Archive for October, 2007
October 8th, 2007
By Carolyn Baker of Speaking Truth to Power
In my recent article “The End Of America: The Police State Is Right Here, Right Now” I included experiences of escalating intimidation on the part of law enforcement in the United States within recent months. I must confess that when I cite such incidents, I fear that in a few days or weeks, it will all go away, and everyone else, myself included, will begin to question the validity of the examples, breathing a heavy sigh of relief and rejoicing that the situation isn’t nearly as dire as I’m asserting it is.
This time, however, I have nothing to fear because since that article was posted, the ante of out-of-control law enforcement in America appears to have been upped with a rapidity that I could not have imagined just a few weeks ago.
Have we not all heard about the New York woman on her way to rehab who passed through the Phoenix airport, became distraught when she had just missed her flight, and was arrested for disorderly conduct by airport police? The suspect, Carol Ann Gotbaum, was handcuffed and then placed in a holding cell and left alone. According to police, when they returned, she was dead. At this writing, Gotbaum’s family and officials are awaiting the autopsy report-the “official” cause of death.
Just a few days later, again in Phoenix, a male suspect was handcuffed after an on-foot chase by police, and shortly after being handcuffed, according to police, he lost consciousness. He was then taken to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead.
In today’s New York Daily News, the story “Science teacher’s brush with police ends in heart attack” relates an incident that happened back in June of this year when an African American Brooklyn high school teacher was mistaken for a perpetrator by police, suffered a heart attack, and was left on his own by the street cops who accused him of “acting.”
As outrageous as these incidents may be, the most chilling event appeared on networks across the nation this morning with the story of a twenty year-old Wisconsin sheriff’s deputy who shot and killed six young people at a party Saturday night. The most obvious question: How is it that a community of citizens allows a twenty year-old to become a deputy sheriff? Why not give an M-16 to a third-grader?
Nevertheless, all of these stories are connected by a common thread: Law enforcement in the United States, whose duty it is to “protect and serve” have now become not just part of the problem but in fact, predatory devourers of those they are sworn to keep safe.
Deepening collapse will be attended by manifestations of the unraveling of all institutions, one of the most frightening examples being law enforcement’s hysterical repression of citizens.
Although we are seeing more media attention given to private security companies such as Blackwater, we should not assume that the power and funding granted to these firms will dissipate anytime soon. They are an integral part of the Shock Doctrine brilliantly analyzed by Naomi Klein in her new book of the same title. The greater the extent of the empire’s collapse, the greater the intensity of the shock applied to those who reside within the belly of the beast. From those shocks flow not only increased terror and social control, but flourishing profits for private security companies.
The U.S. government is making it unmistakably clear that it intends to use every avenue of power at its disposal to lock down the nation. A story sent to my subscribers today from the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA) reveals that in its correspondence with the Treasury Department “The Treasury Department was surprisingly candid in that correspondence, asserting the U.S. Government’s authority, in declared emergencies, to confiscate precious metals and to restrict ownership of mining shares — and to confiscate and restrict every other financial asset as well.”
Almost daily we hear of increased surveillance of Americans as well as unprecedented restrictions on travel, not only on persons entering the U.S. but on persons traveling within the country and on dissenters who attempt to enter other countries as in the case of two activists, Medea Benjamin and Ann Wright who were denied entrance into Canada on Thursday “because their names appeared on the FBI’s National Crime Information Center database.”
Another relevant story relinked today pertains to the anti-terrorism Vigilant Shield 2008 exercise of U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) “The series of exercises is mandated by the US government to prepare, prevent and respond to any number of national crises that would call for the use of the military inside the United States. Vigilant Shield 2008 builds a scenario of a domestic disaster in the US (terrorist attack or natural disaster). It posits the domestic use of the US military including a special role for the US Air Force.” As we know, a precedent for using the U.S. military inside the U.S. was set in the aftermath of Katrina in 2005.
For those considering expatriation, it will soon be too late to leave. For those who choose to remain within this increasingly locked down nation, it will be necessary to acquire survival skills, a strong community of friends, and a great deal of stealth in order to navigate this empire’s exacerbating Orwellian treachery.
October 8th, 2007
By Mathew Maavak of Panoptic World
This is a planet in denial. While the existential question gets a red hot “apocalypse now” for an answer, our stock markets seem to have regained paradise lost.
We are witnessing nothing less than history’s first confluence of unsustainable “peaks.”
Perhaps, we are incapable of piecing them all, for when crude oil reached an all-time intra-day high of $84.10 per barrel on Sept 20, its entitlement to a front pager screamer was conceded to the tale of a few thousand empty — or emptying — American homes.
It was like the Butterfly Effect, with a twist. The flapping rooftops of confiscated homes were now whipping up an economic tsunami worldwide.
Here is how it works.
US mortgage lenders, voracious as ever for “more,” had extended loans to the default-income group, who, were in turn hit by bad economic management. Credit card issuers followed suit to bloat consumer fantasies, and banks tightened the noose with additional loans for cars, tuition and businesses.
In the world of finance, debt is ironically regarded as an “asset.” Think of the rock-solid house that can be repossessed in the event of a default.
Debts, with the outward promise of a steady cash flow, are regularly pooled, “securitized” and converted into a bewildering array of financial products along an upward chain, where, they are hawked off by fund managers to the global market
This money buys up commodities, stocks, and yes, more “securities and derivatives,” along with junk bonds and blue chips.
It was easy come, easy go, wherever the money takes you…a 24/7 electronic casino…a Las Vegas without borders.
London bankers were toasting to the dawn of “the haves and the have yachts” at cocktail parties where sauvé qui peut was the vintage.
One of the greatest scams in recent memory was unfolding, exposing a pyramid scheme of epic proportions.
When this reached the point of metastasis, stock markets began to collapse.
The bottom feeders could not pay up anymore. Even the middle class were finding it difficult to pass the buck upwards.
