Saturday 2 May 2009

Bali BS gets more email !

Bali BS gets more email !
By Bali BS News
Aug 29, 2005, 05:19


First, may we say thank you for the many positive emails we have received. Unfortunately we can not publish details of each one, but that does not diminish our gratitude. Also, thank you for recommending friends and business contacts subscribe to our newsletters, the Bali BS Update. We were asked by a couple of people if this is to be a weekly thing. The answer is “no”, we will put up new articles on a regular basis as details become available to us (or occur to us), and email out the update to our subscriber list every 6 or 7 new articles. We expect the Bali BS Update to become a 3 weekly or even monthly occurrence on average.

A.T. asks if we can name the Kurdish businessman we spoke about in our report on Interpol abuse. We can, his name is Hikmet Tabak. A search on Google should yield plenty of background history on this poor man who was tried in absentia and without anyone’s knowledge and then placed on Interpol’s detention list, in order to close down his legal British based Kurdish TV station and have him deported by any Interpol member state back to Turkey should he cross their borders, despite the fact he has political asylum status in Britain. Mr. Himet Tabak is, we are told, one of the stated examples of human rights abuse the EU is very concerned about over Turkey’s inclusion into the union. Mr. Tabak now dares not travel anywhere outside the UK for fear of being arrested and deported to Turkey despite the fact that serious challenges and representations are being made over what was clearly a jack boot military trial of a civilian for solely political reasons.

Made Wijaya AKA Australian expat Michael White, owner of hotel / villa interior design company PT. Wijaya Tribwana International in Sanur wrote;
"Candi" is pronounced. "Chandy" (as in chundder) not "candy" you Legianspeak dingbat.

Bali BS Response: We really must thank Mr. White for showing us and with it the world just how nasty many expat business owners are in Bali. Mr. White / Wijaya was clearly referring to our article on Candi Internet, but obviously did not read it before disclosing his true nature via his PC keyboard, as Candi is the correct spelling. His knowledge and use of such words (we had to look up the meaning) as Chundder (to be very sick) to illustrate pronunciations of other words is all telling, but not as much as his accusing us of using “Legianspeak”. This is a derogatory term used against expats in Legian and Seminyak. Hmmm, Sanur based Made runs a villa interior design company; any villa owning expats in Legian Speak land thinking of doing business with him right now?!

Reader G.M. gets our thanks. We recently reported the demise of the popular anti-corruption news site, Laksamana Net, at the probable hands of the new president’s anti-freedom of press acts (be warned). G.M. let us know that Laksamana’s archives were not lost when their web site suddenly stopped doing what it was great at, and became a single page “We are becoming a blog” web site (which does not make sense, unless they had no choice; wink, wink). Their archives are still available here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20040612141217/http://www.laksamana.net/

C.R. had this to say about nasty travel agent expat Jack Daniels;
I have recently visited Bali staying at a hotel in the Sanur area to which I found that the people and the area were delightful. However a bad smell is evident over the actions and criminality of the man John M Daniels. of BaliDiscovery Tours. The best course of action is for the Indonisian Govt to deport Daniels back to the United States which will help to restore the good name of Bali once more and remove a corrupt and misguided individual from a beautiful island. Until this is done I have no intention of returning to Bali or recommending it to my many friends.

Bali BS Response: To an extent we agree, but our point is that Jack Daniels is just one of the many problem people in Bali. Deporting a man who has a clear allegiance to a certain alcoholic beverage would certainly have a sobering effect, pardon the pun, on the nasty business people of Bali, but it is not enough. The police officers that work with Daniels also need to be held to account. And it can not just be limited to Daniels and his cronies in public office. The solution is to get rid of corruption as much as is possible across the board, not just pick at the ones who foolishly expose themselves; although they must be the first to face justice, sure. We believe Jack Daniels is like many others in Bali, and they all need to be held to account and to pay for their acts.

A.S. has some good connections with well known members of the community in Bali, but has asked us not to divulge details of this part of their email to us, although we can see their claims to be true. What we can publish from their email is this;

We are enjoying your new publication very much, having been to Bali many, many times since the mid 70's, and having many Balinese and ex-pat friends. Through our associations, we have perhaps a deeper view of Balinese life than many others who just go to Bali for the beaches and the shopping, without wanting to sound smug or snobbish. We see a lot of the layers, facets and cultural subtleties of Balinese life which perhaps the average tourist does not know of, or, (with respect) doesn't want to know of or get involved with. Yet these casual "beach/shopping" tourists also deeply love Bali in their own way, many of them going back and forth almost like getting on a bus, especially from Perth. From where, I believe, there are now "up and back in a day" shopping trips.

We applaud someone presenting the other side of the story re Bali/Indonesia - something which has needed to be said for ages. Having sat up in bed with our morning paper once years ago at the Bali Oberoi, laughing at all the censorship holes which had been cut in it before we got it, it's about time someone hit back. We have no idea who first arranged for your newsletter to be sent to us, but we are very much behind your efforts in bringing so much of this ugliness and corruption, etc. to the light of day. It's about time.

Bali BS response: We are glad you feel that way too. People need to understand, we are not anti-Balinese (quite the reverse) or anti-Indonesian, we are anti-corruption; that corruption and extortion in Bali has never been so bad. It has to stop, and it is perfectly clear to us that it will not unless the everyday people who travel to and conduct business in Bali vote by taking their holidays and business elsewhere. The only losers in a war against corruption are the people who make other peoples lives hell and with it suppress the cultural, spiritual and economic futures of the very people that draw us all to Bali in the first place.

Finally, the last email, actually emails we received came from one Julia, owner of Villa Ixora near Kerobokan. We found what she had to say about poor Harry Bleckert so typically repugnant from an Indonesian middle class business person, we decided to make an article out of it: Villa Ixora Bali

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