Burma: catch all thread

[davidbfpo]

There has always been a reluctance to report consistently on the Burmese insurgencies, which date back to independence in 1947. Burmese nationalism was and is a factor with impact - for the nation, not just the military junta.

Nor have her neighbours encouraged long-term reporting, most notably by Thailand.

I know there have been refugees since 1947 encamped close to the border and few have left for the wider world. Somehow I doubt there is a Burmese diaspora that has any effect, unlike the Tamils for example.

[anonamatic]

I know there have been refugees since 1947 encamped close to the border and few have left for the wider world. Somehow I doubt there is a Burmese diaspora that has any effect, unlike the Tamils for example.

Thailand has had a lot of nasty going on. This is one of the things I found out they've been doing recently:
http://democracyforburma.wordpress.c...wed-to-travel/

Thailand has also engaged in the forced repatriation of refugees during active conflict, meaning they do force people back into places where shooting is still going on.

In the URL I originally posted, you might notice that the Brigade 5 is a splinter group. One of the things that illustrates is that this is quite an active conflict.

The Burmese armed forced under control of `the generals' have been engaging in quite an impressive array of war crimes, including organized forced rapes of women in entire villages, a variety of pressed labor activities including using civilians with sticks impressed to clear minefields & mined roads, use of pressed gangs to haul war material, and array of other more tediously evil murders & forced labor that can be expected by a thoroughly corrupt military regime. All that rather recently too, so these are current events I'm referring to, not historical abuses.

Burma is one of what I think of as the `Chinese toilet ring', one of a set of border countries where they encourage despotic regimes in order to make themselves look better by comparison. It's in line with their other imperialistic ambitions, and a quite troubling pattern that has me concerned with their subversive sponsorship of Nepalese Maoists by way of related activity. This is why when you hear propaganda about China's "peaceful rise" you shouldn't believe it for a second. It's a well papered lie, but a lie no matter how they try to cover up for what they're really doing.

[anonamatic]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc7qMyIu4G4

This guy was used in a press gang as a porter and human shield for 4 years before his escape to the Karen state.

[Backwards Observer]

Here's some background on the tragedy playing out in Burma:

While the work of French clandestine services in Indochina enabled the opium trade to survive a government repression campaign, some CIA activities in Burma helped transform the Shan States from a relatively minor poppy cultivating area into the largest opium-growing region in the world. The precipitous collapse of the Nationalist Chinese (Kuomintang, or KMT) government in 1949 convinced the Truman administration that it had to stem "the southward flow of communism" into Southeast Asia. In 1950 the Defense Department extended military aid to the French in Indochina. In that same year, the CIA began regrouping those remnants of the defeated Kuomintang army in the Burmese Shan States for a projected invasion of southern China. Although the KMT army was to fail in its military operations, it succeeded in monopolizing and expanding the Shan States' opium trade. (excerpt from The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity In The Global Drug Trade by Alfred W. McCoy)

Secret War In Burma: The KMT

The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia - Wikipedia

The Politics of Heroin - Amazon

Alfred W. McCoy - Wikipedia

Some other players:

‘’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.

‘’Chevron can be sued by villagers from Burma if it does not stop the human rights violations,’’ Naing Htoo, EI’s Burma Project coordinator, said during a press conference at the launch of the report. ‘’The violations are happening every day.’’

Burma: US Oil Major Complicit in Abuses - Rights Lobby - IPS News

BANGKOK, Apr 29, 2010 (IPS) - When shareholders of the multinational company Chevron gather for their annual meeting in the U.S. city of Houston in late May, they will come face to face with Naing Htoo, whose community has suffered due to the exploits of the energy giant in military-ruled Burma.

"I want to expose what has gone on as a result of Chevron’s investments in Burma," says the 30-year-old from the Karen ethnic minority. "The shareholders need to know where their money is going and the suffering it is causing."

Pressure Mounts On Energy Giant Chevron To Disclose Revenue - IPS News

I had planned tonight to read from my last interview with Aung San Suu Kyi, but I decided not to – because of something Suu Kyi said to me when I last spoke to her. "Be careful of media fashion," she said. "The media like this sentimental version of life that reduces everything down to personality. Too often this can be a distraction."

The Hypocrites Who Say They Back Democracy In Burma - John Pilger - antiwar.com

A sad state of affairs.

[Backwards Observer]

A couple more things that may be of interest from Alfred McCoy, author of The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity In The Global Drug Trade:

PD: How does the CIA's policies affect drug interdiction? I've spoken for example to former Drug Enforcement Administration officer Michael Levine, who has expressed anger that he was pulled off cases because he got too close to someone who, while being a big trafficker, was also an asset of the CIA.

AM: Mike Levine speaks from personal experience. In 1971 Mike Levine was in Southeast Asia operating in Thailand as an agent of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration [DEA]. At the same time I was conducting the investigation for the first edition of my book.

Mike Levine said that he wanted to go up country to Chiangmai, the heroin capital of Southeast Asia at that point, the finance and processing center and hub of an enterprise. He wanted to make some major seizures. Through a veiled series of cut outs in the U.S. embassy in Bangkok, instructions were passed to his superiors in the DEA, who told him he couldn't go up and make the bust. He was pulled off the case.

$$$

That meant that when the CIA was running one of its covert action wars in the drug zones of Asia, the DEA would stay away. For example, during the 1950's the CIA had this ongoing alliance with the nationalist Chinese in northern Burma. Initially mounting invasions of China in 1950-51, later mounting surveillance along the border for a projected Chinese invasion of Southeast Asia. The DEA stayed out of Southeast Asia completely during that period and collected no intelligence about narcotics in deference to the CIA's operation.

