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The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam by Barbara W. Tuchman

2010-04-06T18:06:00.000+07:00

My rating: 4 of 5 stars Barbara Tuchman was the greatest popular history writer of the late 20th century, and this is her finest book: a work of history for those who don't read history. Unlike the typical history which tackles a period and/or region, this book examines, in quite of bit of detail, four instances of folly in human history. This turns out to be a remarkably useful device for learning about the kinds of events that drive human organizations to places they don't often go -- and in these four cases, shouldn't have gone.

The book defines folly by examining the first case, letting the Trojan Horse into Troy. To qualify as folly for this book, Tuchman explains, acts have to be clearly contrary to the self-interest of the organization or group pursuing them; conducted over a period of time, not just in a single burst of irrational behavior; conducted by a number of individuals, not just one deranged maniac; and, importantly, there have to be people alive at the time who pointed out correctly why the act in question was folly (no 20/20 hindsight allowed).

In the case of the Trojan Horse, the latter role is played by Laocoon, a blind priest, who chastises Trojan leadership the moment the wooden equine is found. "You can't bring that thing in here," he says, "it might be full of Greek soldiers!" Later, as it becomes evident the will to bring it in is strong, he suggests helpfully, "Well, if you're going to bring it in, at least poke it with a spear and see if anybody yelps."

The Laocoons of this book are destined to be ignored, providing a key reminder of the value of dissent. Tuchman moves on to examine the Renaissance Popes, showing them to be pretty much as corrupt and venal a group as has ever been nominated as a symbol of religious purity. Her time period here is the reign of ten consecutive popes, which covers parties in the Vatican with one prostitute per guest, the reign of the infamous Borgia pope, and ends during the year when an unknown cleric named Martin Luther tacks ten resolutions for the reform of the church on a door in Germany.

The third section of the book is entitled The British Loss of North America and treats the American revolution from a rarely-seen perspective: that of an avoidable and silly loss of valuable colonies occurring primarily due to stiff British necks (upper lips being of no service). The extent to which the war was unpopular in Britain is covered, as well as the many Laocoons decrying the idiocy of antagonizing the colonists, including some viewed in the American version of events as villians.

The last section of the book is no less powerful for being more familiar -- it is the Amercian involvement in Vietnam. Tuchman's objectivity slips a bit here (she was an anti-war protestor) but the quality of her research and writing decrying our support of the most blatant of puppet regimes is impeccable. If you think history books are dull drudgery with no real point, this is a book to read. By examining cases where the system was unable to work in its own self-interest, Tuchman gets at the heart of human folly on small as well as large scales. View all my reviews >>

Menghargai Kreativitas

2010-03-01T11:58:00.000+07:00

L Wilardjo | Opini | Kompas Cetak | 1 Maret 2010

Setelah penjiplakan (plagiarism) yang dilakukan guru besar Unpar diberitakan media massa, bermunculanlah artikel tentang penjiplakan. Semuanya mengutuk tindakan itu, yang dinilai sebagai tidak menghargai kreativitas.

Armada Riyanto (Kompas, 24/2/2010) tidak hanya ikut mengutuk penjiplakan, tetapi juga pemberangusan publikasi hasil penelitian yang tidak memenuhi patokan kepuasan penguasa. Apabila penjiplakan merupakan tiadanya penghargaan terhadap kreativitas, terlebih-lebih lagi pemberangusan publikasi hasil telaah ilmiah.

”Penelitian - - - harus bebas dari (campur tangan) para penguasa politik dan ekonomi, yang (justru) harus bekerja sama demi pengembangannya, tanpa menghambat kreativitasnya atau memberangusnya demi tujuan mereka sendiri,” kata mendiang Paus Yohanes Paulus II dalam amanatnya di depan Pontifical Academy of Sciences di Roma, 10 November 1979.

Mengutip bukan menjiplak

Mengutip pernyataan dalam karya orang lain sah-sah saja. Itu bukan penjiplakan, tetapi justru wujud penghargaan atas pandangan yang terkandung dalam pernyataan itu. Karya ilmiah bahkan dinilai, antara lain, berdasarkan seberapa banyak dan seringnya sebagian atau bagian- bagian tertentu dari karya itu dikutip. Makin banyak karya baru yang diilhami suatu gagasan, berarti gagasan itu makin membenih (seminal). Pemanfaatan gagasan atau karya asli itu sesuai dengan ”asas manfaat” yang dianjurkan dalam agama Islam dan dalam utilitarianisme.

Begitu suatu karya dipublikasikan di jurnal ilmiah atau di media massa, ia sudah menjadi bagian dari ranah publik. Siapa saja boleh mengecamnya apabila karya itu tidak benar, atau menerima dan memakainya bila karya itu benar dan baik bagi kehidupan bersama. Karya itu sudah menjadi milik publik. Seperti fasilitas umum mandi, cuci, dan kakus (MCK), siapa pun boleh memakainya.

Itulah imperatif komunalisme, yang merupakan bagian dari paradigma (Robert K) Merton. Bersama dengan ketiga imperatif lainnya, komunalisme merupakan kode etik di bidang pengembangan ilmu.

Penerbitan karya ilmiah, atau pembicaraannya dalam seminar dan simposium, selaras dengan imperatif lain dalam paradigma Merton, yakni organized skepticism. Skeptisisme yang tertib sangat perlu dalam pengembangan ilmu. Tanpa sikap skeptis yang membuahkan kritik, cacat, atau kesalahan yang ada dalam karya ilmiah tidak terungkap. Polemik, berupa serangkaian sorotan (reviews) terhadap suatu karya ilmiah dan tangkisan (rebuttals)-nya, secara dialektis akan menghasilkan karya yang lebih bermutu. Bukan komentar apresiatif saja yang merupakan penghargaan atas kreativitas. Sorotan kritis juga! Yang tidak menghargai kreativitas pencipta karya ilmiah atau seni adalah mereka yang tidak menggubris karya itu.

Jadi, silakan mengutip atau memakai karya orang lain. Hanya saja, jangan mendaku (meng-claim)-nya sebagai karya Anda sendiri. Itulah tata krama yang berlaku di dunia akademik. Menerapkan sopan santun ini berarti mengugemi (berpegang teguh pada) nilai konstitutif yang terpenting, yakni kejujuran.

Harus ada acuan?

Dalam talk-show tentang Gurita Cikeas-nya George J Aditjondro, ada guru besar yang suka menonjolkan kegurubesarannya. Ia menilai karya Aditjondro tersebut tidak ilmiah sebab tidak ada acuannya.

Menonjolkan ego dan predikat itu bukan sikap ilmuwan sejati. Yang ditekankan seharusnya kekuatan logika dan koherensi uraiannya dan korespondensi pernyataannya dengan fakta dan empiria yang ada di ”lapangan”. Tiadanya referensi tidak serta-merta membuat suatu karya menjadi tidak ilmiah. Kalau yang ditulis pemakalah itu temuan eksperimental atau gagasan aslinya sendiri, tentulah tidak ada acuannya.

Apabila orang menyatakan E > mc (kesetaraan antara massa dan tenaga), tidak perlu ia mengacu ke karya Einstein Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Koerper di Annalen der Physik, 17, 891(1905) sebab semua tokoh sudah tahu bahwa ”rumus” tersebut didapatkan oleh Einstein. Makalah Einstein tersebut berupa tinjauan dari aspek elektrodinamis atas benda yang bergerak, dan melahirkan teori relativitas khusus. Mengatakan: ”Apalah arti sebuah nama. Mawar sekuntum, mau disebut apa pun, ya tetap harum”, tidak perlu disertai dengan pengakuan bahwa itu dikutip dari karya Shakespeare. Saben irung wis ngerti, kata orang Jawa. Setiap ”hidung” (maksudnya, orang) sudah tahu!

Dalam karya yang insinuatif seperti Gurita Cikeas-nya Aditjondro, tiadanya acuan ke sumber datanya barangkali merupakan kesengajaan, demi melindungi informan yang bersangkutan. Sumber itu baru diungkapkan di pengadilan apabila ada pihak yang merasa difitnah dan menuntut pertanggungjawaban Aditjondro secara hukum.

Liek Wilardjo Guru Besar Fisika UK Satya Wacana Salatiga

(c) 2008 - 2009 KOMPAS.com - All rights reserved

No Way To Run An Economy

2010-03-01T10:44:00.000+07:00

by Graham Turner | New Internationalist | January 2010

Pluto Press, ISBN 9780745329765

Oh what a tangled web it weaves, when first it practises to deceive. Anyone with blind faith in the self-correcting nature of markets is invariably left dumbfounded by their serial misbehaviour. So it takes someone with the penetrating gaze of Graham Turner to untangle the web, reveal the thing for what it is, explain what ails it, where it’s been, where it’s liable to head next – and sometimes to be proved right, as he famously was by his previous book, The Credit Crunch.

Anyone taking comfort from the soothing notes currently issuing from the very policy-makers that landed us in this mess should hasten to the pages of Turner’s new book No Way To Run An Economy before it’s too late – again. Among other things, the ‘zero bound’ of interest rates that’s now been reached means that there is nothing left in the policy locker. Corporate globalization has wrecked itself, and the earth with it, by unduly favouring capital over labour, money over people, reason and nature. That’s untamed capitalism for you.

Turner deploys a subtle mix of Marx and Keynes to reach conclusions of his own. The one policy most likely to work in the end, he suggests, entails a change no less profound than the blood-soaked war economy that was the eventual escape route from the Great Depression of the 1930s. This time around it has to tackle environmental collapse as well. It can only do so with the engagement of the public whose interests any economy is supposed to serve, thereby bringing an end to the venal ‘shareholder model’ of ownership and control.

DR

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Kutuk Plagiarisme, Lalu?

2010-02-24T11:08:00.000+07:00

Oleh Armada Riyanto | Opini | Kompas Cetak | 24 Februari 2010

Tentang plagiarisme, kiranya tidak berguna lagi aneka kutukan. Yang lebih penting adalah apa kelanjutan sesudah tragedi plagiarisme.

Bandung, Jakarta, Aceh, Malang, Yogyakarta, Surabaya, Solo, Bogor, Semarang, dan Medan, apakah mereka emblem kota-kota intelektual? Dengan menjamurnya pabrikan skripsi, tesis, disertasi, juga paper di kota-kota itu dan lainnya yang belum disebut, mendung kelabu menyelimuti dunia intelektualitas kita. Masih adakah kota intelektual di tanah kita? Sebuah pertanyaan hati nurani.

Tak usah mengutuk Bandung sebab Yogyakarta atau kota Anda mungkin lebih parah. Tak perlu mengkritik institusi yang kecolongan sebab institusi sekaliber UGM, UI, atau MIT di AS, Cambridge di Inggris, atau Alberta di Kanada pun tidak imun terhadap kasus plagiarisme dalam sejarah akademisnya. Di Yogyakarta, dugaan perkara plagiarisme disertasi oleh seorang doktor dari MIT tidak diapa-apakan, malah pernah memegang jabatan penting di dunia pendidikan kita. Institusi paling bersih dipersilakan untuk ”melempar batu pertama” pemberantasan plagiarisme, dan adakah yang berani?

Sepuluh tahun lalu, dalam sebuah penelitian oleh pusat integritas akademik Duke University atas mahasiswa-mahasiswi Amerika diperoleh data 68 hingga 70 persen mengaku pernah melakukan penjiplakan (Cf. http://guides.library.ualberta.ca18 Feb. 2010). Andai hal yang sama dikerjakan terhadap mahasiswa-mahasiswi Indonesia, kita mungkin akan memperoleh angka yang lebih mengejutkan.

Setelah ini apa?

Perketat sistem pengurusan jenjang profesorat? Menggiatkan pendidikan karakter? Penciptaan plagiarism detection software? Mempromosikan pendidikan kebenaran, budi pekerti, dan integritas?

Menteri Pendidikan Nasional pernah berkata, pada 2009 jumlah pemohon guru besar dari perguruan tinggi negeri dan perguruan tinggi swasta sebanyak 986 orang, yang lolos 286 orang. Sudah ketatkah sistemnya? Barangkali soal paling mendasar adalah rumusan-rumusan ilmiah apa saja yang telah diproduksi oleh para ilmuwan kita. Mengapa sepintas masih tampak sepi dan tiada yang baru.

Di samping sebagai emblem merosotnya kejujuran, plagiarisme dapat berasal dari lemahnya pemahaman tentang esensi sebuah ilmu. Ketika putra-putri kita masuk sekolah, orangtua dan pendidik sangat bangga dengan anak didiknya memiliki nilai tinggi. Namun, siapa peduli memerhatikan integritas dan proses pendewasaan serta perkembangan tanggung jawabnya?

Plagiarisme akan tetap menjadi sebuah serial aktivitas sehari- hari bila skema perspektif pendidikan kita tidak berubah. Ketika sebuah kemajuan disempitkan dalam ranah formal berupa angka, dengan sedikit perhatian pada proses pencapaiannya, pendidikan mengalami sebuah kemandekan. Pendidikan integritas tersisihkan.

Plagiarisme adalah tindakan pencurian kreativitas intelektual. Sebagai sebuah tindakan mencuri, plagiarisme memiliki konsekuensi etis-deontologis sebagai perbuatan cela. Namun, mencela pun juga tidak cukup. Apalagi hidup sehari-hari bangsa kita dekat dan lekat dengan aneka kemerosotan tercela berupa ”mencuri” hak-hak kebebasan orang lain atau uang rakyat dalam wujud korupsi.

Di sini, memberantas plagiarisme di tengah suasana keseharian yang berlepotan koruptif semacam ini hampir merupakan mission impossible. Pemberantasan plagiarisme jadi sebuah tautologi belaka, sebuah aktivitas repetitif formalistis yang kehilangan makna.

Menghargai ilmu

Plagiarisme juga terjadi karena redupnya kesadaran menghargai ilmu. Ketika jabatan, tunjangan, dan segala konsekuensi kemudahan ditawarkan, sudah semestinya dikerjakan sebuah sistem pendidikan yang menghargai ilmu.

Thomas Kuhn, dalam The Scientific Revolutions (1964), berkata, ilmu pertama-tama adalah paradigma. Terminologi ”paradigma” memaksudkan kompleksitas teori bagaimana suatu ilmu mengelola atau menggumuli obyeknya: cara-cara mempersepsi, mengobservasi, menganalisis, melakukan eksperimentasi dan verifikasi, menarik kesimpulan, mengevaluasi, mempresentasikan, dan mengomunikasikannya. Kuhn membuka mata kita. Dengan prinsip Khunian ini, kita diberi tahu, ilmu bukanlah informasi. Ilmu pengetahuan identik dengan proses pengenalan sekaligus pergumulan paradigmatik.

Kebijakan-kebijakan totaliter dari pemerintah yang memberangus buku produk penelitian mengindikasikan sebuah kenyataan bahwa ilmu pun kini harus lolos kriteria kepuasan dari penguasa. Ini bukan hanya merupakan pengerdilan sains dan riset, melainkan juga penyetopan berkembangnya humanisme kehidupan dan tata nilai etis-filosofis-saintifik, sebuah introduksi kebobrokan societas yang memprihatinkan. Kebijakan semacam ini menyetop hormat terhadap ilmu sebagai sebuah pergumulan paradigmatik.

Dunia pendidikan nasional akan memberantas plagiarisme? Selama pemerintah tidak mengevaluasi mentalitas totaliter, plagiarisme tidak akan pernah habis sebab plagiarisme adalah bentuk lain dari usaha untuk mengelabui pemenuhan aneka formalisme sistem yang dikelola oleh dunia pendidikan kita. Maraknya plagiarisme adalah emblem redupnya cita rasa kreatif, ilmiah, dan miskinnya pergumulan paradigmatik, di samping rusaknya bangunan nurani kejujuran dan cinta kebenaran bangsa ini.

Armada Riyanto

Guru Besar Filsafat Etika Politik STFT Widya Sasana, Malang

(c) 2008 - 2009 KOMPAS.com - All rights reserved

Senja Kala Sekularisme

2010-01-17T09:51:00.001+07:00

KOMARUDDIN HIDAYAT | Opini | Kompas | Jumat, 15 Januari 2010

Anda tidak perlu Tuhan untuk berperang. You don’t need God for a war, demikian John Micklethwait, pemimpin redaksi majalah The Economist, bersama Adrian Wooldridge seorang kolumnis, dalam karyanya God is Back. Buku setebal 405 halaman ini menyajikan fakta sosial seputar kebangkitan keyakinan agama yang meramaikan panggung politik global di awal abad ini.

Jika Anda naik pesawat terbang dan mendarat di Bandar Udara Nashville, Tennessee, Amerika Serikat, Anda akan disambut tulisan selamat datang: Music City, USA. Menurut Micklethwait, mestinya ditambah lagi dengan papan nama: Faith City, atau Jesus City, bahkan lebih mengena: Southern Baptist City, mengingat di kota ini terdapat sedikitnya 700 gereja, 65 persen penduduknya mengaku religius. Nashville juga dikenal sebagai kota produsen buku-buku dan kaset keagamaan yang diekspor ke seluruh dunia. Banyak penyanyi papan atas melakukan rekaman lagu-lagu keagamaan di kota ini, sebut saja Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, atau Carrie Underwood.

Penggemar lagu-lagu gereja tak akan sulit mencari kaset semisal Jesus Remembered Me, Jesus Dies for Me, How Can You Refuse Him Now?, I Talk to Jesus Everyday, dan lainnya. Suasana batin ini jauh berbeda dengan akhir abad ke-19 ketika seluruh universitas papan atas AS menggusur ke pinggir posisi agama. Now God is returning to intellectual life, tulisnya. Dulu orang belajar agama dianggap aneh atau semacam hobi bagi sekelompok orang, tetapi sekarang belajar agama merupakan hal yang lumrah, bahkan suatu kebutuhan.

Rapuhnya institusi keluarga dan berkembangnya demoralisasi sosial telah ikut mendorong pertumbuhan agama yang sangat mengesankan. Dikatakan, Islam and Pentecostalism today occupy a ”social space” analogous to early twentieth century socialism. Marx has reemerged in the guise of radical imams and Pentecostal preachers.

Pisau bermata dua

Janji-janji surga dunia ideologi besar marxisme dan kapitalisme yang tidak kunjung tiba telah ikut mendorong agama untuk tampil kembali. Ada kerinduan dan harapan masyarakat modern terhadap agama. Namun, agama yang berkembang dalam masyarakat yang kian mengglobal ini tampil semakin warna-warni, beragam paham dan keyakinan. Keragaman agama ini sekaligus juga potensial menimbulkan konflik. Oleh karena itu, kehadiran kembali agama ini dalam waktu yang sama juga menimbulkan ketakutan, dikhawatirkan akan semakin mengintensifkan konflik dan perang atas nama Tuhan. Ketakutan ini cukup beralasan mengingat perang atas nama Tuhan memang memiliki sejarah panjang.

Konflik agama bisa dibedakan menjadi dua, yaitu konflik internal antarsekte dan konflik eksternal, yaitu melawan agama lain. Konflik antara Protestan dan Katolik dan antara Sunni dan Syiah, misalnya, telah menelan korban ribuan nyawa dan menyisakan luka di antara mereka. Dalam ranah global, dua agama yang selalu menyimpan konflik adalah antara Kristen dan Islam. Agama Yahudi terbatas hanya untuk keturunan Israel, Hindu lebih berpusat pada rakyat India, Tao dan Konghucu untuk orang-orang China Daratan dan perantauan, dan Shinto lebih banyak bagi masyarakat Jepang.

Namun, konflik internal antarsekte juga sangat fenomenal. Di kawasan Timur Tengah, terutama Irak dan Lebanon, konflik berdarah-darah antara kelompok Sunni dan Syiah diperkirakan masih akan berlanjut terus. Contoh ini bisa ditambah dengan menyajikan kasus Ahmadiyah di Indonesia yang dihujat dan diserang oleh mayoritas Sunni. Bukanlah mustahil, kalau suatu saat Syiah membesar sangat mungkin akan muncul konflik seperti di Irak.

Jadi, meskipun gerakan agama kembali bangkit, masih ada pertanyaan besar, apa jaminannya bahwa kebangkitan agama akan memberikan kehidupan lebih baik di masa depan? Di sini muncul keraguan di balik God is Back. Tanpa melibatkan Tuhan saja berbagai peperangan yang sadis dan brutal terjadi di mana-mana. Terlebih lagi jika emosi agama ikut hadir menambah amunisi peperangan. Micklethwait mengatakan, kebangkitan agama akan melipatgandakan jumlah orang yang siap untuk saling berbunuhan dengan alasan agama. Konfrontasi antara nuklir Iran di satu pihak dan Israel serta Amerika di pihak lain pasti akan menggema ke seluruh dunia dan orang pun akan segera menafsirkan sebagai perseteruan agama.

Perseteruan antara India dan Pakistan soal Kashmir pasti akan melibatkan emosi keagamaan meskipun pada dasarnya merupakan persengketaan wilayah. Belum lagi di Filipina dan Indonesia, hubungan antara minoritas dan mayoritas Islam-Kristen juga selalu menyimpan bara konflik. Namun, tanpa melibatkan Tuhan dan agama sesungguhnya manusia telah mengukir sejarah konflik berdarah-darah dan berkesinambungan. Abad dua puluh adalah abad paling sekuler dan sekaligus paling berdarah-darah. Apa yang disebut ”the Godless religions of Nazism and Communism” telah membunuh puluhan juta manusia. Begitu juga pembantaian di Kamboja, Kongo, dan Rwanda, kesemuanya sama sekali tidak melibatkan nama Tuhan. Lalu terorisme yang terjadi di Sri Lanka dan Eropa juga bersifat sekuler.

Dengan kata lain, akar terorisme tidak selalu dimotivasi oleh agama. Bahkan, dalam berbagai kasus agama dijadikan jubah dan penambah amunisi, padahal akarnya bisa jadi adanya dominasi mayoritas terhadap minoritas atau kekuatan asing yang akan menguasai atau menjarah wilayah bangsa lain.

Politik identitas

Di tengah maraknya gelombang demokratisasi di berbagai belahan dunia, salah satu konsekuensi yang kurang diperhitungkan sebelumnya adalah munculnya gerakan politik identitas. Proses demokratisasi yang tidak disertai penegakan hukum, partsipasi pendidikan dan kesejahteraan sosial yang merata, maka politik identitas untuk memperjuangkan kelompok etnis dan agama akan semakin menguat. Fenomena ini mesti dicermati dan diantisipasi di Indonesia.

Agenda kelompok berdasarkan kepentingan etnis, daerah, agama, dan parpol mendapatkan ruang manuver secara leluasa dengan dalih hak asasi dan demokrasi. Indonesia sebagai negara bangsa yang masih amat muda, sementara korupsi masih akut, lalu pemerintah yang tengah berkuasa sangat diwarnai politik balas budi dan perkoncoan, sangat rawan untuk menghadapi menguatnya politik identitas yang jika kebablasan akan memperlemah demokrasi dan kohesi bangsa. Terlebih lagi jika ideologi transnasional yang tidak setia pada semangat kemerdekaan RI dan Pancasila ikut bermain.

Jadi, tanpa melibatkan Tuhan saja potensi konflik antardaerah dan etnis cukup rawan. Dan itu sudah terjadi. Terlebih lagi jika memperoleh amunisi tambahan berupa ketidakadilan ekonomi dan pendidikan serta sentimen agama, maka proses demokratisasi yang kita perjuangkan akan digerogoti oleh konflik antarkelompok kepentingan yang tidak rasional. Slogan Bhinneka Tungal Ika, keragaman dalam kesatuan, beralih menjadi perseteruan dalam keragaman yang tidak kunjung reda.

Komaruddin Hidayat Rektor UIN Syarif Hidayatullah, Jakarta

Hikmah Pembangunan Masa Lalu untuk Masa Kini

2010-01-17T09:49:00.001+07:00

Emil Salim | Opini | Kompas | Jumat, 15 Januari 2010

Hari Kamis (14/1), Penerbit Buku Kompas meluncurkan buku Pengalaman Pembangunan Indonesia- Kumpulan Tulisan dan Uraian Widjojo Nitisastro dari tahun 1963 hingga 1996 menggambarkan pengalamannya dalam membangun Indonesia di masa Orde Baru. Jika masa ini sudah lewat, timbul pertanyaan masih relevankah isi buku ini bagi generasi masa kini dan nanti? Hikmah apakah yang bisa ditarik dari buku ini?

Buku ini ditulis oleh seorang profesor ekonomi sehingga segera tampak betapa inner logic ekonomi memengaruhi cara pandang dan berpikir sang penulis. Ilmu ekonomi bertumpu pada logika bahwa harga keseimbangan terbentuk bila penawaran bertemu dengan permintaan. Sifat pasar bisa berbeda, serbaliberal, monopoli, berencana atau lain- lain. Namun, akhirnya yang dituju adalah harga keseimbangan antara penawaran dan permintaan.

Ketika pada tahun 1972 meledak krisis pangan yang parah dan harga melonjak tinggi, terdapat laporan produksi beras yang cukup tinggi dari pejabat pertanian daerah, sedangkan Biro Pusat Statistik mengungkapkan produksi beras lebih rendah daripada tahun-tahun sebelumnya. Selaku Ketua Bappenas, Widjojo Nitisastro menginstruksikan agar yang dijadikan patokan adalah ”harga beras pada musim panen” dan bukan perkiraan jumlah produksi yang simpang siur. Inner logic ekonomi berkata, pada musim panen pasokan beras naik sehingga harga beras mestinya tidak naik. Bila ada kenaikan, produksi pada musim panen lebih rendah dengan sebelumnya.

Asas efisiensi

Pelajaran kedua yang bisa ditarik adalah penerapan asas efisiensi yang secara sederhana terungkap dalam lima pertanyaan Menteri Sekretaris Negara Sudharmono ketika berhadapan dengan tuntutan departemen mengajukan anggaran proyek, yakni: pertama ”apakah perlu membangun proyek itu?” Kalau ini dijawab positif, pertanyaan berikut adalah ”apakah perlu sebesar itu ukuran proyeknya?” Kemudian, menyusul pertanyaan ”apa perlu sekarang, apa betul urgen mendesak?” Lalu ”apakah biaya bisa diturunkan?” Akhirnya masih menyusul permintaan untuk mengajukan studi kelayakan untuk dikaji oleh para ahli.

Tersimpul dalam pertanyaan sederhana Sudharmono ini prinsip efisiensi kegunaan, pertimbangan ukuran besar, faktor urgensi waktu dan faktor biaya. Untuk dicek dengan studi kelayakan proyek. Setelah terjawab ini semua barulah proyek ini bisa lolos.

Hikmah ketiga, diterapkannya dalil ”berpegang teguh pada sasaran yang ditetapkan” dalam bahasa manajemen maintenance of the objectives. Ketika pada Januari 1986 Presiden Soeharto menyatakan tidak akan mendevaluasi rupiah, maka komitmen pemerintah ini harus dilaksanakan. Akan tetapi, harga minyak bumi kemudian jatuh sehingga penerimaan devisa berkurang dengan tajam dan nilai tukar rupiah merosot turun. Dan orang menukar rupiah yang overvalued dengan mata uang asing.

Tujuan kebijakan pembangunan adalah mengusahakan stabilisasi ekonomi dan ini memerlukan nilai tukar yang stabil pada tingkat keseimbangan yang bisa dipikul anggaran. Jika nilai tukar rupiah overvalued, maka devisa akan dikuras sehingga membahayakan stabilitas rupiah. Maka, demi maintenance of the objective mencapai ekonomi stabil, Presiden ”menarik janjinya” dan mendevaluasi rupiah pada tahun 1986.

Kerja ”all-out”

Pelajaran keempat adalah semangat kerja habis-habisan, all out to get things done. Untuk mencapai sasaran swasembada pangan, segala keperluan petani harus sampai ke tangan di lapangan. Bibit unggul PB-5, pupuk, dan saluran irigasi harus tersedia pada waktunya. Dan peranan Bulog membeli padi pada waktu harga turun dan menjual pada waktu harga naik. Jalan kabupaten, jalan provinsi, dan jalan nasional direhabilitasi untuk kelancaran arus pasokan input ke petani dan pembelian output dari petani. Untuk potong lajur birokrasi, jalan pintas diambil untuk menurunkan anggaran langsung dari pusat ke lapangan dengan pola ”Proyek Inpres, Instruksi Presiden”. Irigasi sekunder dan primer perlu semen, maka pabrik semen dibangun. Pupuk dibutuhkan banyak, maka pabrik pupuk dibangun. Tak banyak seminar di masa itu, pertemuan lebih banyak dengan petani di tingkat desa. All out to get things done adalah suasana yang hidup mengejar sasaran swasembada pangan yang dicapai pada tahun 1984.

Pelajaran kelima adalah posisi seorang intelektual yang dibedakan dengan ”pekerja intelek” (intellectual worker). Seorang ”pekerja intelek” adalah seorang ”tukang intelek” yang ”menjual otaknya” kepada pembeli tanpa memedulikan ”untuk apa hasil otaknya dipakai”. Seorang ”pekerja intelek” semata-mata mengembangkan ilmu dan menghasilkan karya hasil otaknya dengan imbalan, titik. Sesudah itu, tanggung jawab pembeli hasil otak.

Berbeda halnya dengan seorang ”intelektual” yang pada asasnya adalah seorang ”pengkritik sosial” (social critic) dan bekerja mengidentifikasi, menganalisis, dan memecahkan masalah untuk mencapai masyarakat yang lebih baik, lebih berperikemanusiaan, dan lebih rasional. Dengan demikian, intelektual itu tumbuh menjadi hati nurani masyarakat, the conscience of the society, yang mendambakan perubahan ke arah perbaikan untuk kemaslahatan masyarakat.

Demikianlah lima hikmah yang bisa dipetik dari buku yang ditulis oleh Widjojo Nitisastro yang telah mencurahkan bagian besar hidupnya bagi pembangunan Indonesia.

Semangat zaman telah berubah kini. Tantangan pembangunan masa kini dan nanti telah berbeda. Sungguhpun diperlukan pola pembangunan yang berlainan agar lebih sesuai dengan tuntutan masa, tetapi kelima-lima pokok hikmah di atas tetap bisa digunakan untuk mengisi tuntutan masa baru dan mengisyaratkan tetap perlunya kerja pembangunan dengan inner logic ekonomi, prinsip efisiensi, maintenance of the objectives, all out to get things done, dan sikap jiwa seorang intelektual pembawa hati nurani masyarakat.

Emil Salim Ekonom Senior

Ekodamai

2010-01-17T09:47:00.001+07:00

BS Mardiatmadja | Opini | Kompas | Jumat, 15 Januari 2010

Perang Dunia III tak jadi pecah. Konfrontasi blok Timur dan Barat batal. Namun, Afganistan tidak kunjung damai. Di Iran dan Irak, kekerasan berkecamuk. Deutsche Welle mengutip ucapan: ”Kalau ada neraka di dunia ini, tentulah di tengah Afrika: di sana pembantaian terjadi di mana-mana oleh siapa pun.”

Film Avatar mungkin sarat dengan fiksi, tetapi nada dasarnya seperti menggemakan film The Mission dan perjuangan sekelompok orang di sejumlah bagian Papua sejak beberapa puluh tahun terakhir: konflik bersenjata yang dijiwai oleh kekerasan ideologis. (Sekelompok) orang dengan ideologi tertentu menggagahi orang (-orang) yang memiliki keyakinan lain. Tindak menggagahi itu kerap dikemas dengan kosmetik modern, seperti demokrasi, kebebasan berpendapat, dan persaingan sah. Terjadilah apa yang dulu sering disebut ”perang yang dapat dipertanggungjawabkan”. Terlalu cepat untuk mengatakan ada ”damai di atas bumi”. Di balik itu tersembunyi nafsu penghancuran semesta.

Maka, Paus Benediktus XVI mengubah slogan lama tentang damai dengan yang baru. Dulu orang bilang ”si vis pacem, para bellum” (bila mau damai, siap-siaplah perang). Benediktus XVI menawarkan ungkapan baru ”si vis pacem, protege creaturam" (bila mau damai, lindungilah ciptaan). Dengan ungkapan itu, seruan damai tradisional Paus di tanggal 1 Januari menangkap gerak dunia akhir-akhir ini: pelestarian ciptaan bukanlah sekadar alternatif; mencintai dan melestarikan ciptaan adalah suatu keharusan kalau kita mau damai.

Nyatanya, sejak akhir abad ke- 20 banyak pertempuran mengambil berbagai dalih yang bunyinya saja demokratis, tetapi pada intinya dasar perang akhir-akhir ini adalah perebutan sumber alam untuk memeras habis madu alam: pemiskinan ciptaan. Ekologi mutlak agar dunia jadi oikos kita bersama, rumah kita bersama: damai di Bumi.

Teringat kita bahwa Yohannes Paulus II sudah 20 tahun yang lalu mengingatkan dunia akan gawatnya masalah lingkungan. Bahkan, sesungguhnya Paulus VI pada tahun 1971 mengajak orang yang mau maju untuk mencintai alam semesta. Benediktus XVI, yang dahulu bernama Joseph Ratzinger, mempunyai pendahulu yang memandang ciptaan dan alam semesta dalam kaitan erat dengan hidup manusia; bahkan dengan panggilan rohani manusia. Teolog Jerman itu bernapas serupa dengan seorang Perancis, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

Kekudusan alam ciptaan

Pemikir yang lama menjadi peneliti di Tiongkok itu meninggal tahun 1966: seorang paleontologis, filsuf, teolog: menangkap gerak-gerak ilahi dalam seluruh pertumbuhan ciptaan. Kuburannya di Hyde Park menjadi tempat ziarah bagi banyak pencinta ekologi. Pada tahun 1981, pada ulang tahunnya yang ke-100, pendapat Teilhard diakui sebagai tepat, yakni bahwa ciptaan adalah hal kudus yang akan berkembang terus dan harus dilindungi. Teilhard menguraikan kekudusan alam ciptaan itu tidak dengan kutipan panjang dari Alkitab, melainkan dengan rentetan analisis ilmiah modern: lengkap dengan kupasan paleontologis, kimia, dan seterusnya.

Kudusnya alam ciptaan tampak dalam pandangan banyak bangsa di mana pun. Tentu saja film Avatar menghidangkannya dengan kecanggihan elektronik dan koreografi baru serta nada-nada New Age. Namun, paparan Avatar sudah lama dapat kita temukan dalam Kisah Penciptaan; ketika kepada manusia diserahkan tidak hanya alam semesta untuk dipergunakan, tetapi juga untuk dipelihara.

Dari pikiran Teilhard de Chardin terdapat sekurang-kurangnya sepuluh butir yang dapat dikembangkan dalam pelestarian lingkungan: bahwa ekologi mengupayakan alam sebagai arena demi kesejahteraan bersama; bahwa melindungi hutan adalah mutlak demi kesejahteraan seluruh dunia; bahwa menjaga keanekaragaman hayati merupakan prasyarat untuk kelestarian manusia; bahwa menjaga hidup binatang langka merupakan latihan rohani untuk pelestarian lingkungan; bahwa penghormatan suku terasing menjadi bentuk antropologi yang ekologis; bahwa keadilan ekonomis hanya dapat berjalan dengan keadilan ekologis; bahwa komunitas manusiawi terbentuk hanya dalam lingkungan alami yang sehat; bahwa tanggung jawab sosial dan ekologis adalah prasyarat industri lestari; bahwa manusia hanya akan terus hidup kalau menjaga energi dan mencari cara baru membangun energi; bahwa masyarakat hanya berkembang kalau diciptakan rekreasi dan transportasi yang ekologis; bahwa ekologi hanya dapat berkembang kalau manusia menghormati budaya asli dan kesatuan manusia dengan alam. Hanya dalam semua itu damai dapat diusahakan.

”The Mission”

Pada abad ke-17-18 orang Iguarani di Paraguay disodori dua macam perkembangan: yang satu adalah pembangunan yang mulai dengan pendidikan menyeluruh, seperti yang dilakukan Gabriel dan komunitasnya. Mereka mengajari orang Indian itu bercocok tanam dan memiliki pertanian serta perkebunan sendiri; bahkan mereka mendidik anak-anak sehingga menjadi cerdas dan memiliki selera seni yang semakin indah.

Model pembangunan masyarakat lainnya menjadikan orang Guarani sebagai alat untuk mencari keuntungan bagi orang Eropa. Mereka adalah tenaga murah yang dapat menolong mengambil hasil bumi sebanyak mungkin demi kepentingan pendatang. Perbedaan cara pembangunan itu menyeret juga perselisihan antara para pemuka agama dan politisi di Eropa. Tidak perlu menunggu lama: terjadilah perang. Itulah yang ditayangkan oleh film The Mission, yang mendapat banyak penghargaan di beberapa pusat seni dan menjadi pangkal studi banyak seminar.

Rebutan sumber daya alam seperti itu bukan hanya tidak berhenti pada abad ke-18, tetapi bahkan semakin meluas dan semakin brutal pada abad ke-19 dan ke-20; abad ke-21 belum terbebaskan dari pertikaian ekonomi dan politis dengan pangkal rebutan sumber daya alam dan dengan akibat perusakan alam yang semakin lama semakin parah.

Kata Iguarani dapat diganti dengan pelbagai nama suku di banyak tempat di seluruh dunia. Paraguay dapat saja pindah ke sembarang tempat di pulau subur di setiap benua, termasuk Indonesia. Banyak suku bangsa memandang alam sebagai ibu, seperti kita dulu sering menyebutnya Ibu Pertiwi. Tidak sedikit yang memandang pelindung kesuburan tanah, seperti Dewi Sri, pantas dihormati sebagai sebuah sikap batin untuk menghormati alam.

Hal serupa berlaku di Jawa, Amungme, Na’vi, dan seterusnya. Semua merujuk pada sikap sama: menghormati alam semesta. Orang yang mencintai kemajuan bangsa manusia secara menyeluruh, dengan segala analisis ekologisnya, memiliki sikap hormat pada alam secara sama: amat berbeda dengan mereka yang melihat bumi sebagai tempat yang harus diisap habis madunya demi keuntungan finansial jangka pendek. Rebutan sumber daya alam itu sejak beberapa abad dan semakin lama semakin ganas menyebabkan terjadinya konflik tersembunyi atau terbuka di PBB dan seluruh dunia.

”Si vis pacem, protege creaturam”, ”bila mau damai, lindungilah ciptaan” adalah seruan yang pantas mendapat perhatian kita, yang mencintai Pertiwi, menyayangi perdamaian, dan menghendaki kemajuan yang lestari. Itulah juga harapan yang layak dikemukakan pada awal tahun 2010.

BS Mardiatmadja, SJ Rohaniwan

Inkongruensi Bangsa Ini

2010-01-17T09:43:00.001+07:00

Limas Sutanto | Opini | Kompas | 16 Januari 2010

Kalau kita tega (atau berani tegas) mengatakan bahwa bangsa Indonesia sakit, pertanyaan mendasar yang niscaya dijawab adalah: apakah penyakit bangsa ini?

Hal itu terasa makin pantas dikemukakan karena akhir-akhir ini kian terhayati betapa keindahan, citra yang baik, kesantunan, ketenangan, dan ketertiban yang begitu tampak dan sengaja ditampakkan di permukaan kehidupan bangsa ini terasa tidak memiliki landasan substansi yang congruent (sejalan dan serasi) dengan semua penampilan hebat di permukaan itu.

Penampilan hebat para pemimpin, yang terkesan lebih bersih dibandingkan dengan penguasa yang lampau, tidak kongruen dengan kemewahan mobil dinas yang dijatahkan melalui prosedur yang ”bersih”, dalam arti diwujudkan tanpa melanggar peraturan atau undang-undang apa pun. Peraturan atau undang-undang disiasati dan dijadikan siasat untuk melakukan sesuatu yang menguntungkan diri sendiri.

Kemenangan gemilang dalam pemilihan umum begitu mengesankan dan pada awalnya sangat membanggakan. Namun, George Junus Aditjondro dalam bukunya, Membongkar Gurita Cikeas, dapat meredupkan kegemilangan, kesan hebat, dan kebanggaan yang sebelumnya begitu mencuat. Bisa saja orang mengatakan, benang-benang gagasan George Aditjondro tentang jejaring korupsi itu ngawur atau bersifat memfitnah, tetapi jika pikiran bening digunakan untuk membaca buku itu, dan reputasi serta rekam jejak sang penulis buku dipertimbangkan, dapat dirasakan betapa setidaknya sebagian kandungan buku George Aditjondro dapat dijadikan masukan dan kritik bagi para penguasa untuk mawas diri.

Namun, yang terlihat dalam kenyataan justru sikap defensif yang intinya adalah aksi asal membela diri. Pidato dan bantahan didengungkan, bahkan kegiatan membantah mencapai tingkat begitu sengit. Salah satu pembantah cerdik memainkan strategi playing victim dan mengadu ke polisi karena merasa dirinya dizalimi sang penulis, bukan saja secara tertulis, tetapi juga secara fisik.

Memalukan

Panitia Khusus DPR tentang Hak Angket Bank Century yang sedang berusaha memberikan penampilan mengesankan bagi rakyat di sana-sini dibercaki beberapa serpihan peristiwa memalukan, seperti pertengkaran antaranggota Pansus seputar ihwal yang sama sekali tidak penting jika ditinjau pada perspektif penyelidikan kasus Bank Century. Dalam pertengkaran terlontar kata-kata kasar, seperti ”bangsat”, dan terluapkan emosi keras penuh amarah.

Ini sungguh incongruent (berlawanan) dengan kesan santun, segalanya serba terukur, tenang, baik, necis, dan tertib yang sela- ma ini begitu diandalkan di permukaan. Tanya-jawab dalam sidang-sidang Pansus pun mengguratkan kesan bahwa tokoh-tokoh yang tampil, apa pun jabatannya, seperti apa pun reputasinya selama ini, ternyata suka berkelit dengan kerap bilang ”tidak tahu” untuk membela dirinya sendiri. Ini tentu incongruent dengan kewajiban mereka sebagai pejabat berintegritas.

Mungkin penyakit bangsa ini adalah inkongruensi (incongruence). Inti inkongruensi adalah ketidakjujuran dan ketidaktulusan. Di balik inkongruensi bersarang kepentingan diri sendiri. Manusia mengejawantahkan inkongruensi karena dia mementingkan dirinya sendiri, berbuat untuk dirinya sendiri, bukan berbuat untuk kepentingan orang lain. Memang tidak ada manusia yang dapat melarang seseorang untuk bersikap inkongruen. Namun, di tengah masyarakat dan bangsa selalu ada orang-orang tertentu yang dipilih oleh hamparan luas warga untuk menjalankan suatu jabatan publik atau untuk jadi pemimpin. Orang-orang tertentu itu disebut pejabat publik dan pemimpin. Tugas mereka adalah melayani kepentingan orang-orang di luar diri mereka sendiri, bukan melayani kepentingan diri sendiri. Mereka seyogianya kongruen dan konsisten.

Kini bangsa ini masih kurang memiliki pejabat publik dan pemimpin yang kongruen. Mudah-mudahan para pejabat publik dan pemimpin itu mau bermawas diri dan menjadi makin kongruen. Namun, sungguhkah bangsa ini suka dengan pemimpin yang kongruen?

Anda mungkin masih ingat betapa Gus Dur adalah pemimpin yang selalu menomorsatukan kepentingan orang-orang lain dan berani mengorbankan kepentingan dirinya sendiri. Gus Dur adalah pemimpin yang kongruen. Namun, Gus Dur tampil begitu saja dengan celana pendek dan baju seadanya di teras Istana, melambaikan tangan buat hamparan rakyat di hadapannya. Dan, apa yang terjadi kemudian? Orang-orang mengecam perbuatan Gus Dur itu.

