ဆီပုံးမွ မွတ္သားစရာ

ေမာင္ေက်ာင္းသား: ဆရာေတာ္ ဦးေဆကိႏၵ နဲ႔ တပည္႔ေတြဟာ ဟာ ခုဆိုရင္ အဲဒီေဒသ ေတြအားလံုးကို အိမ္သာေတြ လိုက္လွဴဖို႔ ျပင္ဆင္ေနပါၿပီ ၊ ဂ်ာနယ္အေဟာင္း နဲ႔ သတင္းစာအေဟာင္းေတြ အလွဴခံေနတယ္လို႔ ၾကားပါတယ္

14 May 08, 00:24
ဦးသိန္းေမာင္: ရေ၀ႏြယ္အင္းမ ဦးရာဇိႏၵ ၀၉၅၁၂၈၅၈၇ ၊ ဦးစေႏၵာဘာသ ၀၁၅၆၄၅၈၈ ၀၁၇၂၆၉၄၀ ၊ ေအာင္ဆန္း ဦကိတၱသာရ ၀၁၆၄၁၉၆၆ ၊ ျဖဴး ဦးနာရပတိ ၀၁၅၃၀၀၆၈ ၀၁၅၀၁၈၄၆ ၊ ဓမၼဒူတ ဦး၀ိမလ ၀၉၅၁၈၅၅၆၃ ၊ ၀၁၄၄၁၀၁၄၇

14 May 08, 00:24
ဦးသိန္းေမာင္: ပိုင္းေလာ႔ ဦးေဇယ်ပဏၭိတ ၀၉၅၁၉၆၁၂၇ ၊ ဦးဆႏၵာဓိက ေရႊပါရမီ ၀၁၂၁၀၄၆၂ ၀၁၂၂၆၅၀၀ ၊ ဆင္ျဖဴေတာင္ ဦဂုဏိႏၵ ၀၁၅၄၀၈၅၀ ၊ ေရႊည၀ါ ဦးပညာသီဟ ၀၁၅၁၀၅၆၆ ၊ ဦး၀ိလာသဂၢ ၀၉၅၁၈၉၈၂၈ ၊

14 May 08, 00:24
ဦးသိန္းေမာင္: ဦးေဒ၀ိႏၵာဘိ၀ံသ ၀၉၂၁၃၁၂၆၅ ၊ ဦး၀ီရိယ ေတာင္စြန္း ၀၉၂၀၂၆၀၃၁ ၀၁၆၂၀၂၆၅ ၊ တြံေတး ဦးဣႏၵက ၀၉၅၀၁၈၀၈၅ ၀၁၅၈၀၄၅၄ ၊ ခင္မကန္ ဦးေခမိႏၵ ၀၁၅၉၁၃၄၈ ၊ မူလဓမၼ ဦး၀ိဇယ ၀၉၂၀၂၃၇၁၂ ၊

Bush administration moves to exploit Burma cyclone disaster

The Bush administration lost no time in seeking to exploit the devastating tragedy in Burma (Myanmar). It has seized upon the cyclone that struck the country over the weekend, killed at least 20,000 and likely many more, to aggressively push its foreign policy agenda in Asia.

On Tuesday, Bush held a special ceremony at the White House to sign a bill giving Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi a Congressional Gold Medal. He used the occasion to place deliberately provocative conditions on any disbursement of aid to the ravaged country, beyond an initial token sum.

“The United States has made an initial aid contribution, but we want to do a lot more,” Bush declared. “We’re prepared to move US Navy assets to help find those who’ve lost their lives, to help find the missing, to help stabilize the situation. But in order to do so, the military junta must allow our disaster assessment teams into the country.”

So far, the US embassy has authorized the release of a paltry $250,000—less than half the cost of a single Tomahawk cruse missile of the type used by the US Navy to kill a Somali rebel last week. Later Tuesday, the administration pledged an additional $3 million to be allocated by a USAID disaster response team.

The very fact that the US is making aid to Burma conditional upon the satisfaction of certain demands is itself an outrage. Bush did not say why it was necessary for the US to carry out its own assessment in order to release more aid, nor did he elaborate on what was meant by promises that the US military would help “stabilize the situation.” US Navy ships are standing by off the coast of Thailand to intervene.

These pledges are certainly not intended as selfless humanitarian gestures. The Bush administration has been seeking to undermine the Burmese military regime for years and seized on protests last year by Buddhist monks to slap economic sanctions on the country and its rulers. There is no doubt that the United States would be happy to exploit the current tragedy to get a military foothold in the country.

