Friday, March 31, 2023
Thursday, March 30, 2023
trump indicted on 30 charges--first time former US president or sitting Presdt has been criminally charged.
Luke Corbin, Independent Journal of Burma Scholarship, bamazaga, local brews coffee table book+John Okell
https://ijbs.online/
very exciting Chiangmai-based e journal.
Operative word "independent."
plus linguist John Okell has passed away.
cheers
km
Monday, March 27, 2023
Al Jazeera--Burma Jet fuel sanctions + 400 garment workers to be fired
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/3/25/myanmar-militarys-jet-fuel-supplies-hit-by-latest-us-sanctions
Burmese economy going into free fall.
https://myanmar-now.org/en/news/more-than-half-of-workers-in-yangon-garment-factory-laid-off-ahead-of-annual-holiday-period
More than 400 recently hired employees at a garment factory in the Shwe Lin Ban Industrial Zone in Yangon’s Hlaing Tharyar Township were reportedly informed last week that they would be laid off when the annual Thingyan holidays commence in mid-April.
The workers in question at the Chinese-owned Fitex Myanmar garment manufacturer, which employs 700 people to produce clothing for international womenswear brand Amisu, were notified verbally by their supervisors of the loss of their jobs on March 13, representatives at the factory said.
“They only fired the workers who had worked for the company for less than six months. The management-level employees who were here before us were safe,” one of the affected workers told Myanmar Now. “They should have notified us earlier if they had plans to shut down, so that we would have had time to find work at other factories,” she added.
According to the Federation of General Workers Myanmar, Fitex Myanmar also fired staff en masse before Thingyan last year. Moe Sandar Myint, chairperson of the trade union federation, said that it was difficult to demand severance from the company, whose actions were not technically illegal.
“They definitely premeditated this,” she said. “They’re only firing the employees with less than six months of working experience there so that they don’t have to pay them compensation.”
Moe Sandar Myint said that the firing of more than half of Fitex Myanmar’s employees would not change the existing orders for apparel taken before the upcoming holidays, and that any gaps would likely be addressed by hiring people at rates which do not include benefits, rather than salaried staff.
“The remaining workers will have to finish that workload,” she explained. “If there aren’t enough workers, they will hire more daily or monthly wage workers after the holidays who they can fire any time they are no longer needed.”
Kaung--Election 2012
In February, two factories producing clothing for European retailer Primark in the Wartayar Industrial Zone in Shwepyithar Township abruptly announced that the sites would be shut down, leaving some 2,400 workers jobless. A Primark spokesperson was quoted in an industry publication earlier this month saying that the treatment of the employees at the factories in question was “extremely concerning” and that its local team on the ground in Yangon was investigating the issue. The Fitex Myanmar employee who spoke to Myanmar Now was among those fired in the Wartayar factory closures, as well. “Now that the Thingyan holidays are very close, we can’t apply for work anywhere. No factory is hiring right now as they don’t want to pay us for time off for Thingyan,” she explained. The holiday period marks the Burmese New Year and lasts several days. A report from the Ethical Trading Initiative last September urged brands to reconsider their presence in Myanmar because of the dire situation concerning human rights that has unfolded in the country since the military coup in February 2021. The International Labour Organisation announced in January 2022 that more than 1.6 million workers had lost their jobs in Myanmar during this period.
From Irrawaddy Myan junt watch--
https://www.irrawaddy.com/specials/junta-watch/junta-watch-naypyitaw-goes-dark-murderers-preach-buddhist-philosophy-and-more.html
NPT rolling blackout, murderers teach Buddhism etc
Topics: Abhidhamma, Blackouts, Buddhism, junta, legal, Naypyitaw, Power outages, Red Cross, Russia legal aid, Sagaing, terror campaign
3-27-2023
Yangon PDF Urban Owls say they have shot and killed junta money launderer Min Tayza Nyunt Tin
https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/yangon-guerrillas-kill-myanmar-junta-money-laundering-chief.html
Yangon PDF Urban Owls say they have shot and killed junta money launderer MinTayza Nyunt Tin 52.
3-27-2023
Wednesday, March 22, 2023
Securites and Exchange Comission sues celebs for endorsing crypto currency--
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/mar/22/sec-sues-celebrities-cryptocurrencies-lindsay-lohan-tron
Bitcoin is not "money" nor "currency"
They are online COUPONs--
Be careful.
3-22-2023
Tuesday, March 21, 2023
Sunday, March 19, 2023
Good explanation of SVB bank failure, why bond prices down when interest rates up.
https://www.npr.org/2023/03/19/1164531413/bank-fail-how-government-bonds-turned-toxic-for-silicon-valley-bank
Ppl don't see that the whole world is interconnected
macro vs micro ecos.
From Internet--Golden Rock Pagoda at Sunset--Burma.
3-19-2023
Friday, March 17, 2023
Banks--private vs public bailouts
https://thehill.com/business/3905734-heres-why-the-too-big-to-fail-banks-bailed-out-first-republic/
but aren't deposits in banks public too--
yes,they are.
