Archive | November, 2011

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Bookshelf Spotlight: Southeast Asia & U.S. Relations/Investments

Posted on 30 November 2011 by PR Coordinator

Featured University Of Hawai’i Press Publishing

* The Philippines and Japan in America’s Shadow

The Philippines and Japan in America’s Shadow


edited by Kiichi Fujiwara & Yoshiko Nagano
University Of Hawai’i Press, 2011

The authors in this volume examine the U.S. occupation of the Philippines and Japan from a wide range of perspectives (political science, history, anthropology, sociology, and literature). They suggest that American colonialism shows distinct characteristics of latecomer-colonialism, starting with the strong role of the state and the primacy of geopolitics. In contrast with other imperial powers, such as Britain, France, and Japan, the Americans relied more on informal empire than on direct control of territory, an approach that suited an era when colonialism as such was increasingly difficult to defend.

University Of Hawai’i Press | Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

Featured Books

* Benevolent Assimilation: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899-1903
* India-Burma (The U.S. Army Campaigns of World War II)
* Lucky Child: A Daughter of Cambodia Reunites with the Sister She Left Behind
* No Sure Victory: Measuring U.S. Army Effectiveness and Progress in the Vietnam War
* Trade and Development in a Globalized World: The Unfair Trade Problem in U.S.D Thai Trade Relations

Benevolent Assimilation: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899-1903


by Stuart Creighton Miller
Yale University Press, 1984

American acquisition of the Philippines and Filipino resistance to it became a focal point for debate on American imperialism. In a lively narrative, Miller tells the story of the war and how it challenged America’s sense of innocence. He examines the roles of key actors—the generals and presidents, the soldiers and senators—in America’s colonial adventure.

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India-Burma (The U.S. Army Campaigns of World War II)


by David W. Hogan
Army Center of Military History, 1992

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Lucky Child: A Daughter of Cambodia Reunites with the Sister She Left Behind


by Loung Ung
Harper Perennial, 2006

After enduring years of hunger, deprivation, and devastating loss at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, ten-year-old Loung Ung became the “lucky child,” the sibling chosen to accompany her eldest brother to America while her one surviving sister and two brothers remained behind. In this poignant and elegiac memoir, Loung recalls her assimilation into an unfamiliar new culture while struggling to overcome dogged memories of violence and the deep scars of war. In alternating chapters, she gives voice to Chou, the beloved older sister whose life in war-torn Cambodia so easily could have been hers. Highlighting the harsh realities of chance and circumstance in times of war as well as in times of peace, Lucky Child is ultimately a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and to the salvaging strength of family bonds.

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No Sure Victory: Measuring U.S. Army Effectiveness and Progress in the Vietnam War


by Gregory A. Daddis
Oxford University Press, 2011

It is commonly thought that the U.S. Army in Vietnam, thrust into a war in which territory occupied was meaningless, depended on body counts as its sole measure of military progress. In No Sure Victory, Army officer and historian Gregory A. Daddis uncovers the truth behind this gross simplification of the historical record. Daddis shows that, confronted by an unfamiliar enemy and an even more unfamiliar form of warfare, the U.S. Army adopted a massive, and eventually unmanageable, system of measurements and formulas to track the progress of military operations that ranged from pacification efforts to search-and-destroy missions. Concentrating more on data collection and less on data analysis, these indiscriminate attempts to gauge success may actually have hindered the army’s ability to evaluate the true outcome of the fight at hand–a roadblock that Daddis believes significantly contributed to the multitude of failures that American forces in Vietnam faced. Filled with incisive analysis and rich historical detail, No Sure Victory is a valuable case study in unconventional warfare, a cautionary tale that offers important perspectives on how to measure performance in current and future armed conflict.

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Trade and Development in a Globalized World: The Unfair Trade Problem in U.S.D Thai Trade Relations


by John M. Rothgeb Jr. and Benjamas Chinapandhu
Lexington Books, 2008

Trade and Development in a Globalized World examines how the unfair trade regulations of advanced countries affect developing societies. The most prominent of these regulations are those pertaining to dumping and subsidies. As antidumping and antisubsidy laws have proliferated, they have increasingly undermined the trade-related development strategies of poor countries. To determine how developing states attempt to cope with the problems created by unfair trade rules, Rothgeb and Chinapandhu conducted a case study of the Thai–U.S. trade relationship. The results, revealed here, show that unfair trade regulations have evolved substantially from their origins as devices for ensuring that international markets can not be manipulated to confer advantages upon selected exporters and that these regulations now serve as the primary protective mechanisms for guaranteeing that advanced country producers will not face competition from developing country industries.

