ဝက္တုပ္ေကြး ေရာဂါသည္ မ်ဳိး႐ိုးဗီဇ ၄ မ်ဳိး ေပါင္းစပ္၍ ျဖစ္ေပၚလာေသာ ဗိုင္းရပ္စ္ပိုးသစ္ ျဖစ္သည္။ ပထမအသုတ္ ေဆးထုတ္လုပ္ရန္အတြက္ ၆ လခန္႔ အခ်ိန္ယူရမည္ျဖစ္ၿပီး၊ ပမာဏမ်ားမ်ားအတြက္ ယခုထက္ အခ်ိန္ ပိုယူရမည္ ျဖစ္သည္။ ဤေရာဂါသည္ ေရာဂါျဖစ္ပြားေသာ ဝက္ကို ထိေတြ႔ကိုင္တြယ္မိရာက ကူးစက္ျခင္းျဖစ္ကာ လူမွ လူသို႔ ကူးစက္ႏိုင္ေသာ ေရာဂါျဖစ္သျဖင့္ ဆားစ္အဆုတ္ေရာဂါကဲ့သို႔ပင္ လ်င္ျမန္စြာ ကူးစက္ပြားမႈ ျဖစ္ေနသည္။ ဧၿပီလ ၁၃ ရက္ေန႔က စတင္ျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့ေသာ မကၠဆီကို ႏိုင္ငံတြင္ ဤတုပ္ေကြးေၾကာင့္ လူ ၂ဝ အသက္ ဆံုး႐ံႈးရသည္ကိုသာ အတည္ျပဳႏိုင္ေသာ္လည္း စုစုေပါင္း ၁၄၉ ဦး အသက္ဆံုးရႈံးခဲ့ရၿပီး ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း အေစာပိုင္းက ေၾကညာခဲ့သည္။ ေသဆံုးသူမ်ားမွာ အသက္ ၂ဝ ႏွစ္မွ ၅ဝ ႏွစ္ၾကား ျဖစ္ၾကသည္။

- အျခား ႏိုင္ငံအခ်ဳိ႕တြင္လည္း ေရာဂါျဖစ္ပြားသူမ်ား ေတြ႔လာေနရသည္။ ကမၻာ့က်န္းမာေရး အဖြဲ႔ၾကီးက ဤေရာဂါႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္၍ အဆင့္ ၄ အဆင့္ဟု ေၾကညာထားရာ လူမွ လူသို႔ ကူးစက္မႈ ျဖစ္ပြားႏိုင္ၿပီး လူမႈ အဖြဲ႔အစည္းအတြင္း ကပ္ေဘးအႏၲရာယ္ ျဖစ္လာႏိုင္သည္ဟု ဆိုျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။

ဝက္တုပ္ေကြး၏ လကၡဏာမ်ား

- ကိုယ္ပူျခင္း၊ ႏွာရည္ယိုျခင္း၊ ႏွာေစးေခ်ာင္းဆိုးျခင္း၊ ကိုယ္လက္ မအီမသာျဖစ္၍ ကိုက္ခဲျခင္း၊ ေခါင္းကိုက္ျခင္း၊ ပင္ပန္းႏြမ္းနယ္ျခင္း၊ အသက္ရႉၾကပ္ျခင္းတို႔ ျဖစ္သည္။

ေရွာင္ရန္

အထက္ပါ ေရာဂါလကၡဏာျဖစ္လွ်င္ မိမိေနအိမ္တြင္သာ အနားယူရန္၊ လိုအပ္လွ်င္ ေဆး႐ံု၊ ေဆးခန္းသို႔ ျပသ၍ ကုသမႈခံယူရန္၊ အဖ်ားၾကီးျခင္း၊ ေခ်ာင္းဆိုးၾကာရွည္ျခင္း၊ အသက္ရႉ ခက္ခဲ၍ ေမာပန္းျခင္း စသည့္ ျပင္းထန္ေသာ ေရာဂါလကၡဏာမ်ား ခံစားရလွ်င္ ေဆး႐ံု၊ ေဆးခန္းသို႔ ျပသရန္ လိုအပ္သည္။

လူတိုင္းလုိက္နာ ေဆာင္ရြက္သင့္သည္မွာ -

(၁) ႏွာေခ် ေခ်ာင္းဆိုးလွ်င္ လက္ကိုင္ပုဝါျဖင့္ ဖံုးအုပ္ျခင္း

(၂) လက္ကို ဆပ္ျပာျဖင့္ စင္ၾကယ္စြာ ေဆးေၾကာျခင္း

(၃) တကိုယ္ေရသန္႔ရွင္းမႈ ဂ႐ုျပဳ ေဆာင္ရြက္ျခင္း

(၄) ေကာင္းစြာ အိပ္စက္အနားယူျခင္း

(၅) အာဟာရ ျပည့္ဝသည့္ အစားအစာမ်ား စားသံုးျခင္း

(၆) ကိုယ္လက္လႈပ္ရွားမႈ မွန္မွန္ ျပဳလုပ္ျခင္း

(၇) ေလေကာင္းေလသန္႔ ရရွိေအာင္ ေဆာင္ရြက္ေနထိုင္ျခင္း

တုပ္ေကြးေရာဂါ ျဖစ္ပြားသည္ဟု သံသယရွိသူမ်ားႏွင့္ ျပဳစုေစာင့္ေရွာက္သူမ်ားသည္ ႏွာေခါင္းစည္းမ်ား တပ္ဆင္ရန္ လိုအပ္သည္။

ဝက္ေမြးျမဴသူမ်ား၊ ေရာင္းဝယ္သူမ်ားႏွင့္ စားသံုးသူမ်ား လိုက္နာရန္

(၁) ဝက္မ်ား၌ ဖ်ားနာသည့္ လကၡဏာမ်ား ေတြ႔ရွိပါက လူႏွင့္ တိုက္႐ိုက္ မထိေစဘဲ လူႏွင့္ အနီးနား၌ မထားဘဲ သီးျခားထားရွိရန္

(၂) ဝက္ၿခံလုပ္ငန္း ေဆာင္ရြက္ၿပီးတိုင္း ေျခ၊ လက္မ်ား စနစ္တက် စင္ၾကယ္စြာ ေဆးေၾကာရန္

(၃) ႏွာေခါင္း၊ ပါးစပ္အကာ လက္အိတ္မ်ား အသံုးျပဳကိုင္တြယ္သြားရန္

(၄) မက်န္းမာေသာ ဝက္မ်ားအား ေစ်းကြက္သို႔ ေရာင္းခ်ျခင္း မျပဳရန္

(၅) မူရင္းဇစ္ျမစ္မသိေသာ ဝက္မ်ားကို ေရာင္းခ်ျခင္း မျပဳရန္၊ အထူးသျဖင့္ နယ္စပ္ျဖတ္ေက်ာ္၍ ဝင္ေရာက္လာေသာ ဝက္မ်ားကို ဝယ္ယူေရာင္းခ်ျခင္း မျပဳရန္

(၆) ဝက္သားႏွင့္ ဝက္သားထြက္ ပစၥည္းမ်ားကို ခ်က္ျပဳတ္စားေသာက္လိုလွ်င္ အပူခ်ိန္ ၇ဝံ င အထက္ ခ်က္ျပဳတ္စားေသာက္ရန္
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ကမၻာ့ႏိုင္ငံမ်ားသို ့ ျပန္ ့ႏွံ ့ႏိုင္တဲ့ စိုးရိမ္ဖြယ္ ၀က္တုပ္ေကြးေရာဂါ
(Swine Flu) အေႀကာင္း သိရွိေစရန္ ေဖၚျပအပ္ပါတယ္။

