Chevron Oil Loves Killing and Torturing the Burmese Citizens

[Hawkwind39]

A month or so back I discovered some very excellent documentary films by John Pilger and one of them happened to be on the subject of Burma.  So I scrounged around you tube and google video and found it again for anyone who is interested.
Gives you a really clear idea of what happens when democracy slides into dictatorship and what I would is clearly martial law.
Watch it (Burma - Land of fear) here at google video:


http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=253734287578732261

[DCUBED]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070928/ap_on_re_as/myanmar

I havent really been following the situation in Myanmar. But when they cut the internet it cant be good.

[bigron]

Pro-Democracy Means Anti-Fascism
By Cindy Sheehan
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18475.htm

“The world is watching the people of Burma take to the streets to demand their freedom, and the American people stand in solidarity with these brave individuals,” - George W. Bush"

09/28/07 "ICH" -- -- Watching the pro-democracy marches in Burma both inspires and sickens me. I am inspired by seeing thousands of red-robed monks leading the demonstrations and sickened by the violence they are being met with by the military.

Seeing the images of the monks and others being beaten reminds me of the Democratic Convention in 1968 where Chicago police beat the living daylights out of demonstrators who were there to try and force the party to come closer to the budding anti-war movement. It didn’t work. Instead of wonderful pro-peace candidate, Eugene McCarthy, the party nominated Johnson’s VP, Hubert Humphrey. We know what happened next: Nixon. After last night’s Democratic “debate” I am terrified and assured that the Democrats will have another pro-war nominee.

The other event in my memory that the pro-democracy movement in Burma reminds me of is Kent State, Ohio in May, 1970. Four students were killed and nine were wounded marching against escalation of the Vietnam debacle.. I have heard from many people who were of age to protest the Vietnam war at that time that the killings had the affect of frightening them into not protesting, or scaling their protests back.

Of course the present state of our nation is not as overtly oppressive as the government of Myanmar (Burma), presently where a Nobel Peace Laureate Aung Sang Suu Kyi has been under house arrest there for years, but we who have been paying attention to events can see that America is on the precipice of serious fascism and only the brave actions of Americans committed to freedom, democracy and peace will help stem the tide of this rising neo-fascism that doesn’t march through our streets in goose-step and swastikas, but is creeping into our lives like cat’s paws.

According to Chris Rowthorn, in his brilliant article, When America Went Fascist, we went fascist on December 11, 2000 when the Supreme Court appointed George as our unelected, un-democratic and illegal President. Although it is easy and tempting to blame everything on BushCo, this is about the only assertion that I disagree with in his article.

What about during the Clinton regime? Does anyone remember Elian Gonzales or The Branch Davidians in Waco? Let’s go back further. What about when Truman dropped to WMD on hundreds of thousands of innocent victims in Japan? What about Korea? Eisenhower and the Military Industrial Complex? What about the Gulf of Tonkin? What about Watergate? What about Panama? Kosovo? Nicaragua? Free trade agreements that hurt workers in all countries that are involved in them and what about the abuse of language in this country: Patriot Act; Homeland Security; Clear Water and Clean Skies—and the No Child Left Behind Act that leaves every child behind and is just a funnel to the recruiter’s office?

There are just a few measures that we can use to stop this slide and Rowthorn articulates what has become an important part of my platform. Only vote for candidates that promise the following things…for president, or any other federal elective offices:

* Repeal the Patriot Act
* Repeal No Child Left Behind
* Scale down the Department of Homeland Security and rename it so it loses its Nazi
tone and is brought under civilian control.
* Restore habeas corpus and close all torture camps by repealing the Military Commissions’ Act.
* Repeal all contracts with paid mercenary killer companies.
* Restore the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.
* Repeal all BushCo-Presidential directives (especially Directive 51) and review all laws that contain signing statements.
* Restore the 4th Amendment by enforcing warrants for spying on Americans.
* Impeach Bush and Cheney-post presidency so they can’t receive federal benefits.
* Bring all troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan and review military needs for other bases around the world.
* Repeal all free trade agreements.
* Kick AIPAC and other lobbyists out of the halls of Congress where they have no business.

One of the most profound ways we can stop this descent into fascism is by impeaching, removing from office and incarcerating George Bush and Dick Cheney, et al. I am very skeptical of a complicit Congress, Inc doing anything about them in this term. I am also very skeptical of a “professional” and fascist military leadership taking their oath of service seriously and above their corporate-military allegiance to the Executive Branch recently and so tellingly revealed by General Betray-Us, so a military coup is out of the question and has the tricky element of becoming a military dictatorship.

I was supposed to be in court today in Washington, DC for my last arrest. I didn’t go because I am not under allegiance and repudiate the fascists that run our government and the enforcers who are doing their best Nazi-job of “following orders” in oppressing our rights as Americans.

Why are they beating up a Reverend who served in the Air Force, and honorably left after the illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq, for wanting to attend a hearing in Congress?

Why are they arresting a Gold Star Mother for exercising the very freedoms for which George Bush freakishly says her son died?

Why are my daughter and assistant under indictment for Contempt of Congress when BushCo have steadily refused to testify before committees under oath, or any other way? As a matter of fact, Betray-Us wasn’t even put under oath that day in the House.

Why are college students being tasered for asking the same questions that we all want answered from John Kerry who threw our Representative Republic in the garbage along with the 2004 election?

Why are nooses being hung in the South?

Why do any of us pay our Federal Taxes to a government that we abhor and which we adamantly disagree with? Why do we allow our hard earned money to be used for murder and oppression?

Why is Congress giving BushCo more authority to begin a New World War?

Where are religious leaders to lead us in pro-democracy demonstrations? Most of our mainstream religions suffer from the same neo-fascism that our governmental leaders suffer from.

Why do we march in DC on Saturdays and get arrested just to get arrested? It’s time to descend on DC on a weekday and make commitments to our world and our posterity to over throw this fascism right now?

When can we have a country-wide massive general strike?

Recent reports show that Saddam made overtures to America through the UAE and Spain to go into exile weeks before the March, 2003 invasion of Iraq. Of course, the overtures were rejected because George’s small mind was already made up to invade Iraq before he became president in some sick way to either show up or gain approval from a dysfunctional family. What if Spain’s former President Aznar had spoken up then? What if Colin Powell, George Tenet, or any of the criminal neocons had spoken up to prevent this horrible loss of life and pain before it even started?

I wouldn’t be under a bench warrant right now. Rev wouldn’t be recovering from a badly sprained ankle. Casey would be alive and hundreds of thousands of others would be alive.

We can’t count on anyone but ourselves. It’s now up to we the people to follow the example of our brothers and sisters in Burma to courageously confront the anti-democracy/pro-fascist elements of our society.

Contact Cindy at: Cindy@CindyforCongress.org

Cindy Sheehan is the mother of Spc. Casey Austin Sheehan who was KIA in Iraq on 04/04/04. She is a co-founder and President of Gold Star Families for Peace

[Dig]

Japanese Media Report: Journalist Shot Dead at Close Range by Authority in Burma
By: bluegal @ 1:16 PM - PDT   
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/09/29/japanese-media-report-journalist-shot-dead-at-close-range-by-authority-in-burma/

Journalist Shot Dead at Close Range

I don’t have a translation for this but you don’t really need it. A Japanese journalist recording on camera the carnage in Burma was shot at point blank range by a uniformed gunman. Times Online (UK): Footage capturing the last, terrible seconds of Kenji Nagai’s life has been aired on Japanese television – horrifying a nation and raising official suspicion that the 50-year old photo-journalist was murdered by Burmese troops (writes Leo Lewis in Tokyo). The shaky, indistinct moments of footage appear to show Nagai, who was on the edge of a crowd of panic-stricken demonstrators, shoved violently to the ground by a soldier and shot dead at point-blank range. The crowd flees, leaving behind a visibly agonised figure believed to be Nagai – dressed casually in shorts and flip-flops – on his back in the street. In his right hand is a video camera, held above the ground to protect it from the fall.  A loud crack is audible as a soldier points his rifle at the prone figure before launching himself at the dispersing crowd of protesters. Read more….

[12Cib]

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=301021

Oil companies look to exploit Burma
Sunday Sep 30 07:09 AEST

AP - While Burma's military junta cracks down on pro-democracy protests, oil companies are busy jostling for access to the country's largely untapped natural gas and oil fields. Just last Sunday - as marches led by Buddhist monks drew thousands in the country's biggest cities - Indian Oil Minister Murli Deora was in Burma's capital Rangoon for the signing of contracts between state-controlled ONGC Videsh Ltd and Burma's military rulers to explore three offshore blocks. Companies from China, South Korea, Thailand and elsewhere are also looking to exploit the energy resources of the desperately poor Southeast Asian country. France's Total SA and Malaysia's Petroliam Nasional Bhd, or Petronas, currently pump gas from fields off Burma's coast through a pipeline to Thailand, which takes 90 per cent of Burma's gas output, according to Thailand's PTT Exploration & Production PLC. But investing in Burma has brought accusations that petroleum corporations offer economic support to the country's repressive junta, and in some cases are complicit in human rights abuses. The military's bloody clampdown on the protests this week have intensified calls from international activist groups for energy companies to pull out of the country. "They are funding the dictatorship," said Marco Simons, US legal director at EarthRights International, an environmental and human rights group with offices in Thailand and Washington. "The oil and gas companies have been one of the major industries keeping the regime in power."

