Myanmar's “Saffron Revolution”: The Geopolitics behind the Protest Movement
William Engdahl | 16.10.2007 19:13 | Anti-militarism | Repression | Social Struggles | World
Burma’s “Saffron Revolution,” like the Ukraine “Orange Revolution” or the Georgia “Rose Revolution” and the various Color Revolutions instigated in recent years against strategic states surrounding Russia, is a well-orchestrated exercise in Washington-run regime change, down to the details of “hit-and-run” protests with “swarming” mobs of Buddhists in saffron, internet blogs, mobile SMS links between protest groups, well-organized protest cells which disperse and reform. CNN made the blunder during a September broadcast of mentioning the active presence of the NED behind the protests in Myanmar.
Burma’s “Saffron Revolution,” like the Ukraine “Orange Revolution” or the Georgia “Rose Revolution” and the various Color Revolutions instigated in recent years against strategic states surrounding Russia, is a well-orchestrated exercise in Washington-run regime change, down to the details of “hit-and-run” protests with “swarming” mobs of Buddhists in saffron, internet blogs, mobile SMS links between protest groups, well-organized protest cells which disperse and reform. CNN made the blunder during a September broadcast of mentioning the active presence of the NED behind the protests in Myanmar.
There are facts and then there are facts. First it’s a fact which few will argue that the present military dictatorship of the reclusive General Than Shwe is right up there when it comes to world-class tyrannies.
It’s also a fact that Burma enjoys one of the world’s lowest standards of living. A dramatic collapse in purchasing power resulted from the ill-conceived 100% to 500% price hikes in gasoline and other fuels in August.
IMF "Economic Medicine"
Inflation, the nominal trigger for the mass protests led by Saffron-robed Buddhist monks, is unofficially estimated to have risen by 35%. Ironically, the demand to establish “market” energy prices was implemented under the helm of the IMF and World Bank.
The UN estimates that the population of some 50 million inhabitants spends up to 70% of their monthly income on food alone. The recent fuel price hike, which was a direct result of the IMF sponsored reforms, makes matters unbearable for tens of millions.
Myanmar is also deeply involved in the world narcotics trade, ranking only behind Hamid Karzai’s Afghanistan as a source for heroin. As well, it is said to be Southeast Asia’s largest producer of methamphetamines.
This is all understandable powder to unleash a social explosion of protest against the regime.
It is also a fact that the Myanmar military junta is on the Hit List of Condi Rice and the Bush Administration for its repressive ways. Has the Bush leopard suddenly changed his spots? Or is there a more opaque agenda behind Washington’s calls to impose severe economic and political sanctions on the regime?
Behind the recent CNN news pictures of streams of saffron-robed Buddhist Monks marching in the streets of the former capital city Rangoon (Yangon) in Myanmar—the US government still prefers to call it by the British colonial name, Burma—calling for more democracy, is a battle of major geopolitical consequence.
The major actors
The tragedy of Burma, whose land area is about the size of George W. Bush’s Texas, is that its population is being used as a human stage prop in a drama scripted in Washington by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the George Soros Open Society Institute, Freedom House and Gene Sharp’s Albert Einstein Institution, a US intelligence asset used to spark “non-violent” regime change around the world on behalf of the US strategic agenda.
Burma’s “Saffron Revolution,” like the Ukraine “Orange Revolution” or the Georgia “Rose Revolution” and the various Color Revolutions instigated in recent years against strategic states surrounding Russia, is a well-orchestrated exercise in Washington-run regime change, down to the details of “hit-and-run” protests with “swarming” mobs of Buddhists in saffron, internet blogs, mobile SMS links between protest groups, well-organized protest cells which disperse and reform. CNN made the blunder during a September broadcast of mentioning the active presence of the NED behind the protests in Myanmar.
In fact the US State Department admits to supporting the activities of the NED in Myanmar. The NED is a US Government-funded “private” entity whose activities are designed to support US foreign policy objectives, doing today what the CIA did during the Cold War. As well the NED funds Soros’ Open Society Institute in fostering regime change in Myanmar. In an October 30 2003 Press Release the State Department admitted, “The United States also supports organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy, the Open Society Institute and Internews, working inside and outside the region on a broad range of democracy promotion activities.” It all sounds very self-effacing and noble of the State Department. Is it though?
In reality the US State Department has recruited and trained key opposition leaders from numerous anti-government organizations. It has poured the relatively huge sum (for Myanmar) of more than $2.5 million annually into NED activities in promoting regime change in Myanmar since at least 2003. The US regime change, its Saffron Revolution, is being largely run according to informed reports, out of the US Consulate General in bordering Chaing Mai, Thailand. There activists are recruited and trained, in some cases directly in the USA, before being sent back to organize inside Myanmar. The USA’s NED admits to funding key opposition media including the New Era Journal, Irrawaddy and the Democratic Voice of Burma radio.
