nicholas nicola etchings


Palm Oil Thread Commentary...
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SEE DIRECTLY BELOW THESE FIRST EXPLANATORY PARAGRAPHS FOR LATEST COMMENTARY. SERENE SCROLLING...
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[ Watch this Space every now and again for new comments. Thank You]. For technical reasons is embedded in this already established etchings website. Thank you for your patience and understanding. 

On the sidebar to navigate to this somewhat disguised/hidden webpage one presses on or hovers over the very bottom side bar heading: TWITTER ARTICLES and the Palm Oil sub-heading should branch out/appear. 

{Twitter articles have previously referred nominally to short articles & explanations written about printmaking, art theory etc issues regarding the main premise of the existence of this website. By the way this is a 'home made' website in case you were wondering...}.

This webpage mainly exists so as to facilitate musings on Twitter in which remarks and links have been provided on a now lengthy #palmoil thread. [ @nicolasnicola22]. Instead of an ongoing long thread have thought to combine comments into paragraphs that can be easily read here. However, this will only occur when the occasion or circumstance requires it. Most information which is derived by other sources on the internet will remain on the palm oil thread. 

The latest commentary will be directly below and will be dated as to when it was uploaded. Below it will be previous commentaries. I hope this basic presentation works out okay. This whole exercise is an experiment. All the best. NN.
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September 2021, prose in progress.

TRANSMIGRATION & PALM OIL


 Regarding Indonesia one notes that palm oil is mainly on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo and now venturing further into West Papua; while although there is some palm oil grown on Java it is curious to this ‘person-in-the-street’ observer that not more is grown on this equally suitable tropical land area of the Indonesian archipelago. 

 One possible explanation is the internal migration policy of the Suharto regime otherwise known as transmigration. Transmigration in its most basic outline was a population policy whereby people from Java were encouraged to move to the so called 'outer islands' of Indonesia in which it is said by some commentators was a Jakarta policy to 'Javanese' Indonesia. For those who made the move to islands such as Sumatra and Borneo palm oil was facilitated as an economic way for them to gain an income.  What is also of interest is palm oil was also encouraged throughout Indonesia as the cooking oil of first choice to help to nationally manufacture a sustained demand for this agricultural cash crop. It should be said the palm fruit from which the oil is extracted is not a local plant but was originally introduced to Indonesia from West Africa by Europeans when the archipelago as the Dutch East Indies was governed by the Dutch - being the case from the start of the nineteenth century and for the first few decades of the twentieth century until the Japanese invaded in 1942. Indonesians would fight for their independence from the Dutch after WWII ended in 1945 and was achieved in 1949. Sukarno would be the new President of the new nation Indonesia until Suharto overthrew him in 1967 who as a dictator stayed in power until 1998. Indonesian in this initial post-war period also has to be seen against the backdrop of the Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union in which both superpowers globally sought after or welcomed the strategic alliance of other nations to them. Under Sukarno Indonesia did not formally align itself with either superpower and it was only after Suharto became leader that Indonesia would become an ally of the United States. What this has to do with palm oil is that the World Bank was now willing to loan funds to Indonesia when Suharto held out his hand to the United States. Palm oil was to become a ubiquitous agricultural product that would aid Indonesia deal with any foreign debt.  Palm oil thus would serve a dual purpose - one nationalist; the other: economic - for the 'Javanese President' Suharto.     


   

 


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