Demonstrations that started a month ago over a spike in fuel prices have become a broader protest against the military rulers. At least 13 people have been killed in violence since Wednesday. Burma's proven gas reserves were 538 billion cubic metres at the end of 2006, according to BP PLC's World Review of Statistics. While that's only about 0.3 per cent of the world's total reserves, at current production rates and Thailand's contract price for gas, the deposits are worth almost $US2 billion ($A2.28 billion) a year in sales over the next 40 years. "It points to the potential that Myanmar (Burma) has," said Kang Wu, Senior Fellow at the East-West Centre. Altogether, nine foreign oil companies are involved in 16 onshore blocks exploring for oil, enhancing recovery from older fields, or trying to reactivate fields where production has been suspended, according to Total's website. Offshore, nine companies, including Total, Petronas, PTTEP, South Korea's Daewoo International Corp and Chinese state-run companies China National Offshore Oil Corp, or CNOOC, and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp, or Sinopec, are exploring or developing 29 blocks, Total said. A block is an area onshore or offshore in which an oil company is granted exploratory and discovery rights. Despite economic sanctions against Burma by the United States and the EU, Total continues to operate the Yadana gas field, and Chevron Corp has a 28 per cent stake through its takeover of Unocal. Existing investments were exempt from the investment ban. Both Total and Chevron have broadly defended their business in the nation.

"To those who ask us to leave the country, we reply that far from solving Myanmar's problems, a forced withdrawal would only lead to our replacement by other operators probably less committed to the ethical principles guiding all our initiatives," Jean-Francois Lassalle, vice president of public affairs for Total Exploration & Production, said this week in a statement. Earlier this week, French President Nicholas Sarkozy urged Total to refrain from new investment in Burma, prompting the French concern to say it had not made any capital expenditure there since 1998. Chevron's interest in the Yadana project is "a long-term commitment that helps meet the critical energy needs of millions in people in the region," said Nicole Hodgson, corporate media adviser for Asia. Total and former partner Unocal Corp were accused of being complicit in forcibly relocating people while a pipeline was being built across Burma to Thailand in the 1990s. They were also accused of using forced labour and cooperating with the military in creating a militarised zone where rape, torture, murder and other human rights violations occurred. Both companies have denied the accusations. However, in 2005, prior to being acquired by Chevron, Unocal settled a lawsuit brought against it in US courts for the alleged abuses. China - Burma's staunchest diplomatic protector and largest trading partner - is eyeing the nation's untapped gas fields and strategic location. Always worried that instability on its border could affect the juggernaut Chinese economy, Beijing has been gently urging Burma's leaders to ease the recent strife. On Thursday, it issued an evenhanded plea for calm, asking the military-led government to "properly deal" with the unfolding conflict. "The Chinese prefer to separate business and politics," said Kuen-Wook Paik, an energy analyst at Chatham House, a think-tank in London.

"They want to take a neutral stance. They don't want to risk the relationship with the Myanmar authorities." But China's chief interest in Burma, analysts say, may lie in its strategic location as a site for pipelines that Beijing reportedly wants to build from Burma's ports to southern China for transshipping oil and gas brought by tankers from the Middle East. That would reduce China's need to ship oil or gas through the Malacca Straits, which Beijing worries could be closed off by the US Navy in the event of a conflict. By building such a pipeline, "you start stitching together a crisis management capability," said William Overholt, director of the Centre for Asia Pacific Policy at RAND Corp, an American think tank. Beyond interests in exploration blocks in the Bay of Bengal off Burma, India also plans to build a pipeline back to eastern India, but disagreements with Bangladesh have delayed the plans. India is not facing any diplomatic pressure to reduce investment in the country, said R S Sharma, chairman of the state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corp. India has decided to pursue these energy interests and is unlikely to take a strident position toward Burma, said Muchkund Dubey, president of Council for Social Development, a New Delhi-based think tank, and the former top bureaucrat at India's Foreign Ministry. "There is a trade-off between the two: that is a moralistic position and these strategic interests," he said. Despite the recent outbreak of violence, Thailand's PTTEP, a partner in Total's Yadana and Petronas' Yetagun gas projects, said in a statement that "production of natural gas is now continuing at the normal rate". "It is business as usual," said Sidhichai Jayamt, the company's manager for external relations. "I don't see any impact in the near future" from the unrest. "When we have a contract with the government, it doesn't really matter who the government is."

©AAP 2007

[Dig]

Rangoon army mutiny reported
http://prisonplanet.com/articles/september2007/300907Rangoon.htm
Newsdesk Special Sunday September 30, 2007

Troops refuse to fire on crowds
Reports from Rangoon suggest soldiers are mutinying. It is unclear the numbers involved. Reports cite heavy shooting in the former Burmese capital. The organisation Helfen ohne Grenzen (Help without Frontiers) is reporting that "Soldiers from the 66th LID (Light Infantry Divison) have turned their weapons against other government troops and possibly police in North Okkalappa township in Rangoon and are defending the protesters. At present unsure how many soldiers involved."  Soldiers in Mandalay, where unrest has spread to as we reported this morning, are also reported to have refused orders to act against protesters. Some reports claim that many soldiers remained in their barracks. More recent reports now maintain that soldiers from the 99th LID now being sent there to confront them. Growing numbers of protestors are gathering in Rangoon, with 10,000 reported at the Traders Hotel and 50,000 at the Thein Gyi market. The police are reported to have turned water cannons against crowds at Sule Pagoda. Many phone lines into the Burmese state have now been cut, mobile networks have been disabled and the national internet service provider has been taken off-line.

[catotx]

cutting the internet in burma means oppression is losing, they're afraid.  you notice the cutting of the internet coincided with the burmese troops not firing on their citizens and burmeses troops revolting.  that's what the oppression didn't want to get out.  i read all this news on the internet not mainstream media.  fight on citizens,fight on.

[Dig]

   
Calls for negotiation in Myanmar
http://prisonplanet.com/articles/september2007/300907standoff.htm
Reuters
Sunday September 30, 2007

Click for Reuters Video


Sep 30 - International support for Myanmar's resurgent pro-democracy movement brings protesters out around the world.

[Rock]

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2007/10/02/rivers.myanamar.beatings.cnn

See what an army will do



Rock

[thinphantom]

but i thought there was no such thing as plain clothed agents inciting riots during otherwise peaceful protests? (sarcasm)  does this really surprise anybody?  most of the recent videos of police brutality in our own country are just as bad if not worse than this.  but you will never hear our media condemning the american govt. as a repressive regime. 

[xvyxx]

Post should be renamed "Coming Soon To A Town Near You"

[Mr Grinch]

Brutal stuff.

It could happen here.....

[jack_2002]

"It could happen here....."
Certainly can & will happen here if we sit around and let it.
2 important lessons here:

1) Burma had a free election and the democratic candidates won by a huge landslide
but the military government didn't like the election results so they simply declared the election null & void and hunted down and shot & killed the democratic supporters and tossed the rest into prison for life and that was the end of peacefull resistance. There's an important lesson here for Ron Paul election campaign workers and supporters--- if you all did in fact win and Ron Paul was ready to form a new government and assume office you must be prepared that the enemy may attempt the same thing here if they can't fabricate some kind of moral scandal or legal gimmick to bar him from taking office.
What I'm telling you is that in the event that Ron really does win it must be top priority for you people to form whatever security organization is necessary to protect Dr. Paul and his staff from any kind of NWO coup or murder squads because I guarantee you the elites will very seriously weigh this option.

2) Any & all communications media controlled by centralized authority is compromised and will be shut down and is useless so therefore every activist should prepare to have access to any type of communications tech high & low which is not centrally controlled.

[Dig]

CNN shows smuggled footage of bloody Myanmar crackdown
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Smuggled_footage_of_deadly_crackdown_on_1003.html
David Edwards and Muriel Kane Published: Wednesday October 3, 2007

CNN has obtained exclusive footage smuggled out of Myanmar (formerly Burma) which provides the first solid proof of rumored atrocities against those protesting against the military dictatorship. The footage shows blood on the streets, protesters being beaten by soldiers, a demonstration being dispersed, and men said to be plainclothes intelligence offices loading those arrested onto trucks.

CNN is also reporting that by now most signs of the crackdown have been eliminated, with the blood being washed away and the protesters arrested or simply disappeared. Even worse, reports are trickling out that Buddhist monks have "all but disappeared" in parts of the capital city, and there are rumors of massacres.



An international aid worker who just left Burma told CNN of seeing bodies left lying in the street as a deliberate message to the crowd. "To see Burmese people display any kind of anger was incredible to me," she said. "These are people who are peaceful, gentle, turn-the-other-cheek people. ... It's difficult for a Westerner to grasp how significant that is. ... This is huge."

The anonymous worker stated that she saw no weapons or violent behavior of any kind among the protesters. She believes that outrage at what has been done to the monks "will spur the people on to larger demonstrations," but added that the West also needs to start using whatever leverage it has against the dictatorship.

[bigron]

October 4, 2007
A Conversation With Aung San Suu Kyi
 
by John Pilger

http://www.antiwar.com/pilger/?articleid=11706

As the people of Burma rise up again, we have had a rare sighting of Aung San Suu Kyi. There she stood, at the back gate of her lakeside home in Rangoon, where she is under house arrest. She looked very thin. For years, people would brave the roadblocks just to pass by her house and be reassured by the sound of her playing the piano. She told me she would lie awake listening for voices outside and to the thumping of her heart. "I found it difficult to breathe lying on my back after I became ill, she said."

That was a decade ago. Stealing into her house, as I did then, required all the ingenuity of the Burmese underground. My film-making partner David Munro and I were greeted by her assistant, Win Htein, who had spent six years in prison, five of them in solitary confinement. Yet his face was open and his handshake warm. He led us into the house, a stately pile fallen on hard times. The garden with its ragged palms falls down to Inya Lake and to a trip wire, a reminder that this was the prison of a woman elected by a landslide in 1990, a democratic act extinguished by generals in ludicrous uniforms.

Aung San Suu Kyi wore silk and had orchids in her hair. She is a striking, glamorous figure whose face in repose shows the resolve that has seen her along her heroic journey.

