Eddy Prasetyo

Tempointeraktif.Com - Densus Endus 68 Transaksi Teroris

2009-08-18T07:51:00.001+07:00

Tempointeraktif.Com - Densus Endus 68 Transaksi Teroris

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Michael Jackson, 'King of Pop,' dead at 50

2009-06-26T12:03:00.001+07:00

LOS ANGELES - Michael Jackson, the "King of Pop" who once moonwalked above the music world, died Thursday as he prepared for a comeback bid to vanquish nightmare years of sexual scandal and financial calamity. He was 50.
Jackson died at UCLA Medical Center after being stricken at his rented home in Holmby Hills. Paramedics tried to resuscitate him at his home for nearly three-quarters of an hour, then rushed him to the hospital, where doctors continued to work on him.

"It is believed he suffered cardiac arrest in his home. However, the cause of his death is unknown until results of the autopsy are known," his brother Jermaine said. Police said they were investigating, standard procedure in high-profile cases.

Jackson's death brought a tragic end to a long, bizarre, sometimes farcical decline from his peak in the 1980s, when he was popular music's premier all-around performer, a uniter of black and white music who shattered the race barrier on MTV, dominated the charts and dazzled even more on stage.

His 1982 album "Thriller" which included the blockbuster hits "Beat It," "Billie Jean" and "Thriller" is the best-selling album of all time, with an estimated 50 million copies sold worldwide.

At the time of his death, Jackson was rehearsing hard for what was to be his greatest comeback: He was scheduled for an unprecedented 50 shows at a London arena, with the first set for July 13.

As word of his death spread, MTV switched its programming to play videos from Jackson's heyday. Radio stations began playing marathons of his hits. Hundreds of people gathered outside the hospital. In New York's Times Square, a low groan went up in the crowd when a screen flashed that Jackson had died, and people began relaying the news to friends by cell phone.

"No joke. King of Pop is no more. Wow," Michael Harris, 36, of New York City, read from a text message a friend had sent him. "It's like when Kennedy was assassinated. I will always remember being in Times Square when Michael Jackson died."

The public first knew him as a boy in the late 1960s, when he was the precocious, spinning lead singer of the Jackson 5, the singing group he formed with his four older brothers out of Gary, Ind. Among their No. 1 hits were "I Want You Back," "ABC" and "I'll Be There."

He was perhaps the most exciting performer of his generation, known for his backward-gliding moonwalk, his feverish, crotch-grabbing dance moves and his high-pitched singing, punctuated with squeals and titters. His single sequined glove, tight, military-style jacket and aviator sunglasses were trademarks, as was his ever-changing, surgically altered appearance.

"For Michael to be taken away from us so suddenly at such a young age, I just don't have the words," said Quincy Jones, who produced "Thriller." "He was the consummate entertainer and his contributions and legacy will be felt upon the world forever. I've lost my little brother today, and part of my soul has gone with him."

Jackson ranked alongside Elvis Presley and the Beatles as the biggest pop sensations of all time. He united two of music's biggest names when he was briefly married to Presley's daughter, Lisa Marie, and Jackson's death immediately evoked comparisons to that of Presley himself, who died at age 42 in 1977.

As years went by, Jackson became an increasingly freakish figure a middle-aged man-child weirdly out of touch with grown-up life. His skin became lighter, his nose narrower, and he spoke in a breathy, girlish voice. He often wore a germ mask while traveling, kept a pet chimpanzee named Bubbles as one of his closest companions, and surrounded himself with children at his Neverland ranch, a storybook playland filled with toys, rides and animals. The tabloids dubbed him "Wacko Jacko."

"It seemed to me that his internal essence was at war with the norms of the world. It's as if he was trying to defy gravity," said Michael Levine, a Hollywood publicist who represented Jackson in the early 1990s. He called Jackson a "disciple of P.T. Barnum" and said the star appeared fragile at the time but was "much more cunning and shrewd about the industry than anyone knew."

Jackson caused a furor in 2002 when he playfully dangled his infant son, Prince Michael II, over a hotel balcony in Berlin while a throng of fans watched from below.

In 2005, he was cleared of charges he molested a 13-year-old cancer survivor at Neverland in 2003. He had been accused of plying the boy with alcohol and groping him, and of engaging in strange and inappropriate behavior with other children.

The case followed years of rumors about Jackson and young boys. In a TV documentary, he acknowledged sharing his bed with children, a practice he described as sweet and not at all sexual.

Despite the acquittal, the lurid allegations that came out in court took a fearsome toll on his career and image, and he fell into serious financial trouble.

Michael Joseph Jackson was born Aug. 29, 1958, in Gary. He was 4 years old when he began singing with his brothers Marlon, Jermaine, Jackie and Tito in the Jackson 5. After his early success with bubblegum soul, he struck out on his own, generating innovative, explosive, unstoppable music.

The album "Thriller" alone mixed the dark, serpentine bass and drums and synthesizer approach of "Billie Jean," the grinding Eddie Van Halen solo on "Beat It," and the hiccups and falsettos on "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'."

The peak may have come in 1983, when Motown celebrated its 25th anniversary with an all-star televised concert and Jackson moonwalked off with the show, joining his brothers for a medley of old hits and then leaving them behind with a pointing, crouching, high-kicking, splay-footed, crotch-grabbing run through "Billie Jean."

The audience stood and roared. Jackson raised his fist.

By then he had cemented his place in pop culture. He got the plum Scarecrow role in the 1978 movie musical "The Wiz," a pop-R&B version of "The Wizard of Oz," that starred Diana Ross as Dorothy.

During production of a 1984 Pepsi commercial, Jackson's scalp sustains burns when an explosion sets his hair on fire.

He had strong follow-up albums with 1987's "Bad" and 1991's "Dangerous," but his career began to collapse in 1993 after he was accused of molesting a boy who often stayed at his home. The singer denied any wrongdoing, reached a settlement with the boy's family, reported to be $20 million, and criminal charges were never filed.

Jackson's expressed anger over the allegations on the 1995 album "HIStory," which sold more than 2.4 million copies, but by then, the popularity of Jackson's music was clearly waning, even as public fascination with his increasingly erratic behavior was growing.

Jackson married Lisa Marie Presley in 1994, and they divorced in 1996. Later that year, Jackson married Deborah Rowe, a former nurse for his dermatologist. They had two children together: Michael Joseph Jackson Jr., known as Prince Michael, and Paris Michael Katherine Jackson. Rowe filed for divorce in 1999.

Cardiac arrest is an abnormal heart rhythm that stops the heart from pumping blood to the body. It can occur after a heart attack or be caused by other heart problems.

Billboard magazine editorial director Bill Werde said Jackson's star power was unmatched. "The world just lost the biggest pop star in history, no matter how you cut it," Werde said. "He's literally the king of pop."

Jackson's 13 No. 1 one hits on the Billboard charts put him behind only Presley, the Beatles and Mariah Carey, Werde said.

"He was on the eve of potentially redeeming his career a little bit," he said. "People might have started to think of him again in a different light."

___
Associated Press Writers Derrik J. Lang, Solvej Schou and Thomas Watkins in Los Angeles and Virginia Byrne, Hillel Italie, Nekesa Mumbi Moody and Jocelyn Noveck in New York contributed to this report.

Sources : http://omg.yahoo.com/news/michael-jackson-king-of-pop-dead-at-50/24346?nc

‘In Your Dreams’

2009-02-26T00:14:00.000+07:00

This is a film about watching the person you love while they sleep. When the eyes are closed, the “windows to the soul” are shuttered. There is no self-consciousness; in fact, consciousness is by definition absent. There is a surrender of the body to gravity and blankets and pillows that creates a kind of intimate landscape. The only visual evidence of life is breathing. It is the finest of motions; a slow rising and sinking. It’s the the primordial rhythm of life.

To make the film, I painted multiple watercolors of my wife, who has always been my favorite subject. I already had boxes full of paintings to work from, spanning the length of our marriage. They were all painted in the morning because, with its bright golden luminance, that’s the light I find most suited to watercolor. And we are both always quite happy when she can sleep late.

Cross-dissolving through a series of nearly identical duplicated paintings makes the little differences between the paintings create motion as they slowly morph, shimmering into one another. By controlling and keeping constant the length of the dissolves, I hoped to create the feeling of breathing. Shay Lynch took the same rhythm for inspiration, and wrote a restful, elegant score.

Sources : The New York Times

Can Obama Actually Achieve Entitlement Reform?

2009-02-24T03:25:00.002+07:00

By Michael Scherer / WASHINGTON

As sure as the sun rises, the sitting President of the United States promises to save our fiscal future by reforming entitlement spending. And as sure as the sun sets, each attempt at delivering on that pledge ends in failure. Bill Clinton vowed to change Social Security when he first addressed Congress in 1993, and he was still vowing in his last address in 2000. He promised to "slow the growth of Medicare" in 1994, and 15 years later, that growth is still rocketing up. George W. Bush touted entitlement reform in both of his successful presidential campaigns. Then last month, just a few weeks before he left office, he was asked to name the mistakes he had made. "I believe that running the Social Security [reform] idea right after the '04 elections was a mistake," he said. "I should have argued for immigration reform."

The reasons for those unfulfilled promises are no secret. At bottom, entitlement reform means one of two things: Less spending on things voters like, such as medical treatment or retirement checks, or unpopular higher taxes to pay for those things, and quite possibly both. Blocking each of those routes are powerful lobbies ready to whip supple members of Congress: anti-tax ideologues, liberal New Deal defenders, retiree groups, patient advocates, pharmaceutical companies, and medical providers, to name a few. To make matters worse, while the coming crisis is both real and terrifying, it is not immediately apparent. Even as our fiscal position deteriorates, the world continues to buy U.S. Government debt, allowing for magically low interest rates in spite of enormous deficit spending. (See 25 people to blame for the financial crisis.)

It is on this inhospitable terrain that President Barack Obama now plans to accomplish the impossible: To reverse the trajectory of the political universe and make real progress on reforming Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. The next step in this quest happens Monday afternoon, when Obama convenes a "Fiscal Summit" in the White House's State Dining Room, with about 100 high profile guests, including the chairs of the relevant Congressional Committees. (See pictures of and read about President Obama's White House staff.)

The event will be conducted like a corporate retreat, with better upholstery on the chairs. There will be an address by the President and his vice president, Joe Biden, followed by "breakout discussion groups" on topics like health spending, taxation, Social Security, and the budget. Those groups will then report their results back to the president. (No word yet on whether the Senators will be using Magic Marker, or those easels with the oversized notepads.)

As daunting as the obstacles to actual reform are, Obama is banking on a number of recent developments to allow him to succeed where Bush and Clinton failed. For one, there is significant appetite in the Democratically-controlled Congress for providing more health care to the growing ranks of uninsured, a campaign promise that Obama made, which he now intends to pair with a concurrent demand to reduce long-term health care inflation in what some observers have called a "grand bargain." "We would not do an expansion of health care without a lot of savings," one high-level White House official told me last week.

In practice, this will mean giving uninsured Americans good news, while at the same time telling patients, and health providers, that bad medicine is on the horizon. "Someone is going to have to tell people you are not going to get the care you want," explains Howard Gleckman, a research associate at the Urban Institute. "Covering the uninsured is easy compared to that."

The companies that depend on federal and state health largesse are already mobilizing to fight back against spending reductions that could hurt their balance sheets. One industry front group, called the Partnership to Improve Patient Care, mobilized last month to water down a House plan for more than $1 billion in the stimulus bill to study the relative effectiveness of certain medical treatments, a widely recognized first step in controlling costs. The provision passed, but not before its language was changed to decouple the effort from evaluating the costs of competing treatments.

In the meantime, other provisions of the stimulus bill, like money for new health information technologies and preventative disease spending, have effectively jump started the move to a more cost-contained health care system. Early last week, Obama made no secret of his pride in these measures, declaring at the stimulus bill signing in Denver, "We have done more in 30 days to advance the cause of health reform than this country has done in a decade." The effort to reform Social Security, which is generally seen as a less complex problem, is likely to take a backseat over the coming months to health care efforts. In part, this is due to resistance to the idea of reducing social security benefits from many House liberals, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was able to take over the reins in Congress thanks in part to the resentment caused by Bush's failed reform effort. Though Administration officials do not like discussing the problem on the record, the White House has not yet ruled out the idea of establishing some sort of independent commission to look at creating a specific reform plan outside the congressional committee structure, an approach supported by many outside experts as the best way to break the political deadlock.

Tennessee Rep. Jim Cooper, a centrist Democrat, recently discussed his proposal for such a commission during a White House meeting with Obama and other moderate, so-called Blue Dog Democrats. "We have to approach the topic very gingerly," Cooper said in a recent interview, noting the concerns of key Congressional leaders that they will lose jurisdiction to such a commission. "The key is going to be a required Congressional vote so we can't duck the problem any longer."

Perhaps the biggest advantage that Obama has as he prepares to tackle entitlement is the financial crisis, which has forced everyone in Washington to focus on the nation's long term fiscal problems. The recent explosion of government spending to handle the banking collapse and housing crisis has been coupled with vocal concern from nations like China, which buy government debt. A drop in international interest in federal debt could lead to a spike in interest rates, which would have a damaging impact on the U.S. economy. On Sunday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Chinese leaders to continue their investments in U.S. debt. "We are truly going to rise and fall together," she warned.

None of this, however, means that Obama's task will be much easier than the one that bedeviled his predecessors. "This is not walking and chewing gum," joked Robert Reischauer, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office. "It's doing open heart surgery and particle physics at the same time." But the difficulty has not dissuaded Obama. As he pivots to confront the nation's fiscal problems, his aides say he knows exactly what he is getting into.

Sources : Ini Dia

Clinton Works to Boost U.S. Ties to Indonesia

2009-02-24T03:11:00.001+07:00

(JAKARTA, Indonesia) —Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton moved Wednesday to boost U.S. ties with the world's most populous Muslim nation and its neighbors, pledging a new American willingness to work with and listen to Indonesia and the rest of Southeast Asia.

Her message was received warmly by officials in Jakarta, the childhood home of President Barack Obama, although small and scattered protests were held in several cities, with some Islamic hard-liners setting tires on fire and others throwing shoes at caricatures of Clinton. (Read "Indonesia's Fatwa Against Yoga.")

She said her choice of Asia for her first overseas trip as Obama's top diplomat was "no accident" and a sign of the new administration's desire for broader and deeper relations with the continent on regional and global issues.

Clinton, who arrived from a stop in Japan and will head Thursday to South Korea and China, was particularly effusive about Indonesia, which she said deserved praise for its hard-won multiethnic democracy and efforts to fight terrorism while respecting human rights. (Read TIME's cover story "Why Indonesia Matters.")

She announced plans to restart Peace Corps programs in Indonesia that were suspended in 1965 when volunteers were expelled after leftists accused them of espionage. And she said the two countries would cooperate on climate change, trade, education, regional security and a host of other issues, while indicating that more development aid was on the way.

"I bring greetings from President Obama, who has himself said and written about the importance of his time here as a young boy," Clinton told reporters at a news conference with Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda.

"It gave him an insight into not only this diverse and vibrant culture, but also the capacity for people with different backgrounds to live harmoniously together," she said.

Wirajuda said Indonesia could be a powerful bridge to help the United States reconnect with Muslims. "As we have proven, democracy, Islam and modernity can go hand-in-hand," he said. "Indonesia can be a good partner for the U.S. in reaching out to the Muslim world."

Indonesia, a secular nation of 235 million people, has personal ties for Obama, who spent four years here as a child. Among those who turned out at the airport to welcome Clinton were 44 children from Obama's former elementary school, singing traditional folk songs and waving Indonesian and U.S. flags. She smiled and swayed to the music as they sang.

Wirajuda said Indonesia would welcome a presidential visit from Obama, but neither he nor Clinton would say if an invitation had been extended.
Another of Clinton's goals in Indonesia was to show stepped-up U.S. engagement with Southeast Asia in general, stressing the growing importance of a region that often felt slighted by the Bush administration.

She visited the Jakarta-based headquarters of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and said Washington would for the first time begin consideration of signing the bloc's Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, a nonaggression pact.

Clinton said she would attend the group's annual regional security conference — something former Bush administration Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice skipped twice during her four years in office.

"It really shows the seriousness of the United States to end its diplomatic absenteeism in the region," ASEAN Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan.

Greater U.S. engagement with ASEAN could pave the way for a fresh approach to promote reform in Myanmar, also known as Burma, whose military regime has a dismal human rights record and has failed to hand over power to a democratically elected government.

Clinton lamented that neither U.S. sanctions nor ASEAN prodding has convinced the junta to embrace democracy or release opposition detained leader Aung San Suu Kyi and an estimated 2,100 other political prisoners.

"It is an unfortunate fact that Burma seems impervious to influences from anyone," Clinton said. "The path we have taken in imposing sanctions hasn't influenced the Burmese junta, but...reaching out and trying to engage them has not influenced them either."

"This is a problem not just for Indonesia and the U.S. but for the entire region, so we are going to work closely and we are going to consult with Indonesia for ideas how best to bring about positive change in Burma," she said.

Though most of Indonesia's 190 million Muslims practice a moderate form of the faith, public anger ran high over U.S. policy in the Middle East and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush years, fueling a small but increasingly vocal fundamentalist fringe.

Security was tight for Clinton's visit, with 2,800 police deployed in the capital along with members of the army, according to local police.

Witnesses saw scattered protests and at least five people were detained by police following a rowdy rally by 200 Muslim university students in front of the U.S. Embassy. Some protesters set tires on fire on the capital's outskirts and others screamed "Hillary is terrorist."

Sources : Time Magazine

MENGUJI JATI DIRI KNPI

2009-02-10T04:43:00.002+07:00

Oleh-Oleh dari Kongres XII Pemuda KNPI Ancol Jakarta

Kongres XII Pemuda – Komite Nasional Pemuda Indonesia (KNPI) Tahun 2008 baik di Jakarta maupun di Pulau Bali baru saja usai. Kedua ajang kongres-pun telah menghasilkan Ketua Umum, yaitu Ahmad Doli Kurnia produk Jakarta dan Azis Syamsudin hasil dari kongres Bali.

Hari ini, kita sama-sama melihat, bahwa KNPI tengah berada di persimpangan jalan. Akankah eksistensi KNPI masih dapat dipertahankan dan dipercaya mampu mewadahi Organisasi Kepemudaan ? ataukah KNPI tetap bertahan untuk larut dalam konflik internal yang berkepanjangan, sehingga menuju jurang kehancuran KNPI itu sendiri.

Menjadi sebuah kenyataan pahit bagi dunia kepemudaan di Indonesia, ditengah hingar bingarnya peringatan Hari Sumpah Pemuda yang ke 80, justru KNPI menorehkan sejarah buram dengan memunculkan konflik internal yang membuahkan dua pelaksanaan kongres di tempat yang berbeda.

Konflik internal yang diawali oleh ketidak harmonisan hubungan antara Ketua Umum Hasanuddin Yusuf (HY) selaku mandataris Kongers XI KNPI di Kinasih Bogor dengan Munawar Fuad (MF) Sekretaris Jendral hasil formatur, kedua figur yang sama-sama berlaga dalam pemilihan Ketua Umum ketika itu.

Menjadi sesuatu yang lumrah ketika konflik mampu dikelola secara arif, cerdas dan dewasa oleh kedua belah pihak, tetapi kenyataan yang terjadi sebaliknya, konflik menjadi terbuka serta menyeret kepada kelompok-kelompok lain untuk saling berhadap-hadapan.

Pihak pemerintah yang diharapkan dapat menjembatani konflik KNPI, dalam hal ini Kementrian Negara Pemuda dan Olah Raga justru dituding cenderung melakukan intervensi melalui pembelaan sepihak yang pada gilirannya lebih memperbesar jurang pemisah di tubuh KNPI.

Secara hukum positif, perseturan terbuka tersebut menunjukkan bahwa KNPI menjadi sebuah “barang berharga” dan “mahal” sehingga patut dan layak diperebutkan oleh para penganut ambisiusisme walaupun harus menempuh cara yang dianggap tidak patut secara etika berorganisasi.

Paradigma bahwa melalui KNPI mampu mengantarkan seseorang menjadi Menpora, mendapatkan jabatan politis dan atau fasilitas tertentu sudah semestinya direevaluasi dan reformasi, karena terbukti membutakan dan menjebak pada membiasnya pergerakan kepemudaan serta melupakan hakikat persatuan dan kesatuan.

