Southeast Asia Briefs #1

Transforming Timor-Leste for Sustainable Development (upcoming conference organized by Victoria University and Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at UNTL)
http://www.vu.edu.au/sites/default/files/faehd/pdfs/East-Timor-Reg-Form.pdf

Lone Planet East Timor Travel Guide (new edition now on sale)
http://shop.lonelyplanet.com/Primary/Region/ASIA/South_East_Asia/East_Timor/PRD_PRD_1985/East+Timor+Travel+Guide.jsp

East Timor Parliament Approves Law Allowing Emergency Abortions (news)
http://easttimorlegal.blogspot.com/2009/06/parliament-approves-law-allowing.html

Illegal VSAT Antennas Ordered Switched Off by Timor Telecommunications Regulator (news)
http://easttimorlegal.blogspot.com/2009/06/illegal-vsat-antennas-ordered-switched.html

East Timor Government Says Fretilin Has Presented No Social or Fiscal Policies to the Nation (press release)
http://easttimorlegal.blogspot.com/2009/06/east-timor-government-says-fretilin-has.html

Pidato Presiden Barack Obama: Permulaan yang Baru
http://jakarta.usembassy.gov/bhs/siaran-pers/June09/obama_remarks_id.html

Cultural Identity of Buleleng (upcoming conference)
http://northbali.org/

Gramedia Toko Buku Online (the major online bookseller in Indonesia)
http://www.gramediaonline.com/

Indonesia: Stop Prison Brutality in Papua (critical analysis)
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/06/04/indonesia-stop-prison-brutality-papua

Email Puts Indonesia's Harsh Defamation Laws in Dock (news)
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c4370984-5168-11de-84c3-00144feabdc0.html

Sex Trafficking in Singapore (blog)
http://singabloodypore.rsfblog.org/archive/2009/06/05/sex-trafficking-in-singapore.html

PAS Finding Its Way Still (analysis)
http://www.aliran.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=932:pas-

PM Abhisit Calls Urgent Meeting on Southern Unrest (news)
http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/145148/pm-to-chair-meeting-on-southern-unrest

Finding It Hard to Explain Southern Arrest Abroad (news)
http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/17919/finding-it-hard-to-explain-southern-unrest-abroad

WhatAils Filipino Education? (analysis)
http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2009/june/04/yehey/opinion/20090604opi4.html

ACICIS Past Field Work Topics

The following is a list of reports which have been produced as a part of the ACICIS Field Study option in Malang, East Java. These reports are not 'academic theses' in the usual sense of the term. Their emphasis is on empirical field work, that is, the collecting of information by the student using their Indonesian language skills, rather than seeking any particular theoretical break-throughs. But they are often a rich resource of field material, which could well be of interest to a wider readership.

Some of these reports are available here by clicking on the report title. Copyright is held by the author of each report. The reports cannot be republished, reprinted, or reproduced in any format without the permission of the author. The views expressed in each report are those of the author of the report and do not represent the views of ACICIS.

If you are interested in a particular report and it is not available online, please contact the Secretariat acicis@murdoch.edu.au, as we may be able to assist you.

Semester 26 (February 2008)

Rachelle Cole Kaliandra Sejati's local community development activities in Dayurejo and Jatiarjo

Dan Delaney Swiftlet Nest Farming in East Java

Mariefe Donaghue The Role of Information in the Organic Coffee Certification process

Jessica Kerr Behind the Fences: Middle Class Groupings in Malang, East Java

Eurico Muller Trade unions and Contract Systems: A Study of Kretek Cigarette Factories in Malang, East Java

Ayleen O'Hanlon Java Day': Essentialist Policy in Javanese Cultural Preservation in Surabaya, Indonesia.

Annisa Sukada 'Kethoprak' : Cultural Preservation in Changing Times

Semester 25 (September 2007)

Drew Boekel The Traditional Oil Industry, Block Cepu

Emma Small The Lapindo Mud Disaster and the Role of Non-Governmental Organisations

Semester 24 (February 2007)

Hannah Al-Rashid White is Beautiful: Perceptions of Beauty and the Indonesian Obsession with White Skin

Eli Brewis Indie and Underground Bands in Malang: An example of an Indonesian Subculture

Anne Dickson Views of Aisyiyah Women Towards Polygamy

Nina James The Problems of Fisherfolk in the Bali Strait and the Impact of Regional Autonomy Laws on the Industry

Marion McQueen The Socio-economic Impacts of the Lapindo Mud Disaster, Particularly Towards Workers in the Informal Sector

Samuel Pickering Application of the Concept of Sustainable Development as a Means of Mangrove Forest Management, Grajagan.

Candice Vooles East Javanese Beliefs towards Nyai Loro Kidul

James Welch Safety of the Aviation Industry following Deregulation: The Factors Influencing Safety Levels and the Parties Responsible

Semester 23 (September 2006)

David Armstrong Visitor Levels to Archaelogical Sites in East Java: Data from 1988-2005

Tamie Balaga The Meaning and Importance of the Head Scarf to the Younger Generation: Comparative Study Malang-Yogya

Tristram Boveington A Survey of Papuan Students in East Java: Background, Facts and Ambitions

Michael Collins Beyond Mutual Respect: Religious Views in Indonesia

Anna Johnson The Other Side of Labour Migration: The Children of Migrant Workers in Kesemben, Blitar

Kim Heriot-Darragh Not Accepted, but Not Denied: The Position of Transvestites in Malang

Jack Radecki Land-Use Conflict in a National Park: A Study of Ranupani Village, BTS National Park

Esther Sainsbury Post-Reformasi Changes to Trans-Migration Policy in Indonesia

Zoe Swinton AUSAID Projects in Indonesia: Opinions of of Aid Recipients

Orlando de Guzman The Link Between the 1965 Massacres and the Myth of Prince Samodro at Gunung Kemukus

Chris Urbanski The Rise and Fall of Alliances Between the Tea and Prostitution Industry in the Simpang Lima Area, Semarang

Ray Webber Participation in World Of Warcraft by the Indonesian On-Line Community

Semester 22 (February 2006)

David Armstrong Visitor Levels to Candi Singosari, Malang 1994-2005

David Cook The Death of the Batu Apple Industry

Anthony Crowe In the End it's all about the Money: Study of Local Politics in Madiun

Marianne Frith Chinese Identity in Malang: Cultural Perservation and Discrimination in the Post-New Order Period

Saarah Jappie The Grave of Syekh Yusuf in Madura: Oral Histories and Local Perceptions from the People of Talango

Kate Stevens Christian-Muslim Relations in Indonesia: UMM Case Study

Paul Svingos The Justice and Prosperity Party as the New Face of Islam in Indonesia; A Survey of Cadre in Malang City

Quinton Temby Radical but not Fundamentalist: An Interpretative Analysis of the Darul Islam Magazine

Semester 21 (September 2005)

Kim Andren Indonesian Women, Sexual Behaviour and Islam: A Case Study

Louisa Garfoot Changes in the Religious Behaviour of East Java Hindu Society (Comparative Study Between the Young and Old Generation)

Nick Heaney Language Relationships in Malang: The Influence of English on Indonesian Youth Slang

Murray O'Hanlon The Santri Thought World: Research Methodology Problems Faced by Foreigners

Emily Provan Folklore and Moral Instruction to the Children in Malang

Caitlyn Stanley Attitude and Awareness of the People of Bajo toward the Environment and Conservation

Semester 20 (February 2005)

Kelly Burgess Policies and Measures of the Indonesian government, NGOs and foreign businesses in regard to the matter of child labour in Indonesia

Victoria Guard Social-Cultural, Environmental and Economic Impacts of Tourism in the Gili Islands of NTB Province, Indonesia

Evan Hynd Continuity among Islamic opposition groups in Indonesia: from the revolution to the era of Reformation

David Osborne Foreign Investors in Indonesia; Cultural and Religious Accommodation and their Importance in the Formula for Success

