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Joining Performancing Ads is extremely easy. Simply apply for an account and confirm your email. After you log into the control panel, you can enter your site information.

You can add as many blogs as you want. You do not need to reapply if you have more than one site or blog. Installing the ad code is as easy as uploading a plugin. Peformancing Ads offer ad plugins for Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla and stand alone PHP sites.

Get paid by Joining as Publisher Account

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All publishers in the Performancing Ads network earn credits either by selling ads or showing other publisher ads in empty spots. Credits are then spent by getting free ad space on similar sites. It’s a nice way to put that unsold inventory to work. With the Publisher Exchange Program, Everyone gets more exposure.

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Extract or Convert PDF files to Microsoft Office Word (.doc)
Export PDF files into .DOC

The program can Convert text, images, shapes from PDF file to Microsoft Office Word .Doc file and preserve the layout. It can convert all the pages, or any pages range of the PDF file. And it is a standalone program. You can convert PDF to Word Doc without Adobe Acrobat Reader or Microsoft Word installed.

Its Freeware (free software), simple and easy to use.

Download
1. Pdf2WordSetup.exe
2. keycode
2. User Manual (Bahasa Indonesia)

[root@afrizal etc]# /usr/local/cpanel/bin/domain_keys_installer username

(i.e.: /usr/local/cpanel/bin/domain_keys_installer afrizal)

It will automatically installing Domain Key for the domain (afrizal.net) successfully.
Now you can verify it from the db record of the domain. The following new entry will be added in the db record.

[root@afrizal etc] vi /var/named/afrizal.net.db

; cPanel 11.23.3-CURRENT_25049
; Zone file for afrizal.net
$TTL 14400
@ 86400 IN SOA ns1.e-padi.com. zall.e-padi.com. (
2008111500 ; serial, todays date+todays
86400 ; refresh, seconds
7200 ; retry, seconds
3600000 ; expire, seconds
86400 ) ; minimum, seconds

afrizal.net. 86400 IN NS ns1.e-padi.com.
afrizal.net. 86400 IN NS ns2.e-padi.com.

afrizal.net. IN A 75.125.178.242

localhost.afrizal.net. IN A 127.0.0.1

afrizal.net. IN MX 0 mail.afrizal.net.

mail IN CNAME afrizal.net.
www IN CNAME afrizal.net.
ftp IN A 75.125.178.242
default._domainkey IN TXT “k=rsa; p=MHwwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEBBQADawAwaAJhAMZmC4FHl63UcC9o1Q3V72dp8DLjp;”

Now run command below:
[root@afrizal etc] rndc reload afrizal.net
[root@afrizal etc] /etc/rc.d/init.d/exim restart

Now you can verify it by creating a new mail account iam@afrizal.net and send an email to yahoo account, then verify the headers.

Delivered-To: zall@e-padi.com
Received: by 10.65.231.17 with SMTP id i17cs232839qbr;
Sat, 15 Nov 2008 12:31:23 -0800 (PST)
Received: by 10.100.107.3 with SMTP id f3mr1053948anc.28.1226781083285;
Sat, 15 Nov 2008 12:31:23 -0800 (PST)
Return-Path:
Received: d24si2511266and.24.2008.11.15.12.31.21;
Sat, 15 Nov 2008 12:31:22 -0800 (PST)
Received-SPF:
DomainKey-Status: good
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=neutral (google.com: 75.125.178.242 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of iam@afrizal.net) smtp.mail=iam@afrizal.net; domainkeys=pass header.From=iam@afrizal.net
DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=default; d=afrizal.net;
b=AoQj21sMFWt8DT6WHsOJ/+deZ+2dEdRnNOs8hVsqFIp5qqCbW06JsSUZSekc7fc6;

From the above headers you can confirm that domain key is working fine.

If you need to download domain key, go to http://sourceforge.net/projects/domainkeys
Find more documentations th Domain Key at : http://domainkeys.sourceforge.net
Well you will find more information about Domain Key at: http://antispam.yahoo.com/domainkeys

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Select Card(s) >> Personal Information >> Optional Enhancements >> Declaration >> Confirmation

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Whois Soeharto?
Soeharto also spelled Suharto (June 8, 1921 – January 27, 2008) was an Indonesian military leader, and the second President of Indonesia, holding the office from 1967 to 1998.

Soeharto with full name H. M. Soeharto was born in a small village near Yogyakarta, during the era of Dutch colonial control. His ethnic Javanese peasant parents divorced not long after his birth, and he passed between several foster parents for much of his childhood. After a brief and unsuccessful stint as a village bank clerk, Soeharto joined the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army in 1940. During the Japanese occupation of Indonesia, Soeharto served in various Japanese-organized Indonesian security forces. He joined the newly formed Indonesian army, during Indonesia’s independence struggle, in which he rose through the ranks to command a garrison against Dutch offensives at the Republican capital of Yogyakarta. Following Indonesian independence, Soeharto rose to the rank of Major General.
An attempted coup on September 30, 1965 was countered by Soeharto-led troops. The Soeharto-led army blamed the attempt on the Indonesian Communist Party, which was subsequently outlawed, and led a violent anti-communist purge, which is thought to have killed over half a million people. Soeharto wrested power from the weakened incumbent and founding president, Sukarno, who relied on the ICP for support, and was inaugurated President in March 1968. Popular, military and political support in Indonesia for Soeharto’s 32-year presidency eroded dramatically following the devastating effect of the 1997–98 Asian financial crisis on Indonesia’s economy and standard of living. Soeharto was forced to resign from the presidency in May 1998 following mass demonstrations and violence. Soeharto lived his post-presidential years in near seclusion, and died at the age of 86 in Jakarta in 2008.

The legacy of Soeharto’s 32-year presidency is debated both in Indonesia and abroad. Under his “New Order” administration, Soeharto constructed a strong, centralized and military-dominated government. An ability to maintain stability over a sprawling and diverse Indonesia and an avowedly anti-Communist stance won him the economic and diplomatic support of the West during the Cold War. For most of his presidency, Indonesia experienced significant economic growth and industrialization, dramatically improving health, education and living standards. The “New Order” placed restrictions on the country’s ethnic Chinese. Against the backdrop of Cold War international relations, Soeharto’s “New Order” invasion of East Timor, and the subsequent 24-year occupation, resulted in an estimated minimum of 102,800 deaths. By the 1990s, the New Order’s authoritarianism and widespread corruption—estimates of government funds missappropirated by the Soeharto family range from US$1.5 billion and US$35 billion—was a source of much discontent, and was referred as one of the world’s most corrupt leaders. In the years since his presidency, attempts to try him on charges of corruption and genocide failed because of his poor health.

Like many Javanese, Soeharto had only one name. In religious contexts, he is sometimes called “Haji” or “el-Haj Mohammed Soeharto”, but this Islamic title is not part of his formal name or generally used. The spelling “Soeharto” has been official in Indonesia since 1947, but the older spelling, “Soeharto”, is still frequently used.

Military career

World War II and Japanese occupation

After a brief stint in a clerical job at a village bank (from which he was forced to resign after a bicycle mishap tore his only working clothes), followed by a spell of unemployment, Soeharto joined the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL) in 1940, and studied in a Dutch-run military school in Gombong near Yogyakarta. With the Netherlands under German occupation and the Japanese pressing for access to Indonesian oil supplies, the ranks of the KNIL had been opened to large intakes of previously excluded Javanese.

After graduation, Soeharto was assigned to Battalion XIII at Rampal. His service there was unextraordinary, but for his contracting malaria requiring hospitalization while on guard duty, and then gaining promotion to sergeant.

The March 1942 invasion of Imperial Japanese forces was initially welcomed by many Indonesians as a key step towards independence and Soeharto was one of thousands of Indonesians who volunteered for Japanese organised security forces. He first joined the Japanese sponsored police force at the rank of keibuho (assistant inspector), where he claimed to have gained his first experience in the intelligence work so central to his presidency (”Criminal matters became a secondary problem,” Soeharto remarked, “what was most important were matters of a political kind”).