This is called a liquidity crisis, and it happens when the laws of gravity finally exert a pull on the cash flow.
Still the champagne flowed. Lip-smacking advertorials continued to gush over “securities,” “derivatives,” and “comprehensive financial suites,” set in a Jacuzzi lilting to Ponzi’s version of “money for nothing and chicks for free.”
The pyramids may come crashing down, but the missing capstones are free to roam, investing in gold here, financial products there and junk bonds everywhere.
To avert a panic run though, central banks worldwide pumped $400 billion to maintain liquidity’s equilibrium.
Stock markets were no longer in the bearish or bullish mode; rather they were cancroidal, allowing fund managers to sidewheel from one market to another in search of profits, suckers, and a subtle pullout before the big bang.
It was the dawn of the crab, of cancer in stock market terminology, if one was needed. Suspicions were mounting. European banks were facing insolvency.
For three days beginning Sept. 14, savers across the United Kingdom removed £2 billion ($4 billion) from Northern Rock, Britain’s fifth largest lender. The Bank of England had to step in to guarantee all deposits in all banks – a move with little or no precedence.
However, the banks were not convinced either. Inter-bank lending, which profitably cycled cash from one bank to another as demand dictated, was now deemed an inter-bank debt trap. Available cash was hoarded up.
The Bank of England’s cash auction of £10bn — at a rate of 6.75% over three-months — has been shunned for the third consecutive week.
Either the “have yachts” have sailed away, or banks may actually find it difficult to repay the Bank of England.
Worldwide, the full weight of the “asset-backed” collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and structured investment vehicles (SIVs) may run into more than the $400 billion which central banks coughed up to keep the system afloat.
CDOs and SIVs are the sleek-sounding trillion-dollar apexes built on loans taken from simple homeowners.
Banks are still tallying what is real and redeemable, and what was created and whirling in thin air. Their best bet now is for a deux ex machina.
Bull in the China Shop
The biggest economic success story of our times was the product of Western consumerism. It created a real supply and demand situation, which forced the relocation of factories to the Third World of cheap labor.
China was the champion recipient. Demand for toys, screws, machinery, computers and cellphones could never ebb, whether it came leaded or unleaded. Beijing’s policymakers decided that the perennial flow of greenbacks demanded a domestic infrastructural revolution dictated by the export market — a first in history if there was one.
Factories, coal-fired plants, superhighways, skyscrapers were springing up at breakneck speed to fulfill the export craze. Excessive pollution and the plight of “unregistered” migrant workers from rural China mattered little.
What mattered were prestige, kickbacks and $1.2tr in hard currency-based reserves. It did not matter that China’s domestic consumption vis a vis its GDP was actually decreasing; it was more a matter of consumer opiates, of who was boss in the center of the universe.
It did not matter that Chinese cities were shrouded in toxic gray, where “only 1 percent of the country’s 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union.” [1]
The Chinese may cough but the ‘days when the world caught a cold whenever Uncle Sam sneezed was over.” Or so it seemed.
Uncle Sam sneezed.
Global finance began hemorrhaging, and it had to be resuscitated through an intravenous flow of taxpayer money.
Western consumers finally realized that girths had to be tightened, and what to better way than to curb spending, and let a market correction take place in the import sector.
An entire supply chain leading to China’s factories are in danger of folding up. Mineral resources from Africa, semiconductor plants in Malaysia, raw textile products elsewhere, now face acute market uncertainty.
China is in a bad fix. However, this is not deterring factories from coming online next year to meet the projected “global demand.” If Western consumers are scaling down their purchases, Africans are not in a position to be the replacement buyers, and without a market, they will not be able to sell their raw products either.
In such circumstances, moods can shift. When “Beijing rolled out the red carpet for more than 40 African heads of state last November, billboards depicting Africans clad in leopard skin underwear, and an indigenous man from Papua New Guinea, plastered the city.” [2] It is no wonder that China’s list of “allies” is getting shorter by the day.
Events in Myanmar are not proving helpful. China enjoys a near monopoly over Myanmar’s estimated 2.46 trillion cubic meters of gas and 3.2 billion barrels of crude oil. Beijing had plans to develop two parallel oil and gas pipelines stretching 2,380-km to link the deepwater port of Sittwe to Kunming, in the Chinese province of Yunnan. Upon completion, a good portion of Middle Eastern oil and gas is expected to bypass the Straits of Malacca.
The quid pro quo was arms supply and support at the UN for Myanmar’s military junta. Any new government now might negate all existing deals, and pull Yangon into the US orbit. This is a timely revolution from Washington’s perspective.
North Korea too is seeking rapprochement. There is enough operational space now to tackle Tehran, Damascus and the Hezbollah.
China can of course play the spoiler by providing arms to these regimes via a proxy. It is still a bad idea as the Israelis are just itching for war.
The IAF recently destroyed a Syrian installation that was purportedly an embryonic nuclear facility, but may well turn out to be a Kolchuga-type passive radar system, ideal for downing B2 stealth bombers. Coincidentally, the Russians have pledged to upgrade Syrian radar defenses after the attack.
If a wider conflagration breaks out in the Middle East, there will be no oil flowing from the Straits of Hormuz to China, either through Sitte, or through the Straits of Malacca.
The best option for Beijing will be to lock its oil and gas grid to the Russian Far East at a breakneck speed, and clean up some level of air pollution in time for the 2008 Olympics.
If an all-out war in the Middle East is our worst nightmare, think of the following unfolding crises…
The Peak Crises and its plural
Peak Oil: Fossil fuels, compressed and formed over aeons in subterranean geological layers are now releasing the telltale sibilant whispers of a punctured gas tank –- low as it was on petrol in the first place. With crude oil hovering above $80 per barrel, the various subsidies built into national economies are bound to burst at the seams, and precipitate price increases for basic necessities.
There is however a unique solution — falling consumer demand worldwide. That would crimp industrial demand for fossil fuel. It is no wonder oil majors were reluctant to build new refineries when profits seemed guaranteed in the era of “peak oil.” This day would surely come!
