Myanmar coup: The shadowy business empire funding the Tatmadaw | Hacker News Reader

Myanmar coup: The shadowy business empire funding the Tatmadaw

bbc.com

80 pointsgmays42 comments

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It's all the financial information from a 167gig torrent file they were given by someone supposedly connected to Anonymous. If you have contacts that can make good use of this please help.

He also has many images of people with their brains and guts spilled across the streets. If the purse strings are closed perhaps the coup could end.

This is very useful!@

This kind of organisation is quite common. Egypt is nice example where the military owns a lot of industry. In Iran the Revolutionary Guards also have a business wing.

These are really hard to sanction because in case of sanctions it is usually the military who controls the smuggling.

In Iran is pretty clear that Revolutionary Guard is engaged in that can of activity. Sanction joke legitimate private business, while government military owned buissness insulate themselves as much as they and use it to cut out competition.

Same in Pakistan.

When a nations political system fails to deliver leadership, the military usually steps in. They have the guns and political leaders shut up pretty quickly when there are guns pointed at them and their families.

It’s tragic but common. Once the military gets political power it doesn’t let go of it. The rewards are just too good.

The military's direct interest in civilian businesses strikes me as strange ... but when I think about it when it comes to authoritarian governments it's surprisingly common.

It would seem to naturally trigger the military to take action when their business interests might be at risk. And of course economically that would be a recipe for corruption / lack of competition and disaster.

It's basic fascist economy.

How is the US any different?

You feel it is the same?

Have military, petrol and finance industries not merged and seized state power, including the majority of central public spending?

Not exactly the same, but a similar fascist-style merging of state violence and private industry.

I don't think it is anything like "fascist-style merging of state violence and private industry".

Funny how the Myanmar coup gets so much coverage in the west and the one in Bolivia was not even reported as a coup even. But perhaps it was because the indigenous non-white leader Evo Morales (over 50 percent vote) was overthrown and replaced by the white minority (5 percent vote). Media in the West used terms like political crisis or Evo Morales ouster or he flew to Mexico etc.... Media that flat out ignored calling it a definitional coup included the BBC, The Economist, NY Times, Washington Post etc... The same form of lies was also in their coverage of the coup by the military junta in Chile which they refused to call a coup at that time as well.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/12/25/morales-claims-us-...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/18/silenc...

All while Joe Biden is saying nonsense like "Juan Guaidó is the legitimate president of Venezuela".

I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. Guaidó is supported by both major political parties in the US but is not recognized as president of Venezuela by any members of the EU. The US has an abysmal track record of meddling in Latin American elections - who should we look to here?

Erm, where are you getting this information? Most countries, if they've expressed a view on the issue, support Guaido, including essentially the entire EU:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Guaid%C3%B3#/media/File:V...

Though I can't say no member states recognize him, the sources on Wikipedia are largely tweets and I'm not sure how up to date they are, the EU as a whole has retracted their support for him as interim president.

https://www.euronews.com/2021/01/07/eu-no-longer-recognises-...

Yep. Also reported by Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-election-eu-idU...

Interesting, I see why this news slipped by given the date.

Edit: If I'm reading this correctly, the EU is not walking back their recognition here but rather updating it

I don't know what the difference is, they don't recognize him currently even if they did in the past.

The difference is that further elections & governmental procedure occurred in Venezuela and the EU is simply updating their recognition in light of that. They aren't timidly walking back their earlier recognition as if they were caught supporting the wrong guy.

Media in the west are licensed so they need to be careful. They can report anything they want as long as it does not put given agenda at risk.

>They can report anything they want as long as it does not put given agenda at risk.

Where do you feel that happens?

Herman and Chomsky's propaganda model (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model) is probably the best way to understand what the poster is referring to.

That's a pretty good article. A quote from it: "So I think when we talked about the "fifth filter" we should have brought in all this stuff -- the way artificial fears are created with a dual purpose... partly to get rid of people you don't like but partly to frighten the rest. Because if people are frightened, they will accept authority."

