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re Infrastructure Finance Feb/Mar 9



Free Burma Readers,  

If you have not, please let me underline the interest in reading :
Infrastructure Finance Feb/Mar 96 , 27 Feb 1996 15:46:33 , From: 
dohrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 
re  TROUBLING PROJECTS
 Myanmar's Yadana gas field raises the question:  
Should companies do business with regimes that violate basic human 
rights?
 By Gregory Millman  (pp. 17-19)

It raises a lot of issues on the Yadana Pipeline, however, looking the 
arguments put forward by the honored professors of economic diplomacy, we 
see how specious they are in trying to defend the rhetoric of making 
money at the cost of human life and destruction of the enviornment, well 
known to oil companies since the days of Standard Oil and « Here?s a dime 
» John D Rockefeller.  Oil company policy has not deviated from its 
bottom line priorites set by the industrial revolution and the grab for 
land and territory.  Millman?s own ambiguity only endorses the confusion 
shared by these honored gentleman in their ivory towers. Please send 
comments to Dawn Star. Thank you. 

Lets see closer, as ?Prof ? Donaldson says :

Professor Tom Donaldson of Georgetown University, author of The Ethics of 
International
 Business, says, "In Burma the human rights violations have been 
systemic,
 widespread, and involve violations of the most fundamental and central
 human rights accepted by both liberals and conservatives."

Donaldson is no knee-jerk bleeding heart.  (what does that mean? ed. Dawn 
Star)
He says that his ethical business guidelines would allow a company to do 
business with
 almost anyone in the world.  "I call this the condition of business
 principle,"  he says, "Basically, we will tolerate a fair amount of
 unethical behavior from a person, firm or nation with whom we just have
 business dealings, but when matters reach the point of a dramatic
 threshold, most people say you just don't do business with that type of
 person.  I don't think China reaches that point, but if any country 
might
 qualify as passing that threshold, it would be Burma."

Well, Prof, what about the millions of Tibetans killed, and the 
destruction of their culture, which is being replayed by the China-proxy 
Slorc now at war with its people.

 Donaldson's view is reinforced by Richard DeGeorge, director of
 the International Center for Ethics in Business at the University of
 Kansas, who says, "One of the guidelines I would put out is that a
 company should not knowingly cooperate with with any supplier, 
government
 or other enterprise that engages in slavery, slave labor, or even child
 labor. 

Well, Prof, does that standard hold now for over half of the world?s 
population, using child and woman slavery for labor?

         Professor Kenneth Goodpaster, a former faculty member at the
 Harvard Business School who now teaches business ethics and policy at 
the
 University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis-St. Paul, says, "When you can
 forsee in clear terms that this supplier or user of your services or
 products is engaging in behavior that is, by any reasonable estimate, an
 abridgment of basic human rights, there's no escaping that you have a
 responsibility there."

« a responsablity », still beating around the bush. These academic 
professors do not seem to be able to draw the line.

         None of these ethicists specifically says that it is unethical
 for Unocal and Total to invest in Myanmar, but they all underscore the
 need for innovative approaches to insure that the project does not
 benefit from the SLORC's injustice. 

That is really for laughs! When will the apologists see the point that 
following the ABSDF line and DASSK thinking, only when the political 
structure changes, and Slorc gets out, will there be justice in doing 
business with a democratically elected government representing the 
Burmese people?


Though oil companies insist they are making every effort that
 ethical business requires, 

It seems here that stretching the truth knows no limits with oil 
companies and their apologists, all to put the gas into your car and 
drive our industrial technology. 


Please be on your guard and call a spade a spade, a dictator, a dictator, 
crime a crime, and investment in burma, bad business, and bad for human 
rights, and unethical period.

Dawn Star