The concert-master of the tactics of Saffron monk-led non-violence regime change is Gene Sharp, founder of the deceptively-named Albert Einstein Institution in Cambridge Massachusetts, a group funded by an arm of the NED to foster US-friendly regime change in key spots around the world. Sharp’s institute has been active in Burma since 1989, just after the regime massacred some 3000 protestors to silence the opposition. CIA special operative and former US Military Attache in Rangoon, Col. Robert Helvey, an expert in clandestine operations, introduced Sharp to Burma in 1989 to train the opposition there in non-violent strategy. Interestingly, Sharp was also in China two weeks before the dramatic events at Tiananmen Square.
Why Myanmar now?
A relevant question is why the US Government has such a keen interest in fostering regime change in Myanmar at this juncture. We can dismiss rather quickly the idea that it has genuine concern for democracy, justice, human rights for the oppressed population there. Iraq and Afghanistan are sufficient testimony to the fact Washington’s paean to Democacy is propaganda cover for another agenda.
The question is what would lead to such engagement in such a remote place as Myanmar?
Geopolitical control seems to be the answer. Control ultimately of the strategic sea lanes from the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea. The coastline of Myanmar provides naval access in the proximity of one of the world’s most strategic water passages, the Strait of Malacca, the narrow ship passage between Malaysia and Indonesia.
The Pentagon has been trying to militarize the region since September 11, 2001 on the argument of defending against possible terrorist attack. The US has managed to gain an airbase on Banda Aceh, the Sultan Iskandar Muda Air Force Base, on the northernmost tip of Indonesia. The governments of the region, including Myanmar, however, have adamantly refused US efforts to militarize the region. A glance at a map will confirm the strategic importance of Myanmar.
The Strait of Malacca, linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans, is the shortest sea route between the Persian Gulf and China. It is the key chokepoint in Asia. More than 80% of all China’s oil imports are shipped by tankers passing the Malacca Strait. The narrowest point is the Phillips Channel in the Singapore Strait, only 1.5 miles wide at its narrowest. Daily more than 12 million barrels in oil supertankers pass through this narrow passage, most en route to the world’s fastest-growing energy market, China or to Japan.
If the strait were closed, nearly half of the world's tanker fleet would be required to sail further. Closure would immediately raise freight rates worldwide. More than 50,000 vessels per year transit the Strait of Malacca. The region from Maynmar to Banda Aceh in Indonesia is fast becoming one of the world’s most strategic chokepoints. Who controls those waters controls China’s energy supplies.
That strategic importance of Myanmar has not been lost on Beijing.
Since it became clear to China that the US was hell-bent on a unilateral militarization of the Middle East oil fields in 2003, Beijing has stepped up its engagement in Myanmar. Chinese energy and military security, not human rights concerns drive their policy.
In recent years Beijing has poured billions of dollars in military assistance into Myanmar, including fighter, ground-attack and transport aircraft; tanks and armored personnel carriers; naval vessels and surface-to-air missiles. China has built up Myanmar railroads and roads and won permission to station its troops in Myanmar. China, according to Indian defense sources, has also built a large electronic surveillance facility on Myanmar’s Coco Islands and is building naval bases for access to the Indian Ocean.
In fact Myanmar is an integral part of what China terms its “string of pearls,” its strategic design of establishing military bases in Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia in order to counter US control over the Strait of Malacca chokepoint. There is also energy on and offshore of Myanmar, and lots of it.
The gas fields of Myanmar
Oil and gas have been produced in Myanmar since the British set up the Rangoon Oil Company in 1871, later renamed Burmah Oil Co. The country has produced natural gas since the 1970’s, and in the 1990’s it granted gas concessions to the foreign companies ElfTotal of France and Premier Oil of the UK in the Gulf of Martaban. Later Texaco and Unocal (now Chevron) won concessions at Yadana and Yetagun as well. Alone Yadana has an estimated gas reserve of more than 5 trillion cubic feet with an expected life of at least 30 years. Yetagun is estimated to have about a third the gas of the Yadana field.
In 2004 a large new gas field, Shwe field, off the coast of Arakan was discovered.
By 2002 both Texaco and Premier Oil withdrew from the Yetagun project following UK government and NGO pressure. Malaysia’s Petronas bought Premier’s 27% stake. By 2004 Myanmar was exporting Yadana gas via pipeline to Thailand worth annually $1 billion to the Myanmar regime.
