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alexanderpusheen · 3 years

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what frustrates me the most abt this china narrative is that the US created al qaeda and ISIS, those groups are recruiting and causing terrorism in xinjiang, china has been trying to handle the situation with re-education programs often suggested by westerners, and its still being treated as this major human rights violation. there are actually dozens of countries with several robust anti radicalization programs that are just as strict, like singapore, colombia, yemen, bangladesh, saudi arabia, and indonesia. this paper ive linked to was even funded by the DHS so like...why has detaining someone and basically reverse brainwashing them out of being a terrorist been so acceptable for so long but now its an issue?

if you take issue with chinas program, you have to prove its somehow exceptional to these other programs. since we really dont have any way of knowing what is truth or reality thanks to the enormous disinformation campaign going on, you fucking cant. we dont even know what the programs entail because even googling it gets you exclusively hyperbolic concentration camp accusations.

what i will say is that relations between the han majority and the uyghur minority have been strained since at least the 80s. link is the notoriously conservative and pro US intervention human rights watch, so dont say im using pro commie sources or anything. every time i do any bit of research on this i seem to find an attempt from major news outlets in the early to mid 2000s or late 20-teens to prove this all started or became dramatically worse now, but things have always been tense. and its not really a surprise that things really got bad after the collapse of the soviet union, an event that was geographically close to china and the xinjiang region and also just like, a fucking major global event in general.

what i find to be very odd is just how dramatically the narrative has changed. the diplomat, one of my favorite periodicals, went from taking very nuanced and balanced positions on xinjiang that i almost completely agreed with to being just as aggressive as outlets like the BBC and CNN in the span of five years. they have eleven pages worth of articles on xinjiang, mostly covering the terrorism and beijings response (which i agree is too harsh) and xinjiang muslims’ relationships to the greater muslim world.

an example is how this article talks about the conflict at the time which warns of escalating violence as a result of han chauvinism and beijing being unable to deal with the extremism holistically. it points out how there were uyghurs captured among taliban ranks in afghanistan and how many might have even been working with ISIL.

The threat will not be an existential one to the Chinese state, as most Uighurs would prefer a peaceful accommodation. But even if only 1 percent of Uighurs hold extreme views, there are 10 million in Xinjiang and even for a state security apparatus as formidable as China’s, 100,000 or more angry people present a tough challenge.

i think its totally right that china does not allow people in that area to have cars, woodcutting tools, and amonium nitrate (which is used in bombs) is very strictly regulated. i completely agree that this is not how you combat terrorism. most people do not want war and broadly punishing these people is itself a human rights violation that went unnoticed until now.

however, in that same year, the diplomat also published this article about the infamous turkestan islamic party. members of TIP are like, literal jihadists lmfao.

TIP fighters call on the world’s Muslims to join the jihad against Western countries in internet videos. Perhaps most worringly for China, the TIP believes that Muslims may fight locally using various means instead of coming to Syria and Iraq to conduct a “holy war” against the “infidel” Western regimes.

yeah i definitely want to hear more about what these guys have to say. the article is really good because i think it highly illustrates just how dangerous these people are. theyve killed hundreds of people across china and want to establish a fascist religious state in xinjiang. while the article speaks for itself, i believe the last paragraph really highlights why china is being singled out whereas countries like france and canada are considered allies to muslims for whatever reason:

However, as experience has shown, China takes a passive position in the struggle against global Islamic jihad in Syria and Iraq. Beijing has not sent its troops to the Middle East to fight ISIS and has instead confined itself to diplomatic support for Russia and the United States. The Chinese government uses the attacks of Islamic jihadists to persuade Western countries to support Beijing’s position on Xinjiang and turn a blind eye when the freedom and rights of Uyghurs are harshly suppressed by Chinese security forces. Therefore, China is not perceived by the West as a reliable partner in the fight against terrorism. [emphasis mine]

im just a little surprised to see that a lot of these violent attacks from extremists throughout the years have targeted not just han chinese but also other uyghurs. in the west people do not typically sympathize with terrorists as freedom fighters, even on the left, because we know that no matter how angry or how seemingly justified the violence might seem, terrorism is unacceptable and it grossly misrepresents islam. it is a fascist act because those terrorists often follow an extremely right wing version of islam. also, we know that those who carry out terrorist attacks even outside of the west are middle class and professionals in some way, not poor and marginalized people. the level of nuance afforded to terrorists outside of xinjiang is pretty staggering.

yet in china, there seems to be this excitement than they are killing chinese people, even if some of those chinese are other uyghers or otherwise muslims. those who carry out attacks in xinjiang dont get any nuance or analysis because theyre justified.

ive referenced the diplomat earlier but this article from 2013 says it perfectly: Call Tiananmen Attack What It Was: Terrorism. except terrorism is bad. and the west wants you to support the uyghurs. and make no mistake, they do not want you to support the millions of uyghurs who want to live peacefully, free of any repression, american or chinese. they want you to support the jihadists randomly blowing up chinese and tourists alike because you are meant to sympathize with their plight.

terrorism isnt something to be romantacized or cheered on. it is something someone or someones do when they feel they have no other option. people do not want to kill even those they feel they have every right to because thats a line you cant uncross. murder changes you, justified or not. see the last chapter of wretched of the earth for this.

terrorism is great, however, for destabilizing a region or a country, and xinjiang is resource-rich. establishing a US-friendly regime, no matter how good they are on human rights, is the goal. the US does not care about muslims. they do not care about human rights. china, also, does not really seem to care about muslims or human rights either. but we’ve seen this since vietnam, and the US has learned since vietnam. the vietnamese were sympathetic. they were minding their business.

after vietnam, merely being communist isnt enough to warrant invasion. theyre killing their own people. nevermind that bolsonaro kills his own people and no one wants to invade (yet--biden has mention sanctions wrt us which is scary but again, thats got everything to do with making sure latin america is loyal to the west, not HR offenses). korea, although it was before vietnam, was less publicized and learning from vietnam gave the US a valuable lesson: always blame the victim. and thus, the US blames the victims of its violence. even if its ‘justified’, even if its ‘true,’ as was the case with saddam hussein, invading and occupying was the nightmare no one but the imperialists anticipated. because they dont broadcast what occupying forces do to the occupied. i am old enough to remember abu ghraib. have it seared in my memory forever. you perhaps are also old enough to remember, but also think millions of abu ghraibs and guantanamo bays are always worth it, always justified.

i know people arent going to read this and remind me really rudely that they didnt read it but i want to really emphasize how one of imperialism and colonialisms features is ethnic and racial separatism. how the rwandan genocide couldnt have happened without previous belgian and french rule. how yugoslavia wouldve remained a single country had it not been for NATO. i think its easy to diminish the role of the colonizer in all of this, but it is actually one of its goals: divide and conquer. exacerbate the existing conflicts to the point of genocide.

and if the west succeeds in balkanizing china, you will get more racism rather than less. you will see more violence against muslim minorities rather than less. they will feel less empowered rather than more. china has to learn that they are also to blame in a way that will be catastrophic for over a billion people. han chauvinism and outright racism must be addressed beyond window dressing.

wrapping up, china is in the wrong here. what theyre doing is racist and humiliating a population that has to be empowered. and the one child rule, even for the han majority, is imo fucking evil lol like sorry tankie tumblr im tankie too but i cannot for the life of me accept that as a good thing.... but i also dont buy the accusations of genocide, because even tho a lot of these articles are kind of glossing over it, china is trying to handle the terrorism in the region. imo theyre feeding into it by getting more han in the area, but also having more han but forcing them to take worse jobs would be a show of good will. idk, this situation is extremely complex and frankly, most uyghers do not want secession.

i also take extreme issue with people saying that adrian zenz is somehow reliable. not only is he a nazi crackpot, hes also literally the only source for almost all of what we know about this in the west. that is not how you do journalism. i dont understand how people are saying ‘yeah hes an extremely fascist grifter but also i believe him because hes anti communist and also anti china’. thats also not really the point? the point is that hes also the ONLY SOURCE on almost all of this, which is alarming.

i also find it very startling that in order to keep interest in the story, every few weeks the US has to remind people that the chinese are also doing what the US is doing to women in its own camps. forget that the US is separating minors from parents (since 2008). forget that the US is sterilizing women en masse (since 2017). forget that the US is raping women at the border (since there was a border). forget the US even has camps because now they arent even called that anymore. this is not that ‘you can be angry at two things at once’ but a clearly cynical attempt to get its citizens to forget that the US is detaining, deporting, sterilizing, and raping, and gassing non US nationals.

they are not ‘your own people.’ they are me. the other. i am an immigrant to the US, currently in my country of birth, so i am the other to you, the american. the chinese are doing the evil crime of killing their own. but the americans could never kill their own because they dont consider black americans to be their own. latin american nationals are not their own. bombing millions globally is not their own. thats always justifiable. there is clearly an element of racism in how these crimes are perceived as more or less evil.