Swine Flu ဆိုတာ ဘာလည္း။

Swine Flu ဟာ ၀က္ေတြမွာျဖစ္တဲ့ Influenza ဗိုင္းရပ္စ္အမ်ဳိးအစား A H1N1 virus
အမ်ဳိးအစားေႀကာင့္ျဖစ္တဲ့ အသက္ရွဴလမ္းေႀကာင္းပိုင္းဆိုင္
ရာေရာဂါ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
လူေတြအေနနဲ ့ ၀က္ေတြကေန တိုက္ရိုက္ကူးစက္ဖို ့ခဲယွဥ္းေပမယ့္
ဒီေရာဂါပိုးရထားတဲ့သူကေနတစ္ဆင့္ အျခားသူတစ္ဦးကို ကူးစက္ႏိုင္ပါတယ္။

Swine Flu ျဖစ္ရင္ ဘယ္လို ေရာဂါလကၡဏာေတြ ေတြ ့ျမင္ရႏိုင္ပါသလည္း။

Swine Flu ျဖစ္တဲ့သူမွာ အပူခ်ိန္အဖ်ားတက္ျခင္း၊ ေခ်ာင္းဆိုးျခင္း၊
လည္ေခ်ာင္းနာျခင္း၊ ခႏၵာကိုယ္ကိုက္ခဲျခင္း၊ ေခါင္းကိုက္ျခင္း၊ ခ်မ္းတုန္းျခင္း၊
ေမာပန္းျခင္းတို ့ ျဖစ္ေလ့ရွိပါတယ္။ အခ်ဳိ ့ေသာသူေတြမွာ ၀မ္းေလွ်ာျခင္း၊
အန္ျခင္းတို ့လည္း ျဖစ္တတ္ပါတယ္။ စိုးရိမ္ဖို ့အေနနဲ ့ကေတာ့ အဆုတ္ေရာင္ျခင္းနဲ
့ အသက္ရွဴလမ္းေႀကာင္းပိတ္ဆို ့ျပီး အသက္ဆုံးရွဳံးႏိုင္ပါတယ္။

Swine Flu ဟာ ကူးစက္ေရာဂါ ျဖစ္ပါသလား။

Swine Flu ဟာ လူတစ္ဦးကေနတစ္ဦးထံ ကူးစက္ႏိုင္ပါတယ္။ အထူးသျဖင့္
ေခ်ာင္းဆိုးျခင္းႏွင့္ ႏွာေခ်ျခင္းမွ ကူးစက္ႏိုင္ပါတယ္။ ထို ့အျပင္ Swine Flu
ေရာဂါရရွိထားသူ၏ ႏွာေခါင္း၊ ပါးစပ္၊ ႏွာေခါင္းနဲ ့ တံေထြးမ်ားမွာ Swine Flu
ဗိုင္းရပ္စ္ပိုး တြယ္ကပ္ေနႏိုင္တာေႀကာင့္ အဆိုပါေနရာမ်ားကို ထိေတြ ့မိပါကလည္း
ကူးစက္ႏိုင္ပါတယ္။

Swine Flu ကို ဘယ္လိုကာကြယ္တားဆီးမလည္း။

ကာကြယ္တားဆီရန္ ႀကဳိတင္ျပဳလုပ္ထားသင့္သည္မ်ားမွာ အသက္ရွဴလမ္းေႀကာင္းမွ
မ၀င္ေရာက္ေစရန္ ႏွာေခါင္းနဲ ့ ပါးစပ္အား ကာကြယ္ထားေပးေသာ ပါးစပ္ဖုံး
ႏွာေခါင္းအုပ္မ်ားအား ၀တ္ဆင္ထားသင့္ပါတယ္။ လက္အား တစ္ခုခုကိုင္တြယ္ျပီးပါက
မႀကာခဏ ဆပ္ျပာျဖင့္ ေဆးေႀကာသန္ ့ရွင္းရပါမယ္။ ကိုယ္ခႏၶာက်န္းမာေရး
အားေကာင္းျပည့္စုံေနေစရန္ ဂရုစိုက္ဖို ့လိုပါတယ္။ အိပ္စက္အနားယူခ်ိန္
ျပည့္ျပည့္၀၀ရရန္ လိုပါတယ္။ စိတ္ဓါတ္က်ဆင္းမွဳနဲ ့ အားနည္းေစမွဳမ်ားကို
ေရွာင္ရွားရန္ လိုပါတယ္။ ေရ ၀၀လင္လင္ ေသာက္သုံးရန္ လိုပါတယ္။ အာဟာရျပည့္စုံေသာ
အစားအေသာက္မ်ား စားသုံးရန္ လိုအပ္ပါတယ္။

Swine Flu ရရွိထားသူ ေနမေကာင္းသူမ်ားအေနနဲ ့ လိုက္နာသင့္တာေတြက ဘာပါလည္း။

မိမိထံမွ Swine Flu ဗိုင္းရပ္စ္ပိုး အျခားသူထံ မကူးစက္ေစရန္ ကာကြယ္မွဳ
ျပဳလုပ္ေပးသင့္ပါတယ္။ မိမိေခ်ာင္းဆိုး ႏွာေခ်တဲ့အခါမွာ လက္ကိုင္ပု၀ါသန္ ့သန္ ့
(သို ့) စကၠဴတစ္ရွဴးမ်ားနဲ ့ ကာကြယ္ျပီးမွ ေခ်ာင္းဆိုးသင့္ ႏွာေခ်သင့္ပါတယ္။
မိမိရဲ ့ မ်က္စိ ႏွာေခါင္း ပါးစပ္တို ့ကို ေရာဂါပိုး ကပ္တြယ္ေနႏိုင္ေသာ
လက္ျဖင့္ ကိုင္တြယ္ျခင္း မျပဳလုပ္သင့္ပါဖူး။ မိမိရဲ ့ လက္ကို မႀကာခဏ
ဆပ္ျပာျဖင့္ ေဆးေႀကာသန္ ့စင္ရပါမယ္။ မိမိ ေခ်ာင္းဆိုး ႏွာေျခရာတြင္ သုံးေသာ
စြန္ ့ပစ္ပစၥည္းမ်ားကို စနစ္တက် သိမ္းဆည္းသင့္ပါတယ္။ မိမိ ေနထိုင္မေကာင္းပါက
လူအမ်ားရွိေသာ ေနရာမ်ား ျဖစ္တဲ ့ေစ်း၊ ေက်ာင္း အလုပ္တို ့ကို သြားေရာက္ျခင္းမွ
ေရွာင္သင့္ပါတယ္။

ဒီ Swine Flu ျဖစ္သူမ်ားအေနနဲ ့ ဘယ္လို အေျခအေနမ်ဳိးမွာ ဆရာ၀န္ႏွင့္ အျမန္ေတြ
့သင့္ပါသလည္း။

Swine Flu ေႀကာင့္ ေနမေကာင္းျဖစ္ျပီဆိုကတည္းက ဆရာ၀န္မ်ား၏ ကုသမွဳကို
ခံယူသင့္ပါတယ္။ အေရးေပၚအေနနဲ ့ ေအာက္ေဖၚျပပါ လကၡဏာမ်ားကို ေတြ ့ရွိရပါက
လ်င္ျမန္စြာ ေဆးရုံေဆးခန္းမ်ားသို ့ သြားသင့္ပါတယ္။

- အထူးသျဖင့္ Swine flu ျဖစ္ေနသူ ကေလးမ်ားအေနနဲ ့ အသက္ရွဴႏွဳန္း
အလြန္ျပင္းထန္လာျခင္း၊ အသက္ရွဴခက္ခဲျခင္း၊ အသားအေရ ျပာေယာင္သမ္းလာျခင္း၊
ေရလုံး၀ မေသာက္ျခင္း၊ အိပ္ေမာက်ေနကာ ႏိုး၍လွဳပ္၍ မရျခင္း၊
ေခ်ာင္းတအားဆိုးျခင္းႏွင့္ ကိုယ္ပူခ်ိန္အဖ်ားႀကီးျခင္း။

