Word: burma
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...share an obsession with George Orwell's 1984, though, unlike him, I don't have to live it. He insists that Burma resembles Orwell's dystopia more with each passing year, from its crippling power cuts to the desperate popular obsession with the lottery. (Everyone in Burma seems to play the numbers.) But when I compare him to Winston, the rebellious protagonist who dares to trust his co-worker Julia, Ko Myo frowns and looks uncharacteristically glum. "There are no Winstons in this country," he says quietly. "People here don't even trust themselves anymore." Although he supports...
...Young, handsome and smarter than a truckful of generals, Ko Myo is a teacher by profession and my guide to the arcane politics of Burma. Thankfully, he's a patient one. On my first trip to Burma, he had bravely taken me to the house of a prominent democrat. Stupidly, I had no idea who she was or what risks Ko Myo had taken to bring me there. Today, he takes a spoonful of tea-leaf salad and shakes his head in mock disgust. "To think I risked a 10-year prison sentence for that," he says...
...that two military-intelligence agents were harassing the staff about my identity and movements. Their timing was unnerving. Orwell's "Hate Week" parades have a modern Burmese equivalent. Mass rallies had been staged at stadiums nationwide to support a "road map" to democracy launched by Khin Nyunt, one of Burma's ruling troika of generals, just weeks after U.S. sanctions were announced. The rallies were organized by the regime's political wing, the Union Solidarity and Development Association, which has millions of members but only because state employees must join or lose their jobs. At one meeting in the ancient...
...headed north for Mandalay, Burma's second-largest city, which I had first visited via dilapidated train from Rangoon, a trip so punishingly long that giant spiders had spun terrifying webs from the luggage racks by the time we arrived. On this occasion, I went by air, which meant landing at one of the most eerie monuments to Burma's economic mismanagement: Mandalay International Airport. Topped with baroque spires to recall the palatial splendors of Burma's royal past, the airport was completed in 2000 at an estimated cost of $150 million. Today, ox carts ply its grand, four-lane...
...junta evidently believed a lavish new airport would transform Mandalay into a regional business hub. However, most goods still arrive in the city by the usual overland route. Mandalay is the terminus of the Burma Road, its trading lifeline to neighboring China, and the main reason the economy has plodded along without ever breaking down catastrophically (so far). Another reason is the nation's staggering agricultural wealth...