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| What Bali really needs |
By a friend of what and who is good in Bali
Oct 4, 2006, 09:39
The irony of our story, although perhaps not is that Jack Daniels is a member of the Bali Governor’s “Bali Recovery Program”. Jack Daniels role we understand in that highly unsuccessful organization is of “Information Manager”, providing statistical data on Bali’s failed tourism industry and wobble on the positives and likely recovery; such as the “new found” domestic tourism market of bargain hungry, budget conscious “Jakartarites” filling some of the void. We are not sure what is lost to Bali’s governor, the fact his recovery program is so seriously flawed because the world has cottoned on to just how bad the Indonesian government and authorities are, or that Jack Daniels and people like him are a very large part of the problem itself and yet help run the failed recovery program, or both.
The Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s vice president John A. Prasetio touched upon the root of the problem in a recent Jakarta Post article stating “There is anxiety that dysfunctional law enforcement will move us deeper into 'gangster' capitalism”. He was talking in respect to foreign investors, or rather the lack of them of course, but the same reasoning applies to why the tourists are staying and indeed should stay away. It is not just the risk of having to pay some bent Indonesian police officer (do you know any other kind) an on the spot fine without receipt (or face court) for allegedly unlawfully overtaking a vehicle which was still miraculously in front of them when stopped by the police. No, it is the hate, the jealousy, the duplicitous nature, the phony smiles and the poor value of Bali as a whole. Right down to the recent mega “dance trance” at Tanah Lot of 5000 Balinese trying to get the Gods to bring the tourists back; yeh right! It was clearly insincerity personified, no doubt orchestrated by the suffering greedy mass tourism brigade rather than coming from the hearts of local Balinese. Why do we say this? Because they danced the Kecak dance, which was devised by a foreigner Walther Spies in the 1930’s. The Kecak dance is therefore solely for foreigners, not for Balinese Hindu Gods, and certainly not for Bali’s second most sacred temple. It had the authenticity and sincerity of a MacDonald’s drive through girl saying “Have a nice day!” Finally we have to wonder whether the mass Kecak dance was as much tourist popularity targeted, as the location was politically targeted, given that area is a Golkar (Suharto) party stronghold and the Suharto Government had a record of Balinese cultural indifference at best, anti-Balinese murderous sentiment at worst. We wonder if the fake cultural dance performance was performed in fact by the institutional tourism industry at a location designated by the greed merchants of Indonesia, without the real Balinese and tourists playing a true role except by being targets of desparate Indo Fagins.
Of course these same self-interested tourism “experts” whose frequent champion the US registered “Pacific Asia Travel Association” (who Jack Daniels is a former chairman of) which is not a higher level travel association as their name implies but rather a trade marketing membership association there to help the tourism industry sell themselves, clearly can not see the wood for the trees. In concert (pardon the punn) with the intrinsically corrupt authorities and thugs of Indonesia, no doubt including the tourism authority and even Balinese governor, the institutional tourism brigade have little apparent motivation to understand or rather perhaps accept that Bali cleaning up its act is what it will take to get the money trees (tourists) back. That is; stop lying, stop spinning / wobbling, get rid of the insincerity and pathetic belief that marketing (saying what you think foreigners want to hear) will bring recovery. Make major inroads into getting rid of the corrupt police and other government officers who chase dollars not terrorists, start getting rid of the anti-western sentiment and injustices, get rid of the stench of the Suharto era which includes his family’s ownership of many of the hotels in Bali, and also show you are sincere about doing this by putting people who commit corruption crimes in jail, which brings us back to jack Daniels.
