Heroes walk alone, but they become myths when they ennoble the lives and touch the hearts of all of us. For those who love soccer, Edson Arantes do Nascimento, generally known as PelŽ, is a hero.
Performance at a high level in any sport is to exceed the ordinary human scale. But Pelé's performance transcended that of the ordinary star by as much as the star exceeds ordinary performance. He scored an average of a goal in every international game he played — the equivalent of a baseball player's hitting a home run in every World Series game over 15 years. Between 1956 and 1974, Pelé scored a total of 1,220 goals — not unlike hitting an average of 70 home runs every year for a decade and a half.

While he played, Brazil won the World Cup, staged quadrennially, three times in 12 years. He scored five goals in a game six times, four goals 30 times and three goals 90 times. And he did so not aloofly or disdainfully — as do many modern stars — but with an infectious joy that caused even the teams over which he triumphed to share in his pleasure, for it is no disgrace to be defeated by a phenomenon defying emulation.

He was born across the mountains from the great coastal cities of Brazil, in the impoverished town of Tres Coracoes. Nicknamed Dico by his family, he was called PelŽ by soccer friends, a word whose origins escape him. Dico shined shoes until he was discovered at the age of 11 by one of the country's premier players, Waldemar de Brito. Four years later, De Brito brought Pelé to Sao Paulo and declared to the disbelieving directors of the professional team in Santos, "This boy will be the greatest soccer player in the world." He was quickly legend. By the next season, he was the top scorer in his league. As the Times of London would later say, "How do you spell Pelé? G-O-D." He has been known to stop war: both sides in Nigeria's civil war called a 48-hour cease-fire in 1967 so PelŽ could play an exhibition match in the capital of Lagos.
To understand Pelé's role in soccer, some discussion of the nature of the game is necessary. No team sport evokes the same sort of primal, universal passion as soccer. During the World Cup, the matches of the national football teams impose television schedules on the rhythm of life. Last year I attended a dinner for leading members of the British establishment and distinguished guests from all over the world at the staid Spencer House in London. The hosts had the bad luck to have chosen the night of the match between England and Argentina — always a blood feud, compounded on this occasion by the memory of the Falklands crisis. The impeccable audience (or at least enough of it to influence the hosts) insisted that television sets be set up at strategic locations, during both the reception and the dinner. The match went into overtime and required a penalty shoot-out afterward, so the main speaker did not get to deliver his message until 11 p.m. And since England lost, the audience was not precisely in a mood for anything but mourning.

When France finally won the World Cup, Paris was paralyzed with joy for nearly 48 hours, Brazil by dejection for a similar period of time. I was in Brazil in 1962 when the national team won the World Cup in Chile. Everything stopped for two days while Rio celebrated a premature carnival.

There is no comparable phenomenon in the U.S. Our fans do not identify with their teams in such a way partly because American team sports are more cerebral and require a degree of skill that is beyond the reach of the layman. Baseball, for instance, requires a bundle of disparate skills: hitting a ball thrown at 90 m.p.h., catching a ball flying at the speed of a bullet, and throwing long distances with great accuracy. Football requires a different set of skills for each of its 11 positions. The U.S. spectator thus finds himself viewing two discrete events: what is actually taking place on the playing field and the translation of it into detailed and minute statistics. He wants his team to win, but he is also committed to the statistical triumph of the star he admires. The American sports hero is like Joe DiMaggio — a kind of Lone Ranger who walks in solitude beyond the reach of common experience, lifting us beyond ourselves.
Soccer is an altogether different sort of game. All 11 players must possess the same type of skills — especially in modern soccer, where the distinction between offensive and defensive players has dissolved. Being continuous, the game does not lend itself to being broken down into a series of component plays that, as in football or baseball, can be practiced. Baseball and football thrill by the perfection of their repetitions, soccer by the improvisation of solutions to ever changing strategic necessities. Soccer requires little equipment, other than a pair of shoes. Everybody believes he can play soccer. And it can be played by any number of players as a pickup game. Thus soccer outside North America is truly a game for the masses, which can identify with its passions, its sudden triumphs and its inevitable disillusionments. Baseball and football are an exaltation of the human experience; soccer is its incarnation.

PelŽ is therefore a different phenomenon from the baseball or football star. Soccer stars are dependent on their teams even while transcending them. To achieve mythic status as a soccer player is especially difficult because the peak performance is generally quite short — only the fewest players perform at the top of their game for more than five years. Incredibly, Pel&233; performed at the highest level for 18 years, scoring 52 goals in 1973, his 17th year. Contemporary soccer superstars never reach even 50 goals a season. For PelŽ, who had thrice scored more than 100 goals a year, it signaled retirement.

The mythic status of Pel&233; derives as well from the way he incarnated the character of Brazil's national team. Its style affirms that virtue without joy is a contradiction in terms. Its players are the most acrobatic, if not always the most proficient. Brazilian teams play with a contagious exuberance. When those yellow shirts go on the attack — which is most of the time — and their fans cheer to the intoxicating beat of samba bands, soccer becomes a ritual of fluidity and grace. In PelŽ's day, the Brazilians epitomized soccer as fantasy.

I saw Pel&233; at his peak only once, at the final of the World Cup in 1970. Brazil's opponent was Italy, which played its tough defense coupled with sudden thrusts to tie the game 1-1, demoralizing the Brazilians. Italy could very easily have massed its defense even more, until its frantic opponent began making the mistakes that would encompass its ruin. But, led by Pel&233;, Brazil paid no attention. Attacking as if the Italians were a practice team, the Brazilians ran them into the ground, 4-1.

I saw Pel&233; a few times afterward, when he was playing for the New York Cosmos. He was no longer as fast, but he was as exuberant as ever. By then, PelŽ had become an institution. Most modern fans never saw him play, yet they somehow feel he is part of their lives. He made the transition from superstar to mythic figure.

Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State, was instrumental in bringing World Cup soccer to the U.S. in 1994

Wanita Solehah Perhiasan Indah di Dunia. Inilah salah satu persediaan kita untuk menjadi wanita yang disukai oleh suami. Banyak lelaki yg terpikat pada wanita yg bersikap keibuan, lembut, mengambil berat dan penuh kasih sayang. Wajah yg keibuan mampu membuat lelaki berasa tenteram ketika sedang stress, cemas dan gelisah dan senang hati ketika mahu bermanja. Jangan tunggu sampai melahirkan baru nak tonjolkan sikap keibuan. Setiap wanita ada potensi keibuan dalam diri masing-masing.

1. Kekanak-kanakkan
Dalam batas yg wajar, sifat kekanak-kanakan seorang wanita menjadi daya tarikan di mata lelaki. Mereka berasa terhibur dengan keletah anda. Tetapi tentulah bukan sifat keanak-anakkan yang melampau dan menyakitkan hati tetapi sikap keanak-anakan yang menyenangkan. Misalnya, kemanjaan wanita yangmembangkitkan naluri kebapaan dan kelakian lelaki. Wanita ceria membuat lelaki lebih berghairah.

2. Penuh Pengertian
Sikap pengertian wanita membuat lelaki berasa dihargai dan diterima seadanya. Sikap ini tercermin dari perasaan mudah memaafkan,
memilih waktu yang tepat untuk berbincang masalah dan sebagainya. Contohnya ketika lelaki melakukan kesilapan, wanita yang berpengertian tidak terus mengeluarkan kata-kata yang kasar atau menuduh bukan2 sebaliknya cuba mengerti duduk persoalannya.

3. Menghargai
Wanita yang menghargai lelaki adalah wanita idaman lelaki. Berbeza dengan wanita yang suka diperlakukan dengan lembut, lelaki suka dihargai, dipuji dengan tulus ikhlas dan diberi kepercayaan. Penghargaan dari wanita membuat lelaki berasa bangga.


4. Menjaga Penampilan
Lelaki menyukai wanita yang pandai menjaga penampilannya agar sentiasa kelihatan cantik, bersih, kemas dan menarik. Penampilan yang baik menunjukkan wanita tersebut menghargai dirinya. Dia akan murah senyuman, pandai merawat tubuhnya, meningkatkan kualiti hidupnya dan memberi yang terbaik kepada dirinya. Dia suka dan bersyukur dengan dirinya dan secara tidak langsung memancarkan pesona yg menyebabkan elaki juga menyukainya. Apabila sudah berumahtangga, wanita tersebut terus menjaga penampilan dirinya dan kesihatan tubuh badan walau sudah beranak-pinak. Siapa yang tidak suka isteri yang masih kelihatan cantik dan ramping walau dah punya anak 3??

5. Pandai berbicara
Lelaki tertarik dengan wanita yang pandai berkomunikasi dan boleh diajak berbual. Walau topik perbualan yang disukai lelaki berbeza dengan topik kegemaran wanita, wanita tersebut dapat mengimbanginya. Dia bukan sekadar teman berbual yang pasif, tetapi dapat memberi respon dan pendapat yang baik. Dia juga tahu menjadi pendengar yang baik, serta mengalihkan topik yang agak serius kepada perbualan yang lebih menarik. Lelaki juga suka dengan wanita yang suka bergurau dan pandai berjenaka serta boleh menerima jenaka lelaki dengan baik dan berfikiran terbuka.

6. Pandai Bergaul dan Menyesuaikan Diri
Wanita yang pandai bergaul dan menyesuaikan diri mempunyai nilai lebih di mata lelaki. Wanita tersebut tahu menghadapi orang yang lebih tua dan cara berhadapan dengan orang yang lebih muda. Apabila berhadapan dengan suasana yang baru, wanita tersebut tidak gentar malah cepat menyesuaikan diri. Dia mudah di ajak ke mana saja dan tidak kekok samada di bandar atau di kampung.

7. Menghormati Diri Sendiri
Lelaki suka dengan wanita yang menghormati dirinya sendiri sebagai seorang wanita, bersikap sopan dan mempunyai etika. Wanita yang menghormati dirinya sendiri mempunyai keyakinan dan tahu apa yg baik dan buruk diperlakukan oleh seorang lelaki terhadap dirinya. Jadi dia tahu apa yg dia inginkan dan mahu elakkan serta menjaga maruah dirinya. Dia tidak akan merendah-rendahkan dirinya dan tidak akan membiarkan lelaki memperlakukan dirinya sesuka hati.