The World Socialist Web Site holds no brief for the Burmese military junta, a brutal regime that has exercised dictatorial control over a largely impoverished country. However, US and European machinations, including the promotion of Suu Kyi, have nothing to do with concern for the democratic rights or economic well-being of the population. As always, the humanitarian pretensions of the US government are carefully calibrated to coincide with the interests of the American ruling class.

In the case of Burma, the US is interested in countering the influence of China, which has closer ties with the military regime and sees the country as a critical point of access into the Indian Ocean. As far as the Bush administration is concerned, the population of the country is only a bargaining chip in the pursuit of geo-strategic objectives.

US energy giants, including the Chevron oil corporation, also have interests in Burma. While the Bush administration has placed economic sanctions on the country, these have not affected Chevron’s multibillion-dollar investments through its subsidiary Unocal. Human rights groups have accused Chevron of complicity in abuses in Burma intended to protect its pipeline routes.

The statements by the Bush administration must also be seen in the context of its treatment of populations around the world, including in the United States itself. On Monday, US First Lady Laura Bush was the first from the White House to respond to the cyclone, using the opportunity to chastise the government for failing to warn the population and adequately prepare for the consequences.

“Although they were aware of the threat,” she said, “Burma’s state-run media failed to issue a timely warning to citizens in the storm’s path. The response to the cyclone is just the most recent example of the junta’s failure to meet its people’s basic needs.”

The hypocrisy and cynicism of this statement are so glaring that one wonders if it is not intentionally provocative. This August 29 will mark the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the massive storm that struck Louisiana and Mississippi, killing at least 1,800 people. The hurricane destroyed and flooded New Orleans, a major American city.

The US and local governments had been aware for decades of the potential for a deadly flood in New Orleans, but there was no evacuation plan in place, and no plan to meet the needs of those trapped or displaced. Tens of thousands remained trapped for days in the Louisiana Superdome. Many thousands who lost their homes were placed in temporary FEMA trailers, and in 2007 it was revealed that these trailers contained extremely high levels of formaldehyde, a toxic chemical.

The devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina was largely preventable, but due to gross governmental indifference and negligence, the levee systems of New Orleans were denied necessary investments and allowed to decay—only one of many examples of the American government’s “failure to meet its people’s basic needs.”


by Joe Kay

Global Research, May 9, 2008
(ယုံျကည္ခ်က္။ ။ ဒီမုိကေရစီ၊ လူအခြင့္အေရးဆုိတာ စာရြက္ေပၚမွာပဲရွိပါတယ္။ ဗုဒၶတရားေတာ္နဲ႔ အညီ ေလာဘ၊ ေဒါသ၊ ေမာဟ နည္းေအာင္ လုပ္ခ်င္းသည္သာ လက္ေတြ႔က်ေသာ ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးစံနစ္ျဖစ္ေပၚ လာေစမည္ျဖစ္ပါသည္။)

Why Myanmar Should Fear Us

I understand why the Myanmar government is rejecting our help. This doesn’t mean that I agree with dictatorships, it just means that we should look at our own belly before observing that of our neighbor’s, says Pablo Ouziel.


In the chaotic “west” it is often difficult to gain the attention of the public, but one must be committed to trying due to the severity of our current existential crisis. We are psychotic as a society, we have become so dumb and manipulable that we are truly being led towards digging our own grave and smiling while working. We cannot go on like this. We cannot pretend that we are a decent society with good intentions any longer. We are not! The “west” as a civilization is corrupt and decrepit, “we” are not the bearers of morality in the eyes of the “other” peoples. We are not an exemplary civilization which people admire and adulate. We are too arrogant and ignorant to realize, that we are seen by the “others” like the enemy, because “we” are.

As a collective of people, the “west” believes itself to be the holder of the truth, the one which understands what is good for the world. This “west” doesn’t exist however, it is a figment of our imagination, a division which has been indoctrinated to make us feel we are superior. Through “our” education systems, “our” media, “our” governments, “our” corporations, “our” art. We are so indoctrinated in industrialized information societies, that we regurgitate to each other the propaganda which is fed to us on a daily basis. This situation must change, because we are collapsing and it can only be reversed by the collective strength of the whole population. Otherwise we will be bombed out of our homes by those we so love to call terrorists. They are terrorists, but terror is what “we” are bringing to their lands and their homes, and that is why they are terrorizing “us”.

As peoples in industrialized information societies, we are looking at the world like a big videogame in which we can solve everyone’s problems because we are civilized. We are not! We have huge internal problems. Inside “our” walls, big CEO’s are earning $400 million for their exploits in the oil of other countries, while illegal immigrants are scrambling for work inside “our” factories. We have millions of people loosing their homes, while banks are being saved thanks to our taxes. If inside our walls, we are leaving our own people behind, we are watching our neighbors lose their jobs and doing little to help them. How can we expect those outside of our walls to trust us when we tell them we are going to help them?

