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lailuhhh · 2 years

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my experience is that you enlist for 4 years at a time (usually with a 4 year commitment to the reserves after that.) Occasionally, and this is happening more in recent years, I've seen and heard of 2 or 3 year enlistments. Between BCT, AIT and EOD it's about 50+ weeks of training. A deployment is anywhere from 6-15 months with time at home in between. Where does it say that Mac was on his third deployment when he met Jack?

In 1x06 Wrench no exact years are used, but Mac is at the EOD training grounds with Pena "6 years ago" which makes it 2010. (since the episode aired in 2016) Pena is killed "5 Years Ago" making it 2011. In 3x06 the date is given 6/27/2011. The day of 1000 IEDs was (according to 3x06) two weeks before Pena's death. In that episode Mac says he'd only been in country for 3 months prior to Pena's death. He meets Jack in 2011. Jack says Mac "got his training officer killed." Training officers aren't often deploying to Afghanistan since their roles are to teach and train. The implication that Mac was working in country with his training officer means he hasn't had multiple deployments at this point. (and he flat out wouldn't have had time if he was in EOD training in 2010)

In the pilot Mac says he spent "three years defusing bombs for the military" and while technically his time shouldn't "count" until he graduates BCT, AIT, and EOD I'm thinking for ease of explanation he is counting those years since his first mission with DXS in Jakarta (3x12 Mac + Fallout + Jack) takes place in 2012. Either way, the minimum enlisted age is 17 with parental consent, which gets fuzzy because who had custody over Mac? Someone needs to have guardianship. It's possible he's emancipated but that too gets complicated. But we avoid that issue by having Mac enlist around 2009-2010ish according to the years given to us in the show.

Who is paying for MIT? a 17 year old can't sign for a loan. There are very very few "full rides" unless James made some kind of fake endowment or scholarship program and awarded it to Mac. Perhaps he tasked an underling with that, but it seems unlikely he went through that much effort. I'm sorry, no school anywhere is letting a 6 year old into fifth grade. Schools are reluctant to let kids skip a single grade, and even though I can see James being an ass about it, I don't think he'd intervene. He'd want Mac to skip based on "merit" not because he went down to the school and threw a temper tantrum. Again, it would be too much effort on James part. the fifth grade teacher is not prepared for the lack of fine motor skills or emotional maturity of a six year old suddenly in their class. Even if Mac is smart enough to skip, there are a lot of social skills and motor skills that are developed in early grades. Even a "young" first grader need more help with things like holding a pencil or using scissors than a "older" first grader. (ie think a first grader who turned six in July prior to school starting versus a first grader who is going to turn 7 just a few weeks after school starts. Those nine months have an enormous difference)

So many he skips one grade. Maybe he graduates early after taking extra classes. Maybe he even starts taking college credits in high school. He's probably not much more than a year or depending on birthdays twoish younger than bozer. But still young enough to be a younger brother. still potentially the same age as Josh would have been.

The MacGyver canon timeline is pretty shit though. They can't keep anything straight. Mac says the KGB was disbanded before he was born so he should actually have a birthday in 1992!

#hello yes thank you #this is very informative #thank you #not gonna lie I need to watch it all again to get the juices going #we just gonna stick with fanon lore from now on #lailuh speaks #macgyver #macgyver 2016 #ask #answer #anon ask #thanks again anon

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aulia-m · 2 years

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Mastodon’s Moment of Truth

Despite the apparent mass migration of Twitter users to Mastodon in the past several weeks, I don’t feel that this network has experienced anything like the 2009 Hudson River moment when a plane landed in the water and its pilot, Captain Sully, became sort of a household name after Twitter users began sharing photos of the plane and the rescue/evacuation attempt that followed.

In Indonesia that moment was the 2009 twin bombing in Kuningan, Jakarta. It thrusted Twitter to national prominence when terrorists bombed the Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotels and a survivor live tweeted the entire moment starting from the explosions near the coffee shops of both hotels.

I’ve read people describe the vibe of Mastodon being like Twitter circa 2010 but to me it still feels a little earlier than that. On the other hand maybe it doesn’t need a moment like that because people already understood how it works in general.

Mastodon is a network that, while technically different to Twitter, serves similar functions, which means unless there are more migration level events or perceived existential threats to Twitter, the general public won’t fly the coop.

The appeal of the elephant site right now is the ability to fully isolate undesirables and to be where people like Elon Musk have no control but if you and your community aren’t affected by their shenanigans (not necessarily due to political leanings or social views but because for you it’s like looking at foreign news on TV), there’s no reason to move because everything still works just fine. Moving there means doing the same thing at a different place which has slightly different features but with more technical barriers.

Yes, the technical barriers exist and not just from the need to choose servers but things like finding out who to follow (because people’s followings are limited), posts not being carried over when moving servers, inconsistent display of metrics, having to follow accounts before you can add them to lists, etc.

It certainly doesn’t work as a 1:1 replacement and people looking for that won’t see the appeal. Mastodon’s pull factor has to be something else and the reasons will be different from one person or community to the next.

One thing’s for sure, both sites are about the communities, without which, they won’t survive, let alone thrive. A social network is its people, not the features or the platform.

Mastodon’s features and platform may help support a healthier community but as long as the community leads, public figures, or thought leaders haven’t moved over, the majority of the population won't either.

#AuliaSays #Mastodon #Fediverse #The Don

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against-a-dark-background · 4 years

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JAKARTA LEGACY

Foolishly, I decided to have a look at the bomb site. My ex-boyfriend Todo, with whom I had only broken up with about a month before, worked in the embassy in the AUSAID department. I tried to get him on the phone, but it just kept going to voicemail. I was worried about him; I still had some remnants of care from our relationship. When I got there, the scene was carnage. People were walking around aimlessly in a dazed state. Windows within a 500-metre radius were shattered, paper was falling from these jagged openings like rain, cars were destroyed, trees and bushes were shredded, burnt, and stripped of their leaves, and body parts were strewn around the bomb crater.

After about ten minutes, I realised I was going into shock, so I ran back home and called Arman to find out where he was. I was so terrified he had been near the blast. He was on the north side of Jakarta and had not even heard the bomb explode.

I would never have guessed that on my first day in Jakarta I would be leaving in severely deteriorated mental health. My first day in Jakarta was somewhat of a disappointment. My boyfriend at the time, Todo had decided to go to work on my first day in this strange and wondrous — and confusing city, leaving me to my own devices, not speaking a word of Indonesian and not knowing a thing about Jakarta.

I had come to Indonesia because Todo had arranged a job interview with English First, a private English language school. Luckily, I had organised an internet friend to be my tour guide. His name was Jojo and he was extremely cute. He was a little shorter than me, with close cropped hair, kind almond-shaped eyes, and kooky teeth like David Bowie’s. He met me outside the Australian Embassy, we grabbed a taxi, and set off to explore Jakarta.

Jojo took me to the place where the Hotel Indonesia and the Plaza Indonesia sit side by side in a circular formation. Plaza Indonesia is a giant shopping mall with all the Western trappings one might expect to find. Next, we went to Monas – Monumen Nasional, sometime jokingly referred by westerners as “Sukarno’s last erection.” This is chiefly because it resembles a phallus and I’m assured that this is no accident. We climbed all the way to the top and looked out over the city, then we went back down to the museum at the bottom of the monument and took in some of Indonesia’s great history. After this, we went to a karaoke bar on the north side of the city and we sang a few songs and made out like teenagers. The day having been spent, Jojo and I went back to the Australian Embassy where I waited for my boyfriend to finish work.

Todo did not stay my boyfriend for long. I had lived with him in a shitty little boarding house known locally as a kost. These were everywhere in Central Jakarta, some of them cheap and rat-infested and others at the more luxurious end of the scale. Todo was a tightwad and even though I had my own cash, in those first few weeks of being in Jakarta, I had no idea of what to do or where to go — and I couldn’t speak the language yet. So, we lived in one of the shittier kosts. We never went anywhere and never ate out, despite this being a cheap thing to do. He left me to my own devices day after day as he went to work, and I suppose this was kind of a good thing — I got a crash course in Bahasa Indonesia from the other residents of the kost.

One night, Todo took me to a gay nightclub called Two-Faces where he spent the night guard-dogging me against any guys that showed an interest. But that all changed when Arman walked in and we locked eyes from across the room. He managed to sidle his way over to me and sit down next to me. We exchanged pleasantries and he gave me his business card — he was a finance worker for Mitsubishi, and this is the lie I told Todo— that I was interested in buying a car from Arman.

Three weeks later Arman and I were living together in a more upmarket kost where they cleaned your rooms daily and did your laundry, and there was a little café out the front where you could get breakfast. Salted duck eggs, rice, little fish called terasi served with peanuts. It was paradise compared to my previous kost.

My medical troubles in Jakarta began in earnest in September 2004 when I woke up vomiting a chocolate-coloured mess and having no feeling down my left side. As ambulances in Jakarta were mostly for ferrying the dead to graveyards, we had to call a friend who had a car as we didn’t have one at this stage. They were reluctant to help us initially until I shouted down the phone:

“I’ve had a stroke!”

