TOTAL,French firms ready to kill fo

[cd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Subject: TOTAL,French firms ready to kill for "their" petroleum.

Cher Michael and All,

Not all things are rotten in France. Offspring,the music group is
playing Paris tonight...

Thank you for the posting on FRench mercenaries and Total. 
On another front, the FT (Financial Times) publishes on lead article
PAGE 3 'US applauds European stand on Iran'....Only Total of France has
so far invested in Iran's oil sector'... regarding the burton-helms
current events...

I have been writing about this, specifically for over a year now, saying
the French would use soldiers, Foreign Legion, whatever, now they have a
special commmando-professional- army elite corps, for just this kind of
thing. The French military have a reputation for brutality and
indifference to political restraint - there is virtually none in this
country where the military have a veritable free hand, as the state
political machinery leaves little dissent or investigation by the pubic. 
The French republic operates very differently from the United States. Do
not forget, their former defense minister under Mitterand, Charles Henru
- a socialist, and recently reputed to be a spy for the Bulgarians and
Russians for over the last thirty years, blew up the Greenpeace ship
over the antinuke demonstrations, killing one lone portuguese
photographer. Of course, both Mitterand and Henru denied it. Henru later
died shortly after leaving office. Mitterands PM Pierre B. got two
bullets in his head, -official a suicide - a close friend of Mitterand
shot himself in the Presidential Palace, a key insider investor close to
mitterand mysteriously died in the American Hospital -i believe it was
that hospital- and Mitterand, of course, all the time knowing he was
dying of cancer, was tapping in the phone lines to actresses (he had a
perverted obsession for Carole Bouquet) and journalists -Liberation -
and some 100 000 'ecoutes' taps -so says yesterday's press. 

This country is run by a very powerful elite, very small number, and
they have a majority in the national assembly and Senate legislative
bodies. Chirac is here to stay for another five years or so, and he
could get reelected then. 

Which is to say, 'Plus que ca change, plus que c'est la meme chose'.
Dont expect much to change here. TOTAL is going for the longterm, 30
year deal and more. 

Of course they are using their army to protect their investment. And no
one here, in France, is about to stop them, not now, not in the near
future. And the FRench soldiers there will kill anything and anyone in
their way.

Back home in the US, check out the new AFL CIO 
http://aflcio.paywatch.org
and see how well off are US corporate executives. Unocal is not yet on
it but we hope it will be soon.

Unocal's Phelp Dodge director, J Steven Whisler is currently involved in
the copper strike in Arizona. By the way, there is one of the worlds
largest copper mines in Zaire...

Unocal director JOHN W Creighton Jr, ceo president of Weyerhaueser is 
one of America's Big pay winners,
http://aflcio.paywatch.org/ceopay/club/index.html
 Last year, John Creighton Jr. raked in
$1,308,325 in salary, bonus, and other
compensations from Weyerhaeuser Co.

  John Creighton Jr.
  CEO of Weyerhaeuser        

If you add in the $1,270,000 in stock option
grants awarded to John Creighton Jr., that's
a total of $2,578,325.

And John Creighton Jr. has $5,050,104 in
unexercised stock options from previous
years.

Of course, that doesnt include his director's pay from Unocal, 
or any of the other dozens of American corporate boards he sits on.

Remember, Thierry Desmarest, TOTAL CEO, is godchild protege and
successor to Serge Tchuruk, former TOTAL boss, now running Alcatel -and
going nuclear. Alcatal is now in the daily press over a deal for
Framatone, a state nuclear company, and Desmarest also is on the board
of Cogema, french state nuclear company. These are heavy industrialists
doing state economics, for the future of the french state in the world
of energy tomorrow. They are very serious, and have a long term strategy
for french nuclear power and exploitation of gas and oil world
resources. REcently, EDF, the other state energy company, more linked to
electricity found gas resources for FRance for the next 200 years! 

Sorry to get a little off the Burma line, but Burma is basically of less
than major  strategic interest when it comes to the overall global plans
for FRance to remain a dominant power in the 21st century. For French
soldiers, a Burma killing fields is seen to them as good field training.
However, if they should get dragged into a major embroglio there, they
stand to do better than they did in Rwanda, or Zaire...

