Opinion | The Story Behind the Myanmar Coup - The New York Times

Why take over if you’re already in charge?

Myanmar’s decade-long experiment in conditional democracy just ended in a textbook example of a coup — a coup that was a pre-emptive strike.

In the early hours of Monday, as the new national Parliament was scheduled to convene for its first session, the military, known as the Tatmadaw, announced that it was taking over, alleging fraud during the last general elections in November. It arrested Daw Aung San Suu Kyi — formally the state counselor, but really the country’s de facto leader — as well as other senior officials and a handful of prominent political and social figures.

The Tatmadaw invoked the Constitution (which it drafted back in 2008) to declare a state of emergency for a year; the already-powerful commander in chief, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, is now essentially a dictator. He has pledged “to practice the genuine, discipline-flourishing multiparty democratic system in a fair manner” and has announced plans to hold another election at an unspecified date.

Why this? Why now? The military has manufactured a crisis so that it could step in again as the purported savior of the Constitution and the country, while vanquishing an ever-popular political foe.

But it may have acted too late. Raw power is its own reward only in appearance.

After one term in office, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy recently bested its landslide victory of 2015. In November, despite the Covid-19 pandemic, more than 70 percent of eligible voters turned out and handed the N.L.D. more than 80 percent of the vote. International and domestic observers, including from the Carter Center and the People’s Alliance for Credible Elections, declared the election to be free and fair. It was an irrefutable popular endorsement of the administration.

But the military still has much power, constitutionally guaranteed: It controls the ministries of defense, home affairs and border affairs; 25 percent of seats in the national and regional assemblies are reserved for it; it has veto authority over amendments to key provisions of the Constitution. The Tatmadaw’s economic interests are largely untouched, with a vast defense budget and steady income streams from holding companies. It can fight various groups around the country in supreme confidence that it will face no legal repercussions.

So why take over if you’re already in charge? Doesn’t the Tatmadaw only stand to lose from staging a crude, retrograde coup?

There is much animus between Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi and General Min Aung Hlaing. The two have rarely met since 2015, often only at strained public events.

Beyond the personal tensions, there is, of course, institutional antagonism. For some three decades, the N.L.D. was subject to crushing persecution at the hands of the Tatmadaw and the security forces; hundreds of the party’s members were arrested, tortured, killed or driven into exile.

In some respects, Monday’s coup looks like a petulantly personalized contest between two elites, both Buddhist and from the ethnic Bamar majority, and both infused with a born-to-rule mentality.

Except for this seemingly confounding fact: During its first five years in power, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s party essentially refrained from seriously diminishing the military’s power, constitutionally, legally or financially.

Soldiers standing guard on a blockaded road leading to Myanmar’s Parliament, in Naypyidaw on Monday. One open question about the coup is how popular it will be within the ranks of the military.Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Activists have criticized the N.L.D. for failing to repeal repressive laws or speak out about political prisoners and attacks on the media. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi herself has been accused, by both Myanmar political organizers and Western analysts, of displaying a sometimes withering disdain for civil society, journalists and intellectuals.

Some N.L.D. members quietly admitted to me over the past five years that a precarious modus vivendi had developed with the military: The administration seemed to pursue a democratization agenda predicated on avoiding pushback from the generals.

Then came the party’s victory in the November election, and another sweeping mandate for a second term. That seemed to upset the uneasy balance of power in place, at least in the eyes of the Tatmadaw, and to threaten the military’s prerogatives and privileges. The coup may have been a pre-emptive strike against its losing ground.

Perhaps especially, and personally, for General Min Aung Hlaing. He was scheduled to step down this year, after the retirement age for his position was moved back, five years ago, from 60 to 65. Diplomats have told me privately that he is concerned that, once out of office, he might be vulnerable to prosecution, at least internationally, for his leadership over the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims, among other things. (Yet now, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi will no longer be around to defend him, or the Myanmar military, against charges of genocide, as she did before the International Court of Justice in 2019.)