As we have previously shown, Jack Daniels plays that too common duplicitous Indonesian business game of committing and even boasting about crimes they are responsible for behind the scenes while vehemently denying them to the wider tourism audience, because admission to the later would likely and justly put them out of business as well as cost them their untenable sense of pride. We have previously shown where Jack Daniels has coerced and reportedly paid corrupt police officers to act unlawfully using the much derided and abused “Criminal Libel” law of Indonesia against a competitor who caught Daniels making earlier unlawful police complaints against him plus, apparently, his Bali Discovery Tours company committing internet fraud. We have produced clear evidence that Daniels was given confidential and unlawfully gained information from police files as to the movements of his competitor and that Daniels used this to try and have him physically harmed, perhaps even murdered. Despite the fact Interpol have acted against the Balinese Police for information unlawfully gained on Daniels’ competitor by the police from Interpol, there is still no investigation let alone trial against Daniels and / or his bent police officer friends in what is a very clear cut and particularly nasty corruption case. But then the public statement from Indonesia’s greatest latest frauds the KPK (Indonesian Corruption Commission) that they can not investigate police corruption in Bali because they (the KPK) do not have an office there says everything about Indonesian justice. Even the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce’s vice president confirms all of this as they report they have “received an increasing number of complaints on the criminalization of civil cases” and commented on the amount of energy, time and money people have to spend on securing their legal rights in Indonesia to the detriment of the economy.
Jack Daniels all the while he is allowed to remain at large clearly will continue and has continued in his public soap box role of being one of the tourism industry’s saviours for Bali while all the time acting for his own selfish interests, which in reality compounds the problem for Bali’s all important tourism market and with it the everyday Balinese. Recently “wobble” meister Jack, in his wallet felt desire to get tourists back to Bali, or rather his own tourism business reported that "Japan Experts Cite Bali's Airport as the Nation’s Most Security Minded." in his falsehood purveying Bali Update mailer. Who were these so called experts and what was their alleged Bali Airport security report? Why, Daniels was writing about some loose comments made by members of Japan’s International Cooperation Agency staff who are in Indonesia to promote “the long-term challenge of realizing a fair and democratic society”, not as airport security experts as Daniels claimed. It is very clear Daniels deliberately twists and even lies about reality in order to try and con the tourists into feeling safe about coming back to Bali, while all the time the bent Balinese mafia police plant drugs on foreigners in order to extort money from them, rather than protect them. As we have pointed out previously, Bali’s airport security is so bad, airline companies have brought in their own staff to make sure bombs do not get aboard their planes. While illegal human effluence dumpers at the end of Bali airport’s runway not just seriously increase the health risks of the area but illustrate how easy it would be for a terrorist to pop off a shoulder fired “Stinger” surface to air missile from one of those which went missing in Afghanistan recently and have been used in other Osama influenced countries like Kenya.
Jack has also excelled himself or rather his complete disrespect for his fellow human beings recently in a series of tsunami warning articles which herald the advent of a mobile phone warning system which allegedly and hopefully sends a text message to your mobile informing you of any tsunami risk around the world 10 minutes after that risk is detected. As we have pointed out previously, Bali’s tsunami risk comes from the Asian / Australasian fault line a few miles off Bali’s coast line; the same fault line that created a massive tsunami on December 26th 2004 which totally destroyed the Aceh coastline further north. The flaw in this “grand master plan” for tourists to Bali being safe if they subscribe to this service is that the text message is reckoned to come around 10 minutes after the tsunami conditions (subterranean earthquake) are detected, but as any substantial quake off Bali’s shores would more than be felt on Bali (most buildings would collapse) and that the resulting tsunami would come ashore 20 minutes after, having your mobile text alarm (if the local mobile phone transmitters survived the earthquake) going off in the middle of all of this is not going to help any poor tourist in Bali one iota. However these articles are a double edged sword for greedy inhumane Jack Daniels. You see, if you read his stories and felt safe enough to go back to Bali, likely using Daniels’ shady travel agency because you subscribed to this texting service, you would be tragically wrong. However not only would Daniels make money from his falsehoods with your travel business, he would also earn a commission from the tsunami text alarm service company because he referred you to them; when you check Bali Discovery’s link to the company, it is encoded with their “affiliate code”, so Daniels geta a percentage of anything you pay for this service if you are stupid or otherwise unfortunate enough to believe him.
Daniels recently also has shown that he is not just prepared to lie to tourists to get them back to his travel business and hopefully make some affiliate commission from them too, but he has clearly demonstrated he is prepared to continuously publish negatives and even falsehoods about areas of Bali’s tourism business his company is weak in; that is hurt Bali’s tourism business when such acts do not impact his own business. Although people have caught Daniels’ company PT Bali Discovery Tours fraudulently cheating on taxes and service charges while dealing with illegal villas, Bali Discovery Tours is not a strong player in the Bali villas arena, which we can only believe and hope is a statement by the island’s villa owners that they do not want to do business with his dodgy firm. Hence it seems Daniels continues with increasingly desparate attacks on villas in Bali in his Bali Updates; particularly one villa resort on the Northern Bali coast Daniels has a grudge against and which has refused to do business with him.
