Landmine Casualties Soar in Myanmar (Burma)

                   (AP article from the WASHINGTON POST on 19 February 2023.)

BANGKOK — The 3-year-old boy had taken only two steps from his mother’s lap when a deafening explosion rang out. The blast caught the woman in the face, blurring her vision. She forced her eyes open and searched for her son around the jetty where they’d been waiting for a ferry, near their small village in south-central Myanmar.

Through the smoke, she spotted him. His body lay on the ground, his feet and legs mangled with flesh peeled away, shattered bones exposed. “He was crying and telling me that it hurt so much,” she said. “He didn’t know what just happened.”

But she did. The boy had detonated a landmine, an explosive device designed to mutilate or destroy whatever comes into its path. Landmines have been banned for decades by most countries, since the U.N. Mine Ban Treaty was adopted in 1997. But in Myanmar, which isn’t party to the treaty, the use of mines has soared since the military seized power from the democratically elected government in February 2021 and armed resistance has skyrocketed.

Carnage At Hlaing Tharyar Hospital By Dr. Soe Min

           (Translated post from Dr. Soe Min’s FACEBOOK on 15 March 2021)

Yesterday, 14 March 2021, despite all the road blocks all over the city, I managed to reach the burning city Hlaing Tharyar.

I tried to call, failed miserably of course, the phone-numbers of medical facilities in the area. So I went direct to the Hlaing Tharyar Hospital and asked if I could help, of course after introducing myself as a surgeon, and they sent me direct to the emergency surgery.  

There was one wounded patient inside and another one waiting just outside the surgery to enter, and I didn’t even know how many wounded were waiting downstairs.  Right away I started operating on the one already inside. Then another one. One after another.

At just after 7 pm I finished fixing a wounded patient with large open wound on belly and mutilated insides. I could still hear the gunshots from right outside the hospital. 

Famed HIMARS Rocket-Artillery For Australia!

     (Staff article from the AUSTRALIAN DEFENCE MAGAZINE on 04 October 2022.)

The US High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) has proved one of the standout weapons of the Ukraine conflict, delivering devastating precision fires on Russian positions, including munitions depots and command posts.

Australia is set to acquire HIMARS, maybe 20 launchers, though the government has yet to give the official go-ahead. With the growing desire for greater self-sufficiency, Australia may also seek to manufacture HIMARS missiles.

James Heading, Lockheed Martin Australia director of programs, strategic capabilities office for missiles and fire control, said  there was active consideration around production of the missiles themselves, though not the launch vehicle.

Sex Ban in Medieval-Islamic Indonesia!

         (Jonathan Head’s article from the BBC NEWS UK on 08 December 2022.)

Indonesia 'sex ban': Criminal code changes threaten other freedoms: Indonesia's revised criminal code has been approved this week by parliament.

It has been branded the "Bali Bonking Ban". The revised criminal code which has been approved this week by the Indonesian parliament is getting the kind of publicity rarely given to arcane changes in another country's legal system.

Headlines around the world are warning tourists visiting Indonesia that they face up to a year in jail if caught having sex or cohabiting with someone they are not married to. Suddenly a country usually lauded as a pluralistic Muslim democracy finds itself being accused of mediaeval moral meddling.

Millions Infected & 10,000+ A Day Dying In China!

                             (Staff article from the NEWS.COM.AU on 24 December 2022.)

China Covid-19 outbreak is the ‘largest the world has ever seen’: China’s top health authority has confirmed the country’s current outbreak is, by far, the largest the world has ever seen.

Dozens of body bags piled up at a Chongqing funeral parlour, a video released on Thursday (December 22) showed, even as China continued to report no new COVID-19 deaths. Authorities have narrowed the criteria for COVID deaths, prompting criticism from many disease experts.

Near 37 million people in China were estimated to have been infected with Covid-19 on a single day this week, according to minutes from a meeting of the country’s National Health Commission, Bloomberg reported.

The First Miracle by Jeffrey Archer (1980)

         (Jeffery Archer's famous children story of the very first Christmas Eve in Year Zero.)

