He had to ask around to figure out exactly what the graffiti meant, where all the slogans came from. He found out, and that was even more of a shock. The capital of his own country had come to mean not cosmopolitanism, not Third World solidarity and global justice, but rather reactionary violence. “Jakarta” meant brutal elimination of people organizing for a better world. And now he was in another country, also backed by the US, whose governing forces celebrated that history rather than condemning it.
