There is nothing like a good disaster, either real or manufactured, to set up the conditions to sell your tainted goods and policies to a traumatized society. When desperate and in shock, people, disoriented and confused, will take any assistance, or swallow any economy program that promises immediate relief, even relief that in the long run will make them worse off than if they let the disaster run its natural course. This is the premise of Naomi Klein's latest book "The Shock Doctrine, " and Myanmar (Burma) today is going to be the next test case for this doctrine.Klein writes on her website: "Biotech Companies Using Food Crisis to Push for More GMO Crops." It reads:
"Soaring food prices and global grain shortages are bringing new pressures on governments, food companies and consumers to relax their longstanding resistance to genetically engineered crops....
With food riots in some countries focusing attention on how the world will feed itself, biotechnology proponents see their chance. They argue that while genetic engineering might have been deemed unnecessary when food was abundant, it will be essential for helping the world cope with the demand for food and biofuels in the decades ahead.
Opponents of biotechnology say they see not so much an opportunity as opportunism by its proponents to exploit the food crisis. “Where politicians and technocrats have always wanted to push G.M.O.’s, they are jumping on this bandwagon and using this as an excuse,” said Helen Holder, who coordinates the campaign against biotech foods for Friends of the Earth Europe. G.M.O. refers to genetically modified organism."
Today, with a good chunk of Myanmar's "rice bowl" area in ruins due to cyclone Nargis, the transnational corporations, the UN, and various NGOs, like vultures, are attempting to sweep in and use the Shock Doctrine to reap the benefits of this conveniently-timed disaster. (Conveniently timed because these groups have been leveraging the man-made food crisis for their own political and financial benefit).
By vilifying Myanmar leadership (a feat not hard to do), and by insisting that Burma's leaders open their ports for U.S./U.N. "humanitarian assistance" a.k.a. -- genetically modified foods and to "aid experts," they will have expertly used the Shock Doctrine to its full effect.
Maybe this is why the Burmese leadership are extremely leery of the U.S. and UN's motives and have refused to let them operate freely in the country. In a news report from "The Irrawaddy," we have this news analysis which sounds credible:
"After days of stalling, the junta gave clearance Thursday for the first major international airlifts carrying aid to cyclone survivors. But it was not allowing US military planes to fly in critical relief and continued to withhold visas for several UN teams seeking entry, said Richard Horsey, a UN spokesman in neighboring Thailand.
A foreign military's presence in Burma would mark a major concession for the junta.
"They're afraid that if foreign soldiers come in they are the spearhead to overthrow the government," said Josef Silverstein, a retired Rutgers University professor who studied Burma for more than a half century. From the junta's perspective: "Aid workers could be carrying weapons to give to the people, they could give them ideas of how to overthrow the government." -- Why Is Burma Junta Afraid of Letting Foreign Aid Workers?
Hmmm, aid workers arming an insurrection? You don't say.
Burmese leadership paranoia makes sense however when you read some of the recent news articles promoting invasion: "The case for invading Myanmar" and US threatens food aid drops on Burma". Does it sound a little suspicious that there just happens to be four U.S. Navy ships in the area stocked with aid and Marines from the Essex Expeditionary Strike Force? From The Australian:
"Four ships, including the destroyer USS Mustin and the three-vessel Essex Expeditionary Strike Force, would be off the coast in about five days, carrying about 1800 Marines.
The Pentagon has moved many of the 23 helicopters on board the USS Essex, which has been participating in a multinational humanitarian exercise in the region, to a staging area in Thailand where they are waiting permission to enter Burma. Three giant C-130 cargo planes and a C-17 loaded with relief supplies are also waiting there." -- US threatens food aid drops on Burma".
Besides their concerns that nefarious actors pretending to be humanitarian aid workers would help to destabilize the country, the Burmese leadership might also be concerned that some of these actors might want to get their genetically modified rice into the hands of needy people, rice which if planted would contaminate local crops and provide companies like Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow and Dupont with annual royalties due to patents.
The transnational AgBio companies with their partners in the UN and USAID have already been accused of forcing GM foods on countries who don't want them even for humanitarian aid. According to Zambian Vice President Enock Kavindele said his country had declined a $50 million line of credit from the U.S. Department of Agriculture because of provisions that it would have to purchase GM commodities. Starving Africa should accept GMO food, US says
Should we be so cynical as to think that there might be another agenda behind the urgent and passionate calls for massive and immediate relief for Burma from first lady Laura Bush and Josette Sheeran Shiner, a long-time Moonie and currently the director of the U.N. World Food Program?
With Laura Bush many of us might be tempted to suspend our disbelief that she is acting as a good faith agent. After all, just because you married a criminal doesn't mean you are one. The same logic can be used when describing Josette Sheeran Shiner and her connections with the Bush administration and the self-proclaimed messiah, cult-leader and businessman, Reverend Sun Myung Moon. But to believe that they are innocent from any corrupting influence would be negligent on our part. We have to be skeptical as to their motives, as much of U.S. foreign policy can be interpreted as nothing more than piracy. And, as many observers have noted, the UN, being controlled by industry insiders and people with dubious bona fides, is just an extension of that piracy.
In the case of Josette Sheeran Shiner, Bush's nominee to head the UN World Food Program, concerns were raised over her close ties to neo-conservative, free-trade elements in the Bush administration and over her long association with Reverend Moon, who is one of the most powerful figures in Washington DC. Rev. Moon is also the owner of a number of newspapers, including the influential Washington Times, where Sheeran was for a time the managing editor.
Is there any reason why we should concern ourselves with Sheeran's religious and political affiliations and her position as head of the most powerful food aid agency in the world? As any astute follower of the global elite and their intelligence agencies knows, they hide behind front organizations to sell their bill of goods, whether that is tainted GMOs, bankrupt free-market ideology, or repressive control of the state. This is illustrated by the various shell companies, organizations and foundations that the CIA and their mind-controlled cults, like the Moonies, use to cover their tracks.
One of these organizations is American Freedom Coalition, a "political education and lobbying group" started by Rev. Moon that has been tied to fake pro-Monsanto marches at the World Summit on Sustainable Development. Rev. Moon has also used his Washington Times and his press service, United Press International (UPI), as a bully pulpit to promote BioAg in a favorable light.
So, is Sheeran, a Moonie-cult member for 21 years (she claims she left it in 1997), just an agent for Moon and his CIA friends? Have they surreptitiously taken over control of the most powerful food aid agency in the world in order to get genetically engineered foods into Asia?
Think about this statement by Meyer Nathaniel Rothschild at a gathering of world bankers February 12, 1912: "Let me control a people's currency and I care not who makes their laws."
Now, imagine what he would say today if he could control the world's food and water supply.