8. Simpati dan prihatin
Lelaki suka wanita yang murah hati, mengambil berat, simpati pada nasib yg susah, sayangkan kanak-kanak dan tidak memilih bulu. Kebaikan yang wajar dan spontan mencerminkan hati yang mulia. Ada kecantikan dalaman pada dirinya yang memancar keluar dengan indah & mempesona…

Inilah sifat seorang wanita yang sempurna…

Everything's relative. Speed, mass, space and time are all subjective. Nor are age, motion or the wanderings of the planets measures that humans can agree on anymore; they can be judged only by the whim of the observer. Light has weight. Space has curves. And coiled within a pound of matter, any matter, is the explosive power of 14 million tons of TNT. We know all this, we are set adrift in this way at the end of the 20th century, because of Albert Einstein.
We tend not to blame Einstein for the bomb, any more than we blame Nobel for dynamite. It wasn't the gentle theorist but the generals of the world who forged e=mc2 into the most terrible dagger in human history, and hoisted that Damoclean blade irretrievably over our heads in 1946. By then, the world had already iconized him: the greatest seer since Newton; science's poetic soul. Genius, in person. In a few thunderclaps of elegance he contained our world and the cosmos in the same equation, and changed forever the way the rest of saw the heavens and ourselves.

The light came on in 1905. Pushed to the fringe of physics by his prickly pacifism and an academic career that seemed designed to annoy his professors, the future emblem of genius was, at the time — the very words have become an Algeresque cliché — just a Swiss patent clerk. Preternaturally confident and suitably unkempt, the 26-year-old Einstein sent three papers, papers scrawled in his spare time, to the premier journal, "Annalen der Physik," to be published "if there is room." They all made the same issue, and they did exactly what he imagined they would: change the world. One was an update of Max Planck's quantum theory of radiation; light, declared Einstein, travels as both a wave and as particles called quanta, mostly because it has to. Another concerned Brownian motion, an until-then unexplained phenomenon involving bouncing molecules. (The patent clerk explained it.) The third, wrote Einstein matter-of-factly in a letter to a friend, "modifies the theory of space and time." Its import: Everything's relative. He could have retired right then and still been the savior of science in the 20th century.

Physics is built on the basic and rather wistful hypothesis that Mother Nature doesn't know much math. Remainders and constants are men's crumbs, not hers -- to a theoretical physicist, the Ten Commandments are too numerous by nine. By 1905, Newton's three were showing cracks under the scrutiny of stronger telescopes and better astronomy; the ether, an omnipresent invisible jello, was supposed to spackle Newton's world smooth again. To Einstein, the ether was just a remainder, and he got rid of it. Nothing can move faster than light, he said, and matter and energy are equivalent: E=mc2. The physicist Louis de Broglie called Einstein's contributions that year "blazing rockets which in the dark of the night suddenly cast a brief but powerful illumination over an immense unknown region." The new view was breathtaking.

Einstein himself, though, would remain in that unknown a while longer. In 1916, he folded special relativity into general relativity: Light had mass, and space and time were simply space-time. Oh, and the universe was quite possibly shaped like a saddle. World-shaking stuff. But war, seemingly Einstein's constant companion, obscured him three more years until British astronomer Arthur Eddington got out and proved it during a solar eclipse: He spotted a star that should have been hidden behind the sun. Light had turned a corner, and so had we. No one really understood what Einstein was talking about — which is only a slight exaggeration even today — but it sure sounded great. Order in the cosmos, even if only one man could see it, was an appetizingly lofty prospect after the all-too-earthbound carnage of World War I. And this fellow Einstein, with his halo of unruly hair and Labrador eyes, was just the gentle genius we were looking for.
Celebrity annoyed Einstein — he would once list his occupation as "artist's model" — but while his theory made the rounds at cocktail parties, the physicist himself discovered that Americans wanted desperately to hear what else he had to say. So he spoke up. His gave speeches and met with heads of state, made enemies of Hitler (and later McCarthy) with his ardent blend of pacifism, Zionism and Communism. (Eventually the sound of his voice got too loud for him; with so much made of every trip, Einstein never left the U.S. after 1935.) His every bon mot was duly recorded for posterity, and his personal quirks (such as very rarely wearing socks) were eagerly added to the fast-growing legend. Not Einstein the physicist anymore; Einstein, the Einstein.

Did the man have flaws? Eager excavators have found that he was unkind to his first wife, Serbian physicist Mileva Maric, and distant at best with his second wife, Elsa, and their son. The famous absentmindedness, so jolly in his later years, was not so benign when it came to human contact. Should we be surprised at this from a man who did not speak until age 3, slouched his way through school, and grew up to find a universe that no others had? Surprised that he was more than a little aloof?

In 1929, TIME noted in a cover story on the physicist that "Albert Einstein's theories have altered human existence not at all." That would not last — the fields of electronics, quantum physics and space travel all bear his fingerprint now (though we're still waiting to see those twins in spaceships wearing watches). But that the atom could be split and its power unleashed — that one was the first to leap off the theoretician's blackboard. In 1939, America's most celebrated pacifist warned Franklin Delano Roosevelt in a letter that the Germans were nearing the nuclear age. America — this the physicist knew from experience from his days in Germany — had better get there first. It did. By 1946 Einstein's epiphany and the Manhattan Project would wreak, in the name of good, the most horrible destruction of our age in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Einstein knew what he and his visions had done; after the war he made a tearful apology to visiting Japanese physicist Hideki Yukawa. Pacifist, deep-thinking Einstein, who loved children, was the father of the bomb.
At Princeton, he was more like a kindly uncle. When he arrived in 1935, and was asked what he would require for his study, he replied: "A desk, some pads and a pencil, and a large wastebasket — to hold all of my mistakes." His salary request had to be raised by Princeton administrators to avoid embarrassment. He played the violin, helped children with their homework, and did indeed, as the story goes, have some trouble remembering his address. He spent the balance of his life there, carving out a quiet spot within his legend and grappling with another chilling science that he had fathered but could not love: quantum physics.

Einstein, though not religious, was a believer. "I want to know how God created this world... I want to know his thoughts; the rest are details." And he had a good idea of what those thoughts were. Subtle but not malicious, non-interventionist but certainly present, Einstein's God didn't "play dice with the universe." Quantum physics, guided by Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, held that matter lived only as a probability, an approximation, an illusion of order in a chaotic universe. This Einstein could not bear, and he resisted the colder world bitterly until he became, in his own words, "a fossil" among his colleagues. "Stop telling God what to do," Niels Bohr told him, but Einstein couldn't. He spent his last two decades wrestling vainly for a "Unified Field Theory" — the final theory — a cause that Steven Weinberg, among others, has taken up today, so far without success.

Do we see too little beauty in the universe, or did Einstein imagine too much? ("It didn't pan out," he once told a colleague, two weeks after casually mentioning he was on the verge of his "greatest discovery ever.") A half-century after his death, we have his eyes in a jar in New Jersey and his brain (minus a few bits chipped off for analysis) in another jar in Lawrence, Kansas. We have the advances he left us, which have touched nearly every branch of the sciences, and we have the the bomb. But probably above all, in our heads we keep his vision (however vaguely) — the rhyming world is the one we keep on rooting for. Einstein got us closer to nature's truths than anyone had before, and he knew how much he had left unsolved. Once, Uncle Einstein sent this reply, along with a page full of diagrams, to a 15-year-old girl who had written for help on a homework assignment: "Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics; I can assure you that mine are much greater." Everything's relative.

Frank Pellegrini writes for TIME Daily

Not being a professional historian, I take on this essay with fear and trembling. That's because, although defeated, although dead, this man is frightening.

What was the secret of his power over his listeners? His demagogic appeal to immoderation, to excess and to simplifying hate? They spoke of his intuitive powers and his "luck" (he escaped several attempts on his life).
Adolf Hitler or the incarnation of absolute evil; this is how future generations will remember the all-powerful Fuehrer of the criminal Third Reich. Compared with him, his peers Mussolini and Franco were novices. Under his hypnotic gaze, humanity crossed a threshold from which one could see the abyss.

At the same time that he terrorized his adversaries, he knew how to please, impress and charm the very interlocutors from whom he wanted support. Diplomats and journalists insist as much on his charm as they do on his temper tantrums. The savior admired by his own as he dragged them into his madness, the Satan and exterminating angel feared and hated by all others, Hitler led his people to a shameful defeat without precedent. That his political and strategic ambitions have created a dividing line in the history of this turbulent and tormented century is undeniable: there is a before and an after. By the breadth of his crimes, which have attained a quasi-ontological dimension, he surpasses all his predecessors: as a result of Hitler, man is defined by what makes him inhuman. With Hitler at the head of a gigantic laboratory, life itself seems to have changed.
How did this Austrian without title or position manage to get himself elected head of a German nation renowned for its civilizing mission? How to explain the success of his cheap demagogy in the heart of a people so proud of having inherited the genius of a Wolfgang von Goethe and an Immanuel Kant?

Was there no resistance to his disastrous projects? There was. But it was too feeble, too weak and too late to succeed. German society had rallied behind him: the judicial, the educational, the industrial and the economic establishments gave him their support. Few politicians of this century have aroused, in their lifetime, such love and so much hate; few have inspired so much historical and psychological research after their death. Even today, works on his enigmatic personality and his cursed career are best sellers everywhere. Some are good, others are less good, but all seem to respond to an authentic curiosity on the part of a public haunted by memory and the desire to understand.

We think we know everything about the nefarious forces that shaped his destiny: his unhappy childhood, his frustrated adolescence; his artistic disappointments; his wound received on the front during World War I; his taste for spectacle, his constant disdain for social and military aristocracies; his relationship with Eva Braun, who adored him; the cult of the very death he feared; his lack of scruples with regard to his former comrades of the SA, whom he had assassinated in 1934; his endless hatred of Jews, whose survival enraged him — each and every phase of his official and private life has found its chroniclers, its biographers.

And yet. There are, in all these givens, elements that escape us. How did this unstable paranoid find it within himself to impose gigantic hope as an immutable ideal that motivated his nation almost until the end? Would he have come to power if Germany were not going through endless economic crises, or if the winners in 1918 had not imposed on it conditions that represented a national humiliation against which the German patriotic fiber could only revolt? We would be wrong to forget: Hitler came to power in January 1933 by the most legitimate means. His Nationalist Socialist Party won a majority in the parliamentary elections. The aging Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg had no choice but to allow him, at age 43, to form the new government, marking the end of the Weimar Republic. And the beginning of the Third Reich, which, according to Hitler, would last 1,000 years.

From that moment on, events cascaded. The burning of the Reichstag came only a little before the openings of the first concentration camps, established for members of the opposition. Fear descended on the country and squeezed it in a vise. Great writers, musicians and painters went into exile to France and the U.S. Jews with foresight emigrated toward Palestine. The air of Hitler's Germany was becoming more and more suffocating. Those who preferred to wait, thinking that the Nazi regime would not last, could not last, would regret it later, when it was too late.
The fact is that Hitler was beloved by his people — not the military, at least not in the beginning, but by the average Germans who pledged to him an affection, a tenderness and a fidelity that bordered on the irrational. It was idolatry on a national scal e. One had to see the crowds who acclaimed him. And the women who were attracted to him. And the young who in his presence went into ecstasy. Did they not see the hateful mask that covered his face? Did they not divine the catastrophe he bore within himse lf?