the way immigrants and black americans are brutalized in the US is almost naturalized. like its the way things are supposed to be. you can live with that. its upsetting that you have to hear about antiblackness and the like but you know thats just how life is. you dont necessarily call for the US to be sanctioned or bombed by other countries because you believe in the inherent goodness of white america. but countries like china and iran and north korea deserve to be starved and killed for their crimes. and you can never say ‘maybe bombing and starving a country isnt the answer’ because it means you agree with it. you can never say ‘this is clearly propaganda to make me hate another race so much’ because it means youre a genocide denier. im sorry, but again, i remember iraq in 2003, i remember libya in 2011. i dont buy it.

finally, theres been a lot of attacks on asian people in the US lately and if you cannot see the violent way the US talks about china the country and how that influences people to harm asians within the US then idk what else to tell you. people will really believe this shit and say the chinese are all blood thirsty islamaphobes and thus need to be harmed. ‘im not like that! i defend my asian friends from racism!’ thats nice and all but idk how spreading some sinophobic propaganda designed by the US to make you support some kind of violence against one billion chinese people isnt inherently racist. also its unhelpful because sanctions dont really solve problems. but ive spoken too much.

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underthewingsofthblackeagle · 2 years

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Afghanistan (I) - various reports

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Afghanistan and China's relationship has come to the fore, ever since the United States withdrew from the country this past August. As international humanitarian aid stopped flowing to Afghanistan, China had been one of the few to step in with - limited - pledges. And it is not clear how much Beijing will engage, given the ongoing security problem as ISIS-K steps up attacks to disrupt Taliban control. So how durable is this China-Afghanistan relationship?

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Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world. But there is one sure-fire way to make money there - the drug trade. The Taliban is heavily involved in the opium and heroin trade - with money funding their recent takeover of power in Afghanistan.

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When the Taliban were in last in power they banned girls’ education, destroying schools and murdering teachers to prevent girls being educated. This time the Taliban told secondary schools to open only for boys, but say their restrictions on girls studying are "temporary" in order to ensure learning environments are "safe" for them. But some schools have opened for girls. The BBC's World Affairs Editor, John Simpson, met female students and their teacher to find out what's happening to girls' education in Afghanistan.

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Since first taking power in Afghanistan in the 1990s, the Taliban have been involved in the mass production and distribution of opium, which is extracted from the country's seemingly infinite amount of poppy fields. In fact, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimates over 80% of global opium and heroin supplies are sourced from Afghanistan. The gross worth of Afghan opiate exports is estimated at between $1.5 and $3 billion per year. Forbes spoke with two experts in the area of Afghanistan's illicit drug trade to learn more about how the Taliban's cartel became so wealthy and what could happen to drug exports now that the organization has retaken power in the country.

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Now that the Taliban are about to run a whole country, experts are wondering what their sources of income will be and how they will use them. German expert Hans-Jakob Schindler risks a look ahead.

#Afghanistan #China #USA #Afghanistan China relations #Afghan Opium #Afghan Opium Trail #Taliban #Taliban Opium Trail #United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime #Women in Afghanistan #Women Rights

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jennymanrique · 5 years

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Grupo Orgullo Hispano acoge a inmigrantes LGBTQ

Carlos González, a la izquierda, y Jesús Gallardo intercambian regalos y abrazos durante una fiesta de Navidad para latinos LGBT en el Resource Center de Dallas el16 de diciembre / 2018. Foto: Ben Torres

Se reúnen dos veces al mes para hablar de temas como prevención de enfermedades de transmisión sexual y su lugar en la sociedad. Dicen que se han convertido en una familia.

Desde hace un poco más de cinco años, Martin Balderrama dedica dos lunes de su mes a reunirse con un grupo de amigos convertidos en familia, para hablar de enfermedades de transmisión sexual, preservativos, medicación, prevención y como no, lo que los une como hispanos: la experiencia inmigrante LGBTQ.

Este lunes 19 de diciembre no fue la excepción: un grupo de unos 20 latinos que se identifican como gay, bisexuales, transgénero y queer mayores de 18 años, escuchó a Balderrama liderar una fiesta de celebración navideña en que hubo regalos secretos, cena, abrazos y sobre todo, aceptación y tolerancia.

“Ponemos nuestro granito de arena para concientizar a la población de habla hispana en cuanto a la protección y a los riesgos que tenemos en nuestra vida sexual y como parte de la comunidad gay”, dijo Balderrama lider del Grupo de Orgullo Hispano (GOH), que existe gracias a la iniciativa del Resource Center, una institución sin ánimo de lucro que promueve la salud física, emocional y social de la comunidad LGBTQ en Dallas.

Balderrama es un líder natural. Para este festejo se puso un gorro navideño y se ideó un nuevo sistema para el Secret Santa con números y colores. Nacido en Sonora, en un pueblo fronterizo con Arizona, nunca encontró allí un espacio en el que pudiera sentirse cómodo con su sexualidad o mucho menos que ofreciera pruebas gratuitas de VIH o hablara sin tapujos sobre el uso de PrEP, una medicina que ayuda a reducir los riesgos de contraer el virus, pero que no reemplaza los preservativos.

“Esto es una medicina novedosa, muchos jóvenes la están usando pero eno usan protección porque creen que ya no la necesitan. Hemos recalcado que hay muchas enfermedades venéreas de las que PrEP no te protege. Este grupo lo entiende y lo transmite a esposos, parejas y amigos que no vienen al grupo”, agregó Balderrama quien está casado con un estadounidense.

Es así como uno a uno los miembros del GOH se han vuelto embajadores de estas conversaciones. Cada vez que pueden invitan a más hispanos a que se unan, realizan labores sociales y de pedagogía sobre la promoción de una comunidad saludable en bares, e iglesias incluyentes.

Incluso participan en protestas civiles pacíficas para promover sus sus derechos.

“Es muy refrescante que haya un lugar que esté fuera del club nocturno donde hay una regulación mucho más sana, con buena vibra y donde uno se siente acogido desde el principio”, dijo Jesús Gallardo, 37, originario de San Luis Potosí, México quien llegó a Dallas hace unos siete años con su esposo Richard Puga de 31 años.

“Desafortunadamente no representamos un porcentaje real de la comunidad gay hispana que está ahí afuera porque están acostumbrados a una convivencia distinta. Ojalá muchos más se atrevieran alguna vez a venir acá”.

Aunque la mayoría de los participantes son de México, también hay puertorriqueños, colombianos, peruanos y el cubano José Manuel Santana. A pesar de que este año la Asamblea Nacional de Cuba votó a favor de legalizar el matrimonio gay y prohibir toda discriminación por motivos de orientación sexual e identidad de género, no es ese el Cuba en que Santana creció donde había una homofobia rampante y terapias de aversión promovidas por el Estado para los considerados afeminados.

“Hace cinco años que vine de Cuba, donde todo es muy complicado”, dijo Santana. “Aquí en Dallas tengo total libertad. He tenido una experiencia de llegar a una gran familia, tengo mi pareja y puedo ser como soy”. Santana está casado con un estadounidense que es el único miembro no latino del grupo, aunque sus padres son vascos.

En México el matrimonio igualitario es legal en doce estados más la Ciudad de México, pero todavía están a la espera de una ley que lo reconozca a nivel nacional.

“Sé que muchas cosas han cambiado pero mientras viví allí (en México) las personas gay tenían que vivir por debajo de cuerda (sic), reunirse en grupos pequeños en las casas, o sino te golpeaban o mataban”, dijo Luis Berrios, estilista de 51 años, nacido en Torreón, Coahuila.

“Hoy hay más escenarios para ejercer tus derechos pero el machismo en Latinoamérica es muy fuerte y aquí esa etapa está más superada”, agregó.

Todos coinciden que esa tolerancia e inclusividad se vuelve más tenue y compleja cuando se cruzan ciertas fronteras del Metroplex: en suburbios de Plano, Fort Worth, y Frisco los espacios ya no aparecen tan seguros.

No es fácil para dos hombres caminar en la calle tomados de la mano o expresarse afecto. Lo que tiene de “alternativa” la ciudad de Dallas se debe a que aquí la población gay ha crecido mucho: ya hay barrios enteros que son parte de su identidad y hasta iglesias como la Catedral de la Esperanza donde pueden expresar cualquiera que sea su religión y hasta recibir misa en español.

“Sí hemos podido celebrar juntos logros como cuando se aprobó el matrimonio gay a nivel nacional”, dijo Balderrama. “Pero también hemos tenido que hablar aquí en este espacio de los crímenes de odio y los ataques contra la comunidad que a veces hacen noticia nacional”.

