US NGO Teams Up with Gulf Terror Sponsor to Target Asia

January 4, 2019 (Joseph Thomas - NEO) - Fortify Rights is one of several fronts posing as nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) operating across Asia.

Such fronts are in actuality extensions of US and European "soft power." Fully funded by the US, British and various European governments as well as US and European corporate foundations like convicted financial criminal George Soros' Open Society, Fortify Rights positions itself as self-appointed arbiter regarding human rights, democracy and the rule of law at the heart of the sovereign internal political affairs of nations like Myanmar (still called Burma by many Western media organisations and politicians), Thailand, Bangladesh and Malaysia.

Human Rights Org Partners with State Sponsor of Terrorism... 

Recently, Fortify Rights' founder American Matthew Smith announced a new and "exciting" partnership with Doha Debates. Doha Debates is a project of the Qatar Foundation which in turn was founded by the Al Thani family, the unelected rulers of Qatar, a notorious Middle Eastern dictatorship, abuser of human rights and state sponsor of terrorism.

The "exciting" partnership between Fortify Rights (a supposed human rights advocacy group) and the Qatari front "Doha Debates" is particularly troubling considering the area of cooperation involves Myanmar's Muslim Rohingya minority.

On Doha Debates' website it describes its partnership with Fortify Rights:

Together, Fortify Rights and Doha Debates are training a group of Rohingya refugees on the basics of photography and Instagram, and we are equipping them with mobile phones to document their lives in refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, for an entire year. Through this partnership, Fortify Rights and Doha Debates hope to empower Rohingya refugees to share their stories with the world.

Despite the relatively benign stated nature of this partnership, it is troubling because it signals a possible vector through which money, training and even weapons can pass, behind a "human rights' façade, inflaming already tense ethnic troubles in Myanmar's western Rakhine state.

At the very least, influence operations by Fortify Rights and Qatar's "Doha Debates" could be used to further divide communities along ethnic lines while mounting pressure on Myanmar's government and military by exploiting the resulting chaos.

Fortify Rights founder Matthew Smith refused to respond to questions of how his supposed cause of advancing human rights is served by partnering with Doha Debates funded by a dictatorship and notorious state sponsor of terrorism. Smith regularly blocks critics on social media concerned with the nature of his organisation's activities, including many in Myanmar whom he claims he's "helping."

US "Investigates" Genocide in Myanmar, Commits Genocide in Yemen

October 12, 2018 (Joseph Thomas - NEO) - Rarely is US hypocrisy so cynical and overt as a recent US State Department investigation into ongoing violence in Myanmar, all while the US continues its full spectrum support of Saudi Arabia's genocidal war on Yemen.

In addition to Washington's role in Yemen, the US also occupies Afghanistan and Syria while carrying out drone strikes and covert military interventions in territory stretching from North Africa to Central Asia.

In Myanmar specifically, the US has openly and for decades funded and supported groups and individuals involved directly on both sides of ongoing ethnic violence. Now, it is leveraging that violence to single out obstacles to US influence in Southeast Asia and in Myanmar specifically. 

Reuters in their article titled, "U.S. accuses Myanmar military of 'planned and coordinated' Rohingya atrocities," would claim:

A U.S. government investigation has found that Myanmar’s military waged a “well-planned and coordinated” campaign of mass killings, gang rapes and other atrocities against the Southeast Asian nation’s Rohingya Muslim minority. 

Reuters admits the US State Department's report, titled "Documentation of Atrocities in Northern Rakhine State," was in fact merely interviews conducted with alleged witnesses in neighbouring Bangladesh.

Was it Really an Investigation? 

Imagine a fight breaks out between two groups of people. The police are called in. But instead of arriving at the crime scene, the police instead interview only one group, and do so at their home before drawing their final conclusions. Would anyone honestly call this an "investigation?" The US State Department apparently would, because this is precisely what the State Department has done in regards to ongoing ethnic violence in Myanmar.

The full report, found here on the US State Department's website, would admit:

The Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), with funding support from the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL), conducted a survey in spring 2018 of the firsthand experiences of 1,024 Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar District, Bangladesh. The goal of the survey was to document atrocities committed against residents in Burma’s northern Rakhine State during the course of violence in the previous two years.

No physical evidence was collected or presented in the report, because investigators never stepped foot in Myanmar itself where the violence allegedly took place. The report also failed to interview other parties allegedly involved in the violence.

While the witness accounts in the US State Department's investigation were shocking, had investigators gone to Rakhine state and interviewed locals there, they would have heard similar stories told of Rohingya attacks on Buddhists and Hindus.

UN Report Cynically Spins Rohingya Genocide

September 12, 2018 (Joseph Thomas - NEO) - Media headlines claim an independent UN report is calling for genocide charges against Myanmar officials.

Qatari state media outfit Al Jazeera in its article, "UN report calls for genocide charges against Myanmar officials," claims:

Myanmar's senior military officials must be prosecuted for genocide and war crimes against the Rohingya and other ethnic minorities, a UN fact-finding mission has urged. 

The mission, which was established by the UN Human Rights Council in March 2017, found that Myanmar's armed forces had taken actions that "undoubtedly amount to the gravest crimes under international law".

Al Jazeera admits Myanmar's military has been singled out by the report. Suspiciously absent from both the accusations made in the report and the charges called for, is State Counsellor of Myanmar Aung San Suu Kyi, referred to throughout the Western media and the report itself as the "de facto" leader of Myanmar.

The leader of a nation is undoubtedly responsible for the actions of that nation's military and while some claim Suu Kyi has no power over Myanmar's military, Al Jazeera itself notes her silence in even condemning the ongoing violence.

Despite the obvious role Suu Kyi plays in enabling the violence even at face value through her silent complicity, the 20 page UN report (.pdf) mentions her name only one time and fails entirely to call for any form of accountability for this role. Suu Kyi's notoriously violent supporters are only briefly and ambiguously mentioned in the report:

Local authorities, militias, militant “civilian” groups, politicians and monks participated or assisted in violations, to varying degrees.

The report never qualifies or further discusses these "varying degrees."

The report admittedly is dependent primarily on interviews. While videos and photography are also supposedly among the evidence the report is based on, neither are specifically referenced in the actual report.

Many of the interviews were supposedly corroborated with likewise secondhand information obtained from what are referred to as "intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations, researchers, and diplomats." These individuals and organisations are conveniently left unnamed and are most likely individuals and organisations directly funded by the US, British and European governments.

In essence, it is US, British and European funded propaganda laundered through a UN report.

Upon closer examination, Suu Kyi and more importantly her political supporters, have played a much more direct role in violence aimed at Myanmar's Rohingya population. It is an intentional and systematic cover up by Western media organisations and foreign-sponsored human rights advocacy groups ongoing for years, one the UN report is a continuation of.