3-17-2023
ICC issues arrest warrant to Putin for alleged deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/17/europe/icc-russia-war-crimes-charges-intl/index.html
I think this presages more to come.
3-17-2023
NYT--Paddock--atrocities in Myanmar as regime under pressure--copied and pasted --
In Myanmar, Atrocities Rise as Army Comes Under Pressure
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/17/world/asia/myanmar-killings-monastery.html
3-17-2023
The rebellion against military rule is gaining strength, and analysts say soldiers are responding with increased brutality.
•
• • • •
Bullet holes in the wall of a Buddhist monastery near the village of Nanneint in central Myanmar. Rebels who are fighting Myanmar’s army say they found 22 bodies there on Sunday.Credit...Pa-Oh National Defense Force-Kham Koung, via Associated Press
By Richard C. Paddock
March 17, 2023, 5:03 a.m. ET
When the soldiers from Myanmar’s notorious army reached the village of Nanneint, the residents fled. Some took refuge in the basement of a nearby Buddhist monastery.
“They thought the soldiers wouldn’t kill monks and people inside the monastery,” said one resident, Khun Htwe, who fled to another village.
But the monastery was no sanctuary. On Sunday, ethnic rebels fighting Myanmar’s military regime said they had found the bullet-riddled bodies of 22 people there, slaughtered by the army.
A gruesome video taken by a fighter with the Karenni Nationalities Defense Force, posted on Facebook, shows the victims lying on bloodstained ground or slumped against the monastery wall, which is pockmarked with dozens of bullet holes. Among the dead are three monks in saffron robes.
“It appears they were lined up and shot in the head,” Khu Ree Du, a rebel soldier who saw the bodies, said by telephone. Since Myanmar’s army — which has a long history of atrocities against civilians — seized power two years ago, a resistance that began with peaceful protests has become an increasingly well-armed rebellion. Analysts who follow the conflict say the army is coming under pressure as the rebels gain strength, and that it is resorting to even bloodier tactics, like the killings near Nanneint. • Sale ends soon: All of the Times, all in one subscription. $1 a week for your first year. “Now we are talking beheadings, disembowelings and massacres, and this clearly reflects frustration and fury at field level in the military,” said Anthony Davis, a Bangkok-based security analyst with the Jane’s group of military publications. “It also reflects a broader strategy based on terrorizing the resistance’s civilian support base — which is to say, most of the population.” Ye Zaw, a doctor, said on Thursday that all 22 victims at the monastery had been tortured, some cut or burned with cigarettes. Most were shot in the head at close range, said Dr. Ye Zaw, who examined the bodies for the shadow National Unity Government, which considers itself Myanmar’s legitimate government. Its human rights minister, Aung Myo Min, said the victims were all civilians and called the killings “a war crime committed by the military.” The junta’s spokesman, Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, said in a statement that clashes began in the Nanneint area earlier this month, when “terrorists” from outside the region took up positions and the military tried to drive them out. “Misinformation was disseminated that villagers were killed,” he said. The general declined to take calls from The New York Times. The conflict raging now is a far cry from the early resistance to the February 2021 coup. In those first months, protesters fought soldiers and the police with slingshots and air guns made with plastic pipe. Image People in Yangon, Myanmar, used slingshots against security forces in March 2021 as they protested against military rule. The resistance is far better armed now. Credit...The New York Times After the demonstrations were crushed, many protesters left the cities and allied themselves with armed ethnic groups that had battled the military for decades. Together, the ethnic armies and the more recently formed Public Defense Force now hold much of the countryside, while the military controls the major urban areas. Factories in two areas held by ethnic armies manufacture assault rifles and grenade launchers, which have been spreading throughout the country, Mr. Davis said. Other weapons, including M16s and M4s, are smuggled across the border from Thailand. Drawing on the expertise of engineers and tech experts who fled to rebel-held territory, a cottage industry has sprung up to produce IEDs and adapt drones to drop explosives on enemy targets, Mr. Davis said. “What we have seen over the past year is a remarkable improvement in the level of organization and weaponry now used by resistance forces,” he said. “It is still David and Goliath, but David is looking increasingly cocky and combative.” The Tatmadaw, as the military is called, is perhaps most infamous for its ruthless campaign against Rohingya Muslims in 2017, which killed at least 24,000 people and drove more than 700,000 across the border into Bangladesh, where most still live in squalid refugee camps. During the protests against the coup in 2021, soldiers and the police gunned down demonstrators and bystanders, including young children. Many were shot in the head. Last October, military jets bombed a concert in Kachin State and killed 80.
With the Tatmadaw facing an increasingly well-armed resistance, the regime placed 40 townships under martial law in February, adding to the 10 that already had been. The declaration sent troops the message that anything goes, Mr. Davis said.
