The Advocates
by
Richard J. Garfunkel
Wednesday, May 21, 2008, at 12:00 Noon, I am hosting “The Advocates” on WVOX- 1460 AM, or you can listen to the program’s live streaming at www.wvox.com. One can call the show at 914-636-0110 to reach us on the radio. Our special guests today are Kyi May Kaung (Ph.D.) is a literary activist who is concerned and involved with TAN, the Technical Advisory Network of the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma or the Burmese Government in Exile, located in Rockville, Md., and Ms. Maureen Aung-Thwin of The Burma Project. Both are native Burmese, who have family still living in that beleaguered country.
Today’ program will focus on “Burma, Human Tragedy and Social Disaster, 45 years in the Making.”
Ms. Kaung was born in Burma during WWII and the Japanese occupation, and left there as a child to the United Kingdom, she traveled back to Burma in 1982 and eventually settled in the United States. She earned BA and MA degrees from the University of Rangoon, was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. She was also awarded an MA and a Ph.D from the University of Pennsylvania. She has won awards from The Academy of American Poets, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. She has been a Pew finalist twice for her dramatic (her play “Shaman” was praised by Edward Albee) and poetic work, and is the author of two poetry chapbooks. She also won an award from North Eastern Illinois University in Chicago this year. For the last decade she has worked for the Burmese democracy movement. She is currently a Senior Researcher with the Vahu Development Institute of Maryland. Her doctoral dissertation focused on the “Pathologies of Tyrannies, as it related to Burma.”
We also have a special call-in guest, Ms. Maureen Aung-Thwin, from the Burma Relief Project funded by The George Soros Foundation. Ms. Aung-Thwin is the Director of the Burma Project/SE Asia Initiative for the Open Society Institution, and is on the Advisory Board of the Human Rights Watch.
Meanwhile, the mission of the “Advocates” is to bring to the public differing views on current “public policy “issues. “Public policy,” therefore, is what we as a nation legally and traditionally follow. Over the years, the “public policy” of the United States has changed or has been modified greatly. As an example, “free public education” is the public policy of the United States. Also, over time great struggles have ensued over the control of the direction of “public policy” For example: free trade vs. protectionism, slavery vs. emancipation, state’s rights vs. Federalism, and an all-volunteer armed forces or the “draft.”
The Program is sponsored by the Green Briar Adult Home, in Millbrook, Dutchess County, NY.
One can find my essays on FDR and other subjects at https://www.richardjgarfunkel.com and one can also see all of the archived shows at: http://advocates-wvox.com.
Richard J. Garfunkel