關於 russian numbers ，我們在網路上蒐集到這些相關的討論、資訊與評價

🇩🇰 這是一篇深度報導，來自歐洲現存最古老的報紙：丹麥Weekendavisen，題目是從香港抗爭運動、香港聯繫加泰羅尼亞的集會，前瞻全球大城市的「永久革命」。一篇報導訪問了世界各地大量學者，我也在其中，雖然只是每人一句，加在一起，卻有了很完整的圖像。

以下為英譯：

Protest! The demonstrations in Hong Kong were just the beginning. Now there are unrest in big cities from Baghdad to Barcelona. Perhaps the stage is set for something that could look like a permanent revolution in the world's big cities.

A world on the barricades

At the end of October, an hour after dark, a group of young protesters gathered at the Chater Garden Park in Hong Kong. Some of them wore large red and yellow flags. The talk began and the applause filled the warm evening air. There were slogans of independence, and demands of self-determination - from Spain. For the protest was in sympathy with the Catalan independence movement.

At the same time, a group of Catalan protesters staged a protest in front of the Chinese Consulate in Barcelona in favor of Hong Kong's hope for more democracy. The message was not to be mistaken: We are in the same boat. Or, as Joshua Wong, one of the leading members of the Hong Kong protest movement, told the Catalan news agency: "The people of Hong Kong and Catalonia both deserve the right to decide their own destiny."

For much of 2019, Hong Kong's streets have been ravaged by fierce protests and a growing desperation on both sides, with escalating violence and vandalism ensuing. But what, do observers ask, if Hong Kong is not just a Chinese crisis, but a warning of anger that is about to break out globally?

Each week brings new turmoil from an unexpected edge. In recent days, attention has focused on Chile. Here, more than 20 people have lost their lives in unrest, which has mainly been about unequal distribution of economic goods. Before then, the unrest has hit places as diverse as Lebanon and the Czech Republic, Bolivia and Algeria, Russia and Sudan.

With such a geographical spread, it is difficult to bring the protests to any sort of common denominator, but they all reflect a form of powerlessness so acute that traditional ways of speaking do not seem adequate.

Hardy Merriman, head of research at the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict in Washington, is not in doubt that it is a real wave of protest and that we have not seen the ending yet.

"I have been researching non-violent resistance for 17 years, and to me it is obvious that there are far more popular protest movements now than before. Often the protests have roots in the way political systems work. Elsewhere, it is about welfare and economic inequality or both. The two sets of factors are often related, ”he says.

Economic powerlessness

Hong Kong is a good example of this. The desire among the majority of Hong Kong's seven million residents to maintain an independent political identity vis-à-vis the People's Republic of China is well known, but the resentment of the streets is also fueled by a sense of economic powerlessness. Hong Kong is one of the most unequal communities in the world, and especially the uneven access to the real estate market is causing a stir.

According to Lee Chun-wing, a sociologist at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the turmoil in the city is not just facing Beijing, but also expressing a daunting showdown with the neoliberal economy, which should diminish the state's role and give the market more influence, but in its real form often ends with the brutal arbitrariness of jungle law.

'The many protests show that neoliberalism is unable to instill hope in many. And as one of the world's most neoliberal cities, Hong Kong is no exception. While the protests here are, of course, primarily political, there is no doubt that social polarization and economic inequality make many young people not afraid to participate in more radical protests and do not care whether they are accused of damage economic growth, 'he says.

The turmoil is now so extensive that it can no longer be dismissed as a coincidence. Something special and significant is happening. As UN Secretary General António Guterres put it last week, it would be wrong to stare blindly at the superficial differences between the factors that get people on the streets.
“There are also common features that are recurring across the continents and should force us to reflect and respond. It is clear that there is growing distrust between the people and the political elites and growing threats to the social contract. The world is struggling with the negative consequences of globalization and the new technologies that have led to growing inequality in individual societies, "he told reporters in New York.

Triggered by trifles

In many cases, the riots have been triggered by questions that may appear almost trivial on the surface. In Chile, there was an increase in the price of the capital's subway equivalent to 30 Danish cents, while in Lebanon there were reports of a tax on certain services on the Internet. In both places, it was just the reason why the people have been able to express a far more fundamental dissatisfaction.

In a broad sense, there are two situations where a population is rebelling, says Paul Almeida, who teaches sociology at the University of California, Merced. The first is when more opportunities suddenly open up and conditions get better. People are getting hungry for more and trying to pressure their politicians to give even more concessions.