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Bookshelf Spotlight: Southeast Asia & Revolution

Posted on 22 November 2011 by PR Coordinator

Featured University Of Hawai’i Press Publishing

* To Nation by Revolution: Indonesia in the 20th Century

To Nation by Revolution: Indonesia in the 20th Century


by Anthony Reid
University Of Hawai’i Press, 2011

The twelve chapters of this book all derive from the reflections of a prominent historian on the nature of modern Indonesian history over a forty-year time span. A central thread running through the book is the importance of the fact that Indonesia entered the modern community of nation-states through political revolution.

University Of Hawai’i Press | Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

Featured Books

* Forgotten Wars: Freedom and Revolution in Southeast Asia
* Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia
* Revolution Interrupted: Farmers, Students, Law, and Violence in Northern Thailand
* Vietnam 1946: How the War Began
* Passion, Betrayal, and Revolution in Colonial Saigon: The Memoirs of Bao Luong

Forgotten Wars: Freedom and Revolution in Southeast Asia


by Christopher Bayly & Tim Harper
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007

In September 1945, after the fall of the atomic bomb—and with it, the Japanese empire—Asia was dominated by the British. Governing a vast crescent of land that stretched from India through Burma and down to Singapore, and with troops occupying the French and Dutch colonies in southern Vietnam and Indonesia, Britain’s imperial might had never seemed stronger.

Yet within a few violent years, British power in the region would crumble, and myriad independent nations would struggle into existence. Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper show how World War II never really ended in these ravaged Asian lands but instead continued in bloody civil wars, anti-colonial insurrections, and inter-communal massacres. These years became the most formative in modern Asian history, as Western imperialism vied with nascent nationalist and communist revolutionaries for political control.

Forgotten Wars, a sequel to the authors’ acclaimed Forgotten Armies, is a panoramic account of the bitter wars of the end of empire, seen not only through the eyes of the fighters, but also through the personal stories of ordinary people: the poor and bewildered caught up in India’s Hindu-Muslim massacres; the peasant farmers ravaged by warfare between British forces and revolutionaries in Malaya; the Burmese minorities devastated by separatist revolt. Throughout, we are given a stunning portrait of societies poised between the hope of independence and the fear of strife. Forgotten Wars vividly brings to life the inescapable conflicts and manifold dramas that shaped today’s Asia.

Belknap Press of Harvard University Press | Amazon | Google Books

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Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia


by Dan Slater
Cambridge University Press, 2010

This is the first collection of short stories by Filipino author Gilda Cordero-Fernando. Dowdy and glamor-starved housewives, the money-mad circle that barely senses the need for social justice, children anxious for love and security–these prvide the material for the fable and vision which fiction demands of its makers.

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Revolution Interrupted: Farmers, Students, Law, and Violence in Northern Thailand


by Tyrell Haberkorn & Thongchai Winichakul
University of Wisconsin Press, 2011

In October 1973 a mass movement forced Thailand’s prime minister to step down and leave the country, ending nearly forty years of dictatorship. Three years later, in a brutal reassertion of authoritarian rule, Thai state and para-state forces quashed a demonstration at Thammasat University in Bangkok. In Revolution Interrupted, Tyrell Haberkorn focuses on this period when political activism briefly opened up the possibility for meaningful social change. Tenant farmers and their student allies fomented revolution, she shows, not by picking up guns but by invoking laws— laws that the Thai state ultimately proved unwilling to enforce.

In choosing the law as their tool to fight unjust tenancy practices, farmers and students departed from the tactics of their ancestors and from the insurgent methods of the Communist Party of Thailand. To first imagine and then create a more just future, they drew on their own lived experience and the writings of Thai Marxian radicals of an earlier generation, as well as New Left, socialist, and other progressive thinkers from around the world. Yet their efforts were quickly met with harassment, intimidation, and assassinations of farmer leaders. More than thirty years later, the assassins remain unnamed.