Sejarah telah mencatat bahwa KNPI lahir dari rahim kesepakatan organisasi kepemudaan yang menjadikannya sebagai wadah berhimpun dan laboratorium kader dalam upaya menyatukan visi dan missi pemuda bagi mempersiapkan kader berkualitas serta siap menjadi pewaris tongkat estafet kepemimpinan bangsa.

Hampir dipastikan dinamika KNPI menjadi sangat lekat dengan kekuasaan, bahkan ketika Orde Baru berkuasa, format kelembagaan KNPI sangatlah kuat melalui back up legal konstitusional pihak Pemerintah. KNPI menjadi satu-satunya lembaga kepemudaan yang diakui dan diproteksi oleh Pemerintah bahkan diatur dalam Garis-garis Besar Haluan Negara (GBHN).

Mengapa KNPI menjadi penting dan layak dipertahankan eksistensinya ?

Idrus Marham, tokoh senior dan mantan Ketua Umum KNPI mencatat ada tiga hal yang mengukuhkan eksistensi dan peran KNPI masa kini dan mendatang tetap dianggap relevan.

Konteks Historis, kehadiran KNPI tidak dapat dilepaskan dari sejarah dan peran pemuda Indonesia sejak Kebangkitan Nasional 1908, Sumpah Pemuda 1928, proklamasi kemerdekaan hingga era pascakemerdekaan. Spirit KNPI adalah spirit kebangsaan yang menghimpun semua spektrum pemuda Indonesia yang majemuk (plural) dan cita-cita kemajuan bangsa.

Konteks Filosofis, KNPI sebagai wadah berhimpun pemuda Indonesia adalah upaya untuk melakukan proses eksternalisasi atau pengabdian nilai persatuan, kebangsaan dan nasionalisme sebagai watak dan karakter yang harus menjadi landasan dan orientasi perjuangannya.

Konteks Sosiologis, sebagai wadah berhimpun pemuda Indonesia, KNPI secara sosiologis merupakan upaya perekat atas realitas kebangsaan yang plural dan heterogen, di dalam sebuah cita-cita bersama yang dilandasi semangat kebangsaan.

Bisa jadi, tokoh sekelas Idrus Marham saat ini tengah bersedih, meratapi kader-kadernya yang telah melupakan catatan bersejarah yang melandasi kelahiran KNPI sebagai sesuatu yang utuh.

Mengutip apa yang disampaikan oleh Para Aktivis Gerakan Pemuda Ansor dalam catatan berjudul “Gonjang – Ganjing di Tubuh KNPI” yang senpat beredar di arena Kongres Ancol menyebutkan bahwa Konflik terbuka yang terjadi telah melahirkan berbagai persepsi, Pertama, kader-kader yang bergabung di KNPI yang selama ini dianggap memiliki segudang pengalaman dan intelektualitas ternyata belum mampu menunjukkan sebagai sebuah kekuatan pemersatu bahkan cenderung memelihara dan memproduksi konflik baru yang sangat kontraproduktif.

Kedua, intervensi pemerintah melalui Menpora memperlihatkan betapa kuatnya arus kekuasaan melakukan hegemoni pada organisasi kepemudaan dan secara langsung mencoba mengarahkan gerak politik pemuda (KNPI) khususnya yang berhubungan dengan kebijakan dan otoritas politik penguasa. Kondisi yang dituding sebagai pemicu lemahnya nilai tawar KNPI serta pengkerdilan peran agen perubahan yang selama ini disandang oleh kaum muda, sehingga rentan terhadap perpecahan.

Siapapun berhak untuk membuat persepsi, yang pasti pasca kongres Ancol dan Bali telah melahirkan dua kepemimpinan dan kepengurusan KNPI, melalui jargon “konstitusional” kedua-duanya mengklaim memenuhi konstitusi.

Sudah selayaknya KNPI dikembalikan kepada komponen dan eksponen kepemudaan agar mampu dan mau duduk bersama, bermusyawarah untuk mufakat bersama sebagai upaya menciptakan formulasi penyatuan kembali KNPI sebagai bagian kepemudaan Indonesia yang utuh, karena hanya jalan inilah yang dapat dianggap paling konstitusional. Perjuangan Pemuda Indonesia yang telah dicontohkan 80 Tahun lalu sepertinya telah dilupakan oleh sebuah harga konstitusi dan kekuasaan.

Semangat Sumpah Pemuda 1928 dengan keberhasilannya mempersatukan kebhinekaan suku, bangsa, agama dan bahasa menanggalkan rasa egoisme, ambisi pribadi/kelompok sudah dirasa perlu dan mendesak untuk direaktualisasikan dalam Jiwa dan Raga yang tumbuh melalui Reinkarnasi Sumpah Pemuda 2008.

Menjadi sesuatu yang ironis, manakala pemuda sedang mengumandangkan gerakan “Saatnya yang muda yang memimpin”, tetapi calon pemimpinnya justru tidak menunjukkan sikap sebagai seorang pemimpin.

Bangsa ini membutuhkan pemimpin yang bukan sekedar memiliki gelar, kepandaian dan kemampuan untuk berdebat, tetapi lebih pada sesuatu yang kongkrit berbuat untuk masyarakat banyak, mau berkorban, kemandirian dan komitmen serta berani mengatakan yang benar adalah benar dan yang salah adalah salah.

Dan ketika itu ada di KNPI, maka seluruh pemuda Indonesia sepakat perpecahan hari ini bukanlah sebuah kegagalan sejarah kepemudaan di bumi Indonesia, melainkan proses alamiah menuju pada pendewasaan dan kearifan diri.

Telah dimuat di Harian Batampos, Senin 3 Nov 2008

HDS looks at virtualization to tackle data explosion

2008-07-31T18:54:00.002+07:00

Like the sprouting high-rise buildings and skyscrapers in metropolitan areas around the world, the amount of data generated by the digital revolution is simply incredible.

Some people estimate that it doubles every year.

A distribution company, for example, has to collect sales data from all of its branches on a daily basis. A credit card issuing bank has to keep track of every purchase made by its cardholders.

A telco company has to be able to provide its customers with details on the calls that they make.

And the data growth that has to be maintained will continue to accelerate. Government regulations, for example, require that a patient's data is maintained for many years even after his death. Online activities such as social networking also contribute to the explosion of data as users share videos and photos with groups of friends and relatives.

"Soon we will be talking about exabytes of data," said Hubert Yoshida, vice president and chief technical officer of Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), during the Hitachi Data Systems Inspirational Tour 2008 on July 17.

One exabyte is one billion gigabytes.

Specializing in storage solutions, HDS manufactures hardware products, develops the applications to manage storage and provides services to their clients.

I was invited by the company to visit their research and development center in Odawara, around 30 minutes by Shinkansen train from Shinagawa, Tokyo.

Yoshida underscored the fact that, while the amount of data has become so staggering, the infrastructure built by other storage vendors has remained the same as it was 20 years ago.

This infrastructure is no longer adequate to handle all the data that has to be gathered and kept today.

In trying to accommodate the increasing amount of data, what enterprises usually do is add more storage. The good news is that, as we have witnessed all these years, storage capacity has also grown.

However, enterprises have found out that acquiring new storage devices is not the right answer. They have realized that they are not using their storage resources efficiently. "Typically, enterprises use only 20 to 30 percent of the storage capacity that they have," said Yoshida.

To add more storage will only lead to increased costs and complexities in storage management. It also means more electricity is required; meanwhile the world is trying to reduce power output and cooling requirements as green has become the color of the day.

An answer was required to address these problems.

HDS' flagship technology is in storage virtualization. In fact, HDS is the market leader in this area. This technology, enabled by the company's Universal Storage Platform, enables a business enterprise to manage its data storage resources, regardless of who makes the devices.

Using HDS' controller, it consolidates the physical storage devices from various different vendors and makes all the external storage look like a single pool of storage.

"With virtualization, an enterprise can increase the utilization of its storage capacity up to 50 to 60 percent," Yoshida added.

Another key technology developed by HDS is Dynamic Provisioning, which allows an enterprise to store data without having to immediately add new storage devices. It is more like "storage on demand".

To increase data storage efficiency further, data that is considered old or "stale" may not have to be stored in a high performance device. Typically, data that is already 60 days old can be archived as it is no longer active. Such data can be stored in a low-cost, low-performance storage system, thus reducing costs further.

The software, which embodies the company's service-oriented storage vision, manages the movement of data across the infrastructure without causing any disruptions.

Another way to increase efficiency is to eliminate duplication of the same data, both structured and unstructured. Take, for example, the collections of product photos that a company usually distributes to their employees for review. They end up in everyone's hard disk, and then the hard disks get backed up.

HDS develops the technology to reduce the duplication through an approach that is called "deduplication".

HDS, a subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd. -- which ranked number 48 in the list of Fortune 500 Global companies last year -- may not be a familiar name even to IT people. The fact is, quite a few of its executives hold patent rights. It is much like Cisco Systems back in the early 1990s, when we began to use the Internet.

Top enterprise IT providers such as IBM and HP have used HDS' products and solutions in their high-end offerings to their own clients.

Today, HDS has 21 sales offices in the Asia-Pacific region, and a few years ago it opened its local office in Indonesia.

Sources : The Jakarta Post

Raja Ampat, Papua's underwater paradise

2008-07-31T18:48:00.004+07:00

Wobbegong!" Saka screamed as he rose to the surface to tell me there was a shark. I hurriedly put on my snorkel and jumped into the katingting (wooden boat) into the sea.

After swimming about 25 meters, I saw four of my friends diving 4 meters deep, surrounding the shark.

The shark was lurking beneath the coral, hidden by the white sand. Not content with the view from the surface, I decided to dive for a closer look at the tasseled wobbegong.

At a distance of 1 meter, the shark stayed motionless with only its broad tassel-swathed head showing from behind the coral. It was a rare moment.

With some prodding by Saka, the 1-meter-long shark came out of hiding.

My four peers soon surfaced, faces shining with pleasure at having seen and photographed this unusual shark.

"At last, I got to see the Ugly Face!" cried Riyanni Djangkaru, host of an adventure program broadcast on a private TV station, as she described the wobbegong with a hearty laugh.

Saka, our diving guide from the Maritime and Fisheries Office of Raja Ampat, Papua, was also beaming. We all celebrated our successful encounter with the shark on board with laughter and applause. The shark made up for our previous dive trip, when we found nothing but a whale squirting out its breath near our boat as we left Waiwo for the Friwin dive spot, Raja Ampat, northwest of the province of Papua.

From Batu Lima, the place where we spotted the wobbegong, Saka asked boat owner Pak Ibrahim to sail to Mioskon, just a short trip away.

There was a rather strong current in the waters 10 to 20 meters deep. I followed the sea flow along with thousands of gold-banded fusiliers and some parrotfish.
Later Saka took me to shallower waters, where sunlight and crystal-clear water enabled me to see through a distance of more than 30 meters.

Kicking my fins, I trailed the Biak native until a spectacular view appeared. It was a fascinating stretch of reefs with soft and hard coral and a myriad of exotic fish dancing around, as though in a welcome ritual.

There were clusters of Acroporidae, Alcyoniidae and others forming 1 to 5 meters of coral mounds. Gorgeous fish species such as goldies, cardinalfish, angelfish, butterflyfish and surgeonfish were playing on sea anemones and coral.

The whole setting presented a panorama of very beautiful and peaceful marine life. It made me realize that through this particular spot, Raja Ampat shows its class as a haven for divers across the world, even a snorkeler like me!

Back on board the boat we continued to admire the underwater natural beauty and hoped for yet more thrilling sights as the boat was heading for the next spot, Chicken Reef, in half an hour. On arrival, the sea was as still as a stretch of carpet, and Saka startled us with a sudden dive to check the water currents, leaving us laughing.

"Barracuda!" shouted Saka, the Mike Tyson look-alike, as he surfaced. While my friends were preparing to dive, I plunged right away to witness swarms of barracuda at a depth of 4 meters.

In this spot there were also giant clams and clownfish having fun on the anemones.

Satisfied with our diving activities in three spots, we took a break on an islet to fill our stomachs after feasting our eyes on the surrounding landscape. The second day of the diving and snorkeling trip wound up in the Cape KRI spot.

This spot offered us the sight of flying rays flapping their fins around 1.5 meters above the water surface.

"Manta...rays!" I cried out as I noticed the fish jumping not far from the back of my friend Panji.

Then I plunged again into the sea current while watching from the surface my friends diving 15 meters below. From slanting drop-off rims I dived down to a depth of 5 meters to take a close look at marine biota, such as golden and brown Faviidae corals forming seabed domes. The silvery reflection of trevally fish exposed to the sun added to the charm of the sea and the specialness of every corner of Raja Ampat.

Manta Rays

After breakfast, we set out on another diving trip amid rather strong winds. The waves were quite high with a strong enough current following the night-to-dawn downpour in the area.

We arrived at Manta Point after more than an hour to start the third day. Two speedboats had arrived earlier, one of which carried Miss Universe 2006 runner-up Kurara Chibana.

As we shifted our gaze from the beauty queen of Japanese origin to the ripples left on the surface of the water by tiny jumping fish, a small dark fin was seen emerging and moving around, followed by several other fins.

"Manta... Manta!" yelled Saka. I also hurried to the water with my snorkel along with the other divers to approach the manta rays.

I got overexcited seizing the opportunity for a close glance. Five mantas were swimming down there, tussling for plankton with numerous gold-banded fusiliers.

The mantas were scattered all over, which made it difficult for us to swim closer to them. So we had to find out where they were heading and screamed at each other when any of us noticed their positions.

My great desire to snap mantas at close quarters separated me from my peers. I kept praying while trying to find the right strategy to approach them and photograph them safely. All I could think about was how to avoid what had befallen Steve Irwin -- "The Crocodile Hunter" of a TV program -- some time earlier.

As I was preoccupied with the search for the fish, a manta was moving toward me. My heart was pounding and I was overwhelmed with admiration, fear and the urge to take pictures. There was no way of withdrawing as the moment would mark my first underwater photos.

"It's the right time!," I thought, pressing the shutter release. The manta was drawing closer to me ...
The flap of its 3.5-meter wings prompted me to refrain from disturbing it and risk infuriating it. I finally lowered the camera as it was even closer, with our eyes meeting and holding.

Moments later I saw its mouth open wide to suck in plankton. When it was only about 3 meters from me, it turned away.

"Alhamdulillah," were my words in praise of God while again photographing the manta before it swam even farther.

Night snorkeling

After dinner I intended to go fishing because I felt something missing in Papua without this activity. Moreover, I'm a sports-fishing buff myself and three of my friends would be diving to find bamboo sharks. But as it was forbidden to fish in the resort area, I was going to head for the open sea by hiring a fishing boat.

In fact, the area around the jetty was teeming with the fish the locals call Bobara (giant trevally), weighing 1-3 kg. "If only the Seribu Islands that could be like this," I thought, an impossible wish given Jakarta Bay is now virtually the septic tank of the capital city.

By starlight, I followed my three friends diving from the jetty to start a bamboo shark hunt. Though I previously thought that sharks were mostly ferocious, further tips indicated that this species was not aggressive, which encouraged me to join the search.

As I shone the flashlight around, my eyes got fixed on a light brown fish in desert soldiers' camouflage pattern. "It's a shark!"
It was unbelievable to have found this shark in such shallow waters.

Sadly, though, the fish began to move to the left and right quickly in a frightened manner. I kept calm so as not to make it panic even more. Yet the shark was now going farther away from me, which spurred me to chase it but it dodged very fast and disappeared into darkness as I got closer.

The sight of the bamboo shark failed to quench my desire to observe blue spotted rays. Earlier in the day, several of these rays were frequently seen roaming around the jetty. This was the ray species that had reportedly killed Steve Irwin.

And my Raja Ampat trip proved to be rewarding.

The one I was looking for moved toward me, perhaps attracted by my flashlight. But the ray finally paused at a distance of about 3 meters from me, leading to another two-way stare.

Despite my composure to avoid any disturbances that might cause panic, the ray withdrew after a while. So the shark and ray wound up my night snorkeling.

Last day

The dive spot on our last day was Mike's Point, which only took a short time to reach using the Maritime and Fisheries Office's speedboat. Here we did the same diving routine before the groups accompanying Kurara Chibana arrived at the spot.

After a cameraman and two divers from the groups went underwater, Kurara and her partner followed. I had the opportunity the photographing the shooting of this film about ecology starring Kurara before my camera housing was affected by fog.

Diving in Raja Ampat's different areas gave us a lot of pleasure and impressions. The natural splendor of the island group will tempt everyone to return for more excitement.

"It was fun! I'll come back next year for my vacation!," the Miss Universe 2006 runner-up assured everyone at the end of her diving adventure in Raja Ampat.

Sources : The Jakarta Post

Death toll in serial blasts in western Indian city of Ahmadabad rises to 45

2008-07-28T00:45:00.001+07:00

An official says the death toll from serial blasts that hit the western Indian state of Ahmadabad has risen to 45.

State government spokesman Jaynarayan Vyas did not say how many people were wounded.

The city's police control room earlier Sunday said 110 people had been injured in the 16 blasts that went off in several neighborhoods of the busy city on Saturday evening.

The blasts came a day after seven small-intensity explosions hit the southern technology hub of Bangalore, killing two people.

Several Indian cities have been hit by serial blasts in recent months. The attacks have been blamed on Islamic militants. (**)

Sources : The Jakarta Post

AWARD FROM TYAS

2008-07-24T20:02:00.004+07:00

Thanks To Tyas Who gave this award to me

Rules of this award are :
Put the logo on your blog
Add a link to the person who awarded you
Nominate at least 7 other blogs
Add links to those blogs on yours
Leave a message for your nominees on their blogs

And this award goes to :

1. Anied Blog

2. Indah Oke

3. Gadis Rantau

4. Laurencia

5. Lina Jubata

6. Gratcia

7. Lyla

VISIT BATAM 2010

2008-07-24T08:04:00.004+07:00

Logo Visit Batam 2010 sources Humas Batam dot Com

Intellinet Server Appliance offers everything, almost

2008-07-24T03:32:00.004+07:00

Once in a while you come across a product that fulfills almost all your needs, only to find that it has technology that is already slightly behind its time.

Intellinet, a do-it-all device that combines a router, RAID data storage and printer server, unfortunately uses that already obsolete IDE hard disk interface. (JP/Zatni Arbi)

A few months ago, Datascrip sent me a unit to review. Unfortunately, all this time I could not make up my mind whether I should review it or not.

The reason it had been sitting on my shelf was that it used two IDE hard disks, which are being phased out. The total storage capacity, if mirroring was used, could be up to 500 GB -- enough to store a decent collection of music and family photos. But, if you have been shopping around for hard disks lately, you will know that brand new IDE hard disks are now very difficult to find. Almost all the hard disks used in the PCs sold today use the Serial ATA (SATA) standard hard disk interface, which offers better performance.

When I was offered this product for review, Datascrip was unable to tell me when SATA-based Intellinet would become available.

However, while browsing the Internet recently I learned that, yes, this server appliance was already available for SATA hard disks. I took some notes of the demo unit before returning it to Datascrip, expecting that the new version would at least match its feature set. I should admit that, in general, this appliance was quite impressive in its capabilities and features.

The Intellinet Server Appliance is great for a small office or a home, especially if you want to keep all your data files in one place. Also called a SOHO (Small Office Home Office) server, it is actually an all-in-one device. It provides a Network Attached Storage (NAS) and several useful networking functions. It supports Virtual Private Network (VPN) to ensure security of communication over a public network such as the Internet.

It is also a print server, a Web server and an email server. (A NAS, by the way, lets all the connected computers share storage space where they can store and share files, regardless of which operating system the individual computers are running.) The server supports operating systems such as Windows, Linux and Mac OS.

If you configure the two IDE hard disks with Level 1 RAID, you would have a mirroring system. So, in case hard disk A crashed, you would still have exactly the same data on hard disk B. This can be life-saving in a small business with a lot of transactions. Just imagine the magnitude of the disaster, for example, if you were to lose all your transactions data because your hard disk died and you did not have any backup copy at all. You might not be able to send the invoices to your customers as you would not know how much they owed you.

In addition to providing data storage, the Intellinet Server Appliance also serves as a router and switch. You only have to connect it to a broadband cable or ADSL modem, and then connect it to up to four PCs via the Ethernet RJ-45 port to build a small network. It is also a Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) device, which means that it can be added and then taken out from the network without causing network downtime.