Mungkin bangsa ini memang lebih suka pada inkongruensi yang dibungkus penampilan bagus ketimbang kongruensi yang tidak terlalu peduli penampilan di permukaan. Seluruh warga bangsa pun perlu mawas diri.

Limas Sutanto Psikiater Konsultan Psikoterapi; Wakil Presiden Asia Pacific Association of Psychotherapists; Tinggal di Malang

Belajar dari India

2010-01-17T09:40:00.001+07:00

Ivan A Hadar | Opini | Kompas | 16 Januari 2010

Menjelang tahun 2010, setiap pejabat negara setingkat menteri serta pemimpin lembaga tinggi negara diberi mobil mewah Toyota Crown Royal Saloon 3.000 cc. Terasa ironis sebab waktu pemberian mobil bertenaga besar dan boros BBM itu nyaris bersamaan dengan pernyataan Presiden Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono bahwa Indonesia bertekad mereduksi emisi karbon hingga 26 persen pada 2020. Juga ironis mengingat tekad pemerintah untuk berhemat.

Menurut Menteri Sekretaris Negara Sudi Silalahi, penggantian mobil dinas seharga 1,3 miliar rupiah per unit itu dianggarkan dalam APBN 2009 sesuai dengan program pemerintah yang telah disetujui DPR periode lalu. Ada dugaan, anggaran mobil dinas itu mungkin diambil dari subsidi pemerintah bagi rakyat miskin. Ya, semacam pelimpahan anggaran, berupa pengurangan subsidi untuk dianggarkan menjadi fasilitas pejabat negara (Kompas, 30/12/2009).

Banyak yang menyesali dan merasa ”kado akhir tahun” untuk para menteri dan pejabat tinggi negara ini melukai rasa keadilan, terutama bagi mereka yang selama ini berkubang dalam kemiskinan. Kenyataannya, masih lebih dari 35 juta rakyat negeri ini tergolong miskin. Penganggur pun masih sangat banyak. Kesenjangan melebar pula, terlihat dari kemerosotan indeks pembangunan manusia (IPM), dari posisi ke-109 (dari 179 negara) pada 2008 menjadi ke-111 pada 2009. Anjloknya IPM menunjukkan bahwa kualitas kesehatan, pendidikan, dan pendapatan per kapita sebuah negara memburuk.

Berbarengan dengan berita itu, wartawan Kompas dalam ”Laporan dari India” menulis keteladanan pemimpin India yang menjadi perekat harmoni sosial. Para pemimpin negeri Mahatma Ghandi ini, termasuk presidennya, tetap menggunakan mobil buatan dalam negeri. Juga tak ada kemegahan kantor-kantor pemerintahan karena yang dipentingkan adalah fungsi (Kompas, 29/12/2009).

Kelompok miskin pedesaan

Pada Pemilu 2009, Partai Kongres India meraih suara terbanyak berkat sebuah program jaminan pekerjaan bagi kelompok miskin pedesaan. Program yang dimulai pada tahun 2005 dengan nama National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 (NREGA) ini memberikan jamin pekerjaan (fisik) kepada semua rumah tangga di daerah pedesaan selama 100 hari per tahun.

Di mancanegara memang terdapat cukup banyak contoh program sejenis. Bedanya, NREGA berangkat dari tingginya kemauan politik pemerintah—berupa jaminan hukum—serta didasari pada kebutuhan riil masyarakat. Panchayat, lembaga pedesaan yang anggotanya dipilih secara demokratis, mengembangkan kerangka pengadaan kerja sehingga dananya tidak jatuh ke tangan pengusaha. Gaji pun diberikan dalam jumlah yang lebih besar dibandingkan dengan rata-rata tingkat gaji di pasar tenaga kerja.

Manfaat program ini sangat dirasakan rakyat miskin pedesaan, yang biasanya terpaksa menerima pekerjaan apa saja dengan tingkat gaji di bawah standar. Dampak positif lain: perbaikan mendasar infrastruktur pedesaan dan berkurangnya arus urbanisasi. Di Negara Bagian Bihar, NREGA berhasil memobilisasi sekitar 44 persen penduduknya (3 juta jiwa) yang berasal dari 7.500 desa untuk menanam lebih dari satu miliar pohon dalam waktu tiga tahun. Sebuah pencapaian puncak yang menjadi rekor dunia.

Program ini mendahulukan mereka yang berada pada strata terbawah orang miskin, terutama lansia, mereka yang cacat, dan janda. Satu kelompok terdiri atas empat keluarga; mereka diwajibkan menanam 200 pohon, termasuk pohon buah-buahan, dan merawatnya selama tiga tahun. Mereka memperoleh gaji ketika pada akhir tahun ketiga 90 persen pohon bertahan hidup. Dalam aturan NREGA, setiap pekerja dibayar 2 dollar AS per hari selama 100 hari dalam satu tahun.

Keberhasilan NREGA adalah membuat Komnas Pengusaha Informal India melakukan penelitian dan mengajukan rekomendasi kepada pemerintah federal untuk menerapkan program sejenis di daerah perkotaan.

Permulaan

Harus diakui, NREGA barulah sebuah permulaan dalam upaya memberantas kemiskinan. Bagi sebuah negara besar seperti India, dan juga Indonesia, persoalan yang dihadapi terbilang kompleks. Namun, arah kebijakan yang jelas adalah sebuah keharusan. Beberapa dasawarsa lalu pembagian pemilikan tanah secara merata menjadi salah satu pekerjaan rumah besar dalam upaya memberantas kemiskinan di pedesaan. Kini persoalannya semakin menjelimet mencakup penerapan jaring pengaman sosial, pemberian akses ke pendidikan, kesehatan, dan perumahan.

Pendidikan dan keterampilan menjadi sangat penting untuk membuka akses bagi penghasilan orang miskin. Menurut Amartya Sen, daripada memacu pertumbuhan makroekonomi, pemerintah sebaiknya memerhatikan persyaratan yang lebih adil terkait pembukaan lapangan kerja dan gaji bagi orang miskin yang dijamin oleh undang-undang.

Seruan penanaman satu miliar pohon per tahun yang disampaikan Presiden Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono baru-baru ini ditanggapi skeptis oleh banyak kalangan. Pengalaman selama ini: imbauan sejenis kurang mangkus. Pemerintah memang selalu mengaku berhasil menanam jutaan pohon, tetapi tidak jelas di mana lokasinya, jenis tanamannya, luas, hingga proses secara keseluruhan.

Sejarah tanam pohon di Indonesia sejak puluhan tahun lalu dianggap sebagai cerita kegagalan. Logikanya, kalau berbagai jenis program tanam pohon berhasil, semestinya tahun ini merupakan waktu panen hasil tanam pohon tahun 2003. Pada waktu itu, sebagian gerakan rehabilitasi hutan dan lahan fokus pada penanaman pohon berumur pendek, seperti sengon.

Seruan penanaman satu miliar pohon juga dituding sebagai politik kamuflase atas kebijakan sektor kehutanan yang eksploitatif. Di satu sisi, Indonesia ingin dicap sebagai negara ramah lingkungan, di sisi lain hutan alam terus dibuka untuk kepentingan industri dan perkebunan.

Menurut data Walhi, berdasarkan rencana tata ruang daerah terakhir, sekitar 17,91 juta hektar hutan sekunder dan primer akan dibuka untuk pembangunan di luar sektor kehutanan. Sementara itu izin pemanfaatan 44 juta hektar kawasan hutan produksi disiapkan dalam tahun 2010-2014.

Tak heran, aktivis lingkungan lebih menyarankan melakukan moratorium penebangan hutan. Idealnya, selain moratorium, tak ada salahnya kita belajar dan menerapkan pengalaman India menggabungkan upaya berantas kemiskinan dan benah infrastruktur pedesaan serta perbaikan lingkungan lewat penanaman satu miliar pohon. Semoga!

IVAN A HADAR Ko-Pemimpin Redaksi Jurnal Sosial Demokrasi Indonesia dan Asia

Bolshevism and Stalinism

2010-01-14T04:11:00.001+07:00

An avalanche of books has recently been published to discredit Lenin, Trotsky and the Russian Revolution. First and foremost of these writers is Professor Robert Service. The aim of his latest book on Trotsky is to prove that Bolshevism leads to Stalinism and totalitarianism. Here Rob Sewell sets the record straight and explains the huge gulf that divided genuine Bolshevism from the monster of Stalinism that was built on the physical destruction of the Bolshevik party

by Rob Sewell | In Defense of Marxism | 13 January 2010

The history of the Russian Revolution is intimately associated with the names of Lenin and Trotsky, its two great leaders. They attracted all the praise and they bore all the hatred. The reason for this is not difficult to understand. The October Russian Revolution, led by the Bolshevik Party, was the greatest event in history. For the first time, the workers and peasant took power into their hands, swept aside the landlords and capitalists, and proceeded to organise a democratic workers’ Soviet Republic. The authority of the new Soviet government rested upon a congress of soviets (workers’ committees) elected from factories and barracks.

Leon TrotskyLeon Trotsky, who was a political giant, built and led the Red Army from scratch. After Lenin’s death, it was Trotsky who led the struggle against Stalinism, for which he paid the ultimate price by his murder in 1940 at the hands of a Stalinist agent.

Over the recent period there has been an avalanche of books published to discredit Lenin, Trotsky and the Russian Revolution. First and foremost of these writers is Professor Robert Service, the author of several books, including one on Lenin and another on Stalin.

His latest book is a biography of Trotsky, which is an attempt to link all three figures and bind them to the crimes of Stalin. This amalgam is not a new method. Its aim is to prove that Bolshevism leads to Stalinism and totalitarianism and must be condemned in equal measure.

Anti-Communism

Professor Service comes from that breed of historians and intellectuals whose stock in trade is anti-communism. The task of these well-paid academics is to discredit Marxism, communism and revolution in general. Despite all the talk of “objectivity”, Service’s latest book contains nothing that is original, and is a rehash of all the old slanders and gossip against Leon Trotsky, one of the greatest revolutionary figures in history.

Robert Service dismisses Trotsky’s own autobiography, ‘My Life’, as well as the sympathetic and highly acclaimed biographies written by Isaac Deutscher and Pierre Broué, which contain, according to him, “highly disputable judgements”. Service wishes to “correct” these judgements with his own twisted conclusions.

Service is incapable of understanding history through the interaction of leaders, parties, classes and groups. He superficially reduces the historic struggle between Trotsky and Stalin as a personal or even psychological struggle, devoid of any class content or interests. “Stalin outplayed him. Trotsky did not go down to defeat at the hands of ‘the bureaucracy’: he lost to a man and a clique with a superior understanding of Soviet public life.” (p.4). This is to reduce historical events to trivia. Trotsky’s defeat is explained simply by personal failings and not by objective forces.

Liberal dilettantes, such as our learned professor, have never been able to understand revolutions or counter-revolutions. For them, such episodes are “excesses” or “accidents” that have deviated from the “normal” course of history. However, a revolution does not simply fall from the skies. Liberal bourgeois thought is incapable of understanding the movement of the masses and those who put themselves on the standpoint of the working class, as in the case of Lenin and Trotsky. Service could never understand Trotsky or what motivated him, his strengths and weaknesses. His motivation is simply to discredit Trotsky and the ideas he represents.

We are forced to leave aside every calumny thrown against Lenin and Trotsky, as these would require a book to answer. We have chosen to concentrate on the key questions raised by Service. According to the Professor, “Without Lenin, furthermore, Stalinism in the Soviet Union would have been impossible...” (Lenin: A Political Life, vol.3, p.xix). This is the crux of the matter. Were Lenin’s and Trotsky’s methods in essence no different from those of Stalin? Does Bolshevism lead to Stalinism? What was the struggle between Trotsky and Stalin all about?

The answers to these questions cannot be found in individual traits or personal combinations, although they play a certain role, but in the complex relationships between classes and different social layers and the objective conditions that predominate at the time.

Lenin’s and Trotsky’s lives were bound up with the revolutionary struggles of their age: the fight against tsarism, the development of Russian Marxism, the 1905 Revolution, exile, the war years, the revolutions of 1917, the conquest of power, and the founding of the Communist International. Trotsky lived on in the fight against Stalinism and the preparation for a new revolutionary international.

Revolutionary Struggle

In his outstanding autobiography, ‘My Life’, Trotsky explained “Thus I know well enough, from my own experience, the historical ebb and flow. They are governed by their own laws. Mere impatience will not expedite their change. I have grown accustomed to viewing the historical perspective not from the standpoint of my personal fate. To understand the causal sequence of events and to find somewhere in the sequence one’s own place – that is the first duty of a revolutionary. And at the same time it is the greatest personal satisfaction possible for a man who does not limit his tasks to the present day.”

Trotsky’s fall from power after Lenin’s death did not represent personal ineptitude but the changed relation of class forces in Russia and internationally. The victory of Stalin reflected the isolation of the revolution in a backward country, surrounded by hostile forces.

In Robert Service’s account of October, which he typically regards as a “coup”, there is one essential ingredient missing – the role of the masses on which the revolution is based. In the aftermath of the revolution, Service concludes “Most people in Russia and the rest of the world regarded the Bolshevik leadership as a gang of wild incompetents who could never sustain themselves in power.” (Service, Trotsky, A Biography, p.189). This is the view of the ruling classes, which Service takes as representing “most people”, but certainly not of the international working class which rallied to the cause of the Russian Revolution.

“Bolshevism,” explained Victor Serge, “is the unity of word and deed. Lenin’s entire merit consists in his will to carry out his programme... Land to the peasants, factories to the working class, power to those who toil. These words have often been spoken, but no one has ever thought seriously of passing from theory to practice.” (From Lenin to Stalin)

This was the essence of the revolution. In the civil war and imperialist intervention, the main aim of the imperialists was the violent overthrow of the revolutionary government and the murder of its leaders. In August 1918, a Social Revolutionary (member of the peasant party) shot and nearly fatally wounded Lenin. Trotsky was also the target of repeated assassination attempts by the White generals.

The first Soviet Constitution guaranteed every freedom for the workers. There was no thought whatsoever of a totalitarian state. All political parties, including the capitalist parties, were free to operate, accept for the fascist Black Hundreds. There was complete freedom of discussion and debate within the Communist Party. On the issue of the Brest-Litovsk proposals to sign a predatory peace treaty with Germany in 1918, for instance, Lenin was in a minority. He put forward the proposal that every group of citizens supported by 10,000 – 15,000 workers should have to right to issue their own paper if they wanted, the only way to democratise the press.

The October Revolution was largely a peaceful affair. “Hardly anyone was arrested”, noted Serge, “and those who were, were soon released. Among these were Krasnov, Ataman of the Cossacks, who took advantage of our leniency to start a civil war in the Don country – and Purishkievich, the anti-Semite leader.” (Ibid) The revolution was still very naive. As soon as these reactionaries were released they immediately took up arms against the workers’ state.

The first Soviet government was a coalition between Bolsheviks and Left Social Revolutionaries, a left wing split off from the Social Revolutionaries. This only came to an end when the Left SRs joined the Mensheviks and other counter-revolutionaries, and took up arms against the government. Only after the summer of 1918 did the revolution hit back in self-defence. Trotsky organised the Red Army in order to defend the revolution.

Leon Trotsky addresses Red Army troops during the Civil War, 1918“Lenin and Trotsky had become the Siamese twins of Russian politics”, states Service, “being joined at the hip in their determination to use ruthless measures including state terror against enemies.” (Trotsky, a biography, p.190). However, in a situation of civil war and imperialist intervention to overthrow the Soviet government, what were they to do, simply fold their arms and pray the counter-revolution would go away?

The counter-revolutionary White forces, backed by 21 foreign armies, took most of the country and carried out wide-scale atrocities against the workers and peasants. At one stage, the Soviet government only controlled Moscow and the surrounding area. The fate of the revolution was hanging by a thread. Trotsky succeeded in turning the situation around, but at enormous cost. War production and famine necessitated rationing in the cities and requisitioning in the countryside. This is the period of “war communism”, where everything was directed unavoidably to the war effort and military defence of the Soviet Republic.

Kronstadt Mutiny

This served to stretch things to the absolute limit. Relations between the peasants and the workers, the cornerstone of the revolution, reached breaking point. Peasant uprisings broke out in 1920 and early 1921. At this time the Soviet government was faced with a naval mutiny in Kronstadt. They had no alternative after negotiations broke down but to crush the rebellion. Failure to do so would have opened the door to military intervention against Petrograd. These Kronstadt sailors were not the same revolutionary sailors of October 1917, but new peasant conscripts under the influence of the counter-revolution. With the end of the civil war, the New Economic Policy was introduced to placate the peasants, allowing them to sell their surplus produce, which succeeded in bringing stability to the countryside.

In this life or death situation, the Bolsheviks had no alternative but to take emergency defensive measures. Incidentally, the same was true of Cromwell’s actions in defence of the English revolution against the Royalist reaction, or Robespierre’s defence of the French revolution against the feudal regime, or the measures of the Northern states against the slave-owning owners in the American civil war. “A party which had seemed doomed to defeat in mid-1918 triumphed by dint of determination, organisation and leadership”, admits Service. (Trotsky, a biography, p.245). But then goes on to attack such measures as “ruthless” and “terror against its enemies”.

The overthrow of the Soviet government would not have brought with it liberal democracy, but the military fascist dictatorship of the White generals. That was the alternative to Soviet power that the imperialists desired.

The Bolsheviks, while defending the revolution at all costs, never believed the revolution could be sustained for any length of time in a backward country like Russia. The fate of the Soviet regime depended upon the world revolution. Lenin believed that if the isolation was not broken, the Russian revolution would be doomed. He was prepared to sacrifice everything for a successful revolution in Germany. The only thing they could do was to hold on as long as possible until help arrived from the west. As we saw, the revolution did not collapse as Lenin had feared, but suffered a bureaucratic degeneration in the form of Stalinism.

Stalinism – the opposite of Bolshevism – grew precisely out of these objective conditions of isolation and terrible backwardness. After the civil war, the economy was completely shattered. The country was ruined and subject to famine and disease. The working class had become atomised. “The terrible crises and the closing down of factories have compelled people to flee from starvation”, wrote Lenin. “The workers have simply abandoned their factories; they have had to settle down in the country and have ceased to be workers.” (Collected Works, vol.32, p.199)

The introduction of the New Economic Policy in 1921 was a retreat, which gave concessions to the market. It saw the revival of capitalism in Russia, together with the merchant, petty employer, rich peasant and black marketer. This went hand in hand with the growth of bureaucratism in industry, the state and even the Bolshevik Party. Stalin, who was a secondary figure in the revolution, became the spokesman for this new social layer that was elbowing aside the working class.

State Apparatus

“Our state apparatus is so deplorable, not to say wretched, that we must think very carefully how to combat its defects”, complained Lenin. (Collected Works, vol.33, p.487). Things became so bad that Lenin and Trotsky formed a bloc in 1922 to fight the menace of bureaucracy. This struggle led to Lenin breaking off all personal relations with Stalin. Lenin stated he was preparing a “bomb” against Stalin. Finally, in his last ‘Testament’ Lenin recommended the Stalin be removed as General Secretary of the Communist Party and recommended Trotsky “as the most able man on the Central Committee”.

The wishes of Lenin’s Testament were not carried out due to the personal intrigues of both Kamenev and Zinoviev, who had made a rotten pact with Stalin to keep Trotsky out of power. Here we see the pernicious role of spite in politics and its unforeseen consequences.

Lenin’s death in January 1924 coincided with the defeat of the German revolution, which provided a double blow to the morale of the Russian workers. At this time, only one percent of the members of the Bolshevik Party had held a party card before March 1917. Many of the advance workers and communists had perished in the civil war. After these blows, through the agency of Stalin, the bureaucracy took control of the party and state apparatus. The weight of the Nepmen (petty capitalists created by the New Economic Policy) and kulaks (rich peasants) grew exponentially. The pressure of these hostile class forces fed into the party through the rising bureaucracy.

In late 1924, Stalin came forward with his anti-Marxist theory of ‘Socialism in one country’, which reflected the conservative outlook of the bureaucracy. This represented a complete break with the perspective of world revolution as put forward by Lenin. It also coincided with a campaign to discredit Trotsky who had established a Left Opposition in 1923 to restore party democracy.

Trotsky defended the position of revolutionary Marxism against the growing revisionism of Stalin. While Trotsky’s support rested upon the revolutionary workers, Stalin’s was based upon the bureaucratic reaction, the millions of petty officials, former tsarist functionaries, tsarist officers, bourgeois intellectuals, and so forth, who made their living in the apparatus of state, industry and party. Stalin became the “chief” of this caste, which now had its own material interests to defend. In 1926, when Lenin’s widow Krupskaya was close to the Opposition, she stated “If Lenin were alive today he would now be in prison.”

“Whoever understands history even slightly knows that every revolution has provoked a subsequent counter-revolution which, to be sure, has never completely thrown the nation all the way back to its starting point in the sphere of the economy but has always taken from the people a considerable part, sometimes the lion’s share, of its political conquests”, explained Trotsky. “And the first victim of the reactionary wave as a general rule is that layer of revolutionaries which stood at the head of the masses in the first period of the revolution, the period of the offensive, the ‘heroic’ period. This general historical observation should lead us to the idea that the matter is not simply one of the skill, the cunning, or the art of two or a few individuals, but of incomparably more profound causes.” (Trotsky - Writings 1935-36, p.171)

Stalin’s Revisionism

The years of hardship and defeat had borne down heavily upon the Russian masses. As the bureaucrats grew in power and insolence, the voice of the revolutionary workers became weaker. While the Bolshevik-Leninists around Trotsky drew to their banner tens of thousands of the best revolutionary fighters, and gathered sympathy from the advanced workers, this sympathy remained passive. They were exhausted and only a victory internationally could have stirred them into life. Meanwhile, the Stalinist bureaucracy railed against “permanent revolution” internationally and unnecessary upheaval at home. “We will build the socialist society in Russia!” they proclaimed. This found an echo in the weary and backward masses, which served to isolate the Bolshevik vanguard. “Therein lies the secret of the victory of the bureaucracy”, explained Trotsky. “Power is not a prize which the most ‘skilful’ win. Power is a relationship between individuals, in the last analysis between classes.” (Ibid, pp.176-77).

Dominant Position

Stalin used his dominant position to expel and exile Trotsky from the Soviet Union. By the mid-1930s, despite all the capitulations of former oppositionists around Zinoviev and Kamenev, Stalin decided to eliminate physically all those connected with the October revolution. The developing revolution in Spain was threatening to rekindle the enthusiasm of the Russian masses. This would have sounded the death-knell of the bureaucracy. As a result, Stalin waged a one-sided civil war against the Old Bolsheviks. This culminated in the purge trials of 1936-8, where those associated with October were physically eliminated. Millions perished in the camps and cellars of the secret police. For those who say, as Service does, that Bolshevism leads to Stalinism, we say that on the contrary, a river of blood separated Stalinism and Bolshevism.

The only way Stalinism could consolidate its rule was over the corpses of those communists and Trotskyists who remained true to the ideals of October. Trotsky fought Stalinism to the death. He refused to capitulate, as this would only serve to discredit the ideas of Marxism. Trotsky paid for this with his life.

Clean Banner

Despite all the terrible odds, and the murder of his close family and collaborators, Trotsky continued to defend the clean banner of Marx and Lenin against the horrors of Stalinism right up to the bitter end. The likes of Professor Service are repelled by this. Even Deutscher failed to understand the real Trotsky, believing he should simply concentrate on writing and not bother himself with organising the forces of a new revolutionary international. However, Trotsky regarded this task as the most important work of his entire life.

Despite the death of Trotsky, his ideas live on. The collapse of Stalinism, which he predicted, and the global crisis of capitalism, will once again make these ideas the most attractive ideas in the world.

“Time was when Trotsky was a frequent topic of public discussion at least outside the USSR. Those days are gone”, states Service. However, in today’s crisis, things are changing. There is a renewed interest in Lenin, Trotsky and their ideas. It is for this reason that Service has published his books. But they will have little effect.

We should study Trotsky’s writings, alongside other great teachers of Marxism, which are a treasure house of experience and theory. With these, the new generation can find the way forward in the eventual overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of world socialism. As for the likes of Professor Service, in the words of the Bible, let the dead bury the dead.

Demokrasi dan Suara Belalang

2010-01-13T07:53:00.000+07:00

KOMPAS cetak - Demokrasi dan Suara Belalang

Senin, 11 Januari 2010 | 03:23 WIB

Antonius Cahyadi

”So, is there life after democracy? & hellip; The question here, really, is what have we done to democracy? What have we turned it into? What happens once democracy has been used up? When it has been hollowed out and emptied of meaning?”
(Arundhati Roy, Listening to Grasshoppers, Field Notes on Democracy).

Di hampir pengujung akhir tahun 2009, Arundhati Roy menerbitkan buku yang merupakan kumpulan esainya tentang demokrasi. Judul bukunya, Listening to Grasshoppers, Field Notes on Democracy. Salah satu esai dalam buku itu yang berjudul sama dibawakan di Istanbul, 18 Januari 2008, untuk memperingati kematian Hrant Dink, jurnalis Armenia yang dibunuh di Istanbul, Januari 2007, karena mencoba mengungkap tragedi yang dialami orang-orang Kristen Armenia pada masa kekaisaran Ottoman tahun 1915.

Di bagian lain bukunya, Roy menggambarkan bagaimana perjuangan orang-orang Kashmir, tergambar lewat civil disobedience pada tahun 2008, memperoleh tekanan yang begitu berat dan sistematik. India berhadapan dengan Muslim Kashmir.

Dalam catatan Roy, demokrasi seperti kehabisan dayanya ketika berhadapan dengan fakta pluralitas masyarakat negara yang diformanya, lebih-lebih ketika demokrasi berhadapan dengan agama. Pemilihan umum untuk memilih wakil rakyat dan kepala pemerintahan menjadi tolok ukur yang banal atas demokrasi. Demokrasi justru menjadi alat untuk mematikan suara rakyat (vox populi). Suara demokrasi justru menjadi suara kerumunan belalang yang menandakan akan adanya bencana. Persis ketika setelah ibunda Hrant Dink yang di tahun 1915 berusia 10 tahun mendengar suara kerumunan belalang di desanya, Dubne, tragedi pembantaian di Armenia itu terjadi. Maka, Roy bertanya dengan memetaforakan suara belalang dan bencana. Adakah kehidupan setelah democracy (yang bagi Roy telah menjadi demon-crazy)?

Kecemasan

Demokrasi memberikan harapan kepada masyarakat manusia yang terbentuk dalam sebuah negara karena pemerintahan negara dijamin dilakukan oleh rakyat. Makna rakyat yang pada zaman pencerahan kemudian diidealisasi sebagai individu yang memiliki otonomitas dan kedirian, atau manusia sebagai subyek, dikawal oleh hukum. Hukum menjamin warga negara berpartisipasi dalam pengelolaan negara. Warga negara oleh demokrasi dan hukum dipandang sebagai subyek yang bermartabat.

Namun, cita dari demokrasi semacam itu yang tidak ditemukan oleh Roy dalam demokrasi riil. Demokrasi dengan hukum formalnya menjadi demokrasi performatif yang sekadar mementingkan penampilan fisik semata dalam pemilu yang seakan-akan ”jurdil” dan pers yang seolah-olah merdeka. Hukum yang memang pada dirinya berorientasi ketertiban menjadi alat untuk melegitimasi adanya demokrasi performatif.

Demokrasi dan hukum zaman pencerahan yang diadopsi oleh negara memiliki persoalan. Bagaimana meletakkan kemanusiaan (manusia sebagai subyek yang otonom) yang baru saja lahir berhadapan dengan negara? Trauma Revolusi Perancis membuat ruang publik sebagai domain keberadaan negara disterilkan dan dinetralkan dari agama (berikut religiositas yang ikut membentuk kemanusiaan kita). Dalam perjalanan waktu, negara melalui demokrasi dan hukum menyingkirkan kemanusiaan. Negara tidak dapat hidup berdampingan dengan kemanusiaan dalam ruang publik yang seharusnya dijaga oleh demokrasi dan hukum.

Apabila Roy menyaksikan negara India lewat demokrasi dan hukum yang diisi oleh nasionalisme Hindu dan developmentalism yang pro-pasar sehingga menyingkirkan kaum Muslim, Kristen, Sikh, dan Dalits, kita melihat bahwa di masa Orde Baru demokrasi Pancasila menyingkirkan orang-orang kiri, kaum penghayat, dan orang-orang kritis. Ironisnya, negara Orde Baru melakukan itu seperti seolah-olah menjawab tantangan pencerahan dengan menyakralkan ruang publik. Pancasila yang maknanya begitu dipersempit menjadi kanal untuk meletakkan kemanusiaan bersandingan dengan negara.

Harapan

Runtuhnya sosialisme sebagai ideologi negara, tragedi 11 September, serangan di Mumbai, dan—untuk kita—reformasi, sebenarnya menjadi momen-momen untuk kembali mempertemukan negara dan kemanusiaan dalam ruang publik yang dijaga oleh demokrasi dan hukum. Momen-momen itu juga sekaligus menandakan bahwa negara tidak lagi bisa dibayangkan sebagai sebuah entitas yang absolut. Negara oleh masyarakat manusia yang menjadi rahim kelahirannya ditantang untuk melihat manusia sebagai subyek yang menghidupinya dalam peristiwa sehari-hari yang begitu sederhana.

Skandal Bank Century yang terungkap, koin untuk Prita, dan banyak fenomena people power lainnya merupakan manifestasi gugatan terhadap kekuasaan absolut negara. Di sisi lain, kasus bunuh diri yang beberapa kali kita saksikan merupakan tanda bahwa ruang publik kita tidaklah semanusiawi yang kita bayangkan selama ini. Negara dengan mekanisme pasarnya telah begitu beringas mengonsumsi kemanusiaan kita sebagai subyek otonom yang dicita-citakan.

Lewat peristiwa dalam hidup keseharian kita, misalnya yang termanifestasi dalam jejaring sosial virtual yang kita miliki, negara diingatkan untuk kembali mendengarkan vox populi sebagai suara rakyat. Dalam suara rakyat terkandung suara kemanusiaan yang mencari jalannya untuk didengarkan. Seperti suara kerumunan belalang, suara rakyat ingin memberitahukan sesuatu kepada negara tentang kemanusiaan di ruang publik yang seharusnya dijaga oleh negara dengan demokrasi dan hukum.

Antonius Cahyadi Dosen Fakultas Hukum Universitas Indonesia; Kandidat Doktor dalam Bidang Socio Legal Studies di Van Vollenhoven Institute, Faculteit der Rechtgeleerdheid, Universitas Leiden, Belanda

Fixing the Hole - Mulai Dari Mana?

2008-08-14T05:45:00.001+07:00

Awicaks

Di depan mata terhampar bentangan luas lahan kosong. Seperti tak berujung, dan rasanya matahari di atas kepala ada tiga. Panas luar biasa. Suhu panas juga disebabkan proses pengeringan gambut yang melepaskan jutaan ton karbondioksida (CO2). Sudah dua jam perjalanan, dan sepertinya tidak berujung.

"Dulu di sini adalah hamparan hutan. Dalam waktu kurang dari setahun hutan di sini dibersihkan, karena perusahaan sudah dapat HGU (Hak Guna Usaha) untuk memulai membangun kebun kelapa sawit." Ujar kawan yang menemani saya.

Itu perjalanan sebulan lalu di salah satu kawasan kaya karbon di Riau. Dan pemandangan yang saya lihat tadi hanya puncak dari gunung es. Riau adalah wilayah yang sudah luluh lantak oleh perkebunan besar tidak hanya akhir-akhir ini, bahkan sudah sejak abad ke-18, padsa masa pendudukan Belanda. Yang mengenaskan, keadaan dan modus operandi yang ada sekarang tidak berbeda dengan yang dilakukan pada masa pendudukan Belanda itu.

Sejalan dengan agresifitas pertumbuhan modal-modal besar, seluruh operasi yang "memakan" hutan pun berlangsung semakin efektif dan harus efisien. Atas nama batas-laba (profit margin) metoda pembukaan hutan dan penyiapan lahan paling murah pun dipilih: Membakar sisa-sisa hutan yang ditebang.

Tahun 1997 Riau merupakan salah satu wilayah yang paling mengenaskan dilanda bencana asap. Ratusan anak-anak menderita infeksi saluran pernapasan bagian atas (ISPA). Sarwono Kusumaatmadja, yang saat itu menjabat Menteri Lingkungan Hidup, tergerak untuk melakukan kerja-kerja di luar batas kewenangannya. Ia begitu tak sabar melihat ketidakpedulian kantor negara yang mestinya bertanggung jawab, seperti Departemen Kehutanan dan pemerintah daerah setempat.

Kebakaran lahan hutan tahun 1997 memang bukan yang terbesar, ada pula kebakaran tahun 1982 yang tak kalah hebat, dan sama-sama dibarengi dengan masa gelombang panas (El Nino). Akibatnya derita warga bertumpuk. Sudah terkena bencana asap, lalu mengalami pula kekeringan.

Di media massa para pejabat tak malu-malu menuding masyarakat sebagai penyulut kebakaran. "Mereka miskin, tak punya pilihan selain membakar hutan demi hidup." Sebuah ungkapan paling tolol yang pernah saya dengar. Sudut pandang sepihak dengan sikap lepas tanggung jawab merupakan ciri khas paling menonjol dari pejabat publik di negara ini.

Kebakaran 1997 yang melanda Sumatra dan Kalimantan itu menjadi penanda dari ambruknya rejim korup Orde Baru. Tak lama, setelah diselenggarakan pemilihan umum a la Orde Baru yang kembali mengantarkan Suharto menjadi presiden untuk kesekian kalinya, Sarwono pun tak tergusur dari jajaran elit Orde Baru. Yang menarik, itulah awal dari runtuhnya kepongahan Orde Baru Suharto.

Setelah Orde Baru tumbang, pada masa reformasi, kebakaran hutan menjadi prioritas penting rejim berikutnya. Namun, alih-alih menyelesaikan krisis, kebakaran hutan justru menjadi kerangka acuan (Terms of Reference, ToR) baru pengembangan proyek-proyek milyaran rupiah, baik yang berasal dari bantuan (tak gratis) negara-negara maju maupun proyek utang luar negeri. Ini memang ciri negeri amburadul ini. Krisis dipecahkan lewat proyek. Krisis tak selesai, pengelola proyek makin kaya!

Yang jelas bencana asap menjadi pemicu ucapan permintaan maaf setiap presiden yang berkuasa sejak Suharto kepada negara-negara tetangga, terutama Malaysia dan Singapura. ASEAN pun tergerak merumuskan sebuah perjanjian kerjasama penangangan bencana asap. Selesaikah krisis? Lagi-lagi ia hanya melahirkan proyek-proyek baru....

"Harusnya pemerintah Malaysia minta maaf kepada kita karena tak mampu mengontrol para pemodal mereka yang berinvestasi di perkebunan kelapa sawit di Sumatra dan Kalimantan," ujar seorang pejabat publik dari Departemen Kehutanan pada masa kepresidenan Megawati. Buruk rupa cermin dibelah!

Mungkin mudah bagi saya menulis, utamakan keselamatan warga dalam kebijakan-kebijakan publik! Tetapi dengan carut-marut struktur dan karakter pengurusan negara macam begini, ktia mesti mulai dari mana? Tanpa pemimpin-pemimpin bernyali, nothing to lose, warga Indonesia tak mungkin keluar dari lingkaran setan krisis. Percayalah!

The Economist's Tale

2008-06-10T17:35:00.000+07:00

Ini bukan buku baru. Bahkan saya menemukannya di lemari arsip Zed Publisher. Petugas di Zed harus menmeriksa basis data di komputer apakah mereka bisa melepas buku ini untuk dijual. Setelah yakin bahwa mereka masih memiliki salinan lain, saya diperbolehkan membelinya. Pantang menyerah, saya minta potongan harga, karena buku ini sudah masuk arsip. Si petugas tertawa, "Nice try. I'll take a look whether you can get a discount or not." Ia pun mengecek ke komputernya kembali. "Okay, you can get 30% discount."

Sekali lagi, ini bukan buku baru. Diterbitkan pertama kali tahun 2003. Buku yang ditulis Peter Griffiths ini pun tidak menawarkan perspektif baru. Meski bercerita tentang hal yang sama, bahkan terbit lebih dulu, buku bertajuk "The Economist's Tale" ini tidak seberhasil buku John Perkins, "Confession of the Economic Hitman." Tetapi yang menarik dari "the Economist's Tale", ia menggunakan pendekatan bertutur, dan beropini secara jujur. Tidak ada teori-teori besar, atau kerangka ekonomi-poltik hegemonik seperti yang ditawarkan buku-buku serupa.

Buku ini lebih tepat disebut gerundelan seorang konsultan kebijakan pangan yang bekerja di Seirra Leone bernama Griffiths, yang merasa tidak nyaman karena kajian keahliannya digunakan secara "keliru" oleh Bank Dunia untuk mendorong perekonomian Sierra Leone lewat kebijakan produksi beras. Anda akan kecewa jika berharap memperoleh bahasan teknikal tentang ekonomi pangan. Anda pun tidak akan dirundung rasa tertekan membaca kejumawaan Bank Dunia dalam mendikte pengurus Negara Sierra Leone. Anda justru akan banyak tertawa, meski pahit, membaca tuturan Griffiths dengan kalimat-kalimat yang cerdas mengejek dirinya sendiri, mengejek kesoktahuan para penentu kebijakan di Bank Dunia tentang situasi ekonomi-politik Sierra Leone.

Yang membuat saya tercekat adalah, ketika menemukan bahwa rute camput-tangan kebijakan yang dilakukan Bank Dunia di Sierra Leone serupa dan sebangun dengan yang mereka lakukan di Indonesia. Dengan kondisi geografik yang berbeda, dengan latar sejarah berbeda, apalagi latar sosial-politik dan ekonomi-politik yang jauh dari sama, Bank Dunia memberlakukan resep yang plek sama antara Sierra Leone dengan Indonesia. Penghapusan subsidi atas bahan-bahan kebutuhan pokok, percepatan privatisasi, pembanjiran utang untuk mendongkrak anggaran rutin kepengurusan Negara, dan sebagainya. Ya ampun! Terlepas dari gaya bertuturnya yang lucu dan ringan, di balik itu saya tidak menemukan perbedaan antara kisah lucu nan pahit di Sierra Leone dengan Indonesia.

Griffiths berhasil memaparkan pengalamannya seperti halnya orang mendongeng. Ia sangat berhati-hati ketika menyisipkan kajian teknikalnya dan meletakkannya sebagai pendapat pribadi terhadap campur-tangan kebijakan Bank Dunia dan Dana Moneter Internasional (IMF), yang menurut penilaiannya absurd.

Sebagai sebuah dongeng yang lucu dan ringan, buku ini justru sangat menakutkan.
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Pemilu Sembilan Bulan? Sinting!

2008-05-17T21:16:00.000+07:00

Saya baru tersadar ketika tahu bahwa masa kampanye pemilihan umum tahun depan bisa memakan waktu sembilan bulan. Saya cuma geleng-geleng kepala. Apa isi kepala orang-orang sekolahan yang disewa untuk merumuskan peraturan perundangan ini? Kalau isi kepala para politikus sih saya sama sekali tidak tertarik untuk tahu, karena sudah terbaca dari perilaku dan biaya kelakuan mereka.

Coba mari telusuri berita-berita media sepanjang dua tahun terakhir. Mari perhatian kita pusatkan ke konflik-konflik yang timbul karena pemilihan kepala daerah (pilkada). Bentrokan antarmassa pendukung jelas tak terhindarkan, belum lagi ketidakpastian hukum karena pasti pihak yang tak terima atas kekalahan mereka akan mondar-mandir ke lembaga peradilan, entah itu Mahkamah Agung atau Mahkamah Konstitusi. Tambal sulam dan bengkel bongkar pasang jelas tak terhindarkan. Belum pula dihitung perdebatan-perdebatan di media massa diantara orang-orang sekolahan yang menjadi pengamat politik, serta para pelaku politik itu sendiri. Apalagi jika kita sudah bicara soal biaya. Baik biaya resmi maupun biaya-biaya silumannya. Dimana otak orang-orang itu?

Rasanya potret derita warga yang tak henti-hentinya diwartakan media massa tak mampu menyentuh syaraf dan sel-sel kelabu otak mereka. Ini negara mau dibawa kemana? Sudah porak poranda ekonominya, korup orang-orangnya, lah kok masih mau bermain-main dengan eksperimen politik yang lama, mahal (baik biaya moneter maupun biaya sosial dan politik). Saya pun bingung, kok tidak ada aktivis organiasi masyarakat sipil yang protes. Jangan-jangan mereka pun tergiur untuk ikut cawe-cawe di eksperimen paling gila ini?

Benar-benar edan!

Berkunjung ke the Corner House

2008-05-12T18:58:00.000+07:00

Larry Lohmann dan Nick Hildyard kelihatan begitu bersemangat ketika mereka muncul di gerbang Stasiun Kereta Api Gillingham, Dorset, Jumat sore lalu. Saya yang masih kelelahan setelah pertemuan marathon di kantor Unilever di London, dilanjutkan dengan konsolidasi di kantor Greenpeace Inggris, kemudian lanjut dengan perjalanan kereta api dua jam hingga tiba di Gillingham, hanya bisa menyambut rangkulan hangat keduanya. Dengan Larry saya masih lumayan sering bertemu dibanding Nick. Terakhir kami sama-sama hadir dan aktif di lokakarya Durban Group beberapa hari sebelum Konferensi Perubahan Iklim di Bali dimulai, Desember 2007. Sedangkan Nick, terakhir saya bersama-sama dengan dia kira-kira tahun 2001, di Canada. Dan kunjungan ke kantor mereka, the Corner House, adalah yang pertama buat saya. Masih setengah jam lagi untuk mencapai kantor the Corner House yang melegenda itu di Sturminster Newton, Dorset, dari Stasiun Kereta Api Gillingham.

Kami menyempatkan kongkow di sebuah kedai minum pedesaan, di pinggiran kota Sturminster Newton. Udaranya sejuk, meski sinar matahari cukup menyengat sore itu. Tak lama setelah mendapat meja, yang pertama kali saya lakukan adalah memberi Nick rokok Ji-Sam-Soe, yang ia pesan lewat email. Bahagia sekali dia. Kami duduk di bagian belakang cafe, yang disebut smoking patio.

Larry bercerita tentang roadshow buku terakhirnya, Carbon Trading - Critical Conversation, selama dua bulan di sepanjang Amerika Utara, yang berakhir Februari lalu. Sementara berkisah tentang kemenangan kasus mereka melawan Pemerintah Inggris, terkait korupsi dalam perjanjian perdagangan senjata antara BAE System dengan Saudi Arabia. Meski itu adalah kemenangan besar buat the Corner House dan publik Inggris, tindak lanjut proses hukum oleh Pemerintah Inggris dinilai Nick dan Larry penuh dengan muslihat. Terkejut juga saya mendengarnya. Kok seperti di Indonesia ya?

Larry Lohmann adalah salah seorang pemikir dan penulis yang produktif yang tak lelah membuka mata para akademisi, aktivis serta para internasionalis tentang ketidakadilan global yang semakin hari semakin membahayakan. Hal yang paling dikhawatirkan Larry adalah, proses pembalikan alami, dimana di masa lalu bangsa Eropa begitu agresif menjajah dunia ketiga, di Asia, Afrika dan Pasifik, kini gelombang bangsa Asia, Afrika dan Pasifik ke negara-negara Eropa menjadi semacam karma. Yang jadi persoalan, gelombang aliran populasi itu tak pelak menimbulkan ketegangan sosial, yang membuat rasisme menjadi semakin nyata. Di sela ngobrol di kedai kopi di seberang the Corner House, saya menanyakan, apakah dia sadar bahwa tempat dia tinggal ternyata semuanya kulit putih. Sehingga saya sering kagok ketika memasuki tempat-tempat publik diikuti pandangan mata heran orang-orang di sekitar. Larry hanya tersenyum simpul.

