PainRack wrote:Sanctions had already been ongoing for 5 years before Cash for Oil came into play. Haiti is also another sterling example of the failure of sanctions. It has already become clear that devoid of a crisis or external threat, economic sanctions are worthless as a weapon against dictatorial governments. Indeed, by the very fact that they monopolise both force and wealth in such an economy, including the lucrative black market, they only become more entrenched in power.
You are talking about a dictatorial government which happened to be sitting on oil reserves and enough cash to keep the army going. If Saddam wasn't keeping the troops happy through his sheer charisma and fear and money, it is likely he will end up strung up like Mussolini, or suffer the fate of his predecessor. Sanctions only work if the regime in question has no fucking money and the sanctions are so tight that no one wants to deal with Iraqi money.
And why would they run out of money? In an economy where the jaunta and drug conglomerates control the major sources of wealth, they automatically become the rulers by default.
They would only run out of money if they didn't have anything to trade with. Liquidity, provided by banks obviously not in the West, provided the means, and cash to trade. Even drug lords need a bank to store their cash in and do currency trading. Plus, if everyone enforced the sanctions, there was no way they would ever access to liquidity, and even if they had hard cash, they couldn't do anything with it since it wouldn't allow them to buy anything abroad. If the Junta decides to print money like banana money, the currency is definitely going to go into inflation. And if they couldn't buy anything from abroad, how are they going to extract any gas or natural resources? Dig it up by hand? Which was precisely why the US, in the most recent dealings with N.Korea, sanctioned the bank in Macau where the N. Koreans parked a sizable sum of cash. Naturally, they squealed.
yet, you choose to prove that point by showing their utter inability to cooperate on economic matters and their inability to project a common voice and military force?
Let me rephrase myself since I seem to have utterly confused you despite having said posts ago, that most of Asean can't care less about how Myanmar.
There is a difference between the lacking the will, and being powerless. As it is, no one in Asean really wants to go and coax the junta to do anything, and even if they did, they do it half-heartedly. There is hardly any will. No one wants to. Everyone just wants to buy the resources of Burma and hell with the population. Who cares? They have their own electorates to please. As it is, Asean which has plenty of bargaining power through all the commercial deals they have with the junta, are unwilling to use any of that bargaining power.
Way to miss the point.Let me repeat this.
So 33% of the electoral constituency who could vote as opposed to 33% of the electoral population and from this 33%, a 66.6% electoral victory = a Singaporean population who are supportive of elitist policies.
If that's so, explain why the Singaporean populace reacted so strongly to a member of an "elite" writing in her blog to "Get out of my elite, uncaring face!".
As I understand it, only the Singaporean populace that actually went out to interact online, actually know of the incident. Most of the population on the ground don't even know a fib about the incident, and the ST hardly devoted much page space to the incident. Given, that the ST is the standard medium for country, and especially true when it is the most regulated among all the papers, if it isn't devoted much discussion, then quite simply most people wouldn't even know of the incident. I would hardly go as far as call the entire population reacting strongly to it since most of them hardly know of the incident.
As for anti-elitist attitudes, such attitudes will exist in a country where the Gini coefficient gets worse over time. It has happened historically before as far back as a few hundred years, it can happen again.
why have Singaporeans have also been involved in fundraising and charity efforts to help Tsunami efforts, despite Indoneisan trangressions.
why has there has been an upswelling of silent support for the vigils and other shows of supports for the Burmese uprising.
While they are supporting the Burmese uprising, it appears that our Government has taken steps to prevent people from whering Support Burma T-shirts. It should be noted that those that do get involved in such events do not represent the mainstream strain of the population, which largely concerns itself with their own business and gets along with their work. As for fundraising and stuff, perhaps Singaporeans are simply too gullible at times, especially when rumours of NKF have been floating around for ages before they came to public light.
Utter strawman. I never insinuated in any means or form that it was wrong to contest the scheme. Read the entire sentence.
As I predicted,the CPF discussions already entered the political arena as a discussion item and the opposition has begun to use it as a political bargaining chip, and since the government hasn't invested the political capital into the scheme yet, its already talking about ways to modify the scheme to meet the requirements of cash rich citizens. Of course, with the no U-turn sign posted firmly high in the sky.
I pointed out that your predictions of complete PAP power has been DISPROVEN before. You claimed that the PAP is so powerful that it could crush political discussion of CPF. Guess what? You were wrong.
It became a political topic.
Point to me, where the fuck did I say the PAP would crush political discussion on the CPF. I have hardly even said anything about the PAP crushing anything even of the opposition. I don't recall even saying anything of complete PAP power, although their power is near absolute.
And considering the evidence, I see no fucking reason to believe your prediction that Singaporeans are somehow uncaring bastards who have no qualms about what's going on in Burma.
Point to me where I said the population are uncaring bastards. I said they were fucking bigots and homophobics, but I never said their were uncaring. If by anything, the uncaring bastards are the leaders who have been actively getting GLCs involved in Burma.
Because by normalising ties and economic links with the rest of the world, they make it "expensive" for the jaunta to commit actions that will cost them wealth and prestige. This as opposed to their current pariah status in which they have absolutely nothing to lose by commiting atrocities after atrocities.
Expensive? How much more expensive? As it is, the junta have proven they are quite capable of ignoring the outside world, as far back as the last general elections held over a decade ago. Expensive? What expensive? They have been under sanctions long time ago by the Western powers and only reason why they have any ounce of cash now is because the Asian nations are happily doing business with them and profiting from it left right center.
This stragety however is relatively useless since unlike Taiwan or China, the jaunta isn't likely to change due to its already extensive and more profitable links with the drug traffickers. Its highly unlikely that any form of inducement would result in a situation that would end up in a surrender of power, since its the power that brings about their wealth.
Oh no there isn't. Though it is theoretically possible to sanction any banks that is involved in transactions involving in drugs. We didn't get accused of money laundering and human trafficking for nothing years ago for nothing. We have one of the most laissez faire policies when it comes to trade, and many of the Indonesian businessmen parked their possibly ill-gotten gains in Singapore and then the Indonesian Govt is trying to get some of it back.
Guess what? My point was that to cut off the NORMAL trade links with burma, you're just going to drive their economy into the gray and black market.
Oh really? You will probably drive them more into the normal trade links if we quit giving their drug lords a place to park their money and trade with it. As it is, our idea of trade with them, includes giving the junta and their cronies cash. I wonder about the distinction between "normal" and "legal" here when what we are doing indiscriminate trade. It is as gray as it is right now with us making a deal with the devil.
Bollocks. So your contention is that economic and industrial infrastructure cannot be dual use? Roads and waterworks are solely for the use of the military?
That depends. As it is, the new shiny capital city for the junta certainly isn't for the common citizen's benefit. I would agree there's dual use, but with most of the population living in rather poor conditions, and the junta high up there, I wouldn't say that there's any real benefit of all that trade trickling down.
And how the fuck does rising oil prices= all business contracts in Burma are for the military? It doesn't. You're simply assuming that all the trade in that country is exclusively for the government benefit.
This is a bloody dictatorship. Nothing goes around without some patronage from the main government, with plenty of bribes to oil the wheels of trade. Even companies like STEngg are not immune from delivering kickbacks, what with a Singaporean diplomat going as far as blatantly advocating it. Practically everything is at the sufference of the Government. You succeed if you are politically well-connected. It happens in China, Russia, it happens in any country with despotic tendencies. The idea of a free mind is repulsive, which is why hundreds of monks bought their place in heaven.