Since then, there has been a surge in military atrocities, including the beheading, disembowelment or dismemberment of nearly two dozen rebels and civilians this month in Sagaing Region. “All these crimes are not mere human rights abuses,” Myanmar’s ambassador to the United Nations, Kyaw Moe Tun, who was appointed before the coup, said in a speech to the General Assembly in New York on Thursday. “They are part of the military junta’s systematic, widespread and coordinated attacks against the civilian population.” He held up photos of the bodies at the Nanneint monastery. But Mr. Davis said the resistance was now too big and well armed for the Tatmadaw to bring it to heel with increased brutality. “The military is a large and robust organization, but it is also severely undermanned and overstretched, and obviously that creates vulnerabilities,” he said. “It is hard to see politically or militarily what more they can bring to the fight.” Image Members of the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, one of the numerous armed ethnic groups opposing Myanmar’s military, training at a base camp in Shan State this month. Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Tom Andrews, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, called for a coordinated international approach to the conflict, like the coalition supporting Ukraine against Russia’s invasion. “This is the forgotten war,” he said in an interview. For soldiers to massacre monks and other civilians in a monastery is a sign of how far the junta is willing to go in terrorizing the population, Mr. Andrews said. “They are losing ground and they understand they are losing ground,” he said. He cited a leaked memo from a December meeting of senior junta officials, who concluded that the resistance was beyond their control and that rebel attacks would escalate this year. The document was posted online by a Burmese-language news outlet, Khit Thit Media. According to the memo, officials said the resistance forces’ capabilities had grown so dramatically that instead of sneak attacks, they were staging artillery assaults with makeshift 107 mm rocket launchers. Officials also complained they were having trouble gathering intelligence, and that money budgeted to pay informants was going unspent. “The response of the junta to their increasingly perilous position is to double down on brutality,” Mr. Andrews said. “What they don’t realize is that it has the opposite effect of what they intend. It is increasing the resolve of the people to oppose the regime.” Image Nanneint, a village near the monastery where the massacre occurred, was bombed by military jets, a resident said.Credit...Karenni Nationalities Defense Force, via Associated Press In a statement Thursday condemning the Nanneint massacre, the National Unity Government and groups allied with it urged the international community to impose sanctions blocking the sale of jet fuel, weapons and technology to the junta. Nanneint, a village just 50 miles east of the capital, Naypyidaw, is in a part of Shan State that has largely remained under the military’s control. During the fighting there, military jets bombed the village, said Mr. Khun Htwe, the villager. Soldiers burned about 60 houses, he said. “The Myanmar army treats the people as enemies,” he said. “The Myanmar military will kill anyone if their interests are affected.” Richard C. Paddock has worked as a foreign correspondent in 50 countries on five continents with postings in Moscow, Jakarta, Singapore and Bangkok. He has spent nearly a dozen years reporting on Southeast Asia, which he has covered since 2016 as a contributor to The New York Times. @RCPaddock • • •
Thursday, March 16, 2023
3 monks' bodies among 29 killed massacre by myanma jjunta showed signs of torture--warning graphic
https://myanmar-now.org/en/news/bodies-of-monks-killed-in-pinlaung-massacre-showed-signs-of-torture
but junta claim perpetrated by ethnic Resistance contrary to their initial
boasting on junt social media.
Think about it, why would local groups kill each other so gruesomely.???
remains ofvillagers burned alive, Burma, 2022
3-16-2023
Polish President Duda says will give 4 MIGs to Ukraine
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/16/europe/poland-fighter-jets-ukraine-intl/index.html
shld have been done ages ago.
Kaung--Zelebsky drawings exhibit July 2022
needlepoint Zeelnsky, CatStevsns.
all images Copyrught Kaung
3-16-2023
Wednesday, March 15, 2023
European firms paid millions by illegal Myanmar junta to consult on disastrous dam projects --from Justice for Myanmar
copied and pasted.
Subject: European firms paid millions by illegal Myanmar junta to consult on disastrous dam projects
Dear all,
Two European engineering corporations, AFRY AB and ILF Group, have been paid millions consulting for the Myanmar military junta on harmful hydropower projects, Justice For Myanmar has revealed.
Justice For Myanmar calls on AFRY and all other companies to responsibly suspend any remaining work on hydropower projects in Myanmar.
Read our feature online here. Our press release is online here and below.
Regards,
Justice For Myanmar
European firms paid millions by illegal Myanmar junta to consult on disastrous dam projects
AFRY AB and ILF Group failing to meet international human rights responsibilities
Two European engineering corporations have been paid millions consulting for the Myanmar military junta on harmful hydropower projects, Justice For Myanmar has revealed through an analysis of leaked tax filings, some of which were provided by Distributed Denial of Secrets.
The Swiss arm of the Swedish publicly listed company AFRY AB earned US$4.68 million in service fees for consulting work on the Upper Yeywa and Middle Paunglaung Hydropower Projects in Myanmar from February 2021 to September 2022.
The Myanmar branch of the Austrian-based ILF Group earned US$1.1 million in consulting fees from the junta from February 2021 to April 2022. ILF Group’s local branch is working on another dam scheme in Myanmar, the Tha Htay Hydropower Project.
Both companies are paid by a department of Myanmar’s electricity ministry which is illegally controlled by the military junta. They are advising the junta under tenders awarded in 2020 by the democratically-elected government, preceding the military’s brutal coup attempt.
AFRY did not respond to specific questions from Justice For Myanmar regarding the current status of their operations in Myanmar, but confirmed they have projects in the country.