One open question about the coup, however, is how popular it will be within the ranks of the military. Given the groundswell of support for Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi in November, soldiers, too, presumably voted for the N.L.D. I know of no official data showing this, but, to take one example, the party won seats, locally and nationally, representing the township of Kengtung, the home of a regional military command and thousands of troops in Shan State, in the eastern part of the country.

At a minimum, the coup, being a major step backward, may undermine morale and cohesion among the troops. Decades of armed conflict with several ethnic groups have inflicted numerous casualties on ordinary soldiers. Desertion has been on the rise. Can the generals expect full compliance from the institution after the coup?

By deploying the dirty playbook of clichéd dictators, General Min Aung Hlaing and the new junta may have thwarted their nemesis, and power is theirs, for the time being. But the Tatmadaw now risks widespread instability and faces the very real challenge of confronting an entire nation, including members of its own ranks, that has developed a taste for democracy. By dragging the entire country into the depths of their praetorian aspirations, Myanmar’s generals are working against their own self-interest.

David Scott Mathieson is an independent analyst with more than 20 years of experience working on Myanmar.

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Opinion | Raise Your Hand if You Were Expecting Biden to Be a Revolutionary - The New York Times

The president has been much more left-wing out of the gate than many predicted. What comes next?

Gail Collins: Bret, the winter weather and pandemic panic are so depressing, let’s start today out with a cheerful thought. Just toss me one.

Bret Stephens: Ivanka Trump will be the next president, but it’s OK because by then most of us will have died from the South African variant of the coronavirus.

Kidding! Hey, we’ve got a president who drives my conservative self crazy in an old-fashioned way, which is to say I disagree with so much of what Joe Biden is doing. And that means he must be totally delighting you. Moratorium on fracking on federal lands? Stopping arms sales to friendly autocrats? You must feel like you’re living through real-life reruns of your favorite West Wing episodes.

Gail Collins: Bret, we have come to a great turning point. Ever since we started conversing our political differences have been drowned out by our mutual loathing of you-know-who.

Now he’s gone and we are ready for war. Friendly war.

Bret: Are you sure he’s gone? Sorry, go on.

Gail: One of the great things about our era of Trump loathing is that it allowed us to develop a personal friendship I know will endure our differences.

Bret: It will, with the assistance of fermented grapes.

Gail: Sometimes whopping differences. Yeah, I am pretty darned happy with Biden. Particularly his top-priority commitment to climate control.

Bret: I don’t begrudge a Democratic president from behaving like, well, a Democrat. He said he was going to rejoin the Paris climate accord, and so he has — though how he’ll get countries like China and India to reduce their emissions is the really important question.

Gail: Definitely a problem, but the choice was joining with allies to put pressure on China and the others, or just throwing up our hands and saying it’s hopeless. History — and future generations — will be on Biden’s side.

Bret: Could be, but China isn’t. What I don’t understand is the logic of killing the Keystone XL pipeline: It just means that Canadian oil will continue to go east or west on rails rather than south through a pipeline, with a loss of blue-collar American jobs. And I really don’t understand the administration’s hostility to fracking, which has helped the U.S. make a broad transition from coal to natural gas, and reduce both our carbon emissions as well as our dependence on foreign fossil fuels.

Gail: Ah, that pipeline. Lots of support, lots of opposition, including from many Native people who live in the construction area. My instinct is to always side with the folks who don’t want to drill for more oil.

And if our concern is good American construction jobs — remember the infrastructure! You think that can be a rallying cry. Like “Remember the Maine”? Guess not.

Bret: I’d be satisfied with, “Remember the Gateway Tunnel!” or “Remember There’s Still No Subway Link to LaGuardia!”

Of course, if Democrats really want to get serious about fighting global warming, they’d embrace safe, modern, carbon-free nuclear technology. I know a lot of our readers will say “Chernobyl!” But using a Soviet-era disaster to condemn an entire technology seems misguided to me. Every energy source involves environmental trade-offs, and from a climate perspective nuclear looks very good.