Mensajes de rechazo como cuando Gallardo y Purga fueron a votar y un hombre les entregó un volante que afirmaba que el matrimonio debe ser entre un hombre y una mujer. Pero otros más violentos como el tiroteo que hubo en San Antonio a principios de octubre en un bar gay, que dejó tres heridos.

En especial les preocupan las políticas de Donald Trump que quieren reversar logros ganados durante la administración de Barack Obama: la posibilidad de que los estudiantes transgénero puedan usar baños que correspondan con su identidad de género en escuelas públicas, o el reclutamiento de hombres y mujeres transgénero en las fuerzas militares.

“Antes de que eligieran a Trump estábamos apoyando a los que podían votar que lo hicieran, porque vimos que venían muchos cambios para nosotros, pero no solo por ser gays sino por ser inmigrantes” explicó Balderrama.

“Invitamos a expertos en inmigración para que nos dieran una plática e incluso vino alguien de la policía que nos habló de qué podíamos hacer en caso de que llegaran los del ICE (Servicio de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas) a las casas”.

Los que no han salido del clóset

Por supuesto les preocupa también la desinformación. “En Dallas hay una incidencia alta de latinos que se infectan con enfermedades de transmisión sexual más que otras poblaciones y es por la falta de educación”, aseguró Carlos Grimaldi, puertorriqueño de 35 años, y padre de dos hijos.

“Esa ignorancia y tabúes son lo que nuestro grupo trata de eliminar. Lamentablemente muchas de las personas que contraen enfermedades no han salido del closet por vergüenza y cometen el error de no tomar precauciones porque tienen miedo a preguntar o no saben cómo navegar el sistema. Esas personas en esa zona gris, son las más preocupantes”.

El grupo ha servido para que algunas personas se reconozcan como bisexuales o compartan libremente sobre los traumas que traen de sus países con culturas predominantemente machistas. Aquí han aprendido desde cómo usar un condón hasta cómo estar preparado para iniciar la vida sexual con información que no reciben en los cursos de educación sexual en las escuelas o de boca de sus padres.

“Aquí en la clínica del Resource Center les damos preservativos gratis, pruebas de VIH gratis y les ayudamos en su idioma. A muchas personas les da pena preguntar esas cosas. Tenemos una verguenza tonta porque todos tenemos vida sexual y debería ser lo más normal del mundo “, insiste Balderrama.

Isis Salazar, la única mujer transgénero del grupo que llegó aquí hace cinco años por recomendación del anterior líder, reconoce que no se hubiera acercado a este espacio de no ser porque una mujer transexual como ella la invitó.

Aquí llegó después de pasar por una depresión tras una ruptura amorosa. Originaria de Guadalajara, Jalisco desde donde emigró a los 13 años, dice que fue inmediatamente aceptada por todos los hombres y que no ha encontrado ninguna barrera para expresar su identidad de género.

“Yo a mi mamá le dije que era gay como a los 15 años cuando estaba en secundaria, pero también desde entonces sabía que quería ir más allá y no quedarme solo como un chico gay”, contó Salazar, de 42 años, sobre su transición.

“Empecé a conocer amistades, chicas transexuales y yo les preguntaba cuáles eran los pasos que tenía que hacer. Ya cuando empecé a tomar hormonas, le dije a mi mamá, y siendo de una familia mexicana, no lo tomó a mal pero sí hubo dificultades al principio.”

Hoy dice que toda su familia incluidos hermanos y sobrinos la acepta como es y que aunque algún cliente hace comentarios “despectivos” o “altisonantes” en su lugar trabajo, ella no ha tenido problemas nunca para usar baños de mujeres en lugares públicos.

“La experiencia LGBTQ es única”, dice Salazar, “pero para nosotros (con este grupo) es la de haber encontrado una real familia aquí en Dallas”, concluyó.

Originalmente publicado aquí

#En español #Dallas #Texas #Grupo Orgullo Hispano #lgbtq #comunidad gay #Navidad #Transexual #gay

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caveartfair · 6 years

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Mona Lisa “Grand Tour” Nixed by Louvre—and the 9 Other Biggest News Stories This Week

01 The Louvre rejected the French culture minister’s idea to send the Mona Lisa on a “grand tour.”

(via The Art Newspaper)

On March 1st, Françoise Nyssen, France’s culture minister, officially floated the possibility of sending Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece on a “grand tour,” in order to fight “cultural segregation.” Following the minister’s pronouncement, the Louvre’s director, Jean-Luc Martinez, met with Nyssen to explain how detrimental travel would be for the artwork. The Mona Lisa (1503) has not travelled since 1974, when a woman tried to spray-paint it red while it was on view at Tokyo’s National Museum. Since 2005, the painting has been in a specialized, temperature-controlled, bulletproof box, and experts warn that creating a similar enclosure suited for travel would be impossible. On top of that, a crack that runs through the artwork’s panel would rapidly expand when taken outside of its safe box. With some scientists warning that the crack could rupture the paint layers that comprise the Mona Lisa’s face, the museum has decided that it is best to keep the painting exactly where it is. Prior to the Louvre’s warning, Nyssen conversed with the mayor of Lens, a former mining town with a population of about 36,000 people, about sending the work there. Despite the Louvre’s pronouncement, Nyssen told The Art Newspaper that the idea is “still under consideration.”

02 Art Basel in Hong Kong opened Tuesday afternoon to swarms of VIPs and collectors.

(Artsy)

Talk at the fair was dominated by Willem de Kooning’s Untitled XII (1975), a masterpiece from the collection of Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen, which sold for $35 million by the Lévy Gorvy gallery in the first hour. “We all said that Asia has arrived, and it has,” noted Adeline Ooi, director of Asia for Art Basel, calling the sale “a testament to the strength of the Asian market.” Indeed, Art Basel in Hong Kong opened one day after visitors flocked to openings at H Queen’s, a Jenga tower of world-class exhibition spaces that are orders of magnitude larger than the broom closets that previously passed for galleries in Hong Kong’s cramped environs. The building houses swaggering mega-galleries Hauser & Wirth and David Zwirner, the first spaces in Asia for both. Pace Gallery secured a floor, as well, its second Hong Kong gallery, as did local stalwart Pearl Lam, which adds another jewel to a crown that already includes a spot in the city, as well as two others in Singapore. All at once, Hong Kong’s burgeoning art scene got a shot in the arm.

03 Billionaire collector Budi Tek announced an unprecedented partnership between the Yuz Museum and LACMA.

(via ARTnews)

The art collector announced what he calls the “marriage” of his Shanghai-based Yuz Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) during a panel discussion at an event hosted by Sotheby’s during Art Basel in Hong Kong. Tek, who is ill with pancreatic cancer, decided the best way to preserve his legacy is to keep his works together as one collection and pair up with LACMA, which can give the art a home with global connections beyond the Yuz Museum’s reach. The partnering institutions will collaborate on exhibitions, and Wu Hung, a Chicago-based art historian, will be a consulting artistic director. “We’re going to connect collections, we’re going to come up with programs that don’t exist anywhere else,” he told ARTnews. This merger is a major win for LACMA, too, whose collection currently has a deficit of Chinese contemporary art. The first exhibition is set for 2019, but the institution that will host it has yet to be announced.

04 Photographer Nicholas Nixon retired from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design ahead of an investigation into his classroom conduct.

(via the New York Times and the Boston Globe)

Nixon abruptly resigned from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt) earlier this month, according to a letter by college present David Nelson, who said the school “received allegations of inappropriate behavior” by the photographer. Though the letter doesn’t detail the conduct, the allegations prompted an inquiry into whether Nixon violated Title IX, a provision of federal law banning discrimination due to gender. Bruce A. Singal, Nixon’s lawyer, told the Boston Globe that the investigation was prompted by charges that the photographer made “inappropriate comments in the presence of students and staff members.” According to Singal, the investigation, which will continue after Nixon’s resignation, will focus on Nixon’s remarks inside the classroom. Nixon is best known for his series “The Brown Sisters,” a photographic odyssey in which he captured a group of siblings over the course of four decades.

05 An Indonesian tourism park is under fire for featuring close copies of work by contemporary artists Yayoi Kusama and Chris Burden.

(via Hyperallergic)

The Instagram account Diet Prada, which acts as a social media watchdog for ripoffs, posted about the similarity between an installation of lights at the Rabbit Town park in Indonesia and Chris Burden’s Urban Light (2008), currently on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Rabbit Town, which opened in January in the Indonesian city of Bandung, subsequently disabled comments on its own Instagram account. But that hasn’t stopped internet users from pointing out more similarities, including one attraction that bares a striking resemblance to Yayoi Kusama’s iconic polka-dot rooms, Hyperallergic reported. The Museum of Ice Cream, which has popped up in several cities and been featured in many an Instagram selfie, accused Rabbit Town of ripping off its own name and attractions, as well (the Indonesian park includes an area that is literally titled “Museum of Ice Cream”).