ILF Group responded, “our activities were discontinued some time ago, and most recently focused on dam stabilization and slope stabilization for spillway purposes.” ILF Group did not disclose the date their activities were discontinued.
Both companies remain registered on Myanmar’s corporate registry.
The illegitimate military junta is building dams while attempting to crush freedom of expression, assembly, and association. Since the military’s coup attempt, the junta has created a state of terror, committing deliberate killings, arbitrary arrests, indiscriminate airstrikes and shelling, rape and torture. The junta has killed more than 3,100 people, and arbitrarily arrested over 20,000.
The Upper Yeywa dam is a 280MW hydropower project on the Namtu River, which is also known as the Myitnge River. It was conceived under the former military dictatorship in Myanmar in 2008, and has been opposed by local communities because of its devastating social and environmental impacts, lack of transparency, threat to ancestral lands and fuelling of conflict.
In 2020, the Shan Human Rights Foundation documented grave human rights violations by the Myanmar military near the Upper Yeywa project, including an extrajudicial killing and torture. The group called on foreign companies to withdraw from the dam project or risk complicity in the Myanmar military’s atrocities.
In December 2022 a local community network, the Namtu River Protectors, warned that more than 40,000 people living in villages near the dam could be impacted by flooding.
Following the military coup attempt, communities have courageously continued to protest the Upper Yeywa Dam, despite grave risks, and a group of workers from the dam project joined the Civil Disobedience Movement against the junta.
On the 2022 International Day of Action for Rivers, communities throughout Shan State protested against the junta’s dam projects, including Upper Yeywa.
The Tha Htay Chaung dam is a 110MW hydropower project in Thandwe Township, Rakhine State. In 2013, a coalition of Rakhine civil society and political parties demanded a halt to the dam, along with other infrastructure developments in the state, until Myanmar has a federal democracy which would ensure ethnic people have control over the management of their resources.
The Middle Paunglaung dam is a 152MW hydropower project on the Paunglaung River, near Naypyidaw. The dam threatens villagers with forced displacement, according to researchers.
Justice For Myanmar calls on AFRY and all other companies to responsibly suspend any remaining work on hydropower projects in Myanmar until there is federal democracy.
In the meantime, Justice For Myanmar calls for AFRY, ILF and all other involved companies to disclose their human rights due diligence and justify their reasoning and decision-making to advise on hydropower projects in Myanmar, and to remediate damage already incurred in accordance with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises.
Justice For Myanmar spokesperson Yadanar Maung says: “It is deplorable that AFRY and ILF Group have been collaborating with the Myanmar military junta, supporting socially and environmentally destructive dams while their business partner wages a campaign of terror against the people of Myanmar.
“AFRY and ILF Group have disregarded the voices of local communities and their international human rights responsibilities by carrying out business as usual with war criminals.
“These dams displace communities, destroy livelihoods and harm Myanmar’s rivers, while emboldening an illegal military junta attempting to use infrastructure to gain control of territory.
“We call on AFRY to stop any remaining work for the military junta and for AFRY and ILF to remediate damage already incurred in accordance with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises.
“We urge AFRY’s shareholders to take concrete action urgently to ensure the company fulfils its human rights responsibilities, or to divest.”
More information:
Read our investigation, European firms paid millions by illegal Myanmar junta for disastrous dam projects
–
Justice For Myanmar, a group of covert activists campaigning for justice and accountability for the people of Myanmar, is calling for an end to military business and for federal democracy and a sustainable peace.
For more information please contact:
Yadanar Maung
Email: media@justiceformyanmar.org
Website: https://www.justiceformyanmar.org/
Mirror: https://justiceformyanmar.github.io/justiceformyanmar.org/
Twitter: @justicemyanmar
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/justiceformyanmar.org/
end post
Tuesday, March 14, 2023
Irrawaddy op ed--UN refusal totalk to NUG will lead to more convoy attacks--
https://www.irrawaddy.com/opinion/guest-column/uns-refusal-to-talk-to-myanmars-nug-will-lead-to-convoy-attacks.html
Not that UN was any use in past.
ONE TRUCK did not even get through bc UN insisted on delivery through junta.
Same same happened Cyclone Nargis--even commander of USS Essex complained.
Which world do we live in??
I'm sorry I discarded the book of UN's florists' bill etc during a move. And needed to be bailed out by Ted Turner.
BTW--Gambari was called Kyauk yu pyan by Burmese--"Took gems (gifts/bribes) and went home."
--Speechless.
It will not end well, I'm telling you.
Scroll down and read of more beheadings.
Remember, the West largely didn't believe in Nazi concentrations camps while they were happening. Lots of Holocaust deniers even today.
3-14-2023
Images--NOTE--Much ofthis destruction,infact all--caused byjunta air attacks.
Poem from Marwood Darwish--And we love life if we find a way to it.
And We Love Life
by Marmood Darwish.
And we love life if we find a way to it.
We dance in between martyrs and raise a minaret for violet and palm trees.
We love life if we find a way to it.
And we steal from the silkworm a thread to build a sky and fence in this departure.
We open the garden gate for the jasmine to step out on the streets as a beautiful day.