Gail: Did I ever tell you my father was in the nuclear energy business? Might not have been able to go away from home for college if that hadn’t come along.

Bret: Didn’t know that. I’m guessing the two of you didn’t see eye to eye on the benefits of enriched uranium.

Gail: The cataclysmic disaster that could occur if there’s a problem with a nuclear plant outweighs the benefits. But I have to admit I don’t really have the heart to argue a lot about this one.

Bret: What do you think of some of the other executive orders?

Gail: I’m a fan. Some of them just rescinded extremely stupid Trump dictates, like the ban on transgender troops serving in the military.

Opinion Debate What should the Biden administration and a Democratic-controlled Congress prioritize?

• The Editorial Board writes that to improve relations with Canada after four years of Trump, Biden must “show that America is prepared to walk alongside its neighbor, rather than kick it around.”
• Nicholas Kristof, Opinion columnist, writes that the president needs a deft China policy: “The coming years represent the greatest risks since I began covering U.S.-China relations in the 1980s.”
• Michelle Goldberg, Opinion columnist, writes that in this unique moment, Biden “has the potential to be our first truly post-Reagan president.”
• Adam Finn and Richard Malley, physicians specializing in infectious disease, argue for a faster vaccination strategy: “The excess of caution is killing people.”

Bret: Hmm.

Gail: Some are just a way to buy time while the new administration figures out plans. For instance, it extends the current pause on federal student loan payments. That’s a very messy situation, made 10 times worse by the Trumpites’ love affair with for-profit schools. But give the kids a break until we can figure out how to reform the whole program.

Bret: The pandemic has put so many strains on the economy that I’m all for pause buttons — provided they don’t become permanent. I’m very skeptical of the kind of debt cancellation that Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders were touting during the campaign, which just seemed like another form of welfare for the relatively well-off.

Gail: Biden’s also been finding quick ways to send the message about bigger change to come — in everything from racial equity to health care.

Who’d have the heart to complain? You understand this is an invitation, right?

Bret: Well, since you asked: Biden has leaned very far to his left with some of these executive orders. Leaving aside the wisdom of the policy, it isn’t in keeping with his call to unity at the inauguration.

Gail: Well, I certainly felt unified …

Bret: Also, government by executive order is a lousy way of running a government. If a president wants to get something meaningful done, work it out with Congress, compromise and make sure the legislation can survive court challenges. That’s especially true when people’s lives and safety are at stake, as it is for the “Dreamers” who should never have to live in fear of deportation and deserve to be given U.S. citizenship.

Gail: I would agree on that last point except for all the times allegedly sympathetic Republicans have bolted on bipartisan immigration reform.

Bret: Republicans have become perfidious, shameful and dishonest when it comes to immigration. Dumb and self-defeating, too. But back to executive orders.

Gail: A lot of the Biden orders you’re worried about were basically retractions of executive orders Trump dumped on us.

Bret: True, although some of them are also additions to Trump rules, like the new “Buy American” order that’s hard to enforce, raises costs of procurement and reinforces the Trump administration’s bad protectionist impulses. I’m also no fan of the new administration’s insistence on sending fat coronavirus assistance checks to most Americans regardless of need.

Gail: Well let’s negotiate a little. Suppose the Democrats agreed to lower the income Americans would need to qualify for the coronavirus aid? I’ll admit couples making $150,000 don’t sound all that needy. Although some families living in places like Manhattan might disagree.

Bret: I’d go further and say that no couples making over $100,000 should be in line for aid, even in Manhattan. Save the money for those who need it most.

Gail: We’ve now got a program of emergency unemployment benefits that’s supposed to end in March. Biden wants to continue it until September and increase those benefits. The Republicans reportedly are arguing for June and to keep the supplement at the current $300 per week. To me, that’s just a knee-jerk conservative reaction to the whole idea of unemployment benefits, but I suppose they could split the difference and go for August.

