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Post by michaelw on Feb 1, 2021 1:01:03 GMT -5
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Post by robeiae on Feb 1, 2021 9:15:13 GMT -5
It must be Monday.
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Post by mikey on Feb 1, 2021 11:53:18 GMT -5
Must've been some "WIDE spread" election fraud. Everyone knows that if it ain't "WIDE spread", it don't count.
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Post by robeiae on Feb 2, 2021 19:22:14 GMT -5
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Post by michaelw on Feb 2, 2021 19:56:24 GMT -5
Some interesting stuff here... www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2021/02/01/heres-why-biden-hasnt-called-myanmars-military-takeover-a-coup/?sh=788993b71849It's titled "Here's Why Biden hasn't called Myanmar's military takeover a coup." Essentially, the US would be forced to withhold foreign aid to Myanmar if they (the US) took the position that a coup occurred. The whole thing is a bit groan-inducing, IMO. But hey, at least the aid money is going to a good cause, right? See here (bolding mine)... Gotta love the double-irony there. But I'll give the Trump administration some credit, at least. They did start calling the Rohingya crisis a case of ethnic cleansing (eventually). Obama called it "discrimination." (I'm not making this up. I suspect he felt that going farther than that would undermine Aung San Suu Kyi, which he didn't want to do. On the other hand, I'm not sure if he was aware that even referring to the Rohingya as Rohingya is also a faux pas from the Burmese persepctive. They refer to the Rohingya as Bengalis, because it makes them sound more foreign.) So to sum up, Myanmar has got to be the ultimate black hole of semantics... You say coup, I say seizure of power. You say ethnic cleansing, I say discrimination. You say Rohingya, I say Bengali. You say Burma, I say Myanmar. Did I miss anything else?
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Post by robeiae on Feb 2, 2021 20:59:32 GMT -5
You say Orwell, I say some English dude.
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Post by michaelw on Feb 3, 2021 5:24:36 GMT -5
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Post by robeiae on Feb 3, 2021 9:09:49 GMT -5
For whatever reason, Burma always elicits top-drawer Orwellian speech: peace is war, freedom is slavery, etc. I seriously recommend reading Emma Larkin's Finding George Orwell in Burma. It's on par with Kaplan's Balkan Ghosts or Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven.
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Post by robeiae on Feb 9, 2021 11:27:02 GMT -5
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Post by michaelw on Feb 9, 2021 13:34:44 GMT -5
I agree with some of that piece, but I think this part...
is tricky, because while the second part is probably true, I think the first part--the idea of Myanmar being "in play"--is actually kind of dubious. China straight-up has the upper hand, compared to the US, with regard to influence in Myanmar currently. Heck, I am not sure the US would even be the #1 player among "democratic" states, because India is arguably in a better position to wrestle w/ China over political influence.
And this part...
seems a bit vague, as I am not sure what exactly she wants to do, if sanctions and "doing nothing" are both problematic. I don't really have an issue w/ her saying that foreign policy needs to be rooted in realism, but that's not much of a specific action point.
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Post by robeiae on Feb 9, 2021 13:40:37 GMT -5
The sense I get is that she doesn't know what to do, with regard to what would help Myanmar (well, the people of Myanmar). Doing nothing means the people return to being under the thumb of some nasty North Korea-esque people. Yet, there isn't a clear path forward. And that's because the US has no real carrots and no real sticks to use, anymore.
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Post by michaelw on Feb 9, 2021 15:42:36 GMT -5
Doing nothing means the people return to being under the thumb of some nasty North Korea-esque people. I think pretty much anything is going to mean that (short of military intervention, I guess). And I think the reality--which I hope is becoming more clear now--is that this was also the situation prior to the coup, as well. Despite appearances, the military obviously never ceded power completely, and in some parts of the country (Rakhine State and other areas, too), one could argue that the military had more of a direct impact on people's day-to-day lives than the NLD ever did. So, maybe Biden won't feel comfortable with the idea, but maybe the best solution is to forget about fake power-sharing agreements and to actually help more on the economic side of things (instead of taking away help via sanctions). Thant Myint-U wrote a piece in the NYT where he noted that--mainly because of Covid--almost 2/3 of the country is living below the global poverty line ($1.90 a day). Before Covid, that number was way less (about 16 percent). So that's a huge, huge issue for millions of people, and it's gonna be an issue regardless of who has the reins of power. And then there's the Rohingya issue, on top of that. I think there's a good chance Bangladesh is going to try to send more Rohingya back to Myanmar over the next year, so Biden can either increase aid for the Rohingya, give aid to the Bangladeshi government in exchange for resettling more Rohingya in Bangladesh, or even try to re-settle more Rohingya in the US (or some combination of the three). I just don't want to see ordinary people suffer even more just because the US is tempted to try to punish the Myanmar military in some kind of hapless quest for karmic justice. It sucks that Myanmar isn't more democratic, but countries don't have to be democratic for the US to trade with them, IMO. (And really, if we're being completely honest, most countries in SE Asia are not democratic. Heck, Thailand, right next door, was literally run by a military junta for years--very similar to Myanmar in a lot of ways--without becoming a pariah state.) But realistically, I know Biden will probably fuck up and make things worse, because he's afraid of people saying he's soft on dictatorships or something.
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Post by michaelw on Feb 10, 2021 20:33:30 GMT -5
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Post by robeiae on Feb 28, 2021 10:13:27 GMT -5
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Post by robeiae on Feb 28, 2021 10:20:34 GMT -5
Graphic:
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