We love life if we find a way to it.
AAnd we plant, where we settle, some fast growing plants, and harvest the dead. We play the flute like the color of the faraway, sketch over the first corridor a neigh.
WWe write our names one stone at a time, O lightning brighten the night. --Thanks to Sarah Browning of DC Poets Against War.
3-14-2023 Pineapple crochet by Kyi May Kaung
Sunday, March 12, 2023
Joint Statement by US Treasury, Federal Reserve, FDIC on Silicon Valley Bank failure etc.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/monetary20230312b.htm
3-12-2023
Good monk Pyi Gyi Ta Gun (Flag of Great Nation) missing after regime commando attack.
https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/prominent-myanmar-monk-disappears-after-being-detained-by-regime-forces.html
Probably dismembered and beheaded and eaten by fish already.
So SAD.
3-12-2023
Photos--water first 2021--later--+ Obama with Daw Suu and doggie Bo
Saturday, March 11, 2023
2 pigs vs lion stories that the Buddha told: Old boar/monk covered in filth + pigs fight back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=of9blcmZM1I
Sakura Legend.
Beautiful drawings, suitable for children.
I was looking for boar vs lion as in Helsinki in 2008, Ashin Sopaka "Thawpaka" in Burmese
helped me with my 2 big suitcases of paintings, he was abt 30 at the time, I was about 70+
Now, Burmese men and esp. monks mostly think it's beneath them to help a woman with her luggage. There might be longyis inside right? That would lower their "Soul Stuff" or Hpone.
I was the only woman there and the oldest in the group.
Yet no one even pretended to help me.
Ashin Sopaka who walked all over N. America with only a GPS to draw attention to the Cause of Burmese Democracy at once said, “Dagamagyi (Great Female Donor) I'll help you" and smilingly helped me down the corridor to my assigned dorm room, which it turned out, was too cold for me, so event organizer poet ko ko thett switched his room in Arthur Hotel with my dorm room.
As we walked along, a little slowed down by 2 large and heavy Samsonite suitcases, Ashin Sopaka started to tell me a pig and lion story, that the Buddha told.
It wasn't this one.
I said, "Is it like Napoleon/Stalin and Trotsky in Animal Farm?"
Ashin Sopaka said, "No. It's the pigs fighting back. When the lion tried to scare them by pointing up his ears, they stuck their ears up.
"When the lion pawed the ground, they did the same with their front trotters.
"When the lion roared, they roared back."
As my late Burma-expert mentor, political scientist Prof. Josef Silverstein used to say, "I'm very old and I remember everything and everyone hates me."
Warm regards,
K M Kaung
3-11-2023
Friday, March 10, 2023
Wednesday, March 08, 2023
My interview of Vietnames artist Huang.
https://ips-dc.org/war_and_peace_an_epic_mural/
John Feffer and IPS were sponsors of her exhibit and John Feffer introduced me to her and suggested I write a piece abt her.
Thank you.
I interviewed her over the telephone. She was a joy to talk to.
I've only written a few articles about other artists.
I don't write about my own artwork as I believe they should "go out on their own, and speak for themselves" as in W.S. Merwin's Envoy from d'Aubigne.
https://voca.arizona.edu/track/id/62239
I was so fortunate that just when I was having my poetry binge and won the William Carlos Williams Award from the Academy of American Poets, (the judge was Dannie Abse), W. S. Merwin selected my friend Dr. Sharon Ann Jaeger for the translation prize.
Hearing and seeing W. S. Merwin read was unforgettable.
The tower of his stacked-up published books of poetry was as high as the podium. I don't remember his hair but one silver eyebrow shot off into space. I still have his signed book, The Carrier of Letters. That's what I mean when I say I have had a wonderful life. I've met the most amazing people. "Their's not the fault have I not shone like them," as my friend in Burma Khin Khin Thein wrote of our economist mentors. I've been more fortunate that I started my conscious life in a Western country, and ended up the last 4 decades in another one. It's better than contorting myself to fit some nationalistic ideal pone san khwet (the molded plates used in prison--but Dr Sean Turnell recently released says they were fed out of a used paint bucket and had to use their hands to scoop out the rice gruel. He said he caught Covid 5 times.) I'm tired of all the flak and all the drivel on Facebook. One Burmese dissident wrote "At this point I had had enough," when the ABSDF (All Burma Students Democratic Front) started putting death sentences on each other. Kyi May Kaung. 3-8-2023
Covid vaccination boosters--mono-valent vs bivalent--I was told I don't need a new one till a new version comes out.
Is anotherbivalent COVID booster shot on the way? Here's what we know.
https://www.aol.com/news/another-bivalent-covid-booster-shot-143828115.html
Yahoo News
Laura Ramirez-Feldman
March 8, 2023, 8:38 AM
A woman receives the COVID-19 booster. (Getty Images)
Last fall, U.S. health officials authorized new COVID-19 booster shots designed to target the original strain of the coronavirus and some of the Omicron subvariants that were circulating around that time. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that the new booster shots, known as the bivalent COVID-19 vaccine, offer the highest protection against the virus at the moment.