In 2005 China, Thailand and South Korea invested in expanding the Myanmar oil and gas sector, with export of gas to Thailand rising 50%. Gas export today is Myanmar’s most important source of income. Yadana was developed jointly by ElfTotal, Unocal, PTT-EP of Thailand and Myanmar’s state MOGE, operated by the French ElfTotal. Yadana supplies some 20% of Thai natural gas needs.
Today the Yetagun field is operated by Malaysia’s Petronas along with MOGE and Japan’s Nippon Oil and PTT-EP. The gas is piped onshore where it links to the Yadana pipeline. Gas from the Shwe field is to come online beginning 2009. China and India have been in strong contention over the Shwe gas field reserves.
India loses, China wins
This past summer Myanmar signed a Memorandum of Understanding with PetroChina to supply large volumes of natural gas from reserves of the Shwe gasfield in the Bay of Bengal. The contract runs for 30 years. India was the main loser. Myanmar had earlier given India a major stake in two offshore blocks to develop gas to have been transmitted via pipeline through Bangladesh to India’s energy-hungry economy. Political bickering between India and Bangladesh brought the Indian plans to a standstill.
China took advantage of the stalemate. China simply trumped India with an offer to invest billions in building a strategic China-Myanmar oil and gas pipeline across Myanmar from Myanmar’s deepwater port at Sittwe in the Bay of Bengal to Kunming in China’s Yunnan Province, a stretch of more than 2,300 kilometers. China plans an oil refinery in Kumming as well.
What the Myanmar-China pipelines will allow is routing of oil and gas from Africa (Sudan among other sources) and the Middle East (Iran, Saudi Arabia) independent of dependence on the vulnerable chokepoint of the Malacca Strait. Myanmar becomes China’s “bridge” linking Bangladesh and countries westward to the China mainland independent of any possible future moves by Washington to control the strait.
India’s dangerous alliance shift
It’s no wonder that China is taking such precautions. Ever since the Bush Administration decided in 2005 to recruit India to the Pentagon’s ‘New Framework for US-India Defense Relations,’India has been pushed into a strategic alliance with Washington in order to counter China in Asia.
In an October 2002 Pentagon report, ‘The Indo-US Military Relationship,’ the Office of Net Assessments stated the reason for the India-USA defense alliance would be to have a ‘capable partner’ who can take on ‘more responsibility for low-end operations’ in Asia, provide new training opportunities and ‘ultimately provide basing and access for US power projection.’ Washington is also quietly negotiating a base on Indian territory, a severe violation of India’s traditional non-aligned status.
Power projection against whom? China, perhaps?
As well, the Bush Administration has offered India to lift its 30 year nuclear sanctions and to sell advanced US nuclear technology, legitimizing India’s open violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, at the same time Washington accuses Iran of violating same, an exercise in political hypocrisy to say the least.
Notably, just as the Saffron-robed monks of Myanmar took to the streets, the Pentagon opened joint US-Indian joint naval exercises, Malabar 07, along with armed forces from Australia, Japan and Singapore. The US showed the awesome muscle of its 7th Fleet, deploying the aircraft carriers USS Nimitz and USS Kitty Hawk; guided missile cruisers USS Cowpens and USS Princeton and no less than five guided missile destroyers.
US-backed regime change in Myanmar together with Washington’s growing military power projection via India and other allies in the region is clearly a factor in Beijing’s policy vis-à-vis Myanmar’s present military junta. As is often the case these days, from Darfur to Caracas to Rangoon, the rallying call of Washington for democracy ought to be tasted with at least a grain of good salt.
* F. William Engdahl is the author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, Pluto Press Ltd.. To contact by e-mail:
info@engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net. Further articles can be found at his website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.
His most recent book, forthcoming with Global Research, is Seeds of Destruction, The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation.
There are facts and then there are facts. First it’s a fact which few will argue that the present military dictatorship of the reclusive General Than Shwe is right up there when it comes to world-class tyrannies.
It’s also a fact that Burma enjoys one of the world’s lowest standards of living. A dramatic collapse in purchasing power resulted from the ill-conceived 100% to 500% price hikes in gasoline and other fuels in August.
IMF "Economic Medicine"
Inflation, the nominal trigger for the mass protests led by Saffron-robed Buddhist monks, is unofficially estimated to have risen by 35%. Ironically, the demand to establish “market” energy prices was implemented under the helm of the IMF and World Bank.
The UN estimates that the population of some 50 million inhabitants spends up to 70% of their monthly income on food alone. The recent fuel price hike, which was a direct result of the IMF sponsored reforms, makes matters unbearable for tens of millions.
Myanmar is also deeply involved in the world narcotics trade, ranking only behind Hamid Karzai’s Afghanistan as a source for heroin. As well, it is said to be Southeast Asia’s largest producer of methamphetamines.
This is all understandable powder to unleash a social explosion of protest against the regime.