Violating the Treaty of Versailles, which limited the German army to 100,000 men, Hitler embarked on a rearmament program of massive scale: fighter planes, tanks, submarines. His goal? It was enough to read Mein Kampf, written in prison after the a bortive coup of 1923 in Munich, to divine its contours: to become, once again, a global superpower, capable and desirous of reconquering lost territory, and others as well.

And the free world let it happen.

His army entered the Rhineland in 1936. A tangible reaction from France and Britain would have led to his fall. But since nothing happened, Hitler played on the "cowardice" of democratic principles. That cowardice was confirmed by the shameful Munich Agre ement, by which France and Britain betrayed their alliance with Czechoslovakia and abandoned it like a dead weight. At every turn, Hitler derided his generals and their lack of audacity. In 1939 he stupefied the entire world by reaching a nonaggression pa ct with Stalin. Though they had never met, the two dictators appeared to get along perfectly; it was said that a sort of empathy existed between them. Poland paid the price of this unnatural "friendship"; cut in two, it ceased to exist as a state.

Hitler also counted on Stalin's naivete. In a sense he was right. According to all witnesses, Stalin had total confidence in Hitler. To humor Hitler's extreme anti-Semitic sensibilities, the Soviet hierarchy withdrew certain Jews, such as Maxim Litvinov, the Soviet Foreign Minister, from the international scene. Stalin's order to honor the commercial agreements between the two countries was scrupulously executed, at all levels, until the beginning of hostilities: the day of German aggression, one still sa w Soviet trains stuffed with raw materials heading toward German factories. Was Hitler shrewder than Stalin? Certainly he was more tenacious than his French and British adversaries. Winston Churchill was the only man of state who unmasked Hitler immediately and refused to let himself be duped by Hitler's repeated promises that th is time he was making his "last territorial demand."
And yet. In his own "logic," Hitler was persuaded for a fairly long time that the German and British people had every reason to get along and divide up spheres of influence throughout the world. He did not understand British obstinacy in its resistance to his racial philosophy and to the practical ends it engendered.

In fact, he wanted to swallow up Russia, Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic countries to augment lebensraum: Germany's vital space. But then why did he launch his destructive war against London? Why did he declare war against the U.S.? Solely to please his Japanese ally? Why did he mandate a policy of cruelty in the Soviet territories occupied by his armies, when certain segments of the population there were ready to greet them with flowers? And finally, why did he invest so much energy in his hatred of Jews? Why did the night trains that took them to their death have priority over the military convoys that were taking badly needed troops to the front? His dark obsession with the "Jewish question" and its "Final Solution" will be long remembered, for it has evocative names that paralyze men's hearts with terror: Auschwitz, Treblinka and Belzec.

After Rommel's defeat in North Africa, after the debacle at Stalingrad and even when the landings in Normandy were imminent, Hitler and his entourage still had the mind to come up with the Final Solution. In his testament, drafted in a underground bunker just hours before his suicide in Berlin, Hitler returns again to this hatred of the Jewish people that had never left him. But in the same testament, he settles his score with the German people. He wants them to be sacked, destroyed, reduced to misery and shame for having failed him by denying him his glory. The former corporal become commander in chief of all his armies and convinced of his strategic and political genius was not prepared to recognize his own responsibility for the defeat of his Reich.

His kingdom collapsed after 12 years in a war that remains the most atrocious, the most brutal and the deadliest in history. But which, by the same token, allowed several large figures to emerge. Their names have become legendary: Eisenhower, De Gaulle, Montgomery, Zhukov, Patton...

But when later we evoke the 20th century, among the first names that will surge to mind will be that of a fanatic with a mustache who thought to reign by selling the soul of his people to the thousand demons of hate and of death.

Nobel Peace laureate Elie Wiesel is professor in the humanities at Boston University

Oliver Wendell Holmes once observed that every profession is great that is greatly pursued. Boxing in the early '60s, largely controlled by the Mob, was in a moribund state until Muhammad Ali — Cassius Clay, in those days — appeared on the scene. "Just when the sweet science appears to lie like a painted ship upon a painted ocean," wrote A.J. Liebling, "a new Hero...comes along like a Moran tug to pull it out of the ocean."
Though Ali won the gold medal at the Rome Olympics in 1960, at the time the experts didn't think much of his boxing skills. His head, eyes wide, seemed to float above the action. Rather than slip a punch, the traditional defensive move, it was his habit to sway back, bending at the waist — a tactic that appalled the experts. Lunacy.

Nor did they approve of his personal behavior: the self-promotions ("I am the greatest!"), his affiliation with the Muslims and giving up his "slave name" for Muhammad Ali ("I don't have to be what you want me to be; I'm free to be what I want"), the poetry (his ability to compose rhymes on the run could very well qualify him as the first rapper) or the quips ("If Ali says a mosquito can pull a plow, don't ask how. Hitch him up!"). At the press conferences, the reporters were sullen. Ali would turn on them. "Why ain't you taking notice?" or "Why ain't you laughing?"

It was odd that they weren't. He was an engaging combination of sass and sweetness and naivete. His girlfriend disclosed that the first time he was kissed, he fainted. Merriment always seemed to be bubbling just below the surface, even when the topics were somber. When reporters asked about his affiliation with Islam, he joked that he was going to have four wives: one to shine his shoes, one to feed him grapes, one to rub oil on his muscles and one named Peaches. In his boyhood he was ever the prankster and the practical joker. His idea of fun was to frighten his parents — putting a sheet over his head and jumping out at them from a closet, or tying a string to a bedroom curtain and making it move after his parents had gone to bed.
The public as well had a hard time accepting him. His fight for the heavyweight championship in Miami against Sonny Liston was sparsely attended. Indeed, public sentiment was for Liston, a Mob-controlled thug, to take care of the lippy upstart. Liston concurred, saying he was going to put his fist so far down his opponent's throat, he was going to have trouble removing it.

Then, of course, three years after Ali defended the championship, there came the public vilification for his refusal to join the Army during the Vietnam War — "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong" — one of the more telling remarks of the era. The government prosecuted him for draft dodging, and the boxing commissions took away his license. He was idle for 3 1/2 years at the peak of his career. In 1971 the Supreme Court ruled that the government had acted improperly. But Ali bore the commissions no ill will. There were no lawsuits to get his title back through the courts. No need, he said, to punish them for doing what they thought was right. Quite properly, in his mind, he won back the title in the ring, knocking out George Foreman in the eighth round of their fight in Zaire — the "Rumble in the Jungle."

Ali was asked on a television show what he would have done with his life, given a choice. After an awkward pause — a rare thing, indeed — he admitted he couldn't think of anything other than boxing. That is all he had ever wanted or wished for. He couldn't imagine anything else. He defended boxing as a sport: "You don't have to be hit in boxing. People don't understand that."

He was wrong. Joe Frazier, speaking of their fight, said he had hit Ali with punches that would have brought down a building. Coaxed into fights by his managers long after he should have retired, and perhaps because he loved the sport too much to leave it, Ali ended up being punished by the likes of Leon Spinks and Larry Holmes, who took little pleasure in what they were doing.
Oscar Wilde once suggested that you kill the thing you love. In Ali's case, it was the reverse: what he loved, in a sense, killed him. The man who was the most loquacious of athletes ("I am the onliest of boxing's poet laureates") now says almost nothing: he moves slowly through the crowds and signs autographs. He has probably signed more autographs than any other athlete ever, living or dead. It is his principal activity at home, working at his desk. He was once denied an autograph by his idol, Sugar Ray Robinson ("Hello, kid, how ya doin'? I ain't got time"), and vowed he would never turn anyone down. The volume of mail is enormous.

The ceremonial leave-taking of great athletes can impart indelible memories, even if one remembers them from the scratchy newsreels of time — Babe Ruth with the doffed cap at home plate, Lou Gehrig's voice echoing in the vast hollows of Yankee Stadium. Muhammad Ali's was not exactly a leave-taking, but it may have seemed so to the estimated 3 billion or so television viewers who saw him open the Atlanta Olympics in 1996. Outfitted in a white gym suit that eerily made him seem to glisten against a dark night sky, he approached the unlit saucer with his flaming torch, his free arm trembling visibly from the effects of Parkinson's.

It was a kind of epiphany that those who watched realized how much they missed him and how much he had contributed to the world of sport. Students of boxing will pore over the trio of Ali-Frazier fights, which rank among the greatest in fistic history, as one might read three acts of a great drama. They would remember the shenanigans, the Ali Shuffle, the Rope-a-Dope, the fact that Ali had brought beauty and grace to the most uncompromising of sports. And they would marvel that through the wonderful excesses of skill and character, he had become the most famous athlete, indeed, the best-known personage in the world

Tun Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad became the fourth Prime Minister of Malaysia on 16 July 1981.

Born on 20 December 1925 in Alor Setar, the capital of the State of Kedah, Tun Dr. Mahathir did his early and secondary education in his home town. In 1947, he gained admission into the King Edward VII College of Medicine in Singapore.

Upon graduation, he joined the Malaysian government service as a Medical Officer. He left in 1957 to set up his own practice in Alor Setar.

Tun Dr. Mahathir has been active in politics since 1945. He has been a member of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) since its inception in 1946.

He was first elected as a Member of Parliament following the General Elections in 1964. However, he lost his seat in the subsequent General Election in 1969. Owing to his keen interest in the country's education, he was appointed Chairman of the first Higher Education Council in 1968, Member of the Higher Education Advisory Council in 1972, Member of the University Court and University of Malaya Council, and Chairman of the National University Council in 1974.

In 1973, Tun Dr. Mahathir was appointed a Senator. He relinquished this post in order to contest in the 1974 General Elections where he was returned unopposed. Following the elections, Tun Dr. Mahathir was appointed the Minister of Education.

In 1976, Tun Dr. Mahathir was made Deputy Prime Minister in addition to his Education portfolio. In a Cabinet reshuffle two years later, he relinquished the Education portfolio for that of Trade and Industry. As Minister of Trade and Industry, he led several investment promotion missions overseas. Tun Dr. Mahathir was elected as one of the three Vice Presidents of UMNO in 1975. In 1978, he won the Deputy President seat and in 1981, he was appointed President of the party. He was returned unopposed as President in 1984.

In the 1987 party elections, Tun Dr. Mahathir defeated his challenger to retain the Presidency and in 1990 and 1993, he was again returned unopposed as party President. Under his leadership, the ruling party Barisan Nasional (National Front) won landslide victories in the 1982, 1986, 1990, 1995 and 1999 General Elections.

Tun Dr. Mahathir is married to a doctor, Tun Dr. Siti Hasmah bt Mohd Ali, and they have seven children Marina, Mirzan, Melinda, Mokhzani, Mukhriz, Maizura and Mazhar.

Tun Dr. Mahathir stepped down as Prime Minister on October 31st 2003.