Siapa Korban Paling Rentan?

2008-04-30T05:01:00.000+07:00

Benarkah terjadi krisis pangan? Krisis pangan atau "krisis pangan"? Atau krisis konsumsi pangan?

Saya tak akan pernah lelah mengusung thesis lama, bahwa pengurus Negara tutup mata terhadap keselamatan warga. Warga harus bekerja sendiri menyelesaikan masalahnya tanpa bisa berharap uluran tangan pengurus Negara.

Krisis pangan hanya salah satu dari daftar panjang krisis dan bencana (catastrophes) yang mengancam dan menghantui kehidupan warga negeri kepulauan ini. Modus hidup warga Indonesia adalah bertahan hidup (survival). Tentu thesis ini tak berlaku bagi warga yang berkelebihan, yang lebih pusing memilih sepatu mana yang cocok dipakai saat mengenakan salah satu koleksi pakaian di lemari. Tololnya, yang disebut krisis di Indonesia adalah menyempitnya akses warga untuk memperoleh, mendapatkan dan memanfaatkan kebutuhan-kebutuhan dasar yang seharusnya dijamin Negara.

Kebijakan dadakan alias crash programme alias tambal sulam sudah jadi ciri pengurus negeri ini, selepas lengsernya alm. Eyang Kakung Suharto. Kebijakan-kebijakan Negara yang bersifat reaktif seringkali tak memperhitungkan dampaknya terhadap kehidupan warga. Atas nama menyeimbangkan anggaran Negara warga diminta berbesar hati merasakan dampak demi tujuan yang lebih besar. Terhadap apa yang sekarang ramai disebut krisis pangan pun sama. Toh terbukti tak satu rejim pengurus Negara mana pun di dunia ini yang mampu mengendalikan liarnya gerak pasar. Ancaman hukuman terhadap para penimbun bahan pokok, sebagai contoh, tak pernah berhasil menciptakan efek jera. Semakin pengurus Negara mencoba mengatur dan mengendalikan pasar, semakin kasatmata ketololan mereka.

Siapa pihak yang paling menderita dari cerita ini semua? Yang paling jelas adalah anak-anak dan kelompok perempuan. Mutu gizi anak-anak di negeri ini adalah data yang paling sering dimanipulasi demi menjaga citra positif kinerja ekonomi-makro Indonesia. Meski angka-angka balita kurang gizi pada Indeks Pembangunan Manusia (Human Development Index, HDI) dari UNDP sudah cukup horror, tetapi saya yakin data itu masih indikatif sifatnya dan terlalu konservatif. Ada banyak realita yang gagal ditangkap metoda-metoda canggih pengumpulan data HDI. Ambil contoh rangkaian proses dari keputusan rumah tangga mengorbankan biaya pendidikan anak atas nama pemenuhan konsumsi, yang berangkai dengan keputusan melibatkan sang anak dalam kegiatan-kegiatan produksi, baik sebagai buruh langsung maupun buruh tak langsung.

Mutu keselamatan dan kesehatan reproduksi perempuan juga adalah data yang paling sering disembunyikan di bawah karpet. Alih-alih menggambarkan angka laju kematian ibu melahirkan, yang justru disajikan adalah keberhasilan pengurus Negara menekan angka kelahiran. Bisajadi keduanya tak berhubungan langsung, tetapi akal sehat saya melihat keterkaitan yang tak terelakkan.

Apa yang akan kita hadapi di masa depan dengan situasi seperti ini? Yang jelas, kita akan memiliki generasi masa depan yang masa kecilnya hidup dengan rendahnya mutu gizi, pendidikan, dan kesehatan. Jangan-jangan negeri ini memang diarahkan untuk menjadi wilayah penyedia buruh murah (sweatshops' labour market)?

Corporate Social Responsibility? "Amoral!" Kata Friedman

2008-04-26T04:02:00.001+07:00

Hakekat perusahaan (corporation) adalah menghidupkan dinamika ekonomik lewat kegiatan produksinya yang mampu menangguk laba agar perusahaan dapat bertahan hidup (survival) atau tumbuh dan meluas. DNA sebuah perusahaan adalah mencari laba. Memaksimalkan perolehan laba dalam konteks bersaing dengan perusahaan lain yang memiliki produk serupa merupakan keniscayaan bagi sebuah perusahaan. Maka ketika perusahaan tampil di depan publik dengan citra tanggung jawab sosial dan lingkungan, itu patut dipertanyakan. Bahkan Milton Friedman menyebutnya amoral!

Tentu saja kecaman Friedman, dan juga Noam Chomsky, bukan suatu pernyataan tunggal. Ada prasyarat yang mesti dipenuhi, yakni peran Negara yang optimal dalam menjamin keselamatan warga, produktifitas warga dalam memenuhi dan mempertahankan kualitas hidup terbaik mereka, serta kemampuan warga merawat dan menjaga fungsi-fungsi alam. Sehingga kewajiban Negara dalam menjamin akses warga kepada pelayanan kesehatan, pendidikan, sumber-sumber pangan dan air bersih yang terjangkau serta energi untuk keperluan kelangsungan hidup menjadi syarat mutlak agar peran perusahaan sebagai dinamisator ekonomi pun berlangsung optimal. Hal tersebut yang tak terjadi di negeri ini.

Pengurus Negara di Indonesia sibuk mengurusi dirinya sendiri. Menyeimbangkan anggaran demi menjaga citra kepengurusan dengan tampilan kinerja ekonomi-makro di hadapan lembaga-lembaga keuangan multilateral dengan mengorbankan keselamatan warga, seperti yang tampak jelas pada pencabutan subsidi BBM, harga gabah di tingkat petani dan sebagainya. Kewajiban Negara menyediakan pelayanan kesehatan dan pendidikan pun hampir bulat-bulat diserahkan kepada pasar, dengan maraknya swastanisasi klinik dan rumah sakit serta persekolahan yang tak bisa menghindari kalkulasi untung rugi menjadi utama dibandingkan aspek pelayanan warga. Jaminan Negara yang mestinya dibiayai dari perpajakan bisa dikatakan tak jalan di Indonesia karena berbagai faktor, dengan korupsi sebagai induk penting faktor penyebabnya. Akibatnya sosok perusahaan merambah hingga ke sektor pelayanan publik yang seharusnya menjadi kewajiban Negara.

"Perusahaan dibentuk untuk menangguk laba, bukan untuk tujuan sosial atau tujuan lainnya," kata Noam Chomsky. "Itu tanggung jawab Negara!" Logikanya, Negara mampu menegakkan mekanisme perpajakan dari dinamika ekonomi yang digerakkan perusahaan-perusahaan. Warga sebagai obyek hukum dan pajak serta pada saat yang sama adalah konsumen dari barang dan jasa industrial yang diproduksi perusahaan harus dijamin keselamatan, kesejahteraan dan produktifitasnya oleh Negara demi terjaganya keseimbangan sosial-politik-ekonomik. Tetapi pendapat normatif Eyang Chomsky dan Eyang Friedman jauh panggang dari api di negeri kepulauan yang amburadul ini.

Kemudahan pajak, penghapusan birokrasi pada penanaman modal (investasi), kemudahan memperoleh lahan serta ketersediaan buruh murah dalam jumlah yang besar menjadi paket kebijakan Negara yang membuat Indonesia menjadi surga bagi investor tetapi sekaligus neraka bagi warganya sendiri. Pada konteks Indonesia, perusahaan yang pada hakekatnya memaksimalkan perolehan laba dengan memperbesar ambang laba (profit margin) dengan meminimalkan eksternalitas dan liabilitasnya telah menjadikan kehidupan sosial dan lingkungan hidup sebagai tempat sampah mereka. Tempat sampah bagi eksternalitas, liabilitas serta resiko-resiko bisnis mereka. Dan hal itu sangat memungkinkan di Indonesia karena adanya kebijakan-kebijakan Negara yang memanjakan perusahaan-perusahaan.

Sehingga, ketika sebuah konsep tanggung jawab sosial perusahaan atau corporate social responsibility (CSR) didorong menjadi suatu tolok-ukur kinerja perusahaan, timbul pertanyaan sederhana, "Memang ada masalah apa kok perusahaan harus menampilkan sosok tanggung jawab mereka dalam hal sosial dan lingkungan?" Chomsky berpendapat, karena perusahaan tidak ingin menanggung beban baru, yakni keresahan dan konflik sosial dan politik, karena kenyataannya kualitas sosial dan lingkungan hidup terus merosot sementara perolehan laba perusahaan terus meroket. CSR adalah tabir asap (smoke-screen) liabilitas dan eksternalitas perusahaan yang selama ini disembunyikan di bawah karpet.

Jika perusahaan berproduksi dan saling bersaing secara sehat serta melaksanakan kewajiban pajak mereka, dan saat yang sama Negara menjamin keselamatan dan kesejahteraan warga, produktifitas warga untuk memenuhi dan mempertahankan kualitas hidup terbaik mereka, serta kemampuan warga merawat fungsi-fungsi alam, CSR sama sekali tidak dibutuhkan. CSR adalah penanda simbolik ketidakberesan bisnis sebuah perusahaan dan saat yang sama merupakan penanda bobroknya pengurusan Negara. Semakin mengkilat tampilan CSR sebuah perusahaan, mestinya kita semakin curiga, seberapa besar masalah yang disembunyikan di bawah karpet?

Paradoks Konsumsi

2008-04-24T10:12:00.000+07:00

Orang-orang di Indonesia, tak cuma Jawa, tengah mabok kepayang pada barang-barang dan jasa industrial. Kemudahan mendapatkan barang-barang tersebut membuat kacau urutan kebutuhan dasar perseorangan dan keluarga. Teori Maslow berantakan. Tidak ada lagi yang namanya kebutuhan primer, sekunder dan tersier. Kalau perlu kualitas pangan untuk anak dikorbankan demi membeli sebuah telepon genggam model terbaru. Atau, tunggakan biaya sekolah anak bisa menunggu demi uang muka membeli sepeda motor buatan China, yang menurut iklan lebih unggul dibandingkan buatan Jepang.

Pertanyaan paling tolol dari kisah di atas, "Lalu bagaimana siklus produktifitas perseorangan atau keluarga demi menjaga kualitas hidup tidak merosot?" Saking tololnya kita tidak menyadari bahwa sekarang ini adalah zaman utang sudah bukan lagi sesuatu yang memalukan. Bahkan berutang di kalangan berpunya telah dikemas sedemikian rupa hingga ada peringkatnya: Silver, Gold, Platinum, dan seterusnya. Edan suredan!

Seorang sepupu saya dengan bangga memamerkan mobilnya yang terbaru, Grand Livina. Kemana mobilmu yang dulu (sebuah Toyota Avanza yang dikenal dengan sebutan mobil sejuta umat), tanya saya. "Tukar tambah lah Mas." Kemudian dia dengan fasih bicara panjang lebar, selayaknya seorang salesman mobil, tentang kemudahan-kemudahan fasilitas kredit yang ia gunakan. Luarbiasa pengetahuannya. Mungkin jika saat itu saya sela dengan pertanyaan, "Ngomong-ngomong kamu tahu nggak siapa itu Teras Narang?" Dia akan terbengong-bengong, dan balik tanya, "Siapa tuh? Apa ada hubungannya dengan fasilitas kredit mobil?"

Kemudahan memperoleh barang (lewat siasat-siasat kredit perbankan), gempuran iklan nan mengkilat, mendesah dan merayu, laju produksi dan distribusi barang dan jasa konsumsi yang meroket, agaknya tidak ada urusannya dengan potret nelangsa warga di desa-desa di Riau yang kebingungan dengan harga minyak goreng curah mencapai Rp 16.000/kg, padahal propinsi tersebut memiliki luas lahan perkebunan kelapa sawit terbesar di Indonesia. Juga tidak ada urusannya dengan warga di desa-desa di Sumatera Selatan, yang terkenal dengan sebutan "Lumbung Energi Nasional", berkeringat antri minyak tanah. Potret nelangsa tersebut pupus ketika kita ajak orang-orang yang antri tersebut bicara tentang jenis terbaru telepon genggam merek tertentu. Atau ajak mereka bicara tentang kelanjutan serial sinetron di stasiun televisi tertentu.

Pada sebuah perjalanan di Pulau Flores, akhir tahun 2005, saya terkejut disajikan fenomena luarbiasa. Warga di sebuah kecamatan ramai-ramai melepas dan menjual tanah untuk membeli sepeda motor buatan China. Saya sempat bertanya, apakah sepeda motor itu untuk keperluan transportasi keluarga atau untuk keperluan produksi. Jawaban beberapa diantara mereka sangat tegas, "Untuk ojek, Pak. Uangnya lebih cepat daripada bertani." Jika sebagian besar mereka menjual tanah untuk beli sepeda motor untuk ojek, lalu siapa penumpangnya? Booming cengkeh saja mendorong pemiskinan petani, apalagi booming sepeda motor...

Biadab: Absennya Sang Walikota

2008-04-23T23:23:00.000+07:00

Cobalah Anda berkendara ke Bogor. Jika Anda berangkat dari Jakarta menggunakan jalan tol, setiba di mulut tol tepat di muka Terminal Baranangsiang, arahkan kendaraan Anda ke kanan. Ketika tiba di muka Pangrango Plaza jalan pecah menjadi dua. Ambil sebelah kanan. Ikuti jalan hingga tiba di pertigaan dengan sebuah monumen yang tak jelas maknanya, menggambarkan seorang pemuda berpakaian olahraga tetapi ada bentukan tabung dan jarum suntik, ambil jalan ke kiri, ke arah Jalan Raya Parung. Jalan tersebut dikenal dengan nama Jalan Baru. Ikuti jalan tersebut hingga melewati sebuah proyek terowongan di bawah rel kereta api. Sekarang saya ucapkan, "Selamat datang di neraka Bogor...."

Jika Anda penggemar olahraga otomotif offroad, mungkin Anda akan menemukan kenikmatan ketika melalui Jalan Baru. Lubang-lubang besar menganga di sana-sini menanti Anda. Amati kendaraan-kendaraan angkutan umum berwarna hijau dan biru, dikenal dengan sebutan angkot (angkutan kota), meliuk-liuk bermanuver mencoba mengatasi lubang-lubang tersebut. Jika Anda menggunakan kendaraan sedan, dijamin Anda harus memperbaiki perangkat kemudi serta kaki-kaki roda kendaraan Anda.

Saya tak pernah habis pikir dengan keadaan tersebut. Proyek perbaikan jalan biasanya mengikuti jadual anggaran. Menjelang tutup tahun anggaran, baru proyek perbaikan dikebut. Jangan ditanya soal kualitas bahan dan kualitas pengerjaan. Namanya juga proyek yang dipercepat. Yang penting platform anggaran tercapai dan selesai tepat waktu. (Saya coba tak berpretensi terjadi tindak penggelembungan nilai belanja proyek atau korupsi). Umur jalan dalam keadaan baik hanya sebentar. Begitu truk-truk besar dengan beban angkut yang (senantiasa) melewati batas sesuai ketentuan melalui Jalan Baru, butuh hanya dua minggu hingga sebulan untuk kembali ke keadaan hancur-hancuran.

Pernah seorang kawan berkata, "Wah, lumayan tuh lubang-lubang itu untuk menanam ikan lele...." Saya hanya tersenyum kecut dengan canda bernada sindiran itu. "Atau mungkin cocok untuk bertanam padi ya....." Kami pun tertawa kecut sambil menikmati guncangan-guncangan tak nyaman saat melalui Jalan Baru nan biadab. Kemana gerangan pejabat pengurus kota? Apakah mereka tak pernah melalui Jalan Baru?

Keadaan jalan seperti itu tidak dimonopoli Jalan Baru. Silakan Anda menjelajahi bagian lain Kota Bogor. Perumahan Taman Cimanggu misalnya. Atau ke arah perumahan TNI Angkatan Udara di daerah Semplak. Saya tak tahu bagaimana tingkat kecelakaan kendaraan bermotor akibat kualitas jalan raya Kota Bogor yang hancur-hancuran ini. Kemana gerangan sang Walikota? Apakah beliau tak pernah melalui jalan-jalan yang hancur itu?

Does Asia exist?

2008-04-12T21:42:00.000+07:00

Economist.com - Apr 9th 2008

A new book suggests we are witnessing the creation

SAD to say, this column suffers occasional pangs of existential doubt. Is there really such a place as “Asia”? Of course there is, if you look at a map—though even there, definitions differ.

Does it include Australasia? How about what Europeans call “the Middle East”, known to South Asians and the United Nations as “West Asia”?

The Economist answers those questions “yes” and “no”, respectively. For us, Asia is everywhere east of Iran, including Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands (which in theory means we should call the six “stans”, more normally known as “Central Asia”, “West Asia”. But let it pass).

The more fundamental issue, though, is whether Asia is anything more than a handy cartographical term. Has it outgrown its ancient Greek origins, when it was used to mean everywhere east of that country? Should this column really be called Eastofgreece.view?

This is a long-running debate. In 1995, when he was foreign minister, Malaysia’s prime minister, Abdullah Badawi, was asked at a press conference whether Australia was part of Asia (as its government at the time very much wanted to be). “No”, he chided his Australian questioner, “look at a map.” He then used his arms to explain that Australia was way down there and Asia “up here”.

What he really seemed to mean was that Australia was largely inhabited by people of European descent. Look not at a map, but in the mirror. But an ethnic definition does not work either, since Asia is so diverse in that respect too.

This latest bout of questioning from Asia.view is inspired by a new book, “Rivals”, by Bill Emmott (who edited The Economist until 2006), which offers some timely reassurance.

The main theme of “Rivals” is explained in its subtitle: “How the power struggle between China, India and Japan will shape our next decade.” But before exploring the emerging relationship between Asia’s three giants, Mr Emmott argues that Asia is undergoing its “deepest and most extensive integration” ever (or at least since Genghis Khan’s time, which saw integration of a rather different sort). Indeed, we are witnessing “the very creation of Asia”.

That, as you can imagine, is a relief. Our doubts are misplaced if understandable. This is a column ahead of its time.

Before this column pats itself on its virtual back, however, it ought to examine some of the counter-arguments that Mr Emmott ably presents. Asia has been, as he notes, “not so much a continent as an array of subcontinents, or subregions, dotted across thousands of miles of ocean and land”.

The world’s highest mountain range separates two ancient civilisations: India and China. Languages on the Indian side are part of the “Indo-European” family rather than the “Sino-Tibetan” tongues of East Asia.

Buddhism spread from India all the way to Japan, but remains dominant only in smaller Asian countries: Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Laos. If religion defines Asia at all, Mr Emmott notes, it is more by tolerance than doctrine. “That is an admirable characteristic,” he says, “but it is not a unifying one.”

Mr Emmott argues that two forces are drawing today’s Asia together: a rapid economic integration, under which half the region’s merchandise exports go to other Asian countries; and an inchoate institutional process, notably through the “East Asia Summit”, which brings together India, Australia, New Zealand as well as the ten South-East Asian countries, China, Japan and South Korea.

One could question both parts of this. Some of the intra-regional trade is accounted for by parts of an export supply-chain generated by the West. And the East Asia Summit has done little more than meet. But why would Asia.view shoot itself in the foot?

Land Use Change and All Indonesian's Typical Bullshits

2008-04-12T06:48:00.000+07:00

Corruption should inevitably be said as the primary driver of the sustainable deterioration of this archipelagic state. The revoke of protected forest in Bintan island for building the local government office complex is a common blemish in Indonesia and doesn't necessarily link to corruption conduct. But not for Al Amin, member of the Indonesian parliament, whose been caught in the act by the Indonesian Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) upon receiving graft at a stars hotel in Jakarta. He's accused of receiving graft for smoothing conversion of protected forest in Bintan for the development of the local government office. So what?

Several journalists called me and requested for phone interview and asked my opinion. A usual first response I gave, "Opinion on what?" It's a typical journalist question which isn't a question whatsoever. They didn't come up with stronger backgrounder and assumed that I share interest with other resources. Some of them need for some time to rearticulate the question as I clearly said, "I read that news, and have no comment since I consider that as common blemishes here in our country." I have to explain that they should interview resources from the Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) or Transparency International (TI) or Masyarakat Transparansi Indonesia (MTI) regarding the case. Until then finally they successfully built a better question, "Okay, could we have your opinion on conversion of protected forests in Indonesia, from your organisation perspective?"

Forest conversion or forest land use change is the top policy lies in this country. If you open the map of Indonesia with good segregation of layers based on land or spatial uses, you'll find pretty good portion of wide variety of areas designation, including the protected forest. According to the law, the protected forest is aimed at protecting integrity of the surrounding ecosystem and (hopefully aimed at) securing safety of the people. As a printed product, that map is pretty good for developing a proposal submitted to some bilateral and multilateral development assistance agencies for a what-so-called sustainable environmental projects. It has nothing to do with safety of the people (though it's always mentioned as one of key primary objectives in the proposal). But, in reality, the nice coloured layer on the map of the protected forest doesn't mean anything to the government but spare lands for any kind of new development.

It is not the community declaring the protected forest officially, unless those under customary laws that always been revoked by the State's law. And it is not the community that has power to convert land use of the protected forest. The government is the one who holds power to do that. One stupid question is, "If the government would anyway convert the land use of a protected forest, why did they set up the area as a protected forest?"

This morning a journalist called me and confirmed a research group from known university in Bogor, assigned by the Forestry Minister, just came up with conclusion that the protected forest in Bintan is eligible to convert, as the extent and diversity of natural mangrove ecosystems had long been destroyed, and the local community had also long been utilising the areas for years. My goodness. The most stupid morning ever in my life.... What kind of research is that? I thought research would always come up with more open, optional in nature and conditional answers, not with fabricated set of fixed answers. If the area had long been fucked up, would it only have one answer: Land use change? How about other possible answers like, "rehabilitation"? Or, "area management improvement"?

Friends, I have no intention disrupting your appetite for breakfast this morning. But I really have pretty bad Saturday morning at the moment...

Finally, A Home For Smokers

2008-04-02T15:38:00.000+07:00

A bit annoying title I supposed, particularly for those, the hypocrites who publicly running a show of how they are defending the mother earth, and be superficially patriot of the environment, but vaguely put their position between workers for organizations and the activist ones. That's basically my concern. Employee versus activist....

So then a friend questioned my commitment. "For more than fifteen years you work for the environmental issue, how then you survive with your smoking habits? If you committed to the environment, you firstly should give up your bad habit!" Aside from semantic debate of that question, I won't be indifferent to that question and questions perhaps often raised by evangelists or Islamic hardliners. "If you do this, so you can't do that. And if you're that, so you can't do this," type of dogmatic statement and/or question.

I'd rather to counter the question by putting first the thorough atmosphere of our middle-class paradigm, particularly the raising new intellectual and critical urban and well informed group of young people, in the reality of an understanding of life's material progress and happiness. A new Nokia's PDA, a new gadget, a new software, a new elegant buzzword and terminology, a new indicator of advancement, a new social status, etc.. But, what's all about? Selfishness and strong desire for a acknowledgement and recognition!

I remember a paragraph from Graham Hancock's Lords of Poverty. I interpret that as "industrialized countries' originated development workers will put tenun-ikat and batik's ornament on wall of their house or apartment to show that they're belong to a new class of global societies of the development." They perhaps did noble activities down there in Uganda or Boznia or Tanzania or East Timor or Indonesia or else, whether on voluntary basis or as highly paid trainers or consultants hired by the development consulting agents under of what-so-called global development assistances' scheme. And perhaps they don't have bad intention and simply want to show off their particular, and far from the grandeur's strategy of global control over production and consumption imposed by complicated web of capital and power commonly represented by anything thing of multinationals, internationals, transnational, global, etc..

Excuse me, friends, I must catch my jet-
I'm off to join the Development Set;
My bags are packed, and I've had all my shots,
I have travelers' checks, and pi;;s for the trots

The Development Set is bright and noble,
Our thoughts are deep and our vision global;
Although we move with the better classes,
Our thoughts are always with the masses.

In Sheraton hotels in scattered nations,
We damn multinational corporations;
Injustice seems so easy to protest,
In such seething hotbeds of social rest.

We discuss malnutrition over steaks
And plan hunger talks during coffee breaks.
Whether Asian floods or African drought,
We face each issue with an open mouth.

We bring in consultants whose circumlocution
Raises difficulties for every solution-
Thus guaranteeing continued good eating
By showing the need for another meeting.

The language of the Development Set
Stretches the English alphabet;
We use swell eords like 'epigenetic',
'Micro', 'Macro'. and 'logarithmetic'.

Development Set homes are extremely chic,
Full of carvings, curios and draped with batik.
Eye-level photographs subtly assure
That your host is at home with the rich and the poor.

Enough of these verses -- on with the mission!
Our task is as broad as the human condition!
Just parry to God the biblical promise is true:
The poor ye shall always have with you.

(The Development Set, from Graham Hancock's book "Lords of Poverty").

So here we go. Crowds of people with consciousness of a better world and tireless of preaching about a new world with high taste of aesthetics, justice and peace. It's not about lifestyle. I'd rather call this a fast growing cult. And I certainly am not be able and can't afford to join the set. So, those who still love of having plastic flower in their pots, love instant coffee, smoke cigarettes, don't have any idea about wide variety of exotic Asian foods, and other low taste life style, welcome to our home. A home for low caste of smokers....

Kekerasan? Keras-Kerasan? Kerasan?

2008-03-31T05:48:00.000+07:00

Kekerasan itu bisa ditafsir terlalu keras. Iya kah? Tapi ia sudah menjadi idiom umum aktivis masyarakat sipil di Indonesia sebagai padanan kata dari Bahasa Inggeris, violence. Tapi jadi berbeda ketika mendengar, "Eh, suaraku kekerasan ya?" Coba... Rumit juga.

Sering saya berpikir, apakah kekerasan versi para aktivis itu adalah sebuah kata tersendiri, atau ia kata berimbuhan dan berakhiran? Jika ia adalah sebuah kata dengan makna violence (Bahasa Inggeris), jelas ia tidak dibentuk oleh kata dasar keras. Tetapi jika ia adalah yang kedua, maka kedudukannya lebih kurang sama dengan kemalaman atau kelaparan dan sebagainya.

"Tindak kekerasan yang dilakukan aparat kepolisian..." Begitu saya baca kepala berita di sebuah koran harian Jakarta. Hmm, apakah itu bermakna bahwa aparat bertindak terlalu keras, atau aparat kepolisian telah melakukan tindak kekerasan (act of violence)? Bisa jadi kedua-duanya adalah tafsir kalimat tersebut. Hehehe...

Bagaimana dengan keras-kerasan? Ah itu jelas hal berbeda. Keras-kerasan bolehjadi setara dengan kuat-kuatan atau lapar-laparan, yang menggambarkan situasi persaingan. Eh, mana ada orang bersaing adu lapar? Bolehjadi ada. Namanya juga Indonesia. Negeri serba mungkin...

"Pasangan muda di apartemen no 1807 itu bertengkar hebat. Juga pasangan tak menikah di sebelahnya. Kedua pasangan itu keras-kerasan bertengkar. Heboh betul...."

Intinya kekerasan (untuk makna yang mana pun) dan keras-kerasan menggambarkan sesuatu yang keras.

Namun, bagaimana dengan kerasan? Ia bisa punya dua tafsir. Kerasan sebagai serapan kata asal Bahasa Jawa, yang artinya betah (halaah ini juga serapan dari Bahasa Jawa, gimana nih?), dan yang kedua sebagai ungkapan dari Bahasa Betawi atau bahasa pergaulan di kota-kota Jabodetabek (the Greater Jakarta), yang kerap digunakan untuk meminta supaya lebih keras lagi.

"Kerasan dong pukulannya.... Capek nih mungut bola di depan net terus-terusan...." Keluh Lim Swi Kee, pemain tangkis bulu, kepada Tauke Hidayat.

Tapi ia jadi berbeda kalau memperhatikan, "Bagaimana, kerasan tinggal di gubuk kami yang AC-nya cuma 1/2 PK ini?"

Hebatnya, saya jarang mendapati orang salah paham. Hebat juga ya. Atau saya saja yang kurang kerjaan memikirkan hal-hal yang seharusnya tidak perlu dipikirkan (taken for granted)?

30 Maret 2008

Riots, Terrorism etc

2008-03-28T09:53:00.000+07:00

John Lanchester

Book Reviewed: Flat Earth News by Nick Davies

Original URL

‘Important’ is a cant word in book reviewing: it usually means something like ‘slightly above average’, or ‘I was at university with her,’ or ‘I couldn’t be bothered to read it so I’m giving a quote instead.’ Very occasionally it might be stretched to mean ‘a book likely to be referred to in the future by other people who write about the same subject’. Nick Davies’s Flat Earth News, however, is a genuinely important book, one which is likely to change, permanently, the way anyone who reads it looks at the British newspaper industry. Davies’s book explains something easy to notice and complain about but hard to understand: the sense of the increasing thinness and attenuation of the British press. It’s not literal thinness: the papers, physically, are bigger than ever. There just seems to be less in them than there once was: less news, less thought (as opposed to opinion), less density of engagement, less time spent finding things out. Davies looks into all those questions, confirms that the impression of thinness is correct, explains how this came about, and offers no hope that things will improve.

His book starts at the point at which he got interested in the story of what he calls ‘flat earth news’: ‘A story appears to be true. It is widely accepted as true. It becomes a heresy to suggest that it is not true – even if it is riddled with falsehood, distortion and propaganda.’ That’s flat earth news, and Davies became interested in the phenomenon, via the story of the millennium bug. How on earth did so many papers get sucked into producing so many millions of words of, it turns out, total nonsense about the impending implosion of all government, all commerce, all human activity, by the catastrophe which was going to be caused by the bug? ‘National Health Service patients could die’ (Telegraph); ‘Banks could collapse’ (Guardian); ‘Riots, terrorism and a health crisis’ (Sunday Mirror); ‘Pensions contributions could be wiped out’ (Independent); ‘Nato alert over Russian missile millennium bug’ (Times). The British government spent a figure variously reported as £396 million, £430 million and £788 million. And then, on the big night, a tide gauge failed in Portsmouth harbour. That was pretty much it. Countries which had spent next to nothing – Russia, for instance, whose government of 140 million citizens spent less on the bug than British Airways – had no problems.

There are several ways of looking at this story, which has some of the aspects of a panic and some of those of a hoax or job-creation scheme.[*] Davies chooses to focus on the fact that of the millions of words written about the bug, all of them were written by journalists who had no idea whether what they were writing was true. They simply didn’t know. Flat Earth News makes a great deal of this. The most basic function of journalism, in Davies’s view, is to check facts. Journalists don’t just pass on what they’re told without making an effort to check it first. At least, in theory they don’t. In practice, contemporary journalism has been corrupted by an endemic failure to verify facts and stories in a manner so fundamental that it almost defies belief. The consequences of that are pervasive and systemic.

Nick Davies is an unusual figure in British journalism, mainly because he has persisted in holding the admirable belief that reporting is the central task of the trade. Journalists report much less than they used to, and much less than they should, as the papers have switched over to a reliance on columnists and opinion. Back in the day, an ambitious young toad going into journalism would have seen All the President’s Men once too often, and would dream of bringing down governments with a single scoop. Good luck to them. Davies was like that. Today the equivalent ambitious young toad would dream of having a column with their picture at the top, as a precursor to a well-timed move to TV or politics or some other form of showbiz.

Davies, however, is still a believer in legwork and in getting the story first-hand. This led him to recruit researchers at Cardiff University’s school of journalism to quantify what was happening in the British press. The result is illuminating and grim. The team looked at a fortnight’s production from the posh papers and the Daily Mail, and analysed in the process 2207 UK news pieces. They focused on two things: the number of stories that were derived directly from press releases; and the number that were taken straight from the main British news agency, the Press Association. The results were amazing, and not in a good way.

They found that a massive 60 per cent of these quality-print stories consisted wholly or mainly of wire copy and/or PR material, and a further 20 per cent contained clear elements of wire copy and/or PR to which more or less other material had been added. With 8 per cent of the stories, they were unable to be sure about their source. That left only 12 per cent of stories where the researchers could say that all the material was generated by the reporters themselves. The highest quota proved to be in the Times, where 69 per cent of news stories were wholly or mainly wire copy and/or PR . . . The researchers went on to look at those stories which relied on a specific statement of fact and found that with a staggering 70 per cent of them, the claimed fact passed into print without any corroboration at all. Only 12 per cent of these stories showed evidence that the central statement had been thoroughly checked.

So only 12 per cent of what is in the papers consists of a story that a reporter has found out and pursued on her own initiative; and only 12 per cent of key facts are checked. The rest is all rewritten wire copy and PR. This remaining 88 per cent is, in Davies’s stinging coinage, ‘churnalism’. No wonder the papers feel a bit thin.

As for the wire copy, most of it comes from the Press Association:

When the queen wants to talk to the world, she gives a statement to the Press Association. When the poet laureate wants to publish a poem, he files it to the Press Association. Every government department, every major corporation, every police service and health trust and education authority delivers its official announcements to the Press Association. It is the primary conveyor belt along which information reaches national media in Britain.

The boffins in Cardiff found that 30 per cent of home news stories are direct rewrites of PA and other news agency copy; another 19 per cent are ‘largely reproduced’ from this copy; another 21 per cent ‘contained elements’ of it. That’s 70 per cent of news stories wholly or in part from wire copy. The general rule in journalism, increasingly honoured more in the breach than the observance, is that a story has to have two sources to be confirmed, but according to BBC guidelines, ‘the Press Association can be treated as a confirmed, single source.’ That practice is widespread.

As a result, it matters deeply what the PA actually does – and here Davies has more grimness to impart. The agency’s network of reporters is stretched increasingly thin, with, for instance, four reporters (including trainees) to cover the whole of Cardiff, South Wales and the Welsh Assembly. The staffers, according to one of them, write an average of ten stories in a single shift: ‘I don’t usually spend more than an hour on a story.’ The emphasis is on catching what people say accurately. As its editor, Jonathan Grun, puts it, ‘our role is attributable journalism – what someone has got to say. What is important is in quote marks.’ If the government says Saddam has WMD, that’s what the PA will report. Because the PA is the basis for such a huge proportion of what’s in the papers, and because its stories tend not to be checked, it is a highly effective way for PRs to plant stories across all the national media simultaneously. ‘It is infinitely preferable logistically to send it to the PA than to try and contact 150 journalists,’ one of Davies’s sources, a PR who works for one of the political parties, told him. ‘And we are rarely subjected to the sort of cross-examination that, say, the Sun or the Times would give us. PA does not do as much of the probing and difficult questions. They are journalists but to some extent they are an information service.’

So we have arrived at a place where ‘the heart of modern journalism’ has become ‘the rapid repackaging of largely unchecked second-hand material, much of it designed to service the political or commercial interests of those who provide it’. In the old days, at this point in the story, it would be time to Name the Guilty Men. They would once have been the evil proprietors, top-hatted cigar-smoking manipulators of public opinion. I don’t agree with the conspiracy theory of the proprietor press, nor does Davies: he thinks that it’s sheer commercial pressure that is to blame. It’s the pressure on costs – to produce more, cheaper copy – that is the ultimate culprit for the state of the modern press.

Flat Earth News breaks down the specific ways in which pressure is exerted on the practice of journalism, on a daily basis. Stories need to be cheap, meaning ‘quick to cover’, ‘safe to publish’; they need to ‘select safe facts’ preferably from official sources; they need to ‘avoid the electric fence’, sources of guaranteed trouble such as the libel laws and the Israel lobby; to be based on ‘safe ideas’ and contradict no loved prevailing wisdoms; to avoid complicated or context-rich problems; and always to ‘give both sides of the story’ (‘balance means never having to say you’re sorry – because you haven’t said anything’). And conversely, there are active pressures to pursue stories that tell people what they want to hear, to give them lots of celebrity and TV-based coverage, and to subscribe to every moral panic. That’s the effect on the texture of journalism, the culture of the newsroom. Of course, the pressure on costs has other, simpler effects too. There is more space to fill – in the British papers, three times as much – but no equivalent expansion of the resources to do the work. Elsewhere, the pressure on resources is just as bad. In 1970, CBS had three full-time correspondents in Rome alone: by 2006, the entire US media, print and broadcast, was supporting only 141 foreign correspondents to cover the whole world.

As the pressures on journalism have increased, so the PR industry has come along with what appears to be a solution. Want news? We’ll give it to you. Britain now has 47,800 PR people to 45,000 journalists. It isn’t the case that PRs just beg for coverage for their clients: they’re much more cunning than that. Once one grows alert to the question, you can see PR influence almost everywhere in the press. The greatly missed Auberon Waugh used to say that behind any claim in any way interesting, striking or surprising in the news, there was either someone demanding more government money or a press release. That is truer than ever, only these days the press release will announce the result of a survey (a favourite PR tactic) or a ‘release’ statement from a phoney pressure group, such as one of the many set up to create uncertainty over the question of climate change. These pressure groups are known as ‘astroturf’ in the PR industry, because their grass-roots are fake, but that doesn’t stop their statements and surveys from getting on the news.

PR is not exactly the villain of the piece, but Davies is persuasive about its all-pervading nature in modern journalism, and also about the increasing sophistication of its techniques. He cites the way the ‘NatWest Three’, the British bankers involved in the Enron frauds, managed to have themselves depicted as victims of the American legal system, with businessmen, civil rights pressure groups and MPs all campaigning on their behalf, when, in truth, they were total crooks. There are plenty of other examples in Flat Earth News. Davies, informed by his knowledge of PR, even has a fresh angle on Alastair Campbell and the Kelly affair. In his account, ‘Campbell used it as a decoy to distract attention from a highly embarrassing story, which was emerging slowly in May and June 2003, that the long-debated Iraqi weapons of mass destruction did not exist.’ Four weeks after the broadcast of Andrew Gilligan’s Today story, Campbell had not asked for an apology for it specifically, had not referred it to the BBC complaints department, and had not mentioned it at lunch with Gilligan’s boss, Richard Sambrook. But he then made ‘three key moves’: on 25 June he denounced Gilligan’s story to the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs (‘Until the BBC acknowledges that is a lie, I will keep banging on’); on 26 June he wrote to Sambrook demanding a reply that same day, and released his own letter to the press; on 27 June he more or less invited himself onto Channel Four News to attack the BBC, live. Davies observes: ‘This move finally established the decoy story as the main media line. The original questions about the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were shunted into the sidings. Several political reporters wrote at the time that this looked like a diversionary tactic. Nonetheless, all of them agreed to be diverted. PR works.’ This explains what Campbell meant, as recorded in his diary for 25 June: ‘Flank opened on the BBC.’

Davies adds a few chapters of detail on the ways in which the papers have gone astray: the industry-wide use of bent private detectives, the culture of error at the Daily Mail, the ease with which the government co-opted the Observer to make the case for war in Iraq. These chapters aren’t really necessary for the central thrust of the book, even though Davies’s specifics are uncheering. For instance, in Britain only the rich can sue for libel; everyone else has to seek remedy via the Press Complaints Commission, set up by the industry to regulate itself. But the PCC rejects 90.2 per cent of all complaints on technical grounds without investigation. Of the 28,227 complaints received by the commission over ten years, 197 were upheld by a PCC adjudication: 0.69 per cent. The one or two points at which Davies disses fellow investigative journalists have a strangely ad hominem feel; there are moments when it seems old grudges are playing a role. This has in turn led to something of a backlash in early reviews of Flat Earth News, including a bizarrely hostile (as opposed to merely negative) review by Peter Preston, editor of the Guardian, Davies’s paper, from 1975 to 1995. Preston had a number of harsh things to say about ‘Saint Nick’, one of which had some traction: that he exaggerates the extent to which there was once a golden age of the British press. True. But all these details are less shocking than the more general data about the broad trend towards churnalism.

So this is Davies’s ultra-bleak portrait. The British news media are crushed by commercial pressure, squeezed by the need for speed, corrupted by PR, indifferent to their own best traditions of independence, recklessly indifferent to the central functions of reporting and checking facts, systematically lied to by commercial interests and governments, and in far too many respects, simply indifferent to the truth. There is a growing, industry-wide failure to be sufficiently interested in reality. I would add a couple of details to the indictment, to do with the way in which the papers have succumbed to their own internal celebrity culture of columnists, most of whom make no attempt to report on the world, in favour of sermonising about it. I would also add – borrowing a point from a journalist I spoke to, who was in depressed and reluctant agreement with Flat Earth News – that the collapse in news leads to a huge knock-on in the rest of the papers. Most columns and features are hung on a news-related peg, so if the news isn’t fulfilling its basic function to report and to check, then nor is anything else. Davies doesn’t mention that, but it doesn’t matter much, since his portrait of the British media could scarcely be any darker, or more convincing. His conclusion is in the same key as the rest of the book. ‘I’m afraid that I think the truth is that, in trying to expose the weakness of the media, I am taking a snapshot of a cancer. Maybe it helps a little to be able to see the illness. At least that way we might know in theory what the cure might be. But I fear the illness is terminal.’

Note

*As a nerd, I feel a duty to point out that computers do sometimes have these problems. Nasa has never had a space shuttle in the air at the end of a year, over the transition from 31 December to 1 January, precisely because it’s not confident about the onboard software coping with the switch. (Nasa’s annual budget is $16 billion.) The truth, according to Davies, seems to be that the bug, while theoretically a problem, would only occur in computers which fitted all the following conditions: they a. had internal clocks (most big, ‘embedded’ systems don’t), b. had clocks which calculated time using an internal calendar, rather than just by measuring the gap between dates, c. used two rather than four digits to calculate the date and d. were in use by programmes which were calculating dates across that boundary. The number of computers that ticked all those boxes turned out to be vanishingly small.

John Lanchester is a contributing editor at the LRB. His latest book is Family Romance, a memoir.

Housmans - Radical booksellers since 1945

2008-03-27T08:24:00.001+07:00

Housmans specialises in books and periodicals of radical interest and progressive politics.

Our stock includes:

Wide coverage of politics, political theory, peace studies, and world current affairs.
Material about - and in support of - campaigns for peace, the environment, human rights, sexual freedom, equitable and sustainable development, and a great deal more.
General fiction and non-fiction.
Many hard-to-find radical publications - and we can obtain most books to order within a few days.

For more details of our range of stock, and of the services we offer, please see the Books and Booklists sections of this website, particularly the Special Offers. And please note that most sections of our radical book stock are supplemented by a large assortment of pamphlets.

Housmans publishes an annual Peace Diary, including a unique World Peace Directory. Copies sent direct from Housmans will be supplied post free to any address in the world.

The World Peace Directory, included in the Housmans Peace Diary each year, includes contact details of almost 2000 national and international peace, green, and human rights organisations around the world. (For more details of the full World Peace Database, from which the directory in the Peace Diary is taken, please contact the Housmans Peace Resource Project - e-mail worldpeace@gn.apc.org.)

And we have the largest range of radical newsletters, newspapers and magazines of any shop in Britain - with editions of well over 200 different titles regularly in stock (and many others irregularly). These publications represent a vast diversity of (and within!) peace campaigns, left movements and parties, civil rights groups, environmental organisations, sexual freedom campaigns, secularist groups, anarchist networks, third world campaigns, alternative lifestyle movements, anti-globalisation and anti-capitalist groups, solidarity campaigns ... and much else.

We produce a monthly Newsletter, if you would like it e-mailed to you please contact andy@housmans.com.

Our basement is home to Porcupine second-hand books - specialists in Philosophy, Politics, History and Psychology.

Besides housing London's oldest independent political bookshop, our historic building in Caledonian Road is also home to our sibling company, the pacifist monthly Peace News, along with War Resisters' International and other peace and radical organisations.