How can we expect the evil military dictatorship of Myanmar to feel comfortable accepting our help? After all, the last time Cuba offered Americans help with Katrina, their help was rejected and the “world” accepted it as normal. Normal, while American people where dying and there were not enough professional hands to help. We in the industrialized information society believe that while “they” have evil dictators, “we” have benevolent democratic institutions which are the choice of the people. But we are blinding ourselves from the reality which we are blatantly living. Our democratic institutions are in the hands of very powerful organizations, our corporations are not ours, they belong to very powerful groups. Our legal system is built to defend those interests, and the media is one of their many propaganda tools. Even our churches are infested with blood money, yet many go to church to feel good about themselves.

How can Christians for example feel good, when they see the cross blessing western soldiers going to kill in Iraq? We have destroyed that country, we should all be confessing our guilt, not blessing our soldiers. The biggest blessing those innocent young “killing machines” could have, is to be brought back to their land, with all their limbs in place, and given some therapy. They need it after having been manipulated into committing such terrible crimes against the people of Iraq.

How can we honestly believe that while our governments have done such a horrible thing in Iraq, their intentions are good everywhere else? But that is a very difficult question to ask oneself and therefore only the bravest make the effort. The answer is not a pleasant one. In the industrialized information society, we should all go to bed tonight trying hard to see our own reality. We must understand that we are the oppressors holding the rest of the world hostage in order to maintain our power. In Iraq last week our media announced that while the whole country is in ruin, a Disneyworld will be built outside of the Green Zone, and nobody reacted. After the Tsunami in 2004, five star beachfront resorts for the rich were raised where once laid the foundations of fishermen homes, nobody reacted then. Yet we do react when Myanmar rejects our help. I would reject it, looking ahead at the consequences for the country.

In the industrialized information society we only have two ways of going to help. Either we come with the barrel of the gun backed by fake diplomacy, destroying countries to borrow their resources. Or we go to help with our NGO’s and then our companies follow for the reconstruction, building factories and offices for our companies, resorts for the rich, and retirement homes for the old. Either way, the locals always end up working for us. I have seen it with my own eyes, I do not need the television to tell me. Once in Laos, I saw a group of fat rich and ugly European NGO directors, getting drunk inside a posh restaurant discussing the future development of that country. In the meantime, the local chauffer waited outside for hours in his impeccable white uniform with white gloves, in an impeccably clean white luxury 4x4. That pretty much defines through my own experience the way we “develop” peoples like to go around the world helping. It is sad but it is very true. I understand why the Myanmar government is rejecting our help. This doesn’t mean that I agree with dictatorships, it just means that we should look at our own belly before observing that of our neighbor’s. People in Haiti or Gaza a few weeks ago, or today would welcome the help we are willing to offer Myanmar. Give it to them, after all there are so many to help in the world, that we shouldn’t be making politicized media events out of the misery of others.

Pablo Ouziel is a sociologist and freelance writer

မုန္တုိင္းကယ္ဆယ္ေရး

၁။ ေက်ာ္သူ ဦးစီးတဲ့ နာေရးကူညီမႈအသင္းမွလည္း ယေန႔မွ စၿပီး နယ္လွည့္ ေဆးကုသမႈ၊ ကယ္ဆယ္ေရးပစၥည္းမ်ား လႈဒါန္းမႈတို႔ကို ေဆာင္ရြက္မည္ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္းသိရသည္။ ယခင္ေန႔မ်ားက ဆန္မ်ားသြားေရာက္လႈဒါန္းမႈမ်ား ရိွေသာ္လည္း ယခုအၾကိမ္တြင္မူ အႏုပညာရွင္မ်ားႏွင့္ ဆရာ၀န္မ်ားက ပူးေပါင္းလိုက္ပါမည္ဟု သိရိွရသည္။