06 Scientists studying King Tut’s tomb determined that brown spots scattered over wall paintings inside, which had sparked concern, are just harmless mold.

(via the New York Times)

For years, scientists and Egyptian authorities have fretted that a slew of brown spots scattered atop paintings lining the walls of King Tutankhamen’s burial tomb in Egypt were caused by tourists visiting the popular site. But this week, a team of scientists from the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles wrapped up a study of the wall paintings and found that the array of blotches are nothing to worry about. After closely comparing a photograph of the tomb taken in the 1920s to the site now, and performing microscopic and chemical testing, the team announced that the spots have a microbiological origin––meaning, in other words, it’s just some dead mold. Prior to this conclusion, many worried that the humidity emitted by sweaty tourists was to blame, or that bat droppings were at the root of the brown dapples. “Now we can say they are mold and fungus but they are dead, no life in them at all,” Neville Agnew, the project’s director, told the New York Times. Still, the harmless spots will be sticking around since they have embedded themselves into the paint, so removing the spots would mean removing the artwork. The research, organized by the Getty and Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities, is a part of a nine-year-long, multimillion-dollar undertaking to study and protect the tomb from further deterioration. In addition to this test, the tomb has seen the addition of ramps, railings, a ventilation system, and a cap to the amount of visitors allowed inside the space at once.

07 The wealthy spent more on art than on wine in 2017, though the latter remains a better long-term investment, according to a new report.

(via artnet News)

Ultra-high-net-worth individuals (those holding assets in excess of $30 million) spent more on art than on wine for the first time in eight years, according to The Wealth Report, published by consultant Knight Frank and broker Douglas Elliman. Art also performed better last year than any other category tracked by the report, growing by 21% compared to wine, which grew by 11% and landed in second place. But art’s growth over a decade, which clocked in at 78%, was outpaced by wine (192%), as well as several other categories including cars (334%) and jewelry (138%). Part of art’s comparatively poor long-term performance can be attributed to the sector’s volatility, according to artnet News, while the dramatic growth in 2017 partially stems from the record-smashing $450 million sale of Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi and the intensified focus on the art market since then.

08 A Bulgarian commission has claimed that influential philosopher Julia Kristeva acted as a secret agent for the Communist regime.

(via The Guardian)

A Bulgarian commission investigating those who worked for the state during the Communist era has claimed that Kristeva, a major postmodern theorist and psychoanalyst, was one of roughly 100,000 people working for state’s clandestine agency. Kristeva began working with the Committee for State Security in the early 1970s, according to the commision, which “did not say how long she had worked for state security or whether she had received any payment,” The Guardian reported. Kristeva, who lives in France and is a visiting professor at Columbia University, could not be reached by the publication for comment.

09 Michael Rakowitz unveiled his sculpture depicting a mythical sculpture destroyed by ISIS in London’s Trafalgar Square.

(Artsy)

On Wednesday morning, Rakowitz’s sculpture The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist was unveiled on a vacant plinth in the square’s northwest corner, where it will remain until March 2020. It is the twelfth contemporary artwork to take up residence on the site, which, since 1999, has hosted one-off commissions from art-world giants including Marc Quinn, Antony Gormley, and Hans Haacke. The artwork is a recreation of a statue of a lamassu, a mythical winged beast that, for nearly three millennia, stood at the gates of the ancient city of Nineveh, in present-day Iraq. In 2015, this astonishing artifact was very publicly dynamited by ISIS militants, its destruction recorded for posterity in a widely circulated online video. While the original was heroically carved from Mesopotamian stone, The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist is a work constituted of rather humbler materials: namely, colorfully designed cans of date palm syrup, a commodity once vital to the Iraqi economy.

10 The Louvre remained the most-visited museum in the world last year, though the National Museum of China was close behind.

(via The Art Newspaper)

The National Museum of China clocked in a little over 8 million visitors in 2017 for its first appearance on The Art Newspaper’s annual museum visitor survey, released Monday. The Beijing museum’s tally was only a few thousand shy of the Louvre, which saw 8.1 million visitors in 2017. The most-trafficked exhibition in the world, in terms of daily visitor totals, was “Unkei: the Great Master of Buddhist Sculpture” at the Tokyo National Museum. The Fondation Louis Vuitton’s exhibition of Impressionist and modern art from collector Sergei Shchukin was the most visited overall, welcoming 1.2 million visitors total, and had the second-highest per-day average attendance at 8,926 visitors. Overall, the top 20 exhibitions show a “greater geographical spread” than in years past, The Art Newspaper reported, with shows in Spain, France, and Australia all making appearances.

from Artsy News

#Artsy News

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trendingnewsb · 6 years

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5 Ways Disney Can’t Stop Screwing Up Star Wars

Star Wars. You love it! You think it’s great. But what if Star Wars stopped being great? That would be bad, right? And bad things aren’t great! Everybody knows that! Seeing as how we’re all in agreement here, let’s talk about the possibility that Disney’s entire strategy for Star Wars might be, as a whole, actually madly deeply verifiably bad. I know it’s painful to fathom such a terrible possibility — I mean, The Last Jedi looks just bonkers — but I can’t help to notice a few glaring red flags. Bad flags. So without further ado …

So Far, The New Movies Seem Afraid To Take Chances

For staunch Star Wars nerds burnt out by years of jackass Expanded Universe stories, adding to the Star Wars canon sometimes feels like writing new chapters to the Bible wherein Jesus comes back to fight ISIS with the aid of a talking car. And seeing as how the folks in charge of Star Wars are the ones who grew up on it, the new films feel a smidge unadventurous at times.

Read more: http://ift.tt/2B6fb2w

from Viral News HQ http://ift.tt/2EfB3ch via Viral News HQ

#IFTTT #Viral News HQ

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usnewsaggregator-blog · 6 years

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What's Dangerous About Donald Trump's Foreign Policy?

New Post has been published on https://usnewsaggregator.com/whats-dangerous-about-donald-trumps-foreign-policy/

What's Dangerous About Donald Trump's Foreign Policy?

When critics argue that Donald Trump is an exceptionally reckless commander in chief, they tend to highlight how the American president deviates from the norm.

By issuing “diplomatic pronouncements” on Twitter and pronouncing actual diplomats irrelevant, Hillary Clinton says, Trump poses “a clear and present danger to our country and to the world.” Trump, the Republican Senator Bob Corker warns, acts “like he’s on a reality show” and “doesn’t realize that we could be heading towards World War III with the kinds of comments that he’s making” about foreign policy, which should be left “to the professionals.” “We are concerned that the president of the United States is so unstable, is so volatile, has a decision-making process that is so quixotic, that he might order a nuclear-weapons strike [against North Korea] that is wildly out of step with U.S. national-security interests,” Corker’s Democratic colleague Chris Murphy recently cautioned during a Senate hearing. In the same hearing, a former Defense Department official testified that he “would be very worried about a miscalculation based on the continuing use of [Trump’s] Twitter account with regard to North Korea.”

Trump, Murphy told me not long ago, “has shown an enthusiasm for military force against North Korea in his Twitter account that is extraordinary.”

But if danger is crudely measured by how many people die in military conflicts as the result of a president’s policies, the dangers posed by Trump’s atypical behavior remain hypothetical at the moment. Leaving aside his genuinely unprecedented moves in trade and diplomacy, the wars that Trump is currently commanding were initiated by his predecessors. He has not (yet) started new conflicts with foes like Iran or North Korea or radically transformed existing ones. When it comes to the real use of military force, rather than the tweeted kind, Trump has acted rather like a “normal” U.S. president—only more so, as he’s escalated some conflicts he inherited. And yet it’s his abnormal actions, which so far haven’t killed anyone, that seem to scare his detractors most.

This intense focus on the discontinuities in Trump’s handling of foreign policy has eclipsed debate over the continuities; ruptures in style often obscure the enduring substance of problematic policies. When, for instance, four U.S. special-operations soldiers were killed in an ambush in Niger, the political circus surrounding Trump’s calls to the soldiers’ families sucked up most of the attention—not the wisdom of continuing the Obama-era policy of sustaining so many low-grade, far-flung counterterrorism campaigns that Congress can’t keep track of them all.