We have regular events in the shop - see the events page. For details of Anne Aylor's creative writing course please see www.anneaylor.co.uk

Orders can be placed on this website via paypal (if you have a credit, debit, or charge card). Also, if you can't come into the shop in person, we are happy to accept orders by post, phone, fax, or e-mail (orders@housmans.com). See the Books page for details.

Volunteers: Housmans welcomes intelligent, reliable and enthusiastic volunteers with relevant skills, to help in its work. Which skills are "relevant" changes over time, but we can often use fairly routine help in and around the shop itself, or on bookstalls at events; we sometimes need technical computer skills, or help with the production of publications. In return there are occasional perks, and the chance to improve your own skills and experience - not to mention the satisfaction of supporting the last major non-sectarian radical bookshop in London.

We are open Monday to Friday 10am to 6.30pm, Saturday 10am to 6pm, and closed on Sunday. We sometimes have extra opening hours for special events - or just because we are able to - so ring us to check if you ever want to visit after our "official" closing time.

Please note that we welcome donations to support the work of Housmans. Trying to promote and supply peace movement and other varieties of radical literature is not the most commercially viable activity - and that's even without taking into account the notoriously unfair competition that all small independent shops face from the major high street bookshop chains. To support our work, you can click below and use your credit/debit/charge card, or you can send us a cheque made payable to Housmans. We also welcome donations of any of your unwanted books - we can often find them a home with a new generation of activists (and raise a little money for the shop at the same time).

Please visit us if you can - we're at 5 Caledonian Road, Kings Cross, London N1 (tel 020-7837 4473). The shop is within one block of 6 of the 12 London Underground lines (Kings Cross / St Pancras station).

The Anti-Capitalist Dictionary

2008-03-26T16:02:00.002+07:00

The Anti-Capitalist Dictionary: Movements, Histories and Motivations by David E. Lowes

Zed Books, London, 2006

Pages: X+310. £16.99

Reviewed By: Yves Laberge

People and groups that oppose capitalism often contest other issues and principles like deregulation, the military-industrial complex, consumerism and corporate-lobby groups. These terms and almost 200 others are all commented upon and defined here. This Anti-Capitalist Dictionary is an original and rigorous reference book, containing useful definitions and accurate cross-references on alternative movements ('New Left', 'Non-Governmental Organizations', 'Students') and political and philosophical concepts ('Ideology', 'Utopia', 'Value'). Each entry is about two pages long and the focus is more about debates and issues than persons. Therefore there is no specific entry for director Michael Moore or Noam Chomsky, for example, although they are mentioned in the appropriate places.

The main strength of the volume is that it always gives the arguments from both sides of a debate, and explains why some people protest about issues that, for many, should not be challenged. For instance: why do some critics oppose the strict protection of intellectual property? (p. 126); what are the real consequences of the cancellation of debt for poor countries? (p. 129); or who critiques the United Nations and for which reasons? (p. 264).

Another useful dimension is the inclusion of concepts that cannot always be found in common reference books (e.g. 'biopiracy'; 'genetic engineering'); and we are given a straightforward definition of 'Neo-Liberalism', that 'is promoted as orthodoxy by the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization' (p. 170). Most definitions give the origins of an idea. For instance, the entry on 'Hegemony' reminds us that the term was first used about Bolsheviks by Georgi Plekhanov in 1905, and some twenty years later by Antonio Gramsci (p. 117). Not surprisingly, dozens of entries are related to environmental issues: 'Biodiversity' (p. 20), 'Deep Ecology' (p. 61), 'Global Warming' (p. 106), 'Kyoto Protocol' (p. 140), 'Sustainable Development' (p. 236), etc.

I would have liked an entry on anti-Americanism, movies and documentaries (the entry on media focuses on newspapers, conglomerates and the power of networks), but as with all good dictionaries, one does not seem to get enough! There is no mention of advocacy, but that topic is covered in the entry on 'Direct Action' (p. 73). Lowes' Anti-Capitalist Dictionary is the perfect complement (or prerequisite reading) to the Encyclopedia of Capitalism edited by Syed Hussein (NewYork, Facts on File, 2004), and both are essential for libraries. Both undergraduates and scholars will benefit from this excellent book - one always needs to get accurate definitions and clear arguments for every current issue.

The Anti-Capitalist Dictionary: Movements, Histories and Motivations

2008-03-26T15:58:00.001+07:00

By Yves Laberge

The Anti-Capitalist Dictionary: Movements, Histories and Motivations by David E. Lowes
Zed Books, London, 2006
Pages: X+310. £16.99

People and groups that oppose capitalism often contest other issues and principles like deregulation, the military-industrial complex, consumerism and corporate-lobby groups. These terms and almost 200 others are all commented upon and defined here. This Anti-Capitalist Dictionary is an original and rigorous reference book, containing useful definitions and accurate cross-references on alternative movements ('New Left', 'Non-Governmental Organizations', 'Students') and political and philosophical concepts ('Ideology', 'Utopia', 'Value'). Each entry is about two pages long and the focus is more about debates and issues than persons. Therefore there is no specific entry for director Michael Moore or Noam Chomsky, for example, although they are mentioned in the appropriate places.

The main strength of the volume is that it always gives the arguments from both sides of a debate, and explains why some people protest about issues that, for many, should not be challenged. For instance: why do some critics oppose the strict protection of intellectual property? (p. 126); what are the real consequences of the cancellation of debt for poor countries? (p. 129); or who critiques the United Nations and for which reasons? (p. 264).

Another useful dimension is the inclusion of concepts that cannot always be found in common reference books (e.g. 'biopiracy'; 'genetic engineering'); and we are given a straightforward definition of 'Neo-Liberalism', that 'is promoted as orthodoxy by the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization' (p. 170). Most definitions give the origins of an idea. For instance, the entry on 'Hegemony' reminds us that the term was first used about Bolsheviks by Georgi Plekhanov in 1905, and some twenty years later by Antonio Gramsci (p. 117). Not surprisingly, dozens of entries are related to environmental issues: 'Biodiversity' (p. 20), 'Deep Ecology' (p. 61), 'Global Warming' (p. 106), 'Kyoto Protocol' (p. 140), 'Sustainable Development' (p. 236), etc.

I would have liked an entry on anti-Americanism, movies and documentaries (the entry on media focuses on newspapers, conglomerates and the power of networks), but as with all good dictionaries, one does not seem to get enough! There is no mention of advocacy, but that topic is covered in the entry on 'Direct Action' (p. 73). Lowes' Anti-Capitalist Dictionary is the perfect complement (or prerequisite reading) to the Encyclopedia of Capitalism edited by Syed Hussein (NewYork, Facts on File, 2004), and both are essential for libraries. Both undergraduates and scholars will benefit from this excellent book - one always needs to get accurate definitions and clear arguments for every current issue.

New fiction: The winds of war

2008-02-03T08:06:00.001+07:00

Jan 24th 2008 From The Economist print edition

WERE it not for the author's photo on the jacket, few would guess that this war story was written by a woman. The details of RAF bombing missions over Germany are scrupulous. More impressive still, A.L. Kennedy has a keen feel for the jousting indirection of male banter. She skilfully depicts the discontinuity between the bursting emotions of men's interior life and the choked, inarticulate bleating that expresses them—or fails to. “Day” was published in Britain last year and well deserved to win the 2007 Costa book of the year award, announced this week. The novel has just come out in America.

Young and working class, Alfie Day is attached to his mother and fears he will no longer be able to protect her from his violent father when he enlists. Nevertheless, with suicidal bravado, he volunteers as a tail gunner. The countdown to flying the 30 missions that will complete his service to the crown recollects the same countdown in Joseph Heller's “Catch-22”: a race between luck and doom. Likewise, in portraying the airmen's distinctively intimate bond, “Day” is in some ways “Catch-22” with the humour removed. But then, both authors would concur that their central material isn't funny.

While on leave Alfie falls in love with a young woman in London. She is already married to a serviceman away at war. And it is a discipline not to permit himself the fantasy that he will survive to claim his small patch of ordinary happiness (perhaps too that the husband will not), when fantasising about surviving to next week seems an indulgence. Sure enough, on mission number 26 Alfie's bomber is downed. His comrades perish, and Alfie becomes a German prisoner of war.

Providing the novel with its sophisticated texture, the story alternates between war and the parody of war—in this case the set of a mocked-up POW camp, where Alfie is performing as an extra in a film five years after the armistice. Keeping track of these time shifts takes concentration, since the author will sometimes deliberately blur the line between war as grand drama and war as farce.

Ms Kennedy manages to make every battle truism fresh—in particular, the cliché about how “you never feel so alive”. Yet in rendering the guilt, numbness and bewilderment of its aftermath, she also kills off any foolish temptation to envy the intensity of warfare.

Inspiring Quotes

2008-01-20T21:47:00.001+07:00

Archbishop Oscar Romero

"When I fed the poor they called me a saint. When I asked why they were poor they called me a communist."

Sun Tzu

"The good leader is the one the people adore; the wicked leader is the one the people despise; the great leader is the one the people say 'we did it ourselves.' "

James Lovelock

"We have grown in numbers to the point where our presence is perceptibly disabling the planet like a disease. As in human diseases there are four possible outcomes: destruction of the invading disease organisms; chronic infection; destruction of the host; or symbiosis - a lasting relationship of mutual benefit to the host and invader. I believe that we have the capacity to choose symbiosis over self-destruction. But we need a rapid, massive and global awakening at a personal level if we are not to go the way of any disease successfully thwarted by its host."

Duane Elgin

"Amid a frenzy of conspicuous consumption, an inconspicuous revolution has been stirring. A growing number of people are seeking a way of life that is more satisfying and sustainable. This quiet revolution is being called by many names, including voluntary simplicity and compassionate living. But whatever its name, its hallmark is a new common sense - namely, that life is too deep and consumerism is too shallow to provide soulful satisfaction."

Robert Putnam

"Humans are social beings, so it is little surprise that good relationships are one of the most important ingredients for a high quality of life."

South to South Film Festival - Vote for Life

2008-01-04T11:18:00.001+07:00

Vote for Life, Memilih untuk Hidup
Update Jum'at, 28 Desember 2007

Apakah masyarakat sekitar tambang memiliki hak untuk memilih adanya perusahaan tambang di wilayah mereka? Jika masyarakat sekitar tambang telah tahu daya rusak yang diakibatkan oleh operasi tambang, lantas apakah mereka bisa memilih untuk menolak atau menerima?

Film *Sipakapa Is Not For Sale *memberi gambaran bagaimana masyarakat di kota Sipakapa, Guatemala berjuang untuk menentukan masa depan mereka, menerima atau menolak operasi tambang di wilayahnya lewat referendum.

Film ini telah masuk dalam beberapa festival, seperti Environmental Film festival di Toronto (2006), dan The Native Spirit Festival di London (2007).

Jangan lewatkan film di atas dan 15 film lainnya di South to South Film Festival di Goethe-Institut Jakarta, 25 ? 27 Januari 2008.
Info lengkapnya dapat dilihat di South to South Film Festival.
---------------------------------------------------
Panitia South to South Film Festival
d/a. Jl. Mampang Prapatan II/30 Jakarta Selatan
Telp. 021-7918 1683, Fax. 021-794 1559
Kontak : Luluk (0815 9480 246)

Nama Departemen

2008-01-04T11:03:00.001+07:00

Oleh Jos Daniel Parera

Kompas, Jumat, 04 Januari 2008

Setiap kali terjadi penggantian rezim yang berkuasa, terjadi pula
penambahan atau perubahan departemen dengan nama yang menurut penguasa/pemerintah/kabinet cocok dengan misi yang diemban oleh departemen dan menterinya.

Berdasarkan catatan saya, bapak-bapak bangsa telah memberikan nama departemen atau kementerian yang cocok dan dekat kepada masyarakat dan rakyat Indonesia. Misalnya, Departemen Luar Negeri, Departemen Dalam Negeri, Departemen Perdagangan, Departemen Perindustrian, Departemen Penerangan, Departemen Pertambangan, Departemen Perburuhan, dan sebagainya. Nama-nama departemen tersebut memang mudah dimengerti oleh rakyat dan mudah dihafalkan oleh para siswa. Akan tetapi, dalam perjalanan waktu dan perubahan kabinet terdapat beberapa nama
departemen yang berubah.

Nama Departemen Perburuhan pada zaman Orde Lama telah diganti dengan nama Departemen Tenaga Kerja, lalu Departemen Tenaga Kerja dan Transmigrasi. Menurut saya, nama Departemen Tenaga Kerja merendah derajat manusia Indonesia. Tenaga kerja di sana merujuk kepada manusia. Seorang manusia Indonesia hanya dinilai dari tenaganya. Ia disamakan dengan tenaga listrik, tenaga uap, tenaga kuda, tenaga air, dan tenaga nuklir. Lahirlah tenaga kerja Indonesia (TKI) dan bukan manusia Indonesia. Pantas manusia Indonesia dihargai di luar negeri hanya karena ia menjual tenaganya. Akan tetapi, di dalam negeri terdapat organisasi buruh dan bukan tenaga kerja. Jika ada demonstrasi buruh ke Depnaker, Depnaker kurang tanggap karena Depnaker bukan mengurusi buruh, melainkan mengurusi tenaga kerja. "Masih punya tenaga atau tidak?" itulah mungkin pikiran para pejabat Depnaker. Mengapa tidak dikembalikan saja ke nama Departemen Perburuhan?

Departemen Pertambangan berubah nama dengan Departemen Energi dan Sumber Daya Mineral. Di sana terdapat dua kata serapan yang belum dekat dengan rakyat dan terasa asing: energi dan mineral. Kiranya energi dan mineral merupakan uraian kerja dari pertambangan. Makna atasannya adalah pertambangan. Mudah dipahami oleh rakyat dan dekat dengan rakyat.

Inilah nama departemen kecongkakan. Departemen Penerangan diganti dengan nama Departemen Komunikasi dan Informatika alias Depkominfo. Nama ini memang mentereng dan elitis, tetapi jauh dari daya tangkap masyarakat atau rakyat, sulit dihafal dan dimengerti oleh siswa.

Mungkin departemen ini bukan untuk rakyat. Lalu, apa yang terjadi?Lahirlah Direktorat Jenderal Sistem Komunikasi Diseminasi Informatika. Rakyat pasti bertanya-tanya apa arti semua itu. Jika kabar bahwa presiden RI menginginkan Depkominfo menjadi juru bicara negara benar, maka sebaiknya nama departemen tersebut dikembalikan saja ke nama Departemen Penerangan.

The 2007 books we liked best: fiction

2007-12-28T13:02:00.001+07:00

The Christian Science Monitor the December 04, 2007 edition

Paula Spencer,by Roddy Doyle (Viking, 279 pp., $24.95)

In this warm and wryly humorous sequel to "The Woman Who Walked Into Doors," Man Booker Prize-winner Roddy Doyle tells the story of Paula Spencer's sobriety. (Reviewed 1/2/07)

Zoli,by Colum McCann (Random House, 352 pp., $24.95)

This drama-laced tale, based loosely on the true story of Romany poet Bronislawa "Papusza" Wajs, spans the Holocaust, the coming of the Communists, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. (1/9/07)

In The Country of Men,by Hisham Matar (Dial Press, 246 pp., $22)

This emotionally wrenching and gorgeously written novel about a young Libyan boy left alone with his mother when his dissident father disappears was shortlisted for last year's Man Booker prize. (2/6/07)

Lost City Radio,by Daniel Alarcón (HarperCollins, 272 pp., $24.95)

Twenty-something Peruvian-born novelist Alarcón's first novel is a haunting, beautifully written tale of lonely lives and broken hearts set in an unnamed Latin American dictatorship. (2/13/07)

Finn,by Jon Clinch (Random House, 287 pp., $23.95)

Novelist Jon Clinch offers a cruel but compelling back story for the life of Huck Finn's Pap. (2/27/07)

Then We Came to the End,by Joshua Ferris (Little, Brown, 387 pp., $23.99)

In this pitch-perfect office comedy, Joshua Ferris captures the angst of the pointlessly employed. (3/6/07)

Heyday,by Kurt Andersen (Random House, 640 pp., $26.95)

Kurt Andersen serves up a sprawling, messy, enthusiastic romp of a novel that takes readers on a wild ride through 1848 New York. (3/27/07)

Boomsday,by Christopher Buckley (Twelve, 318 pp., $24.99)

"Generation Whatever" turns on the boomers in Christopher Buckley's sharp, satiric gibe at political folly. (4/3/07)

Petropolis,by Anya Ulinich (Viking, 336 pp., $24.95)

Chubby Sasha Goldberg faces life as a biracial Jewish teenager in Asbestos 2, a town in Siberia, in this funny, fiery debut novel. (4/6/07)

The Yiddish Policemen's Union,by Michael Chabon (HarperCollins, 432 pp., $26.95)

Michael Chabon packs big ideas and an entertaining story into a noir detective tale that imagines a Jewish homeland in Alaska. (5/1/07)

After Dark,by Haruki Murakami (Knopf, 191 pp., $22)

Through a series of chance encounters in the wee hours of a Tokyo night, Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami captures the loneliness of modern life. (5/15/07)

Maytress,by Annie Dillard (HarperCollins, 224 pp., $24.95)

Pulitzer Prize-winner Annie Dillard's latest novel, set on Cape Cod, combines themes of marriage, forgiveness, and a life lived close to nature. (6/5/07)

The Shadow Catcher,by Marianne Wiggins (Simon & Schuster, 336 pp., $25)

Marianne Wiggins uses the life of legendary Western photographer Edward Sheriff Curtis as the basis of this novel that turns into a meditation on family and memory and ranges from Leonardo da Vinci to Route 66. (7/3/07)

The Septembers of Shiraz,by Dalia Sofer (Ecco Press, 336 pp., $24.95)

Iranian-born novelist Dalia Sofer uses 1981 as the backdrop to her story of a young Iranian woman whose father is arrested for the double crime of having lived well under the shah and for being Jewish. (7/17/07)

Loving Frank,by Nancy Horan (Ballantine, 368 pp., $23.95)

Frank Lloyd Wright's married, intellectual lover Mamah Borthwick Cheney steps out of the shadows to narrate this debut novel by journalist Nancy Horan. (8/7/07)

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,by Junot Díaz (Riverhead Books, 339 pp., $24.95)

In this debut novel, Junot Díaz tells the story of a Dominican-American "ghetto nerd" teen trapped in his own fantasies. (9/11/07)

Tree of Smoke,by Denis Johnson (FSG, 624 pp., $27)

After nearly a 10-year wait, fans of Denis Johnson were rewarded this year by the release of his latest novel, the gripping tale of a CIA agent toiling in Asia during the Vietnam War. (9/14/07)

Bridge of Sighs,by Richard Russo (Yale University Press, 229 pp., $25)

Richard Russo revisits familiar territory with this story of the reunion of a couple stuck in their upstate hometown and their high school friend who long ago left for Italy. (10/2/07)

Run,by Ann Patchett (HarperCollins, 304 pp., $25.95)

Two Boston families unexpectedly collide in Ann Patchett's latest novel, a tender examination of the nonbiological ties that truly create family. (10/9/07)

What we liked best: history

2007-12-28T12:56:00.001+07:00

The Christian Science Monitor - the December 04, 2007 edition

Nixon and Mao: The Week That Changed The World, by Margaret MacMillan (Random House, 432 pp., $27.95)

This thorough, absorbing account of Nixon's 1972 trip to China includes telling details and delicious anecdotes. (3/27/07)

Nixon and Kissinger: Partners In Power,by Robert Dallek (HarperCollins, 740 pp., $32.50)

Historian Robert Dallek offers new details on the Nixon-Kissinger power pairing and the rivalry and the dependency that shaped it. (5/15/07)

Age of Betrayal: The Triumph of Money in America, 1865-1900,by Jack Beatty (Knopf, 512 pp., $30)

Beatty weaves together biography and history to create this powerful, angry examination of corporate greed and racism in post-Civil War America. (5/22/07)

The Perfect Summer,by Juliet Nicholson (Grove Press, 304 pp., $25)

This sparkling social history traces Edwardian English society on the brink of World War I and throughout the course of a withering heat wave that gripped England in the summer of 1911. (5/25/07)

Almost a Miracle,by John Ferling (Oxford University Press, 679 pp., $29.95)

Historian John Ferling argues that the American revolution succeeded only by the narrowest of margins. (7/3/07)

King, Kaiser, Tsar,by Catrine Clay (Walker & Co., 416 pp., $26.95)

England's King George V, Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm, and Russian Czar Nicholas II were the royal cousins who marched the world to World War I. (7/24/07)

Troublesome Young Men,by Lynne Olson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 448 pp., $27.50)

Political courage takes center stage in this account of British politics in the late 1930s. Olson paints fascinating portraits of Winston Churchill, Neville Chamberlain, and their contemporaries, some of whom sacrificed their careers to their consciences. (8/7/07)

The Great Upheaval,by Jay Winik (Harper, 688 pp., $29.95)

Historian Jay Winik explores the revolutionary years of the late 18th century during which thinkers in France, Russia, and the US shaped a new vision of the rights of man. (9/18/07)

The Coldest Winder: America and the Korean War,by David Halberstam (Hyperion, 736 pp., $35)

David Halberstam's final book – a comprehensive, compelling examination of the Korean War – is one of his best. (9/25/07)

The Whisperers,by Orlando Figes (Metropolitan Books, 784 pp., $35)

British historian Orlando Figes conducted scores of interviews and combed through masses of private papers to cull the first-hand accounts that make up this chilling account of private life in Stalin's Russia. (10/30/07)

American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies,by Joseph Ellis (Knopf, 283 pp., $26.95)

In these series of essays, historian Joseph Ellis makes a compelling case for a more realistic portrait of America's Founding Fathers. Ellis laments that too many writers work too hard to either demonize or canonize them. (11/13/07)

The 2007 books we liked best: nonfiction

2007-12-28T12:51:00.001+07:00

Christian Science Monitor - the December 04, 2007 edition

Made to Stick, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath (Random House, 289 pp., $29.95)

A Stanford Business School professor and his brother examine the basics of the effective – and memorable – presentation of ideas. (1/23/07)

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of A Boy Soldier, by Ishmael Beah (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 229 pp., $22)

This haunting memoir tells of the author's experience as a child soldier in Sierra Leone's civil war. (2/13/07)

The Kings of New York, by Michael Weinreb (Gotham Books, 288 pp., $26)

Sportswriter Michael Weinreb looks at the unlikely rise of America's best high school chess team at a public high school in Brooklyn. (3/6/07)

The Fathers of All Things, by Tom Bissell (Pantheon Books, 407 pp., $25)

In a book that combines memoir, travelogue, and history, Tom Bissell tells of the 2005 trip to Vietnam he took with his father, a former Marine and Vietnam vet. (3/13/07)

American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of A Religion, by Paul M. Barrett (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 304 pp., $25)

Paul Barrett offers complex, stereotype-defying portraits of seven different Muslims living in the US. (3/20/07)

The Atomic Bazaar,by William Langewiesche (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 179 pp., $22)

It may not be possible to write an enjoyable book about nuclear proliferation. But journalist William Langewiesche has at least written an intelligent and very readable work on the topic. (5/15/07)

Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring,by Richard Preston (Random House, 294 pp., $25.95)

Mystery writer Richard Preston explores the world of the tallest trees and the scientists who spend their lives studying them. (4/24/07)

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life,by Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver (HarperCollins, 370 pp., $26.95)

Novelist Barbara Kingsolver and her family spend a year eating only what was grown or produced within 10 miles of their home. (5/8/07)

Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA,by Tim Weiner (Doubleday, 702 pp., $27.95)

A 2007 National Book Award winner, this history of the US intelligence by journalist Tim Weiner is compelling, if uncomfortable, reading. (8/14/07)

Indian Summer,by Alex von Tunzelmann (Henry Holt and Co., 416 pp., $30)

History reads like a novel in this exploration of the key figures involved in the creation of the modern states of India and Pakistan. (8/14/07)

The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century,by Alex Ross (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 624 pp., $30)

The "chaotic beauty" of 20th-century music is lost on many. New Yorker writer Alex Ross hopes to change that with this insightful piece of analysis. (10/23/07)

God's Harvard,by Hanna Rosin (Harcourt, 296 pp., $25)

Washington Post reporter Hanna Rosin profiles Patrick Henry College, the school that aims to be the Harvard of the evangelical world. (9/11/07)

Gomorrah,by Robert Saviano (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 320 pp., $25)

Italian journalist Robert Saviano takes readers on an eye-popping tour of La Camorra, the ruthless crime network headquartered in Naples. (11/6/07)

The business of sex

2007-12-28T12:29:00.001+07:00

Geoffrey Alderman

December 27, 2007 10:10 AM

Earlier this month Harriet Harman, the minister for women, signalled a new government offensive against the freedom of the individual. On December 20, Harman announced that she was considering the introduction of legislation to criminalise payments for sex. "Do we think it's right in the 21st century that women should be in a sex trade," she asked, "or do we think it's exploitation and should be banned?"

Well, of course, put like that it's easy to see what answer Harman is expecting to the "very big debate" she has now apparently promised to launch early in the new year. No one - surely - is in favour of "exploitation", so - surely - we must all favour making it illegal for a man (or, less commonly, a woman) to pay for sex. An open and shut case - surely.

But the issue is much more complicated than Harman wants us to believe.

Sex is - like it or not - a commodity and paying for it is an economic transaction which, like any other economic transaction, involves a buyer and a seller. A man wants to enjoy a woman's body, and once he finds a woman willing to sell her body, temporarily, for this purpose the two parties to the transaction strike a price. The price is paid and the service is delivered. This - basically - is what prostitution involves.

I am not for one moment ignoring the exploitation that prostitution might involve. It might involve, as Harman says, the international trafficking in women by criminal gangs. It might involve slavery. It might involve sex with persons under 18 years of age. However, all these activities are already prohibited by law, as they should be.

But prostitution itself is not at present illegal. An indeterminate number of women - and men - in this country appear to follow successful careers as professional prostitutes. That is entirely their business, and the business of their clients. The state has no right to intervene, save to collect the tax due on the income lawfully generated.

The criminalisation of prostitution is most unlikely to be enforceable. The history of prohibition in the USA (1918-28) shows us that where there is a demand for a commodity, otherwise law-abiding people will go to any lengths to ensure a supply. If Miss Harman has her way, the police in this country would be engaged in a war they could never win, and would soon lose public sympathy, as in the USA, which no doubt explains why the Police Federation is so lukewarm to Harman's initiative.

Home secretary Jacqui Smith, in endorsing this initiative, claimed to recognise "that there is considerable support for us to do more to tackle the demand for prostitution". I know of no such "considerable support" but, in any case, "the demand for prostitution" emanates (does it not?) from basic sexual instinct. Exactly how does Miss Smith propose to tackle this "demand"? By adding bromide to our drinking water? I think not. But I do fear that some men, unable to cope with their sexuality, and facing prosecution if prostitution is criminalised, will engage instead in acts of unspeakable violence.

Is that what Smith and Harman really want? If so, they are certainly going the right way about it.

Revisiting the Past

2007-12-27T14:32:00.001+07:00

The Jakarta Post

Buru Island in Maluku was once one of the most isolated places in the world, a perfect spot for the New Order government to exile alleged subversives far from prying eyes. Janet Steele visits the island to see what remains of the past.

I didn't expect Buru Island to be so beautiful. Maybe it was the warnings from friends – "be careful, Buru is not open to foreigners" -- or the stories I'd heard from Amarzan Loebis, who had been detained there for eight years, and who became my friend when I was writing about the history of Tempo magazine.

Maybe it was the work of Buru's most famous former resident, writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer, but before I went to Buru I had the impression the island would be a sinister place – dark, swampy and malarial. The Lonely Planet guide to Indonesia didn't help; it contained only a few paragraphs on Buru Island, all of which emphasized how difficult it was to get there.

From the air, Buru looks like paradise: clear blue-green water lapping at white sandy beaches, and a fringe of coconut palms. As we approached the small landing strip at Namlea, I could see dusty-green mountains and the rugged outcroppings typical of karst formations.

I tried to get my bearings, and wished I had printed out the one map I had found when I Googled "Buru Island". Getting out of the plane, I noticed how dry the air was. Like Southern California, I thought – perfect for the eucalyptus trees that produce the oil for which the island is famous.

We arrived on Buru on August 17. I was traveling with Surya newspaper editor Dhimam Abror and young Surabayan businessman Imam Sulaiman.

It's not clear just how welcome foreigners really are at Buru Island. I had no problems entering Buru, but then we were the guests of Jalil Latuconsina, the adopted son of "Ibu Ratu" Nafsiah Wael, the widow of one of Buru's eight traditional kings.

When we alighted from the small military plane that Pak Jalil had chartered, my passport was inspected and its contents carefully noted. All of this seemed quite normal to me, but Pak Jalil later said that he had been embarrassed by it, as I was his guest.

The airstrip, which the Japanese used during World War II, is on the outskirts of Namlea. There is only one airport on the island, which at 11,117 square kilometers is a little larger than Bali. We didn't pass another vehicle on the road into town. In fact, there wasn't much to be seen on either side of the road other than the small eucalyptus trees, which seem to grow like weeds.

We stayed at the Hotel Grand Sarah, which was built to accommodate President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono during his recent visit. A small stylish hotel, it is by far the best on the island.

Independence Day on Buru Island

I was eager to get to the Units, the local name for what is left of the "Rehabilitation Installation" at Waeapo, but after lunch our first stop was the office of the local regent where the Independence Day parade was in full swing. In a staging area off to the side, about 20 "Putri Indonesia" in bright pink lipstick posed for the camera. A group of teenaged "Freedom Fighters" watched the girls, and jostled one another as they waited their turn to march past the red-and-white-draped viewing stand.

Taking all this in, I had to keep reminding myself that we were on Buru Island, a place where approximately 12,000 political prisoners had been detained without trial. There was nothing to suggest that this place had been the site of one of the greatest and most systematic human rights abuses in Indonesia's history.

One of the regent's VIP guests was Military District Commander Lieutenant Colonel Mohammad Taufik, who had spent 10 years stationed in East Timor. Although he was friendly enough, he also made a point of explaining why it was that Goenawan Mohamad, Amarzan Loebis, two Tempo writers and an Australian documentary filmmaker had been questioned by the police when they came to Buru Island last year. There's no point in constantly stirring up reminders of the past, he said.

By the time the last of the Freedom Fighters had marched by, it was too late in the day to go to the Units at Waeapo. Back in the car, I asked where we were going. To the regent's residence, my friends said, for a courtesy call. This might be Buru, I thought, but it was clearly Javanese standards of etiquette that prevailed.

His residence is situated on a bluff overlooking the deep blue sea, with nothing but

white-capped waves and coconut palms as far as the eye can see. The view reminded me of Bali's Nusa Dua – or of how Nusa Dua might have looked before anyone thought of building five-star resorts there.

Regent Husnie Hentihu is a large jovial man, and he seemed interested in the possibility of developing tourism on Buru. At his suggestion, we took a drive to Jikumerasa, a long stretch of sandy white beach, broken by an inlet where a freshwater lake empties out into the sea. Small pieces of coral and cowry shells were scattered along the white sand, and the water looked calm and inviting – perfect for swimming.

As we walked along the beach, I idly wondered what my three companions would do if I peeled off my clothes and dove in.

But swimming was not on the agenda. Instead the plan was that we would return to the hotel, and get ready for the Independence Day program scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. at the residence.

By the time we arrived at 9:30 p.m., the event was well under way. As we searched for seats in the crowded pendopo, the MC was announcing the winners of the school competitions over an enormous loudspeaker system. Cameras flashed and music blared as the young singers, painters and poetry readers collected their huge golden trophies.

How could I possibly reconcile this homey event – which reminded me of my nephew's junior high school band concert in which "everybody gets a prize" -- with what I thought I knew about Buru?

When the program was over, we made our way to the car. With only headlights to guide the way across the windy field, I wished I hadn't left my flashlight in my luggage. Trying not to trip, I looked up at the dark sky and quickly searched for the Southern Cross. But the clouds had rolled in, and only a few stars were visible in the inky blackness. We would go to the Units first thing tomorrow, my friends promised.

The Units at Waeapo

Waeapo is a good 45-minute drive from Namlea, even on the new road. Without a map, it's hard to get your bearings, especially once you lose sight of the sea. As we drove, I thought of the detainees who had first made their way to Waeapo on foot.

With only about 150,000 residents, Buru Island is sparsely populated, and the village of Savana Jaya comes up suddenly. One of the first things you see is a large grassy field, with a long whitewashed building and small monument at one end. The monument commemorates the dedication of the village in 1972. The building is the Balai Kesenian, or the arts building. An open-air shed with a dirt floor and a simple stage, it's the only physical structure that remains of the Rehabilitation Installation.

Although my friends had been using their mobile phones almost constantly since we'd landed, I sent my first SMS from Buru to Amarzan Loebis.

"I'm at the Arts Building on Savana Jaya," I wrote, "and I can't stop thinking about you." As the text messages flew back and forth to Jakarta, I thought how strange it was that I was on Buru Island, with the ability to communicate instantaneously with my friend who had been detained here 30 years earlier -- at a time when it was one of the most isolated places in the world.

Climbing back into the car, we drove down a side street and arrived at the small house of Koangit Iswani. He is one of the 300 or so former detainees who decided to stay on in Buru.

He is from East Java, where he had been active in a labor union. He's also a religious man, and was the head of the Kemiri Muhammadiyah. As Dhimam asked Koangit about his children, jotting the answers down in a small spiral notebook, I studied the room. Six framed graduation photographs were displayed near the front door. On the back wall was a clock commemorating the 52^nd anniversary of the Indonesian Military Police, and what I later learned were the Arabic words for Allah and Muhammad.

A strange assortment, I thought, and not at all what I would have expected in the home of a former political detainee.

Pak Koangit is in his seventies now, but still in good health with a ready laugh. Although he's missing some teeth, he volunteered that this was the result of a motorcycle accident rather than physical abuse during his detention. As a prisoner, he ran a small theater group, and he still teaches theater to the local children.

After about an hour, Pak Koangit's daughter arrived at the house. Like her father, she is an outspoken admirer of Indonesia's first president Sukarno -- which, after 1965, was grounds for suspicion if not outright imprisonment. Like her five brothers and sisters, Sugeng Hayati is a university graduate. She is also a member of the local legislature, and a member of Megawati Soekarnoputri's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle.

Her dream? That former detainees like her father can rehabilitate their good names.

After leaving the house, we headed toward the village of "Mako" – short for Markas Komando -- passing hectare upon hectare of brilliant green rice fields. Although nothing remains of the barracks that were built by the prisoners, the results of their forced labor are still evident in these fields, now farmed primarily by Javanese transmigrants. The detainees not only changed the landscape of Buru Island, they also changed the staple food. Before the arrival of the detainees, the 40,000 residents of Buru had primarily eaten sagu, which is made from the sago palm. The prisoners built irrigated rice fields out of the forest – an especially astonishing feat given the most of the detainees were writers and intellectuals.

After a lunch of fried chicken at a small restaurant run by Javanese transmigrants, we stopped at the home of Pak Dasipin. Although the furnishings in his house were spare, Dasipin quickly found six pink plastic chairs, and offered us tea and slices of sponge cake topped with sugary white icing. A little boy peeked out shyly from behind the door to the living room.

In the 1960s, Pak Dasipin had been a member of Pemuda Rakyat, the youth group of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). At Buru he had married a local woman, and when the prisoners were released in 1979, he decided to stay on. After several hours of trying to follow the heavily accented local Indonesian, I was happy to let Dhimam ask the questions.

Just before we left, I asked Dasipin about something that had been on my mind since we'd first arrived in Buru.

Although I had only interviewed Pramoedya Ananta Toer once, I said, at the time I had been struck by the clear, cold, consistency of his thinking -- and by his unwillingness either to forgive or forget. But Pak Dasipin didn't appear to be angry at all. Why? Dasipin's answer was simple.

"What's the point in harboring revenge?" he said. "The one thing in life that's certain is that we're all going to die."

Like Koangit, all he really wanted was the return of his good name.

History

By the time we left Dasipin's house, it was already mid-afternoon. Pak Jalil explained that we were headed to the harbor at Namlea, where the prisoners had first landed. From there we would take a small boat to the village of Kayeli. The boat was basically a fiberglass tube, with broken plexiglass windows (shut tight) and only one exit.

As we took off, bouncing and slapping along at breakneck speed – the captain leaning out the window to look for floating logs that could break the propeller -- I tried to plan what I would do if the boat overturned. Swim toward the back and out, I thought, as we slammed into the waves.

After about 30 minutes, we pulled up on the shore of Kayeli village. My heart was still pounding as we rolled up our pants and clambered over the side of the boat. Walking up the dark sand beach, we headed down the straight path past the village to the remains of a fort.

To the right was mangrove swamp. To the left were wooden houses, looking much as they had in 1861 when they were described this way by the British naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace:

The whole place was dreadfully damp and muddy, being built in a swamp with not a spot of ground raised a foot above it, and surrounded by swamps on every side. The houses were mostly well built, of wooden framework filled in with gaba-gaba (leaf stems of the sago palm) but as they had no whitewash, and the floors were of bare black earth like the roads, and generally on the same level, they were extremely damp and gloomy.

After a few minutes, we had attracted a parade of our own; in fact by the time we arrived at the fort, it seemed that every child in Kayeli was with us. According to local lore, the fort was built in 1718 by the VOC. But I wondered about this, as the meticulously accurate Wallace had noted that "the little fort, in perfect order, surrounded by neat grassplots and straight walks…was originally built by the Portuguese themselves."

The history of this fort -- like nearly everything else that I observed about Pulau Buru – was contested. Was it Dutch-built or Portuguese? Were most of the detainees there not because they were Communist Party members, but because of some mistake? And if Buru was as bad as I had always heard, why had some of the detainees decided to stay?

Back in Jakarta two days later, I asked Amarzan Loebis about this.

He explained that in order to join the PKI, you needed to find two party members who would vouch for you and serve as witnesses during a swearing-in ceremony that was led by a party official. According to Amarzan, there was never any question as to who was and was not PKI. Amarzan said that although he had never joined the PKI, he had been a journalist at Harian Rakyat. Thus Amarzan's imprisonment at Buru was not a case of mistaken identity. In the logic of the New Order, he "deserved" to be there.

Amarzan also explained that when the detainees were freed, they were given a choice. If they stayed on, they would be given 2 hectares of land, 2 head of cattle and a house. For those who had been farmers in Java – and who didn't own any land -- the offer made sense.

Amarzan said that he had promised himself that if he didn't find work within six months, he would return to Buru and accept the government's offer. But he did find work – at Tempo magazine.

And what was Amarzan's impression of Buru today? "The destruction of the barracks and all other traces of the unit was an effort to erase history and memory." Amarzan said. "They saved the arts hall only because the villagers were already using it." But "like all places of exile," he conceded, "Buru Island is beautiful."

Getting to Buru

It is extremely difficult to find information on getting to and from Buru. There is ferry service from Ambon, a trip that takes about 8 hours. The Pelni ship Lambelu serves Namlea twice a month, and there is also a fast ship that is said to take either three or four hours, depending on whom you ask.

Some of the best and most updated information can be obtained from the very helpful owners of the Baguala Resort, which is a good place to stay in Ambon while you are trying to arrange for travel to Buru.

Merpati Nusantara Airlines serves Buru twice weekly, but beware. When we returned to Ambon on August 19, we took the 9:30 a.m. Merpati flight. The C-212 plane holds 28 passengers. On August 19, however, the plane took 35 passengers. There were seven people on the waiting list, and all of them got on board. Most of them sat on other passengers' laps.

The Hotel Grand Sarah is located on Jl. A Yani. Tel. (0913) 21301.

Religiously we are good, what about morally?

2007-12-27T14:20:00.001+07:00

Tasa Nugraza Barley, Maryland

The Jakarta Post, 24 December 2007

When I lived in Pakistan for three years the one thing I was really proud of was that I was a Muslim from the country with the largest Muslim population in the world. When people asked where I was from I would proudly say, "I'm from Indonesia." In a country like Pakistan, where religion is a big deal, a Pakistani will be more than happy to know that the foreign guy he is talking to is a Muslim. So they would reply, "Indonesia? Oh, you are brother."

Indonesian Muslims are always proud that they are the majority and they are religious. Non-Muslims may be in the minority but they have the same kind of feeling: We are a religious nation! Muslim parents will beat their children if they don't want to pray daily, while Christian parents will yell at their children if they sleep in on a Sunday morning.

Indonesians claim that Western values are disgusting; therefore they condemn free sex and the use of condoms. Indonesians think that Westerners are immoral people who just can't control their animal-like behavior. "Those people are so sinful, they have sex before marriage, they drink alcohol, and they don't respect their parents."

Indonesian Muslims may not have the world's very greatest mosque, but I am sure they have some of the best mosques that have ever been built by humans. And for sure there are more mosques located in Indonesia than anywhere else in the world since there are more than 200 million Muslims.

In Jakarta, for example, you can find mosques everywhere. Every Friday they are full when the men go there to pray. During my six years of living in Jakarta I can tell you that I never saw one mosque that was not crowded on a Friday. Wow, what a religious country we have. Or do we?

Living more than ten months in America has made me realize that America, or at least some parts of it, is more conservative than people in the East think. Yeah, that's right, America is very conservative.

In America, if you are young, you have to show your ID every time you buy a beer or other alcoholic drink. You have to show your ID to go to a nightclub. Prostitution is only legal in the state of Nevada, and then only in some counties. It is even illegal in a city like Las Vegas.

You can still find girls lining up on the streets but they are very localized, and most likely you will never see them on major streets. And yes, right now there are four states that approve same-sex marriage, but there are many more states that still say same-sex marriage is out of the question.

In the area where I live, people smile at people they don't know on the streets more than I experienced in Jakarta. Children are so valued that every time a school bus stops to let children out, cars from every direction have to stop for safety reasons, no questions asked.

Seniors and people with disabilities are always treated well. They get special parking spots and other public advantages. When you open a door at a store or other public place you have to be aware if there is someone trying to enter behind you so you can hold the door until that person reaches it. When you do, most likely that person will say, "Thank you," and a smile will be your bonus.

"What about free sex?" you might ask. Well, it is true that there are a lot of people in America who consider sex to be no big deal, just a physical need. But even so, I would say things are not as bad as Hollywood movies suggest.

So America is more conservative than what you might think. But being conservative is different than being religious. Being religious means living your life based on religious values, while being conservative means believing in traditional values.

Religious values might be part of traditional values, if you think about it, but since many American conservatives feel religious values are just part of traditional values then those values are not absolute and they can be "twisted" a little bit based on current conditions. Such people would rather be called conservative than religious.

What about Indonesia? Are we religious enough? Yes we do condemn free sex, alcohol, and drugs, but are we really acting virtuous? Jakarta is once again a good example. Yes, the mosques are crowded on Fridays. But does that mean you can't find prostitutes in Jakarta? The answer is yes and yes, you can and it's easy!

Just go to places like Blok M or Kota in the evening and you will see girls in sexy dresses standing on the streets waiting for fancy cars to pick them up, or go to Taman Lawang for a different scene. These prostitutes are not even localized and they pick some of the major streets to "market" themselves.

You want to buy alcohol? Easy, just go to any store. If you are too shy to do that, you can still get pletokan (alcoholic drinks) at traditional stalls on the streets. And while we think that a condom campaign to stop AIDS is ridiculous, we can still buy condoms easily on the streets; you don't even have to look like an adult, just hand over your money.

Now, do I also have to mention the corruption? I guess not. People might say that the bad economy forces people to do things that religions prohibit in order to survive. But will a good economy automatically encourage people to be behave more religiously? Can the material side of life really be an excuse for sinful acts?

The writer is a founder of the organization Jakarta Butuh Revolusi Budaya (Jakarta Needs a Cultural Revolution). His personal blog is gue bukan monyet.