Bret: Fine by me. I’m not against unemployment benefits so long as the benefit doesn’t pay more than a job.

Gail: Now it’s your turn. Pretend you’re the senator from Ohio, Rob Portman, who’s part of the negotiating. What will you offer me back?

Bret: Well, considering that he won’t be running for re-election next year, I guess the answer is another G.O.P. Senate seat that’s up for grabs. But, in terms of some grand bargains, if I were Portman I’d urge my Republican colleagues to support comprehensive immigration reform in exchange for a Biden promise to complete the border wall. No compromise is perfect and there’s a lot I don’t like about a wall, but this one makes moral, political and economic sense for both sides.

Susan Walsh/Associated Press

Gail: Obviously a lot of stuff is going to have to be approved by Congress, and I predict there will be much evildoing on the part of a certain senator from Kentucky. Will you promise to come around to my way of thinking when the enemy is somebody as appalling as Mitch McConnell?

Bret: Gail, when you are thinking about Republican villains, you can do a whole lot worse than McConnell. I mean, Josh Hawley? Ted Cruz? Or what about Marjorie Taylor Greene, of #JewishSpaceLasers infamy? At the rate things are going for the G.O.P., in a few years you may be saying things like, “Back when Republicans had sane and statesmanlike leaders like Mitch McConnell….”

Gail: Well I understand your point about the colorful and crazy villains, but I’m sorta obsessed about the one who stuffed the federal judiciary with a few hundred new conservative judges.

Bret: As you know, that’s the part about Mitch that I liked. And don’t forget that some of those judges proved extremely useful and credible when it came to turning away the crazy legal challenges to the election.

In any case, I’m rooting for a successful Biden administration. I just wish it would take the president’s own advice about bipartisanship more often.

Gail: I think you just like Biden because of all the things he doesn’t have the power to do. But I’m sure our president would love the idea of having you as a cheerleader. We should all get together for coffee sometime. If you don’t mind a bit of a trip, I know a great place at the end of a certain pipeline ….

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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Opinion: Don’t just do something, stand there – a lesson from the fridge - KSL NewsRadio

This is an editorial piece. An editorial, like a news article, is based on fact but also shares opinions. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and are not associated with our newsroom.

Sometimes we get so wound up in our frenzied clamor to solve a problem quickly that we forget that the smart move is sometimes just to stop what we’re doing, stand there, take a pause and think.

Resolve this now: stand there and think it out

President Joe Biden has outlined a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package, which includes immediate assistance for struggling families, such as $1,400 stimulus checks.

Mr. Biden’s stimulus checks include a $600 payment that was approved by Congress in December — $2,000 total. But the president’s plan is running into resistance from a group of 10 Republican senators who are due to meet with President Biden on Monday afternoon to talk over their counterproposal, which is $618 billion — about a third the size of the president’s plan. 

This group of Republican senators — including Utah’s Mitt Romney — wants to send $1,000 checks to each adult but target them to those with lower incomes.

The amount would begin phasing out at $40,000 for individuals and $80,000 for couples filing jointly. The upper cap would be $50,000 for individuals and $100,000 for couples. Dependent adults and children would receive $500.

The dance between GOP senators and the president will be interesting. And after it is all over, I’m afraid we are going to end up with a lot motion and commotion but, sadly, not a lot of forward progress on this issue of providing coronavirus relief to Americans.

Sometimes, the best thing to do in these situations is to slow down and stand there for a moment.

What my fridge taught me

I had a great lesson this morning. 

The control panel on our refrigerator stopped working.

We couldn’t get water. We couldn’t get ice. We couldn’t control the temperature of the refrigerator or the freezer. It just went blank.

So my wife Debbie did the things that we normally do. Stuff she always does. I’m really bad at it, but she checked out the prices and found out that the part that would need to be replaced would be $400 —  just for the part itself. And then, of course, you’ve got to add in the labor and the installation, all of that kind of stuff.