British Divide and Rule Re-imagined 

British public service broadcaster Channel 4 would explain in an article titled, "A Brief History of Burma," about the very source of Myanmar's current ethnic divisions:

Throughout their Empire the British used a policy called 'divide and rule' where they played upon ethnic differences to establish their authority. This policy was applied rigorously in Burma. More than a million Indian and Chinese migrants were brought in to run the country's affairs and thousands of Indian troops were used to crush Burmese resistance. In addition, hill tribes which had no strong Burmese affiliation, such as the Karen in the south-east, were recruited into ethnic regiments of the colonial army.

The article also admitted:

The British 'divide and rule' policy left a legacy of problems for Burma when it regained independence.

We can see the "legacy" of British and now US foreign policy in Southeast Asia still unfolding today, including in Myanmar's north where Kachin militants still battle against Myanmar's military and in the west, particularly in the state of Rakhine, where violence is ongoing between religious and nationalist fanatics and the Rohingya minority.

This recent UN report attempts to place the blame for the ongoing violence against Myanmar's Rohingya minority squarely on the military. However, it was Suu Kyi's most vocal political supporters who had brutalised the Rohingya for years, long before she finally took power in 2016.

Despite a concerted effort across American, European and Commonwealth media outlets to conceal Suu Kyi and her followers' role in the violence, occasional admissions have emerged.

This includes articles like the UK Independent's 2012 report titled, "Burma's monks call for Muslim community to be shunned,"  revealing both Myanmar's "hardline Buddhists" and even activist groups celebrated in the West for "promoting democracy" being involved in persecuting the Rohingya.

US-British Neo-Imperialism and its Modern Day 'Missionaries'

September 2, 2018 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - The worst sort of deception is that perpetrated by those who pose as defending the most vulnerable when in reality, are leveraging their circumstances, exploiting their suffering, and in many cases, playing a direct role in perpetuating both.

This is an apt description of Washington, London, and Brussels' global-spanning human rights racket - used repeatedly as a pretext for political meddling and even war.

An especially cynical example of this is playing out in Southeast Asia's nation of Myanmar.

With ties between Myanmar and China growing, the US and its European partners are working to pressure, co-opt, or even overthrow Myanmar's current political order which includes not only a powerful, independent military, but also a civilian government the US and UK played a direct role in placing into power.

The decades of US-UK support for Aung San Suu Kyi - Myanmar's current State Counsellor - now hang around her and her National League for Democracy (NLD) political party's necks like a millstone. The very foreign-sponsored networks they invited into Myanmar to assist them into power are now being leveraged against them to coerce Myanmar's domestic and foreign policy.

Another Dubious UN Report

A recent UN report on alleged atrocities being carried out against the Rohingya minority in Myanmar has been accompanied by a coordinated public relations campaign led by the Western media and US-UK and European Union-funded fronts posing as "nongovernmental" organizations (NGOs).

Part of this PR campaign has included calls to refer many of Myanmar's military leaders to the International Criminal Court (ICC) - an institution seen around the world as a continuation of Western colonization - especially in Africa. Pressure has also been placed on Myanmar's civilian government led by Aung San Suu Kyi and her NLD party.

The overall effect is the West's ability to leverage ethnic violence to place pressure on Myanmar allowing the West to exact concessions as well as impose sanctions on or remove from power any prominent political or military figures at will.

The primary foreign policy objective of the West is to severe Myanmar's ties with China, transform Myanmar into an obedient client state, and use success there to expand similar efforts across the rest of Southeast Asia.

The actual UN report officially titled, "Report of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar" (PDF), reveals its methodology to have been interviews. It claims:

The Mission amassed a vast amount of primary information. It conducted 875 indepth interviews with victims and eyewitnesses, both targeted and randomly selected. It obtained satellite imagery and authenticated a range of documents, photographs and videos. It checked this information against secondary information assessed as credible and reliable, including organizations’ raw data or notes, expert interviews, submissions, and open source material.

The report also admits:

The Mission also held over 250 consultations with other stakeholders, including intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations, researchers, and diplomats – in person and remotely. It received written submissions, including through a public call.

It is this second point that is of particular concern.

It appears that much of what the UN report includes, is merely a repeat of information US, UK, and EU-funded supposed "NGOs" - central components of the West's human rights racket - have already reported in their own highly suspect publications.

Among these is Fortify Rights - funded by the US, UK, Canadian, and Dutch governments, as well as convicted financial criminal George Soros' Open Society Foundation. The UN report appears to be merely a short summary of Fortify Rights' report, "They Gave them Long Swords" (PDF).

US-UK Funded Modern Day "Missionaries"  

Fortify Rights discloses its funding in at least two annual reports from 2015 and 2016.

In 2015 (PDF), sponsors included the Dutch, Canadian, and US government via the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). It also included Open Society Foundations and Avaaz. In 2016 (PDF), the UK government was also included upon its donors list.

When confronted with questions regarding Fortify Rights' acceptance of money from governments currently engaged in human rights abuses around the globe - including weapon sales to Riyadh and assistance in Riyadh's war on Yemen - Fortify Rights founder, American Matthew Smith, attempted to deflect and downplay his organization's funding.

He claimed NED money did not constitute US government funding because US Congressional funds passed through NED before reaching him.

He also claimed that money his organization accepted from the UK was not used for work in Myanmar, claiming it went instead to a program his organization is running in Thailand - apparently in the belief that this explanation resolved the obvious conflict of interest his organization's activities and its funding represent.

Worst of all, Smith acknowledged the UK's role in Myanmar's current crisis. It was British colonialism that intentionally fomented and exploited the very ethnic tensions still playing out in Myanmar today. This includes virtually all of the ethnic groups Fortify Rights poses as a champion for.

Smith, and others within Fortify Rights have been asked, and have repeatedly failed to explain how foreigners funded by the very governments that created Myanmar's ethnic tensions, inserting themselves into the ongoing violence, can serve as a solution to this conflict.

Militants Threaten China's OBOR Initiative in Myanmar

Militants in northern Myanmar have once again put China's One Belt, One Road initiative on hold. It should come as no surprise that Anglo-American history played a direct role in their creation, and currently fund and back networks supporting them. 

July 3, 2018 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - The BBC has mounted a recent propaganda campaign aimed at once again placing pressure on Myanmar's military, within a wider effort to drive a wedge between Myanmar and China.

Amid an already ongoing and deceptive narrative surrounding the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar's southwest state of Rakhine, attention is now being focused on the nation's northern state of Kachin.

Nick Beake of the BBC produced a narrative aimed at intentionally preying on the emotions of viewers. The report revolved around alleged hardships suffered by Kachin villagers fleeing from a supposed government offensive. The report was absent of any context or evidence and was based entirely on hearsay from alleged villagers Beake claims to have interviewed.