It is also a fact that the Myanmar military junta is on the Hit List of Condi Rice and the Bush Administration for its repressive ways. Has the Bush leopard suddenly changed his spots? Or is there a more opaque agenda behind Washington’s calls to impose severe economic and political sanctions on the regime?
Behind the recent CNN news pictures of streams of saffron-robed Buddhist Monks marching in the streets of the former capital city Rangoon (Yangon) in Myanmar—the US government still prefers to call it by the British colonial name, Burma—calling for more democracy, is a battle of major geopolitical consequence.
The major actors
The tragedy of Burma, whose land area is about the size of George W. Bush’s Texas, is that its population is being used as a human stage prop in a drama scripted in Washington by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the George Soros Open Society Institute, Freedom House and Gene Sharp’s Albert Einstein Institution, a US intelligence asset used to spark “non-violent” regime change around the world on behalf of the US strategic agenda.
Burma’s “Saffron Revolution,” like the Ukraine “Orange Revolution” or the Georgia “Rose Revolution” and the various Color Revolutions instigated in recent years against strategic states surrounding Russia, is a well-orchestrated exercise in Washington-run regime change, down to the details of “hit-and-run” protests with “swarming” mobs of Buddhists in saffron, internet blogs, mobile SMS links between protest groups, well-organized protest cells which disperse and reform. CNN made the blunder during a September broadcast of mentioning the active presence of the NED behind the protests in Myanmar.
In fact the US State Department admits to supporting the activities of the NED in Myanmar. The NED is a US Government-funded “private” entity whose activities are designed to support US foreign policy objectives, doing today what the CIA did during the Cold War. As well the NED funds Soros’ Open Society Institute in fostering regime change in Myanmar. In an October 30 2003 Press Release the State Department admitted, “The United States also supports organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy, the Open Society Institute and Internews, working inside and outside the region on a broad range of democracy promotion activities.” It all sounds very self-effacing and noble of the State Department. Is it though?
In reality the US State Department has recruited and trained key opposition leaders from numerous anti-government organizations. It has poured the relatively huge sum (for Myanmar) of more than $2.5 million annually into NED activities in promoting regime change in Myanmar since at least 2003. The US regime change, its Saffron Revolution, is being largely run according to informed reports, out of the US Consulate General in bordering Chaing Mai, Thailand. There activists are recruited and trained, in some cases directly in the USA, before being sent back to organize inside Myanmar. The USA’s NED admits to funding key opposition media including the New Era Journal, Irrawaddy and the Democratic Voice of Burma radio.
The concert-master of the tactics of Saffron monk-led non-violence regime change is Gene Sharp, founder of the deceptively-named Albert Einstein Institution in Cambridge Massachusetts, a group funded by an arm of the NED to foster US-friendly regime change in key spots around the world. Sharp’s institute has been active in Burma since 1989, just after the regime massacred some 3000 protestors to silence the opposition. CIA special operative and former US Military Attache in Rangoon, Col. Robert Helvey, an expert in clandestine operations, introduced Sharp to Burma in 1989 to train the opposition there in non-violent strategy. Interestingly, Sharp was also in China two weeks before the dramatic events at Tiananmen Square.
Why Myanmar now?
A relevant question is why the US Government has such a keen interest in fostering regime change in Myanmar at this juncture. We can dismiss rather quickly the idea that it has genuine concern for democracy, justice, human rights for the oppressed population there. Iraq and Afghanistan are sufficient testimony to the fact Washington’s paean to Democacy is propaganda cover for another agenda.
The question is what would lead to such engagement in such a remote place as Myanmar?
Geopolitical control seems to be the answer. Control ultimately of the strategic sea lanes from the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea. The coastline of Myanmar provides naval access in the proximity of one of the world’s most strategic water passages, the Strait of Malacca, the narrow ship passage between Malaysia and Indonesia.
The Pentagon has been trying to militarize the region since September 11, 2001 on the argument of defending against possible terrorist attack. The US has managed to gain an airbase on Banda Aceh, the Sultan Iskandar Muda Air Force Base, on the northernmost tip of Indonesia. The governments of the region, including Myanmar, however, have adamantly refused US efforts to militarize the region. A glance at a map will confirm the strategic importance of Myanmar.
The Strait of Malacca, linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans, is the shortest sea route between the Persian Gulf and China. It is the key chokepoint in Asia. More than 80% of all China’s oil imports are shipped by tankers passing the Malacca Strait. The narrowest point is the Phillips Channel in the Singapore Strait, only 1.5 miles wide at its narrowest. Daily more than 12 million barrels in oil supertankers pass through this narrow passage, most en route to the world’s fastest-growing energy market, China or to Japan.