SERJ TANKIAN | Vocals
SHAVO ODADJIAN | Bass
DARON MALAKIAN | Guitar
JOHN DOLMAYAN | Drums

Three years and eight months after the release of Toxicity, one of this decade’s most corrosively powerful, relevant and down-right important albums, System of a Down— guitarist/singer Daron Malakian, singer Serj Tankian, bass player Shavo Odadjian and drummer John Dolmayan—unleashes Mezmerize /Hypnotize… Well, actually, what they’re doing is unleashing half of it—the Mezmerize half—with the understanding that attention spans aren’t what they used to be in the Too-Much-Information Age.

You can count on System, one of rock’s most daring and innovative bands, to do things in its own way, and with a level of commitment that’ll knock the wind right out of you. “This band’s what Public Enemy once was and what Rage Against the Machine never quite managed to be: the potent trifecta of credibility, sincerity and real danger,” pronounced Esquire on naming them “Best Agitators” in the magazine’s 2005 Esky Music Awards. If you were looking for the ultimate one-sentence summation of this extraordinary band, that’s pretty good. Malakian has his own take. “We’re really an honest band—that’s why people are listening to us,” he asserts. “We’re not bullshitting ourselves and we’re not bullshitting them.”

Tankian’s take is even more succinct. “Our music has always been urgent, critical and questioning, and that still remains,” he says.

“We’re artists for the sake of art,” Tankian continues. “And our expression is pure and natural in terms of where it comes from. I think that’s always better with art because, once you have something in mind and you try to achieve it, it becomes less pure in some ways. If you just let whatever expression there is come out—it might be socially viable, it might be political, romantic, humorous, a personal narrative, a philosophical thought, whatever it is—if it’s pure and it just comes out and you leave it that way, I think it’s more potent. I think it’s more real.”

Fate chose this group of Armenian Americans, two of whom were born in Lebanon, one in Armenia and another in Hollywood, as unknowing prophets. Toxicity, System’s second album, appeared on Sept. 4, 2001 and was at the top of the charts on Sept. 12, while America and the world were paralyzed with grief, shock and fear. Perhaps because the music of Toxicity was so uncompromising and yet so full of humanity at its extremes, it provided a suitably harrowing soundtrack for that unimaginable moment, striking a deep nerve. The album generated four Top 10 singles, including the #1 “Aerials,” and went on to sell 6 million copies, establishing System not as some prefab mainstream commercial entity but rather as an urgent voice in the uncharted wilderness that was heard—and believed—by a great many human beings.

Just over a year later, the band offered up Steal This Album!, made up of tracks that had been started during the Toxicity sessions but didn’t fit that album’s dedicated confrontational vibe—tracks that put a greater emphasis on melody and the two-part harmonies of Malakian and Tankian. With Steal!, System, which up to that point had pitched nothing but fastballs (although some were of the split-finger variety), showed that it had a command of all kinds of stuff, and potent stuff at that. Thus, Mezmerize /Hypnotize is both the long-awaited follow-up to Toxicity in big-picture terms and a natural progression from Steal This Album! in a musical sense.

“People ask, ‘How are you gonna compete with Toxicity?’” Malakian points out. “And the answer is: by not competing with it. By not being afraid to use the new ideas that we have. Some bands are afraid of their fans: ‘They’re not gonna like this and they’re not gonna like that.’ We don’t have that mindset. We’ve gotta impress ourselves before we impress the fans—you gotta love yourself first, you know? I’ve gotta feel like we have everything it takes to make a record that’s better than anything we’ve done.”

“I look at everything we do as a continuation because it’s the same band and the same four individuals,” says Dolmayan, “So Mezmerize /Hypnotize is still System of a Down, but definitely there’s a huge growth. It’s more melodic but at the same time more aggressive. Every album captures where you are at that moment, but almost instantly you’re in a new place, as soon as it’s recorded, so it’s just basically a window into where you’re going in the future. And how people want to look at that and understand it is really up to each individual.”

Malakian not only produced the band’s magnum opus with Rick Rubin, as he did with Toxicity and Steal This Album!, but also increased his already considerable song, arrangement and vocal contributions, stepping forward both as a lead vocalist and as one half of System’s distinctive harmonies. Malakian’s increased foreground presence poses no problems for Tankian. “It’s not hard for me because we’ve been working together for over 10 years,” Serj points out. “I don’t necessarily encompass his words when I sing them—I approach them from my perspective and what they make me feel.” This is the same sort of statement one might expect to hear from Mick Jagger in describing his relationship with Keith Richards, or Robert Plant on Jimmy Page.

Likewise, Tankian, who shared production chores on Toxicity, broadened his own contributions in terms of writing music and arranging. In addition to writing more than half of the lyrics for both Mezmerize and Hypnotize, he played acoustic guitars, pianos and synths on the new album, as well as handling the string arrangements, doing most of it in his well-appointed home studio. There’s a great deal of back and forth between them in the creation of material, as Malakian explains: “I might have a great chorus but I don’t think the verse is that great, so I’ll ask Serj, ‘Can you make the verse better?’ And he does the same thing with me on stuff that he writes.” Both artists, then, have stepped up and branched out as their band matures, but their interaction is ongoing. So many great rock & roll bands have been led by tandems, and System of a Down is no exception.

System of a Down wrote some 30 tracks for Mezmerize/Hypnotize and recorded them at Rubin's Laurel Canyon studio between June and November of 2004. The new songs are more complex, more progressive, more unorthodox and more experimental than ever, while retaining the idiosyncratic, ironic and schizophrenic qualities that make System of a Down so distinctive. Among the uncompromising songs contained on Mezmerize are “Cigaro,” “Violent Pornography,” “Sad Statue,” “Radio/Video” and “Revenga.”

According to Malakian, the ramping up of melody and vocal interaction between the two collaborators is “part of the band’s evolution.” His priorities in developing the material for Mezmerize/Hypnotize involved “just being honest as a writer—not being afraid to express different parts of my life and different parts of what I see around me. Some people kind of censor themselves; I don’t and this band doesn’t. It’s a crazy time in the world, and I just stay focused on being inspired, not only by the crazy times but also by everyday life. It all meshes together. You can look at these songs from the viewpoint of a normal Joe or you can look at it in a broader way, because there’s a world going on around this normal Joe.”

The new album’s character is encapsulated by the jaw-dropping first single, “B.Y.O.B.,” with its myriad shifts in tempo, tone and viewpoint. The track starts out with System’s signature teeth-baring ferocity, as Tankian howls like an opera singer on steroids about a world gone mad while his cohorts impersonate the RATATAT of an AK47. Then, just as abruptly, a second protagonist comes into the frame, this one a carefree dude cruising eastward on the San Bernardino Freeway en route to a party in the desert, the scene delivered via a delectable minor-key pop hook. Thereafter, like some chemically amplified fever dream, the settings keep shifting until they begin to overlap, and a voice—Malakian’s—screams, “Blast off / It’s party time / And where the fuck are you?,” setting up the bitter incantation, in yet a third distinct time signature, that sends the song—and the listener—over the edge: “Why don’t presidents fight the war? / Why do they always send the poor? / Why do they always send the poor?” The song is so epic that it seems much bigger than its 4:17 length, and when it’s over, the listener is spent, enraged and exhilarated, all at once. And that’s just the first track of an album that packs a world of compressed fury into its 37 minutes. But it isn’t gratuitous fury.

“Originally, there was, in my own performance—on the first album, for example—a lot more ferocity and rage and aggression in terms of how I expressed myself,” Serj points out. “Whereas, now, it’s almost like a way of shaking things up to raise my voice, to communicate on an intense-energy level—which I would say is as powerful as anger and rage, yet more focused and productive.”

The album ends—this half of Mezmerize/Hypnotize does, at any rate—just as thrillingly as it begins, with Malakian’s double-cheeseburger reflection on his ugly, beautiful and bizarre hometown, comprising the Spandex-style rocker “Old School Hollywood” (ironic, maybe, but bitchen for sure), inspired in part by his surreal experience on the field at Dodger Stadium for the 2003 celebrity game, segueing into “Lost in Hollywood,” a bittersweet journey back to “the streets where I grew up,” which has to be the most beautiful and haunting song this band has ever recorded. Admittedly, “bittersweet,” “beautiful” and “haunting” haven’t been used a whole lot in describing System of a Down up to now, but this band is endlessly surprising, and they refuse to be typecast. From moment to moment within any given track, they might be perceived as art rock, hard rock, Floydian prog-rock, psychedelia, politically charged hardcore, nu-metal, old metal or even Gilbert & Sullivan from some parallel universe, but in the end they’re System, period—unpredictable and indescribable.

“In terms of dichotomy and the dynamics of the songs, it just kind of comes naturally through Daron’s songwriting and my songwriting,” says Tankian. “We just go with it. To me, it’s always been interesting both musically and lyrically to put two things next to each other that don’t have a previous relationship and see what kind of relationship I can create out of them, because I think that’s creating something new. If you can make it work, it’s fun.”

The band has no overriding concept, meaning each of their albums is—just as Dolmayan says—essentially a representation of these particular individuals at a particular moment in time. Simple, right? Right. And also incredibly complex—as complex as human beings and the world they’re living in, a world seemingly without absolutes or easy answers.

“I don’t really have a side—I’m not red or blue,” says Malakian. “And since I did write a good part of the lyrics on this record, the songs tend to take a middle ground rather than being one-sided about it. I think that’s why my world and Serj’s come together so well lyrically, because he’s more politically motivated and I’m not, but some of his stuff makes mine more serious, and some of my stuff makes his stuff a little bit more human. As I was sequencing the records, I realized that if I went to a shrink and he hypnotized me, I would be singing some of these songs.”

“I don’t feel any particular responsibility in discussing social or political things,” Tankian explains. “It’s something that’s in my heart. I’ve always had a problem with injustice, whether it’s personal, national, international or universal. It’s just always bothered me to the point where I have to say or do something. I think action is worth a million words, though, as far as that’s concerned. But ultimately, if there’s one thing I’d like to do more than anything else, it’s to not take this life so seriously.”

There’s not a trace of arrogance in this band, despite the scope of its success. In its place is a disarming humility. “I didn’t find music—music found me,” Malakian says, clearly in awe of the part he feels destiny tapped him to play. Odadjian is similarly grateful to be where he is in life. “Every day that comes, I thank my Higher Power that I’m alive and doing what I do for a living, because I love it,” he says. “It’s something I’ve dreamt of doing, and I’ve worked my ass off to get where I’m at. I don’t take any of it for granted.”