Peak oil is also tied to the current dollar crises. With the US dollar dipping against other major currencies, crude oil should come cheaper for Washington.
Oil and other commodities are traded in dollars, and dollar-denominated assets outnumber assets weighed in other currencies. Beijing can dump its hundreds of billions in dollar reserves for euros, only to trade them back into dollars to buy crude oil, gold and other assets.
The dollar blackmail will not work, especially with the US Army entrenched in the oil-rich Middle East.
Doomsday theorists are however predicting another Great Depression ahead, where the value of the dollar may mean little in the event of a global financial meltdown.
If this occurs, a global depression will have to deal with the following phenomena that was absent in the 30s.
Peak Urbanization: More than half of the world’s population will live in urban areas in just… a few months, according to a United Nations Population Fund report. That translates to 3.3 billion people in an urban concentration camp of shantytowns and high-rise pigeonholes.
Children are growing up in a peculiarly boxed-in environment, removed from the soil that births their identity. They do not wake up to the sound of a crowing rooster, which is nature’s way of sowing repentance and a turning of mindsets outside the conventional thinking box.
They wake up to beastly clangor instead. It is either the alarm clock or the barking dog, installed as “pets” to yelp any perceived intruder during the morning rush hour. The urban jungle is an industrialized Ziggurat, which pecks out a hierarchy from childhood. The ones right at the bottom will be the ones shouldering more concrete, or the biggest debt burden.
Close human proximity also leads to petty competitiveness and conflict. That is why “civilization” is held at gunpoint; by the police, by the army and by “treaties.”
The urban life is delicate and vulnerable to all sorts of hazards, from plagues to a breakdown in the utilities, communications and transportation services. And political upheavals. A disaster will grind down traffic to a gridlock, far from the escapist countryside.
What if an energy warfare broke out? What if a global depression hits us? Can three billion people grow a patch of greens on their balconies?
When it comes to greens, the outlook is not at all verdant…
Peak Grain: Global grain stockpiles are down to their tightest levels in three decades after two years of unusual weather patterns. Heatwaves have wilted crops in the granaries of the world while floods and other environmental scourges have devastated some of the poorer “self-sustaining” regions.
Global wheat stockpiles will fall to a 34-year low by June 2008, according to the International Grains Council. U.S. stockpiles will fall to lowest level since 1951-52. Wheat futures in Chicago reached $9.3925 a bushel late September when major supplier Ukraine slashed exports.
The price of a bushel has more than doubled in the past year.
The bushel of woes includes rice, barley, soybeans, sorghum, oats and lentils as well, and they are all sagging under record prices. The grapes of wrath have gone on to stalk eggs, cheese, milk, meat and the a la carte menu.
There may come a point when the industrial food chain has little choice but to pass the rising costs to consumers in a dramatic fashion.
Creeping upticks in the price of milk and bread are turning Europeans livid. Milk is now dubbed as the “new white gold.”
It is not just bad weather to blame. Rising demand from China is pushing up prices, despite the fact that only half of its urban population has basic health insurance. Tragically, processed food re-exported through Beijing’s food chain is causing a global health nightmare.
But why pick on China? The current biodiesel craze is inducing farms to purpose-plant their crops for the profitable bioenergy industry, according to the Hamburg-based Oil World.
“It is high time to realise that the world community is approaching a food crisis in 2008 unless usage of agricultural products for biofuels is curbed or ideal weather conditions and sharply higher crop yields are achieved in 2008,” it added
Bad news gets worse.
Peak Water: There is not enough freshwater around to sustain the planet’s inland ecosystem and its human population. Rivers that help supply drinking water are laden with toxic industrial wastes. Population growth is already straining the capacities of water treatment plants worldwide while desalination plants remain the prerogative of wealthy nations. According to the Pacific Institute: “Over 1 billion people don’t have access to clean drinking water; more than 2 billion lack access to adequate sanitation; and millions die every year due to preventable water-related diseases. Water resources around the globe are threatened by climate change, misuse, and pollution.” It estimates that “over 34 million people might perish in the next 20 years from water-related disease — even if the United Nations ‘Millennium Development Goals,’ which aim to cut the proportion of those without safe access by half, are met.” [3]
Lots of water will be diverted to industries and agriculture, or the highest bidder as privatization of water supply gains currency. In some regions, the situation is so acute that water diversion in one country may precipitate conflict with a neighbor. As early as 1974, Iraq reportedly mobilized its army to target Syria’s al-Thawra dam on the Euphrates. Israel has cast its own eyes on Lebanon’s Litani River.
According to Former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, “The next war in the Near (Middle) East will not be about politics, but over water.”
If this watery grave is not enough, think of the next one…
Peak Fish: There is some fishy business going on in our oceans. Like oil and water, we are trawling deeper and deeper for our fish supplies. Such piscatorial adventures have led to a global decline in fish stocks. “Ecologists worry that entire fisheries will collapse as… ‘junk fish’ are used up.” Aquaculture, which substitutes marine catches to an extent, comes with its own environmental problems. [4]
The Times of London paints a similar gloomy scenario. According to some experts, 90% of fish around British waters “will disappear within 20 years” in the absence of an immediate intervention.
With 75% of fish stocks fully exploited, declining numbers across species worldwide hint at a collapse point by 2048, beyond which replenishment is not possible.
Peak Fish “comes at a time when their nutritional value is recognized more than ever.”
“World Health Organisation officials recommend a weekly intake of 200 to 300 grams of fish each week but today’s catches can only just meet this target. Since the 1950s an estimated 60 per cent of stocks in British waters have collapsed…”
The Times invokes the paradox that “measures proposed to limit fishing to a sustainable level will only place a cap on the nutritional flow for the coming decades.” [5]
The full circle
What began as sub-prime woes in the US housing sector may ripple into something we cannot yet imagine. Will there be a severe global recession, or worse? If wars are yet contained, bidding wars will yet emerge over wheat, water, fish, medicines and oil. What will the future hold in this ecology of crises?
