Saturday, August 09, 2008

Beautiful Burma?

I was going to post something about the Olympics, China and whether there should have been a political boycott over the occupation in Tibet, and the support it gives to repressive regimes in Burma and Sudan.

When this morning I received this comment via blogger

“Murray Forgie has left a new comment on your post "Burma Campaign – Committee for Workers Capital":

BEST wishes from UNISON's furthest flung member on the Thai/Burma border: Check out
http://www.amnesty.org.uk/events_details.asp?ID=778

The Burma play: A Comedy of TerrorFrom: Mon 4 August 2008 To: Sun 10 August 2008 Described by John Pilger as 'a vital glimpse of the courage and suffering of the Burmese people', the Burma Play is brought to the Edinburgh Festival by Northern International Theatre in conjunction with Amnesty International, and the Burma Educational Scholarship Trust and Unison.

Tickets to the play will cost £8/£5with all procedes to BEST and Burma Campaign UK.”

I assume this comment is genuine and is from Murray Forgie who is indeed on the Thai/Burma border. Hopefully, he will send me a guest post on Burma.

However, when I googled “Burma Campaign”, I found the sponsored advert top left hand corner was for a travel agency advertising for “Beautiful Burma” (see fittingly in red).

Check out the Burma Campaign page on the tourist boycott of Burma. Money from tourism directly and indirectly supports the military regime there, resorts have been built with forced labour and “ Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has asked tourists not to visit Burma.”
But it appears that Google (who also own "blogger" which hosts this blog) appear to be making money out of promoting Burmese tourism. I think I will have to try to “engage” with Google billionaire owners, Larry and Sergey, on this matter.

Or will I have to consider boycotting my own blog?

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