Katherine Purwanto Candi Jago and its Relevance in Contemporary Times

Rachael Ratican The Influence of the Liberation of Timor Leste on Australia-Indonesia Relations

Hannah Taarnby The impact of tourism on the environment of Bali

Semester 19 (September 2004)

Kate Atkins Tourism and Development in the Karimunjawa National Park

Sonja Balaga Studying Shadow Puppetry: Searching for the Soul of the Puppets

Melanie Barnes Language and Politics: the Discourse of Plesetan (Word Play)

Sam Beckman Seeking a Balance: Management of the Interaction Between the Community and Alas Purwo National Park

Stephanie Creagh Sex Education in the High Schools of the Special District of Yogyakarta

Angus Gratton Putting Right the Discourse: Developments in the Teaching of History in Malang since the Beginning of the Reform Era

Clare Harvey Education, Modes of Resistance and the Preservation of Urban Kampungs

Daniel Heppell Cause and Effect of Changes in Javanese Culture in Yogyakarta

Lisa Johnson Sports and Identity: the Function of Sports in the Formation of Identity for the Society and People of the City of Malang

Erin Kite Chinese Cultural Identity: Suharto's Policy of Complete Assimilation and the Record of Its Success or Failure

Janelle Marburg East Timorese University Students in Malang: Experiences, Perceptions and Ambitions

Jemma Parsons The Life of Female College Students in Pesantren (Islamic Boarding Schools) in Central and East Java

Elizabeth Raleigh Muslim Fashion for Women and Popular Culture in Indonesia: Influences and Perceptions

Esther Walcott The Art of Traditional Medicine in Malang: Knowledge and Perception

Johan Weintre Several Snapshots of the Kanayatan Dayak: Precious Rituals and Agricultural Diversity in the West Kalimantan Forest

Semester 18 (February 2004)

Jenny Backstrom Trade and Protection of Turtles in Bali: Changing and Fixed Attitudes. Read her article in Inside Indonesia

David Evans The Dewaruci in Javanist Spiritual and Cultural Praxis and its Subjective Force on Javanese Naval Bureaucracy

Jessica Prince Life Knowledge, Farmers' Sovereignty and Organic Agriculture: Sowing the Seeds of Social Transformation

Eileen Stelmach The Human Face of Environmental Disaster in the Village of Sitiarjo

Nicola Hall Credit Cooperatives in the City and Kebupaten of Malang

Rebecca McLaren Trafficking of Women Workers from Blitar, the Role of NGOs and the Government of Blitar in Overcoming the Problem

Deanne Whitfield Sleeping under a Sack - Street Children of Yogyakarta

Semester 17 (September 2003)

Tracy Wright Webster Beyond the Closet: The Voices of Lesbian Women in Yogyakarta

Georgia Sedgwick Mural as Social Phenomenon: A Study of Murals in Yogyakarta

Rebecca Burchell Community Perceptions about Keppres 6/2000 : A Case Study in Yogyakarta

David Henton Tingkat Kesadaran dan Pemahaman Masyarakat Kecamatan Bumiaji Kota Batu tentang Konservasi dan Lingkungan Hidup

Johan Weintre The Social Organisation and Culture of a Minority Group in Indonesia: A Case Study of the Orang Rimba in Sumatra (The Nomadic Kubu Society)

Semester 16 (February 2003)

Rebecca Meckleburg A Portrait of Contemporary Life in a Rural Javanese Farming Community in the Era of Globalisation

Thomas Barker Pink Noise: Indonesia dan Pornografinya

Tanya Fisher Transisi Kesehatan di Indonesia: Jasmani yang tidak Aktif dan Implikasinya bagi Kesehatan Penduduk

Semester 15 (September 2002)

Anne Pohlman Daughters of Srikandi: The Founding, Growth and Destruction of Gerwani (Gerakan Wanita Indonesia)

Emma Wilson Clash of Cultures: Anti-Western Islamic Sentiment in Indonesia

Charlotte King The Impact of the Situbondo Incident - 10 October 1996

Inez Mahony The Role of Dukun in Contemporary East Java: A Case Study of Banyuwangi Dukun. Read her article in Inside Indonesia

Ulla Keech-Marx Komersialisasi Tenunan Songke: Dampaknya Terhadap Masyarakat Manggarai

Lisa Woinarski Pulau Serangan: Dampak Pembangunan pada Lingkungan dan Masyarakat

Karl Brandt Mengapa Kebudayaan Masyarakat Kampung Komodo Terancam

Jacqueline Dobell Otonomi Daerah: Implementasi di Jawa Timor

Mayra Walsh Pondok Pesantren dan Ajaran Golongan Islam Ekstrim. Read her article in Inside Indonesia

Jennifer Robinson Kasus Abepura: Sebuah Ujian untuk UU No 26/2000 dan Penegakan HAM di Papua dan Indonesia

Sarah Dinsmore ITF di Indonesia: Analisa Sejarah Aliran Taekwondo International Taekwon-Do Federation di Indonesia, Tahun 1970 Sampai 2003

Racheal Kuczma Gerakan Buruh di Indonesia

Semester 14 (February 2002)

Christopher Campbell "Why go to Temples?" The Role of Ancient Temples in East Java

Kipley Nink South Sulawesi Fishermen who Fish in Australia: Their Technology and Knowhow

John Psilopatis Aremania: From Hooliganism to Model Soccer Supporters

Sean Reardon The Mass Killing of Members of the Indonesian Communist Party: 1965/66

Joanne Sharpe 'Indie' Spirit: The Independent Film Movement in Indonesia. Read her article in Inside Indonesia

Adelaide Worcester Prostitution in a Cultural Context

Penelope Coutas Language Teaching at SMU Negeri 3, Yogyakarta

Semester 13 (September 2001)

74. Stacey Anderson Fiat Justitia Ruat: For Justice Even if the Sky Sollapses

75. Jaclin Craig Experiences of Mystical Ritual: Wealth and Favouritism

76. James Harkness Internet Use by Students in Malang

77. Diana Hooton Education for the Disabled in Indonesia: A Case Study of Hifal School for the Disabled in Pekalongan

78. Kirrilee Hughes The Press in Malang. Read her article in Inside Indonesia

79. Julian Lay The Fate of Coral Reefs in Indonesia: Destruction of Coral Reefs in Indonesia: A Case Study in Pasir Putih, Situbondo, East Java

80. Katarzyna Sienko The Struggle for Truth and Reconciliation: A Victim's Perspective of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Indonesia

81. Bianca Wolloghan Women in the Eyes of Women: Women's Perceptions toward Advertisements in Women's Magazines

82. Josephine Smyth Access to Education for the Poor

Semester 12 (February 2001)

67. Rebecca Adams Wedding Ceremonies in Java (Ceremonies, Symbolism and Regional Variations)

68. Renne Kjar West Papua Independence Movements

69. Sally Jamieson Indonesian Migrant Workers (TKI) in Malaysia: The Experience of Indonesian Workers with Malaysian Government Work Regulations

70. Rebecca Matanle Reformation - A Utopian Paradise?: Perceptions of Members of the Islamic Student Movement (HMI) of the Wahid Government and the Reform Process

71. Tracy Rowe Bull Racing in Madura: The Influence of the Motivations of Racing Bull Owners on Social and Cultural Change in Bull Racing

72. Rebekah Starbuck Press Coverage of Separatists Movements

73. Michael Tardif Legal Protection and Human Rights Law Reform in the Post-Suharto Era

Semester 11 (September 2000)

