Reaches new heights of excellence. Nelly van Doorn's review of Barton and Fealy's NU I found particularly interesting : 'a radical yet traditional organisation' seems a pretty good summing up of the most powerful non-Abri, non-presidential organisation in Indonesia today. Aditjondro's piece was the usual brilliance and deserved pride of place as first and longest article: the dedication at the end to Iran's Ali Shari'ati especially impressive. This quarter's Inside Indonesia is so good it ought to be compulsory reading for anyone interested.
Chris Beale, Asia-Info, Sydney.

I felt proud to see a portrait of a woman in Islamic head dress on the cover of this Australian magazine. But the last paragraph of George Aditjondro's article, proposing that all the banned political parties including the Communist Party have the right to exist in a multiparty system, makes me think he wants to return to the past, pitting religion against atheism.
Haryanto, University of Queensland, Brisbane.

Throughout history, Muslims more than anyone have been aware of the reality of pluralism. George Aditjondro likes an Islamic political model that practises democracy and avoids sectarianism. George Aditjondro is a great man.
Arifin Bakti, University of Queensland, Brisbane.

You'll be pleased to know that my son's Grade 3 class has sworn off Nike forever after he took the Inside Indonesia article about Nike for 'show and tell'.
Margaret Coffey, ABC Radio, Melbourne.

Did I tell you that based on a long ago article from Inside Indonesia on Nike and Reebok factory conditions in Indonesia [June 1991; ed.], I successfully petitioned our socially responsible mutual fund, Pax World, to divest Nike and Reebok stock!? They dropped the stock at the next available moment. One more victory for the power of the press!
Jay Losher, Austin, Texas.

The assassination scenario in 'Murder in the Cathedral' is very strange and illogical. Bishop Belo's death in a murder before tens of thousands of his greeters would have opened an unprecedented opportunity for the resistance to float all kinds of allegations to smear Indonesia from the topmost to the lowest, uneducated infantryman. And why should he die before his time? He is not anti-integration as often depicted by some sources.
Leonardo J Rimba, Jakarta.

Having spent the last year and a half teaching in a university in Central Java, and sampling the culinary and political delights of what appears to my ignorant eyes to be a vast slave state, I now hope like hell that Australia does not become Asian in its culture or politics, but remains European and democratic, and that it ensures this by reducing our Asian intake to the minimum.
Dr Peter Gilet, Satya Wacana University, Salatiga, Indonesia.

Inside Indonesia is not a news magazine, but it reflects the interests of the Indonesian NGO movement to overseas readers, especially in Australia... The articles are supported by good research. Using critical, analytical and sharp commentary, this bulletin covers human rights, environmental issues, social-economic and political concerns. However, Inside Indonesia also covers the positive side of the country.
From an MA thesis by Gregorius Winarno, Coventry University, UK.