In The News

Indonesia Backgrounder: How the Jemaah Islamiyah Terrorist Network Operates

December 11, 2002
How do multinational terrorist organizations maintain communication, plan violent attacks, and find people of similar thinking to grow their ranks? This background report from the International Crisis Group describes how Southeast Asia's fiercest terrorist organization – the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) – motivates, recruits, and carries out violent attacks. The investigators who authored the...

Police Arrest Key Mcdonald's Bomb Suspect

December 11, 2002
Finding more ties to the terrorist group Jamaah Islamiyah, Indonesian police arrested a key suspect in the bombing of a McDonald's restaurant last week. Although it is still unclear whether the restaurant bombing was tied to the bombing in Bali that killed about 200 people in October, such a link remains a strong possibility, as both the restaurant and the nightclub destroyed in Bali are...

What a Howler

December 9, 2002
Australian Prime Minister John Howard said recently that he favors preemptive strikes against terrorists in Asian nations, unleashing a flood of criticism from within Australia and without. This commentary in Singapore's Straits Times argues that the notion of preemption must be examined by the international community. The United Nations must be consulted before preemptive strikes occur...

When Chinese Martial Arts Flies Through the Global Box Office

Christina Klein December 9, 2002
Taiwan-born director Ang Lee won accolades for turning a Chinese novel into the fantastical, money-making movie, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. With undeniably Chinese martial arts action and a romantic story the Brothers Grimm would have praised, Lee's blockbuster appealed to audiences the world over. But with so many different cultural elements in the film, should we think of the movie...

The War on Terror in Southeast Asia Could Hurt Civil Liberties

Sidney Jones December 6, 2002
The war on terror in Southeast Asia has a quickened tempo in the wake of the discovery of a bombing plot in Singapore and the Bali bomb attacks killing nearly 200 people. These heightened anti-terrorist measures come just as countries like Indonesia and the Philippines are emerging from years of despotic rule. According to some observers, already there are worrisome signals that the new...

Vivendi Set to Agree Shanghai Theme Park

Richard McGregor December 6, 2002
In a surprise turnaround for Disney, Shanghai has decided to favor Universal Parks and Resorts, a subsidiary of Vivendi Universal, with plans to open a theme park outside the city. Disney had originally negotiated with Shanghai to open its own theme park outside of the city. However, the slow process of the deal, the competition with Disney’s proposed theme park in Hong Kong, and the exorbitant...

PAS Gets Tips from Turkey on How to Win Elections

Brendan Pereira December 5, 2002
In our era of super-fast communication and cheap international transportation, even ideas and political strategies are not always wholly domestic. Leaders of an Islamic Malaysian political party just returned home from a trip to Turkey where they consulted with newly-elected Islamic politicians and asked about the secret to political success. "'The victory in Turkey has really inspired...