Headline News 07/12/2022

Headlines:

Indonesia Passes Criminal Code Banning Sex Outside Marriage

Europe’s Concerns Over US Inflation Reduction Act

Details:
Indonesia Passes Criminal Code Banning Sex Outside Marriage

Indonesia has passed a controversial new Criminal Code that includes outlawing cohabitation and sex outside marriage, in changes that critics contend could undermine freedoms in the Southeast Asian nation. The new laws apply to Indonesians and foreigners and also restore a ban on insulting the president, state institutions or Indonesia’s national ideology known as Pancasila. The planned code sparked nationwide student-led protests when a full draft was released in September 2019, amid fears it would curtail personal freedoms. Both sex before marriage and adultery will be punishable by up to a year in prison or a fine under the code. Cohabitation will be punishable by six months in prison or a fine, although only if reported to the police by parents, children, or a spouse.

Rights groups say the proposals underscore the increasing conservatism of a country long hailed for its religious tolerance, with secularism enshrined in its constitution. Since the fall of successor Suharto - who ruthlessly suppressed political Islamic groups - there has been growing mobilisation around Islamic values, the sense that Islam is threatened by outside influences in many areas of the island of Java, where more than half of Indonesians live. The global media response has been negative, they have presented this step as a step backwards in the modern world.

Europe’s Concerns over US Inflation Reduction Act

French President Emmanuel Macron recent visit to the US who travelled to the United States on Nov. 29 where he met with President Joe Biden and discussed the soon-to-be-implemented Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The measure includes $370 billion in subsidies and tax breaks for green investment. But a key condition for this is most of the supply chain for qualifying goods needs to be in North America. But Europe, with France in the vanguard, has framed the law as an illegal effort to poach cutting-edge and strategic European industries when the Continent is at its most vulnerable. European officials are threatening Washington with a trade war and a lawsuit before the World Trade Organization if it does not offer their industries benefits comparable to those available to Canada and Mexico. For decades the US promoted global free trade in order to create an order that would serve its agenda. But over the years the US tax payer saw jobs and industries move abroad and foreign companies get privileged access into the US market, at the expense of domestic US companies. The days of globalisation are now being replaced with economic nationalism and onshoring rather than offshoring.