Tuesday, May 26, 2009

AFP

• 


• 

The actual price for free trade. 

Ms. Chen Xingtao was sent to Bamalong Female Slave Labor Camp, China for practicing Dafa. She was subject to torture as well as forced to work until she was paralyzed from the barbaric torture inflicted by guards. She died from her injuries.

 Imagine waking up one morning to discover a group of men raping your wife and daughter. Then as you pan this horrific scene you notice your sons disemboweled and decapitated body lying in a pool of blood. His body still in the throws of death as it contorts in an autonomic dance of death. As if the ghoulish scene were not enough you discover your sons head mounted on a stake with his eyes gouged out and the rest of his face totally disfigured.

Reeling from this macabre scene of brutality you watch in total horror as these men begin to dissect your screaming family members. With bayonets drawn they plunge their knives deep into your once lovely daughter while another man begins to hack her head off. You listen as her screams become garbled as blood drowns her pleas. Your wife suffers a similar fate as these men crush her skull with the butts of their rifles. And all the while, these minions of hate laugh and joke as the lives of your loved ones fad from existence.

Undetected and fearing for your own mortality you escape into the jungle as the sound of gun fire resonates behind you. Bullets cut through the brush all around you as you struggle to find safety. With your heart racing as you run for your life you stumble over a mutilated torso and fall to the ground. Struggling to your feet you trip on a skull, it is your elderly mothers. Overwhelmed you keep on running as bullets keep screaming past you. The smell of death abounds as you make your way through an ocean of blood and dismembered body parts. Eventually you find safety and the remnants of your fellow villagers. You begin to reflect on the surreal scene of untold horror you had just witnessed. Then reality sets in as you recall the brutal deaths of your loved ones. You cry a deep and mournful cry as you ask yourself why.                                                                                                                                                                

Hkwan Din, a 15 year old Kachin school girl wanted to become a school teacher.

 This is the reality of the Karen people of Northern Burma who’s only crime was living in the jungle. Military dictator Than Shwe has declared war on these people and has exercised a barbaric form of eugenics in epic proportions. Cruel enough for you? It actually gets much worse as stories that would overshadow Hollywood’s most grizzly Horror Movie are told at the burgeoning refugee camps along the Thai/Burma border. Government troops have burned children alive as parents looked helplessly, the cries of their kids forever etched in their souls. People have been tortured to death in a slow a deliberate fashion as their eyes were plucked out and other parts of their bodies were carved out such as their genitalia, breasts, ears, facial features and limbs. The cruelty of the criminal regime of Than Shwe has no boundaries and the world sits silent.

Shamefully the world sat by as death was doled out in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis. Neutered and impotent the most powerful nations of the world watched as untold numbers of people died from disease and starvation. The trees, waterways and farmland were decorated with human carnage. Imagine eating the bloated flesh of a rotting water buffalo then drinking water tainted with the decomposed essence of human beings who were left in the streams.                                                                  

Hkawn Din. One day this happy school girl was on her way to give her brother lunch in the rice paddy. Sadly she encountered Burmese government troops who gang raped her and while she was alive they cut her fact off of her skull and gouged her eyeballs out. She eventualy died from stab wounds in her genetalia and body. The soldiers where simply transfered to another unit in Than Shwe's criminal army. I am personally haunted by this story since I have daughters of my own.The United Nations, as impotent as the rest of the world, wrote resolution after resolution scolding Than Shwe for his conduct. Ibrahim Gambari, and inert emissary from the UN has repeatedly failed to bring justice or peace to Burma. Though only a rumor from within Burma, it was said Gambari received a fabulous ruby as a gift from Than Shwe. This would not be surprising if this allegation were true in light of a recent monetary gift of $500,000 Gambari’s homeland of Nigerian gave Burma. Small wonder Aung San Suu Kyi refused to see him.

 The United Nations, as impotent as the rest of the world, wrote resolution after resolution scolding Than Shwe for his conduct. Ibrahim Gambari, and inert emissary from the UN has repeatedly failed to bring justice or peace to Burma. Though only a rumor from within Burma, it was said Gambari received a fabulous ruby as a gift from Than Shwe. This would not be surprising if this allegation were true in light of a recent monetary gift of $500,000 Gambari’s homeland of Nigerian gave Burma. Small wonder Aung San Suu Kyi refused to see him.

It would appear corporate interests far overshadow the concerns of human beings since Human Rights issues are repeatedly ignored by the business world. China with its brutality and slave labor has become a Mecca for international corporations as they relocate from throughout the free world. Profits from slave labor and non existent environmental laws have driven up the corporate bottom line. Following suit Burma has taken up the cause for slave labor as they mimic China’s total disregard for human life. Of course US, Asian and European corporations have followed suite and capitalized in the lucrative slave labor market in China and abroad.