- Swine flu ျဖစ္ေနသူ လူႀကီးမ်ားအေနျဖင့္ အသက္ရွဴခက္ခဲျခင္း၊ အသက္ရွဴရာတြင္
နာက်င္ျခင္း၊ ရင္ဘတ္ႏွင့္ ၀မ္းဗိုက္တြင္ နာက်င္ျခင္း၊ ရုတ္တရက္ မူးေ၀ျခင္း၊
အျမင္ေ၀၀ါးျခင္း၊ အဆက္မျပတ္အန္ျခင္းတို ့ ျဖစ္ပါက ေဆးရုံေဆးခန္းသို ့
အျမန္သြားေရာက္ ျပသသင့္ပါတယ္။

Swine Flu ကို ၀က္သားစားျခင္းႏွင့္ ၀က္မွ ထုတ္လုပ္ေသာ အစားအေသာက္မ်ားေႀကာင့္
ကူးစက္ႏိုင္ပါသလား။

၀က္သားအပါအ၀င္ မည္သည့္အစားအေသာက္ကမွ Swine flu မကူးစက္ႏိုင္ပါ။ သို ့ေသာ္ Swine
flu ျဖစ္ေနေသာ ၀က္မ်ားအား ထိေတြ ့ကိုင္တြယ္ျခင္းကိုမူ ေရွာင္ရွားရပါမည္။

Swine Flu ျဖစ္ရင္ မည္သည့္ေဆး၀ါးသုံးစြဲသင့္ပါသလည္း။

အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စု ကူးစက္ေရာဂါျပန္ ့ပြားမွဳထိန္းခ်ဴပ္ေရးဌာနမွ
ကြ်မ္းက်င္သူဆရာ၀န္မ်ားကေျပာတာကေတာ့ Tamiflu နဲ ့ Relenza ေဆးမ်ားဟာ Swine Flu
ကာကြယ္ကုသဖို ့အတြက္ အသုံးျပဳႏိုင္တယ္လို ့ မွတ္ခ်က္ေပးပါတယ္။

Swine Flu ျဖစ္တဲ့ ေနာက္ဆုံးအေျခအေန ဘယ္လိုရွိပါသလည္း။

ဒီ Swine Flu ေရာဂါျဖစ္ပြားသူ - အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စုမွာ မေန ့ကထိ စုစုေပါင္း
(အေယာက္ ၂၀)၊ ကေနဒါမွာ (၆) ေယာက္၊ မက္ဆီကိုမွာ အေယာက္ (၁၃၈၄) ဦး - ေသဆုံးသူ
(၈၁) ဦးတို ့ျဖစ္ျပီး၊ ေရာဂါသံသယရွိဖြယ္ေတြ ့ရွိမွွဳမွာ ျပင္သစ္မွာ (၁) ဦး၊
အစၥေရးမွာ (၁) ဦး၊ နယူးဇီလန္မွာ (၁၀) ဦး၊ စပိန္မွာ (၇) ဦးတို ့ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
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Swine တုပ္ေကြး ဥေရာပတိုက္သို႔ပါ ျပန္႔နွံ႔လာ

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ဝက္မ်ားတြင္သာ ျဖစ္ပြားတတ္ေသာ Swine တုပ္ေကြးတစ္မ်ဳိးသည္ လူမ်ားကိုပါ ကူးစက္လ်က္ရိွရာ အဓိကျဖစ္ပြားသည့္ မကၠဆီကိုႏိုင္ငံတြင္ ေသဆံုးသူ ၁၀၃ ေယာက္ထက္မနည္း ရိွလာေနၿပီး အေမရိကန္၊ ကေနဒါတို႔တြင္သာမက တိုက္ခ်င္းျခားလ်က္ရိွေသာ ဥေရာပတိုက္ စပိန္ႏိုင္ငံတြင္ပါ ျဖစ္ပြားလာေနသည္ဟု သတင္းမ်ားအရ သိရသည္။

မကၠဆီကို ႏိုင္ငံႏွင့္ အေမရိကတုိက္တြင္ ျဖစ္ပြားေနေသာ Swine တုပ္ေကြးေရာဂါ ခံစားေနရသူတစ္ဦးကို စပိန္ႏိုင္ငံတြင္ ေတြ႔ရိွခဲ့ၿပီးေနာက္ ဥေရာပႏွင့္ အာရွေဒသမ်ားအတြက္ပါ စိုးရိမ္စရာျဖစ္လာခဲ့ၿပီး သက္ဆိုင္ရာ အစိုးရမ်ားႏွင့္ အဖြဲ႔အစည္းမ်ားက ၾကိဳတင္ကာကြယ္မႈမ်ား ျပဳလုပ္ၾကရန္ ႏႈိးေဆာ္လ်က္ရိွသည္။ Swine တုပ္ေကြးေၾကာင့္ မကၠဆီကို တစ္ႏိုင္ငံတည္းတြင္ ေသဆံုးသူ ၁၀၃ ဦးရိွၿပီျဖစ္ၿပီး သံသယရိွဖြယ္ရာ ဖ်ားနာေနသူ ၁၆၀၄ ဦးရိွသည္ဟု မကၠဆီကို က်န္းမာေရးဌာနက သတင္းထုတ္ျပန္သည္။ အေမရိကန္ႏိုင္ငံ၏ ျပည္နယ္ ၅ ခုတြင္လည္း ေရာဂါျဖစ္ပြားေနသူ ၂၀ ဦးရိွသည္ဟု ေရာဂါထိန္းခ်ဳပ္ေရးအဖြဲ႔က ေၾကညာခဲ့ျပီး ကေနဒါႏိုင္ငံတြင္ ၆ ဦးရိွသည္ဟု သိရသည္။ စပိန္ႏိုင္ငံတြင္ ေတြ႔ရိွရသည့္ ေရာဂါကူးစက္ခံ အမ်ဳိးသားမွာ မကၠဆီကိုမွ ျပန္လာသူျဖစ္သည္ဟု ဆိုသည္။

