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Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55882489

It looks like the military will be taking over again in Myanmar. Their military commander-in-chief has now the power to do whatever he wants. It's because of the fraud election system on Myanmar where most people believe that Aung San Suu Kyi should have won the election, but it ended up in a landslide win against her opponent. A lot of them cannot accept the results of the election and may lead to another dictatorship, which resulting to protests.

Now Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi and the other senior members of the governing party are all detained in an injustice way. The United States and UK are condemning the coup. Citizens are experiencing disruptions in mobile data internet connections and phone service providers. TV networks are also experiencing major issues and are off-air, and international broadcasters like BBC World are blocked.

This is definitely bad and I feel for the citizens of Myanmar.

Any thoughts, opinions or feelings that you guys would like to share about the terrible situation in Myanmar now?

We are living in 2021 and still things like this are happening. It's very sad and I pray for the people of Myanmar. The military should never be in charge of a hole country, nothing good is coming from that. And the ones suffering the most are going to be the citizens. We need the UN to step up and pressure Myanmar for a peaceful transition of power.

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Seems like all three in front row have some issues to deal with
https://i.ibb.co/HPT9kjQ/Untitled-2.png (https://ibb.co/JpjSM9P)

What kind of fashion bracelet is that?
https://i.ibb.co/fGQ17ZX/Untitled-2.png (https://ibb.co/x83CQw2)

That look no fine place
https://i.ibb.co/5nHB9BW/Untitled-5.png (https://ibb.co/Hx8n2nD)

I was just browsing on a Dota 2 page about an update with a player transfer. And what's the relation? on top of the comments, there's one that commented about this scene in Myanmar and asked for help or at least letting the world know their situation.

Honestly, I don't know what's happening with them until I've read it a while ago and through this thread too. Terrible situation in Myanmar and I hope that its allies in the SEA will help them make the situation better.  :-[

this was already expected because according to what I read the constitution of Myanmar says that the military has 25% of the seats of the two legislative chambers, the right of veto and three ministries - Frontiers, Interior and Defense and as they have not changed the constitution, it was predictable that this would happen.

Suu Kyi, as she cannot become president, created the position of State advisor to lead the country. I don't live there but I think this thirst for power is the reason for this taken over by the military

Horrible to see things like this still happening in 2021, but it’s expected that some areas will be forgotten about and disregarded because the elites don’t see a reason to protect the people that are currently in power.

Don’t worry — if this was a country with a large amount of oil reservers, the US and their allies would already have boots on the ground to ensure that the next government is friendly towards the West.

Curious on what the UN does with it’s massive budget. Maybe I’m just a pessimist though.

The US is okay with middle eastern countries having dictatorships so long as they supply oil to the West.

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It appears the military has its own political party and has candidates that run for office. This really means the military was always in control. It is important for the military to be non-political to avoid these types of situations.

Heh, yeah. Doesn’t matter what you do to your people if you just keep the West happy and keep pointing to populists threats as a way to keep the support around from the West — at least in the ME that’s the case.

Military does have its own political party over there, but they had a pretty horrible showing in the most recent election which is what sealed the fact that they were going to attempt a coup — which they did, successfully.

'Chaos' in the White House as Biden administration officials argue over whether to call Myanmar military takeover a 'coup' over fears they will
anger China
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9213225/Biden-threatens-Myanmar-sanctions-administration-debates-calling-military-takeover-coup.html

Wouldn’t say that the DailyMail is the best source, but still. We already have an update on the matter.

Biden admin has already declared that this is a coup, meaning that the country will lose any aid from the US. - Not like they got much aid in the past, but it’s still frozen. Next few days will show what the admin wants to do in terms of China and this new cold war that we may be entering.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-admin-designates-myanmar-militarys-takeover-coup-dtat/story?id=75620156

Like I said, this shows the importance of the military being non-political.

The military does not need to attempt a coup, generally, as the military has guns, weapons, and soldiers, they can just execute a coup.