“But then there is also the mobilization that takes place when people get worse. That seems to be the overall theme of the current protests, even in Hong Kong. People are concerned about various kinds of threats they face. It may be the threat of inferior economic conditions, or it may be a more political threat of erosion of rights. But the question is why it is happening right now. That's the 10,000-kroner issue, ”says Almeida.

Almeida, who has just published the book Social Movements: The Structure of Social Mobilization, even gives a possible answer. A growing authoritarian, anti-democratic flow has spread across the continents and united rulers in all countries, and among others it is the one that has now triggered a reaction in the peoples.

“There is a tendency for more use of force by the state power. If we look at the death toll in Latin America, they are high considering that the countries are democracies. This kind of violence is not usually expected in democratic regimes in connection with protests. It is an interesting trend and may be related to the authoritarian flow that is underway worldwide. It's worth watching, 'he says.

The authoritarian wave

Politologists Anna Lürhmann and Staffan Lindberg from the University of Gothenburg describe in a paper published earlier this year a "third autocratic wave." Unlike previous waves, for example, in the years before World War II, when democracy was beaten under great external drama , the new wave is characterized by creeping. It happens little by little - in countries like Turkey, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Hungary and Russia - at such a slow pace that you barely notice it.

Even old-fashioned autocrats nowadays understand the language of democracy - the only acceptable lingua franca in politics - and so the popular reaction does not happen very often when it becomes clear at once that the electoral process itself is not sufficient to secure democratic conditions. Against this backdrop, Kenneth Chan, a politician at Hong Kong Baptist University, sees the recent worldwide wave of unrest as an expression of the legitimacy crisis of the democratic regimes.

“People have become more likely to take the initiative and take part in direct actions because they feel that they have not made the changes they had hoped for through the elections. In fact, the leaders elected by the peoples are perceived as undermining the institutional guarantees of citizens' security, freedom, welfare and rights. As a result, over the past decade, we have seen more democracies reduced to semi-democracies, hybrid regimes and authoritarian regimes, ”he says.

"Therefore, we should also not be surprised by the new wave of resistance from the people. On the surface, the spark may be a relatively innocent or inconsiderate decision by the leadership, but people's anger quickly turns to what they see as the cause of the democratic deroute, that is, an arrogant and selfish leadership, a weakened democratic control, a dysfunctional civil society. who are no longer able to speak on behalf of the people. ”The world is changing. Anthony Ince, a cardiff at Cardiff University who has researched urban urban unrest, sees the uprisings as the culmination of long-term nagging discontent and an almost revolutionary situation where new can arise.

"The wider context is that the dominant world order - the global neoliberalism that has dominated since the 1980s - is under pressure from a number of sides, creating both uncertainty and at the same time the possibility of change. People may feel that we are in a period of uncertainty, confusion, anxiety, but perhaps also hope, ”he says.
Learning from each other.

Apart from mutual assurances of solidarity the protest movements in between, there does not appear to be any kind of coordination. But it may not be necessary either. In a time of social media, learning from each other's practices is easy, says Simon Shen, a University of Hong Kong political scientist.

“They learn from each other at the tactical level. Protesters in Hong Kong have seen what happened in Ukraine through YouTube, and now protesters in Catalonia and Lebanon are taking lessons from Hong Kong. It's reminiscent of 1968, when baby boomers around the globe were inspired by an alternative ideology to break down rigid hierarchies, 'he says.
But just as the protest movements can learn from each other, the same goes for their opponents. According to Harvard political scientist Erica Chenoweth, Russia has been particularly active in trying to establish cooperation with other authoritarian regimes, which feel threatened by riots in the style of the "color revolutions" on the periphery of the old Soviet empire at the turn of the century.

"It has resulted in joint efforts between Russian, Chinese, Iranian, Venezuelan, Belarusian, Syrian and other national authorities to develop, systematize and report on techniques and practices that have proved useful in trying to contain such threats," writes Chenoweth in an article in the journal Global Responsibility to Protect.

Max Fisher and Amanda Taub, commentators at the New York Times, point to the social media as a double-edged sword. Not only are Twitter and Facebook powerful weapons in the hands of tech-savvy autocrats. They are also of questionable value to the protesting grass roots. With WhatsApp and other new technologies, it is possible to mobilize large numbers of interested and almost-interested participants in collective action. But they quickly fall apart again.

The volatile affiliation is one of the reasons why, according to a recent survey, politically motivated protests today only succeed in reaching their targets in 30 percent of cases. A generation ago, the success rate was 70 percent. Therefore, unrest often recurs every few years, and they last longer, as Hong Kong is an example of. Perhaps the scene is set for something that might resemble a permanent revolution in the world's big cities - a kind of background noise that other residents will eventually just get used to.