Soeharto shifted from police work toward the Japanese-sponsored militia, the Peta (Defenders of the Fatherland) in which Indonesians served as officers. In his training to serve at the rank of shodancho (platoon commander) he encountered a localized version of the Japanese bushido, or “way of the warrior”, used to indoctrinate troops. This training encouraged an anti-Dutch and pro-nationalist thought, although toward the aims of the Imperial Japanese militarists. The encounter with a nationalistic and militarist ideology is believed to have profoundly influenced Soeharto’s own way of thinking.

The Japanese turned ex-NCOs, including Soeharto, into officers and gave them further military education, including lessons in the use of the samurai sword. Soeharto’s biographer, O.G. Roeder, records in The Smiling General (1969) that Soeharto was “well known for his tough, but not brutal, methods”.

Indonesian National Revolution

The Japanese surrender to the Allies in World War II brought forth the opportunity for the leaders of the Indonesian Nationalist cause Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta to hastily declare the complete independence of Indonesia and the beginning of the Indonesian National Revolution. International recognition of Indonesia’s sovereignty, however, would only come after armed action — a task at which Soeharto would prove himself adept.

Expulsion of the Japanese

The Japanese surrender left Soeharto in a position to create a name for himself as a part of the military effort to first expel the remaining Japanese forces, and to prepare nationalist forces for the Dutch attempt to retake their former colonial possessions in the archipelago. He became a deputy to Umar Slamet in the service of the revolutionary government’s People’s Security Body (BKR).

Soeharto claims to have led a number of attacks against remaining Japanese forces around Yogyakarta. The central role he commonly portrayed himself playing in his reminisces on the period during his presidency is debatable; however, it may be acknowledged that Soeharto’s familiarity with military functioning helped in the organization of the disparate independence forces into a unified fighting force. In the early years of the War, Soeharto organized local armed forces into Battalion X of Regiment I; Soeharto was promoted to the rank of Major and became Battalion X’s leader.

Return of the Dutch

The arrival of the Allies, under a mandate to return the situation to the status quo ante bellum, quickly led to clashes between Soeharto’s Division X and returning Dutch forces, bolstered by Gurkhas in the employ of Great Britain. Political differences within both the Allies and the civilian Nationalist forces caused the conflict to alternate in intensity from the end of 1945 into first months of 1946, as negotiations went on between the leaderships of the Indonesian Nationalists and the Dutch in between periods of fighting. In this muddle, Soeharto led his troops toward halting an advance by the Dutch T (”Tiger”) Brigade on May 17, 1946. It earned Soeharto the respect of his superior, Lieutenant Colonel Sunarto Kusumodirjo, who invited him to draft the working guidelines for the Battle Leadership Headquarters (MPP), a body created to organize and unify the command structure of the Indonesian Nationalist forces.

The military forces of the still infant Republic of Indonesia were constantly restructuring. By August 1946, Soeharto was head of the 22nd Regiment of Division III (the “Diponegoro” Division) stationed in Yogyakarta. In late 1946 the Diponegoro Division became responsible for defense of the west and south-west of Yogyakarta from Dutch forces. Conditions at the time are reported in Dutch sources as miserable; Soeharto himself is reported as assisting smuggling syndicates in the transport of opium through the territory he controlled, in order to make income.

Soeharto was married to Siti Hartinah, a woman from a high class family that, in the years of the revolution, lost its prestige and income. Over the next 17 years the couple would have six children: Siti Hardiyanti Rukmana (Tutut, born 1949), Sigit Harjojudanto (born 1951), Bambang Trihatmodjo (born 1953), Siti Hediati (Titiek, born 1959), Hutomo Mandala Putra (Tommy, born 1962), and Siti Hutami Endang Adiningsih (Mamiek, born 1964). Soeharto’s wife, died in 1996.

Operatie Kraai (”Operation Crow”), commenced in December 1948 and decimated much of the Indonesian fighting forces, resulting in the capture of Sukarno and Hatta, the civilian leadership of Indonesia. Soeharto, for his part, took severe casualties as the Dutch invaded the area of Yogyakarta; the retreat was equally humiliating.

Guerrilla warfare and victory

It is widely believed that the humiliating nature of this defeat engrained a sense of guilt in Soeharto, as well as a sense of obligation to avenge his honor. Soeharto, and the aggrieved Indonesian armed forces, attempted to do this by means of guerrilla warfare, using intelligence and supply networks established at the village level. During this time ambushes became a favored tactic; villagers were enlisted to attack Dutch patrols with weapons as primitive as bamboo spears. The desired effect was to remind the populace of the continuing resistance to Dutch rule. However, these attacks were largely ineffective and were often comparable to suicide.

Soeharto’s efforts to regain the national honor culminated in an attack on Dutch forces at Yogyakarta on March 1, 1949. Soeharto would later embellish his role as the singular plotter; according to more objective sources, however, the nationalist Sultan Hamengku Buwono IX (who still remained in power), as well as the Panglima of the Third Division ordered the attack. General Nasution would recall, however, that Soeharto took great care in preparing the “General Offensive” (Indonesian” Serangan Umum).

In a series of daring small-scale raids under cover of darkness and with the support of locals, Soeharto’s forces captured the city, holding it until noon. The attack yielded some ammunition and a few light arms; as propaganda and psychological warfare it had filled the desired effect, however — civilians sympathetic to the Nationalist cause within the city had been galvanized by the show of force, and internationally, the United Nations took notice, with the Security Council putting pressure on the Dutch to cease Police Action and to re-embark on negotiations. Soeharto gained both national and international recognition of his abilities as a military planner.

The return of the Dutch to the negotiating table all but assured, Soeharto took an active interest in the peace agreements, though they were much to his dissatisfaction.

Post-Independence military career

During the following years he served in the Indonesian National Army, stationed primarily on Java. In 1950, Colonel Soeharto led the Garuda Brigade in suppressing a rebellion of largely Ambonese colonial-trained supporters of the Dutch-established State of Eastern Indonesia and its federal entity the United States of Indonesia; the rebellion was led by Andi Azis a former officer of the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL). During his one-year stay in Makassar, Soeharto became acquainted with his neighbours the Habibie family, whose eldest son BJ Habibie would later became Soeharto’s vice-president and went on to succeed him as President. In 1951, Soeharto led his troops in a cautious blocking campaign against the Islamic-inspired rebellion of Battalion 426 in Central Java before it was broken by the ‘Banteng (Wild Buffalo) Raiders’ led by Ahmad Yani. Between 1954 and 1959, Brigadier General Soeharto served in the important position of commander of Diponegoro Division, responsible for Central Java and Yogyakarta provinces. His relationship with prominent businessmen Liem Sioe Liong and Bob Hasan began in Central Java where he was involved in series of ‘profit generating’ enterprises conducted primarily to keep the poorly funded military unit functioning. Army anti-corruption investigations implicated Soeharto in 1959 smuggling scandal. However, his military career was rescued by Gen. Gatot Subroto; instead of being brought before a court martial, he was transferred to the army Staff College in Bandung, West Java.

In 1962 he was promoted to the rank of major general and was appointed to lead the Mandala Command, a joint army-navy-air force umbrella command headquartered in Makassar, that organised military incursions in Netherlands New Guinea, after this country had elected a council and adopted a flag and anthem in preparation of independence. Diplomatic pressure by the US, which feared Indonesia would otherwise ally with the Soviet Union, led the Netherlands to sign the New York Agreement that transferred sovereignty of Western New Guinea to Indonesia. After this, Soeharto was appointed commander of Kostrad (Strategic Reserve), a sizeable army combat force, which most importantly had significant presence in the Jakarta area.

Overthrow of Sukarno (Soekarno) (1965)

Background

Described as the great dalang (”puppet master”), President Sukarno’s position came to depend on balancing the opposing and increasingly hostile forces of the army and Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI). His anti-imperial ideology saw Indonesia increasingly dependent on the Soviet Union and then communist China. By 1965, the PKI penetrated all levels of government extensively, and with the support of Sukarno and the air force, successfully pursued policies to gain influence at the expense of the army, thus ensuring the army’s enmity. By late 1965, the army was divided between a left-wing faction allied with the PKI, and a right-wing faction that were being courted from abroad by the United States.