50. Jacqueline Baker The National and Global Importance of the Laskar Jihad

51. Christopher Bandle Vespa Friends: An Investigation into a Scooter Club

52. Philippa Beale Program Implementation by an NGO and its Connection with Farming Policies in Indonesia

53. Angie Bexley History of the Radical Arts Movement in the Transition of Authority in Indonesia (1930 - 2000)

54. Benjamin Blyth Teaching Styles in Three Indonesian Primary Schools in Malang

55. Margaret Brady Beliefs and Practices Associated with the Birth of Children in East Java

56. Jennifer Donohoe The Problem of Abortion in Indonesia

57. Matthew Flint Political Thought and Practice of the PDI-P in Malang

58. Debbie Hartlett Child Workers in Indonesia: A Case Study in Malang in East Java

59. Paul Harvey The Internet Cafe Business in Malang and Blitar

60. Daniel Hoogesteger The Legality of the Cigarette Industry in Indonesia and its Effects on the Health of a Nation

61. Naomi Kinsella "Masuk Angin": Concepts of Health and Healing in Java

62. Emily Low Inside the People's Democratic Party: Dictator or Friend?

63. Adelen Matthewman Why Muslim Women Wear the Jilbab

64. Merryn Rider Sukarnoists : A Case Study of Sukarno Supporters in East Java

65. Anita Roberts Asylum Seekers from the Middle East in Indonesia; the perspective of the Republic of Indonesia. Read her article in Inside Indonesia

66. David Saxby Informal Indonesia : Colloquial and Youth Language: A Descriptive Linguistic Study of Language Variations

Semester 10 (February 2000)

43. Sally Asbanu Illegal Drugs or Corruption: The Reality of 'Narkoba' in Indonesia

44. Sharon Krause English Language Teaching in Several Schools in Malang City

45. Joanna Maning Identity, Marriage, Recognition: Stories of Fear and Hope among the Gay Community in Yogyakarta

46. Joanna Pickles From Subculture to Counter-Culture: Mission and Vision of Punks (hardcore) and Skinheads in Yogyakarta and Bandung. Read her article in Inside Indonesia

47. Dylan Walsh Beliefs about Mountains in Javanese society

48. Johan Weintre The Impact of the Economic Crisis on the Lower Socio-Economic Classes in Indonesian Society

49. Rebecca Wells Traditional Dance in Javanese and Balinese Society

Semester 9 (September 1999)

31. Jason Brown Killing of Dukukn Santet in Banyuwangi, 1998

32. Jenny Cotter NGO's and the Problems Faced by Women in the Context of Government, Religion, Culture and Nature

33. Brett Elliot The Debate about Indonesia's Future as a United Nation, 1997-1999

34. Michelle Gray Children of Families in Malang who use Indonesian as their First Language

35. Ben Harkness Environmental Managament Problems: Three Case Studies in East Java

36. Xylia Ingham Career Woman

37. Ollie Jones The Position of Women in Relation to State and Islamic Law when Viewed from the Perspective of International law

38. Sarina Kilham Street Children and Authority in Yogyakarta

39. Ben Preston Small Businesses in Three Cities (Malang, Yogyakarta and Medan) and their Social Aspects

40. Meg Skinner Women and Hducation: Hopes and Reality

41. Peter Swanson Inequalities in the Ability of People to Protect the Environment

42. Neroli Vivian The Influence of the Monetary Crisis on Students

Semester 8 (February 1999)

26. Carolyn Wight Program Pengobatan Jamu Tradisional

27. Olivia Craze Faktor-faktor yang Menyebabkan Sengketa Pertanahan di Indonesia

28. Katharina Popp Program Kesenian di Padepokan Seni Mangun Dharma

29. Alexandra Owens Kondisi Kehidupan Keluarga Yang Tidak Dapat Mempunyai Anak

30. Russell Yule Pendekatan Komunakatif Dalam Kelas Bahas Inggris Sekolah-Sekolah dan Lembaga Swasta di Jawa Timur dan Bali

Semester 7 (September 1998)

22. Paul Edmiston From the Ground Up: Developing an Alternative Tourism Network in Indonesia - An East Java Example

23. Emma Hyland Wanita dan Olahraga di Daerah Sekitar Malang

24. Paul Murray Hubungan Antara Manusia dan Binatang di Daerah Malang

25. David McRae Gerakan Mahasiswa 1998 di Indonesia

Semester 6 (February 1998)

19. Ian Briggs Social Perceptions of People Infected with HIV/AIDS in Indonesia

20. Robert Letchford Telecommunications, Telemedicine and the Problems of Access to Health Services in Indonesia

21. Kurt Stenross Perahu Janggolan of Sreseh: A Form of Perahu Threatened in the Modern, Rational World

Semester 5 (September 1997)

14. Mark Avery Profil Pedagang Kaki Lima dan Pedagang Asongan

14. Frances Barns TKW : Structural Subordination, Human Rights and the Concept of 'Social Agent'

16. Nicholas Collier Sorga Nunut Neraka Katut, Keadaan dan Pengalaman Para Jandi di Indonesia Modern

17. Brett Elliott Workers NGO in Indonesia: Who Really Helps Indonesian Workers?

18. Merrall Gillam Aneka Ragam Penggunaan Bahasa Indonesia - The Various Uses of the Indonesian Language

Semester 4 (February 1997)

1. Darren Boey Big Mac, Coca Cola and Arema: An Analysis of the Effects of the Globalization of Information on the Views Youth in Malang have Towards Gender Roles

2. Duncan Faulds A Study of Factors Affecting Staff in the Hotels and Tourism Industry in Bali and Malang, East Java

3. Karl Fjellstrom Structural Change and the Relationship between Societal Groups and Policy Formation in Indonesia: An Industrial Pollution Program and the Formation of the 1997 Environment Bill

4. Fiona Lawson The Violation of the Rights of Women Factory Workers in East Java

5. Kathryn Livingstone Peran Ganda Wanita: Sebagai Guru dan Ibu Rumah Tangga

6. Natasha Mann The Law as a Tool for Social Change: Efforts to Transform Women's Legal Situation in Indonesia

7. Ben Mclean Microcredit Schemes: IDT, TAKESRA and Koperasi: Three Villages

8. Ann Murray Translating

9. Heidi Perry What Light does the Thoughts of Prostitutes and Alternative Lifestyles Shed on the Ideal Image of the Javanese Muslim Woman?

10. Fiona Robinson Environmental Education: A Case study at the Seloliman Centre for Environmental Eductaion (PPLH) Trawas, Mojokerto East Java

11. Kirsten Stobbe Bahasa Inggris di SLTP Negeri: Tujuan Pendidikan Nasional dan Pengembangan GBPP Kurikulum 1994, Laporan Studi di 3 SLTP Negeri di Kotamadya Malang, East Java

12. Susan Weymouth The Production, Handling, Storage and Transport of Agricultural Produce in Batu, Malang, East Java

13. Nami Yokoyama Batik and the Indonesian Society in East Java

Semester 3 (September 1996)

Campbell Watson Permeable Border: The Community Decision-Making Mechanisms of Indonesia's Papelan Fishing Community and the Assertion of their Rights and Interests within Australian territory

Alexandra Ryan Pole Kah Sangkima: Report on the Sangkima Community; One of the Oldest Settlements within Kutai National Park, and Efforts to Secure their Historical, Cultural and Existential rights

Semester 2 (February 1996)

Tracey Gellard The Implications of Gender in Human and National Development

Ian Wilson Spirit Dances: A Working Paper on Jaran Kepang in East Java

Semester 1 (September 1995)

Tom Plummer Snapshots of Resistance (1995). Read his articles in Inside Indonesia

Source - http://www.acicis.murdoch.edu.au/hi/fieldrep.html

Documents of the Day, No. 3, June 4

La'o Hamutuk Bulletin, Vol. 10, No. 1, June 2009
http://www.laohamutuk.org/Bulletin/2009/Jun/bulletinv10n1.htm

The Urban Transformation in Asia: Policy Implications of Decentralization
http://www.eastwestcenter.org/fileadmin/stored/pdfs/urbanasia001.pdf


Jakarta: The Absence of Nationalism in a Transnational City
http://www.scribd.com/doc/13728366/Indonesia-National-Identity?autodown=pdf
or
http://www.scribd.com/doc/13728366/Indonesia-National-Identity

The Internet and Religion in Singapore: A National Survey
http://www3.ntu.edu.sg/sci/SIRC/workingpapers/IR%20report%20-26%20Sept%202005.pdf

Chinese Religion in Malaysia: A General View
http://www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publications/afs/pdf/a449.pdf

Why NPR is the Future of Mainstream Media

Mashable, Josh Catone, June 3 - In March of this year, National Public Radio (NPR) revealed that by the end of 2008, 23.6 million people were tuning into its broadcasts each week. In fact, NPR's ratings have increased steadily since 2000, and they've managed to hold on to much of their 2008 election coverage listenership bump (with over 26 million people tuning in each week so far in 2009), unlike many of their mainstream media counterparts.