Tomorrow it would be A.D. 1, but nobody had told him. If anyone had, he wouldn’t have understood, because he thought it was the forty-third year of the reign of the emperor. And in any case, he had more important things on his mind.

His mother was still angry with him, and he had to admit that he’d been naughty that day, even by the standards of a normal thirteen-year-old. He hadn’t meant to drop the pitcher when she had sent him to the well for water. He had tried to explain to her that it wasn’t his fault he had tripped over a stone—that bit at least was true. What he hadn’t told her was that he had been chasing a stray dog at the time. And then there was that pomegranate: How was he to know that it was the last one, and that his father had taken a liking to them?

The young Roman was now dreading his father’s return and the possibility that he might be given another leathering. He could still recall the last one: He hadn’t been able to sit down for two days without being reminded of the pain, and the thin red scars hadn’t completely disappeared for three weeks.

He sat on the window ledge in a shaded corner of his room, trying to think of some way he could redeem himself in his mother’s eyes. He had spilled cooking oil all over his tunic and she had thrown him out of the kitchen. “Go and play outside,” she had snapped, but playing outside wasn’t much fun if you were only allowed to play by yourself. Pater had forbidden him to mix with the local boys.

Reliving 1973 Kachin Christmas Eve in New York City

 (Re-post of my "Reliving 1973 Kachin Christmas Eve in New York City" from 2011.)

New York City's Skyline.

The Big Apple or the New York City is a wholesomely overwhelming town for a simple jungle boy like me. Especially the enormous Romanesque facades of century old skyscrapers. And it hurts my neck so much that I’ve stopped trying to look up at their distinctive tops.

Like many other wide-eyed tourists from the Australian fringe of the mighty empire of USA I ended up wandering on the wide avenues leading to the Times Square brightly lit and filled to the rims by the excited crowd on the Christmas Eve.

I walked and walked and walked aimlessly on the near-zero freezing but still unbelievably crowded Fifth Avenue and ended up, fortunately of course as I wasn’t really looking for it, right in front of a beautifully grand Gothic-revival church. I walked in and realized this is the historic St.Patrick’s Cathedral   and the traditional Midnight Mass was just a few hours away.

Russian Fighter Jets Slaughtering Burmese People

                  (Staff article from the ALJAZEERA NEWS on 30 July 2022.)

Myanmar used Russian-made aircraft in civilian attacks: Myanmar Witness says open-source investigation shows Yak-130 being equipped with rockets and cannons attacking ground positions. The Myanmar military has been accused of using Russian-made Yak-130 aircraft with ground attack capability against civilians, as it seeks to stamp out opposition to its rule.

Myanmar Witness, a London-based group that collects evidence of rights abuses in Myanmar, says it was able to verify open-source investigations on several occasions in which unguided rockets and 23mm cannons had been used in built-up areas.

“Myanmar Witness has verified the repeated deployment of the Yak-130 – a sophisticated, Russian manufactured, two-seat jet trainer with a documented ground attack capability – in Myanmar,” Myanmar Witness said in its report, which was released on Friday. “During this investigation, credible reports and geolocation have revealed the use of the Yak-130 within populated, civilian areas.”

China Freedom – Blank Paper Protests!

                    (Selina Wang’s article from the CNN on 28 November 2022.)

At the heart of China’s protests against zero-Covid, young people cry for freedom: For the first time in decades, thousands of people have defied Chinese authorities to protest at universities and on the streets of major cities, demanding to be freed not only from incessant Covid tests and lockdowns, but strict censorship and the Communist Party’s tightening grip over all aspects of life.

Across the country, “want freedom” has become a rallying cry for a groundswell of protests mainly led by the younger generation, some too young to have taken part in previous acts of open dissent against the government.

“Give me liberty or give me death!” crowds by the hundreds shouted in several cities, according to videos circulating online, as vigils to mark the deaths of at least 10 people in a fire in Xinjiang spiraled into political rallies.