Beake would conclude that his report represented the "first eyewitness accounts of the Burmese military targeting civilians in their latest offensive in Kachin State." And supposed eyewitness accounts were all Beake presented. At one point Beake's report even cited third-hand reports of torture and rape - stories fleeing villagers claimed they had only heard from others, but did not directly witness themselves.

The only specific death Beake cited was of a man of military age he claims was killed during the supposed fighting. Beake avoided mentioning whether the victim was a Kachin fighter or a civilian caught in crossfire.

The BBC's Nick Beake makes little mention of the actual conflict and no mention at all that Kachin militants are among the most heavily armed and well organized in the divided nation of Myanmar.

And while the BBC report briefly claims that Kachin militants "have been fighting for independence for decades," it never mentions the central role the British government itself played in creating Kachin militant groups during World War II to protect their colony, how Kachin militants played a role in resisting Myanmar's bid for independence, and the role these militants have played in preventing Myanmar's progress forward as a unified nation ever since.

Manufacturing Crisis, Foiling Chinese Interests 

The BBC report and an uptick of sudden concern over Kachin State come at a time when Beijing has been working to foster peace deals to end the chaos unfolding along its border with Myanmar.

An April 2017 article in Foreign Policy titled, "China Is Playing Peacemaker in Myanmar, but with an Ulterior Motive," would include a revealing subtitle:

Beijing is trying to end the long-running conflicts along its border with Myanmar — but only because it can't exploit the region's resources at will anymore.

While Foreign Policy attempts to cast doubts on China's motivations, it inadvertently reveals that Kachin militants and their conflict with Myanmar's military are impeding Chinese interests, providing an essential clue as to who the fighting benefits and who is likely encouraging and enabling it.

Foreign Policy makes mention of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy coming to power and and the role that Suu Kyi herself played in protesting and obstructing Chinese-led infrastructure projects - including dams, roadways, ports, and pipelines - in Myanmar. Foreign Policy fails to mention the decades of US-UK funding that created and propelled Suu Kyi's government into power.

Western Media Consumed by Myanmar Monster of Own Creation

December 23, 2017 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - Years ago, those confronting and questioning the Western media's "pro-democracy" narrative regarding Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, her National League for Democracy (NLD) political party and her supporters including saffron-clad supposed "Buddhist monks," were ridiculed and dismissed.

Warnings that Suu Kyi's political movement was nothing more than a foreign-funded attempt to co-opt the people and resources of the Southeast Asian state of Myanmar - a former colony of the British Empire still referred to widely in the West by its colonial nomenclature, "Burma" - were dismissed as mere conspiracy theories.

Meanwhile, concerns that violence targeting Myanmar's Rohingya minority was in fact being bolstered by Suu Kyi's rise to power were intentionally and concertedly sidestepped by the Western media who attempted to conceal the true nature of Suu Kyi's political party and the core "values" of her support base and shift blame onto the ruling military-led government.

It was inevitable that upon taking power, Suu Kyi and the NLD - enabled by decades of US-UK-EU financial, political, and material support - the progressive veneer applied to this "democracy icon" would begin to peel, and the true nature of her and her followers would reveal itself.

Consumed by a Monster of Their Own Creation 

In an immense amount of irony, prominent Western media organizations like Reuters now find themselves decrying the very government they themselves spent decades helping into power, as the government cracks down on reporting over the ongoing Rohingya crisis.

Two Reuters employees - Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo - were reportedly arrested after illegally obtaining documents from Myanmar police. Reuters and the myriad of faux-human rights advocates that conspired with the US, British, and European governments to put Suu Kyi into power are now calling on the Myanmar government - though not Suu Kyi by name - to release their colleagues.

Reuters employee Andrew Marshall has recently flooded his social media accounts with desperate pleas for his colleagues' release, citing US "demands" that Myanmar release them, and alluding to the debt Suu Kyi and the NLD owed the foreign press for their role in bringing them to power.

Yet even now, as Reuters finds two of its own rendered as collateral damage in the wake of Suu Kyi and the NLD's ascent into power, both this most recent row regarding Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo and the ongoing Rohingya crisis are only obliquely linked to Suu Kyi by the Western media. Marshall - for example - continuously cites "Myanmar's president - Suu Kyi's ally" as supporting the prosecution of his colleagues - either unaware or unwilling to admit that Suu Kyi herself created and currently occupies the highest office - State Counsellor - referred even by the Western press as the "de facto" head of the Myanmar government.

Shifting Blame as US Agenda Unfolds in Myanmar

October 25, 2017 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - As violence continues to unfold in Myanmar's western Rakhine state against the nation's Rohingya ethnic minority, the agenda driving the conflict is likewise unfolding in a more transparent and direct manner. 

As was predicted - the US is shifting blame away from the US-backed client regime headed by Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League of Democracy (NLD) party the US installed into power in 2015 - and toward Myanmar's independent institutions, including the nation's still powerful military. 

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in a recent talk before the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington D.C. (PDF) laid the blame squarely on Myanmar's military, claiming: 

...we’re extraordinarily concerned by what’s happening with the Rohingya in Burma. I’ve been in contact with Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the civilian side of the government. As you know, this is a power-sharing government that has – that has emerged in Burma. We really hold the military leadership accountable for what’s happening with the Rakhine area.

Reuters in an article titled, "Lawmakers urge U.S. to craft targeted sanctions on Myanmar military," would report: 

More than 40 lawmakers urged the Trump administration on Wednesday to reimpose U.S. travel bans on Myanmar’s military leaders and prepare targeted sanctions against those responsible for a crackdown on the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority.

And Freedom House - a subsidiary of the US government and corporate-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) - would also publish a piece titled, "Does Democracy’s Toehold in Myanmar Outweigh the Lives of the Rohingya?," shifting the blame away from the very regime it worked for decades to put in power, and target Myanmar's military.

It claimed:

In less than two months, more than half a million Rohingya have fled to neighboring Bangladesh to escape the destruction of entire settlements, systematic rape, and the mass slaughter of men, women, and children. This horrendous violence is perpetrated by the military, with assistance from elements of the local Rakhine Buddhist population.

It is clear that the confined nature of Myanmar's ongoing Rohingya crisis will not lead to the same type of nationwide militancy observed in Syria. It is also clear that the United States is likewise confining its condemnation for the violence not to the ultra-violent elements that it cultivated under Suu Kyi's political movement for decades, but on the military who often stood between Rohingya communities and violent onslaughts. 

The pressuring and weakening first, then either co-opting or overthrowing of Myanmar's current military leadership under the pretext of the current crisis will invite a larger and expanding US and European role in Myanmar's internal affairs. Secretary Tillerson alluded to precisely that in his recent remarks, claiming: 

And so we have been asking for access to the region. We’ve been able to get a couple of our people from our embassy into the region so we can begin to get our own firsthand account of what is occurring. We’re encouraging access for the aid agencies – the Red Cross, the Red Crescent – U.N. agencies to – so we can at least address some of the most pressing humanitarian needs, but more importantly so we can get a full understanding of what is going on. 