Likewise, in more aggressively prosecuting the Obama administration’s battle against jihadist groups, the Trump administration has helped uproot ISIS from its last strongholds in Syria and Iraq, crippling the world’s most notorious terrorist group and thereby saving an unknowable number of lives in the United States and around the world. As a consequence, however, civilians and U.S. troops in the region are dying in greater numbers. The political scientist Micah Zenko noted this summer that “in Iraq and Syria, at least 55 percent of all civilians killed by airstrikes since the air war began in August 2014 have died under Mr. Trump’s watch.” (U.S. military officials argue that they have taken great care to conduct the most “precise air campaign in the history of warfare” and that ultimately the best way to protect civilians is to defeat the terrorists holding them hostage.)

When The New York Times recently reported that the U.S.-led coalition’s airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq are inadvertently killing civilians at a much higher rate than the coalition claims, no one went on television or held hearings in Congress to denounce Donald Trump as dangerous. Nor was there much of an outcry in the United States this past summer when civilian casualties mounted as the United States and its allies went on the offensive against the Islamic State, or this past spring when more than 100 civilians perished as a result of a U.S. bombing in the Iraqi city of Mosul. The alarms that sounded after Trump’s threat to unleash “fire and fury” on North Korea have largely stayed silent as innocent Syrians and Iraqis have fallen victim to American firepower.

In August, after Trump announced a plan to send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, as Barack Obama and George W. Bush had done before him, Zenko pointed to a jump in Afghanistan of “70 percent more civilian casualties from American airstrikes in the first six months of 2017 than in the first half of 2016.” And he emphasized the risks of “standard operating procedure in Washington,” asserting that Trump was accelerating trends that predated his presidency. “Mr. Trump proudly proclaimed … that ‘we are killing’ terrorists. He has certainly tried. Every country the United States was bombing when he entered office has seen a sharp increase in the number of bombs dropped since Inauguration Day. But he is also killing unacceptably high numbers of civilians,” Zenko wrote. “Rather than committing to block the pathways by which individuals adopt jihadist ideologies and become attracted to terrorist groups, policy makers of both parties try the same military policies over and over.”

Trump, of course, has been in office for less than a year. The consequences of what he’s done thus far haven’t yet come into focus. He is indeed taking big risks with his subversive approach to international affairs. His freewheeling war of words with Kim Jong Un could morph into an actual war on the Korean peninsula, whether by choice or by accident. The ways in which he has enfeebled the State Department, left vacant ambassadorships across Asia and the Middle East, and publicly humiliated his secretary of state—all while stressing America’s military power—could make conflict more likely in the world’s most volatile regions.

But it’s also worth keeping in mind that more traditional approaches to foreign policy carry their own grave hazards. Consider the worst foreign-policy blunders of the two men who preceded Trump.

Bush secured support from the government bureaucracy, the public, and Congress for the invasion of Iraq, which went on to spark a war that has killed an estimated 200,000-plus people to date (mostly civilians), contributed to the emergence of ISIS, and effectively dissolved a country.

Obama obtained the backing of U.S. allies and the UN Security Council for a NATO military mission to protect Libyan civilians from a threatened massacre by Muammar al-Qaddafi during the Arab Spring. Perhaps that move saved countless civilian lives—we don’t know. But we do know what happened next: Qaddafi was killed, the rebels and their NATO partners triumphed, and Libya collapsed in part because the United States and its UN and European allies neglected the land they had helped liberate. Today Libya stands in political and economic ruin, deprived of basic governance, riven by fighting between rival militias, and hospitable to human smugglers and jihadist groups. Obama has cited the lack of international follow-up to the Libya intervention as the worst mistake of his presidency. Privately, as The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg reported, Obama labeled Libya a “shit show.”

If Trump’s aggressive dealings with Kim Jong Un are making war between two nuclear-weapons states significantly more likely, it’s hard to overstate the risks of that approach; millions could die in such a conflict. But in evaluating the Trump administration’s policy on North Korea’s nuclear-weapons program, it’s also important to keep the aggression in perspective. While it’s astounding and unsettling to see the president of the United States call North Korea’s leader “short and fat,” no one died in the making of that tweet. Thae Yong Ho, one of the highest-ranking officials ever to defect from North Korea, recently told me that he thinks past American presidents were too “gentle” with North Korean leaders and Trump’s unpredictable tactics are actually keeping North Korea’s provocations in check. Han Sung Joo, a former South Korean foreign minister and ambassador to the United States, told me that Trump’s tough rhetoric, which he interpreted as the president “expressing his views at the moment” rather than the “result of serious strategic thinking,” has succeeded in pressuring China to do “a little more” to isolate North Korea.

The Trump administration “has handled things in a … measured and firm way that will prevent North Korea from miscalculating,” Han argued. “I do not know if it is wise to push North Korea to the extent they feel they have to react in a non-peaceful way. But North Korea has shown some degree of restraint as far as deeds are concerned, although their rhetoric has also been quite blustery.”

“The most important thing is not to make the situation worse,” he continued. “We can’t expect to resolve the problem in a short period of time. But we have to patiently work on it while all the time maintaining deterrence and defense capabilities, and that the United States [under Trump] has done.”

“So far,” Han noted, “the present U.S. administration hasn’t really made any major mistakes.”

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tigerstrikesasteroidnetwork · 7 years

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PHL / Anachronism and Liberation

Anachronism and Liberation Curated by Mary Henderson and Jane Irish August 4 - September 17, 2017 Artists’ Reception: Thursday, August 10

[Images]

Anachronism and Liberation presents nine artists, ranging from emerging to established, creating work that engages with social and/or political issues in subtle and surprising ways. The artists involved are all committed makers, whose approaches offer an expanded vision of what political art pieces that consider issues of imperialism, political oppression, labor rights, environmental justice, race, gender and sexuality can look like. The work deliberately connects to traditional practices and engages in dialog with art history; at the same time, it is powerfully responsive to the urgency of this political moment.

The show’s title refers to the notion of artists simultaneously looking backwards and forwards in their practices, employing the “anachronistic,” the aggressively handmade and historically informed, in service of “liberation,” both in the political sense of the word, and in a more personal, aesthetic sense. The artists’ connection to art history and traditions of making becomes a freeing component in their work, adding layers of complexity and allowing it to transcend beyond sloganeering or propaganda. Their art is suspended between traditional forms and liberatory meanings, in which forms of the past are celebrated, undermined, and re-construed in the effort to construct new futures. They return to traditional media with new purpose, using old resources to open possibilities for reconfigured identities, making 'nonce' forms mean something again.

New Orleans-based artist Ana Hernandez is confronted by the architecture of the oil industry on the bayous, gentrification legacies of Katrina, and the destruction of aquifer. We selected The Utica to reveal that our own region is on her mind. Ana’s compassionate reaction to ICE round-ups and fracking of central PA is one in a series Altering Internal Landscapes: In pursuit of unearthing bodies of Energy. She says that it is “a visual representation of ecological trauma; it aims to highlight the dissection and destruction of a physical and psychological landscape, whose vulnerable and shifting body print can be traced and mapped by the scars of injury left on the environment and all who inhabit it.” Ana Hernandez is a founding member of Level Artist Collective, New Orleans. She recently exhibited her work at The Contemporary Art Center of New Orleans, A Studio in the Woods, The New Orleans Museum of Art and she was a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundations 2016 Artist-in-Residence Program.

Roberto Lugo lets us see that Graffiti tagging and American pot throwing are connected. Lugo grew up in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. He is an American potter, social activist, spoken word poet, and educator. Lugo's work here draws together hip-hop, history and politics into formal ceramics. It is commemorative, like a 19th century Tucker Factory pitcher, but represents both an ending and a beginning, honoring the worker instead of the owner. Lugo has been featured at multiple exhibitions, including SOFA Chicago, solo shows at Eutectic Gallery in Portland, Oregon and Wexler Gallery, Philadelphia. He received the United States Artist Barr Fellowship and the Emerging Artist award for the National Council on Education in Ceramic Arts.

We admire Rebecca Ness’ activism as well as her connected artistic practice. She uses the politically charged imagery to empower both the artist and the viewer. Her work is remarkably straightforward, humorous and biting. It is both a report on our current political climate and a crystallization of a liberating feminism with a long arc. Rebecca Ness is a founding member of the web activist site, In Residence. She has exhibited at Field Projects Gallery, NY; Copeland Gallery, London; Distillery Gallery, Boston; Bergen Street Studios, Brooklyn among many others. She is currently enrolled in the MFA program in painting and printmaking at Yale University.

Odili Donald Odita orchestrates color interaction in pure and visionary leaps. Transformative routes of his palette and shapes begin as a catalog of abstract color that may signify contexts as in flags or represent the visible emanations of the exterior world, architecture of an unsettled, colonized culture. As his new formalism explores figurative historical and sociopolitical realities, his work emerges into a charged coexistence and physical presence. Odita was born in Enugu, Nigeria and lives and works in Philadelphia. He has been the recipient of grants from the McCall Foundation, Joan Mitchell Foundation, and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation. In 2007, his work “Give Me Shelter” was featured prominently in the 52nd Venice Biennale exhibition, Think With the Senses, Feel With the Mind, curated by Robert Storr. He is represented by The Jack Shainman Gallery.

