PICASSO GAY?

Among the many works of Picasso, the famous Spanish artist ...

Going by the definitions on LGBT set by the Putrajaya Consultative Council of Parents and Teachers Associations, Picasso is deemed gay for sporting a red flower on his left ear and bare-chested!

Defining LGBT. 

This guy with cawat is definitely gay! Noted for their manhood, that RamSikh cannot be gay. No?

RAYER, CLEANSE OFF CELAKA AT GANGES!

The Ganges is a cleanser for celaka. Go and have a dip, Keling.

Ride threesome to the Ganges.

If not be a mendicant!

All your celaka will be gone.

DYANA, DANCE WITH ME NOT LIM

Dyana, Lim is old and won't last long with with his dance antics. 

Dance with me for I am young,  fast and furious like you.

FALL OF MALAY KINGDOM, TIMELINE 1500-11

The fall of the Malay kingdom of Melaka in 1511 to the Portuguese was imminent. Discoveries, events, and developments elsewhere in the west - Italy, Spain, Porugal, Peru ... were impinging many parts of the globe. Melaka was without exception. It was famous entrepot trading centre in the East, a very attractive prize to conquer.  

It was said that whoever control Melaka would have a stranglehold on the spice trade.

The last Sultan of Melaka, Sultan Mahmud Shah and his brave people fought using hand weapons such as spears, keris riding on elephants, rowing small boats in the sea and river mouth were greatly outclassed by the gunnery of the armour-clad Benggali Putih viz-a-viz Portuguese and their ships.

This medieval Latin manuscript from around 1500 depicts an elephant trampling a man. Note the impressive tower on the elephant's back.

Cuzco (Peru), late Incan masonry wall, ca. 1500

In the late 1400s and 1500s was the Renaissance Period of the Western civilisation

1502, Columbus sailed from Spain to West Indies which took a month.

Cairo, the caravanserai of Qansuh al-Ghuri, 1504-5; interior court. Originally, the court had a small prayer hall in the centre. The two porticoed lower floors contain storage rooms; the upper floors are occupied by apartments arranged in vertical stacks of three rooms each.

Raphael, School of Athens, mural pairing in the Vatican Palace in the room called Stanza della Segnatura, 1509-11.

The tide of events wait for no man unprepared. 

SLAVERY: TRADE AND PREJUDICE

Slavery: a kneeling figure of a young black Roman slave cleaning a boot. This bronze statuette was made between the 1st and 3rd centuries AD.

A seventeenth-century Barbary war gallery with slaves manning the oars.

Round the circle of buyers the auctioneer led the slaves.

A prospective buyer on the Barbary Coast of North Africa carefully examining a female slave before bidding.

Slaves in North America.

Slave trading is (in)human trafficking. Africa was the source of slaves and the scourge of slavery were the Arab traders. They were near to Africa. There was market for slaves within and outside their domains and hence the trading. 

The Barbary Coast in North Africa and Zanzibar in the central east coast of Africa were noted as entrepôt for slave trading. One of the sultans of Zanzibar became so rich that he could afford to have 90 wives!

The thousands of years in the past that Africa had been associated with slavery remains a stigma and prejudice against coloured people.

OF BASTINADO AND FORCED CIRCUMCISION

Richard Burton in his book on pilgrimage to Mecca mentioned 'bastinado' a number of times. I was wondering what it meant. 

So, bastinado is a form of torture meted on slaves or infidels (western captives) by order of the sult of the Barbary Coast, present day Morocco Tunisia, Algeria and Libya. The pics below show it was carried out. Forced circumcision which could be messy was also a practice to punish or perhaps convert them into Islam!

 

American and European accounts depicted a slave's life in Barbary as an unending hell of torture, including the bastinado (left) and forced circumcision (right). 

A European slave being bastinadoed.

After the Civil War, in the late 1700s, The American with new new confidence and improved naval vessels led to expansion to North Africa.  The Sultan of Libya declared war against the US for interfering their slave trade in the Mediterranean. Or was it a conjured pretext for the American to come in? In one naval battle the Americans lost a ship in which lives were lost and among those captured probably bastinadoed!

TAN MALAKA AND RASHID MAIDIN - COMMUNIST OR NATIONALIST?

The pathway to nationalism and gain independence from colonialists is full of pitfalls and apt to be bloody. The conduct of the struggle may go in a gamut ways, means, and fronts  often overlapping if not simultaneously - political,  revolutionary and bloody, peaceful negotiation. A nobel idealism can be hijacked and things can go wrong during the years of fight.

Tan Malaka of Indonesia and Rashid Maidin of Malaysia initially joined political (communist) parties which later metamorphosed and turned revolutionary. Tan was killed (1949) in trying to achieve his brand of Republik Indonesia. 

Rashid Maidin survived years of guerilla warfare from the jungle first against the Japanese, then the British, and then the Malaysian government. He surrendered and gained amnesty.

(text refused to be set upright)

"... Tan Malaka joined the Communist Party Indonesia (PKI). His active involvement with civil strike led to his arrest (1922). He requested to leave Indonesia and to go to the Netherlands and Soviet Union to represent PKI in the Commintern. He became a member of the Executive Committee of Commintern for the Far East, Shanghai. He was amongst the communist member who did not agree with the PKI revolution of 1926. At Bangkok he formed PARI (Partai Republik Indonesia) and later known as Proletaris Aslia Republik International (1946). He returned home and went underground during the Japanese Occupation, 1942-1945. After Indonesia proclaimed independence, he joined KNI. Then he formed and led Persatuan Perjuangan that rejected the Linggarjati and Reville Agreement. He was against the FDR (Front Demokrasi Rakyat) led by Muso and Amir Sjarifuddin. He formed Partai Murba which Muso considered it Trotskyist. Tan Malaka and Muhammad Yamin were involved in the 3rd July Incident. He was captured by pro-RI guerillas at Kediri district and was shot (1949). The whereabout of his grave is still unknown. His books include Dari Penjara Ke Penjara, Kuminisme Di Jawa (1922, ditulis bersama Bergsma), Kuli Kontrak (1923),  Naar de Republiek (1925), Madilog (1942)."

Tunku Abdul Rahman, the first Prime Minister coming for peace talk at Baling, 28 Dec 1955 with Chin Peng, Head of Comunist Party of Malaya. The latter rejected the terms of peace and surrender and went back into the jungle.

Rashid Maidin (right) accompanied with Chin Peng (beside him) for the Baling peace talk.