The East Timor question

Paul Hainsworth & Stephen McCloskey (eds)

Examines some of the key aspects of Western complicity in the invasion and subsequent annexation of East Timor by Indonesia, and the West's prioritisation of strategic interests over human rights concerns there. Well-known commentators and activists (such as Peter Carey, Carmel Budiardjo, Charles Scheiner, Jim Aubrey and Pedro Pinto Leite) provide up-to-date analysis, including Indonesia's tentative steps towards democracy after Suharto's downfall.

London/NY: I B Tauris, 2000, ISBN 1-86064-408-2 (pbk), 222pp, avail: www.ibtauris.com

Indonesia: An eyewitness account

Michael Maher

From a journalist's perspective, much of Asia seems to lurch from revolution to revolution. And there was never going to be a show quite like Indonesia when it blew. Michael Maher's racy, eyewitness account sets out to give the armchair viewer a stripped-down, nuts-and-bolts version. He correctly questions whether the events of May 1998 should be considered a revolution in the true sense. The reader is taken to interviews with the Jakarta elite, as well on tours of the countryside. Maher worked for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The text is somewhat heavy on cliches. Yet overall what comes across is an unfinished tragedy of monumental proportions. (Michael Vatikiotis, FEER)

Victoria: Penguin Viking, 2000, ISBN 0670885320 (pbk), Rrp A$30

Redheads

Paul Spencer Sochaczewski

An eco-novel with echoes of the real life story of Swiss activist Bruno Manser, who disappeared probably in Sarawak in May 2000. In the middle of a Borneo rainforest, a band of near-naked Penan, encouraged by an equally clothes-challenged renegade Swiss shepherd, hesitantly blockade a logging truck, testing their commitment to protect their forest home. How can the world's oldest forest be saved? Paul Spencer Sochaczewski has spent more than 30 years on the conservation

front lines. Jeffrey McNeely, chief scientist at IUCN-World Conservation Union, describes Redheads as 'Carl Hiaasen goes to Borneo'.

Melbourne (Aus): Sid Harta, 2000, ISBN 0-9587448-9-0 (pbk), 0-9587448-8-2 (hbk), avail: www.sidharta.com.au, email author@sidharta.com.au or pauls@iprolink.ch

Television, nation, and culture in Indonesia

Philip Kitley

Philip Kitley shows how important television has been to both the official and popular imagination since its beginnings in the early 1960s. It's a fascinating tale, with implications going well beyond regional specialists, since the use of popular media to promote nation, citizenship and identity is common to many countries, new and old. Kitley's book is a well-researched, wise, elegantly written account of the forces, dreams, and policies that link public and private life in and after 'New Order' Indonesia. (John Hartley, QUT)

Ohio Univ Press, May 2000, ISBN 0896802124 (pbk), 392pp, Rrp US$30

Profits on paper

Christopher Barr

This report by a researcher at the Center For International Forestry Research (Cifor) is subtitled 'Fiber, finance, and debt in Indonesia's pulp and paper industry'. Since the late 1980s, the industry has grown by nearly 700 percent. Most of the fibre comes from clear-cutting natural forest, often illegal. Indonesia's largest pulp mills face growing fibre supply deficits. Investors have spent some US$ 12 billion to finance the sector's growth. They were willing to invest such large sums in high-risk projects because their owners have been able to avoid much of the risk. There are strong reasons to believe Indonesia's bank restructuring agency may write off a substantial portion of their outstanding debts - providing yet another capital subsidy. For Indonesia's two largest pulp producers, APP and APRIL, debt-driven expansion is likely to put added pressure on Indonesia's remaining natural forests.

Avail: www.cifor.cgiar.org/publications/pdf_files/profits.pdf

Indonesia: Bankruptcy, law reform and the Commercial Court

Timothy Lindsey (ed)

Analyses the background and prospects of the Commercial Court and its Bankruptcy Law, established as one of the essential conditions for IMF aid in helping the country out of its financial dead-end. Between the demand and the implementation there have been untold

problems. The new Bankruptcy Law is actually a massively amended Dutch East Indies law of 1905. A new law takes time to be internalised, yet the Commercial Court does not have that luxury. Will Indonesia emulate Japan of the 1850s and prove to the world that it has the determination necessary to crawl out of the current economic crisis? (Jakarta Post).

Sydney: Desert Pea Press, 2000, ISBN 1-876-861-00-2 (pbk), 314 pp

Indonesian Heritage Encyclopedia - Online

The Indonesian Heritage Online project is an extension of the fifteen volume print edition of the Indonesian Heritage Series. Each month over a period of at least two years, the materials gathered for the encyclopedia (much more than what eventually made it into the book), will be serialised online while new contents and functions will be added ongoingly. Each new chapter covers a specific subject in much detail and with rich illustrations and images, researched and edited by acredited specialists. Various forms of multimedia contents, including video-clips will be added from a variety of sources.

www.indonesianheritage.com

Two new magazines

Rantau

The first edition of this Australian-Indonesian quarterly appeared in November 2000, with articles and poetry in both Indonesian and English on Aceh, East Timor, reconciliation in Australia, inter-religious dialogue in Indonesia, and much more. 'Rantau is a response to the call for a broadening forum between Australians and Indonesians.... [we] need to shift attention from the "great leader" to an understanding of the machinations driving global political change' (from the editorial).

Produced by students at MIALS, University of Melbourne, www.indonesian.unimelb.edu.au/courses/resources/rantau/, email rantaus@hotmail.com, A$22 p.a.

Latitudes

A new monthly magazine devoted to creative coverage of Indonesia's diverse cultures and currents of thought - culture, art, literature, women's issues, architecture, economy, health and body, and expatriate life. Travel features offer not just a guidebook glance but thought-provoking views of unique destinations. Showcases striking visual representations of both the extraordinary and the everyday across the archipelago. First edition has articles by Ariel Heryanto, Dede Oetomo, M Dwi Marianto, Leslie Dwyer, Goenawan Mohamad, and many more.

Web latitudesmagazine.com, Rp 220,000 p.a. (in Indon), or US$70 (elsewhere), email subscribe@latitudesmagazine.com, or fax to Bali (62)(361) 229738