Drawing on hundreds of newspaper articles, cremation volumes, activist and state documents, and oral histories, Haberkorn reveals the ways in which the established order was undone and then reconsolidated. Examining this turbulent period through a new optic—interrupted revolution—she shows how the still unnameable violence continues to constrict political opportunity and to silence dissent in present-day Thailand.

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Vietnam 1946: How the War Began


by Stein Tonnesson
University Of California Press, 2011

Based on multiarchival research conducted over almost three decades, this landmark account tells how a few men set off a war that would lead to tragedy for millions. Stein Tønnesson was one of the first historians to delve into scores of secret French, British, and American political, military, and intelligence documents. In this fascinating account of an unfolding tragedy, he brings this research to bear to disentangle the complex web of events, actions, and mentalities that led to thirty years of war in Indochina. As the story unfolds, Tønnesson challenges some widespread misconceptions, arguing that French general Leclerc fell into a Chinese trap in March 1946, and Vietnamese general Giap into a French trap in December. Taking us from the antechambers of policymakers in Paris to the docksides of Haiphong and the streets of Hanoi, Vietnam 1946 provides the most vivid account to date of the series of events that would make Vietnam the most embattled area in the world during the Cold War period.

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Passion, Betrayal, and Revolution in Colonial Saigon: The Memoirs of Bao Luong


by Hue-Tam Ho Tai
University of California Press, 2010

This is the incredible story of Bao Luong, Vietnam’s first female political prisoner. In 1927, when she was just 18, Bao Luong left her village home to join Ho Chi Minh’s Revolutionary Youth League and fight both for national independence and for women’s equality. A year later, she became embroiled in the Barbier Street murder, a crime in which unruly passion was mixed with revolutionary ardor. Weaving together Bao Luong’s own memoir with excerpts from newspaper articles, family gossip, and official documents, this book by Bao Luong’s niece takes us from rural life in the Mekong Delta to the bustle of colonial Saigon. It provides a rare snapshot of Vietnam in the first decades of the twentieth century and a compelling account of one woman’s struggle to make a place for herself in a world fraught with intense political intrigue.

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Song of the Week: The Great Spy Experiment (Singapore)

Posted on 20 November 2011 by Ronald Gilliam

The plan was simple. Get two guitars, a bass, a keyboard and a drumset. And rock. Five different people. One common goal: To change the face of Singapore music.

Drawing influences from bands like Ash, The Killers, Mansun, Radiohead, Kent, Suede and Interpol, The Great Spy Experiment create music that is described as ‘a champagne-fuelled cocktail of powerpop, indie, rock and dance’. As much guitar-led as it is beat-driven, with indie riffs juxtaposing irresistable pop hooks and dance textures overlaying dance-able rock-grooves, the music is created with the dancefloor in mind and the bedroom at heart. In just over three years, the band has gone from virtual unknowns to being touted as the nation’s indie darlings, on the back of incessant gigging and electrifying live performances, featuring in internationally renowned events such as the Baybeats, Singfest, Mosaic and ZoukOut festivals. In March 2007, the band travelled to the USA where they tore the stages at the South-by-Southwest Festival in Austin, as the first Singaporean representatives in the 21-year old event, as well as the San Antonio Indie Fest. In April 2007, the band travelled to the USA again, this time to perform at Singapore Day at New York’s Central Park. The Great Spy Experiment’s debut full-length album ‘Flower Show Riots’ was released in September 2007. -Last.fm


Facebook | MySpace | Last.fm | Reverb Nation | Interview

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Photography: Tales of the Waria

Posted on 16 November 2011 by PR Coordinator

Tales Of The Waria

“Some countries have what can be called “third sex” or “third gender” groupings. Leading examples are hijras, aravanis, zenanas and metis in South Asia. As well there are bakla in the Philippines, waria in Indonesia, mak nyahs in Malaysia and kathoey in Thailand. All these names refer to individuals who were born as males (or sometimes as intersexuals), and present themselves as female. Typically these groupings have faced various forms of discrimination and, at some times, in some countries, harassment and brutality by police and others. Positive responses to the situation of “third sex” groupings involve (a) recognition of their female or “third sex” status, (b) access to medical treatment, and (c) economic and social training and assistance. [...]”

