Burma Riots were Instigated by CIA?

It was long planned and throughoutly rehearsed, when agents and provocateurs with the pricehike on gas in August got the final take on protest rallies.

Who made the monks march, a very unbuddhistic thing to do, against their own rulers?
As a religion Buddhism is non different than others, you adhere your ruler.

This article explores the details.

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The geopolitical stakes of 'Saffron Revolution'
By F William Engdahl

First it's a fact which few will argue that the present military dictatorship of the reclusive General Than Shwe is right up there when it comes to world-class tyrannies.

It's also a fact that Myanmar enjoys one of the world's lowest general living standards. Partly as a result of the ill-conceived 100% to 500% price hikes in gasoline and other fuels in August, inflation, the nominal trigger for the mass protests led by saffron-robed Buddhist monks, is unofficially estimated to have risen by 35%.

Ironically the demand to establish "market" energy prices came from the IMF and World Bank.

The UN estimates that the population of some 50 million inhabitants spend up to 70% of their monthly income on food alone. The recent fuel price hike makes matters unbearable for tens of millions.

Myanmar is also deeply involved in the world narcotics trade, ranking only behind Hamid Karzai's Afghanistan as a source for heroin. As well, it is said to be Southeast

Asia's largest producer of methamphetamines.

This is all understandable powder to unleash a social explosion of protest against the regime.

A very interesting article, that suggests the riots were instigated from the outside to force on Burma to give up some of its sovereignty for the better of the world community in the international policing of terrorist. After all Humbali was hiding out in Burma, before they caught him.

The sledge hammer is more likely to be used to make the junta allow bases for operations along its 3000 mile shoreline overlooking Bay of Bengal and Sea of Andaman way down to the Antarctic Sea, geo-political one of the most important stretches of space in the world.

That's why US secretly desire surveillance instalation and ready deployment bases on the Myanmar coast. Like it is now they only got an airbase on Banda Ache. To control the most trafficed, most importent trade route in the world, the Straits of Malacca.

A major part of the world trade goes through the Malacca Strait, 1.5 miles wide at Singapore. As much as 80 per cent of China's oil passes through there. Fact each day, more than 12 million barrels in oil supertankers pass through this narrow passage, most en route to the world's fastest-growing energy market, China, or to Japan.

Obvious it's a geopolitical spot as hot as the M East, but fortunately not in flames yet. Fire comes with enforcement, and whoever wants to enforce anything here must do with an opposition likely military from China. The Malacca Strait is their lifeline, they'll defend it, and makes understandable China's rush in building a 1800 mile gasline from deepwater port at Sittwe by the Bay of Bengal to Kumming deep inside Yunnan.

To cut out the Malacca Straits would be a huge strategic advance for China. That's the politic of China, with its involvement in Burma, who gladly provides sites for Chinese military instalations.

It is common sense to China with the US militarization of any part of the world holding fossil reserves, that better put your foot in the door before others do.

Since it became clear to China that the US was hell-bent on a unilateral militarization of the Middle East oil fields in 2003, Beijing has stepped up its engagement in Myanmar. Chinese energy and military security, not human rights concerns, drives their policy.

In recent years Beijing has poured billions of dollars in military assistance into Myanmar, including fighter, ground-attack and transport aircraft; tanks and armored personnel carriers; naval vessels and surface-to-air missiles. China has built up Myanmar railroads and roads and won permission to station its troops in Myanmar.

China, according to Indian defense sources, has also built a large electronic surveillance facility on Myanmar's Coco Islands and is building naval bases for access to the Indian Ocean.



SOURCE | www.atimes.com | Read more...

What I would fear is, they are preparing, making ready the next theater of conflict in the Wars of the Last Oil.

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Beside the facts Engdahl is dishing up, his main message seems to be, that not social dispair and misery was the trigger of late summer's 'spontaneous'' outbreaks of riots in Burma. They very well were the cause, but the well timed trigger was the World Bank imposing its order to the market. They knew people couldn't bear it, and they would riot. They only needed a little help from their friends.

The size and disciplin they were carried out with points, according to Engdahl to infiltration by professionally trained agents. He also names the US consulate in Chiang Mai as HQ of the operation.

I'm not sure what to mean about such a theory. It does make sense, but then the spontanity of the events, a tribute to the human spirit unbreakable as such, all those fine words and conceptions surrounding the event, they will have to go down the drain, if the rebellion really was instigated.

Like to hear your opinion.


[edit on 3/11/2007 by khunmoon]

i must admit, the US is very good at chess.
securing the estimated 200 billion barrels of iraq oil, imposing sactions on a major supply of russia's and china's oil and natural gas (iran) , installing a pro US regime in afghanistan to circumvent russia from caspian oil, trying to get bases in myanmar to control the strait of malacca.

the control or influence of energy for russia and china is an effective strategy.. own nothing, control everything.


www.workers.org...



[edit on 4-11-2007 by turbokid]

An article in opposition to Engdahl's above, claiming absolutely no strings attached in Burma.