၂။ အမ်ိဳးသားစီမံကိန္း၀န္ၾကီး ဦးစိုးသာႏွင့္ က်န္၀န္ႀကီးမ်ား UN အဖြဲ႕အစည္းမ်ား၊ INGO မ်ားႏွင့္ ေမ ၁၁ ညေနတြင္ ေတြ႔ဆံုၿပီး ကယ္ဆယ္ေရးလုပ္ငန္းမ်ားႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္၍ ညိွႏိႈ္င္းေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့သည္။ ဦးစိုးသာက လက္ရိွအခ်ိန္တြင္ ကယ္ဆယ္ေရးအတြက္ ေနာက္တန္းအေျခစိုက္စခန္း သံုးခု၊ အလယ္တန္းစခန္း ေျခာက္ခု၊ ေရွ႕တန္းစခန္း ၁၂ ခုဖြင့္ၿပီး ကယ္ဆယ္ေရးပစၥည္းမ်ား ျဖန္႔ေ၀ေန ေၾကာင္းႏွင့္ ႏုိင္ငံေတာ္မွ လက္ရိွအခ်ိန္ထိ က်ပ္ ၂၀ ဘီလီယံ သံုးစြဲျပီးျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ေျပာၾကား ခဲ့သည္။

၃။ ကယ္ဆယ္ေရးပစၥည္းမ်ားကို ေလယာဥ္တစ္စီး၊ ရဟတ္ယာဥ္ ၈ စီး၊ ေရတပ္ႏွင့့္ ျပည္တြင္းေရေၾကာင္းသေဘၤာ ၁၆ စီး အသံုးျပဳၿပီး ပို႔ေဆာင္လွ်က္ရိွရာ ေမ ၁၁ရက္ေန႔တြင္ တန္ ၅၀၀ ပို႔ေဆာင္ ႏုိင္ခဲ့ေၾကာင္း အစိုးရသတင္းစာမ်ားတြင္ ေဖာ္ျပထားသည္။

၄။ ေမ ၁၁ ကယ္ဆယ္ေရးပစၥည္းေရာက္ရိွမႈ

(က) ကမာၻ႔စားနပ္ရိကၡာအစီအစဥ္မွ ေလယာဥ္ႏွစ္စီး ကယ္ဆယ္ေရးပစၥည္း ၃၃ တန္။

( ခ) ႏုိင္ငံတကာၾကက္ေျခနီေကာ္မတီမွ ေဆးႏွင့္ ေရသန္႔စက္မ်ား ၃၅ တန္။

( ဂ) ထိုင္းဘုရင္မင္းျမတ္မွ ရြက္ထည္တဲ ၂၅ လံုးႏွင့္ ကယ္ဆယ္ေရးပစၥည္း ၁၃ တန္။

(ဃ) ဂရိႏုိင္ငံမွ ရြက္ထည္တဲ ၆၀ ႏွင့္ ကယ္ဆယ္ေရးပစၥည္း ၁၈ တန္။

၅။ လွဳဒါန္းမႈမ်ား

(က) ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္ အေရွ႕ပိုင္းျပည္သူမ်ားက က်ပ္သိန္းႏွစ္ေထာင္ရွစ္ရာေက်ာ္တန္ဖိုးရိွ ေငြႏွင့္ ပစၥည္းမ်ား။

( ခ) ထိုင္းၾကက္ေျခနီအဖြဲ႔မွ ဘတ္ ဆယ္သိန္း။

( ဂ) တရုတ္သံရံုးမွ ေဒၚလာ ႏွစ္ေသာင္း။

(ဃ) တရုတ္ကုန္သည္ၾကီးမ်ားအသင္းမွ ေဒၚလာ ေျခာက္ေထာင္။

(င) ေမ ၁၀အထိ ျပည္တြင္းမွ အလႈရွင္မ်ားလႈဒါန္းမႈမွာ ေငြ၊ ပစၥည္း သန္းေလးေထာင္ေက်ာ္ ရိွသြားၿပီ ျဖစ္ ေၾကာင္း သတင္းစာတြင္ေဖာ္ျပထားသည္။


** အထက္ပါသတင္းမ်ားကုိ ျကည့္ျပီး လွဴဖုိ႔မလုိအပ္ေတာ့ဘူး မယူဆပါႏွင့္။ ထုိပစၥည္းမ်ားသည္ ဒုကၡသည္ တစ္သန္းအတြက္ လုံး၀ မလုံေလာက္ပါ။ သတင္းေကာင္းေလးနဲ႔ စိတ္ကုိလန္းဆန္းေစဖုိ႔ပါ။ တာ၀န္မဲ့ဖုိ႔အတြက္ မဟုတ္ပါ။

Why the propaganda campaign for international intervention in Burma?

The catastrophe wrought by Cyclone Nargis on the Burmese people has provoked an extraordinary campaign by the US and allied powers, and in the international media, demanding that the military junta open its borders to aid and aid officials as well as to American military aircraft, troops and warships. Once again an attempt is being made to stampede public opinion with heartrending images of desperate survivors and devastated towns, accompanied by an incessant drumbeat condemning the Burmese regime for its inadequate aid efforts, its insularity, and its failure to accept international, especially American, aid.