If the strait were closed, nearly half of the world's tanker fleet would be required to sail further. Closure would immediately raise freight rates worldwide. More than 50,000 vessels per year transit the Strait of Malacca. The region from Maynmar to Banda Aceh in Indonesia is fast becoming one of the world’s most strategic chokepoints. Who controls those waters controls China’s energy supplies.
That strategic importance of Myanmar has not been lost on Beijing.
Since it became clear to China that the US was hell-bent on a unilateral militarization of the Middle East oil fields in 2003, Beijing has stepped up its engagement in Myanmar. Chinese energy and military security, not human rights concerns drive their policy.
In recent years Beijing has poured billions of dollars in military assistance into Myanmar, including fighter, ground-attack and transport aircraft; tanks and armored personnel carriers; naval vessels and surface-to-air missiles. China has built up Myanmar railroads and roads and won permission to station its troops in Myanmar. China, according to Indian defense sources, has also built a large electronic surveillance facility on Myanmar’s Coco Islands and is building naval bases for access to the Indian Ocean.
In fact Myanmar is an integral part of what China terms its “string of pearls,” its strategic design of establishing military bases in Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia in order to counter US control over the Strait of Malacca chokepoint. There is also energy on and offshore of Myanmar, and lots of it.
The gas fields of Myanmar
Oil and gas have been produced in Myanmar since the British set up the Rangoon Oil Company in 1871, later renamed Burmah Oil Co. The country has produced natural gas since the 1970’s, and in the 1990’s it granted gas concessions to the foreign companies ElfTotal of France and Premier Oil of the UK in the Gulf of Martaban. Later Texaco and Unocal (now Chevron) won concessions at Yadana and Yetagun as well. Alone Yadana has an estimated gas reserve of more than 5 trillion cubic feet with an expected life of at least 30 years. Yetagun is estimated to have about a third the gas of the Yadana field.
In 2004 a large new gas field, Shwe field, off the coast of Arakan was discovered.
By 2002 both Texaco and Premier Oil withdrew from the Yetagun project following UK government and NGO pressure. Malaysia’s Petronas bought Premier’s 27% stake. By 2004 Myanmar was exporting Yadana gas via pipeline to Thailand worth annually $1 billion to the Myanmar regime.
In 2005 China, Thailand and South Korea invested in expanding the Myanmar oil and gas sector, with export of gas to Thailand rising 50%. Gas export today is Myanmar’s most important source of income. Yadana was developed jointly by ElfTotal, Unocal, PTT-EP of Thailand and Myanmar’s state MOGE, operated by the French ElfTotal. Yadana supplies some 20% of Thai natural gas needs.
Today the Yetagun field is operated by Malaysia’s Petronas along with MOGE and Japan’s Nippon Oil and PTT-EP. The gas is piped onshore where it links to the Yadana pipeline. Gas from the Shwe field is to come online beginning 2009. China and India have been in strong contention over the Shwe gas field reserves.
India loses, China wins
This past summer Myanmar signed a Memorandum of Understanding with PetroChina to supply large volumes of natural gas from reserves of the Shwe gasfield in the Bay of Bengal. The contract runs for 30 years. India was the main loser. Myanmar had earlier given India a major stake in two offshore blocks to develop gas to have been transmitted via pipeline through Bangladesh to India’s energy-hungry economy. Political bickering between India and Bangladesh brought the Indian plans to a standstill.
China took advantage of the stalemate. China simply trumped India with an offer to invest billions in building a strategic China-Myanmar oil and gas pipeline across Myanmar from Myanmar’s deepwater port at Sittwe in the Bay of Bengal to Kunming in China’s Yunnan Province, a stretch of more than 2,300 kilometers. China plans an oil refinery in Kumming as well.
What the Myanmar-China pipelines will allow is routing of oil and gas from Africa (Sudan among other sources) and the Middle East (Iran, Saudi Arabia) independent of dependence on the vulnerable chokepoint of the Malacca Strait. Myanmar becomes China’s “bridge” linking Bangladesh and countries westward to the China mainland independent of any possible future moves by Washington to control the strait.
India’s dangerous alliance shift
It’s no wonder that China is taking such precautions. Ever since the Bush Administration decided in 2005 to recruit India to the Pentagon’s ‘New Framework for US-India Defense Relations,’India has been pushed into a strategic alliance with Washington in order to counter China in Asia.
In an October 2002 Pentagon report, ‘The Indo-US Military Relationship,’ the Office of Net Assessments stated the reason for the India-USA defense alliance would be to have a ‘capable partner’ who can take on ‘more responsibility for low-end operations’ in Asia, provide new training opportunities and ‘ultimately provide basing and access for US power projection.’ Washington is also quietly negotiating a base on Indian territory, a severe violation of India’s traditional non-aligned status.
Power projection against whom? China, perhaps?
