I thought I would try and explain the politics of Myanmar in light of their military taking over once again. Myanmar has the strangest Army/Civilian relationship I have ever seen or heard of. The Myanmar army is independent of any other group in Myanmar. They live separately, they marry within army families, etc. When the army needs more soldier the army will kidnap babies and children from their civilian population! The army also wrote their constitution and reserved, I think, something like 38% of all legislators to themselves. That 38% is filled by the army appointing members of the army to those positions.

Aung San Suu Kyi has been blamed for any number of things because she was elected to the head of the government and so its been assumed that she was in charge of the military - nope, not really. The assumption that she was responsible for the crackdown on the Muslim Rohingya minority would also be wrong. Actually that crackdown happened due to a really nasty Buddist monk who got everybody worked up against Muslims.

Anyway, I just thought I would point this out in case anybody was interested. The Myanmar thing is a mess without solution unless the army backs down. They just may as Myanmar is pretty dependent on tourist dollars which also funds the Army. One can only hope.

Here is some Burma backstory for context

Burma: Land of ballots and blood

Army oversight has actually worked for a while in Turkey to modulate religious corruption of a secular country. It didnt work for long enough! Just another reason to fear unbridled democrazy, sidetracked by a demagogue.

This may help Tigers too, but its controversial

I neglected to mention the Buddists. The Myanmar military is one of the three independent groups that make up that nation. The Buddists is the second isolated group and all the rest is the third group. None of these groups answer to any of the others. The fact that Myanmar even exists is a miracle!

Oh, one more thing. In Myanmar Buddhist priests can own nothing. An interesting fact is that there are a LOT of Buddhist priest driving around in new pickups. I once asked somebody how that could be. They shrugged their shoulders and said something like; "We don't know but its true"