We sat in a room dominated by a wall-length portrait of Aung San, independent Burma's assassinated liberation fighter, the father she never knew.

"What do I call you?" I asked. "Well, if you can't manage the whole thing, friends call me Suu."

"The regime is always saying you are finished, but here you are, hardly finished. How is that?"

"It's because democracy is not finished in Burma . . . Look at the courage of the people [on the streets], of those who go on working for democracy, those who have already been to prison. They know that any day they are likely to be put back there and yet they do not give up."

"But how do you reclaim the power you won at the ballot box with brute power confronting you?" I asked.

"In Buddhism we are taught there are four basic ingredients for success. The first is the will to want it, then you must have the right kind of attitude, then perseverance, then wisdom . . ."

"But the other side has all the guns?"

"Yes, but it's becoming more and more difficult to resolve problems by military means. It's no longer acceptable."

We talked about the willingness of foreign business to come to Burma, especially tour companies, and of the hypocrisy of "friends" in the West. I read her a British Foreign Office press release: "Through commercial contacts with democratic nations such as Britain, the Burmese people will gain experience of democratic principles."

"Not in the least bit," she responded, "because new investments only help a small elite to get richer and richer. Forced labor goes on all over the country, and a lot of the projects are aimed at the tourist trade and are worked by children."

"People I've spoken to regard you as something of a saint, a miracle worker."

"I'm not a saint and you'd better tell the world that!"

"Where are your sinful qualities, then?"

"Er, I've got a short temper."

"What happened to your piano?"

"You mean when the string broke? In this climate pianos do deteriorate and some of the keys were getting stuck, so I broke a string because I was pumping the pedal too hard."

"You lost it ... you exploded?"

"I did."

"It's a very moving scene. Here you are, all alone, and you get so angry you break the piano."

"I told you, I have a hot temper."

"Weren't there times when, surrounded by a hostile force, cut off from your family and friends you were actually terrified?"

"No, because I didn't feel hostile towards the guards surrounding me. Fear comes out of hostility and I felt none towards them."

"But didn't that produce a terrible aloneness ...?"

"Oh, I have my meditation, and I did have a radio . . . And loneliness comes from inside, you know. People who are free and who live in big cities suffer from it, because it comes from inside."

"What were the small pleasures you'd look forward to?"

"I'd look forward to a good book being read on 'Off the Shelf' on the BBC and of course to my meditation .... I didn't enjoy my exercises so much; I'd never been a very athletic type."

"Was there a point when you had to conquer fear?"

"Yes. When I was small in this house. I wandered around in the darkness until I knew where all the demons might be . . . and they weren't there."

For several years after that encounter with Aung San Suu Kyi I tried to phone the number she gave me. The phone would ring, then go dead. One day I got through.

"Thank you so much for the books," she said. "It has been a joy to read widely again." (I had sent her a collection of T S Eliot, her favorite, and Jonathan Coe's political romp What a Carve Up!.) I asked her what was happening outside her house. "Oh, the road is blocked and they [the military] are all over the street . . ."

"Do you worry that you might be trapped in a terrible stalemate?"

"I am really not fond of that expression," she replied rather sternly. "People have been on the streets. That's not a stalemate. Ethnic people, like the Karen, are fighting back. That's not a stalemate. The defiance is there in people's lives, day after day. You know, even when things seem still on the surface, there's always movement underneath. It's like a frozen lake; and beneath our lake, we are progressing, bit by bit."

"What do you mean exactly?"

"What I am saying is that, no matter the regime's physical power, in the end they can't stop the people; they can't stop freedom. We shall have our time."
 

 
 
 
 

 
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/pilger/?articleid=11706 
 

   

[Hawkwind39]

Thank you for providing this video clip.  Cheers

CNN shows smuggled footage of bloody Myanmar crackdown
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Smuggled_footage_of_deadly_crackdown_on_1003.html
David Edwards and Muriel Kane Published: Wednesday October 3, 2007

CNN has obtained exclusive footage smuggled out of Myanmar (formerly Burma) which provides the first solid proof of rumored atrocities against those protesting against the military dictatorship. The footage shows blood on the streets, protesters being beaten by soldiers, a demonstration being dispersed, and men said to be plainclothes intelligence offices loading those arrested onto trucks.

CNN is also reporting that by now most signs of the crackdown have been eliminated, with the blood being washed away and the protesters arrested or simply disappeared. Even worse, reports are trickling out that Buddhist monks have "all but disappeared" in parts of the capital city, and there are rumors of massacres.



An international aid worker who just left Burma told CNN of seeing bodies left lying in the street as a deliberate message to the crowd. "To see Burmese people display any kind of anger was incredible to me," she said. "These are people who are peaceful, gentle, turn-the-other-cheek people. ... It's difficult for a Westerner to grasp how significant that is. ... This is huge."

The anonymous worker stated that she saw no weapons or violent behavior of any kind among the protesters. She believes that outrage at what has been done to the monks "will spur the people on to larger demonstrations," but added that the West also needs to start using whatever leverage it has against the dictatorship.

[bobdole]

I have no idea what the machinations are behind the scenes in Burma/Myanmar but I do know there is a lot of spin when it comes to people screaming Free Tibet as prior to Chinese occupation the people of the nation were mostly serfs under an elite priest ruling class. It is important to remember the Dalai Lama has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the CIA and that all monks are not necessarily the greatest of people. Why is this happening now and does it have anything to do with Leigh Price's fidning of 400 million barrels?

[Dig]

I have no idea what the machinations are behind the scenes in Burma/Myanmar but I do know there is a lot of spin when it comes to people screaming Free Tibet as prior to Chinese occupation the people of the nation were mostly serfs under an elite priest ruling class. It is important to remember the Dalai Lama has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the CIA and that all monks are not necessarily the greatest of people. Why is this happening now and does it have anything to do with Leigh Price's fidning of 400 million barrels?

this has to do with the same neocons that had our children die for their oil slowdown ... they want to control all energy in the world so they can create fraudulent peak oil bullshit.

Total Oil company

they love slavery, torture, and death as they generate big bucks on falsely inflated oil prices.

[Dig]

Amid Deaths, Censorship, Oil Companies Continue Myanmar Operations
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/10/amid-deaths-cen.html
October 03, 2007 3:01 PM


Avni Patel Reports:
Despite a bloody government crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Myanmar, Chevron and other oil giants continue to operate in the country, paying billions in taxes and fees that support Myanmar's repressive regime.  Myanmarese dissident groups say the government has killed hundreds and detained thousands of monks and citizens in camps as part of its recent efforts to violently quash a pro-democracy movement that threatens their rule. The government of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, says only 10 people have died in the violence.   President Bush, Secretary State Condoleezza Rice, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and other world leaders have all strongly condemned the violence. U.S. congressional leaders from both parties sent a videotape message to the people of Myanmar supporting their struggle for democracy. The oil companies, who have argued their business in Myanmar helps its citizens, have expressed concern over the crackdown -- and kept their operations going.

U.S.-based Chevron and France's Total, which jointly operate the Yadana natural gas pipeline, issued statements in the last week, expressing "deep concerns" about the situation in Myanmar and calling for a "peaceful resolution." Both statements reaffirmed the companies are committed to staying in Myanmar, pointing to social and health programs they say have improved the lives of those in communities along the Yadana pipeline route. Most of Myanmar's residents are not able to read the statements at the moment. The junta owns the country's telecommunications firms, and on Friday reportedly cut off Internet access for all computers in the country that did not belong to the regime. Human rights activists urge the oil companies to take a principled stand.  "They need to strongly condemn what the government is doing and make their voices heard," said Arvind Ganesan, director of Business and Human Rights Program at Human Rights Watch. "Being silent isn't constructive engagement."

Chevron, Total and other oil companies have poured billions in Myanmar's booming natural gas industry in recent years. Natural gas projects generated $2.16 billion in revenue for Myanmar's military regime in 2006, according to Human Rights Watch. Human rights groups say the revenue from taxes and fees on the gas pipelines have become the largest source of cash for Myanmar's generals and have helped to prop them up.   "Whenever you have billions of dollars in revenue that flow directly to a government that does not express any interest in looking out for the benefit for its people, it certainly helps them stay in power," said Ganesan.    U.S. sanctions largely prohibit investment in Myanmar by U.S. companies. Chevron Corporation is the only major U.S. company remaining in Myanmar. It took over a 28 percent stake in the Yadana pipeline project when it bought Unocal. The investment pre-dated the U.S. sanctions and was grandfathered by the law. Myanmarese villagers sued Unocal and Total of France, which operates the pipeline, alleging the companies were complicit in human rights abuses during the building of the pipeline in the 1990s. The companies settled the lawsuit outside of court for an undisclosed amount. Other companies that have invested in Myanmar's natural gas industry include Nippon Oil of Japan, Thailand's state-controlled oil company PTTEP and Malaysia's state-owned oil company Petronas. Indian, South Korean and Chinese firms are also involved in natural gas exploration off Myanmar's shores, and are currently vying for multi-billion-dollar projects.

[Dig]

Chevron’s Links to Burma Stir Critics to Demand It Pull Out
by David R. Baker
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/04/4303/
Chevron Corp. of San Ramon is drawing harsh criticism for its business ties to Burma, the Asian nation conducting a brutal military crackdown.

The company owns part of a natural gas project in Burma, where soldiers crushed pro-democracy protests last week and killed at least 10 people.

U.S. sanctions prevent most U.S. companies from working in Burma, but Chevron’s investment there existed before the sanctions were imposed and continues under a grandfather clause. As a result, the company is one of the few large Western companies left in the country.

Now Chevron faces pressure to pull out.

Human rights activists are calling on the company to either leave Burma or persuade the country’s military rulers to stop killing demonstrators. Bloggers are encouraging people to flood Chevron’s phone and fax lines in protest. Some are calling for a boycott.