But uptake has been low. Even though the bivalent booster shots have been shown to be safe and to increase protection against infection and severe disease, so far only 16% of Americans have received it.
However, many of those who were early adopters of the shots are coming up on six months post-vaccination and are now wondering if they need a second dose, and if so, when.
“This is probably the most common question I get asked. ‘Hey, doc, I got that back in September. It's been a few months. Shouldn't I be getting another booster by now?’” Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, told Yahoo News.
On Tuesday, vaccine advisers in the U.K. recommended a spring booster dose for high-risk groups, including those who are over 75, immunosuppressed and residents of nursing homes.
Many early adopters of the bivalent vaccine don't want to wait until the fall
Federal health agencies such as the Food Drug and Administration and the CDC have not officially made a recommendation on whether a second bivalent booster dose is needed right now. However, the FDA recently proposed switching to an annual COVID-19 booster plan, similar to the flu model. Under this strategy, most healthy people will receive one dose every fall. The agency said some Americans, including older people, unvaccinated young children and those who are immunocompromised, may need to be offered two or more doses a year.
Paula Lazor, 68, from Arlington, Va., told Yahoo News that she and her husband — who is 75 years old and has underlying health conditions — got the bivalent booster as soon as it became available. They’re both now eager to get a second dose. “My husband and I feel very strongly about getting a second bivalent shot. In fact, we planned to contact our primary care doctor next week … to see if that is possible,” Lazor said, adding that she wants her family to have the highest protection possible against the virus.
The CDC has reaffirmed several times that the primary goal of the country’s COVID-19 vaccination strategy is to prevent severe disease, but people like Lazor also worry about getting "long COVID" and getting others sick. “We particularly do not want to pass this virus on to our grandchildren,” she said. Lazor’s concern that the bivalent booster shot’s protection may be waning by now is not unfounded, given what we know about past boosters. Booster doses were first recommended in the fall of 2021 for high-risk groups. The initial boosters were the same formulation as the primary series, which was designed to target only the original strain of the virus. This is also known as a monovalent vaccine. While these shots proved highly effective at protecting people against severe disease and death, scientific evidence began to show that vaccine effectiveness against COVID-19 hospitalization declined over time. This reduction in protection was significant for those 65 and older in particular. Experts have said the decline in vaccine effectiveness is likely due to a combination of factors including waning immunity and the emergence of new variants. “In the past, for the monovalent boosters, when you look at some of the data, the protection against hospitalization starts to fall off after around five months,” Hotez explained. If the bivalent boosters are similar, he said, “we are approaching that time, and that's why I think it's important for the CDC or FDA or both to issue a statement so we know where we stand at this point.” Not enough data to make a recommendation right now, CDC says The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices — a group of outside experts who advise the agency on vaccines — recently met to discuss the COVID-19 shots. During the meeting, the agency presented some data on the effectiveness of the bivalent booster dose. According to this data, bivalent vaccines continue to offer protection against hospitalizations, but protection against infection seems to wane over time, particularly among older adults. But the agency said “waning for bivalent vaccine effectiveness against hospitalization, including among older adults, wasn’t yet known.” This is in part because not enough time has passed since the shot was deployed. At the end of the meeting, the panel of scientists concluded that there was “insufficient evidence” available to make a recommendation on whether older adults and those who are immunocompromised need another booster dose at this time. They noted, however, that this can change in the future. But some experts think that federal health agencies should at least authorize the additional booster dose so that people have the option to choose for themselves — especially because community transmission continues to be high in many areas of the country, according to CDC data. At an expert briefing on COVID-19 vaccines recently held by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Dr. William Moss, who is a professor in the departments of epidemiology, international health as well as molecular microbiology and immunology at that institution, told Yahoo News that authorizing another bivalent booster shot for vulnerable populations would be a sensible idea.
“Officially there’s not a recommendation yet for an additional booster dose for those individuals, but based on what we’ve been saying I think that would be quite reasonable in vulnerable populations, for whom the last booster was sometime ago,” Moss said. “There would have been some waning protective immunity, certainly against mild and perhaps moderate disease. There’s no right answer. It’s also going to depend on the level of community transmission, but I would say that would be a reasonable consideration,” he added. Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist and a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said it’s understandable that those who are older or immunocompromised feel anxious about not knowing when they can receive another bivalent booster. But she said some studies have shown that the initial doses of the vaccines are still doing a good job at protecting them against severe disease. In addition, she said the COVID antiviral pill Paxlovid continued to be an important tool for those in high-risk groups who catch the virus.
“I would say that the original doses of the vaccines you received seem to be working very well and I would not worry about needing another dose before the fall, based on the level of evidence that we have,” Gandhi said. end copy and paste text
Monday, March 06, 2023
Bad news this Monday--massive fire at Kutapaling? world's largest refugee camp--for Rohingya
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-64858932
Find out how to donate through Red Cross-Red Crescent.
3-6-2023
Sunday, March 05, 2023
Safety and consent--sex scenes in movies--Intimacy Directors --also for body doubles. If we can protect animals, we can protect humans.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/02/business/intimacy-coordinator-sex-scenes-film-jessica-steinrock.html
Many models, many women have complained, and opened rape cases,e.g.against Trump and Weinstein.