Abortive coup and anti-communist purge

On the night of September 30–October 1, 1965 six senior army generals were kidnapped and executed in Jakarta by a battalion of soldiers from the Presidential Guard in an attempted coup. The left faction among the top generals was wiped out, including the powerful Army Chief of Staff, Ahmad Yani. The army thus fell to those more willing to stand up to Sukarno and the army’s enemies on the left. Backed by elements of the armed forces, the insurgents, known as the 30 September Movement, commanded the Presidential Palace opposite Merdeka Square, the national radio station, and telecommunications centre. The group announced on radio that morning that they were trying to stop a CIA-backed military coup which was planned to remove Sukarno from power on “Army Day”, October 5.

Soeharto was the most senior general not removed by the 30 September group, apart from Armed Forces Chief of Staff, General Abdul Harris Nasution (who was targeted for assassination but narrowly escaped, and was in hiding). Soeharto had no affinity to Sukarno, nor any special Islamic conviction with which to oppose him. He despised disorder, but was known for prizing opportunity, for which General Yani and disciplined him several years before, thus removing affinity there. On the night of 30 September, Soeharto had been in hospital preoccupied with a scalding injury to his three-year old son Tommy where Colonel Abdul Latief was the only principal of ensuing events with whom Soeharto spoke that evening.

Upon being told of the disappearance of the generals and shootings, Soeharto went to Kostrad headquarters just before dawn from where he could see soldiers occupying Merdeka Square. He led the elite Army Strategic Reserve (Kostrad) in seizing control of the centre of Jakarta, capturing key strategic sites. Now joined by Nasution, Soeharto announced over the radio at 9:00pm that six generals had been kidnapped by “counter-revolutionaries” and that he was in control of the army, and would crush the 30 September Movement and safeguard Sukarno. Soeharto issued an ultimatum to Halim Air Force Base, where the G30S had based themselves and where Sukarno (the reasons for his presence are unclear and were subject of claim and counter-claim), General Omar Dhani and Aidit had gathered. The coup leaders fled Jakarta while G30S-sympathetic battalions in Central Java quickly came under Soeharto control, and it was clear that the incompetently organised and poorly coordinated coup had failed. By 2 October, Soeharto’s faction was firmly in control of the army. Sukarno’s obedience to Soeharto’s 1 October ultimatum to leave Halim is seen as changing all power relationships. Sukarno’s fragile balance of power between the military, political Islam, communists, and nationalists that underlay his “Guided Democracy” was now collapsing.

In early October, a military propaganda campaign began to sweep the country, successfully convincing both Indonesian and international audiences that it was a Communist coup, and that the murders were cowardly atrocities against Indonesian heroes. The PKI’s denials of involvement had little effect. The army led campaign to purge Indonesian society, government and armed forces of the communist party and other leftist organisations. Leading PKI members were immediately arrested, some summarily executed. The purge quickly spread from Jakarta to the rest of the country, and the worst massacres were in Java and Bali. The situation varied across the country; in some areas the army organised civilian groups and local militias, in other areas communal vigilante action preceded the army. The most widely accepted estimates are that at least half a million were killed. A CIA study of the events in Indonesia assessed that “In terms of the numbers killed the anti-PKI massacres in Indonesia rank as one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century..”. Many others were also imprisoned and for the next ten years people were still being imprisoned as suspects. It is thought that as many as 1.5m were imprisoned at one stage or another. As a result of the purge, one of Sukarno’s three pillars of support, the Indonesian Communist Party, had been effectively eliminated by the other two, the military and political Islam.

Power struggle

By January 1966, President Sukarno’s strongest pillar of support had been effectively eliminated, largely by his other two pillars of power, the army and the Muslims. Long wanting to more control of the political system, the army now saw its opportunity to occupy the apex of Indonesian power. Sukarno was still the Supreme Commander by virtue of the constitution, thus Soeharto was careful not to be seen to be seizing power in his own coup. For eighteen months following the quashing of the 30 September Movement, there was a complicated process of political manoeuvers against Sukarno, including student agitation, stacking of parliament, media propaganda and military threats.

On February 1, 1966, Pres. Sukarno promoted Soeharto to the rank of Lieutenant General. The same month, Gen. Nasution had been forced out of his position of Defense Minister. The power contest had been boiled down to Soeharto and Sukarno; with Sukarno in ill-health and politically isolated due to the removal of the PKI from the scene, Soeharto had virtually assured himself the presidency. The Supersemar decree of 11 March 1966 transferred much of Sukarno’s power over the parliament and army to Soeharto, ostensibly allowing Soeharto to do whatever was needed to restore order.

On March 12, 1967 Sukarno was stripped of his remaining power by Indonesia’s provisional Parliament, and Soeharto named Acting President. Sukarno was placed under house arrest and little more was heard from him, and he died in June 1970. On March 21, 1968, the Provisional Peoples Representative Assembly formally elected Soeharto for the first of his five-year terms as President.

“New Order” Government (1967–1998) (Order Baru)

Institutionalisation of the New Order

Soeharto established what he called the “New Order” (Orde Baru). In place of Sukarno’s revolutionary rhetoric, Soeharto showed a pragmatic use of power, and in contrast to the liberal parliamentary democracy of the 1950s, Soeharto headed an authoritarian, military-dominated government. Economic development and the building of strong government with a resultant weak civil society became defining features of the New Order.

Internationally, Soeharto put Indonesia on a course toward improved relations with Western nations, while ending its friendly relations with the People’s Republic of China. He dispatched his foreign minister, Adam Malik to mend strained relations with the United States, United Nations, and Malaysia and end the Confrontation. Indonesia also became a founding member of ASEAN. Diplomatic ties with the People’s Republic of China were eventually restored in 1990.

To maintain domestic order, Soeharto greatly expanded the funding and powers of the Indonesian state apparatus. He established two intelligence agencies—the Operational Command for the Restoration of Security and Order (KOPKAMTIB) and the State Intelligence Coordination Agency (BAKIN)—to deal with threats to the regime. Soeharto also established the Bureau of Logistics (BULOG) to distribute rice and other staple commodities granted by USAID. These new government bodies were put under the military regional command structure, that under Soeharto was given a “dual function” as both a defense force and as civilian administrators.

Soeharto became a strong advocate for Chinese assimilation rather than integration. As part of 1967’s ‘Basic Policy for the Solution of the Chinese Problem’ and other measures, all but one Chinese-language papers were closed, all Chinese religious expressions had to be confined to their homes, Chinese-language schools were phased out, Chinese script in public places was banned, and Chinese were encouraged to take on Indonesian-sounding names. Most of this legislation were revoked following Soeharto’s fall from power in 1998.

Economic Matters

President Soeharto relied on a group of American-educated economists, nicknamed the “Berkeley Mafia,” to set economic policy. Soon after coming to power, he passed a number of reforms meant to establish Indonesia as a center of foreign investment. These included the privatization of its natural resources to promote investment by industrialized nations, labour laws favorable to multinational corporations, and soliciting funds for development from institutions including the World Bank, Western banks, and friendly governments. Soeharto brought a shift in policy from firebrand Sukarno that allowed for USAID and other relief agencies to resume operations within the country. Soeharto would open Indonesia’s economy by divesting state owned companies, and Western nations in particular were encouraged to invest and take control of many of the mining and construction interests in Indonesia.

Within a few years, the Indonesian economy was revived from its near collapsed state of the mid-1960s. It grew by an average 7 per cent for 25 years, reducing the proportion of Indonesians in the “very poor” category from 65% in the mid-1960s to 7% in 1990, (although much of these gains would be lost in the 1997/98 Asian financial crisis). Soeharto established Indonesian self-sufficiency in rice production by the mid-1980s, extended basic education to almost all citizens and implemented a successful family planning program.

As virtually unchecked forces in Indonesian society under the New Order, however, members of the military and Golkar Party were heavily involved as intermediaries between businesses (foreign and domestic) and the Indonesian government. This led to bribery, racketeering, and embezzlement. Funds from these practices often flowed to foundations (yayasan) controlled by the Soeharto family.

Unitary state and regional unrest

From his assumption of office until his resignation, Soeharto continued Sukarno’s policy of asserting Indonesian sovereignty. He acted zealously to stake and enforce territorial claims over much of the region, through both diplomacy and military action.