On the way to the hospital, I insisted on smoking several cigarettes as I knew I wouldn’t be able to smoke in hospital. Arman, now my husband, to his credit took a week off work and slept beside my hospital bed every night. I had only known him for three months, so that’s when I knew he was a keeper. With Arman’s help and a lot of effort, I recovered from my stroke and regained the use of my left side. My speech was not affected but to this day, I sometimes transpose letters when I’m handwriting, as I’m left-handed. I credit Arman and my neurologist for my return to health. My neurologist was a fabulous woman in her thirties who had long, red, fake nails and whose lipstick bled through her cloth mask. I got on with her very well and it was her psychiatrist father who treated me later.

My other medical troubles involved drugs but not illegal drugs. One afternoon after I had finished work, I decided to go to the Rumah Sakit Tebet, which is a typical, small, Christian-run hospital. I went into the emergency waiting room and there was a cliché nurse in a pressed, white uniform. She even had a little white hat on.

“Bisa Bahasa Inggris?” I asked

“Ya, sedikit-sedikit,” she replied

“I’m having a panic attack, I can’t breathe properly, and my heart is racing. Can you please help me?”

“Ok, you wait here,” she said.

I sat down in the waiting room, my legs jiggling and my hands shaking. I waited for what seemed like an eternity, but it was only about twenty minutes. A tall, grey-headed doctor came out and waved me in. He sat me down and asked for my symptoms. I repeated what I had told the nurse, can’t breathe properly, heart racing, I feel panicked. He asked me what I wanted him to do and I said,

“I need some diazepam.”

“Oh, I see. Have you ever had it before?” he asked.

“Yes, I used to be on it when I lived in Australia. It’s essential medication for me.”

“Well, I can give you some tablets today,” he said.

This doctor, this soft touch, became my go-to for my future diazepam needs. I would present at emergency, spin the same yarn about having a panic attack and I always got what I wanted. Sometimes it was diazepam, sometimes it was lorazepam — sometimes I even managed to convince the good doctor to give me a 10mg diazepam injection — which was magnificent, and it eased my troubled mind — at least for a short while.

When this doctor had finally had enough of my histrionics, I went above his head and bribed the doctor in charge of the hospital to continue to supply me with the drugs — it worked, corruption is endemic in Indonesia and it penetrates all levels of society — I craved those chemicals to calm my traumatised mind.

My mental problems grew increasingly worse after another earthquake struck, this one worse — 7.6 in magnitude and only 170 km to the north-west, off the coast of Jakarta. I was in the lift of my apartment building at the time and it began to sway from side to side, smashing into the walls of the elevator shaft as it went up. When I got out of the elevator, I couldn’t stand up because the building was swaying so violently. There were several people there with me and one of them was yelling “Oh Tuhan, oh Tuhan, oh Tuhan,” right in my ear. Tuhan being a cry to god. I couldn’t stand it, so I got up along the wall to my apartment and went inside, smoked three pipes of weed, and lay on the couch until the earthquake subsided — I did not care if the building collapsed — I was on the top floor, and there was absolutely nothing I could do.

It was at this point my mental health took a turn for the worse. I engaged in further drug-seeking behaviour and would often turn up for work under the influence of whatever I could get my hands on — diazepam, morphine, tramadol, gabapentin. No one at work noticed but I was buzzed every day. It was not at all for pleasure; it was self-medicating for the mental trauma I was suffering.

The next brush with death occurred on the 14th July 2009, when Arman and I ate at the Srivijaya buffet room in the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Kuningan, Jakarta. Three days later, on the 17th July, a suicide bomber walked in with a backpack full of explosives and detonated his bombs. At the same moment, another suicide bomber walked into the foyer of the Ritz-Carlton, directly opposite the Marriott, but he was stopped by security, wherein he detonated his bomb. I was quite disconcerted by this experience.

At the time the bombs went off in the Marriott and the Ritz-Carlton, I was teaching a Study In Australia Program (SIAP) to captains and majors in the Indonesian military. The SIAP IELTS program was designed to ready these military personnel to a level of English that would allow them to undertake master’s degrees in counterterrorism and the like at Australian universities. It was a cooperative effort between my school, the Australian Embassy, the Department of Defence, and ABRI, the Indonesian Military.

When we heard the bombs go off; I asked my military students if they knew who was behind the bombings. I was with several majors and captains, smoking outside during a break from class. I had some idea as I had heard talk from my in-school students, some of whom were the children of government workers and big businesspeople.

“I think I know who was behind the bombing,” I said.

“Who do you think it was?” asked one of the majors

“Was it the guy who’s running for vice-president with XXXXXXX?”

“I don’t want you to say that again,” said the major.

“So, am I right?” I asked.

“Please, you can’t talk about this anymore. It is dangerous for you,” he said with finality.

Since then, I have been enduring the weight of knowing who was behind the twin bombings of the Ritz-Carlton and J.W. Marriott Hotels in 2009.

Arman and I decided that it was best if we go and live in Australia, where I could get the medical help I so desperately needed and the support from my family. Arman set out to become a permanent resident of Australia and he had to do this by himself, as I had to work and was of little use.

My mental state began to decline further and people at work noticed there was something wrong with me. I missed a promotion and my reaction was ugly to say the least. I began to act out and soon other teachers noticed my behaviour and would ask me if I was ok. I lied and said I was, but things were deteriorating. My manager called me into his office

“I’m going to get down to it straight away,” he said. “Would you like to take a few weeks off, to get your head right?’

“No,” I shook my head in denial. “No, please. I’m fine. I can still teach. I’m doing my job well, I think. There’s been no complaints.”

“I’ve heard things from the other teachers, they say it sounds like you’re not coping well. Please consider a holiday. I think it’ll be of great benefit.”

“No really, I’m okay. I’m coping well. I really don’t want to take time off. I don’t need it.”

After this, things became so bad that I broke down and cried in a class full of children, who I’m sure were scarred by the experience.

Arman was working hard getting his permanent residency and I became too much to handle. We went to see a psychiatrist, the father of my neurologist, who put me on a raft of psychoactive drugs and then decided that I should be admitted to a psychiatric hospital. It was an odd feeling being in an Indonesian psychiatric hospital, for a start I couldn’t communicate well with the other patients and it was hard interacting with the staff.

I did make one friend — a 19-year-old boy who apparently was suffering from major depression. From my perspective, he seemed like a shy, introverted nineteen-year-old boy, whom I suspected was gay. His parents had admitted him when he failed to thrive at ITB (Institut Teknologi Bnndung) university. He and I would talk every day while we smoked in the outdoor area. I developed a bond with him and after a few days, we were fast friends. He told me all about his inability to cope at university and his parent’s insistence that there was something wrong with him. I strongly believed there was nothing wrong with him at all.

The food was abysmal — sloppy rice with fish and other such tasteless muck. My psychiatrist insisted that I stay in the hospital for three weeks, which did not mesh with Arman’s arrangements for us to go to Australia. He telephoned my parents who in turn telephoned the Australian embassy. They then sent out two consular officials who demanded my immediate release from the hospital. My doctor had no choice but to comply.

Arman had organised everything, his permanent residency, our tickets to Australia and he had arranged for our belongings to be sent via air freight to Brisbane airport. So, I found myself on my way home to Australia doped up to the eyeballs on alprazolam, chlorpromazine, haloperidol, and several other drugs. It was a rough flight home but I’m usually a good flier. I found myself popping 2mg alprazolam every other hour because I could not cope with the panic.

When we arrived home, my parents almost did not recognise me, I knew because I saw their shocked looks. My face was all puffy, I was bloated, I had put on weight and I had dark circles under my eyes. My mum cried when she saw me, so I must have looked a mess. My mum and dad had organised a caravan for us to live in in my sister’s backyard.

It was a dramatic comedown from living on top of one of the tallest buildings in the middle of one of the largest cities in the world.

I began to get proper medical care. I saw a G.P. who referred me to a psychiatrist who then took me off most of the drugs they had put me on in Jakarta. I slowly began to improve but to this day I have Bipolar II Disorder, PTSD, anxiety, and panic, and ADHD – Inattentive Type.

I am on the Disability Support Pension.

This is one side of the legacy of my time in Jakarta. One day, I shall tell the rest of my Jakarta legacy.

#Jakarta Legacy #Fictional Memoir #Psychotic Break #Self Medication #Drug Misuse #Bipolar II Disorder #PTSD #9th September Australian Embassy Bombing - Jakarta - 2004 #2009 JW Marriott & Ritz-Carlton Suicide Bombings #7.5Earthquake while on the 46th floor of an apartment building #Charles' Fictional Memoirs & Sci-Fi & Pop Culture

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partwildflower · 5 years

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Great ice cream parlours around the world

Wherever you are in the world, ice cream is the quintessential summer treat. Whether you’re cycling in Copenhagen or temple-touring in Tokyo, exploring famous streets or keeping off the beaten track, we’ve scooped up a selection of fantastic parlours offering you respite from a sweltering day. All you’ve left to do is answer the all-important question: what’s your flavour?