By Cynthia Boaz: Burma's Uprising: People Power, Not Political Puppetry

In the past month, amid the flurry of reports and commentary in international media about the events in Burma, a disturbing theme has emerged among some media commentators. Ranging from the Asia Times and the South China Morning Post to a collection of skeptical Western bloggers, they make the claim that various Washington DC-based agencies and a few key political actors are actually pulling the strings in the Burmese uprising. The rationale behind this "foreign interference," as it has been termed by both the Burmese and Chinese governments, has been given as (take your pick): interests in oil and/or gas reserves, heroin, methamphetamines, geopolitical advantage, and power projection by the United States. While I am among the first to question the motives of the American administration when it comes to foreign policy, I find these claims absurdly cynical to the point of being delusional.

Whenever a mass rally takes place, someone will have done the foot work. The conception of spontanity spreading like rings in the water, because a handful of monks had an incident with government officials, and thus should have sparked the mushrooming of well organized protest over the country, might even for Burma be a little romantic.

The first misconception in the conspiracy theories stems from the coincidence that in the Burma case, US foreign policy and the interests of the Burmese movement are the same on at least one point: Both entities would like to see an end to military rule in that country.

How can you really be sure in that Cynthia?

This does not, however, constitute proof the Bush administration is behind the uprising. One of the key criteria for the success of broad-based nonviolent resistance is that it be indigenous.

Depends on who help you pay the bills.

And if the thesis that nonviolent struggle was simply another method for the projection of US power, how do these conspiracy theorists explain the successes of broad-based civilian movements in places like Chile (where the US had supported Pinochet) and the Philippines (whose ousted dictator Marcos had been a close friend of Ronald Reagan)? Are these cases simply anomalies?

No, they're cases gone wrong.

Another misconception comes from a degree of ignorance about how nonviolent struggle works. To claim nonviolent protests of the scale we witnessed in late September in Burma can be manufactured abroad is to grossly overestimate the influence of US agents and agencies. How could US agencies organize broad-based protests and manage to get hundreds of thousands to maintain nonviolent discipline half a world away, while these same agencies have, for 50 years, been unable to remove the now 81-year-old, and reportedly invalid, Fidel Castro from his perch only 90 miles from the US border and with a population one-fifth the size of Burma's? These kinds of claims show contempt for what the people of Burma are doing, which is to assert control of their own destiny. They have had enough of repression, fear and poverty. This is their struggle, and they deserve, like all people who are struggling for justice, respect for having sovereignty over their own lives and credit for their courage and sacrifice in the face of oppression.



SOURCE | truthout.org | Read more...

I have a feeling Cynthia might be a little blue eyed here.

Cynthia Boaz is assistant professor of political science and international studies at the State University of New York at Brockport, and is on the academic advisory committee of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.

okay im sorry, but I got an off-topic question

In 1954, U.S. invaded guatemala
CIA directed exile invasion and overthrow of leftist government; military junta installed.

So, did they install Junta in Burma too?

Great post! I thought I was the only one (besides the junta itself) who had a suspicion that there were foreign influences.

Things like these [usually] don't just happen.

Here's a post originally in my Burma Watch thread, but it's a prove of Western involvement in Burma and a program only to consolidate the power holders.


In the beginning of October news broke, that Australia Police train Burma's police force. Never a word in Mainstream of course.

"Many of the senior police and intelligence officers who are currently involved in the Burmese Government crackdown against the pro-democracy movement were probably trained by the Australian Federal Police at a centre funded by the Australian aid program," Kate Wheen, spokesperson of AIDWATCH said in response.

Australia Funding Intelligence Training In Burma

In 2004-2005 AUSAID funded training 'for senior officials in the theory of counter terrorism recognition and collaboration for combating terrorism'. The project funded counter-terrorism workshops, later delivered to 600 government personnel in Burma.

Since 2004 the Australian Government has funded Burmese intelligence training through the 'Jakarta Centre for Law Enforcement Cooperation' . The Centre receives $6 million a year from the Attorney Generals Department, funds attributed to the Australian Government aid effort.

The Centre plays an important role in training Burmese police and intelligence officers. In November 2006, for instance, 20 senior intelligence officers from the Burmese government were trained by three Australian Federal Police at the Centre.

Police intelligence training directly serves the military regime. In Burma there is no civil command: since 1995 the Police force in Burma has come under the control of the military, the Tatmadaw. Police intelligence and the 'Special Branch' is subordinate to regional military command structures. Human rights groups such as the New York-based Human Rights Watch and the Brussels based International Crisis Group highlight the increased use of police intelligence against pro-democracy groups in Burma, especially since 2004. Intelligence and police training for the Burmese Government, paid for by Australian taxpayer, directly implicates the Australian Government in these human rights abuses.



SOURCE | burmagateway.org | Read more...

The news wasn't late to hit before a demonstration against this program, funded under schemes of terrorist fighting, was arranged.

Funny enough I have to go to an obscure, ethnic news site to get the information.

Activists to hold rally demanding Australia to stop secret cooperation
By Sai Awn Tai

A major rally to demand that the Australian government to stop its secret cooperation with the Burmese Military Junta will be held in Sydney on November 15.

The rally organised by the Sydney based Joint Action Committee for Democracy in Burma (JACDB) will take place at Martin Place, Sydney.

Same source gave me the info on police training as well.
No, it's cerntainly not mainstream, they don't touch stuff like this.

Just recently the Manly Daily local newspapers revealed that five police officers from Burma had been trained at the Australian Institute of Police Management in Manly, Sydney over the past five years.



SOURCE | shanland.org | Read more...

Assies, don't forget to join the demo -- 6 days from now.