News and Comment

Three years ago today, the tsunami hit Aceh. It was a cataclysm so vast that Acehnese don't talk about it all that much. It's easi...

After Mitt Romney accused Mike Huckabee of being soft on crime, Huckabee -- the nice guy in the US race -- responded by pointing out that a...

Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, the Indonesian cleric and political leader, says that the Bali bombers "were not terrorists but counter-terrori...

Last June, when President/General Susilo of Indonesia visited one of his provinces, in the Moluccas, he was greeted by local residents perfo...

News and Comment, http://www.newsc.blogspot.com/ Wednesday, December 12, 2007 9:21 AM US Eastern time) By Allan Nairn US intelligence offic...

The UN World Food Program estimates that, in the wake of Israel's cutoffs,"Food imports into the Gaza Strip are only enough to meet...

Hillary Clinton just pointed out that whoever holds the US presidency can, on both national and foreign matters, engage in "split-secon...

The phrase "knowing where the bodies are buried" has different meanings in Timor and Washington. In Washington, it means knowing s...

A headline in the Bangkok Post (November 27, 2007) says that ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra "faces up to 26 years in jail...

Crossing the Moei river from Thailand into Burma you see many river bathers. But if you look again more closely you notice they are all on ...

The Daily Telegraph of Australia carries a report of an extraordinary death-row press conference/ festive family visit (Indonesian death row...

In downtown Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, some Dior dresses just got dry-cleaned with tear gas, in an interesting illustration of the principle th...

Early estimates say that maybe 3,000 people have died in the Bangladesh cyclone and floods. And the footage shows that much poor-people'...

When hard rain falls on a tin-roofed house it sounds like a machine-gun assault. Unless you know the person you're talking to very well...

Talking with some Burmese activists the other day, one young leader made a crucial point. The discussion included familiar topics like sanc...

On Tuesday the big front page news in the two leading newspapers of northern Sumatra was that Indonesia's President, Gen. Susilo Bambang...

Referring to the $10 billion in military and financial aid that the US has given the government of Pakistan since it formally switched sides...

Gen. Pervez Musharraf has declared a state of emergency in Pakistan, and in the White House, Bush and Cheney may be, in some part, a little ...

Sitting around in a house in Indonesia over green agar-agar (seaweed gelatin) for diarrhea, the talk is of the "dog" POLRI police,...