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Bulletins and News Discussion from March 10th to March 16th, 2025 - The New World Struggles To Be Born; Now Is The Time Of Proxy Wars - COTW: Myanmar

Image is from Wikipedia's article on the war..

I've wanted to cover Myanmar for a while now but haven't had the needed knowledge to write much more than "This situation really sucks." After doing a little reading on the situation, I feel even more confused. A decent analogy is the Syrian Civil War, at least while Assad was in power (though it's still pretty true today) - many different opposition groups, some co-operating with the United States, others not. The main government supported partially by an anti-American superpower, but who could live with that government collapsing if there are deals to be made with the group coming into power. A conflict kept going and exploited at least partially by the United States and other imperial core powers, though with plenty of genuine domestic animosity and desires for political independence.

Recently, the Myanmar government - the mainstream media uses "junta", which is probably accurate despite the connotations - has promised elections at the end of 2025. This doesn't seem likely to happen, and even if it did, how this would work in a country as war-torn as Myanmar is unclear. The government is losing territory and soldiers at a quick pace; they now hold only 21% of the country, though that 21% does at least comprise many of the cities. It's difficult to get a handle on the number of people affected because civil wars and insurgencies have been ongoing in some shape or form for decades, but we're talking at least millions displaced and thousands of civilians killed.

Here's a comment by @TheGenderWitch@hexbear.net from fairly recently that covers the situation in Myanmar:

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1K comments

  • An anti-american fever sweeps Canada over trumps threats, meanwhile to the south...

    Tens of thousands of Mexicans rally with president to celebrate US decision to delay tariffs

    how tf has Canada took more heat than Mexico this go around? I think Sheinbaum is the trump whisperer. I think she knows the "trump just agrees with whoever he talked with last" meme and is actually exploiting it (along with constantly massaging his ego in negotiations, I'm sure)

    In Trump’s statement announcing the delay, he didn’t point to any specific further concessions from Sheinbaum on either fentanyl or trade, even though there are some policy shifts he might reasonably have hoped to achieve, as we noted on Monday,” he wrote. “Sheinbaum’s midday post also did not point to any specific policy commitments beyond general continued cooperation on migration, fentanyl, and guns.”

    Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said at a news conference Thursday that, in her call with Trump, she cited a graph from U.S. Customs and Border Protection showing a drop in fentanyl seizures, which she said Trump hadn't previously seen. "In February alone, the reduction in fentanyl seizures on the United States side of the border with Mexico was reduced by 41.5%. He didn’t know about this graph until I sent it to him, she said.

    "she had the best graph folks, you should have seen this brilliant graph. Much better than Justin's, much better than Biden."

    • how tf has Canada took more heat than Mexico this go around?

      Because México is actually deploying their national guard along the border, who are arresting cartel leaders, while the USA runs reconnaissance flights along the México border (even more aircraft have just headed to the USA from Italy for that). Even if these national guard operations are just for the press and PR and aren't actually doing much to the cartels, this pleases a personality like Trump. He can talk on Fox News about how "México is deploying their army against the cartel, very good". When you combine it with data about fentanyl getting into the the USA being lower and border crossings being down (even if it's misleading or cherry picked), that really makes Trump happy. So yes you're right, for now at least Sheinbaum has figured out how to deal with Trump and appease him.

1003 comments