Myanmar’s Resistance Defying Horrid Chinese Pressure

            (Jason Tower’s post from The U.S. PEACE INSTUTUTE on 5 December 2024.)

Myanmar’s Resistance Manages to Defy Chinese Pressure — For Now: Since August, China has tried to weaken Myanmar’s resistance forces while offering legitimacy to the junta. Many elements of the resistance are defying Chinese demands, but tension and instability are rising. Myanmar may become a test case for more robust Chinese security involvement overseas.

In early August, resistance forces in northern Myanmar delivered yet another historic defeat to the Myanmar military. After just 35 days of fighting, resistance actors toppled the Myanmar army’s northeastern command, bringing expansive amounts of territories across northern Shan State under their control. These developments rippled through Myanmar and reinvigorated the resistance — but also triggered a dramatic response from the Chinese Communist government.

Since August, China has unleashed punitive measures targeting key resistance groups, greenlit military airstrikes across northern Myanmar to push ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) out of newly captured territories, and showered Myanmar junta leader Min Aung Hlaing with unprecedented levels of legitimacy.

NYC CEO Killing: Anger and Danger for Health Insurers

                (Brad Ryan’s post from ABC NEWS AUS on 7 December 2024.)

Killing of the healthcare CEO in New York highlights anger and danger for US health insurers: As he walked a footpath in central Manhattan just before the sun rose over New York, Brian Thompson suddenly fell victim to a deadly ambush.

The father-of-two had travelled from Minnesota to attend a conference for UnitedHealthcare — a huge health insurance company where he was the CEO. Its parent company, UnitedHealth Group, is America's fourth largest money-maker, after Walmart, Amazon and Apple. It was set to present investors with a revenue forecast for the coming year of $US450 billion (A$705 billion).

CCTV shows Thompson, 50, approaching the doorway of the conference venue, the Midtown Hilton hotel, at 6:45am. Suddenly, a man wearing a black hoodie appears in the corner of the frame. He raises a gun, which appears to be fitted with a hitman-style silencer, aims at Thompson and fires two rounds.

‘Killing the weeds’: Village warfare in Myingyan

              (Hein Thar’s post from the FRONTIER MYANMAR on 2 July 2024.)

Son Village near Myingyan burning.

The post-coup conflict in Myanmar’s Dry Zone has pitted villages against each other, while the junta’s boosting of allied militias has deepened the cycle of violence: 

Ko Tin was so exhausted from staying up late to fill out paperwork that he slept through the sound of explosions that roused the rest of the town. When he went out for his morning walk, he noticed people gathering at a pagoda on a hilltop, from where they were watching a plume of smoke rising about two miles away.

“Some village was burned down this morning,” someone in the crowd explained to him when he reached the top. The 38-year-old regime-appointed administrator of Si Mee Khon town was also looking down at Son village, a small settlement in Mandalay Region’s Myingyan Township.

Thidar Yumon: Myin-Gyan Pyu-saw-htee Boss!

                (Based on Myanmar Media posts from 2022 to 2024-Nov.)

Pyu-saw-htee was a legendary king of Pagan Dynasty of Burma (Myanmar), who according to the Burmese chronicles supposedly reigned from 167 to 242 CE. The chronicles down to the 18th century had reported that Pyusawhti, a descendant of a solar spirit and a dragon princess, was the founder of Pagan—hence, Burmese monarchy.

However Mhan-nan Yazawin-dawgyi, the Royal Chronicle of Kone-baung Dynasty proclaimed in 1832 that he was actually a scion of Tagaung Kingdom and traced his lineage all the way to Maha Sammata, the first king of the world in Buddhist mythology.

Scholarship conjectures that Pyusawhti the historical figure likely existed in the mid-to-late 8th century, who perhaps came over from the Nanzhao Kingdom as part of the Nanzhao raids of the Irrawaddy valley during the period.

Pyu-saw-htee was considered by the Burmese populace as a mythical superhero from the ancient history of Burma. And during the 1950s and 60s the ruling AFPLF (Pha-Sa-Pa-La) Government’s civilian militia was called the Pyu-saw-htee Militia.

The evolution of warfare in Myanmar

     (David Scott Mathieson’s post from the MYANMAR NOW on 11 November 2024.)