Here is a refrain from the book of Hosea (4:3):
Because of this the land mourns,
and all who live in it waste away;
the beasts of the field and the birds of the air
and the fish of the sea are dying.
Kuala Lumpur, Oct 9, 2007
Copyright 2007 Maavak
Reference:
[1] As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes, NYT, Aug 26, 2007
[2] Beijing police round up and beat African expats Guardian, September 26, 2007
[3] Global Water Crisis Pacific Institute.
[4] Water shortages will leave world in dire straits USA Today, 26th Jan 2003
[5] Fish will vanish from British waters in 20 years, says author Times Online, Sept 15, 2007
Most of Mathew Maavak’s commentaries can be read here or visit the Panoptic World homepage.
October 8th, 2007
By Anwaar Hussain of Truth Spring
There are main battle tanks, there are fish tanks and there are simple water tanks. Then there are ‘Think Tanks’.
Odd as it may seem, Think Tanks are tanks that think. And just as when a dog bites a man that is not news, but when a man bites a dog that is news, their ‘thinking’, whenever they do that, makes it straight to the main stream media. Ours, on the other hand, remains confined to free google blogspots.
So when in a recent study, the Oxford Research Group Think Tank said the “war on terror” has been a disaster, it was a man biting the dog but when we poor bloggers cried ourselves hoarse to, “bring out the nails to hammer into the coffin of the Empire dream because the Empire seekers tried to defeat with brawn what should have been conquered with brain”, it was a dog biting the man.
When the Tank warns against attacking Iran it was a man biting the dog but when we said, “America’s invasion of Iran may finally prove to be that last straw on the camel’s back in the unraveling of that great country a la the Soviet break-up post Afghanistan invasion” and that “it is not wise to deliberately alienate 1.3 billion Muslims and act as lackey for the miniscule Zionists who are the only ones to benefit from the Iran misadventure while the Americans will foot the bill and take the brunt of Muslims’ wrath” it was a dog biting the man.
When the Tank asks for major changes to West’s military policy in Iraq and Afghanistan because the two places had become jihadist training grounds, it was a man biting the dog but when we said, ” from Sudan to Pakistan and beyond, the ranks of America haters now stand swollen like never before. The recruiters for suicide brigades now drool non-stop with glee at the long cues of raging applicants outside their murky caves”, it was a dog biting the man.
When the Tank said,” every aspect of the so-called war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan has been counterproductive” it was a man biting the dog but when we said,” for the time being however, riding on the wings of terra, the Americans are being sleep marched into history’s hall of shame. But when they do finally wake up, they are sure to ask themselves, in a deafening global chorus of error, error, error, the fateful question, ‘What have we done?’ ” it was a dog biting the man.
When the Tank said that “From the loss of civilian life through to mass detentions without trial, in short, it has been a disaster,” it was a man biting the dog but when we said way back in March,” post-invasion excess deaths in occupied Iraq now totals 1 million” and, ” when Bush hastily declared mission accomplished, he stated that “Saddam’s torture chambers are closed.” He did not tell the world that he had already opened his own…the first one at Bagram” it was a dog biting the man.
When the Tank talked of secret detentions and renditions, it was a man biting the dog, but when we said, “America’s torture trail at the present weaves across the globe. America has now become the biggest patron of torture by proxy in the history of planet earth” it was dog biting the man.
When the Tank said,” Western countries simply have to face up to the dangerous mistakes of the past six years and recognize the need for new policies” it was a man biting the dog but when we said,” That this bloody US occupation practically guarantees that Americans and their sidekicks will continue to be targets of violence wherever and whenever possible and that the soon-to-come Iran misadventure is most likely to swell the ranks of these very ‘terrorists’ like never before” it was a dog biting the man.
When the Tank said,” Going to war with Iran will make matters far worse, playing directly into the hands of extreme elements and adding greatly to the violence across the region” it was a man biting the dog but when we said that there is a,” likelihood of hundreds of thousands of Taliban types who will come screaming banshee-like down the surrounding mountains to take revenge on our unfortunate troops bogged down in Iran” it was a dog biting the man.
When the Tank wants the West to take heed, the main stream media sits up and takes notice because it is a man biting a dog but when we shrieked from the rooftops for years that America has to realize, “that many other empires have had their day in the sun as superpowers before which others trembled. But today their crumbling ruins stand witnesses in mute silence to the fact that none were sovereign over the kingdoms of men for infinite times. All came to sad, inglorious ends” it was a dog biting the man.
If I were a Tank, every time I would think, men would bite dogs.
Copyrights : Anwaar Hussain
October 4th, 2007
By Rowan Wolf
The current protests in Burma are attributed to a 500% increase in fuel prices which crippled an already struggling population’s ability to survive (BBC). The people of Burma have been descending into deeper and deeper poverty over the last decade. According to Jonathan Head, author of the BBC article, the people of Burma spend an average of 70% of their income on food. The dramatic increase in fuel prices on August 15, 2007 was too much to bear.
It appears that the government of Burma (Myanmar) were reacting to a “suggestion” by the International Monetary Fund, that they needed to phase out the state subsidizing of oil prices. Myanmar is a member nation of the IMF. This makes one wonder at the seeming naivity of this statement by Head:
Like so many decisions made by the reclusive generals, the sudden hike in fuel prices is hard to fathom.
The IMF had advised weaning the population off subsidised fuel, because with rising world oil prices it was becoming an unsustainable burden for Burma, which although rich in natural gas, relies on imports for almost all of its refined petrol and diesel.
But it is unlikely the IMF would have supported such a dramatic, and unannounced price rise.
The IMF indicated in 1998 that Myanmar was an HIPC (Heavily Indebted Poor Country). That debt was to the World Bank. The current information on Myanmar at the World Bank site states:
The World Bank has approved no new lending for Myanmar since 1987, and has no plans to resume its program. The country is currently in arrears to the World Bank, and has failed to enact economic and other reforms.