“There’s no question that the money from the pipeline project helps prop up the military government,” said Marco Simons, U.S. legal director for EarthRights International. “If Chevron can stop people from getting killed by using its influence, we’d certainly like to see that. In the long run, we don’t think anyone should be doing business with this government.”

But Chevron doesn’t intend to leave.

“Chevron is maintaining its interest in the … project,” said spokesman Alex Yelland.

The company has been trying to build up its portfolio of oil and natural gas projects in Asia, where energy demand is growing fast. Chevron also has a history of working under difficult political circumstances. In some cases, that history involved countries with questionable human rights records or nations that ran afoul of the U.S. government. In other cases, the company’s own actions have been called into question.

Chevron has been the focus of repeated protests in Nigeria, for example, where soldiers paid by the company have been accused of shooting villagers and burning homes. And the company continues to work in Venezuela, despite constant sniping between Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and the Bush administration.

Chevron has denied any part in any human rights abuses. Its executives argue that staying in troubled countries - even pariahs such as Burma - does more good than harm by employing locals and funding health and education programs.

“I’m convinced that hundreds of thousands of people in Burma have benefited,” said Chevron Vice Chairman Peter Robertson, who pointed to the community doctors and teachers his company has paid for. “They benefit from us being there.”

There’s also the question of whether pulling out would work.

Chevron owns a minority stake in the Yadana natural gas field and pipeline, a little more than 28 percent. Both China and India have been eager to do business with Burma, hoping to secure some of the fuel supplies that their surging economies need. If Chevron left, one country or another would try to take its place, Robertson said.

“It’s pretty clear that this is a very attractive asset, and other people would be interested,” he said.

Frank Verrastro, head of the energy program at the Center for Strategic & International Studies think tank, said Burmese law also would force Chevron to fork over much of the company’s capital gains on the project if it sold its stake. That could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars, depending on the sale price. The project cost roughly $1 billion to build in the mid-1990s and is doubtless worth far more today.

“That goes straight to the Burmese government,” Verrastro said. “The biggest conundrum right now is how to deal with bad actors who have a resource that the world needs. And we haven’t come to grips with that in any way, shape or form.”

Chevron’s involvement in Burma - called Myanmar by the military junta that rules it - already has a complicated and controversial history.

It started with Unocal Corp., one of Chevron’s historic rivals. Unocal invested in the Yadana project in the 1990s along with three other companies: France’s Total, Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise and the Petroleum Authority of Thailand. When Washington decided to impose sanctions on Burma’s military junta in 1997, Unocal was allowed to stay under a grandfather clause.

Chevron acquired the stake when it bought Unocal in 2005. By then, however, the Yadana project had become a public relations disaster for Unocal. Burmese exiles sued the company in a U.S. court, saying the pipeline’s construction had involved forced labor and other human rights abuses committed by the military. Unocal denied the accusations but settled the case out of court for an undisclosed sum.

Burma isn’t the only place where Chevron has faced questions about human rights.

The company’s operations in Nigeria have triggered frequent protests by poor Nigerians who say they see little of the money flowing from the nation’s rich oil fields. Some have sued Chevron, saying that soldiers paid by the company have killed protesters and villagers.

And in Ecuador, Chevron is fighting a long-running lawsuit concerning oil-field pollution that residents say has contributed to a wave of illnesses in part of the Amazon jungle. The suit alleges that Texaco, which operated an oil-field in Ecuador years before Chevron bought the company, left pools of petroleum and hazardous chemicals scattered around the field, eventually covering them with thin layers of soil rather than removing them.

In both countries, Chevron has denied the allegations, both inside and outside court.

In Burma, Chevron acts mainly as an investor. The company does not operate the Yadana field. That role falls to Total, which has the biggest stake in the project, at 31 percent.

Despite its strategic location for Chevron, Yadana has its limits. The U.S. sanctions prevent Chevron from expanding its investment, even as the company pours money into exploring for oil and natural gas off neighboring Thailand. And the existing operations are small compared to many of the company’s projects worldwide.

Even so, Yadana represents a key source of cash for Burma’s government.

Human Rights Watch, one of the groups trying to pressure Chevron, says natural gas sales are the government’s single largest source of income, although economic data from Burma are unreliable. Gas sales to Thailand brought the government $2.16 billion in 2006, according to Human Rights Watch. Most of the Yadana project’s gas flows to Thailand.

“President Bush should order Chevron to cease operations in Burma immediately,” said Nyunt Than, president of the Burmese American Democratic Alliance. “That would cut hundreds of millions of dollars from this military. It would create great pressure on them to come to the table.”

A White House spokesman referred questions about Chevron’s presence in Burma to the National Security Council, which did not respond to a query.

Chevron pays for social programs in communities along the Yadana pipeline’s route, funding teachers, libraries and doctors. The company reports significant declines in local deaths from malaria and tuberculosis since the programs began.

But exerting political pressure on Burma’s government is another question entirely. Chevron has typically resisted calls for that kind of involvement.

Chief Executive Officer David O’Reilly defended that position in a Chronicle interview last year.

“You have to be apolitical and try to remember what you’re doing. What we do well is we invest in oil and gas exploration, refining and whatnot,” he said. “We were in Angola during years and years of civil war and years when there were clearly people in the United States who felt that Angola was an inappropriate place to invest. And yet Angola’s civil war is over. We’ve had a very positive influence there. We’ve created a lot of jobs.”

To learn more

– For a quick overview of Burma, its people, economy and recent history, go to the World Factbook from the Central Intelligence Agency: www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/bm.html

– Chevron Corp. has a brief statement on Burma on the company’s Web site. Read it here: www.chevron.com/news/press/Release/?id=2007-10-02

– Want to call Chevron? The main number for the company’s San Ramon headquarters is (925) 842-1000.

– The French oil company Total operates the Burma natural gas project that includes Chevron as a minority investor. For Total’s take on the project, look here: burma.total.com/en/gazier/p_2_2.htm

[Dig]

Burma, Chevron, slave labor, Rice and more
http://clipmarks.com/clipmark/A0CE6C67-05A4-490C-A362-82AC3155C756/
The Bush administration is making headlines with its strong language against the Burmese regime. President Bush declared increased sanctions in his U.N. General Assembly speech. First lady Laura Bush has come out with perhaps the strongest statements.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, at the meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, said, “The United States is determined to keep an international focus on the travesty that is taking place.” Keeping an international focus is essential, but should not distract from one of the most powerful supporters of the junta, one that is much closer to home. Rice knows it well: Chevron.
Fueling the military junta that has ruled for decades are Burma’s natural gas reserves, controlled by the Burmese regime in partnership with the U.S. multinational oil giant Chevron, the French oil company Total and a Thai oil firm.
The pipeline was built with slave labor, forced into servitude by the Burmese military.

[Dig]

Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Chevron Protest on TUESDAY October 9th 2007


CALL TO ACTION!

We will be holding the CHEVRON PROTEST through FAX and PHONE calls on TUESDAY October 9th from 1:00pm-3:00pm Pacific Time (9:00pm-11pm GMT).

Chevron pays millions of dollars in oil and gas royalties to the current military junta. We will demand that they put these royalties in escrow for the legitimate, elected government of Burma headed by Aung San Suu Kyi. These monies are being pocketed by the military leaders - it is not their money.

Below is the contact info for each Chevron office throughout the world.

We will be calling the California Headquarters office from 9pm-11pm GMT -- 1-3pm US Pacific Time
You should also call your local Chevron office at 1-3pm your local time if you are outside the US/Canada/Mexico

When you call or fax ask for David O'Reilly, the CEO, to register your concern and protest Chevron's activity in Burma and ask that they put the royalty money in escrow for the elected government of Burma.
The company is holding an investor update at 2pm local time so this is the perfect window of time to call.



HEADQUARTERS

1.Chevron Corp.
6001 Bollinger Canyon Road
San Ramon, CA 94583
United States

Phone: +1 925-842-1000

Fax: +1 415-894-6817

Ask for David O'Reilly, CEO




OTHER OFFICES AROUND THE WORLD

2.Cabinda Gulf Oil Company
Avenida Lenine 77
Luanda, Angola
Telephone: +244 22.269.2600

3.Chevron Argentina
Peron 925 – 4º (C1038AAS)
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Telephone: +54.11.4320.740

4.Chevron Australia Pty. Ltd.
QV1 Building, 250 St. Georges Terrace
Perth, Western Australia 6000
Australia
Telephone: +61 (8) 9216.4000
Fax: +61 (8) 9216.4444
ctapl@chevron.com

5.Chevron Global Lubricants
Chevron Technology Ghent
Texaco Belgium SPRL/BVBA
Technologiepark Zwijnaarde 2
B - 9052 Gent
Telephone: +32 (0) 9.240.7111
Fax: +32 (0) 9.240.7222

6.Chevron Brasil Petróleo Ltda.
Av. República do Chile
230 – 29º andar – Rio de Janeiro – Brazil
Telephone: + 55 (21) 2510.5900

7.Chevron Brasil Ltda.
Av. República do Chile
230 – 25º andar – Rio de Janeiro – Brazil
Telephone: + 55 (21) 2271.9140

8.Chevron Canada Limited
1500 - 1050 West Pender Street
Vancouver, BC V6E 3T4
+1 604.668.5300

9.Chevron Canada Limited
Burnaby Refinery
355 North Willingdon
Burnaby, B.C.
V5C 1X4

10.Chevron Canada Resources
500 - 5th Avenue S.W.
Calgary, AB T2P 0L7
+1 403.234.5200

11.Chevron Upstream
Ms. Gloria Zhao
Room 1218 China World Tower 2
No. 1 Jian Guo Men Wai Avenue
Beijing 100004
People's Republic of China
Telephone: +86.10.6505.8711
gloriazhao@chevron.com

