Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
Protests swell against Burma’s military regime
Simon Montlake, Christian Science Monitor
Nuns and others joined the Buddhist monks in Sunday’s marches against the ruling junta.
—
A protest movement led by Buddhist monks chanting prayers is gathering momentum in Burma (Myanmar), leaving an embattled military regime stranded in a groundswell of popular frustration at economic and political stagnation.
Maroon-robed monks led a sixth successive day of peaceful marches Sunday through the streets of Rangoon, the commercial capital. The Alliance of Burmese Buddhist Monks, an underground organization, has called on Burmese citizens to join hands in national protests Monday, in what observers say would represent another major escalation of a movement that began last month after a steep hike in fuel prices.
Until now, thousands of onlookers have cheered the monks, but few have dared to join in. That could change, as could the attitude of security forces, who cracked down hard on student-led protests two weeks ago but appear reluctant to confront the clergy, who command widespread respect in an overwhelmingly Buddhist nation. Activists say the escalating crisis echoes similar events in 1988, before the Army unleashed a bloody repression similar to that seen in Tiananmen Square in Beijing the following year.
“The highest moral authority is taking the leading role and that’s very important. We may not have to wait much longer to see another people’s uprising,” says Soe Aung, a spokesman for the National Council for the Union of Burma, which is based in Thailand.
About 10,000 monks and lay people marched Saturday in Mandalay, among the biggest turnouts so far, the Associated Press reported. In Yangon, in a symbolic fusing of the fuel protests with a long-suppressed democracy movement, several hundred monks passed security checkpoints and chanted prayers outside the house of Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.
(24 September 2007)
The immediate cause of the protests was a steep hike in fuel prices.-BA
Greenspan, Kissinger: Oil Drives U.S. in Iraq, Iran
Robert Weissman, Huffington Post
Alan Greenspan had acknowledged what is blindingly obvious to those who live in the reality-based world: the Iraq War was largely about oil.
Meanwhile, Henry Kissinger says in an op-ed in Sunday’s Washington Post that control over oil is the key issue that should determine whether the U.S. undertakes military action against Iran.
These statements would not be remarkable, but for the effort of a broad swath of the U.S. political establishment to deny the central role of oil in U.S. involvement in the Middle East.
…Henry Kissinger echoes this view in his op-ed. “Iran has legitimate aspirations that need to be respected,” he writes — but those legitimate aspirations do not include control over the oil that the United States and other industrial countries need.
“An Iran that practices subversion and seeks regional hegemony — which appears to be the current trend — must be faced with lines it will not be permitted to cross. The industrial nations cannot accept radical forces dominating a region on which their economies depend, and the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran is incompatible with international security.”
Note that Kissinger prioritizes Iranian (or “radical”) control over regional oil supplies over concern about the country acquiring nuclear weapons.
One might reasonably suggest that Greenspan and Kissinger are only pointing out the obvious. (Kissinger himself refers to his concerns about Iran as “truisms.”)
But these claims have not been accepted as obvious in U.S. political life.
(17 September 2007)
Trade warning over ‘green’ product standards
Raphael Minder, Financial Times
The proliferation of agreements on “green” and other product standards between large western retailers and consumer groups is likely to spark a new spat with developing countries that fear new barriers to their exports, according to the head of the World Trade Organisation.
“Developing countries are certainly beginning to have a problem, and this question of standards is becoming a real issue,” Pascal Lamy said in an interview with the Financial Times.
…Mr Lamy noted consumer groups were having “a lot more leverage” in the context of an ageing, and hence more risk-averse, population, especially following several recent health scares. As a result, they were applying to a bigger range of products a wider selection of standards – “environmentally friendly, fair trade, GM-free”, and finding it easier to reach agreement with large retailers and other companies.
He said: “If you are the marketing director of a big company, you try to be nice to your consumers, and Âpreferably nicer than your neighbour. Consumer organisations know that and it is also natural for them to push this further as this is how they recruit more members and develop their activities.”
(21 September 2007)
