Is Burma for sale?

In a silly attempt to buy Burma and shunt the junta into becoming wealthy corporate shareholders, I wish my efforts had been successful twenty years ago. But I still wonder if a mercantile approach in Myanmar wouldn’t be effective. Greed has colors other than the saffron and blood red we see today. But I can tell you that companies and institutions vacated Burma when conditions began to affect their brand and reputation, and that’s the color of yellow. Levi’s was sewing jeans. Macy’s fashion. Union Carbide held on for a few years. There’s a neon list of top firms that made it easy for the pickup truck pythons to strangle Burma. They just walked away. What now?


Simon Tisdall at The Guardian states:

Western governments are right to condemn the repression in Burma. But for the most part, their actions, inaction and indifference have strengthened the generals – and they should take their share of the blame for what is happening now.


Buying off threats is not customary, but it’s cheaper.

We would have saved 100s of billions buying Saddam Hussein.

The former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar kept notes and recorded his meeting in Crawford, Texas with George W. Bush. He’s “revealed a previously undisclosed initiative to avert war in Iraq by spiriting Saddam Hussein out of the country.” Cost? A bargain at one billion.

Full story here.