12.Chevron Downstream
Ms. Eunice Cheng
42/F, Central Plaza
Wanchai
Hong Kong, SAR
Telephone: +85.2.2582.6593
echeng@chevron.com

13.Chevron Colombia
Calle 100, #7A-81
Bogotá, Colombia
Telephone: +57.1.639.4444

14.Chevron India
Level 16
Eros Corporate Towers
Nehru Place
New Delhi, India - 110 019
Telephone: +91.11.4650.0600
Fax: +91.11.4650.0603

15.Chevron IndoAsia Business Unit
Gedung Sarana Jaya
Jl. Budi Kemuliaan I No. 1
Jakarta 10110
Indonesia
Pramono IndrohartoGeneral Manager, Government and Public Affairs Email for general information: pramgpa@chevron.com Email for human resources: Indonesia-HR@chevron.com

16.Chevron Eurasia Business Unit
CDC-1 Center, 8th Floor
240G Furmanov Street
Almaty, Kazakhstan 050059
Telephone: +7.327.298.0662
Fax: +7.327.250.5805

17.KNPC Chevron Technical Service Agreement General Manager P.O. Box 8733
22058 Salmiya Kuwait
+965.242.7734

18.Chevron Exploration and Production Netherlands B.V.
Chevron Transportation B.V.
Appelgaarde 4
2272 TK Voorburg
The Netherlands
Telephone: +31 (0)703.57.2357
ctuepublicaffairs@chevron.com

19.Chevron Oronite Technology B.V.
Petroleumweg 32
3196 KD Vondelingenplaat
The Netherlands
Telephone: +31 (0)10.295.1400
Fax: +31 (0)10.438.1292

20.Chevron New Zealand
PO Box 2297
Wellington, New Zealand 6140
Telephone: +64 800.733.835
Email: nzservice@chevron.com

21.Chevron Nigeria Ltd.
2 Chevron Drive, Lekki Peninsula
Private Mail Bag 1282
Lagos, Nigeria
Telephone: +23.4.1.260.0600

22.Chevron Oil Nigeria Plc
8 McCarthy Street,
Lagos, Nigeria
Telephone: +23.4.1.461.4500.9
Fax: +23.4.1.461.4606

23.Chevron Philippines Inc.
Mark C. Quebral
Manager - Policy, Government and Public Affairs 10f 6750 Ayala Avenue
1226 Makati City
Philippines
Telephone: +63.2.841.1000
Fax: +63.2.841.1092
chevron-pgpa@chevron.com

24.Chevron Malampaya LLC
Hank Tomlinson
President
8/F Asian Star Building
2402-2404 Asean Drive
Filinvest Corporate City
Alabang, Muntinlupa City 1781
Philippines
Telephone: +63.2.772.1000
Fax: +63.2.772.2953
hanktomlinson@chevron.com

25.Chevron Holdings Inc.
Joseph Anthony C. Ayllon
Communications
Manila Shared Services Center
35F Yuchengco Tower
RCBC Plaza 6819 Ayala Avenue
1200 Makati City
Philippines
Telephone: +63.2.793.4000
Fax: +63.2.793.4422
For general inquiries: MSSCCommunications@chevron.com For career opportunities: recruitment-ph@chevron.com

26.Chevron Geothermal Philippines Holdings, Inc.
Antonio Yee
President and General Manager
14/F 6750 Building, Ayala Avenue
Makati City 1226
Philippines
Telephone: +63.2.845.8562
Fax: +63.2.845.8598
cgphi-pgpa@chevron.com

27.Chevron Neftegaz, Inc.
Rakhmanovsky pereulok, 4
Moscow, Russian Federation 127051
Telephone: +7.495.258.2700
Fax: +7.495.258.2727

28.Chevron Downstream Singapore
Diana Lee
Chevron House, 30 Raffles Place, #25-00
Singapore 048622
Telephone: +65.6318.1000
Fax: +65.6318.1709
For general inquiries: dianalee@chevron.com For career opportunities: SGHQrecruitment@chevron.com

29.Chevron (S.A.) (Pty) Ltd.
Chevron House
19 D F Malan Street
Cape Town, South Africa 8001
Telephone: +27.21.403.7911
emku@chevron.com

30.Chevron Thailand Exploration and Production, Ltd Ms. Pornsuree Konanta 6th Floor, Tower 3, SCB Park Plaza
19 Rachadapisak Road
Chatuchak
Bangkok 10900, Thailand
Telephone: +66.2.545.5555
Fax: +66.2.545.5554
corpcomm@chevron.com
Downstream

31.Chevron (Thailand) Ltd.
Mr. Apiwat Aganidad
123 Vibhavadee Rangsit Rd.
Chatuchak
Bangkok 10900, Thailand
Telephone: +66.2.612 7155
Fax: +66.2.612.7013
apiwata@chevron.com

32.Chevron Trinidad and Tobago Resources SRL Dave K. Mohammed, Country Manager 3A Sweet Briar Road Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago
Telephone: +1 868.622.6024
Fax: +1 868.622.1596
Email: Dave.Mohammed@chevron.com

33.Chevron Upstream Europe
Seafield House
Hill of Rubislaw, Aberdeen
AB15 6XL
ctuepublicaffairs@chevron.com

34.Chevron Downstream Europe
1 Westferry Circus
Canary Wharf
London
E14 4HA
Visit Chevron in the UK

35.Graduate Development and Recruitment Coordinator Human Resources Chevron Upstream Europe Seafield House Hill of Rubislaw Aberdeen
AB15 6XL
Chevron Ltd
Pembroke Refinery
Pembroke
SA71 5SJ

36.Chevron Headquarters
6001 Bollinger Canyon Rd.
San Ramon, CA 94583, U.S.A.
Tel. +1.925.842.1000
Email: comment@chevron.com

37.Chevron Latin America
Avenida La Estancia
Centro Banaven (Cubo Negro)
Torre D, Piso 7 - Chuao
Caracas, Venezuela
Telephone: +58 (212) 902.5400
Careers in Venezuela: empleosrd@chevron.com
38.Media Relations:
925.842.0050

39.Investor Relations
BNY Mellon Shareowner Services
480 Washington Blvd., 27th Floor
Newport Office Center VII
Jersey City, NJ 07310
Phone: +1 800-368-8357
Email: shrrelations@melloninvestor.com

40.Please contact Chevron Investor Relations:
Phone: +1 925-842-5690
Email: invest@chevron.com
Bill Clutter, Assistant Manager, Phone: +1 925-842-3526

[Dig]

UPDATED: Burma, Chevron and Total: If I were on a jury…
http://www.bradspangler.com/blog/archives/811
October 4th, 2007 by Brad Spangler
 

As you’re no doubt aware, the Burmese state has been bloodily cracking down on popular unrest — massacring pacifist monks, dragging people out of their homes in the middle of the night and so forth.

What you might not be aware of is that oil companies Chevron and Total are business partners with the Burmese state. These enterprises are complicit in propping up a tyrannical regime. Agorists recognize that, like most of the corporate dominated “white market” economy, the source of their wealth is not really production and exchange but subsidies, sweetheart deals and generally cozy relationships with the bandit gangs more commonly referred to as “governments”.

“… if you wish to know how libertarians regard the State and any of its acts, simply think of the State as a criminal band…” — Murray Rothbard

As one man alone with few resources, there is little or nothing that I can do about the situation in Burma directly. I can, however, tell the truth as I see it and try to act accordingly.

Chevron and Total are complicit in the atrocities in Burma via their relationship with the Burmese government. This constitutes an active disregard for the rights of the Burmese, rather than the merely apathetic passive disregard of the average person who feels to overwhelmed with the challenges of day to day life to pay attention to such things and is not directly involved in the first place. Chevron and Total, by means of their business partnership with the Burmese government ARE involved.

It is my opinion that this active disregard rises to a level sufficient to nullify corporate property claims, at the very least until such time as Chevron and Total sever all ties with the Burmese government.

As Samuel Edward Konkin III noted:

“Regular, repeated patterns of aggression make one a habitual criminal — a statist (or ‘pure statist’). These people earn no wealth and have no property. Their loot is forfeit to revolutionary agorists as agents of the victims. The pure statist subclass includes all political officeholders, police, military, civil service, grantholders and subsidy receivers. There is a special subclass of the pure statists who not only accept plunder and enforce or maintain the machinery of the State but actually direct and control it. In ‘socialist’ countries, these are the top officeholders of the governing political party who usually (though not always) have top government offices. In the ‘capitalist’ countries, these super-statists seldom appear in government positions, preferring to control directly the wealth of their state-interfaced corporations, usually banks, energy monopolists and army suppliers.

If I were on a jury, as a matter of moral conscience I could not vote to convict anyone of a property crime involving purported property of Chevron or Total — from petty shoplifting through multi-billion dollar embezzlement and including destruction of property where no egregious risk to others was created by the destructive act.

If you feel the same way, feel free to use the Digg button up at the top of this post.

UPDATE: For a full list of companies supporting the Burmese state, click here.

[Dig]

New Burma ‘Dirty List’ - Companies Named and Shamed
12 Dec 2005
http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/pm/weblog.php?id=P193
Siemens, Swiss Re and Chevron join Burma ‘Dirty List’

View the new 'Dirty List' here

26 new companies have been added to the ‘Dirty List’ published today by the Burma Campaign UK. A total of 101 companies feature on the new list. The ‘Dirty List’ exposes companies that are directly or indirectly helping to finance Burma’s brutal military dictatorship.

Other major companies named and shamed include Rolls Royce, Total Oil, DHL, Orient Express, Schlumberger, Lonely Planet, Daewoo and China National Offshore Oil Corp.

“These companies are putting profit before principle by helping to keep Burma’s military dictatorship in power,” said Yvette Mahon, Director of the Burma Campaign UK. “Foreign investment and trade doesn’t help the people of Burma, it hurts them.” The regime spends half its budget on the military and spends less on health than any other country.