The fridge is getting a little old. It’s at least eight years old now. So, is it worth investing another five, six, seven hundred dollars to repair this part or would we be far better off to just buy a new fridge?

Hit the reset

But then a wonderful thing happened last night.

Our electricity went out for about 15 seconds. And when the power came back on, so did the fridge — and the control panel. What the fridge needed was just a reset. And so often that is exactly what we need.

Debbie send this message to our family-group text today: Sometimes we just need a little reset. We didn’t need to make a drastic decision. We didn’t need to spend a whole bunch of money. We didn’t need to flail about with all kinds of tough decisions about what we would do next.

And that is a great lesson. 

We only needed a 15 second reset. Think about some of the harsh conversations you’ve had over the last little while. How many of those could have been reset if you just would have paused for 15 seconds or 15 minutes?

We all race around, and it’s exhausting and frustrating; it creates anxiety, anger and and fear. If we just stop for a minute, step back and take a little reset — 15 seconds, 15 minutes, 15 days. 

Don’t just do something, stand there

In government matters, often we are so pressed to do what’s next or to be seen as taking that action.

Sometimes the best thing to do is to not take action.

You know the old saying: Don’t just stand there, do something.

But often we do things that in the end really aren’t all that helpful. And sometimes they’re very hurtful. Sometimes they’re counterproductive. And sometimes they take years to unravel.

So I would flip that old saying on its head today: Don’t just do something, stand there.

Doing stuff is easy. Thinking about stuff is hard. Being strategic is difficult.

So often in Washington, D.C., we seem to have these Armageddon moments. We have to get this done by Friday or calamity X will be upon us. 

Just stand there and think for a minute. And then let’s have a conversation. Let’s hit the reset for a minute, then we can take action. We’re not putting things off. We’re not pointing fingers and placing blame.

This idea that we constantly have to be doing something is counterproductive. 

And so while we have this race in Washington, D.C., to see what coronavirus relief package comes up next, I would advise President Biden, I would advise the loyal opposition and advise liberals and conservatives alike, don’t just do something. Stand there.

Inside Sources with Boyd Matheson, who is also the opinion editor of the Deseret News, can be heard weekdays from 11:00 a.m to 12:00 p.m. on KSL NewsRadio. Users can find the show on the KSL NewsRadio website and app.

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Opinion | It’s Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Party Now - The New York Times

She embarrasses some Republicans, but she’s no outlier.

Steve King, the Republican former congressman from Iowa, must feel robbed. Two years ago, he was stripped of all his committee assignments after asking, in an interview with The New York Times, “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?” The Republican Party threw its weight behind King’s primary challenger, and he was whisked off the national stage, no longer to embarrass colleagues who prefer that racist demagogy be performed with enough finesse to allow for plausible deniability.

Since then, standards have changed. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, is every bit as bigoted as King, and 10 times as unhinged. By now, you’ve surely heard her theory that California wildfires might have been caused by a space laser controlled by Jewish bankers. That wasn’t Greene’s first foray into anti-Semitism; in 2018 she shared a notorious white nationalist video in which a Holocaust denier claimed that “Zionist supremacists have schemed to promote immigration and miscegenation.”

Recently, Greene met with a far-right British commentator, Katie Hopkins, who has described migrants as “cockroaches” and said she doesn’t care if they die. Greene told her, “I would love to trade you for some of our white people here that have no appreciation for our country.” She described the results of the 2018 midterms as “an Islamic invasion of our government.” Greene endorsed calls for the execution of prominent Democrats and agreed with Facebook posts claiming that the Parkland and Sandy Hook school shootings were hoaxes. She harassed one of the Parkland massacre’s young survivors.