ဥေရာပသမဂၢက ဥေရာပ က်န္းမာေရးဝန္ၾကီးမ်ား အေရးေပၚ အစည္းအေဝးဆင့္ေခၚခဲ့ၿပီး ေရာဂါကူးစက္လာမႈ တားဆီးရန္ ေဆြးေႏြးမႈမ်ား အပူတျပင္း ျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့ၾကသည္။ အေမရိကန္ သမၼတ အိုဘားမားကလည္း အခ်ိန္မဆိုင္းဘဲ အထိေရာက္ဆံုး ကာကြယ္ကုသသြားရန္ တိုက္တြန္းလိုက္သည္။ အေမရိကန္တြင္ တနဂၤေႏြေန႔ကတည္းက က်န္းမာေရး အေရးေပၚ အေျခအေနအျဖစ္ ေၾကညာထားၿပီးျဖစ္သည္။ ကမာၻ႔က်န္းမာေရးအဖြဲ႔ၾကီး (W.H.O) ကလည္း ကမာၻအႏွံ႔ျပန္႔ႏွံ႔ ထိခိုက္ႏိုင္သည့္ တုပ္ေကြးအျဖစ္ အထူးသတိေပးလ်က္ရိွသည္။ မကၠဆီကိုႏိုင္ငံတြင္ ေရာဂါကူးစက္မႈအတြက္ လူထူထပ္ေသာ ေနရာမ်ားကို ေရွာင္ၾကဥ္ၾကရန္ သတိေပးၿပီးေနာက္ လမ္းမမ်ားတြင္ ေျခာက္ကပ္လ်က္ရိွသည္။ မကၠဆီကိုတြင္ တနဂၤေႏြက က်င္းပသြားေသာ ေဘာလံုးပြဲကိုလည္း ပရိသတ္ၾကည့္ခြင့္ မေပးခဲ့ဘဲ ကြင္းပိတ္ကစားသြားခဲ့သည္။ ထိုင္း၊ အင္ဒိုနီးရွား၊ တရုတ္ႏွင့္ ရုရွားႏိုင္ငံတို႔က မကၠဆီကို၊ အေမရိကန္ႏွင့္ အေမရိကႏိုင္ငံမ်ားမွ ဝက္သားမ်ား တင္သြင္းျခင္းကို ယာယီပိတ္ပင္ထားလိုက္သည္။ ထိုႏိုင္ငံမ်ားမွ ျပန္လာသူမ်ားကိုလည္း ေလဆိပ္တြင္ က်န္းမာေရးစစ္ေဆးျခင္းကို ကမာၻ႔ႏိုင္ငံ အမ်ားအျပားတြင္ ျပဳလုပ္လ်က္ရိွသည္။ ေရာဂါကူးစက္လ်က္ရိွေသာ ႏိုင္ငံမ်ားႏွင့္ နီးစပ္ရာႏိုင္ငံမ်ားတြင္ လမ္းသြားပါက ပါးစပ္ႏွင့္ ႏွာေခါင္းကို ကာကြယ္သည့္ မ်က္ႏွာဖံုးမ်ား တပ္ဆင္ၾကရန္ သတိေပးထားသည္။ ဖိလစ္ပိုင္ႏိုင္ငံတြင္ ျပည္သူမ်ားကို အခ်င္းခ်င္း ဖက္ျခင္း၊ နမ္းရႈံ႕ျခင္း မျပဳလုပ္ၾကရန္ သတိေပးထားသည္ဟု ေဒသဆိုင္ရာ AFP သတင္းတစ္ပုဒ္တြင္ ပါရိွသည္။

Swine တုပ္ေကြးသည္ မတ္လမွ စတင္၍ မကၠဆီကို ႏိုင္ငံတြင္ ျဖစ္ပြားေနခဲ့ကာ လူမ်ားကို ကူးစက္လ်က္ရိွၿပီး လ်င္ျမန္စြာ ျပန္႔ပြားေနေၾကာင္း ယခုလ ၂၃ ရက္ေန႔တြင္ ေၾကညာခဲ့သည္။ ေရာဂါခံစားရသူသည္ အဖ်ားၾကီးျခင္း၊ ေခ်ာင္းဆိုးျခင္း၊ ေခါင္းမူးေခါင္းကိုက္ျခင္းမ်ား ခံစားရသည္ဟု သိရသည္။ အဆိုပါတုပ္ေကြးသည္ ေခ်ာင္းဆိုးျခင္း၊ ႏွာေခ်ျခင္းမ်ားမွ တဆင့္ ကူးစက္ႏိုင္သည္။

(ေရာဂါလကၡဏာမ်ားကို http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Symptoms_of_swine_flu.svg တြင္ၾကည့္ႏိုင္ပါသည္)

WHO to stop using term 'swine flu' to protect pigs

AP – A traditional Hungarian 'mangalitsa' pig sticks its snout out of the hurdle at a private pig farm in …

By FRANK JORDANS, Associated Press Writer Frank Jordans, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 43 mins ago

GENEVA – The World Health Organization announced Thursday it will would stop using the term "swine flu" to avoid confusion over the danger posed by pigs. The policy shift came a day after Egypt began slaughtering thousands of pigs in a misguided effort to prevent swine flu.

WHO spokesman Dick Thompson said the agriculture industry and the U.N. food agency had expressed concerns that the term "swine flu" was misleading consumers and needlessly causing countries to ban pork products and order the slaughter of pigs.

"Rather than calling this swine flu ... we're going to stick with the technical scientific name H1N1 influenza A," Thompson said.

The swine flu virus originated in pigs, and has genes from human, bird and pig viruses. Scientists don't know exactly how it jumped to humans. In the current outbreak, WHO says the virus is being spread from human to human, not from contact with infected pigs.

Egypt began slaughtering its roughly 300,000 pigs Wednesday even though experts said swine flu is not linked to pigs and not spread by eating pork. Angry farmers protested the government decree.

In Paris, the World Organization for Animal Health said Thursday "there is no evidence of infection in pigs, nor of humans acquiring infection directly from pigs."

Killing pigs "will not help to guard against public or animal health risks" presented by the virus and "is inappropriate," the group said in a statement.

China, Russia, Ukraine and other nations have banned pork exports from Mexico and parts of the United States, blaming swine flu fears.

Most in the Muslim world consider pigs unclean animals and do not eat pork because of religious restrictions. The farmers in Egypt raise the pigs for consumption by the country's Christian minority.

WHO also reported the number of confirmed swine flu cases rose to 257 worldwide Thursday, with cases in Mexico rising to 97 from 26, with seven deaths. The WHO confirmed tally from the United States now stands at 109, with one death.

Other confirmed cases include 34 in Canada, 13 in Spain, eight in Britain, three each in Germany and New Zealand, two in Israel and one each in Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands.

WHO raised the pandemic flu alert to phase 5 on Wednesday, one step away from the highest level indicating a global outbreak. WHO flu chief Keiji Fukuda said Thursday there were no indications in the past day that would prompt the U.N. body to raise the alert further.

To move from pandemic alert level 5 to level 6 means that WHO believes there is evidence of big outbreaks in at least two world regions and a pandemic is under way.

Fukuda said the jump in confirmed cases from Mexico was probably the result of scientists working their way through a backlog of untested samples from suspected cases.

"They are going through several thousands of laboratory specimens right now," he said.

WHO has started distributing its stockpile of 2 million treatments of the antiviral drug Tamiflu to regional offices, which will decide where to send them next.

Many of those drugs will go to developing countries that don't have stockpiles of their own and some will be sent to Mexico, Fukuda said, without providing figures.

My nargic storey "part one"