The appliance is so easy to set up and manage because it is pre-packaged, and that is one of the reasons it is called an appliance. I suppose you could also connect it to a wireless access point to provide Wi-Fi connectivity within your home or office, but I did not have the opportunity to try it out due to lack of time.

If you need to expand your storage capacity, Intellinet has four high-speed USB 2.0 ports to connect external hard disks. You can also connect the server to a printer using the USB port. The browser-based configuration steps are straightforward, no software driver installation is necessary as everything is already pre-installed.

Physically, this device is small and lightweight: It is the size of a lunch box, and it even has a handle so you can take it home with you over the weekend or keep it in a locked safe for security reasons. There are a lot of cables to unplug, though.
The AC adaptor is external and the design of the enclosure is quite stylish, too.

Opening the covers to put in or pull out the hard disks only requires the opening of two finger screws. Unfortunately, the screws have to be handled carefully, as the threads seem to get stripped easily.

One annoying characteristic I noticed during my test was the loud fan noise. The fan kept rotating and there was no thermostat to automatically slow it down when not needed. Hopefully the new model will be fitted with a fan that stops when the internal temperature is below the threshold.

It would be nicer if the next model of this appliance also came with an integrated Wi-Fi access point. This would make the features even more compelling.

Nonetheless, if you are interested in an all-in-one device like the Intellinet Server Appliance, just make sure that, at least for now, it uses SATA hard disks.

Sources : The Jakarta Post

Yusuf Islam wins damages for "veiled women" slur

2008-07-24T03:29:00.002+07:00

London, NU Online

British folk singer Yusuf Islam, formerly Cat Stevens, accepted libel damages and an apology on Friday from a news agency that reported he had refused to talk to women at an awards ceremony who were not wearing a veil.

The artist, who changed his name after becoming a Muslim in the late 1970s, will donate the "substantial" payout to Small Kindness, a U.N.-linked charity he chairs.

Adam Tudor, the singer's attorney, told London's High Court that the story behind the legal action was published by World Entertainment News Network and was used on Contactmusic.com, a website said to have 2.2 million page views a month.

The article appeared in March last year and suggested that the singer was "so sexist and bigoted that he refused at an awards ceremony to speak to or even acknowledge any women who were not wearing a veil," Tudor said.

"It went on to suggest that Mr. Islam's manager had stated 'Mr. Islam doesn't speak with women except his wife, least of all if they don't wear a headscarf. Things like that only happen via an intermediary."'

Tudor said the article had embarrassed the singer, creating a false impression of his attitude to women and also casting serious aspersions on his religious faith.

World Entertainment News Network issued an apology, saying:

"We now accept that these allegations ... are entirely without foundation, and that Mr. Islam has never had any difficulties working with women, whether for religious or for any other reason."

Islam, 59, is still best known for his hits as Cat Stevens, including "Wild World," "Morning Has Broken" and "Moonshadow."

He sold an estimated 60 million albums as Stevens, but retired from showbusiness in 1978 after converting to Islam. He released his first mainstream pop album since then in 2006. (reu/dar)

Sources : NU Online

Singapore turns ASEAN into all work, no play

2008-07-24T03:26:00.001+07:00

Kornelius Purba and Tony Hotland , The Jakarta Post , Singapore

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is a very serious organization.
And Singapore's Foreign Minister George Yeo is very serious in ensuring the success of the annual ASEAN meeting, which has been overshadowed by the dispute between Cambodia and Thailand, with Cambodia opting to directly report the dispute to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) before asking her neighbors for help and Thailand refusing to involve the regional group in resolving the conflict at all.

Indeed, the minister is so serious that he will not allow his guests to follow ASEAN tradition and give stage performances, as done in the past by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who played the piano, and former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who gave a rendition of Bob Hope's "Thanks for the Memories": "When you are not so sweet, I call the Seventh Fleet..."

So the host provided his guests with nothing but delicious food when he organized a gala dinner for them on Wednesday.

Before ASEAN received the foreign ministers of China, Japan and South Korea on Tuesday afternoon, Yeo chaired a special meeting for the ASEAN ministers to discuss the Cambodia-Thai dispute.

Their dispute over 4.6 square kilometers of land near the Preah Vihear Temple has embarrassed the regional group at a time it is hosting dialogues with major global players such as the United States, China, Russia, India and Japan in Singapore this week.

Cambodia has asked the foreign ministers of Indonesia, Singapore, Laos and Vietnam to help bring the conflict to an end. But the ASEAN ministers were still confused about how to help the reluctant members, although they have explored the possibility of setting up a contact group to deal with the problem.

"The problem is that the parties (Cambodia and Thai) are not in full agreement on whether or not at this time we need to establish a contact group," Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda said.

In a separate comment, Minister Yeo said that "Both sides reiterated that they would handle the situation in accordance with their ASEAN and international obligations."

Minister Yeo moved quickly to seek outside help. In his bilateral discussions with Japanese Foreign Minister Masahiko Koumura, he asked Japan's help in persuading the two feuding nations to find an amicable solution to their problem.

Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kazuo Kodama confirmed the request was made because the Singaporean diplomat believed "Japan has very good relations with the two countries".

On Wednesday, ASEAN will receive its guests from 17 countries and organizations before hosting the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) on Thursday.
But for the participants of the ASEAN meeting, something will be missing in Singapore this year.

ASEAN Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan confirmed that Singapore would not allow the ministers to perform on stage on the night before ending their meeting. Surin indicated that some ministers were too serious in preparing their stage performances, neglecting their main mission as diplomats.

"Some of the dialogue partners took their performance too seriously. They kept their scripts secret and rehearsed sometimes in their bathrooms," Surin said.

In Kuala Lumpur in 2006, Rice performed a classical piano piece and Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso made an appearance as Humphrey Bogart.

Sources : The Jakarta Post

The critic of holistic-transformative education

2008-07-21T20:44:00.002+07:00

Title : Transformative Islamic Education
Writer: Dr Mahmud Arif
Publisher: LKiS Yogyakarta
Edition I: Februari 2008
Thick: xiv + 310 pages
Reviewer: Abdul Halim Fathani

Education is an important thing that would always be talked about, examined, and debatable. The purpose of education is basically to develop human in the frame of carrying out mandate as representative of Allah on earth. Nowadays there have been many talking more about the format of education that is appropriate with the era of ours. More over we have most of the time found those attaining high education whose no good morality. Instead many attaining poor educational standards have good attitude. Then the raising question is that is there such a mistake dealing with the implemented model of education or the education itself can not respond to any human difficulties? Apart from all this we have actually realized about the importance of education in developing human personality.

In terms of the importance of education, Malik Fadjar (2004) tries to place the education within the frame of human investment. Malik says there are three big challenges facing education in Indonesia. First is defending the results having been obtained; second is anticipating globalization era;and the third is conducting changes and adapting national education system that supports the process of more democratic education; paying more attention to various necessities/circumstances of regions and students; and encouraging the increasing of people's participation.

It is a must that most people have expected the existence of Islamic educational institutions whose quality in any kinds and educational levels. Even education has now been such an urgent necessity especially for those middle-class Muslim circles. While educational institutions having rapidly developed and professionally been managed have most of them belonged to public educational ones whose no religious background.

According to Muhaimin (2006:237) there are three paradigms in developing Islamic education, namely Dycotomic Paradigm, Mechanism Paradigm, and Organism or Systemic Paradigm. In dycotomic paradigm, the aspect of life is viewed very simple. Islamic education tends to merely deal with ritual and spiritual matters while economic, political, cultural, social, and scientific aspects are considered as mere worldly matters. The dycotomic paradigm would lead to dualism in education system.

Mechanism paradigm views that the life consists of many aspects and education is considerably to implant and develop a set of values of life leading to their own rhythm. While organism paradigm suggests that educational activity constitutes a system consisting of components that can work together to reach certain purpose, namely the realization of religious life inspired by religious values and tenets.

The book's writer says so far studies on thoughts and Islamic education have “idealistically” viewed the golden era of Islam. AS for him, culture and and tradition of Islamic thoughts in the golden era were such final reference. It is taboo to review and should be blindly (taklidiyah) followed. So it is not so strange if some standard literatures on Islamic studies have tended to elaborate the excellence of tradition of thought and Islamic education in the golden age of Islam without being followed with critical analysis to emerging weaknesses.

Sources : NU Online

NU students from across Java agree to set up a forum

2008-07-21T20:41:00.001+07:00

Yogyakarta, NU Online

NU students from across Java gathering at a meeting in Yokyakarta over the weekend agreed to set up a new forum. The forum designed to facilitate dialogue and the exchange of information between students within NU community was called as NU Students' Communication Forum across Java (FKMNUJ).

The meeting was initiated by NU student family from a number of universities like Gajah Mada University (UGM), State University of Yogyakarta, (UNY) and Bogor Agricultural Institute (IPB). The great event involving NU activists and students from universities throughout Java was held in Alma Ata Institute of Health Sciences (STIKES) of Yogyakarta.

NU figure of Yogyakarta who is also the professor of Gajah Mada University, Prof. Dr. Muhammad Maksum MSc open the meeting and was appointed to be the keynote speaker at the scholarly forum.

There were nine prominent universities in Java participating in the meeting that was attended by some 50 students. In addition to being attended by the three forum-initiating top universities, the meeting was also attended by delegates from universities like Sunan Kalijaga Islamic State University (UIN) of Jakarta, Sebelas Maret State University of Solo (UNS), State University of Surabaya (Unesa), Brawijaya University of Malang, State Islamic University (UIN) of Malang and Darul Ulum Islamic University (Unisda) of Lamongan.

Organizing Committee chief, Najmu (UGM), said the forum was purposefully expected to be such a means of the importance of sharing ideas, strengthening cooperation, and addressing any issues faced by NU in all respects.

“We hope this meeting would give benefits for NU for preaching in developing NU in campuses has so far been difficult on such a scale. Many challenges that should be faced. This umbrella is expected to be a means of seeking solutions,” Najmu said.

While a participant in the meeting, Yudin, said that NU had now been facing threats posed by certain groups whose transnational networks. Furthermore, many NU cadres studying in prominent general campuses like UGM, IPB, UNY, UI, ITB, and so on have not yet been well organized, he said.

“If in religious-based campuses such as UIN, IAIN, STAIN and those affiliated with UIN the influence of NU both organizationally and culturally has remained strong. The existence of NU-based student organizations has remained good enough. At present, our homework is how the existence of NU students in general science-based campuses can be better organized,” Yudin said. (hir)

Sources : NU Online

Unlocking the Benefits of Garlic

2008-07-20T02:40:00.002+07:00

Garlic has long been touted as a health booster, but it’s never been clear why the herb might be good for you. Now new research is beginning to unlock the secrets of the odoriferous bulb.

In a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers show that eating garlic appears to boost our natural supply of hydrogen sulfide.

Hydrogen sulfide is actually poisonous at high concentrations — it’s the same noxious byproduct of oil refining that smells like rotten eggs. But the body makes its own supply of the stuff, which acts as an antioxidant and transmits cellular signals that relax blood vessels and increase blood flow.

In the latest study, performed at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, researchers extracted juice from supermarket garlic and added small amounts to human red blood cells. The cells immediately began emitting hydrogen sulfide, the scientists found.

The power to boost hydrogen sulfide production may help explain why a garlic-rich diet appears to protect against various cancers, including breast, prostate and colon cancer, say the study authors. Higher hydrogen sulfide might also protect the heart, according to other experts.

Although garlic has not consistently been shown to lower cholesterol levels, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine earlier this year found that injecting hydrogen sulfide into mice almost completely prevented the damage to heart muscle caused by a heart attack.

“People have known garlic was important and has health benefits for centuries,'’ said Dr. David W. Kraus, associate professor of environmental science and biology at the University of Alabama. “Even the Greeks would feed garlic to their athletes before they competed in the Olympic games.'’

Now, the downside. The concentration of garlic extract used in the latest study was equivalent to an adult eating about two medium-sized cloves per day. In such countries as Italy, Korea and China, where a garlic-rich diet seems to be protective against disease, per capita consumption is as high as eight to 12 cloves per day.

While that may sound like a lot of garlic, Dr. Kraus noted that increasing your consumption to five or more cloves a day isn’t hard if you use it every time you cook. Dr. Kraus also makes a habit of snacking on garlicky dishes like hummus with vegetables.

Many home chefs mistakenly cook garlic immediately after crushing or chopping it, added Dr. Kraus. To maximize the health benefits, you should crush the garlic at room temperature and allow it to sit for about 15 minutes. That triggers an enzyme reaction that boosts the healthy compounds in garlic.

Garlic can cause indigestion, but for many, the bigger concern is that it can make your breath and sweat smell like…garlic. While individual reactions to garlic vary, eating fennel seeds like those served at Indian restaurants helps to neutralize the smell.

Garlic-powder pills claim to solve the problem, but the data on these supplements has been mixed. It’s still not clear if the beneficial compounds found in garlic remain potent once it’s been processed into a pill.

Sources : The New York Times

Top US fighter jet makes airshow debut

2008-07-20T02:36:00.002+07:00

Farnborough, England (ANTARA News/Reuters) - Lockheed Martin Corp's F-22 "Raptor" fighter jet, widely considered the world's most advanced, streaked through a milestone performance on Monday for a warplane that money cannot buy.

The 15-minute display of dips, dives and pirouettes was a highlight of the opening day of the Farnborough International Airshow, a global arms bazaar and aviation trade show held in alternate years in Farnborough and Paris.

It marked the debut of the single-seat, radar-evading Raptor at an overseas air show. Among crowd-pleasing stunts, the 43,340-pound F-22 shot nearly straight up into leaden skies, then dropped back in a "tail-slide" controlled by dual engines capable of twice the speed of sound.

Major Paul Moga of the U.S. Air Force 27th Fighter Squadron opened the weapons-bay doors after flashing the aircraft's belly at spectators, displaying the area where bombs and missiles would be stored.

A back flip was followed by a sharp slowdown that made it appear to float across the horizon before it roared supersonically, its after-burners glowing orange.

Unlike most fighter aircraft, no weapons are carried externally on the Raptor, to make it harder to detect on radar screens.

Crossing the Atlantic to England was itself a first for the aircraft, deployed last year to Kadena Air Base on the Japanese island of Okinawa, the hub of U.S. air power in the Pacific.

Japan, Israel and Australia have shown interest in buying the F-22 if the U.S. Congress were to change a law that makes it unavailable for export because it is deemed too good at what it does. The ban was enacted 10 years ago, partly to prevent the spread of U.S. technological knowhow and partly to avoid regional arms races.

Also of concern is protecting the market for Lockheed Martin's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a family of radar-evading fighters being developed by the United States with eight other countries.

After watching the acrobatics, Gen. Tan Sri Azizan, chief of staff of the Malaysian Air Force, was typically dazzled.

"If you know the principles of flight, it defies that," he told Reuters.

U.S. Air Force officials have said they need 381 Raptors to meet their requirements. But the Pentagon's fiscal 2009 budget request, unveiled Feb. 4, made no provision for any beyond 183 jets already approved.

This left a decision to the U.S. president to be elected Nov. 4 on whether to keep open or close the F-22 production line. If shut, it could be for good, given the high cost of resuming output.

Primarily an air superiority fighter, the F-22 also has capabilities for ground attack, electronic warfare and intelligence gathering.

The United States began operating it in December 2005, 20 years after it was conceived to defeat Soviet warplanes in air-to-air combat over Europe.

F-22s go for $142 million apiece not including development costs, according to the Air Force.

"The F-22 cannot be matched by any known or projected fighter aircraft," according to an Air Force release that calls it "an exponential leap in warfighting capabilities."

Robert Stevens, Lockheed Martin's chief executive, told reporters on Sunday that he was unaware of any "discussion", by implication among U.S. decision-makers, about repealing the prohibition on F-22 exports from the United States.

In the absence of funding for long-lead materials used in the manufacturing process, Lockheed "probably" will have to notify suppliers toward the end of this year whether there will be any follow-on orders, Stevens said.

Sources : Antara Online

Gus Dur faces losing grip on PKB

2008-07-20T02:33:00.002+07:00

The Supreme Court has dealt Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid and his supporters a heavy blow that will expel him from the party he helped found in 1998.

In a hearing Thursday, the court turned down an appeal filed by Gus Dur's National Awakening Party (PKB) against Muhaimin Iskandar and Lukman Edy, respectively the elected party chairman and secretary-general in the 2005 national congress in Semarang, for holding an extraordinary congress last May.

The extraordinary meeting dethroned Gus Dur as the party's chief patron and his daughter Yenny Wahid as the secretary-general.

A rival congress held by Gus Dur's camp just a few days earlier had dismissed Muhaimin and elected Ali Masykur Musa as his replacement while retaining Yenny as the secretary-general.

"Thank God. The truth has come and surely the bad will be eliminated," said Nursyahbani Katjasungkana, a House of Representatives lawmaker loyal to Muhaimin, responding to the court's verdict.

Last month, Gus Dur lost the legal battle to Muhaimin and Lukman as the South Jakarta District Court declared the latter's dismissal by Gus Dur illegitimate. The court said Muhaimin and Lukman should be reinstated as the party's chairman and secretary-general.

The Supreme Court's ruling confirms the legitimacy of Muhaimin and Lukman as the party leaders and allows them to consolidate the party ahead of the elections.

The dual leadership has disrupted preparations of the PKB, the nation's third-largest party in terms of popular vote, for the elections. The PKB is among 34 parties eligible to contest the polls next year.

Muhaimin said last week the Supreme Court's decision would settle the dispute beyond doubt. He added that if the court rejected Gus Dur's appeal he would lead the party to recovery.

Gus Dur had reportedly threatened to boycott the elections if the court turned down his appeal.

Many observers still consider Gus Dur the most influential figure in the PKB. He founded the party upon request of influential Nahdlatul Ulama clerics in 1998.

In response to the Supreme Court's ruling, General Elections Commission member I Gusti Putu Artha said the poll body would wait for a decree from the Justice and Human Rights Ministry before taking measures concerning the PKB's participation in the 2009 polls.

Artha said that in accordance with the political party law, the PKB had to report its legitimate board of executives to the ministry based on the Supreme Court's ruling.

"The ministry has seven days to issue a decree approving the legitimate board of executives. The KPU will then complete the process (to ensure the entry of the PKB under Muhaimin in the election)," Artha said.

The legitimate party chairman and secretary-general will have the right to approve legislative candidates to be submitted to the KPU, according to the election law.

"In this case, it is Muhaimin and Yenny that should give the approval. If one of them turns down the party list, the PKB's legislative candidates could be disqualified," Artha said.

The KPU recognizes Muhaimin and his rival Yenny as PKB chairman and secretary-general respectively.

Sources : The Jakarta Post

At Royal Balinese Funeral, Bodies Burn and Souls Fly

2008-07-19T20:47:00.002+07:00

UBUD, Indonesia — In a roar of orange flame, the body of Agung Suyasa, head of the royal family of Ubud, was reduced to its earthly elements on Tuesday, liberating his soul to fly upward, in a spray of sparks, through the night sky to the heavens.

In the most spectacular royal funeral in Bali in at least three decades, the energy, mysticism and creativity of this Hindu island came together in the mass cremation of three royal figures and 68 commoners.

It was the highest moment — but not the final one — in months and sometimes years of funerary rites as bodies were buried or preserved waiting, according to local belief, for their souls to be freed through cremation.

The bodies of the commoners had waited to join Mr. Suyasa and two other members of his extended family in a royal cremation, although the pyres of the commoners were in a separate location.

All were on a journey of purification and renewal in which, according to Balinese tradition, the soul can return to inhabit a new being, generally a member of the same family, until, once again, it is freed through cremation.

In the coming months, more ceremonies lie ahead, to further cleanse both the soul of the departed and the people left behind.

“None of us is brand new,” said Raka Kerthyasa, the younger half-brother of Mr. Suyasa. Mr. Kerthyasa oversaw the cremation and is now the guardian of the ancient but symbolic royal family. “We are part of the cycle of life,” he said.

That ever-changing cycle may one day claim the cremation rites themselves, and some here say that in the face of a globalizing world, Bali may never again see a cremation ceremony to match this one.

“They’ll have things in the future, but elaborate and grand like this one, I don’t think so,” said I Nyoman Suradnya, an artist, whose older brother was one of the commoners cremated Tuesday.

“Cultures come and go,” he said. “It is just a matter of time. Don’t be afraid of change. There is nothing absolute.”

