Burma

[john_denver]

Has anyone been paying attention to the events that are happening in Burma right now?

What could be one of the richest countries in Asia in terms of natural resources...has nothing.

Well, except if you are in the military.

I have been to Burma twice, the most recent in 2001. The people are very friendly and very genuine in their actions.

We had a great time.

However, traveling through Burma in 2001 was like stepping back in time to about 1945. The government keeps the population and country isolated by using techniques one would read about in many of George Orwell's books. While in Burma I was warned many times to not talk politics because secret police were everywhere. One day we visited a famous wooden bridge but our guides refused to go with us. Because this was a place foreigners frequently visited, it had many undercover secret police waiting for someone to talk about the forbidden.

It's an amazing country in many great ways and many very bad ways. I hope it all ends peacefully and there is a change.

Here is a very accurate article from the IHT: Myanmar from IHT

[davidals]

I haven't been, but I have been following the stories. Politically, the place seems inhuman - I did read Emma Larson's book, which was fairly spooky - 'Emma Larson' is a pseudonym, and the many Burmese she talks with are disguised in the portrayals, but the book does relate a good deal of history, a lot of detail about the landscape, and a lot of detail about what 45 years of an isolationist government have done to the place - once the wealthiest S.E. Asian nation, and now the poorest, in slightly less than a half-century.

As sealed up as the country is, bloggers have been a primary source for news of current developments, and that would open up a little hope that this regime might be getting close to its' expiration date, though - given the regime's past behavior (the massacres during the Ne Win era), I also think things will get uglier before they get better.