We need to fight the whore or madonna complex.
I don't like K-drama (S Korean) too much.
3-5-2023
Saturday, March 04, 2023
Black Escalade with tinted windows by Marianne Villaneuva
https://www.wcwonline.org/Women-=-Books-Blog-Archive/burma-and-western
Marianne has given me permission to write abt "our time" when her mother, a concert pianist came to the Berlin Conference with the Philppine ambassador to Germany and took her out to dinner.
We were very concerned.
Marianne had written about the gang rape of a a beauty queen, Mayor of the Roses; 42 difft semen samples were detected during the autopsy.
The boyfriend was framed and blamed.
The woman ambassador said "These things don't happen in Philippines."
My friend came back fr the dinner OK.
We also saw the Holocaust Memorial. We stayed in a beautiful hotel on the River Spree "Spray".
Like all such meets it was harrowing as well as enervating.
It was good to meet others such as Thai writer Rattawut and Vietnamese- Amercan poet Linh Dinh.
Well, none of us stood by and did nothing.
KMKaung
3-4-2023
revered monk falls from grace --sitagu--copied and pasted from Myanmar Now--
https://myanmar-now.org/en/news/in-myanmar-a-once-revered-monk-falls-from-the-peoples-grace
Preaching paranoia
A decade later, however, this image began to unravel. In May 2017, he delivered a sermon to an audience of military family members that appeared to condone the killing of non-Buddhists. Coming at a time when the army was facing accusations of genocide for its attacks on Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State, this was seen by some observers as not just a deviation from the loving-kindness preached by the Buddha, but as an act of complicity in crimes against humanity.
As jarring as this was to many, it did not come as a great surprise to those who have followed Nyanissara’s career in recent years. It was certainly not the first time he had expressed antipathy towards Muslims. Over the years, he turned increasingly to the theme of the dominance of Islam in countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Malaysia, where Buddhism had once flourished. While doing so, he often projected an image of himself as the protector of the faith followed by the majority of Myanmar citizens, even though Buddhism has no place for religious leaders who occupy such a role. Monks are meant to set an example for those who seek to achieve liberation by overcoming their own mental shackles—not by lashing out at external enemies, real or imagined.
6._ashin_nyanissara_mah.jpeg
Ashin Nyanissara and Min Aung Hlaing at a ceremony in 2020 (Myanmar Now)
Interestingly, it was after Myanmar began to open up to the outside world just over a decade ago that Nyanissara’s preoccupation with Islam became more pronounced. Perhaps this was because the military-orchestrated transition to a quasi-democracy that started in 2010 didn’t just usher in limited political rights; it also showed signs of eroding respect for traditional power hierarchies, including that of the Buddhist monastic order.
While monks still had a moral authority that the military had long since lost, some began to feel that their influence was waning as society changed. New forces were coming into play—everything from party politics and civil society to a free press and social media. While many may have adjusted well to this new reality, others saw it as more of a threat. This was particularly true of certain senior monks who feared that in the long run, they would lose the ability to collect the donations that they wielded to great effect to enhance their own prestige.
It was in this context that a new Buddhist nationalist movement, calling for the protection of “race and religion,” emerged. The most notorious embodiment of this reactionary force was the Patriotic Association of Myanmar—better known by its Burmese acronym, Ma Ba Tha—of which Nyanissara was a founding member and vice chair.
Although he later distanced himself from Ma Ba Tha as it came to be dominated by more extreme figures like Wirathu—the monk who spearheaded the anti-Muslim 969 Movement—Nyanissara was clearly on board with its central message. He demonstrated this in July 2013, around six months before the group was formally established, when he addressed a major gathering of monks in Yangon and stoked their growing paranoia by speaking of how ancient Buddhist pagodas had been torn down in the city’s centre to make way for mosques. facogq8_12_20200828_135328_9834620.jpg Min Aung Hlaing and Ashin Nyanissara attend an inauguration ceremony for a 17-metre-tall Buddha statue in Naypyitaw in 2020 (Senior General Min Aung Hlaing website) An unholy alliance As I noted in my reporting at the time, that event was also widely attended by members of the then-governing Union Solidarity Party (USDP). Two years later, the military proxy party was soundly defeated by the National League for Democracy (NLD), led by Aung San Suu Kyi. And it was at that point that Nyanissara—who until then had avoided being too closely associated with the military—began to forge a new relationship with Myanmar’s top general.