Ice cream sandwiches at Ruby Violet, London. Image courtesy of Danielle Wood/Ruby Violet

Ruby Violet, London

We love the flavours at this quaint, blue-tiled London hideout, where extraordinary flavours are presented in an array of forms – from milkshakes and affogato to sofa floats and the Meringue Muddle, comprising two scoops with meringue bathed in hot salted caramel or chocolate sauce. If none of these will tide you over, you can also pick from a tantalising selection of cocktails, tea, coffee and hot chocolate, or indulge even further with an ice cream afternoon tea, ice cream cake or elegant bombe. The parlour was brought to life by Julie Fisher – who’s so good at crafting the creamy stuff, she’s even published her own recipe book, Ruby Violet’s Ice Cream Dreams.

Address: 118 Fortess Rd, London NW5 2HL

Le Bac à Glaces, Paris

All journeys to Paris should begin and end with a taste of its sweetest snacks: for the best artisanal ice cream try the chic and sophisticated Bac à Glaces, which makes its own creamy delights using natural produce and fresh fruit. Some stunning French flavours are just a scoop away: choose from chestnut, coffee, nougat, salted caramel, white cheese, speculoos and more, or opt for a selection of refreshing sorbets ranging from pink grapefruit to passionfruit.

Address: 109 Rue du Bac, 75007 Paris, France

Image courtesy of Oddfellows Ice Cream Co.

OddFellows Ice Cream Co., New York City

On your next trip to Brooklyn, New York City, make a stop at OddFellows Ice Cream Co. where the ice cream is pasteurised and made from scratch to guarantee a rich and flavourful snack. A bright vintage-inspired parlour featuring red-and-white striped interiors, it offers a different array of flavours each day – standouts include buttermilk apple, matcha passionfruit, pumpkin cheesecake, roasted pear and caramel walnut, and black olive coffee with blueberry compote.

Address: 175 Kent Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11249, USA

OLUFs, Copenhagen

About as colourful as Copenhagen’s architecture, the ice cream bars over at OLUFs in Osterbro are treats to both the eyes and tongue. Each one is a work of art in its own right: whether chocolate-dipped, pistachio-flecked or coconut-covered, the home-made Italian gelatos and sorbets are smothered and sprinkled to perfection – they’re so pretty, they’re the kind of snack you’ll want to be seen eating as you amble down the city’s stylish streets.

Address: Olufsvej 6, 2100 København, Denmark

Popbar, Jakarta

While we’re on the subject of popsicles, another venue to try is the amazing Popbar, which has made the rounds in the United States and proves a refreshing option to beat the heat with in Jakarta. You can customise a selection of pretty pastel popGelatos and popSorbettos with hundreds of toppings. Some eye-poppingly fruity flavours here include guava, papaya, watermelon, kiwi, mandarin and banana.

Address: Jl. Letjen S. Parman Kav. 28, Central Park Lt. L No. 157, RT.12/RW.6, Tj. Duren Sel., Grogol petamburan, Kota Jakarta Barat, Daerah Khusus Ibukota Jakarta 11470, Indonesia

Image courtesy of Salt & Straw

Salt & Straw, Portland

Pear and blue cheese, strawberry honey balsamic with black pepper, chocolate gooey brownie, and honey lavender are just some of the unique combinations that can be found at Salt & Straw’s Portland joint, which brings creativity and refinement to the table with frosty flair. Teamed with a rustic interior, where wooden floors and produce-lined furnishings glow in the sun, this little spot is perfect for whiling a post-lunch afternoon away.

Address: 838 NW 23rd Ave, Portland, OR 97210, USA

Glaslyn Ices, Beddgelert

Far removed from bustling big cities, this little Welsh parlour comes as quite a surprise, with award-winning ice cream that’s irresistibly thick and served on a tasty waffle cone. You’ll find it in the picturesque village of Beddgelert, set in the gorgeous Snowdonia area of Gwynedd. Pick up a crème caramel, white chocolate or butterscotch and pecan snack, to savour on a leisurely stroll along the river.

Address: Beddgelert, Caernarfon, Gwynedd County LL55 4YB

Rocambolesc, Barcelona

Located in Barcelona, this little treasure of a gelateria is a dream come true for every kid at heart. Imagined by Jordi Roca of El Celler de Can Roca fame, its cute interior makes for an upscale Roald Dahl-esque experience – think giant candy-striped pipes, bicycle wheels and colourful illustrations straight out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. We haven’t even mentioned the best part: uniquely-shaped popsicles and freshly-churned, 100% natural ice cream, popped onto a long waffle cone and decorated with many a great topping. On less sunny days, try the panet – lush ice cream and toppings wedged between two brioche halves.

Address: La Rambla, 51-59, 08002 Barcelona, Spain

Image courtesy of Gelato Messina

Gelato Messina, Sydney

Voted the home of Australia’s best gelato by Good Food Guide, Gelato Messina serves whopping, mouth-wateringly messy portions to more than satisfy your sweet tooth with. Five special flavours are introduced weekly alongside the usual crowd favourites, which include panna cotta with fig jam and amaretti biscuit, macadamia crunch, apple pie, and pear and rhubarb. Gelato cakes are also available – options include the quirky Dr Evil’s Magic Mushroom, the epic hazelnut and caramel affair that is The Golden 8, and the more sophisticated Bombe Alaska.

Address: level g/80 Pyrmont St, Pyrmont NSW 2009, Australia

Giolitti, Rome

Giolitti is one for all serious foodies to top their ice cream bucket list with: founded in 1890, this popular parlour is the oldest in Rome and constantly buzzes with eager crowds. Try a rainbow of traditional and harmonious flavours, each perfected by years of experience and served in generous portions. Follow a cone up with a delectable ice cream biscuit, cake or truffle, or opt for the most indulgent Mont Blanc dessert.

Address: Via degli Uffici del Vicario, 40, 00186 Roma RM, Italy

Gelateria Sincerita, Tokyo

Once you’ve finished tackling Tokyo’s savoury treats, head off to find this quiet, dainty and adorable hideout in Suginami. Everything here is coloured in feminine shades of pastel, making for a sophisticated Italian gelato experience in the heart of Japan. Get your hands on a scoop of coconut, maple, fresh milk, white berry or cheese and fig ice cream, all served in a dainty cup, and grab yourself a warming coffee for the road.

Address: 1 Chome-43-7 Asagayakita, Suginami, Tokyo 166-0001, Japan

Written for Secret Escapes’ blog, The Great Escape, published 14 September 2018.