One should immediately pause and recall the outcome of similar “humanitarian” exercises. In 1999, the plight of Kosovan refugees was exploited by the US and its allies to wage war against Serbia and transform the province into a NATO protectorate largely “cleansed” of its Serbian minority. In the same year, Australia, with the backing of the US, used the violence of Indonesian-backed militias to justify a military intervention into East Timor to install a regime sympathetic to Canberra’s economic and strategic interests. After nearly a decade the local populations in both countries continue to live in appalling conditions, with none of their fundamental needs having been met.

Undoubtedly a huge social tragedy has taken place over the past week. Official Burmese figures put the number of dead and missing at more than 60,000. UN officials estimate the death toll at 100,000 and the number of people severely affected by the cyclone at nearly 2 million. Much of the huge Irrawaddy delta has been devastated by the storm surges whipped up by Cyclone Nargis, which swamped the low-lying land. Entire towns and villages have been washed away, leaving scenes that recall the destruction produced by the December 2004 tsunami along the coasts of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand.

It is also true that the Burmese junta is a brutal regime that has repeatedly gunned down anti-government protesters in order to maintain its own power and privileges. Its rescue efforts are certainly hampered not only by the economic backwardness of the country, but also by the regime’s callous indifference to the plight of the Burmese people. Given the current media campaign, one should approach all press reports with considerable caution. But there is little doubt that many cyclone victims are being left to fend for themselves—as indeed were the survivors of the 2004 tsunami by governments of the worst hit countries.

No one, however, should place any credibility in the protestations of concern from the Bush administration and its allies. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice insisted on Wednesday that Washington’s cyclone assistance was “not a matter of politics” but rather “a matter of a humanitarian crisis”. “What remains is for the Burmese government to allow the international community to help its people,” Rice declared.

In reality, all American assistance comes with political strings attached. The Bush administration has offered a paltry $3.5 million in financial aid and is pushing for the entry of US officials, aid workers and military personnel to handle emergency relief operations rather than allow Burmese authorities to carry them out. At the same time, the US and its European allies continue to maintain sanctions against the Burmese regime that have compounded the country’s economic difficulties. In the week prior to the cyclone, the Bush administration strengthened its bans on trade and investment and the freezing of assets, all of which remain in place except for a slight easing of restrictions on financial aid.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner suggested on Wednesday that the UN Security Council be convened to invoke its “responsibility to protect” to override Burmese national sovereignty and deliver international aid, with or without the junta’s approval. The “responsibility to protect” resolution, which has a history dating back to the 1999 NATO war on Yugoslavia, was passed in 2006 as an instrument for the major powers to justify military aggression on the grounds of preventing “genocide, war, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity”. Kouchner’s suggestion would extent the scope for such interventions to natural disasters such as Cyclone Nargis.

Kouchner’s comments have yet to be publicly supported by Washington, but the suggestion is clearly being discussed within the administration. The US ambassador to the UN, Zalmay Khalilzad, declared that most governments were “outraged” by the slowness of the Burmese regime to accept international aid. Alluding to the UN Security Council powers, he added: “A government has responsibility to protect its own people, to provide for its people.... It should be a no-brainer to accept the offer made by the international community.”

Director of the US Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, Ky Luu, was more explicit. He indicated that unilateral air drops by US military aircraft was one of the options being considered if the junta continued to refuse to accept American aid. Four US warships are already heading towards Burma and Navy helicopters and Air Force cargo planes have been stationed in neighbouring Thailand. US Defence Secretary Robert Gates commented that he could not imagine a military intervention without Burmese permission. Defence Department spokesman Bryan Whitman noted: “If you’re not asked and it’s not requested, it’s considered an invasion.” Nevertheless, it is clear that the military option and its political ramifications are being actively discussed.


The Asian tsunami

As part of the campaign to pressure the Burmese junta, a new mythology is being created to paint the international response to the Asian tsunami as a model of rapid, efficient and compassionate aid delivery by all involved. Contrasts are increasingly being made between the Burmese regime today and its “democratic” counterparts in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand in 2004.

Any objective examination of the 2004 tragedy, however, reveals a very different picture. The huge tsunami waves engulfed impoverished villages around the Bay of Bengal on December 26. For days, as the death toll quickly mounted into the tens of thousands, US President Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other world leaders failed to make any statement on the disaster. When they finally broke their vacations, their collective contempt for the fate of the victims was revealed in their perfunctory comments and pathetic offers of aid. It was only after an outpouring of sympathy and donations from working people around the world, aghast at the enormity of the disaster, that the US and major powers began to act.

