No Indonesian Left Behind

What's going on here? FSI can't keep current instructor/s? More instructors needed? Communication gaps need to be filled? Extra hands needed for Obama visit in 2010? State Department is really doing more long-range planning about Indonesia? More Indonesia analysts in US government agencies (including CIA) finally going to use the flood of Bahasa Indonesia materials in their virtual or print originals?

I remember the years in the pre-internet age at the (now defunct) USIA when I was the only one in the 'foreign affairs community' reading Indonesian newspapers at my desk and scrubbing the ink from my hands afterward.


Hmm, no course in Indonesian listed on FSI's language page at http://www.fsi-language-courses.com/ . Go look. Hmm, there's a link to the How to Learn Any Language site at http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/index.html . Just looked. No Indonesian there either. Pitiful. Getting bored, I went to the FSI search-this-site page at http://fsi-language-courses.com/site_search.asp. Typed in keywords Indonesian, later Indonesia. Result:

Your Search - indonesia - did not match any files on this site. Suggestions:

• Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
• Try different keywords.
• Try more general keywords.
• Try fewer keywords.

Good luck, Indonesians.

For sure, you can always do-it-yourself. Starters -- http://www.learningindonesian.com/ or
http://www.seasite.niu.edu/Indonesian/ .

The following ad just appeared on Cornell's SEAP-L list --


Language And Culture Instructor: U.S. Department of State, the Foreign Service Institute, Arlington, VA

The Foreign Service Institute is currently recruiting a Language and Culture Instructors in Indonesian.

The Foreign Service Institute: The Foreign Service Institute is the Federal Government's primary training institution for officers and support personnel of the U.S. foreign affairs community, preparing American diplomats and other professionals to advance U.S. foreign affairs interests overseas and in Washington.

In your position as Language and Culture Instructor you will:

Teach speaking, reading, listening comprehension and writing (if required) skills to a full range of students at all levels of language proficiency

Requirements: Native or near-native fluency in Indonesian language and culture. Must have US work authorization.

Salary: $ 50,408.00 - 79,280.00 (starting salaries vary and may be based in part on superior academic achievement and/or previous work experience).

Application Deadline: Applications will be accepted Friday, June 05, 2009 to Friday, June 19, 2009.

Contact Information: (703) 302-6813, Maria Garza, FSIJobApplications@state.gov

To Apply: Go to www.usajobs.opm.gov (before June 19, 2009) for the detailed vacancy announcements and information on how to apply, job announcement FSI 09-24. In order to receive full consideration for the position, please read and follow the instructions carefully.

For more information and more job announcements, also check out: www.usajobs.opm.gov

Prawet Jantharat Ed.D.
FSI-School of Language Studies
Language Training Supervisor
(Burmese, Indonesian, Lao, Malay, Tetun and Thai)

Tel: 703-302-7292, Fax: 703-302-7055 jantharatp2@state.gov

The Evolving Terrorist Threat to Southeast Asia: A Net Assessment

Book by Peter Chalk, Angel Rabasa, William Rosenau, Leanne Piggott

Terrorism is not new to Southeast Asia. For much of the Cold War, the activities of a variety of domestic ethnonationalist and religious militant groups posed a significant challenge to the region's internal stability. Since the 1990s, however, the residual challenge posed by substate militant extremism has risen in reaction to both the force of modernization pursued by many Southeast Asian governments and the political influence of radical Islam.

Building on prior RAND research analyzing the underlying motives, drivers, and capabilities of the principal extremist groups that have resorted to terrorist violence in the Philippines, southern Thailand, and Indonesia, this study examined the historical roots of militancy in these countries to provide context for assessing the degree to which local agendas are either being subsumed within a broader ideological framework or shaped by other extremist movements. Moving beyond simple terrorism analysis, this research also examined national and international government responses to militant movements in the region, including counterterrorist initiatives, military and policing strategies, hearts-and-minds campaigns, and funding and support from international organizations and governments (including the United States). Finally, the study broke new ground in assessing Cambodia as a potential future terrorist operational and logistical hub in Southeast Asia.

Pages: 264

ISBN/EAN: 9780833046581

Free, downloadable PDF file(s) are available below.

Full Document

(File size 1.6 MB, 7 minutes modem, < 1 minute broadband)

Summary Only

(File size 0.1 MB, < 1 minute modem, < 1 minute broadband)

RAND makes an electronic version of this document available for free as a public service. If you find this information valuable, please consider purchasing a paper copy of the full document to help support RAND research.

Use Adobe Acrobat Reader version 7.0 or higher for the best experience.