We experience Robert Pruitt’s portraits as a guide to peace. Pruitt draws with charcoal on paper. He selects this medium for its accessibility, its connection to the maker and hand, but also to the viewer's haptic experience: most of us have had the experience of drawing on paper. His emphatic choices of imagery from science fiction and comic books, together with the history of political and social struggle suggest that we need to change everything, to think in terms of the history of science or fantasy to guide us beyond the killing of each other. Robert Pruitt has exhibited his work at The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, The Dallas Museum of Art, The Bronx Museum of Art, the 2006 Whitney Biennial, and at the Studio Museum of Harlem. He has held residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, ArtPace, Fabric Workshop Museum, and Brandywine Printshop. He has received numerous awards including the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, the Joan Mitchell Artist Grant, a project grant from the Creative Capital Foundation, and the William H. Johnson Award.

This small wood and paint construction by Lisi Raskin is part of a series of love tokens that the artist has been making since 2015. While the artist spent fifteen years traveling to the Arctic Circle, former East German and Yugoslav Atomic bunkers, and the American west exploring the intersection of nuclear-age fears and utopian mythologies of the Cold War, she now focuses on liberatory practices that attempt to produce and represent the occurrences in the world that she wishes to see, including radical love, collaboration across difference, and redistribution of resources. Raskin has exhibited internationally at institutions including Kunsthaus Graz, Casino Luxembourg, the Frankfurter Kunstverein, the Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius, PS1/MoMA Contemporary Art Center, the Blanton Museum of Art, the Center for Curatorial Studies/Hessel Museum at Bard College, and the Rubin Museum of Art. She has been the recipient of numerous awards and grants including the Guna S Mundheim Berlin Prize at the American Academy in Berlin, a Quimby Foundation Grant, Mayer Foundation Grant, and the Hayward Prize from the American Austrian Foundation.

Han Wang’s ceramic art presents multiple overlapping anachronisms. Wang is a Chinese artist who is living in Philadelphia, PA. Her artistic practice embodies the phenomenon she named “cultural grafting.” Her work explores the history of other cultures using Chinese techniques, and she refers to her new work as contemporary Chinoiserie. Her craft is at such a high level she is able to comment on the history of export porcelain, seduction of the copy, the autonomous artist directly articulating the misconceptions, stereotypes and bigotry with a light, freeing mirror of humor. The chickens on display in this show play with gender stereotypes as well as cultural ones, referencing both the notion of “Three Ages of Women,” and “chicken” as derogatory Chinese slang for woman. Han Wang is an artist in residence at the University of the Arts and at the Clay Studio, and has exhibited at Marginal Utility Gallery, Philadelphia and Gatov East Gallery, Los Angeles.

We see Charles Edward Williams' paintings as investigations of our inner life. Confrontation III references the human hands that display the request for trust. Concepts for this exhibit were drawn from recent and past incidents of police brutality from corrupt police officials and officers around the United States, and include the inspiration of Artist Gerhard Richter’s The October 18, 1977 series. This image is digitally manipulated from the Death of Eric Garner 2014 and used as a reference for creating the piece. This painting focuses on highlighting hands using oil paint on panel and combining elements of abstractions. This invites the viewer to be challenged and to question the relationship between the subject matter; from the reality to its abstraction. This painting is conceptually referencing German painter Gerhard Richter’s October 18, 1977 series and theoretically responding to archived incidents based on photographs of the arrests, deaths and funerals of members of the radical left-wing German terrorist gang. Recent solo exhibition of Williams’ work have been at Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, GA; Winthrop University Art Gallery, New Gallery of Modern Art \Charlotte; Central Piedmont College Art Gallery and Morton Fine Art Gallery, Washington, DC.

Alexi Worth’s subtle and coherent paintings using trompe l’oeil and cubist space are insistent on an idiosyncratic first-person point of view. A small body of work depicting the Arab Spring uprising comes from his comprehensive grasp of crucial political events and personal connections that his journalist brother Robert recently published: “The Middle East in Turmoil, From Tahrir Square to ISIS.” Alexi shares his own experience both visually and viscerally. Crafted with care and humility, the painting here establishes through a human connection to the viewer and our own efforts at freedom. Alexi Belsey Worth has had solo exhibitions with the Elizabeth Harris, Bill Maynes, and DC Moore galleries, among others. He has received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Tiffany Foundation, and the New England Foundation for the Arts. As a writer, Worth’s exhibition reviews and articles have appeared in Artforum, Art in America, The Brooklyn Rail, The New Yorker, T Magazine, ARTnews, Art New England, etc. Guest Curator and Essayist: Jane Irish Irish’s work is in the collections of Philadelphia Museum of Art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Locks Gallery, Philadelphia has presented numerous solo exhibitions since 2007. She has been the recipient of awards from Pew Fellowship in the Arts, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts, Independence Foundation, Creative Artist Program Service (NYFA), and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Crispin Sartwell Crispin Sartwell is a writer and philosopher, teaching philosophy at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Publications include Act Like You Know: African-American Autobiography and White Identity (1998); Six Names of Beauty (2004); Against the State: An Introduction to Anarchist Political Theory (2008); Political Aesthetics (2010); How to Escape: Magic, Madness, Beauty, and Cynicism (2014); and Entanglements: A System of Philosophy (2017).

#anachronismandliberation #tigerstrikesasteroid #tiger strikes asteroid

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trimahar · 7 years

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Ceritanya Hantam Magang Di KBRI Bangkok : Hari 0

Hey!

Seperti yang udah gue bilang di instastory gue rencananya mau nulis tentang kegiatan gue selama ikut magang di KBRI Bangkok. Soalnya, kata Bu Hani, walaupun cowok juga harus bikin diary biar ga susah pas nulis laporan magang nantinya. But, tidak hanya itu saja, alasan gue maksain nulis tiap hari juga biar bisa share pengalaman gue selama ngejalanin magang di KBRI. Buat junior gue juga nanti biar ada gambaran, ngapain aja dan seperti apa kegiatan magang di KBRI (Bangkok khususnya).

Kalau sempat, nanti bakal gue usahain buat jadiin bilingual. Lihat sikon dulu.

Sawasdee Khrab

Nah, berhubung seri ini adalah hari pertama gue bakal cerita tentang perjalanan gue aja kali ya dari Bandung sampai Bangkok. Banyak hal-hal yang gue temukan menarik buat di-share. Dari mulai gue salah liat jadwal Primajasa yang kecepetan, ketemu sama orang Pattaya di CGK, pesan Grabcar sendiri di Bangkok tanpa bantuan orang Thai, hingga ternyata Ibu Kosan yang baik banget.

Di periode ini, dari Telkom University ada tiga orang yang bakal magang di KBRI Bangkok. Selain gue ada juga Syifa dan Deni. Nah, Syifa ini temen sekelas tapi dia ambil pesawat yang beda, jadinya jadwal keberangkatannya juga beda. Kalau Deni, dia anak DKV dan mulai magang bulan Juni. Kita masuknya jadi ga barengan. Gue pergi sendirian, nggak sama kesayangan gue Aldiaan atau yang lain.

Gue akuin gue sempat ceroboh karena gak ngecek lagi tiket Primajasa gue. Gue udah yakin bener kalau jadwalnya jam 3 pagi. Jadinya pagi-pagi sekitaran jam setengah 2 gue udah riweuh ngangkat-ngangkat barang bawaan ke bawah. Sampai-sampai gue dibonceng sama Pak Satpam yang baik banget di kampus. Untungnya pas hari itu kampus baru beres ada event kontes robotik. Jadinya gue nggak usah melas minta tolong dibukain gerbangnya ke Pak Satpam. Heheh.

Nah, sesampainya di pool Primajasa gue shock dong pas dibilangin sama mbak-mbaknya kalau di tiket gue jadwalnya jam 4 pagi. Tahu gitu kan mending tidur dulu yakan. Soalnya ngantuk berat. Gue ga sempat tidur pas masih di asrama karena nanggung banget. Baru ngecek bener-bener beres packing jam dua belasan. Tidur di kursi di pool juga gabisa. Ya jadinya di tahan aja sambil main Pokemon Go. Lumayan nambah-nambah koleksi. Jadi, buat kamu nantin pastiin itu cek bener-bener jadwal tiketnya. Masih untung gue kecepetan yakan, kalau gue terlambat gimana?