In 1969, Soeharto moved to end the longtime controversy over the last Dutch territory in the East Indies, western New Guinea. Working with the United States and United Nations, an agreement was made to hold a referendum on self-determination, in which participants could choose to remain part of the Netherlands, to integrate with the Republic of Indonesia, or to become independent. Though originally phrased to be a nationwide vote of all adult Papuans, the “Act of Free Choice” was held July–August 1969 allowed only 1022 “chiefs” to vote. The unanimous vote was for integration with the Republic of Indonesia, leading to doubts of the validity of the vote.

In 1975, after Portugal withdrew from its colony of East Timor and the Fretilin movement momentarily took power, Soeharto ordered troops to invade East Timor. Later the puppet government installed by Indonesia requested the area be annexed to the country. A detailed statistical report prepared for the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor estimated a minimum of 102,800 conflict-related deaths in the period 1974–1999, namely, approximately 18,600 killings and 84,200 ‘excess’ deaths from hunger and illness. On July 15, 1976 Soeharto’s “New Order” declared East Timor the 27th province of Indonesia. Following Soeharto’s 1998 resignation from the Presidency, East Timor voted for independence in 1999 and was transferred to United Nations administration.

In 1976, the regime was challenged in the province of Aceh by the formation of the Free Aceh Movement, or GAM, who demanded independence from the unitary state. Soeharto quickly authorized troops to put down the rebellion, forcing several of its leaders into exile in Sweden. Prolonged fighting between GAM and the Indonesian military and police led Soeharto to declare martial law in the province, by naming Aceh a “military operational area” (DOM) in 1990.

The rapid pace of this development had vastly increased their population density. In response, Soeharto pursued the policy of transmigration to promote movement from crowded cities to rural regions of the archipelago where natural resources had not yet been exploited.

Politics and dissent

In 1970, corruption prompted student protests and an investigation by a government commission. Soeharto responded by banning student protests, forcing the activists underground. Only token prosecution of the cases recommended by the commission was pursued. The pattern of co-opting a few of his more powerful opponents while criminalising the rest became a hallmark of Soeharto’s rule.

In order to maintain a veneer of democracy, Soeharto made a number of electoral reforms. According to his electoral rules, however, only three parties were allowed to participate in the election: his own Golkar party; the Islamist United Development Party (PPP); and the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI). All the previously existing political parties were forced to be part of either the PPP and PDI, with public servants under pressure to join Golkar. In a political compromise with the powerful military, he banned its members from voting in elections, but set aside 100 seats in the electoral college for their representatives. As a result, he was unopposed for reelection as president in 1973, 1978, 1983, 1988, 1993, and 1998.

On May 5, 1980 a group of prominent military men, politicians, academics and students calling themselves the “Petition of Fifty” questioned Soeharto’s use of the national ideology Pancasila. The Indonesian media suppressed the news and the government placed restrictions on the signatories. After the group’s 1984 accusation that Soeharto was creating a one-party state, some of its leaders were jailed.

In the same decade, it is believed by many scholars that the Indonesian military split between a nationalist “red and white faction” and an Islamist “green faction.” As the 1980s closed, Soeharto is said to have been forced to shift his alliances from the former to the latter, leading to the rise of Jusuf Habibie in the 1990s.

After the 1990s brought end of the Cold War, Western concern over communism waned, and Soeharto’s human rights record came under greater international scrutiny. The 1991 killing of over 200 East Timorese civilians in Dili, East Timor, resulted in the Congress of the United States passing limitations on IMET assistance to the Indonesian military. In 1993, under President Bill Clinton, the U.S. delegation to the UN Human Rights Commission helped pass a resolution expressing deep concern over Indonesian human rights violations in East Timor. Noam Chomsky has referred to the Indonesian invasion and occupation of East Timor has the worst instance of genocide relative to population since the Holocaust.

Resignation

In 1996 Soeharto was challenged by a split over the leadership of the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI), a legal party that propped up the regime. Megawati Sukarnoputri, the daughter of Sukarno, had become PDI’s chairwoman and was increasingly critical of Soeharto’s regime. In response, Soeharto backed a co-opted faction led by Deputy Speaker of Parliament Suryadi. The Suryadi faction announced a party congress to sack Megawati would be held in Medan from June 20 - June 22.

In response, Megawati proclaimed that if sacked, her supporters would hold demonstrations in protest. The Suryadi faction went through with its sacking of Megawati, and the demonstrations manifested themselves throughout Indonesia. This led to several confrontations on the streets between protesters and security forces. A deal was eventually made with the military to allow Megawati’s supporters to take over PDI headquarters in Jakarta, in exchange for a pledge of no further demonstrations. During this time, Megawati supporters organized “democracy forums” at the site, with several activists making speeches denouncing Soeharto and his regime.

After one month of this, police, soldiers, and persons claiming to be Suryadi supporters stormed the headquarters, killing Megawati supporters and arresting two-hundred. Those arrested were tried under the Anti-Subversion and Hate-spreading laws. The day would become known as “Black Saturday” and mark the beginning of a renewed crackdown by the New Order government against supporters of democracy, now called the “Reformasi” or Reformation.

The 1997 Asian Financial Crisis had dire consequences for the Indonesian economy and society, and Soeharto’s regime. The Indonesian currency, the rupiah, took a sharp dive in value. Soeharto came under scrutiny from international lending institutions, chiefly the World Bank, IMF and the United States, over longtime embezzlement of funds and some protectionist policies. In December, Soeharto’s government signed a letter of intent to the IMF, pledging to enact austerity measures, including cuts to public services and removal of subsidies, in return for receiving the aid of the IMF and other donors.

Beginning in early 1998, the austerity measures approved by Soeharto had started to erode domestic confidence in the regime. Prices for commodities such as kerosene and rice, and fees for public services including education rose dramatically. The effects were exacerbated by widespread corruption.

Soeharto stood for reelection for the seventh time in March 1998, justifying it on the grounds of the necessity of his leadership during the crisis. As in past years, he was unopposed for reelection. This sparked protests and riots throughout the country, now termed the Indonesian Revolution of 1998. Dissension within the ranks of his own Golkar party and military finally weakened Soeharto, and on May 21, 1998 he stood down from power. He was replaced by his deputy Jusuf Habibie.

Post-presidency

After his resignation, Soeharto retired to a family compound in Central Jakarta, making few public appearances. Efforts to prosecute Soeharto have mostly centered around alleged mismanagement of funds, and their force has been blunted due to health concerns. Soeharto was never prosecuted.

Investigations of wealth

In May 1999, a Time Asia estimated Soeharto’s family fortune at US$15 billion in cash, shares, corporate assets, real estate, jewelry and fine art. Of this, US$9 billion is reported to have been deposited in an Austrian bank. The family is said to control about 36,000 km² of real estate in Indonesia, including 100,000 m² of prime office space in Jakarta and nearly 40 percent of the land in East Timor. Over US$73 billion is said to have passed through the family’s hands during Soeharto’s 32-year rule.

On May 29, 2000, Soeharto was placed under house arrest when Indonesian authorities began to investigate the corruption during his regime. In July 2000, it was announced that he was to be accused of embezzling US$571 million of government donations to one of a number of foundations under his control and then using the money to finance family investments. But in September court-appointed doctors announced that he could not stand trial because of his declining health. State prosecutors tried again in 2002 but then doctors cited an unspecified brain disease.

According to Transparency International, Soeharto embezzled more money than any other world leader in history with an estimated US $15–35 billion embezzlement during his 32 years rule.

On March 26, 2008, civil court judge Wahyono acquitted Soeharto of corruption but ordered his charitable foundation Supersemar to pay $110m (£55m).

Related legal cases

Unable to legally prosecute Soeharto, the state has instead pursued legal actions against his former subordinates and members of his family. Soeharto’s son Hutomo Mandala Putra, more widely known as Tommy Soeharto, was initially sentenced to 15 years in jail for arranging the murder of a judge who sentenced him to 18 months for his role in a land scam in September 2000. He became the first member of the Soeharto family to be found guilty and jailed for a criminal offence. Tommy Soeharto maintained his innocence, and won a reduction of his sentence to ten years in June 2005. On October 30, 2006, he was freed on “conditional release.”