Someone – if these reports are true, someone is going to be held to account for that. And it’s up to the military leadership of Burma to decide what direction do they want to play in the future of Burma, because we see Burma as an important emerging democracy, but this is a real test.

With US ally Saudi Arabia fueling a militancy under the guise of a Rohingya "resistance," the US will also be able to justify military aid, joint-operations, and even permanent US military facilities - however meager - that will present a serious obstacle to Chinese influence in the nation and in the region. It will also be an obstacle that once erected, will be difficult to dismantle as America's enduring and unwanted military presence in the Philippines is proving to be.  

US Meddling Across Southeast Asia

October 17, 2017 (Joseph Thomas - NEO) - At a time when US political leaders decry with little evidence what they claim is a pandemic of "Russian interference" in Western political affairs from Western Europe to North America, years of documented evidence exist of this very same interference in the domestic affairs of other nations around the world, funded and directed not by Moscow, but by Washington D.C.

Across Southeast Asia alone is an interlocked, deeply rooted and heavily financed network of American-backed agitators and propagandists, operating behind the cloaks of journalism and rights advocacy, working to upend local, independent political institutions and replace them with a system created by and serving exclusively the interests in Washington that created them.

Shedding Light on US Interference in the Philippines

The Manila Times in a recent article titled, "CIA conduit funding anti-Duterte media outfits," would shed light on US government money being channelled into the Philippines for the explicit purpose of manipulating public perception, particularly regarding politics.

The article cites the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and its grantees, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR), and the Vera Files.

The article outlines the funding, stating:

NED documents show that for 2015—the earliest year for which data is available—2016 and 2017, it gave the PCIJ $106,900; Vera Files $70,000, and CMFR, $278,000. (Another funder of Vera Files is Reporters without Borders, which is also recipient of NED funds.)

Even if NED wasn’t a CIA conduit, it is an institution funded by the US government, and therefore advances US interests. Shouldn’t we be outraged that the US government is funding anti-Duterte media outfits here?

It also points out that this US interference in Filipino politics fits into a much larger, global pattern of political interference engaged in by the US government. The article cites US interference in Ukraine in particular, noting that it was US backing that eventually led to the overthrow of the elected government there between 2013 and 2014.

The article's author, Rigoberto Tiglao, attempted to contact several of the Filipino US NED grantees, only to be confronted or evaded, a response typical of US NED grantees worldwide when questioned about their foreign funding, the dangerous conflicts of interests they are indulging in and the contradictions of posing as independent media organisations entirely dependent on foreign government funding.

Pressure on the Philippines through US-funded media is only one of several fronts the US is using to transform, direct and determine the future of the Philippines as a nation. It has placed direct political pressure on Manila to cooperate in confronting Beijing over the South China Sea. It has also attempted to use Saudi-funded terrorism in the Philippines' south as a vector to reintroduce a significant and expanding US military presence across the archipelago nation.

The use of terrorism as both a pressure point against Southeast Asian states and as a pretext for a US military presence is a tactic the US is attempting to reuse everywhere from Indonesia and Malaysia, to southern Thailand and neighbouring Myanmar. So is the use of US NED-funded organisations operating under the guise of independent journalism or rights advocacy.

Beyond the Philippines: Thailand and Cambodia 

Thailand faces a similar landscape of compromised opposition organisations posing as independent, yet entirely funded by the US government and US-based corporate foundations. These include Prachatai, Thai Netizens, the New Democracy Movement, the Isaan Record, Thai Lawyers for Human Rights and even the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand (FCCT).

Like their Filipino counterparts, they pose as proponents of democracy and as human rights advocates, but cover current events in a transparently one-sided manner, excusing or omitting abuse and corruption among the opposition and targeting only Thailand's independent institutions, particularly the military and the monarchy.

In Cambodia, US government funding goes one step further, funding the entire opposition, hosting them in Washington D.C. and creating an entire media network to skew public perception in favour of this foreign enterprise and the interests that propel it.

Analysis by Analogy: Myanmar is not Syria

September 27, 2017 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - Many geopolitical analysts and commentators have noted many worthwhile similarities between the Syrian crisis and the one now unfolding in the Southeast Asian state of Myanmar. However, what is different about these two crises is just as important as what is the same.

The Similarities 

Particular focus has been placed on evidence emerging that US-ally Saudi Arabia is serving as an intermediary fueling militancy in Myanmar's western Rakhine state. The militants, however, consist of a foreign armed, funded, and led cadre, constituting a numerically negligible minority of the Rohingya population they claim to represent, and are in fact no more representative of the Rohingya people than militants of Al Qaeda and the so-called "Islamic State" are representative of Syria or Iraq's Sunni Muslim populations.

While it is crucial to point out the foreign-funded nature of a militancy attempting to co-opt the Rohingya minority in Myanmar, it is equally important to understand precisely where this militancy fits into Saudi Arabia's and ultimately its American sponsors' larger plans.

Another similarity pointed out by analysts is the use of US and European-funded fronts posing as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). These include larger organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, as well as organizations on the ground in Myanmar funded by the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED), its various subsidiaries including the International Republican Institute (IRI), the National Democratic Institute (NDI), Freedom House, USAID, and Open Society.

These organizations are intentionally seeking to control the narrative, inflame rather than smooth over tensions, and create a pretext for wider and more direct intervention in Myanmar's expanding crisis by Western nations.

Analysts and commentators, however, cannot stop here. They must commit to equal due diligence in unraveling what stands behind Myanmar's government - who it was that assisted them into power during the relatively recent 2016 elections, who built up their political networks across the country over the course of several decades, and what role their actions play in Western designs for the nation's near and intermediate future.

The Differences 

Syria's government is the creation and perpetuation of localized special interests - backed by various alliances ranging from the former Soviet Union in the past, to Russia, Iran, and to a lesser degree China in present day.

From the Philippines to Myanmar: US to Fight US-Saudi Sponsored Terrorism

September 8, 2017 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - With the recent attack on police in Myanmar by terrorists described by Reuters as "Muslim insurgents," and ongoing terrorism plaguing the Philippines where forces are engaged with militants from the so-called "Islamic State," it would appear that terrorism has spread into Southeast Asia with no signs of waning. 

However, the sudden uptick in violence comes at a time when America's so-called "pivot to Asia" has ground to a complete halt, providing the United States with an all-too-convenient pretext to reengage and establish itself across the region in a much more insidious manner. 

US Sought Military Presence in Southeast Asia for Decades but Lacked a Pretext, Until Now 

The United States has openly conspired to establish and expand a permanent military presence in Southeast Asia as a means to confront, encircle, and contain China for decades.

As early as the Vietnam War, with the so-called "Pentagon Papers" released in 1969, it was revealed that the conflict was simply one part of a greater strategy aimed at containing and controlling China.