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brookstonalmanac · 3 years

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Events 6.22

217 BC – Battle of Raphia: Ptolemy IV Philopator of Egypt defeats Antiochus III the Great of the Seleucid kingdom. 168 BC – Battle of Pydna: Romans under Lucius Aemilius Paullus defeat Macedonian King Perseus who surrenders after the battle, ending the Third Macedonian War. 813 – Battle of Versinikia: The Bulgars led by Krum defeat the Byzantine army near Edirne. Emperor Michael I is forced to abdicate in favor of Leo V the Armenian. 910 – The Hungarians defeat the East Frankish army near the Rednitz River, killing its leader Gebhard, Duke of Lotharingia (Lorraine). 1527 – Fatahillah expels Portuguese forces from Sunda Kelapa, now regarded as the foundation of Jakarta. 1593 – Battle of Sisak: Allied Christian troops defeat the Ottomans. 1633 – The Holy Office in Rome forces Galileo Galilei to recant his view that the Sun, not the Earth, is the center of the Universe in the form he presented it in, after heated controversy. 1774 – The British pass the Quebec Act, setting out rules of governance for the colony of Quebec in British North America. 1783 – A poisonous cloud caused by the eruption of the Laki volcano in Iceland reaches Le Havre in France. 1807 – In the Chesapeake–Leopard affair, the British warship HMS Leopard attacks and boards the American frigate USS Chesapeake. 1813 – War of 1812: After learning of American plans for a surprise attack on Beaver Dams in Ontario, Laura Secord sets out on a 30 kilometer journey on foot to warn Lieutenant James FitzGibbon. 1839 – Cherokee leaders Major Ridge, John Ridge, and Elias Boudinot are assassinated for signing the Treaty of New Echota, which had resulted in the Trail of Tears. 1870 – The United States Department of Justice is created by the U.S. Congress. 1893 – The Royal Navy battleship HMS Camperdown accidentally rams the British Mediterranean Fleet flagship HMS Victoria which sinks taking 358 crew with her, including the fleet's commander, Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon. 1897 – British colonial officers Charles Walter Rand and Lt. Charles Egerton Ayerst are assassinated in Pune, Maharashtra, India by the Chapekar brothers and Mahadeo Vinayak Ranade, who are later caught and hanged. 1898 – Spanish–American War: In a chaotic operation, 6,000 men of the U.S. Fifth Army Corps begins landing at Daiquirí, Cuba, about 16 miles (26 km) east of Santiago de Cuba. Lt. Gen. Arsenio Linares y Pombo of the Spanish Army outnumbers them two-to-one, but does not oppose the landings. 1907 – The London Underground's Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway opens. 1911 – George V and Mary of Teck are crowned King and Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. 1911 – Mexican Revolution: Government forces bring an end to the Magonista rebellion of 1911 in the Second Battle of Tijuana. 1918 – The Hammond Circus Train Wreck kills 86 and injures 127 near Hammond, Indiana. 1940 – World War II: France is forced to sign the Second Compiègne armistice with Germany, in the same railroad car in which the Germans signed the Armistice in 1918. 1941 – World War II: Nazi Germany invades the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. 1942 – World War II: Erwin Rommel is promoted to Field Marshal after the Axis capture of Tobruk. 1942 – The Pledge of Allegiance is formally adopted by US Congress. 1944 – World War II: Opening day of the Soviet Union's Operation Bagration against the Army Group Centre. 1944 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs into law the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill. 1945 – World War II: The Battle of Okinawa comes to an end. 1948 – The ship HMT Empire Windrush brought the first group of 802 West Indian immigrants to Tilbury, marking the start of modern immigration to the United Kingdom. 1948 – King George VI formally gives up the title "Emperor of India", half a year after Britain actually gave up its rule of India. 1962 – Air France Flight 117 crashes on approach to Pointe-à-Pitre International Airport in Guadeloupe, killing 112 people. 1965 – The Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea is signed. 1966 – Vietnamese Buddhist activist leader Thích Trí Quang was arrested as the military junta of Nguyen Cao Ky crushed the Buddhist Uprising. 1969 – The Cuyahoga River catches fire in Cleveland, Ohio, drawing national attention to water pollution, and spurring the passing of the Clean Water Act and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. 1978 – Charon, the first of Pluto's satellites to be discovered, was first seen at the United States Naval Observatory by James W. Christy. 1984 – Virgin Atlantic launches with its first flight from London to Newark. 1986 – The famous Hand of God goal, scored by Diego Maradona in the quarter-finals of the 1986 FIFA World Cup match between Argentina and England, ignites controversy. This was later followed by the Goal of the Century. Argentina wins 2–1 and later goes on to win the World Cup. 1990 – Cold War: Checkpoint Charlie is dismantled in Berlin. 2000 – Wuhan Airlines Flight 343 is struck by lightning and crashes into Wuhan's Hanyang District, killing 49 people. 2002 – An earthquake measuring 6.5 Mw strikes a region of northwestern Iran killing at least 261 people and injuring 1,300 others and eventually causing widespread public anger due to the slow official response. 2009 – A Washington D.C Metro train traveling southbound near Fort Totten station collides into another train waiting to enter the station. Nine people are killed in the collision (eight passengers and the train operator) and at least 80 others are injured. 2012 – Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo is removed from office by impeachment and succeeded by Federico Franco. 2012 – A Turkish Air Force McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II fighter plane is shot down by the Syrian Armed Forces, killing both of the plane's pilots and worsening already-strained relations between Turkey and Syria. 2015 – The Afghan National Assembly building is attacked by gunmen after a suicide bombing. All six of the gunmen are killed and 18 people are injured.

#Events

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against1a1dark1background · 4 years

Text

Jakarta Legacy

My mental state began to deteriorate when the Australian Embassy was bombed on the 9th September 2004. I was standing on my balcony, eight hundred metres away from the embassy when the bomb went off. The sound was like no other that I have ever heard, it was like a flat smack! The blast wave almost knocked me over. Foolishly, I decided to have a look at the bomb site. My Indonesian ex-boyfriend Todo, whom I had only broken up with about a month before worked in the embassy in the AUSAID department. I tried to get him on the phone, but it just kept going to voicemail. I was worried about him; I still had the remnants of care from our relationship.

When I got there, the scene was carnage. People were walking around aimlessly in a dazed state Windows within a 500-metre radius were shattered, cars were destroyed, body parts were strewn around the bomb crater. I felt myself going into shock and there was obviously nothing I could do for anyone. I couldn’t get Todo on the phone and I couldn’t get into the embassy. I had to leave.

I would never have guessed that on my first day in Jakarta I would be leaving in a state of extremely poor mental health.

My first day in Jakarta was somewhat of a disappointment. My boyfriend at the time, Todo had decided to go to work that day in this strange, wondrous — and confusing city, leaving me to my own devices, not speaking a word of Indonesian and not knowing a thing about Jakarta.

I had come to Indonesia because Todo had arranged a job interview with English First, a private English language school. Luckily, I had organised an internet friend to be my tour guide. His name was Jojo and he was ridiculously cute. He was a little shorter than me, with close cropped hair, kind almond-shaped eyes, and kooky teeth like David Bowie’s. He met me outside the Australian Embassy; we grabbed a taxi and set off to explore Jakarta.

Jojo took me to the huge roundabout, where the Hotel Indonesia and the Plaza Indonesia sit side by side in a circular formation. Plaza Indonesia is a giant shopping mall with all the Western trappings one might expect to find. Next, we went to Monas – Monumen Nasional, sometime jokingly referred by westerners as “Sukarno’s Last Erection.” This is chiefly because it resembles a phallus and I’m assured that this is no accident. We climbed all the way to the top and looked out over the city, then went back down to the museum at the bottom and took in some of Indonesia’s great history. After this, we went to a karaoke bar on the north side of the city and we sang a few songs and made out like teenagers. The day having been spent, Jojo and I returned to the Australian Embassy where I waited for Todo.

Todo did not stay my boyfriend for awfully long. I had lived with him in a shitty little boarding house known locally as a kost. These were everywhere in Kuningan, central Jakarta, some of them cheap and rat-infested and others at the more luxurious end of the scale. Todo was a tightwad and even though I had my own cash, in those first few weeks of being in Jakarta, I had no idea of what to do or where to go — and I couldn’t speak the language yet. So, we lived in one of the shittier kosts. We never went anywhere and never ate out, despite this being a cheap thing to do. He left me to my own devices day after day as he went to work, and I suppose this was kind of a good thing — I got a crash course in Bahasa Indonesia from the other residents of the kost.

One night Todo took me to a gay nightclub called Two-Faces where he spent the night guard-dogging me against any guys that showed an interest in me. But that all changed when Arman walked in and we locked eyes from across the room. He managed to sidle his way over to me and sit down next to me. We exchanged pleasantries and he gave me his business card — he was a finance worker for Mitsubishi and this is the lie I told Todo — that I was interested in buying a car from Arman. Three weeks later Arman and I were living together in a more upmarket kost where they cleaned your rooms daily and did your laundry, and there was a little café out the front where you could get breakfast. Salted duck eggs, rice, little fish called terasi served with peanuts. It was paradise.

My medical troubles in Jakarta began in earnest in September 2004 when I woke up having vomited a chocolate-coloured mess and having no feeling down my left side — a result of an MDMA overdose, along with morphine, and diazepam.

As ambulances in Jakarta were mostly for ferrying the dead to graveyards, we had to call a friend who had a car as we didn’t have one at this stage. They were reluctant to help us initially until I shouted down the phone “I’ve had a stroke!”

With Arman’s help and a lot of effort, I recovered from my stroke and regained the use of my left side. My speech was not affected but to this day, I sometimes transpose letters when I’m handwriting, as I’m left-handed. I credit Arman and my neurologist for my return to health. My neurologist, Dr Priscilla, was a fabulous woman in her thirties who had long, red, fake nails and whose lipstick bled through her cloth mask. I got on with her very well and it was her psychiatrist father who treated me later.

The next knock to my mental state occurred when we were living on the top floor of a 46-storey building. Arman was managing a company for his friend in Japan at this point and they had bought an apartment for us. At 02:00 one morning, there was an earthquake that shook the whole building, waking us up in fright. We ran all the way down the stairs — 46 storeys took us over forty-five minutes to get to the ground. As we descended the stairs, a realisation dawned upon me — there was nothing supporting the stairs. We made the decision to stay in our apartment if another earthquake hit, as we’d be dead either way — we lived on the top floor. I suppose you could say that I had PTSD at this stage, as I had nightmares and slept poorly, waiting for the next earthquake.

My other medical troubles involved prescription drugs. One afternoon after I had finished work, I decided to go to the Rumah Sakit Tebet, which is a typical, small, Christian-run hospital. I went into the emergency waiting room and there was a cliché nurse in a pressed, white uniform. She even had a little white hat on.

“Bisa Bahasa Inggris?” I asked

“Ya, sedikit-sedikit,” she replied

“I’m having a panic attack, I can’t breathe properly, and my heart is racing. Can you please help me?”

“Ok, you wait here,” she said.

I sat down in the waiting room, my legs jiggling and my hands shaking. I waited for what seemed like an eternity, but it was only about twenty minutes. A tall grey-headed doctor came out and waved me in. He sat me down and asked for my symptoms. I repeated what I had told the nurse, can’t breathe properly, heart racing, I feel panicked. He asked me what I wanted him to do and I said,

“I need some diazepam.”