In the worst affected countries, emergency relief efforts were hamstrung by red tape and political agendas, of both the local regimes and the donor countries. The Indonesian and Sri Lankan governments had been waging brutal long-running wars against separatist movements and were extremely reluctant to allow aid organisations, let alone foreign militaries, into the disaster zones. Far from helping the victims, the Indonesian military seized the opportunity to intensify its operations against Achnese rebels. In Sri Lanka, attempts to establish a joint aid body with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) under the auspices of the 2002 ceasefire collapsed, amid bitter communal recriminations over any official recognition of the separatists.

The Indian government insisted that it would control its own relief operations and dismissed any suggestion that foreign militaries should be involved. The Indian military was particularly sensitive to the presence of international aid workers in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which were among the worst hit areas, because of the presence of strategic navy and air force bases there. More than three years later, thousands of tsunami victims on the islands, as well as in other parts of India, Indonesia and Sri Lanka, are still living in squalid conditions in temporary accommodation.

No one in ruling circles in the US or Europe suggested at the time that a military operation should be mounted to override Indian sovereignty or to make unilateral air drops over the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. In the case of Sri Lanka and Indonesia, the governments eventually permitted the US military to assist in aid operations on their territories. In both cases, Washington’s overriding purpose was political—to forge closer working relations with the militaries of the two countries as well as to set a precedent, which is now being invoked to exert pressure on the Burmese junta.

US Secretary of State Rice bluntly told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January 2005 that the tsunami constituted “a wonderful opportunity to show not just the US government, but the heart of the American people... And I think it has paid great dividends for us.” Rice now declares that US aid offers to Burma are “not a matter of politics”, but the Bush administration is intent on transforming this latest disaster into a new political “opportunity” to advance its strategic and economic interests in the region.


Strategic interests

The decision of the Burmese junta to selectively accept aid from sympathetic countries such as China, India and Thailand, and not the US, is hardly surprising. The Bush administration has made little secret of the fact that it favours “regime change” in Burma—the removal of the military regime and its replacement by a government, headed by opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, more amenable to Washington’s interests and to opening up the country to foreign investors.

The US targetting of the junta has nothing to do with concern for the democratic rights or the welfare of the Burmese people. Washington’s hostility towards the Burmese regime is driven above all by the latter’s close association with China, regarded by the US as its main potential rival. Over the past eight years, the Bush administration has pursued a strategy of strengthening military ties and establishing bases in a string of countries around China—from South Korea and Japan to the Philippines, Australia and Indonesia and around to India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Central Asia republics.

Burma is a significant hole in US efforts to “contain” China. The country sits next to the strategic Strait of Malacca—the major sea-lane linking North East Asia, including China, with the energy resources of the Middle East and Africa. Control of such “choke points” has long been central to American naval plans. China has assisted Burma in building various naval facilities and counts on access to Burmese ports as part of its efforts to protect shipping lanes that are vital for its own economy.

The international media is already making criticisms of China for failing to exert more pressure on its ally to open up to international aid. US Secretary of State Rice phoned her counterpart in Beijing this week to push the Chinese government to exert more pressure on Burma. If the Bush administration did decide to press for a UN resolution to intervene, Beijing would quickly become a more direct target of vilification. China has opposed any move to raise the cyclone disaster in the UN Security Council.

There is also a broader economic agenda behind Washington’s hostility to the Burmese junta. For decades, it has maintained a largely shut-in, isolated economy in which military-run enterprises still dominate the key sectors. For American corporations, the country is a new potential source of cheap labour as well as critical resources, including oil and gas. The US administration has quietly allowed the Chevron oil corporation to proceed with its multi-million dollar investments in Burma, but such operations are hindered by bad relations between the two countries.

The Bush administration is no more motivated by humanitarian concerns in Burma than it is in Iraq or Afghanistan. In rejecting the latest lies and hypocrisy from the White House, it is necessary to consider the fundamental issues involved. Why do such catastrophes repeatedly hit the most vulnerable layers of the world’s population? Why do disease, hunger and poverty continue to ravage the masses of Asia, Africa and Latin America?

The resources exist to abolish suffering and want, as well as to minimise the impact of natural disasters such as Cyclone Nargis. Over the past three decades, the globalisation of production has vastly expanded mankind’s economic capacity, establishing the basis for the rational planning and deployment of resources on a world scale to ensure a decent standard of living for people in every part of the globe. Under capitalism, however, this huge economic and scientific capacity is exploited to provide profits for the wealthy few, while the vast majority, including in the major industrialised countries, struggle to survive from day to day.

