Subscribe to EIR Online

PRESS RELEASE


Kra Canal Video
Draws British (Blue) Blood

Oct. 14, 2013 (EIRNS)—This release was issued today by the Lyndon LaRouche Political Action Committee.

The impact of the LaRouche PAC video, "Kra Canal & The Development of Southeast Asia," along with the gathering momentum for "connectivity" led by China—exemplified both by President Xi Jinping's promotion of the "New Silk Road" and the "Maritime Silk Road" and the push for high-speed rail development in Southeast Asia — has drawn a nasty retort from London.

The Economist's Asia hatchet man, "Banyan," in an Oct. 12 article warning of the ambitious China-Thailand railroad development projects, makes a point, in an offhanded but unmistakable aside, to slander the Kra Canal and the use of Peaceful Nuclear Explosives after LaRouche PAC's recently released video on those subjects.

This attack against the KRA Canal is, as the KRA video points out, firmly in the British tradition. "The 1946 Anglo-Thai Treaty Article Seven states that: The Siamese Government undertake that no canal linking the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Siam shall be cut across Siamese territory without the prior concurrence of the Government of the United Kingdom."

The immediate threat is, of course, the railroad development.

The railroad project, Banyan says,

"aims to fulfill a favorite dream of Thailand's political class: To make the country the keystone of mainland South-East Asia. (WikiLeaks reveals that in 1973 Thai mandarins joined Edward Teller, an American nuclear nut, in the fantasy of using Hiroshima-sized bombs to blast a canal from the South China Sea to the Indian Ocean.)"

After describing the joint Thai-Chinese push for the 2 trillion baht ($64 billion) project which includes the threatening prospect of linking China's Yunnan province with Singapore, Banyan lays out "The case against the infrastructure plan, which everyone agrees is needed in principle."

He trots out various economists' arguments that the project violates "the main tenets of fiscal prudence," but dismisses it because the Thai debt levels are low, adding that "This call for fiscal prudence is not what the opposition needs if it is to change the electoral map in its favour."

So the Empire, Banyan says, is left with the shop-worn, rather stale, bloody flag of "Corruption" to wave against real progress being attempted in East (and Central) Asia.

Back to top

clear
clear
clear