In The News

Government Spends Rupiah 3.5 Billion to Revive Bali Tourism

December 3, 2002
In the aftermath of the Bali bombing incident, the Indonesian Ministry of Culture and Tourism has set up a program to revitalize the nation’s ailing tourism. As part of the program, the Ministry has invested rupiah 3.5 billion on the production of video clips on Bali’s attractions. These clips are to be both locally and globally broadcasted during December. - YaleGlobal

Startling His Neighbors, Australian Leader Favors First Strikes

John Shaw December 2, 2002
Close on the heels of President George W.Bush’s doctrine of pre-emptive attack to deter terrorist strike against the US, a close ally, Australia has adopted the same principle. In a television interview Australian Prime Minister John Howard said he would be willing to strike at terrorists in another country if there were evidence of a plan to attack Australia. . He said that it was necessary...

Kenya's Muslims: Resentments Both Local and International

Dexter Filkins December 1, 2002
Close-knit global communication is helping to spread information and arouse passions about developments in far-away places. This New York Times report finds widespread resentment among Kenya’s Muslim community about their condition at home and abroad. Much of that resentment is born of a widespread belief among Kenya's Muslim minority that they have long been the victims of discrimination...

Whither Arab Independence?

Basheer M Nafi November 27, 2002
What does America's effort to clamp down on Iraq mean for the Middle East as a whole? According to historian and Islamic scholar Basheer M Nafi, the US-led, UN-sanctioned weapons inspection project is simply another attack on the already brittle sovereignty of Arab nation-states. Writing in Egypt's Al-Ahram Weekly, Nafi argues that "Western imperialism has made a comeback in the...

Behold the Leviathan

Kari Huus November 26, 2002
In a time of much political and economic uncertainty at the international level, MSNBC conducted a series of interviews with people around the world, asking them to comment on several aspects of American policy and culture. Democracy, equality, and freedom—fundamental virtues and values—received much admiration from those surveyed abroad. When asked about America’s foreign policy, they changed...

The Axis of Irony

Strobe Talbott November 26, 2002
The Iraq crisis could have the ironic but salutary effect of reinvigorating the United Nations, revealing George W. Bush to be more of a multilateralist than the rest of the world thought (and feared), and establishing a welcome degree of continuity in American foreign policy. - YaleGlobal

Bin Laden Material Found at Alleged Bali Mastermind's House

November 25, 2002
The interrogation of the prime suspect of the Bali blast in October and forensic evidence have raised the tantalizing possibility that the attack was a suicide bombing. If this turns out to be true this would be the first suicide attack by a Muslim in Indonesia, perhaps in Southeast Asia. While suicide attacks by Tamil Tiger guerillas in Sri Lanka has been a common phenomenon and in recent years...