Apologies for the lack of the regular fortnightly wrap-up for Asia and the Pacific earlier this week; work’s been hectic plus there’s been a whole bunch of personal stuff going on. Next wrap-up will be published on Mon, 16 November.
As always, if you’re enjoying Solidaritas, paid subscriptions are available for US$5/month or much much cheaper at US$40/year. Have a lovely weekend!
-Kate
Read
How some of Canada’s First Nations peoples are trying to save the caribou.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s next four years:
“It’s not an accident that, every cycle, the boogeyman of the Democrats is a woman,” says Ocasio-Cortez. “A couple of cycles ago, it was Pelosi. Then it was Hillary, and now it’s me.”
Why is the clitoris ignored by medical science?
Rebecca Traister on the growth of progressive movements in the US.
A developing story to watch: a Chinese-Australian man, who is considered a community leader and is a director of the Museum of Chinese Australians, has become the first person changed with a foreign interference offence.
Watch and listen
As mentioned last week, the full length version (55 mins) my friend Febriana Firdaus’ doco on female land rights defenders in Indonesia, Tanah Ibu Kami (Our Mothers’ Land), is out now on YouTube. It features activists from Java (Kendeng), Flores (Mollo), Sulawesi (Piondo), and Aceh.
I also watched the Blackpink doco, Light Up The Sky, on NetFlix over the weekend; I don’t know why but it was what I settled on while browsing. It was surprisingly interesting, especially with regard to how group members are even recruited internationally.
This episode of NPR’s Code Switch podcast taught me a lot about the history of voter suppression in America, focusing on how it affects Black communities.
Eat
I went to Biang Biang in the Canberra Centre for lunch last Friday and it was delicious. They’re a Sydney restaurant that opened here a few months ago, but this was my first visit (you know, COVID-19 and everything). Their flat wheat noodles are made to order and are such a great texture, especially in contrast to the delightful and incredibly moreish spicy sauces. My lunch partner and I also shared some lamb dumplings in a sort of black vinegar beef broth; also excellent. Worth venturing out into the city and even wearing hard pants.
Cooking-wise, my mum is trying to perfect her Hainan chicken rice; my job is the chilli sauce. This time, I used this recipe from Adam Liaw’s website and it was pretty spot on. We didn’t have enough chicken fat to render down so I added some sesame oil to boost it a bit.