In that spirit, Tuesday was a day of raucous energy as thousands of volunteer porters in purple shirts carried the giant emblems of the ceremony like armies of ants bearing impossibly large objects.

Hunched under a giant bamboo platform, 200 at a time for 100-yard shifts, the porters bore an 11-ton tower, as tall as a three-story building, that carried the coffin of Mr. Suyasa under a nine-tiered pinnacle.

Whooping and laughing, sometimes breaking into a run, the porters swung the platform crazily from right to left to confuse the spirits.

Along with it came a huge, undulating dragon, terrifying to behold with its bulging eyes and splayed teeth. After that came a giant black, wood bull, hung with gold necklaces, that would serve as the sarcophagus at the cremation.

“Strange as it seems, it is in their cremation ceremonies that the Balinese have their greatest fun,” wrote Miguel Covarrubias in his classic work, “Island of Bali,” published in 1937.

“A cremation is an occasion for gaiety and not for mourning, since it represents the accomplishment of their most sacred duty” to liberate the souls of the dead, he wrote.

For most of the time since Mr. Suyasa died on March 28, his body had been lying embalmed, as if asleep, in his palace. The family brought daily offerings and symbolic meals. Coffee and tea were prepared by the bier. A comb, toothbrush and mirror were kept handy nearby.

On Tuesday, poised between heaven and earth, his white and gold coffin entered the cremation site in the funerary tower, which glided on the backs of its 200 porters as smoothly as if it were on ice.

Porters carried the coffin down a soaring white chute, then paraded it three times around the waiting bull, trailed by men and women with pyramids of offerings on their heads.

On the crematory platform, the hollow back of the bull was opened and the body was placed inside, its final stop on its earthly journey. A second, smaller bull stood by its side holding the body of another royal relative, Gede Raka.

The sun was sinking as the back of the giant bull was closed and the crematory plaza, packed with thousands of onlookers, twinkled with the flashes of cameras.

Suddenly bright shoots of flame appeared under the belly of the bull, quickly caught the gold necklaces and traveled upward. Smoke seemed to pour from its nostrils and flames shot from its eyes. Its curved horns and ears were on fire.

As the bull fell away, the iron bars that formed its frame remained, and within them hung the burning skeleton, its skull tilted downward, its right foot spurting flames.

Acting with ritual disrespect for the now-useless body, workers poked and prodded at it with long bamboo poles to stoke the fire, and it swayed slightly in the flames.

The body disintegrated into its five earthly elements: earth, wind, water, fire and ether. Its soul disappeared into the night sky.

One of Mr. Suyasa’s sons, Indrayana, sat on the ground nearby, dressed in ritual gold, holding his hands in prayer toward his father. Then, fire to fire, he put a match to a cigarette, looked up, and inhaled.

Sources : The New York Times

Obama Lands in Afghanistan for First Tour of War Zones

2008-07-19T20:44:00.002+07:00

WASHINGTON – Senator Barack Obama arrived in Afghanistan early Saturday morning, opening his first overseas trip as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, to meet with American commanders there and later in Iraq to receive an on-the-ground assessment of military operations in the two major U.S. war zones.

Mr. Obama touched down in Kabul about 11:45 a.m., according to a pool report released by his aides. In addition to attending briefings with military leaders, he hoped to meet with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan before flying to Iraq later in the weekend.

His trip was cloaked in secrecy, which advisers said was due to security concerns set forth by the Secret Service. His whereabouts have been unknown since he departed Chicago. He left Andrews Air Force Base near Washington on Thursday afternoon, according to a pool report, and turned up in Afghanistan on Saturday.

Before he left the United States, he gave a brief outline of his trip to two pool reporters traveling with him from Chicago to Washington. No reporters accompanied him to Afghanistan.

“Well, you know, I’m more interested in listening than doing a lot of talking,” Mr. Obama said. “And I think it is very important to recognize that I’m going over there as a U.S. senator. We have one president at a time, so it’s the president’s job to deliver those messages.”

Mr. Obama’s arrival opened a weeklong foreign trip that includes visits to Iraq and two other stops in the Middle East as well as appearances in three European capitals. His tour of Afghanistan and Iraq are part of a Congressional delegation — similar to trips that Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, made in the spring — in which he is joined by Senators Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, and Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, both of whom have been mentioned as possible vice presidential running mates.

The international trip by Mr. Obama is intended to counter Republican criticism — and one advanced by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton during the Democratic primary campaign — that he has too little experience in foreign affairs to serve as a world leader.

His advisers said Mr. Obama chose to begin his trip in Afghanistan because he believes that the region is among the most important foreign policy challenges facing the United States.

“Well, I’m looking forward to seeing what the situation on the ground is,” Mr. Obama told reporters on Thursday before he left Washington. “I want to, obviously, talk to the commanders and get a sense, both in Afghanistan and in Baghdad of, you know, what the most, ah, their biggest concerns are. And I want to thank our troops for the heroic work that they’ve been doing.”

It is the first trip to Afghanistan for Mr. Obama, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee. This week, he proposed deploying about 10,000 more troops to battle resurgent forces in Afghanistan, a plan intended to shift the American military focus from the Iraq war to what he calls the central fight against terrorism.

The proposal has become a centerpiece of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy and a major point of disagreement with Mr. McCain, who maintains that both places are major battlegrounds and disputes Mr. Obama’s suggestion that the war in Iraq has distracted the United States from its efforts in Afghanistan.

Mr. McCain has suggested to voters that Mr. Obama lacks the experience to serve as commander in chief. He particularly criticized the Illinois Democrat for not having held a single hearing in his capacity as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee’s subcommittee on European affairs.

“He’s going to go to the American people and say, ‘I want to be commander in chief,’ ” Mr. McCain told reporters on Thursday, “and yet he has been the chairman of the subcommittee that oversights NATO and he has never had a hearing, nor has he ever visited Afghanistan.’ ”

But that criticism was dismissed this week by Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, who said issues related to Afghanistan were intentionally being addressed “at the full committee level.”

Mr. Obama’s trip is drawing considerable attention in the United States and abroad. It is being carefully choreographed by his campaign strategists to coincide with a new television advertisement in 18 states intended to highlight his ideas on foreign policy and portray him as ready to serve as commander in chief, which is one area where polls show that voters give an edge to Mr. McCain.

In addition to visiting Iraq and Afghanistan, Mr. Obama is extending his overseas tour, his first as a presidential candidate, to include a visit to Amman, Jordan, on Monday, followed by stops in Jerusalem, the Palestinian territories, Berlin, France and London.

Now that Mr. Obama has decided to take the trip, the McCain campaign is not sure what to make of it. Jill Hazelbaker, the communications director for Mr. McCain, offered a hint of the Republican criticism of the trip on Thursday by dismissing it as “the first-of-its-kind campaign rally overseas.”

But Mr. McCain sought to temper the message, saying: “I’m glad he is going to Iraq. I am glad he is going to Afghanistan. It’s long, long overdue if you want to lead this nation.”

Robert Gibbs, a senior campaign strategist for Mr. Obama, dismissed that suggestion. He said the trip was rooted in substance, rather than politics.

“The trip is not at all a campaign trip, a rally of any sort,” Mr. Gibbs told reporters on Friday. He said Mr. Obama would hold “a series of substantive meetings with our friends and our allies to talk about the common challenges that we face and the national security dangers for the 21st century.”

In the next week, Mr. Obama is scheduled to meet several foreign leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Jordan’s King Abdullah, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Shimon Peres and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Sources : The New York Times

SEE YOU IN RIAU

2008-07-18T01:02:00.003+07:00

Colorful fireworks burst into the sky over the Palaran main stadium in Samarinda, East Kalimantan on Thursday to mark the official closing of the 17th National Games. The next game will be held in Riau in 2012. (JP/Ricky Yudhistira)

Sources : The Jakarta Post

Gus Dur ready for inquiry over bribery

2008-07-18T00:56:00.004+07:00

Former president Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid said he was ready to face an investigation by the graft body over a lawmaker's claim to have paid his medical expenses using money allegedly obtained as a bribe.

Yusuf Emir Faishal, a lawmaker from the National Awakening Party (PKB), said he had paid a medical bill for Gus Dur using money he had allegedly received as a bribe related to a forest conversion.

Gus Dur, the PKB chief patron, denied his party member's claim, saying he still received government benefits that included payment of medical expenses.
"Go ahead and investigate it," he said Wednesday, as quoted by Antara.

"If Yusuf has the data and solid evidence on the case, he should just show it."
The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) detained Yusuf -- former chairman of the House of Representatives' Commission IV overseeing agriculture, forestry and fisheries -- late Tuesday.

He has been accused of receiving bribes related to the conversion of 600 hectares of Tanjung Api-api mangrove forest into a seaport in Banyuasin, South Sumatra. The KPK named him a suspect last week.

Yusuf, the husband of noted singer Hetty Koes Endang, was detained after KPK investigators searched his house in Serpong, Tangerang, for about six hours.
"The KPK seized a number of my documents, including my land certificate," he said.

Yusuf's lawyer, Sela Salomo, said all the money received by his client had gone to the PKB.

She said Yusuf had received Rp 800 million (US$86,957) from an unknown party before handing over Rp 300 million to then PKB treasurer Aris Junaidi. The remaining Rp 500 million was later submitted to then chairman of the PKB's executive council Muamir Mu'in Syam.

Gus Dur said his party kept proper records of all money it received, including that from the government and donations from individuals and party members.

On Monday, Yusuf showed two receipts to the press. One of the receipts, a bank transfer transaction, said Rp 300 million had been transferred to Aris for "hospital bills of KH AW". Another receipt, for a Rp 500 million transaction, showed the money had been given to Muamir as a "donation for the construction of the PKB building".

Aris denied the money he received was related to the conversion or that it was for a hospital bill.

He said the Rp 300 million was part of the budget for the PKB election campaign team.

Aris said the party's team still held the balance from an original Rp 900 million fund.

"Yusuf reported to Gus Dur about 18 months ago that the election campaign team still had the balance of Rp 900 million. From the fund, about Rp 300 million was then transferred to my account but it was not for gratification or for Gus Dur's medical bill," he said.

Aris said Yusuf had yet to transfer the remaining Rp 600 million allocated to the PKB campaign back to the party.

Yusuf is the second lawmaker declared a suspect in the case, after Sarjan Taher of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's Democratic Party was named.

The KPK has detained Sarjan, who has admitted accepting Rp 260 million in the forest conversion.

Sources : The Jakarta Post

WITH THE GOVERNOR RIAU ISLANDS

2008-07-18T00:11:00.004+07:00

With The Governor Riau Islands Ismeth Abdullah

THIS MOMENT

2008-07-16T21:37:00.005+07:00

Botak with Edo Kondolongit, Rieke "oneng" Diah Pitaloka, Yurike and Andi Nuwawea

Anwar Ibrahim arrested

2008-07-16T21:28:00.002+07:00

Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim was arrested outside his home in Kuala Lumpur at 1.05 p.m. Wednesday, according to his office.

Anwar Ibrahim was arrested upon returning home from the Anti Corruption Agency, after giving a statement in relation to a police report regarding the suppression of material facts in a case involving him in 1998, his office said in a statement made available to The Jakarta Post.

"As he entered the neighborhood of his home, a contingent of ten police cars, half unmarked and half patrol, forced the two cars in Anwar Ibrahim's entourage to stop," the statement said.

"An officer approached Anwar Ibrahim and demanded that he accompany the police in an unmarked vehicle to the Kuala Lumpur Police Headquarters."
His lawyers were not permitted to travel with him to the police station.

His lawyer Sankara Nair told Malaysian The Star online service, that the police had told Anwar that he was being arrested for investigations for alleged "carnal intercourse against the order of nature".

The Star reported that Anwar arrived at the city police headquarters in a white Pajero at 1.15 p.m. Wednesday after being arrested in front of his house in Bukit Segambut.

The arrest took place less than 15 hours after Anwar Ibrahim appeared live on Malaysian television for the first time since 1998, to announce to millions of viewers his intention to stand for election. He also promised that upon the formation of a new government, he would lower the domestic price of fuel by 50 sen.

"These events are deeply disturbing to us and indicate that this entire episode is a repeat of the actions taken against Anwar Ibrahim in 1998," the statement said.

On June 28, his 23-year-old former aide Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan lodged a police report alleging that Anwar had sodomized him.

Anwar was due to issue a statement at Kuala Lumpur Police Contingent Headquarters (IPK KL) at 2.00 p.m based on an agreement reached with the police on Tuesday.

The statement also said that during the last few weeks the government-owned media had demonized and vilified the former deputy prime minister.

"His staff have been harassed and we see a conspiracy being hatched to thwart the political change that is imminent in Malaysia.

"Under no circumstance will the people of Malaysia and the international community tolerate any harm to Anwar Ibrahim. We remind Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi of the promise he made to ensure Anwar Ibrahim's protection."(**)

Sources : The Jakarta Post

PON as momentum to boost achievements, strengthens unity- President Says

2008-07-06T09:02:00.001+07:00

Samarinda, E Kalimantan, (ANTARA News)- President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono expressed hope that the National Sports Week (PON) will not only step up achievements but it will also strengthen unity and brotherhood.

The president made the remarks Saturday night at Palaran main stadium here when opening the 17th National Sports Week (PON) which will take place till July 17, 2008.

The 17th sports week participated in by 7,608 athletes from 33 provinces, had a theme "Attain Achievement, Strengthen Brotherhood".

The head of state on the occasion asked the athletes to compete in full spirit and uphold sportsmanship in a bid to create new records by maintaining the spirit of "One Indonesia" although the athletes representing their respective regions.

"Use PON as a moment to attain best achievements, become the strongest, the fastest and the most attractive, ... but uphold the spirit in accordance with the PON`s theme," he said.

Yudhoyono also expressed hope that the 17th National Sports Week (PON) taking place in conjunction with 100 years of the national awekening moment, will eventually make a success in international arena.

"We hope PON will provide athletes, who can attain achievements in international competitions such as SEA Games, Asian Games or Olympiad," he said.

Yudhoyono said further that PON which takes place once in four years will be beneficial to reach the highest achievements through sports capacity building in respective region.

"I will invite all National Sports Committee members to improve the sports capacity building," the president cited, hoping that the sports officials could give serious attention to the successful young athletes including their welfare.

The head of state, who was also accompanied by Madame Ani Yudhoyono, asked the East Kalimantan people and all sports lovers in the country to make 17th PON a success.(*)

Sources : Antara Online

Venus wins Wimbledon final over sister

2008-07-06T08:57:00.002+07:00

Venus Williams won her fifth Wimbledon singles title Saturday, beating younger sister Serena Williams 7-5, 6-4 in the final.

Defending champion Venus is 5-2 in Wimbledon finals, losing only to Serena in 2002 and ‘03. The win at the All England Club gave Venus her seventh major title.

The match was the seventh Grand Slam final between the American sisters, with Serena leading 5-2. They are now 8-8 overall.

Venus came from 3-1 down in the first set to turn around the match, breaking Serena four times while dropping her own serve twice in a final of high quality despite the wind.

Venus broke to finish the match, with Serena hitting a backhand wide on the second match point. The sisters embraced at the net, and Venus kept her celebrations in check as she twirled and waved to the Centre Court crowd.

Venus accepted the winner’s trophy—a sterling silver salver aptly named the Venus Rosewater dish—from the Duke of Kent.

“I have to first of all say great match to Serena,” Venus said. “I can’t believe that it’s five but when you’re in the final against Serena Williams, five seems too far away from that first point. She played so awesome. It was really a task to beat her.

“It’s so rewarding to perform here,” Venus added. “Every time I come back I know I have the chance to play well and make history. My first job is big sister and I take that very seriously.”

Watching the match from the players’ box was the sisters’ mother, Oracene. Their father, Richard, had flown back to the United States because he can’t stand to watch his daughters play each other.

Referring to the mixed feelings of her family about who to support, Venus said, “It’s hard for all of them, but I like to think they want me to win.”

The 26-year-old Serena accepted her runner-up trophy and paid tribute to her 28-year-old sister.

“I’m so happy that at least one of us was able to win,” Serena said. “She’s played great this year. We’re just glad to be in the finals again.” (***)

Sources : The Jakarta Post

More infants infected with HIV/AIDS in Batam

2008-07-06T08:52:00.002+07:00

HIV/AIDS is increasingly prevalent and fatal among children in Batam, Riau Islands, where weak preventive measures are failing to contain the disease, an activist said Friday.

Prevention manager of Asuhan Bunda Counseling Foundation (YPAB) at the Budi Kemuliaan Hospital, Francisca L. Tanzil, told The Jakarta Post on Friday that the first case of HIV/AIDS in a child under the age of five in Batam was reported in 2003.

HIV/AIDS was first detected in Batam in 1994. The number of children with the disease has gradually risen.

This is shown by data from the YPAB on the steady increase in the number of people accessing HIV/AIDS counseling in Batam.

In 2005 1,269 clients participated in counseling and 1,164 of these agreed to have blood tests. Results showed that 137 were diagnosed with HIV, while 36 adults and four infants had AIDS.

In 2006, 1,351 out of 1,388 counseling participants underwent tests, of which 193 were diagnosed with HIV and 45 adults and nine infants had AIDS.

In 2007, 1,448 out of 1,506 participants voluntarily had tests, 193 were diagnosed with HIV and 57 adults and four children were confirmed as having AIDS.

"Since the available data represents the tip of the iceberg, the number diagnosed probably does not reflect the much larger number to be found in the population," said Francisca, a doctor treating HIV/AIDS patients in Batam.

Riau Islands ranks as one of the highest among Indonesian provinces in terms of HIV/AIDS infection spread through sexual contact rather than through sharing of needles by drug addicts, she said.

"Most infants with HIV/AIDS in Batam die because of their parents' promiscuous lifestyle along with ineffective prevention of the disease by the local administration," Francisca said.

She said it was clear that the local authorities still regarded the problem as minor, evidenced by poorly coordinated and ineffective efforts on awareness and treatment.

Riau Islands Health Office head Munzir Purba said the local administration had carried out adequate public awareness campaigns on the prevention of HIV/AIDS in the province.

Data at the health office shows that Batam ranks top in the number of HIV/AIDS cases compared to five other regencies and cities in the province.

"This is due to the huge number of sex workers operating in Batam. We have campaigned on the use of condoms in various red-light districts in Batam in order to reduce the number of HIV/AIDS-related cases," Munzir said.

Sources : The Jakarta Post

READY FOR ACTION

2008-07-03T01:05:00.002+07:00

Elementary school students wearing traffic police uniforms take part in a ceremony to celebrate the 62nd anniversary of the National Police at National Monument (Monas) Square in Jakarta on Tuesday. (JP/R. Berto Wedhatama)

Sources : The Jakarta Post

President to Launch National Games Week (PON)

2008-07-03T01:03:00.002+07:00

TEMPO Interactive, Balikpapan:The 17th PON will take place on July 5-17, and will be officially opened at 18.00 Western Indonesia Time.

The opening ceremony will be opened in the East Kalimantan Main Stadium, with demonstrations of parachute jumping, a performance Kalimantan dances, and the PKT Bontang marching band.

The PON flame will be lit at 19.30. This year, 43 games will be competed in six cities. Initially set at Rp. 3.9 trillion, the PON funds is expected to baloon, given that the local administration has asked for a revised budge to include a subsidy from the provincial government.

A senior official of the East Kalimantan governor, Syaiful Teteng said that the PON budget began to be spent as of 2003. “When all is completed, the total amount spent is expected to be Rp. 4,5 billion.”

Most of the funds went to pay for the construction of venues and training centers, as well as Rp. 150 million bonus for gold medal winners.

The budget also includes the provincial government’s plans to provide free facilities, accommodation, food, and transportation during the PON. “We have reported this to the President,” said Teteng.

Sources : Tempo Interactive

Yudhoyono says world oil price could reach US$200 per barrel

2008-07-03T01:00:00.002+07:00

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - President Susilo Bambang Yudhono expressed deep concern about the continuing surge in the world oil price, saying it might well reach US$200 per barrel.

However, the government could not increase the fuel oil prices at home again and again due to the skyrocketing world crude oil price, the president told newsmen in Palembang, South Sumatra, on Wednesday.

"The world crude oil price could well reach US$160 to US$200 per barrel," the head of state said.

The president said the government recently increased domestic fuel oil prices by an average of 28.7 percent as it had estimated the world crude oil price would reach US$110-US$120 per barrel.