"Since there is still no obvious alternative to neoliberalism, the polarization that led to the protests initially will probably continue to apply," says Lee of Hong Kong Polytechnic University. "At the same time, this means that the anger and frustration will continue to rumble in society."

[美國文化觀察]

川普前幾天說, 以後的移民要在移民美國時, 就要會說英文. 經濟學人這篇文章講的挺好: 其實移民移居美國後, 早晚都會說英文的.

在我身上其實也應證了這說法. 旅居美國十幾年, 雖然平常有跟此地的台灣同胞保持互動, 但因為身處在美語環境, 也為了生存下去, 所以我漸漸地習慣說英文, 聽英文歌, 看美國電視, 看原文書. 我也很清楚地意識到, 自己的母語(中文)能力在退化中. 所以我前幾年開始接英翻中的case, 而兩年前也開始藉著寫中文個股分析與開部落格來彌補這問題. 很多時候不是我故意在秀英文, 而是我真的不知道該用甚麼中文字來表達意思了, 或是我覺得用英文能夠更傳神地表達我的想法.

"Rather than refusing to learn English, today’s immigrants actually abandon their first language much more readily than previous generations. German, the language spoken by the president’s ancestors, is a case in point. Germans arrived in America in big waves in the middle of the 19th century. Generations later, they were still speaking German at home; a small number were even monolingual in German despite being born in America. Only with America’s entry into the first world war did German-speakers drop their suddenly unpopular language.

Today the typical pattern is that the arriving generation speaks little English, or learns it imperfectly; the first children born in America are bilingual, but English-dominant, and their children hardly speak the heritage language. This is as true of Hispanics as it is of speakers of smaller languages—and all without a lecture from the White House."

以下是全文:
DONALD TRUMP’s young administration is adept at one particular manoeuvre. Whenever the president is having a terrible time in the press, for some embarrassing statement, interview or imbroglio, the White House announces a far-reaching policy designed to stoke up his nationalist base while infuriating his opponents. In February it was the proposed ban on visitors from seven mainly Muslim countries. Last month it was the announcement on Twitter that he would not let transgender soldiers serve in the military.

In each case, the new policy tends to hurt people who can be portrayed as threatening outsiders to ordinary Americans who work hard and pay their taxes. Yesterday’s announcement to back a months-old plan to overhaul America’s immigration rules falls in the same category. If implemented, it would reward applicants with sought-after job skills who already speak English, at the expense of low-skilled workers without language skills.

This may seem perfectly sensible: after all, skilled immigrants are a good thing. But as an ongoing shortage of farm workers in California shows, unskilled immigrants are just as crucial. Equally, it is a good thing if immigrants speak English. But they need not speak it before arrival: as it is impossible to participate fully in American life without speaking English, the incentive to learn it quickly is overwhelming.

The administration’s emphasis on English skills therefore harks back to an old myth that the linguistic make-up of America, which has been an English-dominant country for a long time, is changing: that the status of English is somehow threatened, especially by Spanish, but more generally by the notion that English is no longer needed in the economy.

The myth goes something like this: today’s immigrants want to come to America to isolate themselves into communities that do not speak English. American policy tacitly encourages this by not being tough enough in requiring English. In the past, immigrants happily learned English quickly; “my grandpa came here from the old country but he refused to speak his old language; he insisted on getting by in his broken English until he was fluent.” But today’s immigrants no longer do so, as multiculturalism has replaced the melting pot.
All of this is wrong. America began as a thin band of English colonies clinging to the eastern coast, vastly outnumbered by speakers of other languages. The foreign-born percentage of the population peaked not last year—the administration likes to talk of “unprecedented” numbers—but in 1890, when the share of foreign-born residents was at an all-time high of 14.8%. This proportion has risen again after declining in the mid-20th century (it stood at 12.9% in the 2010 census). America today has multilingual big cities with their voting instructions in Korean, Chinese and Russian.

Historically, this is the norm rather than the exception: the years from 1925 to 1965, when immigration was almost completely cut off, were unusual. But those born from the 1940s to the 1960s became used to the low numbers of foreign-born residents, regarding this state as normal. That in turn supported a belief that America has always naturally belonged completely to English.
For most of its history, America was precisely the “polyglot boardinghouse” Teddy Roosevelt once worried it would become. That history has turned out very well not just for America, but for English—the most successful language in the history of the world. Along with American power, English has spread around the globe. At home, wave after wave after wave of immigrants to America have not only learned English but forgotten the languages their parents brought with them.

