 |
|
Add to My Group
|
May 7, 2008 at 13:12:00
Are Vampire Capitalists About to Descend on Crisis Wrought Myanmar? by Martha Rose Crow Page 1 of 3 page(s) 
|
|
|
Nowadays, most important news gets ignored, buried or goes under the radar by corporate-owned media, especially when this news reveals the dark side of the “free market” or the dark plans for more parasitic, predator capitalism unleashed against a weakened populace or country. Myanmar is the modern name for a country the English speaking empires still call Burma. On May 2nd, US President George W. Bush ordered a new round of sanctions on Burmese state companies to pressure the military leadership there over human rights abuses and to push for political change. Few wires picked up this Act of Aggression from Washington. Instead, the whole world watched with wonder as Tropical Cyclone Nargis slammed into Myanmar on May 2nd and May 3rd. 
For over a week, meteorologists knew that Myanmar would be hit so it is either ironic or planned that Bush would sanction Myanmar the same day it was to be devastated.
Bush announced in his statement on May 2nd, "Today I've issued a new executive order that instructs the Treasury Department to freeze the assets of Burmese state-owned companies that are major sources of funds that prop up the junta."
The sanctions were targeted at companies and industries that produce timber, pearls and gems. Notice that gas and oil were not on the list of sanctions.
Myanmar is one of the world's oldest oil producers. It exporting its first barrel in 1853. Rangoon Oil Company, the first foreign oil company to drill in the country, was created in 1871. Between 1886 and 1963, the Myanmar's oil industry was dominated by Burmah Oil Company (BOC), which discovered the Ychaugyaung field in 1887 and the Chauk field in 1902. Both fields are still in production.
The oil and gas industry was nationalized after a socialist-leaning military regime seized power in 1962. As in many other countries, the State assumed ownership of the resources, either operating them itself or delegating this task to private operators, who were paid for their outlay and work in oil or gas under production sharing contracts called PSCs.
The article, ‘Big Oil Fuelling Burma’s Junta?’ (click here says, “…global oil companies are falling all over themselves in the cue to gain access to what may be substantial oil reserves in that fractured country.” If Myanmar was fractured before, it is shattered from Tropical Cyclone Nargis.
French oil giant TOTAL is the fourth largest oil company in the UK, and the fourth largest oil company in the world. On February 21, 2005, the Burma Campaign UK published a hard-hitting new report exposing how oil giant TOTAL plays a crucial role in funding and protecting Burma’s brutal military dictatorship. (click here The report said, “There has been little relief for villagers living in the Yadana pipeline region in southern Burma since the Chevron Corporation became a partner to this natural gas venture in 2005.” "Chevron and its consortium partners continue to rely on the Burmese army for pipeline security and those forces continue to conscript thousands of villagers for forced labour, and to commit torture, rape, murder and other serious abuses in the course of their operations," revealed the 76-page report, 'The Human Cost of Energy'. “Chevron should act on "its moral and legal obligations to human rights rather than profit from human rights abuses," the report added of this project that earned the Burma's junta about 1.1 billion US dollars in 2006, over half of its total earnings from the sale of gas to neighbouring Thailand, which was 2.16 billion dollars that year.” The Yadana pipeline has been dogged by controversy and human rights abuses since its inception in 1991. The venture, to extract offshore natural gas in the Andaman Sea and have it flow along an overland pipe to Thailand, was backed by a consortium that included the US company Unocal, French company Total and a subsidiary of Thailand’s state-owned gas and oil company. The local partner was the Myanmar Gas and Oil Enterprise, an affiliate of Burma’s energy ministry. In developing Burmese energy resources, the ruling Myanmar junta has forcibly relocated villages and uses villagers as slave labor.
This keeps profits high for foreign oil companies and the ruling junta who get their cut. 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.