He said if the world oil price rose to US$140-US$145, the fuel oil subsidy would reach Rp205 trillion, not to mention the subsidy for electricity which would increase by Rp80 trillion to Rp300 trillion.

When the world crude oil price approached US$150 per barrel, the fuel oil subsidy would reach Rp230 trillion in addition to Rp80 trillion for the electricity subsidy.

"If the oil price increases further to US$160, the fuel oil subsidy will rise to about Rp259 trillion plus the Rp80 trillion increase in the electricity subsidy, the president said.

On the impact of the world crude oil price hike on the state budget, the president said, it would be "very unhealthy" if the subsidy for fuel oil and electricity reached Rp300 trillion.

The head of state, therefore, called on all the people, including government officials and members of state institutions, to continue economizing on the use of fossil-based energy sources so that fuel oil consumption and fuel oil subsidy could drop.

The head of state said the soaring of the world crude oil price to US$150 per barrel was an alarming sign.

Therefore, he said, when attending the G-8 summit in Hokkaido, Japan, within the next few days, he would call on the meeting to also discuss the world oil price crisis without blaming each other.

Yudhoyono said the summmit discussions on the world oil price issue should not only involve OPEC member countries but other parties such Russia and multinational companies as well.

The parties in the discussions should consider whether or not world oil production could be increased, and if it could not, then oil consumption should be reduced.

The president also called on experts to continue research activities on alternative energy sources like biofuel. (*)

Sources : Antara Online

Megawati overtakes SBY as front runner: Survey

2008-07-01T09:31:00.001+07:00

Abdul Khalik , The Jakarta Post

A new survey suggests former president Megawati Soekarnoputri would win an election if it were held today, thanks to the government's decision to raise fuel prices.

The survey, conducted by Indo Barometer 10 days after the fuel prices went up, found 30.4 percent of respondents would vote for Megawati for president compared to only 20.7 percent for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

The survey -- conducted among 1,200 respondents in 33 provinces -- indicated a sharp decline in Yudhoyono's popularity.

A similar survey in May last year showed Yudhoyono still far ahead of Megawati, with 35.3 percent of respondents saying they would vote for him as opposed to 22.6 for the former president. A survey last December showed Yudhoyono still ahead, at 38.1 percent to Megawati's 27.4 percent.

"Yudhoyono's decision to increase fuel prices and his administration's failure to get people to accept the decision are factors behind his plunging popularity," Indo Barometer executive director M. Qodari told reporters during the survey presentation here Sunday.

The survey said only 8.1 percent of respondents agreed with the government's fuel price policy while more than 80 percent opposed it.

Most respondents rejected the government's arguments -- preventing smuggling, global price increases, reducing subsidies or helping poor people -- to justify the increase.

Yudhoyono's poll loss to Megawati was in line with the low approval many expressed for his performance as president. Some 60.5 percent of respondents said they were not satisfied with his performance in general, with only 36.5 percent saying they were satisfied and 3.2 percent declining to answer.

Respondents expressed highest dissatisfaction for Yudhoyono's handling of the economy, with 79.1 percent saying they were disappointed in his inability to solve economic problems.

Overall, the survey said 50.1 percent opposed his reelection while 31.3 percent supported it and 18.1 percent were undecided.

Economist Faisal Basri said the results could be much worse for Yudhoyono now that people had already felt the full impacts of fuel price increases.

"A month or two after the fuel price hike, people will feel the second round impacts of the raised prices, especially in increased goods and transportation costs," he said.

Faisal, however, said the results did not necessarily guarantee Megawati the presidency, since her approval rating was still just over 30 percent.

Fentiny Nugroho of the University of Indonesia said Yudhoyono could rebound if he enhanced his pro-poor policies in the health and education sectors while trying to create jobs for people.

Aside from Megawati's rising popularity, former TNI chief Gen. (ret.) Wiranto and Yogyakarta Governor Sultan Hamengku Buwono X also received support with 9.3 percent and 8.8 percent of respondents respectively.

Sri Sultan was also the most electable vice presidential candidate with support from 19.9 percent of respondents, with Vice President Jusuf Kalla coming in a distant second at 12.3 percent.

Sources : The Jakarta Post

Spain wins first major in 44 years

2008-06-30T08:50:00.003+07:00

The Associated Press , Vienna Mon, 06/30/2008 3:36 AM Sports

Big-game flops no more, Spain won the European Championship 1-0 over Germany on Sunday for its first major title in 44 years.

Fernando Torres scored in the 33rd minute and the Spaniards never backed down against such a formidable opponent. Their last significant title came in the 1964 Euros at home.

In beating a team that makes a habit of appearing in championship finals, the Spaniards put to rest a reputation for underachieving. Always loaded with talented players, Spain has spent four decades falling short of expectations.

That all changed at these Euros, where the Spaniards swept their first-round games, eliminated World Cup champion Italy in a penalty-kicks shootout in the quarterfinals, then routed Russia 3-0 in the semifinals.

Against the highly accomplished Germans, they weren’t intimidated. They got the one goal they needed—from a slumping striker, no less—and set off chants of “ES-PANA,” and “Ole, Ole Ole” at the final whistle.

The entire Spanish squad ran over to the huge rooting section of red and gold, exchanging hugs, while many of the spent Germans collapsed to the turf.

When Spain goalkeeper and captain Iker Casillas accepted the trophy on a stage, the Spanish fans began chanting the melody to their national anthem, which has no words. Thousands of camera flashes went off as the players jumped in place, then headed onto the field to show off their prize.

Germany has won three Euros and three World Cups, but was no match in this final. Captain Michael Ballack, questionable before the game with a calf injury, started, but hardly was noticeable—except when he left for several minutes to have a bloody right eye treated.

Torres, who had 33 goals for Liverpool this season but has been invisible in Euros, came through off a brilliant feed from Xavi Hernandez.

Germany goalkeeper Jens Lehmann, at 38 the oldest player in the competition, charged from his net when he saw that defender Philipp Lahm was beaten on the right side. But Torres chipped the ball over the sliding Lehmann and into the gaping net.

The crowd of 51,428 at Ernst Happel Stadium, split almost equally between Germany and Spain, might have expected the Spaniards to go into a protective shell. Instead, and even without leading scorer David Villa (leg injury), they continued to carry the attack and were far more dangerous than Germany the rest of the way.

Indeed, Lehmann, who helped the Germans to third place in the 2006 World Cup, kept it close with several tough saves.

A crowd of about 68,000 packed Vienna’s downtown fan zone to watch the final, police said. In Germany, flags fluttered from balconies and car antennas across the country. In Berlin, an estimated 400,000 fans watched the game on large outdoor screens.

Spain has never made a World Cup final and was in one other Euros final, aside from the 1964 triumph. That was a loss to France in 1984.

With two of the world’s top clubs, Real Madrid and FC Barcelona, the nation has tons of talent. What it has lacked is fortitude.

No one can say that anymore. (***)

Sources : The Jakarta Post

Nganjuk Government Reinforces No Smoking

2008-06-30T01:12:00.000+07:00

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta:The letter was composed during Siti Nurhayati’s leadership. However, from the evaluation results, we found that the implementation was not effective, said Nganjuk Regency Government spokesperson, Hariyanto, Friday (27/6).

The regulation, Hariyanto continued, only applied to Nganjuk government staff and personnel, and its relevant offices. “There are still people who, deliberately or not, smoke in offices,” he said.

According to Hariyanto, The regulation applied to all heads and their staff, offices and agencies, sub-districts, and work units as well as private and state school principals, teachers and students. If one does not abide by the rules, the relevant office can immediately impose a sanction.

If one breaks a rule, said Hariyanto, he would be recorded as undisciplined and would affect his performance assessment. In the future, this smoker-restricting letter is expected to be applied in a wider community.

To facilitate the letter’s efficiency monitoring and supervision, the Nganjuk Government has designed special smoking rooms. Offices and institutions are called on to build these rooms according to the government’s instructions. However this does not apply to schools, as smoking is strictly prohibited there.

From Tempo’s observation, despite much disobedience, the spirit to respect the non-smoking letter was high in some offices. Stickers saying “No Smoking” were glued in corners. Some said “Put Out Your Cigarette Before It Puts You Out,” “No Smoking Area,” “Smoking Damages Health,” et cetera.

DWIDJO U. MAKSUM

Sources : Tempo Interactive

RI's Islamic organizations told to 'think globally'

2008-06-30T01:07:00.000+07:00

DISCUSSION AHEAD OF 3rd ICIS

Local Islamic organizations should unite and start a global movement to advance Indonesian Muslims and extend their political influence, scholars say.

Former Muhammadiyah chairman Amien said Islamic organizations should think globally to draw more members or followers.

"So far, I see that Islamic organizations, including two mainstream movements, Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), are yet to respond well to global issues. They are still focused on local issues."

"It's so surprising given Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world," Amien told a religious discussion co-hosted by NU and the International Conference of Islamic Scholars at the NU headquarters in Kramat Raya, Central Jakarta on Thursday (26/6).

"Muhammadiyah members also still think locally. We just discuss local issues like education, health and welfare. We rarely discuss international issues or policies."

"People overseas will recognize our Islamic organizations if they start to think globally. This is a good opportunity for organizations to draw more members," he said.

Amien said it was important to introduce and promote Indonesia's Islamic organizations so the world had a better understanding of Indonesian Muslims.

Indonesia is the largest Muslim population in the world, comprising more than 182 million Muslims of its 208 million people, the Religious Affairs Ministry reported in 2005.

Amien said the country's Islamic organizations should learn from their counterparts from other Muslim nations like Iran, Lebanon, Turkey and Algeria. He cited Hizbut Tahrir, an extremist group from Lebanon, as an example.

"This group has successfully spread its teachings all over the world," Amien, who is also a former chairman of the People's Consultative Assembly, said.

In the meantime KH Ma'ruf Amin of NU said all Islamic organizations in the country should unite to develop Indonesian Muslims.

"All organizations should put aside any differences and stick in the same movement," Ma'ruf said. "So far, ulema have tended to be left behind. Now, it's time for them to prove that they can make changes and play a larger role in this country, like giving suggestions to the government in policy making," he said. (jp/dar)

Sources : NU Online

Just Call Him Madam

2008-06-29T08:31:00.002+07:00

Fashion designer Ivan Gunawan’s camp antics are out of the closet and proving a ratings success on prime-time television. The latest in the long line of gender-bending Indonesian entertainers, he tells Bruce Emond about not playing it straight.

Judging the singing ability and performance prowess of the celebrities – a random assortment of mostly young soap actors and starlets – and their moms is among the secondary reasons for the popularity of Supermama Seleb Show.

It is the rest of the lineup that garners the attention on the hit Indosiar variety program. Out front on stage is irrepressible host Eko Patrio, mugging for the camera at every opportunity like a slightly sedated Robin Williams. Next up is his short, wisecracking co-host Ruben Onco, and the rotating group of judges, including singers Hetty Koes Endang, Maia Dhani and Tri Utami.

Last but not least is “Madam”, the resident fashion consultant whose ostentatious fashion choices – on any day they may include ruffles, furs, sequins, in-your-face false eyelashes and teased red hair – and run-on repartee with the two hosts keeps viewers tuning in.

Madam is Ivan Gunawan, a fashion designer who has parlayed clever comebacks and a gorgeously androgynous face into a parallel career in entertainment.

He acted in a couple of teen movie comedies, hosted a TV gossip show and, after a much-publicized weight loss, did a bit of soap acting. But even the 26-year-old Ivan, someone who appears to have considerable self-confidence, expresses surprise at the latest venture’s runaway success.

He has gone from regular celebrityhood to a full-fledged household name, which is to be expected when one is a regular on a five-hour show broadcast three times a week in this TV-obsessed nation. At the end of 2007, it was the top rated show in the country according to AGP Nielsen, with a 30 percent share in major urban centers.

So what is the deal with Madam?

“I’m just being me, not covering anything up and the makeup is part of the character of Madam,” says Ivan at his plushly decorated boutique in South Jakarta. “I think an [effeminate] character like mine is rare, because usually they are made to look ugly, they are the laughing-stock and the target of insults, which I don’t want to be. I want to be the whole package, with depth to my style.”

Always one of the easiest ways to get laughs in Indonesia has been to put a male actor in a dress and heels and have him camp it up on screen: such iconic comedy figures as the late Benyamin, Trio Warkop and more recently Tessy did it to their advantage.

The difference with them and Ivan’s Madam (as well as many of today’s group of young male emcees who spout the popular transvestite-inspired slang) is that there was no doubts about their heterosexuality.

With Ivan, the “is-he-or-isn’t-he?” question mark is always there.

“Indonesians are so stereotypical,” Ivan says with a smile. “They’re very easily deceived. They’ll never think that a macho-looking man is gay even if he is, while I just have to put on some false eyelashes and people immediately say, ‘Ah, he must be’”.

He jokes that he enjoys “playing with the emotions” of the public by camping up the character of Madam but still keeping them guessing about whose team he is actually playing on. In January, he introduced “Madam’s son”, appearing in a designer suit and with his hair slicked back.

In 2006, after the towering 1.85-meter Ivan emerged slimmer and sans makeup following a diet and fitness program, some people believed that he had changed his ways. That perception grew when he acted in one of the popular religious repentance shows, playing a transvestite who finds God.

“Actually, I was still being me, it was just that it was what other people thought was happening to me, judging the book by its cover. I was just following Madonna in always looking to reinvent myself,” he says with a laugh.

Indonesian society’s own “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy persists, even if gay men are an increasingly recognizable part of the urban landscape in Jakarta and some other major cities. To publicly admit to being gay risks derision and losing face with family and friends.

As we talk the radio is playing in the background, with a reality comedy spot called Salah Sambung (Wrong Number): today’s segment, coincidentally, has the host calling up an unsuspecting man and declaring, “Did you know your son is a bencong (sissy)?” The poor man stammers and stutters, lost for words, before he is let in on the prank.

“I always say that everybody wants to have a relationship. I don’t know who will propose to me, or who I will propose to. Of course, we all need love, and one day to have a family,” Ivan says in repeating his standard answer to infotainment journalists.

“But I don’t want to marry just for my parents. One day, without having to be told to, I will get married.”

He pauses and chuckles. “Now, whether it will be a woman or a man, I don’t know. Let the viewers and readers guess that. All I am trying to do is give my best to them.”

Ivan admits he was not a typical little boy. Toy action figures and cars or rough-housing it with the gang were not to his liking, but he found his calling with a neighbor’s Barbie collection.

He would dress the dolls up, brush their hair and, like many effeminate boys, dream a little dream about one day looking pretty like them. “I felt different very early on, really as long as I can remember.”

The youngest of three children of a diplomat, he spent most of his childhood abroad, first in Hong Kong in elementary school and then Russia. He graduated from playing dress-up to a full-fledged passion for fashion, combing popular designer stores for new additions to his wardrobe.

A sensitive young boy with a love of clothes seems like a prime target for the schoolyard bully, but Ivan says he escaped any major teasing. He returned to Indonesia in his teens and was taken under the wing of his maternal uncle, the designer Adjie Notonegoro, to learn more about fashion design.

“From the time I was a kid, my uncle already knew what my talents were,” says Ivan, who adds that he never liked studying at school. “He saw that I loved to perform, that I would give 1,000 answers to one question, that I loved modeling, fashion and celebrity. Everything, really, that has to do with being a star.”

He was spotted by the director Richard Buntario, who cast Ivan in the movie comedy Lima Sehat, Empat Sempurna in 2002. His look and style was noticed early; The Jakarta Post, in an otherwise negative review, wrote that the newcomer “managed to make the film watchable”. It was then that he started developing his prissy stage persona, including as an infotainment host.

“Indonesian people really enjoy effeminate characters but there is that hypocrisy that makes them scared of loving them,” he says. “But they like them because they are fun. An office is always livelier when you have a gay person there, it’s that special queeny touch ... If everybody was straight things would be very rigid.”

But not everybody is mad about Madam; some find the camping around a bit too close for comfort, too threatening, even embarrassing. Ivan says that his father, now Indonesia’s consul-general in Toronto, refused to watch him in the early years of his career because he said he was “ashamed” in front of his colleagues.

His father has come around to his son’s career decisions, and Ivan is close to his mother; on his 26th birthday in December, he called his mother on-air.

“I always tried to explain to my parents that not every child my age has the opportunities and the good fortune that I have,” he says. “I work according to my talents, with all my heart and I don’t want to lie to anybody ... And they can see that I have made myself somebody.”

Sources : The Jakarta Post

DURIAN IN BIG DURIAN

2008-06-29T01:44:00.002+07:00

Fachmi, a durian wholesaler, offers the spiky fruit to street vendors along Jl. Kebayoran Lama in South Jakarta on Friday. He gets the fruit from Lampung and sells it in Jakarta and Tangerang for Rp 5,000 (54 US cents) to Rp 8,000 per durian. (JP/R. Berto Wedhatama)

Sources : The Jakarta Post

No Indonesian shuttler left in Thailand open

2008-06-29T01:41:00.001+07:00

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The one and only Indonesian shuttler left in the semifinal round of the Grand Prix Gold Thailand Open, Alamsyah Yusuf failed to book a ticket for the final round after being defeated by first-seed Lin Dan of China.

With Alamsyah`s defeat, Indonesia would have no shuttler in the final round of the championship to be held on Sunday.

In the semi-final round, he was defeated in a straight set 16-21, 18-21, the official website of the tournament which is being held in the Nimibut National Stadium, Bangkok, said on Saturday.

"He is far behind Dan in all aspects. For sure, this is his first meeting with Dan," the coach for single number, Hendrawan said.

He said the meeting between Alamsyah, the world`s 79th rank, and Dan was important to add his experience.

Before facing Dan, Alamsyah has defeated third-seeded Joachim Persson of Denmark and ninth-seeded March Zwiebler of Germany.

Chiba managed to put all China`s finals in three numbers, namely women`s singles, men`s doubles, and mix-doubles.

In the women` singles, first-seed Xie Xinfang will meet with second seed Lu Lan and in the men`s doubles first seed Fu Haifeng/Cai Yun will face second seed Xie Zhongbo/Guo Zhendong.

Meanwhile, in the mixed doubles, China`s mixed-double He Hanbin/Yu Yang will meet Xie Zhongbo/Zhang Yawen.

In the men`s singles, Lin Dan will meet host country`s shuttler second seed Boonsak Ponsana.

In the women`s doubles, first seed Yang Wei/Zhang Jiewen will meet fourth seed Wong Pei Tty/Chin Eei Hui of Malaysia. (*)

Sources : Antara Online

The Last King of Java

2008-06-28T00:29:00.003+07:00

Indonesia 's former president offers a model of Muslim tolerance

BY BRET STEPHENS

JAKARTA, Indonesia--Suppose for a moment that the single most influential religious leader in the Muslim world openly says "I am for Israel." Suppose he believes not only in democracy but in the liberalism of America's founding fathers.

Suppose that, unlike so many self-described moderate Muslims who say one thing in English and another in their native language, his message never alters. Suppose this, and you might feel as if you've descended into Neocon Neverland.

In fact, you have arrived in Jakarta and are sitting in the small office of an almost totally blind man of 66 named Abdurrahman Wahid. A former president of Indonesia, he is the spiritual leader of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), an Islamic organization of some 40 million members. Indonesians know him universally as Gus Dur, a title of affection and respect for this descendant of Javanese kings.

In the U.S. and Europe he is barely spoken of at all--which is both odd and unfortunate, seeing as he is easily the most important ally the West has in the ideological struggle against Islamic radicalism.

Conversation begins with some old memories. In the early 1960s, Mr. Wahid, whose paternal grandfather founded the NU in 1926 and whose father was Indonesia's first minister of religious affairs, won a scholarship to Al-Azhar University in Cairo, which for 1,000 years had been Sunni Islam's premier institution of higher learning. Mr. Wahid hated it.

"These old sheikhs only let me study Islam's traditional surras in the old way, which was rote memorization," he recalls, speaking in the excellent English he learned as a young man listening to the BBC and Voice of America. "Before long I was fed up. So I spent my time reading books from the USIS [United States Information Service], the Egyptian National Library, and at the cinema. I used to watch three, four movies a day."

As Mr. Wahid saw it, the basic problem with Al-Azhar was that the state interfered in its affairs and demanded intellectual conformity--a lesson he carries with him to the present day. In 1966 he left Cairo for Baghdad University, where he encountered much the same thing: "The teaching [suffered from] conventionalism. You were not allowed to go your own way."