....The coup in Bolivia

I don't think the original comment was about coverage of events in Bolivia, in Bolivia.

I'm referring to the US coverage.

Are you say if someone covers Bolivia they will lose their license?

Not in the US, outside of the traditional TV networks.

The same Evo Morales who tried to modify the constitution to run another time since he wasn't allowed anymore using a referendum, people voted against so he lost, then sued and was allowed to run under very flaky legal arguments, then when the election came and his opponent was winning, results stopped being published and he proclaimed himself the winner without even finishing the count?

the very same

>his opponent was winning, results stopped being published and he proclaimed himself the winner without even finishing the count?

First, his opponent was never winning. His opponent was barely inside the 10% margin needed to secure a runoff election. And though Morales claimed himself the winner before absolutely all the votes were counted, he still left open the possibility of the runoff election being held.

No significant fraud was ever found to have occurred, but after bogus claims of fraud Morales agreed to hold new elections. Morales was ousted from power before any further elections could happen though. If you want to claim the election was corrupt, his opponent Mesa should have become president. What happened was clearly a coup.

We also call elections before all the votes are counted here in the US. Morales did win that election, the suspicious patterns that were reported were bogus. The NYT had to issue a retraction over it, despite the fact that coverage at the time pointed out exactly the flaws mentioned later.

You're also leaving out that Morales resigned and fled the country. And the fact that after the "interim government" was dissolved, Morales' very same political party won again.

Looking at the 2020 results, it seems like a remarkably good outcome to me. The trouble is that any leader who tries to expand term limits gets a relatively good deal probability wise, while the society gets a lot of uncertainty followed by a high probability of dictator. Consequences of trying to raise term limits should be many and more severe.

>Consequences of trying to raise term limits should be many and more severe

More severe then a foreign backed coup? I don't disagree that raising term limits is sketchy, but the punishment seems far more worthy of condemnation.

The power of foreign governments wax and wane, a permanent president is eventually a dictator and has all the necessary local resources to stay put.

It is unfortunate for other countries that the precedents haven't been severe. I don't think Putin, Erdogan or Morales can reasonably regret not taking their standard ex-President package.

So democracy doesn't really mean much to you, people making the "wrong" choice need their betters to step in and correct that choice.

Democracy is important to me, and therefore republics that have limits to maintain it. If killing a leader who increases his power within a republic is a problem for you then you value a world where democracy for one generation can choose dictators for the next. That is a world that can't maintain democracy.

A foreign coup to overthrow a popularly elected president is the antithesis of democracy, even if you worry the person may be gathering too much power. It's the right of the governed to decide their government, and sacrificing democracy for this generation does not help democracy in future generations.

And this all ignores that it is ridiculous to claim this coup had anything to do with Morales bring president too long. We have no problems associating with open dictatorships.

> Myanmar's military - the Tatmadaw - began its involvement in business after the socialist coup of Ne Win in 1962.

Naturally. [1]

Hopefully if it ever comes to an end it won't be a firesale to some oligarchs like what ruined modern day Russia. Turning shady KGB connected people into overnight billionaires, with a judicial system that is in step with the mafia they created.

Most people don't know that Somalia's government failed after a socialist experiment, it turned into total anarchy by 1991: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somali_Democratic_Republic

People like to joke that the anarchy Somalia created (and still largely remains) is some capitalist paradise. Yet few businesses or foreign capital ever chose to operate in such anarchy.

A stable, fair, reliable, and independent judicial system plus democratic politics (so far the best we got) is a bare minimum for happy life.

People should really appreciate those two things.

[1] The moral to these stories isn't simply anti-socialism, that's over simplifying it (even though that tends to be the early trigger in the modern era for anarchy and revolutions), it's what comes after the revolution/anarchy that is what is critical. You have to work overtime to avoid authoritarianism, which is extremely difficult and rare - or baked right in to some ideologies calling for "vanguard parties" that never end.

I'd love to read those early young revolutionary's pamphlets about what they were promising vs what it turned into today. Before the authoritarian boots stomped all over them, without thanking them for the help.

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