Kyi May Kaung - comment left of Irrawaddy site - with ref. to Aung Zaw's articles on Burmese Dictators

My comment left on Irrawaddy site -

ref. Ko Aung Zaw's articles on Burma Dictators:

If this is not a book already, it should be - but you need to footnote every single sentence as to where you got the information.

This is U Chit Hlaing (Ko Ko Maung) right?  UCH occasionally taught us French Grammar at Alliance Francaise in Rangoon, including on 7th July 1972, the day of the shooting.

He almost had a nervous breakdown on the podium.  "They're going to shoot, they're going to shoot." We students all went home - only next day I found out what had happened.

The memorable class is described in my upcoming novel Wolf.

If you got the info. from UCH, he is hardly an unbiased witness.

Don't like you writing - "Than Shwe met his beloved wife -"  How do you know if she is beloved or not?

You don't want to be accused of whitewashing the story, do you.

Ever read - The Burmese Way to Socialism?  Find it understandable - also would you say Burma post 1962 was good to Buddhist (monks) and others -

If it's a history you need all points of view.

Look at Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States - which is all from the workers'/slaves' point of view, but he draws on many sources and documents everything - things like letters etc.

You could make this your magnum opus or in lieu of a Ph.D. Dissertation, but you need to flesh it out and deepen it with many different sources and points of view.

Ian Holliday, Burma Redux is also good -- but in my opinion veers between Burma vs Myanmar without giving a clear argument for one vs the other.

This is a good start about the d. dictators, but to be multidimensional it needs more (work) - you can retain the journalistic, accessible style, but you must cite sources.  I know you told me once (in Gutenberg in 2002?) that you are not an academic, but in this case academic methods like citation will be your best friend.

Kyi May Kaung (Ph.D.)