အခ်ိန္က ၂၀၀၈ခုႏွစ္၊ ေမလ ၂ ရက္ေန႔ ည ၂ နာရီၿဖစ္သည္။ ေမလ ၁၀ ရက္ေန႔မွာေၿဖဆိုရမယ္႔ TOEFL စာေမးပြဲက အရမ္းနီးေနၿပီဆိုေတာ႔ study time ကညတိုင္းသန္းေကာင္ေက်ာ္ေလ႔ရွိသည္။ ဒီညလဲ သန္းေကာင္ေက်ာ္ဦးမယ္ဟုေတြးကာၿပတင္းေပါက္နဲ႔အနီးဆံုးလ်ွပ္စစ္မီးအလင္းေရာင္အေကာင္းဆံုးေနရာကို
စာၾကည္႔ဖို႔ေရြးလိုက္သည္။ အေဖနဲ႔အကိုကေတာ႔ရုပ္ရွင္ၾကည္႔လို႔ေကာင္းေနပံုရၿပီး နွစ္ေယာက္စလံုး ၿငိမ္ခ်က္သားေကာင္းေနၾကသည္။ ဒီလိုနဲ႔ သန္းေခါင္ေက်ာ္ ၂ နာရီေလာက္ၿဖစ္မည္ထင္သည္ ၊ ေလၿပင္းတိုက္သံေတြတၿဖည္းၿဖည္းက်ယ္ေလာင္လာၿပီး က်မစိတ္ထဲမွာလ ဲတမ်ိဴးၾကီးခံစားလာရသည္။ ေၾသာ္ သတိရၿပီ ၊နားစြင္နားဖ်ားၾကားထားတဲ႔ သတင္းအရ ဒီညမုန္တိုင္းရွိမယ္တဲ႔၊ ခါတိုင္းမုန္တိုင္းေတြလိုပဲ ေလအနည္းငယ္တိုက္တာၿဖစ္မွာပါဟု သာမန္ကာရွန္ကာပဲ ေတြးလိုက္ၿပီး စာထဲကိုအာရံုၿပန္စုစည္းလိုက္သည္။ ေလတိုးသံက က်ယ္သထက္ပိုက်ယ္လာေနသည္ ၊ စာေမးပြဲေဇာကပ္ေနတဲ႔အတြက္ သိပ္အာရံုမထားေတာ႔ပဲ အေဖနဲ႔အကို႔ ကိုသာအကဲခတ္သလိုတခ်က္ၾကည္႔မိလိုက္တယ္။ သူတို႔ကေတာ႔ဘာမွမၿဖစ္သလိုပါပဲ၊ ရုပ္ရွင္အေတာ္ေကာင္းေနေသာၾကာင္႔ၿဖစ္မည္။ ပို၍စိတ္ခ်သလိုခံစားလိုက္ရၿပီး စာၿပန္ၾကည္႔ဖ္ို႔ၾကိဳးစားလိုက္သည္။
ခဏအၾကာမွာ၊ၿပတင္းေပါက္ေတြေသခ်ာေသာ႔ခတ္ထားလားစစ္လိုက္ဦးဆိုၿပီးအေဖကလွမ္းေအာ္ေတာ႔ time နဲ႔ practice လုပ္ေနတဲ႔ sample exam မမွီမွာစိုး၍ၿမန္ၿမန္ထစစ္လိုက္တယ္။ ဒီလိုနဲ႔ သန္းေကာင္၂ နာရီခြဲအေက်ာ္ေလာက္မွာေတာ႔ အၿပင္ကေလတိုးသံက စာထဲမွာဆက္ၿပီးအာရံုစိုက္လို႔မရေလာက္ေအာင္ထိ က်ယ္ေလာင္ေသာင္းက်န္းေနၿပီ။ ေဝွ႔ေဝွ႔ၿပီး တိုက္တဲ႔အခါမွာၿဖစ္ေပၚလာတဲ႔ ေၾကာက္ဖို႔ေကာင္းတဲ႔ေလ သံက ကြ်န္မတစ္သက္မွာတစ္ခါမွမၾကားဖူးတဲ႔အသံ။ မင္သက္စြာနဲ႔နားေထာင္ေနရင္းပင္ေက်ာခ်မ္းလာသည္။ ၿပတင္းေပါက္နားမွာဆက္မထိုင္ရဲေတာ႔ပဲ အကိုနဲ႔အေဖၾကားမွာဝင္ထိုင္လိုက္တယ္၊ စာဖတ္တာကိုရပ္ၿပီးေလသံေတြကိုအ႔႔ံၾသစြာနားေထာင္ရင္း ရုတ္တရတ္ဆိုသလို ကြ်န္မစိတ္ထဲမွာ ထူးဆန္းတဲ႔ခံစားခ်က္တခုဝင္လာတယ္။ အခုၿဖစ္ေနတဲ႔အၿဖစ္အပ်က္က တကမာၻလံုးသိေလာက္တဲ႔အထိမ်ား ၿပင္းထန္သြားမလားမသိဘူးဆိုၿပီးလဲေတြးလိုက္မိတယ္။ သက္ၿပင္းတခ်က္ခ် ေခါင္းတခ်က္ရမ္းလိုက္ၿပီ စာၿပန္ၾကည္႔ဖို႔ၾကိဳးစားလိုက္တယ္။ ရုပ္ရွင္ၿပီးလို႔ အကိုနဲ႔အေဖကအိပ္ရာဝင္ဖို႔ၿပင္ေနတဲ႔အခ်ိန္မွာ က်မလဲေနာက္ထပ္ sample တခုကို practice လုပ္ဖို႔ၿပင္ဆင္လိုက္တယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ႔ အေဖဆီက ၾသဇာပါတဲ႔ အမိန္႔ေပးသံကိုၾကားလိုက္ရတယ္၊သြားအိပ္ေတာ႔အရမ္းမိုးခ်ဴပ္ေနၿပီတဲ႔။

ခါတိုင္းဆိုရင္ ဘယ္ေလာက္ပဲဆူညံဆူညံ အိပ္လိုက္တာနဲ႔ ၁၅ မိနစ္အတြင္းမွာအိပ္ေပ်ာ္ၿပီးသားၿဖစ္ေနတဲ႔က်မဟာအဲဒီညမွာ ေတာ္ေတာ္နဲ႔အိပ္လို႔မေပ်ာ္ခဲ့ဘူး။ စာေမးပြဲေဇာေၾကာင္႔လား၊ မုန္းတိုင္းေၾကာင္႔လား၊ တခုခုေၾကာင္႔ၿဖစ္မည္ထင္သည္။ ကုတင္ေပၚမွာလူးရင္းလိမ္႔ရင္း မနက္ ၅ နာရီေလာက္မွက်မအိပ္ေပ်ာ္သြားတယ္။ မနက္၇ နာရီေလာက္မွာ အလိုလိုနိုဳးလာလို႔ စိတ္ထဲအသိေရာက္တဲ႔ အခ်ိန္မွာ က်မလန္႔သြားတယ္။ မေန႔ကထက္ အဆေပါင္းမ်ားစြာ ၿပင္းထန္ေနတဲ႔ေလသံ၊ မွန္ကြဲသံ၊ ပစၥည္းေတြၿပဳတ္က်သံ၊ အလြန္အမင္းက်ယ္ေလာင္စြာေဝွ႔ရမ္းၿပီးတိုက္ေနတဲ႔ေလသံ၊ သြပ္ေတြၿပဳတ္က်သံ၊ သစ္ပင္ေတြၿပိဳလဲသံ။ ဆူညံမႈေပါင္းမ်ားစြာနဲ႔ ကမာၻပ်က္ေနသလိုပါပဲ။

ဆက္ရန္..

http://thechangeyouwanttosee.com/

http://www.filmforum.org/films/burma.html
http://www.irrawaddy.org/highlight.php?art_id=15526
http://burmese.dvb.no/
http://www.shwemyanmar.net/catalog/
http://www.burmatoday.net/
http://www.rfa.org/english/?service=bur
http://www.bbc.co.uk/myanmar/
http://www.rfa.org/burmese/
http://moemaka.com/
http://www.voanews.com/burmese/index.cfm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsaJBtc7MUE

Day De Ye Donation With Online Donation Group

Get On the Bus 2009 in New York City

Myanmar Proverb

THE PEOPLE IN A DEMOCRACY

Why do we have democracy? Said another way, for whom does it exist?

The answer to this is the people, the general public. It is the presence of inalienable human rights, and the fact that power lies with the people, which infers that society must be democratic. However, this is not a one-way street. For democracy to succeed, and serve the people, the people in turn must fulfill a number of obligations.

This distinction, that democracy serves us but we must also serve it, is easier to understand through considering dictatorship. The people in a dictatorship are subjects, not participants. They do not make decisions for themselves; instead, they are told what to do. The misrule and repression of dictatorship generally compels the people to concentrate on survival. Interestingly, it is common to use group or communal survival strategies. While it is in a sense forced, by circumstance, they cooperate together. This is the basic obligation that the people in a democracy bear: they must be willing to cooperate.

In such societies the people establish democratic systems within the overall dictatorship. This further illustrates that democracy is both a natural response to the challenge of life, and also that it works.

The people in turn have a particular nature, what is known as “human nature.” Human society can only be as good as the people from which it derives. Democracy is also a response to human nature. It is not based on a false, an unrealistically positive, appraisal of it. Instead, it is a system that is designed to function with people as we really are.