“Oh, I see. Have you ever had it before?” he asked.

“Yes, I used to be on it when I lived in Australia. It’s essential medication for me.”

“Well, I can give you some tablets today,” he said.

This doctor, this soft touch, became my go-to for my future diazepam needs. I would present at emergency, spin the same yarn about having a panic attack and I almost always got what I wanted. Sometimes it was diazepam, sometimes it was lorazepam, sometimes I even managed to convince the good doctor to give me a 10mg diazepam injection, which was magnificent. When this doctor finally wised up to my act, I went above his head and bribed the doctor in charge of the hospital to continue to supply me with the drugs I craved to calm myself. Corruption is endemic in Indonesia - it pervades all levels of society.

My mental problems grew increasingly worse after another earthquake struck. I was in the lift of my apartment building at the time and it began to sway from side to side, smashing into the walls of the elevator shaft as it went up. When I got out of the elevator, I couldn’t stand up because the building was swaying so violently. There were several people there with me and one of them was yelling “Oh Tuhan, oh Tuhan, oh Tuhan,” right in my ear. Tuhan being a cry to god. I couldn’t stand it, so I got up along the wall to my apartment and went inside, smoked three pipes worth of weed and lay on the couch until the earthquake subsided. I didn’t care if the building collapsed — there was nothing I could do about it.

It was at this point my mental health took a turn for the worse. I engaged in further drug-seeking behaviour and would often turn up for work under the influence of whatever I could get my hands on — diazepam, morphine, tramadol, gabapentin. No one at work noticed but I was buzzed every day. It wasn’t at all for pleasure, it was self-medicating for the mental trauma I was suffering.

Our next brush with death occurred on the 14th July 2009 when we ate at the Srivijaya buffet in the J.W. Marriott hotel in Kuningan, Jakarta. Three days later, on the 17th of July, a man walked in with a backpack full of explosives and detonated them. I was shaken up by this experience. At the same time, another suicide bomber tried to enter the Ritz-Carlton Hotal, opposite the Marriott. He didn’t make it past security and detonated his bomb in the foyer.

At the time the bombs went off in the Marriott and the Ritz-Carlton, I was teaching a Study In Australia Program to captains and majors in the Indonesian military. The SIAP IELTS program was designed by the Australian Embassy TBI, and the Australian Department of Defence, in conjunction with ABRI — the Indonesian military, to ready these military personnel to a level of English that would allow them to undertake master’s degrees in counter-terrorism and the like in Australian universities. When we heard the bombs go off, I asked my military students if they knew who was behind the bombings. I was with several majors and captains, smoking outside during a break from class. I had some idea as I had heard gossip in Indonesian (they thought I couldn’t understand them,) from my regular students, some of whom were the children of government workers and big businesspeople.

“I think I know who was behind the bombing,” I said.

“Who do you think it was?” asked one of the majors

“Was it the guy who’s running for vice-president with XXXXXXXXXX?”

“Don’t say that again - to anybody,” said the major.

“So, am I right?” I asked.

“Please, you can’t talk about this anymore. It is dangerous for you,” he said with finality.

Since then, I have been enduring the weight of knowing who was behind the twin bombings of the Ritz-Carlton and J.W. Marriott Hotels in 2009.

Arman and I decided that it was best if we go and live in Australia, where I could get the medical help I so desperately needed and the support from my family. So, Arman set out to become a permanent resident of Australia. He had to do this all on his own as I had to work and was of no use.

My mental state began to decline further and people at work noticed there was something wrong with me. I missed a promotion, and my reaction was ugly to say the least. I began to act out and soon other teachers noticed my behaviour and would ask me if I was ok. I lied and said I was, but things were deteriorating. My manager called me into his office

“I’m going to get down to it straight away,” he said. “Would you like to take a few weeks off, to get your head right?’

“No,” I shook my head in denial. “No, please. I’m fine. I can still teach. I’m doing my job well, I think. There’s been no complaints.”

“I’ve heard things from the other teachers, they say it sounds like you’re not coping well. Please consider a holiday. I think it’ll be of great benefit to you,” he said.

“No really, I’m okay. I’m coping well. I really don’t want to take time off. I don’t need it.”

After this, things became so bad that I broke down and cried in a class full of children, who I’m sure were scarred by the experience.

Arman was working hard getting his Permanent Residency and I became too much to handle. We went to see a psychiatrist, the father of my neurologist, who put me on a raft of psychoactive drugs and then decided that I should be admitted to a psychiatric hospital.

It was an odd feeling being in an Indonesian psychiatric hospital, for a start I couldn’t communicate well with the other patients and it was hard interacting with the staff. I did make one friend — a 19-year-old boy who was suffering from major depression. His parents had admitted him when he failed to thrive at ITB university. He and I would talk every day while we smoked in the outdoor area. I developed a bond with him and after a few days, we were fast friends. He told me all about his inability to cope at university and his parent’s insistence that there was something wrong with him. The food was abysmal — sloppy rice with fish and other such tasteless muck. My psychiatrist insisted that I stay in the hospital for three weeks, which didn’t mesh with Arman’s arrangements for us to go to Australia. He telephoned my parents who in turn telephoned the Australian embassy. They then sent out two consular officials who demanded my immediate release from the hospital. My doctor had no choice but to comply.

Arman had organised everything, his permanent residency, our tickets to Australia and he had arranged for our belongings to be sent via air freight to Brisbane airport. So, I found myself on my way home to Australia doped up to the eyeballs on Alprazolam, Largactil, Haloperidol and several other drugs. It was a rough flight home but I’m usually a good flier. I found myself popping Alprazolam every other hour because I couldn’t cope with the panic.

When we arrived home, my parents almost didn’t recognise me, I knew because I saw their shocked looks. My face was all puffy, I was bloated, I had put on weight and I had dark circles under my eyes. My mum cried when she saw me, so I must have looked a mess.

My mum and dad had organised a caravan for us to live in in my sister’s backyard. It was a dramatic comedown from living on top of one of the tallest buildings in the middle of one of the largest cities in the world.

I began to get proper medical care. I saw a G.P. who referred me to a psychiatrist who then took me off most of the drugs they had put me on in Jakarta. I slowly began to improve but to this day I still have Bipolar II Disorder, PTSD, anxiety and panic, and ADHD. I’m on the Disability Support Pension. This account is just one of the legacies of my time in Jakarta.

#Jakarta Legacy #Fictional Memoir #Charles' Fictional Memoirs & Sci-Fi & Pop Culture #excession

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toldnews-blog · 5 years

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New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/world/japan-emperor-akihitos-human-touch/

Japan emperor: Akihito's human touch

Image copyright Getty Images

On a beautiful spring morning last week, I stood on a street corner on the western outskirts of Tokyo. For hundreds of metres in each direction, the road was lined, three-deep, with eager, excited faces. Then, with almost no warning, a large black limousine approached over a bridge, motorcycle outriders on either side.

As the car slipped by, for a few brief moments, we could see Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko leaning forward waving gently. A ripple of applause and waving of plastic flags from the crowd, and they were gone.

To me, it all seemed a little anti-climactic. And I was not alone. Nearby an elderly lady was chastising a policeman.

“Why did they go so fast?” she demanded to know. “Usually they drive much slower than that. We hardly got any chance to see them.”

The policeman smiled patiently. Clearly, he had no control over the speed of the motorcade.

I had expected a few hundred hard-core groupies to turn out for this final visit by the royal couple to the imperial tombs. Instead there must have been 5,000 or more. Some were dabbing away tears as the crowds began to disperse.

“I am grateful for what they have done for the Japanese people,” said a lady wearing an exquisite spring kimono. “I waved at them with the feeling of deep gratitude for all these years.”

“I am really moved,” said her friend. “I hope he can rest and have a peaceful life after so many years on duty.”

Kaoru Sugiyami, wearing a large floppy sunhat, had also come with a group of friends.

“I am not from the generation that experienced the war,” she said. “But when you look back, it is the emperor that has kept peace in Japan through his reign. So I wanted to come and see him on his last visit, to show my gratitude. I wanted to tell him, ‘thank you’.”

What is it that Emperor Akihito has done to inspire such feelings?

The consoler in chief

In January 1989, upon his father’s death, Emperor Akihito succeeded to the Chrysanthemum Throne.

It was an optimistic time. Japan was rich, at the height of its post-war economic boom. Sony was about to buy Columbia Pictures and Mitsubishi was on the verge of buying the Rockefeller Center in New York. The talk, in much of the world, was of Japan the new “superpower”.

Image copyright AFP

Image caption Japanese Emperor Akihito in ceremonial outfit, 1990

But a year into his reign, calamity struck. The asset bubble burst and the Tokyo stock market collapsed, losing 35% of its value. Nearly 30 years on, Japanese stocks and land prices are still below 1990 levels.

For most Japanese people the Heisei era – the name means “achieving peace” – has been one of economic stagnation. It has also been one marked by tragedy.