In 2003, Soeharto’s half-brother Probosutedjo was tried and convicted for corruption and the loss of $10 million from the Indonesian state. He was sentenced to four years in jail. He later won a reduction of his sentence to two years, initiating a probe by the Indonesian Corruption Eradication Commission into the alleged scandal of the “judicial mafia” which uncovered offers of $600,000 to various judges. Probosutedjo confessed to the scheme in October 2005, leading to the arrest of his lawyers. His full four year term was reinstated. After a brief standoff at a hospital, in which he was reportedly protected by a group of police officers, he was arrested on November 30, 2005.

On July 9, 2007, Indonesian prosecutors filed a civil lawsuit against former President Soeharto, to recover state funds ($440m or £219m, which allegedly disappeared from a scholarship fund, and a further $1.1 billion in damages).

On September 4, 2007, mediation at the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) between prosecutors and lawyers for Soeharto over the Supersemar foundation civil lawsuit succeeded and thus the trial will have to commence.

On September 10, 2007, Indonesia’s Supreme Court awarded Soeharto damages against Time Asia magazine, ordering it to pay him one trillion rupiah ($128.59 million). The High Court reversed the judgment of an appellate court and Central Jakarta district court (made in 2000 and 2001). Soeharto had sued the U.S.-based Time magazine seeking more than $US 27 billion in damages for libel over a 1999 article which reported that he transferred stolen money abroad.

Health crises

After resigning from the presidency, Soeharto was hospitalized repeatedly for stroke, heart, and intestinal problems. His declining health negatively affected the many attempts to prosecute Soeharto on charges of corruption and human rights violations, as his lawyers successfully claimed that his condition rendered him unfit for trial.

On May 6, 2005, Soeharto was taken to Pertamina Hospital in Jakarta with intestinal bleeding, believed to be from diverticulosis. The political elite of Indonesia, including President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Vice President Jusuf Kalla, visited his bedside. He was released and returned home, May 12, 2005.

On May 26, 2005, the Jakarta Post reported that amid an effort by the government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to crack down on corruption, Indonesian Attorney General Abdurrahman Saleh appeared before a Parliamentary commission to discuss efforts to prosecute New Order figures, including Soeharto. Attorney General Abdurrahman remarked that he hoped Soeharto could recover so that the government could begin inquiries into New Order human rights violations and corruption for purposes of compensation and recovery of state funds, but expressed skepticism that this would be possible. As a result, the Supreme Court of Indonesia has issued a decree making the office of the Attorney General responsible for supervising Soeharto’s medical care.

On April 24, 2006, Attorney General Abdurrahman announced that a team of twenty doctors would be asked to evaluate Soeharto’s health and fitness for trial. One physician, Brigadier General Dr Marjo Subiandono, stated his doubts about by noting that “Soeharto has two permanent cerebral defects.” In a later Financial Times report, Attorney General Abdurrahman discussed the re-examination, and called it part of a “last opportunity” to prosecute Soeharto criminally. Attorney General Abdurrahman left open the possibility of filing suit against the Soeharto estate.”

On May 4, 2006, Soeharto was again admitted to Pertamina Hospital for intestinal bleeding. His doctors stated further that Soeharto was suffering from partial organ failure and in unstable condition.

Death

On January 4, 2008, Soeharto, 86, was rushed to the Pertamina hospital, Jakarta with complications arising from a weak heart, swelling of limbs and stomach, and partial renal failure. His health fluctuated for several weeks but progressively worsened with anaemia and low blood pressure due to heart and kidney complications, internal bleeding, fluid on his lungs, and blood in his feces and urine which caused a haemoglobin drop. Doctors reported his “very critical condition” after almost all his organ functions failed, and that there was only a 50-50 chance that he would survive, though some Indonesians believed Soeharto would not die easily because he practiced Kejawen mysticism. On January 23, 2008 Soeharto’s health worsened further, as a sepsis infection spread through his body. His family consented to the removal of life support machines, and he died on January 27 at 1:10 p.m. local time.

Soeharto’s body was taken from Jakarta to the Giri Bangun mausoleum complex, part of the Mangkunegaran burial site in Karanganyar, near the Central Java city of Solo. He was buried alongside his late wife in a state military funeral with full honours, with the Kopassus elite forces and Kostrad commandos as the honour guard and pallbearers and Commander of Group II Kopassus Surakarta Lt.Colonel Asep Subarkah. In attendance were the incumbent president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as “Ceremony Inspector”, and vice-president, government ministers, and armed forces chiefs of staff. Soeharto’s eldest daughter Siti Hardiyanti Rukmana spoke at the funeral requesting, in accordance with Javanese custom, forgiveness for her any misdoings of her father. Tens of thousands of people lined the streets to see the convoy. Condolences were offered by many regional heads of state, although certain regional leaders such as Helen Clark, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, boycotted the funeral, and Indonesia’s President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono declared a week of official mourning.

Barack Obama

LIFE AND CAREERS

Barack Obama was born at the Kapi’olani Medical Center for Women & Children in Honolulu, Hawaii,to Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., a Luo from Nyang’oma Kogelo, Nyanza Province, Kenya, and Ann Dunham, a white American from Wichita, Kansas. His parents met in 1960 while attending the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where his father was a foreign student. The couple married February 2, 1961; they separated when Obama was two years old and subsequently divorced in 1964. Obama’s father returned to Kenya and saw his son only once more before dying in an automobile accident in 1982.

After her divorce, Dunham married Lolo Soetoro, and the family moved to Soetoro’s home country of Indonesia in 1967, where Obama attended local schools, such as Asisi, in Jakarta until he was ten years old. He then returned to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents while attending Punahou School from the fifth grade in 1971 until his graduation from high school in 1979. Obama’s mother returned to Hawaii in 1972 for several years, and then in 1977 went back to Indonesia, where she worked as an anthropological field worker. She stayed there most of the rest of her life, returning to Hawaii in 1994. She died of ovarian cancer in 1995.

As an adult Obama admitted that during high school he used marijuana, cocaine, and alcohol, which he described at the 2008 Civil Forum on the Presidency as his greatest moral failure.

Following high school, Obama moved to Los Angeles, where he studied at Occidental College for two years. He then transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in political science with a specialization in international relations. Obama graduated with a B.A. from Columbia in 1983, then at the start of the following year worked for a year at the Business International Corporation and then at the New York Public Interest Research Group.

After four years in New York City, Obama moved to Chicago, where he was hired as director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Greater Roseland (Roseland, West Pullman, and Riverdale) on Chicago’s far South Side, and worked there for three years from June 1985 to May 1988. During his three years as the DCP’s director, its staff grew from one to thirteen and its annual budget grew from $70,000 to $400,000, with accomplishments including helping set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants’ rights organization in Altgeld Gardens. Obama also worked as a consultant and instructor for the Gamaliel Foundation, a community organizing institute. In mid-1988, he traveled for the first time to Europe for three weeks and then for five weeks in Kenya, where he met many of his Kenyan relatives for the first time.

Obama entered Harvard Law School in late 1988. At the end of his first year, he was selected, based on his grades and a writing competition, as an editor of the Harvard Law Review. In February 1990, in his second year, he was elected president of the Law Review, a full-time volunteer position functioning as editor-in-chief and supervising the Law Review’s staff of eighty editors. Obama’s election as the first black president of the Law Review was widely reported and followed by several long, detailed profiles. During his summers, he returned to Chicago where he worked as a summer associate at the law firms of Sidley & Austin in 1989 and Hopkins & Sutter in 1990. After graduating with a Juris Doctor (J.D.) magna cum laude from Harvard in 1991, he returned to Chicago.

The publicity from his election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review led to a publishing contract and advance for a book about race relations. In an effort to recruit him to their faculty, the University of Chicago Law School provided Obama with a fellowship and an office to work on his book. He originally planned to finish the book in one year, but it took much longer as the book evolved into a personal memoir. In order to work without interruptions, Obama and his wife, Michelle, traveled to Bali where he wrote for several months. The manuscript was finally published in mid-1995 as Dreams from My Father.

Obama directed Illinois’ Project Vote from April to October 1992, a voter registration drive with a staff of ten and seven hundred volunteers; it achieved its goal of registering 150,000 of 400,000 unregistered African-Americans in the state, and led to Crain’s Chicago Business naming Obama to its 1993 list of “40 under Forty” powers to be.

