http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listse rv.aol.com/msg02217.html
"This CIA operation was the infiltration of corporate media in an effort to take over major news outlets. Deborah Davis’ book, “Katharine the Great : Katharine Graham and Her Washington Post Empire,” shows that the CIA “owned” journalists of the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other media outlets. A quote from Ms. Davis’ book.
“By the early 1950´s, the CIA owned respected members of the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communication vehicles, plus stringers, four to six hundred in all according to a former CIA analyst."
Now that we have that straight, you understand this article and who is behind the insurgency against Burma.
This is why it made the news pages for just a few days, then generally disappears -- like COUNTLESS OTHER STORIES and COUNTRIES!!!
That's what the AGENDA-PUSHING "NEWS" BUSINESS is ALL ABOUT!!!!
KLERDEY, Burma - For a repressive police state, Burma has borders that are curiously porous.
Along the eastern border with Thailand, legions of displaced farmers, smugglers, and army deserters slip back and forth with little trouble and no paperwork.
Quite unlike the dictatorship in North Korea, the zippered-up and ethnically homogeneous police state far to the northeast, Burma's is a dog's breakfast of ethnic insurrection, cross-border criminality, and massive refugee flight.
To halt peaceful prodemocracy demonstrations in Burmese cities in September, the generals who run the country had only to order soldiers to club, shoot, and detain Buddhist monks. Taming the mountainous eastern frontier has not been so brutally simple.
The army periodically launches scorched-earth offensives, razing villages, enslaving farmers, and raping women, according to human rights groups. Alternatively, it cuts lucrative deals with ethnic leaders, encouraging them to grow opium, manufacture methamphetamine, and clear-cut teak forests.
Still, armed resistance boils on, and the border continues to leak.
Consider General Johnny, commander of the Seventh brigade of the Karen National Liberation Army, military wing of the largest of the 20 ethnic groups that for more than half a century have intermittently fought insurgency wars against the government.
From a hut perched on bamboo stilts, he commands about 1,000 guerrillas in this tiny village on the west bank of the Moei River, a lazy waterway that separates Burma from Thailand, said the general, who gives his name as Johnny.
In the past year, he said, the Burmese Army has not mustered the resolve to force him to move.
"The order from headquarters is to attack us, but the battalion commander who is responsible in this area does not follow the order," the general said. "He doesn't want to fight."
The Burmese Army is among the largest in Asia, with about 400,000 soldiers. But parts of it are a shambles, with poor morale, an officer corps that drinks to excess, and an acute desertion problem, according to diplomats, human rights groups, and the army.
Desertion grew by 8 percent last year, according to a report by the London publication "Jane's Defence Weekly," which said in April it had obtained an internal army document that summarized a quarterly meeting of regional army commanders. During a four-month period in 2006, the army lost 9,497 people, mostly from desertion, Jane's said.
Diplomats and human rights officials also say the army's ability to deploy soldiers has been eroding. "On paper they have 400,000 soldiers, but in the field it is more like 250,000," said Shari Villarosa, charge d'affaires at the US Embassy in Burma.
To find soldiers, army recruiters often abduct or buy children as young as 10, according to a recent report by the New York-based advocacy group Human Rights Watch. It said children are grabbed at train and bus stations and that some are beaten until they agree to volunteer.
The army expects many of its soldiers, especially those stationed in the wild eastern frontier, to live off the land. That means they compel farmers and villagers at gunpoint to give them food.
"I was very ashamed of taking food from the people in the villages," said Si Thu, 22, who recounted deserting from the army in October. By sneaking across the countryside at night, he said, he found his way here to territory controlled by the Karen rebels.
Thu said he was forced to join the army last spring, when soldiers grabbed him as he was going home from a video shop.
"There is no pride in the army," he said.
"After the cease-fire, the government deployed their troops in every Palong village," according to Lway Aye Nana, a Palong who now lives in exile in Thailand, and soldiers ordered villagers "to grow opium so they can collect taxes on it."
"A lot of young Palong have ended up being drug-addicted," she said."