Compared to cable news, where most networks are shedding viewers, and newspapers, where circulation continues to plummet, NPR is starting to look like they have the future of news all figured out. Or at least, they appear to doing a lot better at it than the rest of the traditional media.

But what is NPR doing differently that's causing their listener numbers to swell? They basically have a three-pronged strategy that is helping them not only grow now, but also prepare for the future media landscape where traditional methods of consumption (TV, radio, print) could be greatly marginalized in favor of digital distribution.

---

A Focus On Local

---

Though most people think of NPR as a radio station, it's actually a news gathering and production organization that sources and creates content for member stations (which are different than affiliates in that they're completely independent entities). According to new CEO Vivian Schiller, that means that NPR has a culture incredibly devoted to local coverage. "To me, local is the big play, because local commercial radio has abandoned the local market. Local newspapers are withering or sometimes dying. The big national media companies, including excellent ones like The New York Times, cannot afford to be covering every single community. So that leaves a big, gaping hole to serve Americans' local coverage," she told mediabistro.com in April.

Focusing on local information is a very smart approach for two reasons. One, because as Schiller says, it fills a gap in coverage, and two, because many people feel that delivering and aggregating hyperlocal content will be an important part of the future of media. In 2007, Alex Iskold, the CEO of semantic web application company AdaptiveBlue, predicted the rise of hyperlocal information, indicating that extremely targeted local advertising could be the path forward for the ad industry.

"Despite globalization, hyperlocal information is very valuable both to people and advertisers. In the coming years, we will be seeing the rise of a new way to look at information - geography. Inspired by utility and the promise of hyperlocal advertising, startups are racing to build businesses that deliver highly relevant, local information to users," he wrote.

Earlier this week we noted here on Mashable just how much more useful information can be when it is locally relevant. So for NPR, going local is a way to reach disenfranchised listeners, provide more utility, and potentially offer greater value to advertisers when the ad market rebounds.

---

A Focus On Social Media

---

Another aspect of NPR's winning approach is their adoption of social media. Social media tools are changing the media landscape by allowing consumers to define what's worthy of attention. NPR hasn't sat idly by — they're one of the few mainstream media organizations that is leading the charge in social media channels. Their Twitter account has over 780,000 followers, making it one of the top 25 on the social network (and third among news organizations behind only the New York Times and CNN). Their Facebook Page has over 400,000 fans.

But NPR has embraced social media in more ways than just having an active presence on top social media channels. They've also put social media to work for them. In October of 2008, for example, NPR asked listeners to factcheck the US Vice Presidential debates and communicate findings via a Twitter () hashtag. And in February, NPR's social media strategist (@acarvin) talked about Twitter on air, including hundreds people tweeting back comments in the conversation. Their conclusion? Twitter lets us all share the media consumption experience together, and that's a very positive thing.

NPR doesn't stop at social networking, either — their social media efforts extend to podcasts (they have over 650), blogs (they publish almost 20), mobile apps, and even their own social network. NPR has been recognized for these efforts year after year with multiple Webby Awards.

Social media is helping NPR reach new audiences and connect better with the one they have (which, of course, helps with audience retention).

---

A Focus On Ubiquitous Access

---

Perhaps the most important aspect of NPR's approach to new media, is that they have an organizational level commitment to allowing listeners and readers to access their content on their own terms. Schiller, who prior to joining NPR at the start of this year was the SVP-GM of The New York Times web site, told mediabisto.com that NPR aims to bring people access to content "online, mobile, whatever people want, podcasts — you name it — so that you have that same sense of the NPR experience wherever you are. As far as NPR.org — sure, I want the traffic to increase, but to me the ultimate goal is not just bringing people to this walled garden that is NPR.org."

That's nothing new for Schiller, who at the Times led the charge to shut down their pay content service, TimesSelect, even though it was pulling in tens of millions of dollars. "Change is happening so fast in the media and the economy that you have to be able to say, 'Forget about what we did then — let's look at what makes sense now,'" she said, which is a very enlightened view for someone who holds a position of power in a mainstream media culture that has for so long been resistant to change.

The same sentiment is echoed by NPR's Senior SVP for News, Ellen Weiss. "We need to put NPR wherever the audience is, and that has to happen online and has to happen on the radio," she told PBS in January. And NPR has delivered.

In July of 2008, for example, the radio organization released a content API that allows developers to remix and reuse any content created by the network. That's led to interesting mash ups like NPRbackstory, which attempts to figure out the news behind trending topics by searching through NPR's archives.

More recently, NPR released a mix your own podcast tool, which gives listeners the ability to easily create their own programming schedule from the organization's audio archives. That, as Schiller and Weiss promised, is NPR at work allowing users to consume media on their own terms.

NPR's commitment to going to its audience rather than making its audience come to them is a smart strategic move. Schiller is convinced that walled gardens and pay walls just drive audiences to "lesser quality news content that is free." If that's true, NPR's blueprint is not only about attracting eyeballs (or in this case, ears), but creating an environment where quality reporting from trained journalists can continue to exist.

---

Not Everything Is Rosy

---

Unfortunately for NPR, even while their ratings soar, they have not been immune to the economic woes gripping most industries. They cut 7% of their daily news staff in December of 2008 and axed two underperforming shows. NPR faces a projected budget gap of $8 million in 2009, though that's better than 2008's $23 million shortfall.

Still, the future looks bright at NPR. Their 26.4 million weekly listeners are 11 times more than the daily circulation of USA Today, and greater than 9 times more than the prime time viewership of the #1 cable news channel in the US, Fox News. They have 860 local stations in their member network and operate 38 news bureaus around the world — 18 in foreign markets, which is greater than any other news gathering organization. NPR's amazing growth over the past 10 years prompted FastCompany magazine in March to call NPR the "most successful hybrid of old and new media," and wonder if NPR could be the savior of the news industry.

And they owe that success to the culture of open access and audience participation that they've cultivated over the past decade.

Source - http://mashable.com/2009/06/03/npr/

Google Squared: Your Search Results in Spreadsheet Form

Mashable, Jennifer Van Grove, June 3 - At Google's Searchology event in May, Google announced the impending arrival of Google Squared, a Labs project that would return search results in spreadsheet form.

Today it appears as though Google Squared has been released out into the wild. Now your search results can take a completely different form, so you can remove content, add suggested columns of your own, and even save your squares for future access.

Since Google Squared is just your search results in column and row form, you're best off making queries on groups of things. So, you can search for television shows and get back a list of shows, accompanying images, descriptions, language, and run time in a format that's much easier to consume than typical search results. You can add additional columns and Google will try to help you fill in the blanks.

The cool thing about Google Squared is that columns are dynamic, so they mesh with the content displayed in the squared results. Cell content is also customizable, so clicking on a cell will let you search for other possible values and display a confidence level (eg. low confidence). We're also big fans of the fact that you can save your Squares, a small but important feature that could turn this into a quick and powerful utility for research.

If you stump the square, you can manually enter a few of the items you want to see compared, and Google () will automatically work to find similar entities and build out a comprehensive square.

Based on our initial use, we see Google Squared being a potentially huge time saver for professionals and consumers who need to do quick comparisons. It's incredibly useful if you know what you're looking for, ie. photo sharing sites, and are hoping to see side-by-side comparisons.

