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.

China’s Brutal Debt Trap - Kenya

                (Brahma Chellaney’s article from the STRATEGIST on 24 November 2022.)

Kenya revelations shine a light on China’s predatory lending practices: Recently released details of Kenya’s 2014 loan agreement with China to finance a controversial railway project have once again highlighted the predatory nature of Chinese lending in developing countries.

The contract not only imposed virtually all risk on the borrower (including requiring binding arbitration in China to settle any dispute), but also raised those risks to unmanageable levels (such as by setting an unusually high interest rate). With terms like that, it’s no wonder that multiple countries around the world have become ensnared in sovereignty-eroding Chinese debt traps.

Over the past decade, China has become the world’s largest single creditor, with loans to low- and middle-income countries tripling in this period, to US$170 billion at the end of 2020. Its outstanding foreign loans now exceed 6% of global GDP, making China competitive with the International Monetary Fund as a global creditor. And through loans extended under its US$838-billion Belt and Road Initiative, China has overtaken the World Bank as the world’s largest funder of infrastructure projects.

Animal Farm By George Orwell – Chapter 2

                  (Chapter-2 from the Project Gutenberg Australia on 8 March 2008.)

Three nights later old Major died peacefully in his sleep. His body was buried at the foot of the orchard. This was early in March. During the next three months there was much secret activity. Major's speech had given to the more intelligent animals on the farm a completely new outlook on life.

They did not know when the Rebellion predicted by Major would take place, they had no reason for thinking that it would be within their own lifetime, but they saw clearly that it was their duty to prepare for it. The work of teaching and organising the others fell naturally upon the pigs, who were generally recognised as being the cleverest of the animals.

Pre-eminent among the pigs were two young boars named Snowball and Napoleon, whom Mr. Jones was breeding up for sale. Napoleon was a large, rather fierce-looking Berkshire boar, the only Berkshire on the farm, not much of a talker, but with a reputation for getting his own way. Snowball was a more vivacious pig than Napoleon, quicker in speech and more inventive, but was not considered to have the same depth of character.

RBA’s Independence Inflating Housing Bubbles

                   (Staff article from the ABC NEWS Australia on 05 November 2022.)

Most cash RBA has printed last 30 yrs went to houses.

The Australian Greens say the Reserve Bank needs to be more democratically accountable: Senator Nick McKim, the Greens' treasury spokesman, says the RBA must become more accountable for the consequences of its policies, and it should accept some responsibility for making inequality worse since the 1990s.

He says current monetary policy arrangements also need to be re-imagined to help Australia confront the climate emergency. That would include getting the RBA and government to play a more active role in directing the flow of credit to productive ends, particularly the transition to a low-emission economy, and to discourage the flow of credit to speculative ends, particularly highly leveraged property investment, he says.

"This policy would be given effect through prudential regulation and the RBA's use of its own balance sheet," he said. Senator McKim has used his submission to the RBA review to call for a number of changes to the way in which monetary policy is conducted in Australia. He said under central bank "independence", which has existed in Australia since the 1990s, monetary policy had become disconnected from democratic processes.