Arguably in Myanmar the military were always in power anyway. It's questionable how much power Aung San Suu Kyi actually had in the first place. Most of the top government positions were held by representatives of the military - the same military that had her under house arrest for the better part of two decades. I think she always worked within quite severe constraints, and was never free to govern as she pleased.

I don't think the military taking control is a huge surprise, as they largely had control anyway. The bit that did surprise me was that exercise video that caught the coup live!

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/3e3b815f0c5b31929d4061e5d2e95a49da764689/75_0_1330_798/master/1330.jpg?width=1200&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=b93ac06bec762eb9b3b178077f8d75d7
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/02/exercise-instructor-appears-to-unwittingly-capture-myanmar-coup-in-dance-video

My zero-research take on things is that if the previous bitch was a favorite with the globalists, the people will probably be better served by the military cleaning up things for a while.

If 'exercise instructors' can stop wearing a mask during physical exercise, alone, and outdoors, under the new 'military dictatorship' then it's very solid evidence that the military is more on the side of the peeps than was the previous globalist certified dictatorship.

I am not familiar with Myanmar politics, but when people with the government's guns are running for office, they ultimately have control. 

Geeze. What people will do for a tic-tok video these days, lol.

Just listened to the latest pod save the world (https://crooked.com/podcast/the-coup-in-myanmar-explained/) and learned a bunch about this.

The 'previous bitch' (Aung San Suu Kyi) was first elected in 1990 with over 80% of the votes after campaigning on making changes to their constitution that would strip some political power from the Military.  So they captured her before the election, nullified the results, and basically locked her in her own home for ~20 years. (they assassinated most members of her party, and prob would of killed her, but it could have caused a revolt as her father was like their version of George Washington)

In 2015 (25 years later) she ran again, and won more than 80% of the vote again.  So this time the Military added a clause to the rules that made her ineligible since her her husband was born in another country.  Instead of locking her up this time, they made a new roll and allowed her to be 'State Counselor' while the Military was able to keep their power while she handled the more public stuff.

Then beginning in 2015-16 there was the whole genocide thing where the Military executed ~25k Muslims, gang raped 18,000 muslim women and children, and burned down ~100k Muslim homes.  Almost 1 million Muslims fled the country.  Mission accomplished.  

In the November 2020 election Aung San Suu Kyi won again by a landslide and then started talking about amending the constitution again.  The Military claimed there was widespread election fraud and despite no evidence to support their claims locked up Aung San Suu Kyi and here we are today.

Fun Fact: Back in 2016 facing enormous pressure Facebook started banning top Military leaders for spreading misinformation that was leading to violence.  Here's a good article about it: A Genocide Incited on Facebook, With Posts From Myanmar’s Military (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html)

Gah...'NPR Cadence' propaganda that had me fucked in the head for 30 years and still afflicts most of my friends and family.  I background listened to a fair bit of it.

Here's the problem:  I live in a country with a president who is, for whatever reason, not a favorite of the 'globalists'.  I see wild stories from Western state-sponsored propaganda outlets like NPR and all of the corp/gov media rags about how the guy is running around shooting people in the head for not wearing masks and blah, blah, blah.  The problem is that I am on-the-ground and can see with my own eyes that it is completely fabricated horse-shit.

I take anything from the corp/gov mainstream media with a heaping tablespoon of salt, and especially when they are trying to color-revolution some country in furtherance of the global government project (which is about all that foreign policy is these days.)

There has never been a globalist program more pernicious and devastating to the world than the current globalist 'covid-19' scamdemic.  Any 'leader' playing ball with it is a traitor to his/her people and nation as far as I am concerned.


The globalists are big into commie style genocide and ethnic 'population movements'.  Sounds like the bitch's 'election' was a big boon for their operations and she wasted no time getting right to work.

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BTW, Myanmar was on my short-list of places to go to escape the inevitable controlled demolition of the U.S..  I sort of wrote it off because I anticipated that the Globalist would use the Chinese boots that they control to pave it over in construction of the 'belt and road' program.