Take action -- click here to contact your local newspaper or congress people:
US Hidden Economic and Political Agenda for Myanmar
Click here to see the most recent messages sent to congressional reps and local newspapers
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
 Contact Author |
Contact Editor |
 View Authors' Articles |
|
|
|
| 3 comments |
|
Classic "Shock Doctrine"
...if it were true. Only I can't find any evidence that it is. The latest news about any sanctions imposed against Mayanmar/Burma dates from 2007. All the more confusing that you are writing this posthumously. Help me out here! by Maxwell (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 409 comments [85 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Thursday, May 8, 2008 at 1:17:54 PM  (0+)
|
|
Reply: Sanctions Against Myranmar
This is just a new sanction against Myranmar. Bush has sanctioned them before, but the "holy grails" of energy (e.g., natural gas and oil) are never sanctioned. That's because American companies have been poised (or in the cue) to get into the game and when they do, they don't want to have to deal with the sanctions. American oil companies have proven for a long, long time that they don't care about democracy in foreign markets they get their product from. They don't want to be "pressured" (the intent of the new sanctions) to pressure for a democracy they don't want. But what caught my eye about this new round of sanctions is that Bush did it the same day Myranmar got slammed by the cyclone! Some might call this "foreign relations" but I call it bullying. Kinda like an alpha male country barring his teeth and pushing the weaker countries around. Bush's sick macho bravado. Then Myanmar gets knocked out by the cyclone. There is something that I meant to put in the article but didn't want to make the article too long so I kept it out. A "CEO President," Bush doesn't care anything about real democracy. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that psychopathic predator western capitalism and democracy doesn't mix. Each are totally different. Most corporations are dictatorships (from the top) and are authoritarian in structure and systems. By their very nature, they are racist, misogynistic and care nothing for their employees. Corporations exist to earn profits for their owners any way they can and if it's illegal, if they can get away with breaking the law or if they can cost effectively pay for fines and fees somewhere up the road. Profits are their legal mandate. Because profits come before anything, corporations are loathe to pay taxes because they interfere with the bottom line. Most corporations prefer to work with dictatorships because they can get cheap steady workers and natural resources cheaper. But Myanmar's military dictatorship won't prostrate themselves as cheap whores to western capitalism. That's the only reason why Bush is pushing for "human rights" reform. Democracies strive for citizen participation, strive to be fairer to all groups, strive for non-authoritarian/non fascist governance, structures and systems are less restrictive, believe in taxes, so forth. Joel Bakan wrote in his book "The Corporation," that if many of the big corporations were psychiatrically evaluated as individuals, that they would be psychopaths! Do you know what a psychopath is? A person who is completely without conscience. A person who constantly lies. A person who sees the world completely different from the majority of people and strives to bring this sick, twisted world view into reality. A psychopath is an evil person. A psychopathic corporation is an evil institution. Why is it so hard to bring the word "evil" to the table of humanity? I think that will be the theme of my next article. What happened to values? Why is it okay for corporations to enslave the workers of the world (slavery), "capture" markets by any means (lying, theft, racketeering, murder, pollution, so forth), manipulate markets like food and oil that cause catastrophic suffering and death and determine governments? Thank you for your comment. If you have any more questions, please ask. Martha Rose Crow by Martha Rose Crow (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 44 comments [6 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Thursday, May 8, 2008 at 4:23:53 PM (0+)
|
|
Possibility of the cyclone being created or steered?
Great article, Martha Rose. For comparison we could also look at http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/01/307115.shtml - that is about the Tsunami, was it man-made? There seems even more evidence of the ability to use or even direct and magic up high winds and rain events as weapons of war, or triggers to destabilise countries. click here can perhaps also focus HAARP or Energy Weapons on individual buildings ... - or complexes of buildings - as per Sept 11th if www.drjudywood.com is right, and I think she is broadly speaking. by Keith Mothersson (6 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 74 comments [1 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Thursday, May 8, 2008 at 6:48:02 PM (0+)
|
Want to post your own comment on this Article? 
|
||||
|
||||||||||||||
Must Read (0) 
Well Said (0) 
News (0) 
Touching (0) 
Funny (0) 
Supported (0) 
Interesting (0) 
Inspiring (0) 
Valuable (0)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Tell a Friend:
|
Copyright © 2002-2009, OpEdNews |