Let's take two more examples that bring it right up to the present. [First] the Afghan operation: from 1979 to the present, the CIA's largest operation anywhere in the world, was to support the Afghan resistance forces fighting the Soviet occupation in their country. The CIA worked through Pakistan military intelligence and worked with the Afghan guerilla groups who were close to Pakistan military intelligence.

In 1979 Pakistan had a small localized opium trade and produced no heroin whatsoever. Yet by 1981, according to U.S. Attorney General William French Smith, Pakistan had emerged as the world's leading supplier of heroin. It became the supplier of 60% of U.S. heroin supply and it captured a comparable section of the European market. In Pakistan itself the results were even more disastrous.

In 1979 Pakistan had no heroin addicts, in 1980 Pakistan had 5,000 heroin addicts, and by 1985, according to official Pakistan government statistics, Pakistan had 1.2 million heroin addicts, the largest heroin addict population in the world.

McCoy Interview, 11/9/91

Military Misadventure: Present Situation

Counterintuitively, as their power wanes, empires often plunge into ill-advised military misadventures. This phenomenon is known among historians of empire as “micro-militarism” and seems to involve psychologically compensatory efforts to salve the sting of retreat or defeat by occupying new territories, however briefly and catastrophically. These operations, irrational even from an imperial point of view, often yield hemorrhaging expenditures or humiliating defeats that only accelerate the loss of power.

Embattled empires through the ages suffer an arrogance that drives them to plunge ever deeper into military misadventures until defeat becomes debacle. In 413 BCE, a weakened Athens sent 200 ships to be slaughtered in Sicily. In 1921, a dying imperial Spain dispatched 20,000 soldiers to be massacred by Berber guerrillas in Morocco.

McCoy Article, 1/8/11

[Backwards Observer]

A link to an article by some human rights outfit concerned about possible excessive use of force by Royal Thai Police during drug crackdowns:

A deafening silence

Its not as if the Bush Administration didn't know what was going down in Thailand. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights special repporteur Asma Jahangir expressed "deep concern" about the "extra-judicial executions" in the spring of 2003. Before Prime Minister Thaksin came to the U.S. for the first time as a head of state in June 2003 Human Rights Watch sent the White House a letter detailing the drug war atrocities taking place. The June 911 letter mentioned the over "2000 killings" and quoted Thai government officials including Thaksin himself on the drug crackdown. "In this war drug dealers must die." (Letter to U.S. President George Bush: Press Thaksin on Extrajudicial Executions, Burma. Human Rights Watch June 9, 2003). It also quoted Interior Minister Wan Muhamad Nor Matha referring to the drug crackdown. "They will be put behind bars or even vanish without a trace ... who cares?" (ibid) The Human Rights Watch report politely mentioned that the U.S. reputation may be "sullied by association with a bloody and murderous campaign in the name of the war on drugs" due to our on going anti narcotics training and money to the Thai police. (ibid)

The Royal Thai Massacres by Roger White

An interesting link to the elite Thai Border Patrol Police Aerial Reinforcement Unit who as far back as the late Fifties were receiving Ranger training at Benning:

As part of this support, the newly opened CIA station in Bangkok worked with the Thai government to form contingency plans in case of a Chinese invasion. Part of these plans involved the creation of a local guerrilla force. A choice was made to use the Thai Police as the source for these guerrilla fighters since the Thai Police were viewed as more flexable than the Royal Thai Army. In addition, Thai Police were already distributed around the country and could provide a faster reaction to events than the Thai Military. Strong support for the plans was given by the Director-General of the Thai National Police Department, General Phao Siyanon.

The CIA assigned James William 'Bill' Lair to work with the Thai Police on the project. An American front company, Southeast Asia Supply Company, or Sea Supply, was also created to administer the training programs.

PARU - nationreligionking.com

[anonamatic]

I am not about to try to tie up the heroin problem by casting blame at the CIA. I've certainly looked at the situation closely enough in Afghanistan & Pakistan to be completely convinced that it's a problem there that is wholly derived from Pakistani tolerance of the traffic because it's the same insurgents who're using it to finance their imperialist agenda.

Worse, every time someone tries to talk about the problems in Burma, there's always some pinhead who goes off on a rant trying to blame the US for the problems. That by focusing only on the drug trade, and again tying it to poorly substantiated allegations of CIA involvement.

Since it's sure as hell not heroin dealers forcing the Thai government to treat refugees so badly, or forcing the Burmese military to engage in mass rapes, slavery, and broad amounts of wanton slaughter of civilians *today*, attempting to curtail discussion with a tired out "blame the USA" argument simply isn't going to cut it here. The countries where the heroin trade flourishes are almost uniformly pseudo-communist dictatorships, and nearly every one of them shares a border with China.

Also, antiwar.com is not at all a credible news source. It makes Fox News look fair & balanced, and Glen Beck look level headed and rational. It's the other side of coin of extremist propaganda nuttery in that respect. If you really believe that stuff, I suggest you FOIA the CIA for disclosure of related material, or contact the National Archives to see if they've got material related to it since it would now be over 20 years from the end of the Viet-Nam war & overdue for mandatory declassification.

In any case, I sure didn't post any of this stuff to give you an opportunity to go off on some jackass poorly sourced leftist rant that has nothing more going for it than your disdain for the USA.

[Backwards Observer]

what I think of as the `Chinese toilet ring'

In any case, I sure didn't post any of this stuff to give you an opportunity to go off on some jackass poorly sourced leftist rant that has nothing more going for it than your disdain for the USA.

My apologies then. Perhaps it is as Confucius say, "Man who stand on toilet ring high on pot."