They operate as a democracy, with each band member embracing his own particular role while contributing to System’s unorthodox but remarkably harmonious dynamic, which comprises intricate relationship vectors. Odadjian, for example, handles System’s stage production and is involved with the band’s videos as a director (Toxicity’s “Chop Suey” and “Aerials”) and editor (“B.Y.O.B.”) “We have our arguments,” Dolmayan acknowledges, “but in the end, if someone has a compelling argument, everyone else will listen, even if that person’s in the minority. So it’s a true democracy in that everyone’s voice is heard.” Dolmayan pauses for the punch line. “Some people talk more than others,” he quips.

And speaking of relationships, System has a deep connection with its audience. The band’s fans seem to receive the music precisely in the spirit in which it’s offered, making it the rarest of situations—particularly in the context of commercial art forms—and certainly the most rewarding. “The impact that we’ve had on people, artistically, socially and politically, is pretty amazing,” Tankian marvels. “It’s a huge compliment, and it’s a very special thing. I think System of a Down in itself is very special in that sense.

“It’s about the audience finding you, rather than you finding the audience,” Tankian offers. “A lot of bands are marketed by labels to certain demographics. With us it was just the opposite from Day One. We toured pretty heavily until we built up a certain amount of fans that bought our CDs and saw our shows before we approached radio or video in any way. So that set us apart. That’s the old-fashioned way, and it’s how bands should be broken. And that’s why I think—luckily—we’ve had a good long career, and one that’s perpetually increasing. We’re not an overnight-success kind of band.”

Remember, Mezmerize is only the first half of this serial double album, so expect another sheaf of surprises when Hypnotize sees the light of day later this year. “The end of Hypnotize will tie together Mezmerize,” Daron promises, “but it’s really tough to explain until you hear it. Individually, in my opinion, they both stand on their own, but until you hear the second one you won’t know how the two records come together as one. We’re not leavin’ you dry.”

Don’t expect these guys to ever follow any script but their own—they make it up as they go along, and yet it always turns out to be right on the nose.

“I think you do what you’re destined to do,” says Tankian, expressing what could serve as his band’s credo. “If you follow your heart and you follow your path, then you’ll always be safe with anything that you do, including art.”

Radiohead was one of the few alternative bands of the early '90s to draw heavily from the grandiose arena rock that characterized U2's early albums. But the band internalized that epic sweep, turning it inside out to tell tortured, twisted tales of angst and alienation. Vocalist Thom Yorke's pained lyrics were brought to life by the group's three-guitar attack, which relied on texture -- borrowing as much from My Bloody Valentine and Pink Floyd as R.E.M. and Pixies -- instead of virtuosity. It took Radiohead awhile to formulate their signature sound. Their 1993 debut, Pablo Honey, only suggested their potential, and one of its songs, "Creep," became an unexpected international hit, its angst-ridden lyrics making it an alternative rock anthem. Many observers pigeonholed Radiohead as a one-hit wonder, but the group's second album, The Bends, was released to terrific reviews in the band's native Britain in early 1995, helping build a more stable fan base. Having demonstrated unexpected staying power, as well as increasing ambition, Radiohead next released OK Computer, a progressive, electronic-tinged masterpiece that became one of the most acclaimed albums of the '90s.


Thom Yorke (vocals, guitar), Ed O'Brien (guitar, vocals), Jonny Greenwood (guitar), Colin Greenwood (bass), and Phil Selway (drums) formed Radiohead as students at Oxford University in 1988. Initially called On a Friday, the band began pursuing a musical career in earnest in the early '90s, releasing the Drill EP in 1992. Shortly afterward, the group signed to EMI/Capitol and released the single "Creep," a fusion of R.E.M. and Nirvana highlighted by a noisy burst of feedback prior to the chorus. "Creep" was a moderate hit, and their next two singles, "Anyone Can Play Guitar" and "Pop Is Dead," built a small following, even as the British music press ignored the group. Pablo Honey, Radiohead's debut album, was released to mixed reviews in the spring of 1993. As the band launched a European supporting tour, "Creep" became a sudden smash hit in America, earning heavy airplay on modern rock radio and MTV. On the back of the single's success, Radiohead toured the U.S. extensively, opening for Belly and Tears for Fears. All the exposure helped Pablo Honey go gold, and "Creep" was re-released in the U.K. at the end of 1993. This time, the single became a Top Ten hit, and the band spent the following summer touring the world.


Although "Creep" made Radiohead a success, it also led many observers to peg the band as a one-hit wonder. Conscious of such thinking, the group entered the studio with producer John Leckie to record its second album, The Bends. Upon its spring 1995 release, The Bends was greeted with overwhelmingly enthusiastic reviews, all of which praised the group's deeper, more mature sound. However, positive reviews didn't sell albums, as Radiohead struggled to be heard during the U.K.'s summer of Britpop and as American radio programmers and MTV ignored the record. The band continued to tour as the opening act on R.E.M.'s prestigious Monster tour. By the end of the year, The Bends began to catch on, thanks not only to the band's constant touring but also to the stark, startling video for "Just." The album made many year-end best-of lists in the U.K., and early in 1996 the record re-entered the British Top Ten and climbed to gold status in the U.S., helped in the latter by the video for "Fake Plastic Trees." During the first half of 1996, Radiohead continued to tour before re-entering the studio that fall to record their third album, OK Computer, which was released in the summer of 1997. A devoted following of fans and a handful of enthusiastic critical supporters immediately embraced the album's majestic blend of unfettered prog rock, post-punk angst, eerie electronic textures, and assured songwriting. Since it skillfully teetered between rock classicism and futurism, it earned near-unanimous critical and popular support over the course of the year, which turned into unrestrained adoration in the final two years of the decade, even though its sales still hadn't climbed above gold status.

Expectations for Radiohead's fourth album were stratospheric, which placed additional pressure on the already perfectionist band, and led to several stumbling blocks along the way. An intense buzz of excitement among the band's still-growing following greeted the prerelease appearance of most of the album's tracks on the Internet in MP3 form; they displayed an all-out fascination with challenging, often minimalist electronica. Titled Kid A, the album was finally released in October 2000 and astonished many observers by debuting at number one on the U.S. album charts. While the band didn't release any singles or embark on a formal tour, the album met with a mixed critical response as the group was accused of creating a distant and radio-unfriendly record; however, it did remain a fan favorite. In June of 2001, Radiohead quickly released an album under the name Amnesiac that consisted of material that was recorded during the Kid A sessions. The band made it very clear, though, that it was not to be considered an outtakes album; rather, they insisted that the two albums were of clear and separate concept. Regardless, Amnesiac debuted at number one in the U.K. and number two on the U.S. chart (behind then-stronghold Staind), while outselling Kid A in week one by 25,000 copies. The singles Pyramid Song and Knives Out were culled from Amnesiac with a subsequent world tour. While planning I Might Be Wrong for a third single, the idea expanded into a live "mini-album" that was released in November of 2001. Making for their third release in 13 months, the tracks were collected from four different shows in Europe and included an unreleased song, "True Love Waits."

Muse adalah sebuah band rock asal
Inggris yang terbentuk di Teignmouth, Devon, tahun 1997. Band ini
terdiri dari Matthew Bellamy (vocal, gitar, keyboard), Chris
Wolstenholme (bas, gitar, keyboard, vocal) dan Dominic Howard (drum,
perkusi). Baru-baru ini, Morgan Nicholls ditampilkan pada posisi
gitar dan keyboard setiap kali Muse mengadakan konser album Black
Holes And Reve. Musik mereka merupakan gabungan dari rock
alternative, rock progresif, musik klasik, elektronika, rock indie,
dan heavy metal. Band ini terkenal dengan aksi panggung mereka yang
enerjik dan ketertarikan eksentrik Bellamy akan hal-hal yang berbau
konspirasi global, kehidupan luar jagat raya, teologi dan hal-hal
mengenai wahyu.

SEJARAH

Formasi Tahun-tahun Awal (1992-1997)

Personil Muse pada awalnya merupakan
anggota band-band yang berbeda pada Teignmouth Community College pada
awal 90-an. Formasi Muse diawali setelah Bellamy sukses melewati
audisi untuk posisi gitar pada band milik Dominic Howard. Mereka
mengalami kesulitan setelah gitaris mereka, Phys Vandit, memilih
untuk keluar, sehingga mereka meminta teman dekat mereka, Chris
Wolstenholme untuk mempelajari permainan gitar bas. Sebelum
mengadopsi nama Muse, nama band sendiri sering berganti sejalan
perjalanan waktu. Nama-nama band yang pernah digunakan adalah Gothic
Plague, Carnage Mahyem, Fixed Penalty, dan Rocket Baby Dolls
(kronologi nama-nama ini tidak jelas disebabkan oleh informasi yang
berbeda-beda yang diberikan Muse pada wawancara yang berbeda-beda).
Pada tahun 1994, dengan nama Rocekt Baby Dolls dan dengan image
gothic, grup ini memenangkan kontes Battle Of The Bands dan
melambungkan nama mereka (mereka dianggap satu-satunya ‘band rock
sejati’ pada kontes itu). Singkatnya, setelah kontes itu, mereka
memutuskan untuk tidak melanjutkan kuliah mereka dan lebih memilih
berkarir di bidang musik professional. Mereka mengubah nama mereka
menjadi Muse dan mulai mengadakan konser di kelab-kelab malam.

EP Pertama Dan Showbiz (1998-2000)

Setelah beberapa tahun membangun basis
fans di London, mereka mulai menancapkan tajinya di Manchester. Muse
bertemu dengan Dennis Smith, pemilik Sawmills, sebuah studio rekaman
di Cornwall, Barat Daya Inggris.

Pertemuan ini membawa mereka ke rekaman
pertama dan peluncuran album pertama, EP, yang mana cover depan album
ini didesain sendiri oleh sang drummer, Dominic, di studio pelabelan
Sawmill, Dangerous. EP mereka yang kedua, Muscle Museum EP,
mengundang perhatian jurnalis musik Inggris, Steve Lamacq dan
publikasi musik Inggris mingguan, NME. Muse kemudian dinaungi oleh
perusahaan produksi musik, Taste Media (Muse bergabung dengan
perusahaan ini pada tiga album pertama mereka). Hal ini sangat
menguntungkan Muse karena mereka dapat mengekspresikan musik dan
skill individual mereka secara bebas pada awal karir-karir mereka.

Origin Of Symmetry (2001-2002)

Album kedua mereka, Origin of Symmetry,
yang diproduksi oleh Leckie, menyajikan musik yang lebih keras, suara
rock yang lebih sangar, dengan permainan bas Wolstenholme, yang
terampil, berdistorsi atau bersintesis, yang kadang-kadang menggunkan
teknik klasik pada lagu seperti “Seperti Dementia”.

