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Human migration is NOT unidirectional — from Global South to Global North — , has never been.

#leçonspendantlescrisespolitiques #lessonsintimeofpoliticalcrises #lessonsinlockdown #lessons_in_time_of_pandemic

#DidYouKnow

There has been an Australian diasporic community in Myanmar, well before the southeast Asian "opened up" to the world again, in 2010. Two prominent members of this diaspora deserve a special mention each.

In the noughties, Ross Dunkley an Australian businessman founded the English language newspaper 'Myanmar Times' which later became one of the leading English language newspaper there. He's been in trouble with the law in Myanmar, convicted of using/possessing illicit drugs.

Another is the Australian academic and former aide to Aung San Suu Kyi, Sean Turnell. The junta detained him on trumped-up charges. (Ie, They just loathe him for working very closely with Suu Kyi.)

Burma of late 19th century-1965 and of 2010-pandemic era hosted/hosts diasporic communities, from Afghanis to Zimbabweans and everyone else in between including Aussies and my favourite the Irish.

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On Waitangi Day 2021...

I am reflecting on the moral of the importance of excellent interpreters and translators, in any treaty negotiation. Even more so important when a treaty concerns who would be the sovereign!

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On Myanmar coup and the "Myanmar coup dance" viral video

My Swiss friend posting the mashup meme of “#Myanmarcoupdance“ #viral video edited with juxtaposed images of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders stirred my curiosity greatly ( https://www.news18.com/news/buzz/bernie-sanders-myanmar-coup-trump-viral-meme-mashup-has-the-internet-vibing-in-unison-3392372.html ) .

So, digging around I learned that the background music chosen by the fitness instructor and PE teacher Khing Hnin Wai of Naypyidaw on the fateful morning of 1st February is the Indonesian song ”Ampun Bang Jago” by Dara Fu (vocalists: Tian Storm and Ever SLKR).

Given the anti-authority motif in the lyrics, it could not be more appropriate than it already is, for the #emblematic viral video for the decade #2020s. Here's the video explainer by Jakarta Post on the theme of the lyrics and the singer Tian's reactions to his song's sudden association with a coup ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM6EVAUEU3E ).

Lastly, you can watch Khing Hnin Wai's full workout on 1 Feb with military coup underway in the background, here on her Facebook timeline, https://www.facebook.com/100005518668726/videos/pcb.1569642986562975/1569578346569439

Arts, music, dance, literature, fitness and sports are all important both in good times and in bad times. And, like that tragically emblematic black-and-white photograph of a naked girl fleeing military action during Vietnam War, this video too is sure to become one of the poignant symbols of the topsy-turvy 2020s, by 2030.

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https://mapologies.files.wordpress.com/2020/12/vaccine-01-2.png Look at this topical infographic map on the etymologies the words for a "vaccine". These are how people say and spell "vaccine" in the various standard #vernaculars of these European, Western Asian and North African villages, towns, cities, regions and countries, (dependencies - eg. Gibraltar, Aaland, the Faeroes, Ceuta, Mellila or Jersey, or territories of contentiously disputed statuses - Kosovo, Crimea, Armenian-Azeri borderlands or North Cyprus).

In the righthand upper corner, there is a key for us to learn the roots from which the word "vaccine" is derived. In the areas depicted in the map, the two main ways of coining the word for "vaccines" are modifying the word for a domesticated livestock bovine animal also known in modern English as a "cow"* and deriving from the word for "graft", denoting the transfer of an object (immunity stimulus in case of vaccines) to a new, unusual place for it (the body of a living thing eg a human).

As a standard-bearer of Maori and Burmese languages, may I kindly add this? Neither in Maori nor Burmese, the word for a "vaccine" has the two most prevalent root words found in Europe,Western Asia and North Africa. Instead both Maori and Burmese words for a "vaccine" mention the protective, immunity-boosting function of such a medicine. In Maori, "rongoā āraimate" is the noun meaning "vaccine". In Burmese, it is "ကာကွယ်ဆေး " .

*In the Latin language "vacca" means "a/the cow" 🐄 in the nominative (subject) case. Note, my South Asian classics or Buddhist studies scholars friends, that "vaccha" in Pali denotes a "calf", too. (References: Wikitionary and https://dsalsrv04.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/app/pali_query.py?page=592 (the online Pali-English dictionary maintained by University of Chicago in the United States)

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Well, how about that! Look at the the mismatch between prediction made in the past and present reality! The countries that had been reported as unprepared (and thus implicitly predicted to be hard hit by pandemics) are better managing their covid19 epidemics than those that had once been assessed "prepared" to deal with a pandemic contagious disease outbreak!

this did not age well

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Watch "United Nations Day - Observance ceremony, 26 October 2020" on YouTube

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Watch "United Nations Day - Observance ceremony, 26 October 2020" on YouTube

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I like this, so I decided it deserves a reblog. 