As it happens, this week House Republicans are seeking to punish a prominent woman in their ranks — but it’s not Greene. A big chunk of the House Republican caucus is reportedly trying to oust Liz Cheney of Wyoming from leadership because she voted to impeach Donald Trump for inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House leader, is meeting with Greene, but it’s far from clear that he’ll act against her, because she represents much of their party’s base. When The New Yorker’s Charles Bethea met a group of Greene’s local supporters last year, they were generally familiar with QAnon, and several agreed that Democrats are controlled by Satan. There’s a reason Kelly Loeffler, who needed to get out the pro-Trump vote, touted Greene’s endorsement when she was trying to hold on to her Georgia Senate seat.

Some decent Republicans imagine they’re in a battle for their party’s soul. Representative Adam Kinzinger, who like Cheney voted to impeach Trump, recently started a PAC devoted to fighting the forces that led to Greene’s rise and the Capitol rampage. “The time has come to choose what kind of party we will be,” he said in an introductory video. The thing is, Republicans already have chosen.

Just look at the party’s state affiliates. On Jan. 4, the Arizona G.O.P. retweeted a “Stop the Steal” activist who’d pronounced himself willing to “give my life” to overturn the election. Said the party’s official account: “He is. Are you?” An Arizona lawmaker has since introduced a bill that would let the Legislature, controlled by Republicans, override the presidential vote of the state’s increasingly Democratic citizenry.

The Oregon Republican Party approved a resolution suggesting that the Capitol siege was a “false flag” attack. The Texas Republican Party has adopted the QAnon slogan “We are the storm” as its motto, though it insists there’s no connection. The chairman of Wyoming’s Republican Party, who attended Trump’s rally on Jan. 6, said he might be open to secession.

Greene is not the outlier in this party. Kinzinger is.

American conservatism — particularly its evangelical strain — has fostered derangement in its ranks for decades, insisting that no source of information outside its own self-reinforcing ideological bubble is trustworthy.

If you’re steeped in creationism and believe that elites are lying to you about the origins of life on earth, it’s not a stretch to believe they’re lying to you about a life-threatening virus. If what you know of history is the revisionist version of the Christian right, in which God deeded America to the faithful, then pluralism will feel like the theft of your birthright. If you believe that the last Democratic president was illegitimate, as Trump and other birthers claimed, then it’s not hard to believe that dark forces would foist another unconstitutional leader on the country.

There was a moment, after the Capitol riot, when it seemed as if a critical mass of the Republican Party was recoiling at what it had created. But the moment passed, because it would have required the party’s putative leaders to defy too many of their followers. Senator Mitch McConnell floated openness to convicting Trump in a Senate trial, but ended up voting that such a trial was unconstitutional. Fox News, finger to the wind, purged many of its real journalists and gave the conspiracy theorist Maria Bartiromo a prime-time tryout.

On Monday Politico reported that if Republicans don’t strip Greene of committee assignments, Democrats will try to do it, bringing the issue to the House floor. Republican members will have the chance to distance themselves from her. If they don’t, it will be because they know she belongs.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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Opinion: Does voting access improve health care outcomes? - The Virginian-Pilot

Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.

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Breaking Hits App Turns Up the Volume on Authentic Opinion in the Music Industry and Beyond - PRNewswire

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 1, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Breaking Hits, an organized aggregator of an authentic opinion App, is ramping up to launch its pilot program. The first will focus on the Super Bowl and the second on Valentine's Day. Both will ask, "Retire or fire?" and ask music and non-music related questions. It's a new voice that music industry pros will want to hear.

On February 4, "Retire or On Fire Super Bowl Day Review," will ask a series of questions focused on which players people think should retire or who are on fire for the next season. The second one to launch on February 11, seeks people's authentic opinions about which love song artists and love songs should be retired as well as those on fire.

The Breaking Hits App looks to differentiate opinion from fact. Its goal is to ditch the hype and get the real opinions of listeners for others as well as the music industry at large. Through their voice, people can engage directly with the music and entertainment world. This app ensures that all opinions are accounted for and amplified.