Myanmar remains a member of the World Bank. The World Bank continues to track data about the country and also remains in contact with the United Nations and other development partners regarding Myanmar. And the Bank also accompanies officials from the International Monetary Fund on their annual visits to assess the country’s economic situation.
In 1998, then Junta Finance Minister for Myanmar reported to the IMF on the governments efforts to apparently meet the demands of structural adjustment reforms to acquire aid from both the IMF and the World Bank:
Let me now touch on some features of Myanmar’s economic development. Since the latter part of 1988, streamlining of foreign trade procedures and liberalization of both internal and external trade had been introduced. Foreign investors are allowed to invest in Myanmar and foreign bankers are permitted to open their representative offices. Myanmar has been participating in regional cooperation programmes and cooperating with both developed and developing countries for its technological advancement. Rural and border areas development activities are being implemented to alleviate poverty and also to reduce gaps in differences between rural and urban populations.
…
Myanmar is the land with rich natural resources to be tapped for development purposes. Unfortunately, multilateral financial assistance to Myanmar have been unfairly suspended since 1988. Myanmar has been a legitimate member of the Bank and the Fund since 1952. As a legitimate member, Myanmar is fully eligible for the Bank’s development assistance. However, the Bank has neglected Myanmar’s development efforts and it has failed to assist Myanmar for the past eleven years. However, we have cooperated with the Bank and the Fund and we have been servicing our outstanding payments to the Bank regularly, up to the end of 1997.
In 2003, further economic sanctions were placed on the country, and were protested by Major General Hla Tun - Governor for the Bank of Myanmar. Each year, Mayanmar has reported to the IMF its step by step progress towards the “adjustments” apparently being demanded by the World Bank and the IMF, and has made a plea for economic support. Since the same plea is repeated year after yer (up through 2006), The IMF and World Bank have refused to raise restrictions on lending, or easing the debt burden of Burma.
This is not to excuse the brutality and repression of the Junta government of Burma. However, it is important to acknowledge that the economic situation in Burma is not due simply to the “chronic mismanagement” of the government which is one of the primary issues pointed to by Jonathan Head.
There is of course another aspect of the story. In the process of its structural adjustment, a few in the Junta have pocketed significant amounts of money. The business deals and corruption have siphoned off significant amounts of the wealth of Burma. The elite lives in opulence; the government sequestered itself deep in the forests establishing a new capital. The details of corporations involved are discussed in a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) titled “Burma: Foreign Investment Finances Regime.”
According to HRW, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), allocates only a fraction of the available resources to social programs (for example health and education). This is consistent with the typical structural adjustment program regime which requires significant decreases in spending on social infrastructure - though HRW does not discuss this. Also typical of structural adjustment, massive amounts of the economic resources have been redirected to the military. It is estimated that 50% of the Burma’s funds are designated for the military.
Burma has significant natural gas reserves which have created strong trade relations with both India and China, and there are significant hardwood exports to China as well. This gives China and India (among others) some degree of influence with the Junta. However, it is also likely that the Junta elite are directly beneffiting from these relationships. Whether China and India would do more than “request” the Junta back away from its brutal repression is questionable. After all, their agreements are with the current government. It is not surprising given the dramatically increasing demand for natural gas to fuel the growth in China and India, they (and Russia) have been very active in helping finance the development of Burma’s natural gas reserves. Also involved have been major petrochemical companies. According to HRW:
At present the SPDC receives the bulk of its gas money from the onshore “Yadana” and “Yetagun” gas fields. The Yadana consortium is led by Total of France and includes UNOCAL (now Chevron) of the United States and Thailand’s state-controlled PTT Exploration and Production Co Ltd (PTTEP). The Yetagun consortium, led by Malaysia’s state-owned Petronas, includes Japan’s Nippon Oil as well as PTTEP. PTTEP, a subsidiary of the largely state-owned PTT Public Co Ltd (PTT) of Thailand, buys the gas for export to Thailand.
Major offshore natural gas projects are under development. A consortium of South Korean and Indian firms, in partnership with the Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise, has made a large gas find off the coast of Arakan State in western Burma. Known as the “Shwe” gas project, it is expected to produce massive revenues once it is in production. Estimates of the gas yield of the Shwe deposits range between US$37 to US$52 billion, and could lead to a total gain in revenues to the junta or future Burmese governments of US$12 to US$17 billion over 20 years.
The Shwe gas consortium is composed of the South Korean company Daewoo International, state-owned companies from India and South Korea, and the Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise. Some of the foreign partners also have separate deals with the Burmese government entity for other concessions.
On September 24, for example, India’s state-controlled Oil and Natural Gas Co (ONGC), whose subsidiary ONGC Videsh is a partner in the Shwe consortium, signed a deal with Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise to explore for gas in three more offshore blocks. Under the deal, Oil and Natural Gas Co pledged to invest US$150 million through ONGC Videsh.
India’s Office of the President holds nearly 75 percent of the shares in Oil and Natural Gas Co. India’s minister for oil, Murli Deora, traveled to the Burmese capital last week to sign the agreement as thousands of protesters in Burma took to the streets to call for political freedom, an end to the SPDC’s abuses, and economic improvements.
India, China and Russia have also provided military support to the Junta according to a separate report from HRW.
The money gathering in the pockets of the Burma elite are certainly being kept outside of Burma. Tom Malinowski of HRW testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on October 3, 2007. The transcript is not yet available though the hearing was broadcast on C-Span. Malinowski testified that the strongest international bank relations of the Burma elite has been with Singapore, though certainly they have other international finance connections. He recommended that targeted sanctions freezing the international accounts of the Junta and others might be most effective in pressuring the government to release the political prisoners and relax their response to the protests. This seems like a most reasonable response as broader sanctions against the country would only cause more damage to the population. The Burmese military is a huge organization - second only to China in number of forces. Given the record of the ruling Junta, they would not hesitate to further mobilize against the population.