Three important quotes from these papers reveal this strategy. It states first that: 

“...the February decision to bomb North Vietnam and the July approval of Phase I deployments make sense only if they are in support of a long-run United States policy to contain China.”

It also claims:

“China—like Germany in 1917, like Germany in the West and Japan in the East in the late 30′s, and like the USSR in 1947—looms as a major power threatening to undercut our importance and effectiveness in the world and, more remotely but more menacingly, to organize all of Asia against us.” 

Finally, it outlines the immense regional theater the US was engaged in against China at the time by stating: 

“there are three fronts to a long-run effort to contain China (realizing that the USSR “contains” China on the north and northwest): (a) the Japan-Korea front; (b) the India-Pakistan front; and (c) the Southeast Asia front.” 

While the US would ultimately lose the Vietnam War and any chance of using the Vietnamese as a proxy force against Beijing, the long war against Beijing would continue elsewhere. 

More recently, an American policy think tank, the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) in a 2000 paper titled "Rebuilding America's Defenses" (PDF) would unabashedly declare its intentions to establish a wider, permanent military presence in Southeast Asia.

The report would state explicitly that: 

...it is time to increase the presence of American forces in Southeast Asia.

It would elaborate in detail, stating:

In Southeast Asia, American forces are too sparse to adequately address rising security requirements. Since its withdrawal from the Philippines in 1992, the United States has not had a significant permanent military presence in Southeast Asia. Nor can U.S. forces in Northeast Asia easily operate in or rapidly deploy to Southeast Asia – and certainly not without placing their commitments in Korea at risk. Except for routine patrols by naval and Marine forces, the security of this strategically significant and increasingly tumultuous region has suffered from American neglect. 

Noting the difficultly of placing US troops where they are not wanted, the PNAC paper notes: 

This will be a difficult task requiring sensitivity to diverse national sentiments, but it is made all the more compelling by the emergence of new democratic governments in the region. By guaranteeing the security of our current allies and newly democratic nations in East Asia, the United States can help ensure that the rise of China is a peaceful one. Indeed, in time, American and allied power in the region may provide a spur to the process of democratization inside China itself.

It should be noted that the paper's reference to "the emergence of new democratic governments in the region" is a reference to client states created by the United States on behalf of its own interests and in no way constituted actual "democratic governments" which would otherwise infer they represented the interests of the very people possessing the "national sentiments" that opposed US military presence in the region in the first place.

Myanmar: Gasoline and Fire, Not Good vs. Evil

September 5, 2017 (Tony Cartalucci - LD) - The unfolding crisis in Southeast Asia's state of Myanmar has confounded many geopolitical analysts due to its complex history and the intentionally deceptive and now contradictory coverage provided by the Western media.

The current government of Myanmar is headed by Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD). It has ascended into power after a decades-long struggle against the nation's military who ruled the nation for decades.

Aung San Suu Kyi is a Creation and Proxy of US and European Interests 

Suu Kyi and her NLD are the recipients of tens of millions of dollars in US, British, and European aid. Entire networks of fronts posing as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have been created to undermine and overwrite Myanmar's sovereign institutions.

The extent of this support and funding is covered by many of the Western organizations themselves, including the Burma Campaign UK, who in its 36 page 2006 report, "Failing the People of Burma?" (.pdf) details extensively how it and its American counterparts have built up Suu Kyi's now impressive political domination of Myanmar.

The report states explicitly:

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED – see Appendix 1, page 27) has been at the forefront of our program efforts to promote democracy and improved human rights in Burma since 1996. We are providing $2,500,000 in FY 2003 funding from the Burma earmark in the Foreign Operations legislation. The NED will use these funds to support Burmese and ethnic minority democracy-promoting organizations through a sub-grant program. The projects funded are designed to disseminate information inside Burma supportive of Burma’s democratic development, to create democratic infrastructures and institutions, to improve the collection of information on human rights abuses by the Burmese military and to build capacity to support the restoration of democracy when the appropriate political openings occur and the exiles/refugees return.

It also reports:

Both Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA) have Burmese services. VOA broadcasts a 30-minute mix of international news and information three times a day. RFA broadcasts news and information about Burma two hours a day. VOA and RFA websites also contain audio and text material in Burmese and English. For example, VOA's October 10, 2003 editorial, "Release Aung San Suu Kyi" is prominently featured in the Burmese section of VOAnews.com. RFA's website makes available audio versions of 16 Aung San Suu Kyi's speeches from May 27 and 29, 2003. U.S. international broadcasting provides crucial information to a population denied the benefits of freedom of information by its government.

Regarding the indoctrination and education of future leaders of this Western proxy political bloc, it states:

The State Department provided $150,000 in FY 2001/02 funds to provide scholarships to young Burmese through Prospect Burma, a partner organization with close ties to Aung San Suu Kyi. With FY 2003/04 funds, we plan to support Prospect Burma’s work given the organization’s proven competence in managing scholarships for individuals denied educational opportunities by the continued repression of the military junta, but committed to a return to democracy in Burma.

In regards to convicted financial criminal George Soros' Open Society and its role in interfering with Myanmar's internal politics, the report states:

Our assistance to the Open Society Institute (OSI) (until 2004) provides partial support for a program to grant scholarships to Burmese refugee students who have fled Burma and wish to continue their studies at the undergraduate, or post-graduate level. Students typically pursue degrees in social sciences, public health, medicine, anthropology, and political science. Priority is given to students who express a willingness to return to Burma or work in their refugee communities for the democratic and economic reform of the country. 

The report, written in 2006 when another US proxy - Thaksin Shinawatra - presided over Thailand as prime minister until his ouster later that year, would detail the role Thailand was then playing to undermine and overthrow Myanmar's political order:

Last year the U.S. government began funding a new program of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to provide basic health services to Burmese migrants outside the official refugee camps in cooperation with the Thai Ministry of Public Health. This project has been supported by the Thai government and has received favorable coverage in the local press. Efforts such as this that endeavor to find positive ways to work with the Thai government in areas of common interest help build support for U.S.-funded programs that support Burmese pro-democracy groups.

Myanmar's current minister of information, Pe Myint - for example - underwent training at the NED and Open Society-funded Indochina Media Memorial Foundation in Bangkok.

A US diplomatic cable made available via Wikileaks would reveal just how integral such training was in building up the US client state that now rules Myanmar.

Myanmar Dodges Human Rights Bullet With US-EU Help

As the Western media labels other governments "autocratic regimes," it helps Myanmar's despots stay in the shadows of impunity. 

May 3, 2017 (Joseph Thomas - NEO) - Myanmar appears poised to escape international scrutiny of its vast and expanding human rights abuses targeting its Rohingya minority.

US State Department-funded media platform, The Irrawaddy, would report in an article titled, "Burma set to Dodge Full UN Probe on Arakan State," that:

Burma looks set to escape an international investigation into alleged atrocities in Arakan State, after the European Union decided not to seek one at the UN Human Rights Council, a draft resolution seen by Reuters showed on Wednesday. 

