Thank you Rainforest Action Network

[dawnstar@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Subject: Thank you Rainforest Action Network!!! US pension funding TOTAL/ELF

For those of you who might have missed this, ten days ago, there was a
full page advertisement in the New York Times, with a large photo of Mr
Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank, and beside it, "MR.
WOLFENSON,STOP THE PIPELINE." The ad was run by the Rainforest Action
Network (RAN) which has been active on the Burma oil investment, namely
against Unocal, Texaco, Arco and TOTAL(Arco has since pulled out). We at
EuroBurmanet would like to thank RAN and its supporters, some of whom
you probably know, for this ad which opens with the following: "HERE'S
YOUR CHANCE TO INVEST IN CORRUPT GOVERNMENTS AND GET HIGH-YIELD
RAINFOREST DESTRUCTION AT NO EXTRA COST." 

Unfortunately, the RAN's ad does not specifically address the
environmental destruction caused by the Yadana and other oil and gas
development in Burma. The target of this ad is the Chad/Cameroon
pipeline project slicing "through the heart of Africa's rainforests"
while funding courrupt regimes to do so. The ad targets the French oil
and gas conglomerate currently in a takeover war with TOTAL to create
the world's FOURTH largest oil and gas company (Elf was a government
subsidy until its privatisation in 1993). Elf, along with Shell and
Exxon are the villians here and you can see more at the Ran website,
http://www.ran.org. 

It would be encouraging to see this kind of publicity against TOTAL's 
Yadana Devlopment Pipeline, so called, where TOTAL is the operator.
TOTAL and Elf are soon to merge. The french papers are full of it,and
its amazing how little ideology exists now in France, as the reporting
is flacid and gives very little information about French oil and energy
strategy, other than to say that the deal will go through, more or less,
in the first two weeks of September once Elf's shareholders decide what
to do, on September 3. 

Whenever the Elf-TOTALfina deal goes through, there will be no change in
oil and energy strategy decided in Paris with government backing. What
is clear is that the French do not want any non French company to get in
on the deal. 

And what is even more clear and important is the prevailing role of the
American pension funds investing in both TOTAL and ELF (24% in Elf as
recently reported here, and up to 60% in TOTAL according to english
business and financial reports). 

So fellow readers, why are we not going after the US pension funds,
instead of slamming TOTAL. I say this because you are now going to have
to slam ELF too and take a direct aim at the french foreign energy
policy. This we have been doing all along as you know, and though it
invited a lot of disagreement with French people here and their western
and eastern supporters, the truth is now very self evident and needs no
'I TOLD YOU SO' finger-pointing.

I would like to encourage the US based environmental and human rights
activists and their friends at RAN, EarthRights International, the Burma
Projet and others to start getting SERIOUS about the US pension fund
investors like T Rowe Price. Elf's president Philippe Jaffré was
recently in London and New York drumming up support for his takeover
counter attack on TOTAL.So readers, do it. Go where the money is, follow
the money trail. Attack the pension funds for investing in TOTAL. US
pension funds are encouraging support for TOTAL's Burma business. But I
dont hear anything about these investment financiers being criticised or
attacked? I would like to know why not? 

I understand that ERI (EarthRights International) is planning a sequel
to the excellent TOTAL Denial report. Its a little late for that, unless
there is some very new evidence of TOTAL financing the Burmese army and
pipeline security and other human rights violations. (Not that we need
more dead bodies, victims and destruction to prove what we already know,
for years, more or less ignored by the ILO last spring.)

Of course we welcome any contribution to greater public awareness of the
TOTAL Yadana pipeline calamity and its wicked support of the junte.

You should all know that you will soon be able to read in French, a
detailed rendering of the TOTAL gaz investment in Burma, and the lack of
public and political will here in France to stop it. To understand the
TOTAL french energy investment in Burma, and its double diplomacy there,
you need to understand the French culture and way of thinking. If you
don't first address the French on their homeground, nothing will get
them out of Burma except perhaps another Diem Bien Phu...

And thats not very likely to happen, n'est-ce pas?

So readers, as TOTAL gets bigger and stronger in the next few weeks,
flexing it muscles and pouring billions into the deal to take over Elf,
do a reality check and just think of all those US pension funds and
investment houses and banks making it easy for them, here in Paris, and
in Burma. 

Its time to do some real work to stop the investment funds from
financing the oil and gas projects in development projects whether in
Chad, Cameroon or Burma. 

RAN understands that. And they put money to see that others do too.
Have the other groups got that message clear yet? 

Any and all comments welcomed. Perhaps Simon Billenness or someone at
the Burma Project at George Soro's investment empire could shed some
light on this problem for us all.

There is a fundamental problem of focus here, and US-based groups should
understand that.

Dawn Star
Euro-Burmanet
Worldwide TOTAL Boycott

(NYT, August 10, 1999)