Femal soldiers of Arakan Army (AA).

The evolution of warfare in Myanmar: Nearly four years of post-coup conflict have transformed the way Myanmar’s military and its many enemies wage war against each other.

One year after the launch of Operation 1027 and the escalation of armed conflict throughout Myanmar, and nearing four years of repressive rule by the State Administration Council (SAC), how much has the nature of warfare changed in Myanmar?

The answer is—dramatically and in multiple ways, and for varied reasons. There has been military adaptation and innovation in all three branches of the Myanmar armed forces—the army, air force, and navy—and by ethnic armed organisations (EAOs) and other resistance forces under the general title of People’s Defence Forces (PDFs), in ways that have transformed the shape of fighting.

Trump Loyalist Kash Patel Nominated FBI Director!

            (Andrea Margolis’s post from the FOX NEWS on 30 November 2024.)

President-elect Donald Trump has named longtime ally Kashyap "Kash" Patel, who has been a frequent and harsh critic of the FBI, to serve as the bureau's next director in the new administration.

Patel, 44, is an attorney with experience in national security, intelligence and counterterrorism and helped uncover the bureau's surveillance of the Trump campaign and first term. He has been a member of Trump’s transition team, advising the administration on other appointments.

Trump announced Patel’s appointment in a Truth Social post on Saturday. "Kash is a brilliant lawyer, investigator, and ‘America First’ fighter who has spent his career exposing corruption, defending Justice, and protecting the American People," Trump's statement read.

The Age of Cloud Capital: Capitalism is Finished!

            (Staff post from the PERSUASION COMMUNITY on 30 April 2024.)

The Age of Cloud Capital: Capitalism is finished. What's replaced it is even worse. Extracts from “Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism” by Yanis Varoufakis.

Capitalism is now dead, in the sense that its dynamics no longer govern our economies. In that role it has been replaced by something fundamentally different, which I call technofeudalism. At the heart of my thesis is an irony that may sound confusing at first but which I contend makes perfect sense: the thing that has killed capitalism is… capital itself.

Not capital as we have known it since the dawn of the industrial era, but a new form of capital, a mutation of it that has arisen in the last two decades, so much more powerful than its predecessor that like a stupid, overzealous virus it has killed off its host.

Making Sense of the Mess in Myanmar’s Shan State

          (Bertil Lintner’s post from The IRRAWADDY MEDIA on 9 September 2024.)

The simplistic version of what is happening in northern Shan State is that a united front of Bamar and non-Bamar resistance armies has liberated huge swathes of territory. The Myanmar army is on the defensive after being forced to abandon numerous small as well as major outposts and is about to lose the war.

A more down-to-earth look at the situation, however, reveals a much more complex picture. It is correct that the Brotherhood Alliance, which brings together the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) and the Arakan Army (AA), has taken over large tracts of land in northern Shan State, including several towns and highways between them.

But the bitter reality is that the resistance forces are not always entirely welcome in the areas they now control. Uniformed men from the TNLA, a Palaung group, patrol Shan-dominated towns like Hsipaw and Kyaukme as well as Kachin-inhabited areas around Namhpakka and Kutkai.

Riss and Rise of TNLA The Mighty Pa-laung Army!

        (Staff article from the International Crisis Group (ICG) on 04 September 2023.)

Treading a Rocky Path: The Ta’ang Army Expands in Myanmar’s Shan State. With Myanmar’s military fighting on other fronts, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army is firming up its foothold in the country’s north. Clashes with other ethnic armed groups are possible. The Ta’ang group should focus on improving governance in its areas, in conjunction with civil society.

What’s new? The Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) has used Myanmar’s post-2021 coup crisis to expand its territory in northern Shan State, recruit fighters and strengthen its parallel administration. Although it has quietly supported anti-coup resistance forces, it has clashed with the military only rarely and has met with regime representatives.

Why does it matter? The TNLA’s expansion has created tensions with other ethnic armed groups and non-Ta’ang communities in northern Shan State. The group’s ambiguous political positioning since the coup reflects the complex environment in which ethnic armed groups operate. It also helps explain why building a countrywide anti-regime alliance has proven so difficult.