Though we wouldn't say that Google Squared is revolutionary, or able to compete with these 5 things Wolfram Alpha does better than Google, we do think that it's an interesting departure from the status quo of standard list search results. Plus, with the recent release of Bing, it's important that Google continue to innovate and experiment to maintain their dominance in search.

Source - http://mashable.com/2009/06/03/google-squared/

See also - http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2009-06-03-n25.html

Mahalo 2.0: Search Result Pages Built on Flickr, YouTube, and Twitter

Mashable, Ben Parr, June 2 - Mahalo, the human-powered search engine and web directory, has been busy recently expanding it's array of content. In December, they launched Mahalo Answers, which offers payments to users that can provide the best answers. Yet, since it's a human-powered website, Mahalo has only been able to grow as fast as people have been able to create content. So now, it's turning to social media to fill in the gaps.

The company has just dropped the beta tag from their logo and launched Mahalo 2.0. Along with a new logo and a design facelift, the startup has improved user control of pages. Most notable of all, however, is that Mahalo has created a system that pulls information from multiple social media sources to create web pages for every search term.

Mahalo pages of old contained byte-sized summaries, questions and answers, quick facts, reviews, and some social media content, like Youtube () videos. Mahalo 2.0 has added a lot more content. The service is utilizing multiple social media APIs to add images (via Flickr ()), videos (via YouTube), and discussion of the specific topic on Twitter (). While we can't post the full screenshots (because these pages are incredibly long), take a look at Bob Dylan's page on Mahalo, before and after, to get an idea of what's going on:

Mahalo: Previous Layout
Mahalo 2.0 Layout

From what we can tell, this can nearly double the amount of content available on a Mahalo page. Unless of course, the search term doesn't exist in the Mahalo system, in which case it will create a page based on the same social media APIs. This means Mahalo can create a nearly-unlimited amount of pages with content - pages that can be indexed, shared, and edited.

User control has also gotten a boost. Users can edit these new, automatically-generated pages with a one-click interface and become page managers. This is important because page managers get 50% of a page's revenue, so this new release could spark a new push by regular Mahalo users to become the admins of these newly-created pages. Page managers can even embed pages on other websites. However, it still comes with a catch: you've got to edit the page every week or you lose it.

Mahalo is smart to create pages that users have not via social media. This content is rich, dynamic, and filled with the keywords and search engine optimization (SEO) juice that has helped Mahalo grow in the Google () rankings. Yet there has been controversy with Mahalo pulling questions from Twitter for its Mahalo Answers program, and it's possible that some users may argue that this as stealing their social content for Mahalo's gain. Regardless, Mahalo has become even more useful, if not a bit too cluttered.

Source - http://mashable.com/2009/06/02/mahalo-20/

Health Lessons from Europe

Time, Eben Harrell, Copenhagen, May 20 - High infant mortality, low life expectancy, soaring health-care costs — the symptoms are numerous and the diagnosis unmistakable: America's health-care system is ailing. But like a patient who coughs or limps his way through an illness, the U.S. has often been reluctant to look for help.

That's changing. The Obama Administration promises to offer universal coverage, introduce electronic records and wrestle health-care costs under control — in short, at least part of the health-care revolution that many Americans have advocated for years.

Inevitably, perhaps, that means Americans are looking to European models, hailed by some, dismissed as socialized medicine by others. In truth, European health care is neither the nirvana of Michael Moore's imagination, nor the publicly funded money pits that so scare conservatives. For one thing, Europeans spend less — about $4,000 a person less, in some cases — than Americans on health care annually, and often with better outcomes. The good news is that without reassembling its entire health-care system, there are many relatively simple measures that could help the U.S. get a handle on soaring costs — and keep its population healthier, too. America, here is your prescription:

Denmark: Electronic records save money and improve outcomes

At the Frederiksberg University Hospital in Copenhagen, there are no clipboards. Instead, doctors and nurses carry wireless handheld computers to call up the medical records of each patient, including their prescription history and drug allergies. If a doctor prescribes a medication that may cause complications, the PDA's alarm goes off. In the hospital's department of acute medicine — where patients often arrive unconscious or disorientated — department head Klaus Phanareth's PDA prevents him from prescribing dangerous medications "on a weekly basis," he says. "There's no doubt that it saves lives."

President Obama recently pledged $19 billion to computerize America's medical records by 2014. Denmark has already made the transition. The country has a centralized computer database to which 98% of primary care physicians, all hospital physicians and all pharmacists now have access. While basic records go back to 1977, a detailed history is available of all "patient contacts" since 2000. A recent study by the Commonwealth Fund, a health-care-reform nonprofit, rated the country's health-care IT systems as the most efficient in the world, with computerized record-keeping saving Danish physicians an average 50 minutes a day of administrative work. "That's essential for [U.S.] doctors," says Jeff Harris of the American College of Physicians, who points out that U.S. family physicians have the highest administration costs in the developed world and "are already under strain from all the paperwork required to run an office."

Denmark boasts several advantages that have helped in the early adoption of electronic health records. It is small (population: 5 million) with a tech-savvy citizenry and a public sector-run health system. Trust in the government is high. Most crucially, when the health service established a National Patient Registry in 1977 — a system that required doctors to file patient visit details in order to be reimbursed for their work — the country unknowingly laid the groundwork for electronic health records by putting in place centralized record-keeping.

But there have been slipups. After the government decided to move away from paper records in 1999, a team of officials came up with a coding system that required doctors to insert information and notes in alphanumerical form. The system was never implemented and eventually abandoned in 2006 after physicians and nurses complained. Now, instead of a single system, record-keeping utilizes various compatible systems, linking networks established by regional health agencies. "What we found is that adoption of electronic health records must be done by evolution rather than revolution," says Jens Andersen of Sunded.dk, the state health-care web portal. "You have to work with the systems already in place."

The latest phase of the program focuses on telemedicine. In the past year, the health-care service has piloted two home-monitoring programs for patients with diabetes and those on blood-thinning medication — groups at high risk of emergency hospitalization. At Frederiksberg Hospital, Dr. Phanareth is running a ground-breaking study to test whether patients with exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease — responsible for 10% of all hospital admissions in Denmark — can be treated at home using telemedicine technology. "Sometimes, a lack of resistance is all you need for change to happen," Phanareth says.

Germany: Easing the burden of chronic disease; strengthening peer review

Sudden illness may be what scares most people, but chronic conditions place the greatest strain on health care. Around 75% of the U.S.'s $2 trillion annual health-care expenditure goes toward ailments such as heart disease, asthma, diabetes and certain cancers, and the vast majority of that is spent when these conditions require hospitalization and emergency care. The problem is particularly acute in the U.S. public sector: over 20% of U.S. Medicare patients have five or more chronic illnesses.

Preventing these conditions from developing in the first place is helped by a holistic approach to preventive medicine that encourages changes in what people eat or how much exercise they get. But for those patients already battling a chronic illness, there are steps health-care providers can take to keep them stable and out of hospital — as Germany's experience shows. The solutions can be as simple as educating patients about their condition, having nurses call patients to make sure they are staying on top of their medication and allowing doctors to compare their success rate with other physicians.

Germany's "disease-management programs" began in 2002 and cover some 3 million chronic patients. The results are promising. One survey by the University of Heidelberg of some 11,000 patients in the Saxony Anhalt and Rhineland-Palatinate regions found that the death rate in older diabetics in the program was about 8% lower than among diabetics who received regular care. And when one of Germany's largest insurers tracked 20,000 coronary heart disease and diabetes patients enrolled in disease-management programs for 15 months, it found the percentage of patients requiring hospitalization dropped from 4.3 to 2.9 — and 25% of the patients also gave up smoking.