So, I never really put a lot of research into the politics and history of Myanmar.  I would like to have a 'third option' and it is still on my list of countries to look into.  I'm relatively serious that a 'military junta' is not, to me, a negative thing compared to a globalist-friendly 'democratically elected' leader.  What the global mainstream media says about one faction or the other means exactly ZERO to me.  I do my research using other mechanisms.

Quick Aside before I go into the meat of it - How is pod save the world? Been looking into a new podcast that goes in depth into things and it keeps coming up, but curious on what sort of slant I’ll be getting with it.

But in regards to the coup. This is going to lead to a heap of international sanctions that hopefully leads to the downfall of this military that has been disregarding democracy (and democracy by a large margin) for decades upon decades.

I don’t want Western countries to put boots on the ground, cause there’s no need to do so. But it would be very helpful to hit them with a brigade of sanctions on both their country as a whole and top people to try to make them fall from within. Further, it’s important to open up their internet. As the military run government has already shut off access to social media services.’

Democracy is the dictatorship of the stupid, equally as bad as any dictatorship, marginally better than communism.
No-one has right to rule over anyone else.
Everyone has right to rule over his Bitcoin keys and thats that.

Very liberal.  It's hosted by Ben Rhodes (Obamas Deputy National Sec Advisor) and Tommy Vietor (Spokesperson for the National Security Council).  If you can get past the rants about Republicans they do a really good job of explaining foreign policy and the history that led to where we are now.  THere's also some good stories, like what the flight was like on AF1 with Obama after Trumps inaguration, or when he walked in on the Queen of England thinking it was a mens room, not a single person unisex bathroom.   First half is always good imo, second half is always an interview - hit or miss.

If you're looking for something super interesting and educational without as much political bias (there's still a little) check out The Deal (https://www.middlebury.edu/office/deal-podcast). It's an evergreen series (not current events), only 5 episodes, hosted by the director of a big Non-proliferation program.  Very well produced, made me think about things differently.

The timing doesn't surprise me. The military, and their backers in Beijing seems to have waited until Trump was kicked out of power in the United States. There was no major trigger as such in Myanmar and the military staged the coup at this time after very lengthy planning. The reason being given is that the recently concluded parliamentary elections were rigged by the ruling NLD. 

And contrary to what some have posted here, the Rohingya issue has played no role in these events. Both Suu Kyi and the Tatmadaw are on the same side as far as the Rohingyas are considered. The major difference was related to the issue of clashes between Christian missionaries and the Hill Regions Buddhist Mission (HRBM) in states such as Chin and Kachin. Suu Kyi has actively supported the Baptist church during her term as the president, while the Tatmadaw is a solidly Buddhist dominated entity and it is opposed to the increasing presence of Baptist church in the country.

After her win in 2020, Suu Kyi had asked the army to stop providing support to the HRBM and not to restrict the activities of the Baptist church. The discontent within Tatmadaw resulting from this move was brewing for some time.

Oh imagine the following scenario:

your neighbors in a number of 5 people decide to go to your house and tell you to take your clothes and take your ass... your neighbors are very strong and you don't have the strength to deal with them, that's why you give your ass

how do you expect to resolve this situation without the police? will you kill all your neighbors? you may have remorse for years and a relative of your neighbor will take revenge and the cycle of revenge will never end

This is an example that we need laws, governments, the police and this whole system even if it is a system where there is a lot of corruption and cases of injustice, without it the world would be worse

I really appreciate content at this level of detail.  It gives a person a good starting point for research should one decide to do so.  Thanks!

(BTW, I'll be sad if you lose in the upcoming Russian Roulette game vis-a-vis human trials for the gene therapy developments.  More so than or most people since I've got a lot out of your input here over the years.)

And it just getting worse. They have blocked Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for Myanmar citizens until "further notice".

Sources:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55923486
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55960284

However, they haven't blocked Telegram, Whatsapp, Reddit, Discord, Uptrennd and other similar platforms yet. Myanmar citizens should turn on decentralized social media and other platforms where it's impossible for the military coup to block them even if they order the telecoms in doing so.

I just hope they don't ban their citizens from crypto-related activities there.

