DODGY MEDIA DEALINGS OVER BURMA
October 20th 2007 00:40
HOW THE US NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR DEMOCRACY WAGES MEDIA WAR AGAINST MYANMAR: PART 1
The Myanmar junta is always quick to use the country’s state-run newspaper The New Light of Myanmar to blame its internal flare-ups on the agitations of outside neo-colonial agencies intent on subverting the peace and sovereignty of Myanmar.
Such protestations are inevitably tendered in western newspapers as further evidence of the madness of overweening paranoia of the Myanmar generals.
But an article in this week’s influential Asia Times suggests the Myanmar generals might be right in being paranoid.
The article, titled The Geopolitical Stakes of the Saffron Revolution is written by F William Engdahl is the author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, Pluto Press Ltd.
Part of his argument is, “The tragedy of Myanmar…is that its population is being used as a human stage prop in a drama scripted in Washington by the National Endowment for Democracy, the George Soros Open Society Institute, Freedom House and Gene Sharp's Albert Einstein Institution, a US intelligence asset used to spark ‘non-violent’ regime change around the world on behalf of the US strategic agenda.
”Myanmar’s ‘Saffron Revolution’, like the Ukraine ‘Orange Revolution’ or the Georgia ‘Rose Revolution’ and the various colour revolutions instigated in recent years against strategic states surrounding Russia, is a well-orchestrated exercise in Washington-run regime change, down to the details of ‘hit-and-run’ protests with ‘swarming’ mobs of monks in saffron, internet blogs, mobile sms links between protest groups, well-organised protest cells which disperse and re-form.
“CNN made the blunder during a September broadcast of mentioning the active presence of the National Endowment for Democracy behind the protests in Myanmar.
”In fact the US State Department admits to supporting the activities of the National Endowment for Democracy in Myanmar. The National Endowment for Democracy is a US government-funded ‘private’ entity whose activities are designed to support US foreign policy objectives, doing today what the CIA did during the Cold War.
“As well, the National Endowment for Democracy funds Soros' Open Society Institute in fostering regime change in Myanmar. In an October 30, 2003 press release the State Department admitted, ‘The US also supports organisations such as the National Endowment for Democracy, the Open Society Institute and Internals, working inside and outside the region on a broad range of democracy promotion activities.’
Engdahl claims the US State Department has recruited and trained key opposition leaders from numerous anti-government organisations in Myanmar, and has poured the relatively huge sum of more than US$2.5 million annually into National Endowment for Democracy activities in promoting regime change in Myanmar since at least 2003.
He adds, “The US regime change effort, its Saffron Revolution, is being largely run, according to informed reports, out of the US Consulate General in bordering Chiang Mai, Thailand. There activists are recruited and trained, in some cases directly in the US, before being sent back to organise inside Myanmar.
He said the National Endowment for Democracy admits to funding key opposition media including the New Era Journal, The Chiang Mai-based Irrawaddy Journal and the Democratic Voice of Burma radio.
Aung Zaw, the dissident editor of The Irrawaddy Journal has admitted when questioned about funding that some monies do come from the National Endowment for Democracy.
Finally Engdahl reveals that ,”the concert-master of the tactics of Saffron monk-led non-violence regime change is Gene Sharp, founder of the deceptively-named Albert Einstein Institution in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a group funded by an arm of the National Endowment for Democracy to foster US-friendly regime change in key spots around the world. Sharp's institute has been active in Myanmar since 1989, just after the regime massacred some 3,000 protestors to silence the opposition.
He said a CIA special operative and former US military attache in Rangoon, Colonel Robert Helvey, an expert in clandestine operations, introduced Sharp to Myanmar in 1989 to train the opposition there in non-violent strategy.
Engdahl comments, “Interestingly, Sharp was also in China two weeks before the dramatic events at Tiananmen Square.”
HOW THE US NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR DEMOCRACY WAGES MEDIA WAR AGAINST MYANMAR: PART 2
This brief extract from Peter Olszewski’s book about Myanmar, Land of a Thousand Eyes, describes how the US role in publishing The Irrawaddy Journal became an issue in Thailand in 2003:
“The Irrawaddy Journals editor Aung Zaw and Ross Dunkley, editor of the Myanmar Times had slugged it out at the Foreign Correspondents Club, and Dunkley had castigated the dissident publisher for being funded by the US to the tune of $250,000 annually. Aung Zaw claimed the figure was only US$100,000, and that this ‘partial’ funding came courtesy of the National Endowment for Democracy, a private non-profit organisation backed by the US Congress.
“The Bangkok slugfest had grown more heated when Priscilla A. Clapp, the Charge d’Affaires at the US embassy in Yangon had…turned on Aung Zaw saying, ‘I remind him that he is highly supported by the US government and we did notice his editorial in the Thai press saying that America deserved the attack on September 11.’
“When Aung Zaw tried to deny this allegation, Clapp added, ‘That does not go unnoticed in Washington.’”