Band ini mencoba instrumentasi
non-ortodoks, seperti orjen gereja, Mellotron dan peti drum. Lebih
terasa garis vocal Bellamy yang tinggi, permainan gitar yang
arpegiasi dan permainan piano yang berbeda yang terinspirasi dari
karya pianis pada pergerakan Romantisisme, khususnya Rusia,
Rachmaninov dan Tchaikovsky. Juga influens musik minimalis yang jelas
seperti Philip Glass. Bellamy menyebutkan bahwa influens musiknya
adalah Ned (Atomic Dustbin) dan Tom Morello (Audioslave dan Race
Against The Machine) dan hal ini dibuktikan dengan lagu-lagu yang
berbasis urak-urakan pada Origin Of Symmetry dan penggunaan efek
pitch-shifting pada permainan solo Bellamy yang ekstensif. Album ini
juga menampilkan karya Anthony Newley dan Leslie Bricusse; “Feeling
Good” yang diaransemen kembali…

Taking pot shots at the four-headed monolithic heavy rock beast that was Led Zeppelin is all too easy.

Musically, it was a lumbering leviathan, often playing three-hour sets that often comprised of seemingly endless, self-indulgent solos, including (horror of horrors) John Bonham bashing out a drum solo on 'Moby Dick'. And don't forget their wholesale pillaging of the blues which they sprinkled liberally throughout most of their songs and then cranked up the volume to an ear-splitting Spinal Tap level of 11. Lyrically, too, they could be appalling. When Robert Plant wasn't singing about some mystical mumbo-jumbo about Vikings or the Battle for Evermore his crotch took over, invariably imploring some woman to "squeeze my lemon 'till the juice runs down my legs" (the line was looted from Robert Johnson anyway).

Even off stage they were one big rock cliché, living the rock 'n' roll lifestyle to the hilt. The band consumed an endless supply of alcohol, drugs, televisions and hotel rooms – when they weren't flying around America in their own private jet. Jimmy Page, for a while, got obsessed with the occult, magick and Aleister Crowley. There was also a limitless supply of groupies. The stories of which have now gone into the realms of folklore. Separate incidents supposedly involved a Red Snapper and a redheaded groupie, the so-called “octopus incident” and whilst on their third tour of America, a groupie that liked her Great Dane to do certain things to her. In the "groupie" issue of Rolling Stone Page recounted a tale of being served up on a room service trolley by Bonham dressed as a waiter to the waiting women.

They were exactly the sort of rock dinosaurs punk came along to eradicate.

But they also had a radical edge to them. When they first signed to their record label the band managed to secure complete artistic control and then, later, set up their own record label, Swan Song. They also never sanctioned the release of singles in the UK. For most record labels, singles are largely seen as a loss-leader, put out solely as a means to promote the forthcoming album. Despite severe pressure to release 'Stairway to Heaven' in a 7-inch format the group still refused, probably losing themselves a great deal of lost income and exposure. They also shunned the usual record company marketing ploys and not only refused to give their fourth album a title but also refused to have their name on the cover. The band also took time and effort over the artwork on each album. Rather than shoving out a cover with a picture of the band, most albums came in a gatefold sleeve at least. 'Led Zeppelin III' came with a cardboard disc that could be spun around, changing the patterns on the cover (the idea came to Page from recollecting old gardening catalogues). 'In Through the Out Door' had six possible covers and the covers of the double album 'Physical Graffiti' slotted together to complete a picture of a tenement block. Even playing live they defied convention, refusing to accept a support band in favour of playing three hour slots themselves.

When, though, someone comes to write that great big thick book on rock mythology Led Zeppelin will be right up there as one of the great rock bands. They could veer from the hypnotic pounding of 'When the Levee Breaks', the intricate, exotic influences on 'Kashmir' as well as the straight-forward blast of 'Rock and Roll'. There was the loneliness of 'Tea for One', the reflective 'In My Time of Dying' and the spookiness of 'No Quarter'. And they also wrote a little ditty called 'Stairway to Heaven' which you may have heard of.

Not only were they musically way over the top but also financially. They were big business selling albums in vast quantities; their second album spent two and a half years in the US Top 40. In 1973 the Financial Times tipped the band to earn in excess of $30 million in the US alone. It's hard to think of a more commercially successful or archetypal rock band of the 70's. Along with The Beatles they are the only band to have five diamond albums (sales of more than 10 million each). Their fourth album has reportedly sold 22 million copies.

Not bad for a band that was originally conceived as the New Yardbirds.

After Jeff Beck left the Yardbirds and the band disintegrated in 1968 guitarist Jimmy Page was left with the name and an obligation to complete a tour of Scandinavia. Page initially linked-up with session bassist John Paul Jones, whom he had worked with on various sessions including those for Lulu, Dusty Springfield and Donovan. Teaming up with manager Peter Grant they set about putting a band together. Vocalist Robert Plant (who had been in Band of Joy along with a drummer called John Bonham) was recommended to them, who in turn suggested Bonham for the drumming position. And the New Yardbirds went off to fulfil their contractual obligations.

Talking to Mick Houghton, then writing for Circus magazine in 1976, Page said: "I knew exactly the style I was after and the sort of musicians I wanted to play with, the sort of powerhouse sound I was really going for."

The band returned, went into the studio to cut their first album, which was supposedly done in 37 hours at a cost of £1,750 (paid out of Page's life savings) and then took the name Led Zeppelin after a suggestion by Who drummer Keith Moon who, legend has it, quipped their sound was “so heavy they should go down like a lead zeppelin”.

'Led Zeppelin' was released in early 1969 after the band signed to Atlantic for a record-breaking $200,000 advance which included a "total artistic control" clause. The album, which was largely a studio version of their live set, mixed together a heavy-duty interpretation of the blues in the shape of covers of Willie Dixon's 'You Shook Me' and Otis Rush's 'Can't Quit You' with the folk of Bert Jansch (who remains a strong influence on Page: “He [Jansch] was the innovator of the time.”) via the acoustic instrumental 'Black Mountain Side' (Jansch's September 1966 album 'Jack Onion' contained 'Blackwater Side') and Anne Bredon's 'Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You' (which Joan Baez had covered) as well as their love of rhythm and blues in the epic 'Dazed and Confused'. It went Top 10 in both Britain and the US. Looking back in 1977 Page commented that "the first album has got the catalyst for so much."

"It was inevitable that the first LP had leftover ideas from the Yardbirds," Page told Houghton in Circus magazine. "Because that's what I'd been working on. It was original stuff that I'd developed myself."

Following in chronological order was 'Led Zeppelin II'. The album was an unashamed collection of rock songs, containing the classic 'Whole Lotta Love'. Released as a single in America, it was to give the band their only Top 10 hit in the US. Although the band thought it would be inappropriate to release the single in the UK it would later be covered by Alexis Korner's studio band CCS (standing for Collective Consciousness Society) and used as the theme tune for BBC1's chart show 'Top of the Pops'. Strangely, the song would also be covered by the London Symphony Orchestra as well as Tina Turner. Willie Dixon, though, thought the song bore a remarkable similarity to his song 'You Need Love' and brought a plagiarism suit against the band in 1987, which would eventually be settled out of court. At the time, Plant was reported to have said: “You only get caught when you're successful. That's the game.” Upon release the album went straight to number one on both sides of the Atlantic and had even notched up 400,000 advance orders before its late 1969 release. Along with 'Whole Lotta Love' songs like 'The Lemon Song', 'What Is and What Should Never Be' as well as 'Moby Dick' (which would later become a live favourite and feature Bonham's drum solo) ensured that the album would often feature in "best rock album" polls. "This is one fucking heavyweight of an album!" is how John Mendelssohn described it in his review for Rolling Stone in December 1969.

After a 27-date tour of America which grossed $800,000 Plant and Page (along with roadies Clive Coulson and Sandy Macgregor) hid themselves away in the remote eighteenth-century Welsh country cottage, Bron-yr-Aur (meaning "breast of gold"), in south Snowdonia to organise and prepare their third album, which would have the ingenious title of 'Led Zeppelin III'. The cottage was extremely basic with no bathroom, electricity or running water. Candles and gaslights were used, water had to be fetched from the nearby stream and the nearest town was two miles away down a mountain road. The area is steeped in ancient myth. The giant Idris Gawr has his seat on the mountain near by and legend has it that King Arthur fought his last battle in the Ochr-yr-Bwich pass. During their stay the songs 'Bron-yr-Aur', 'Bron-y-Aur Stomp', 'Misty Mountain Hop', 'Friends' and 'That's the Way' were written as well as the early stages of what would become their best known song, 'Stairway to Heaven'. Rough sketches of 'Over the Hills and Far Away', 'Down by the Seaside' and 'The Rover' were also drawn up. After playing the Bath Festival in 1970 and heading out on tours of Europe and the US the album was released towards the end of that year. Later, in 1973, Plant would return to the area, buying a sheep farm in the nearby Llyfnant Valley.

The latest album, released in October, still contained some hard-boiled rockers – in the shape of the thunderous 'Immigrant Song' (about the Viking invasions of England) complete with Plant's finest Wagnerian wailing and 'Celebration Day' – but the album largely emphasised the band's acoustic, folk and blues heritage with the mournful 'Since I've Been Loving You' and the traditional 'Gallows Pole' (which stemmed from a Leadbelly song) standing out. Along with the trademark riffs it mixed in the folk music of Pentangle, Fairport Convention and the Incredible String Band, Celtic mythology (Plant had been studying the manuscripts of the ancient legends kept at the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth) as well as the delta blues of Mississippi. In an interview at the time Page said: “The new album is totally different from the others and I see that it's obviously a new direction. Everybody in the band is going through some changes. There are changes in the playing and the lyrics. Robert is really getting involved in his lyric writing.” Despite critical misgivings - Lester Bangs in Rolling Stone thought: "Their music is as ephemeral as Marvel comics" comparing their "insensitive grossness" to a one of Cecil B DeMille's films. The fans still brought it though and the album topped the charts in both the UK and America. "Sitting around a log fire in Wales," commented Page in a defence of the album to Gig in 1977. "You don't put up a 200-watt Marshall set-up but you get your acoustic guitars. Consequently acoustic numbers came out." For Plant, it was a "time to step back, take stock and not get lost in it all."

While the band were doing their own Valhallic-style raiding in the US by cultivating their "wild boys on tour" image by their excessive consumption of drink, drugs, groupies and the trashing of hotel rooms they also had a darker side too largely thanks to Page's growing interest in the occult and particularly Aleister Crowley. Page's obsession even stretched to buying Crowley's Scottish mansion Boleskine House in 1970 and putting the quotes 'Do What Thou Wilt', and 'So Mote It Be' from the self-styled "Great Beast" on the run-out grooves of their third album. In 1976 he told Circus magazine that he had read 'Magic in Theory and in Practice' when he was about 11 and had done "quite extensive" reading of Crowley's work, particularly being attracted to Crowley's "system of self-liberation". In 1975 Page even opened his own occult bookshop off Kensington High Street called Equinox. When questioned about his interest in the subject though Page would be coy and hesitant to reveal too much.