The UN said in a report last month that the army and police had committed mass killings and gang rapes of Rohingya Muslims in northern Arakan state and burned villages in a campaign that may amount to crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.

The article would also reveal the role the European Union played in avoiding the UN probe, stating:

EU diplomats told a meeting on Tuesday that they preferred using an existing mechanism that had received good cooperation and access from Burma’s government, rather than a new approach, and to give more time to the domestic process.

The article indicates, however, that existing mechanisms lack transparency, independence and thus legitimacy. It also notes that other nations, including Ukraine and Syria, have not escaped similar probes.

Why Myanmar is "Special" 

The Southeast Asian state of Myanmar's political transition last year which saw Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy come to power and herself assume office as the first "State Counsellor of Myanmar," was the culmination of decades of US-European regime change efforts.

Myanmar Mass Murder Made in America

January 31, 2017 (Joseph Thomas - NEO) - The Southeast Asian state of Myanmar has recently become the epicentre of an expanding humanitarian crisis. But because the current government of Myanmar is headed by a regime favoured by American and European interests, little attention and even less action has been given to the conflict. 

A January 10, 2017 Guardian article titled, "65,000 Rohingya flee from Myanmar to Bangladesh following crackdown: UN," reports that:

At least 65,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar – a third of them over the past week – since the army launched a crackdown in the north of Rakhine state. 

The figure, released by the UN, marks a sharp escalation in the numbers fleeing a military campaign which rights groups say has been marred by abuses so severe they could amount to crimes against humanity.

The same article claims:

The stories have cast a pall over the young government of Aung San Suu Kyi, with mainly Muslim Malaysia being especially critical. 

Myanmar’s government has said the claims of abuse are fabricated and launched a special commission to investigate the allegations.

However, anyone at all familiar with Myanmar's recent history and the nature of the current government's support base knows that the unfolding tragedy among the Rohingya minority was not only predictable, but with Aung San Suu Kyi coming to power, inevitable.

The fact that Suu Kyi's political party came to power on a decades-long tsunami of US and European cash and political support, despite US-European knowledge of Suu Kyi's supporters harbouring racist, even genocidal intentions toward the Rohingya, makes the West at the very least partially responsible for the current crisis.

The Warning Signs Were There For Years 

The Guardian would also link the violence against the Rohingya to what it calls, "hardline Buddhist monk Wirathu," in the very last paragraph of its article, giving readers little explanation as to just how prominent a role both Wirathu and his saffron-clad followers have played both in bringing Suu Kyi to power and persecuting the Rohingya with genocidal violence.

Such lies of omission are common throughout the Western media indicating a systematic attempt to conceal the true nature of Suu Kyi and her followers. In fact, so contradictory is the image the Western media has built up for Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and the reality of her political movement's violence, that many are unable to accept the truth even when evidence finally becomes widely known.

In 2007, the Western media eagerly reported on what it dubbed the "Saffron Revolution," a political protest led by Suu Kyi's political allies, including thousands of monks wearing their saffron-coloured robes.

But these same activist groups, including various monk "associations" have systematically been involved in the persecution of and violence against Myanmar's Rohingya minority.

Occasional articles like the UK Independent's 2012 report titled, "Burma's monks call for Muslim community to be shunned," reveal both Myanmar's "hardline Buddhists" and even activist groups celebrated in the West for "promoting democracy" are involved in persecuting the Rohingya.

The report would state:

Monks who played a vital role in Burma's recent struggle for democracy have been accused of fuelling ethnic tensions in the country by calling on people to shun a Muslim community that has suffered decades of abuse. 

In a move that has shocked many observers, some monks' organisations have issued pamphlets telling people not to associate with the Rohingya community, and have blocked humanitarian assistance from reaching them. One leaflet described the Rohingya as "cruel by nature" and claimed it had "plans to exterminate" other ethnic groups.

The Independent would also admit that:

Ko Ko Gyi, a democracy activist with the 88 Generation Students group and a former political prisoner, said: "The Rohingya are not a Burmese ethnic group. The root cause of the violence… comes from across the border."

It is difficult to discern what then, the Western media means by "democracy activist" when such "activists" openly display racism, bigotry, discrimination, and support a growing conflict that involves both calls for genocide, and violence aimed at carrying out genocide. The 88 Generation Students group has for years repeatedly weighed in on the Rohingya conflict, backing calls to deny them citizenship, voting rights and even basic human rights.

Is the US Positioning Itself for Military Presence in Myanmar?

January 12, 2017 (Joseph Thomas - NEO) - The governments of the United States and United Kingdom have spent decades and millions of dollars creating the political opposition fronts that constitute support for Myanmar's new (and first ever) State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi. This support includes backing Suu Kyi's saffron-clad street fronts who make up a nationwide network of "monk" alliances and associations.

And it is these alliances and associations that have served at the forefront of persecution against Myanmar's Rohingya minority.

Also for years, this violent persecution has unfolded in what was otherwise a media blackout across North America and Europe. When violence reaches fevered pitches, American and European media organisations intentionally introduce ambiguity as to who precisely is leading anti-Rohingya violence.

The conflict carries with it all the hallmarks of an intentional strategy of tension; used within Myanmar to galvanise Suu Kyi's otherwise morally and politically bankrupt opposition fronts and now, it appears to be ready for use within Washington's wider strategy of "pivoting to Asia."

Myanmar's "New Rohingya Insurgency" 

The International Crisis Group (ICG), a Brussels-based foreign policy think tank funded by some of the largest corporations on the planet, poses as a conflict management organisation. In reality, it introduces manufactured narratives that are then picked up and eagerly promoted across American and European media outlets, to shift public perception and pave the way for shifts in Western geopolitical aspirations.



Their most recent manufactured narrative involves what it calls a "Rohingya insurgency." Their narrative is already circulating across American and European media, including the Wall Street Journal whose article, "Asia’s New Insurgency Burma’s abuse of the Rohingya Muslims creates violent backlash." claims (our emphasis):

Now this immoral policy has created a violent backlash. The world’s newest Muslim insurgency pits Saudi-backed Rohingya militants against Burmese security forces. As government troops take revenge on civilians, they risk inspiring more Rohingya to join the fight.

The article also admits:

Called Harakah al-Yaqin, Arabic for “the Faith Movement,” the group answers to a committee of Rohingya emigres in Mecca and a cadre of local commanders with experience fighting as guerrillas overseas. Its recent campaign—which continued into November with IED attacks and raids that killed several more security agents—has been endorsed by fatwas from clerics in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, the Emirates and elsewhere. 

Rohingyas have “never been a radicalized population,” ICG notes, “and the majority of the community, its elders and religious leaders have previously eschewed violence as counterproductive.” But that is changing fast. Harakah al-Yaqin was established in 2012 after ethnic riots in Rakhine killed some 200 Rohingyas and is now estimated to have hundreds of trained fighters.