Beginning in 1992, Obama taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School for twelve years, being first classified as a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996, and then as a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004.

He also, in 1993, joined Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a twelve-attorney law firm specializing in civil rights litigation and neighborhood economic development, where he was an associate for three years from 1993 to 1996, then of counsel from 1996 to 2004, with his law license becoming inactive in 2002.

Obama was a founding member of the board of directors of Public Allies in 1992, resigning before his wife, Michelle, became the founding executive director of Public Allies Chicago in early 1993. He served from 1994 to 2002 on the board of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago, which in 1985 had been the first foundation to fund the Developing Communities Project, and also from 1994 to 2002 on the board of directors of The Joyce Foundation. Obama served on the board of directors of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge from 1995 to 2002, as founding president and chairman of the board of directors from 1995 to 1999. He also served on the board of directors of the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Center for Neighborhood Technology, and the Lugenia Burns Hope Center.

STATE LEGISLATOR (1997 – 2004)
Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996, succeeding State Senator Alice Palmer as Senator from Illinois’ 13th District, which then spanned Chicago South Side neighborhoods from Hyde Park-Kenwood south to South Shore and west to Chicago Lawn. Once elected, Obama gained bipartisan support for legislation reforming ethics and health care laws. He sponsored a law increasing tax credits for low-income workers, negotiated welfare reform, and promoted increased subsidies for childcare. In 2001, as co-chairman of the bipartisan Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, Obama supported Republican Governor Ryan’s payday loan regulations and predatory mortgage lending regulations aimed at averting home foreclosures.

Obama was reelected to the Illinois Senate in 1998, and again in 2002. In 2000, he lost a Democratic primary run for the U.S. House of Representatives to four-term incumbent Bobby Rush by a margin of two to one.

In January 2003, Obama became chairman of the Illinois Senate’s Health and Human Services Committee when Democrats, after a decade in the minority, regained a majority. He sponsored and led unanimous, bipartisan passage of legislation to monitor racial profiling by requiring police to record the race of drivers they detained and legislation making Illinois the first state to mandate videotaping of homicide interrogations. During his 2004 general election campaign for U.S. Senate, police representatives credited Obama for his active engagement with police organizations in enacting death penalty reforms. Obama resigned from the Illinois Senate in November 2004 following his election to the US Senate.

U.S. SENATE CAMPAIGN (2004)
Obama began considering a run for the U.S. Senate; he enlisted political strategist David Axelrod that fall and formally announced his candidacy in January 2003. Decisions by Republican incumbent Peter Fitzgerald and his Democratic predecessor Carol Moseley Braun not to contest the race launched wide-open Democratic and Republican primary contests involving fifteen candidates. Obama’s candidacy was boosted by Axelrod’s advertising campaign featuring images of the late Chicago Mayor Harold Washington and an endorsement by the daughter of the late Paul Simon, former U.S. Senator for Illinois. He received over 52% of the vote in the March 2004 primary, emerging 29% ahead of his nearest Democratic rival.

Obama’s expected opponent in the general election, Republican primary winner Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race in June 2004.

In July 2004, Obama wrote and delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, Massachusetts. After describing his maternal grandfather’s experiences as a World War II veteran and a beneficiary of the New Deal’s FHA and G.I. Bill programs, Obama spoke about changing the U.S. government’s economic and social priorities. He questioned the Bush administration’s management of the Iraq War and highlighted America’s obligations to its soldiers. Drawing examples from U.S. history, he criticized heavily partisan views of the electorate and asked Americans to find unity in diversity, saying, “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America.”Broadcasts of the speech by major news organizations launched Obama’s status as a national political figure and boosted his campaign for U.S. Senate.

In August 2004, two months after Ryan’s withdrawal and less than three months before Election Day, Alan Keyes accepted the Illinois Republican Party’s nomination to replace Ryan. A long-time resident of Maryland, Keyes established legal residency in Illinois with the nomination. In the November 2004 general election, Obama received 70% of the vote to Keyes’s 27%, the largest victory margin for a statewide race in Illinois history.

U.S. SENATOR (2005 - 2007)
Obama was sworn in as a senator on January 4, 2005. Obama was the fifth African American Senator in U.S. history, and the third to have been popularly elected. He is the only Senate member of the Congressional Black Caucus. CQ Weekly, a nonpartisan publication, characterized him as a “loyal Democrat” based on analysis of all Senate votes in 2005–2007, and the National Journal ranked him as the “most liberal” senator based on an assessment of selected votes during 2007. In 2005 he was ranked sixteenth, and in 2006 he was ranked tenth. In 2008, he was ranked by Congress.org as the eleventh most powerful Senator.

LEGISLATION
Obama voted in favor of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and cosponsored the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act. In September 2006, Obama supported a related bill, the Secure Fence Act. Obama introduced two initiatives bearing his name: Lugar–Obama, which expanded the Nunn–Lugar cooperative threat reduction concept to conventional weapons, and the Coburn–Obama Transparency Act, which authorized the establishment of USAspending.gov, a web search engine on federal spending. On June 3, 2008, Senator Obama, along with Senators Thomas R. Carper, Tom Coburn, and John McCain, introduced follow-up legislation: Strengthening Transparency and Accountability in Federal Spending Act of 2008.

Obama sponsored legislation that would have required nuclear plant owners to notify state and local authorities of radioactive leaks, but the bill failed to pass in the full Senate after being heavily modified in committee. In December 2006, President Bush signed into law the Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act, marking the first federal legislation to be enacted with Obama as its primary sponsor. In January 2007, Obama and Senator Feingold introduced a corporate jet provision to the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, which was signed into law in September 2007. Obama also introduced Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act, a bill to criminalize deceptive practices in federal elections and the Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007, neither of which have been signed into law.

Later in 2007, Obama sponsored an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act adding safeguards for personality disorder military discharges. This amendment passed the full Senate in the spring of 2008. He sponsored the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act supporting divestment of state pension funds from Iran’s oil and gas industry, which has not passed committee, and co-sponsored legislation to reduce risks of nuclear terrorism. Obama also sponsored a Senate amendment to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program providing one year of job protection for family members caring for soldiers with combat-related injuries.

COMMITTEES
Obama held assignments on the Senate Committees for Foreign Relations, Environment and Public Works and Veterans’ Affairs through December 2006. In January 2007, he left the Environment and Public Works committee and took additional assignments with Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. He also became Chairman of the Senate’s subcommittee on European Affairs. As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Obama made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. He met with Mahmoud Abbas before he became President of Palestine, and gave a speech at the University of Nairobi condemning corruption in the Kenyan government.

PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN (2008)
On February 10, 2007, Obama announced his candidacy for President of the United States in front of the Old State Capitol building in Springfield, Illinois. The choice of the announcement site was symbolic because it was also where Abraham Lincoln delivered his historic “House Divided” speech in 1858. Throughout the campaign, Obama has emphasized the issues of rapidly ending the Iraq War, increasing energy independence, and providing universal health care, at one point identifying these as his top three priorities.
Obama on stage with his wife and two daughters just before announcing his presidential campaign in Springfield, Illinois.

Obama’s campaign raised $58 million during the first half of 2007, of which donations of less than $200, classified as “small donations” by campaign laws, accounted for $16.4 million. The $58 million set the record for fundraising by a presidential campaign in the first six months of the calendar year before the election. The magnitude of the small donation portion was outstanding from both the absolute and relative perspectives. In January 2008, his campaign set another fundraising record with $36.8 million, the most ever raised in one month by a presidential candidate in the Democratic primaries.

Among the January 2008 DNC-sanctioned state contests, Obama tied with Hillary Clinton for delegates in the New Hampshire primary and won more delegates than Clinton in the Iowa, Nevada and South Carolina elections and caucuses. On Super Tuesday, he emerged with 20 more delegates than Clinton. He again broke fundraising records in the first two months of 2008, raising over $90 million for his primary to Clinton’s $45 million. After Super Tuesday, Obama won the eleven remaining February primaries and caucuses. Obama and Clinton split delegates and states nearly equally in the March 4 contests of Vermont, Texas, Ohio, and Rhode Island; Obama closed the month by winning Wyoming and Mississippi.