Their untitled, and best known, fourth album was largely recorded on the Rolling Stones mobile recording studio at Headley Grange in Hampshire and was released in December 1971. The inside cover containing four runic symbols that represented each member of the group. It kicked-off with the thunderous boogie of 'Black Dog' which was followed by the self-explanatory 'Rock and Roll". The tempo was sedated by the mystical folk of 'The Battle of Evermore' (with former Fairport Convention singer Sandy Denny helping out on vocal duties) before the album's centrepiece, 'Stairway to Heaven'. Also seeped in mysticism (as well as obscure lyrics) it would become their best-known track and a perennial feature in concerts. The eight minute song slowly built from Plant's voice into a rousing, head-strong virtuoso guitar solo from Page. The song gestated over a long period. The early buds of the song started coming through whilst they were in their Welsh cottage but the actual recording of the song started in Basing Street in December 1970. Plant's lyrics came later when the band were at Headley Grange and Bonham and Jones had taken the night off to go to the Speakeasy. The guitar solo would also come later when the band returned to Basing Street, according to Richard Digby Smith, who was the tape operator on the album, Page got the solo down in three takes. For Page, the song "crystallised the essence of the band. It was milestone for us."

'Misty Mountain Hop' saw the band pay homage to the hippie era in San Francisco. It's really though the final track that really stands out. 'When the Levee Breaks' took a blues framework, put the drums way up in the mix as if Bonham had been bashing out the rhythm with concrete slabs and then had Plant wailing over the top. The drum sound was achieved by putting the drums in the huge open entrance hall which had a stairway going up to all three floors. A stereo mike was then put on the second floor. US rap group the Beastie Boys liked the track so much that they sampled it on the track 'Rhymin & Stealin' from their 1986 album 'Licensed to Ill.' Indie also-rans Chapterhouse also sampled Bonham's drumming on their single 'Pearl'. Zeppelin's untitled album got to number one in the UK but. despite the classic status now bestowed on it, it could only mange second place in the States evn though it went gold on its first day of release.

Their fifth album was actually given a proper title: 'Houses of the Holy', although the band obviously forgot to actually put that on the cover. Despite having its moments the spring 1973 album recorded at the Electric Ladyland and Olympics studios was patchy at best. Fans were not only offered up the likes of the ominous 'No Quarter' and 'The Song Remains the Same' as well as the rollicking reggae-tinged 'D'yer Mak'er' but also the appalling cod-funk of 'The Crunge' – a strong contender for the band's worst effort actually committed to vinyl - and the run-of-the-mill 'Dancing Days.' The album still managed to reach the top of both the UK and US charts.

After yet another tour of America the band had something of a hiatus, they stopped touring to work on their film/live album, form their own label Swan Song (launched in May 1974 it would sign acts like Bad Company and The Pretty Things) and write songs for the album that would become 'Physical Graffiti'.

Eventually released in 1975 the double album would contain some of the band's finest songs, most notably the majestic sweep of the nine-minute 'Kashmir', the unabashed 'The Rover' and the stunning blues of 'In My Time of Dying'. Sides three and four couldn't quite match the opening two but still managed to conjure something special with 'In the Light' and 'Night Flight'. It spent six weeks at the number one spot in the US charts and also hit the top over here, eventually becoming the band's biggest-selling recording.

A planned world tour had to be cancelled when disaster struck Plant and his wife when they were both badly injured in a car crash on the Greek island of Rhodes in the summer. Plant would not be able to walk unaided until the following year.

With boring predictability their next album, 'Presence', once again reached the top of the UK and US album charts in 1976. It's cover depicted a strange, black obelisk set in familial settings. The music varied wildly and marked something of a return to the band's hard rock of their early albums. Recorded in Munich in three weeks, it kicked-off with the gallop of 'Achilles Last Stand' before moving on to the rather workman like efforts of 'For Your Life' and 'Royal Orleans'. 'Nobody's Fault But Mine' upped the standard once again before falling back to the plain and ordinary 'Candy Store Rock' and 'Hoot's On for Nowhere'. The album closed though with the beautiful despair and heartache of 'Tea for One'. "Nothing was plotted out beforehand, remembered Page to Houghton. "There may have been a few ideas on cassette but that was all. Everything just came pouring out in the studio."

The long awaited double live album and film, 'The Song Remains the Same', finally saw the light of day in late 1976. Although it was a commercial success (and reached the number one spot in the USA and the UK) it was also a musical albatross; generally failing to capture the spirit of the band's marathon concerts. It was Led Zeppelin at their most bombastic and over-blown. Songs were drawn out, seemingly endless and usually filled with self-indulgent solos. Fans had to be super fit to last this endurance test of stamina. Along with the live footage shot at Madison Square Garden, spliced in-between the songs were "fantasy sequences" where each member of the band was meant to reveal their innermost soul. Plant saw himself as some sort of medieval hero excelling at horse riding, sailing and fighting baddies to save young damsels in distress. Raglan Castle between Monmouth and Abergavenny was used for the filming. Plant summed-up his feelings of the album to Mojo magazine in 1994: "I think 'The Song Remains the Same' is such a load of bollocks".

Tragedy struck again in July 1977 during a 51-date tour of America. Initially a security man got badly beaten up and then three days later Plant's son, Karac, died after suddenly contracting a stomach infection. The tour was abandoned immediately. It would prove to be the last time the band would tour the States.

The band retreated and nothing was heard from them for a year. Rumours started spreading that the band was jinxed in some way. Gossips pointed to Page's fascination with the work of Aleister Crowley and the occult in general as the cause. Some even thought that the band had gone to the crossroads to sell their souls in a Faustian-style pact with the devil - just like the legend that surrounded Robert Johnson. Any efforts to quell the whispers weren't helped when John Bonham broke two ribs in a car crash.

The band returned to the studio – in fact, Abba's studio in Sweden – in late 1978 to record their next album 'In Through the Out Door'. Certainly one of the group's weaker efforts it still had its moments and contains a diverse spread of styles which had largely been masterminded by Jones. Opener 'In the Evening' boogied along while 'All My Love' (supposedly written for Plant's son) showed a tender, if a little clichéd, side and the weary 'I'm Gonna Crawl' saw the band still finding their creative form but songs like 'South Bound Saurez' never had much going for it. Fans remained loyal though, once again buying enough copies to send the album to the top of the charts. It stayed at number one in the US charts for seven weeks.

A European tour was planned in 1980, acting as a warm up for a US tour afterwards but whilst rehearsals were underway Bonham was found dead at Page's house, having choked on his own vomit after a serious drinking binge in September.

After his death the band felt that they couldn't go on and announced their retirement soon afterwards.

Until recently the band's vaults hadn't been comprehensively raided. A compilation album of unissued tracks spanning the band's career, 'Coda', was released in 1982, largely for contractual reasons, and was aimed directly at the die-hard fans. Despite some flashes it didn't unearth any startling discoveries or forgotten gems.

Over the years though the label has cashed in on the popularity of their back catalogue releasing remastered box sets and compilations (such as the 'Remasters' albums and a 4-CD box set, which did contain some previously unreleased material) and although it improved the sound quality it usually meant selling fans something they already had.

The release of the band's BBC radio sessions in 1997 proved to be of most interest to fans, and even contained three previously unheard tracks.

In a spate of activity though a five hour DVD collecting various live performances - including the Royal Albert Hall in January 1970 and Knebworth in 1979 - and the triple live album 'How the West was Won' – taken from two shows on the west coast of America in June 1972 – has seen the light of day. Hopefully now, with the release of a decent live album the "bollocks" on 'The Song Remains the Same' will be consigned to the archives.

The appeal of the band to the latest crop of groups like the White Stripes and the Flaming Lips as well as older, hard rock bands like AC/DC and Aerosmith is perhaps best left up to Plant in an interview with Barney Hoskyns for 'Rock's Backpages' in May 2003. "The thing about the group was the extension of the instrumental parts, and that was in full fling by the time we even made our first record [...] It was what we feasted on to get riffs, to get organised, to become a big band with big riffs."

The Beatles were an English musical group from Liverpool whose members were John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. They are one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed bands in the history of popular music.[2]

The Beatles are the best-selling musical act of all time in the United States of America, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.[3] In the United Kingdom, The Beatles released more than 40 different singles, albums, and EPs that reached number one. This commercial success was repeated in many other countries: their record company, EMI, estimated that by 1985 they had sold over one billion discs and tapes worldwide.[4] In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked The Beatles #1 on its list of 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.[5] Their innovative music and cultural impact helped define the 1960s,[2] and their influence on pop culture is still evident today.

The Beatles led the mid-1960s musical "British Invasion" into the United States. Although their initial musical style was rooted in 1950s rock and roll and homegrown skiffle, the group explored genres ranging from Tin Pan Alley to psychedelic rock. Their clothes, styles, and statements made them trend-setters, while their growing social awareness saw their influence extend into the social and cultural revolutions of the 1960s.

General TNI (Ret) Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, popularly known as SBY, was born in Pacitan, East Java, on 9 September 1949. He graduated from the Military Academy in 1973-top in his class. He received his fourth star in 2000. In the first-ever direct presidential election in Indonesia in 2004, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, running on a platform for "more just, more peaceful, more prosperous, and more democratic Indonesia", was elected as the 6th President of the Republic of Indonesia, gaining a landslide 60% of the popular vote over the incumbent President Megawati Soekarnoputri.

President Yudhoyono is also an accomplished scholar. He was educated in the United States, where he received his Masters degree in Management from Webster University in 1991. He continued his study and earned a Doctorate Degree in Agricultural Economics from Bogor Institute of Agriculture, West Java, Indonesia, in 2004. President Yudhoyono was awarded with two honorary doctorates in 2005, respectively in the field of law from his alma mater, Webster University, and in political science from Thammasat University in Thailand.

During his 27-year distinguished military service, President Yudhoyono took an extensive range of training, education and courses, both in Indonesia and overseas. President Yudhoyono also held numerous important posts and positions as troop and territorial commander, staff officer, trainer and lecturer. He served both in the field and at headquarters, as well as missions overseas. He was the Commander of the United Nations Military Observers and Commander of the Indonesian Military Contingent in Bosnia-Herzegovina from 1995-1996.

For his outstanding service, President Yudhoyono was decorated with 24 medals and awards, including the UNPKF Medal, the Bintang Dharma, the Bintang Mahaputera Adipurna and the Bintang Republik Indonesia Adipurna, the highest national medal for excellent service beyond the calls of duty.

Prior to being elected, President Yudhoyono held various important government positions, including Minister of Mining and Energy and Co-ordinating Minister for Political, Social, and Security Affairs in the National Unity Cabinet under President Abdurrahman Wahid. He again served as Co-ordinating Minister for Political, Social, and Security Affairs in the Gotong Royong Cabinet under President Megawati Soekarnoputri. It was in his capacity as Coordinating Minister that he became internationally recognized for leading Indonesia's counter-terrorism efforts.