Daniels traveled all the way to these north Bali villas a while back, an 8 hour round trip from his Sanur office, just to take a photo of the villas or rather a deliberately misleading photo of the front of their beachfront restaurant which his sole purpose was to abuse on the Internet. Daniels has now published three “articles” in his Bali Updates which have increased in ferocity against “Illegal beachfront villas” featuring this photo. From his first article which went on about certain villas being built on the other side of the island without a building permit to his latest rant about beachfront villas which block access to the public beaches of Bali, Jack Daniels has fraudulently and viciously published the same unrelated picture each time, no doubt in the hope that guests of those villas in the north will wrongly believe them to be illegal or anti-Balinese and refrain from staying there again. Daniels does this despite the fact the photo he shows is not a villa, although he masquerades it as one by only showing the very front of the structure, but of an open restaurant “bale” pavilion. Daniels does this in spite of the fact and well known to him that the villas in question behind and the beachfront restaurant itself are 100% legal. He knows they were built with a proper / full building permit which was issued not through corruption money / bribes but because the villas are also guardians of the coral reef offshore and in fact part of the Indonesian Ministry of Fisheries coral protection project. He also knows by token of the fact he went there subversively that the same villas he featured in an article about blocking beach access do not in any way prevent access to the beach and actually have made it easier for everyone by maintaining the access road and also building public steps down to the beach where a steep jump was before.
Daniels’ tirades against illegal villas are clearly done at the expense of tourism to Bali but as this does not affect his own areas of business, Daniels clearly does not care. It is also clear that Daniels continues false even fraudulent misrepresentations against one of the most culturally, environmentally and local population friendly villas in Bali, which just shows what a skunk he is. Daniels does all this knowing he is subject to Indonesian law [sic] which is permanently available for sale, not for real justice. He does this to unfairly try and destroy a legitimate business solely because of his own nasty and very anti-Balinese agenda. It is not just that Daniels acts unlawfully, it is the fact he is an enemy of the tourism industry of Indonesia, not one of its top ambassadors as he and others like him declare him.
We feature Daniels as we do because for us he typifies the very worst of Bali; he is a barometer if you like of both criminal activity and acting against the interests of Bali, while exuding false piety and professionalism. For us when Daniels goes to jail it will not just show the authorities are finally on the road to legitimacy but that the institutional tourism cronies in Indonesia have woken up to the fact many travellers can see their falsehoods and insincerity for what they are and avoid Bali as a result.
Past such a joyous event as people like Daniels going to jail, we hope that things might start to improve much faster in Indonesia for potential investors and tourists, plus for the population themselves. Although we understand putting their colluding police officers behind bars for their unlawful acts is not such an easy matter, given the still present all powerful military families / Golkar dominated structure of Indonesia, we believe it is abundantly clear that Bali will not have begun to correct the problem, that is remove the cancer which in reality is the cause which kills their livelihood, until people like Daniels, who after all should know better, go to prison. Until that day business (corruption) will go on as the civil and human rights abusing members of Bali’s police force will continue to feel and actually be immune to the law themselves. With people like Daniels in jail and their main police conspirators at least named, shamed and disciplined, only then will Bali’s police officers likely start to feel disposed to being public servants, not servants of their own wallets. Only once they do a job as police officers will Bali actually become safe for tourists. And only once the tourism industry offers sincerity and honesty will many tourists want to come back
Bali can only prove to the world it deserves tourists back if it realizes tourists are human beings, and those like Daniels who play a part in civil and human rights abuse are held to account, not allowed to go on trying to line their pockets at the expense of others. At the very least in the interim Bali’s ethical businesses perhaps need to wake up to fact people like Daniels are bad for business and stop dealing with them. All the while people like Daniels are allowed to put their own pockets, selfish hate and unlawful acts first, Bali is going to suffer.
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