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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556 comments

Mildly interesting financial news: gold is growing to 3k, seems weird though, detached from other commodities and bitcoin. So no coherent explanation outside of paranoia of goldbugs i guess. Think iwas wrongo @GaveUp@hexbear.net
- Gold is used as a holding stock when funds pull their money out of other stocks they're worried about, they put it in gold instead.
  Makes sense for it to go up while the rest of the market goes down so significantly, this is from money that was pulled out of the rest of the market.
- A recent episode on Geopolitical Economy Report has Michael Hudson talking about the gold price increase: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2025/02/13/politics-gold-price-economist-michael-hudson/
  Their argument is that there has indeed been demand for gold as an alternative asset to US Dollars or Treasury Bonds by national banks. And another aspect is among private buyers. The US has been lending out gold for years and there is now almost a "run on the banks" effect where people who want to hold gold are wondering if the gold is even on hand.
  I've been slowly reading Shaikh's Capitalism and his chapters on Money. And, in addition to Hudson's above interview, it has me reconsidering my previously held view of gold as irrelevant. Even if it no longer serves as a medium of pricing or circulation, it still has function as a store of value and is some alternative to paper money.
  
  The last part of the interview is about the US and England leasing out gold to gold dealers. Both as a way of making money and a way to keep the price of gold down so it doesnr replace the US dollar as that store of value. But over the years, the lack of statistics on the amount of gold the US actually on hand has led to a run of sorts according to Hudson.