President Yudhoyono is also known for his activities in various civil society organizations. He served as Co-Chairman of the Governing Board of the Partnership for the Governance Reform, a joint Indonesian-international organization focused on the improvement of governance in Indonesia. He also served as Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Brighten Institute, an institution devoted to studying the theory and practice of national development policy.

President Yudhoyono is a keen reader and has authored a number of books and articles including: Transforming Indonesia: Selected International Speeches (2005), Peace deal with Aceh is just a beginning (2005), The Making of a Hero (2005), Revitalization of the Indonesian Economy: Business, Politics and Good Governance (2002), and Coping with the Crisis - Securing the Reform (1999). Taman Kehidupan (Garden of Life) is his anthology published in 2004. President Yudhoyono speaks English fluently.

President Yudhoyono is a devoted Moslem. He is married to Madam Ani Herrawati. The first couple is blessed with two sons. The oldest is First Lieutenant Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono, who graduated top in his class from the Military Academy in 2000 and is now serving at the elite 305th Airborne Battalion of the Army Strategic Reserves Command (KOSTRAD). The youngest, Edhie Baskoro Yudhoyono, earned his degree in Economics from Curtin University, Australia.

Syekh Siti Jenar (juga dikenal dalam banyak nama lain, antara lain Sitibrit, Lemahbang, dan Lemah Abang) adalah seorang tokoh yang dianggap Sufi dan juga salah satu penyebar agama Islam di pulau Jawa yang sangat kontroversial di Jawa, Indonesia. Tidak ada yang mengetahui secara pasti asal-usulnya, di masyarakat, terdapat banyak varian cerita mengenai asal-usul Syekh Siti Jenar.

Sebagian umat Islam menganggapnya sesat karena ajarannya yang terkenal, yaitu Manunggaling Kawula Gusti. Akan tetapi sebagian yang lain menganggap bahwa Syekh Siti Jenar adalah intelektual yang sudah mendapatkan esensi Islam itu sendiri. Ajaran - ajarannya tertuang dalam pupuh, yaitu karya sastra yang dibuatnya. Meskipun demikian, ajaran yang sangat mulia dari Syekh Siti Jenar adalah budi pekerti.

Syekh Siti Jenar mengembangkan ajaran cara hidup sufi yang bertentangan dengan cara hidup Walisongo. Pertentangan praktek sufi Syekh Siti Jenar dengan Walisongo terletak pada penekanan aspek formal ketentuan syariah yang dilakukan oleh Walisongo.

Ajaran Syekh Siti Jenar yang paling kontroversial terkait dengan konsepnya tentang hidup dan mati, Tuhan dan kebebasan, serta tempat berlakunya syariat tersebut. Syekh Siti Jenar memandang bahwa kehidupan manusia di dunia ini disebut sebagai kematian. Sebaliknya, yaitu apa yang disebut umum sebagai kematian justru disebut sebagai awal dari kehidupan yang hakiki dan abadi.

Konsekuensinya, ia tidak dapat dikenai hukum yang bersifat keduniawian (hukum negara dan lainnnya), tidak termasuk didalamnya hukum syariat peribadatan sebagaimana ketentuan syariah. Dan menurut ulama pada masa itu yang memahami inti ajaran Siti Jenar bahwa manusia di dunia ini tidak harus memenuhi rukun Islam yang lima, yaitu: syahadat, shalat, puasa, zakat dan haji. Baginya, syariah itu baru berlaku sesudah manusia menjalani kehidupan paska kematian. Syekh Siti Jenar juga berpendapat bahwa Allah itu ada dalam dirinya, yaitu di dalam budi. Pemahaman inilah yang dipropagandakan oleh para ulama pada masa itu. Mirip dengan konsep Al-Hallaj (tokoh sufi Islam yang dihukum mati pada awal sejarah perkembangan Islam sekitar abad ke-9 Masehi) tentang Hulul yang berkaitan dengan kesamaan sifat manusia dan Tuhan. Dimana Pemahaman ketauhidan harus dilewati melalui 4 tahapan ; 1. Syariat (dengan menjalankan hukum-hukum agama spt sholat, zakat dll); 2. Tarekat, dengan melakukan amalan-amalan spt wirid, dzikir dalam waktu dan hitungan tertentu; 3. Hakekat, dimana hakekat dari manusia dan kesejatian hidup akan ditemukan; dan 4. Ma'rifat, kecintaan kepada Allah dengan makna seluas-luasnya. Bukan berarti bahwa setelah memasuki tahapan-tahapan tersebut maka tahapan dibawahnya ditiadakan. Pemahaman inilah yang kurang bisa dimengerti oleh para ulama pada masa itu tentang ilmu tasawuf yang disampaikan oleh Syech Siti Jenar. Ilmu yang baru bisa dipahami setelah melewati ratusan tahun pasca wafatnya sang Syech. Para ulama mengkhawatirkan adanya kesalahpahaman dalam menerima ajaran yang disampaikan oleh Syech Siti Jenar kepada masyarakat awam dimana pada masa itu ajaran Islam yang harus disampaikan adalah pada tingkatan 'syariat'. Sedangkan ajaran Siti Jenar sudah memasuki tahap 'hakekat' dan bahkan 'ma'rifat'kepada Allah (kecintaan yang sangat kepada ALLAH). Oleh karenanya, ajaran yang disampaikan oleh Siti Jenar hanya dapat dibendung dengan kata 'SESAT'.

Dalam pupuhnya, Syekh Siti Jenar merasa malu apabila harus berdebat masalah agama. Alasannya sederhana, yaitu dalam agama apapun, setiap pemeluk sebenarnya menyembah zat Yang Maha Kuasa. Hanya saja masing - masing menyembah dengan menyebut nama yang berbeda - beda dan menjalankan ajaran dengan cara yang belum tentu sama. Oleh karena itu, masing - masing pemeluk tidak perlu saling berdebat untuk mendapat pengakuan bahwa agamanya yang paling benar.

Syekh Siti Jenar juga mengajarkan agar seseorang dapat lebih mengutamakan prinsip ikhlas dalam menjalankan ibadah. Orang yang beribadah dengan mengharapkan surga atau pahala berarti belum bisa disebut ikhlas.

Dalam ajarannya ini, pendukungnya berpendapat bahwa Syekh Siti Jenar tidak pernah menyebut dirinya sebagai Tuhan. Manunggaling Kawula Gusti dianggap bukan berarti bercampurnya Tuhan dengan Makhluknya, melainkan bahwa Sang Pencipta adalah tempat kembali semua makhluk. Dan dengan kembali kepada Tuhannya, manusia telah menjadi sangat dekat dengan Tuhannya.

Dan dalam ajarannya, 'Manunggaling Kawula Gusti' adalah bahwa di dalam diri manusia terdapat ruh yang berasal dari ruh Tuhan sesuai dengan ayat Al Qur'an yang menerangkan tentang penciptaan manusia ("Ketika Tuhanmu berfirman kepada malaikat: "Sesungguhnya Aku akan menciptakan manusia dari tanah. Maka apabila telah Kusempurnakan kejadiannya dan Kutiupkan kepadanya roh Ku; maka hendaklah kamu tersungkur dengan bersujud kepadanya (Shaad; 71-72)"). Dengan demikian ruh manusia akan menyatu dengan ruh Tuhan dikala penyembahan terhadap Tuhan terjadi.

Perbedaan penafsiran ayat Al Qur'an dari para murid Syekh Siti inilah yang menimbulkan polemik bahwa di dalam tubuh manusia bersemayam ruh Tuhan, yaitu polemik paham 'Manunggaling Kawula Gusti'.

Prinsip ini berarti memakmurkan bumi. Ini mirip dengan pesan utama Islam, yaitu rahmatan lil alamin. Seorang dianggap muslim, salah satunya apabila dia bisa memberikan manfaat bagi lingkungannya dan bukannya menciptakan kerusakan di bumi.

Kontroversi yang lebih hebat terjadi di sekitar kematian Syekh Siti Jenar. Ajarannya yang amat kontroversial itu telah membuat gelisah para pejabat kerajaan Demak Bintoro. Di sisi kekuasaan, Kerajaan Demak khawatir ajaran ini akan berujung pada pemberontakan mengingat salah satu murid Syekh Siti Jenar, Ki Ageng Pengging atau Ki Kebokenanga adalah keturunan elite Majapahit (sama seperti Raden Patah) dan mengakibatkan konflik di antara keduanya.

Dari sisi agama Islam, Walisongo yang menopang kekuasaan Demak Bintoro, khawatir ajaran ini akan terus berkembang sehingga menyebarkan kesesatan di kalangan umat. Kegelisahan ini membuat mereka merencanakan satu tindakan bagi Syekh Siti Jenar yaitu harus segera menghadap Demak Bintoro. Pengiriman utusan Syekh Dumbo dan Pangeran Bayat ternyata tak cukup untuk dapat membuat Siti Jenar memenuhi panggilan Sri Narendra Raja Demak Bintoro untuk menghadap ke Kerajaan Demak. Hingga konon akhirnya para Walisongo sendiri yang akhirnya datang ke Desa Krendhasawa di mana perguruan Siti Jenar berada.

Para Wali dan pihak kerajaan sepakat untuk menjatuhkan hukuman mati bagi Syekh Siti Jenar dengan tuduhan telah membangkang kepada raja. Maka berangkatlah lima wali yang diusulkan oleh Syekh Maulana Maghribi ke Desa Krendhasawa. Kelima wali itu adalah Sunan Bonang, Sunan Kalijaga, Pangeran Modang, Sunan Kudus, dan Sunan Geseng.

Sesampainya di sana, terjadi perdebatan dan adu ilmu antara kelima wali tersebut dengan Siti Jenar. Menurut Siti Jenar, kelima wali tersebut tidak usah repot-repot ingin membunuh Siti Jenar. Karena beliau dapat meminum tirtamarta (air kehidupan) sendiri. Ia dapat menjelang kehidupan yang hakiki jika memang ia dan budinya menghendaki.

Tak lama, terbujurlah jenazah Siti Jenar di hadapan kelima wali. Ketika hal ini diketahui oleh para muridnya, serentak keempat muridnya yang benar-benar pandai yaitu Ki Bisono, Ki Donoboyo, Ki Chantulo dan Ki Pringgoboyo pun mengakhiri "kematian"-nya dengan cara yang misterius seperti yang dilakukan oleh gurunya di hadapan para wali.

Setelah tersiar kabar kematian Syekh Siti Jenar, banyak muridnya yang mengikuti jejak gurunya untuk menuju kehidupan yang hakiki. Di antaranya yang terceritakan adalah Kiai Lonthang dari Semarang, Ki Kebokenanga dan Ki Ageng Tingkir.