Suchergebnisse

On 24th and 25th April, 1985, delegates from more than 80 Asian and African countries gathered in the Indonesian city of Bandung at the "Gedung Merdeka", or "House of Freedom", to commemorate the famous Bandung Asian-African Conference held thirty years previously. What, in retrospect, has been the historical and political significance of Bandung? What have been the achievements of its heirs so far?

The World Social Forum at Porto Alegre has become symbolic of the forces beginning to shape a front of common resistance to the pattern of imperial globalization. Yet its character & composition remain little understood. Michael Hardt analyzes the debates within it, & their political potential. Adapted from the source document.

An assessment of the Bandung Conference on the occasion of its thirtieth anniversary in April 1985 from a pro-Soviet standpoint. The development of international relations greatly influenced by the Bandung decisions. The relevance of the Conference for the developing countries today. Important role played by India in furthering the tendencies of peace and detente in Asia. Nonaligned movement's anti-war potential. (DÜI-Sen)

Sukapakir is the real but appropriate name of a poor urban kampung in southwestern Bandung. It is one of the most densely populated neighbourhoods of the town now, although some forty years ago it was still a largely rural district. On the fringes of Sukapakir, one finds even today a few sawah fields, planted with kangkung (a sort of spinach) and watered by the little streams that function as drains and into which various industries and thousands of households have deposited their waste. Another little plot of sawah, surrounded on all sides by dense habitation but unused because of a legal conflict, has been turned into a garbage heap, adding at once color and desolation to the neighbourhood. There are no other open spaces left, apart from where houses have recently been torn down to make place for a new road. The houses are very densely packed; hardly any space remains unused. Only two or three houses still have a tree and a few plants in front, otherwise there is no greenery left. What used to be front- or backyards have also been built over; some houses moreover have a makeshift second floor added to them, something uncommon in Bandung. The average house, initially built for one family, now lodges three to four households. Not surprisingly, three out of four adults living here are immigrants to Bandung; most of the remaining fourth, the children of immigrants. Most of them originate from various parts of West Java, much smaller numbers from Central Java and Sumatra. Their arrivals were in many cases directly connected with the political and economic upheavals of the past half century. Sukapakir is like a living museum of West Java's social history of the past half century, as seen from the lower rungs of the social ladder. Its people's life histories exemplify the successes, and especially the failures of Indonesia's development programmes.

Fifty years after the Asia-Africa conference was held in Bandung in 1955, the "Spirit of Bandung" continues to be redeployed & rediscovered, & is argued to be the kind of political response needed today. The perceived radicalism of Bandung took place within the divisiveness & conflict within Asia & Africa that undermined the ability of Third World nationalists to contest the US empire, but reaffirmed legitimacy of US imperial ambitions. A convergence of Left & ruling class nationalism is traced through the Asian economic crisis of 1997 through the ascent of the Thai Rak Thai party in 2003 that resulted in reorganization through privatization of the functions of the state. The construction of a new nationalism rooted in a CEO model of governance is a deliberate strategy to undercut working-class power by further internationalizing domestic capital. Indonesia is the clearest example of massive anger & frustration over the vulnerability & uncertainty generated by accelerated globalization & intensified US military aggression. The anti-globalization movements must understand imperialism as a blending of liberal assumptions with revolutionary language that undermines strategies of resistance. References. J. Harwell

Due to the increasing demand of fresh water in Bandung, the capital city of the west Java Province, the Republic of Indonesia, since 1980's, the municipal government and private firms have started to use deep groundwater through deep wells. This project report investigates the impact of this development on the pattern of deep groundwater flows and the environment by means of a two dimensional computer model. A computer program called AQUIFEM-1 is used. The conceptual model, consisting of a triangular finite element grid with 164 nodes and 289 elements, which represents the study area of about 325 km2. The results are shown either on printing outputs or on graphs that show the changes of the groundwater flow pattern. It is concluded that, the total existing well discharge of about 666 m3/day does change the groundwater flow pattern significantly depleting the volume of the water in the aquifer. This may cause the shallow wells located in the area to dry up, heavy constructions on shallow footings may experience additional settlement, and subsidence over part of the area might occur in time. ; 1991

As the author sees it, to historians of Southeast Asia, the Bandung conference of 1955 presents itself as one of the most striking international initiatives undertaken by newly-independent Indonesia. He examines how Britain after 1945 pursued a policy of decolonization designed to install co-operative governments and deny opportunities to communism and how it, with some success, used its diplomatic resources to influence the Bandung conference of 1955. (DÜI-Sen)