[...] When we refer to a “third sex,” we need to be very careful. It is not a useful or accurate term in perhaps half of the world’s countries. There are no comparative studies of these groups – only a number of specific, often quite localized accounts. No one gives us a reliable list of the societies where the phrase is appropriate and where it is not. We must avoid simplistic assertions, such as statements suggesting that the “berdache” role among certain North American Indian tribes is analogous to that of the hijra, or that we can speak of the xanith of Oman as a general national category, when our source of information only describes one city (and is an accidental addition to a study on the role of women).”

“[...] In Indonesia the Social Welfare department has identified waria as an economically marginalized group and established training programs. As in other examples noted above, waria may get training to work in beauty parlours. [...] There are waria organizations in Indonesia, one going back to the 1960s. There are waria groups within various political parties, including Golkar, the party established by former President Soeharto. They provide entertainment at political rallies. The Department of Social Welfare, as well as municipal governments and political parties, have been involved in organizing or supporting waria organizations.”

At the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Hawai′i at Mānoa, we are proud of the diversity in our community as well as supporting the marginal SE Asian voices that are, at times, hidden. As a group which is sometimes misunderstood and forgotten, it is our pleasure to present this stunning set of photography by Diego Verges on the waria community. Please, enjoy.

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Photography by Diego Verges Fotógrafo | Text & Research by Professor Douglas Sanders

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Film Series: Tanah Air Beta (Indonesia)

Posted on 16 November 2011 by PR Coordinator

Wednesday, 16 November 2011 @6:30pm
Indonesia, 2010 (97 mins)
Indonesian w/ English subtitles

Director: Ari Sihasale
Cast: Alexandra Gottardo, Asrul Dahlan, Griffit Patricia, Lukman Sardi,
Yahuda Rumbindi, Ari Sihasale, Robby Tumewu, Thessa Kaunang

Inspired by the true events following the referendum for independence in East Timor (Timor Leste) in 1999, Tanah Air Beta is about the struggle of displaced people in a time of conflict. Despite the reality of terrifying political conditions following the referendum, Director Ari Sihasale (Denias, Senandung di Atas Awan) chooses to focus this film on the importance of family and friendship in desperate times. The film centers around the struggle of Tatiana (played by Alexandra Gottardo) and her daughter Merry (Griffit Patricia) who try to survive in poverty and an uncertain political situation in a refugee camp in East Nusa Tenggara. The exodus split Tatiana’s family resulting in her having to leave her bitter son behind in East Timor. Merry takes it upon herself to heal family wounds by traveling to the border to meet her brother. With little idea of where or how far the border is, the journey becomes the focal point for this heartwarming story. The opening scene is one that you will not want to miss.

Trailer: Tanah Air Beta (Indonesia) Distributor: Alenia Pictures

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Bookshelf Spotlight: Southeast Asian Feminists, Activism, and Literature

Posted on 16 November 2011 by PR Coordinator

Featured University Of Hawai’i Press Publishing

* Power, Resistance and Women Politicians in Cambodia: Discourses of Emancipation

Power, Resistance and Women Politicians in Cambodia: Discourses of Emancipation


by Mona Lilja
University Of Hawai’i Press, 2008

In a world where there are few women politicians, Cambodia is still noticeable as a country where strong cultural and societal forces act to subjugate women and limit their political opportunities. However, in their everyday life, Cambodian women do try to improve their situation and increase their political power, not least via manifold strategies of resistance. This book focuses on Cambodian female politicians and the strategies they deploy in their attempts to destabilize the cultural boundaries and hierarchies that restrain them. In particular, the book focuses on how women use discourses and identities as means of resistance, a concept only recently of wide interest among scholars studying power. The value of this book is thus twofold: not only does it give a unique insight into the political struggles of Cambodian women but also offers new insights to studies of power.

University Of Hawai’i Press | Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

Featured Books

* Freedom from Fear and Other Writings
* The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick Maker
* Passional: New Poems and Some Translations
* Refiguring Women, Colonialism, and Modernity in Burma
* Realizing the Dream of R. A. Kartini: Her Sister’s Letters from Colonial Java

Freedom from Fear and Other Writings


by Aung San Suu Kyi
Penguin Books, 1995

Aung San Suu Kyi, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and the leader of Burma’s National League for Democracy, has lived under house arrest since 1989. Nonetheless, despite her incarceration, Burma’s “woman of destiny” has steadfastly refused to renounce her non-violent opposition of the country oppressive military junta. She is one of the world’s greatest living defenders of freedom and democracy, and an inspiration to millions worldwide.

