From 2 new Burma/Myanmar experts--from Jan. Burma requires new mandala system--

https://www.irrawaddy.com/opinion/guest-column/beyond-operation-1027-a-new-mandala-order-needed-in-myanmar.html

A mandala or mandala power system is power radiating out from the center-with no exact boundary lines--like traditional/feudal city states--

vs nation states as we know them since the 19th century.

A mandala system/model would reflect better conditions on the ground--

plus--see today's Irrawaddy--Thai ask for UWSA to withdraw from Thai territory near Tachilek

TNLA asking for peace talks.

Burma is rapidly sliding into Balkanization with warlords everywhere--which my late pol. sci advisor Henry Teune predicted would happen (in the world)--

Teune was a systems expert, as I am now--not a "Burma expert."

I went to find him as my dissertatin chairman around 1987 when I was starting preparing for my Comps or Comprehensive exams--which I did in 1987 after my son, an engineering student, joined me in Philadelphia.

In the City Planning department at Penn where I was, registered Ph.D.candidates looked for their own advisors, and designed their own field exams so there were a total of 4 advisors and 3 field exams. different but connected to the dissertation topic.

Mine were:

Ph.D.Chair--Herbert Levine--Soviet expert.

Dissertation chair--Henry Teune.

Burma Chair--Donald E Smith

India Chair --an India expert from Wharton School of Business

Department Chair--Planning Theory--Seymour Mandelbaum.

External Examiner--Josef Silverstein--Burma expert.

Each one of these professors mentored me well. Thank you.

I studied authoritarian systems, command economies, Soviet Eco.Planning, Indian Eco.Planning, Eco. problems of Maoist China, Deng Xioaping Reforms and more--

So I am really a Political Economist and a Systems Expert--not a "Burma area specialist"

a cardboard box I resent being pushed into.

and I am also a novelist, sometime writer of non-fiction, and a poet.

Don't typecast me, I hate it.

Kyi May Kaung

These days I sign myself, at least in fiction--"Land of the Free and the Brave"--which could be anywhere.

11-26-2024