In March 2008, a controversy broke out concerning Obama’s former pastor of twenty years, Jeremiah Wright, after ABC News broadcast clips of his racially and politically charged sermons. Initially, Obama responded by defending Wright’s wider role in Chicago’s African American community, but condemned his remarks and ended Wright’s relationship with the campaign. During the controversy, Obama delivered a speech entitled “A More Perfect Union” that addressed issues of race. Obama subsequently resigned from Trinity United Church of Christ “to avoid the impression that he endorsed the entire range of opinions expressed at that church.”

During April, May, and June, Obama won the North Carolina, Oregon, and Montana primaries and remained ahead in the count of pledged delegates, while Clinton won the Pennsylvania, Indiana, West Virginia, Kentucky, Puerto Rico, and South Dakota primaries. During the period, Obama received endorsements from more superdelegates than did Clinton. On May 31, the Democratic National Committee agreed to seat all of the Michigan and Florida delegates at the national convention, each with a half-vote, narrowing Obama’s delegate lead while increasing the delegate count needed to win. On June 3, with all states counted, Obama passed the threshold to become the presumptive nominee. On that day, he gave a victory speech in St. Paul, Minnesota. Clinton suspended her campaign and endorsed him on June 7. Since then, he has campaigned for the general election race against Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee.

On June 19, Obama became the first major-party presidential candidate to turn down public financing in the general election since the system was created in 1976, reversing his earlier intention to accept it.

On August 23, 2008, Obama selected Delaware Senator Joe Biden as his vice presidential running mate. At the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado, Obama’s former rival Hillary Clinton gave a speech strongly supporting Obama’s candidacy and later called for Obama to be nominated by acclamation as the Democratic presidential candidate. Then, on August 28, Obama delivered a speech to the 84,000 supporters in Denver. During the speech, which was viewed by over 38 million people worldwide, he accepted his party’s nomination and presented his policy goals.

On November 2, 2008, Obama’s grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died from cancer at the age of 86. Obama learned of his grandmother’s death on November 3, one day before his election as the 44th President of the United States.

On November 4, 2008, Barack Obama defeated John McCain to become the 44th President of the United States and the first African American President in U.S. history. In his victory speech, delivered before a crowd of hundreds of thousands of his supporters in Chicago, Obama proclaimed that “change has come to America.”Echoing Martin Luther King’s “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” address, he declared, “The road ahead will be long, our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year, or even in one term — but America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there.”

POLITICAL
Obama was an early opponent of the Bush administration’s policies on Iraq. On October 2, 2002, the day President George W. Bush and Congress agreed on the joint resolution authorizing the Iraq War, Obama addressed the first high-profile Chicago anti-Iraq War rally in Federal Plaza, speaking out against the war. On March 16, 2003, the day President Bush issued his 48-hour ultimatum to Saddam Hussein to leave Iraq before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Obama addressed the largest Chicago anti-Iraq War rally to date in Daley Plaza and told the crowd that “it’s not too late” to stop the war.

Obama stated that if elected he would enact budget cuts in the range of tens of billions of dollars, stop investing in “unproven” missile defense systems, not “weaponize” space, “slow development of Future Combat Systems,” and work towards eliminating all nuclear weapons. Obama favors ending development of new nuclear weapons, reducing the current U.S. nuclear stockpile, enacting a global ban on production of fissile material, and seeking negotiations with Russia in order to take ICBMs off high alert status.

In November 2006, Obama called for a “phased redeployment of U.S. troops from Iraq” and an opening of diplomatic dialogue with Syria and Iran. In a March 2007 speech to AIPAC, a pro-Israel lobby, he said that the primary way to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons is through talks and diplomacy, although not ruling out military action. Obama has indicated that he would engage in “direct presidential diplomacy” with Iran without preconditions. Detailing his strategy for fighting global terrorism in August 2007, Obama said “it was a terrible mistake to fail to act” against a 2005 meeting of al-Qaeda leaders that U.S. intelligence had confirmed to be taking place in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas. He said that as president he would not miss a similar opportunity, even without the support of the Pakistani government.

In a December 2005, Washington Post opinion column, and at the Save Darfur rally in April 2006, Obama called for more assertive action to oppose genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. He has divested $180,000 in personal holdings of Sudan-related stock, and has urged divestment from companies doing business in Iran. In the July–August 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs, Obama called for an outward looking post-Iraq War foreign policy and the renewal of American military, diplomatic, and moral leadership in the world. Saying “we can neither retreat from the world nor try to bully it into submission,” he called on Americans to “lead the world, by deed and by example.”

In economic affairs, in April 2005, he defended the New Deal social welfare policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt and opposed Republican proposals to establish private accounts for Social Security. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Obama spoke out against government indifference to growing economic class divisions, calling on both political parties to take action to restore the social safety net for the poor. Shortly before announcing his presidential campaign, Obama said he supports universal healthcare in the United States. Obama proposes to reward teachers for performance from traditional merit pay systems, assuring unions that changes would be pursued through the collective bargaining process.

In September 2007, he blamed special interests for distorting the U.S. tax code. His plan would eliminate taxes for senior citizens with incomes of less than $50,000 a year, repeal income tax cuts for those making over $250,000 as well as the capital gains and dividends tax cut, close corporate tax loopholes, lift the income cap on Social Security taxes, restrict offshore tax havens, and simplify filing of income tax returns by pre-filling wage and bank information already collected by the IRS. Announcing his presidential campaign’s energy plan in October 2007, Obama proposed a cap and trade auction system to restrict carbon emissions and a ten year program of investments in new energy sources to reduce U.S. dependence on imported oil. Obama proposed that all pollution credits must be auctioned, with no grandfathering of credits for oil and gas companies, and the spending of the revenue obtained on energy development and economic transition costs.

Obama has encouraged Democrats to reach out to evangelicals and other religious groups. In December 2006, he joined Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) at the “Global Summit on AIDS and the Church” organized by church leaders Kay and Rick Warren. Together with Warren and Brownback, Obama took an HIV test, as he had done in Kenya less than four months earlier. He encouraged “others in public life to do the same” and not be ashamed of it. Before the conference, eighteen anti-abortion groups published an open letter stating, in reference to Obama’s support for legal abortion: “In the strongest possible terms, we oppose Rick Warren’s decision to ignore Senator Obama’s clear pro-death stance and invite him to Saddleback Church anyway.” Addressing over 8,000 United Church of Christ members in June 2007, Obama challenged “so-called leaders of the Christian Right” for being “all too eager to exploit what divides us.”

A method that political scientists use for gauging ideology is to compare the annual ratings by the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) with the ratings by the American Conservative Union (ACU). Based on his years in Congress, Obama has a lifetime average conservative rating of 7.67% from the ACU, and a lifetime average liberal rating of 90 percent from the ADA.

FAMILY AND PERSONAL LIFE
Obama met his wife, Michelle Robinson, in June 1989 when he was employed as a summer associate at the Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin. Assigned for three months as Obama’s adviser at the firm, Robinson joined him at group social functions, but declined his initial offers to date. They began dating later that summer, became engaged in 1991, and were married on October 3, 1992. The couple’s first daughter, Malia Ann, was born in 1998, followed by a second daughter, Natasha (”Sasha”), in 2001.

Applying the proceeds of a book deal, in 2005 the family moved from a Hyde Park, Chicago condominium to their current $1.6 million house in neighboring Kenwood. The purchase of an adjacent lot and sale of part of it to Obama by the wife of developer and friend Tony Rezko attracted media attention because of Rezko’s indictment and subsequent conviction on political corruption charges that were unrelated to Obama.

In December 2007, Money magazine estimated the Obama family’s net worth at $1.3 million. Their 2007 tax return showed a household income of $4.2 million—up from about $1 million in 2006 and $1.6 million in 2005—mostly from sales of his books.