Freedom from Fear brings together the remarkable Buddhist leader’s most powerful speeches, letters, and interviews. She passionately voices sentiments that capture not only her own struggle and that of her fellow citizens, but also the hopes and fears of all people who yearn to be free.

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The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick Maker: A Collection of Short Stories


by Gilda Cordero-Fernando
Benipayo Press, 1962

This is the first collection of short stories by Filipino author Gilda Cordero-Fernando. Dowdy and glamor-starved housewives, the money-mad circle that barely senses the need for social justice, children anxious for love and security–these prvide the material for the fable and vision which fiction demands of its makers.

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Passional: New Poems and Some Translations


by Ophelia A. Dimalanta
University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2002

Passional is the title poem of Dr. Dimalanta’s sixth poetry collection. Her juxtaposition of a funeral wake and rather “erotic” description of the energy that “is last to go” is striking. Death throes as passion throes are supreme conceits of life, love, and dying. Part II of the poem is certainly one of the best descriptions of how the final death is truly the death of passion, the rigour mortis of the final separation between body and spirit, the final release of a “final come.” The perfect calm and the supreme emancipation of passional release and death release – the poetic juxtaposition is startling and truly poetic – .

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Refiguring Women, Colonialism, and Modernity in Burma


by Chie Ikeya
University Of Hawai’i Press, 2011

Refiguring Women, Colonialism, and Modernity in Burma presents the first study of one of the most prevalent and critical topics of public discourse in colonial Burma: the woman of the khit kala—”the woman of the times”—who burst onto the covers and pages of novels, newspapers, and advertisements in the 1920s. Educated and politicized, earner and consumer, “Burmese” and “Westernized,” she embodied the possibilities and challenges of the modern era, as well as the hopes and fears it evoked. In Refiguring Women, Chie Ikeya interrogates what these shifting and competing images of the feminine reveal about the experience of modernity in colonial Burma. She marshals a wide range of hitherto unexamined Burmese language sources to analyze both the discursive figurations of the woman of the khit kala and the choices and actions of actual women who—whether pursuing higher education, becoming political, or adopting new clothes and hairstyles—unsettled existing norms and contributed to making the woman of the khit kala the privileged idiom for debating colonialism, modernization, and nationalism.

The first book-length social history of Burma to utilize gender as a category of sustained analysis, Refiguring Women challenges the reigning nationalist and anticolonial historical narratives of a conceptually and institutionally monolithic colonial modernity that made inevitable the rise of ethnonationalism and xenophobia in Burma. The study demonstrates the irreducible heterogeneity of the colonial encounter and draws attention to the conjoined development of cosmopolitanism and nationalism. Ikeya illuminates the important roles that Burmese men and women played as cultural brokers and agents of modernity. She shows how their complex engagements with social reform, feminism, anticolonialism, media, and consumerism rearticulated the boundaries of belonging and foreignness in religious, racial, and ethnic terms.

Refiguring Women adds significantly to examinations of gender and race relations, modernization, and nationalism in colonized regions. It will be of interest to a broad audience—not least those working in the fields of Southeast Asian studies, colonial and postcolonial studies, cultural studies, and women’s and gender studies.

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Realizing the Dream of R. A. Kartini: Her Sister’s Letters from Colonial Java


by Joost J. Coté
Ohio University Press, 2007

Realizing the Dream of R. A. Kartini: Her Sisters’ Letters from Colonial Java presents a unique collection of documents reflecting the lives, attitudes, and politics of four Javanese women in the early twentieth century. Joost J. Coté translates the correspondence between Raden Ajeng Kartini, Indonesia’s first feminist, and her sisters, revealing for the first time her sisters’ contributions in defining and carrying out her ideals. With this collection, Coté aims to situate Kartini’s sisters within the more famous Kartini narrative–and indirectly to situate Kartini herself within a broader narrative.

The letters reveal the emotional lives of these modern women and their concerns for the welfare of their husbands and the success of their children in rapidly changing times. While by no means radical nationalists, and not yet extending their horizons to the possibility of an Indonesian nation, these members of a new middle class nevertheless confidently express their belief in their own national identity.

Realizing the Dream of R. A. Kartini is essential reading for scholars of Indonesian history, providing documentary evidence of the culture of modern, urban Java in the late colonial era and an insight into the ferment of the Indonesian nationalist movement in which these women and their husbands played representative roles.

