Are Vampire Capitalists About to Descend on Crisis Wrought Myanmar?

Soldiers are contracted by foreign investors to protect energy project sites and pipelines.  Violence by these is commonplace, perpetuating the cycle of human rights abuses. Soldiers have been implicated in killings, beatings, rapes and arrests of the villagers living on or by energy fields and pipelines.

On Tuesday, May 6th, President Bush requested the country's junta to allow the United States to provide disaster assistance, saying Washington was prepared to move naval assets to help search for the dead and missing.

Barbara Starr, Pentagon reporter for CNN, reported the same day (May 6) on CNN Business Report that Myanmar could receive all kinds of “help” from the US Navy including help with delivering and sanitizing water. 

Why the flip-flop?  Why does Bush freeze Myanmar’s assets the day it is hit with a Hurricane Katrina-size cyclone and four days later Bush wants to help this crisis wrought country?  It’s like beating someone to a pulp (freezing assets) and then leaving them on the sidewalk for violent nature to finish the job!  And both happened on the same day!  Now that the country is properly beaten, Bush wants to help them?  This kind of mindset is psychopathic to say the least!

 If Myanmar’s assets are frozen, how are they to rebuild the country? 

Thankfully, the Myanmar military, which regularly accuses the United States of trying to subvert their regime, is unlikely to allow US military presence in its territory.  How would the junta make the Navy leave after it and US oil carpet- baggers become entrenched in the rivers and sea around Myanmar, especially since the country is so weakened by cyclone devastation?  Think how weakened and powerless New Orleans was after Hurricane Katrina and apply this same dynamic to Myanmar.

But with tens of thousands of Burmese dead, more injured and up to a million are homeless, this may be the “Perfect Storm” for proponents of the Friedian Chicago School of Economic’s “Shock Doctrine” where western capitalists, the World Bank and the IMF are always poised to descend on third-world countries devastated and paralyzed by shock, despair, huge losses of life and destroyed infrastructures from natural or other disasters.

The article “Turning a Tsunami Into a Windfall - For Some’ begins (http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=53cd6f6b99245288a7d2316c5c563e62) says “The Christmas tsunami of 2004 left a devastating trail of destruction but for some it opened up huge business opportunities. It created a blank slate for what Naomi Klein calls “shock doctrine.” This is how shock doctrine works. First there is a disaster, a coup, a terrorist attack, a tsunami, a hurricane: the population goes into shock, the economy is in a shambles, it’s a perfect opportunity to push through unpopular economic shock therapy. This means privatizing resources and selling state assets.”

If you’ve read Naomi Klein’s book THE SHOCK DOCTRINE: THE RISE OF DIASTER CAPITALISM, you will know that half a million Sri Lankan fisher folk were moved inland to free up the beaches for “development” the tourist market.  This left a half million people without their traditional land to live on and without a way to make an income.

The Washington Consensus has been pushing for a “regime” change in Myanmar for a long time.  They base it on “abuse” of human rights and endless western propaganda that the “majority” of Burmese want “democracy.”

Who is Bush to push for “human rights” reform when most of the world regards America as the worst human rights abuser on the planet? This is evidenced by the fact that the US prison population dwarfs that of other nations (http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/23/america/23prison.php), the illegal detainment and torture of inmates in Guantanamo, illegal wars leaving over 2 million Iraqis dead and more injured (for “regime change”), and torture of its prisoners internationally and nationally to name a few offenses. 

American “human rights” reform is always done by the barrel of a gun or economic genocide (like freezing assets) or both.

The current junta had scheduled a May 10 referendum as a key stage in a seven-step "roadmap to democracy" that should culminate in multi-party elections in 2010, as a replacement to the absolute power wielded by the army since their 1962 coup.

With Myanmar lying in ruins, Tropical Cyclone Nargis has delayed this vote.  Myanmar state radio announced that Saturday's vote on the military-backed draft constitution would be delayed until May 24 in 40 of 45 townships in the Yangon area and seven in the delta. It indicated that the balloting would proceed in other areas as scheduled.

Not only is freezing a country’s assets an Act of Aggression, it can also be interpreted as an Act of War. 

On March 30th, another “under the radar” important news story was released and few news wires picked it up. 

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