Here Mr. Wahid digresses into Islamic history. "In the second century of Islam, the Imam al-Shafi'i began remodeling the religion," he says. "He put into place the mechanism of understanding everything through law [Shariah]. Now people can't talk about that anymore. We cannot attack al-Shafi'i."

The point is crucial to Mr. Wahid's understanding of Islam as being something broader, deeper and better than the tradition-bound view of life imposed by traditional schools of Islamic law (all the more striking because Mr. Wahid is himself a leading theologian of the Shafi'i school). It is equally crucial to Mr. Wahid's politics, not to mention his relaxed approach to social issues.

"The globalization of ethics is always frightening to people, particularly Islamic radicals," he says in reference to a question about the so-called pornoaksi legislation. For the past three years Indonesian politics have been roiled by an Islamist attempt to label anything they deem sexually arousing to be a form of "porno-action." Mr. Wahid sees this as an assault on pancasila, Indonesia's secularist state philosophy from the time of its founding. He also sees it as an assault on common sense. "Young people like to kiss each other," he says, throwing his hands in the air. "Why not? Just because old people don't do it doesn't mean it's wrong."

Mr. Wahid is equally relaxed about some of the controversies that have recently erupted between Muslims and the West. Pope Benedict's Regensburg speech from last September was "a good speech, though as usual he pointed to the wrong times and the wrong cases." As for the furor over the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, he asks "why should we be angry?" And he dismisses Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, the al-Jazeera preacher who helped incite the cartoon riots, as an "angry, conventional" thinker.

What really concerns Mr. Wahid is what he sees as the increasingly degraded state of the Muslim mind. That problem is becoming especially acute at Indonesian universities and in the pesantren--the religious boarding schools that graduate hundreds of thousands of students every year. "We are experiencing the shallowing of religion," he says, bemoaning the fact that the boarding schools persist in teaching "conventional"--that word again--Islam.

But Mr. Wahid's critique is not just of formal Islamic education. He also attacks the West's philosophy of positivism, which, he says, "relies too much on the idea of conquering knowledge and mastering scientific principles alone." This purely empirical and essentially soulless view of things, broadly adopted by Indonesia's secular state universities, gives its students a bleak choice: "Either they follow the process or they are outside the process."

As a result, Western-style education in Indonesia has come to represent not just secularism but the negation of religion, to which too many students have responded by embracing fundamentalism. At the University of Indonesia, for example, an estimated three in four students are members or sympathizers of the "Prosperous Justice Party," or PKS, an ultra-radical Islamic party.

This raises the subject of religion and politics. "For us, an Islamic party is not a thing to follow," he says, adding that "religion and morality is tied to person, not a party." To illustrate the point, he observes that religious parties in the Muslim world have more often been the handmaids of dictatorship than democracy.

"Whenever governments tried to enforce their institutions they use 'Islamic' people as potential allies." The Front for the Defense of Islam (FPI), a radical vigilante group that uses violent means to suppress "un-Islamic" behavior, was, he observes, originally a creature of the Indonesian military.

So why did Mr. Wahid, as a religious leader, make the choice to go into politics himself? He demurs at the suggestion of choice. "I am against politics, so to speak. In 1984 I tried hard to convince people that the NU should not be in politics." He was overruled by others in the organization, and eventually he founded the Party of National Awakening, or PKB.

Yet the party, he insists, is "based on non-Islamic principles," a fact he illustrates by pointing to a nearby aide who is an Indonesian Protestant. "We have to go for plurality, for tolerance."

He also believes that the "only solution" to the challenge of Islamic radicalization in Indonesia is more democracy. But what about the example of Hamas, which came to power through democratic means, and of other groups like Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood that would probably do the same if given the chance? Mr. Wahid's answer is to distinguish between what he calls "full democratization" and the "hollow imitation of democracy" that he sees taking place in Indonesia as well as among Arabs in Palestine and Iraq.

"The problem is not personalities, it is institutions," he says. "For the past 250 years the Americans have had not just Jefferson's concept of the rights of the individual but also Alexander Hamilton's belief in a strong state." In order to function properly, democracy requires competent government that can effectively uphold the rule of law. It also requires a broadly understood concept of self-rule, which is missing in too much of the developing world: "Here, ordinary citizens expect the government to do everything for them."

He therefore takes a fairly dim view of Iraq's democratic prospects. "Iraqis understood that Saddam had caused them trouble," and were grateful to be rid of him, he says. "But as for the U.S. concept of democracy, they don't understand it at all." The problem, he adds, goes double in the rest of the Arab world, where, he says, the prevailing view is that being a democracy is an expression of weakness, while being a dictatorship is a sign of strength.

What's needed, in other words, is for countries like Indonesia and Iraq to find a way to combine effective government with a powerful respect for the rights of the citizen. But how one goes about doing that is itself a deeper problem, a problem of culture. "How do we follow the West without [becoming] Westerners? How do you do that? I don't know."

In fact, Mr. Wahid has begun to develop an answer through two organizations he chairs, the Wahid Institute, run by his daughter Yenny, and LibForAll, an Indonesia- and U.S.-based nonprofit run by American C. Holland Taylor, which works to discredit Islamism's ideology of hatred. "It's up to LibForAll to introduce both sides to Muslims; to show that common principles are also the principles of Islam," Mr. Wahid says. "Hundreds of thousands of Muslim youth learn in countries where there is technological modernity. We need to [nurture] the emergence of a new kind of people who think in terms of being modern but still relate to the past."

In fact, that perfectly describes Mr. Wahid, who is keenly aware of his own roots in both Islamic and Javanese traditions. Among his ancestors are the last Hindu-Buddhist king of the Javanese Majapahit dynasty, and Sunan Kalijogo, a Sufi mystic who married Islamic and local traditions and, according to lore, defeated Islamic extremism in the 16th century. Can Mr. Wahid, heir to this venerable tradition, accomplish the same feat? "Right now, the fundamentalists think they're winning," he once told a friend. "But they're going to wake up one day and realize we beat them."

Mr. Stephens writes "Global View," The Wall Street Journal's foreign affairs column
(The Wall Street Journal April 7, 2007)

Sources : Gus Dur Net

Indonesia's Struggle: Jemaah Islamiyah and the Soul of Islam

2008-06-28T00:21:00.004+07:00

Author: Greg Barton
Publisher: University of New South Wales Press (UNSW Press), August 2004, Sidney
ISBN: 0-86840-759-3
Softback, 118 pages

Reviewed by Gary LaMoshi*

Despite more than 225 dead in three bomb attacks attributed to Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) terrorists and thousands more killed in anti-Christian jihad in the Malukus and central Sulawesi since 1999, Indonesia continues to dismiss the influence of radical Islam. Conventional wisdom contends that extremists enjoy support from only a tiny minority in the world's largest predominantly Muslim nation. Yet Indonesia 's mainstream political and religious leaders more frequently embrace these alleged fringe groups than condemn and isolate them, lending extremism respectability and acceptance as the body count rises.

Given that contradiction, examining Islam in Indonesia often raises more questions than it answers. Indonesia's Struggle: Jemaah Islamiyah and the Soul of Islam presents a clear-eyed analysis of Islam's involvement in Indonesian politics and terrorism, avoiding simple generalizations as Indonesia emerges from decades of authoritarian rule under former president Suharto that suppressed Islam as a potential threat to the New Order's political control.

Author Greg Barton of Australia 's Deakin University , an expert on modern Islamic intellectual currents, explains in this concise volume major trends in Muslim thought in simple language that lay people can understand. The theology can be somewhat confusing: what many call fundamentalists are more rightly labeled modernists, their thinking growing out of Wahhabism from Saudi Arabia , which funds Indonesian radicals and seeks to scour impurities from Islam and return to sixth-century practices. Liberals or traditionalists endorse a syncretic Islam that appends elements of Sufi mysticism and local, traditional influences.

Gun-intended consequences?

Throughout this book, Barton acknowledges links between terrorism and the Indonesian armed forces that most experts sweep under the rug. Jemaah Islamiyah was born as an unintended consequence of Indonesian military plots against Muslim radicals in the 1970s. JI attacks starting with the Christmas Eve 2000 bombings across the archipelago may, in turn, be unintended consequences of the military's sponsorship of anti-Christian jihad in the Malukus and central Sulawesi

Supplementing his academic qualifications, Barton was a live-in biographer for former Indonesian president Abdurrahman Wahid, holding a ringside seat to observe the role of Islam in Indonesia 's reform era. Wahid, a nearly blind, liberal Muslim cleric widely known as Gus Dur, became president in 1999 as a compromise candidate with Islamist support.

(Barton defines Islamists as transforming Islam into a political ideology and emphasizing the differences between Muslims and others, whereas liberals support acceptance and tolerance.) Gus Dur was ousted in 2001 after Islamists realized that he didn't share their agenda, illustrating the split between Islamic and Islamist politics.

In Indonesia's Struggle Barton shows how religion stood at the center of Indonesian politics even before independence. The original draft of the 1945 constitution included the Jakarta Charter, obliging Muslims to follow Sharia, Islamic law. Nationalists removed that section to create a more secular state, inspiring Islamist political and even armed opposition that didn't end until the military takeover in 1965. In the first national elections in 1955, Islamic parties received nearly 40% of the votes. After more than three decades of repression, Islamic parties received similar percentages in the 1999 and 2004 national elections, with Islamists showing growing strength in the most recent balloting.

Islamist gains may owe to their former forbidden-fruit status; the two hottest categories in Indonesian mass culture are Islam and sex, both suppressed under Suharto (though still widely practiced). Barton cautions against ignoring radical Islamist roots of the fast growing Prosperous Justice Party, whose chairman is a speaker of the legislature. But Barton echoes other Western critics when he discounts the appeal of Islamists as political reformers when other choices carry New Order connections. More curiously, Barton fails to address why the political establishment fears Gus Dur enough to create a blatantly discriminatory excuse - a vision test requirement - to bar him from the 2004 presidential race without worrying about backlash from his supporters while fearing negative reaction if they condemn radical Islamists.

The enduring strength of Islamists is an uncomfortable fact for Indonesia 's secular politicians and concerned Westerners to face. But liberals need to recognize that religion is a staple of Indonesian political life just as Indonesians need to understand that they're the ones who suffer from Islamist terrorism in their country. Barton argues convincingly that it's not public sympathy for radical Islamists that endangers Indonesia but political Islamists' denial of jihadi Islamist violence.

Two roads converged …

Political Islamists support the introduction of Sharia by democratic means, while jihadi Islamists advocate theocracy and are willing to use violence to get it. Barton observes that Indonesia 's political and jihadi Islamists are converging, with politicians' embrace of jihadis moving violent extremists into the mainstream. He warns that the convergence could lead Indonesia to resemble Pakistan , where an Islamist minority has imposed its views on a secular majority. At the focal point of Indonesia 's convergence, Barton finds the Indonesian Mujahideen Council (MMI) and its founder Abu Bakar Ba'asyir.

A fervent preacher with a flair for public relations, Ba'asyir currently is standing trial for a second time on charges that he's the leader of JI. Ba'asyir 's botched first trial, according to Barton, reversed the post-Bali bombing current of public support for a crackdown on jihadi Islamists, confirming Islamist propaganda that the "war on terror" is a war on Islam and demonstrating how Western support for anti-terrorism measures can be counterproductive.

Barton points out that, in the war for Indonesia 's soul, the Islamists are better equipped and more aggressive than liberal Muslims. That's hardly surprising: zealots who see the world in black and white tend to be more fanatical than those who detect nuance and accept different views. Barton's straightforward book reveals where radical Islam stands in this nation with key strategic geopolitical and theological-political roles, placing Islamists closer to Indonesia 's center than most choose to believe.

*Gary LaMoshi has worked as a broadcast producer and print writer and editor in the US and Asia. Longtime editor of investor rights advocate eRaider.com, he's also a contributor to Slate and Salon.com.

(Asia Times Online, 11/12/2004)

Sources : The Wahid Institute

Sony Ericsson launches C902, the thinnest Cyber-shot phone

2008-06-27T23:44:00.004+07:00

Matheos Viktor Messakh , The Jakarta Post

As far as pictures are concerned, the star of the just concluded cell phone exhibition was Sony Ericsson C902 Cyber-shot camera phone.

Many prominent phone brands have had their own camera phones with megapixel capability on the market since 2006. But it wasn't until Sony Ericsson launched its K850i that a 5 megapixel camera phone made sense, with picture quality rivaling that of low-end dedicated digital cameras.

Sony Ericsson C902 has raised the bar even higher with a combination of superb phone features, such as high-speed internet access HSDPA and excellent camera features.

"The new C902 is our first Cyber-shot phones launched in 2008. The phone places ease-of-use and best-in-class picture quality at the heart of its design," Sony Ericsson Indonesia's head of marketing Djunadi Satrio said during the camera phone's launch at the Jakarta Convention Center recently.

At first glance, the C902 looks like a direct descendant of the K850, but it will be another handset to inherit the latter's legacy.

Dubbed as "the thinnest Cyber-shot phone", the C902 designation does break a mold, as all previous Cyber-shot models belong to the K-series. It's now C for Cyber-shot, nice and easy.

The phone is quite compact, at only 10.5 millimeters thick, yet its full metal body adds to the total weight of 107 grams.

The ultra-compact C902 has a surprisingly small 2-inch, 262,144-color TFT display of 320x240 pixel or QVGA resolution. There are eight touch sensitive camera keys that backlight in blue around the display.

As a camera-centric phone, Sony Ericsson C902 bundles up a 5.0 megapixel shooter with a unique lens cover. The camera is slumbered under a sliding top. Once you slide it up, the camera is revealed and you are ready to shoot.

The slim 5.0 megapixel camera phone also offers other good niceties including face detection, image and video stabilizer, BestPic, auto-rotate, macro mode and a proper photoflash LED.

The face detection and automatic focus capabilities enable the camera to detect and focus on the face of your object rather than the background, so that you can take sharp and high quality pictures of your friends.

With C902, you can be confident of getting the perfect shot. The phone incorporates the latest in lighting technology. Photo flash gives you better quality pictures even in low-light conditions.

Also, a light solution has been added to the BestPic application which lets you to take nine photos continuously, choose the best and delete the rest. So now you can use BestPic wherever you are, perhaps even to capture the dance-floor action when you are visiting a club.

The eight camera touch keys come to life and let you choose between camera modes, Photo flash, face detection and automatic focus and more, with just one touch without moving your finger from the shutter button.

The phone's lighting dramatically signals when you are in camera mode by switching from white to blue.

While C902 comes with a better camera and entertainment features, it doesn't come with GPS. You can, however, add optional HGE-100 GPS enabler if you really need the capability.

With 5 megapixel pictures, you can't be more descriptive of places you are visiting.

In the entertainment area, a 3D Need for Speed game is on top of the regular games, while Bluetooth with A2DP allows you to hear music through a wireless stereo headset.

The multimedia package includes a media player with the MegaBass equalizer preset, TV out, FM radio with RDS and TrackID.

The slim C902 also comes with x-Pict story to add music and transitions to your gallery of photos and automatically create your own multimedia slide show to share with your friends.

The C902 is a global phone with quad-band GSM/EDGE support as well HSDPA.

The phone has an internal memory of 160MB, the equivalent of storage for up to 100 high resolution photos. Additional storage comes with the Memory Stick Micro (M2) that can be bundled with the phone depending on the market.

Users can transfer images from the phone to a computer by using the CCR-70 M2 USB Adapter. All you have to do is move your pictures to the memory card, and insert the card into the CCR-70 and then connect the USB adapter to a PC or laptop to complete the transfer.

By emptying the memory card, you will have an ample storage to be filled again with pictures.

So, start taking pictures...

Sources : The Jakarta Post

Student protests turn violent

2008-06-25T12:35:00.004+07:00

The Jakarta Post , Jakarta Wed, 06/25/2008

Student protests in Jakarta on Tuesday turned violent, leaving at least 18 people injured and causing massive traffic jams that brought areas of the city to a virtual standstill.

Several students were detained and questioned at Jakarta Police Headquarters.

At least 1,000 students gathered at the gates of the House of Representatives building, demanding they be allowed to take part in a plenary session being held to discuss the government's fuel price policy.

They also voiced solidarity with National University student Maftuh Fauzi, who died on June 20 a month after being involved in a clash with police on the university's South Jakarta campus.

The protesters blocked a section of Jl. Gatot Subroto, leaving only one lane available for vehicles.
They burned tires in the street in front of the House and clashed with police when officers moved in to arrest the more violent protesters.

Police used water cannons on the protesters, who responded by pelting the officers with stones.

"We just want to enter the House building to persuade lawmakers to vote to question the government over its fuel price policy. We hope by using their right to inquiry, they can annul the government's fuel price hike policy," one of the leaders of the student protesters, Lalu Hilman Afriandi, said.

He said several students attempted to enter the House compound through a back gate, located on Jl. Gelora, but security guards blocked them.
"We tried to enter the building but we failed. That's why many students were angry," he said.

During the plenary session, 233 of 360 lawmakers voted for an inquiry into the government's fuel price policy.

Another protest in front of Atma Jaya University, on Jl. Sudirman, also turned violent as students searched for government cars before burning one vehicle.

Students and activists also protested at the Jl. Rasuna Said office of copper and gold mining company Freeport, demanding the government nationalize the company. The protesters halted the operation of TransJakarta buses serving the Kuningan-Ragunan route.

The rallies caused massive traffic jams, forcing office workers to seek alternative routes home.

Nine cars were damaged during the protests, including one that was completely burned out.

Commenting on the violent protests, Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Ketut Untung Yoga Ana called on the Atma Jaya University rector to do more to control students.

He said police detained five students over the violence.
"The rector told us to take all necessary measures to secure the protest," he said. (ind)

Sources : The Jakarta Post

Basel waste meeting opens in Indonesia

2008-06-24T10:14:00.001+07:00

Nusa Dua, Bali (ANTARA News) - More than 1,000 people from 170 countries gathered on the Indonesian resort island of Bali on Monday to discuss the management of waste under the Basel Convention, organisers said.

Indonesian Environment Minister Rahmat Witoelar opened the five-day meeting organised by the governing body of the 1992 convention on the generation and movement of waste.

The ninth such "Council of the Parties" is scheduled to focus on the impacts of hazardous waste on human health and livelihoods in terms of the UN's millennium development goals, organisers said.

It will also include discussions on the disposal of massive amounts of electronic waste such as old mobile phones.

Witoelar said Indonesia's long coastline made it particularly vulnerable to the illegal dumping of toxic waste.

"Due to its archipelagic nature, with the second longest coastal line in the world, Indonesia is vulnerable to illegal traffic of transboundary hazardous waste," he was quoted by AFP as saying.

The Basel Convention is an international treaty which regulates the international trade in hazardous waste and aims to minimise its generation and movement across borders.

Participants are expected to adopt a "Bali Declaration" aimed at highlighting the importance of health and waste management for global development strategies such as reducing poverty.

"As we are all too often reminded, hazardous wastes continue to pose serious risks for human health and the environment," said Basel Convention Executive Secretary Katharina Kummer Peiry said in a statement ahead of the meeting.

"It is especially important that this meeting reaffirms the undeniable interdependence between environmentally sound waste management and the achievement of sustainable development, especially for those who need it the most." (*)

Sources : Antara Online

The Dell XPS M1330: Still a strong contender

2008-06-23T20:55:00.005+07:00

This time around, courtesy of Lucid Communications, the public relations company that handles Dell Indonesia, I had the opportunity to put a handsome Dell XPS M1330 through its paces for a couple of weeks.

This notebook was launched in Indonesia in February, when Dell announced it was also entering the consumer segment. Previously, Dell mainly supplied our market with desktop and notebook PCs in the business category.

The XPS M1330 is positioned as an ultraportable Intel-based notebook. There are some positive points in getting my turn to review a notebook -- or a cell phone -- after half a dozen other people: At least it has undergone some abuse that I would not have the heart to perform.

When I received the notebook and opened it, for example, my nose was immediately stung by the smell of clove cigarette ash. Clearly, the earlier reviewers were intentionally or unintentionally testing the unit against unfriendly particles.

There were a lot of smudges, too. But, all it took me was five minutes with a wet chamois, and the unit looked brand new again. This demonstrated Dell's careful choice of materials for the notebook casing.

The first thing to catch your eye when you see a Dell XPS 1330 is its highly appealing screen cover color. My test unit came in blue, and it looked very handsome. Other color options are available, including black and red. The overall design is enhanced further with silver trim -- the same color as the keyboard and the palmrest.