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Song of the Week: Slank (Indonesia)

Posted on 12 November 2011 by Ronald Gilliam

Slank is an Indonesian rock band. It was founded in 1983 by some teenagers in a small street in Jakarta called Gang Potlot. They had played rock music everywhere until they got an opportunity to make an albumn. Bimbim created Cikini Stone Complex in early 1980s. This band only performed Rolling Stones song and not from another band. Then, they broke up late 1983 because of boredom. Accompanied by his colleague Denny and Erwan, Bimbim made Red Devil. For the guitarist Bimbim brought Bongky. In December 1983 they changed their band name became Slank because they are looked selengean.

Formed in Jakarta in 1983, Slank-the group’s initial lineup was Kaka (vocals), Pay (guitars), Bongky Marcel (bass), Indra Qadarish (keyboards), and Bimbim (drums) — would play their trade for a number of years before finally landing a deal and releasing their first album, Suit suit…hehehe, in 1990. From there, more albums, most of them commercially successful, followed, but Slank was plagued by a number of defections, some involving personal issues, others having to do with internal tensions based around creative decisions. The negativity was overcome, and over the next 20 years, Slank was able to increase their profile, touring the world and maintaining a high commercial value. In 2007, Slank released album number 20, Slow But Sure. Suit suit…hehehe (1991) was an enormous hit. Their subsequent success inspired the formation of other bands, such as Dewa. Their first three albums, awarded by BASF Indonesia as The Best Selling Albums on BASF tapes and the fourth album Generasi Biru went multi-platinum, with several songs making in into Indonesia’s top charts. Slank became the first MTV Indonesia icon in 2005.

Since its inception, Slank’s band members have changed frequently. Reasons have ranged from drugs uses, woman, money and differences in musical styles. The most popular line up of the band has been Kaka (vocals), Bimbim (Drum), Abdee (Guitars), Ivanka (Basses), Ridho (Guitars). In 2008 Slank has been touring the U.S. and Europe. They have also played in various Asian countries, such as Thailand, the Philippines, Japan and South Korea. Having more than fifteen albums sold and occasionally causing political controversy in Indonesia, Slank decided to travel to the USA to record their first English-speaking album, Anthem for the Broken-Hearted. Blues Saraceno is chosen to be their producer of this album. They record and mixed the album in only twenty-two days.
“If you want the world to see what you want to say, you better go to the highest mountain. And for music, the highest mountain now is in the U.S.A.,” says Abdee Negara

For more than two decades, Slank has managed a healthy attitude towards their music career, which in turn has helped them throughout the years. Slank has also gained somewhat of a cult status in Indonesia, Slank fans are known as ‘Slankers’, and they have a reputation for devotion. They waved their Slank flags, which consist of the word ‘Slank’ shaped into a graffiti-style butterfly. They sang along with several punk-rock songs and performed a stadium-worthy call-and-response routine. According to one of the guitarists Ridho, “Slankers” span all ages from children to adult. -Wikipedia


Official Profile (Bahasa) | Last.fm | MySpace | Youtube Chanel | Jakarta Post Article

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Bookshelf Spotlight: Southeast Asia, Natural Disasters, & Response

Posted on 09 November 2011 by PR Coordinator

Featured Books

* A Land On Fire: The Environmental Consequences of the Southeast Asian Boom
* Mining and Natural Hazard Vulnerability in the Philippines: Digging to Development or Digging to Disaster?
* Natural Disaster Reduction: South East Asian Realities, Risk Perception and Global Strategies
* Post-Disaster Reconstruction: Lessons from Aceh
* The Indian Ocean Tsunami: The Global Response to a Natural Disaster

A Land On Fire: The Environmental Consequences of the Southeast Asian Boom


by James David Fahn
Westview Press, 2003

The future of Earth’s environment will be decided in Asia, home to 60 percent of the world’s population and some of the world’s fastest-growing economies. As an award-winning investigative journalist based in Bangkok, James Fahn spent a decade grappling with the challenges facing the region’s mega-cities, tropical forests, coastlines, and societies dashing toward modernity.