As well, the Bush Administration has offered India to lift its 30 year nuclear sanctions and to sell advanced US nuclear technology, legitimizing India’s open violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, at the same time Washington accuses Iran of violating same, an exercise in political hypocrisy to say the least.
Notably, just as the Saffron-robed monks of Myanmar took to the streets, the Pentagon opened joint US-Indian joint naval exercises, Malabar 07, along with armed forces from Australia, Japan and Singapore. The US showed the awesome muscle of its 7th Fleet, deploying the aircraft carriers USS Nimitz and USS Kitty Hawk; guided missile cruisers USS Cowpens and USS Princeton and no less than five guided missile destroyers.
US-backed regime change in Myanmar together with Washington’s growing military power projection via India and other allies in the region is clearly a factor in Beijing’s policy vis-à-vis Myanmar’s present military junta. As is often the case these days, from Darfur to Caracas to Rangoon, the rallying call of Washington for democracy ought to be tasted with at least a grain of good salt.
* F. William Engdahl is the author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, Pluto Press Ltd.. To contact by e-mail:
info@engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net. Further articles can be found at his website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net. His most recent book, forthcoming with Global Research, is Seeds of Destruction, The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation.
William Engdahl
Homepage:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7072
Comments
Hide the following 9 comments
Will you please all STOP calling it Myanmar
16.10.2007 21:11
burma
By any other name
16.10.2007 22:25
The article you criticise is North American and there the name Myanmar has been adopted by almost everyone, certainly by the CIA and the government. Because the generals chose it, the resistance rejects it. It is the equivalent of a hypothetical Scottish junta renaming the country Caledonia or Alba, which are both valid historical alternative names for Scotland. In short it has significance only because of who changed the name. So for you to say "By using this name, you give legitimacy to the general's reign of terror" is pedantry. However well-meaning, it seems a bit hysterical and unfocussed.
That is a really interesting article. It backs up what 'ftp' ( and later myself ) originally said about these protests. It actually understates the evidence we presented that this is a CIA attempt at either regime change or even worse, a deliberate ploy to induce regional instability with no expectation of regime change. And we have seen this sort of manipulation happen before, historically, which is why we should be cautious.
The difficult question is what to do. Morally, obviously, we should support demonstrators over dictators, victims over abusers, people over governments. Yet in such a CIA backed 'spectacle' we don't want to be extras in some Hollywood movie, rent-a-mob activists easily directed by manipulative mendacious mainstream media. It is natural to worry why we are allowed to protest this injustice by not the massacres our states currently commit elsewhere.
So there are now regular demos at Total garages around the UK reported on IM. That is good, Total are complicit in Burma. So are Chevron, an US corporation known as Texaco in the UK, and yet they haven't been targetted once.
And now there are regular demos outside the Chinese embassy reported on IM. That is good, China are complicit in Burma. So are the US, India, Thailand, Singapore, and yet their embassies haven't been targetted once.
If people are genuinely upset about Burma, why only target foriegn targets ? The Burma Campaign lists lots of alternatives.
My first reaction, once I'd read 'ftp's informed comments, was to support this campaign but to point out our own complicity, our own history and current involvement. And I've done a couple of things and will do more. But my main priorities are the same as they have been for years - Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine. For it it is my state, the taxes of those around me, that is most complicit in those far worse conflicts.
Anyway, you slag off the article for calling the country Myanmar. I'd only criticise the article for being too mild in it's expose of cynical western collusion. Either way amounts to a vindication of the article.
Danny
burmese people still need our complete solidarity
17.10.2007 13:55
Does any of this change the fact that there is a genuine movement for freedom in Burma that desperately needs and deserves our support?
Or should we only support those struggles that fit into an anti-US agenda? 'Sorry Burmese protesters, we've decided to stand by while thousands of you are killed or tortured, because it doesn't fit our anti-imperialist analysis'?!?
NO. Wherever there is a people struggling against injustice, against ANY government, we should support them. When we allow Geopolitical Considerations to drown out the cry for freedom from Burmese lips, we become just as cynical and hypocritical as the elites we oppose.
What we should do, perhaps, is to warn Burmese activists that the US is no reliable friend, but is only waiting in the wings to exploit Burma itself. If some Burmese groups work with the US, out of desperation, then of course that's bloody tragic, but who are we to condemn them? We are not living and struggling in their conditions and have no right to dictate to them what strategies and alliances to use.
PS I have been one of those targetting Total stations, and would have targetted Texaco too but simply didn't know they were also involved in Burma. Why not stop seeing bloody conspiracies everywhere and start by assuming the good faith of your fellow activists? Agh.
against *all* oppression
Agh
17.10.2007 14:43
Listen, there is nothing in your post I'd disagree with, except perhaps the last line. I haven't doubted the good faith of activists and you yourself have just acknowledged the conspiracies around this issue. China and Total aren't the only two targets for us on this issue, the Burma Campaign 'Dirty List' contains local companies we can all target.