The challenge is finding the funding to implement such schemes. In America's health system, there are few financial incentives for providers to take proactive measures to keep people healthy: the longer and more extensively a doctor or hospital treats a patient, the more income they recoup. That's why the American College of Physicians and others are calling for reform in health-care reimbursement, with the Federal Government and large insurance companies setting up "Patient Centered Medical Homes" in which a portion of doctors' pay will be linked to performance targets. As in Germany, these homes will target chronic diseases by allowing doctors, nurses, dietitians and therapists to educate all patients — especially chronic ones — on how to stay healthy. In 2007, Geisinger Health System began a pilot program in Pennsylvania, hiring nurses to check on patients with diabetes, heart disease and other chronic ailments, as well as linking 20% of physician income to targets in areas such as patient weight loss, smoking cessation and cholesterol levels. After the first year of the study, hospitals reported a 20% fall in admissions in the area and health-care expenditure dropped 7%.

The Germans have also shown how effective it can be to allow physicians to compare their performance against their colleagues. The country has the largest database on hospital performance in the world, which helps spread best practice. Such ideas would prove equally effective in the U.S., according to Karen Davis of the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund, but change needs to come at the policy level. "Right now we can see how successful these programs are in places like 
 Germany and Pennsylvania but then doctors and hospitals come back and ask, 'Who's going to pay for it?'," she says. 
 "It's a fair question."

Britain: How much is a year of life worth?

Placing a cap on drug costs could save U.S. health care billions. But it's not without controversy. England and Wales have set up a body called the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) which reviews treatments to decide which are the most cost-effective and which the National Health Service (NHS) should pay for. A new drug has to offer value for money — and if it doesn't, whether it is life-saving or not, NICE won't approve it.

NICE uses a metric called "quality-adjusted life year," or Qaly, which grades a person's health-related quality of life from 0 to 1. Say a new drug for a previously untreatable condition comes on the market and the drug is proven to improve a patient's quality of life from .5 to .7 on the scale. A patient on the drug can expect to live an average of 15 years following the treatment. Taking the new drug thus earns patients the equivalent of three quality-adjusted life years (15 years multiplied by the .2 gain in quality of life). If the treatments costs $15,000, then the cost per quality-adjusted life year is $5,000.

Taking its lead from Britain's Department of Transport — which has a cost-
per-life-saved threshold for new road schemes of about $2.2 million per life, or around $45,000 per life year gained — NICE rarely approves a drug that costs more than $45,000 per Qaly (the fictitious drug would easily pass).

Not only does the equation make hard-nosed sense in a public-health system, its use can reduce costs in other ways. Eager to gain NICE's approval, drug companies have started giving away portions of expensive treatment for free in Britain in order to ensure their drugs meet the threshold. Sir Michael Rawlins, chairman of NICE, believes that if the U.S. adopted a similar system, it would revolutionize the culture of major pharmaceutical companies, many of which spend more on marketing than research and development. A 2008 study in the New England Journal of Medicine predicted that incorporating information about cost-effectiveness into the design of U.S. insurance would save $368 billion over 10 years.

NICE approves over 90% of new drugs, and those it rejects are rarely life-saving. But it has turned down some expensive treatments that prolong life — most notoriously, the kidney cancer drug Sutent in 2008 — angering patients and oncologists. The organization has since promised to approve more expensive life-saving drugs for illnesses affecting fewer than 7,000 patients a year. Rawlins concedes that NICE is "muddling through" uncharted waters: "The biggest lesson we've learned is to be open and transparent. But you have to be willing to make difficult decisions."

Aware that the idea of "rationing" health care would prove controversial in the U.S., advocates of reform — from the American College of Physicians to the advocacy group Center for Medicine in the Public Interest — have suggested a system of review that doesn't take into account the cost of new treatments. This would help doctors decide a course of treatment, as currently they have no way of comparing the efficacy of different drugs for the same condition. But it could also raise prices. "In a free-market economy the manufacturers may use the effectiveness review to charge higher prices for the best drug," says Jeffrey Harris, president of the American College of Physicians.

Peter Pitts of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest says higher prices are a risk America will have to take. "Because NICE is concerned about saving money and not what's in the best interest of the patient, its methods are not only imprudent, they are unethical," he says, arguing that pharmaceutical firms use profits to fund research and development. Rawlins has a different take. "All health-care systems have implicitly, if not explicitly, adopted some form of cost control. In the U.S. you do it by not providing health care to some people. That's a rather brutal way of doing it."

France: The benchmark system is neither truly socialized nor fully equal

In 2000 the World Health Organization (WHO) used statistical measures, such as life expectancy and infant mortality, to rank the world's health-care systems. France topped the rankings. In 2008, researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine followed up the WHO study by showing that France is not only a good place to stay healthy, but also a good place to be sick: of 19 industrialized nations, France has the lowest number of "amenable deaths" — fatalities that could have been prevented by good health care. (The U.S. had the highest.) But France is not immune to the challenges of modern health care. Despite massive government spending, its health-care system regularly runs over budget; in 2009 the deficit is expected to be $10.4 billion. Frustrated with the overstrained public-health sector, many people are now choosing private care.

France's state-run health insurance scheme reimburses 60% to 70% of most medical bills. The remaining costs are assumed by the patient. More than 90% of French citizens pay for supplementary health insurance to cover these costs — mostly from state-run providers called mutuals. But those who can afford it are increasingly abandoning mutuals in favor of private insurance. For most ailments, that makes little difference: 80% of France's general practitioners work under a regime that caps how much they can charge. But the reverse is true for specialists and surgeons — 80% of them set their own fees, often exceeding the reimbursement ceiling of most mutuals.

The result: a two-tiered system that runs counter to the utopian ideals of most health-care reformers. That's inevitable, says Dr. Roger Rua, secretary general of Syndicat des Médecins Libéraux, a union representing private practitioners. "Anywhere you've got a degree of socialization in a nation's health-care system, you'll eventually find people who feel they aren't finding what they want within it and decide to opt out," he says. "This is particularly true when systems begin having trouble financing themselves, and start cutting back on services."

Rua and others say that what's exemplary about France's system is that it has managed to foster patient choice while continuing to provide a generally high level of care for even the most vulnerable. All French citizens have affordable access to a doctor, thanks in part to one of the highest rates of doctors per capita in the world (3.4 per 1,000, compared to 2.4 in the U.S. and 2.5 in Britain). A sick French citizen who stays inside the public funding system might not get to choose from a list of specialists, but he or she will get a referral and the needed care. In some cases, patients even get paid to go to the doctor: for new mothers, a network of prenatal and early childhood facilities, called Protection Maternelle et Infantile, provides basic care, with financial incentives for the poor to attend.

France shows how a health-care system might realistically function in the face of daunting 21st century challenges: find a way to take care of your middle class and poor, and let the rich top up care as they see fit. As Rua puts it: "The [French] system ensures quality treatment for everyone, but it isn't there to eliminate the realities that exist in every country — and in every professional and economic sector — that give the more affluent a wider variety of choices, and the ability to seek élite care."

With reporting by Bruce Crumley / Paris and Stephanie Kirchner / Berlin

• Find this article at:
• http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1899873,00.html

Obama Hits A Home Run

The Nation, Robert Dreyfuss, Dubai, June 4 - I watched President Obama's Cairo speech from Dubai, the sprawling and frenzied city of gold and shopping malls on the shores of the Arabian--er, Persian--Gulf. (I'm on my way to Tehran tomorrow, to report on the July 12 presidential elections there, and I'd better keep my "Arabian" and "Persian" Gulfs straight.)

Based on early returns from a decidedly unrepresentative sample of Arab public opinion, Obama hit a home run. I agree. (Incidentally, it's not easy to find Arabs in Dubai, a desert kleptocracy run by a super-rich ruling clan, whose population is overwhelmingly from South Asia, East Asia, southern Sudan, and other parts of Africa.) In Dubai, at least, and in its media, Obama's speech was topic one, two and three all week.

