Latest on Fri, 06:13 am
Pity me, pity us
Life is wonderful. But not perfect.
One thing that is pestering me are these instant surveys. The ones which have as their sole purpose to attract the attention of the media.
“The World is Indonesia Now”
Indonesia has been there before.  And it took the country nine years to recover.
The wise and sensible Paul Krugman’s said: “the world is Indonesia now”. He was referring to Indonesia’s economical crises, which did hit Asia and particularly Indonesia, a decade ago. Like the US and Europe now, in ’97 it also was all about going for the quick buck , dealing in derivatives, speculation (against weak currencies then, against weak system banks now) and mismanaging the risks. Even the concept of crony capitalism may be applied in both cases: there is only a thin line between membership of boards of banks and membership of governments in Western capitals, like there was only a very thin line between the Suharto family and business.
The rights of Papuans
Prior to the latest edition of “Inside Indonesia” my knowledge about West Papua was near zero. The facts I was aware of were scarce. I did know about the pretty dirty circumstances the Dutch colonial rule was ended in the early sixties of course, had read about some real nasty and even disastrous environmental developments and had heard some occasional alarming news about the oppression of Papuan attempts to achieve more autonomy. I even noticed the trouble Indonesian based correspondents of European newspapers had, to get into that territory. But essentially this part of the world escaped my, and I guess most people’s, attention most of the time.
The odd dozen essays in the October-December issue of the periodical however, show that this attitude is wrong. The present situation is really rather worrying.
Distinctively Dutch
Christie’s, London, had another auction last week. This one dedicated to Dutch photographers. They were lucky that the financial and economical crises seemed not to have reached the super rich art collectors. Five thousand up to twenty thousands euro’s was not unusual. Most was paid for “the ice cream parlour” from the series “Rain” by Erwin Olaf ( over € 22.000). But Ruud van Empel (“World”), Desirée Dolron (“Xteriors”) and Celine van Balen (Muslim girls) were very much in demand also.
Why?
Newsflash: Europeana has been launched today!
For everyone who may be interested in European paintings, books, films and archives: you may find it here. It is major project based in the Royal Library in The Hague.
From the announcement on the site I quote:
direct access to some 2 million digital objects, including film material, photos, paintings, sounds, maps, manuscripts, books, newspapers and archival papers.
The interface will be multilingual. Initially, this may mean that it is available in French, English and German, but the intention is to develop the number of languages available following the launch.