In January 1995, a 6.9 magnitude earthquake ripped through the city of Kobe, toppling buildings and motorway viaducts and starting fires that burned for days, turning the sky above the city black. Around 6,000 people were killed.

In 2011, an even more devastating quake hit off the north-east coast. At magnitude 9, it was the fourth largest earthquake ever recorded. It unleashed a giant tsunami that smashed into the coast of northern Japan, sweeping away whole towns and killing nearly 16,000 people.

It was after that second disaster that Emperor Akihito did something no emperor had ever done before. He sat down in front of a TV camera and spoke directly to the Japanese people.

Two weeks later, the emperor and empress arrived at an evacuation centre in a stadium outside Tokyo.

People were camped on the floor, a few meagre possessions piled around them. Most had fled the radiation cloud ejected from the damaged nuclear plant in Fukushima. They had left almost everything behind, unsure of when, or if, they would be able to return to their hometowns.

The emperor and empress knelt on the ground with each family in turn, talking to them quietly, asking questions, expressing concern.

Image copyright ISSEI KATO

Image caption Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko talk with evacuees from the 2011 earthquake and tsunami

Japanese people had never seen an emperor behave like this before. To conservatives it was a shock. This is not how the direct descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu should behave. But many more Japanese were deeply moved by the emperor’s very human show of empathy.

“He has moral authority,” says Prof Jeff Kingston, from Temple University in Tokyo. “And he’s earned it. He is the consoler in chief. He connects with the public in a way his father never could.

“So he goes to shelters and not like a politician going for a photo op, to wave and leave. He sits with people and drinks tea and engages in conversation in a way that was unthinkable in the pre-1945 era.”

The sins of the father

Emperor Akihito does not have the appearance of a revolutionary. He is small, modest and softly spoken. His words and actions are tightly constrained by Japan’s post-war constitution and, unlike Britain’s Queen Elizabeth, he is not Japan’s head of state.

Instead his role is much more vaguely defined as “symbol of the state and unity of the people”. He is banned from expressing any political opinion.

And yet within the tight straitjacket of his ceremonial role, Emperor Akihito has managed to do some remarkable things.

The first thing you need to remember is that Akihito is the son of Hirohito, the god-like emperor who reigned over Japan during its nearly 15-year rampage across Asia in the 1930s and 40s. Akihito was 12 when the war ended with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Emperor Hirohito and Prince Akihito reading a newspaper

At some point in his education, some say under the influence of his American tutor Elizabeth Gray Vining, Akihito became a confirmed pacifist, and he remains so today. He has told people his greatest contentment comes from knowing that during his reign, not a single Japanese soldier has been killed in war or armed conflict.

The emperor has made it his job to reach out to Japan’s former enemies and victims. From Beijing to Jakarta, Manila to Saipan, he has sought to heal the wounds inflicted under his father.

“He created a new role for the emperor, and that is the nation’s chief emissary for reconciliation, criss-crossing the region, making gestures of atonement and contrition. Basically, trying to heal the scars of wartime past,” says Prof Kingston.

Image copyright Keystone-France

Image caption Wedding of Prince Akihito and Princess Michiko, 1959

In the 1990s that was relatively uncontroversial. Japanese politicians encouraged the emperor, arranging a landmark trip to China in 1992. But as he has grown older, Japanese politics has moved dramatically to the right.

The old “apology diplomacy” is out of favour, as is pacifism. The current prime minister, Shinzo Abe, had vowed to rid Japan of its pacifist constitution. He and others on the right want to bring back patriotic education, and expunge what they call the “historical masochism” of the post-war era.

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe walks past Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko during an annual memorial service for war victims, Tokyo, 2014

In subtle, but determined ways, Emperor Akihito has repeatedly shown his disdain for the revisionists. In 2015, on the 70th anniversary of the end of the war, Mr Abe gave a speech.

“He basically said that the peace and prosperity we enjoy today is owing to the sacrifice of the three million Japanese who died during the war,” says Prof Kingston.

“The next day, Akihito was having none of that. He made a speech saying the prosperity we enjoy today is down to the hard work and sacrifice of the Japanese people after the war.”

To the millions of Japanese watching on TV, it was an unmistakable slapdown.

On another occasion at a royal garden party in Tokyo, a right-wing member of the Tokyo metropolitan government proudly told the emperor that he was in charge of making sure all teachers stand and face the flag when they sing the national anthem.

The emperor gently but emphatically admonished the bureaucrat.

“I am in favour of individual choice,” he said.

The long farewell

Throughout his reign, the emperor has been inseparable from his most important companion and advisor, Empress Michiko. She was born a commoner, and has, at times, found life in the imperial household extremely hard. In 1993, the empress collapsed from mental exhaustion and for two months she lost the ability to speak.

Image copyright Alamy

Image caption Empress Michiko married Emperor Akihito in April 1959

Writing recently, she spoke of her awe at her husband’s resolve.

“His duties required of him in his role are the utmost priority at all times and personal matters take second place,” she wrote, “and that is exactly how he has lived these nearly 60 years.”

But for some time, Emperor Akihito has been in declining health. He has had cancer and major heart bypass surgery. Those close to him say he has become increasingly worried that poor health would incapacitate him and make it impossible for him to carry out his official duties.

As far back as 2009, the emperor began quietly agitating to be allowed to hand the throne to his son. This is no easy task.

The post-war constitution makes it clear emperors are to serve “for life”. And so, according to Prof Takeshi Hara, of Japan’s Open University, the politicians ignored the emperor’s requests.

“Over the course of nine years, none of the governments sympathised with the emperor’s feelings,” he says. “They felt that if they complied with the emperor’s desire to abdicate, this would show the emperor has power to make important decisions, and that is against the constitution.”

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Prince Naruhito and Princess Masako with their pet dog Yuri.

It is a very Japanese conundrum. In increasing desperation, Prof Hara says the emperor and imperial household agency cooked up a scheme.

“The emperor and the Imperial Household Agency were growing more and more impatient,” he says. “So someone in the Household Agency leaked the information to NHK (Japan’s national broadcaster). Then NHK broadcast news of the emperor’s request.”

It was a huge scoop for Japan’s national broadcaster and it broke the impasse. A month later the emperor went on TV for a second time to appeal directly to the Japanese people, explaining his wish to step down and hand the throne to his son.

Opinion polls showed the overwhelming majority of Japanese supported the emperor’s wish. Mr Abe and the conservatives had no choice but to comply. It has taken nearly another two years, but now Emperor Akihito will finally be able to enjoy his retirement.

The country will officially begin a new era on 1 May, when Crown Prince Naruhito ascends to the Chrysanthemum Throne as the new emperor.

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ericfruits · 6 years

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Indonesia’s president toys with releasing a terrorist ideologue

print-edition icon Print edition | Asia

Jan 24th 2019 | JAKARTA

ABU BAKAR BASYIR founded Jemaah Islamiah, the group responsible for Indonesia’s deadliest terrorist attack. In 2002 bombs ripped through two nightspots packed with revellers on the island of Bali, killing 202. Between 2003 and 2009 JI staged four more large bombings in Indonesia, claiming more than 50 lives. Many of its members are dead or behind bars, including Mr Basyir, its chief ideologue, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2011 for financing a terrorist training camp.

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On January 18th, however, Indonesia’s president, Joko Widodo, known as Jokowi, said that the 81-year-old preacher would be released early on “humanitarian” grounds, owing to poor health. Yusril Mahendra, a legal adviser to Jokowi, said the decision was proof that the president is not hostile to devout Muslims.

Jokowi, a Muslim himself, is standing for re-election in April. His political opponents have long smeared him as troublingly irreligious. To counter those claims, Jokowi has chosen Ma’ruf Amin, a prominent 75-year-old cleric, as his running-mate this time. Other conservative figures have been put on the government payroll in an attempt to quell their criticism. Many saw Jokowi’s decision to free Mr Basyir as another attempt to appease the Islamists—even though there was no great clamour for his release.

But Mr Basyir has never renounced violent extremism. He refuses to accept pancasila, Indonesia’s founding principles, which enshrine democracy and a degree of freedom of religion—normally a precondition for convicted terrorists seeking clemency. Mr Basyir’s son said that his father would resume preaching if released. Sidney Jones, an expert on Indonesian militants, thinks Mr Basyir’s status would be elevated if he were set free: “It would send a message that promoting violence, rejecting democracy and spreading hatred of non-Muslims are all forgivable.”

Many Indonesians howled at the announcement, as did the government of Australia (88 Australians died in the bombing in 2002). Jokowi appears to be reconsidering: he now says Mr Basyir would have to agree to certain conditions before he could be released, including accepting pancasila, which he is unlikely to do. But the damage to the president’s reputation as a bulwark against the spread of extremism in Indonesia is already done.