"You are more than a number, a like or a vote. You are a voice. You are part of an authentic collective that is heard, honored and amplified to artists, their representation, managers, investors and record label," Neil Collins, Breaking Hits, CEO and founder says. "We're compiling authentic opinions from real music listeners, vetted influencers and verified music industry pros and then bringing that authentic intel and data to the artists and labels."

Loren Weisman, brand messaging strategist and author of "Music Business for Dummies," and "The Artists Guide to Success in the Music Business," says, "We've seen a great deal of money and time wasted in creating connections to consumers. The tone across social media has left many users feeling confused, annoyed, unheard and under-appreciated. Some people have been able to purchase votes, likes, views, listens and comments, while voting as much as they like and this may be harming more than helping. This app has the authority that I believe artists, labels and investors are hungry for."

Breaking Hits is available on iOS and Android and allows people to discover the latest music, videos, breaking artists and fresh sounds shared exclusively by the talent, management, labels, radio stations and sponsors that are hungry for the authority intelligence to make those next-step promotional decisions.

On April 3, Breaking Hits is also launching 4,3,21 Ignition and Launch: All Opinions Go Debut. It's inviting interested artists to be part of it and to get in touch by filling out a form at: https://breakinghits.com/all-opinions-go/ to be considered as a featured artist or brand for this next phase. 

Information: https://breakinghits.com/

*PHOTO: https://www.Send2Press.com/300dpi/21-0201s2p-neil-collins-300dpi.jpg

*Caption: Neil Collins, Founder and CEO.

This release was issued through Send2Press®, a unit of Neotrope®. For more information, visit Send2Press Newswire at https://www.Send2Press.com  

SOURCE Breaking Hits, Inc.

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Opinion: The military coup in Myanmar is an outrage - Los Angeles Times

Sunday night in the U.S. brought sudden news that there had been a military coup in Myanmar, the South Asian country that for five years has been celebrated as a military dictatorship turned fledgling democracy. Early Monday morning in Myanmar the democratic leaders of the country had been “detained.”

Most notably, the military detained Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Prize-winning icon of democracy, who spent 15 years under house arrest for advocating for democracy when a military junta was in place.

Suu Kyi has proved to be dismal and disappointing at advocating for human rights in her own country, but the last thing anyone should want to see is the military unilaterally running this country again.

It was the military and its supporters and paramilitary henchmen who went on a savage campaign of murder, rape and destruction against the Rohingya Muslims, a minority population in the largely Buddhist country and one of the most oppressed groups of people in the world, in 2016 and 2017. About 700,000 were forced to flee to neighboring Bangladesh and its refugee camps. The government faced a formal accusation of genocide at the International Court of Justice at the Hague. Bizarrely, Suu Kyi defended the military, testifying that it was responding to attacks on its outposts by Rohingya rebel groups. The court continues to investigate and the U.S. is considering declaring Myanmar’s actions genocide.

Her defenders say Suu Kyi may not have felt she could push the military on human rights without destabilizing this fragile power sharing between civilians and the military. So she didn’t push—and yet she still got detained and toppled.

What we had hoped was that Suu Kyi would be emboldened to become a defender of human rights, not the military, as time went on. Her National League of Democracy party again won a landslide victory in November. Unfortunately, that landslide was one of the things that appears to have unsettled the military (at one point, they declared the election a fraud — sound familiar?) and pushed it into declaring it was taking over the country in a “12-month state of emergency.”

Matthew Smith, the chief executive of Fortify Rights, a human rights group, wrote in an email to me that he was told that all the civilian members of parliament who were in the capital of Naypyidaw were detained. He saw a list of 26 arrests — and expects more.

All this is tragic. And it’s unclear what the U.S. can do. The army general who has taken power, Min Aung Hlaing, is already under economic sanctions by the U.S. for his involvement in human rights abuses.

Nonetheless, world leaders should denounce this and work to put Myanmar back on a democratic course. Monday was to have been the opening day of parliament.

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Opinion: The military coup in Myanmar is an outrage - Los Angeles Times
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