In a 2006 interview, Obama highlighted the diversity of his extended family. “Michelle will tell you that when we get together for Christmas or Thanksgiving, it’s like a little mini-United Nations,” he said. “I’ve got relatives who look like Bernie Mac, and I’ve got relatives who look like Margaret Thatcher.” Obama has seven half-siblings from his Kenyan father’s family, six of them living, and a half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, the daughter of his mother and her Indonesian second husband. Obama’s mother was survived by her Kansas-born mother, Madelyn Dunham until her death on November 2, 2008, just before the presidential election. In Dreams from My Father, Obama ties his mother’s family history to possible Native American ancestors and distant relatives of Jefferson Davis, president of the southern Confederacy during the American Civil War.

Obama plays basketball, a sport he participated in as a member of his high school’s varsity team. Before announcing his presidential candidacy, he began a well-publicized effort to quit smoking.

Obama is a Christian whose religious views have evolved in his adult life. In The Audacity of Hope, Obama writes that he “was not raised in a religious household.” He describes his mother, raised by non-religious parents (whom Obama has specified elsewhere as “non-practicing Methodists and Baptists”) to be detached from religion, yet “in many ways the most spiritually awakened person that I have ever known.” He describes his father as “raised a Muslim”, but a “confirmed atheist” by the time his parents met, and his stepfather as “a man who saw religion as not particularly useful.” In the book, Obama explains how, through working with black churches as a community organizer while in his twenties, he came to understand “the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change.” He was baptized at Trinity United Church of Christ in 1988.

CULTURAL AND POLITICAL IMAGE
With his Kenyan father and white American mother, his upbringing in Honolulu and Jakarta (Indonesia), and his Ivy League education, Obama’s early life experiences differ markedly from those of African American politicians who launched their careers in the 1960s through participation in the civil rights movement. Expressing puzzlement over questions about whether he is “black enough,” Obama told an August 2007 meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists that the debate is not about his physical appearance or his record on issues of concern to black voters. Obama said that “we’re still locked in this notion that if you appeal to white folks then there must be something wrong.”

Echoing the inaugural address of John F. Kennedy, Obama acknowledged his youthful image in an October 2007 campaign speech, saying: “I wouldn’t be here if, time and again, the torch had not been passed to a new generation.”

Many commentators mentioned Obama’s international appeal as a defining factor for his public image. Not only did several polls show strong support for him in other countries, but Obama also established close relationships with prominent foreign politicians and elected officials even before his presidential candidacy, notably with then current British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whom he met in London in 2005, with Italy’s Democratic Party leader Walter Veltroni, who visited Obama’s Senate office in 2005, and with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who also visited him in Washington in 2006.

BOOKS AUTHORED
- Obama, Barack (1995). Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. Three Rivers Press. ISBN 0307383415. Audio Book Grammy Award Winner: Spoken word.

- Obama, Barack (October 17, 2006). The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. Crown Publishing Group / Three Rivers Press. ISBN 0307237699. Audio Book Grammy Award Winner: Spoken word

- Obama, Barack (March 27, 2007). Barack Obama in His Own Words. PublicAffairs. ISBN 0786720573.

- National Urban League (April 17, 2007). The State of Black America 2007: Portrait of the Black Male, Foreword by Barack Obama, Beckham Publications Group. ISBN 0931761859.
- Obama, Barack (July-August 2007). “Renewing American Leadership”. Foreign Affairs 86 (4). Retrieved on 2008-01-14.

- Obama, Barack (March 1, 2008). Barack Obama: What He Believes In – From His Own Works. Arc Manor. ISBN 1604501170.

- Obama, Barack; McCain, John (June 13, 2008). Barack Obama vs. John McCain – Side by Side Senate Voting Record for Easy Comparison. Arc Manor. ISBN 1604502495.

- Obama, Barack (September 9, 2008). Change We Can Believe In: Barack Obama’s Plan to Renew America’s Promise, Foreword by Barack Obama, Three Rivers Press. ISBN 0307460452.

FLV Player is a tool to play Flash FLV and H.264 (MPEG-4) videos with. This utility can come in handy when viewing many FLV and/or H.264 files. The installer comes with optional FLV file-association, so double clicking an FLV file opens and plays the file in FLV Player.

Version 2.0.25 adds ‘video-only’ mode (press [tab] to hide all FLV Player interface elements, note that you can still drag the video around), volume control with [arrow-up] and [arrow-down] keys, timer toggle (normal and milliseconds). Ability to skip forward with [arrow-right] key has been restored.

Most people don’t need anything more than a Web browser and a Macromedia plug-in to watch Flash videos. However, if you want a hair’s breadth more control over your viewing, this open-source freeware program will do the trick.

FLV Player’s exceedingly simple controls allow you to navigate backward and forward through videos and play them in a loop. You can also adjust the volume, mute it, and adjust the size of the player. The Settings menu provides some basic control over program behavior, such as opening a new player window when double-clicking on an FLV file and remembering previous settings. And that’s about it.

Our only major complaint is that the display window doesn’t automatically resize to the size of your movie frame. We hope this problem will be remedied in future versions. FLV Player isn’t a must-have by any stretch, but it’s a decent tool for penny-pinching Flash developers.
License: Free
Requirements: Windows 2000/XP/Vista
Limitations: No limitations
Click here to Download FLV Player 2.0.25 for Microsoft Windows

With the ability to scan your RAM, Registry, hard drives, and external storage devices for known data-mining, advertising, and tracking components, Ad-Aware 2008 can clean your system easily, allowing you to maintain a higher degree of privacy while you surf the Web.

Ad-Aware 2008 includes an improved threat detection, enhanced rootkit removal system, faster updates, Lavasoft ThreatWork to submit suspicious files for analysis, and is now compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit Windows Vista.

One of the first applications built to find and remove adware and spyware, Ad-Aware’s excellent reputation is well-justified. The 2008 edition looks to be more of a course correction from some of the missteps in the 2007 version.

The adware and malware detection engine has undergone a significant overhaul, resulting in faster scan times and improved rootkit detection. New users should notice that the app performs faster than integrated antivirus and antimalware programs: That’s because only the paid version of Ad-Aware comes with a new antivirus engine. Only users of Ad-Aware’s paid versions reap that benefit.

The updater is no longer permanently on, and it instead runs in your system’s background only if you activate it–eliminating a big problem with last year’s model. The interface improvements include six skins, cleanly designed tabbed navigation for each of the program’s main functions, and easy-to-see red Xs and green check marks to indicate a features status.

Besides the antivirus integration, other features disabled in the free version include the real-time Ad-Watch guard, heuristics scanning, the scheduler, and plug-ins. Although Ad-Aware detects and removes malware with ease, we hesitate to recommend it as anything more than a secondary detection engine considering that many free competitors offer more features and similar, if not stronger, levels of effectiveness.
License: Free; paid upgrade available
Requirements: Windows 2000/XP/2003 Server/Vista(32- and 64-bit)
Limitations: No limitations
Click here to Download Free Ad-Aware 2008 version 7.1.0.8 for windows

AVG Free Edition is the well-known antivirus protection tool. AVG Free is available free of charge to home users for the life of the product. Protect your computer from viruses and malicious programs. Rapid virus database updates are available for the lifetime of the product, thereby providing the high level of detection capability that millions of users around the world trust to protect their computers. AVG Free is easy to use and will not slow your system down (low system resource requirements. Highlights include automatic update functionality, the AVG Resident Shield, which provides real-time protection as files are opened and programs are run, free Virus Database Updates for the lifetime of the product, and AVG Virus Vault for safe handling of infected files.

Version 8.0.173 may include unspecified updates, enhancements, or bug fixes.

This antivirus program offers rock-solid protection. AVG Free provides the bare necessities, including a real-time shield to prevent infections, anti-virus and anti-malware wrapped up in one engine, and a link scanner for Web surfing with care.

By default, the application is set to search for new virus definitions daily, but you always can use the scheduling tool to change this. Should a virus create serious system problems, AVG creates a rescue disk to scan your computer in MS-DOS mode. The program doesn’t tax your system when scanning or when running in the background and always proved effective in our tests. The new interface is much easier to navigate than in previous version, with tabbed navigation on the left assisting users in drilling down to the tools they need.

Though the free version of this program will suffice for average folks, those who demand more control should certainly consider AVG Anti-Virus Professional.

License: Free
Requirements: Windows 2000/XP/Vista
Limitations: No limitations
Click here to Download AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 8.0.173 for Windows