Humans are regularly unethical. Democracy incorporates many systems, beginning with the legal system, to account for this.

Another aspect of human nature is that we are independent. We do not like to be told what to do. What this implies is that our participation in society must be voluntary. Democracy is based on such voluntary action, and it is also the only social system that enables the popular voice, that lets us decide what we want to do.

A final aspect of our nature is that we have the ability of reason. Democracy is based on reason, not emotion. It assumes that we have the ability to discriminate among the different choices with which we are faced, and also the vigor to do it. Democracy implies that we have the will to want to understand the world, and that we will work at this until we do.

The ability to make informed decisions requires education, to understand what is at stake; and experience, to put the choices that are available in a larger context. It is extremely significant that for the first time in human history formal education is being extended to all the world’s children. Similarly, international travel, which is the means to truly wide experience, is now available to everyone. We finally have the prerequisites in place to enter what might be termed the “Democratic Age.”

Democracy further requires self-discipline, in particular that people will not respond with violence if they lose a vote or otherwise do not get their way. It requires that voters who have been defeated on a particular issue or for a specific candidate control their emotions and wait through the intervening years until a new election is held and they get another chance.

An important problem for democracy is that many social influences seek to undermine our reason and self-discipline. For example, institutions commonly treat us as subjects. To religions, we are believers, and to corporations, employees and consumers. Such institutions attempt to control us, including through manipulating us using appeals to our emotions.

The personal decision making process begins when we are children, and as children we generally accept what we are told, by our parents. We therefore do not discriminate, and we also become the recipients of whatever social beliefs our parents have been conditioned to have. It is only later, as we mature and become adults, that we learn to think on our own. Only then do we develop the power to reject social influences, including those that we inherited as children.

This, however, is not an easy task. The influences of our childhood are imprinted in our brains, and certain social influences and beliefs are so strong that they are effectively uncriticizable. For instance, Muslims cannot challenge their faith. To do so makes them apostates. Likewise, in the United States, the President, military and police are (or at least were) considered to be above criticism. Anyone who opposes their abuses of power is branded as unpatriotic.

These cases illustrate the subtle distinctions that we must grasp. A religion that disseminates an honest approach to spirituality is above reproach, but one that spreads hate must be stopped. Militaries that defend a society, and when called upon fight just and ethical wars, should be applauded, but armies that engage in wars of aggression and barbaric combat practices must be opposed. Similarly, police who fight crime and risk their lives in the process are heroes, but officers who repress social dissidents are criminals themselves.

For democracy to function well, nothing is above criticism. Otherwise, we have lost our right to freedom of expression, and taken the first step towards truly becoming the subjects of dictatorship.

The challenge of confronting social influences is now greater than ever before. The modern media of television and film are so powerful that their effects constitute nothing less than brainwashing.

In the face of social influences, reason can be ephemeral. It does not always prevail. For example, it is disturbing that the people who are best at influencing us, such as to vote for them, are regularly not the most skilled educators: those individuals who can explain the intricacies of complex issues. Rather, they are the people who are most adept at rhetoric and behavioral manipulation. In almost all cases involving large groups, the latter tend to be more persuasive, and attract more followers, than the former.

Democracy imposes an obligation for the people to reject such influences and instead choose the well-reasoned course. At the present time, though, we regularly fail in this requirement.

The people also exhibit other shortcomings, depending on the nature of the democracy to which they belong. For instance, it is common in new democracies for individuals to sell their votes. It goes without saying that the system cannot function properly in these circumstances. Alternatively, in mature democracies the public is often apathetic, and does not even bother to vote. Or, in response to social influences, the people, and their respective political parties, become polarized over specific issues and lose the ability to cooperate.

Democracy sets a high standard for its participants. And, at the present time, and in most societies, significant portions of the population appear unable to meet it. This does not mean that we should abandon the system as a failed experiment and instead revert to other, traditional forms of social organization (based on natural law rather than human rights). Rather, it just means that we still have a lot of work to do.

When democracy fails, the people become disordered mobs, including such things as ultra-nationalists and religious fanatics. This is unacceptable. We must learn to work together, and to leave our differences behind. To do this, everyone must confront, and defeat, the influences that encourage such mobs.

What this also illustrates is that personal responsibility does not end with the vote. The people must continually evaluate elected officials, and express their views on important issues. They must hold the officials accountable, and for individuals who abuse their power, demand relief up to and including dismissal, impeachment, and criminal prosecution.

EQUALITY, AND FREEDOM

Human society has changed dramatically over the millennia, and probably the single most significant event to-date in this process has been the development of written language. This enabled widespread education, which in turn revealed that our social goal should be equality, and also that this can be best achieved through the political system of democracy.

Humans are, in a sense, interchangeable. One aspect of this – at least initially, as infants – is that there are no limits to our prospects and the opportunities that we may pursue. Through education, anyone can fulfill – can learn to fulfill – virtually any social role. Therefore, any system that sets aside privileged roles for a select few is unfair, and unacceptable.

This includes authority. Given equality, there is no basis for anyone automatically being given a position whereby they can exert power and control over others. Because of this, democracy, in which individuals retain their independence and decide the important questions regarding their personal lives, is the only rational political system.

Human equality begins at birth. We all start life the same, with no prejudices or biases, only the desire to live.

This equality then continues throughout our lives. Regarding the most important aspects of life, what one has to deal with day-to-day and, furthermore, how to understand and deal with life's conclusion, with death, there is no difference between us in our ability to observe and understand. Anyone, just through being alive, can grasp the deepest issues surrounding our existence, and take advantage of its greatest opportunities.

What this implies is that equality begins with value. While there may be wide differences between us in the lives that we lead – one person is a farmer and another a Prime Minister – there is no difference in value. No individual has a greater value than any other.

This extends to groups of people as well, in other words, cultures. There is no basis for judging one culture to be superior to another. Two different cultures may be completely dissimilar, but it is impossible to say that one is better than the other.

This is the case even when a particular culture has a characteristic or subgroup that is justly reviled, for example, the actions of the Nazis in Hitler’s Germany. Cultures are long-term phenomena, and at some stage many if not most are misled. One can criticize, and seek to change, such a divergent culture, but this does not justify a personal feeling of superiority, particularly since the day may come when your own culture is similarly misled.

Equality is not only a social goal: it is the foundation principle of democracy. It rejects any system that is characterized by the rule of the many by the few. Democracy has other principles as well, although most people do not have a clear idea of what these are. However, if such principles are not in place, recognized and followed, the democratic system will fail.

The implication that government must be democratic in turn demands universal suffrage: that every person of a specified age is entitled to vote. In early democracies, including the United States after its foundation, only property holders were allowed to vote.

Setting a standard like this is undemocratic. Similar situations include barring women the right to vote, or limiting it to the members of a particular racial or ethnic group or the followers of a specific religion.

Equality further implies that society, not only government, should not engage in discrimination. If we are equal, our personal characteristics are irrelevant, and this includes our behavior, provided that we do not harm others.

Next, we are not only born equal: we are also born free. Moreover, the principle of equality implies that we should have equal freedom, to lives our lives as we choose and to go anywhere and to do anything that we want.

That’s the situation in principle but the reality is far different. Our freedom is restricted in many different ways. There are wide variations from society to society in the idea of personal freedom, in what an individual is entitled to do.

A common restriction is on one’s ability to believe, to have faith, or not to have faith, in a particular religion. For instance, if you are born to Muslim parents in Saudi Arabia and many other Islamic countries, you too must become a Muslim. You have no say in this whatsoever, and if you refuse you will be imprisoned if not killed. Conversely, in China it is forbidden to be a Christian, unless you practice in a state-approved church.