In A Land on Fire, he shares his findings – the profound implications for global issues such as climate change, the loss of biodiversity, and the greening of world trade. He explores Southeast Asia’s environmental battles through the eyes of the people fighting them, and recounts his many adventures while covering them. Whether chasing down log smugglers along the Thai-Burmese border, exposing the dumping of toxic mercury into the Gulf of Thailand by multinational oil corporations, or covering the controversy surrounding the filming of the movie The Beach, Fahn provides unique insight into the relationship between sustainable development and democracy, the crippling impact of corruption, and the environmental challenges facing us all.

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Mining and Natural Hazard Vulnerability in the Philippines: Digging to Development or Digging to Disaster?


by William N. Holden, R. Daniel Jacobson
Anthem Press, 2012

The Philippines is a nation highly prone to a variety of natural hazards such as earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, typhoons, and El Niño induced droughts. These various natural hazards have a high potential to adversely interact with the potential for environmental degradation inherent in mining. Earthquakes can destabilize tailings storage facilities, typhoons can flood tailings ponds, and mine pit dewatering can enhance the competition for groundwater resources during droughts. This study shows how natural disasters can amplify the environmental harm prevalent in mining and pose a substantial threat to the livelihoods of archipelago’s poor, who depend upon subsistence agriculture and subsistence aquaculture.

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Natural Disaster Reduction: South East Asian Realities, Risk Perception and Global Strategies


by Dilip Kumar Sinha
Anthem Press, 2007

In the aftermath of considerable seismic unrest caused by the tsunami in the Indian Ocean, this volume focuses on exposing the coastal vulnerability of the region. Despite a plethora of enquiries [sic] into natural disasters in different parts of the globe, there is now a more conspicuous concern than ever for the South East Asian region. This global concern has become all the more prevalent since the Hyogo Declaration in January 2005 and the recent Asian Summit in Indonesia. The purpose of this treatise is to bring the characteristics of the disastrous events of the region to the fore, seeking to present not only the continuing fatalities and fragilities of the area, but also the possibilities for coping with natural disasters. The book’s layout is specifically shaped by the nature of the damage and threat caused by these disasters, particularly concerning the communities at risk and their responses. This book will appeal to those involved in both global and local organizations as administrators, facilitators, stakeholders and activists, as well as Governmental / Non Governmental agencies, societies including organizations such as ESCAP, UNDP, WMO, UNESCO, UNCRD.

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Post-Disaster Reconstruction: Lessons from Aceh


by Matthew Clarke, Sue Kenny, Ismet Fanany
Earthscan, 2010
On Sunday 26 December 2004, a tsunami of up to 30 meters high hit the northern tip of Sumatera in Indonesia, causing immediate destruction and the deaths of at least 130,000 in Indonesia alone. The scale of the devastation and ensuing human suffering prompted the biggest response endeavor to any natural disaster in history.

Post-Disaster Reconstruction will be the first major book that analyzes the different perspectives and experiences of the enormous post-tsunami reconstruction effort. It looks specifically at the reconstruction efforts in Aceh, one of the regions most heavily-hit by the tsunami and a province that has until recently suffered nearly three decades of armed conflict. Positioning the reconstruction efforts within Aceh’s multi-layered historical, cultural, socio-political and religious contexts, the authors explore diverse experiences and assessments of the reconstruction. They consider the importance of the political and religious settings of the reconstruction, the roles of communities and local non-government organizations and the challenges faced by Indonesian and international agencies. From the in-depth examination of this important case study of disaster reconstruction–significant not only because of the huge scale of the natural disaster and response but also the post-conflict issues–the editors draw together the lessons learned for the future of Aceh and make general recommendations for post-disaster and post-conflict reconstruction-making.

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The Indian Ocean Tsunami: The Global Response to a Natural Disaster


by Pradyumna P. Karan and Shanmugam P. Subbiah
University Press of Kentucky, 2010

On December 26, 2004, a massive tsunami triggered by an underwater earthquake pummeled the coasts of Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and other countries along the Indian Ocean. With casualties as far away as Africa, the aftermath was overwhelming: ships could be spotted miles inland; cars floated in the ocean; legions of the unidentified dead — an estimated 225,000 — were buried in mass graves; relief organizations struggled to reach rural areas and provide adequate aid for survivors.