But there is perhaps a deeper and darker link to U.S. interests in Burma, and why for 40 years the U.S. has shown little concern for the people of Burma. That goes to the Vietnam war. Burma is part of the “Golden Triangle” - the rich opium producing region of Asia. In fact, until recently, Burma was second only Afghanistan in opium production. The French utilized the opium production and support of war lords to finance their covert networks, and when the U.S. stepped into France’s shoes they inherited that lucrative network (Alfred McCoy). The CIA utilized the opium trade, and the network connected to it, in the Golden Triangle to finance covert operations in Laos and Cambodia (the secret wars). They also used it to help fund anti-communitist armies of people such as the Hmong (Djedje and Korff).
Of course that is ancient history (perhaps).
Part of the Burma Junta’s efforts with the IMF and World Bank has recently been anti-drug activities including the elimination of opium production. If a March 7, 2006 Reuters report - War on opium gives Golden Triangle a different hue - is accurate, that war on opium has been largely successful. Of course, that success might be part of the deteriorating economic situation of the people of Burma. Much of the population of Burma lives by agriculture, and there is no more lucrative crop than opium. Look to Afghanistan as a companion example.
It seems odd that the U.S. is taking official attention to the most recent protests and Junta response in Burma. For 40 years the U.S. has largely looked the other way. Similarly, the U.S. continued to work with the Taleban government of Afghanistan despite its repression and abuses - until they also successfully drastically reduced opium production. Perhaps it is just coincidence, and of course both situations are more complex than this.
Regardless, it is well past time to ease the conditions of the people of Burma. It is well past time for us to speak out to end the repression and the resulting displacement of millions of Burmese. It is also time to demand debt relief for Burma. Like all such burdens, it benefits interests outside of Burma while crushing the people of Burma.
Information and Support Efforts
Free Burma!
Global Voices
Witness (Real Media video from Witness)
Of Related Interest
Christopher Wren. 5/11/98. NY Times. Road to Riches Starts In the Golden Triangle
Kieran Cooke. BBC. 12/06/2003. Drug tourism in the Golden Triangle.
CNN. 9/30/07. A look at Myanmar’s insular military leadership.
CNN. 10/04/07. Myanmar troops launch nighttime roundups to intimidate activists.
October 2nd, 2007
By Phil Rockstroh of Ebullient Skepticism (Note that Phil has a web site now!!!)
“We must become the change we want to see.” — Mahatma Gandhi
“In any case, I hate all Iranians.” –Debra Cagan, Deputy Assistant Secretary to Defense Secretary, Robert Gates
How many times do we, the people of the US, have to go around on this queasy-making merry-go-round of propaganda and militarism before we shout — enough! — then shutdown the whole cut-rate carnival and run the scheming carnies who operate it out of town? It is imperative the nation’s citizens begin to apprehend the patterns present in this ceaseless cycle of official deceit and collective pathology. This republic, or any other, cannot survive, inhabited by a populace with such a slow learning curve.
Over the last three decades, the authoritarian right has risen to create the nation they have been longing for since their humbling by the Watergate scandal. After being subdued and humiliated by the mechanisms of a free republic, the right has turned the tables — and subdued and humiliated the republic. If the trend continues, all but unchallenged and unabated, we might as well replace the torch held aloft by Lady Liberty with a taser.
How could it come to this? How did so many US citizens grow so apathetic, oblivious, if not flat-out hostile to the tenets of a free republic?
The authoritarianism inherent to the structure of multi-conglomerate corporatism is antithetical to the concept of the rights and liberties of the individual. Most individuals — bound by a corporation’s secrecy-prone, hierarchical values — will, over time, lose the ability to display free thinking, engage in civic discourse, and even be able to envisage the notion of freedom.
This is true, from the florescent light-flooded aisles of Wal*Mart to the insular executive offices of Haliburton to the sound stages of CNN and Fox News. Under the prevailing order, reality, for the laboring class of the corporate state, has become debt slavery; in contrast, the simulacrum of reality, in which, the striver class exists, is a milieu defined by obsessive careerism. Under the hegemony of corporatism, freedom might as well be fairy dust. It only exists in an imaginary land, not the places one arrives by way of one’s morning and evening commute.
In addition, economically, by way of decades of financial chicanery, perpetrated by the nation’s business and political elite, we are eating our seed crop, and the consequences of this harvest of deceit have left the people of the US, intellectually and spiritually malnourished.
As a result, many attempt to sate the keening emptiness and mitigate the chronic unease by gorging themselves on the Junk Food Jesus of End Time mythology, which is a belief system wherein corporeal events and actions (personal and collective) have no lasting consequence because even the human body is to be cast aside, like a junk food wrapper, when the cosmic CEO decides to make the earth a part of his heavenly franchise.
Accordingly, the corporate state requires modes of being that evince obliviousness and obedience (the defining traits of the US consumer) on the part of the majority of the populace. Ergo, the rise of both Christian consumerists and the vast apparatus of the right-wing propaganda matrix that dominates news cycles via the electronic mass media.
All coming to pass, as George W. Bush — the reigning mascot of this fantasyland of infantile omnipotence and instant gratification — is rocked to sleep by his handlers cooing preposterous tales of how history will place him in the pantheon of those men whose greatness was unrecognized by the shallow and petty minds of their own era.
When, in fact, Bush, whose ruinous wars of aggression, deficit-ballooning tax breaks for the wealthy, and policies of crony capitalism (that enabled the economy-decimating, easy credit banking scams of the present) displays the character traits of a man ridden with severe psychological trauma; his attempts to tamp down immense inner turmoil, by means of his grandiose bearing, his absolute certitude regarding his own infallibility, and his bullying behavior, have resulted in an exteriorizing of his pathologies on a global scale, and this is playing out ugly, for all concerned.
Why do the people of the nation (for the most part) slouch, slack-jawed and passive, before this assault upon their collective integrity and personal dignity?