A further complexity is that there is a tradeoff between freedom and equality: they are regularly in conflict. We therefore need to decide, which is our overall goal?

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”

This issue is clearly resolved in the United States Declaration of Independence, which is probably the most significant historical statement of the democratic ideal. The American declaration of freedom begins with a declaration of equality. Equality comes first.

Pure freedom is otherwise known as natural law, or the domination of the strong over the weak. In such a society might is right, and if you have the might you can do literally anything that you want. With sufficient power, you can be a dictator and turn everyone else into slaves.

Natural law obviously is unacceptable, but there are other situations that are more difficult to evaluate. A basic freedom is the freedom of merit, the freedom to work hard and to excel. Merit is a principle in its own right, and it is also a key check on nepotism, on parents transferring their status and authority to their children. One’s social position should be based on ability and effort, not privilege.

A problem here, though, is that merit is frequently used in the service of inequality. People work hard not only as a means to personal development, but as a tool of competition: to achieve an advantage over others, even – so they believe – to be better and to have more value.

If our goal is equality, it is clear that we have to give up a few freedoms, although fortunately these are very few, and largely unethical, such as the freedom to kill. On the other hand, if we focus on freedom, including the freedom to compete, win and conquer, which traditionally has been the case, we will be unable to achieve equality.

We need to value equality more than freedom, but the latter does, of course, remain a goal. We seek freedom of action, but only when it is not unethical or when it does not conflict with equality.

WHAT IS DEMOCRACY?

Democracy is well recognized to mean “government by and for the people.” The real question, then, is what does this mean? How do the people govern themselves?

There are two basic models of democracy: representative and direct. Under representative democracy, which is the version in use in different countries around the world, the people participate in a series of elections. Through such elections, they select a small group of leaders. It is these leaders that actually have the job of running the government.

Under direct democracy, the people make the choices of government. In other words, they vote directly on all important governmental issues, rather than elect leaders to decide them. Direct democracy has not yet been implemented on a large scale, for many reasons, including the difficulty of administering such a system and also organizing the transition to it from the current representative model.

The preference for representative democracy in turn raises the question, is this all there is to it? Does the role of the people end once they have made their electoral choices?

The answer to this is: No. Democracy is a complicated system of social organization. It has a variety of principles, responsibilities and institutions. The most important principles of democracy are human equality and personal freedom. But, there are many others as well. For the second, both the people and the leaders have their own respective responsibilities, and for the people these extend well beyond the vote. Lastly, democracy also has many different institutions, beginning with what are known as checks and balances, and the rule of law.

An implicit but rarely considered responsibility that the people bear is that they must understand democracy: all of its different aspects. Otherwise it is impossible that it will function and is actually an unachievable goal.

At the moment, though, most of the people of the world have little or no understanding of the democratic system. Even in countries where it is long established, comprehension is limited and in many ways flawed.

This is the starting point for why the democracies that are in place today experience wide-ranging and serious problems.

The reason for the lack of understanding is simple: as just mentioned, democracy is complex. The system has many individual elements, and to achieve a proper understanding of it you must isolate these elements and then logically link them together.

By completing this series of lessons, you will learn about all of the different elements of democracy, and through doing so reach a level of knowledge such that you are prepared to participate in a democratic society.

One aspect of the prevailing ignorance is that democracy has become the subject of fierce controversy. Within countries and also from nation to nation there is great dispute about what it is supposed to be.

A basic issue in the controversy is whether democracy is an absolute or a relative system, with the latter view implying that it, meaning representative democracy, can have multiple, fundamentally different forms. Proponents of this position distinguish such things as the democracy of one political party versus another, Asian versus Western, Russian democracy under Vladimir Putin, Venezuelan under Hugo Chavez, etc.

In fact, democracy is an absolute, because it is based on a core set of principles. Any system that does not satisfy or embed these principles is necessarily not democratic.

On the other hand, democracy does have legitimate and differing forms: parliamentary, where the head of the government is appointed by popularly elected legislators; and presidential, where he or she is also elected. Furthermore, the democratic system must be adapted to such things as a nation’s history, population and ethnic diversity, as well as its geography and prevalence of natural resources.

This is where the controversy develops, in discriminating between democratic principles, which must be fulfilled, and other characteristics that may reasonably vary. For example, politicians such as Putin and Chavez say that national attributes justify the denial of certain principles, including the protection of civil liberties and the freedom of the press, and through this the creation of an authoritarian system, which they then attempt to brand as democracy.

As this suggests, the alternative to democracy is an “authoritarian” society, where a small group of people has authority, or power, and then uses it to tell everyone else what to do. This is government by and for such a small group, rather than on behalf of everyone. Authoritarian rule, which is also known as dictatorship, can take many different forms. There are military dictatorships, or rule by army generals, in such countries as North Korea and Burma. Many Islamic societies are religious dictatorships, or rule by religious leaders, which is known as theocracy. There are also economic dictatorships, including such things as colonialism, where one country controls another, for economic gain; and feudalism, where a small group of individuals in a society controls most of the economy and everyone else is subservient to them in one way or another. Some authoritarian countries, such as China, even incorporate more than one form.

A related source of confusion with democracy is whether it is limited to a political role. Government regulates or at least oversees all of society. From this perspective, then, democracy, as a means to organize government, is more properly a social system rather than just political.

Societies have many different subsystems. There are political systems, both democratic and authoritarian, to run the government. There are also economic systems, including such things as capitalism and communism, to organize the production of goods and services. Other subsystems include communications, or the Internet, telephones, and the media; educational systems, starting with schools; and also spiritual systems, the most well-recognized of which are the major organized religions. Importantly, if any one of these is able to dominate, it can be termed an overall social system as well.

Currently, there is widespread and aggressive competition between the different subsystems. The most extreme example of this is with democracy and capitalism. Democracy is considered to be a political system and capitalism economic, but both aspire to overall social control. (For democracy, this is more properly social guidance.) The underlying issue here is that the two systems are not compatible. Capitalism also has its own sets of principles, responsibilities and institutions, and in many cases they conflict with democracy. This competition and conflict will also be examined throughout the lessons.

Similarly, and which the lessons too will explore, the principles, responsibilities and institutions of a society that is dominated by a particular religion are also frequently incompatible with democracy.

In conclusion, as human societies around the world are becoming integrated, through the process known as globalization, these types of disputes are becoming more and more pronounced. The world is now seeing a resurgence of authoritarianism and dictatorship, and the associated rejection of democracy. It is hoped that this series of lessons will help clarify things, and also demonstrate that democracy is by far the preferred choice.

Open Letter to the Burmese Government

Published on April 8, 2009

Should the State Peace and Development Council respect human rights and move towards changes in the interest of the country and all its people, the sanctions in protest against the SPDC’s violations of human rights, would be removed.

1. Burma is facing severe political, social and economic crises. Due to the global economic recession, the people of Burma will soon confront even more severe crises.

2. To overcome these crises is a task for all the people. Thus, the National League for Democracy has proposed to the SPDC to tackle these issues through dialogue.

3. The NLD and the Committee Representing the People’s Parliament (CRPP) has called for the SPDC to take the following actions: the unconditional release of all political prisoners including Aung San Suu Kyi; to convene parliament; to commence political dialogue; and to review the constitution. The 88 Generation Students Group believes these actions are urgently needed in order to overcome the crises in the country. These calls are reiterated by stakeholders inside and outside the country as well as the international community.

4. The SPDC has failed to realise these calls, and continues to implement repressive measures including placing restrictions on movements of, and arresting, activists struggling for democracy and human rights. Countries that respect democracy and human rights have taken political, social and economic sanctions against the SPDC.

5. Regarding the sanctions, when meeting UN Special Envoy Gambari, Prime Minister Theing Sein asked that “the UN should first make efforts for lifting economic sanctions” and accused Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD of causing the sanctions. Making such accusations against Aung San Suu Kyi, the NLD, activists and Western nations will not get the sanctions lifted.