Gue tiba di CGK jam setengah tujuh. Cepet banget memang gue akui perjalanannya yang cuma habisin waktu dua setengah jam dari Bandung ke CGK. Padahal jadwal pesawat gue jam setengah satu. Enam jam nunggu itu ya bosen-bosen gemes lah. E tapi tiba-tiba ada ibu-ibu yang duduk di samping gue yang lagi nge-charge. Ternyata doi juga nge-charge powerbank tapinya doi tinggal. Ngobrol-ngobrol deh kita, sampai gue disuruh mampir ke tempatnya ke Pattaya buat main kalau lagi senggang.

Jujur, ngobrol sama ibu-ibu itu nggak bikin ngantuk lagi. Doi cerita, ke Indonesia buat liburan. Doi abis dari Bali. E dan ternyata doi kaget pas ngerti pecahan uang di Indonesia yang besar banget angkanya. Katanya doi pusing ngitung uang Indonesia. Terlalu besar jumlahnya jika dibandingkan dengan kurs Baht. Obrolan kami udahan karena gue harus check-in.

Di ruang tunggu, karena bosen, gue Cuma mondar-mandir sambil nangkepin Pokemon. It’s like, seru aja di sana lumayan banyak pokestop-nya. Frekuensi pokemon yang muncul juga lumayan sering. Sampai gue bisa naik ke level 20 dari level 19 selama main di CGK. Ehehe.

Sebelum ini, gue pernah sekali ke Bangkok dan gue udah seneng banget sama transportasi umumnya : kereta api (MRT & BTS). Maka dari itu gue udah susun rencana sebelumnya, sesampainya di BKK gue mau naik ARL (Airport Rail Link) buat pergi ke kosan di Petchburi Rd. Jadi, gue udah ngumpulin info-info mulai dari rute, harga, frekuensi, dan estimasi tiba di stasiun Phayathai. Gue seneng banget sama transportasi ini di Bangkok karena bersih dan cepet. Dari segi harga dan kecepatan, dibanding dengan taksi, ini jauh lebih murah dan jauh lebih cepat. Cuma 45 Baht saja dari BKK ke Stasiun ARL Phayathai. Kalau dirupiahin, sekitar lebih kurang 17 ribu lah. Kalau gak salah inget, tadi gue cuman ngabisin waktu sekitar 15 - 30 menit dari BKK- Phayathai.

Nah, kemudian gue juga niat banget ingin pesan grab sendiri di Bangkok. Ya walaupun kelihatannya gak penting banget ya kan keinginannya dan terlihat norak mungkin, tapi ini selalu jadi keinginan tersendiri kalau pergi ke tempat-tempat baru. Setelah yang pertama dulu gue udh pernah ngerasain get lost naik bus omprengan di Bangkok. Sama Itsaradech dahulu naik apa ya, lupa gue. Bukan tuk-tuk. Sekarang gue pengin pesen grab sendiri. Next, harus cobain tuk-tuk.

Gue nggak tahu juga sih di Bangkok ini apa Grab udah legal atau belum. Hanya saja, gue lihat di Stasiun ARL Phayathai ini ada pool Grab Taxi. Keren ya. Nggak rusuh.

Oiya, tadi driver grabnya cewek dan keren. Dari Stasiun Phayathai ke kosan kena THB 54, sekitar 21ribuan. Gue kasih 100 Baht, eh dikembaliin 50 Baht. Doi ga enak kali ya soalnya tadi gue nunggu lama karena doi kena macet pas mau jemput. Lumayan juga padahal yakan 4 Baht mah. Akhirnya, gue minta kembaliin 40 Baht ajalah biar simple.

Kosan gue namanya Manoo House, di Soi 9 Jalan Petchburi. Eh ternyata eh ternyata, yang punya orang Bali. Beliau juga salah satu pegawai di KBRI di Bangkok. Sesuatu. Saudaranya juga alumnus Telkom University. Hmm. Jarak kosan gue sama KBRI deket, 5 menitan paling kalau jalan. Kalau di kampus ya ibaratnya kampus FKB ke gerbang Permata Buah Batu. Harganya di THB 8500 selama sebulan (gue 35 hari). Bisa diisi dua orang. Isi kamarnya lengkap banget, worth it lah kalau gue bilang. Apalagi kalau berdua, biar ga sepi banget dan bisa share jadi lebih manteb. Oiya, ini bentuknya rumah private gitu tapi ada beberapa kamar yang sengaja disewain. Mungkin kebanyakan juga temen-temen yang magang di KBRI kali ya. Gue belum sempat ketemu dan kenalan euih. Mungkin besok. Gue rekomendasiin tempat ini deh buat kamu yang besok rencananya mau magang di KBRI di Bangkok.

Nggak sampai situ juga hlo, Ibu Susan, begitu namanya, juga nyiapin snacks gitu di kamar. Snacks Indonesia gitu macam Beng-Beng dsb. Baik banget sumpah. Di dalem kulkasnya juga disediain air. The best lah kalau gue bilang. Ga ada jam malam juga. Asalkan bisa jaga sikon aja, ga rame dan ga neko-neko. I sedddappp.

Anw, gue dapet kontak Ibu Susan ini dari Resti, anak Permitha dan juga temen gue waktu SMP dulu. thanks banget Rest!!! Walaupun di situ keterangannya Ibu Susan nyari perempuan, tapi gapapa kok cowok juga. Asalkan berkabar saja. Hehek.

Oiya, gue tadi makan Seafood Suki pinggir jalan. Enak njir. Senernya mirip pak lay, tapi ini seperti ada kuah tomyam-nya. Semoga nanti pas bulan Ramadhan bisa ngontrol nafsu makan lah. Kalau enggak, bisa-bisa gue membengkak banget badannya. Padahal mah ini udah bengkak banget kek bakso cincang Mang Japra Sukapura -,-a

Gue juga tadi sempet nge-take footage buat ala-ala flight review gitu. Jadi rencananya gue bakal unggah review Thai Airways : CGK – BKK, BKK – HAN, HAN – BKK, BKK – CGK. Soalnya gue pernah nyesel nggak ngelakuin itu pas kemarin ke Fukuoka. Padahal mah buat sekarang-sekarang ini kesempatan itu nggak setahun sekali. Kelarin skripsi dulu. Anw, pesawatnya tadi beda euih sama yang terakhir gue sama Aldi naikin yang ke Bangkok juga. Tadi seat-nya 3-3-3. Padahal dulu mah 2-3-2. Interiornya juga beda. Sayapnya juga enggak terlipat. Pesawat baru kali ya? Nggak tau deh.

Nah, buat prolog, segini dulu cerita gue. Rencana gue, insyaAllah gue bakal update terus per hari. Jadi biar ga lupa-lupa gitu. Masih fresh ceunah.