As the country geared up for its next election in 2020, Nyanissara worked hand in hand with Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, the commander in chief of the armed forces, to burnish his image as a devout Buddhist. In 2019, they joined forces to oversee the construction of a giant, 17-metre-tall statue of the Buddha in Naypyitaw. And in February of the following year, Nyanissara organised a ceremony to confer the lengthy title of Agga Maha Mangala Dhammajoti Daja—meaning “great and noble protector of the Dhamma”—on the man whose orders had resulted in the expulsion of nearly a million Rohingya into neighbouring Bangladesh. During that ceremony, held at the headquarters of the Yangon Regional Military Command, Nyanissara sat next to Tiloka Bhivamsa, the head of Ma Ba Tha, which by then had been banned by the NLD-led government. Meanwhile, Kumara Bhivamsa, the chief monk of the State Sangha Mahanayaka—the state-sanctioned monastic association—officiated, completing a sort of triumvirate of high-ranking monks dedicated to upholding the status quo. jhmsllg_4_20200209_025109_2863714.jpg Min Aung Hlaing, third from left, offers alms to Ashin Nyanissara, second from left, and Tiloka Bhivamsa, the head of Ma Ba Tha, at a ceremony in February 2020 (Senior General Min Aung Hlaing website) After the election, Nyanissara echoed the military’s claims that there were doubts about the outcome, based on allegations that it had been rigged in favour of the NLD. Speaking to hundreds of his followers on November 16, 2020, he even made his own contribution to these unfounded conspiracy theories, claiming that a mysterious box containing 40,000 ballots had appeared out of nowhere at a polling station in Yangon.
Despite his increasingly blatant embrace of the military, however, Nyanissara remained a widely respected and even revered figure. Privately, though, some had begun to express misgivings about his charitable work, to which he dedicated much of his time and energy. His fundraising activities took him around the world, into Myanmar diaspora communities that donated huge sums of money to support his many projects. During these tours, he would stay in luxury hotels rather than local Buddhist monasteries. One follower told me that on a trip to Melbourne, Australia, about a decade ago, Nyanissara bought an expensive camera for his personal use without even bothering to check the price. Such reports of his free-spending ways were common, but rarely reached the ears of devotees back home in Myanmar, where few dared to openly criticise him. 5.ashin_nyanissara.jpg Ashin Nyanissara in 2019 (Myanmar Now) The last straw But all that changed after the military overthrew the elected NLD government on February 1, 2021. Many were appalled when, at a ceremony held a month and a half later to mark the birthday of Ma Ba Tha head Tiloka Bhivamsa, Nyanissara endorsed the coup regime by saying that it had shown moral integrity and great devotion to the Buddhist faith. By continuing to back Min Aung Hlaing—even travelling with him to Russia last year for the opening of a Buddhist temple—Nyanissara has outraged many who once held him in the highest esteem. When, at an Armed Forces Day ceremony held less than two months after the coup, Myanmar’s new dictator seized on the monk’s praise to congratulate himself for his role in ridding Myanmar of “bad kalars”—using a derogatory term for people of Indian descent to refer to the Rohingya—it left an especially bitter taste in many people’s mouths. For it was on that day—March 27, 2021—that Min Aung Hlaing escalated his attacks on civilians opposed to his rule, killing hundreds around the country. letyetkone.jpg \ Buddha statues inside a religious building hit by a junta air strike in Letyetkone, in Sagaing Region’s Depayin Township, in September 2022 (Myanmar Now)
Since then, the regime has murdered thousands more. In Sagaing Region, where Nyanissara’s following has always been especially strong, junta troops torch entire villages on an almost daily basis. Countless civilians have died in these attacks, designed to terrorise them into submission. Around the country, more than a million have been displaced by the regime’s predations. And yet, nearly two full years into Myanmar’s coup-induced catastrophe, support for the resistance movement remains solid. Against this backdrop, Nyanissara’s fall from grace is the least of the country’s worries. But it still stands as a cautionary tale to those who place their faith in religious leaders who lose sight of the fact that the real struggle is one waged within. Only when it has slain its own demons will Myanmar cease to be a nation at war with itself. Ashin Nyanissara Sitagu Sayadaw Buddhism Swe Win Swe Win is the Editor-in-Chief of Myanmar Now. Related Artic
Warning graphic –junta victims’ remains found dismembered, disemboweled. Beyond human rights abuses, abuse of corpse.
https://myanmar-now.org/en/news/junta-hostages-found-tortured-executed-in-sagaing
and some people are venerating "monks" who condoned this.
People should read about the Tamil genocide, there are many videos.
These are "fake news?"
Likewise you should read about the Cambodian genocide.
I've seen Auschwitz, I've seen Majdanek--those weren't fake either.
Be careful who you place on a pedestal.
3-4-2023
Friday, March 03, 2023
People I used to talk about in my classes in Burma--Edward Jenner
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20220213-britains-miraculous-life-saving-garden-shed
My mother caught smallpox as an infant and was forever scarred physically and mentally. Her elder sister died. Vaccination had been invented but had not reached Burma in 1910.
km
3-3-2023
The World According to Garp --by John Irving
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_According_to_Garp
He never knew his biological father.
He told his mother, "If you don't tell me, I will invent him."
She said,"Go ahead dear."
3-3-2023
Thursday, March 02, 2023
Narnia and Lord of the Rings
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/28/travel/cs-lewis-oxford-narnia.html
C S Lewis and JRR Tolkein had a great writing group going.
km
3-2-2023
Re-reading Martin Sixsmith The Litvenenko File
https://www.amazon.com/Litvinenko-File-Martin-Sixsmith/dp/0330454137
Very well written but refuses to assign blame, except to FSB.
3-2-2023
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