The Goodness of Nations

2007-12-20T06:05:00.001+07:00

Benedict O.G. Anderson

Public Lecture Series Hosted by Dr. Xolela Mangcu In collaboration with The Public Intellectual Life Research Project University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa 13 September 2006

If one looks at the immediate historical origins of nationalism, in the last quarter of the 18th century, one realizes that it arose in the context of a wider popular involvement in projects of emancipation. Jefferson’s famous Declaration of Independence speaks in the name of “The People,” but this people has as yet no name. The French Revolution had a huge impact in Europe, the Americas, the Caribbean, and later in Asia and Africa, precisely because of its universalist message, not its local “Frenchness.” In the 19th century nationalism typically was found in popular movements against emperors, monarchs, and aristocracies, and nationalists in different regions regarded themselves as “brothers” in a common struggle. The same was true for much of the decolonizing twentieth century.

Nkrumah, Nehru, Tito, Touré, Sukarno and U Nu had all grown to manhood under imperial rule of different kinds, and felt their affinities keenly, even when they did not like each other much on a personal level. Only after World War I, however, did the nation-state become “normal” across the globe with the initiation of the League of Nations.

At the same time, however, nationalism now has a long enough history for anyone to recognize its dark side. Almost all modern nations are divided along the lines of class, religious affinity, ethnicity, gender, ideology and generation. Many of them have behaved very badly at times, to their own members and to neighbours, and have fallen under the control of corrupt, cruel, and/or incompetent leaders. Why then do nations continue to have enormous emotional power, even in the age of globalization? How can they be felt as Good?

Some intellectuals have sought to explain this emotional hold by describing nationalism as a kind of secular religion, marked by the same unquestioning belief that the “religious religions” often command. But this view is unsatisfactory. Nations want to be members of the United Nations, along with perhaps 200 others, therefore with quite modest and local claims.
They wish to be recognized and respected by “other nations,” which, like them have a lot in common, in spite of local idiosyncracies. A United Religions seems quite unfeasible, however, because each religion makes strong claims to “absolute truth,” and most believe they have a global sphere of action. It is not that the nation lacks a utopian horizon, as I shall explain later, but that this horizon is intrahistorical. No nation looks forward to happiness in Heaven, or torment in Hell. What it fears is quite earthly: the possibility of extinction through genocide.

It in this historical-utopian framework that I would like to suggest to you three loci for the goodness of the nation, though you may initially find them pretty strange.

The first of these is the Future. The nation-state form is the first in human history to be fundamentally bound to the idea of Progress.
Prior to the rise of nationalism people were accustomed to the idea that dynasties and empires rose and fell. Peoples merged with others, got assimilated, and sometimes were killed off without much notice being paid.
It is useful to look at a map of the Roman Empire at its height, stretching from the borders of Scotland to the southern marches of Egypt, from today’s Portugal over to Iran. How many peoples mentioned by Roman historians and statesmen have either changed their names or disappeared. In fact, only a very few, which do not include the Romans themselves, have survived. But the Nation’s face is turned to a limitless Future, and it expects, under the banners of Development, to keep moving ahead. What is Good about this?

We can get an answer from a strange passage in a famous lecture given 110 years ago by the great German comparative sociologist Max Weber. Most of the talk was devoted to the horrible mess into which his country had fallen. The dominant nobility had lost all ideas and energy, and thought only of clinging to its privileges. The complacent middle class was sunk in mindless consumerism and political opportunism. The workers were politically illiterate and incapable of providing national leadership. After this gloomy analysis, however – analogies to which one find in the press of many countries today – he suddenly said something quite astonishing. “If…we could rise from the grave thousands of years from now, we would seek the traces of our own being in the physiognomy of the race of the future, Even our highest, our ultimate terrestrial ideals are mutable and transitory. We can not hope to impose them on the future, But we can wish that the future recognizes in our nature the nature of its own ancestors. We wish, by our labour and our being, to become the forefathers of the race of the future.” Let me quickly quickly explain that Weber does not use the “racist” word Rasse, but rather Geschlecht, which can mean gender, ancestry, lineage, and race in the loose way that permits Germans to speak of the human race (menschliche Geschlecht).

The horizon here is uncounted thousands of years into the Future. Weber is thinking about a Future-Germany, which may have no nobility, middle class, or workers, and may share no late 19th century ideals and hopes. But this Future-Germany imposes profound moral obligations on living Germans. They must be worthy of the Future, so that they can be recalled honorably as remote ancestors. At the same time, these uncountable Future- Germans are part of Germany. Though weirdly put, what Weber said is actually replicated all the time in every nation’s discourse. We are constantly asked so save the environment and national treasures for “future generations.” We pay taxes for schools we will not attend, for projects that will only mature after we are dead, support armies unlikely to fight in our lifetime. If war comes, we may be asked to lay down our lives not just for our fellow-citizens, but for the unborn. Yet between us and the unborn there is a central difference. Most South Africans can think of many fellow-South Africans that they hate or despise, according to their social and political situation: die-hard racists, superviolent tsotsis, merciless corporate bosses, corrupt politicians, etc. etc. For such people, sacrifices will not willingly be made. But unborn South Africans have none of these characteristics, or any others than futurity, even if one could imagine among them descendants of those one currently dislikes. This is exactly why one can willingly make sacrifices for them.

The other side if Weber’s coin is just as interesting. He says that the Future asks us to be worthy ancestors. He himself was deeply ashamed of his German contemporaries. This shame is basic to the Goodness of the Nation. If we are incapable of being ashamed for our country, we do not love it. It is a shame that can be very valuably mobilized. You will all be able to think of your own examples. What comes to my mind are those mothers in Buenos Aires who year by year held quiet demonstrations in the Plaza de Mayo on behalf of all those young people who were “disappeared” in their thousands by the military regime of General Videla. These mothers wanted justice, of course, but what they tried to arouse was a general shame among their fellow-Argentinians, a shame in the face of unborn Argentinians. Hence, a good nationalist slogan is always “Long Live Shame!”

You will not, I think, be surprised, if I now turn to the uncounted numbers of the National Dead. National history books usually foreground heroes of whom everyone is asked to be proud. Of course, there always national villains too, though they are fewer. Most striking, however, is that the anonymous collective dead are never wicked. Chinese and Korean nationalists have been outraged by the regular visits of Prime Minister Koizumi to the Yasukuni shrine commemorating all the Japanese who died in modern wars, and one can understand why -- given the real horrors inflicted on the two countries in the first half of the 20th century by Japanese imperial forces. But if one enters the shrine one gets another kind of impression, for it is full of unfinished diaries and pathetic letters written by young peasant conscripts who died fulfilling what they believed was their national duty.
Living Japanese see these letters and diaries as moral challenges to live up to the obligations implied by the youngsters’ sacrifices.

In other national cemeteries, a different kind of Goodness emerges. The inscriptions on the graves are typically very short, often just a simple name. The viewer is told nothing sociological at all – parentage, region of origin, religious affinity, marital status, and so on. He will not learn how many enemies a dead man killed, or whether he treated his wife cruelly, abandoned his children, or went to prison for a crime. On could say that National Death has cleared his moral books. And it makes no difference if the war in which he died was a good or bad war. The most moving monument to the National Dead in the USA is Maya Lin’s austere memorial to those Americans who died in what is now generally accepted to be the “very bad” Vietnam War. What the monument leaves out, of course, are the 3 million or so natives of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos in whose deaths those dead Americans played their own small part. When I recently read about President Mbeki attending the memorial commemorations for the Boers who fought and died in their war against the British Empire, it seemed to me that a similar process is at work in South Africa. His gesture points forward to a time in the future (two generations?) when even apartheid will be remembered as a “national tragedy,” which must be simultaneously remembered and forgotten by all South Africans. By then, maybe, young Afrikaners will have learned to be attached to the Apartheid Museum and that of Soweto.

To summarize the argument so far, the Goodness of the Nation can only be understood by remembering that the Nation includes the ghosts of the dead and the phantoms of the still unborn, who are, for different reasons unqualifiedly good. But do living members of the Nation not make some contributions? I believe they do. The most obvious example are “collective children.” The word “collective” must be emphasized. First, because understood collectively, they can be regarded as the avant-garde of the unborn still awaiting their turn at human life. But collectivity also allows us to set aside all the faults of real and individual children whom we know personally or read about in the newspapers: spoilt, lazy, bullying, ungrateful, disobedient, drug-addicted, even criminal. Second, however, is their peculiar political status as “minor” citizens. It is of course impossible to prevent youngsters under 18 (or 19 or 21) from learning about politics from TV and the chatter of their elders, or from participating in riots and demonstrations. But the key thing is that they can not vote. From one angle, this could be regarded as a deprivation. But from another, it protects them collectively from responsibility for, and contamination by, the everyday squalors of even democratic political participation. They have no votes to be sold or bought, they are not part of national armies which may be repressive of the citizens, they have no incomes, so no chance to cheat on their taxes. If they happen to be racists or vulnerable to mean ethnic prejudices they can not legally act upon them in the electoral process. They can not be blamed if this horrible politician is elected, or that horrible political party takes power.

A kind of benevolent fiction is at work: “our kids collectively” are always good, not least because at every minute they are gaining new infant members, and losing others to murky adulthood. It is the same type of fiction that is observable in the field of sexuality. In spite of the fact that children develop sexual feelings very early, and start menstruating or ejaculating in their early teens, modern nations draw a firm and arbitrary line between adult sexuality ( citizens can marry only at these ages, may have non-marital sexual relations at others, etc). After 16 or 17 the children become, so to speak, overnight “sexual voters,” responsible for the consequences of their sexual behavior: not before.

And adults? Even here there are possibilities of a kind of Goodness. The rise of the Inter-Nation Olympic Games historically occurred close to the arrival of the League of Nations. They seemed like a harmless substitute for war. But television changed everything, giving a new kind of importance even to intra-nation athletics. The enormous amount of watching time devoted to sports shows us the modern importance of a continuous parade of perfect national bodies – healthy, strong, fast, powerful, elegant, beautiful and often “winning.” These young men and women are read as synecdoches of the Good Beauty of the Nation, which is why reports of doping and steroids feel so calamitous. But these young beauties pass us like glow-worms at night. We do not see what happens to brain-damaged boxers after they retire from the ring, or the ruined knees of tennis-players and footballers. (New beauties arrive to replace them.) Just as we do not see the Marlboro man when he undergoes chemotherapy. In this way mortality is kept at bay, and the Nation remains young, strong, and lovely.

Another site of Goodness occurred to me some years ago in the United States. If you are old enough, you may remember the calamitous Iraq-Iran of the 1980s. The US traumatized by the Iranian Revolution’s seizure of hostages in the American Embassy in Teheran, became a close ally of Saddam Hussein, and armed him to the teeth – also with the poison gas that he later used against rebel Kurds. By the time of the Gulf War, this lethal friendship had necessarily been forgotten. At that moment I was struck by newspaper photographs showing American warplanes on which the pilots had scrawled in large letters Saddam Bend Over! In popular language, this meant, we are coming to sodomize you. Not long afterward, Bill Clinton was elected president, with huge popular support in many quarters, but also arousing violent hatred amongst rightwingers, who eventually impeached him. But there were never any bumper stickers reading Bill Bend Over. Why not?

Here it is good to remember the style of personal address which characterizes social movements and national discourse. It is the language of Brothers and Sisters. Leaders of modern nation-states can not address those they lead and rule as “my children,” as monarchs and clerics were wont to do in the past. “Brothers and Sisters” has nothing to do with a citizen’s age, marital status, class position, or ideology. But does have lot to do with ideas of equality and family intimacy. My own belief is that this form of address is underpinned by a metaphoric incest taboo. Brothers and sisters are supposed to give each other unconditional love, but one from which anything erotic must be excluded. This is, one could say, the highest form of Love, and thus a great Good. The meaning of this in the political life of the nation is that citizen solidarity is that good, austere kind, from which sexuality is absolutely barred. Individual citizens can have any kind of “private” sexual life that they want and can legally get away with, but in the public arena this is out of the question. An American citizen can advertize his eagerness to sodomize Saddam Hussein, but he can not do the same for his own president. He can be a public beast overseas, but not at home.

In this light, it is not surprising that most nations identify their country as the Motherland. This is, metaphorically, the mother to whom we – all of us – owe our existence, our permanent gratitude, and our austere devotion. She in inaccessible to us, but she looks after us all, with a love that is impartial and transcends anything sexual. So she too forms a source of the Goodness of the Nation.

It is quite possible that readers may find the argument of these pages too abstract and philosophical. So let me switch registers for a few closing remarks.

No book on nationalism is more down-to-earth than Michael Billig’s wonderful Banal Nationalism. What he wishes to stress is that nationalism is above all a matter of everyday Habit, dull, only semi-conscious, and absolutely ordinary. It is the powerful, almost unseen glue that keeps the members of complex and large societies from behaving much worse to each other than they otherwise would do. If I could be allowed to extrapolate from Billig to speak of South Africa – but not South Africa alone - I would mention the following. First, the television weather reports which, day in day out, incessantly nationalize Nature by showing “South African weather” extending up into the stratosphere, and quite distinct from the almost invisible Namibian, or Mozambiquan weathers. Second, South African newspapers, which like national newspapers everywhere, have separate sections every day for National News, and foreign or international news. Third, “international sports” in newspapers and on television, which nonetheless quietly exclude any sports in which South Africans do not ordinarily participate. Fourth, logo-maps – maps giving merely the outline boundary of the country without any written information, but instantly recognized by South Africans, who would probably not recognize the logo-map of Burma, Hungary, or Uruguay. These logomaps one sees everywhere, but barely notices. Like the oxygen we are barely aware of breathing, but can no do without.

Though Billig’s work is often extremely funny, he is not writing to “debunk” nationalism, which in fact he regards, in the tradition of the great Norbert Elias, as a profoundly civilizing process. He believes, as I do, that it is a mistake to over-value the significance of “human rights,” in contrast to the national rights of citizens. “Human rights,” with its abstract universalist valence, is too easily used as a mask for opportunist military and economic interventions by world powers, and too simply used to override local custom and tradition. It is also a doctrine, which, with all its real value, still has a missionary, topdown smell to it. The rights of citizens make more modest claims, but they come from, as it were, the bottom up, and require for their realization real citizen activity. And they were central to the original self-emancipatory thrust of early nationalism.

I do not wish to single out the US in any special way, but I have worked there on and off for over 40 years, so can speak from long personal observation, even though I am not an American citizen. When I arrived as a student in 1958, racial segregation was still largely unchallenged, “red Indians” were visible only as villains in Hollywood Westerns, women could get divorced only with great difficulty, while abortion was illegal and dangerous; gays and lesbians were terrified, semi-secret minorities regularly abused by the police and other authorities. Today, the legal structure of segregation is gone and Martin Luther King has his own National Day, red Indians have become, instructively, “First Americans,” and are on the gentle offensive; for women divorce is quite simple and abortion mostly legal, while there has been a huge increase in the number and visibility of female politicians at all levels; gays and lesbians are already allowed to marry in some states, and the number will surely increase. If one asks for an explanation of these changes, “human rights” will be quite useless. In every case, the process of emancipation has been based on the claims of American citizenship. “As an American citizen,” Mr X or Ms Y can not be treated as anything less than any another citizen. Here, locally, we are back with another old source of the Goodness of the Nation. But this has nothing to do with American peculiarity, South Africa’s Constitution is even better.

The Global Nexus - Kebangkitan 1908 dan Kemacetan (?) 2008

2007-11-07T07:46:00.001+07:00

Suara Pembaruan - 4 Nov 07

Christianto Wibisono

Kepala Divisi Kriminal Komersial Polisi Diraja Malaysia Ramli Yusuf sedang menghadapi dakwaan ACA, Anti Corruption Agency, KPK-nya Malaysia. Ramli dituduh menyalahgunakan wewenang memperkaya diri hingga memiliki properti senilai RM 27 juta. Ramli mengeluh bahwa ia dijadikan korban politik dan berseru kepada LSM dan media internet Malaysia kini agar membela hak asasinya. Padahal, ketika berkuasa di Kepolisian Malaysia, Ramli termasuk galak dan arogan terhadap media.

Di Jakarta, Jumat (2/11/07), Laksamana Sukardi, mantan Menteri Negara BUMN selaku Komisaris Utama Pertamina, ditetapkan sebagai tersangka dalam kasus dugaan korupsi pada penjualan kapal tanker raksasa atau very large crude carrier (VLCC) Pertamina.

Pada Senin (29/10), pengacara TIME Mulya Lubis selaku Ketua Chapter mendampingi Huguette Libellle, Presiden Transparency Internasional (TI), mendorong Presiden Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono agar proaktif memimpin kampanye antikorupsi pada tingkat ASEAN. Hari Sabtu ( 27/10) di Washington, Bank Dunia mengumumkan peringkat Indonesia pada nomor 123 dari 178 negara dalam survei Doing Business. Paralel dengan keluhan pengusaha tentang korupsi yang dalam indeks TI berada pada nomor 143 dari 179 negara. Pada Rabu (31/10), WEF (World Economic Forum) mengumumkan peringkat daya saing dunia, dan Indonesia stagnan pada nomor 54. Sementara Tiongkok dari nomor 54 tahun lalu melejit ke nomor 34.

Wartawan senior asal Filipina Eduardo Lachica dalam Seminar Global Nexus Institute, Kamis (1/11), di Washington DC dengan pesimis menanyakan apakah Pemerintah Indonesia dapat mengamankan program REDD yang diajukan untuk Peta Jalan Bali dari ancaman korupsi karena merebaknya kasus illegal logging dan lemahnya penegakan hukum. Korupsi penyalahgunaan wewenang politik sangat sulit dibuktikan secara legal formal, sehingga menurut tajuk The Jakarta Post, Juwono Sudarsono menjadi Defenseless Minister of Defense. Menteri Pertahanan yang tidak mampu bertahan dari tekanan politik, kekuatan unsur legislatif untuk meredam dan meralat ucapan bahwa parlemen terkait dengan konflik kepentingan.

Euforia Demokrasi

Negara berkembang seperti Indonesia memang terjebak dalam euforia demokrasi dan reformasi dengan seolah-olah mengebiri kekuasaan eksekutif presiden. Tapi, membagi porsi kekuasaan kepada legislatif dan judikatif, yang keduanya merasa juga berhak menikmati dan "men-tunai-kan kuasa yang diembannya" sebagai imbalan bahwa mereka telah menunaikan kewajiban sebagai penyelenggara negara yang pantas digaji tinggi.

Sebetulnya kalangan elite Indonesia mirip "Soeharto kecil" yang tidak merasa bersalah dan tidak mempunyai wacana tentang konflik kepentingan. Di Barat pun sampai sekarang masih ada elite yang mempraktekkan tumpang-tindih konflik kepentingan, tapi transparansi dan kekuatan publik opini dan media massa cukup kuat menangkalnya, Sebab supremasi hukum benar-benar ditegakkan terhadap koruptor eselon tinggi sekalipun.

Amerika Serikat adalah induk segala money politics. Tapi, justru karena itu AS juga siap dengan perangkat perundang-undangan yang jelas dan berkepastian hukum untuk mencegah dan menindak terjadinya korupsi penyelenggara negara. Suatu penyalahgunaan kekuasaan publik, untuk kepentingan pribadi, golongan, keluarga, kroni dan jabatan politik. AS sadar benar bahwa manusia pada dasarnya kurang sempurna dan cenderung menyalahgunakan atau ingin menikmati kekuasaan secara berlebihan, dengan alasan telah berjasa dan menang serta dipercaya rakyat untuk memerintah.

Sebaliknya, di negara berkembang elite merasa pasti bermoral dan berdedikasi. Tidak akan korupsi sebab semua sudah tersedia. Juga merasa upeti dari konglomerat bukan korupsi, melainkan sesuatu yang layak, lumrah, dan bahkan wajib. Semuanya campur-aduk, tidak ada pembukuan terpisah atau sengaja menjadi ruwet dan tidak bisa diaudit karena tidak ketahuan mana batasan harta pribadi, sumbangan donator, atau hibah dari penghibah misterius yang tidak bisa ditelusuri apa dan siapanya. Akibatnya terjadi korupsi model dana non-bujeter, di mana kalangan birokrat memeras pengusaha dan masyarakat untuk dibagi dan dinikmati secara arisan dan kolektif sesama politisi. Dengan harapan "demokratisasi korupsi" itu diampuni. Atau paling sedikit tidak ada yang berani menindak, karena yang harus ditangkap banyak orang penting dan penguasa bisa terlibat. Inilah yang menjadikan pemberantasan korupsi di Indonesia dan Malaysia sekarang ini dianggap hanya berani kepada pihak pecundang, mantan elite politik atau lawan politik yang harus disingkirkan, dilemahkan atau dikorbankan. Ini akan menghasilkan siklus politik balas dendam, takut mundur, ngotot berkuasa karena hanya kursi jabatan yang bisa menjamin impunitas para kleptokrat (penguasa korup).

Hidup Mewah

Indonesia dan Dunia Ketiga hanya menjiplak money politics AS tanpa menerapkan batasan undang-undang yang tegas mengendalikan money politics dan konflik kepentingan. Di AS seorang presiden harus segera me-masrahkan aset bisnis dan pribadi keluarganya kepada blind trust management independent. Sehingga jelas berapa kekayaan dan penghasilan pribadi Bill Clinton, George W Bush, atau Barack Obama. Kekayaan mereka mungkin hanya beberapa atau belasan juta dolar. Sedang dana kampanye politik bisa puluhan, bahkan ratusan juta dolar, tapi semua transparan. Bila kebetulan pelobi atau calo politik menyumbang dan ternyata terlibat kriminal maka tim pengelola dana kampanye Clinton atau Bush atau Obama, tinggal menyisihkan dana tersebut untuk dihibahkan kepada lembaga sosial. Masalah dana kampanye partai dan Senator serta anggota Kongres juga ditata ketat dan transparan untuk menghindari "pemerasan politik" oleh jajaran legislatif terhadap masyarakat dan pengusaha.

Di Indonesia selama Soeharto berkuasa praktek simbiose parasitis antara pengusaha, masyarakat, dan pejabat merupakan rahasia umum. Sebab tidak seorang pun pegawai negeri atau penyelenggara negara yang bisa hidup bergelimang aset mewah hanya dari gaji yang nilainya kecil. Tapi, tidak ada yang merasa bersalah atau korupsi. Semua merasa

wajar karena sudah berjasa menjadi penyelenggara negara dan memberikan kemudahan kepada dunia bisnis dan masyarakat. Maka wajar, afdol, dan sah untuk kaya- raya.

Korupsi pada tingkat jajaran elite politik Orde Baru masih diteruskan pada masa transisi ini. KPK sudah berani menggebrak bahkan sampai ke tingkat pejabat Deputy Gubernur BI. Malah Ketua BPK pun akan didengar keterangannya. Orde Baru memang telah diganti Orde Reformasi. Tapi, sekarang kalangan elite Orde Reformasi telah memeratakan gaya Orde Baru, money politics tanpa kontrol dan kritik, di mana seorang Menhan tidak berdaya dan harus menyerah kepada "demokratisasi korupsi" . Sistem korupsi bersama akan tetap menggerogoti bangsa ini. Hasilnya, dalam semua peringkat kita tetap terpuruk, walaupun kita sudah "berdemokrasi" 10 tahun, tapi tanpa efektivitas pengendalian korupsi politik. Perlu suatu transformasi institusional dan penegakan supremasi hukum yang berani merambah pelaku money politics. Hingga merupakan pamungkas perubahan watak klektopkrat menjadi meritokrat. Tanpa transformasi institusional itu maka gebrakan Komite Bangkit Indonesia juga hanya ibarat jalan-jalan di tempat, seperti kata Wiranto. Jauh dari kinerja para perintis Kebangkitan Nasional 99 tahun yang lalu, pada 20 Mei 1908.

Penulis adalah pengamat masalah nasional dan internasional

Pramoedya Ananta Toer's "Arok of Java: A Novel of Early Indonesia"

2007-10-20T17:59:00.001+07:00

Periplus Bookshop Kemang cordially invites you to join us in a celebration for the publication of Toer's latest English language publication.

We are going to have a meet and greet with Max Lane, the translator for this book.

And with our guest of honor, Ibu Pram and daughter - Titiek will also be attending. This event will be taking place on:

Day & date : Saturday, October 27, 2007
Time : 11 am – onwards
Venue : Komp. Villa Kemang (Hero Kemang)
Jl. Kemang Selatan 1 – South Jakarta

Book Description

It is the 13^th century in Java. Rebelliousness stirs among peasant farmers and Brahmin priests alike. Slavery has returned and men, women and children labour to find gold for Java's rulers. Bearing the symbols of spiritual power, a young scholar-bandit and rebel appears, called Arok – "he who upturns everything". As the rebellion spreads, it is Arok himself whom the rulers employ to suppress it. Thus emerges one of the epic political conspiracies of Javanese history. At stake is power in Java itself, the Lady Consort Dedes, and an end to slavery and oppression.

This novel presents Pramoedya's version of a great legend emerging out of the mists of historical past, is a tale of palace politics, conspiracy and revolution. It sets out the beginning of historical process that began on Java and gives the most vivid picture of the political, cultural and social forces which Pramoedya sees as having remained crucial until even today: the castes of the Brahman intellectuals, the Satria military and the Sudra, the people, the farmers, the artisans and labourers.

About the Author

Pramoedya Ananta Toer (1925-2006) was born in Blora, central Java, the eldest son a headmaster and activist. He wrote more than 40 works, including novels, short stories, plays, history, literary criticism and more than 400 newspaper essays. His Buru Tetrology has been hailed as a brilliant work of epic historical fiction.

Pramoedya is survived by his second wife, Maemunah, with whom he had five children. He had three children from his first marriage, 16 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

For further information please contact:

Tessa

Marketing & Communications
PERIPLUS BOOKINDO

Mobile: 0818 0649 6007

Email: teresa@javabooks.co.id

Sekelumit Cerita di Balik Penyusunan Tesaurus Bahasa Indonesia

2007-10-20T17:56:00.001+07:00

dari: Forum Pembaca Kompas

Awal Desember 2006 yang lalu terbit, Tesaurus Bahasa Indonesia(TBI)â€"agaknya karya pertama dalam sejarah dari jenis ini. Buku yang diterbitkan Gramedia ini mendapat sambutan yang cukup bagus. Dalam waktu singkat, ia sudah mengalami cetak ulang.

Yang menarik, tesaurus setebal 736 halaman ini dikerjakan seorang diri. Penyusunnya Eko Endarmoko, anggota redaksi Jurnal Kebudayaan Kalam (sekarang on-line) di Komunitas Utan Kayu, Jakarta.

Eko Endarmoko, yang pemalu dan pendiam ini, baru sekarang menceritakan pengalamannya menyusun karya yang sulit dan bertahun-tahun dikerjakan ini.

Tesaurus ini adalah buah dari dorongan terus-menerus akan keperluan mendapatkan kata paling jitu sewaktu merangkai kalimat. Hampir separuh kandungan tesaurus itu berasal dari setumpuk carikan kertas berisi kata-kata bersinonim yang saya catat berdikit-dikit sejak kuliah di tahun 1980-an. Kira-kira sepuluh tahun kemudian, demi lebih cepat mendapatkan sesuatu kata sekaligus mencegah carikan-carikan kertas tadi berceceran, semua catatan tadi lalu saya garap dengan program pengolah kata.

Niat membukukannya, yang muncul sesudah melihat seluruh bentuk kasarnya terketik di layar, terdesak dan bahkan sempat terlupakan beberapa lamanya, oleh rutinitas kerja sebagai penyunting di penerbit Pustaka Utama Grafiti.

Sekitar pertengahan tahun 1997, yaitu saat saya mulai bergabung dalam Jurnal Kebudayaan Kalam, adalah momen penting yang memungkinkan TBI menemukan bentuknya seperti sekarang. Jurnal Kalam, Teater Utan Kayu, dan Galeri Lontarâ€"ketiganya merupakan sayap kesenian Komunitas Utan Kayuâ€"tak lain dari apa yang biasa diringkas dengan sebutan TUK atau Teater Utan Kayu.

Rekan-rekan saya, para kurator-sastrawan di sana, Nirwan Dewanto, Sitok Srengenge, Hasif Amini (dan sebelum ini: Ayu Utami), memerhatikan persoalan bahasa Indonesia dengan tekun, cerewet, dan bersemangat. Bekerja sama dengan mereka memberi rangsangan tersendiri bagi saya untuk meneruskan penyusunan tesaurus ini, sekalipun praktis kami cuma berkumpul sekali seminggu, tiap Rabu, antara lain untuk rapat menyusun program acara tiga bulan ke depan.

Bekerja di TUK atau KUK memang setengah "kerja sukarelawan". Maka tiap orang punya kegiatan samping. Kegiatan samping saya adalah menjadi penyunting bahasa, antara lain bagi terjemahan yang akan diterbitkan oleh lembaga KITLV (Koninklijke Instituut voor Taal-, Land-en Volkenkunde) Belanda yang di Jakarta diwakili Jaap Erkelens. Bung Jaap sering datang ke Kedai Tempo dan kami duduk berdua bekerja di depan tumpukan naskah. Bung Jaap dengan demikian juga jadi bagian dari KUK, sebagaimana tiap orang yang kerap datang dan bekerja di sana. Bahkan Bung Jaap pernah jadi "kurator" pameran karikatur pers Belanda dari masa revolusi Indonesia (Februari-Maret 2006).

Oleh KLTV juga, saya disponsori untuk kerja penelitian di Leiden, Belanda, selama Mei-Agustus 2001 dalam menyiapkan TBI. Saya senang rekan-rekan di TUK merelakan, bahkan mendorong, saya meninggalkan kerja selama itu. Saya harap hasil kerja itu tidak mengecewakan.

Memahami Aceh dalam Kerumitan Indonesia

2007-10-19T10:41:00.001+07:00

Koran Tempo - Jum'at, 19 Oktober 2007

Opini

Otto Syamsuddin Ishak, peneliti senior pada Imparsial, Jakarta

Sekarang lebih mudah memahami Aceh ketimbang Indonesia. Berbeda dengan dahulu, lebih mudah memahami Indonesia--yang akhirnya berkembang menjadi permakluman politik--daripada memahami Aceh, yang kemudian melahirkan resistansi politik.

Mungkin karena Aceh adalah dunia mikro, dan Indonesia adalah dunia makro, lebih mudahlah memahami Aceh daripada memahami Indonesia. Namun, antropolog Clifford Geertz telah mengingatkan tentang Aceh yang cenderung ekstrover sehingga cenderung bergerak evolutif. Sedangkan Indonesia--akibat dominasi budaya Indonesia Dalam yang agraris dan membatin--cenderung introver dan bergerak involutif.

Seturut itulah, Aceh lebih mudah dipahami karena kemikroannya, sifatnya yang ekstrover, dan geraknya yang evolutif. Indonesia tentunya semakin susah--kalau belum memusingkan--dipahami karena kemakroannya, sifatnya yang introver, dan geraknya yang involutif.

Singkatnya, anatomi Aceh itu sederhana. Anatomi Indonesia itu rumit. Namun, bukankah, pasca-Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) Helsinki, Aceh berada dalam Indonesia? Karena itu, apakah cukup memadai untuk memahami kesederhanaan Aceh tanpa kaitannya dengan kerumitan Indonesia?

Tengoklah laporan International Crisis Group, "Aceh: Komplikasi Pasca-Konflik". Kiranya ini sebuah contoh yang ideal bagaimana memahami kesederhanaan Aceh tanpa kaitannya dengan kerumitan Indonesia. Anatomi Aceh--yang diwakili oleh kajian tentang evolusi Gerakan Aceh Merdeka dan Badan Reintegrasi Aceh (BRA)--demikian lancar diuraikan tanpa mengaitkannya dengan kerumitan Indonesia, serta dengan mudah dapat diramalkan bagaimana jadinya di esok hari.

ICG melaporkan, pasca-MOU Helsinki, ada ketenangan di Jakarta, dan terjadi kegelisahan yang semakin kuat di Aceh perihal masa depan perdamaian yang sedang dilangsungkan. Pasalnya sederhana saja, yakni menyangkut evolusi dalam tubuh GAM dan BRA. Dan kedua kelembagaan ini dikendalikan oleh orang GAM. Meskipun ICG mengakui orang GAM bukan pelaku satu-satunya yang menggelisahkan, anatomi pelaku lain tak juga diuraikan oleh ICG. Mungkin terlalu rumit.

Transformasi politik yang berdampak sosial yang terjadi pasca-pemilihan kepala daerah (pilkada) yang digelar sejak Desember 2006 digambarkan oleh ICG dengan terang-benderang dan sederhana bahwa "para pemilih di Aceh tampaknya telah mengganti elite korup yang satu dengan yang lain". Pejabat baru melahirkan jaringan patronase baru.

Perihal patronase baru bukanlah hal yang unik. Di mana pun dunia politik hidup dan mengalami pembaharuan, baik secara demokratis maupun nondemokratis, pastilah melahirkan jaringan patronase baru yang seturut dengan penguasa baru. Dalam sejarah kesultanan Aceh, setiap muncul sultan dan sultanah baru, apalagi dari wangsa baru, dengan segera terbentuk jaringan patronase baru. Dalam sejarah Indonesia, begitu Soeharto menjatuhkan Soekarno, maka segala jaringan patronase Soekarno dihancurkan dan dibentuk jaringan patronase yang Soeharto-sentris. Sejarawan Ong telah menguraikan keniscayaan sejarah tentang kemunculan kaum orang kaya baru setelah kemunculan penguasa baru.

Hal penting lain yang tak pernah dikaji adalah bahwa pilkada Aceh itu telah memutuskan dominasi oligarki partai nasional yang sudah selaras dengan pelaku birokrasi dan militer sejak masa Orde Baru. Ternyata, klaim politik bahwa hanya partai politik nasional, birokrasi, dan serdadu yang bisa melahirkan pemimpin tidak sepenuhnya benar. Gerakan protes juga bisa melahirkan pemimpin yang bisa terpilih oleh rakyat. Klaim politik hitam bahwa uang adalah modal utama untuk menjadi penguasa politik juga salah. Klaim politik kampanye dengan mobilisasi massa yang sebesar mungkin dengan umbul-umbul politik yang mengepung rakyat--sehingga membutuhkan dana politik yang besar--juga salah. Aliansi antarpartai atau membeli partai sebagai tunggangan politik juga kalah.

Di satu sisi, kita bisa membaca peristiwa itu sebagai sebuah reintegrasi Aceh, dan khususnya GAM, ke dalam sistem politik Indonesia. Lalu, kita bisa berkata-kata: itukah perpolitikan Aceh yang berbeda dengan perpolitikan Indonesia? Di sisi lain, kita pun dapat memahami peristiwa itu sebagai sebentuk revolusi politik. Paling tidak lebih revolusioner daripada capaian politik yang diperoleh dari gerakan Reformasi 1998 secara nasional.

Akibat perubahan politik yang revolusioner itu--sekalipun baru pada tataran pelakunya, belum masuk ke revolusi struktur dan kultur politik di Aceh-- keseluruhan sendi kehidupan di Aceh menjadi goyah. Kaum elite lama khawatir terjungkal. Sebagian besar rakyat yang merasa menang atas dominasi kaum elite lama menggelembungkan harapan hidup barunya pada pemimpin yang baru.

Celakanya, pilkada juga bisa berarti menjebloskan penguasa baru itu ke dalam struktur dan kultur politik, birokrasi, dan keserdaduan yang telah mengakar dengan rumit, yang juga adalah refleksi dari keberhasilan Indonesianisasi di Aceh. Masalahnya, apakah para pelaku politik dari pihak GAM, yang sekarang terintegrasi ke dalam struktur dan kultur politik keindonesiaan itu, mampu mengubah atau justru tenggelam di dalam kerumitan Indonesia.

Dalam perancangan anggaran, penguasa baru belum berhasil merancang sistem anggaran belanja yang sesuai dengan visi dan misinya. Kaum teknokrat dan birokrat yang mendominasi penganggaran masih menyusunnya sesuai dengan mindset yang tak sensitif terhadap kondisi Aceh pascakonflik dan bencana tsunami. Dalam restrukturisasi pemerintahan Aceh, penguasa baru terbentur dengan cara berpikir kaum politikus di parlemen lokal yang tidak melihat Undang-Undang Pemerintahan Aceh sebagai acuan utamanya. Bahkan mereka disekongkoli oleh kaum birokrat yang khawatir terjungkal.

Untuk melihat lebih jauh bagaimana kesederhanaan Aceh didominasi oleh kerumitan Indonesia, Badan Reintegrasi Aceh (BRA) merupakan contoh idealnya. Pada aras politik, penanggung jawab utama seluruh reintegrasi berada di pundak pemerintah RI, baik yang menyangkut GAM maupun korban (rakyat sipil). Hal itu dibunyikan dengan kalimat, "Pemerintah RI dan pemerintah Aceh akan melakukan upaya? Pemerintah RI akan mengalokasikan dana? Pemerintah RI akan mengalokasikan tanah pertanian dan dana?" MOU juga menjelaskan dengan terang benderang apa saja dan siapa saja yang menjadi subyek reintegrasi itu.

Namun, dalam aras implementasinya terjadi dua hal yang merumitkan. Pertama, BRA adalah sebuah lembaga yang dibentuk oleh pemerintah Aceh, bukan oleh pemerintah RI sehingga kewenangannya sulit menjangkau langit-langit kebijakan politik nasional. Beban nasional dilimpahkan menjadi beban daerah, meskipun dengan alokasi dana dari anggaran nasional (APBN). Agenda reintegrasi pun berkelindan dengan agenda dinas sosial.

Kedua, kerumitan semakin menjadi, ketika BRA dibebani hal-hal di luar mandat MOU Helsinki. BRA harus menanggulangi para milisi yang merupakan subyek tak tersebutkan dalam MOU Helsinki. Bahkan BRA menjadi saluran dana bagi Forum Komunikasi dan Koordinasi (FKK), yang merupakan evolusi dari Desk Aceh di masa perang yang berelasi dengan Menteri Koordinator Politik Hukum dan Keamanan. Hal ini terjadi setelah FKK melibatkan keanggotaan pemimpin GAM di dalamnya. BRA pun tak berdaya memperoleh akuntabilitas pemakaian dana itu dari FKK. Lebih rumit lagi bila benar bahwa pembentukan FKK merupakan siasat politik menyabotase pembentukan Komisi Bersama Penyelesaian Klaim, yang diamanatkan MOU Helsinki namun belum juga dibentuk, sedangkan permasalahan semakin rumit.

Hal lain yang semakin merumitkan adalah pemerintah RI tidak berupaya membuat agenda reintegrasi yang terancang dengan baik (blueprint) bagi Aceh-Indonesia pascaperang. Pertarungan politik internal dibiarkan dan ketidakpuasan para subyek BRA terus menggelembung.

Tampaknya, contoh-contoh di atas sudah cukup untuk menjelaskan bagaimana kerumitan-kerumitan Indonesia yang semakin mengepung Aceh, yang merupakan produk dari pengabaian komitmen-komitmen politiknya sebagaimana yang tercantum dalam MOU. Situasi pun semakin rumit manakala tanggung jawab pemerintah RI untuk memfasilitasi transformasi GAM dari gerakan bersenjata menjadi gerakan politik tidak dilakukan. Apalagi para donor yang terlibat dalam memfasilitasi pemerintahan Aceh maupun GAM sama sekali tidak memahami apa dan bagaimana kesederhanaan Aceh dan kerumitan Indonesia itu. Sementara itu, pelaku-pelaku politik baru di Aceh mulai kehilangan kesadaran akan kesederhanaan Aceh dan mulai terseret ke dalam alam kerumitan Indonesia

Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality (Paperback)

2007-10-17T22:30:00.001+07:00

Book Review

by Gil Dines, Robert Jensen, Ann Russo

A must read for EVERYONE, June 9, 2003

By
Kevin Davis (Charlotte, NC United States) - See all my reviews

I say this is a must for everyone because pornography effects everyone (whether you use it or not). This is an honest look into the world of pornography including the producers, consumers, and victims. Since it was written by 3 outspoken liberal feminists (e.g., one author claims to be anti-capitalist, and they all dismiss religious conservatives such as fundamentalists as often hypocritical; not to mention, they make a point of naming the Catholic religion of many of the users and abusers of porn). Even with those quibbles (since I'm a conservative/fundamentalist Baptist, pro-capitalist, and for the most part, anti-feminist), I still highly recommend this book. Beware, however: the illustrations of mainstream porn and the accounts of the victims are very graphic. For those of us who never "got into" the world of hardcore or semi-hardcore pornography, this will be an eye-opener that will make you both sad and disgusted. If you don't have the money to buy this book, please go see if your library has it (like mine). A must read no matter where you are on the left-right social/political spectrum.

In Memoriam Marianne Katoppo: Kepergian "Yang Lain" Itu

2007-10-17T22:21:00.001+07:00

Oleh Aryawirawan Simauw

Sabtu siang tanggal 13 Oktober 2007, di tengah keriangan Idul Fitri, angin sepoi-sepoi terasa sendu di Krematorium Oasis Lestari, Tangerang. Pada sebuah oven, jasad Marianne Katoppo dalam dua jam telah menjadi abu berwarna putih. Kesenduan dan keheningan bersatu menghantar Marianne berpulang menuju Sang Khalik. Tak ada suara kucing-kucing yang mengantarnya, mahluk hidup yang selama bertahun-tahun menjadi teman setianya. Tak ada isak-tangis yang berkepanjangan. Suasana sunyi dan teduh, sesunyi dan seteduh hidupnya. Kepergiannya begitu lain. Sepi, sunyi, damai, dan indah.

Sejumlah kalangan yang mendengar kabar berpulangnya Marianne seakan tak percaya. Bagi saya, kepergiannya sangat mengagetkan dan menyesakkan dada. Sebab, seminggu sebelum Marianne berpulang, ia meminta saya datang menengoknya di Bogor, tapi saya tak bisa. Ironisnya, sesungguhnya sejak minggu lalu Marianne sudah setuju untuk menjadi penasihat penulisan cerita dalam film layar lebar yang sedang saya persiapkan, "Ashram Shanti". Sebuah film yang direncanakan diputar 8 Maret 2008, pada Hari Perempuan Internasional, dan sekaligus bagian dari hadiah HUT ke-65 Marianne.

Perempuan yang dilahirkan di Tomohon pada 9 Juni 1943 itu, memiliki sejumlah sahabat. Sejak 1989, saya membangun persahabatan dengannya, melanjutkan persahabatan ayah dan ibu saya. Bersamaan dengan menguatnya tekanan rezim Orde Baru, Marianne adalah sosok pemberani yang luar biasa.

Mungkin tidak banyak yang tahu, bahwa dalam fase perubahan dari 1990 hingga 1998, Marianne memberikan kontribusi bagi percepatan reformasi secara tak langsung. Tulisan-tulisannya di Suara Pembaruan dalam fase itu dan kehadiran di berbagai forum internasional serta kenekatannya mendirikan Forum Demokrasi (1991) bersama Gus Dur dkk adalah kontribusinya yang cerdas.

Marianne yang menulis buku Compassionate and Free pada 1979 dan telah memberi pencerahan di mana-mana, memilih teologi perempuan sebagai teologi pembebasannya. Gelar Sarjana Teologi dari STT Jakarta tidak membuatnya sungkan untuk beradu pandangan dengan teman-teman teolog Indonesia lainnya yang Strata II dan Strata III.

Sebab, dengan kemampuan lebih dari 10 bahasa, penguasaan pengetahuan filsafat, sejarah, politik, sosial, dan ekonomi, Marianne dikenal kalangan luas. Ia juga terlibat berbagai organisasi, mulai dari sebagai anggota Pengurus Pusat Gerakan Mahasiswa Kristen Indonesia (1962-1964, 1976-1978), pendiri Kelompok Hapus Hukuman Mati (1980), anggota Pendiri Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologian in Indonesia (1982), anggota United Borad for Christian Education in Asia (1982-1986), anggota Majelis Pekerja Harian Persekutuan Gereja-gereja di Indonesia (1984-1989), dan anggota International Council of World Conference for Religion and Peace (1989-1994).