© KOJI ARAKI Art Works

Daily life and every small thing is the gate to the universe ：）

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ကွန်ဖီနမွန့်/အိမ်တွင်နေစေအမိန့်ရှိသော ကာလအတွင်းသင်ကြားပို့ချချက်များ(Lessons in lockdown)

(၁) "ကွန်ဖီနမွန့် " မှာ ပြင်သစ်ဘာသာမှ မိမိတိုက်ရိုက် မွေးစားလိုက်ခြင်းဖြစ်၏။ မိမိသည် မြန်မာဘာသာစကားအသုံးပြုများက အင်္ဂလိပ်မဟုတ်သော ဘာသာစကား၊ စာပေများမှ ဝေါဟာရများ တိုက်ရိုက်ယူငင်မွေးစားသော အလေ့စရိုက်ကောင်းကို ပြန်လည်ဆန်းသစ်စေရန် ဆန္ဒများပြင်းပြ၍ အခုလို ဦးဆောင်လမ်းပြသည်။ ရှေးယခင်ခေတ်များတွင် ဝိဇ္ဇာဘွဲ့ရများ၊ ခရစ်ယာန်/အစ္စလာမ်/ဗုဒ္ဓဘာသာ သာသနာပြုများ၊ ကုန်သည်များ နှင့် သံတမန်များက ဦးဆောင်ကာ အင်္ဂလိပ် မဟုတ်သော စကားလုံးများကို မွေးစားခဲ့သည်။ ဥပမာ- အာရဗီစာစကားမှ "အလံ " ၊ အီတလီ စာစကားနှင့်လာတင်စာစကားတို့မှ "နာတာလူးပွဲ " (ခရစ္စမတ်ပွဲ)/" ရောမ"၊ ပေါ်တူဂီ စာစကားမှ "နာနတ်သီး "၊ ဟန္ဒီစာစကားမှ " ဂိုထောင်"၊ ပြင်သစ်စာစကားမှ (အချို့မှာ အင်္ဂလိပ်စာစကားက တဆင့်ခံ ဖြစ်) "ဟော်တယ်" - ဤမူကွဲ မှာ ပြင်သစ် အသံထွက် (l'hôtel) ကို ရေးထားခြင်း/ " ကိစ္စ" / "ကဖေး" (သို့)" ကဖီး"/"ပြင်သစ်" / "ပါရီ"/"လောင်ဂျီတွဒ် "/ "လတ္တီတွဒ် " ၊ သက္ကတ နှင့်ပါဠိစာစကားတို့မှ "သင်္ကြန်"/"သိကြားမင်း"/"ရဟန္တာ" / "မုခ် "/ နတ်"ဒေဝါ " စသည်ဖြင့် ရှိသည်။

(၂) မြန်မာစာစကား သဒ္ဒါတွင် ဝိဘတ် များရှိသည်။ "ဝိဘတ်"သည် "preposition" ဟု ဘာသာဗေဒ မကျွမ်းကျင်သော ကျောင်းဆရာ/ဆရာမများ ဘာသာပြန်ရမ်းသမ်းခြင်းမှာ အကျည်းတန်သည်။ 😭😫🥵 ဝိဘတ် များသည် နေရာဌာနေပြခြင်း (position) ထက်ပိုသည်။ ထို့ပြင် "Pre-" မဆိုနိုင် - ဝိဘတ်များက အခြားဝါစ္စင်္ဂများ၏ အရှေ့တွင် မရှိပါ။ အခြားဝါစ္စင်္ဂများကိုရေးပြီး / ပြောပြီးမှ ဝိဘတ်ကို ရေး/ ပြောသည် ထုံးစံသာ မြန်မာစာစကားအသုံးပြုသူများက လိုက်နာသည်။ ဝိဘတ်ကို အင်္ဂလိပ်လိုဖော်ပြလိုပါက "case, position and tense marker (marking particle) " ဟုခေါ်မှသာ မှန်သည်။

မယုံပါက မြန်မာသဒ္ဒါစာအုပ်များအပြင် မူရင်း ဘာသာဗေဒနှင့် မြန်မာဘာသာစကား သုသေသနစာတမ်း မြောက်များစွာကို "ဂ��ဂဲလ် " (Google)၊ "ဂူဂဲလ် သုသေသီ"(Google scholar) အင်တာနက်စာမျက်နှာများတွင် များသောအားဖြင့်အင်္ဂလိပ်၊ စပိန်၊ ပြင်သစ်၊ ဂျာမန်၊ ပေါ်တူဂီ၊ ရုရှ၊ တရုတ်၊ ဂျပန် စာစကားများဖြင့် ဖတ်ရှုလေ့လာနိုင်သည်။