The color combination tends to give the impression this is a five-kilogram machine. It isn't. It weighs just a little over two kgs. Of course, although Dell puts it in the ultraportable category, the M1330 is not to be compared with the MacBook Air or ThinkPad X300.

The engine is a pretty capable one. My review unit ran on an Intel Core 2 Duo T75450 processor with a 1.66 GHz clock speed. Thanks to its 2 GB memory, it ran Windows Home Premium like a professional marathon runner. Unlike the notebooks from many of the other brands, it did not come with too many preinstalled applications that most of us never use.

In addition to its great performance, I loved the screen. It is an LED backlit, widescreen display measuring 13.3 inches diagonally. The TFT panel has a glossy surface that does not seem to get smudged easily. It produces a high level of brightness, but it is not too bright and is not uncomfortably glaring.

I had to lower the resolution a lot to make the characters easier to read. The factory default resolution is 1280 by 800, which gives very tiny characters. My sweet spot turned out to be 800 by 600. It is not the right resolution for a wide screen, so the icons and characters look stretched and disproportionate. But, at least, they are easier on my eyes.

The keyboard is spacious and pleasing enough for a fast typist. I like the large arrow keys as well as the column of the navigation keys along the right edge. The unit gets rather warm after a while, but not enough to burn your lap.

The integrated Webcam is another plus found on this unit. With a 2.0 MP capability, it is great for videoconferencing as well as taking vanity photos. It even has face tracking that will try to put your face in the center. If the bandwidth is limited, the resolution can be lowered. Adjusting the resolution, color setting and background light compensation is very straightforward once the Dell Webcam Manager is running.

Incidentally, the Webcam application has motion detection capability, too. So, if you see an unattended Dell XPS M1330, you had better not mess with it. It may send an alert to its owner without your knowledge.

The M1330 comes with two USB ports. I would opt for more. In addition to the standard VGA port to connect it to an analog projector, there is also an IEEE 1394 port for video transfer. It also has a port for High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI), which can connect the computer to a high definition TV. A remote control is even thrown in.

Most notebooks come with both an RJ-45 Ethernet port and an RJ-11 modem port. Dell's design engineers seem to think that people no longer use dial-up connection, so the modem is a detachable USB device. Another extra is an 8-in-1 card reader, which complements the ExpressCard slot.

The Wi-Fi is also very easy to set up. Slide the Wi-Fi button on the ride side, and you will see all the available 802.11 a/b/g/n networks in your surroundings, complete with their individual signal strength. The audio ports are located on the front edge. I think these ports should be on the side, but the challenge is perhaps finding the space for them as both sides are already full with connector ports and buttons.

Interestingly, two sets of stereo headphones can be connected to the notebook.
Also atypical of previous Dell notebooks, there is a row of touch buttons on the top right-hand end of the keyboard. It is called Dell MediaDirect. The touch-sensitive buttons detect human fingers only.

Nothing happened when I tried to press any of them with a cotton bud. Unfortunately, though, they are placed too close to each other that, I think, the system sometimes gets confused if they are not touched in the right spot. It is a challenge for people like me, who have fat fingers.

The DVD writer is trayless, or slot-loading, according to Dell's lingo. I still feel worried when using the slot-type drive -- worried that I will not be able to take a disc out should it become stuck inside. There is the option of using a Solid State Drive instead of a conventional hard disk, but it will raise the price substantially. Besides, the current maximum capacity is only 64 GB, which is quite small for those who have become accustomed to having a 200 GB hard disk.

So, what do I think of the M1330, which has received an Editor's Choice from PCMagazine as well as a long list of other awards? When it comes to lightweight and thinness, it may have arrived a tad too late in the market. But, when it comes to performance, comfort-of-use and style, it still offers truly exceptional value. It should definitely be on your list of alternatives if you are in the market for a new notebook

Sources : The Jakarta Post

Guus Hiddink's Russia outlasts and outplays the Netherlands to reach Euro 2008 semifinal

2008-06-23T00:56:00.002+07:00

The Associated Press , Basel, Switzerland Sun, 06/22/2008

Guus Hiddink danced onto the pitch Saturday after Russia beat tournament favorite the Netherlands 3-1 i extra time to secure its first ever European Championship semifinal appearance. He doesn't do that often.

Hiddink and his players earned the right to party with their shock win over the Netherlands that had been so dominant in its first three games at Euro 2008, scoring nine goals and conceding just one.

Hiddink's team will now meet Italy or Spain in the semifinals in Vienna on Thursday. If it is Spain, Russia has the chance - and judging by Saturday's performance, the skill and stamina - to avenge its humiliating 4-1 defeat in its tournament opener, when David Villa scored a hat trick.

For shock value, Russia's progress to the semifinals of Euro 2008 is reminiscent of South Korea's run - also engineered by Hiddink - to the last four of the 2002 World Cup.

"After 90 minutes, going into extra time, and then doing what they did, that is a tremendous achievement," Hiddink said. "I did not experience that very (often) in my career."

Hiddink said before the tournament that he was aiming for the quarterfinals, but once he got there he didn't want his young players to lie down and let the Netherlands overrun them.

There was never any question of that happening. From an opening surge in the first half to the final minute of extra time, it was Russia that dominated the match.

The team took a deserved lead through Roman Pavlyuchenko, squandered it when it allowed Ruud van Nistelrooy to poach a late equalizer, and then in the last period of extra time, poweed by the skills and stamina of Andrei Arshavin, it swamped the Netherlands with a Dutch-style, all-out attack.

Arshavin crossed for substitute Dmitry Torbinski to score from close range and then the Zenit St. Petersburg star rounded off his second straight man-of-the-match performance by firing a low shot through goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar's legs in a humiliating end to the Netherlands captain's international career.

"Maybe playing against the Dutch it was good to have a Dutch coach - and a very good coach," Russia midfielder Diniyar Bilyaletdinov said. "I've never played in a match like this."

Hiddink said he was not ready to worry about the semifinals so soon after the shocking victory.

"I have not had any thoughts about that," he said. "Going into quarterfinals being an outsider and reaching that goal is already a big achievement, and then going into next round and semifinal, I think the first thing we do is rest two days and then focus on the opponent."

As with all his successful campaigns - Hiddink has now taken the Netherlands and South Korea to World Cup semifinals and Russia to the same stage at the European Championships - the fitness of his players was key. Hiddink worked his squad hard at a long pre-tournament training camp in Germany to improve its stamina, and it is paying off on the pitch now.

Russia beat Sweden 2-0 in its last Group D match just three days before the quarterfinals, while the Netherlands' first-team players had rested for more than a week before Saturday's match at St. Jakob Park in Basel.

Even so, it was Russia who was freshest in extra time, while the Netherlands looked weary.

"Physically, they were a step ahead of us, they were justified winners," said Netherlands winger Arjen Robben, who missed the match because of a recurrence of a groin injury.

Hiddink has constantly claimed underdog status in this tournament, but that may be tough from now on after dominating such a strong Netherlands team.

"I don't know if we're favorites now," Bilyaletdinov said. "We played a great match. Hopefully, we can play another one next time - and the time after that."
Hiddink is confident his team can rise to whatever the next challenge is.

"This team is learning very fast in a short time," he said. "They are very coachable, very keen on what they have to do. And then they have the quality to play." (**)

Sources : The Jakarta Post

Indonesia can save up to Rp200 trillion in coming two years: VP

2008-06-23T00:53:00.002+07:00

Banjarmasin (ANTARA News) - Vice President Jusuf Kalla said that Indonesia might be able to save its budget up to Rp200 trillion in the coming two years in line with increasing use of coals as fire power plant fuel.

"The budget could be saved up to hundreds of trillions of rupiah in line with the use of coals to fire steam-power plants (PLTU)," Kalla who is also general chairman of the Golkar Party said here on Sunday.

He made the remarks at the opening of the third regional leadership meeting of the Golkar Party in Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan.

The vice president said that the coal deposits in the country had the potentials to produce power and to develop PLTUs as one of the relatively cheap energy sources.

"The development of PLTUs continue to increase in the country from time to time so that it is not impossible for the country to save a huge amount of its budget and spendings," he said.

Touching on the economic growth in Indonesia, Kalla said that the economic growth was encouraging which at present had reached 6.3 percent.

He said that Indonesia`s economic growth was better than other countries in Asia like India, Bangladesh, Thailaind and Vietnam.

The vice president said that the level of the Indonesian people`s income also seemed better than those of other Asian nations like the Philippines, Vietnam and India.

Therefore, he called on all elements in the country to remain optimistic that Indonesia would become a strong nation in Asia.

"Looking objectively at the conditions and potential sources in a number of Asian nations, one would find that none of them was strong but that of Indonesia," he added.

He cited as an example the need for staple. "If several years in the past Indonesia had to import rice, now in a year`s time, it is now self-sufficient," the vice president added. (*)

Sources : Antara Online

Jakartans celebrate city's birthday reminiscing the past

2008-06-22T14:14:00.003+07:00

The Jakarta Post , Jakarta Sun, 06/22/2008 10:44 AM

Photographs of contemporary Jakarta merged with images from its past at Darmawangsa Square in South Jakarta on Saturday, as Jakartans prepare to celebrate the city's 481st birthday.

The exhibition was one of the many events organized by the Creative Culture, Darmawangsa Square and The Occasion, wrapped in the "Story of Jakarta" celebration, which lasts from June 14 to June 22.

The photographs displayed are works by five young photographers -- Nancy Tenlima, Priyagung Adhitama, Wihdy Miftah, Poer Soebagyo and Dodit Wijanarko.

Most captured the lonely corners of the city and other interesting images -- like street lamps, windows of houses and buildings that are rarely seen.

Other than the works of the young photographers, there were also collections from Jakarta's History Museum, adding a romantic touch to the story of Jakarta.

"This is a good and artistic combination. Those unaware of the history of Jakarta can now understand it better," said Nurman, one of the visitors of the exhibition.

"From the collection we can see how things were cleaner and neater in the past. I think this exhibition is a good way for our young people to learn from," added the 45-year old.

Another visitor, 26-year old Mariska, said she had gained a different perspective of Jakarta from the exhibition.

"I used to live in Bandung and am just getting used to this metropolitan city. From the photographs I can feel the positive vibrations in store for me," she said.

Scores of young people were seen observing the photographs, especially those taken from the History Museum's collection.

Photographs aren't the only treat prepared at the Darmawangsa Square -- also on display are paintings from Pasar Baru painters and writers, including the works of S. Wito, Eko Bandhoyo, Agus S. Eeng, Fathul Muin, Arif JAG, Diedith K, Nano, Nanang, Nandang, Djustru, Osman Effendy, Meshadi, Asep and Irma Gayatri.

"The pictures strike me as uncommonly interesting. Some provide the surreal experience of being a citizen in Jakarta, while some other show how real the city is," said 27-year old Henny.

"Maybe if I'd seen these pictures when I was younger, I wouldn't feel so touched. But having lived in Jakarta for quite some time now, they sort of speak to me," she said.

Visitors interested in batik can also browse through the hall of the square, where high-quality dresses and blouses made from the traditional decorated cloth are on display.

"The Story of Jakarta" is on display at the Darmawangsa Square until Sunday, June 22 --when Jakarta will be one year older. (lva)

Sources : The Jakarta Post

RI`s target for Chinese tourist arrivals still low: Diplomat

2008-06-22T14:00:00.001+07:00

Beijing (ANTARA News) - Indonesia`s target for Chinese tourist arrivals at 300 thousands this year is still low as China has a population of 1.2 billion people, Indonesia`s Deputy Chief of Mission for China Mohamad Oemar said.

"The 300 thousand arrival target is still low while the opportunity to increase the number of tourists visiting Indonesia is still open wide," the Indonesian diplomat said here on Sunday.

He said that Indonesia with its different tourist objects had the potentials to attract more Chinese tourists, after all the relations of both counties had been going on for over 600 years.

A lot of promotion activities have been carried out by the government, the private sector and tourism operators to attract more Chinese visitors to Indonesia.

"All related parties are working hand-in-hand to promote Indonesia`s tourism potentials to the Chinese people so that it is expected that the number of Chinese tourist arrivals in Indonesia would continue to increase from year to year," he said.

He said that the embassy in Beijing was tirelessly promoting Indonesia`s tourism potentials to the Chinese people. The Indonesian Ministry of Tourism and Culture had also invited local administrations in Indonesia to help promote their potentials in China.

The Indonesia embassy will also hold an Indonesia week in Wangfujing, a popular shipping center in Beijing, according to Rosmalawati Khalid of the embassy here.

"The Indonesia Week will be held in September 2008, not too long from the hosting by China of the Olympic Games," she said. (*)

Sources : Antara Online

UFO alert: Welsh police helicopter spots `unusual aircraft`

2008-06-21T21:54:00.000+07:00

London (ANTARA News/afp) - UFO enthusiasts got a boost Friday when Welsh police confirmed that one of their helicopter crews had spotted an "unusual aircraft" flying over Cardiff earlier this month.

An investigation into the sighting had been launched, they said.

The police clarification came after tabloid newspaper The Sun reported a UFO had "attacked" a police helicopter, following it for several miles over the Bristol Channel.

"The pilot banked sharply to avoid being hit, then launched into a high-speed pursuit. But he was forced to give up the chase as the helicopter's fuel ran low -- and the UFO escaped," the tabloid reported.

The helicopter crew had described the object as "flying saucer-shaped and circled by flashing lights," it added.

That description was rather more dramatic than the official police version, which said: "South Wales Police can confirm its air support unit sighted an unusual aircraft.

"This was reported to the relevant authorities for their investigation," they added in a brief statement, avoiding the use of the term "UFO", or Unidentified Flying Object.

At the time of the incident, the helicopter with three men on board was waiting to land at the St Athan RAF base near Cardiff. The sighting reportedly took place at 00:40 am (23:40 GMT) on June 8.

South Wales Police denied there was a pursuit and indicated that the helicopter crew was never in any danger.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said it had heard nothing about the incident.

"But it is certainly not advisable for police helicopters to go chasing what they think are UFOs," he added. (*)

Sources : Antara Online

NU chairman calls on Nahdliyin to be active in democratization process

2008-06-21T08:07:00.000+07:00

Friday, June 20, 2008 18:19:57

Jakarta, NU Online

General chairman of the Central Board of Nahdlatul Ulama (PBNU) KH Hasyim Muzadi called on Nahdliyin (NU followers) to take part and be active in the democratization process in the country including in the 2009 elections ahead.

"The PBNU has never called on (the Nahdliyin) to abstain from voting (golput)," Hasyim told reporters at the PBNU headquarters in Jakarta on Friday (20/6).

As reported KH Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid on the sidelines of a meeting taking up issues on corruption eradication at the Jakarta's Candra Kartika Hotel over the weekend called on people not to use their right elections.

Gus Dur made the statement following the allegations that the government has involved in his party's internal problems and has now tried to trouble his presidential candidate in the 2009 elections.

Gus Dur believed the number of voters abstaining from voting in the elections would be larger than previous ones if he is a golput.

The General Elections Commission (KPU) ruled Gus Dur medically unfit to contest the 2004 presidential election. (mkf)

Sources : NU Online

Muslim Barack Obama fans told to hide from television cameras

2008-06-21T08:04:00.000+07:00

Thursday, June 19, 2008 11:02:10

Detroit, NU Online

Barack Obama's campaign has been forced to apologise to two Muslim women barred from sitting behind him at a public event.

The two women in headscarves were asked not to sit in view of cameras at a rally in Detroit on Monday, where Al Gore endorsed Mr Obama.

Hebba Aref, a 25-year-old lawyer, told Politico magazine: "I was coming to support him, and I felt like I was discriminated against.

"The message that I thought was delivered to us was that they do not want him associated with Muslims or Muslim supporters."

Miss Aref's friend Ali Koussan, a law student, said that a volunteer "explained to me that because of the political climate and what's going on in the world ... it's not good for her to be seen on TV or associated with Obama."

A second woman was told to take off her headscarf if she wanted to sit in the special seats. Telegraph.co.uk reported.

Polls show that around one in eight Americans falsely believe that Mr Obama is Muslim.

Campaign spokesman Bill Burton said: "This is of course not the policy of the campaign. It is offensive and counter to Obama's commitment to bring Americans together and simply not the kind of campaign we run.

"We sincerely apologise for the behaviour of these volunteers."

But the incident highlights the degree to which Mr Obama's campaign is concerned with traditional political image making, something his promise to change American politics claims to eschew.

While he grew up and was schooled in Indonesia, a Muslim nation, Mr Obama's campaign has repeatedly denied that he was ever a Muslim.

Until he resigned over the furore surrounding his former's pastor's comments, Mr Obama has worshipped for more than 20 years at the same Chicago church. (dar)

Sources : NU Online

Adam Air Operator’s License Canceled

2008-06-21T01:51:00.000+07:00

Friday, 20 June, 2008 16:55 WIB

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta: The transportation department officially canceled Adam Air’s operator certificate (AOC) as they did not improve recommended efforts during the past three months.

The AOC is issued with Decree No. AU/3752/DSKU/1902/2008 dated June 18th, signed by director for the air transportation department, Budhi Muliawan Suyitno. “To have it back, Adam Air should submit another request for a new certificate,”Budhi said.

On March 18th, the Transportation Department canceled Adam Air's operation specifications that says Adam Air cannot operate its aircraft, for safety and security reason.

The aircraft accident data in 2007 showed Adam Air had a fatal accident on January 2007. At that time, the aircraft crashed and submerged in Majene waters, West Sulawesi, with its passengers.

Adam Air's director, Adam Aditya, did not say anything about the certificate cancellation. Earlier, he admitted poor security on his airline. He also said the airline's internal conflict since 2007 has decreased his employees' work motivation.

Sources : Tempointeractive

RI`s crude price expected to reach US$120 per barrel

2008-06-21T01:46:00.000+07:00

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The price of the Indonesian crude petroleum in 2008 is expected to reach an average of US$120 per barrel or higher than the government`s projection of US$110 per barrel, an official said.

"The Energy Information Administration (EIA) on June 10 projected the price per barrel of the West Texas Intimidate (WTI) for 2008 at US$120," Director for Marco Affairs of the Office of the Minister for National Development Planning (Bappenas), Bambang Prijambodo said here on Friday.

Bambang said the high price of oil in the world market was fueled by a cut in Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) output.

He said the price of Indonesian crude (ICP) was about two to three dollars below the price of the WTI.

"The high oil price is influenced by seasons such as the holiday season in the northern hemisphere as well as by expectations of high oil consumption in non-OPEC countries," he said.

Besides, the decline in the United States` oil reserves had also served as another factor that caused oil price in the world market to increase which in turn prompted world market players to respond to it by directly increasing the price of oil in the world market.

He said the assumption of the US$120 per barrel had taken into account the significant increase in oil production in the United States, Brazil and Azerbaijan.(*)

Sources : Antara Online

Former BIN deputy chief named suspect in Munir murder case

2008-06-20T09:23:00.000+07:00

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Police have named Muchdi PR, a former National Intelligence Agency (BIN) deputy chief, as a suspect in the murder of human rights activist Munir, a spokesman said here Thursday.

"Having been declared a suspect, he will be detained as soon as his interrogation tonight is over," chief of the National Police Headquarters` public relations division Insp Gen Abubakar Nataprawira said Thursday night.

Police had served a summon on Muchdi to come to the National Police Headquarters for questioning on Friday (June 20) but he met the summons a day earlier at his own volition, Nataprawira said.

"So Muchdi was not arrested but he gave himself up," Nataprawira said, adding that before he showed up at the National Police Headquarters, Muchdi`s lawyer had informed the police his client would surrender on Thursday night.

Nataprawira said Muchdi was to be charged based on Article 340 of the Penal Code on premeditated murder and the Code`s Article 55 on participation in a criminal offense.

The articles carried the maximum penalties of 20 years imprisonment, life-long impisonment or death.

Earlier, National Police Chief Gen Sutanto and the head of the National Police`s Criminal Investigation Department Com Gen Hendarso Dahuri had indicated police had identified a new suspect in the Munir murder case. But they declined to reveal the new suspect`s name.

Muchdi PR`s name was mentioned in the court trials of two other people involved in Munir`s murder. A Munir case fact-finding team had also recommended he should be questioned.

The two persons already tried and convicted by a court for Munir`s murder were former Garuda pilot Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto and former PT Garuda airline company president director Indra Setiawan. Priyanto was sentenced to 20 years and Setiawan to one year in jail.

