This reads to me lide the best suggestion that I have seen so far for giving aid with a reasonable chance that it will get through to where it is intended to go. Parachuting aid in without any assurance as to where it is going sounds like an excellent way to ensure that the junta and its troops will continue to be fed.

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They are still doing business with the dictatorial Burmese government - you know, the ones who held up the food aid?

Chevron has huge gas concessions in Burma, as well as partial ownership of a major pipeline there (built with slave labor).

Better than a boycott would be a government ban on doing business with Burma - something that investors in the U.S. would fight tooth and nail.

This is a very typical Alternet piece, however - never mind the corporate and government structures that benefit from Myanmar's dictatorship, just give us some feel-good donations.

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You wont find to any of the child sex ex-pats that all-so poluted this land helping out.
I have a idea why dont the U.S.A. Invade this country of military leaders who are willing to let thier people starve and do a leadership change? Oh right its about people not OIL!

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Let's begin this story of betrayal with PNAC member Zalmay Khalilzad, former high-paid Unocal consultant -- also an ex-Chevron board member.

When Bush 41 was president, Khalilzad worked for PNAC member Paul Wolfowitz in the Defense Department. Prior to Gulf War 1, both Wolfowitz and Khalilzad advocated the use of military force to eliminate Saddam Hussein’s regime.

After Khalilzad left the DOD, he worked for the Rand Corporation, a rightwing think tank that performed research for the U.S. military, DOD and American intelligence community. Not surprisingly, Unocal was a Rand client.

While consulting for Unocal, Khalilzad participated in talks with the Taliban on Afghan oil and gas pipeline infrastructure, attended a delegation of Taliban leaders that visited Unocal headquarters in Texas, and called for the United States to support their regime.

During the Clinton years, Khalilzad conducted risk assessments for Unocal on their proposed 900-mile pipeline project to transport natural gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan through Afghanistan.

Even as the Clinton administration began to recognize the repressive nature of the Taliban regime and its links to bin Laden, Khalilzad called for U.S. engagement with the Taliban.

The history of Unocal’s Middle East adventurism was featured in a Washington Post story headlined, “How Afghanistan Went Unlisted as a Terrorist Sponsor.”

The article said Unocal hired Henry Kissinger and former U.S. ambassador John Maresca for advisory work. Marcesca later became a Unocal vice president. Robert Oakley, former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, was also hired by Unocal for advisory work.

PNAC member Richard Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State under Colin Powell, also performed Unocal contract work.

No stranger to the pipeline business, Armitage was a member of the Burma/Myanmar Forum, a group that received major funding from Unocal.

In 1997, he was implicated in a lawsuit filed by Burmese villagers who suffered human rights abuses during the construction of a Unocal pipeline. Halliburton, under another PNAC member, Dick Cheney, also performed contract work on the Burmese project.

In 2001, Bush appointed Zalmay Khalilzad as a special envoy to Afghanistan, making him the highest-ranking American diplomat stationed in Kabul. After Gulf War 2 started, Khalilzad became our ambassador to Iraq.

Three years later, the stock of Cheney’s former company, Halliburton, has gone from ten bucks a share before Shock & Awe to $70, the same price as a barrel of crude oil, causing gasoline prices to shoot past $3 a gallon at the pump.

Don’t tell me the 2003 Iraq invasion wasn’t about U.S. petroleum companies making big bucks on oil. If Iraq had produced cotton instead of crude, Saddam would still be in power, exporting T-shirts that said, “Death to Americans,” and nobody in Washington would care.

And don't tell me PNAC members and rightwing Republicans have clean hands in Burma. Quite the conrary, as I write this comment, they are bloodier than ever.

---------------------------------

Hugh E. Scott, Vietnam veteran, lifelong registered Republican, Obama supporter and the editor of www.FreedomCentralUSA.com -- a nonprofit investigative website that exposes Bill Kristol's rightwing extremist organization, Project for a New American Century (PNAC), as the primary and profit-motivated instigator of Gulf War 2.

For visitors who want to keep track of the treasonous weasels, FreedomCentralUSA presents a list of 225 PNAC members (called "signatories"), including patriot turned Bush-loving politcian, John McCain.

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This was already a cool group whose primary mission was centered more around freedom for Aung San Suu Kyi, it's worth it to sign their petition and get on their mailing list. At present they send an awful lot of mail, but pre-cyclone it was not quite so much.

United States Campaign for Burma

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I am reminded of Katrina when Bush dropped out of sight and instead of his human concern for the loss of life, he offered excuse after excuse for not coming to the Aid of millions. It seems that Chertof and Homeland Security did everything to hinder and nothing to help. Does anyone not find it strange, after what this president presided over, that he sings the blues about his concern for the rights of other men, the Burmese people?

Does not anyone question why Laura Bush would demand that Burma accept US AID almost immediately after George froze billions of their monies which would surely help them more in this crisis?

But pushing something like Bush' help down a people's throat that does not want anything to do with the US is really a joke. Demanding they accept it is ludicrous.

The US press, and all its organs, have floated the story that Burma is ignoring its people. We have only to believe our own press that gave us lie after lie about our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as its silence on torture? Can we believe G.W. Bush when he paints Burma as a dictatorship and claims himself to be concerned Christian. There is something seriously wrong with this picture and I favor making a judgment on what we know...i.e. that George Bush is a serial liar and anything that comes from his mouth or Laura's must be verified not by the western press but by those in the East. I do not believe the picture that is being painted by the West.

I feel strongly that Burma is taking care of its people and we are using this disaster to wage a propaganda war against them in order to get our corporations in their country. If George Bush is orchestrating a human Rights Campaign, then you are seriously lacking in intelligence if you believe this.

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