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honeymosphere · 7 years

Photo

The surprise is still going on... Jadi ceritanya hari ini gue jalan-jalan nih ama sahabat-sahabat gue, rencananya biar kekinian kita mau ke mall, namanya mall pelangi ya kan, plaza semanggi, dan kalau lo ngebrowsing buat check-in location keluarnya itu "the plaza semanggi" beuuhh kurang kekinian apalagi ya kan ini mall. eh sampe di lantai 4, isinya jualan hp macem itc, zupeerr bgt lah ini mall, merakyat gitu, elite plus non elite semua berkumpul jadi satu, tapi bagus si mallnya dan ini perdana banget gue kesini (horeee) Trus aja kita lanjut makan, gue ke dapur iga, enak banget cuy rasanya walaupun harganya ga enak. hahaha but still worth the taste. yang lain pada mesen yoshinoya, mungkin selain udah familiar dengan yoshinoya, mereka suka makan jepang-jepang gitu siapatau makan yoshinoya eh tiba-tiba jeng jeng sampe di jepang, siapatau... jangan berharap banyak dulu. okey abis itu seperti yang telah dijanjikan, kita karaoke. inul vizta dong yang paling lengkap plus ada nilainya, jadi ketauan kalo nilainya jelek berarti "maaf suara anda tidak layak" dan nilai gue... standard passing grade lah cm 80an, diiringin bunyi "huuuu" yang bikin sedih. tapi gapapa yang penting puas karaoke. Abis karaoke, pas kita ke mushola buat sholat magrib #kitanaksolehdansolehah #sholatituwajib #walaupundimallkekinianjanganlupaibadah #kewajibanhaqiqi nah kemudian di pintu mushola wanita, si kikik blg "ini buat lo nik sesungguhnya..." Well, let's go back a few hours ago... Jadi ceritanya karena gue liat harga g**bcar yang tidak wajar untuk berangkat dari rumah gue ke pelangi kekinian ini, gue cari alternatif lain, gue hubungin kikik dong buat berangkat bareng biar murah tarifnya bisa patungan huehehehe, awalnya niatnya gue mau bawa motor sendiri, tapi gue gatau jalan. mau bawa mobil sendiri, tapi macet banget pasti di harinya anak abg muda pada pacaran ini huff, yauda aja pilihan gue jatuh untuk berpatungan dengan kikik ini #menujuhanihemat2017 Sesampainya dirumah kikik yg notabene lebih deket ke pelangi, gue liat dia bawa tentengan tas, tas mengaji gitu loh dari suatu masjid, gue kira doi ingin mengaji di pelangi, ternyata isinya figura dan ada kotak kotak lainnya (yang entah apa) trus gue tanya dong: G: eh kik apaan tuh? lo mau mengaji nanti disana? K: bukan, ini teh titipannya tice, dia kemarin minjem ini ke gue G: *gerasak gerusuk liat sekilas isi tas mengaji* eh apaan ini? K: nganu, ya itu deh barangnya tice G: tice minjem apa? figura? kok aneh bener? K: iya dia minjem figura foto dari gue G: speechless... Eh ternyata itu buat gue dong, tas mengaji dari masjid itu (subhanallah) dan isinya ada 3, figura isinya karikatur genk gejolak ya super mirip sama gue serta the genk, trus kado dari ola (sobi gue banget) dan kado personal dari kikik. Eh kado dari ola ini juga ada behind the scenenya loh... let's go back to... a few hours ago, i mean a few weeks ago Sebelum gue ulang tahun, di suatu hari yang gue uda lupa tanggalnya si ola ngechat gue. O: haniik, aku mau beli ini nih, tempat kartu gitu, bagus ga? G: baguuus laaa elegant gitu O: eh pilihin dong yang mana *sambil kirim banyak foto pilihan* G: *dihadapkan dengan banyak pilihan* hmmm km sukanya yang mana hloo, masa nanya aku? O: ya gapapa mana yang menurut km bagus, aku bingung G: menurut aku si yg itu *sambil nunjuk yg biru muda cokelat* O: eh yang itu ga ready stock, POnya lama. selain itu yang mana? G: paling yg biru tua-cokelat laa, tp bagusan yg tadi. mending kamu PO aja O: ah uda mepet han kalo mau PO Disaat itu gue punya firasat yang aneh, si ola ini punya gelagat yang tidak wajar dan seakan-akan memaksa gue memilih diantara banyak pilihan (aku tak sanggup) akhirnya gue ke online shopnya dong kebetulan ada di ig, taunya... harganya... mahal banget otokeee 😣😣😣 Trus gue ngetes aja, gue chat lg... G: laaa km nanyanya maksa banget, mau ngado ya buat aku 😏 O: yaaah ketauan yaa, iya aku mau ngado buat kamu han. G: laaa itukan mahal banget, aduh aku ga enak ini. O: ya gapapa km kan sahabat baik aku han blablabla *dan alasan lainnya yang terpaksa disensor demi kebaikan bangsa dan negara* Speechless dong gue, eh sebelum itu bahkan dia nanya alamat rumah gue, cm karena gue curiga gue ga kasitau. ternyata beneran mau ngado, omooo so sweet banget walaupun udah ketauan di awal... Anyway thankyou so much guyss buat kadonya, the price doesn't matter, what matter most is that you all guys still remember me, dan gue terharu banget, bahkan sahabat gue yang di surabaya banyak yang ngado dong, so sweet banget walaupun udah pada jauh semua. terimakasih ya Allah sudah dipertemukan dan dikenalkan dengan orang-orang sebaik mereka, walaupun sering gue jadikan tong sampah keluh kesah gue, kegalauan gue, dllnya mereka tetap setia dan selalu mengingat gue. terharu banget. Tolong jaga mereka ya Allah dan berikanlah yang terbaik buat mereka semua, I love you all guys 💕💕💕

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8erdistraksi · 7 years

Text

Tentang Buku dan Aku

Fellas, terutama Girls, prefer beli buku baru atau beli baju baru? Yeah, basic girl akan jawab baju baru ya, tapi kalau basic girl merangkap bookworm sepertiku, apa kabar?

He he he, pasti pilihan berat, ya. Apalagi, design baju zaman sekarang kok semakin gemas-gemas saja. Outfit dan perempuan itu sudah tidak bisa diganggu gugat, kawan. Mereka abadi.

Well, memilih untuk membeli bacaan tidak semerugikan itu kok. Di bazaar juga banyak bacaan-bacaan murah dan worth to read. Nggak harus yang tebal, best seller, new entry, dan yang paling mahal. Apapun bacaan kalian, semuanya itu mengandung ilmu. Yang membedakan adalah apakah isi buku itu ilmu yang kalian butuhkan atau tidak. Itu saja.

Aku dan membaca bukan lagi hal yang asing. Aku membaca apapun, segala bentuk artikel atau tulisan yang selewatnya, kalau menarik dan aku capable untuk baca, pasti aku baca.

Little bit throwback, kalau anak-anak dulu ketika baru masuk SD diajak orang tuanya beli mainan entah itu Barbie (meskipun, dulu aku juga koleksi sih), Hot Wheels, Lego, robot-robotan or any other kind of toy stuff. Awkwardly, aku diajak Bapak ke toko buku Gramedia. Pun adik-adikku. Perkenalan aku dan buku dulu nggak seekstrem dengan beli buku tebal dan banyak tulisan.

Bapak did it so well, terukur, dan nggak sembarangan. Bapak paham betul kalau aku suka Disney, apalagi dengan film The Lion King, ya meskipun nggak nolak juga waktu dikasih lihat kisah princess Snow White atau princess Aurora. Sampai di Gramedia, Bapak mengajakku ke rak buku gambar. Dan begitu melihat gambar Mufasa sekeluarga, aku pilih tiga jenis buku gambar yang berbeda, tapi masih bertema The Lion King. Selesai, pulang ke rumah, seperti biasa (bahkan sampai sekarang) weird habit, setelah aku buka plastik pembungkusnya, aku endus-endus dulu bukunya. Entah, pokoknya aroma kertas dari buku baru itu enak, he he he. Begitu aku buka, aku warnai semuanya, dan kemudian aku baru sadar kalau di setiap bagian gambar di buku ini tertulis ceritanya juga. Nah, dari situlah minat bacaku mulai sedikit tumbuh.

Begitu buku gambarku habis. Bapak mengajakku lagi ke Gramedia, tapi kali ini masuk ke rak buku cerita bergambar yang sudah berwarna. Pernah dengar beberapa cerita dari Hans Christian Andersen? Well, dari karya beliau lah aku mulai mengenal alur sebuah cerita. Seingatku, buku pertama yang aku pilih dulu adalah The Match Girl. Heran, sedih amat seleraku waktu kecil.

Lambat laun, kalau diajak ke toko buku, aku sudah bisa memilih mau ke rak bagian mana tanpa dikomandoi Bapak. Biasanya beliau hanya akan tanya buku apa yang aku pilih, dilihat oleh beliau sinopsisnya bagaimana, kemudian langsung ke kasir. Sudah.

Genre buku yang aku baca juga lama-lama berkembang. Dari polosnya kisah Franklin si kura-kura, ajaibnya kisah Barbie Swan Lake dan kawan-kawannya, aku mulai beralih ke bacaan fiksi seperti novel. Jenis bacaan adiktif itu pun lama-lama berkembang juga seiring bertambah usianya aku, sehingga aku mulai sadar kalau realistis itu juga perlu. Alhasil, sampai sekarang, aku sedang mengoleksi beberapa buku self guide dan beberapa biografi seseorang, nggak ketinggalan juga buku novel tapi kali ini yang berbahasa Inggris. Semacam upgrading kompetensi diriku. Hehe.

Sekarang, kalau ditanya lebih milih beli buku baru atau baju baru, semacam ditampar bolak-balik, depan-belakang. Ada kali bulan lalu aku beli tiga buku, dan belum kubaca sama sekali, bahkan plastik pembungkusnya pun belum kebuka. Semacam nggak sempat baca, padahal targetku satu bulan sekali harus selesai baca satu buku. Apapun. Eh, yang ada, hanya mampu bacain LINE Today, hiks.

Hendak beli baju baru juga yang dipakai pasti itu-itu aja. Sekali beli pun juga pasti warnanya nggak jauh-jauh dari Hitam, Abu-abu, atau Navy blue. WHY.

Namun, sekarang pilihan semakin sulit karena aku mulai tergiur dengan…….

Foto-foto tempat dan makanan lucu.

Help, my new addiction ini cukup merepotkan dan membuatku ingin sekali punya camera mirrorless yang capable untuk hobi baruku ini. Hhhh. Semoga hobi ini tidak berkembang semakin ekstrem dan semakin menguras pundi-pundi uangku.

Baiklah, sekian ‘gerutu’-an seorang basic girl yang merangkap menjadi bookworm dan mulai tertarik dengan hunting foto tempat dan makanan lucu ini.

Terima kasih.

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