UPDATED: Burma, Chevron and Total: If I were on a jury…

As you’re no doubt aware, the Burmese state has been bloodily cracking down on popular unrest — massacring pacifist monks, dragging people out of their homes in the middle of the night and so forth.

What you might not be aware of is that oil companies Chevron and Total are business partners with the Burmese state. These enterprises are complicit in propping up a tyrannical regime. Agorists recognize that, like most of the corporate dominated “white market” economy, the source of their wealth is not really production and exchange but subsidies, sweetheart deals and generally cozy relationships with the bandit gangs more commonly referred to as “governments”.

“… if you wish to know how libertarians regard the State and any of its acts, simply think of the State as a criminal band…” — Murray Rothbard

As one man alone with few resources, there is little or nothing that I can do about the situation in Burma directly. I can, however, tell the truth as I see it and try to act accordingly.

Chevron and Total are complicit in the atrocities in Burma via their relationship with the Burmese government. This constitutes an active disregard for the rights of the Burmese, rather than the merely apathetic passive disregard of the average person who feels to overwhelmed with the challenges of day to day life to pay attention to such things and is not directly involved in the first place. Chevron and Total, by means of their business partnership with the Burmese government ARE involved.

It is my opinion that this active disregard rises to a level sufficient to nullify corporate property claims, at the very least until such time as Chevron and Total sever all ties with the Burmese government.

As Samuel Edward Konkin III noted:

“Regular, repeated patterns of aggression make one a habitual criminal — a statist (or ‘pure statist’). These people earn no wealth and have no property. Their loot is forfeit to revolutionary agorists as agents of the victims. The pure statist subclass includes all political officeholders, police, military, civil service, grantholders and subsidy receivers. There is a special subclass of the pure statists who not only accept plunder and enforce or maintain the machinery of the State but actually direct and control it. In ‘socialist’ countries, these are the top officeholders of the governing political party who usually (though not always) have top government offices. In the ‘capitalist’ countries, these super-statists seldom appear in government positions, preferring to control directly the wealth of their state-interfaced corporations, usually banks, energy monopolists and army suppliers.

If I were on a jury, as a matter of moral conscience I could not vote to convict anyone of a property crime involving purported property of Chevron or Total — from petty shoplifting through multi-billion dollar embezzlement and including destruction of property where no egregious risk to others was created by the destructive act.

If you feel the same way, feel free to use the Digg button up at the top of this post.

UPDATE: For a full list of companies supporting the Burmese state, click here.