For generations, the ephemeral dazzle of pop culture paternalism and tabloid Manichaeism, as confabulated by advertising and public relations hacks and corporate news courtesans, has overwhelmed gravitas, history, even self-awareness. As all the while, shallow opportunists have been elevated to the status of pundits, experts and sages. Withal, the present system generously rewards those individuals who have mastered the art of impersonating human traits and responses in utterly contrived environments. As a whole, the majority of the populi have come to garner information about the world at large, and, worse, their own self-image, from a medium where phoniness is a treasured commodity, while authentic human traits and responses are banished to a beggar’s road.
Is it any wonder that the media types who thrive in these artificial settings have come to define authenticity as being only those attributes that appear authentic on television? Apropos, if you ask these “media personalities” about the shortcomings and corruption of the present system, they will plead the careerist’s Nuremberg Defense … of only being a stormtrooper obeisant to the “bottom line.”
Fantasy alert: One would hope that if one were to descend down a ladder constructed of these layers upon layers of bottom lines, one would arrive in a Hell reserved for those possessed with such shameless cupidity.
Reality redux: Yet as much as the human heart might yearn for such outcomes, there will never arrive the terrible majesty and bitter reckoning of anything resembling Judgement Day, heralded by celestial trumpets and legions of naked and cowering sinners; instead, in human affairs, there arises dire exigencies that can no longer be ignored nor explained away. The arrival of such a moment for the US is nearly at hand.
When a nation manifests a mixture of mass ignorance and official mendacity, in combination with uncheck power emanating from an insular and arrogant elite, a golden age of peace and plenty is as possible as holding a tea dance in a tsunami. As sure as a village of desperate fools who devour their seed crop, a nation that refuses universal health care to its children — yet rushes to the aid of its parasitic class of wealthy “speculators” and “investors” from the consequences of their own greed-besotted, fiscal debacles — is doomed.
This is the classic pattern of collective immolation experienced by a nation when power and privilege is increasingly consolidated in fewer and fewer hands. In essence, this is the key to the conundrum paralyzing the leadership of the Democratic Party: In a culture in which an individual’s worth is determined by the degree one can be exploited by the corrupt interests that control both the private and public sector, the public at large has little value to the political establishment … That is: other than, every few years, being bamboozled for their votes in the sham spectacles known as the US electoral process, a scam mostly financed, hence controlled, by the aforementioned big money interests.
In sum, this is the reason the Democratic Party feels little allegiance to their base. In turn, the political classes themselves are only of value to the big money corporate elite, because, by their delivery of staggering amounts of pork, massive tax cuts, and the passage of desired anti-regulatory legislation, they serve as their errand boys.
Moreover, the corporate control of congress is a microcosm of US society as a whole. Accordingly, the increasingly corporatized, ever more submissive people of the US should be termed, the Whose-Your-Daddy Nation.
Yet, since life does not exist in stasis, within this hierarchy of deceivers and dupes, we will gnaw at one another’s ankles until the whole pathetic pyramid collapses.
All around us, we can feel the shoddy structure starting to sway and buckle. Axiomatically, the value of the dollar is collapsing like the smooth facade of a con man called-out by a group of wised-up marks. At present, in the wake of the bust in the housing market, repo men are retracing the tracks of real estate grifters who fleeced legions of wishful thinkers who brought the American dream and now only possess the misery of debt slavery.
One would think the time for insurrection has arrived — that, at long last, an awakened and enraged public would rise up and foreclose on these reprobates and ne’er-do-wells squatting in the White House and skulking through Congress. The power and privilege of the corporately controlled elite of Washington should be repossessed like the Lexises of Atlanta real estate agents and the oversized pickup trucks of Tucson contractors, confiscated in the wake of the collapse of the housing market. Foreclosure signs and repossession notices should festoon the whole of official Washington.
Turn about would be fair play. Since, the rise of Reaganism, the financial sector has been engaged in selling off the assets of the nation’s public sector to the highest bidders. It is amazing that, at this point, this klavern of kleptocrats haven’t yet torn from the walls and absconded with all the copper plumbing fixtures and fittings on Capitol Hill.
Is a turnaround possible?
If we wake-up and smell the jackboot. From the miasma of right-wing media propaganda, to the proliferation of predatory capitalism, to the corruption and cupidity of the prison industrial complex, to the pandemic of police brutality and the trampling of the rights of the accused, to perennial civilian shooting sprees, to the muzzling of descent, to the rise of the national surveillance state, to the use and acceptance of torture as state policy, to the adoption of an unlawful, immoral foreign policy doctrine that promotes policies of perpetual war, one is forced to conclude that bullying, and deferring to bullies, has become the dominate mode of being in the US.
Remedy: In order to turn this trend around, the people of the US must begin to acquire the anti-authoritarian traits of empathy and engagement. The gaining of empathy alleviates the pathological need to be a bully, while social and political engagement mitigates feelings of powerlessness that authoritarian bully-boys, such as Bush, Cheney, Giuliani, et al., exploit.
In short, remedial human lessons for the US population, in general, and for the corporate and political classes, in particular.
Let us start the process by having a period of grief and repentance for the death and suffering that our government, in our name, has inflicted on the people of Iraq. This should be done as the US begins the process of a complete military withdrawal from their decimated nation, and the bestowing of economic reparations upon the millions of Iraqis who have suffered under the brutal machinations and murderous mayhem unloosed by our country’s contemptible invasion and occupation.
To do so, might save the people of our next target, Iran (as well as ourselves) a world of grief.
October 1st, 2007
BY Joel S. Hirschhorn author of Delusional Democracy and Friends of the Article V Convention
After many years of political disappointment, more progressives, liberals and conservatives - and certainly moderates and independents - know in their hearts that voting for Democrats or Republicans is a waste. Just imagine if voter turnout was cut to 25 percent or less! Let the whole world see Americans boycotting a broken and corrupt political system and rejecting what has become a delusional democracy. To keep voting in an unjust political system makes us willing political slaves that the rich and powerful elites exploit.
