Burma has perhaps the most thuggish, repressive government on the planet. Dissidents are routinely raped, tortured, and imprisoned. Secret police and informants are everywhere.
Even more scandalous is how little fuss is made by the G7, the EU and the UN about Burma’s further slide into a vicious, sweatshop nightmare.
Why do western imperialist countries ignore the repression in Burma while they cheerfully made up reasons to invade Iraq, a country with a government under Saddam that granted its citizens substantially more rights and freedoms than currently exist in Burma?
Well, of course you know the answer.
France, whose main oil company Total has extensive interests in the country, has opposed moves to tighten lightweight European economic sanctions. The world’s biggest banks have acted to help the junta circumvent US laws stopping it trading in dollars by enabling the regime to open euro accounts.
Here in the US, the major oil companies happily do business with this noxious brutal government. Think about Burma the next time George Bush whinnies about creating democracies. The US and Europe have ignored the brutality in Burma for decades, and the primary reason is because Burma has always opened the door for the big oil companies and banks.