A week of reading in Ubud

Fake news, Duterte and looking forward as we look back

October 30, 2019

Hello friends!

I am back in the big smoke after a full week in Ubud for the Writers and Readers Festival. This was professionally a big leg up for me, but I think it might’ve been too much of a biggie and there’s so much I meant to say that I never did. Luckily, I’ve built my own platform on which to be totally self-indulgent. Below are the four panels or discussions I was #blessed to moderate and a couple of links about the writers or follow-ups on the chat. 

If this is particularly poorly self-edited that is because apart from meeting so many brilliant people, I also indulged way too much in Bintangs and have possibly given myself some sort of brain damage. Should be mended again by Friday for a look ahead at the Asean Summit over the weekend at Bangkok, but can’t make any promises just yet. 

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All photos are care of Ubud Writers and Readers Festival Flickr and I have deliberately chosen ones which I am not featured because my cute Anna Wintour-inspired fringe is always destroyed by Bali heat 🙏

See you Friday!Erin Cook

Parag Khanna: The Future Is Asian

Parag Khanna is so natural with a mic in his hand, I will surely be the first moderator to be replaced by AI. His Future is Asian book came out earlier this year and had a real moment. As he said at the festival, it looks beyond the usual geographic limitations put on Asia to include the real, full picture. It felt a bit difficult to prepare for, honestly, because it’s so dense with facts, data and arguments that defining the conversation would be hard! But Khanna did a genuinely great job of identifying the audience and what they want/need to hear which was very impressive to me and a total skill I hope I develop one day.

Ubud Writers is known as being predominantly Australians in the audience and Khanna did a great job in explaining where we fit in this. Which is super handy! My whole life has been ‘oh 21st Century is Asian Century but also let’s only talk about Australia.’ Truly, for Australian readers of this newsletter picking up the book for parsing Australia’s role is a brilliant idea.

All across Asia, I see hyphenated Americans becoming repats. Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis, Vietnamese, Uzbeks, Burmese and other well-settled Americans now see opportunity where once there was only repression and depravity. They’re taking their American skills back to their homelands to build factories, upgrade real estate, start schools, launch tech incubators and be close to extended family.

America has been the far-off promised land for several centuries, and given the choice, much of humanity would still teleport to America if it could. But we’re not talking about Latinos, Africans or Arabs. It is Asia — primarily the Japan-India-Australia triangle, of which China sits at the center — that has spent the past 40 years modernizing at a breakneck pace to surpass both America and Europe in economic size. And it is Asians whose attitudes toward their homelands has evolved from an inferiority to a superiority complex.

Weapons of Mass Distortion

I was totally flattered to moderate the Weapons of Mass Distortion panel alongside BFF of the letter Stanley Widianto, the human rights soothsayer of Indonesia Andreas Harsono, Famega Syavira, whose recent work as a journalist with BBC Indonesia has been explosive, and iconic poet Nirwan Dewanto. The panel could’ve been its own four-day event looking at how fake news and hoaxes play out across Indonesia. 

It must be tough for the programme staff to lay out the scope of a panel like that for a largely international audience. I’m not sure I did enough to stress the difference between what Indonesia (and others in the region!) are dealing with compared to where most of us have come from. I think it’s very important at all points to reiterate that press freedoms have been a very new and bumpy ride in post-Suharto Indonesia. 

When we talk about Indonesia, we talk about one of the world’s largest media audiences which, by virtue of the Suharto regime, missed a couple of generations of developing an industry and widespread media literacy. And then when web-based media followed by social media bloomed, Indonesia jumped headfirst. Which left our one hour chat scraping the top layer of what is an intriguing and nation-defining issue. 

Famega Syavira (and colleague Benjamin Strick) released this report into how bots and social media is being gamed earlier in the month. It lays out exactly how these campaigns operate and who is behind them. Famega and Pak Andreas both used the work to speak to how these structured campaigns can and are used to exacerbate human rights issues. 