Contents

Chapter One:
Introduction

Chapter Two:
Malay Muslim Extremism in Southern Thailand

Chapter Three:
Muslim and Communist Extremism in the Philippines

Chapter Four:
Terrorism and National Security in Indonesia

Chapter Five:
The Regional Dimension: Jemaah Islamiyah

Chapter Six:
Counterterrorism and National Security in Thailand

Chapter Seven:
Counterterrorism and National Security in the Philippines

Chapter Eight:
Counterterrorism and National Security in Indonesia

Chapter Nine:
National Security in Southeast Asia: The U.S. Dimension

Chapter Ten:
Conclusion

Appendix:
Exploring the Potential for Emergent Operational and Logistical Terrorist Hubs in Cambodia

The research described in this report was prepared for the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). The research was conducted in the RAND National Defense Research Institute, a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the OSD, the Joint Staff, the Unified Combatant Commands, the Department of the Navy, the Marine Corps, the defense agencies, and the defense Intelligence Community.

Source http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2009/RAND_MG846.pdf

Documents of the Day, No. 2, June 2, 2009

The Religiosity of American College and University Professors
http://socrel.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/srp026v1

Timor-Leste Health Care Seeking Behaviour Study
http://www.sphcm.med.unsw.edu.au/SPHCMweb.nsf/resources/01_UNSW_Timor-Leste_Study_English.pdf/$file/01_UNSW_Timor-Leste_Study_English.pdf

The History of Violence and the State in Indonesia
http://www.crise.ox.ac.uk/pubs/workingpaper54.pdf

The Barong Wants to Go Out Again: Krisis Moneter and the Resurgence of Rituals in Indonesia
http://www.seas.at/aseas/1_2/pdf/ASEAS%201-2-A7.pdf

Identifying Key Concerns of Jemaah Islamiyah: The Singapore Context
http://www.pvtr.org/pdf/Ideology%20Response/Identifying%20key%20concerns%20of%20JI.pdf

Documents of the Day - No. 1, June 1, 2009

These choice documents are all free, full-text, and open source. They all fall within the main topics covered by this blog (listed in the blog logo).

National Intelligence: A Consumer's Guide
http://dni.gov/reports/IC_Consumers_Guide_2009.pdf

Facebook and Academic Performance
http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2498/2181

Indonesia: Radicalization of the Palembang Group
http://www.crisisgroup.org/library/documents/asia/south_east_asia/b92_indonesia___radicalisation_of_the_palembang_group.pdf

Timor-Leste: The Dragon's Newest Friend
http://irasec.com/components/com_irasec/media/upload/publication_file_fr_287.pdf

That should be enough provocation for one day. I will try to make these posted research searches a regular blog feature.

Neat Search Gadgets

Blogger seems now to have access to most (maybe all) the Google gadgets which can be added to an iGoogle personal homepage. There are tens of thousands of these handy tools. Since letting you do more net search easier and faster with better results is one main aim of this blog, I've put a small number of search-related gadgets at the bottom of this webpage.



Try them. They're easy to use. During your visit to Starting Points, you can do your own searches and customize them to a significant degree. The only exception is Breaking News which I pre-set to generate every few seconds self-refreshing current news on all the blog's subjects mentioned in its masthead. In Breaking News, you can click on any headline which appears to get the full story -- which will open in a new browser tab.

While I may change or add some other bottom-page gadgets as the blog evolves, here's a how-to on the other stuff there now as I write this.

TwitterSearch appears because I gradually became convinced Twitter could consistently yield useful results. Type in any searchword in any language and hit return. When the page is refreshed in your browser, or you return to the blog, the default search reverts to the last one carried out by any user of the gadget.

Easy Wikipedia Search lets you search nine different language versions of Wikipedia. Every version of Wikipedia has its own content. Non-English versions are not translations of the English version. Use the drop-down menu to choose a Wikipedia version other than the English one. The developer accidentally put French -- FR -- twice in the menu. Otherwise, the gadget seems to work well. Just remember to type your search keyword in the language of the Wikipedia you are using! For privacy and convenience reasons, your search keyword/s and results vanish after you leave the blog.

Google Mini Search lets you search three Google databases at once -- websites, videos, and blogs. Look for the three cute little boxes above each type of search result. By default, the first box brings just one result, the second brings up more, and the third brings up all Google's results for the search term/s. Again, your keywords and results are not saved on the blog page display after you leave it.

Search YouTube works simply. Type your search term/s and hit your keyboard's enter (return) key. You get a list of YouTube videos with image, filenames, and links. Just hit the image or link and you get taken directly to the video you select in a new tab. From that point on, you are operating on the very flexible YouTube site with its many options. Your YouTube searches vanish from this blogpage after you leave it. Others coming in at the same or later times will find the searchbox empty.