That's good and bad. Obama's arrival in Saudi Arabia and Egypt was greeted in two ways. First, it had the trappings of a visit by an all-powerful but distant Great White Father--okay, he's black, but anyway--on whose words the fate of the Arab and Muslim world hangs, which is understandable in light of the fact that American troops and sailors are everywhere. And second, in contrast, sophisticated Arab opinion was truly hopeful that Obama's remarks would make concrete the sharp break with the Imperial America as represented by the administration of George W. "Crusader" Bush. I think the latter prevailed. Obama was appropriately humble, and he laid down important markers that signal a new U.S. approach to the Middle East and beyond.

And, as CNN reported, "No one threw a shoe at his head."

He acknowledged the current state of tension, along with the history of colonialism and Cold War power politics that treated Muslim nations as chess pieces. He correctly laid the root of the tension on the Muslim world's reaction, especially among conservatives and the Islamic right, to "modernity and globalization." He acknowledged that a speech doesn't change everything. He quoted the Quran, and he spoke eloquently of the West's (and the world's) debt to Islamic civilization. "I have known Islam on three continents," he said. And he added: "Islam is part of America." Words, true – but words that I have been waiting for a long time to have heard from a president of the United States.

With Osama bin Laden's recent communiqué still echoing, Obama drew out the contrast between Islam and bin Laden's version of "violent extremism." He said that the United States has no designs on Afghanistan and no plans to establish permanent bases there. And on Iraq, he said the same: "We pursue no bases, and no claim on their territory or resources"--i.e.,, oil. And he reiterated that all U.S. forces will be out of Iraq by 2012. (All of this, of course, will require some insistence by American voters and the "Arab and Muslim street" to hold Obama to his promises.)

But it was on Palestine that Obama hit the gong:

For more than 60 years they've endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations -- large and small -- that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: The situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. And America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own.

How long has it been since a president spoke movingly about Palestinian suffering? And in a speech so high profile, even game-changing?

He even nodded to Hamas, acknowledging that Hamas has support among the Palestinians, and – amazingly – did not refer to the organization as a "terrorist group." And, of course, he kept up the pressure on Israeli expansionism by yet again slamming the settlements in the occupied territories – an issue, that likely as not, will bring down Bibi Netanyahu's right-wing government.

On Iran, Obama stated clearly that Iran has the right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Indeed, it is precisely that issue that will be at the core of the coming U.S.-Iran dialogue, since for Iran its ability to enrich uranium on Iranian soil is a no-compromise concern. Yet there are plenty of ways to finesse, regulate, and internationalize that.

On democracy, Obama said that "there is no straight line" to create representative governments in the Muslim world, such as Egypt – meaning that he won't push too hard, a la Bush and the neoconservatives, for instant democratic transformation. I think he hit precisely the right note.

His closing was pure Obama:

The Holy Koran tells us: "O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another."

The Talmud tells us: "The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace."

The Holy Bible tells us: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God."

The people of the world can live together in peace. We know that is God's vision. Now that must be our work here on Earth.

Okay, it's a speech. But it's a good start.

Source - http://www.thenation.com/blogs/dreyfuss/440904/print

After Waterboarding: How to Make Terrorists Talk?

Time, Bobby Ghosh, Washington, June 8 - The most successful interrogation of an Al-Qaeda operative by U.S. officials required no sleep deprivation, no slapping or "walling" and no waterboarding. All it took to soften up Abu Jandal, who had been closer to Osama bin Laden than any other terrorist ever captured, was a handful of sugar-free cookies.

Abu Jandal had been in a Yemeni prison for nearly a year when Ali Soufan of the FBI and Robert McFadden of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service arrived to interrogate him in the week after 9/11. Although there was already evidence that al-Qaeda was behind the attacks, American authorities needed conclusive proof, not least to satisfy skeptics like Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, whose support was essential for any action against the terrorist organization. U.S. intelligence agencies also needed a better understanding of al-Qaeda's structure and leadership. Abu Jandal was the perfect source: the Yemeni who grew up in Saudi Arabia had been bin Laden's chief bodyguard, trusted not only to protect him but also to put a bullet in his head rather than let him be captured. (See pictures of do-it-yourself waterboarding attempts.)

Abu Jandal's guards were so intimidated by him, they wore masks to hide their identities and begged visitors not to refer to them by name in his presence. He had no intention of cooperating with the Americans; at their first meetings, he refused even to look at them and ranted about the evils of the West. Far from confirming al-Qaeda's involvement in 9/11, he insisted the attacks had been orchestrated by Israel's Mossad. While Abu Jandal was venting his spleen, Soufan noticed that he didn't touch any of the cookies that had been served with tea: "He was a diabetic and couldn't eat anything with sugar in it." At their next meeting, the Americans brought him some sugar-free cookies, a gesture that took the edge off Abu Jandal's angry demeanor. "We had showed him respect, and we had done this nice thing for him," Soufan recalls. "So he started talking to us instead of giving us lectures."

It took more questioning, and some interrogators' sleight of hand, before the Yemeni gave up a wealth of information about al-Qaeda — including the identities of seven of the 9/11 bombers — but the cookies were the turning point. "After that, he could no longer think of us as evil Americans," Soufan says. "Now he was thinking of us as human beings."

Soufan, now an international-security consultant, has emerged as a powerful critic of the George W. Bush — era interrogation techniques; he has testified against them in congressional hearings and is an expert witness in cases against detainees. He has described the techniques as "borderline torture" and "un-American." His larger argument is that methods like waterboarding are wholly unnecessary — traditional interrogation methods, a combination of guile and graft, are the best way to break down even the most stubborn subjects. He told a recent hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee that it was these methods, not the harsh techniques, that prompted al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah to give up the identities of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-confessed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla. Bush Administration officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, had previously claimed that Abu Zubaydah supplied that information only after he was waterboarded. But Soufan says once the rough treatment began — administered by CIA-hired private contractors with no interrogation experience — Abu Zubaydah actually stopped cooperating. (Read "Dick Cheney: Why So Chatty All of a Sudden?")

The debate over the CIA's interrogation techniques and their effectiveness has intensified since President Barack Obama's decision to release Bush Administration memos authorizing the use of waterboarding and other harsh methods. Defenders of the Bush program, most notably Cheney, say the use of waterboarding produced actionable intelligence that helped the U.S. disrupt terrorist plots. But the experiences of officials like Soufan suggest that the utility of torture is limited at best and counterproductive at worst. Put simply, there's no definitive evidence that torture works.

The crucial question going forward is, What does? How does an interrogator break down a hardened terrorist without using violence? TIME spoke with several interrogators who have worked for the U.S. military as well as others who have recently retired from the intelligence services (the CIA and FBI turned down requests for interviews with current staffers). All agreed with Soufan: the best way to get intelligence from even the most recalcitrant subject is to apply the subtle arts of interrogation rather than the blunt instruments of torture. "There is nothing intelligent about torture," says Eric Maddox, an Army staff sergeant whose book Mission: Black List #1 chronicles his interrogations in Iraq that ultimately led to the capture of Saddam Hussein. "If you have to inflict pain, then you've lost control of the situation, the subject and yourself."

Read about a top interrogator who is against torture.

See pictures of the aftershocks from the Abu Ghraib scandal.

The Rules of the Game
There is no definitive textbook on interrogation. The U.S. Army field manual, updated in 2006, lists 19 interrogation techniques, ranging from offering "real or emotional reward" for truthful answers to repeating questions again and again "until the source becomes so thoroughly bored with the procedure, he answers questions fully and candidly." (Obama has ordered the CIA to follow the Army manual until a review of its interrogation policies has been completed.)

Some of the most interesting techniques are classified as "emotional approaches." Interrogators may flatter a detainee's ego by praising some particular skill. Alternatively, the interrogators may attack the detainee's ego by accusing him of incompetence, goading him to defend himself and possibly give up information in the process. If interrogators choose to go on the attack, however, they may not "cross the line into humiliating and degrading treatment of the detainee." (See pictures of the battle against the Taliban.)