Me, I've done one PR stunt against one of those companies, and one more direct, technical action against the regimes technicians that I'm probably better suited for. And I'll do other stuff when it occurs to me or when it is suggested. It is just not my only issue. I hope you apply the same principles and effort to the conflicts our state is even more complicit in.
Danny
apologies
18.10.2007 11:08
(First you wondered why only Total and China were being targeted then you said 'If people are genuinely upset about Burma, why only target foreign targets ?' I read this as:
'people are only targeting foreign targets, therefore they are not being genuine about Burma'. Coming straight after your talk of 'manipulation' and having been put in a bad mood by the article itself, I got my wires severely crossed!)
I just think that talk of CIA manipulation etc tends to undermine UK activist support for Burmese activists at a time when we should be doing what we can to help. And that's what really pisses me off.
I realise it's important to ask these questions, and to have a clear picture of what's going on. But I think that should happen within a context of full support for the Burmese people (their struggle is real and concrete, not a 'spectacle') and of assuming the good faith of activists there as well as here!
If you could point me in the direction of the previous discussions you refer to (ftp's comments etc), I'd like to read more into all this. So far the only conspiracy I've seen evidence for is the huge difference in volume and tone of MSM coverage between Burma and countries where UK/US are more complicit. And of course the sympathetic coverage has a knock-on effect in terms of police attitudes and public opinion.
me again
Neducation
18.10.2007 11:44
Well, at the same time, cheerleading imperialism really pisses me off........
When you talk of supporting Burmese activists, who do you mean? The "channels of resistance" that were being pushed at the beginning of the demos turned out to be long term NED funded, (Iriwaddy/Mizzima and Democratic Voice of Burma) and that has implications, if NED/CIA funding gives a particular group of activists more clout, because they have privileged access to resources.
Theres a bit more on NED in this recent article:
"Professor William I. Robinson was the one of the first researchers to draw attention to the hypocrisy that was the antidemocratic practices of the NED, and his seminal work on this topic was Promoting Polyarchy, a book which examined the hijacking of democratic transitions in Nicaragua, Haiti, the Philippines and Chile. Robinson notes that the primary goal of such ‘democracy promoting’ groups is the promotion of polyarchy or low-intensity democracy over more substantive forms of democratic governance, enabling “the replacement of coercive means of social control with consensual ones”. Crucially, Robinson concluded that the success of foreign interventions can “be understood only when seen in its entirety – as a skilful combination of military aggression, economic blackmail, CIA propaganda, NED political interference, coercive diplomacy, and international pressures”."
Do the NED funded activists represent the interests of their funders or of 50 million Burmese, is a question that has to be asked.
Joining Bush and Brown in their cheerleading for "democracy" in Burma is a step that should be taken with caution, as they have never shown support for real resistance against oppressive regimes. I'm sure they'd prefer activists to spend time focussing on their pet project, rather than than the horrors of their own military occupations.
The ANC happily adopted a neo-liberal regime, and despite Glynnis Kinnock's assertion at the Burma Rally that "we won" in our struggle against the Apartheid regime, for the majority of South Africans, there has been no improvement in their conditions of living.
Personally I can't actively boycott Total, or Daewoo as I don't have a car. And demanding that they withdraw from Burma until a US Government supported opposition has been installed in power, may be more helpful to the US funded elite and the US itself than to the average Burmese person.
It does seem imperative to me that support for the Burmese people is offered, but in this case it also makes sense to ensure that it is really the Burmese people who are at the heart of any actions, and that we are not being manipulated into supporting the overthrow of one pernicious regime with another..
More info on NED linked to from here:
ftp
snakes
18.10.2007 15:12
I agree fully. By the way I meant 'spectacle' in the Situationalist sense of the word, which isn't necessarily pejorative.
I don't doubt the good faith of activists in Burma or here. I also don't doubt corporations, governments and their security agencies manipulate and mislead activists regularly, and the NED work against democracies as often as they work against dictatorships.
There is an Indian proverb I've used before to refer to the Burmese situation, 'a drowning man will clutch at snakes'. There is no doubt that the Burmese are drowning and need pulled to the shore, but we do have to be wary of the snakes - especially the ones that pushed them in the water in the first place.
Less poetically, the CIA has a history of encouraging revolts it knows are doomed to failure, promising support it knows it will not deliver on. Hungary in 56, China in '89, Iraq in '91 are far from the only examples where democrats have been sacrificed simply to destablise an enemy. This is not meant as an excuse for inaction, it is simply hope that we can act informedly.