The Wall Street Journal and ICG both apparently expect readers to believe that Saudi Arabia is backing armed militants in Myanmar simply to "fight back" against Aung San Suu Kyi, her government and her followers' collective brutality against the Rohingya.

In reality, Saudi Arabia and its sponsors in Washington, London and Brussels, only intervene when geopolitically advantageous. Just as Saudi Arabia is backing armed militants everywhere from Yemen to Syria to advance a joint US-European-Gulf campaign to reassert primacy across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Saudi Arabia's support of supposed militants in Myanmar is driven by similar hegemonic ambitions.

Myanmar: Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi Oversees Genocide

December 14, 2016 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - Reading commentary, analysis, and even alleged "reports" from the Southeast Asian state of Myanmar, it would appear that Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi - poster child of American and European "democracy promotion" - is helpless to avert what is quickly expanding into wholesale genocide against the nation's Rohingya minority. 

In reality, Suu Kyi's political coalition has for decades been bolstered by highly politicized sectarian factions, including saffron-clad "monks" who have regularly employed street violence in support of Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) party. These same factions - also for decades - have pursued a policy of racially and religiously charged, politically-motivated violence against Myanmar's Rohingya population. 

Myanmar's Rohingya - many of whom have lived in the nation for generations - had at one point coexisted with Myanmar's majority ethnic groups. It was only relatively recently that enterprising political factions decided to use racial and religious tensions as a means of galvanizing and radicalizing opposition aimed at undermining the then military-led government and bringing Suu Kyi to power.

It was warned years before Suu Kyi came to power that should her party win elections, free reign would be granted to her supporters to fully and openly pursue their genocidal agenda. The NLD has won the elections, and that genocidal agenda is now unfolding.

Covering Up Suu Kyi's Ties to Sectarian Extremists... for Years    

This fact is omitted across the Western media's current reports, in an effort to exonerate Suu Kyi from any responsibility for the ongoing violence.

CNBC News, for example, in an article titled, "Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi under fire as Rohingya crisis escalates in Rakhine," claims (emphasis added):

A year after becoming Myanmar's de-facto leader, Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi is coming under a barrage of international criticism for her failure to end alleged military crimes in the country's northwest.

About 1.1 million people in the state of Rakhine identify themselves as Rohingya Muslims, an ethnic minority that has long suffered persecution in the Buddhist-majority nation. The group's origins in Myanmar can be traced back to the fifteenth century, according to the Council of Foreign Relations, but Rohingyas have yet to be granted citizenship and remain unable to vote.

Strategically omitted from CNBC's coverage is the fact that it was Suu Kyi, her NLD, and street demonstrations led by her "saffron" supporters that protested the previous government's attempts to grant the Rohingya provisional citizenship and voting rights ahead of the elections that saw Suu Kyi's NLD come to power.

Australia’s ABC News would report in a 2015 article titled, “Myanmar scraps temporary ID cards amid protests targeting ethnic minorities without citizenship,” that (emphasis added):

Myanmar’s government says identity cards for people without full citizenship, including Muslim Rohingya, will expire within weeks.

The scrapping of ID cards snatches away voting rights handed to them just a day earlier (Tuesday), after Myanmar nationalists protested against the move.

The Rohingya, along with hundreds of thousands of people in mainly ethnic minority border areas, who hold the documents ostensibly as part of a process of applying for citizenship, will see their ID cards expire at the end of March, according to a statement from the office of president Thein Sein.

The "nationalists" were of course, Suu Kyi's "saffron" supporters.

Irony Redefined: "Human Rights Champion" Suu Kyi Jails Dissidents

October 28, 2016 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - Myanmar's defacto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi of the  National League for Democracy (NDL) political party, has paved her time since coming to power earlier this year with both irony and hypocrisy. She has not only illegally declared herself "leader" of the Southeast Asian state in contravention of its constitution, she has also embarked on an iron-fisted purge of her political opponents identical to the one she fought against as she struggled to seize power to begin with.

During elections earlier this year, Myanmar's constitution prevented Suu Kyi from holding the nation's highest office due to her inordinate amount of time overseas, her status of having been married to a foreign, and her children's dual citizenship. Instead of adhering to the law, her party once in power, simply contrived an entirely new post for her, State Counsellor of Myanmar, which makes her the "defacto leader" of Myanmar.

Canada's The Globe and Mail in an article titled, "Stéphane Dion says Aung San Suu Kyi is the ‘de facto’ leader of Myanmar," would note that Canada's government recognized this legal side-stepping, stating:

Dion called Suu Kyi, now Myanmar’s foreign minister, “the de facto national leader” of her country “because they have a strange rule that if you have married somebody who’s not of the country, you cannot be the leader of the government and of the state.” 

Suu Kyi, the internationally recognized democracy advocate, is barred from becoming president because her late husband was British, as are her two sons. The rule was crafted during Myanmar’s decades of military rule, which Suu Kyi fought against during years of house arrest before finally prevailing last fall.

In essence, she is unelected, and illegally holding power. For a woman who's Western backers - particularly in the United States and United Kingdom - have held her up as a champion for democracy and the rule of law, she and her party's first act upon taking power was trampling both.

The Inhumane Humanitarian  

Another myth built up around Nobel Peace Prize laureate Suu Kyi by the West has been her advocacy for "human rights." Her advocacy for human rights, however, appears only to extend out to protect only as far as her immediate political allies are concerned. For groups beyond this self-serving political protection, and particularly regarding her political opponents, she and her NDL are just as eager to jail, crush, or kill political opponents as they claimed the ruling military government had been.

How the US Took Over Myanmar's Ministry of Information

August 11, 2016 (Joseph Thomas - NEO) - Uncharacteristically, Myanmar's Ministry of Information-run newspaper, the Burmese-language Myanma Alinn Daily, levelled commentary toward neighbouring Thailand. It is uncharacteristic, because until of late, the paper and the Ministry of Information itself has generally refrained from commenting on the politics of other nations.

And not only did the Ministry of Information-run newspaper comment on Thailand's politics, it did so in a way supporting a wider Western-crafted narrative attempting to undermine the legitimacy of Bangkok's current government in order to pave the way in the region for yet another American-European backed political front, the first being that of Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar itself.

Reuters' article, "Myanmar paper: Thailand risks 'substandard democracy'," would report:

A state-run newspaper in Myanmar says Thailand risks "substandard" democracy if a military-backed draft constitution is approved in a referendum on Sunday. 

The irony of the comment is hardly lost on voters and political observers alike across the region. For decades Myanmar suffered economic stagnation under harsh military rule while Thailand was seen as an Asian "tiger" economy with extensive freedoms and a developing democracy.