The new companies added to the list are the result of new information and an influx of new investment in Burma’s gas sector.

- 37 companies on the list are in the tourism sector – either operating tours to Burma or promoting tourism through guides.
- 18 companies on the list are in the timber sector.
- 23 companies on the list are in the oil & gas sector.

Prime Minister Tony Blair has called on companies not to trade with Burma, but since Labour came to power imports from Burma have quadrupled, rising from £17.3million in 1998 to £74m in 2004. In addition, Britain is ranked as the second largest investor in Burma, as it allows foreign companies to use the British Virgin Islands to channel investment to the country. The government has repeatedly refused to stop this investment, despite calls from Burma’s democracy movement and the British trade union movement. All the main opposition parties and more than 100 Labour backbenchers also support an investment ban.

Almost 20 of the companies on last year’s ‘Dirty List’ have ended their involvement in Burma, including insurance giant Aon, Austrian Airlines and Frommers guides.

View the new 'Dirty List' here

For more information and a copy of the Dirty List, contact Mark Farmaner, Media Officer, on 020 7324 4713

NOTE TO EDITORS: THE CURRENT SITUATION IN BURMA
Burma is ruled by one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world. In November democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi had her detention without trial extended for a further six months. Rape is used as a weapon of war against ethnic minorities and over 1,100 political prisoners languish in jail, many subjected to horrific torture.

[Dig]

Over 2 years ago Chevron sanctioned torture/killing/slaughtering of innocent citizens

August 16, 2005

Lack of Human Rights Policy Concerns Chevron Shareowners in Light of Unocal Merger
    by William Baue
http://www.socialfunds.com/news/article.cgi/article1781.html
Part two of this two-part article examines the implications of the delay in adopting a human rights policy given the inheritance of Unocal holdings in Burma and Alien Tort Claims Act cases.

SocialFunds.com -- Chevron (ticker: CVX) shareowners and socially responsible investment (SRI) advocates are voicing concern over the company's lack of a human rights policy. The 2002 Chevron Corporate Responsibility Report stated the company had "developed a draft Human Rights Statement" and that it sought to "revise and finalize the statement and begin corporate-wide implementation in 2004."

"As of now, Chevron has not published its human rights statement nor disclosed its timeline for implementing a human rights policy," writes AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka in a July 22, 2005 letter to Chevron CEO and Board Chair David O'Reilly. "How would Chevron implement, monitor, and enforce such a policy?"

In a July 28 response letter, Chevron Board Vice Chair Peter Robertson discloses a timeline, but he does not answer the question.

"While we had originally targeted 2004 to begin deployment of this Statement, we have extended the time to allow for a more thorough internal consultation," Mr. Robertson writes. "Our goal now is to complete consultations and begin corporate-wide deployment of the Statement in 2006."

Mr. Robertson's letter leaves many other of Mr. Trumka's questions and concerns unaddressed. For example, Mr. Trumka expresses concern over Chevron's bid to aquire Unocal (UCL), complete with its stake in the Yadana pipeline in Burma (also known as Myanmar) that links Unocal (and now Chevron) to well documented human rights abuses. Mr. Trumka notes that several other Chevron shareowners, including the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS--the largest US public pension fund) and the New York State Common Retirement Fund, share the AFL-CIO's concern about this merger.

"In the case of Burma, we believe a human rights policy would not be enforceable," states Mr. Trumka. "Does Chevron intend to divest from Burma?"

Mr. Robertson does not answer this question in his July 28 response letter, noting that the acquisition had not yet taken place then. Even after Unocal shareowners ratified the acquisition last week, however, Chevron spokesperson Jeff Moore maintains the silence.

"We are looking at all of Unocal's assets, but haven't yet made any decisions on the disposition of assets in specific markets," Mr. Moore told SocialFunds.com.

The financial liability of the Yadana investment was established earlier this year when Unocal reportedly paid $30 million to settle an Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) lawsuit alleging the company hired Burmese security forces knowing they committed murder, rape, and forced labor. In an August 9 letter to Sam Nunn, the former Democratic Senator from Georgia who now chairs the Public Policy Committee of Chevron's board, Mr. Trumka pointed out that "Unocal may be subject to addiational claims."

"As the first step to establish an enforceable human rights policy, the Public Policy Committee should recommend when Chevron should divest from a country with untenable human rights abuses," Mr. Trumka writes. "It is our view that investment in the Yadana pipeline is an unacceptable legal and political risk, and that Chevron should divest from Burma just as Texaco did in 1997 prior to its merger with Chevron."

Mr. Trumka's July 22 letter cites another ATCA case (based on a 1789 law allowing allowing non-citizens to seek legal recourse in US courts for violations of international law) posing human rights and financial risks to Chevron. Bowoto v. Chevron alleges Chevron's complicity in human rights abuses carried out by Nigerian soldiers in 1998 and 1999, as detailed in part one of this two-part article.

The AFL-CIO is not the only Chevron shareowner concerned about Unocal's Yadana pipeline investment, the Bowoto v. Chevron case, and the company's failure to uphold its promise to produce a human rights statement. The Wisconsin Jesuit Province has been leading a coalition of faith-based investors in dialogue with Chevron for about a year urging implementation of a human rights policy, according to Doris Gormley, the SRI consultant to the National Jesuit Committee on Investor Responsibility (NJCIR).

These issues "all pose both reputation and liability risk to the company and they are topics of discussion and clarification during our dialogues," Sister Gormley told SocialFunds.com. "We continue to work in a focused way to see this policy realized."

This work will continue at least through next year, if Chevron sticks to the timeline presented by Mr. Robertson in his July 28 letter. Of course, Chevron's implementation of a human rights policy would not end the work of holding the company accountable on human rights issues.

"Frankly, from my perspective, it doesn't really matter what their policy is, it matters what happens on the ground--the policy's wonderful if they follow it," said Rick Herz, a lawyer for EarthRights International (ERI) who is trying the Bowoto v. Chevron case.


Part one of this two-part article examines the implications of a new document identified in the discovery phase of the Bowoto v. Chevron case indicating Chevron paid Nigerian soldiers for services on a day several villagers were allegedly killed.

[geetardiva]

International narcotics agenda behind Myanmar instability
By Larry Chin
Online Journal Associate Editor



For the past month, the military government of Myanmar has been the focus of increasingly strident demonstrations, resulting in violent military crackdowns in recent days.

What must be noted is the Bush administration's open support for the dissidents, in conjunction with growing international (Western) support behind a coup attempt, and the likely parapolitical goals behind this agenda.

The demise of the Golden Triangle: bad for business

According to a report by Thomas Fuller of the International Herald Tribune, the Golden Triangle has, in recent years, lost its prominence as a narco-region.

In fact, the legendary Triangle now accounts for as little as 5 percent of world opium supply, according to some estimates. [Notorious Golden Triangle loses sway in opium trade, Thomas Fuller, International Herald Tribune, September 11, 2007]

Not surprisingly, the Golden Crescent and Afghanistan, now under control of the US and its drug-intelligence proxies, are by far and away the world’s number one opium suppliers, as well as the top overall drug producing region, dwarfing Colombia and the Golden Triangle.

In fact, the demise of the Golden Triangle in recent years can be traced to geostrategic developments that run counter to the agenda of international interests whose financial and banking system depends on the multi-billion dollar cash flows of the criminal drug trade.

As noted by Fuller:

1. The United Nations credits Myanmar’s central government for leading opium eradication.

2. Militias with long-standing ties to the heroin business have also pushed eradication.

3. China has played a major role pressing opium growers to eradicate.

4. The Laotian government has led its own opium eradication campaign. Officials see the link between poverty and opium, and the fact that “it is mostly organized crime syndicates that profit.”

These narco-developments, parallel with 1) other financial and political reasons why a new Mynamar government would be preferred; 2) a fragile and teetering world economy facing numerous financial bubbles and insolvency; and 3) continued failure to control either the Middle East or contain the rising political and economic power of China, cast a different light on the sudden burst of interest on the part of the Bush administration to back a coup or regime change in Myanmar.

The Bush administration, the epitome of criminal political power, does not support “human rights.” It will utilize every means, including overt military force, to protect geostrategic interests that depend on the world drug trade.

The revitalization of the Golden Triangle drug trade, and the installation or support for an openly pro-US regime in Myanmar, benefits Western financial interests. Any geostrategic foothold in Southeast Asia also benefits efforts to contain China.

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/printer_2473.shtml

[bobdole]

International narcotics agenda behind Myanmar instability
By Larry Chin
Online Journal Associate Editor

Thanks for this real info.    know people want to focus on Chevron when its issues you bring up in this report that people should be focusing on.

[Dig]

International narcotics agenda behind Myanmar instability
By Larry Chin
Online Journal Associate Editor

Thanks for this real info.    know people want to focus on Chevron when its issues you bring up in this report that people should be focusing on.

Chevron/Total/Drugs/70,000 child army/rape/torture

Do you think if there was no oil, so much establishment would be committed to torturing/raping/killing the children?

Afghanistan was also a 2 for 1

Opium/Sonoco and the Karzai Pipeline

You keep posting nonsense and I will think you really are Bob Dole

[Dig]

Secret cremations hide Burma killings
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2604151.ece
Our staff correspondent, Rangoon

THE Burmese army has burnt an undetermined number of bodies at a crematorium sealed off by armed guards northeast of Rangoon over the past seven days, ensuring that the exact death toll in the recent pro-democracy protests will never be known. The secret cremations have been reported by local people who have seen olive green trucks covered with tarpaulins rumbling through the area at night and watched smoke rising continuously from the furnace chimneys. They say they have watched soldiers in steel helmets blocking off roads to the municipal crematorium and threatening people who poke their heads out of windows overlooking the roads after the 10pm curfew. Their accounts have been volunteered to international officials and aid workers in Rangoon, Burma’s main city. The consensus in the foreign community is that the consistency of the stories makes them credible. “There has been no attempt to identify the dead, to return the bodies to their families or to give them even the minimum Buddhist religious rites,” said a foreign official who has collated information on the toll of dead and injured from a wide variety of sources. Horrifying rumours are sweeping the city that some of those cremated were severely injured people thrust into the ovens alive, but these have been treated with extreme caution by independent observers and have not been verified.

