Update. It’s no longer a “coup attempt,” it succeeded. Aung San Suu Kyi and Win Myint have been removed from office and detained. The Tatmadaw, headed by Min Aung Hlaing, are now the head of Myanmar.
I’ll be honest: I don’t really know what to make about Myanmar or Burma or whatever we call it as it’s honestly hard to decipher what’s going on with that country.
There’s what the mainstream media says and there’s the politics and the goings-on behind it all, the actual quality of it.
I hope that I don’t get in trouble for saying any of this. It’s just… hard to know how to approach all this and how to learn more about the subject. I think the problem with Myanmar/Burma is that nobody has really deciphered all the facts about what’s happening on the ground. We know more about, say, Vietnam or even Laos than we do that country.
Don’t worry, I consciously made this place to be a place where people are free to speculate on current world events. So feel free to speculate.
Very well.
That’s exactly why I created this community, to decipher current world events from a socialist perspective. Even if we don’t know all the facts now, we can try to learn them. This is extremely new news, but as more information is added, we may learn more about it. Until then, feel free to debate among yourselves what is going on.
Also, feel free to call it either Myanmar or Burma, or flip flop between both. Aung San Suu Kyi personally said that people are free to call it either, of course, she’s no longer in charge, the Tatmadaw is.
My old roommate is from Myanmar and we looked into doing business in the country. His family were Muslim NLD supporters (not Rohinga).
The old military junta is looking to regain control. Both the junta and NLD are corrupt, with the junta during its decades of rule running Myanmar as its personal fiefdom with a few words about socialism with no action towards building it, and the NLD bringing in WB and IMF loans.
No mistake, Myanmar needed outside funds to develop the country as they had barely started modifying their agricultural infrastructure until about 10 years ago when they opened up. Under the junta, infrastructure in Myanmar was the worst kind of anarchy, bribery was everywhere. After the NLD took power, the top leaders of the junta were technically removed from power, but they had transferred most of their assets to their cronies who remained in the government.
Ultimately, the liberal democracy of the NLD and its plan to improve productive forces in Myanmar is a net good over the junta which just ran the country into the ground for decades, whereas the NLD has hardly been in power for a decade.
I’m concerned about US intervention in Myanmar as it is incredibly wealthy in oil, gold, titanium, jade, valuable timber like teak, and there is still considerable opium cultivation in the Golden Triangle. However, given proximity to China and the business they’re doing there, I doubt US troops would be sent in without Chinese permission. China has a non-intervention policy and will continue to try and do business there regardless of who’s in charge.