Just leaving the major parties is not good enough and, besides, most Americans are not party members. We need a bolder strategy. We must humiliate the political elites in both major parties and the corporate interests that support both of them. We can send a shock wave throughout the political establishment by not voting in the 2008 presidential election.
Stop playing THEIR game. Take back control. Take back YOUR nation. Time to boycott voting. This strategy is consistent with the thinking of Gandhi and King: peaceful resistance to political tyranny that can bring the corrupt system to its knees. Ultimately, the most effective protest is through civil disobedience - to visibly and stubbornly refuse to respect what has become a corrupt, untrustworthy system. Before it can be fixed it must be deconstructed and then rebuilt. Taxation with MISrepresentation means we need a Second American Revolution; it must begin - not with violent action - but with massive withdrawal by citizens that have seen the light. We have a good head start with about half of eligible voters already so turned off that they don’t vote. Obviously that has not been sufficient to change the system.
There will be negative, defensive knee-jerk reactions to this audacious strategy. Let’s examine them:
Many will think that taking such action violates our responsibility as citizens. But taking that responsibility seriously as engaged citizens in the Jeffersonian sense must reflect that there is still a valid contract between citizens and their government. When we vote we have the right to a political system that respects we the people and gives us an authentic representative democracy. We have a right to a constitutional republic operating under the rule of law. But we have elected representatives that no longer have the public interest as their primary commitment, nor truly honor and respect our Constitution.
They have been corrupted by corporate and other special interests that fund their campaigns to get the laws, loopholes and largesse they want. They have been corrupted by power and the perks of office. They are political cowards and mostly intellectual midgets. The two major parties have a stranglehold on our political system that no longer merits our participation in their crooked game. Political parties are not part of our Constitution and the two-party duopoly has demonstrated that both Democrats and Republicans put their own interests above those of we the people, our nation and our democracy. We cannot vote our way out of our current, dreadful political system.
Whether you are on the political left or right, you will fear that not voting will help put in office people that support policies your abhor. But decades of objective political reality tell us that even people from the party that we align with do not, when elected, fulfill their promises and our hopes. Sadly, most Americans have become lesser-evil voters, deluding themselves that this is the best, least worse, yet awful choice. Instead of feeling bad about voting for candidates that we know in our hearts are not worthy of our votes and public office, we must have the courage to say “enough is enough; I will not play in this shameful game any longer.” We must stop legitimizing and abetting our disgraceful government.
Many may fear that not voting sets a terrible example to children. But isn’t it more important to tell America’s children that true patriotism must reveal itself by rejecting a political system that no longer merits respect? Thomas Jefferson believed in periodic rebellion. Now is the time for all good Americans to come to the rescue of their nation, peacefully by boycotting elections.
The small number of third party members may be screaming: yes, don’t vote for Democrats and Republicans; come over and join us! I have been a strong third party supporter, but we must face the painful truth. The two major parties have so rigged the political system in their favor and against third parties that voting for third party candidates for federal office is a futile action. We must first boycott voting to create sufficient pressure to open the system to genuine political competition. That requires a number of electoral reforms, possible if the nation gets its first Article V convention (see www.foavc.org). With reforms we can increase voter turnout to over 90 percent, as routinely seen in other democracies.
False patriotism may cause some to think that we must not show anti-American nations and terrorists that our government no longer has the trust of its citizens. But that has already been widely disseminated by endless polls and surveys, including the recent Zogby poll that found a record-low 11 percent support for Congress. Better to show our enemies that we the people have finally awakened and decided to re-assert our sovereignty and restore American democracy. Loyalty to country, yes; loyalty to government, no. Our populist American insurgency must begin with a boycott of voting.
Proof that this extraordinary strategy can work is that by now diehard Democrats and Republicans reading this are squirming in discomfort. So spread the word, if you have not deluded yourself about voting the nation into a far, far better place. Time to boycott voting. Join the picket line; admit that none of the above is the only rational decision when the choices the two major parties give us for federal officials are not worth a dime.
Voting in a delusional representative democracy is as harebrained as voting even though you know votes will not be honestly counted - which many fear may be true. We may have lost control of our government, but we still control our voting. Time to walk away from the brainwashing and fiction that it really matters which Democrat or Republican you vote for in primaries and general elections for federal office. Power elites want us to believe that. They collude with the corporate mainstream media that make tons of money from campaigns and want you to stay glued to suspenseful horse races. Loud-mouth political pundits that narrate the races are democracy’s enemies. We must stop watching and listening to the political entertainment designed to keep us obediently mesmerized, as if the game is honest. Without an audience, these phony races and media circus will disappear.
Don’t be fooled by the large number of candidates in the Democratic and Republican presidential primaries. It is a sham - a scheme to keep spectators glued to the illusory competition. Ron Paul has as much chance of being the Republican nominee as Dennis Kucinich has of being the Democratic nominee. With power elites controlling both major parties, zero chance for them and the other minor candidates, regardless of their grassroots support. Reflect on how both major parties accept lots of candidates in televised debates in the primary season. But come the general election with prime time televised presidential debates they keep out third party candidates that desperately need that exposure to rally meaningful support. Such is the hypocrisy and disdain of the two-party duopoly.
Come Election Day in 2008 we should party and celebrate (with TVs turned off) our populist boycott of voting and enjoy the camaraderie of fellow patriots. We must help them resist any late urge to vote, because by then millions of dollars will be spent by many special interests to make us feel guilty and ashamed if we do not vote. I can hear Paul Revere now: The liars are coming! The liars are coming! All that advertising and pundit-screaming to herd us back into the voting booths will verify that our boycott strategy works.
With having the votes of only a small minority of the electorate, whoever becomes president will have no public mandate except major, systemic political reforms that satisfy the will of the people. Either that or accept being the president of a fake democracy on the world scene.
Be brave. Stick together. Save voting for a reformed political system worthy of respect and participation.