However, it is widely accepted that the cremations began on the night of Friday, September 28, more than 24 hours after soldiers opened fire on unarmed Buddhist monks and civilians demonstrating on the streets of Rangoon. They have continued at intervals right up to the end of last week, according to local people. Taxi drivers refused to take a foreigner to the area, saying they were too frightened and that the army moved bodies after the shoot-on-sight curfew. The best estimate among foreign diplomats here is that between 100 and 200 people lost their lives in the Rangoon disturbances. The number of Buddhist monks arrested is put at about 1,000, while about 3,000 civilians have also been detained. The regime’s own statement is that 2,093 people are in custody. The Chinese army carried out a similar practice of anonymous cremations in Beijing after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, when many unidentified bodies were disposed of at the city’s Babaoshan crematorium. The true number of dead has never been established. A more disturbing aspect of the Burmese regime’s conduct is the apparently continuous stream of deaths days after the guns fell silent. “We have first-hand evidence from respected Burmese doctors that hospitals and clinics were ordered not to give any treatment to the wounded,” said a foreign medical expert, “so it’s not possible to assess the victims by those treated in public hospitals.

“We do know that some injured people were treated in hiding in people’s homes. We assume that beaten, injured or wounded people taken into custody have got no treatment and may have died.” This evidence has given rise to grave concern for the wellbeing of elderly monks and very young novices rounded up, by all accounts, with brutality. There has been a drumbeat of allegations that soldiers and militiamen unleashed crazed violence against these holy men when they crashed into monasteries in the small hours of the night over the past week. Blood-stained robes, shattered statues and defaced holy pictures have been caught on digital images smuggled out of the country. Some of the worst violence appears to have occurred at the Mwe Kya Jan monastery in northwest Rangoon. According to graphic testimony published in yesterday’s Thai newspapers, the soldiers lined the monks up against a wall and smashed each of their shaven heads against the wall in succession. The monks were roughed up and thrown into trucks, but the abbot was so severely beaten that he died on the spot, the reports claimed.

It was not possible to corroborate these reports yesterday owing to a heavy security presence at the monastery. But two boy monks asking for alms on a street in a nearby area appealed for help in their limited English. “We are very frightened,” said the elder, who was about 14, while the younger, about 10, said: “I want to go home to see my mother and father again.” Foreign observers experienced in monitoring human rights here say the stories of beatings, abuse and starvation in custody are likely to be accurate. The regime has refused to grant access for the International Committee of the Red Cross to inspect the conditions of those in detention. Humanitarian workers said they hoped the British, French and American governments would take the lead in pressing the case for access at the UN security council and in private talks with the Burmese leaders and with China. An attempt to observe an alleged detention centre at the Rangoon Institute of Technology was halted by soldiers who waved away a car at gunpoint. Through sheets of monsoon rain, trucks could be seen parked outside what appeared to be an administration block, but there was no sign of activity. The United Nations special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, said on Friday in New York that he feared “mass relocations” of monks and protesters had taken place.

The systematic arrests have continued at night – a convoy of lorries and other vehicles rumbled past my hotel windows long after midnight – initially puzzling diplomats and activists, who wondered how military intelligence drew up its lists of those to be arrested. The answer, it seems, was a grimly paradoxical use of the internet, whose liberating role in disseminating images and sound of the protests was prematurely celebrated by many as marking the world’s first globalised on-line revolt, instantly dubbed the Saffron revolution. It is now clear that the regime was techno-savvy, patient and thorough. It kept the internet open long enough to allow its own cyber-operatives to down-load the images and recordings of street protests to identify the protesters. The internet is now shut down. “Every Burmese street has a block registration with photographs of each resident on the wall of the local administration office,” said an international aid official, whose agency used the system to help track recipients of aid. Burmese have given accounts of soldiers and plain-clothes men arriving to make arrests with computer-generated photographs of their targets pulled off the internet. On Friday government security agents raided the offices of Japan’s international aid agency, attempting to seize e-mail records and computers, several foreign sources said. After protests, the agents backed off. The news caused staff at other aid agencies to take steps to secure their own computer records.

The one ray of optimism in Rangoon this weekend has come on the political front. On Friday night a Burmese crowd in a teashop gasped to see the first pictures for many years of Aung San Suu Kyi on television. The news programme showed the world’s most famous political prisoner meeting Gambari at her home at 54 University Avenue. The junta’s leader, Than Shwe, told Gambari he would meet her under certain conditions, an offer that was reported to have been rejected but which, in local political terms, was remarkable. But among the deeply superstitious Burmese there was a murmuring of hope after another piece of inauspicious news for the generals. There was delight in the teashops at the reported death from cancer of Soe Win, the junta’s “prime minister”. Unlike his fellow countrymen, Soe Win had benefited from the best therapy that local doctors, aided by specialists in Singa-pore, could provide. The “tea-shop telegraph” also flashed the news that Soe Win’s brother had died in a failed attempt to donate marrow to fight the illness. In a land where portents, stars and horoscopes are revered, it was a dreadful omen.

[Biggs]

Please sign this petition in support of the suffering people of Burma and their brave attempt to shake off the rule of the monstrous Junta.

http://www.avaaz.org/en/stand_with_burma/w.php?cl=27915654

I know this is a bit late but I was offline for a while, anyway they are collecting signatures all this week and hope to reach 1 million within a few days (currently 710,000)

And spare a thought for the thousands who were arrested, including 2,000 good brave monks, and who have been taken away to camps doubtless to face some sort of re-education (toture) and whose fate still remains uncertain.

[Overcast]

See they were just following Dow's example.

I'm hoping the 'Yes Men' will find a nice spin on this one too - http://www.theyesmen.org/
That's a good site - those guys masquerade as corporate goons to drawl attention to atrocities, check it out. It's all satire.

See what they did was put up a 'satirical' website - http://www.dowethics.com/
And got invited to a conference, lol - the conference thought they were REALLY Dow Chemical Reps. Ooops...

Here's more info on the Bhopal incident too: http://www.bhopal.net/

[bobdole]

2,000 good brave monks

And you know this how? Like I said before, just because some is a monk doesn't mean they aren't a shill. Look at the Dalai Lama being a CIA asset. I mean, are there any monies backing the armed monks in Burma and if so where has it come from and who is going to benefit from the topple of the Burmese gov? So if people are pro Burma regime change are they pro opium production because that seems what the choice is; either support the brutal dictatorship backed by Chevron known for its poppy eradication OR support regime change backed by the media/everyone else which will lead to a massive increase in opium production?

[Biggs]

@Bobdole
Anyone who protests peacefully against a regime with a record of slaughtering its own citizens is brave. I am not saying their leaders are brave necessarily, I am saying these monks who risked everything are brave.

And whilst nobody wants to see more opium in the world (apart from those who suffer due to the global shortage of medical opiates), the crimes committed against the people of Burma, especially the tribes such as the Karen, are vast and outweigh any other factor.

IMHO.

(at the end of the day there is a need for that opium, just buy it normally off the farmers and give it to needy patients in the West and some for free to the less developed nations, the scheme pays for itself easily and there are no Taliban to take the money either)

[bigron]

Hirsh: Democracy's Strange Bedfellows
The champions of democracy often share an overly romantic view of how quickly it can flower in hostile soil.
WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Michael Hirsh
Newsweek
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21251538/site/newsweek/
Updated: 12:56 p.m. ET Oct. 11, 2007
Oct. 11, 2007 - It seems a morality tale not unlike the one that got us mired in Iraq. An evil dictator oppresses and starves his people, crushing hopes for freedom and progress. A brave and beautiful pro-democracy leader sacrifices her comfortable life in Britain, her marriage and her children for her people. Such is the gripping drama that is now under way in Burma. Even First Lady Laura Bush stepped into the picture this week, warning that if Burmese ruler Gen. Than Shwe doesn’t move toward democracy “within the next couple of days,” her hubby George will slap more sanctions on him. But the story of Burma’s junta and the country’s inspiring heroine, Aung San Suu Kyi, isn’t quite that simple. And in that more complex story lies a larger tale of how democracy is rarely the panacea it’s touted to be in the rhetoric we hear out of Washington.

I remember traveling to Burma in 1992 on a rare journalist’s visa. It was then, as it is now, a tragic place. Burma was once a country so full of resources and promise that in the late 1950s the World Bank concluded that it would outpace Singapore, a mosquito-ridden backwater at the time. Things did not work out that way. In 1962 a junta took over led by the bizarre Ne Win, a half-mad general who governed by numerology; once he wiped out the savings of millions of Burmese when he decreed that the number nine was lucky and redenominated the kyat. Ne Win completely closed the country off and declared that he would follow “the Burmese way to socialism.” By 1987 the country had sunk miserably into “least developed country” status. When I visited, the corridor between the major cities of Rangoon and Mandalay was so underdeveloped that the only buildings of substance were crumbling stone hulks left by the British 50 years before. One dictator followed another: Ne Win was ousted in 1988 and ultimately replaced by Than Shwe, who did no better. He crushed the democracy movement led by Suu Kyi, nullifying the elections that she won, to his surprise, in 1990.