This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline "Undeserving"

https://econ.st/2WcXs3U

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brookstonalmanac · 4 years

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Events 6.22

217 BC – Battle of Raphia: Ptolemy IV Philopator of Egypt defeats Antiochus III the Great of the Seleucid kingdom. 168 BC – Battle of Pydna: Romans under Lucius Aemilius Paullus defeat Macedonian King Perseus who surrenders after the battle, ending the Third Macedonian War. 813 – Battle of Versinikia: The Bulgars led by Krum defeat the Byzantine army near Edirne. Emperor Michael I is forced to abdicate in favor of Leo V the Armenian. 910 – The Hungarians defeat the East Frankish army near the Rednitz River, killing its leader Gebhard, Duke of Lotharingia (Lorraine). 1527 – Fatahillah expels Portuguese forces from Sunda Kelapa, now regarded as the foundation of Jakarta. 1593 – Battle of Sisak: Allied Christian troops defeat the Ottomans. 1633 – The Holy Office in Rome forces Galileo Galilei to recant his view that the Sun, not the Earth, is the center of the Universe in the form he presented it in, after heated controversy. 1774 – The British pass the Quebec Act, setting out rules of governance for the colony of Quebec in British North America. 1783 – A poisonous cloud caused by the eruption of the Laki volcano in Iceland reaches Le Havre in France. 1807 – In the Chesapeake–Leopard Affair, the British warship HMS Leopard attacks and boards the American frigate USS Chesapeake. 1813 – War of 1812: After learning of American plans for a surprise attack on Beaver Dams in Ontario, Laura Secord sets out on a 30 kilometer journey on foot to warn Lieutenant James FitzGibbon. 1839 – Cherokee leaders Major Ridge, John Ridge, and Elias Boudinot are assassinated for signing the Treaty of New Echota, which had resulted in the Trail of Tears. 1870 – The United States Department of Justice is created by the U.S. Congress. 1893 – The Royal Navy battleship HMS Camperdown accidentally rams the British Mediterranean Fleet flagship HMS Victoria which sinks taking 358 crew with her, including the fleet's commander, Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon. 1897 – British colonial officers Charles Walter Rand and Lt. Charles Egerton Ayerst are assassinated in Pune, Maharashtra, India by the Chapekar brothers and Mahadeo Vinayak Ranade, who are later caught and hanged. 1898 – Spanish–American War: In a chaotic operation, 6,000 men of the U.S. Fifth Army Corps begins landing at Daiquirí, Cuba, about 16 miles (26 km) east of Santiago de Cuba. Lt. Gen. Arsenio Linares y Pombo of the Spanish Army outnumbers them two-to-one, but does not oppose the landings. 1907 – The London Underground's Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway opens. 1911 – George V and Mary of Teck are crowned King and Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. 1911 – Mexican Revolution: Government forces bring an end to the Magonista rebellion of 1911 in the Second Battle of Tijuana. 1918 – The Hammond Circus Train Wreck kills 86 and injures 127 near Hammond, Indiana. 1940 – World War II: France is forced to sign the Second Compiègne armistice with Germany, in the same railroad car in which the Germans signed the Armistice in 1918. 1941 – World War II: Nazi Germany invades the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. 1942 – World War II: Erwin Rommel is promoted to Field Marshal after the capture of Tobruk. 1942 – The Pledge of Allegiance is formally adopted by US Congress. 1944 – World War II: Opening day of the Soviet Union's Operation Bagration against the Army Group Centre. 1944 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs into law the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill. 1945 – World War II: The Battle of Okinawa comes to an end. 1948 – The ship HMT Empire Windrush brought the first group of 802 West Indian immigrants to Tilbury, marking the start of modern immigration to the United Kingdom. 1948 – King George VI formally gives up the title "Emperor of India", half a year after Britain actually gave up its rule of India. 1969 – The Cuyahoga River catches fire in Cleveland, Ohio, drawing national attention to water pollution, and spurring the passing of the Clean Water Act and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. 1978 – Charon, the first of Pluto's satellites to be discovered, was first seen at the United States Naval Observatory by James W. Christy. 1984 – Virgin Atlantic Airways launches with its first flight from London Gatwick Airport. 1986 – The famous Hand of God goal, scored by Diego Maradona in the quarter-finals of the 1986 FIFA World Cup match between Argentina and England, ignites controversy. This was later followed by the Goal of the Century. Argentina wins 2–1 and later goes on to win the World Cup. 1990 – Cold War: Checkpoint Charlie is dismantled in Berlin. 2002 – An earthquake measuring 6.5 Mw strikes a region of northwestern Iran killing at least 261 people and injuring 1,300 others and eventually causing widespread public anger due to the slow official response. 2009 – A Washington D.C Metro train traveling southbound near Fort Totten station collides into another train waiting to enter the station. Nine people are killed in the collision (eight passengers and the train operator) and at least 80 others are injured. 2012 – Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo is removed from office by impeachment and succeeded by Federico Franco. 2012 – A Turkish Air Force McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II fighter plane is shot down by the Syrian Armed Forces, killing both of the plane's pilots and worsening already-strained relations between Turkey and Syria. 2015 – The Afghan National Assembly building is attacked by gunmen after a suicide bombing. All six of the gunmen are killed and 18 people are injured.

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cleopatrarps · 6 years

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Bomb Jokes on Indonesian Flights Have Officials Cracking Down, Not Up

It’s not funny, people.

That’s the message the Indonesian authorities are trying to send, as a sudden rash of jokes about bombs has resulted in flight disruptions across the country.

On Monday night, at least 10 passengers suffered injuries, including broken bones, after a 26-year-old man on a Lion Air plane preparing to take off from the city of Pontianak on Borneo island told a flight attendant there was a bomb on board, The Associated Press reported.

A video circulating on social media appeared to show what happened next: passengers on the wing, fleeing the plane. The A.P. quoted an airline spokesman, Danang Mandala, as saying that a panicked passenger had opened both emergency exits on the plane’s right side without the cabin crew’s permission. The police later searched the plane but found nothing suspicious.

The reaction on social media was a mix of bewilderment and outrage:

Indonesian news media said Monday’s episode was the ninth bomb scare this month that started with a joke, and the seventh on Lion Air alone. The company could not immediately be reached for comment on Wednesday.

A 2009 law imposes a penalty of up to eight years for joking about bombs in airports or planes in Indonesia, The Jakarta Globe newspaper reported. But enforcement of the law has been weak — at least until this week, when the authorities charged the 26-year-old, identified by the Globe as a local university student, in Monday’s incident and vowed to follow up on other cases.

“Through this legal action, we hope to give a deterrent effect to bombers, so it becomes a lesson for all of us to no longer joke about bombs,” the Globe quoted the transportation minister, Budi Karya Sumadi, as saying.

Indonesia is the world’s fifth-largest domestic aviation market, and its domestic passenger traffic grew to nearly 97 million last year from less than 30 million in 2005, according to the CAPA-Center for Aviation, a research group in Sydney, Australia. Lion Group, the parent company of Lion Air, controls 51 percent of the domestic market.

Lion Air, which operates throughout Southeast Asia and the Middle East, is a low-cost carrier based in Jakarta, the capital, and is the country’s largest privately owned airline, according to the CAPA center. In 2013, Lion Air ordered $24 billion worth of new single-aisle jets from Airbus.

But Indonesia has long had a troubling air safety record, and several of its airlines have been barred over the years from flying in Europe and the United States.

Lion Air has had multiple plane crashes and other episodes in which planes have skidded off runways. Four of its pilots were arrested in separate instances in 2011 and 2012 for possession of drugs, including ecstasy pills and crystal methamphetamine.

The post Bomb Jokes on Indonesian Flights Have Officials Cracking Down, Not Up appeared first on World The News.

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party-hard-or-die · 6 years

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Bomb Jokes on Indonesian Flights Have Officials Cracking Down, Not Up

It’s not funny, people.

That’s the message the Indonesian authorities are trying to send, as a sudden rash of jokes about bombs has resulted in flight disruptions across the country.

The reaction on social media was a mix of bewilderment and outrage:

But Indonesia has long had a troubling air safety record, and several of its airlines have been barred over the years from flying in Europe and the United States.

The post Bomb Jokes on Indonesian Flights Have Officials Cracking Down, Not Up appeared first on World The News.

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dani-qrt · 6 years

Text

Bomb Jokes on Indonesian Flights Have Officials Cracking Down, Not Up

It’s not funny, people.

That’s the message the Indonesian authorities are trying to send, as a sudden rash of jokes about bombs has resulted in flight disruptions across the country.

The reaction on social media was a mix of bewilderment and outrage:

But Indonesia has long had a troubling air safety record, and several of its airlines have been barred over the years from flying in Europe and the United States.

The post Bomb Jokes on Indonesian Flights Have Officials Cracking Down, Not Up appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2kCijMg via Online News

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dragnews · 6 years

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Indonesia’s ‘Sick’ New Suicide Bomb Threat: Parents With Their Children

JAKARTA, Indonesia — A wave of deadly bombings on Sunday and Monday and evidence of more planned have shaken Indonesia just ahead of the holy month of Ramadan, with entire families — including children — carrying out suicide attacks against Christian worshipers and the police.