Teman-temannya bukan saja dari kalangan Protestan, tetapi Katolik dan Ortodoks. Demikian pula dari kalangan Islam, Hindu, Buddha, Khonghucu, Sikh, Brahmana Kumaris, dan Bahai. Keterlibatannya pada pergumulan pluralisme, multikulturalisme dan theologiae religionum tetap pada pilihannya pada teologia perempuan sebagai paradigma berteologia.

Realitas Kemanusiaan

Dalam buku peringatan 50 Tahun Sekolah Tinggi Teologia Jakarta tahun 1984, dengan jelas Marianne mengatakan bahwa diperlukan paradigma baru dalam berteologi, yaitu realitas kemanusiaan dan bukan lagi sekadar pewahyuan dari Allah. Marianne sangat yakin harusnya realitas kemanusiaan yang terpecah sekarang ini dan menghasilkan kemiskinan, ketidakadilan, ketidakdamaian, kerusakan lingkungan menjadi titik-tolak berteologia agama-agama dalam menyelesaikan persoalan kekinian kita.

Teriakannya yang keras tentang konsep Imago Dei dalam memperjuangkan kesetaraan, persamaan, pemulihan kemanusiaan, dan hubungan yang hancur dimampatkan dalam konsepnya tentang Liberation Theology Toward Full Humanity. Dan baginya, tugas ini bukan melulu pada satu agama tertentu, tetapi pada agama-agama. Oleh karena itu, selain dikenal sebagai perintis pikiran teologi perempuan di Asia, Marianne juga menggunakan teologia perempuan sebagai karya-karya pembebasan bagi agama-agama menemukan kembali fungsinya sebagai pembebas.

Dalam ranah yang lain, Marianne juga dikenal sebagai seorang novelis dengan kekayaan tema perempuan yang menyentuh. Sebutlah "Dunia Tak Bermusim" (1976), "Raumanen" (1977), dan "Rumah Di Atas Jembatan" (1981). Bahkan novelnya "Raumanen" diganjar Hadiah Yayasan Buku Utama (1978) dan SEA Write Award (1982). Konon, latar kisah dalam novel-novelnya banyak diambil dari pengalaman hidupnya dan teman-temannya. Selain itu, Marianne menerjemahkan karya sastra dari bahasa aslinya ke bahasa Indonesia. Misalnya "Lapar" (Knut Hamsun, Norwegia), "Malam dan Fajar" (Elie Wiesel, Prancis) dan antologi cerpen India dan Thailand.

Namun, karya terbesarnya adalah buku Compassionate and Free. Buku ini ditulis Mei 1979, selama satu bulan dalam bahasa Inggris untuk kepentingan Dewan Gereja-gereja se Dunia. Buku ini telah membawa banyak pencerahan di kalangan perempuan, komunitas dan lembaga di dunia. Seorang teman saya bercerita bahwa ketika mengikuti sebuah workshop teologi feminis, oleh banyak perempuan Marianne dianggap sebagai inspirasi mereka. Juga bagi beberapa peserta dari negara-negara Timur Tengah.

Setelah 28 tahun buku ini ditulis, diterjemahkan ke berbagai bahasa, dipakai sebagai text book mata kuliah teologi feminis, baru pada tahun ini diterjemahkan dalam bahasa Indonesia, diterbitkan oleh sejumlah sahabat perempuannya. Dalam perjalanan pulang kami semua berujar, bahwa setelah 28 tahun bukunya dibungkam di Indonesia dan raga Marianne telah tiada, buku ini menjadi momentum kebangkitan teologi perempuan Indonesia.

Saat ini, Marianne telah tiada. Marianne tahu masih banyak perempuan yang acap dianggap tak ada, tak perlu ada, dan tak lagi ada. Dianggap "yang lain" itu. Tetapi Marianne telah berhasil menyatakan: "Saya mengklaim hak perempuan untuk dibebaskan dari yang Lain yang mengancam itu. Saya menuntut hak perempuan menjadi Yang Lain dalam seluruh kepenuhannya dan dengan berbagai karunianya–Yang Lain, yang bukan merupakan lawan, deviasi, subordinat dari Diri, melainkan dia yang memberikan makna pada Diri". Perempuan "Yang Lain" itu telah tiada, dengan kematian "Yang Lain", tapi kini perjuangan menjadi Diri "pasti lain" jadinya! Marianne, kami akan lanjutkan perjuanganmu!

Penulis adalah pekerja seni, hiburan, media dan penyiaran; pendamping orang dengan HIV/AIDS; pendamping perempuan korban kekerasan

Laskar Jihad: Islam, Militancy, and the Quest for Identity in Post-New Order Indonesia

2007-10-15T07:50:00.001+07:00

Journal article by Zachary Abuza; Contemporary Southeast Asia, Vol.
29, 2007

Review

Laskar Jihad: Islam, Militancy, and the Quest for Identity in Post-New
Order Indonesia. By Noorhaidi Hasan. New York: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 2006. Softcover: 266pp.

The first time that I met Umar Jafaar Thalib, the first thing that I noticed about him was that he had delicate manicured hands, an eerie juxtaposition to all the bloodshed for which he was responsible. Yet reading through Noorhaidi Hasan's Laskar Jihad: Islam, Militancy, and the Quest for Identity in Post-New Order Indonesia--the first book-length study that charts the decline and fall of one of the most visible symbols of post-Soeharto Islamic militancy--one gets little sense of the sheer brutality or scope of violence that plagued Indonesia's Outer Islands from 1999 to 2002. Much of the violence gets glossed over and many parts of the book are frustrating because very little attention is given to such critical points. But the book, which was based on 18 months of fieldwork and 125 interviews of members of Laskar Jihad, remains a wealth of information.

The book in many ways is much more of an intellectual history of the Salafi movement within Indonesia, and in particular, Jafaar's quest to become the movement's paramount leader. Chapter 4, for example, simply explains the Salafi ideology as it took root in Indonesia. The book begins with an analysis of the rapid emergence of Salafi mosques, madrassa, and halqa' ("study circles"). It ties in local politics with the expansion of Saudi Arabian geopolitics and explains the emergence of what he considers a "new type" of Salafi students, in particular, those who went through Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Islam dan Bahasa Arab (LIPIA). Under the constraints of the New Order regime, the nascent Salafi movement in Indonesia was forced to focus on what it considers to be its core mission: da'wah, and eschewing politics and militancy.

Hasan's argument is that the Salafi movement, perhaps more than any other movement in Indonesia, was highly influenced by exogenous factors: the Afghan war, Gulf charity funding, and the first Gulf war.

As Soeharto's legitimacy waned in the 1990s with economic slowdowns and rampant corruption, he turned to the Islamists for support--a move that gave the Salafi movement more space. Yet the Salafi movement remained woefully disparate throughout the 1990s. Hasan explains both the doctrinal schisms and personality contests that kept the Salafis divided (pp. 54-58). To that end, Jafaar turned to the Saudi Arabian Hai'at Kibar al-Ulama (the Committee of Senior Ulama) led by Bin Baz to issue fatwas justifying Thalib's actions, and hence his authority--a tactic Thalib would use again in the coming years to crush his rivals in the Salafi movement (pp. 58-61).

Following a rift within the global Salafi movement over the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia in 1991, Thalib began publishing Salary in 1996, which became his ideological mouthpiece. Hasan argues: "There is little doubt that the monthly Salafy quickly reinforced Thalib's image as a leading Salafi authority in Indonesia" (p. 85). Salafy was followed by a network of pasentren, Ihyaus Sunnah Network, though which Thalib fell out of favour and was ousted.

The move from quietest activities into political activism, always a wedge within the Salafi community between the strict Salafis and the Ikhwanists and Surusist, is charted in Chapter 3. As Hasan notes: "The dramatic shift of the Salafi movement towards political activism and militancy was inseparable from the political ambitions of the movement's leaders who saw that the rapid changes in the Indonesian political landscape would facilitate the orchestration of popular politics and the staging of collective actions" (p. 93). While some of the opening came from the rise of Islamist political leaders following the fall of Soeharto in May 1998, Hasan contends that it was the outbreak of sectarian conflicts that gave the Salafis not just the political opening, but a religious obligation to act--both a personal obligation (fard ayn) and a collective obligation (fard kifaya).

Thalib with other Salafis established Forum Komunikasi Ahlus Sunnah wah' Jama'ah, the umbrella organization for Laskar Jihad.

Forum Komunikasi questioned the "indifference" of the government to the plight of the Muslims in the Malukus (p. 209), and in particular to President Abdurrahman Wahid's coddling of Christians, communists, and his desire to forge diplomatic relations with Israel. For the conspiracy-minded Thalib, the Malukan conflict was something escalated by a Zionist-American conspiracy to rip apart the Indonesian state (p. 114). Here again, Thalib relied on the fatwas of no less than six leading Salafi clerics in the Middle East to justify the Laskar Jihad's jihad in the Malukus (pp. 116-21). Those fatwas were used to declare President Wahid, the former leader of Nadhalatul Ulama, the world's largest Muslim organization, a kafir (infidel), who had abdicated his responsibility to defend Muslims from aggression. And in doing so, Hasan contends that the Salafis "appointed Thalib as temporary commander of their jihad mission" and ergo "temporary leader whose commands should be followed" (p. 155). Thalib's quest to become the amir of the Salafi movement was one step closer to fulfilment.

Despite extensive fieldwork and interviews, Laskar Jihad is not a quantitative study, but it sheds particular light on the process of exclusion and establishing parallel communities, cut off from secular society, what Hasan labels "enclaves". The author demonstrates how the leaders of Laskar Jihad encouraged members to live apart in terms of dress, norms, behaviour, and language, "a domain in which a resistance identity is created" (p. 181). While he admits that the public sphere of the Salafi movement "belongs only to men" (p. 180), there is little discussion of women's role within Forum Komunikasi and the Salafi community.

The 6 April 2000 meeting in Jakarta between three Laskar Jihad leaders and President Wahid, who refused to sanctify their vigilante defence of the Muslims in the Malukus, marked the start of armed conflict.

Laskar Jihad began military training. Some members of Tentara Nasional Indonesia (TNI) appear to have assisted in this process, but what Hasan fails to demonstrate is why the Indonesian government allowed Laskar Jihad to continue the training and then board government-owned ships bound for Ambon, an event that dramatically escalated the violence. The TNI's complicity in supporting Laskar Jihad's activities in Malukus must be understood in the context of what was happening in East Timor, a subject that goes completely unexplained. Far more on the role and involvement of the TNI needs to be researched.

Hasan argues that Laskar Jihad added little to the battlefield in terms of tactics or military skills; indeed, their "achievement in the Moluccas was, in many ways, strikingly limited" (p. 197). In general, Laskar Jihad was there to set up Koranic centres and to take control of abandoned mosques. Hasan rightly notes that much of the fighting was done by the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI)-linked Laskar Mujahidin, and some foreign fighters, though he explains little about these groups or how they were related with Laskar Jihad. Indeed, there was often significant tension between them.

The March 2001 stoning to death of a member who committed rape was a turning point in the organization. Thalib used his religious authority, again based on a fatwa issued in Saudi Arabia, to implement shariah, rather than simply calling on followers to obey it. He became known not only as a jihad leader, but also as one of the vanguard who supported comprehensive implementation of the shariah. It was as though he had challenged those who had previously spoken out about the need to return to the Jakarta Charter to step forward and prove their commitment to Islam (p. 199).

Yet again, while explaining the actions and implications, Hasan glosses over what happened on the part of the state: "Partly because of the demands of the aforementioned Muslim organizations, the police released Thalib and changed his legal status to that of house detainee. Following the pre-judicial trial, which determined that his arrest was illegal, the police eventually absolved Thalib of all indictments" (p. 199). This is hardly a convincing and satisfactory answer to why someone who unilaterally challenged the authority of the state was able to literally get away with murder. Likewise, Hasan is really unable to explain why it took the state so long to send troops to the Malukus, in August 2001, though his analysis of the repercussions on Laskar Jihad is quite strong.

There are a few factual errors regarding the JI in his discussion of the post-9/11 environment. There were no arrests of JI members until after the 12 October Bali bombings; indeed the Indonesian government was in an appalling state of denial regarding the scope of Islamic militancy within its borders. Likewise, the author overstates the popularity and resilience of Jaringan Islam Liberal (Liberal Islam Network) which has been in significant retreat since 9/11, as other militant groups such as Front Pembela Islam (FPI, or Islamic Defender's Front) have intimidated its members, while the quasi-official Ulama's Council of Indonesia (MUI) have issued fatwas branding "liberal Islam" un-Islamic (p. 208).

There are other places that simply begged for a more thorough treatment and analysis. The jihad in Poso got only a paragraph (p. 205), yet the violence continues there to this day, as it does in the Malukus. While the author contends that Laskar Jihad had scant involvement there, the conclusion would have been an apt place to discuss the ongoing legacy of Laskar Jihad. While the group disbanded under the weight of internal factionalism and Thalib's rapid fall from grace, discussed in pages 211-13, the legacy of militant Islam continues to this day. The Indonesian government's apparent reluctance to take on these small laskar groups is troubling.

All too often groups such as Laskar Jihad and the FPI are dismissed as thugs. Hasan's work is integral to our understanding of the profoundly theological nature of these groups. He explains the theological debates and schisms with clarity and consistency. Despite some limitations as mentioned above, Laskar Jihad is very balanced and eminently readable, and will remain the standard reference on the group. It should be read by anyone interested in Islamic militancy in Indonesia.

ZACHARY ABUZA is a Professor in the Department of Political Science
and International Relations, Simmons College, Boston, USA.

The Burmese Way to Fascism

2007-10-15T07:41:00.001+07:00

Far Eastern Economic Review - October 2007

by Bertil Lintner

If Karl Marx was right that history repeats itself first as tragedy and then as farce, Burma is still stuck in the tragedy phase. The protests and crackdown in Rangoon in recent days are reprising the doomed democracy movement of 1988. As time passes and the security forces succeed in cowing the population, the world's outrage gives way to ineffectual responses and then resignation.

HARRY HARRISON

In the initial euphoria that such mass movements inevitably bring, the Western media dubbed this Burma's saffron revolution, comparing it to the peaceful "color revolutions" of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. So named because of the leading role played by Buddhist monks, the movement seemed destined to sweep away the unpopular military regime that has impoverished a country once among the wealthiest in Asia. The moral authority of the clergy, combined with the flow of information to the outside world facilitated by new technology, stoked the sense of optimism. The U.S. imposed tougher sanctions, while even China and the Association of South-East Asian Nations, not normally known for putting pressure on their neighbors, issued strong statements.

However, the reality is that nothing substantive has changed since 1988. In fact, the Burmese regime is arguably stronger than it has ever been. It is well prepared to weather this new storm of domestic and international criticism.

The survival of successive military regimes in Burma is one of the enigmas of Southeast Asian politics. The key to this puzzle is understanding that Rangoon is no "ordinary" military dictatorship, and it cannot be compared with Thailand, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan or other countries in the region which also have had spells of military rule.

When the army first seized power in Burma in 1962, it not only took control over the government, but also assumed economic power.

Branded the "Burmese Way to Socialism," this meant that almost all private property was confiscated and handed over to a number of military-run state corporations. The old mercantile elite, which to a large extent was of ethnic Indian and Chinese origin, left the country, and so did many of Burma's intellectuals. Prior to the 1962 coup, Burma had had one of the highest living standards in Southeast Asia, and a fairly well-educated population. But thereafter the military became the only elite.

The Burmese military establishment also developed into a state-within-a-state, a society where army personnel, their families and dependents enjoy a position far more privileged than their counterparts ever had in, for instance, Thailand and Indonesia. In both those countries, some degree of pluralism was always accepted even during the darkest years of military dictatorship.

After the last uprising in 1988, the Burmese Way to Socialism was abolished after the 1988 uprising, perhaps in an attempt to appease the international community, which had condemned the carnage in Rangoon, but also because the military had realized that they could make more money in a free-market economy. Private enterprise and foreign investment were permitted after the bloody events of 1988, when at least 3,000 protesters were gunned down, but, in essence, the Burmese Way to Capitalism is also a military-dominated economy.

There are few major enterprises which are not directly or indirectly controlled by the military, or by businessmen affiliated with the military, like the powerful, 43-year-old tycoon Tay Za, who is close to junta leader Gen. Than Shwe and his family. His Htoo Trading Company was one of two main contractors that built Burma's new administrative capital, Naypyidaw. The other was the Asia World Group, which is headed by Tun Myint Naing, or Steven Law, the son of Lo Hsing-han, who in the 1970s was branded by U.S. authorities as the king of opium in Burma's sector of the Golden Triangle.

In Burma, there are special schools and hospitals for the military and their dependents. They live in secluded, subsidized housing and shop for goods that are not available in ordinary stores. An army pass assures the holder of a seat on a train or an airplane, and a policeman would never dare to report him or her for violating traffic rules. The military's only civilian support base is the Union Solidarity and Development Association, USDA, which was formed in 1992. It claims to have 21 million members, but that is mainly because membership is compulsory for civil servants and ordinary citizens are forced to join. Like the Burma Socialist Program Party, BSPP, which ruled Burma until the 1988 uprising, it is a colossus on feet of clay, which, in the wake of current events, is likely to collapse, as the BSPP did 19 years ago.

The rise of military power in Burma began shortly after independence from Britain on Jan. 4, 1948. Communist as well as ethnic rebel armies rose in rebellion against Rangoon, and, in the northeast, remnants of Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Chinese forces retreated across the border after being defeated by Mao Zedong's communists. At independence, the Burmese army was only 15,000 strong, plus militias. But by 1955, because of the civil war, the ranks of the army had increased to 40,000, and it was already involved in businesses such as shipping, banking and publishing. When the emerging state-within-a-state gobbled up the state in 1962, there were 104,200 men in all three services. That rose to 140,000 in 1976, 160,000 in 1985, and, at the time of the 1988 uprising, 180,000 in the army and nearly 200,000 in all three services.

Today, the strength of the three services is estimated at 400,000, and they are much better equipped than at any time in Burma's modern history, mainly due to massive procurement of arms from China. The latest expansion comes at a time when the ruling military has managed to strike cease-fire agreements with most of the country's rebel groups, so, during the past decade, there has been very little fighting in Burma's traditionally volatile frontier areas. The enemy now is the population at large.

China's support is a key factor in the junta's staying power, and Beijing wants "stability," not a regime change. In January this year, China—along with Russia—used its veto power to block a U.S. and U.K.- sponsored resolution in the U.N. Security Council, although a majority of U.N. members had voted in favor. The Chinese insisted that the Burmese regime did not a pose a threat to regional security and, therefore, the Security Council was not the right forum to pass resolutions on political repression in Burma. Not even appeals by activists for a boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympics seem to have swayed China into being more critical of the Burmese regime. China has not reacted to pictures from the carnage in Rangoon showing Burmese soldiers carrying Chinese-made T-56 automatic assault rifles.

It may be argued that Chinese military aid is of little help in quelling urban unrest. But the modernization of Burma's armed forces since 1988 has also served the purpose of ensuring the loyalty of the military, which is crucial for the survival of the present regime. Nothing is going to change as long as the military remains united, and there have so far been no credible reports of splits within the military. Given the abuse of power, their privileges and the atrocities they have committed, the Burmese military has everything to lose and nothing to gain from allowing more openness and transparency. Foreign-based opposition groups like to talk about "dialogue" and "national reconciliation," but these are no more than popular buzzwords with little relevance inside Burma, where the military talks to no one but itself.

A Rangoon-based Western diplomat once put it to me quite bluntly: "They fear that if they don't hang together, they'll hang separately." The junta is now reading from its standard playbook, blaming the "disturbances" on "internal and external destructionists." In a speech on Sept. 24, Burma's religious affairs minister, Brig.-Gen. Thura Myint Maung, asserted that "political extremists" from the pro-democracy National League for Democracy, NLD, "remnants" of the Communist Party of Burma (which has been defunct for more than 18 years), and foreign broadcasting stations had instigated Buddhist monks and others to demonstrate. The situation, he said, was being handled "softly" and "with care."

Meanwhile, the National League for Democracy, formed shortly after the 1988 uprising, has been decimated. Its main leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has charisma but she remains under house arrest, and nearly the entire, original leadership of the NLD is either dead, in prison or has simply given up all political activity. Most young NLD activists have been imprisoned, cowed into submission, or have fled the country. Only a handful of elderly spokespersons remain, and none of them has the strength and charisma to carry the party forward. That serves the interests of the junta, since the new-look NLD would appear to the outside world not to be a viable alternative.

Nor have external forces had much influence over Burma's ruling generals. Western sanctions have had minimal effect, as the country's neighbors—China, India and Asean—continue to trade and invest in the country, allowing the generals to use their ample natural resources and strategic geographical position to survive. China was the first major country to show interest in Burma's riches, even before the events of 1988. Pan Qi, former vice minister of communications, wrote an article in the Sept. 2, 1985 Beijing Review entitled "Opening to the Southwest: An Expert Opinion," outlining the possibility of finding an outlet through Burma to the Indian Ocean for trade from China's landlocked provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan. He mentioned the Burmese railheads of Myitkyina and Lashio in the northeast, and the Irrawaddy River, as possible conduits for the export of Chinese goods.

By late 1991, Chinese experts were assisting in a series of infrastructure projects to spruce up the poorly maintained roads and railways. Chinese military advisers also arrived in the same year, the first foreign military personnel to be stationed in Burma since the Australians had a contingent there to train the Burmese army in the 1950s. The total value of Chinese arms deliveries to Burma is not known, but intelligence sources estimate it to be about $1.4 billion.

Burma's close relationship with China caused concern in India. To counter China's growing influence, at first India supported Burma's pro-democracy movement. But when it became clear that it was not going to come to power within the foreseeable future, India began to court the junta. Enticing Burma to distance itself from China, however, was not New Delhi's only concern; the rapidly expanding Indian economy needs energy, and Burma has ample resources of natural gas.

During the current turmoil, China blocked an attempt by the U.N. Security Council to adopt a binding resolution of Burma, while a spokesman for the Indian government on Sept. 26 made a rather bland statement: "The government of India is concerned at and is closely monitoring the situation in Myanmar (Burma). It is our hope that all sides will resolve their issues peacefully through dialogue. India has always believed that Myanmar's process of political reform and national reconciliation should be more inclusive and broad-based."

Burma's generals are, therefore, firmly entrenched in power, and not overly worried about condemnation by the West. That doesn't mean that their position is entirely secure. They remain profoundly despised by the population at large and, last year, an entirely new movement began to take shape. It consisted of veterans of the 1988 uprising, the most prominent among them being Min Ko Naing, a student leader who was arrested in March 1989—and released only in November 2005, after nearly 16 years in solitary confinement. In 1988 he was a 26-year-old zoology student addressing crowds of tens of thousands in Rangoon. When he was released he was 42, and his years in prison had left their mark on his face and body. In 2005, he looked old and haggard—but his fighting spirit had not been quelled. "The people of Burma must have the courage to say `no' to injustice and `yes' to truth," he said at a meeting of the newly formed "88-Generation Students' Group" in Rangoon in August 2006.

Min Ko Naing's group played an important role in organizing the first protests in August, shortly after the authorities had increased the price of petrol and fuel, causing further hardships for a population that was already suffering from rising living costs. But the entire leadership of the group was arrested immediately, depriving the movement of direction. The monks, who took the initiative in the street marches which led to a renewed mass movement, can only mobilize people and take the moral high ground; as monks, they cannot be political leaders. Thus, unlike in 1988 when a number of political leaders emerged, among them Aung San Suu Kyi, the current movement is leaderless and rudderless.

The bitter reality is that nothing is going to change as long as the military remains united and willing to gun down its own people. A younger generation of army officers, who see the need to negotiate with the pro-democracy movement, is probably the only hope. But for now, no one is aware of any "young Turks" lurking in the wings, and there are no signs of serious cracks within the ranks. But if change does come to Burma, it will in any event be because of action taken by such younger army officers, not demonstrations led by monks. The protests can, at the most, influence sections of the army to realize that there is no future in supporting the present regime. But only time will tell if that is going to happen.

Mr. Lintner is a free-lance writer based in Thailand. He is the author of several books on Burma.

Dari Catatan Harian Imam Bonjol

2007-10-15T07:35:00.001+07:00

Tempo - Edisi. 34/XXXVI/15 - 21 Oktober 2007

Iqra

Imam Bonjol meninggalkan sejumlah catatan hidupnya saat diasingkan. Ada catatan tentang jalannya pertempuran dan negosiasi dengan Belanda. Tak ada tentang kebrutalan.

"Ini ada surat kumpeni menyuruh saya datang kepada kumpeni sekarang. Bagaimana kiranya segala datuk-datuk atau baik saya pai (pergi—Red.) atau tidak?"

Imam Bonjol wafat di Manado. Selama di Manado, ia ternyata menulis semacam otobiografi dalam huruf Arab Melayu. Oleh anaknya, Naali Sutan Chaniago dan Haji Muhammad Amin, yang ikut dibuang ke Manado, naskah itu diselamatkan.

Dalam catatan itu, kita temukan kesaksian Imam Bonjol menyerang daerah-daerah yang belum menjalankan syariah, juga kisah bagaimana ia mengirim Tuanku Tambusai ke Mekkah, yang kemudian membuat Tambusai bergelar Haji Muhammad Saleh.

Atau bagaimana di sebuah salat Jumat, ia menyerukan hukum adat basandi syarak. Ia melukiskan dengan agak rinci betapa ganasnya perang mempertahankan benteng Bonjol. Tapi bagian paling panjang adalah pengakuannya bernegosiasi dengan Belanda.

Diceritakan, utusan Belanda, Kroner (Kolonel) Elout, memintanya menyerah. Ia menolak, lalu terjadi pertempuran sengit. Dikisahkannya ia memasang meriam sendiri untuk menggempur Belanda. Tapi benteng Bonjol jatuh, dan utusan datang lagi. Di Padang, ia bertemu dengan Residen Francis.

Resident Francis: Dulu saya minta Tuanku, Tuanku tidak mau datang bertemu kami….

Tuanku Imam Bonjol: Tempo tuan kirim surat yang dahulu tuan minta saya. Saya kasih lihat surat itu kepada raja-raja dan penghulu. Hampir saya dibunuh orang tempo itu dan dicabik-cabiknyo dek surat itu. Surat kemudian tidak kasih lihat pada penghulu. Maka itulah sekarang mencari tuan….

Imam Bonjol akhirnya mau dibawa kapal ke Betawi, Surabaya, Buton, Ambon, sampai Manado. Di sanalah, di Lotak Pineleng, ia tinggal sampai wafatnya. Keberadaan naskah Tuanku Imam Bonjol pertama kali dilaporkan oleh Ph.S. van Ronkel dalam artikel Inlandsche getuigenissen aangaande de Padri-oorlog (Kesaksian Pribumi mengenai Perang Padri) dalam jurnal De Indische Gids, 1915.

Ronkel menyebutkan bahwa dia telah menyalin satu naskah berjudul Tambo Anak Tuanku Imam Bonjol setebal 318 halaman. Pada 2004, Sjafnir Aboe Nain dari Pusat Pengkajian Islam dan Minangkabau, Padang, menerbitkan transliterasi naskah Tuanku Imam Bonjol.

Kata pengantar yang ditulis Sjafnir menyebutkan bahwa salinan Ronkel itu sesungguhnya gabungan antara catatan Imam Bonjol yang berjumlah 191 halaman dan catatan anaknya, Naali dan Amin. Naskah itu sendiri, menurut dia, dikenal dengan nama Tambo Naali Sulthan Chaniago.

Transliterasi dilakukan Sjafnir ke dalam bahasa Minang-Melayu, membuat naskah ini agak sulit dipahami dalam waktu singkat. "Saya butuh waktu lama untuk memahami naskah ini," kata peneliti sejarah Tapanuli Selatan, Basyral Hamidy Harahap.

Tak ada bagian dari naskah ini yang menampilkan sikap Imam Bonjol akan kekerasan yang dilakukan Padri. "Tapi saya yakin Imam Bonjol mengetahui kekejaman kaum Padri, baik penculikan maupun pemerkosaan. Tapi ia diam saja," kata Basyral.

Ia merujuk, ada halaman yang menampilkan masalah penculikan dan jual-beli perempuan ternyata dibicarakan secara terbuka dalam suatu pertemuan yang dihadiri tokoh-tokoh umat, yakni Sultan Chaniago, Nan Pahit, Datuk Kayo, Datuk Limo Koto, Rajo Minang, Punjuak Batuah, dan Pado Alim.

"Pailah (pergilah—Red.) ke rumah Malin Kecil, basua (bertemu) perempuan. Ditanyalah dek (oleh) Datuk Limo Koto perempuan itu. 'Siapo nan manangkap di lading Batang Silasung?' kata Datuk Limo Koto. Alah (kemudian) menjawab perempuan, 'Nan manangkap saya dicari (si Cari) orang Durian Tinggi. Dijualnya dek si Cari itu saya kepada Rajo Manang. Dek Rajo Manang dijual pula ke Bamban.'"

Sejarawan dari Universitas Andalas, Padang, Dr Gusti Asnan, melihat, untuk sebuah catatan harian, Tuanku Imam Bonjol sangat tidak mungkin menuliskan fakta-fakta kebrutalan Padri. "Bila dibandingkan dengan sumber sejarah Belanda, Tuanku Imam Bonjol tidak memasukkan peristiwa pembakaran, perampokan, serta penculikan dan pemerkosaan perempuan. Tapi saya pikir dia tahu mengenai kejadian itu," ungkap Gusti.

Baik Basyral maupun Gusti melihat proses negosiasi Tuanku yang diwakili anaknya, Sutan Chaniago, dengan pemimpin Belanda sama sekali tidak menunjukkan ketegangan. Mengherankan, Imam Bonjol yang dikenal sebagai sosok penentang Belanda yang gigih kemudian seperti melemah. Bahkan Gusti melihat keakraban Tuanku dengan Residen Elout dan Residen Francis aneh.

"Sekarang Tuanku pergi ke negri Menado, karena negri Menado baik, tempat baik, makanan murah…."

"Sebagai seorang pahlawan nasional, apa iya Tuanku tidak merasa curiga terhadap niat Belanda?" tanya Gusti.

Sita Planasari Aquadini, Seno Joko Suyono

Kontroversi Kebrutalan Kaum Padri

2007-10-15T07:23:00.001+07:00

Iqra

Tempo - Edisi. 34/XXXVI/15 - 21 Oktober 2007

Gerakan Padri selama ini diidentikkan dengan kepahlawanan Imam Bonjol dan kelompoknya melawan Belanda. Tapi belakangan sebuah buku lama yang kontroversial dan menunjukkan sisi gelap Padri, Tuanku Rao, diterbitkan kembali. Lalu muncul buku baru dengan judul Greget Tuanku Rao sebagai reaksi.

Kedua buku ini memperlihatkan bahwa gerakan Padri sesungguhnya adalah gerakan Wahabi—gerakan pemurnian Islam yang dilakukan secara keras terhadap Islam kultural di Minang dan Batak. Dan itulah gerakan yang membuat puluhan ribu nyawa jadi korban. Imam Bonjol dianggap dengan sadar melakukan itu, sehingga ada usul gelar pahlawan nasional dicabut darinya. Betulkah demikian? Ikuti pembahasan Tempo.

… Petisi ini mendesak Pemerintah Indonesia untuk membatalkan pengangkatan Tuanku Imam Bonjol sebagai Pahlawan Perjuangan Kemerdekaan…. Imam Bonjol adalah pimpinan Gerakan Wahabi Paderi…. Gerakan ini memiliki aliran yang sama dengan Taliban dan Al Qaeda…. Invasi Paderi ke Tanah Batak menewaskan jutaan orang….

Petisi online itu tersebar di banyak mailing list seminggu lalu. Seorang anak muda, Mudy Situmorang—lulusan Teknik Elektro Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember, kelahiran Simanindo, Pulau Samosir—telah mengirimnya. Dalam petisi itu, ia membeberkan dosa-dosa gerakan Padri, antara lain pembantaian massal keluarga Kerajaan Minangkabau Pagaruyung dan penyerbuan Padri ke Batak yang menewaskan Sisingamangaraja X.

Ia mengatakan petisi itu atas nama pribadi, bukan organisasi, dan semata-semata untuk pelurusan sejarah. "Kita tunggu sampai 500 pendukung. Hasilnya dikirim ke pemerintah," katanya saat dihubungi Tempo. Sampai sekarang, petisi itu memang belum "berbunyi".

Namun petisi ini mengingatkan orang akan dua buah buku bertema sama yang baru-baru ini terbit. Yang satu adalah buku lama karya Mangaradja Onggang Parlindungan berjudul Tuanku Rao. Buku itu pertama kali dicetak penerbit Tanjung Pengharapan, 1964, dan diluncurkan kembali oleh penerbit LKiS Yogya, Juni lalu, tanpa suntingan apa pun, bahkan tetap dalam ejaan lama.

Itulah buku yang pada 1964 menghebohkan. Buku itu tidak bercerita langsung tentang Imam Bonjol, tapi berisi kronologi penyerangan komandan-komandan Padri. Parlindungan sendiri menyusun buku itu berdasarkan data sejarah Batak yang dimiliki ayahnya, Sutan Martua Radja. Pada 1918, ayahnya adalah guru sejarah di Normaalschool Pematangsiantar. Ayahnya memiliki warisan dokumen sejarah Batak turun-temurun dari tiga generasi sepanjang 1851-1955.

Di samping itu, Parlindungan memakai bahan-bahan milik Residen Poortman. Posisi Poortman sama dengan Snouck Hurgronje. Snouck adalah seorang ahli Aceh, yang informasinya diminta oleh pemerintah Belanda. Sedangkan Poortman adalah seorang ahli Batak. Poortman pensiun pada 1930 dan kembali ke Belanda. Di Leiden, Belanda, Poortman lalu menemukan laporan-laporan para perwira Padri sepanjang 1816-1820 untuk Tuanku Imam Bonjol. Parlindungan mengenal Poortman secara pribadi dan pernah bertemu di Belanda. Poortman mengirimkan bahan-bahan laporan itu saat Parlindungan menulis bukunya.

Parlindungan bukan sejarawan profesional. Caranya menulis pun serampangan. Data yang diramunya itu sering ditampilkan cut and glue atau dinarasikan kembali dengan bahasa campuran: bahasa Indonesia lisan, kadang disisipi kalimat-kalimat Inggris yang panjang. Di sana-sini, ia memberikan komentar yang cara penulisannya seperti seorang ayah yang menerangkan kisah kepada anaknya. Kata ganti yang dipakai untuk dirinya adalah "Daddy". Sedangkan anak laki-lakinya di situ disebut "Sonny Boy". Ketika polemik menghangat, buku itu ditarik dari peredaran. Buku itu pun jadi buku langka. Di sebuah pameran buku di Jakarta, buku itu beberapa tahun lalu bahkan sempat dihargai Rp 1,5 juta.

Buku kedua, Greget Tuanku Rao, ditulis Basyral Hamidy Harahap, terbit September lalu. Basyral adalah Ketua Jurusan Perpustakaan Universitas Indonesia 1965-1967 dan pensiunan pustakawan Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (KITLV). Ia ingin mengoreksi beberapa info tentang Tuanku Rao yang dianggapnya kurang tepat. Tapi, pada garis besarnya, ia sepakat dan bahkan menambahkan data kekerasan yang dilakukan Padri. "Buku Parlindungan banyak salahnya, tapi buku itu ada di jalan yang benar."

l l l

Siapakah Parlindungan? Tak banyak yang tahu sosok pengarang ini. Basyral sendiri pada 1974 pernah bertemu dengannya di dekat rumah Hamka di Jakarta. Ia langsung menanyakan kabar polemik antara Parlindungan dan Buya Hamka. Agaknya Parlindungan tak suka. "Saat itu ia langsung mengarahkan tongkatnya yang berkepala gading ke arah dahi saya. Saya kaget, mengelak," kenang Basyral.

Hal ini sedikit terkuak ketika anaknya, Dorpi Parlindungan Siregar, kini 59 tahun, mau bercerita kepada Tempo—dialah anak yang dipanggil Sonny Boy dalam bukunya.

"Ayah saya seorang perwira KNIL. Perjalanan karier ayah saya dimulai ketika pada 1 Oktober 1945, Jenderal Mayor Oerip Soemohardjo mendirikan Tentara Keamanan Rakyat (TKR). Beliau mengumpulkan 17 anak muda di Yogyakarta, di antaranya Soeharto, Ibnu Sutowo, dan ayah saya."

Pada usia 27 tahun, menurut Dorpi, ayahnya memperoleh pangkat letnan kolonel. Sebagai insinyur kimia lulusan Jerman dan Belanda, ayahnya menjadi bawahan dr Willer Hutagalung, dulu dokter pribadi Jenderal Soedirman. Mereka kemudian mengambil bekas pabrik mesiu dan peralatan senjata Belanda, yang lalu menjadi Pindad.

Pada 1960, ayahnya ditahan rezim Soekarno karena dianggap pro-Masyumi. Tempat tahanan ayahnya berpindah-pindah, dan akhirnya menjalani tahanan rumah. Di sanalah, dengan data milik kakeknya dan Residen Poortman, ayahnya menulis buku Tuanku Rao.

Dan yang mengejutkan, bagian terbesar halaman buku ayahnya menceritakan kisah kejahatan algojo Padri bernama Tuanku Lelo, sosok yang tak lain menurut Parlindungan adalah kakek dari kakeknya sendiri. "Jadi ia seperti menceritakan aib keluarga sendiri. Tak banyak penulis yang berani seperti itu," kata Ahmad Fikri dari LKiS. Buku itu awalnya, menurut Dorpi, tidak diperuntukkan bagi umum, tapi bagi anak-anaknya saja. "Sehabis membaca Al-Quran setiap hari, Ayah membacakan cerita ini untuk saya dan adik," kenang Dorpi akan ayahnya yang meninggal pada 1975 itu. Atas desakan teman-temannya, buku itu akhirnya diterbitkan.

Buku itu intinya berisi informasi bagaimana gerakan Wahabi masuk Minang. Waktu itu, tahun 1803, Haji Piobang, Haji Sumanik, dan Haji Miskin kembali ke Minang setelah bermukim di Mekkah lebih dari 12 tahun. Mereka adalah bekas perwira tentara Turki. Mereka mencoba menanamkan mazhab Hambali di Sumatera, menekankan pemurnian Islam.

Gerakan pembersihan agama Islam ini menarik hati seorang mubalig besar bernama Tuanku Nan Rentjeh, yang tengah gundah lantaran di Minang berkembang Islam Syiah. Mereka bersama-sama kemudian mencita-citakan suatu Darul Islam. Piobang membentuk pasukan Padri yang sangat profesional. Pakaian mereka serba putih. Persenjataannya cukup kuat. Mereka, misalnya, menurut Parlindungan, memiliki meriam 88 milimeter bekas milik tentara Napoleon yang dibeli "second hand" di Penang. Dua belas perwira Padri dikirim belajar di Turki. Tuanku Rao, yang aslinya seorang Batak bernama Pongkinangolngolan Sinambela, dikirim untuk belajar taktik kavaleri; Tuanku Tambusai, aslinya bernama Hamonangan Harahap, belajar soal perbentengan. Pasukan Padri juga memiliki pendidikan kemiliteran di Batusangkar.

Sasaran pertama "gerakan kaum putih" ini adalah Istana Pagaruyung, karena istana itu dianggap sebagai boneka Belanda yang merintangi Darul Islam. Pada 1804, ribuan rumah dibakar dan keluarga Istana Pagaruyung dibantai. Untuk cita-cita Darul Islam, pasukan Padri ingin meluaskan agresinya ke luar alam Minangkabau—ke tanah Batak.

Salah satu tamatan pendidikan militer Batusangkar, bernama Peto Syarif Ibnu Pandito Bayanuddin, oleh Tuanku Nan Rentjeh diperintah mencari lokasi yang bakal digunakan sebagai benteng—basis tentara Padri menyerang Tanah Batak. Peto menemukan bekas sarang perampok di rute Minangkabau-Batak bernama Bonjol. Ia mengislamkan kawasan Bonjol, membangun benteng di sana, serta melatih kekuatan 10 ribu tentara. Sejak itu, ia dijuluki Imam Bonjol.

Buku Tuanku Rao ini menjelaskan cukup detail bagaimana persiapan dan kronologi invasi Padri ke Batak Selatan (1816) dan Toba (1818- 1820). Dari etape-etape dan serangan kilat (blitzkrieg), siasat-siasat, sampai notula rapat-rapat para panglima dideskripsikan. Pendiri Padri, Haji Piobang dan Tuanku Imam Bonjol, mengkoordinasi penyebaran pasukan di bawah pimpinan Tuanku Rao, Tuanku Tambusai, Tuanku Lelo, Tuanku Asahan, Tuanku Maga, dan Tuanku Kotapinang.

Toba dikepung dari empat penjuru. Tuanku Asahan dengan kavaleri berkekuatan 11 ribu tentara menyerang dari samping kanan; Kolonel Djagorga Harahap dengan kekuatan 4.000 anggota pasukan dari sayap kiri; Tuanku Maga menusuk dari sisi tengah atas dengan 5.000 anggota pasukan; Tuanku Lelo bersama 9.000 tentaranya merangsek dari sisi tengah bawah. Pada 1820, Sisingamangaraja X, yang bertahan di Benteng Bakkara, akhirnya tewas. Kepala Sisingamangaraja X ditusuk di atas tombak, dipancang di tanah.

Penyerbuan yang paling bengis dilakukan oleh Tuanku Lelo. Parlindungan sendiri menganggap "eyangnya" itu "kriminal perang". Tuanku Lelo bernama asli Idris Nasution. Sosoknya besar, berjanggut hitam, berambut panjang, berombak-ombak. Ia mengenakan baju jubah dan serban yang seluruhnya putih serta suka memakai selempang dan ikat pinggang berwarna merah bertaburan emas—yang dirampasnya di Pagaruyung. Ia dikenal sebagai algojo pembantai, juga maniak seks.

Parlindungan bahkan sampai menyebut eyangnya itu seorang big scoundrel yang memiliki kelakuan binatang. Di tiap kawasan, sang eyang mengumpulkan ratusan wanita, lalu memerkosanya. Di Toba, 14 malam berturut-berturut pasukannya dibiarkan melakukan pesta seks besar-besaran.

Ketika pasukan bergerak meninggalkan Toba, Tuanku Lelo memerintahkan ribuan wanita dikumpulkan di Red Light District di Sigumpar Toba. Dari Sigumpar, mereka digiring berjalan kaki melalui Siborong-borong, Pangaribuan, Silantom, Simangambat, Sipirok, menuju Natal Mandailing. Sesampai di Mandailing, hanya 300 wanita selamat; 900 mati. Yang capek dipenggal.

Kemudian Belanda memutuskan menyerang Padri. Pertempuran pada 1820, menurut Parlindungan, meletus di Benteng Air Bengis. Imam Bonjol turun sendiri. Tuanku Rao tewas di situ. Nah, di pertempuran Air Bengis ini, secara licik Tuanku Lelo melakukan desersi. Melihat Imam Bonjol terdesak, ia lalu memimpin kavalerinya sendiri menuju Angkola dan Sipirok. Ia melanjutkan petualangannya, menjarah, membunuh, melampiaskan nafsu seksualnya. Ia lalu menjadi warlord di Angkola dan Sipirok selama 1822-1833. Ia di sana mendirikan sebuah harem di bentengnya di Padang Sidempuan.