But Suu Kyi tried to take power in a country that, somewhat like Iraq, was utterly broken and demoralized. The millions of students and hopeful Burmese who supported her election had no wealth or economic leverage, much less sophisticated knowledge of how democracy works. The military was the only organized entity in the country. Suu Kyi is still deservedly revered in Burma, but even some of her most avid supporters told me back in 1992 that she had tried to do too much too fast, demanding that the military step aside right away. “I was caught by her charisma at first,” one young activist said. “But when you see things with a cooler head … I think she did overdo things. Her ideas of democracy and freedom were too abstract and out of touch with the real Burmese situation.”

Sound a little familiar? I wouldn’t dream of equating Aung San Suu Kyi with, say, Paul Wolfowitz (much less Laura Bush). Suu Kyi put her life on the line and sacrificed everything while Wolfowitz, the former dean of Johns Hopkins’s School of Advanced International Studies, was merely brave with other people’s courage: the young men and women he fecklessly sent to war. But both were driven by an abstract, ill-thought-out notion of democracy, and that doesn’t get you very far in backward countries. Conditions have to be right—economic, social, and legal. And they weren’t right in Burma in 1988 for the sort of instant transformation that Suu Kyi tried to foment, just as they weren’t right in 2003 for Wolfowitz’s grandiose notions of a new Middle East.


One of the many mysteries of Wolfowitz’s disastrous misunderstanding of Iraq and the Arab world was that he loved to tell people about the lessons he had taken from East Asia. “They will say it can’t be done; Arabs just don’t do democracy,” he told a Rand conference in 2004. “But I remember a time some 20 years ago when I worked for President Reagan as his assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, and then as his ambassador to Indonesia ... I remember hearing people, experts and distinguished academics saying Koreans and Chinese really don’t care that much about freedom, indeed that their Confucian heritage predisposes them to accept tyranny, or that they were incapable of democracy because they had no historical experience of it.” Wolfowitz would then point out that South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines and other East Asian nations had since become democracies.

Here is an academic flying so high in the empyrean of abstraction that he doesn’t stop to pay attention to the details on the ground. The details were these: the East Asian governments (the Philippines excluded, but that is another story) followed a three-generation plan for prosperity that gradually laid down conditions for democracy. In the decades after World War II these countries focused purely on development, creating an economic middle class. That in turn engendered a broad-based hunger for democracy, the wealth and economic power to sustain it, and the judicial structures to enforce democratic freedoms. As Suu Kyi said poignantly in 2000, in a videotaped message at the first Community of Democracies conference in Warsaw (she was still under house arrest), democracy also means “freedom after speech and freedom after elections.”

Democracy is very, very hard. It can’t be imposed from without. (The two examples the Bush administration loves to cite—postwar Germany and Japan—both featured highly developed countries that had had considerable experience with democracy before the U.S. occupation.) It is evolutionary, not revolutionary. And it is certainly not a panacea. (Two of the biggest East Asian economic success stories, China and Singapore, have prospered under enlightened autocrats, not democracy.) One hopes that the long-suffering Burmese will soon have a taste of freedom, and that Suu Kyi will too after 18 years of standing up for principle. But for them that will only be the beginning.

[bigron]

Only now, the full horror of Burmese junta's repression of monks emerges
By Rosalind Russell
Published: 11 October 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article3047606.ece

Monks confined in a room with their own excrement for days, people beaten just for being bystanders at a demonstration, a young woman too traumatised to speak, and screams in the night as Rangoon's residents hear their neighbours being taken away.

Harrowing accounts smuggled out of Burma reveal how a systematic campaign of physical punishment and psychological terror is being waged by the Burmese security forces as they take revenge on those suspected of involvement in last month's pro-democracy uprising.

The first-hand accounts describe a campaign hidden from view, but even more sinister and terrifying than the open crackdown in which the regime's soldiers turned their bullets and batons on unarmed demonstrators in the streets of Rangoon, killing at least 13. At least then, the world was watching.

The hidden crackdown is as methodical as it is brutal. First the monks were targeted, then the thousands of ordinary Burmese who joined the demonstrations, those who even applauded or watched, or those merely suspected of anti-government sympathies.

"There were about 400 of us in one room. No toilets, no buckets, no water for washing. No beds, no blankets, no soap. Nothing," said a 24-year-old monk who was held for 10 days at the Government Technical Institute, a leafy college in northern Rangoon which is now a prison camp for suspected dissidents. The young man, too frightened to be named, was one of 185 monks taken in a raid on a monastery in the Yankin district of Rangoon on 28 September, two days after government soldiers began attacking street protesters.

"The room was too small for everyone to lie down at once. We took it in turns to sleep. Every night at 8 o'clock we were given a small bowl of rice and a cup of water. But after a few days many of us just couldn't eat. The smell was so bad.

"Some of the novice monks were under 10 years old, the youngest was just seven. They were stripped of their robes and given prison sarongs. Some were beaten, leaving open, untreated wounds, but no doctors came."

On his release, the monk spoke to a Western aid worker in Rangoon, who smuggled his testimony and those of other prisoners and witnesses out of Burma on a small memory stick.

Most of the detained monks, the low-level clergy, were eventually freed without charge as were the children among them. But suspected ringleaders of the protests can expect much harsher treatment, secret trials and long prison sentences. One detained opposition leader has been tortured to death, activist groups said yesterday. Win Shwe, 42, a member of the National League for Democracy, the party of the detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, has died under interrogation, the Thai-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners said, adding that the information came from authorities in Kyaukpandawn township. "However, his body was not sent to his family and the interrogators indicated that they had cremated it instead." Win Shwe was arrested on the first day of the crackdown.

It was the russet-robed Buddhist clergy, not political groups, who had formed the backbone of demonstrations during days of euphoric defiance and previously undreamed-of hope that Burma's military regime could be brought down by peaceful revolution. That hope has been crushed under the boots of government soldiers and intelligence agents and replaced by fear and dread.

A young woman, a domestic worker in Rangoon, described how one woman bystander who applauded the monks was rounded up. "My friend was taken away for clapping during the demonstrations. She had not marched. She came out of her house as the marchers went by and, for perhaps 30 seconds, smiled and clapped as the monks chanted. Her face was recorded on a military intelligence camera. She was taken and beaten. Now she is so scared she won't even leave her room to come and talk to me, to anyone."

Another Rangoon resident told the aid worker: "We all hear screams at night as they [the police] arrive to drag off a neighbour. We are torn between going to help them and hiding behind our doors. We hide behind our doors. We are ashamed. We are frightened."

Burmese intelligence agents are scrutinising photographs and video footage to identify demonstrators and bystanders. They have also arrested the owners of computers which they suspect were used to transmit images and testimonies out of the country. For each story smuggled out to The Independent, someone has risked arrest and imprisonment.

Hein Zay Kyaw (not his real name) received a telephone call last week telling him to be at a government compound where the military were releasing 42 people, among them Mr Kyaw's friend, missing since he was plucked from the edge of a demonstration on 26 September. Mr Kyaw told the aid worker: "The prisoners were let out of the trucks. Even though now they were safe, they were still so scared. They walked with their hands shielding their faces as if they were expecting blows. They were lined up in rows and sat down against the wall, still cowering. Their clothes were dirty, some stained with blood. Our friend had a clean T-shirt on. We were relieved because we thought this meant that he had not been beaten. We were wrong. He had been beaten on the head and the blood had soaked his shirt which he carried in a plastic bag."

The United States yesterday threatened unspecified new sanctions against Burma and called for an investigation into the death of Win Shwe.

White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in a statement: "The junta must stop the brutal treatment of its people and peacefully transition to democracy or face new sanctions from the United States."

The scale of the crackdown remains undocumented. The regime has banned journalists from entering Burma and has blocked internet access and phone lines.

Mark Farmaner of the Burma Campaign UK says the number of dead is possibly in the hundreds. "The regime covers up its atrocities. We will never know the true numbers," he said.

At the weekend the government said it has released more than half of the 2,171 people arrested, but exile groups estimate the number of detentions between 6,000 and 10,000.

In Rangoon, people say they are more frightened now than when soldiers were shooting on the streets.

"When there were demonstrations and soldiers on the streets, the world was watching," said a professional woman who watched the marchers from her office.

"But now the soldiers only come at night. They take anyone they can identify from their videos. People who clapped, who offered water to the monks, who knelt and prayed as they passed. People who happened to turn and watch as they passed by and their faces were caught on film. It is now we are most fearful. It is now we need the world to help us."

[bobdole]

Go Ron Paul
Statement on Burma, H Con Res 200
October 2, 2007
http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2007/cr100207h.htm

Madame Speaker, I rise in opposition to this legislation not because I do not sympathize with the plight of the oppressed people of Burma , particularly as demonstrated by the continued confinement of Aung San Suu Kyi. Any time a government represses its citizenry it is reprehensible. My objection to this legislation is twofold. First, the legislation calls on the United Nations Security Council to “take appropriate action” with regard to Burma  and its internal conditions. This sounds like an open door for an outside military intervention under the auspices of the United Nations, which is something I do not support.

More importantly, perhaps, I am concerned that while going around the world criticizing admittedly abhorrent governmental actions abroad we are ignoring the very dangerous erosions of our own civil liberties and way of life at home. Certainly it is objectionable that the Burmese government holds its own citizens in jails without trial. But what about the secret prisons that our own CIA operates around the globe that hold thousands of individuals indefinitely and without trial? Certainly it is objectionable that the government of Burma can declare Aung San Suu Kyi a political prisoner to be held in confinement. But what about the power that Congress has given the president to declare anyone around the world, including American citizens, “enemy combatants” subject to indefinite detention without trial? What about the “military commissions act” that may well subject Americans to military trial with secret evidence permitted and habeas corpus suspended?

So while I am by no means unsympathetic to the current situation in Burma , as an elected Member of the United States House of Representatives I strongly believe that we would do better to promote freedom around the world by paying better attention to our rapidly eroding freedom here at home. I urge my colleagues to consider their priorities more closely and to consider the much more effective approach of leading by example