Rather than refusing to learn English, today’s immigrants actually abandon their first language much more readily than previous generations. German, the language spoken by the president’s ancestors, is a case in point. Germans arrived in America in big waves in the middle of the 19th century. Generations later, they were still speaking German at home; a small number were even monolingual in German despite being born in America. Only with America’s entry into the first world war did German-speakers drop their suddenly unpopular language.

Today the typical pattern is that the arriving generation speaks little English, or learns it imperfectly; the first children born in America are bilingual, but English-dominant, and their children hardly speak the heritage language. This is as true of Hispanics as it is of speakers of smaller languages—and all without a lecture from the White House.

Malaysia Airlines flight crashes in Ukraine

The Russian news agency Interfax have reported on Thursday that the Malaysian Airlines plane on its flight from Amsterdam of Netherlands to Kuala Lampur has been crashed in eastern Ukraine.



Malaysia Airlines confirmed that it have lost the contact with its MH17, and the flight’s last known position was over Ukrainian airspace, the airline said on Twitter. According to Interfax, the jet is a Boeing 777. The reportedly have went down near the border between Russia and Ukraine. Altogether 295 peoples were on board on from the Netherlands capital Amsterdam to the Malaysian capital Kuala Lampur.

Malaysian Airlines flight 17 was shot down by "terrorists" using the Russian anti-aircraft system Buk, Geraschenko told CNN. The plane was shot down near the town on Torez in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, he said. The plane was flying 10,000 meters above the ground, he said. Earlier, on his Facebook page, he said 280 passengers and 15 crew members were killed.

The Pentagon said Wednesday that Russia now had 12,000 troops on the border with Ukraine, as well as some heavy weapons. The troop numbers had fallen to about 1,000 previously from a high of an estimated 40,000 forces earlier this year.

Let's learn numbers and colors in Russian!

Edit by Lara


On the right side is Cyrillic alphabet and left side is English alphabet.
右がロシアで使われているキルリ文字表記
左がアルファベット表記です。

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#LittleLaraland
#LittleLaralandSketchbook
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#illustration
#art
#ロシア語
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#イラスト
#ララちゃん

email : info@makikonikson.com

Is Religion banned? Will you get your organs harvested for practicing your faith in China? Will you be oppressed and suppressed? Will you be arrested? Are there Churches in China?

The Taiping Rebellion was influenced to some degree by Christian teachings, and the Boxer Rebellion was in part a reaction against Christianity in China. Christians in China established the first modern clinics and hospitals, and provided the first modern training for nurses. Both Roman Catholics and Protestants founded numerous educational institutions in China from the primary to the university level. Some of the most prominent Chinese universities began as religious-founded institutions. Missionaries worked to abolish practices such as foot binding, and the unjust treatment of maidservants, as well as launching charitable work and distributing food to the poor. They also opposed the opium trade and brought treatment to many who were addicted. Some of the early leaders of the Chinese Republic, such as Sun Yat-sen were converts to Christianity and were influenced by its teachings. By 1921, Harbin, Manchuria's largest city, had a Russian population of around 100,000, constituting a large part of Christianity in the city.

Christianity, especially in its Protestant form, gained momentum in China between the 1980s and the 1990s, but in the following years, folk religion recovered more rapidly and in greater numbers than Christianity (or Buddhism). One scholar noted that "the Christian God then becomes one in a pantheon of local gods among whom the rural population divides its loyalties".

Protestants in the early twenty-first century, including both official and unofficial churches, had between 25 and 35 million adherents. Catholics were not more than 10 million. Other demographic analyses found that an average 2–4% of the population of China claims a Christian affiliation. Christians were unevenly distributed geographically. The only provinces in which they constituted a population significantly larger than 1 million persons are Henan, Anhui and Zhejiang. Protestants are characterised by a prevalence of people living in the countryside, women, illiterates and semi-literates, and elderly people.

A significant number of members of churches unregistered with the government, and of their pastors, belong to the Koreans of China.[334] Christianity has a strong presence in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, in Jilin. The Christianity of Yanbian Koreans has a patriarchal character; Korean churches are usually led by men, in contrast to Chinese churches which more often have female leadership. For instance, of the 28 registered churches of Yanji, only three of which are Chinese congregations, all the Korean churches have a male pastor while all the Chinese churches have a female pastor. Also, Korean church buildings are stylistically very similar to South Korean churches, with big spires surmounted by large red crosses. Yanbian Korean churches have been a matter of controversy for the Chinese government because of their links to South Korean churches.

In recent decades the Communist Party of China has become more tolerant of Christian churches outside party control, despite looking with distrust on organizations with international ties. The government and Chinese intellectuals tend to associate Christianity with subversive Western values, and many churches have been closed or destroyed. Since the 2010s policies against Christianity have been extended also to Hong Kong.

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