Buku Tuanku Rao hanya sedikit menyinggung peran Tuanku Tambusai. Namun, menurut Basyral, Tuanku Tambusai tak kalah kejam dibanding Tuanku Lelo. "Kebrutalan Tuanku Tambusai terjadi di daerah Padang Lawas, Dolok, dan Barumun. Salah satu kawasan yang paling parah terkena adalah daerah nenek moyang saya, Simanabun," tutur Basyral (lihat "Tambusai dan Pasukan Putih-putih").

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Para sejarawan berbeda pendapat soal kebrutalan ini. "Sebetulnya masuknya Padri ke Batak bukan ekspansi. Kelompok-kelompok musuh Padri saat itu dapat dipukul mundur hingga ke Tapanuli Selatan. Karena itu, mereka bertempur sampai ke daerah tersebut," tutur Dr Mestika Zed, sejarawan dari Universitas Negeri Padang.

"Sebagai sebuah buku sejarah, buku Parlindungan sumbernya sangat lemah. Dokumen Poortman sendiri diragukan. Banyak yang tidak faktual," kata Dr Asvi Warman Adam dari Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia. Hamka bahkan pernah menganggap Tuanku Lelo hanyalah karangan Parlindungan belaka (lihat "Mengenang Sanggahan Hamka"). Memang, sekarang mustahil untuk mengecek semua sumber yang digunakan Parlindungan, karena semua data itu dimusnahkan oleh Parlindungan sendiri.

Dalam bukunya itu, Parlindungan menyebutkan data yang diwariskan ayahnya kepadanya hanya meliputi 20 persen dari yang dimiliki ayahnya. Ia menyaksikan sendiri, pada 1941, ayahnya membakar sisanya sambil bercucuran air mata di tepi Sungai Bah Bolon.

"Daddy tidak mau risiko," katanya kepada anaknya. "Our family secrets yang ketahuan pada outsiders cukup yang terbatas dalam buku ini. No more." "Saya menduga, itu adalah alibi dia, yang sebenarnya tak cukup memiliki data otentik, atau bisa juga ia tak mau sejarawan lain menelitinya," kata J.J. Rizal dari Yayasan Bambu, yang menerbitkan Greget Tuanku Rao.

Akan halnya Dr Gusti Asnan, pengajar Jurusan Sejarah Fakultas Sastra Universitas Andalas, Padang, menganggap tidak semua sumber Belanda yang digunakan Parlindungan mengandung bias. Dari 100 laporan, ada 20-50 persen data yang benar. Menurut dia, historiografi Perang Padri sendiri dimulai pada 1950-an. "Saat itu terjadi dekolonialisasi historiografi Indonesia, termasuk Perang Padri. Demi persatuan dan kesatuan, bagian-bagian miring dari data yang ada, seperti kebrutalan Perang Padri, sengaja tidak disiarkan."

Ia juga melihat gerakan pasukan Padri tak semata-mata bermotif agama, tapi juga ekonomi. Sejak akhir abad ke-18 hingga awal abad ke-19, perkembangan ekonomi di Sumatera Barat memang luar biasa karena booming kopi.

Dr Gusti pernah membaca sebuah kisah tentang saudagar bernama Peto Magik di Pasaman. Ia dikenal sebagai saudagar Padri—bisa dianggap konglomerat. Seorang Belanda bernama Bulhawer yang melakukan kerja sama dengan Peto mengaku tidak melihat sedikit pun gambaran islami padanya. "Kesan yang dilihat Bulhawer, Peto Magik adalah seorang kapitalis. Dan gambaran ini saya rasa juga menggambarkan sebagian besar kaum Padri," ujar Gusti.

Maka, menurut Gusti, ketika daerah kekuasaan di Tanah Datar dan Agam mulai direbut Belanda, kaum Padri pun meluaskan ekspansi ke utara: Bonjol, Pasaman, dan Tapanuli Selatan. Mengapa ke utara? Karena daerah utara memiliki basis kekayaan yang sangat tinggi. Apalagi, dengan menguasai area tersebut, Padri masih dapat melakukan hubungan dengan kaum lain, seperti Aceh, melalui jalur sungai.

Sekalipun mengakui kekerasan yang dilakukan Padri, sebagian orang memandang dari sudut berbeda. "Soalnya saat itu kan tidak ada HAM," kata sejarawan Taufik Abdullah.

Basyral sendiri melihat Imam Bonjol mengetahui segala perampokan, pemerkosaan, dan mutilasi yang dilakukan perwira-perwiranya. "Mustahil Imam Bonjol tak tahu. Ia kan komandan," kata Basyral.

Tapi Taufik Abdullah tak sependapat. Menurut dia, kekerasan di awal gerakan Padri bukan tanggung jawab Tuanku Imam Bonjol. Saat gerakan Padri masih radikal di awal, Tuanku Imam Bonjol masih muda dan baru menjabat sebagai asisten Tuanku Bandaro, salah satu pemimpin gerakan Padri saat itu.

"Buat saya, pencabutan gelar pahlawan itu nonsens. Justru di bawah pimpinan Tuanku Imam Bonjol pasukan Padri lebih menitikberatkan serangan pada pihak Belanda," kata Taufik.

Menurut Taufik, keliru jika melihat sosok Imam Bonjol dalam Padri disamakan dengan Diponegoro. "Diponegoro merupakan pemimpin tunggal, sementara gerakan Padri merupakan gerakan sosial kolektif, dengan banyak pemimpin," katanya.

Taufik mengatakan, bahkan, Tuanku Imam Bonjol sempat mengirim empat anak buahnya ke Mekkah untuk naik haji, termasuk Tuanku Tambusai. Tujuannya untuk melihat kondisi Islam di Mekkah. Ternyata Islam saat itu jauh lebih moderat. Sehingga, ketika kembali ke Minang, Tuanku Tambusai pun menjadi lebih moderat. Sekembali dari Mekkah, seperti disebut dalam Tuanku Rao, ia pun menyesal melihat dengan mata kepala sendiri bagaimana wanita-wanita ditawan oleh pasukan Tuanku Lelo.

Menurut Taufik, adat basandi syarak justru mengemuka di bawah kepemimpinan Tuanku Imam Bonjol. Imam Bonjol wafat pada usia 93 tahun di Manado, pada 1864. Tak banyak orang yang tahu, ia meninggalkan sebuah "catatan harian" (lihat "Dari Catatan Harian Bonjol").

Seno Joko Suyono, Sita Planasari

Dua Jilid Terra Incognita

2007-10-15T07:17:00.001+07:00

Tempo - Edisi. 34/XXXVI/15 - 21 Oktober 2007

Dua buku ekologi Papua diterbitkan, menggenapi lima seri alam Indonesia. Hanya menyingkap sebagian kekayaan Papua.

The Ecology of Papua
Editor: Andrew J. Marshall, Bruce M. Beehler
Penerbit: Periplus International, 2007 Tebal: 1.476 halaman (2 volume)

Sampai pertengahan abad lalu, para ilmuwan hayati dunia meyakini Papua sebagai satu-satunya terra incognita—dunia tak dikenal—yang terbesar dan masih tersisa. Bahkan, menurut G.S. Hope, peneliti dari Australia, sampai pertengahan 1976, hanya segelintir peneliti yang dengan izin khusus bisa memasuki kawasan ini.

Papua yang dekat, tapi begitu jauh dari jangkauan, merupakan persoalan kontemporer kita. Dan keadaan miris ini berlangsung hingga akhir September lalu—ketika dua volume Ecology of Papua, tebalnya mencapai 1.476 halaman, diterbitkan. Sebuah buku yang mencoba mencatat keadaan geografis serta kekayaan hewani dan nabati subkontinen yang menakjubkan itu. Patut pula dicatat, semua ini jadi lebih terbuka setelah 86 orang pakar hayati dan taksonomi bergerak sepuluh tahun silam, seraya mengumpulkan keanekaragaman hayati tanah Papua.

Ya, Ecology of Papua adalah hasil jerih payah yang panjang yang membuahkan hasil. Lihatlah bagaimana buku ini menggambarkan bahwa sebuah pohon roboh bisa dihuni oleh 173 jenis lumut. Tapi gambaran Papua yang tertangkap dalam buku ini tentu saja lebih dari itu. Ecology of Papua menyampaikan bahwa para pakar itu menjumpai 20-25 ribu spesies tanaman berpembuluh, dan sekitar 60-90 persen merupakan endemik Papua. Ada catatan istimewa tentang paku-pakuan yang meliputi sekitar 2.000 spesies; 30 persen di antaranya berada di atas ketinggian 4.000 meter dari permukaan laut.

Dari dunia nabati, kita juga bisa mendapatkan gambaran kekayaan anggrek Papua—plus Papua Nugini. Mereka menyimpan sekitar 2.800 spesies anggrek atau sekitar 11 persen dari anggrek dunia. Dengan kata lain, merekalah yang terkaya kedua, setelah Pegunungan Andes di Amerika Selatan.

Di luar kekayaan nabati, Papua punya kekayaan lain. Di pulau itu, para pakar menemukan antara lain 37.643 spesies vertebrata atau sekitar 6,5 persen dari binatang bertulang belakang di dunia. Di antaranya terdapat 600 spesies burung, termasuk 25 spesies cenderawasih. Mereka memperkirakan Papua memiliki 300-500 ribu spesies vertebrata. Serangga saja jumlahnya ditaksir 100 ribu spesies dan baru sebagian kecil yang dikatalogkan. Dengan jumlah flora dan fauna yang melimpah itu pun, menurut Direktur Pusat Penelitian Biologi Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia Dedy Darnaedi, "Mungkin baru sebagian kecil kekayaan hayati Papua yang bisa diungkap."

Hewan Papua juga merupakan campuran hewan Benua Asia dan Australia. Ada satu hal yang menarik dicatat dari buku ini: temuan mereka tentang kanguru pohon. Dan ini membuktikan bahwa spesies itu belum punah. Sebagaimana diketahui, kanguru pohon yang hanya hidup di Papua itu tidak pernah ditemukan selama 90 tahun terakhir. Dilengkapi ratusan foto, gambar, dan peta, Ecology of Papua tak pelak lagi bisa menjadi rujukan untuk hal-hal yang sangat praktis. Misalnya zonasi dalam pengelolaan sumber alam. Dan kita mungkin masih ingat rencana pembangunan proyek listrik tenaga air Mamberamo dua-tiga tahun lalu—rencana yang terpaksa terhenti lantaran lokasinya masih masuk zona inti yang tidak boleh disentuh oleh pemanfaatan manusia.

Apa pun, yang jelas, terbitnya buku ekologi Papua ini menambah khazanah literatur ekologi Indonesia, yakni melengkapi lima seri ekologi Indonesia yang sudah ada: ekologi Sumatera, Kalimantan, Jawa dan Bali, Sulawesi, Nusa Tenggara dan Maluku, serta satu seri ekologi laut Indonesia.

I G.G. Maha Adi

Just a Prude? Feminism, Pornography, and Men’s Responsibility

2007-10-14T15:11:00.001+07:00

By Robert Jensen
Original URL

I want to begin by coming out: I am a man. More specifically, I am a white man. That’s important because it suggest two things regarding what I know about the world. First, I know some things that women don’t know about men. By definition, women are never in all-male spaces. Women don’t directly experience what men say about them when there are no women around. I do, and that means I know some things that women don’t.

Being a man also means there’s a lot I don’t know, that I have had to learn—and have to keep learning—from women and a feminist movement. In these remarks, I’m going to speak about the feminist critique of pornography and the feminist anti-pornography movement, from which I have learned much. But in doing that, I should acknowledge the irony of a man talking to a group of mostly women about the feminist analysis of pornography. I need to make it clear that I am not speaking for women. Instead, I see my role as speaking with women, and with the ultimate goal of speaking about the insights of this critique to men.

But even that is complicated, of course, because women do not speak with one voice about pornography, nor any other issue. There are pro-pornography women who would contest much of what I have to say. All I can do is acknowledge the women who have helped me come to understand the issue, tell the truth as I see it, and ask men to take seriously this critique of the domination/subordination dynamic that is so common in pornography and, indeed, in the world.

The minute one begins to make such a critique, one can expect this response: Feminists who critique pornography are really just prudes at heart. Pornography’s opponents, we are told, are afraid of sex. In one sense, that’s true. I am afraid of sex, of a certain kind. I’m afraid of much of the sex commonly presented in contemporary mass-marketed pornography. I am afraid of sex that is structured on a dynamic of domination and subordination. I am afraid of the sex in pornography that has become so routinely harsh that men typically cannot see the brutality of it thorough their erections and orgasms. I’m not against sex or sexual pleasure. I’m against the kind of sex that is routinely presented in contemporary pornography. I’m against that kind of sex because it hurts people in the world today, and it helps constructs a world in which people—primarily the most vulnerable people, women and children, both girls and boys—will continue to be hurt.

Pornographic sex

Let me describe one kind of sex that I’m afraid of. This is a scene from the film Gag Factor #10 released by J.M. Productions, which boasts that it pushes the envelope in pornography. The company website brags that this gag series, which is going on #17 as of March 2005, offers ‘The best throatfucking ever lensed.’ If you want a sample, the website has pictures and short video clips, under the heading ‘this week’s victim,’ with the promise ‘new whores degraded every Wednesday.’

In one of the 10 scenes from Gag Factor #10, released in 2002, a nagging wife is haranguing her husband and asking why he is so lazy. ‘Why can’t you do anything?’ she asks, going on to insult his intelligence and criticize him because he doesn’t read. She asks him if he even can read, and then suggests Henry Miller, from which she starts to read. The camera focuses on her mouth as she reads, then cuts to his eyes, which look increasingly angry. The film cuts to the woman on her knees as he yells, ‘Shut the fuck up.’ He grabs her hair and thrusts his penis into her mouth. From this point on, we hear almost exclusively from him: ‘Your teeth feel good you little bitch. Eat that dick. … Are you OK? Are you crying? I love you. I fucking love you. Open that mouth.’ He slaps her mouth with his penis. ‘Open wide. Choke. Open wider, wider. You’re so good baby. Put your mouth on my balls. You treat me so fucking good. That’s why I keep you here. Give me the eyes [meaning, look up at me] while I gag you. … Do you like to gag? Beg for it. Say please. Say please gag me some more. … Your throat is so good.’ At this point, she re-enters the conversation. She says, ‘Keep going.’ He says, ‘Good, that’s the fucking answer I was looking for.’ He then flips her over, putting her on the table with her head hanging over edge. She gags several times when he thrusts into her mouth. He holds her by the cheeks, spreading her face apart. She gags but he doesn’t stop. He allows her to catch her breath. Her face is unexpressive, almost frozen. ‘I want those tears to come out again, baby. I want to choke the shit out of you,’ he says. He grabs her hair and drives his penis into her mouth. He says: ‘Suck that dick. Convulse. I want to see your eyes roll back in your fucking head. Yes, I love it.’ He asks her if she loves it; she says yes. He ejaculates into her mouth and says, ‘Spit that cum out. I can’t hear you. What did you say? Don’t talk with your mouth full.’ He walks away and says ‘Don’t give me any more shit.’

Gag Factor is a type of ‘gonzo’ pornography, which is the roughest form available in the mainstream pornography shops and also the fastest growing genre. This scene is more overtly misogynistic than some, but it is not idiosyncratic. The sex and the language in what the industry calls ‘features’ typically is not as rough, though the message is the same: Women are for sex, and women like sex this way.

Empathy

I am afraid of the sex I just described to you. I’m worried about the physical and emotional well-being of the woman in that scene. I’m afraid of the way in which the men who use that pornography will act in their own lives, toward women in their lives. I am afraid of the world that such sex helps to create. I am afraid, and you should be, too.

If anyone wants to dismiss these concerns with the tired old phrases ‘to each his own’ and ‘as long as they are consenting adults’—that is, if you want to ignore the reality and complexity of the world in which we live—I can’t stop you. But I can tell you that if you do that, you are abandoning minimal standards of political and moral responsibility, and you become partially responsible for the injuries done as a result of a system you refuse to confront. I will defend that conclusion in a moment. But first, I want to make sure we come to terms with the scene I just described. We live in a world in which a woman can be aggressively ‘throat fucked’ to facilitate the masturbation of men. We all live in that world. We all live with that woman in Gag Factor #10. She is one of us. She is a person. She has hopes and dreams and desires of her own. We all live with that woman who finds herself making a living by being filmed in another kind of gonzo film called a Blow Bang, in which a woman has oral sex in similar fashion with more than one man.

In one of these films, Blow Bang #4, released in 2001, a young woman dressed as a cheerleader is surrounded by six men. For about seven minutes, ‘Dynamite’ (the name she gives on tape) methodically moves from man to man while they offer insults such as ‘you little cheerleading slut.’ For another minute and a half, she sits upside down on a couch, her head hanging over the edge, while men thrust into her mouth, causing her to gag. She strikes the pose of the bad girl to the end. ‘You like coming on my pretty little face, don’t you,’ she says, as they ejaculate on her face and in her mouth for the final two minutes of the scene. Five men have finished. The sixth steps up. As she waits for him to ejaculate onto her face, now covered with semen, she closes her eyes tightly and grimaces. For a moment, her face changes; it is difficult to read her emotions, but it appears she may cry. After the last man, number six, ejaculates, she regains her composure and smiles. Then the narrator off camera hands her the pom-pom she had been holding at the beginning of the tape and says, ‘Here’s your little cum mop, sweetheart—mop up.’ She buries her face in the pom-pom and the scene ends. Dynamite is one of us. She is a person. She has hopes and dreams and desires of her own.

The women in the movement to end men’s violence have helped society understand that we have to empathize with the victims of sexual assault and domestic violence. We also need to extend that empathy to the women in pornography and prostitution. Now we are going to practice empathy, that most fundamental of human qualities. I want us to think of that scene with Dynamite. One woman and six men. After she has performed oral sex on six men, after six men have thrust their penises into her throat to the point of gagging, after six men have ejaculated onto her, the camera is turned off. Think not about the sex acts but about the moment when the camera shuts off. The men walk away. Someone throws her a towel. She has to clean the semen of six strangers off her face and body and from her hair. This woman, who is a person, who is one of us, who has hopes and dreams and desires of her own, cleans herself off.

Now, I want you to imagine that the woman in that scene is your child. I want you to think about how you would feel if the woman being handed a towel to wipe off the semen of six men were your child, someone you had raised and loved and cared for. How does that feel? Then imagine that woman is the child of your best friend, or of your neighbor, or of someone you work with. Then imagine that women is the child of someone you have never met and never will meet. Imagine that woman is just a person, one of us, with hopes and dreams and desires of her own. Forget about whether or not she is your child. She is a person; she is one of us. Imagine that you are the one handing her the towel. Look into her eyes. We need to dare to look into her eyes and try to understand what she might be feeling. You can’t know for sure what she is feeling. But try to imagine how you would feel if it were you.We are constantly told pornography is about fantasies. Those scenes I just described are not fantasy. They are real. They happened. They happened to those women. Those women are not a fantasy. They are people. They are just like us.

And after those scenes were put on videotape, the films were sold and rented to thousands of men who took it home, put it into VCRs or DVD players, and masturbated to orgasm. That also is real. Men fantasize when they masturbate, but the men who are masturbating are not a fantasy. Thousands of men have climaxed to the recording of those women being aggressively ‘throat fucked.’ Those orgasms happened in the real world. Those men’s sexual pleasure was being conditioned to images of women being aggressively ‘throat fucked,’ in the real world. Those specific women and those specific men are part of the world we live in. And that idea of what a woman is, and that idea of what’s men’s sexuality is—those ideas are also part of the world we live in. None of it is a fantasy. All of it is as real as we are.

So, I want to pose a simple question: What do we owe those women? What do we owe Dynamite? What is our responsibility to her, to her hopes and dreams and Choices, hers and ours?

At this point, some will think: ‘Whatever you or I may think of those activities, she chose to do that. She’s an adult. Who are we to condemn her choice?’ I agree; we shouldn’t condemn her choice, and we shouldn’t condemn her. We should empathize with her. And we should think not just about her choice abut about the choices of the men who pay for the tape and create the demand for aggressive ‘throat fucking.’ From research and the testimony of women who have been prostituted and used in pornography, we know that childhood sexual assault (which often leads victims to see their value in the world primarily as the ability to provide sexual pleasure for men) and economic hardship (a lack of meaningful employment choices at a livable wage) are key factors in many women’s decisions to enter the sex industry. We know how women in the sex industry—not all, but many—routinely dissociate to cope with what they do. We know that in one study of 130 street prostitutes, 68 percent met the diagnostic criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder. We know that any meaningful discussion of choice can’t be restricted to the single moment when a woman decides to allow herself to be sold sexually, but must include all the background conditions that affect not only the objective choices she faces but her subjective assessment of those choices. What matters is not just what is available but how she perceives herself in relation to what is available. We know that in anyone’s life, completely free choices are rare, that every choice is made under some mix of constraint and opportunity.

I know, for instance, that in my large lecture classes when I give a multiple-choice exam, virtually none of the students believes that such exams are an accurate or meaningful way of measuring their learning. I know that many of them find such exams to be ridiculous, as do I. But all of my students ‘choose’ to take a test they know to be virtually useless (except for the data it provides me in a large cattle-call class so that I can assign grades at the end of the term). They choose to take that exam because if they chose not to—no matter how sensible and compelling their analysis of the exam’s flaws—they will not pass the course, and they will be denied something that is important to them, a college diploma. They could choose to reject the institution, and thereby give up that asset, but it would cost them. Their choice is free, but it is not made under conditions of complete freedom, given their limited power in the system. So, let us not be naïve about choice.

But, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that the specific woman who was used in that aggressive ‘throat fucking’ movie made a completely free and meaningful choice to participate, with absolutely no constraints on her. That could be the case, but it does not change the fact that many women in the industry choose under dramatic limitations. And so long as the industry is profitable and a large number of women are needed to make such films, it is certain that some number of those women will be choosing under conditions that render the concept of ‘free choice’ virtually meaningless. When a man buys or rents a videotape or DVD, he is creating the demand for pornography that will lead to some number of women being hurt, psychologically and/or physically. That is a fact in the world in which we live. So, men’s choices to buy or rent pornography are complicated by two realities. First, at any given moment, the consumer has no reliable way to judge which women are participating in the industry as a result of a meaningfully free choice. And second, even if the men consuming pornography could make such a determination about specific women in specific films, the demand for pornography that their purchase creates ensures that some women will be hurt. Given that conclusion, there is only one decision that men who claim to have even minimal standards of moral and political responsibility can make: They must not buy or rent pornography. Let me restate that in a personal way: You and I must not buy or rent pornography. You and I must not create the demand that creates the industry that creates a world in which vulnerable people will be hurt.

If we buy or rent pornography, we bear some responsibility for that world. We can try to pretend we don’t know that, but we can’t avoid that responsibility.

Justice and self-interest

That’s the argument from justice. It’s an argument that men, and the women who buy or rent pornography, should take seriously unless they want to abandon minimal moral and political standards. But it is fairly obvious that arguments from justice do not always move people who are in positions of power and privilege. Maybe such arguments from justice should be enough to change people, but they often aren’t. So, arguments from self-interest are important, too.

Men should stop buying and renting pornography because it is the right thing to do. They also should do it because it is in their self-interest. To explain that, I want to tell a story from my experience at the 2005 convention of the pornography industry, the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo, which I attended as part of a team working on a documentary film called Fantasies’ Matter. At the end of our first day filming at the convention, the film’s director/editor, Miguel Picker, and I walked out of the Sands Expo Center in Las Vegas without saying much. We had just spent the better part of the day together on the exhibition floor, which featured about 300 booths visited by thousands of people. Miguel had been behind the camera, and I had been interviewing pornography performers, producers, and fans about why they make, distribute, and consume sexually explicit media.

We had spent the day surrounded by images of women being presented and penetrated for the sexual pleasure of men. All around were pictures and posters, screens running endless porn loops, and display tables of dildos and sex dolls. I had listened to young men tell me that pornography had taught them a lot about what women really want sexually. I had listened to a pornography producer tell me that he thinks anal sex is popular in pornography because men like to think about fucking their wives and girlfriends in the ass to pay them back for being bitchy. And I interviewed the producer who takes great pride that his Gag Factor series was the first to feature exclusively aggressive ‘throat fucking.’ Miguel and I had spent the day surrounded by sex for sale, immersed in the predictable consequence of the collision of capitalism and patriarchy. We had talked to dozens of people for whom the process of buying and selling women for sex is routine. When that day was over, we walked silently from the convention center to the hotel. The first thing I said was, ‘I need a drink.’

I don’t want to feign naivete. As a child and young adult, I used pornography in fairly typical fashion. I have been working on the issue of pornography since 1988. I have talked to a lot of people about pornography, and in very short and controlled doses, I have watched enough of it to understand how corrosive it is to our individual and collective humanity. But I had never been to the industry convention before; I had always found a reason to avoid it. As Miguel and I left the hall, I understood why. ‘I need a drink,’ I said, and we stopped at the nearest hotel bar (which didn’t take long, given how many bars there are in a Las Vegas hotel). I sat down with a glass of wine. Miguel and I started to talk, searching for some way to articulate what we had just experienced, what we felt. But all I could do was cry.

It’s not that I had seen anything on the convention floor that I had never seen. It’s not that I had heard something significantly new or different from the people I had interviewed. It’s not that I had had some sort of epiphany about the meaning of pornography. It’s just that in that moment, the reality of the industry, of the products the industry produces, and the way in which they are used—it all came crashing down on me. My defenses were inadequate to combat a simple fact: The pornographers have won. In the short term, the efforts of the feminists who put forward the critique of pornography, the sex industry, and men’s violence have failed. The pornographers, for the time being, have won. The arguments from justice lost. The pornographers not only are thriving, but are more mainstream and normalized than ever. They can fill up a Las Vegas convention center, with the dominant culture paying no more notice than it would to the annual boat show.

And as the industry has become more normalized, paradoxically, the content of their films becomes ever crueler and more overtly degrading to women. The industry talk is dominated by talk of how to push it even further. Make it nastier. Make it, in the terms of one industry observer, ‘brutal and real.’ That’s the way the pornographers and the customers like it: Brutal. Because brutal is real. And real sells. It is real, and that’s at the heart of the sadness. What was reflected on the convention floor was not just a truth about pornography, but a truth about gender and sex and power in contemporary culture, as well as a truth about the brutality of capitalism. At the end of that day, I was more aware than ever that the feminist critique of pornography is not simply a critique of pornography but about the routine way we are trained to be sexual, about the eroticization of domination and subordination. Feminism, as I learned it, is a full-bore attack on systems of illegitimate authority, of which male dominance is one, along with white supremacy, capitalism, and imperialism.

And at that moment, all I could do was cry. It was a selfish indulgence, because at that moment, my tears were not for the women who are used and discarded by the industry, or the women who will be forced into sex they don’t want by the men in their lives who use pornography. The tears were not for girls and young women who bury their own needs and desires to become sexually what men want them to be. I wish I could honestly say that was front and center in my mind and heart at that moment. But the truth is that my tears at that moment were for myself. Those tears came because I realized, in a more visceral way than ever, that the pornographers have won and they are helping to construct a world that is not only dangerous for women and children, but also one in which I have fewer and fewer places to turn as a man. Fewer places to walk and talk and breathe that haven’t been colonized and pornographized. As I sat that, all I could say to Miguel was, ‘I don’t want live in this world.’ I think at that moment Miguel didn’t quite no what to make of my reaction. He was nice to me, but he must have thought I was going a bit over the top. I don’t blame him; I was a bit over the top. After all, we were there to make a documentary film about the industry, not live out a melodrama about my angst in a Las Vegas hotel bar.

The next day Miguel and I hit the convention floor again. At the end of that day, as we walked away, I made the same request. We sat at the same bar. I had another glass of wine and cried again. Miguel, I think, was glad it was the last day. So was I.

Two days after we left Las Vegas, Miguel called me from New York. This time he was crying. He told me that he had just come to his editing and recording studio and had put on some music. Miguel is not only a director and editor, but a very talented musician. He’s one of those people who understand the world through music. He told me that he had put on music that he finds particularly beautiful, and then the floodgates opened. ‘I understand what you meant in the bar,’ he said, speaking through his own tears.

I tell that story not to glorify two sensitive new-age men. Miguel actually is a sensitive person, though not very new-age. I’m not new-age, and I don’t feel particularly sensitive these days. I feel harsh and mean. I feel angry most of the time. I spend most of my days on political organizing. I don’t write poetry. I’m from North Dakota. People from North Dakota don’t write a lot of poetry. We shovel snow. I tell that story because it’s never been clearer to me that in the struggle over pornography, the sex industry, and men’s violence, it is not enough to be right and to make arguments solely about justice. The central insights of the feminist critique of pornography are, I believe, right. I think it is the most compelling way to understand the issue. If anything, that critique of pornography is truer today than it was when the founding mothers of the movement first articulated it in the late 1970s. But we live in a society in which the pornographers have won, in the short term. Their products are more widely accepted and available than ever. Much of the culture has bought the ‘pornography is liberation’ and ‘pornography is freedom’ lines. To the degree that an anti-pornography position can get traction in the dominant culture, it comes from right-wing groups that have co-opted the language of feminism—the political language of harm—as a cover for a regressive moralism that rejects the values of feminism. Those same right-wing groups typically resist a critique of the capitalist commodification of everything, an analysis crucial to understanding pornography.

At this moment, being right is not enough. We have to find ways to tap into the humanity of people, a humanity that is systematically diminished and obscured by capitalism and patriarchy, as well as the explicit racism in pornography. That’s the argument from self-interest that men must hear. Men get something very concrete from pornography: They get orgasms. For most men, it’s an extremely effective way to gain physical pleasure. But it comes at a cost, and the cost is our own humanity. To be a man in this sense is to surrender some part of your humanity. I speak from experience here: It’s a bad trade-off. No orgasm is worth that much. That’s why the experience that Miguel and I had on the floor is important. On that day, the concentrated inhumanity of the pornographic world overwhelmed us. I went onto the convention floor knowing a lot about pornography. I left the floor feeling it more deeply than ever before. We know a lot about the pornography industry and its effects. We know there is a compelling critique. We have to be willing to feel it, as well.

Feeling and thinking our way forward, together

I realize that this task is difficult: We have to help men understand the depravity of their own pleasure. We have to make them feel that sense of desperation, articulating it in a way that leads people to action not paralysis, hope not despair, resistance not capitulation. We have to make them face what pornography does to us all, men and women. For men, we have to make them face that to be a pornography user is to be a john, to be someone who is willing to buy women for sex, someone who sees sex as a commodity, someone who has traded his own humanity for an orgasm.

Those realities are not easy for women to face either. I can’t speak for women, of course, but I assume that it is not easy to be a woman and understand how pornography portrays women and their sexuality, and to know that men like it. Put bluntly, in pornography, women are reduced to three holes and two hands. In pornography, women are reduced to the parts of their bodies that can sexually stimulate men. Women are not really sex-objects (which at least implies they are human) but more fuck-objects, simply things to be penetrated. I imagine that is not an easy thing to face when you are faced with pornography all around you. I imagine it is not easy to realize that this is the world in which women learned to be sexual.

Men have some difficult realities to face. So do women. I understand how painful those realities can be, because I have struggled, and continue to struggle, with them, and I have talked to many other people about their struggles. Sometimes I feel like I know too much. Sometimes I wish that I didn’t have all these pictures in my head. Sometimes I wish I had never heard the stories of women’s pain that I have heard. But I never wish I were back where I was 20 years ago, because 20 years ago I also was in pain, albeit a very different kind. In some ways, that old pain was easier to mask, but it was impossible to escape. This newer pain might be more intense at times, but it is a necessary part of the process that has changed my life for the better. I don’t really like it, but I accept the need for it, because this pain can lead somewhere. It can lead to a long and difficult, but ultimately rewarding, process of trying to revision sexuality. It can lead to involvement in a political movement to change the world that, even if not successful in the short term, holds out the hope for not just personal but societal transformation. Confronting the violence and pain of the world, both outside and inside me, has led me to meet many amazing people whose friendship and love has sustained me through difficult times.

When we talk like this, one of the predictable rejoinders is that we are trying to impose strict sexual rules on others. As one prominent pro-pornography feminist scholar, Linda Williams, put it in a recent interview, ‘Really, who are anti-pornography activists to tell us where our sexual imaginations should go?’ I agree. No one can tell others where their sexual imaginations should go. Imaginations are unruly and notoriously resistant to attempts at control. But our imaginations come from somewhere. Our imaginations may be internal in some ways, but they are influenced by external forces. Can we not have a conversation about those influences? Are we so fragile that our sexual imaginations can’t stand up to honest human conversation? It seems that pro-pornography forces live with their own fear of sex, the fear of being accountable for their imaginations and actions. The defenses of pornography typically revert to the most superficial kind of liberal individualism that shuts off people from others, ignores the predictable harms of a profit-seeking industry that has little concern for people, and ignores the way in which we all collectively construct the culture in which we live. I have no interest in telling people where there sexual imaginations must end up. But I would like to be part of a conversation about the direction in which we think our sexual imaginations can move.

So, I am afraid of the sex that pornography creates because it hurts people. But I am not afraid of talking about an alternative to the cruelty and brutality of the pornography industry. I need that conversation. I can’t do this on my own. I’m not smart enough and I’m not strong enough. I need help. I know the direction I want to move, but I stumble on the way. I have made mistakes that have hurt others and hurt myself. I can correct some of those mistakes on my own, but none of us can do this completely on our own. So, can we start talking about how to move our sexual imaginations toward respect, toward empathy, toward connections based on equality not domination? Can we give up enough of our fear of the unknown to try to imagine together what that might look like?

This culture tends to talk about sex in terms of heat: Who’s hot, what kind of sex is hot. What if we shifted to a language of light? Sex not as something that produces heat, but something that shines light. Can we talk about moving toward the light? The light that is inside me and inside you. The same light that is inside Dynamite. I want to live in a world in which Dynamite can tell us her name, not the pornographers’ name. I want to live in a world in which we hear her about her hopes and dreams and desires, not the pornographers’. I want to live in that world not just for her sake but for my own, because it is that world in which I can find my own authentic hopes and dreams and desires.

We have given the pornographers far too much power to construct our sexual imaginations. It is our world, not theirs. It is our world to take back. This is not just about taking back the night, but taking back the whole day, taking back the culture’s imagination, taking back the way we see men and women and sex. If we do not, I fear that the light inside us will dim. Our hopes and dreams will be increasingly shaped by the pornographers. And our hopes for a desire based on equality, maybe even the dream of equality, may not survive. I am afraid of that.

We all need to work to make sure that does not happen. For Dynamite’s sake. For your own. For all of us.
——————————————-
Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin, a founding member of the Robert Nowar Collective, and a member of the board of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center. He is the co-author of Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality (Routledge) and author of Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (City Lights Books). He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.

“Green and Red Revolution”

2007-10-14T15:03:00.001+07:00

By Tom O'Lincoln

Original URL

Reviews:

John Bellamy Foster, Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000);
Donnella Meadows, Jorgen Randers and Dennis Meadows, Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update (White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green, 2004);
Paul Roberts, The End of Oil: The Decline of the Petroleum Economy and the Rise of a New Energy Order (London: Bloomsbury, 2004).

Last year I walked in Sumatran rainforests. It was a delight, and yet … There were almost no birds, because people steal the eggs to scratch a living. Illegal logging is chronic, and before being exported to the West, the logs travel to a plywood factory south of the provincial capital of Padang. The factory employs poor people for paltry wages. It squats menacingly at the top of beautiful Bungus Bay, where fisherfolk say pollution has reduced their catches by 90 percent. Men drag long nets across the bay, but all they catch is bits of wood.

It gets worse. This is one of the places where forest-clearing fires got out of hand in 1997 and blanketed the region with dark haze; the haze blocked the sunlight which in turn killed the coral reefs. So the tourists stay away, leading to more economic desperation, putting more pressure on the forests, the sea, the air. And we are only talking about one region of economically and ecologically miserable Indonesia, which is just one part of a crisis-ridden planet. How can we can survive, and will it mean radical changes in the way we live?

These three titles tell us what we’re up against. Limits to Growth, an update of the Club of Rome forecasts, audits just how badly the planet is damaged, offeirng scenarios for coming decades. The End of Oil is a racy account of the energy business and its social and environmental impacts. Marx’s Ecology has been with us since 2000, an authoritative guide to the old man’s ‘green’ thinking.

Limits to Growth

Some people dismiss the ‘Club of Rome’ as panic merchants. The right wing Cato Institute remembers their 1972 report this way:
The Club of Rome had just released its primal scream, Limits to Growth, which reported that the earth was rapidly running out of everything. The most famous declinist of the era, biologist Paul Ehrlich, had appeared on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson to fill Americans with fear of impending world famine and make gloomy prognostications, such as ‘If I were a gambler, I would bet even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.’

Seven years ago, by contrast, energy banker Matthew R Simmons reviewed the same report and remarked that ‘for a work that has been derisively attacked by so many energy economists, a group whose own forecasting record has not stood the test of time very well, there was nothing that I could find in the book which has so far been even vaguely invalidated.’

My reaction to the new volume is more like Simmons’. Everything in the new book seems to add up; nothing seems unreasonable. The authors don’t claim to predict the future. But they offer us some credible projections on which to base our own judgements. The outlook is grim:

It is a sad fact that humanity has largely squandered the past thirty years in futile debates and well-intentioned, but half-hearted responses to the global ecological challenge. We do not have another thirty years to dither. Much will have to change if the ongoing overshoot is not to be followed by collapse during the twenty-first century. (p. xvi)

The authors begin their main argument with a chapter on ‘exponential growth’. This might suggest a clash with Foster’s book, since Marx cut his theoretical teeth on demolishing Malthus’ theories, which said population must grow exponentially and therefore outstrip food supply. Marx’s reply was that different social contexts create very different population dynamics. Whereas Malthus blamed the poor for their own suffering; Marx blamed capitalist society.

After careful reading, I don’t think Limits to Growth is Malthusian in the strict sense. The authors’ charts do show exponential growth in population and industrial production (which may exhaust resources) and they’re certainly worried about population; but they also emphasize the social context:

… in pre-industrial societies both fertility and mortality are high, and population growth is slow. As nutrition and health services improve, death rates fall. Birthrates lag by a generation or two, opening a gap between fertility and mortality that produces rapid population growth. Finally, as lives and lifestyles evolve into the patterns of a fully industrial society, birthrates fall …(p.31)

So they recognize that ‘population problems’ are social problems. In fact, declining fertility is causing angst in 60-odd countries right now – which is one reason the United Nations expects the global population to plateau at around at 9 billion. The problem, the Limits to Growth team would still insist, is that the demands of 9 billion people may be enough to exhaust the planet.

The book asks just how serious is the depletion of sources of materials, taken together with the destruction or overwhelming of the sinks that absorb pollution. Forests, for example, are both sources and sinks: if you burn them you generate energy and release carbon, and at the same time you lose their ability to absorb the CO2 generated by industry and cars. The book traces demands on sources and sinks, considers the costs to humans, and throws up scenarios. These are complex, yet the lay reader won’t be daunted, because the authors take us through them in easy-to-read installments while beginning to suggest solutions.

Scenario One is the unlikely possibility of ‘business as usual’. If we do nothing differently, human welfare goes downhill fairly sharply in a decade or two. Under Scenario Two, if resources are more plentiful than we think, we may postpone the evil day for 20 years, but then the environmental costs catch up with us.

Later scenarios factor in pollution control technology, land yield enhancement, land erosion protection, resource efficiency technology. None makes the dilemma go away entirely. However, we can still achieve a reasonable lifestyle for all of humanity, if we act now. Along what lines? The headline answers in Limits to Growth are that we need to control population, control industrial production, and change the way we live. I think all three are deeply problematic.

Population control might seem like common sense. If there are less shoppers in Safeway, they will throw away fewer plastic bags; fewer people to keep warm in winter would mean less demand for energy. But when you look deeper, ugly problems arise. Thus the authors invite underdeveloped countries to take the lead in population reduction, because at least it’s an area where they can readily contribute. But impoverished third world people put less pressure on the planet per head than we ‘consumerist’ westerners do. India’s per capita ‘ecological footprint’ is less than 8% of the USA’s, so why is it up to Indians to have fewer babies? It’s not hard to see racist dangers along this path. The spectre of Malthus returns.

Moreover reactionary social policies are linked to reducing fertility, from forced sterilisation in India to China’s repressive one-child limit. To accept these policies legitimises the regimes that use them, yet reactionary regimes are more likely to take a slash-and-burn approach to the environment. In addition to infanticide and gender imbalance, the US National Intelligence Council reports another grim irony of China’s one-child policy: the Chinese are now madly industrialising and polluting ‘in a race to see if they can get rich before they get old. If economic growth cannot provide the capital to support its growing elderly population, China will be hard pressed to support its needs once the "one-child" generation dominates the labour market.’

Talk of reining in industrial production has its dangers too, seeming as it does to threaten workers’ jobs, which only opens up opportunities for the likes of John Howard to divide our side of politics. But there are ways to ensure both prosperity and environmental sustainability, as the authors emphasise: ‘The good news is that current high rates of throughput are not necessary to support a decent standard of living for all the world’s people.’ (p. 9, emphasis in original). How can do we do that? We’ll see a bit later.

The End of Oil?

Limits to Growth is a sober policy document. Paul Roberts’ The End of Oil offers something much racier. He has toured the planet, talking to Azerbaijani managers, Saudi ministers and renewable energy technologists, asking whether the world will run out of petroleum.

It’s not a new topic. In 1956 geophysicist M. King Hubbert predicted American oil production would peak in the early 1970s. Though derided by experts, he was right. Will the world as a whole reach ‘Hubbert’s peak’, and if so when? Harris thinks non-OPEC oil will peak by around 2015, and western rulers are nervous about depending on OPEC, particularly after the 2005 oil price spike.

No wonder Washington moved to seize Iraqi oilfields.. Roberts calls the 1991 Gulf War ‘the first military conflict in history that was entirely about oil,’ noting also that after the 2003 invasion, the Americans quickly secured the Oil Ministry while ‘hospitals, schools, utilities … were left to be burned and looted’. (p.105, 304)

He’s vaguer on the race for oil, gas and pipelines around central Asia and their connection to the 2002 Afghan war; and in fact Roberts doesn’t even come out clearly against these acts of imperial aggression. There’s nothing left wing about his book. It does however provide important facts about the economic and political sides of the environmental crisis.

Take politics. The Bush administration keeps pressing to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, with more than the obvious agenda: ‘ANWR can be used as a bargaining chip in an energy debate with far larger political stakes …. strategists have long known that the Arctic wilderness carries a far higher emotional impact among voters than does fuel efficiency …’ (p. 299-300) Congress can only manage one ‘green’ vote each year, and with the reluctant acquiescence of the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society they choose to protect ANWR rather than take the much more important step of imposing stricter fuel standards on car-makers.

The book summarises the global warming debate, surveying alternative energy strategies; and it’s convinced me big business won’t invest seriously in solar or wind power until some major shock gets their attention. The ‘renewables’ are too costly for the market to spontaneously embrace. Solar cells and wind farms are too decentralised to fit the dominant industrial paradigm, and neither guarantees power 24 hours a day. Of course there are technical fixes for all these drawbacks, they just need a lot of government-funded R&D of the kind George Bush is not going to sponsor.

But this doesn’t have to be an impasse, Roberts hopes, if governments use market mechanisms cleverly. The energy economy and its environmental consequences are an extreme case of ‘market failure’ -- as documented by researcher Joan Ogden, who calculated the ‘hidden costs’ of oil, petrol and cars ‘from well to wheels’, including health, mortality, and global warming’s consequences such as weather damage to crops. The price tag was $2006 per car. These are real costs, it’s just that society pays them rather than energy companies, car makers or owners.