Andreas Harsono’s latest book looks at how race and religion have emerged to dictate politics in Indonesia over the last 15 or so years. To borrow a line from both Jewel Topsfield and Krithika Varagur (and no doubt others!), Andreas’ work with Human Rights Watch has made him an invaluable conduit for foreigners attempting to understand the complicated history (and present!) of human rights in Indonesia. No person is more qualified to write this and it was automatically added to the must-read on Indonesia canon. 

Our Stanley briefly mentioned this one from BuzzFeed back in 2016 as the starting point for this global conversation and I can’t stop thinking about it. He’s totally right, of course, but it’s almost been forgotten now. 

One smart question from the audience came care of a young Balinese economic student (I’m telling ya, smart) on buzzers. Buzzers is something I would’ve loved to have brought up earlier in the conversation but with only an hour getting into the concept is HARD. But I do just want to note that if anyone in that audience did want to know more about buzzer campaigns — this one from Kate Lamb at the Guardian became the gold standard. 

Jonathan Miller: Duterte Harry

I was most nervous about this session. When I get an opportunity to meet someone who knows a lot about the Philippines, I have a real tendency to needle away and I know a one-hour session in beautiful Ubud is not the time to ask about the quirks of Salvador Panelo or the odds of constitutional change within the Duterte term. And I was EXTRA worried because Jonathan Miller’s Duterte Harry is THE book for getting your head around Duterte. 

But, Miller knows how to do this. His ability to explain just how dark the Duterte years have been, how Davao City lingers over everything, how popular the president remains despite it all and how democratic institutions are being eroded at every step was truly a masterclass and I can’t bring myself to look at any photos from it because I think I was slack-jawed the whole time. 

Duterte is an important leader in this region, obviously, but he can often be sold to the West as ‘Asia’s Trump’ or a titillating figure from far away. Miller’s book and his talk about it both solidly ground those thoughts. This is serious and it’s more than calling the Pope a son of a whore. Audience members kept popping up during the session and running back to their seats clutching brand new copies, but the real endorsement comes from a tough fighting Filipina activist (who I’m not sure what’s her name here!). She said via Twitter she would’ve loved to have been there and has used Miller’s work extensively as a resource for her thesis. 

High polling and the adulation of Duterte coaxed literal GASPS from the audience. This from Regine Cabato goes to some lengths to help understand why Duterte is such an enduring figure among voters. Regine’s work earlier this year with Lynzy Billing looking at a death in Tondo, Manila, is absolute required reading. 

Miller touched on Duterte’s attacks on the media and Rappler in particular. I meant to shout out this profile at the end of the session, but totally forgot. 

Frank Palmos: Living Dangerously

Frank Palmos is these days best known by the shorthand ‘one of the men who Year of Living Dangerously is kinda based on,’ but that’s not enough. Palmos opened the first non-wire foreign bureau in Jakarta in 1964 just in time to watch it all kick-off. He was an unofficial translator to President Sukarno and spoke openly with a lot of heart about how his whole life has been spent trying to reconcile his role as a journalist and his personal relationship with Indonesia’s first president. 

His works are a little tough to track down now, but I really hope that as Australia becomes more interested in Indonesia we see a resurgence in his work. But until then, this profile from Jewel Topsfield (a lot of shout outs for Jewel this week!) gives an idea of how fascinating Palmos is. 

Dr Palmos believes it is important to put the time in context. He said Jakarta in 1965 was "pregnant with danger". "It is hard to exaggerate the dangers for Europeans," he said. The PKI made gruesome signboards depicting foreigners being bayoneted. China and the PKI were urging president Sukarno to allow workers and peasants to carry arms and become a fifth force. "It was a very tense time … it was very violent. Civil war was certain."

Dr Palmos believes Australia was justified in supporting Suharto at the time.

"We were all so relieved, not so much that it was Suharto, but that it was a change. Indonesia was going to hell in a handcart, it was just such an awful place."

But as Dr Palmos began to make forays into the country - first into east and central Java in October and November 1965 and then Surabaya in early 1966 - he realised the extent of the carnage.

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