But experienced interrogators don't limit themselves to the 19 prescribed techniques. Matthew Alexander, a military interrogator whose efforts in Iraq led to the location and killing of al-Qaeda leader Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, says old-fashioned criminal-investigation techniques work better than the Army manual. "Often I'll use tricks that are not part of the Army system but that every cop knows," says Alexander. "Like when you bring in two suspects, you take them to separate rooms and offer a deal to the first one who confesses." (Alexander, one of the authors of How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq, uses a pseudonym for security purposes.)

Others apply methods familiar to psychologists and those who deprogram cult members. James Fitzsimmons, a retired FBI interviewer who dealt extensively with al-Qaeda members, says terrorism suspects often use their membership in a group as a psychological barrier. The interrogator's job, he says, "is to bring them out from the collective identity to the personal identity." To draw them out, Fitzsimmons invites his subjects to talk about their personal histories, all the way back to childhood. This makes them think of themselves as individuals rather than as part of a group.

Ultimately, every interrogation is a cat-and-mouse game, and seasoned interrogators have more than one way to coax, cajole or trick their captives into yielding information. Lying and dissimulation are commonplace. When a high-ranking insurgent spoke of his spendthrift wife, Alexander said he sympathized because he too had a wife who loved to shop. The two men bonded over this common "problem"; the insurgent never knew that Alexander is single. The Army manual even includes a "false flag" technique: interrogators may pretend to be of other nationalities if they feel a captive will not cooperate with Americans. (Read "Beyond Waterboarding: What Interrogators Can Still Do.")

Other countries that have experienced insurgencies and terrorism have evolved rules too. From Britain, with its Irish separatists, to Israel, with its Palestinian militants, most such countries have tended to move away from harsh techniques. But institutional relapses can occur: human-rights lawyers and Palestinians with experience in Israeli prisons say some violent interrogation techniques have returned in recent years.

The Tricks of the Trade
Each interrogator has his own idea of how to run an interrogation. Soufan likes to research his captive as thoroughly as possible before entering the interrogation room. "If you can get them to think you know almost everything to know about them — their families, their friends, their movements — then you've got an advantage," he says. "Because then they're thinking, 'Well, this guy already knows so much, there's no point in resisting ... I might as well tell him everything.'" When Abu Zubaydah tried to conceal his identity after his capture, Soufan stunned him by using the nickname given to him by his mother. "Once I called him 'Hani,' he knew the game was up," Soufan says.

To get Abu Jandal's cooperation, Soufan and McFadden laid a trap. After palliating his rage with the sugar-free cookies, they got him to identify a number of al-Qaeda members from an album of photographs, including Mohamed Atta and six other 9/11 hijackers. Next they showed him a local newspaper headline that claimed (erroneously) that more than 200 Yemenis had been killed in the World Trade Center. Abu Jandal agreed that this was a terrible crime and said no Muslim could be behind the attacks. Then Soufan dropped the bombshell: some of the men Abu Jandal had identified in the album had been among the hijackers. Without realizing it, the Yemeni prisoner had admitted that al-Qaeda had been responsible for 9/11: For all his resistance, he had given the Americans what they wanted. "He was broken, completely shattered," Soufan says. From that moment on, Abu Jandal was completely cooperative, giving Soufan and McFadden reams of information — names and descriptions of scores of al-Qaeda operatives, details of training and tactics.

See pictures of a jihadist's journey.

See pictures from inside Guantanamo Bay's detention facilities.

Alexander, who conducted more than 300 interrogations and supervised more than 1,000 others in Iraq, says the key to a successful interrogation lies in understanding the subject's motivation. In the spring of 2006, he was interrogating a Sunni imam connected with al-Qaeda in Iraq, which was then run by al-Zarqawi; the imam "blessed" suicide bombers before their final mission. His first words to Alexander were, "If I had a knife right now, I'd slit your throat." Asked why, the imam said the U.S. invasion had empowered Shi'ite thugs who had evicted his family from their home. Humiliated, he had turned to the insurgency. Alexander's response was to offer a personal apology: "I said, 'Look, I'm an American, and I want to say how sorry I am that we made so many mistakes in your country.'"

The imam, Alexander says, broke down in tears. The apology undercut his motivation for hating Americans and allowed him to open up to his interrogator. Alexander then nudged the conversation in a new direction, pointing out that Iraq and the U.S. had a common enemy: Iran. The two countries needed to cooperate in order to prevent Iraq from becoming supplicant to the Shi'ite mullahs in Tehran — a fear commonly expressed by Sunnis. Eventually the imam gave up the location of a safe house for suicide bombers; a raid on the house led to the capture of an al-Qaeda operative who in turn led U.S. troops to al-Zarqawi. (See pictures of U.S. troops' 6 years in Iraq.)

The Ticking Time Bomb
Proponents of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques say the noncoercive methods are useless in emergencies, when interrogators have just minutes, not days, to extract vital, lifesaving information. The worst-case scenario is often depicted in movies and TV series like 24: a captured terrorist knows where and when a bomb will go off (in a mall, in a school, on Capitol Hill), and his interrogators must make him talk at once or else risk thousands of innocent lives. It's not just fervid screenwriters who believe that such a scenario calls for the use of brute force. In 2002, Richard Posner, a Court of Appeals judge in Chicago and one of the most respected legal authorities in the U.S., wrote in the New Republic that "if torture is the only means of obtaining the information necessary to prevent the detonation of a nuclear bomb in Times Square, torture should be used ... No one who doubts that this is the case should be in a position of responsibility."

The CIA's controversial methods, argue their defenders, were spawned by precisely that sense of urgency: in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, amid swirling rumors of further attacks to come — including the possibility of a "dirty" nuclear bomb — the Bush Administration had no choice but to authorize the use of whatever means necessary to extract information from suspected terrorists. "We had a lot of blind spots after the attacks on our country," former Vice President Cheney explained in a May 21 speech in Washington. "We didn't know about al-Qaeda's plans, but Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and a few others did know. And with many thousands of innocent lives potentially in the balance, we didn't think it made sense to let the terrorists answer questions in their own good time, if they answered them at all."

But professional interrogators say the ticking-time-bomb scenario is no more than a thought experiment; it rarely, if ever, occurs in real life. It's true that U.S. intelligence managed to extract information about some "aspirational" al-Qaeda plots through interrogation of prisoners captured after 9/11. But none of those plots have been revealed — at least to the public — to have been imminent attacks. And there is still no conclusive proof that any usable intelligence the U.S. did glean through harsh interrogations could not have been extracted using other methods.

In fact, a smart interrogator may be able to turn the ticking-bomb scenario on its head and use a sense of urgency against a captive. During combat raids in Iraq, Maddox grew used to interrogating insurgents on the fly, often at the point of capture. His objective: to quickly extract information on the location of other insurgents hiding out nearby. "I'd say to them, 'As soon as your friends know you've been captured, they'll assume that you're going to give them up, and they'll run for it. So if you want to help yourself, to get a lighter sentence, you've got to tell me everything right now, because in a couple of hours you'll have nothing of value to trade.'"

That trick led to Maddox's finest hour in Iraq. At 6 a.m. on December 13, 2003, the final day of his tour of duty, two hours before his flight out of Baghdad, he began interrogating Mohammed Ibrahim, a midranking Baath Party leader known to be close to Saddam Hussein. More than 40 of Ibrahim's friends and family members associated with the insurgency were already in custody. For an hour and a half, Maddox tried to persuade him that giving up Saddam could lead to the release of his friends and family. Then Maddox played his final card: "I told him he had to talk quickly because Saddam might move," he says. "I also said that once I got on the plane, I would no longer be able to help him. My colleagues would just toss him in prison. Instead of saving 40 of his friends and family, he'd become No. 41." It worked. That evening, Ibrahim's directions led U.S. forces to Saddam's spider hole.

Read Senator Patrick's Leahy's case for the Truth Commission.

Read about why Obama is still opposed to the Truth Commission.

Correction: The original version of this story identified Ali Soufan as an expert witness in cases brought by detainees. He has been a witness in cases against detainees.

• Find this article at:
• http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1901491,00.html