Munir died after being poisoned during a Garuda flight from Jakarta to Amsterdam on September 7, 2004.(*)

Sources : Antara Online

Indonesia to consider buying F-16 fighter planes from US

2008-06-20T09:20:00.000+07:00

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The Indonesian Air Force will consider a US government offer to sell multi-role Block 52 F-16 Fighting Falcon and heavy transport 130-J Hercules planes to Indonesia, a spokesman said.

"We will consider buying the planes under our procurement plan for 2010-2014," Vice Air Marshal Soenaryo, chief of the Air Force`s Material Maintenance Command, said here Friday.

Speaking after accompanying Air Force Chief of Staff Air Marshal Soebandrio at a meeting with visiting US Under Secretary of the Air Force for Internatinal Affairs Bruce S Lemkin, Soenaryo said the F-26 fighter planes were needed to increase the Air Force`s capacity and deterrent capability as many of its combat aircraft were approaching the end of their service time.

Also, procurment of F-16s would fit in with the Air Force`s plan to reduce the variety of its aircraft to economize on maintenance and servicing costs in the 2008-2019 period, he said.

The multi-role F-16 Fighting Falcons could replace the force`s F-5E Tiger fighters which had been in service for almost 25 years.

"We will possibly build up an F-16 squadron gradually in the 2010-2014 budget years. The interest to acquire the aircraft must first be thoroughly considered at Air Force Headquarters level with due account being taken of the limited amount of state funds available. After approval has been obtained at Air Force Headquarters level, we will submit the plan to the Defense Ministry for acquisition," Soenaryo said.

Apart from discussing the US offer to supply F-16 aircraft, the Air Force chief and Lemkin also agreed at their meeting to intensify cooperation between the two countries` air forces in the fields of education, training and spare parts supply.(*)

Sources : Antara Online

NU ready to guide Ahmadiyah followers towards basic creeds of Islam

2008-06-19T01:30:00.000+07:00

Jakarta, NU Online Wednesday, June 11, 2008 19:07:51

Indonesia's biggest Muslim organization Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) would be ready to guide Ahmadiyah followers towards true basic creeds of Islam. All this is aimed at rejecting misleading teachings as declared by by the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI).

General Chairman of the Central Board of Nahdlatul Ulama (PBNU) KH Hasyim Muzadi, accompanied by General Secretary Endang Turmudi, made the remarks at a press conference in the PBNU's headquarters, Jalan Kramar Raya, Jakarta, Tuesday (11/6).

"Especially in rejecting, NU is to ready take part from its preaching side for the conviction is impossible to be vanished with violence. Instead it should be conducted with elegant preaching," Hasyim said.

NU clerics and ulemas, he added, had also been ready to conduct the prophetic duty. As for him, only with the elegant preaching without violence, the Ahmadiyah followers were expected to return to the true creeds of Islam.

The Nahdliyin-based organization would also be ready to help security officials protect the safety of Ahmadiyah followers, facilities, and properties.

Hasyim expected the issuance of a joint ministerial decree on Ahmadiyah not to be such reason by some parties or certain groups to commit violent action against Ahmadiyah followers. (rif)

Sources : NU Online

Delay of Ahmadiyah ban, radical groups up pressure on central government

2008-06-19T01:28:00.000+07:00

On Monday, April 16, several intergovernmental agencies led by junior attorney general Wisnu Subroto issued a statement declaring Ahmadiyah a heretical sect and recommending its immediate ban.

The Agency for the Monitoring of Religious Sects and Mystical Beliefs (Bakor Pakem) said that Ahmadiyah should be banned because it violated its 12 premises. Bakor Pakem sent the recommendation to the Home Affairs Ministry, Religious Affairs Ministry and the Attorney General’s Office and urged them to issue a joint governmental decree to ban Ahmadiyah.

The government then promised to immediately issue the decree but had not done so by Sunday, May 5. The movement to ban Ahmadiyah has been driven by several hard-line Muslim groups, including the Indonesian Council of Ulema (MUI) and some officials within the Religious Affairs Ministry, and therefore it is only natural that they would be disappointed over the delay. They are expected to increase violent acts against Ahmadiyah.

For this reason, the Ahmadiyah have again become the main topic of this latest monthly report. Violence against sect members continues as the officials discuss the joint decree, and the police and the courts stand idly by.

Besides the Ahmadiyah issue, this month we also highlight the police’s killing of Madi, a local religious figure who MUI earlier accused of heresy. There are many issues surrounding Madi’s death, including questionable behavior of security forces and the biased coverage against the leader by the local media.

Another development we examine is the warning from the National Broadcasting Commission (KPI) to television networks against airing TV programs that insult faiths or disturb prayer times. Although this is not a new warning, we regard it as interesting because the KPI is basing its policy on a religious – read Muslim -- argument.

The four-year jail term recently imposed on Musaddeq, the head of the al-Qiyadah al-Islamiyah sect, is also included in this report. Musaddeq has been convicted by the South Jakarta District Court of insulting the Muslim faith, which according to the judges was against Article 156a of the Criminal Code.

We also look at a clash between a militant Islamic group, the Islamic Paramilitary Force (LUIS) in Surakarta and local residents – violence which claimed a man’s life. This case was given little airing in the national media. It shows how some hard-line Islamic groups use violence to address problems.

Sources : The Wahid Institute

Obama to focus on bolstering Michigan's future

2008-06-18T12:00:00.000+07:00

Gordon Trowbridge / Detroit News Washington Bureau

Sen. Barack Obama today brings his traveling economic policy show to Michigan, the nation's most economically battered state, laying out a series of policies that aides believe will convince voters here he can help reverse the state's decades-long slide.

"What he's going to be focused on a lot (today) is what we can do to actually help America compete and succeed in the global economy over the long run," said Jason Furman, Obama's new director of economic policy.

After a week of appearances in swing states, in which he has mostly touted steps to address the downturn, Furman said today's argument will be more focused on the future: that policies, from improving education to boosting research on new auto technologies, will help Michigan and other Rust Belt states hang on to jobs they have been losing for a generation.

It's an argument that the John McCain campaign has answered with three words: "tax and spend," the traditional GOP label for Democratic presidential candidates.

McCain and his economic advisers argue that Obama's tax plan would stifle the economy. It's also one that traditional Democratic allies, especially organized labor, have in some cases been slow to embrace, though many have begun to do so aggressively since Obama clinched the Democratic presidential nomination.

"We finally have someone running for president who says we should help manufacturing compete. So I'm in," said Mark Gaffney, president of the Michigan AFL-CIO, who earlier this year said Obama needed a better understanding of manufacturing issues.

Obama will make three public appearances in the next two days in Michigan, highlighting the state's importance to his campaign and the centrality of the economy in winning here. The stops mark the middle of a two-week tour in which Obama has sought to define the economic battleground of the 2008 campaign.

New aide causes controversy

The tour began with a distraction: Some controversy over Furman's addition to Obama's campaign team. Furman, an economist and aide to previous Democratic campaigns, is close to Clinton administration Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, whom many liberals believe was too focused on helping financial markets at the expense of workers.

Furman dismisses those concerns, saying his job is to execute Obama's economic plan, not to shape it, and pointing to liberal economists who are advising the campaign. Though officials from the AFL-CIO and the United Steelworkers union have criticized Furman's selection, others call the criticism misplaced.

"Senator Obama has a very broad group of folks from the economic world that support his candidacy," said former Michigan congressman David Bonior.

"Progressive policies ... will be dominant if Senator Obama is elected."

More criticism -- from Republicans -- comes from the right. McCain aides such as Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the Republican's top economic adviser, and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina have ripped Obama for pledging to roll back Bush administration tax cuts for those making more than $250,000 and for policy proposals they say would make the federal budget balloon.

Fiorina, in a television interview last week, called Obama's plan "the same old tax and spend philosophies of the liberal Democratic past" and said "he's not proposed one single tax cut."

Tax cuts proposed

In fact, Obama has proposed significant tax cuts for low- and middle-income families. The campaign points to an analysis last week by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center that found Obama's plan would cut taxes mostly for those with moderate incomes, while McCain's would provide only modest benefits to families in most income brackets but a big boost to those in the top 20 percent of incomes.

Holtz-Eakin criticized the report as incomplete, but Furman called it "a complete corroboration" of Obama's plan.

Another area of difference with high interest in Michigan: trade. Obama has called for a slowdown in more than two decades of expanding free-trade deals and for renegotiating parts of the signature agreement of that trend, the North American Free Trade Agreement. McCain criticizes Obama as protectionist, arguing that expanding U.S. export markets are crucial to growing the economy.

But Obama's focus today, and at another site in Metro Detroit on Tuesday, will be on more long-term plans.
"We want to put in place policies that are going to help the economy today, but also some policies that will help over the next 10 to 20 years," Furman said.

Infrastructure targeted

Obama will lay out a long-range vision that includes improvements to infrastructure such as roads and bridges, higher science and technology funding and improved education -- aimed, Furman said, at boosting competitiveness for the long run.

The campaign believes the argument will resonate especially in Michigan, which has been hit as hard as any state by global changes in trade and technology.

Furman said that while short-term approaches such as opposing a pending free-trade deal with South Korea are necessary, a long-term plan is vital to helping the domestic carmakers compete.

"They need a long-run policy, investing in education and in the next wave of innovation, which we're already seeing is going to be centered around cleaner cars," Furman said.

You can reach Gordon Trowbridge at (202) 662-8738 or gtrowbridge@detnews.com.

Sources : The Detroit News and Barack Obama Online

RI asks wealthy nations to stick to Bali road map

2008-06-18T11:43:00.000+07:00

Indonesia has called on rich nations to meet promises they made during last year's climate change conference in Bali to take the lead in emissions cuts to tackle global warming.

Developed countries remained reluctant to make a new commitment to reduce their emissions after six months of the much-welcomed Bali road map, State Minister for the Environment Rachmat Witoelar told the press here Tuesday.

"The discussions, particularly on emissions reduction targets for rich nations, remain tough. They are still reluctant to open their wallets to fulfill their promises," said Rachmat, who spoke on behalf of the president of the United Nations' Conference of Parties (COP) on climate change.

"Please, stick to the Bali agenda and focus on what steps to take after 2012."
He made the statement in response to two recent international meetings that both failed to focus on goals for mid-term emissions cuts.

"Rich nations seem to be trying to shift the issue to long-term solutions, after 2050 ... (but) the world needs real emissions cuts for mid-term targets," the minister said.

The latest round of UN-sponsored global climate change negotiations concluded Friday in Bonn, Germany, with a call for all parties to step up negotiations in the run-up to a crucial climate change summit next year.

The two-week meeting, attended by more than 2,000 participants from 170 countries, failed to reach a consensus on new binding emissions cuts for wealthy nations, which are widely blamed for being the main contributors of carbon dioxide causing climate change.

In March, an international conference held in Thailand similarly failed to set a binding target for emissions cuts.

The Bali road map stipulates that nations must come up with new binding emissions cuts during a Copenhagen summit in 2009 to replace the Kyoto Protocol that will expire in 2012.

The protocol requires each of 36 wealthy nations to cut 5 percent of their emissions by 2012. But except for the eastern bloc countries, they are on a pace that will not reach anywhere close to the target by the deadline.

The United States, the world's top emitter, is the only major developed economy to reject the protocol's binding emissions cuts on fears of its economic costs.

The United States also insisted that Asia's emerging economic nations, China and India, should also be on the list of nations obliged to make emissions cuts.

Under the protocol, no developing nation -- Indonesia included -- is required to make emissions cuts.

Rachmat said Indonesia, however, would take actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in efforts to help the world fight global warming.

"We are a poor nation and not required to set a binding target, but we have still committed to slashing about 17 percent of emissions from our energy sectors. Why do the rich nations still close their eyes?" he said.

The negotiators of the climate change conference will meet again in Accra, Ghana, in August in part to discuss emissions cuts.

Rachmat said he would attend a climate change meeting hosted by the Group of Eight (G8) club of rich nations next month in Japan to demand they focus on mid-term solutions

Sources : The Jakarta Post

AMBASSACAT

2008-06-18T11:34:00.000+07:00

Japanese Ambassador to Indonesia Kojiro Shiojiri receives Japan’s visiting “anime ambassador” Doraemon at his office in Jakarta on Tuesday. The manga character will be in Jakarta for several days as a part of programs to commemorate the golden anniversary of Indonesia-Japan relations. Doraemon was named anime ambassador in March this year to promote Japan’s culture and animation industry. (JP/Ricky Yudhistira)

Sources : The Jakarta Post

Air Asia to Give Compensation for Delayed Flights

2008-06-18T10:53:00.000+07:00

Tuesday, 17 June, 2008 14:05 WIB

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta: The Air Asia airline group--consisting of Air Asia Berhad, Air Asia Thailand and Air Asia Indonesia--started an on-time guarantee for its passengers yesterday (16/6).

Any Air Asia passenger who has to wait for more than three hours due to a flight delay, will be given an Air Asia E-gift voucher worth Rp500,000.

This compensation voucher is valid for three months and can be used as a payment for another Air Asia flight, product, or on-line service.

It can only be used for a one-time payment and should be the same value as greater than the voucher.

“However, compensation will not be given when a delay is caused factors outside the control of Air Asia management like bad weather, air route arrangement, or airport closing,” said CEO Indonesian Air Asia Dharmadi told reporters today (17/6).

He said the compensation was to stimulate on time flight schedules.

During May this year, 79 percent of Air Asia flights were on time.

According to Tony Fernandes, Group CEO for Air Asia Berhad, Air Asia works 10 minutes faster than the flight industry standard and arrives earlier than scheduled.

Sources : Tempo Interactive

West Java Governor Promises Free Education

2008-06-18T10:52:00.000+07:00

Tuesday, 17 June, 2008 13:08 WIB

TEMPO Interactive, Bandung: On his first day as West Java governor, Ahmad Heryawan, has promised free and cheap education.

He also said he was determined to accomplish the nine-year school compulsory program and break new ground for a 12-year compulsory school program.

“We want to have a qualified education service that is achievable in line with our regional state budget,” said Ahmad.

He explained that the funding may not only come from the regional state budget, but also from some aid program.

“As long as school-aged children can go to school,” said Ahmad.

The number of students dropping out of junior and high schools amounts to 1.4 million students.

Some 62.12 percent or 105,977 elementary school buildings are damaged, while 3.39 million students do not have proper educational facilities.

Ahmad also mentioned two other sectors that should be improved immediately, they health and infrastructure sectors.

In the health sector, more than 400,000 births are still being assisted by non-medical workers thus putting mothers at high risk.

“As many as 38.77 percent of midwives are non-medical workers,” said Ahmad yesterday (16/6).

In addition, the new Governor highlighted the number of poor people in West Java.

The National Family Planning Board (BKKBN) has reported 30.79 percent of the total population is poor while the Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS) reported that the figure is only 13.55 percent.

The number of poor families has been increasing continuously since 1999.

In the infrastructure sector, 60 percent of households have electricity while the rest do not.

Sources : Tempo Interactive

Japan Executes Notorious Cannibal Killer

2008-06-18T00:27:00.001+07:00

Tokyo (ANTARA News) - Japan on Tuesday executed three people including notorious serial killer Tsutomu Miyazaki, a fetishist convicted of murdering four little girls and eating some of their bodies, officials said.

Miyazaki, 45, was nicknamed the "killer nerd" for his obsession with sexual cartoons and pornography. But defence lawyers contended he was mentally ill and could not be held fully responsible for his actions.

Japan is the only major industrialised nation other than the United States to apply the death penalty and has been stepping up the pace of executions, which enjoy wide public support.

"We are carrying out executions by selecting the people whom we can execute with a feeling of confidence and responsibility," Justice Minister Kunio Hatoyama was quoted by AFP as telling a news conference.

The executions come one week after Japan saw a deadly stabbing spree in a Tokyo neighbourhood known for nerd culture, carried out by a troubled young auto worker who sent messages of despair over the Internet.

Miyazaki was arrested in July 1989 while trying to take naked pictures of a girl outdoors and the details that emerged from his case stunned Japan.

He confessed to having killed four girls, aged between four and seven, in Tokyo and its suburbs and eating some of the remains of two of them.

Miyazaki mutilated the bodies of the victims, slept next to the corpses and drank their blood.

He sent letters to the media under a woman's name claiming responsibility for the crimes and sent a box containing the remains of a slaughtered girl to her family.

"The atrocious murder of four girls to satisfy his sexual desire leaves no room for leniency," Chief Justice Tokiyasu Fujita said in January 2006 when he upheld his death sentence.

"The crime is cold-blooded and cruel," he said.

When police arrested Miyazaki, they found about 6,000 videotapes, many of which contained horrific footage, at his home in Saitama prefecture, near Tokyo.

During the nearly two-decade judicial process, Miyazaki never uttered a word of remorse to the victims and their families. He cryptically said that a
"rat man" -- a cartoonish image of which he drew -- committed the crimes.

He also distanced himself from his family. When his father, unable to come to terms with what his son did, jumped into a river to his death in 1994, Miyazaki wrote to a publisher: "I feel refreshed."

But court-appointed psychiatrists agreed with defence lawyers that Miyazaki was mentally ill.

One finding was that Miyazaki suffered from a multiple personality disorder, while a second said he was schizophrenic.

Hirokazu Hasegawa, a clinical psychologist who saw Miyazaki in 2006, said the killer believed his crimes would resurrect his grandfather, who died three months before the grandson committed his first crime in 1988.

"What he told me lastly was 'Please tell the world that I'm a gentle man'," Hasegawa said at the time.

The death penalty enjoys wide support in Japan, despite criticism from the ountry's human rights groups and lawyers, as well as the European Union. (*)

Sources : Antara Online

Members of SPSI`s Conflicting Camps Clash

2008-06-18T00:23:00.000+07:00

Medan, North Sumatra (ANTARA News) - Tens of people from the two conflicting camps in the All-Indonesia Labor Union (SPSI) clashed on Jalan Semarang here on Tuesday.

The clash involved members of the executive board of SPSI`s North Sumatra chapter led by Muhyir Hasan Hasibuan and members of the Confederation of All-Indonesia Labor Unions (K-SPSI)`s North Sumatra chapter led by Raja Nasution.

An eyewitness said the brawl caused many residents to stay indoors and shops to close for fear they would suffer harm by the fighting.

The clash was believed to have been triggered by a dispute over a plot of land in the area, said the eyewitness who spoke on condition of anonimity.

But the conflicting groups stopped fighting when police officers arrived at the scene.

Police have detained 18 people for questioning. (*)

Sources : Antara Online

Golkar Not Eyeing Attorney General`s Post

2008-06-18T00:12:00.000+07:00

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Golkar Party Vice Chairman Agung Laksono said his party was not among those who were exerting pressure on President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to replace Attorney General Handarman Supandji.

"We are not asking the president to do so. It is a matter over which the president has a prerogative right," Laksono said here on Tuesday in connection with the alleged involvement of several junior attorneys general in a bribery case.

He said Golkar was not interfering in the matter because it involved the president`s prerogative right. He denied a report saying Golkar had suggested that its cadre Muladi, currently governor of the National Resilience Insitute )Lemhanas), be named attorney general.

In the meantime, legislator Gayus Lumbuun of the House of Representatives (DPR`s) Commission III which deals with legal affairs, said Supandji had to be investigated to determine whether or not he was involved in the Artlyta Suryani bribery case.

The bribery by Suryani came to light last March (March 2, 2008) when Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) agents caught public prosecutor Urip Tri Gunawan red-handed receiving US$660,000 in cash from Artalyta Suryani in a house in South Jakarta.

Gunawan was at the time head of a team of 35 public prosecutors investigating Bank Indonesia liquidity assistance debtor cases.

The Indonesian Attorney General`s Office (AGO) is questioning several of its top officials for alleged links with the bribery case after a record of bugged conversations was released in last week`s corruption criminal court session.

The AGO officials being investigated are Junior Attorney General for Civil and State Administrative Cases Untung Adji Santoso, Junior Attorney General for Intelligence Wisnu Subroto and former Junior Attorney General for Special Crimes Kemas Yahya Rahman.

Lask week`s corruption criminal court heard a junior attorney general`s bugged conversations with Artalyta Suryani, a businesswoman being tried for allegedly bribing Gunawan.

Lumbuun said he had not seen any indication so far that the attorney general was involved in the bribery scandal.

Sources : Antara Online