Reuters would further report:

"If the draft of the constitution in Thailand were to be approved in the upcoming referendum, the democracy in that country would become substandard and limited," said an editorial in the Burmese-language Myanma Alinn Daily, which is run by the Ministry of Information and rarely comments on politics in other countries. 

Zaw Htay, a spokesman for Aung San Suu Kyi, asked if the editorial reflected the government's official position, referred questions to the Ministry of Information.

The US State Department-Trained Minister of Information  

Myanmar's new Minister of Information is Pe Myint, who according to the Myanmar Times article, "Who’s who: Myanmar’s new cabinet," is (our emphasis):

Formerly a doctor with a degree from the Institute of Medicine, U Pe Myint changed careers after 11 years and received training as a journalist at the Indochina Media Memorial Foundation in Bangkok. He then embarked on a career as a writer, penning dozens of novels. He participated in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa in 1998, and was also editor-in-chief of The People’s Age Journal. He was born in Rakhine State in 1949.

To understand why Pe Myint's training at the Indochina Media Memorial Foundation in Bangkok (IMMF) is key, readers must turn to Wikileaks and a US diplomatic cable titled, "An Overview of Northern Thailand-Based Burmese Media Orgranizations."

Myanmar: West's "Saint Suu Kyi" Tramples Rohingya

May 15, 2016 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - Myanmar's "de facto leader" Aung San Suu Kyi recently warned the United States to not refer to the Rohingya ethnic minority as "Rohingya," in an attempt to deny them the dignity and human rights she and her party posed as renowned defenders of.

Image: Fake "monks" who constitute the violent street front that helped propel Suu Kyi into power, are also shamelessly and openly racist bigots bent on carrying out genocide against the nation's Rohingya population. 

For those critically examining and long-following political developments in Myanmar and their wider geopolitical implications for Southeast Asia, Asia, and the world, Aung San Suu Kyi and her "National League for Democracy" (NLD) political front, along with a vast array of Western-funded NGOs' turning against Myanmar's Rohingya population after predicating their ascent into power upon "human rights" and "democracy" is no surprise.

For those receiving their news from establishment media networks in the US and Europe, Suu Kyi refusing to recognize the Rohingya, many of whom have lived in Myanmar for generations, may seem puzzling, even disappointing, or more disturbingly, an opportunity for excuses.

However, it was warned before recent elections - hailed by the Western media as "historic" - that not only would Suu Kyi fail to deliver on the utopian promises her party represented, and not only would her coming to power begin a process of recolonization by the British Empire's successors in London and on Wall Street, but that it would also herald increasing persecution, violence, and eventually genocide against the Rohingya minority already long-targeted by Suu Kyi's staunchest supporters.

As early as March 2015 in a previous article titled, "Myanmar: Meet Aung San Suu Kyi's Saffron Mobs,"  the true nature of Suu Kyi's support base was revealed with the "saffron" robed monks often the centerpiece of Suu Kyi and the NLD's street demonstrations exposed as ultra-violent, genocidal, and very much Western-backed.

Not only did this backing including funding and organizational support, but it also included substantial public relations efforts across the Western media to cover up the true nature of their actions and motivations.

More recently, as Suu Kyi assumed power by proxy through a hand-picked "president" Suu Kyi openly pledged to "rule above," it was warned that the stalwart support of Suu Kyi's "saffron" mobs would be rewarded by giving them an increasingly free hand to target and eliminate Myanmar's Rohingya people.

In the article titled, "Myanmar's New Dictator: Aung San Suu Kyi," it was explicitly stated that:

With the diminished role of the military in government and Suu Kyi's self-serving and selective adherence to the rule of law, her supporters likely anticipate a free hand in actualizing their genocidal ambitions versus not only the Rohingya, but all of their political and sociocultural enemies. 

Not only is the prospect of wider violence a concern for the people of Myanmar, but the rise of political order in Myanmar unwilling or incapable of stemming genocide spells chaos for its neighbors, particularly Thailand.

Suu Kyi Warns Against Recognizing Rohingya

Considering this, it should hardly come as a surprise then, when the New York Times reported recently in their article, "Aung San Suu Kyi Asks U.S. Not to Refer to ‘Rohingya’," that:

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Myanmar’s first democratically elected government since 1962, embraced that view last week when she advised the United States ambassador against using the term “Rohingya” to describe the persecuted Muslim population that has lived in Myanmar for generations. 

Her government, like the previous military-led one, will not call the Rohingya people by that name because it does not recognize them as citizens, said her spokesman, U Kyaw Zay Ya, a Foreign Ministry official.

New York Times' screed, however, is predictably inaccurate. The "previous military-led one," had in fact, attempted to grant the Rohingya additional rights, including the right to vote, and only backed down as a matter of concession when confronted by Suu Kyi's violent street mobs.

Southeast Asia Must Not "Compromise" With Terrorists and Traitors

May 2, 2016 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) -  So-called Thai "academic" Thitinana Pongsudhirak of Chulalongkorn University in a Bangkok Post op-ed titled, "Thailand lags as Myanmar gains ground," attempts to convince readers that Myanmar is an example for Southeast Asia to follow, while Thailand is in reverse.

Thitinan's simplistic analysis is based on the most superficial metrics one can observe. Myanmar had "elections," so therefore Thitinan concludes functioning and fair "democracy" must exist. The US and Europe hailed the ascension of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to power, therefore it must be "good." And Myanmar's military leadership made concessions to allow all of this to take place, therefore "so should Thailand and the rest of Southeast Asia."

Thitinan condemns Thailand for what he calls, "fits and starts from military-authoritarianism to popular rule only to revert to dictatorship, enabled by two military coups in 2006 and 2014."

He fails to mention the "popular rule" removed from power by "two military coups" was led by Thaksin Shinawatra, a man who literally mass murdered nearly 3,000 innocent people in 2003, another 85 protesters in a single day in 2004, and carried out a systematic campaign of murder, assassinations, kidnappings, and physical and legal intimidation to silence his critics and political opponents all while illegally and very openly consolidating his power.

In the wake of the 2006 coup, twice Shinawatra brought mobs to Bangkok, and in 2010 those mobs included 300 heavily armed terrorists who tipped off street battles that killed nearly 100 protesters, by-standers, soldiers, and police. That was before Shinawatra's political subordinates openly called for nationwide arson upon protest stages before dutifully and destructively carrying it out.

Image: The people responsible for doing this to Thailand, never get to run the country again. Period. Not only is Thitinan's omission of these various episodes of mass murder and mayhem dishonest, it is dishonest p precisely in the same manner known-Shinawatra lobbyists are leading many to suspect this so-called "academic" is himself just another lobbyist. 

Thitinan, like many pro-Shinawatra lobbyists impersonating academics, intentionally leaves all of this out, as well as any feasible alternative that could have been used to remove a "popular ruler" from power who was openly trampling both the rule of law, and the lives and livelihoods of the people of Thailand.