Myanmar Earthquake (MBS reporting from Bangkok)

HoustonSaint68 said
As I understand it, the Myanmar/Yangon names were the traditional names before British colonialism, which in British parlance became Burma/Rangoon. So you would think that the decision to change the name back would have been a no brainer within the country, right?

Well, actually no. Aside from human beings just not liking change, (and, again, this is as I understand it from being educated by locals in-country), the name change was the brainchild of the military government and was seen as a rather transparent bullshirt attempt to "unify" the country at the same time they were fighting off/jailing Aung San Suu Kyi and her democratic followers.

So the locals I was familiar with when I was spending a lot of time there (roughly 1993-1997) still used "Burma" and "Rangoon" as a kind of F-you to the government. Not that they were happy with the British colonialism legacy, but rather it was the real-time oppression of the military junta that they were immediately concerned with, not the "university student" optics of a name change.

And, yes, Burmese women are by-and-large gorgeous, and their personalities and friendliness are even more attractive than their physical beauty. If I didn't love my wife as much as I do....

It was the military junta that, by and large, were the ones mostly responsible for driving out British colonial authorities in the late 50's and then later on turned on one another in immediate post-independence confusion and chaos where a cadre of military generals led by charismatic military idealogue, a Col. Muammar Gaddafi type, assumes and consolidates total control of the country. A very similar series of circumstances played out in mid-late 60's with Suharto in Indonesia.

It was a similar pattern in the period of "decolonialization" following WWII with most European empires in Africa, Middle East, Southeast Asia with particular focus on FLN in Algeria (nearly lead to De Gaulle's assassination and attempted coup by right-wing elements in French army determined to keep Algeria a French province, the Mau Mau revolt in Kenya (Tom Morello's parents were Mau Mau revolutionaries), the breakup of British power in Cyprus in the early 60's and how inter-communal, long-dormant ethnic tensions between Greek and Turkish Cypriots eventually lead to a 1974 Turkish intervention that's permanently split the island, more then 50+ years later. The 1967 Aden Emergency and how it ultimatrly lead to a bitterly-divided north and South Yemen: a pro-Soviet, Marxist communist Arab regime in IIRC northern Yemen, and a Saudi-and-Western backed royal/military regime in the south during the 1970's and 80's amidst the Cold War's backdrop until 1990 when socialist, communist Yemeni state collapsed.