In another part of the book, there is this passage: “Radio Free Asia, beamed into Myanmar from Washington, is one of the Myanmar Times’ most fervent attackers; it broadcasts the opinion that Ross Dunkley should be granted the national literary award, because his writing bolsters the military government’s policy. The network calls him Lorr Dunpli or Mr Traitorous Flattering – in Myanmar lorr means traitorous or sly and pli means flattery.”
The Myanmar junta is always quick to use the country’s state-run newspaper The New Light of Myanmar to blame its internal flare-ups on the agitations of outside neo-colonial agencies intent on subverting the peace and sovereignty of Myanmar.
Such protestations are inevitably tendered in western newspapers as further evidence of the madness of overweening paranoia of the Myanmar generals.
But an article in this week’s influential Asia Times suggests the Myanmar generals might be right in being paranoid.
Part of his argument is, “The tragedy of Myanmar…is that its population is being used as a human stage prop in a drama scripted in Washington by the National Endowment for Democracy, the George Soros Open Society Institute, Freedom House and Gene Sharp's Albert Einstein Institution, a US intelligence asset used to spark ‘non-violent’ regime change around the world on behalf of the US strategic agenda.
”Myanmar’s ‘Saffron Revolution’, like the Ukraine ‘Orange Revolution’ or the Georgia ‘Rose Revolution’ and the various colour revolutions instigated in recent years against strategic states surrounding Russia, is a well-orchestrated exercise in Washington-run regime change, down to the details of ‘hit-and-run’ protests with ‘swarming’ mobs of monks in saffron, internet blogs, mobile sms links between protest groups, well-organised protest cells which disperse and re-form.
“CNN made the blunder during a September broadcast of mentioning the active presence of the National Endowment for Democracy behind the protests in Myanmar.
“As well, the National Endowment for Democracy funds Soros' Open Society Institute in fostering regime change in Myanmar. In an October 30, 2003 press release the State Department admitted, ‘The US also supports organisations such as the National Endowment for Democracy, the Open Society Institute and Internals, working inside and outside the region on a broad range of democracy promotion activities.’
Engdahl claims the US State Department has recruited and trained key opposition leaders from numerous anti-government organisations in Myanmar, and has poured the relatively huge sum of more than US$2.5 million annually into National Endowment for Democracy activities in promoting regime change in Myanmar since at least 2003.
He adds, “The US regime change effort, its Saffron Revolution, is being largely run, according to informed reports, out of the US Consulate General in bordering Chiang Mai, Thailand. There activists are recruited and trained, in some cases directly in the US, before being sent back to organise inside Myanmar.
He said the National Endowment for Democracy admits to funding key opposition media including the New Era Journal, The Chiang Mai-based Irrawaddy Journal and the Democratic Voice of Burma radio.
Aung Zaw, the dissident editor of The Irrawaddy Journal has admitted when questioned about funding that some monies do come from the National Endowment for Democracy.
Finally Engdahl reveals that ,”the concert-master of the tactics of Saffron monk-led non-violence regime change is Gene Sharp, founder of the deceptively-named Albert Einstein Institution in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a group funded by an arm of the National Endowment for Democracy to foster US-friendly regime change in key spots around the world. Sharp's institute has been active in Myanmar since 1989, just after the regime massacred some 3,000 protestors to silence the opposition.
He said a CIA special operative and former US military attache in Rangoon, Colonel Robert Helvey, an expert in clandestine operations, introduced Sharp to Myanmar in 1989 to train the opposition there in non-violent strategy.
Engdahl comments, “Interestingly, Sharp was also in China two weeks before the dramatic events at Tiananmen Square.”
HOW THE US NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR DEMOCRACY WAGES MEDIA WAR AGAINST MYANMAR: PART 2
This brief extract from Peter Olszewski’s book about Myanmar, Land of a Thousand Eyes, describes how the US role in publishing The Irrawaddy Journal became an issue in Thailand in 2003:
“The Irrawaddy Journals editor Aung Zaw and Ross Dunkley, editor of the Myanmar Times had slugged it out at the Foreign Correspondents Club, and Dunkley had castigated the dissident publisher for being funded by the US to the tune of $250,000 annually. Aung Zaw claimed the figure was only US$100,000, and that this ‘partial’ funding came courtesy of the National Endowment for Democracy, a private non-profit organisation backed by the US Congress.
“The Bangkok slugfest had grown more heated when Priscilla A. Clapp, the Charge d’Affaires at the US embassy in Yangon had…turned on Aung Zaw saying, ‘I remind him that he is highly supported by the US government and we did notice his editorial in the Thai press saying that America deserved the attack on September 11.’
“When Aung Zaw tried to deny this allegation, Clapp added, ‘That does not go unnoticed in Washington.’”
In another part of the book, there is this passage: “Radio Free Asia, beamed into Myanmar from Washington, is one of the Myanmar Times’ most fervent attackers; it broadcasts the opinion that Ross Dunkley should be granted the national literary award, because his writing bolsters the military government’s policy. The network calls him Lorr Dunpli or Mr Traitorous Flattering – in Myanmar lorr means traitorous or sly and pli means flattery.”
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