Jeffrey Winters’ masterful, brilliant book, Oligarchy, contains the most precise and chilling description of Indonesia’s regime of thieves that I’ve read (and an equally eye-watering account of oligarchy in the US). Winters describes an absolute moral vacuum in which Indonesias dictator, Suharto, is only widely criticised for corruption after his children and their thuggish friends begin stealing from the other oligarchs -- all most of whom are thieves themselves, who rely on the army to enforce (and legitimate) the spoils of their larceny. In The Act of Killing, Pancasila Youth is only one of a great many groups of paramilitary gangsters. But it would be inaccurate -- and too limited -- to say Indonesia is ruled by thugs like those in Pancasila Youth. Sadly, the power of paramilitary thugs that we see in North Sumatra is merely a metaphor for a much more frightening, all-pervasive military-backed kleptocracy. amazon/Oligarchy-Winters-ebook/dp/B0056XNK80/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1397413184&sr=8-1&keywords=oligarchy
Posted on: Sun, 13 Apr 2014 18:20:29 +0000