Other than powping what you recommended? Have to start getting on top of things

we really cannot judge the leader for doing this. Because first of all, being a leader of a cpuntry is never easy and if sometimes, there is a threat which requires greater control over the citizens of that country which would have more pros than cons, then such decision is just. A coin always has two sides, im just looking at the situation in an even perspective. But of course, if the people are heing taken advantage of, then by all means this should not be allowed to happen.

It's very hard for us to say from far away what the people should do. Once the military takes over it is hard to fight against it. They have all the power. In my opinion the pressure should come from abroad. Best would be to have the UN to force general elections. Not through military threats but economic ones. There could be financially support if the country becomes a democracy.

Outside intervention will only make it worse. One of the arguments put forward by the military is that Suu Kyi is a western puppet (the fact that her late husband Michael Aris was a British national doesn't help much). Now if the Western nations make this a proxy battle between China and the NATO, then things will get complicated. Suu Kyi enjoys widespread support among the Bamar majority, while the military is supported by the Sangha and the Chinese. My guess is that the military won't be able to hold on to power for too long, with Suu Kyi and NLD commanding such a level of support. So even without any foreign intervention, the military coup will be undone soon. Now western interference will only complicate matters further.

Myanmar is not a country I know too much about, so I did some research due to the coup. This Al Jazeera documentary (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF1GZ0O94qk) from a couple years ago is pretty interesting. It sounds like the military was already mostly in charge, and over the last years they've joined with the Buddhist monks to create something of a Buddhist theocracy, similar to some other countries in the region. Even in 2019 it sounded like Aung San Suu Kyi didn't have all that much influence. In the documentary they partially blamed her for the Rohingya oppression, but in hindsight it seems possible that she was just never in a strong enough position to do much.

Is anyone here from Myanmar? I wonder what it's like on the ground there.


Did that help with Cuba, Iran, or North Korea? Sanctions often just give the regime someone to blame, and it's the poor who are hurt the most from them.


They have a heavy neoliberal bias. Similar to FiveThirtyEight, whose podcast I do listen to, but Pod Save the World is much lighter on real info, so I don't find it worth the bias. For in-depth US news, I recommend C-SPAN's podcasts: Washington Today, The Weekly, and After Words. (I don't know of a good one for in-depth world news.)

Will totally take a look at the Al Jazeera documentary, sounds very interesting.

Sanctions may not be amazing and glamorous, but there isn’t really a lot an outside country can do to put pressure on another outside of sanctions. Guess you could freeze assets of people at the top of the military in Myanmar, but that’s typically done alongside sanctions and can only help when the people are storing money at international banks that will listen to US intervention. Totally gives the regime someone to blame, but it does make people within the country angry which could set off a revolution of some sort.

Writing those podcasts down to take a listen to. Not trying to add more neoliberal bias stuff to my feed, get enough of that everyday.

Protests are being seen around the country now though, and they’re all about installing Aung San Suu Kyi back into leadership. People are being arrested, shot at, and being told that if they continue to protest then they’re ‘breaking democracy’ very funny.

Short little update: Biden admin has announced sanctions on the military leaders who directed the coup where they’ve frozen their assets and money that was held by the Burmese government in the United States. Seems to be some export controls as well into the country.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/10/politics/biden-myanmar-coup-sanctions/index.html

Curious on if this is enough pressure of if we’re going to need a concentrated effort by US allies to sanction them (which I expect to be the case)

One interesting thing I picked up on from Ronald Bernard's interviews were that international sanctions are one of the main ways to get money moved into and out of the shadow banking system.  When he mentioned this it got me thinking about various observations and memories of the 10 years of sanctions on Iraq (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tihL1lMLL0) and the like.  His suggestion fits pretty well actually.

I have less confidence in who/what Bernard is than I have in the generals (and specifics) of stories he tells.  Many of them have great explanatory power.  And there are a variety of reasons why having fake people tell real stories could be of certain uses.  I have seen nothing which really convinces me that he is _not_ more-or-less legit either.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w12IksIQQn0 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w12IksIQQn0)