Danny
ned didnt pull the trigger, but they died coz ned machination....
20.10.2007 04:30
denk
Troubled Burma - The Washington Connection
21.10.2007 17:43
This diary is inspired by a recent article written by William Engdahl which was published in Asia Times Online.
As we read last month the trigger for the mass demonstrations led by the Buddhist Monks in Myanmar, or Burma if you prefer, was fuel costs which were increased by 100% to 500% when the government ended subsidies for gasoline and other types of fuel. Engdahl tells us that the UN estimates overall inflation had increased by 35% in this very poor country where people spend about 70% of their income for food.
There is more to this story than meets the eye.
"Behind the recent CNN news pictures of streams of monks marching in the streets of the former capital city, Yangon, calling for more democracy, is a battle of major geopolitical consequence."
What is not so well known is that Burma is also on the Bush Administration's hit-list for regime change. And, we can dismiss the idea that it has genuine concern for democracy, justice and human rights for the oppressed. Iraq and Afghanistan are sufficient testimony to the fact Washington's talk of democracy is cover for a different agenda.
Some readers might be familiar with the National Endowment for Democracy. NED is funded by Congress which has oversight, however NED in turn funds other organizations which are unaccountable. The topic of NED is worthy of a separate diary but for now we'll provide some basic information on NED activities and on their agenda in Burma from the link above.
"During the late 1970s there was new thinking at the highest levels of the U.S. foreign policymakers, that ugly murderous military dictatorships of the 1970s were really the best way to preserve U.S. interests in these countries – U.S. interests being defined traditionally as unfettered access to the primary products and raw materials, to the labor and to the markets of foreign countries. (Think Iraq, Venezuela, Iran) This new thinking led to the establishment in 1983 of the National Endowment for Democracy.
NED regularly provides funding to opposition candidates in elections in countries other than the USA. According to Allen Weinstein, one of the founders of NED, "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA".
NED has principally supported candidates with strong ties to the military and who support the rights of U.S. corporations to invest in those countries with minimal restriction. The NED has not supported candidates who oppose investments by U.S. corporations or who promise restrictions on investment rights of U.S. corporations."
A list of former and present members of the board of directors includes Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright, Frank Carlucci, Zbigniew Brzezinski, General Wesley K. Clark, Paul Wolfowitz and Vin Weber.
NED was present and had an active part in directing the protests last month in Myanmar. In fact CNN mentioned their presence and activities in one of their broadcasts. The State Department also admits to their presence. The protest "concert master", per Engdahl, was Gene Sharp who is the founder of an organization funded through NED, called the Albert Einstein Institution.
So why is remote Burma, a small country about the size of Texas, in Southeast Asia, be of such interest to the US? One reason, as it was with Somalia, which suffered a recent regime change orchestrated by Washington - Geopolitical control, writes Engdahl.
"... control ultimately of the strategic sea lanes from the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea. The coastline of Myanmar provides naval access in the proximity of one of the world's most strategic water passages, the Strait of Malacca, the narrow ship passage between Malaysia and Indonesia.
The Pentagon has been trying to militarize the region since September 11, 2001 on the argument of defending against possible terrorist attack. The US has managed to gain an airbase on Banda Aceh, the Sultan Iskandar Muda Air Force Base, on the northernmost tip of Indonesia. The governments of the region, including Myanmar, however, have adamantly refused US efforts to militarize the region."
And of course there is the China factor:
"The Strait of Malacca, linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans, is the shortest sea route between the Persian Gulf and China. It is the key chokepoint in Asia. More than 80% of all China's oil imports are shipped by tankers passing the Malacca Strait. ...each day, more than 12 million barrels in oil supertankers pass through this narrow passage, most en route to the world's fastest-growing energy market, China, or to Japan."
The US State Department, operating from across the border in Chiang Mai, Thailand, is actively training and providing funding for fostering regime change in Burma. China reacting to what it sees as US militarization of the Middle East has recently put a lot of money into Burma, and like the US in the Middle East, energy and military security, not human rights concerns, drives their policy.
China has also helped to build infrastructure in Myanmar including railroads and roads and has been allowed to station troops in Burma.
Engdahl reports that:
"Myanmar is an integral part of what China terms its "string of pearls", its strategic design of establishing military bases in Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia in order to counter US control over the Strait of Malacca chokepoint. There is also energy on and offshore of Myanmar, and lots of it. "
The unanswered question is what will become of the people of Mynanmar? If Iraq and Somalia are to held up as examples I would judge that they would be better off under the more local, Chinese, influence. Either way it is unfortunate for them and in the end they will not likely have much say in how future events will unfold.
truong son traveler (reposted by ftp)
Homepage:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/10/17/113050/64