The troubling discovery Monday of a trove of completed bombs in a housing complex outside Surabaya, Indonesia’s second-largest city, came a day after members of a single family carried out three attacks against separate churches in the city around Mass time, killing seven people.

On Sunday night, three members of another family, including a child, were killed when a bomb exploded at their apartment outside Surabaya when the police moved in to arrest them.

And on Monday morning, a family of five riding on two motorbikes detonated a bomb at the entrance of the Surabaya Police Headquarters — killing all but one of them and injuring four police officers. An 8-year-old girl who was with the attackers survived the blast and was taken to the hospital.

The extent of the carnage and the fact that children were enlisted in the attacks drew condemnation from the country’s leader, President Joko Widodo, who called them “barbaric.” All told, 12 civilians and 13 terrorist suspects were dead from two days of violence, with at least 46 people injured, including police officers.

Police officials said the attackers, whether by blood or other ties, were working together.

“They’re from one organization,” Gen. Tito Karnavian, chief of the National Police, said during a Monday news conference in Surabaya. The city, the capital of East Java Province with a population of almost three million, has a large ethnic Chinese Christian community.

A day earlier, General Karnavian had said the family suspected in those attacks had recently returned to Indonesia after being deported from Syria.

On Monday, General Karnavian said the bombs that exploded on Sunday and Monday were similar in their construction — highly-powerful and sensitive to movement — to those used by the Islamic State in its war in Iraq and Syria.

He said that these types of bombs are known as the Mother of Satan.

The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attacks, describing each of the bombings as a “martyrdom” operation carried out by three modes of attack: a car bomb, a suicide vest and a motorcycle-borne bomb.

Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, practices one of the most moderate forms of Islam in the world, but still has a homegrown terrorism problem. The country has experienced numerous attacks in the years after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, including deadly terrorist bombings on the resort island of Bali in 2002 and 2005, and bombings of international hotels in Jakarta in 2003 and 2009.

But the use of children in terrorist plots, analysts say, represents a new and shocking development in Indonesia.

“It was in one way expected and also completely unexpected, and that raises it to a new level of sick, using kids in this kind of thing,” said Ken Conboy, a security consultant and counterterrorism analyst in Jakarta.

During Sunday morning’s attacks, one suicide bomber appeared to have been disguised as a churchgoer. In another, an attacker drove a Toyota minivan with a bomb the site. Still another attacker was seen in footage speeding on a scooter toward a church before an explosion.

In Sidoarjo, a suburb south of Surabaya, a bomb detonated within a family’s apartment as the police closed in on Sunday night, killing the husband and wife and one of their children, and injuring another three children, said a spokesman for the provincial police, Frans Barung Mangera. He identified the dead suspect as Anton Ferdiantono, 46, who police officials later said was a friend of the man behind the church bombings.

In the final burst of violence, on Monday, four of the five people on the motorcycles were killed, and the fifth, the 8-year-old girl, was taken to the hospital, said Mr. Frans, the police spokesman. Four police officers were reported injured. A video released by an Indonesian news outlet appeared to show the explosion centered on one of the motorcycles, flattening police officers and damaging another car.

The counterterrorism police said they raided another housing complex in Sidoarjo on Monday morning, recovering several completed bombs after having neighboring residents evacuate.

The wave of deadly attacks began with the Sunday church bombings, which left at least 43 people injured and occurred in different parts of the city within minutes of each other, according to the police.

The family members in the church bombings have been identified as Dita Oepriarto and his wife, Puji Kuswati. Two of their sons, ages 18 and 16, were also involved, as well as two daughters, ages 9 and 12, according to the police.

The police said the father had dropped off his wife and two daughters at the Indonesia Christian Church. There, the wife tried to force her way inside, detonating a bomb outside the entrance and killing herself and her two daughters, the police said.

The sons rode motorcycles to their target, the Santa Maria Church, before detonating their explosives, according to the police.

The father was behind the wheel of the vehicle that crashed into the third church, the Surabaya Center Pentecostal, detonating a bomb believed to have been in the vehicle, the police said.

All six of the family members died in the explosions, the police said.

The police later disabled three bombs at the family’s home.

The bombings occurred as professed followers of the Islamic State have begun to make their presence felt in Indonesia, which is proud of its diversity and religious tolerance.

Last Wednesday, the Islamic State said it was responsible for a riot at a police detention center near the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, which housed dozens of terrorist suspects and convicts, most of them members of an Indonesian terrorist network that has sworn allegiance to the Islamic State.

Detainees killed five guards before order was restored, and one detainee was also killed.

In 2016, the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, claimed its first attack in Southeast Asia, when militants attacked a police post and shopping center in central Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, with homemade guns and bombs.

Amir Tejo contributed reporting from Surabaya, Indonesia, Muktita Suhartono from Bandung, Indonesia, Muhammad Rusmadi from Jakarta, and Rukmini Callimachi from New York.

The post Indonesia’s ‘Sick’ New Suicide Bomb Threat: Parents With Their Children appeared first on World The News.

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ericfruits · 6 years

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Indonesia’s prisons will soon start spawning even more jihadists

AMAN ABDURRAHMAN was first arrested in 2004 following an accidental explosion during a bomb-making class near Jakarta. But his career as a jihadist really got going in prison, where he has spent 12 of the subsequent 14 years. Until recently Mr Aman was able to run a militant propaganda campaign from his cell. He translated some 115 articles from Islamic State publications into Indonesian and uploaded them online. He also recruited volunteers to go fight in Syria—all from behind bars. He became IS’s “most important ideological promoter” in Indonesia, according to Sidney Jones of the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC), a think-tank in Jakarta. Abu Bakar Basyir (pictured), a radical cleric on death row for masterminding bombings in Bali in 2002 that killed more than 200 people, first befriended Mr Aman in prison and then distanced himself from him because he was “too hardline”.

Indonesia’s 477 prisons were built to house 125,000 prisoners. They are currently crammed with more than 254,000. One facility, in the province of South Kalimantan, holds 2,459 in a space meant for 366. An officer at a high-security prison in Jakarta says it is not uncommon for 15 inmates to be placed in a cell of nine square metres intended for three people.

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Graft flourishes. Earlier this year a raid by the KPK, an anti-corruption agency, revealed cells with air-conditioning, flat-screen televisions and private bathrooms. Even the KPK could not get into several cells, because the keys were kept by their occupants.

Small wonder, then, that jihadists have been able to recruit and organise freely from prison. Authorities were shocked to discover that a gunman involved in an attack on civilians in Jakarta in 2016 was a former prisoner who had served as personal masseur to Mr Aman while in jail. He had been granted an early release just months before for “good behaviour”.

Abu Husna is another man who organised terrorism from jail. He leads one of the two main Indonesian factions supporting IS (Mr Aman leads the other) and is a former cellmate of Mr Basyir. Baim Maulana, a former weapons-procurer for jihadist groups and separatists in the province of Aceh, describes how Abu Husna and fellow IS supporters controlled certain parts of the maximum-security prison in which he used to be held: “This included the kitchen at one point.” Mr Maulana received an invitation for a meal with Abu Husna, who wanted Mr Maulana to work for him. “I couldn’t refuse at that point, so I left it open-ended—surviving in prison was already tough as it was without rejecting their offer,” Mr Maulana says.

Terrorist inmates sit atop a “moral hierarchy” in prison and are often regarded by other inmates as enlightened, at least in comparison with drug offenders and petty criminals, says Taufik Andrie of the Institute for International Peace-Building, which helps released extremists reintegrate. “They act like pesantren (Islamic school) leaders,” he says, “and are given a lot of privileges in jail amongst inmates”. Amir Abdillah, who helped build the bombs used in an attack in Jakarta in 2009, says, “Radicals offer fellow inmates a chance to atone for their sins and pray together.” Mr Amir says that when he was arrested, he was convinced he “was doing the work of God and would be respected even in prison”.

The key to stemming the spread of radical ideology among inmates, argues Mr Andrie, is segregating the hardliners. “This unfortunately does not happen in ‘medium-security’ prisons or in centres where detainees await trial,” he explains. Until 2016, when Mr Aman was transferred to a maximum-security prison, he could receive visits from admirers. Some of his visitors went on to commit a series of bombings of churches and police posts in Surabaya in May. The same month Mr Aman reportedly mediated between police and pro-IS inmates at another prison after they seized control of part of the building and slit the throats of five police officers.

Since the bombings in May the authorities have been trying hard to disrupt terrorist networks. A revision to the anti-terrorism law allows suspects to be arrested pre-emptively and held for up to three weeks (a judge can extend the detention to as much as 290 days). A spike in arrests has followed; there are only 466 people convicted under terrorism laws in Indonesia’s jails, but since June some 350 suspected terrorists have been arrested.

In the absence of reforms to the prison system, however, this campaign is likely to make things worse, not better. “It is not clear how already overburdened detention centres, prosecutors, courts and prisons are going to cope,” writes Ms Jones in a recent IPAC report. In all likelihood, thrusting so many radicals among other prisoners will simply create more terrorists.

This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline "Jail sheikh"

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newestbalance · 6 years