One solution is to tax petrol so prices reflect total costs. Another is carbon trading. Governments combated acid rain fairly effectively by allowing companies to trade ‘pollution credits’ in sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, so why not trade carbon? The problem, which Roberts skates over, is that it’s easy for our rulers to manipulate these mechanisms. Do we trust governments not to hand credits to cronies? And in the international sphere, market arrangements can turn very ugly.

For example, the Kyoto Protocol allows western governments and corporations to earn credits for investing in projects to cut greenhouse emissions in poor countries. That could mean they dump older technology on China, while the west introduces new, clean equipment. If the old technology is "cleaner" than existing Chinese factories and power plants, the west may get greenhouse credits while the Chinese are stuck with obsolete infrastructure that won’t perform when China’s turn comes to directly reduce emissions. Thus a seemingly benign environmental program can veil an imperialist agenda.

Or consider the Bisasar Road landfill in Durban, South Africa. Under apartheid, this site filled with toxic waste, causing cancer in surrounding areas. Upon coming to power, the African National Congress promised to clean it up. Then in 2002 the World Bank proposed to Durban’s mayor that the site be left alone so that methane could be siphoned off for emissions trading under the Bank’s prototype carbon trading program. The local government would make millions, and it might make a slight dent in global warming, but as what cost to the local people? The October 2004 Durban Conference declaration trenchantly criticised the underlying capitalist logic of pollution trading: ‘History has seen attempts to commodify land, food, labour, forests, water, genes and ideas. Carbon trading follows in the footsteps of this history. Through this process … the Earth’s abillity and capacity to support a climate conducive to life and human societies is now passing into the same corporate hands that are destroying the climate.’

So we’re talking about capitalism and imperialism, in which case Karl Marx may have something to offer.

Marx’s Ecology

The San people of the Kalahari have no trouble whatever understanding the value of biodiversity. Until fairly recently … all their food, their clothing, their shelter, their medicines, their cosmetics, their playthings, their musical instruments, their hunting weapons, everything came from the productivity of their surroundings, the plants and animals on which they completely depended for a living. Why, then, is it so difficult for most of us in the industrialised nations … to grasp the significance of biodiversity? (Niles Eldridge)

The answer that we’re estranged from nature. A simple yet profound insight, and more central to Karl Marx’s thought than most Marxists have realised. Reading the Communist Manifesto we pass casually over its call for ‘abolition of the distinction between town and country’. John Bellamy Foster explains its importance. He focuses on the issue of alienation, a concept that emerged in Marx’s early polemics. The rising capitalist order denied the poor their traditional right to firewood, an aspect of the wider ‘privatisation’ of common land into the hands of the rich. This was part of turning the working people into a wage-earning proletariat, but at the same time it destroyed all their relationships with nature not mediated by private property. The labourers were estranged from the products of their labour and their environment, with everything commodified, as the Durban Declaration notes.

Just as we lose control over capital (the fruits of our own past labour) which returns as an alien power to exploit us, so we are cut adrift from our relation with nature; the ‘subjection of nature’s forces to man’ becomes the seizure of land by an exploitative minority.

Capitalism drives millions into cities where they labour for capitalist employers; while those who remain on the land are likewise forced to work for capitalist farmers. Either way, people who used to gather and grow their own food, and the materials for their own clothing, begin to purchase these things through intermediaries. Today we buy things in supermarkets, seldom asking whence they came. This threatens a crisis for humanity, because: ‘Man lives from nature, i.e. nature is his body, and he must maintain a continuing dialogue with it if he is not to die.’ (p. 72) The emancipation of labour on the economic, political and social fronts becomes inseparable from restoring workers’ organic connection to the earth.

One consequence was a drastic disruption of the cycle of nutrients. In traditional society, these had returned directly to the soil as human excrement. In Marx’s time, harvested food began to be sold to the cities on a massive scale, after which vast amounts of excrement went into urban sewers, leading to one of the great environmental crises of the age. The land, for its part, became increasingly impoverished, to the point where people plundered old battlefields looking for bones to fertilise it.

Marx learned about this from Scottish economist James Anderson, and German agricultural chemist Justus von Liebig – two ‘environmental gurus’ of the age. This breakdown had already begun to take on global proportions. Marx discussed how England exploited its neighbours’ land: ‘England has indirectly exported the soil of Ireland, without even allowing its cultivators the means for replacing the constituents of the soil.’ (p. 164). Britain went on to plunder the globe. The search for fertiliser likewise became global: in a bizarre scramble foreshadowing today’s imperialist race for oil, the United States seized 94 guano-rich islands, rocks, and cays around the world between 1856 and 1903. It was natural, therefore, for Marx to combine his concern for the environment not only with support for workers’ struggles, but also with those against imperialism and national oppression.

From his study of environmental and social questions, Marx arrived at what today we call ‘sustainability’:

Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not owners of the earth. They are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it to succeeding generations as boni patres familias [good heads of the household]. (p. 164)

A sustainable revolution?

Marx wanted a social revolution, which seems a long way from the concerns of Limits for Growth. Or is it? The latter’s authors call for a ‘sustainability revolution’, and they mean truly radical change.
Their sustainable society would be ‘interested in qualitative development, not physical expansion’ (p. 253) with radically negative growth for some:

‘Some games that amuse and consume people today, such as arms races or the accumulation of unlimited wealth, would probably no longer be feasible, respected or interesting. But there would still be games, challenges, problems to solve, ways for people to prove themselves [and live] perhaps more satisfying lives than any possible today.’ (p. 256)

So we need ‘new feedback loops, new behaviour, new knowledge, and new technology, but also new institutions, new physical structures and new powers within human beings ... Visioning meaning imagining … what you really want.

That is, what you really want, not what someone has taught you to want, and not what you have learned to be willing to settle for.’ (p. 270)

This seems a good starting point for dialogue between green and red revolutionaries.

Tom O'Lincoln has been active on the left since 1966, in the German SDS, at Berkeley and for many years in Australia. He is the author of Into the Mainstream: The Decline of Australian Communism, Years of Rage: Social Conflicts in the Fraser Era, and United We Stand: Class Struggle in Colonial Australia. He maintains the Marxist Interventions website: http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/interventions/

Capital Accumulation, Sustainability and Hamilton, Ontario: How Technology and Capitalism can Misappropriate the Idea of Sustainability

2007-10-14T12:53:00.001+07:00

Original URL

Erin Balser

One response to the environmental crisis--to climate change, natural resource depletion, species extinction, deforestation and a myriad of other ecological problems--is the idea of ‘sustainability’. Sustainability is often defined as inter- and intra- generational equity in the social, environmental, economic, moral and political spheres of society (Meadows 7). Ideologically, sustainability is a communal concept. However, in practice, the attempt to engage in sustainable lifestyles and make environmentally conscious decisions has largely fallen to the individual and through technology. As a result, the environmental crisis isolates and ostracizes various populations who cannot afford to become sustainable. By engaging in an analysis of the environmental crisis, the intersection between sustainability and capitalization, I will demonstrate how this intersection between sustainability and capitalism is potentially causing harms to communities, by examining how the emergence of environmental technologies has further oppressed the poor. This phenomenon is occurring globally and locally. The BIOX bio-diesel production plant that was recently built in Hamilton, Ontario demonstrates and its impact on the surrounding community demonstrates this.

Karl Marx developed the idea of capital accumulation in his work Capital. Capital accumulation is the constant conversion of products into means of production (715). Originating in both trade and expropriation, it arises from the constant need to realize surplus value. According to Marx and more recently, Rosa Luxemburg, this cycle perpetuates social inequality and instability. Marx scholars David Harvey declares that “market liberalization- the credo of the liberals and the neo-liberals- will not produce a harmonious state in which everyone will be better off. It will instead produce ever greater levels of social inequality” (144) and “produce serious and growing instabilities cumulating in chronic crises of overaccumulation” (144). This process begins at the point called private accumulation. For Marx, this was the initial divorce of labourers from the means of production (716). It was not the start of capital accumulation, but an external point which mechanized it. Every new market or commodity that capital accumulation subsumes can be traced back to this point of primitive accumulation.

Capitalism is constantly looking for new things to commodify. Either by subsuming not-capital markets or by intensifying internal markets, capitalism thrives on creating, then subsuming the other. Capitalism is constantly expanding, capital accumulating is never-ending. Marx states “a precondition of production based on capital is therefore the production of a constantly widening sphere of circulation, whether the sphere is directly expanded or whether more points within it are created as points of production” (407). Capitalism is not a simplistic linear system in which subsumes singular items. Rather it’s a diverse web that is continuously expanding and trapping things. These crises can vary in size, expression and materialization.

This supposition insinuates the notion of crisis. In Empire, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri declare that “crisis indicate[s] a passage, which is the turning point in every systematic cycle of accumulation, from a first phase of material expansion (investment in production) to a second phase of financial expansion (including speculation)” (238). With every crisis, it appears as if this cycle of capitalization reaches its limit. Yet, the reinvention of capitalization ensures that this is not the case. The environmental crisis is no different, it exists at a threshold in which constant new technologies, policies or ideas push it past these limitations, and deferring the apocalypse for yet another day. This construction of crisis only further perpetuates the cycle of capitalization. Hardt & Negri recognize this inherent contradiction when they declare “it is logical to assume that there would come a time when these two moments of the cycle of accumulation, realization and capitalization, come into direct conflict and undermine each other” (227). They do feel however, that “this contradictory tension is present throughout the development of capital, but it is revealed in full view only at the limit, at the point of crisis- when capital is faced with the finitude of the humanity and the earth” (228; my emphasis). Thus, the only crisis which might destroy this cycle is one of environmental origin, when the social constructions of humanity finally reared head against the limitations of the earth’s natural resources. While this has been the threat for decades, the environmental crisis has continually evaded this and reinvented itself along the lines of the cycle of capitalization and commodification. Instead of ending this cycle, it has only perpetuated it.

While sustainable practices existed for centuries in indigenous cultures and traditional agriculture (Hawken 22), sustainability as an environmental buzzword is relatively new. The most common definition of sustainability is from Brundtland Commission’s Our Common Future: “sustainable development is the development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (9). The Commission developed two key concepts: “the concept of ‘needs’, in particular the essential needs of the world’s poor, to which the overriding priority should be given” and “the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment’s ability to meet present and future needs” (11). While these concepts supposedly establish sustainable practices, they remain dependant on defining these ‘limitations’, which are determined by ‘technology and social organization’. Thus, sustainability is the interrelationship between ‘human needs’ and ‘human productive capacities’ (Norton 21). Where does the environment fit into this definition? Are there any limitations on these ‘human productive capacities’? Is technological innovation the only limitation? The environment is a passive element; it seemingly imposes no limitations that cannot be overcome by ‘technology and social organization’. What the Brundtland Commission resulted in a vague, human centered definition that does not recognize the external limits on the human systems. To return to Hardt & Negri for a moment, crisis occurs at the moment such limitations are realized. Yet these crises are a natural component to the process of capitalization. They declare that “capital does not function within the confines of a fixed territory and population, but always overflows and internalizes new spaces” (Hardt & Negri 221). By reinventing sustainability as a technological issue, internalizing these new spaces becomes a simple process of technological innovation, through which human needs are met.

Donella Meadows attempts to address the Bruntland Commission’s limitations in her book, Limits to Growth: “a sustainable society is one that can persist over generations, one that is far- seeing enough, flexible enough, and wise enough not to undermine either its physical or social systems of support” (Meadows 8). This definition, too, recognizes the importance of intergenerational equity. The inherent difference between Meadows and the Bruntland Report is that one recognizes how external systems- namely the finite nature of environmental resources- influence human’s capacity to build technology, infrastructure and bolster the current economic system. However, recognizing these physical limitations has not hindered the technological reinvention of sustainability.

Paul Hawken wrote The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability and Natural Capital in an attempt to respond to these issues. Both of these works adamantly claim that we cannot escape capitalism. Hawken declares

No ‘plan’ to reverse environmental degradation can be enacted if it requires a wholeseale change in the dynamics of the market. We have to work with who we are- which includes our strong instinct to shop the market and buy products of comparable quality at the lowest price (Hawken, Ecology xv).

Hawken’s interpretation of the environmental crisis and of sustainability can be interpreted as a practical and realistic approach. It attempts to work within the systems at hand in order to create change as opposed to constantly fighting them. However, by not recognizing the problems and limitations of capitalism for the environment, and for the human population, he is merely validating the system and all the solutions found within it. In Natural Capital, Hawken “explore[s] the lucrative opportunities for businesses in an era of approaching environmental limits” (7). This book repackages environmentalist ideals and the concept of sustainability directly into capital rhetoric. It outlines four points businesses need to follow in order to become environmentally responsible:

-Radically increase the productivity of resource use.
-Shift to biologically inspired production with closed loops, no waste, and no toxicity.
-Shift the business model away from the making and selling of "things" to providing the service that the "thing" delivers.
-Reinvest in natural and human capital (11).

This validation of capitalism by such influential environmentalist writers, only further perpetuates the cycle of capitalism and belief in it. The most recent manifestation of this discourse is Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. He, too, finds the answers in technology, in democracy and in capitalism. These works encourage seeking answers to sustainability in technology and resource efficiency and effectiveness. Sustainability is a process about “coming to terms with sustainability in all its deeply rich ecological, social, ethical and economic dimensions” (O’Riordan & Voisey 32; my emphasis). Sustainability is no longer about the salvation of nature, but the prolonging of human life and human social and economic systems, namely capitalism. And this is done, not only through technological advancement and the capitalization of environmental solutions, but the perpetuation of the sustainability discourse that supports these processes, the individualization of sustainability.

Bio-diesel is an alternative ‘clean’ fuel that is becoming an increasing popular alternative to regular diesel fuel. It is designed to work effectively in traditional diesel engines. Bio-diesel is the conversion of vegetable and animal fat into usable fuel (Pahl 13). Bio-diesel is considered sustainable because it is reusing vegetable and animal residue often found the in food production industry. It is also considered renewable because of the short life cycle of corn plants, which is the primary source for bio-diesel. Use of bio-diesel results in lower emissions and a longer engine life, due to the lower restraint bio-diesel puts on engines. Mass production of bio-diesel must adhere to strict policies and regulations put in place by the various levels of government and the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) guidelines (Pahl 32). While the creation of such regulations are designed to preserve personal health and safety, it has mechanized a big business bio-diesel industry, the building of large bio-diesel plants and the large scale sales and shipment of mass quantities of bio-diesel. What began as a small time, agricultural project, which hoped to maximize the efficiency of agricultural practices, has become a huge environmental business, designed to save the environment and help consumers feel good about the types of products they are purchasing (Pahl 47).

Mass produced bio-diesel is more expensive than traditional diesel fuel, due to the limited production and shipment of the product (Pahl 51). While the price of bio-diesel is expected to decline with time, it is currently a difficult to access product for most consumers, unless it is self-made. One of the largest proponents of bio-diesel is the multi-national company BIOX Corporation. BIOX was incorporated in Canada in 2000, and has grown rapidly ever since. BIOX was incorporated to create high quality, accessible and affordable bio-diesel for environmentally concerned consumers. In September 2004, BIOX announced that they were going to build the first commercial scale bio-diesel production plant in Canada in Hamilton, Ontario. Specifically, this project was to be built in the North End of Hamilton (BIOX).

Hamilton has one of the highest incidents of low income per household in Ontario (StatsCan), most of which is concentrated in the North End of Hamilton (Neufeld 17). The North End of Hamilton borders Lake Ontario and is where most of Hamilton’s major industries, including the steel mills of StelCo and DofasCo exist (Neufeld 19). While Hugo Neufeld paints a vibrant picture of the North End community in his book The North End Lives- he joyfully notes a Hamilton Spectator caption that read- “the North End of Hamilton is a complex mix of grit and gritty characters, tough problems, and big hearted neighbours” (Spectator as quoted in Neufeld 17), his stories are laced with the themes of poverty and helplessness. The North End is where the poor and the oppressed reside, where joblessness and homelessness are fairly common problems (Neufeld 22).

The proposed site for the BIOX plant in the North End of Hamilton was directly across from residential homes. The proposed location of this plant was only a few hundred feet from several homes in the area. The BIOX plant negatively impacted the community from the moment it was proposed. First, the site selected was community green space. Second, the constant tremors resulted in severe damage to several homes in the area, including near- collapsing chimneys, jammed doors and windows, cracked walls and ceilings, and splintered foundations. Third, making bio-diesel involves the storing of highly flammable chemicals, sulphuric acid and ‘BIOX blend’. BIOX’s storage facility for the Oliver Street site was within one hundred feet of residents’ homes, which violates many health and safety regulations, within the municipal, provincial and federal governments. Finally, with the completion of the site, it is now a constant source of noise, light and air pollution. This constant exposure has the potential to impact the health and safety of the entire community.

While the BIOX plant represents the ecological integrity and economic prosperity that is deemed so important for sustainability, it is certainly at the sacrifice of social equality. The introduction of the plant in the community has diminished the quality of life of the residents, exposed them to harsh and potentially harmful chemicals, and to a variety of constant pollutants. This exploitation was done for the sake of sustainability, in order to promote a more environmentally friendly fuel, and to appease the consumers of bio-diesel. They can rest easy because their consumer choices are more environmentally conscious and more sustainable. Yet it was done at the sacrifice of the poor. When sustainability is reinvented as technology and as individual choices, it creates a divide in the population along the lines of class. Not only is the wealthy engaging in sustainable solutions, their decisions to do so impact the lives of those who cannot afford such luxuries. The BIOX plant is large, unattractive and potentially dangerous. Even if it adheres to the most stringent governmental and industrial regulations, it has taken away some of the quality of life in the North End. Neufeld was so proud of the community and liveliness he found here, despite the rampant poverty (27). How can that dynamic remain unchanged if it is the prime development location for industry? Who is going to tell these people why?

These issues are laced with contradictions and complications. Sustainability claims to be a communal concept which requires new and innovative ways to look at the world. Yet, in practice it has the potential to become about individual decisions and technological innovations to delay and reinvent the ecological limitations imposed on our current lifestyle. Sustainability discourse simultaneously blames capitalism for the current environmental problems and looks to it for solutions. Sustainability also claims to promote social equality and economic prosperity, yet, again in practice, it oppresses and ostracizes specific populations in order to attain its goal. Sustainability can demonstrate how Marx’s idea of capital accumulation can manipulate the end result and how it subsumes even the most unlikely ideologies and practices. The situation in the North End is not, and never was, the intention of promoting sustainable practices and technologies. Rather, it became a tangential and necessary victim to ensure that bio-diesel production was efficient and the product was affordable. This phenomenon is not unique. There are several local, national and international circumstances which mirror the situation in Hamilton. However, this creates a moral conflict: is it right to save the environment, or to save the poor? How do we decide? Who gets to decide? Until we can reinvent the practice of sustainability so it mirrors its ideological construct of community, morality, equality and prosperity instead of technology-driven innovation, capitalist-oriented motives this situation will only become more and more frequent as we constantly look for the answers to the environmental problems within technology.

Works Cited
Brundtland Commission. Our Common Future: The World Commission on Environment and Development. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Gore, Al. An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It. New York: Rodale Press, Incorporated, 2006.
Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri. Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000.
Harvey, David. The New Imperialism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Hawken, Paul, Amory Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins. Natural Capital: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution. London: EarthScan, 1999.
Hawken, Paul. Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability. New York: Harpers Collins Publishers, 1994.
Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981.
Meadows, Donella. Beyond the Limits. Post Mills, Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 1992.
Neufeld, Hugo. The North End Lives: A Journey Through Poverty Terrain. Herald Press: Waterloo, Ontario, 2006.
Norton, Bryan G. Searching for Sustainability: Interdisciplinary Essays in the Philosophy of Conservation Biology. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
O’Riordan, T. and Henry Voisey. The Politics of Agenda 21 in Europe. London: EarthScan, 1998
Pahl, Greg. Biodiesel: Growing a New Energy Economy. Chelsea Green Pub: White River Junction, 2005.
Rutherford, Paul. “The Entry of Life into History.” Discourses of the Enviroment. Ed. Eric Darier. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999.
Alternative Energy. Accessed at: http://store.altenergystore.com/Solar-Electric-Panels/Roofing-Solar-Panels/c680/. Accessed on: 2006-12-06.
BIOX Corporation. Accessed at: http://www.bioxcorp.com/. Accessed on: 2006-12-06.
Saskatchewan Organic Directorate. Accessed at: http://www.saskorganic.com/about_organic_food/why_organic_food_costs_more.hml. Accessed on: 2006-12-06.
Statistics Canada. “Incidence of low income among the population living in private households, by census metropolitan area (1996 and 2001 Censuses).” Date modified: 2005-01-10. Accessed at: http://www40.statcan.ca/l01/cst01/famil60g.htm Accessed on: 2006-12-06.

Corporeal Capital: Theorizing the Division of Body Parts under Global Capitalism

2007-10-14T12:47:00.001+07:00

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Sarah Blacker

While in the academy…‘the body’ is generally treated as a text or a trope or as a metaphor that is ‘good to think’ with, in the larger society and in the global economy ‘the body’ is generally viewed and treated as an object, albeit a highly fetishized one, and as a ‘commodity’ that can be bartered, sold or stolen. -- Nancy Scheper-Hughes (“Bodies for sale,” 1)

This paper will bring the practice of the global trade in human organs to bear on a discussion of recent theorizations of biopolitics in order to reveal the way in which this practice announces the urgency of a re-theorization of our political subjectivity under global capitalism (Cazdyn 5-6). Even in the throes of radical commodification, the body manages to continue to occupy a space in which it demands special consideration through articulations of residual beliefs regarding the sanctity of the body. Of particular interest is the way in which this movement to protect the ‘sacred integrity’ or ‘wholeness’ of the body at all costs constitutes an unusual moral intervention in late capitalism and interrupts the process of the commodification of the body. Why does this moralistic discourse emerge in the context of corporeal dispossession while economic dispossession fails to elicit the faintest whisper of moral outcry? An examination of the global organ trade, a literal undoing of the body politic under late capitalism, facilitates the construction of a concrete portrait functioning as a sort of autopsy of the processes of dispossession at work in this practice and will shed light on more insidious and less visible and immediately theorizable forms of dispossession. By looking (non-metaphorically) at the politics of corporeal movement under biopolitics and bioeconomics and the way in which bodies are divided into saleable parts under global capitalism, it is possible to develop a modus operandi that will allow us to identify, understand, and address these more covert forms of dispossession.

A description of the global black market trade in organs in its current incarnation will not be a focus of this paper as this practice is an extremely complex and multifaceted one, taking on different forms in different regions, thereby resisting summarization. Rather, this discussion will work from Nancy Scheper-Hughes’ contention that within the global organ trade, organs are distributed in an identical manner to all other types of resources under late capitalism (“Bodies for sale” 4). According to Scheper-Hughes, “the flow of organs follows the modern routes of capital: from South to North, from Third to First World, from poor to rich, from black and brown to white, and from female to male” (“Global traffic” 193). Working from the premise of a general tendency within which wealth consistently overdetermines the body, this paper will interrogate the politics of movement in this context in which organs occupy the unique position of life-giving capital that is widely “needed” and desired, but cannot be legally purchased.

A discussion of this practice requires that organs be viewed not only within the context of late capitalism, but that we view organs as unmediated capital. The global organ trade is symptomatic of the way power is working under capitalism to maximize production in which body parts themselves are transformed into capital. The human body becomes divisible and destructible; the productive value of the body no longer lies in its potential for labour, but instead in its components. This paper seeks to identify the repercussions of a practice that enacts a one-directional allocation of organs as capital, looking to the methods of selection employed by biopolitics and bioeconomics that result in the extension of some lives and the abbreviation of others through the organ trade under global capitalism.

As organ transplantation increasingly becomes the standard of care or norm in the treatment of a multitude of diseases, the market value of organs has skyrocketed in relation to the productive limitations defining this practice. With the exception of the ability to produce animal organs for human usage, as of yet there exists no standard practice by which to procure organs for this purpose other than through the willed donation or sale on the part of the divisible body, to take place either during life or following death. In the case of the live donor or seller, the procurement of the organ is viewed as an exchange through which the donor or seller forfeits biological capital and for this reason must be compensated for his or her loss. The normalization of this practice creates an unprecedented demand for human organs as well as an unprecedented moral directive that those who can afford to do so must attempt to extend their lives, by any available means, through the procurement of organs for transplantation (Waldby and Mitchell 187). As Catherine Waldby and Robert Mitchell write, there is now “a cultural desire for, and sense of entitlement to, self-regeneration among the aging populations of the wealthy North” (162). This drive is symptomatic of the reach of what Foucault calls regulatory biopower in that this practice reflects the repercussions of advancements in medical research and technology within a globalized world defined by a radical inequality in economic conditions through which to “make live” (Foucault 241).

For the normalization of the practice of living donor organ transplantation to take root within global neoliberal capitalist culture, a fiction of scarcity had to be instituted to simultaneously instill fear in potential organ consumers and a sense of opportunity and profitability in potential organ vendors. As Eric Cazdyn writes, “the logic of the market requires a withholding—or even a destruction—of any surplus goods…so as not to push prices so low that they jeopardize the integrity of the system itself” (26). Dependent upon the ideological entrenchment of this fiction of scarcity in organs available for transplant, the medical discourse of organ transplantation constructs the practice as the sole mode of treatment on the table for discussion, unrivalled in its efficacy, rather than as an elective practice and merely one of several treatment options (White 25). In this context of “invented needs and artificial scarcities” (Scheper-Hughes, “Bodies for sale” 3), there is no foreseeable reason why patients would not prefer the option of transplantation to alternate treatments. The relations of power structuring the transplantation process coercively “intervene to make live” (Foucault 248) through the cultural imperative to extend life at all costs by means of, within this specific sector, the procurement of organs for transplantation.

Introducing what he calls “a ‘biopolitics’ of the human race” (243), Foucault asserts that this new “technology of power” (242) is exercised on a larger scale than was disciplinary power, shaping “a global mass that is affected by overall processes characteristic of birth, death, production, illness, and so on” (242-243). Addressing these biological processes “at the level of their generality” (246) as well as “a whole series of related economic and political problems” (243), biopolitics “is applied not to man-as-body but to the living man, to man-as-living-being; ultimately, if you like, to man-as-species” (242). Biopolitics determines the conditions for life for “a new body, a multiple body, a body with so many heads that, while they might not be infinite in number, cannot necessarily be counted” (245). Of pertinence for this discussion is the manner in which biopolitics works to “incapacitate individuals, put them out of circuit or neutralize them” (244) by way of managing the “relations between the human race” (245). In contrast to disciplinary power as it functioned under the sovereign nation-state—actively killing some while passively allowing others to live at the level of individual bodies (241)—the “massifying” regulatory power of biopolitics actively ensures continued life for some while passively allowing death for others on the international scale of the human species as a whole (247). Taken at face value, this biopolitics makes the rich live through the indoctrination of the belief that extending life through organ transplantation is not an elective decision but an unquestioned path of action, and lets the poor die through the creation of conditions for life that drive poverty-stricken organ-possessors to sell their means to biological life.

Foucault writes that the regulatory power of biopolitics works “to improve life by eliminating accidents, the random element, and deficiencies” (248). I argue, however, that the regulatory power we see manifested in the current operation of the global organ trade works only to improve life that occupies a dominant position within the global flow of capital. The tenure of this form of life is extended through organ transplantation, while the corporeal material required to extend these lives is procured from the subservient form of life which endlessly contributes to the economic system from which they cannot escape through their labour, often without even receiving a living wage in return. How does the ideal of individual autonomy and entrepreneurship as central to neoliberal culture fit into this? At first glance, it seems as though the population from which organs are procured are quietly relegated to a state of exception—a system in which autonomy and responsibility for one’s own livelihood is forced upon us all, that is, all except this population as standing reserve. However, even this obviously exploited population is subsumed into the neoliberal discourse of individual autonomy and responsibility for one’s own destiny through the insistence that giving would-be organ sellers the opportunity to improve their financial status through entering this exchange of capital from which they would otherwise be prohibited to participate is somehow giving this population the promise of an otherwise unattainable upward mobility.

The global organ trade constructs a lack of organs available for transplant as the enemy or threat to the human population or man-as-species (Foucault 256). As Foucault writes, “the enemies who have to be done away with are not adversaries in the political sense of the term; they are threats, either external or internal, to the population and for the population” (256). In the context of the global organ trade, the enemy is not a “bad” or “inferior race” (255). Instead, the enemy is the death that threatens to rob the global economy of its main contributors to the accumulation of capital; more specifically, the enemy is the lack of resources through which these lives can be extended and fortified. Foucault’s theorization of racism as justification for murder is inadequate to explain the process of human exploitation occurring within the global organ trade. The violence inflicted upon organ-supplying populations is not predicated on assumptions of inferiority of race. Instead, this exploitation is denounced through neoliberal narratives pronouncing the infallibility of the ideal of autonomy and the ‘generous’ provision of opportunity for economic advancement. Working towards “the elimination of the biological threat to…the species” (Foucault 256), the global organ trade has worked to eliminate the threat of borders closed to the trade of organs, thus eliminating the threat to the survival of the segment of the species with the power to dictate the survival of the species as a whole under global capitalism. The creation of sites of production for these ‘desperately needed’ organs adheres to the rules of limitless accumulation: organs are simply procured from any site of economic deprivation and desperation featuring an international airport.

In a neoliberal global market economy driven by consumer desire and a model of subjectivity in which individuals are defined solely as consumers, the consumer rarely balks at the labour practices leading to the satisfaction of desire. Why, then, does the consumer cringe at the thought of the desperation leading individuals to sell organs? As Scheper-Hughes writes, we “can all too easily fall prey to an uncritical moralizing rhetoric, a knee-jerk reaction against body commodification to which still attaches fairly ‘primitive’ sentiments of bodily integrity and sacredness which demand that the body be treated as an exception” (“Bodies for sale” 3). Where to draw the line demarcating which possessions should and should not be sold out of economic desperation? As Lesley Sharp questions, “[c]an or should we hold sway over the body’s parts if they are of value on the open market?” (49). Why does the affluent Western observer of the organ trade value biological bodies with more fervour and protectiveness than are mobilized in response to the lack of economic or material conditions that allow the body to live in extreme poverty? Today, we hardly flinch when we hear the daily toll of lives lost in Iraq, but hearing about the sheer numbers of Iraqis driven to sell their organs by an unemployment rate as high as 70 percent (Jarabi) and for as appallingly little compensation as $700 (Al Jibouri and Freeman) gives us pause.

Cazdyn also warns against falling into the trap of moralizing, asserting that this discourse can distract us from the crucial question raised by processes unfolding under bioeconomics: what can these processes in their current incarnations tell us about “the general transformation of power underway today”? (18). Viewing the global organ trade as symptomatic of what he calls bioeconomics, “an emerging global ideology…that exceeds various nationalisms and that feeds off of the current logic of contemporary capitalism” (15), Cazdyn argues that though related to bioeconomics, eugenics and biopolitics cannot adequately describe political subjectivity under global capitalism (16). He makes a distinction between biopolitics and bioeconomics, asserting that biopolitics works “toward constituting national subjects from the body up” under the nation-state, bioeconomics flourishes under global capitalism, “constituting global subjects who are at the mercy of their diseased bodies and can appeal to no one save the most impotent NGOs” (Cazdyn 16). The economic mechanism of control instituted by bioeconomics is entirely determined by the forces mobilized to drive capitalism in general, “scarcity, sustainability, and profit,” but in service of a greater goal: “to set in motion an ideological justification for the lack of democracy” (Cazdyn 18). This justification is often articulated as follows: ‘sure, it would be nice to extend medical services and other social programs to everyone regardless of inability to pay, but if we did so, our economy would collapse, silly!’

The bio under Cazdyn’s bioeconomics is defined by an economic equation through which health is positioned as directly proportional to wealth, and suffering inversely proportional to ability to pay for medical treatment. Put crudely, those who have access to the capital required to ward off death will live, while those cut off from the flow of capital who are subject to suffering and disease are so often cut off from the medical treatment available to those who can pay. Inequality is inherent to the logic of bioeconomics, an economic system “based on the unapologetic logic of the capitalist market” that “is not at liberty to suspend the rule of profit and expansion under any circumstance” (Cazdyn 16). There are no exceptions to the rule; health is bought and sold like any other commodity. The logic is infuriatingly simple and straightforward; this partially explains the moral outrage emerging in response to organ sales. There exists a residual belief that health and the physical body should somehow escape capitalism, that they should be treated as an exception and not be determined and distributed by economic affordability. However, capitalism as an economic system will not permit this exception: as Cazdyn suggests, “so many are dying not because capitalism is failing, but because it is succeeding, because it is fulfilling its logic” (17).

The advent of the global organ trade is sometimes perceived as a positive development, reflecting the view that globalization should be celebrated for its extension of economic opportunity to otherwise excluded and un-coincidentally poverty-stricken populations. This logic suggests that both organ vendor and organ recipient benefit from the exchange: the organ vendor received much-needed cash in exchange for surgery while the organ recipient purchases as otherwise unattainable restoration of life, thus enabling continued accumulation. The global organ trade ensures that the poor are no longer excluded from the global market economy. Participation in global trade is no longer inaccessible to these populations. Instead, participation becomes coercive as the trade continues to expand and populations become increasingly economically deprived, and therefore, desperate to acquire the means to ongoing material life even if this acquisition threatens their own personal means to ongoing corporeal life. Organ vendors are included in global trade, though only by means of exploitation. As Deleuze writes, “[m]an is no longer man enclosed, but man in debt” (6). The problem posed by this inclusion of populations valued only for their exploitability in an exchange of capital is the threat posed by the possibility that the exploitable will acquire too much capital, enough to relieve this desperation that is the very condition of inclusion. To guard against this threat that the position of the exploitable be measurably improved through the trade, the process is surveilled in order to protect a delicate balance of the economic imbalance. This is a process of policing to ensure the mono-directionality of capital’s flow. As Eugene Thacker notes, “[t]he problem of security for biopolitics is the problem of creating boundaries that are selectively permeable” (27).

Étienne Balibar suggests that the late capitalist system cannot survive any limitation being placed upon its propensity towards accumulation through exploitation, and for this reason “elimination or extermination has to take place, ‘passive’ if possible, ‘active’ if necessary” (129). The form assumed by this process in the context of the global organ trade is a ‘production’ of ‘development’ of “specific populations” into “viable donors” in what Lawrence Cohen calls a “biopolitics of suppression” (11). In order to allow global capitalism to fulfill its destiny, the process of accumulation must not be hindered by a pesky shortage in organs! In response to this threat, organ donors are produced as the exploitable, available-to-be-killed population required by “the system” to ensure its survival (Balibar 129). As Balibar contends, material conditions inadequate for the proliferation of life are reproduced for the sole purpose of exploitation; this is certainly the case for the “superfluous” populations from which organs purchased by wealthy ‘Westerners’ are excised (128). Balibar argues that all forms of seemingly disconnected discrimination and exclusion taking place concurrently and robbing populations of the means of life must be viewed in relation to their overall ramifications (128). As Balibar writes, these “zones” in which donors are produced amount to systems of indirect murder: “In the face of the cumulative effects of different forms of extreme violence or cruelty that are displayed in what I called the ‘death zones’ of humanity, we are led to admit that the current mode of production and reproduction has become a mode of production for elimination” (Balibar 128). An examination of the global organ trade illuminates this process and reveals the strict biopolitical division of the world’s population through the conditional investment in donor populations in order to excise the desired resources while maintaining these populations’ dependency. In this sense, the populations existing within the “death zones” cannot properly be called life under a global economic system that defines life as accumulation while simultaneously requiring these excluded populations as the possibility for accumulation.

Zygmunt Bauman notes that security is maintained under global capitalism through a strict regulation of movement and travel. A discussion of the role of travel in the context of the global organ trade is especially pertinent considering that the enormous distances traveled by organs sold for international transplantation and the speed of this travel are unprecedented for medical interventions. The phenomenon known as “transplant tourism” exemplifies the dual and contradictory movement invoked by globalization as articulated by Bauman: “[g]lobalization divides as much as it unites; it divides as it unites” (2). Bauman describes globalization as a process within which some are liberated from previously-constrained spaces by newfound access to movement and travel on a global scale, while others are imprisoned within increasingly constrained spaces. Arguing that the “the freedom to move” is “the main stratifying factor” (2), Bauman terms the first group, “the increasingly global and extraterritorial elites” (2), tourists, while the second group, simultaneously lacking mobility and enabling that enjoyed by the first group, are the vagabonds (92).

Bauman’s description of the relation between the two groups suggests a type of Darwinian natural selection. He writes that the ‘vagabonds’ are “the mutants of postmodern evolution, the monster rejects of the brave new species…the waste of the world which has dedicated itself to tourist services” (92). Indeed, trapped within a space increasingly devoid of resources to support life, the ‘vagabonds’, driven by desperation to sell organs, do become an ‘inviable’ form of life viewed as a standing reserve by the organ-purchasing ‘tourists’ who possess the capital required to extract the coveted biological capital in the form of organs from the ‘vagabonds.’ As Waldby and Mitchell remark, “‘spare’ kidneys in third world bodies are resignified as a negotiable surplus” (162). Thus, Bauman insists that the opportunity for continuing ‘tourism’ is dependent upon a continued stationary gridlock of the ‘vagabonds.’ Within the bodies of the ‘vagabonds,’ the organs are viewed as wasted; capitalism dictates that the organs would be better put to use within the bodies of the global elite, in which case the organs are mobilized to work towards accumulation, while they were seen to be ‘wasting away’ in the bodies of the ‘vagabonds.’ However, this form of accumulation is of course limited, not limitless. The supply of ‘vagabond’ organs is finite, and as long as ‘tourist’ lives are extended while those of the ‘vagabonds’ are cut short, the organ-supplying ‘vagabond’ population will eventually be killed off completely. Does this practice constitute “biocolonialism” (Nelkin and Andrews 33)?

Now that the divisible human body has entered the globalized market under late capitalism, body parts are distributed in a manner identical to all other commodities on the world market: they are sold to the highest bidder. However apt this description of organs functioning in the global market as commodities may be, Waldby and Mitchell caution that organs offer long-term benefits, unlike many commodities, and this factor must be taken into consideration (177). Waldby and Mitchell assert that organs are “extremely complex forms of generative value that are not used and consumed in the usual sense but incorporated by the recipient as the condition of continuing life” (177). This examination of the global organ trade reveals the way in which particular forms of power allow medical technology and discourses promoting the extension of life at all costs on economically deprived populations under global capitalism.

Ronald Munson attempts to justify the asymmetrical allocation of organs based on universal neoliberal commitment to self-determination and autonomy, despite the disparity in income level – there are no exceptions to this commitment to autonomy, no matter the stakes of inability to pay. Through what Cazdyn would call “a simple economic analysis…to justify human suffering” (17), Munson offers a now ubiquitous argument for a legalized and regulated system to replace the black market organ trade. As Scheper-Hughes writes, “the neo-classical economists of the global economy, and a new class of bioethicists following their lead, now argue that free markets, including body markets, are liberating in their valuing of individual choice, autonomy and the impersonality of the economic exchanges” (“Bodies for sale” 3). Munson’s argument is at bottom informed by an assumption that we should be driven to eradicate disease and ward off death by procuring organs for transplantation from living donors, rather than relying solely on cadaver organs and allowing those who are unable to secure cadaver organs for transplantation to die. Munson argues that in order “to reduce human misery and save lives, we should try to increase the number of living kidney donors” by creating a regulated system through which organ ‘donors’ are financially compensated (116). Acknowledging that organ sales within this system would continue to benefit the rich while exploiting the poor, Munson argues that this is not symptomatic of the organ trade itself but of larger problems of global inequality (117). As he writes:

in a just world…people wouldn’t have to sell a kidney to meet the basic needs of their children. We don’t live in such a world, however, and the relevant question is whether, in the society we inhabit right now, we should condemn paying living donors as unethical and prohibit the practice (117).

In defense of this argument, Munson cites “our commitment to allowing individuals to be self-determining” (117), thus appealing to the neoliberal ideal of individual autonomy. Munson suggests that a failure to legalize compensated organ donation would amount to a stripping of individuals’ rights to mobilize their economically-valued possessions in the form of corporeal property in times of need.

The obvious counter-argument to Munson is that the organ sellers do not actually exercise autonomy and freedom of choice by voluntarily offering up their organs for sale but are instead coerced to sell their organs out of economic desperation. Autonomy remains ever-elusive to those living in “the social and economic contexts that make the choice to sell a kidney in an urban slum of Calcutta or in a Brazilian favela”; this ‘choice’ is not selected from among a variety of options at hand, but rather is made out of desperation and is “anything but a free and autonomous one” (Scheper-Hughes “Global traffic” 197). Scheper-Hughes writes that the consumer demands of the affluent global North enforce the dominance of an economic valuation of organs as means to financial survival for the working poor who would otherwise view their organs as sacred and indissociable parts of the self but are forced to defy these cultural beliefs in order to survive (“Global traffic” 210-211). Waldby and Mitchell suggest that we must avoid paternalism at all costs, and that disallowing legal and “fair” compensation for organ vendors inevitably constitutes paternalism (173). They ask why it is that we feel more comfortable with the moral coercion required in order to procure organs from related donors in gift system of organ transplantation than with the economic coercion required to procure organs from the poor (Waldby and Mitchell 173). It could be argued that related donors do not exercise autonomy and freedom of choice when agreeing to have organs removed for the benefit of family members. This desperation or coercion can be seen as moral or relational rather than economic, although economic factors can also play a role in these decisions.

Would the establishment of a regulated and controlled global market monitoring the trade in human organs result in decreased exploitation of the economically desperate? Could a system be created through which organs would be allocated on the basis of medical need rather than ability to pay through the establishment of an international grants system? If a grant system was instituted, how would organs be allocated? What criterion of allocation would be utilized: merit, lottery, health, utility, age, ‘need’? How would the ‘market price’ of organs be determined? Would a fluctuating price for something so ‘sacred’ and ‘priceless’ as a human organ ever be widely accepted? If the market price for organs is determined in relation to the highest price offered for the commodity on the world stage, it would become like the international oil market in that the highest bidder would set the price. These questions will only become more urgent in coming years as the baby boomer generation ages. These consumers, armed with wealth and a fierce desire to fend off death, will create an enormous demand for organs. Demand for every commodity has been transformed by the impact of this generation. Why would organs be an exception to this rule? The prospect of an enlarged market suggests increased exploitation if a mechanism to reverse the current pattern of distribution is not instituted. Today, the economic capacity of the organ recipient determines the market value of organs. It will become imperative to create a biopolitics that can institute a barrier to the distribution of organs based on wealth as it is likely impossible to reverse the cultural valuation of medical interventions in the service of extending life at all costs.

The logic of capitalism and its engine, biopower, dictate that distribution is identical in every sphere of life; thus, the mono-directional global trade of organs is of interest due to its unprecedented division of bodies, rather than the direction in which these body parts flow. An examination of the global organ trade allows us to concretely visualize “the material transformation of the paradigm of rule” of biopolitics (Hardt and Negri 22). Driven solely towards limitless accumulation, capitalism redistributes organs so that those contributing to the accumulation of wealth are outfitted with the means to extended life while non-contributors draining wealth from the system through usage of social services are stripped of their organs. The distribution pattern put in place by global organ trade is demonstrative of the status of divisible bodies under global capitalism, exemplifying the way in which radical inequality arising out of this system must be viewed as “not only a political matter, but also a biological matter” (Thacker 27). The practice of the global organ trade reproduces the systemic inequality that is inherent to capitalism directly and without mediation on the individual, physical body, rather than indirectly through economic deprivation and its eventual biological repercussions. For this reason, it is pertinent to speak so concretely of biopolitics and bioeconomics through a discussion of the global organ trade and to focus critical attention on this practice in an attempt to bring forth possibilities for change.

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