Ironically former US Vice President Dick Cheney’s Halliburton was just leveled a fine exceeding 500 million dollars for over 20 years of bribing the corrupt leadership of Nigeria with millions of dollars. The victims where the peasants and general public whose land was taken away and stripped of natural resources for the benefit of the corporate bottom line. The Cancer is undoubtedly Globalization with the blessing of the World Trade Organization for their callus disregard for national sovereignty, individual cultures and human life. Bill Clinton and his wife as well as the Bush family have gleaned millions of dollars from the exploits of Barrick Gold and its subsidiaries at the expense of the citizens of Africa, South America and the good ole USA. Again it must be known the Clintons are bed fellows with China and have profiteered from the cheap slave labor. The people of the world have become enablers as they enjoy cheap goods made from human suffering. The flood gates of greedy corporate interests who salivate at cheap labor and non existent environmental laws pour into China. Sadly, this is only the tip of the corrupt corporate ice berg fore there are world leaders who are part and parcel co-conspirators in the greatest world take over in human history. And it’s all about the money Paisan, it’s all about the money.

Birds of a feather flock together and it is clear that all these economic unions are not designed to benefit the populations of the nations who subscribe to these economic packs. These unions only benefit an absolute minority or a miniscule fraction of the world population. There is no question this is where the money is disappearing to as the world begins to slide into a world wide financial crisis. Money does not simply disappear whence a depression occurs, it lines pockets. Of course the solution will be a global one as partners of the World Trade Organization and other World based corporate interests evolves a solution. Benito Mussolini once said “Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power”.  

Cute little five year old Nang Sap was abducted by Burmese troops, sexually abused then ritually sacrificed at the Ho Mong Temple.

Burma is only a microcosm of what the free world will soon face as we are pushed further and further away from democracy, civil liberties and humanity, all for the corporate bottom line. When will the citizens of the world wake up and connect the dots of international corporatism and its dark realities? The enemies of Globalization are labor unions, democracy and freedom of speech. The victims are the silent and humble people from the jungles of Burma, the broad expanse of Africa and the world. Human beings are loosing everything they have from greed.Though it may seem complex and hard to fathom at first light, stop and take a long hard look at the inhumanity that surrounds us at this juncture in time. Daiwoo, Toyota, Wal-Mart and an endless list of other corporations are skimming profits from slave labor not only in China, Burma or Tibet, but around the world. Our ambivalence to the cries of the Karen, Rohingya and other suffering people will undoubtedly come full circle fore as they say, “What goes around comes around”

When I hear about a 15 year old Kachin girl who was raped tortured and her face carved off of her skull before she was dead, I weep fore she was my daughter. When I hear of a *Falun Gong or Buddhist Monk who was arrested then tortured and beaten to death in some dingy cell outside of Beijing, this was my relation. When Native farmers are murdered by ruthless hired gunmen in South America for they land, those were my people. And when innocent children are starved to death in East Timor those were my kids. The culprits are international corporations and anyone who purports the cause of Globalization, corporatism or the mythical One World Order are criminals. From Europe to the US unions and labor are under attack as corporatism tries to take over country after country in a quest to increase the corporate bottom line, it’s as simple as that. Some call it Friedmanism named for Nobel Alumni Milton Friedman and his ideologies pertaining to anarcho-capitalism. Author **Naomi Kline wrote a book, “Shock Doctrine; The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” where she identifies the systematic process of destroying democracy and robbing a nations assets. The axiom derived from the teachings of Milton Friedman according to Naomi. Others call this rush for material gain and power fascism since this is a thinly veiled version of Mussolini’s utopian ideology called corporatism.

There is no question this is why the world and its corrupt leadership turns a deaf ear to the cries of the Karen. No one wants to upset the ox cart or cash flow by disrupting the so called free market that is fed part and parcel by cheap affordable slave labor, broken promises and deceit. The new economical powerhouse on the block is China with its 80 million slaves with the blessing of the World Trade Organization. Asia as a whole is under siege as poachers strip Laos and Viet Nam of their timber to satisfy China’s demand for natural resources to feed western markets. Stores are filled with commodities by corporations invested in Burma, China and other totalitarian regimes. And they wonder why we are poised to suffer the greatest recession since the Great Depression. This culture has come full circle.

The plights of Burmese fishermen who work on ships in Thailand face death and sever beatings from unscrupulous captains. Beaten with pipes and left for dead they are tossed into the shark infested waters of the coast of Thailand. Others simply don’t get paid for their labor further increasing the corporate bottom line. Human trafficking between Burma, China and Thailand has in itself become a most lucrative enterprise as children are sold into bondage. Brothels are filled with helpless refugees and innocent children simple to suit the fancy of foreign businessmen. And the world looks on.  

* http://www.faluninfo.net/ 

** http://www.naomiklein.org/main

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/14/barackobama.uselections2008

Your Devil’s Advocate

Buffalohair