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State Propaganda for better or for worse: Inculcating culture and habits by the power of the state, in Covid19 pandemic crisis, for a general election ...and while trying to resolve a six decades-long civil war - lessons from Myanmar/Burma

Titled “The World with Wounds” (ဒဏ်ရာများနဲ့ကမ္ဘာ), this music video in Burmese - evidently commissioned by Myanmar state television and radio - shows the enduring tradition and the power of the state propaganda in Burma/Myanmar in crises and in good times. The practice of inculcating culture and habits, top-down, is something I am rather fond of as a policy implementation device, perhaps because of the legacy of one-party socialism Burma/Myanmar survived. Content-wise, pretty well-written: there’re an appeal for united action against the COVID-19 pandemic, non-sectartian prayers for the world’s healing (a nod to aspirational unity in Burma/Myanmar), and of course a call for socially democratic equitable responses (as opposed to neoliberal responses), keeping with the ideology of the incumbents in the halls of Naypyidaw. Electioneering drive of incumbents thinly weaved through [a standard practice of any and all incumbents in all electoral systems, really].  

For those not familiar with Myanmar society, it is no exception but rather a longstanding norm for the government to inculcate desired habits through the arts.

As further examples, here in this video, the state in Burma/Myanmar is priming the public for a general election in November, to be held with public health rules in force. Looking back. In the 1990s, the then junta urged for unity as they embarked on ceasefire negotiations with this. 

To me, it is a big irony that this musical call for peace outlasted the junta who played the track repetitively on airwaves as they publicly shook hands with rebels in the late-1990s/early 2000s. 

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(Source: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10221042526485774&set=a.1025438209150&__cft__[0]=AZUYqBNjARXuR3Z6gj0tAvPdOIY3WXpkQ9o6x8QCh6NwbxLOMvhfTgngE-ekdl8H9QHJH4zk5TPoTHMD31XdJHIhoODtBMqVwILXqD5ub9QYB0E6ZcQwwPeN8PIkw4_aYCI&__tn__=EH-R Photo by Haykel Ezzeddine) 

1 August is the national day of Switzerland. Did you know? 

The flag of the Swiss Confederation is one of the rare non-rectangular national flags in extant in the world today.

In Covid-19 stricken world, the Swiss authorities have had to livestream the celebrations from the historiographical birthplace of Switzerland, Rūtli, this year. 

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Lessons in lockdown, including a language learning tip

First, let’s begin with thoughts on philosophical and existential questions, shall we, dear readers?

Do you realize? , The Amazon Original television series “Upload” is the age-old beliefs in afterlife of humankind, re-conceptualized for the very cyber, virtual, digital era of pestilence-stricken 2020s.

Language learning tip

As this blogger now is involved in French-English translations, in a project of a Cameroon-based organization with operations in West and Central Africa, their language learning needs have been built in. Like this:

Playing with the settings on subtitles and dubbings in film and television - when available - is one of my most effective and most enjoyable ways to expand vocabulary in any foreign language. So, in watching Upload, I am cycling through these pairs of subs and dubs — French subs - English original audio track; English close captions with French dubs; and French subs and French dubs. ;) 

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#Lessons in #lockdown:

In the English language, the #demonym for a person on #Guam Island, an "unincorporated #territory of the #UnitedStates, is "#Guamanian."

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MONUMENT TO DANTE (1865): Piazza Santa Croce, Florence, Italy.

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Stretched Porsche limousine.

Porsche 

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Lessons in lockdown: The economic fall of Campione d'Italia the Italian exclave surrounded by Switzerland (Ticino canton) - Unsurprisingly the exclave dwellers had lots of disruption due to pandemic-control travel restrictions imposed by the parent state (ITA) and the surrounding host (CHE), too!

As there is a second wave of covid19 setting back the gains [for now, minorly] of disease control in my town, I tuned into the State public service radio of Switzerland - Romansh version-this evening. This led me to wonder how exclaves and enclaves are faring in the age of sealed borders.

This is a summary of the tumultuous fortunes of one exclave, Italy's Campione d'Italia locked in and cut off from Italy proper by the Swiss territory; before and during the height of the coronavirus outbreak in continental Europe.

http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20200517-campione-ditalia-an-italian-town-surrounded-by-switzerland

And, here is the web stream of "RTR" the radio and television of the Swiss state broadcast in the most moribund and the remotest the Alpine federation's 4 federal official languages.

I'm listening to En Cuschina on Radio Rumantsch with @TuneIn. #NowPlaying http://tun.in/sepKC