Shortly after this disaster, researchers from around the world traveled to the region’s most devastated areas, observing and documenting the tsunami’s impact. The Indian Ocean Tsunami: The Global Response to a Natural Disaster offers the first analysis of the response and recovery effort. Editors Pradyumna P. Karan and S. Subbiah, employing an interdisciplinary approach, have assembled an international team of top geographers, geologists, anthropologists, and political scientists to study the environmental, economic, and political effects of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

The volume includes chapters that address the tsunami’s geo-environmental impact on coastal ecosystems and groundwater systems. Other chapters offer sociocultural perspectives on religious power relations in South India and suggest ways to improve government agencies’ response systems for natural disasters.

A clear and definitive analysis of the second deadliest natural disaster on record, The Indian Ocean Tsunami will be of interest to environmentalists and political scientists alike, as well as to planners and administrators of disaster-preparedness programs.

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Film Series: Himala (Miracle) (Philippines)

Posted on 08 November 2011 by Ronald Gilliam

Wednesday, 10 November 2011 @6:30pm
Philippines, 1982 (123 mins)
Tagalog with English and Japanese subtitles

Dir: Ishmael Bernal
Screenplay: Ricardo Lee
Cast: Nora Aunor, Veronica Palileo, Spanky Manikan, Gigi Dueñas, Vangie Labalan, Laura Centano, Joel Lamangan

Considered by many to be one of the greatest films in Philippine cinema history, frame for frame, HIMALA may also be the most beautifully shot Philippine film I’ve ever seen. With a photographer’s eye, director Ishmael Bernal (City After Dark, Relasyon) turns an arid, non-descript countryside Philippine town into a mystical place with real people. The Superstar of Philippine Cinema, Nora Aunor, playing the lead role, works with the visual setting as much as it works with her. She’s the ever-sad Elsa, an illegitimate child who one day claims, like many of us Filipinos like to do, to have seen the Virgin Mary, who has endowed her with super healing powers. A battle between her and a doubtful, sometimes vengeful, Catholic church ensues, and she starts winning. Throngs of peasant folk travel from afar to get their miracle on, and the once-filled church dwindles to a measly ten people. Is she real, or is it a hoax? For a suffering people short on hope in the faith they were given, and seeking it elsewhere, anywhere – does it even matter? Acting with just her eyes for most of the film, Aunor is mesmerizing. HIMALA makes a potent, poignant statement on Filipinos’ faith, making a subtle connection between the colonial legacy of the church and the suffering that drives us toward and away from it. -Prometheus Brown

Distributor: Kabayan Central

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Song of the Week: Sai Sai (Myanmar)

Posted on 07 November 2011 by Ronald Gilliam

Sai Sai Kham Hlaing (Burmese: စိုင်းစိုင်းခမ်းလှိုင်) is a popular Burmese singer-songwriter, model, novelist, and actor of ethnic Shan descent. He is best known for his hip hop music. He was born on 10 April 1979 in Taunggyi to Cho Cho San Tun and Kham Hlaing of an ethnic Shan aristocratic family. His great-grandfather Sao San Tun, Saopha of Mongpawng, was a signatory to the 1947 Panglong Agreement that was the basis for the formation of modern Myanmar, and one of nine senior government officials assassinated on 19 July 1947. The day of the assassination is commemorated each year as the Martyrs’ Day in Myanmar. The hospital he was delivered in was his great-grandfather’s namesake—the Sao San Tun Hospital. He is the eldest son and has two younger sisters and a younger brother. Soon after he was born, his parents moved to nearby Aungban for two years before moving back to Taunggyi. His parents divorced when he was got to 4th standard. He was living in two houses soon after the divorce but ended up with his father. He would not see his mother for another six years. He did not recognize his own mother when they met again in Yangon. Sai Sai attributes his interest in music to his father. He grew up listening to songs by Sai Htee Saing and Aung Yin that his father listened to on a “small mono cassette player”. Sai Htee Saing and his father were friends. But it was after his parents’ divorce that Sai Sai earnestly took up music. His father bought him a guitar at 5th standard, and he learned to play it by 6th standard. Sai Sai became a judo player at 8th standard. He won district level competitions in high school, and even competed in national youth competitions in Yangon. Sai Sai came to Yangon and enrolled in Dagon University as an English major. He received his bachelor’s degree in English from Dagon University and a graduate diploma in English from the University of Foreign Languages, Yangon. His mother lives in Australia and his father died in 2006. -Wikipeida


Official Homepage | Myanmar Music Online Page

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