Poverty and unemployment are no aberration. The vast layers of the world’s urban and rural poor are an essential feature of global capitalism. They form a vast reserve army of labour that is used as a constant downward pressure on the wages and conditions of the working class internationally. The only means for abolishing the immense and deepening chasm between rich and poor is through the revolutionary restructuring of society along socialist lines, so that the burning needs of the overwhelming majority of humanity take precedence over the profit requirements of the few.

by Peter Symonds
Global Research, May 11, 2008

ေမ 10 သတင္းမ်ား

၁။ WFP မွ ေနာက္ထပ္ေလယာဥ္ႏွစ္စီးေစလႊတ္မည္ျဖစ္ေၾကာင့္ ေျပာၾကားခဲ့သည္။ ယမန္ေန႔က ေပၚထြက္ခဲ့သည့္ ေပးပို႔ခဲ့သည္ပစၥည္းမ်ားကို ျဖန္႕ေ၀မည့္စနစ္ႏွင့္ပတ္သက္ၿပီး အစိုးရႏွင့္ ေဆြးေႏြးေနေၾကာင္း၊ ေမ ၈ ရက္ေန႔က ေပးပို႔ခဲ့သည့္ လူ ႏွစ္ေသာင္းတစ္ေထာင္အတြက္ အထူးအဟာရ ျဖည့္တင္းထားသည့္ ဘီစကစ္မ်ားကိုမူ ၂၄ နာရီအတြင္း အစိုးရႏွင့္ ပူးေပါင္းၿပီး မုန္တိုင္းဒဏ္ ျပင္းထန္စြာခံခဲ့ရေသာ ေဒသမ်ားသို႔ ျဖန္႔ေ၀ေပးၿပီးျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း WFP ေၾကညာခ်က္တြင္ ေဖာ္ျပထားသည္။

၂။ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံေတာင္ပိုင္းတြင္ လာမည့္ ၂၄ နာရီအတြင္း မိုးရြာသြန္းႏုိင္ေၾကာင္းႏွင့္ အခ်ိဳ႕ေနရာမ်ားတြင္ မိုးၾကီးနိုင္ေၾကာင္း၊ သို႔ေသာ္ မုန္တိုင္းတိုက္ခိုက္ျခင္းမဟုတ္ေၾကာင္း ဖိလစ္ပိုင္ႏုိင္ငံအနီးတြင္ ျဖစ္ေပၚေနေသာ မုန္တိုင္း၏ အက်ိဳးသက္ေရာက္မႈ ေၾကာင့္ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ျမန္မာအသံမွ ေၾကညာသြားသည္။

၃။ ယေန႔မနက္မွစၿပီး ရန္ကုန္တိုင္းမွ ေလေဘးဒုကၡသည္မ်ားကို ႏုိင္ငံတကာမွ ေပးပို႔ခဲ့သည့္ မိုးကာတဲႏွင့္ ပလတ္စတစ္စမ်ား ျဖန္႔ေ၀လွ်က္ရိွသည္။

၄။ ယမန္ေန႔က လိႈင္သာယာ၊ ေရႊျပည္သာစေသာ ၿမိဳ႕နယ္မ်ားတြင္ ေဆာက္လုပ္ေရးကုမၸဏီမ်ားက အိမ္ေထာင္စု တစ္စုလွ်င္ သြတ္ႏွစ္ခ်ပ္ႏႈန္းေရာင္းခ်ေပးခဲ့သည္။ သို႔ေသာ္ ထုိသြတ္မ်ားကိုတဆင့္ ျပန္လည္ေရာင္းစားမႈမ်ားရိွခဲ့သျဖင့္ သက္ဆုိင္ရာဆိုင္မ်ားတြင္သာ သတ္မွတ္ေစ်းျဖင့္ ေရာင္းခ်ေပး မည္ဟု သိရိွရသည္။

၅။ ယေန႔ မနက္တြင္ ဘုရင္ေနာင္တံတားေပၚမွ ဧရာ၀တီတိုင္းဘက္သို႔ ကယ္ဆယ္ေရး ပစၥည္းမ်ား တင္ထားသည့္ စစ္ကား ငါးဆယ္ခန္႔ ျဖတ္သြားခဲ့သည္။

ပိေတာက္ေျမမွ ကူးယူေဖၚျပပါသည္

** အထက္ပါသတင္းမ်ားကုိ ျကည့္ျပီး လွဴဖုိ႔မလုိအပ္ေတာ့ဘူး မယူဆပါႏွင့္။ ထုိပစၥည္းမ်ားသည္ ဒုကၡသည္ တစ္သန္းအတြက္ လုံး၀ မလုံေလာက္ပါ။ သတင္းေကာင္းေလးနဲ႔ စိတ္ကုိလန္းဆန္းေစဖုိ႔ပါ။ တာ၀န္မဲ့ဖုိ႔အတြက္ မဟုတ္ပါ။

