Off the Road to Mandalay

How the news changes… China and the product recalls have faded from the news, and now it’s all about Myanmar (Burma). Protests in the streets! Angry Buddhist monks! But as usual, the key components of this event are left out or obscured. The media loves putting things into polarized frameworks: it’s the evil Myanmar government versus the common people and their Buddhist muses. The U.N. special envoy Ibrahim Gambari is off to the country in the next day or so; he plans to meet with the ruling generals there to discuss the protests and the government’s response. Bush called for sanctions in a speech at the U.N.

Therein the story ends… as far as much of the media is concerned. Despite the “outrage” of the international community, this important question is rarely asked: Where does the government of Myanmar get its money — that is, the money that it uses to keep them in power? The real kernel of this whole Myanmar story can be found buried inside a BBC report posted yesterday (Thursday, 27 September 2007): “The scramble for Burma's energy resources make it almost impossible to isolate the regime.” Yes, as usual, it’s all about resources, and Burma has lots of offshore oil and natural gas. In fact, natural gas is the most important export for Myanmar (Burma), worth some 1.4 billion U.S. dollars in 2005; natural gas exports make up over a third of the country’s total export revenue. It is unlikely that international “outrage” is going to limit those exports, nor the income they provide the military government. This fact should be in the headlines, not the sidelines. The media needs to start talking about hard economic realities, not bleeding-heart fantasies.