6. These countries have put in place sanctions against the SPDC in protest against the severe violations of democratic and human rights the SPDC exercises.

7. No other individual and/or organisation than the SPDC military government can do what is necessary to end these sanctions. The 88 Generation Students Group firmly believes that should the SPDC immediately respect the above calls made by the NLD and the CRPP, the sanctions would be removed one after another.

8. In the current situation, it is time for the military government to move towards changes in the interest of the country and the people.

9. The 88 Generation Students urge the military government to respect the calls made by all forces inside and outside the country as well as members of the international community.

If the SPDC does not respect these calls, the responsibility for the negative consequences the country will suffer will rest solely with the SPDC.

THE 88 GENERATION STUDENTS

Cows & Dogs (cartoon)

Mar 20th, 2009

Peacock’s Way

Feb 22nd, 2009

Traitors

Mar 28th, 2009

SOMEDAY BURMA WILL BE FREE

Feb 26th, 2009

by D.Law 21 Feb 2009
(Sing to the tune of Somewhere My Love in Dr. Zhivago, ’60’s)

First Verse
Someday My Friends — there will be Freedom Bells
Although right now — we’re in a Land of Hell
Somewhere a Spark — Revolution, we’ll start
All of our Dreams — all will come true at last (British pronunciation)

Chorus 1 :
Peo-ple — will be set free, — set free
Aung San — Suu Kyi will be free — set fre-e-e e-e-e

Second Verse
All we have now — are just our blood and tears
Tied down in chains, — barbed wire, iron bars
We’ll break these chains, — barbed wire, iron bars
And we’ll rejoice, — Freedom will come at last !

Chorus 2 :
Some day we’ll meet Aung San Suu Kyi
Some where when Revolution suceeds

Repeat First Verse
Someday My Friends — there will be Freedom Bells
Although right now — we’re in a Land of Hell
Somewhere a Spark — Revolution, we’ll start
All of our Dreams — all will come true at last

Helping Burma is a
Matter of the Heart
- by Jeffrey Karl Hellman

In tears I write these words,
In tears my words will start,
I heard a voice for human rights,
Helping Burma is a matter of the heart.

For years the people of Burma,
have been tortured by a disease,
A tumor, a cancer, malicious, Metastasis,
Bear with me if you please.

See cancer can start in one place,
then spread very very fast,
till the body of freedom’s
heart will beat for a very last.

With Metta Sutta we can fight this pain,
With loving kindness and peace,
but it’s increasingly difficult when
you start to study the disease.

SPDC in Burma,
A brutal military regime,
can take the life of anyone,
General Than Shwe is much worse than mean.

Ignorant, stubborn man,
a man that issues a license to rape,
He destroys the peace in Burma,
and evidence by videotape.

Take to the jungles of Burma,
where millions are all on the run,
Being chased after by the Junta,
is anything but fun.

Harass the mass,
take villages by fire!
For Senior General Than Shwe,
this cancer is his empire.

70,000 child soldiers in Burma,
what a nice future this will be,
all because a man imprisoned a woman
who beat him in democracy.

Now the dictator’s year is set,
I read it in the news,
2009 will be his “victory,”
for 50 million people, the blues.

He likes the number 11,
so we’re all in for a treat,
the stars are telling Than Shwe to attack the innocent,
to the borders they have to retreat.

Goodbye to the homes they lived in,
the structure of a happy life,
some stubborn army general,
causes millions to live in strife.

Imagine the way the world would have been,
if peace were to end the war,
but peace in Burma is incarcerated,
now the country is worse than poor.

An AIDS epidemic reins through the land,
killing thousands every year,
while Malaria prevails to those in the jungles,
A Nation filled with fear.

We wait and wait for change in Burma,
but all that has is the name,
the mere sound of Myanmar,
puts democracy to shame.

In 1989 Aung San Suu Kyi was imprisoned,
for speaking the words of liberty,
shame on you Than Shwe,
for your hopeless hypocrisy.

Enough of politics,
enough with the war,
I’m tired of fighting for freedom,
human rights should not be a chore.

Instead I’ll tell you a story,
about how Burma filled my heart,
and why this poem
began with tears from the very start.

In the hallways of perception,
In the hallways of my school,
I met a facilities attendant from Burma,
who educated me about his country under military rule.

He starved himself outside the United Nations,
each day, equaling each year,
that his country has been up-ducted,
by terrorists who role by fear,

He lead an inspirational peace walk,
four years in a row,
the last year with Cancer,
what a noble way to go.

So now embrace me friends,
as I riddle about the day,
the Saffron Revolution’s one year anniversary,
Burmese Freedom Fighter, U Han Lin, passed away.

Peace walks went on that day,
as tears from the sky fell like rain,
so free the Children of Burma,
like a liberated peace train.

Demand the cancerous tyrants,
to be removed from political power,
or the military children will spread under Than Shwe,
Now it’s time for international Chemo power.

The malicious cells are multiplying fast,
and soon they’ll strike again,
we can not wait for another cyclone,
international intervention must fall like rain.

Education for the children,
Nurture them with loving care,
Provide health aid for the weak,
This is the message to share.

Spread the peace and free Daw Aung San Suu Kyi,
soon she will be 64,
twenty years are enough for miseducation,
when first arrested, she was 44.

Americans were given a chance at changing our government,
democracy reigned down like a storm,
now, it’s time for Burma,
hearts should be getting warm.

So please remember my teacher’s lessons,
as I explained to you from the start,
and with an act of courage,
Help Burma with all your heart.

© Jeffrey Karl Hellman

Who is Politician of the Year 2006 Burma

The politician of the year is a person who has led the people in the most significant and most important political movement during the year.

The most significant and most important political movement during this year is the White-coloured people power movement signifying people’s innocent and peaceful desire to get freedom, democracy and human-rights. And it was led by new generation student leaders.

So now thousands of readers of BURMA DIGEST have overwhelmingly voted new generation student leader Ko Mya Aye as The Politician of the Year 2006 Burma!

Final Voting Results (validated at two decimal points) * Only one vote from one IP address is counted. ¨ Ko Mya Aye 21.52% ¨ Daw Aung San Suu Kyi 18.83% ¨ 8888 students 9.97% ¨ Ko Min Ko Naing 9.07% ¨ Nurul Islam 3.73% ¨ Dr. Cynthia Maung 3.69% ¨ Snr. Gen. Than Shwe 3.16% ¨ Sao Yawd Serk 3.12% ¨ U Aye Thar Aung 2.79% ¨ Dr. Nay Win Maung 2.59% ¨ Su Su New 2.27% ¨ U Maung Sein 2.21% ¨ U Win Tin 1.83% ¨ U Maung Maung (NCUB) 1.80% ¨ Nan Charm Tong 1.78% ¨ Ko Jimmy 1.75% ¨ Karen National Union & Saw Bo Mya 1.55% ¨ U Myint Aye (Human-rights Defender) 1.45% ¨ John Bolton 1.35% ¨ Nan Ohn Hla (NLD) 0.25% ¨ Daw Nan Khin Hla Myint (NLD) 0.15% ¨ Ludu U Sein Win 1.10% ¨ Ko Thet Win Aung 0.98% ¨ Ko Ko Gyi 0.85% ¨ Dr. Thaung Htun 0.75% ¨ Ko Aung Din 0.65% ¨ Ko Htay Kywe 0.54% ¨ Ko Min Zeya 0.46% ¨ Zoya Phan 0.35% ¨ Ma Phyu Phyu Thein (HIV NGO) 0.23% ¨ Ko Tun Tun (political activist) 0.17% ¨ Gen. Maung Aye 0.05%