ျမန္မာႏုိ္င္ငံအေနျဖင့္ ႏုိင္ငံတကာအကူအညီမ်ားကို လက္ခံေနေၾကာင္း ထပ္မံေျပာၾကားခဲ့ျခင္း

ျမန္မာဒုတိယႏုိင္ငံျခားေရး၀န္ႀကီး ဦးေက်ာ္သူက ေမ ၉ ညေနတြင္ အေမရိကန္သံရံုး ယာယီတာ၀န္ခံ မစၥရွာရီ ဗီလာရိုစာကို ေခၚယူေတြ႔ဆံုခဲ့သည္။ ဦးေက်ာ္သူက ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံက မိမိႏွင့္ သင့္ျမတ္ေသာ ႏုိင္ငံမ်ားထံမွ အကူအညီကိုသာယူၿပီး အေနာက္ႏုိင္ငံမ်ားမွ အကူအညီကို ျငင္းပယ္ေနသည္ဟု မမွန္မကန္သတင္းမ်ား ေပၚထြက္ေနမႈႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္ၿပီး ရွင္းလင္းေျပာၾကားခဲ့ေၾကာင္း ျမန္မာ့အသံ ည ၈ နာရီသတင္းတြင္ ေဖာ္ျပသြားသည္။

ဦးေက်ာ္သူက ေမ ၅ ရက္ေန႔တြင္ႏုိင္ငံျခားေရး၀န္ႀကီးက သံတမန္မ်ားကို ေတြ႔ဆံုစဥ္ကပင္ အေရးေပၚ လုိအပ္ေသာပစၥည္းမ်ားကို မည္သည့္ႏုိင္ငံမွ မဆိုလက္ခံမည္ျဖစ္သည္ကို ေျပာခဲ့ၿပီးျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း၊ မည္သည့္ႏုိ္င္ငံမွမဆို ေပးပို႔သည့္ ကယ္ဆယ္ေရးပစၥည္းမ်ားကို ေလဆိပ္၊ သေဘၤာဆိပ္မ်ား တြင္လက္ခံၿပီး ေလေဘးသင့္ေဒသမ်ားသို႔ ခ်က္ျခင္းျဖန္႕ေ၀ေပးေနေၾကာင္းႏွင့္ မည္သည့္ႏုိ္င္ငံ မည္သည့္အဖြဲ႕အစည္း၏ ကယ္ဆယ္ေရးပစၥည္းႏွင့္ ေငြေၾကးလွဳဒါန္းမႈမ်ားကို ျငင္းပယ္ခဲ့ျခင္း မရိွေၾကာင္း ထပ္မံအတည္ျပဳ ေျပာၾကားသြားသည္။ အေမရိကန္သံရံုးယာယီတာ၀န္ခံက ကယ္ဆယ္ေရး ပစၥည္းမ်ားေပးပို႔ေရးအတြက္ ကမ္းလွမ္းခ်က္ကို ဦးေက်ာ္သူအားေပးအပ္ရာတြင္ ဦးေက်ာ္သူက အကူအညီေပးမႈကို လက္ခံမည္ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ျပန္ၾကားခဲ့သည္ဟု သတင္းတြင္ ေဖာ္ျပသြားသည္။

ယေန႔ညေန CNN သတင္းတြင္ ျမန္မာႏုိ္င္ငံက ကမာၻ႕စားနပ္ရိကၡာအစီအစဥ္မွ ေပးပို႔သည့္ပစၥည္းႏွင့္ ေလယာဥ္မ်ားကို အစိုးရက တားဆီးထိန္းသိမ္းထားသည္ဟု သတင္းထုတ္လႊင့္သြားခဲ့သည္။ သို႔ေသာ္ ည ၈ နာရီသတင္းတြင္ WFP စာတမ္းပါ ပစၥည္းမ်ားကို ေလယာဥ္ေပၚမွ သယ္ယူၿပီး ရဟတ္ယာဥ္၊ ကားမ်ားေပၚသို႔ တင္ပို႔ေနသည့္ ပံုမ်ားကို ထုတ္လႊင့္သြားသျဖင့္ ထိုသတင္းမွန္ကန္မႈ မရိွသည္ကို ေတြ႔ရသည္။

ပိေတာက္ေျမမွကူးယူေဖၚျပပါသည္