Dawn Star, paris
WORLDWIDE TOTAL BOYCOTT
HTTP:///www-uvi.eunet.fr/asia/euro-burma/total/
mbeer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> 
> From: Michael Beer <mbeer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: US, French firms ready to kill for "their" petroleum.
> 
> Here are reports about mercenaries hired to "protect" the pipeline.
> Looks like French and US firms are willing to kill Burmese for gas.
> S. Africa is thinking  of outlawing mercenary firms.
> Maybe others should follow suit.
> (Michael Beer, Nonviolence International)
> 
> Copyright 1997 Asiaweek Limited Corp.
>                                     Asiaweek
>                                  April 11, 1997
> SECTION: FRONTLINES; Intelligence; Pg. 8
> HEADLINE: Pipeline Pathway Cleared
>    Myanmar's military authorities doubt that there is a single Karen guerrilla
> within seven km of Ban-I-Thong, at the Thai border. That is the crossing point
> for the controversial natural gas pipeline under construction that will make its
> way from Myanmar's Yadana offshore natural gas field into Thailand. And in the
> frontier provinces to the north, Karen fighters are holed up, considering their
> options. This dry season's particularly harsh government offensive against their
> 49-year-old insurgency hit them harder than in previous years (see EDITORIAL, p.
> 21).
> 
>    In 1995, five civilian workers were killed and 11 others injured when the
> Karen National Liberation Army attacked the joint Franco-American Total-Unocal $
> 1.06-billion pipeline project. Now, another major U.S. player, Texaco, as part
> of another international consortium, is surveying the route with an eye to
> laying its own parallel pipeline from a second field in the Andman Sea, called
> Yedagun. But Texaco is playing it safe -- or at least safer -- than Total or
> Unocal did at first. IT HAS HIRED A U.S. COMPANY, ORDSAFE, TO CONTROL SECURITY
> in the area in which it is working. Ordsafe's orders are to evacuate all Texaco
> company personnel at the first hint of trouble. At least half a dozen former
> members of the South African military make up the 20-plus Ordsafe team. The U.S.
> oil companies have also called on their friends in high places. In Bangkok,
> Karen representatives were summoned by U.S. diplomats and advised that any
> further attacks on U.S. commercial interests will be viewed as acts of war.
> 
>                      Copyright 1995 Indigo Publications
>                             Intelligence Newsletter
>                                  June 29, 1995
> SECTION: THREAT ASSESSMENT; GUERILLA WARFARE; No. 267
> HEADLINE: Total Squares up to Karens
> The French oil group Total is beefing up security on the pipeline it is
> building to carry gas from Burma's offshore Yadana field to the Thai frontier.
> Workers setting out to choose a route for the pipeline fell victim to a first
> attack by the Karen National Liberation Army in March.   While denying it is
> doing so, Total has been striving ever since to make contact with French
> mercenaries who helped Karen guerillas for a number of years and also with a
> French arms merchant installed in Thailand who supplied them with weapons.
> Total also plans to install passive security systems with infrared sensors along
> the entire length of the pipeline. Curiously, however, the oil company won't
> send technicians to the site for the present, asking them to work exclusively
> from maps and blueprints. There is some detailed evidence (including video film)
> that Karen political prisoners in leg-irons have been "employed" to work on the
> gas pipeline. France's DGSE is also closely studying security on the pipeline,
> on which many French technicians and engineers are expected to work.
> 
> Copyright 1995 Indigo Publications
>                             Intelligence Newsletter
>                                December 21, 1995
> SECTION: BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE; BURMA; No. 278
> HEADLINE: French "mercenaries" to protect Total worksite
>    Around 10 French "mercenaries" left about Nov. 20 for Burma to see to the
> protection of a 63-km-long gas pipeline that the French oil company Total is
> building close to the Thai border (IN 267). The security companies hired by
> Total to recruit the mercenaries found it hard to find volunteers.   Indeed, a
> lot of French mercenaries took up cause over the years with the Karen rebellion
> and some even lost their lives in doing so. The work to be carried out by
> Total will be conducted under the "protection" of the Burmese army, and thus
> against Karen rebels. As a result, the mercenaries who accepted the job are
> mainly young men who recently quit the French army. Among them are two mine
> disposal experts who served under UN colors in former Yugoslavia.
> 
> Warmly,
> Michael
> mbeer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx