Author: Jason Goroncy

Art, Religion, Identity: An interdisciplinary symposium

In conjunction with an art exhibition at Glasgow University Chapel celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of Glasgow Jewish artist Hannah Frank, the Graduate School of Arts and Humanities and the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Glasgow are planning a two-day symposium on Art, Religion and Identity for 23-24 September 2008

Keynote speakers are Professor Melissa Raphael-Levine (University of Gloucestershire), Professor Shulamit Reinharz (Brandeis University) and Dr. Laura Levitt (Temple University).

Organisers have issued a call for papers on any topic relating to the conference theme, with a focus on the 19th and 20th centuries, although they are open to proposals dealing with other periods. They welcome papers from any discipline, including but not limited to theology, art history, museum and archive studies, cultural studies, history, psychology, sociology, anthropology and literature. Abstracts of 150-300 words, for papers not exceeding 20 minutes in length, or proposals for posters (A1 size) should be addressed to Julie Clague and Alana Vincent no later than 20 July.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

Art as (auto)biography
Borrowing and appropriation of imagery
Contested (religious) identities
Hermeneutics, textuality, and ‘reading’ images
Intersections between mythology and religion in visual culture
Imagination and the fantastic
Material memory and culture making
Theological and/or religious aesthetics
Tensions, transgressions, heresies, and idolatries
Religious uses of art: devotion, illustration, midrash, protest
Artistic uses of religion: themes, symbolism, tradition, power
Visual markers of religious identity
Gender in relation to any of the above

Further information is available here.

[on] church planting … et al

David reminds us that in addition to the currently-running Karl Barth Blog Conference (which so far has included some great papers), that there are also two other blog conferences coming up: the Sergei Bulgakov Blog Conference (September 2008), and the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Blog Conference (November 2008).

Andrew offers a nice reflection on the nature of love, and Craig Carter reviews Douglas Farrow’s, Nation of Bastards: Essays on the End of Marriage.

Finally, Tim Chester has reposted some helpful lessons/reminders about church planting:

1. There are worse things than failure
… we need to take the long view in planting – develop a 100 year plan! [This reminded me of Forsyth’s ‘Think in centuries!]

2. Church planting is like surfing
… reflect on the providence of God. We cannot create the waves, we simply ride them as they come.

3. Know your
… there are different ways of planting – be clear on what your is.

4. You need a team
… for support, for diversity of gifts…

5. Ideals need to become flesh
… ‘too many people plant churches in their heads’. We must live it in everyday life.

6. Enthusiasm is a discipline
… and remind yourself in the hard times, how this estate is beautiful in God’s sight… and remember Jesus is your Saviour not your ministry.

7. Small may not be beautiful but it will do
… and size of church is not the source of your identity/security.

8. Locals are better than me
… those who have been around and grown up in the area will always be better equipped at relating to other locals, so equip them.

9. Read the Parable of the soils
… be clear about your conviction that the Word of God, though small, is powerful and will bring a harvest.

NT Wright – ‘Kingdom come: The public meaning of the Gospels’

Kingdom come: The public meaning of the Gospels
by N.T. Wright

In his new book, The Great Awakening, Jim Wallis describes how as a young man growing up in an evangelical church, he never heard a sermon on the Sermon on the Mount. That telling personal observation reflects a phenomenon about which I have been increasingly concerned: that much evangelical Christianity on both sides of the Atlantic has based itself on the epistles rather than the Gospels, though often misunderstanding the epistles themselves.

Indeed, in this respect evangelicalism has simply mirrored a much larger problem: the entire Western church, both Catholic and Protestant, evangelical and liberal, charismatic and social activist, has not actually known what the Gospels are there for.

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are all in their various ways about God in public, about the kingdom of God coming on earth as in heaven through the public career and the death and resurrection of Jesus. The massive concentration on source and form criticism, the industrial-scale development of criteria for authenticity (or, more often, inauthenticity), and the extraordinary inverted snobbery of preferring gnostic sayings-sources to the canonical documents all stem from, and in turn reinforce, the determination of the Western world and church to make sure that the four Gospels will not be able to say what they want to say, but will be patronized, muzzled, dismembered and eventually eliminated altogether as a force to be reckoned with.

The central message of all four canonical Gospels is that the Creator God, Israel’s God, is at last reclaiming the whole world as his own, in and through Jesus of Nazareth. That, to offer a riskily broad generalization, is the message of the kingdom of God, which is Jesus’ answer to the question, What would it look like if God were running this show?

And at once, in the 21st century as in the first, we are precipitated into asking the vital question, Which God are we talking about, anyway? It is quite clear if one reads Christopher Hitchens or Friedrich Nietzsche that the image of “God running the world” against which they are reacting is the image of a celestial tyrant imposing his will on an unwilling world and unwilling human beings, cramping their style, squashing their individuality and their very humanness, requiring them to conform to arbitrary and hurtful laws and threatening them with dire consequences if they resist. This narrative (which contains a fair amount of secularist projection) serves the Enlightenment’s deist agenda, as well as the power interests of those who would move God to a remote heaven so that they can continue to exploit the world.

But the whole point of the Gospels is that the coming of God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven is precisely not the imposition of an alien and dehumanizing tyranny, but rather the confrontation of alien and dehumanizing tyrannies with the news of a God-the God recognized in Jesus-who is radically different from them all, and whose inbreaking justice aims at rescuing and restoring genuine humanness. The trouble is that in our flat-Earth political philosophies we know only the spectrum which has tyranny at one end and anarchy at the other, with the present democracies our dangerously fragile way of warding off both extremes. The news of God’s sovereign rule inevitably strikes democrats, not just anarchists, as a worryingly long step toward tyranny as we apply to God and to the Gospels the hermeneutic of suspicion that we rightly apply to those in power who assure us that they have our best interests at heart. But the story that the Gospels tell systematically resists this deconstruction-for three reasons having to do with the integration of the Gospel stories both internally and externally.

First, the narrative told by each Gospel-yes, in different ways, but in this regard the canonical Gospels stand shoulder to shoulder over against the Gospel of Thomas and the rest-presents itself as an integrated whole in a way that scholarship has found almost impossible to reflect. Attention has been divided, focusing either on Jesus’ announcement of the kingdom and the powerful deeds-healings, feastings and so on-in which it is instantiated, or on his death and resurrection. The Gospels have thus been seen either as a social project with an unfortunate, accidental and meaningless conclusion, or as passion narratives with extended introductions. Thus the Gospels, in both popular and scholarly readings, have been regarded either as grounding a social gospel whose naive optimism has no place for the radical fact of the cross, still less the resurrection-the kind of naïveté that Reinhold Niebuhr regularly attacked-or as merely providing the raw historical background for the developed, and salvific, Pauline gospel of the death of Jesus. If you go the latter route, the only role left for the stories of Jesus’ healings and moral teachings is, as for Rudolf Bultmann, as stories witnessing to the church’s faith, or, for his fundamentalist doppelgängers, stories that proved Jesus’ divinity rather than launching any kind of program (despite Luke 4, despite the Sermon on the Mount, despite the terrifying warnings about the sheep and the goats!).

Appeals for an integrated reading have met stiff opposition from both sides: those who have emphasized Jesus’ social program lash out wildly at any attempt to highlight his death and resurrection, as though that would simply legitimate a fundamentalist program, either Catholic or Protestant, while those who have emphasized his death and resurrection do their best to anathematize any attempt to continue Jesus’ work with and for the poor, as though that might result in justification by works, either actually or at the existentialist meta-level of historical method (Bultmann again, and Gerhard Ebeling and others).

The lesson is twofold: (1) Yes, Jesus did indeed launch God’s saving sovereignty on earth as in heaven; but this could not be accomplished without his death and resurrection. The problem to which God’s kingdom-project was and is the answer is deeper than can be addressed by a social program alone.

(2) Yes, Jesus did, as Paul says, die for our sins, but his whole agenda of dealing with sin and all its effects and consequences was never about rescuing individual souls from the world but about saving humans so that they could become part of his project of saving the world. “My kingdom is not from this world,” he said to Pilate; had it been, he would have led an armed resistance movement like other worldly kingdom-prophets. But the kingdom he brought was emphatically for this world, which meant and means that God has arrived on the public stage and is not about to leave it again; he has thus defeated the forces both of tyranny and of chaos-both of shrill modernism and of fluffy postmodernism, if you like-and established in their place a rule of restorative, healing justice, which needs translating into scholarly method if the study of the Gospels is to do proper historical, theological and political justice to the subject matter.

It is in the entire Gospel narrative, rather than any of its possible fragmented parts, that we see that complete, many-sided kingdom work taking shape. And this narrative, read this way, resists deconstruction into power games precisely because of its insistence on the cross. The rulers of the world behave one way, declares Jesus, but you are to behave another way, because the Son of Man came to give his life as a ransom for many. We discover that so-called atonement theology within that statement of so-called political theology. To state either without the other is to resist the integration, the God-in-public narrative, which the Gospels persist in presenting.

Second, the Gospels demand to be read in deep and radical integration with the Old Testament. Recognition of this point has been obscured by perfectly proper post-Holocaust anxiety about apparently anti-Jewish readings. But we do the Gospels no service by screening out the fact that each of them in its own way (as opposed, again, to the Gospel of Thomas and the rest) affirms the God-givenness and God-directedness of the entire Jewish narrative of creation, fall, Abraham, Moses, David and so on. The Old Testament is the narrative of how the Creator God is rescuing creation from its otherwise inevitable fate, and it was this project, rather than some other, which was brought to successful completion in and through Jesus. The Gospels, like Paul’s gospel, are to that extent folly to pagans, ancient and modern alike, and equally scandalous to Jews. We gain nothing exegetically, historically, theologically or politically by trying to make the Gospels less Jewishly foolish (or vice versa) to paganism and hence less scandalous, in their claim of fulfillment, to Judaism.

Third, the Gospels thus demonstrate a close integration with the genuine early Christian hope, which is precisely not the hope for heaven in the sense of a blissful disembodied life after death in which creation is abandoned to its fate, but rather the hope, as in Ephesians 1, Romans 8 and Revelation 21, for the renewal and final coming together of heaven and earth, the consummation precisely of God’s project to be savingly present in an ultimate public world. And the point of the Gospels is that with the public career of Jesus, and with his death and resurrection, this whole project was decisively inaugurated, never to be abandoned.

From the perspective of these three integrations, we can see how mistaken are the readings of both the neo-Gnostic movement that is so rampant today and the fundamentalism that is its conservative analogue. Indeed, if an outsider may venture a guess, I think the phenomenon of the religious right in the U.S. (we really have no parallel in the United Kingdom) may be construed as a clumsy attempt to recapture the coming together of God and the world, which remains stubbornly in scripture but which the Enlightenment had repudiated, and which fundamentalism itself continues to repudiate with its dualistic theology of rapture and Armageddon.

It is as though the religious right has known in its bones that God belongs in public, but without understanding either why or how that might make sense; while the political left in the U.S., and sometimes the religious left on both sides of the Atlantic, has known in its bones that God would make radical personal moral demands as part of his program of restorative justice, and has caricatured his public presence as a form of tyranny in order to evoke the cheap and gloomy Enlightenment critique as a way of holding that challenge at bay.

The resurrection of Jesus is to be seen not as the proof of Jesus’ uniqueness, let alone his divinity-and certainly not as the proof that there is a life after death, a heaven and a hell (as though Jesus rose again to give prospective validation to Dante or Michelangelo!)-but as the launching within the world of space, time and matter of that God-in-public reality of new creation called God’s kingdom, which, within 30 years, would be announced under Caesar’s nose openly and unhindered. The reason those who made that announcement were persecuted is, of course, that the fact of God acting in public is deeply threatening to the rulers of the world in a way that Gnosticism in all its forms never is. The Enlightenment’s rejection of the bodily resurrection has for too long been allowed to get away with its own rhetoric of historical criticism-as though nobody until Gibbon or Voltaire had realized that dead people always stay dead-when in fact its nonresurrectional narrative clearly served its own claim to power, presented as an alternative eschatology in which world history came to its climax not on Easter Day but with the storming of the Bastille and the American Declaration of Independence.

Near the heart of the early chapters of Acts we find a prayer of the church facing persecution, and the prayer makes decisive use of one of the most obviously political of all the Psalms. Psalm 2 declares that though the nations make a great noise and fuss and try to oppose God’s kingdom, God will enthrone his appointed king in Zion and thus call the rulers of the earth to learn wisdom from him. This point, which brings into focus a good deal of Old Testament political theology, is sharply reinforced in the early chapters of the Wisdom of Solomon.

Psalm 2 also appears at the start of the Gospel narratives, as Jesus is anointed by the Spirit at his baptism. Much exegesis has focused on the christological meaning of “Son of God” here; my proposal is that we should focus equally, without marginalizing that Christology, on the political meaning. The Gospels constitute a call to the rulers of the world to learn wisdom in service to the messianic Son of God, and thus they also provide the impetus for a freshly biblical understanding of the role of the “rulers of the world” and of the tasks of the church in relation to them. I have three points to make in this regard.

First, it is noteworthy that the early church, aware of prevailing tyrannies both Jewish and pagan, and insisting on exalting Jesus as Lord over all, did not reject the God-given rule even of pagans. This is a horrible disappointment, of course, to post-Enlightenment liberals, who would much have preferred the early Christians to have embraced some kind of holy anarchy with no place for any rulers at all. But it is quite simply part of a creational view of the world that God wants the world to be ordered, not chaotic, and that human power structures are the God-given means by which that end is to be accomplished-otherwise those with muscle and money will always win, and the poor and the widows will be trampled on afresh. This is the point at which Colossians 1 makes its decisive contribution over against all dualisms which imagine that earthly rulers are a priori a bad thing (the same dualisms that have dominated both the method and the content of much biblical scholarship). This is the point, as well, at which the notion of the common good has its contribution to make. The New Testament does not encourage the idea of a complete disjunction between the political goods to be pursued by the church and the political goods to be pursued by the world outside the church, precisely for the reason that the church is to be seen as the body through whom God is addressing and reclaiming the world.

To put this first point positively, the New Testament reaffirms the God-given place even of secular rulers, even of deeply flawed, sinful, self-serving, corrupt and idolatrous rulers like Pontius Pilate, Felix, Festus and Herod Agrippa. They get it wrong and they will be judged, but God wants them in place because order, even corrupt order, is better than chaos. Here we find, in the Gospels, in Acts and especially in Paul, a tension that cannot be dissolved without great peril. We in the contemporary Western world have all but lost the ability conceptually-never mind practically-to affirm that rulers are corrupt and to be confronted yet are God-given and to be obeyed. That sounds to us as though we are simultaneously to affirm anarchy and tyranny. But this merely shows how far our conceptualities have led us again to muzzle the texts in which both stand together. How can that be?

The answer comes-and this is my second point-in such passages as John 19 on the one hand and 1 Corinthians 2 and Colossians 2 on the other. The rulers of this age inevitably twist their God-given vocation-to bring order to the world-into the satanic possibility of tyranny. But the cross of Jesus, enthroned as the true Son of God as in Psalm 2, constitutes the paradoxical victory by which the rulers’ idolatry and corruption are confronted and overthrown. And the result, as in Colossians 1:18-20, is that the rulers are reconciled, are in some strange sense reinstated as the bringers of God’s wise order to the world, whether or not they would see it that way. This is the point at which Romans 13 comes in, not as the validation of every program that every ruler dreams up, certainly not as the validation of what democratically elected governments of one country decide to do against other countries, but as the strictly limited proposal, in line with Isaiah’s recognition of Cyrus, that the Creator God uses even those rulers who do not know him personally to bring fresh order and even rescue to the world. This lies also behind the narrative of Acts.

This propels us to a third, perhaps unexpected and certainly challenging reflection that the present political situation is to be understood in terms of the paradoxical lordship of Jesus himself. From Matthew to John to Acts, from Colossians to Revelation, with a good deal else in between, Jesus is hailed as already the Lord of both heaven and earth, and in particular as the one through whom the Creator God will at last restore and unite all things in heaven and on earth. And this gives sharp focus to the present task of earthly rulers. Until the achievement of Jesus, a biblical view of pagan rulers might have been that they were charged with keeping God’s creation in order, preventing it from lapsing into chaos. Now, since Jesus’ death and resurrection (though this was of course anticipated in the Psalms and the prophets), their task is to be seen from the other end of the telescope. Instead of moving forward from creation, they are to look forward (however unwillingly or unwittingly) to the ultimate eschaton. In other words, God will one day right all wrongs through Jesus, and earthly rulers, whether or not they acknowledge this Jesus and this coming kingdom, are entrusted with the task of anticipating that final judgment and that final mercy. They are not merely to stop God’s good creation from going utterly to the bad. They are to enact in advance, in a measure, the time when God will make all things new and will once again declare that it is very good.

All this might sound like irrationally idealistic talk-and it is bound to be seen as such by those for whom all human authorities are tyrants by another name-were it not for the fact that along with this vision of God working through earthly rulers comes the church’s vocation to be the people through whom the rulers are to be reminded of their task and called to account. We see this happening throughout the book of Acts and on into the witness of the second-century apologists-and, indeed, the witness of the martyrs as well, because martyrdom (which is what happens when the church bears witness to God’s call to the rulers and the rulers shoot the messenger because they don’t like the message) is an inalienable part of political theology. You can have as high a theology of the God-given calling of rulers as you like, as long as your theology of the church’s witness, and of martyrdom, matches it stride for stride.

This witness comes into sharp focus in John 16:8-11. The Spirit, declares Jesus, will prove the world wrong about sin, righteousness and judgment-about judgment because the ruler of this world is judged. How is the Spirit to do that? Clearly, within Johannine theology, through the witness of the church, in and through which the Spirit is at work. The church will do to the rulers of the world what Jesus did to Pilate in John 18 and 19, confronting him with the news of the kingdom and of truth, deeply unwelcome and indeed incomprehensible though both of them were. Part of the way in which the church will do this is by getting on with, and setting forward, those works of justice and mercy, of beauty and relationship, that the rulers know ought to be flourishing but which they seem powerless to bring about. But the church, even when faced with overtly pagan and hostile rulers, must continue to believe that Jesus is the Lord before whom they will bow and whose final sovereign judgment they are called to anticipate. Thus the church, in its biblical commitment to “doing God in public,” is called to learn how to collaborate without compromise (hence the vital importance of common-good theory) and to critique without dualism.

In particular, as one sharp focus for all this, it is vital that the church learn to critique the present workings of democracy itself. I don’t simply mean that we should scrutinize voting methods, campaign tactics or the use of big money within the electoral process. I mean that we should take seriously the fact that our present glorification of democracy emerged precisely from Enlightenment dualism-the banishing of God from the public square and the elevation of vox populi to fill the vacuum, which we have seen to be profoundly inadequate when faced with the publicness of the kingdom of God. And we should take very seriously the fact that the early Jews and Christians were not terribly interested in the process by which rulers came to power, but were extremely interested in what rulers did once they had obtained power. The greatest democracies of the ancient world, those of Greece and Rome, had well-developed procedures for assessing their rulers once their term of office was over if not before, and if necessary for putting them on trial. Simply not being reelected (the main threat to politicians in today’s democracies) was nowhere near good enough. When Kofi Annan retired as general secretary of the United Nations, one of the key points he made was that we urgently need to develop ways of holding governments to account. That is a central part of the church’s vocation, which we should never have lost and desperately need to recapture.

All this, of course, demands as well that the church itself be continually called to account, since we in our turn easily get it wrong and become part of the problem instead of part of the solution. That is why the church must be semper reformanda as it reads the Bible, especially the Gospels. Fortunately, that’s what the Gospels are there for, and that’s what they are good at, despite generations of so-called critical methods which sometimes seem to have been designed to prevent the Gospels from being themselves. Part of the underlying aim of this essay is to encourage readings of the Bible which, by highlighting the publicness of God and the gospel, set forward those reforms which will enable the church to play its part in holding the powers to account and thus advancing God’s restorative justice.

This article is adapted from a lecture N.T. Wright gave at a meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in November 2007.

[Source: The Christian Century]

2008 Karl Barth blog conference

The 2008 Karl Barth blog conference has kicked off with an appropriate and juicy post by Jon Mackenzie entitled Introduction: The Impossible Possibility? Philosophy and Theology in the Work of Eberhard Jüngel.

For those who are unaware of this conference (where have you been?), its concern will be the conversation between Barth and his most distinguished student, Eberhard Jüngel. Huge thanks to Travis for coordinating, encouraging and hosting this ongoing conversation on theirs.

Here’s a few tasters from Jon‘s contribution:

‘Faith is not a type of knowledge but instead the very reconstitution of one’s being. Undoubtedly, the holistic nature of this reconstitution of being must include the faculties of reason, but to simply juxtapose faith against reason is to reduce faith down to mere epistemology’.

‘Jüngel is keen to highlight the event-character of faith because it reduces the risk of conceptualising faith as a metaphysical state or attribute. Were this the case, then the identification of God in Jesus would be conceptualised simply as the highest instantiation of a more general metaphysical principle and, thus, God would merely become a part of this world’.

‘It is precisely the fact that faith gives itself to be thought that faith needs theology … The existential nature of faith makes it impossible for faith to be self-reflective. If it could be so, then faith would cease to be what it is: a correspondence to the word of Jesus Christ’.

‘There is in Jüngel … a carefully developed notion of the relationship between philosophy and theology; a dissimilarity in similarity. Whilst both philosophy and theology are formally acts of thought, they still differ materially in that theology remains parasitic upon the event of the word of God appearing in history whereas philosophy is self-justifying. In this sense, it becomes obvious how the relationship between philosophy and theology can only be conceptualised with recourse to the person of Jesus Christ in history. “Theological critique is materially the orientation of theology to the ‘word of the cross’ as the ‘word’ (logos) which is constitutive for all talk about God, and this orientation must be constantly renewed.”’

Check out the full post here.

[NB. The scary picture is from Jon’s Myspace page, where you can also listen to some of his funky music. What a talented guy … though he does actually look older and less handsome in real life]

Worship Resources

I have created a Worship Resources section in my sidebar and so would be keen to hear about any resources that others have found helpful and that ought to be included in this (or any other) sidebar list.

Another new FW Boreham book – ‘A Packet of Surprises’

In addition to the forthcoming FW Boreham book, The Chalice of Life, Geoff Pound has announced that another Boreham book is in the pipeline. At a time when print runs of good books are halted far too early (thank God for Wipf and Stock!), and when so much poorly-written dribble abounds, it is so encouraging to see such valuable material being kept alive.

The book, A Packet of Surprises: The Best Essays and Sermons of F W Boreham, can be ordered by contacting Mike Dalton.

Geoff Pound has also generously made available a copy of his Preface to this new book, which I reproduce here:

Selecting the Best

Choosing the best essays of F W Boreham is as excruciating as selecting some children to get the honors and telling the others that they did not make the grade. As mentioned in the preface to The Best Stories of F W Boreham the selection is subjective. But there is some rhyme and reason to the choices. Some were voted in by current Boreham readers so they appear by popular demand. Others are clearly Boreham’s choice or were popular in his day. His biographer, T Howard Crago, reported that ‘The Other Side of the Hill’ (a variation of which was entitled ‘The Sunny Side of the Ranges’, was an address delivered 80 times and ‘The House that Jack Built’ was given 140 times to churches that requested Dr Boreham to give this lecture to their community as a fund raiser.[1]

In compiling this selection an effort has been made to include essays on a range of themes, those which illustrate different homiletical methods and others that are drawn from different periods in Boreham’s career. The sermons, ‘Mind Your Own Business’, ‘He Made as Though’ and ‘A Prophet’s Pilgrimage’ represent extensive reflections on Biblical stories. The chapters entitled, ‘Dominoes’, ‘Please Shut the Gate!’ and ‘I.O.U.’ are fine examples of the way F W Boreham told parables by taking ordinary, everyday objects or expressions and skillfully helped his hearers to discover a deeper truth. The messages on the favorite texts of Catherine Booth, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Abraham Lincoln are representative of the 100+ addresses in the most popular Boreham sermon series that are contained in the five books on the theme, ‘Texts that Made History’. ‘The Squirrel’s Dream’ and ‘Waiting for the Tide’ offer glimpses into the way F W Boreham used paintings to illustrate his themes.

The sermon ‘The Whisper of God’ may at face value have not made the cut in Boreham’s best but it is included because it is the best of his earliest sermons and it illustrates how his preaching changed in style, structure and length. His contemporary, J J North, judged Boreham’s early literary ventures to be “long-worded” because “the terse Boreham had not arrived.”[2] Amid the many admiring reviews, it was said of Boreham’s first volume of sermons, The Whisper of God, that “if illustrations and incidents did not jostle so thickly on the pages and the poetical quotations were remorselessly reduced the sermons would gain much in value.”[3] The Best Essays of F W Boreham demonstrates the way that Boreham worked hard to remodel his writing and preaching through such things as the removal of wordy clutter for it is clear to see the emergence of a simple and flowing style.

Genre

Already the terms ‘essay’, ‘sermon’, ‘lecture’ and ‘address’ have been used in this introduction. Some of the chapters in his books are clearly one genre or another but F W Boreham was, as Lindsay Newnham described, the great ‘recycler’ who suited his style to his audience and tweaked his material to fit the allotted time or word limits.[4]

In a review of the book A Bunch of Everlastings, Dr. James Hastings, editor of the famous Dictionary of the Bible, asked a question that many readers have asked: “Is Mr. Boreham able to preach such sermons as these, exactly as they are printed here? Their interest is undoubted and intense. For Mr. Boreham is an artist. Every sermon is constructed. Every thought is in its place, and appropriately expressed. And there are no marks left in the constructing. To the literary student, as to the average reader of sermons, every sermon is literature.” Howard Crago, (whose text was read by F W Boreham) answered, ‘The fact was, of course, that each of these sermons was preached from memory in almost the exact words in which it was printed.’”[5]

Truth through Personality

If the content of these sermons and lectures were word for word the same as what we read in this volume they do not convey fully the total impact of the preaching event—the pausing, the modulation of his voice, the twinkle in the eye and the response of his hearers. Fortunately Howard Crago has recorded this colourful insight into how one of F W Boreham’s addresses was received:

“As time went on and ‘The House That Jack Built’ grew in popularity, the lecturer developed it and perfected its delivery until the whole thing flowed on for more than an hour of fascinating elocution and magnificent eloquence. He himself revelled in reciting it, and the audience enjoyed it to the full while being unconsciously influenced by its gentle suggestiveness.”

“A typical audience-reaction was that of the Rev. C. Bernard Cockett, M.A., who, after hearing the lecture in a Surrey Hills church said, ‘It is not to be wondered at that individuals who appreciate the words of an author are interested in him as a man, lecturer and minister. Therefore, when the Rev. F. W. Boreham’s presence was heralded in a Melbourne suburb many people asked, `What is he like?’ `Can he speak and preach as well as write?’ `Has he personality and originality in the pulpit as well as in the study?’ Boreham came-spoke-and conquered! He spoke for an hour; but the minutes passed by on shimmering wings. He speaks quite as well as he writes—the voice is strong and sweet; ringing, yet winning, and the word lives in the message. ‘The House That Jack Built’ was a brilliant drama, staged and performed by the author. And his control of the audience! A happy and original introduction; apposite stories from history, science, and romance, related with telling effect; soft touches on the varying notes of the human soul, making it tremble with childlike laughter, and then a sudden chord of richer music with concentrated and arresting power—while the listener perceives God through smiles.’”

“Moving a vote of thanks at Wangaratta [Victoria], a local farmer expressed a good deal when he said, ‘I enjoyed the lecture because I could see that Mr. Boreham was enjoying it so much himself.’”[6]

Inflaming Passion

These essays and sermons have been brought together not for literary inspection and homiletical interest but so they might speak powerfully to readers in this contemporary age. F W Boreham believed in the importance of heroes, he devoted an entire chapter of his autobiography to two of his preaching models [7] and he encouraged preachers to study evangelistic models to “inflame your devotion.”[8]

But Boreham sounded a warning about copying the style of someone else. Writing on the topic, ‘A troop of apes’, he drew analogies from nature (lyre bird, jays, ostriches and apes) to state that, “life abounds in mimicry” and if our tendency to imitation is so strong and impossible to eradicate, then human beings must select “worthy models.”[9]

Be Yourself

The great hope for this new book is that it might stimulate among its readers one of the major themes of F W Boreham—that each person, with their God-given gifts might develop their unique style:

“He sees as nobody else sees. He must therefore paint or preach or pray or write as nobody else does. He must be himself: must see with his own eyes and utter that vision in the terms of his own personality.”[10]

[1] T Howard Crago, The Story of F W Boreham (London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1961), 172-174. [2] J J North, New Zealand Baptist, April 1943. [3] Review of Whisper of God, (n.p., n.d.). This review appears in a cutting that Boreham kept in his own copy of his book Whisper of God. [4] Lindsay L Newnham, ‘Recycling by Dr F W Boreham’, Our Yesterdays 5 (Melbourne: Victorian Baptist Historical Society, 1997), 78. [5] Crago, The Story of F W Boreham, 179. [6] Crago, The Story of F W Boreham, 172-173. [7] F W Boreham, My Pilgrimage (London: The Epworth Press, 1940), 98-103. [8] F W Boreham, I Forgot to Say, 42. [9] F W Boreham, Mercury, 8 October 1955. [10] Boreham, Mercury, 9 September 1950.

A new Boreham book

Geoff Pound, who served as principal of Whitley Theological College where I trained, and who is something of a FW Boreham devotee (and a great guy), has announced that a new Boreham book, The Chalice of Life, has just hit the printers. This is exciting news, and worthy of a plug. As a taster, here’s Geoff’s ‘Foreword’ to the book:

This book is a collection of five addresses that F W Boreham delivered on some major stages of life and this quintet is accompanied by two further essays in which the author develops the theme of life’s milestones.

Most of these essays were written soon after Boreham attained the particular milestone even though for his later lecture series he gave them a polish and wrote a new one for a stage he had not written about earlier.

It is good to reflect on Frank Boreham’s life at the time he reached each age as he draws much upon his own experience. At the age of thirty (1901) F W Boreham was married with one daughter, he was pastor of the Mosgiel Baptist church in New Zealand, contributor to the Taieri Advocate and the Otago Daily Times, editor of the New Zealand Baptist, and President of the Baptist Union. At the age of forty (1911) he had two more daughters, was pastor of the Hobart Baptist Tabernacle, he had authored several books and he was soon to begin his marathon commitment with the Hobart Mercury. At the age of fifty (1921) Boreham was pastor of the Armadale Baptist church in Melbourne, he had fathered a boy and another daughter in this last decade and his publishing ministry was in top gear. At the age of sixty (1931) F W Boreham was officially retired from pastoral ministry and was serving as a minister-at-large, across the denominations of the church and undertaking preaching and teaching tours overseas. At the age of seventy (1941), Dr Boreham had published his autobiography, in which he signaled that he had entered into the final stage of life. This was not entirely accurate as he churned out several more books and his weekly ministry at Scot’s Church was blossoming.

It is interesting to note that F W Boreham did not have an article on Life at Twenty, especially as he was fond of quoting Southey who said, “However long a person’s life, the first twenty years represent by far the biggest half of it.”[1] It is also significant that Boreham did not appear to write an article on Life at Eighty, even though he was still publishing books and preaching weekly.

F W Boreham remarks in one of these addresses that the one thing that each of these milestones has is life. F W Boreham was a self-confessed “lover of life.”[2] This theme pulsates through this book and in all his writing and preaching. In an essay on the coming of Spring Boreham reflects on the source of his love for life when saying, “I have learned that my quenchless longing for life is, after all, all unconsciously, a secret, unutterable yearning after God; for how can you conceive of life apart from Him?[3]

Throughout the pages of this volume one feels the sheer exuberance that Boreham had for life. He is possessed with a sense of wonder about the newness of each day:

“Half the fun of waking up in the morning is the feeling that you have come upon a day that the world has never seen before, a day that is certain to do things that no other day has ever done. Half the pleasure of welcoming a new-born baby is the absolute certainty that here you have a packet of amazing surprises….Here is novelty, originality, an infinity of bewildering possibility.[4]

It is Frank Boreham’s love of life that motivates his curiosity and his ministry to people:

“I have so thoroughly relished the little bit of life that was doled out to me that I find myself clamoring for all the lives that I can see….the same hunger underlies my passion for biography and even my fondness for the Bible. …Life has been so sweet to me that I like to mark the relish with which others tell their enjoyment of it.[5]

F W Boreham was very attentive to anniversaries and he kept a ‘birthday book’ or Personal Almanac in which he recorded special dates. He noted down each year the arrival of the first swallow[6] and the exact day that the elms around his house, “attired themselves in their new spring dresses.”[7] Many of his editorials commenced with reference to the birth or death of his subject. Two of his books contain the word ‘milestone’ in the title. His autobiography is a comprehensive record of the important dates of his life and family and it describes the way he remembered and celebrated the key events of his ministry.

The Chalice of Life is not so much about the exact ages as the general stages of life—their pitfalls and their possibilities. What then was Boreham’s favorite stage in life? This question is like asking him to decide which of his children was his favorite. Concerning his three churches he spoke with equal warmth and affection, even though he highlighted their different qualities. In a similar fashion and at the risk of being told that “all his swans were geese” Boreham writes with high commendation of each age and stage of life. What is happening is akin to the way he explained his growing love for Australia, “Life has a wonderful way of coaxing us into a frame of mind in which we not only become reconciled to our lot: we actually fall in love with it.”[8]

In the final two essays of this book, ‘So It’s Your Birthday!’ and ‘Life’s Landmarks’, we see the way F W Boreham is not merely registering dates in a diary or counting commemorations on a calendar. His approach is to greet each day with expectancy and to make the momentous decisions with which life confronts us. F W Boreham claimed that the greatest day of a person’s life was not their birthday, their wedding anniversary or the date of their death but, “The greatest day in a man’s life is the day on which he finds himself overwhelmed and bowed to earth by a sense of the greatness of God.”[9]

Enjoy this book and most importantly, drink deeply from “the chalice of life.”[10]

Dr. Geoff Pound.

Image: Front cover of The Chalice of Life, so beautifully created by Laura Zugzda.

P.S. F W Boreham’s son, Frank, told me that his wife Betty did most of the proof reading of his books. The ship would dock in Melbourne, the proofs would be delivered the next day and FWB and Betty would read and make the corrections before the ship left in a couple of days to return to England. When the first copy of each new book appeared FWB would take it warmly, kiss it and pass it to other members of the family for them to do the same. Producing Boreham books was a concern and a delight of the whole Boreham family.
Footnotes
[1] F W Boreham, My Pilgrimage (London: The Epworth Press, 1940), 91.
[2] F W Boreham, The Golden Milestone (London: Charles H. Kelly, 1915), 9
[3] F W Boreham, The Three Half-Moons (London: The Epworth Press, 1929), 125.
[4] F W Boreham, Faces in the Fire (London: The Epworth Press, 1916), 14.
[5] F W Boreham, On the Other Side of the Hill (London: The Epworth Press, 1917), 173.
[6] Boreham, The Golden Milestone, 34.
[7] F W Boreham, The Passing of John Broadbanks (London: The Epworth Press, 1936), 261.
[8] Boreham, My Pilgrimage, 137.
[9] F W Boreham, A Witch’s Brewing (London: The Epworth Press, 1932), 155.
[10] F W Boreham, A Bunch of Everlastings (London: The Epworth Press, 1920), 88.

Denney on prayers for the dead

Recent days have seen a turning of my attention towards James Denney who was a good mate of PT Forsyth’s and an extraordinary NT scholar. One thing that impressed me today in my reading were his comments on praying for the dead. While Forsyth defends the practice on christological grounds, Denney does so on grounds creational and experiential.

I do not think it is any use telling people not to pray for the dead; you might as well teach them not to think of them or love them, or indeed tell them roundly that after death there is nothing at all. I think most people who pray at all do pray for the dead … Certainly the absence of any example of it from the Bible is remarkable, especially taken with the life and death urgency of all the Bible does say: but a great many things must be lawful that the Bible says nothing about – things covered by the word of Jesus, “If it were not so, I would have told you” – a saying which always seems to me to justify yielding … to any instinct of the nature which is made in God’s image, and cannot be simply delusive in the things of God.

It seems to me odd that the long-held practice of praying for the dead has all but disappeared in Protestant circles (or at least in the circles in which I move). No doubt there are decent historical reasons for such abandonment, but understanding history never justifies history’s poor actions. [As an aside, recall that Denney’s comments – ‘I think most people who pray at all do pray for the dead’ – were not only made by a staunchly-Reformed Protestant, but were written just over a hundred years ago].

What both Denney and Forsyth are seeking to urge is that in Jesus Christ, the living and the dead remain unforgettably and indestructibly united in love for each other, and in a common hopeful sharing. It is not anthropology, therefore, that holds the communion of saints together on both sides of death, but Jesus Christ as Lord of both the living and the dead. Therefore, do not the saints on earth have an obligation in the gospel to pray for those who have died, and who indeed form the largest part of the race? Such prayer helps to bear witness to the Church’s unity and catholicity, and indeed to the theo-organic unity of the race itself under its new Head, himself risen from the dead. To pray for the dead signals a refusal to believe the lie that the state of a person remains fixed at death, and functions as a sign of hope in the God who raises the dead to life. To pray for one who is dying, and then to continue praying after they die – without missing a beat – is not to deny the reality of their death so much as it is to faithfully trust in the God who knows his way out of the grave.

Conference: The Sermon on the Mount and Christian Ethics

The Society for the Study of Christian Ethics is planning a conference at Westcott House, Cambridge on 5-7 September. The conference is open to both students and faculty members in the disciplines of ethics, theology, religion, philosophy, politics, and sociology, and the conference poster can be downloaded here.

This year’s conference is entitled ‘The Sermon on the Mount and Christian Ethics’, and speakers include the John Battle, Richard Bauckham, Carolyn Muessig, Oliver O’Donovan, Susan Parsons, and Glen Stassen.

There is a Call for Papers which can address either the conference theme or more general work-in-progress. But you’ll need to get cracking because the application deadline for giving a paper is 20th June 2008. Proposals and enquiries should be emailed to Jeffrey Bailey.

McCormack lays down the gauntlet

Recently over at aboutlet, Bruce McCormack cleared up a few misreadings and then laid down the gauntlet to Lane Tipton: ‘The issue for me has never been the existence of a Logos asarkos (to deny which would be tantamount to rejecting the pre-existence of the eternal Son). The issue has always been the identity of the Logos asarkos (i.e. whether the identity of the eternal Son can be established on the basis of some form of natural theology or only on the basis of Christology)’. Read the post here.

It’s great to see Bruce entering blogdom.

Stanley Fish on demands for justification

Stanley Fish’s latest post, Politics and the Classroom, makes fascinating reading. Along the way, he makes an observation about demands for justification that might be employed in any number of imaginable (theological) conversations:

The demand for justification … always come from those outside the enterprise. Those inside the enterprise should resist it, because to justify something is to diminish it by implying that its value lies elsewhere.

Burma’s forced labour

The brutal Burmese government has for years forced citizens to work for free. Twenty per cent of those sentenced to prison with hard labour perish. Meanwhile, just who will rebuild the cyclone-hit country?

The Burmese military government has come under huge international pressure and criticism since cyclone Nargis destroyed large parts of Burma, killing at least 78,000 and leaving 56,000 more missing.

A month on, the UN estimates that 2.4 million people are in need of food, shelter or medical care, and more than a million have yet to receive foreign aid. Huge numbers of people are surviving in appalling conditions, with little or no help.

In the month since the disaster, only a small number of international aid workers have been granted access into the affected regions, and there is growing concern that the reconstruction effort will depend on forced labour – be it from children or migrant adult workers.

The International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) liason officer in Rangoon, Steve Marshall, said there had not been any verified reports of forced labour linked to the disaster. But he added: “We’re not saying it isn’t happening.”

Burma is well known for its use of forced labour. The Tatmadaw (Burmese military) routinely forces civilians to work on state infrastructure projects, such as the building of roads, bridges, military bases or even towns.

The military will typically demand labour from local villages, with the threat of fines if households are unable to supply the required amount of people. The ruling State Peace and Development Council’s (SPDC) search for labourers is made easier by the existence of registration documents with details of the exact number of inhabitants, property and livestock within any given village.

Inhabitants have no choice but to apply for national identity cards and register their details or risk fines or arrest.

The military is increasingly relying on SPDC-appointed village chairpersons as intermediaries through whom to disseminate their demands.

One particularly brutal example of forced labour is SPDC’s use of villagers as human minesweepers to clear the way for the safe passage of soldiers.

Projects vary in length and intensity, but they always mean that people are taken away from their land and livelihoods without any remuneration in return.

Military personnel operate under blanket impunity, and know that they will not be held accountable for any mistreatment of civilians. Furthermore, low level officers and soldiers in charge of forced labour projects are under pressure to meet demands, quotas and timetables ordered by their superiors.

Threats, harassment, beatings and even killings are not uncommon, and women risk rape and other sexual abuses. Forced labour often means that villagers are unable to work on their own agricultural work for days or even weeks on end. Regular forced labour in Mon State (South-eastern Burma), for example, has been a primary factor leading to increasing food insecurity.

Prison Labourers

Human rights organisations have reported the continuous use of forced prison labour in Burma, and it is estimated that as many as 20 percent of prisoners sentenced to ‘prison with hard labour’ die as a consequence of the conditions of their detention. It has been reported that at least 91 labour camps operate in areas across the country and the thousands of prisoners in these camps are used to build highways, dams, irrigation canals, and to work on special agricultural projects. Prisoners are reportedly being forced to work 12 hours a day without rest, and the sick and weak are not exempted from work. Inmates who cannot afford bribes are condemned to the harshest labour.

The living conditions and the general treatment of forced prison labourers are widely reported to be far worse than for civilian forced labourers. The work is more dangerous, they have to work even longer hours and health provisions are non-existent. The prisoners are viewed as expendable labour and there are countless reports of their torture, beatings and killings. A constant supply of prison labour is ensured by the continuing arbitrary arrests, as well as the imposition of lengthy sentences for minor misdemeanours. Those arrested often do not receive due legal process and are told that they will be released on payment of a bribe. Those who are unable to bribe the police or the judiciary are automatically sent to prison, whether there is evidence against them or not.

Forced conscription and child soldiers

Human rights groups, meanwhile, believe boys as young as 12 are recruited to fight against ethnic minority rebels. Human Rights Watch (HRW) estimated that there may be more than 70,000 child soldiers in the SPDC Army.

The children are often kidnapped without their parents’ knowledge while on their way home from school. They are then brutalised and physically abused during their induction and basic training before being shipped off to fight in the country’s ethnic states. “Child soldiers are sometimes forced to participate in human rights abuses, such as burning villages and using civilians for forced labour,” said HRW. “Those who attempt to escape or desert are beaten, forcibly re-recruited or imprisoned.”

Following the suppression in 1988 of the nationwide pro democracy demonstrations, the ruling military council initiated a dramatic effort to modernize and expand the armed forces. To tighten its control over its population, the SPDC Army instituted a dramatic expansion of military personnel throughout the country.

Service in the armed forces is for many a dangerous and gruelling experience, and soldiers are often subjected to mistreatment by senior officers. According to the junta’s military meeting minutes, there were about 9,000 desertions during 2006, whereas the army was only able to recruit 6,000. This trend continued in 2007, and the army is facing an acute shortage of trained personnel as a result.

Burma continues to have one of the highest numbers of child soldiers in the world – despite an official age of enlistment of 18.

According to Thein Sein, it is under-18s that are to blame for the problem because they lie about their true age or did not inform their parents that they had enlisted in the army.

Though, in a tacit admission that there remained underage soldiers in the armed forces, he further stated that soldiers with stunted growth were not sent to forward areas but were instead given light work duties at military bases, and that illiterate youth were sent to army schools to be educated.

With forced labour being such a common occurrence in the country, it is expected Burma will make use of it for the reconstruction process. Burma has a long history of ignoring the advice of International Organisations and actively hampering their freedom of movement and investment in the country, and is not about to change its stance.

Once again, the military junta will throw a spanner in the works and prevent ILO from monitoring the reconstruction process properly, adding further suffering to the devastated area and a population that has been through so much already.

[Source: New Statesman]

On Festschriften

One review I read recently described Festschriften as those ‘essays from the bottom drawer which could find no other home, and a disparate volume for which the many are asked to pay high prices for the sake of the few’. A bit harsh perhaps, but all too familiar isn’t it: volumes of essays with very little inter-connection, of interest to about 3 people in the world (including the authors’ mothers), and with a print run so small that basically only libraries can afford them, or remortgaging is required.

It made me wonder though, what is it that makes a good Festschrift? And what one/s have you placed on your must read list?

For my money, there’s four that jump to mind:

Christ in Our Place: The Humanity of God in Christ for the Reconciliation of the World: Essays Presented to Professor James Torrance. Edited by Trevor A. Hart and Daniel Thimell. Princeton Theological Monograph Series. Allison Park/ Exeter: Pickwick/Paternoster, 1989.
Incarnational Ministry: the presence of Christ in church, society, and family: essays in honor of Ray S. Anderson. Edited by Christian D. Kettler and Todd H. Speidell. Colorado Springs: Helmers & Howard, 1990.
Creation, Christ and Culture: Studies in Honour of T.F. Torrance. Edited by Richard W.A. McKinney. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1976.
Denkwürdiges Geheimnis: Beiträge zur Gotteslehre: Festschrift für Eberhard Jüngel zum 70. Geburtstag. Edited by Ingolf U. Dalferth, Johannes Fischer, and Hans-Peter Großhans. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004.

At least the first three of these volumes could not be accused of throwing the family budget into turmoil, and none of them of nebulous unrelated content. Each of them is packed with significant essays that contribute to not only some key themes explored by the one being honoured, but do so with a view to engaging with an ongoing conversation about those very themes in a way that will appeal to a wider audience.

But are there other criteria? Fidelity to the work/themes of the one being honoured? Brevity? Does it come with a DVD?

Thoughts?

[One I’m yet to read is Daniel J. Adams’ From East to West: Essays in Honor of Donald G. Bloesch. I’d be keen to hear from anyonwe who is familiar with this volume]

Denney on reading our Bibles too much

I’m currently writing a paper on James Denney, specifically Denney’s understanding of pastoral ministry gleaned as it was not only by some seriously-deep engagement with the NT, but also from critical reflection on his time in two pastorates. I hope to post on some of these reflections soon, but for now consider the following confession, made all the more radical coming from the pen of one whose scholarly and personal devotion to the NT (in particular) was unquestionable:

‘Does it ever occur to you … that we read our Bibles too much, and that it might do us good to read none for a twelvemonth, just as it would do some people good if for as long they read nothing else? I have sometimes felt weary of the very look and sound of the New Testament; the words are so familiar that I can read without catching any meaning, and have to read again, far oftener than in another book, because I have slid a good bit unconsciously’. – James Moffatt, ed., Letters of Principal James Denney to His Family and Friends (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1921), 81.

‘Painting the fall’

His canvases sagged with decay,

each a small shrine to imperfection, dereliction

infecting its seams and squares, left brittle

and opens, oils a fecund messenger.

a chorus if sores in line. It had to fester, like

damaged flesh, and drink from this corrupt well.

All the world was simply vaudeville.

His bankruptcy was inevitable.

What market is there for such things?

Ruin is not a commodity so much

as a global condition. Unnecessary

to be so reminded, ruin arriving for each of us.

Set aside for sufficient time.

There is a poetry of despair, a paean

to blotched faces and rotten meat.

That was not his style.

He sought the itch of existence, the very point

where life went off, irretrievably,

and lost its balance.

What he thought of as the honesty of disintegration.

– Tom Weston, ‘Painting the fall’, in Small Humours of Daylight (Wellington: Steele Roberts & Associates, 2008).

Around … [reloaded]

James Merrick reflects (with McCabe) on the politics of jubilee. He writes: ‘the antithesis of Jubilee is the politics of fear wherein one’s personal freedom conflicts with the freedom of others, where freedom is something protected not shared’.
John Stackhouse has posted 4 critical and (mostly) very fair reflections (here, here, here and here) on The Shack. [I’ve blogged on this book here and here].
Steve Holmes offers some valuable thoughts on the Christian duty to find error attractive.
The Worldwide Church of God have posted two short videos on CS Lewis shot on location in Oxford.
Ben Meyers points us towards some free MP3’s from St Vladimir’s Seminary Press.
Halden Doerge offers some helpful advice on reading Robert Jenson. [BTW. I just received my copy of Jenson’s A Large Catechism this week and am loving it … and now I’m very much anticipating the publication of his commentary on Ezekiel].
Richard Mouw seeks to make ‘a good case for “seeker sensitive” preaching by appealing to the authority of John Calvin’ and (hold your breath) Karl Barth!
Tim Keller recently gave an insightful apologetic talk on his The Reason for God as part of the Authors@Google series. It goes for just over an hour.
With no UK team in Euro 2008, how do Brits choose who to support? Well why not make the choice based on ethical criteria? The World Development Movement has created a handy website to aid that all important (read: completely arbitrary) choice of team(s) to support each match. It ranks each team using criteria such as: spending on the military and healthcare; corruption; contribution to climate change; and income inequality. Overall Sweden ranks as the most ‘ethical’ team in the competition, and Russia comes in last. [HT: New Statesman]
Damaris have produced and are now making available (free if you’re in the UK) some multimedia and study resources for schools and churches to complement the new Narnia flick, Prince Caspian (which is, btw, a much better-produced movie than The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – which I thought totally stank]
Noam Chomsky was recently interviewed by Gabriel Mathew Schivone on the United States of Insecurity.
Coffee lovers might be interested in this interview with Michaele Weissman, author of God in a Cup: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Coffee.

Video: Displaced children in northern Karen State

In December 2007, Burma Army soldiers operating under Military Operations Command (MOC) #4 conducted a series of attacks against villages in the Th’Ay Kee area of southeastern Toungoo District, northern Karen State. This Karen Human Rights Group video includes footage of the initial attack and the following days as children and their families from the Th’Ay Kee area continued to flee on foot in order to evade the Burma Army soldiers who were hunting them down.

[Source: KHRG]

A Dirty List

Burma Campaign UK has published its ‘Dirty List’ of companies that are helping to prop up the Burmese junta. The list is provided with a view to encouraging individuals/groups to write to companies calling upon them to stop funding the Burmese regime. For those who are sceptical that such action works, Burma Campaign UK have reported that since they launched the list 6 years ago, over 100 companies have withdrawn from Burma because of pressure so applied. Among the companies listed on the new list are BBC Worldwide, Jetstar Asia, Lonely Planet, Mitsubishi, Qantas, Siemens and Toyota.

I try to keep up to speed on what’s happening in Burma, and usually post on Burma-related issues at Civicus.

A Dirty List

Abercrombie & Kent
Abercrombie & Kent (A&K) is an American holiday company with 45 offices around the world, including offices in the UK. In 2003 the UK branch of A&K informed the Burma Campaign UK that A&K would no longer include Burma in its brochures or promote tourism to Burma. However today both the UK and US branches operate tours to Burma. Aung San Suu Kyi and the Burmese democracy movement have asked tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy. Forced and child labour was used to develop many tourist facilities.

Geoffrey Kent
Chairman and CEO
Abercrombie & Kent, Inc.
1520 Kensington Road, Suite 212
Oak Brook, Illinois 60523-2156
USA

Alcatel
Alcatel is a French multinational specialising in communication technology. Alcatel is working closely with the regime in Burma to help it develop telecommunications such as landlines and mobile networks. The regime is the only mobile service provider in Burma, and is keen to expand the service because of high revenues and its importance to companies investing and trading with Burma, in particular, gem miners and exporters.

President
Alcatel HQ
54, rue La Boétie
75008 Paris
France
Email: caroline.mille@alcatel.com

Managing Director
Alcatel
7a The Long Room
CopperMill Lock
Canal Side
Harefield
UB9 6JA
UK

Andaman Club
The Andaman Club is a luxury casino/hotel complex located on Thahtay Kyun Island in Southernmost Burma. It was launched by Vikrom Isiri in 1995, who leases the land from the Burmese junta. Isiri has since gone on to become a Thai senator and the complex has provided the seed money for numerous other ventures, including Phuket Airlines.

Vikrom Isiri
Andaman Club
1168/71 25th- A Floor,
Lumpini Tower Building
Rama IV Road
Thungmahamek
Bangkok
Thailand 10210

Fax: + (662) 285 6408-9
Email: andamanclubmm@hotmail.com

Andaman Teak Supplies Pty Ltd
Andaman is an Australian teak supplier to the marine sector, which only uses Burmese teak. The Burmese regime owns all teak plantations in Burma and teak sales earn the regime millions of pounds every year.

Andaman Teak Supplies Pty Ltd
59 Magnesium Drive
Crestmead Qld 4132
Australia

Fax: +61 (0)7 3803 1118
Email: andamanteak@bigpond.com

Andrew Brock Travel
Andrew Brock Travel is a tour operator that organises tours to Burma. Aung San Suu Kyi and the Burmese democracy movement have asked tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy. Forced and child labour was used to develop many tourist facilities. Owner Andrew Brock has said that Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi is ‘oppressing Burma’s people’.

Andrew Brock
ANDREW BROCK Ltd.
29a Main Street,
Lyddington,
Oakham,
Rutland LE15 9LR
UK

Fax: 01572 821072
Email: ABROCK3650@aol.com

Aquatic
Aquatic is a privately owned Scottish company that provides specialist services to the oil and gas industry. Aquatic has an office in Burma, through which they assist the oil and gas industry. Gas exports are the regime’s largest source of income.

Managing Director
Aquatic
Palmerston Centre
29-31 Palmerston Road
Aberdeen AB11 5QP

Fax: 01224 577361
Email: admin@aquatic.co.uk

Archaeological Tours
Archaeological Tours is a US tour operator specialising in archaeological and historical study tours led by distinguished scholars. Their 2007-2008 programmes includes a ‘Khmer Kingdoms Tour’ which begins in Burma. Aung San Suu Kyi and the Burmese democracy movement have asked tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy.

Archaeological Tours
271 Madison Avenue
Suite 904
New York
10016
USA

Fax: + (212) 370-1561
Email: ArchTours@aol.com

Asia Optical
Asia Optical is a Taiwanese company and is one of the biggest lens producers in the world. It invested $12m in Burma to build a lens factory, which opened in early 2004. Customers of Asia Optical include: Canon, Epson, Hitachi, Kodak, Konica, Minolta, Nikon, Olympus, Panasonic, Sony, and Sharp.

Mr Robert Lai
Chairman
Asia Optical
No. 22-3 South 2nd Road
T.E.P.Z, Taichung 427
Taiwan R.O.C

Email: service@asia-optical.com.tw

Audley Travel
Audley Travel is a travel company that organises tours to Burma. It also promotes holidays to Burma in national newspapers, including the Sunday Telegraph, The Times, The Guardian and The Observer.

Craig Burkinshaw
Managing Director
Audley Travel Ltd
6 Willows Gate
Stratton Audley
Oxfordshire OX27 9AU
UK

Fax 01869 276 214
Email: mail@audleytravel.co

Asia World Company – NEW
Asia World Company is an Australian company that is involved with the Shweli River dam project. The project has been associated with numerous human rights abuses. Dam projects in Burma have been associated with forced relocations, extrajudicial killings, forced labour, death by labour and torture.

Level 2, 403 Pacific Highway
Artarmon,
Sydney
NSW 2064
Australia
Phone: +61 2 9906 6372
Fax: 61 2 9906 1874

Aban Offshore – NEW
Aban Offshore is an Indian Oil company which won a $25 million contract from the Thai company PTTEP International to help increase the revenues the regime gains from Burma’s oil and gas reserves. In 2007 the regime received $2.7 billion from the oil and gas sector.

Managing Director
Aban Offshore
Janpriya Crest
113, Pantheon Road
Egmore
Chennai 600 008
India

A.L.T Inter Corporation – NEW
A.L.T Inter Corporation is a Thai telecoms company, which has been undertaking contract work for the Burmese regime. A.L.T Inter operates in Burma through a joint venture company called Kordia Solutions Thailand with the New Zealand government owned Kordia. Their joint venture company has been working on a $80,000 contract with the regime owned Myanmar Post and Telecommunications on mobile phone towers in Burma. Mobile phone services are strictly controlled in Burma and it is extremely difficult for ordinary citizens to afford or acquire a mobile phone. However, for supporters of the regime it is relatively easy to acquire a phone through the pro-regime Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA). It is reported that the USDA members raise funds by selling mobile phones, which they acquire due to their close ties to the regime.

A.L.T Inter Corporation
52/1 M00 5
Bangkruay-Trinoi Road
Bangsithong
Bangkruay District
Nonthaburi 11130
Thailand

Baker Hughes
Baker Hughes is a supplier of products and services to the oil and natural gas industry. Headquartered in Houston, Texas, the company operates in over 90 countries, including Burma, where it has offices in rangoon. Its subsidiaries- Hughes Christensen and Baker Petrolite have further offices in South East Asia designated to serve the industry in Burma. As well as supplying equipment to the oil and gas industry in Burma, Baker Hughes operate a rig count service within the country. Baker Hughes has worked in joint venture with Singapore based MPRL E&P Pte. Ltd in Burma.

Baker Hughes
Corporate Headquarters
2929 Allen Parkway Ste
2100 Houston
TX 77210-5177
USA

Fax: + 713 439 8699
Email: info@bakerhughes.com

Bales Worldwide
Bales Worldwide is a travel company that organises tours to Burma. Although the company admits there are ‘conflicting views’ on whether tourists should visit Burma, it argues in favour of tourism. Aung San Suu Kyi and the Burmese democracy movement have asked tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy.

Managing Director
Bales Worldwide Holidays
Bales House
Junction Road
Dorking
Surrey RH4 3HL UK

Email: enquiries@balesworldwide.com

Bamboo Travel
Bamboo Travel is a UK company which aims to deliver bespoke itineraries for tourists wishing to visit China and South East Asia. Burma is included as one of the company’s destinations. Aung San Suu Kyi and the Burmese democracy movement have asked tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy.

Bamboo Travel Ltd
1E Elms Road
Clapham
London SW4 9ET

Email: info@bambootravel.co.uk

BBC Worldwide – NEW
On October 1st 2007 the BBC’s commercial arm, BBC Worldwide, bought a 75% stake in Lonely Planet. Lonely Planet is an Australian multinational publishing company specialising in travel guides. Lonely Planet publishes a guide to Burma, which encourages tourists to visit the country. Lonely Planet vigorously defends tourism to Burma, attempting to undermine calls by Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma’s democracy movement for tourists to stay away. The BBC charter states that the activities of BBC Worldwide must not “jeopardise the reputation of the BBC or the value of the BBC brand”. BBC Worldwide maintains that Lonely Planet will continue to publish its Burma guidebook; even though the book fails to warn readers which hotels are regime owned or highlight which tourists facilities were built or prepared for tourism with forced labour (such as the “ huge gleaming” airport in Mandalay and Mrauk U in Rankaing State). The Burmese regime has identified tourism as a vital source of income.

John Smith
BBC Worldwide
Woodlands
80 Wood Lane
London W12 0TT
UK

Ben Line Agencies/ EGT Holdings
Ben Line Agencies is a Scottish shipping line with offices in Burma. It operates a range of port services for companies exporting cargo from Burma. Ben Line is owned by EGT Holdings.

William Thomson
Chairman
Ben Line Agencies
Suite 7, Bonnington Bond
2 Anderson Place
Edinburgh EH6 5NP

Fax: 0131 557 4742
Email: info@egtholdings.com

BJ Services
BJ Services is an American oil services company. It provides services to oil companies operating in Burma. The oil and gas sector are a major source of revenue for the Burmese regime.

J. W. Stewart
Chairman, President and CEO
BJ Services 5500 Northwest Central Drive
Houston Texas 77092
USA

Email: rcoons@bjservices.com

Chevron
Since its 2005 takeover of Unocal, US oil giant Chevron has been one of the joint venture partners developing the Yadana offshore gas field in Burma, which earns the military regime millions of dollars. Chevron also owns Texaco.

David J. O’Reilly
Chairman and CEO
Chevron
6001 Bollinger Canyon Rd.
San Ramon
CA 94583
USA

Email: comment@chevron.com

CHC Helicopter Corporation
CHC Helicopter Corporation, a Canadian company, is the world’s largest provider of helicopter services to the global offshore oil and gas industry. It has aircraft operating in more than thirty countries around the world including Burma where it has supported offshore operations of international oil companies operating in the country. CHC trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbols FLY.A and FLY.B; and on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol FLI.CHC.

CHC Helicopter Corporation
4740 Agar Drive
Richmond, BC
V7B 1A3
Canada

Email: communications@chc.ca

China Heavy Machinery Corporation – NEW
China Heavy Machinery Corporation is a Chinese company that is involved with the Yeywa dam project in Burma, which has been associated with numerous human rights abuses. Dam projects in Burma have been associated with forced relocations, extrajudicial killings, forced labour, death by labour and torture.

The Chief Exeuctive
China Heavy Machinery Corporation
RM 8-1-1603
Jingang Plaza
NO. 19 Xindawang Rd.
Chaoyang District
Beijing
China 100022

Email:xyang@chmbnet.com, cbc@chmbnet.com

China International Trust and Investment Company (CITIC Group) – NEW
The state-owned CITIC Group is China’s largest financial conglomerate, with over 40 subsidiaries worldwide, including in North America and Asia Pacific. Some of these have had substantial dealings with the Burmese military regime. One subsidiary, CITIC Technology has ongoing involvement in numerous projects within Burma, the majority of which are hydroelectric related, though it has also been involved in resource extraction. As recently as last October a delegation from CITIC Technology met publicly with members of the junta at a hotel in Nanning, China.

Chang Zhenming
Vice-President & Chairman, CITIC Group
Capital Mansion
6 Xinuan Nan Road
Beijing 10004
Peoples Republic of China
Tel: +86-10-6466-5534
Fax: +86-10-6466-1186
Web: http://www.citic.com

China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC)
CNOOC is China’s offshore and overseas oil company. It is involved in several gas fields in Burma. Most recently its involvement has been through its China Oilfield Services Ltd subsidiary. In 2006 it agreed a deal to provide drilling services at three onshore sites in Burma’s Arakan state, having previously secured a drilling contract from Daewoo to drill for gas offshore.

Chairman
CNOOC
Offshore Petroleum Plaza
NO.6, Dongzhimenwai Xiaojie
DongCheng District
Beijing
P.R. China 100027

Fax: 00 86-10-84521441
Email: xiaozw@cnooc.com.cn

China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC)
CNPC is China’s largest oil and gas company. It has been involved in Burma’s oil and gas industry for more than a decade, increasing its investment in 2001 through its subsidiary – Chinnery Assets. In 2004 it entered into production sharing contracts with the Myanmar Ministry of Energy for offshore exploration of oil and gas through another of its subsidiaries- China Huanqiu Contracting and Engineering Corporation. CNPC’s largest subsidiary PetroChina signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Burmese junta in 2005 for the supply of natural gas from Burma to China.

Mr. Chen Geng
President
CNPC
6, Liupukang Jie
Xicheng Dist., Beijing
100724
China

Fax:00 86 10 6209 4806
Email:master@cnpc.com.cn

China Nonferrous Metal Mining Company (CNMC) – NEW
Owned by the Chinese State, China Nonferrous Metal Mining Company plans to invest US$600 million in a new nickel mine. Situated approximately 200 kilometres north of Mandalay, Tagaung Taung mine is a joint venture with the regime’s Number 3 Mining Enterprise, who will keep a 25% stake in the venture. Early estimates suggest that 85,000 tonnes of ferronickel and 22,000 tonnes of nickel per year could be produced, making it one of the largest in Burma. This will generate significant income for the Burmese regime.

6/F China NonFerrous BLD
25 Lianhuachi South Road
Beiljing
Beijing Municipality
China, 100055
Phone: +86 10 63420715
Fax: +86 10 63485616
Email: CNMC@nfcg.com.cn
Web: http://www.nfcg.com.cn/en

China PetroChemical Corp (Sinopec)
Sinopec is China’s second largest oil company, and is listed in Hong Kong and New York. Its subsidiary – Dian-Quin-Gui Petroleum Exploration Bureau – signed a contract for oil and gas exploration with the regime in September 2004.

Wang Tianpu
President
Sinopec
No.A6 Huixin East Street
Chaoyan District
Beijing 100029
China

China Power Investment Corporation – NEW
China Power investment Corporation is a Chinese company that is involved with the Irrawaddy Myitsone dam project in Burma, which has been associated with numerous human rights abuses. Dam projects in Burma have been associated with forced relocations, extrajudicial killings, forced labour, death by labour and torture.

The Chief Executive
China Power Investment Corporation
Building 3,
No.28 Financial Street
Xicheng District
Beijing,China

Tel:+86-10-66298000
Fax:+86-10-66298095

China Southern Power Grid – NEW
China Southern Power Grid is a Chinese company that is involved with the Irrawaddy Myitsone dam project in Burma, which has been associated with numerous human rights abuses. Dam projects in Burma have been associated with forced relocations, extrajudicial killings, forced labour, death by labour and torture.

The Chief Exeuctive
China Southern power Grid
6 Huasui Rd.
Guangzhou, 510623
China

Phone: 86-20-3812-1080
Changjiang Institute of Surveying, Planning, Design and research – NEW
China Southern Power Grid is a Chinese company that is involved with the Irrawaddy Myitsone dam project in Burma, which has been associated with numerous human rights abuses. Dam projects in Burma have been associated with forced relocations, extrajudicial killings, forced labour, death by labour and torture.

The Chief Executive
Changjiang institute of Surveying, planning, design and research
Wuhan 430010
China

CH. Karnchang Co – NEW
CH. Karnchang is a Thai engineering company, which is involved in the Salween Dam project. The US$ 6 billion project has led to over 300,000 people being forcibly relocated and the militarisation of the surrounding area which has resulted in an increase in reports of torture, extrajudicial killing and other human rights abuses. Over four fifths of the electricity from the project will be exported to Thailand.

Managing Director
CH. Karnchang Co
587 Viriyathavorn Building,
Sutthisarn Road,
Dindaeng Subdistrict,
Dindaeng District,
Bangkok,
Thailand.

Colenco Power Corporation – NEW
Colenco Power Corporation is a Swiss company that is involved with the Yeywa dam project in Burma which has been associated with numerous human rights abuses. Dam projects in Burma have been associated with forced relocations, extrajudicial killings, forced labour, death by labour and torture.

The Chief Executive
Colenco Power Engineering Ltd.
Hydropower Plants
Department Täfernstrasse
26 CH-5405
Baden
Switzerland
Tel: +41 56 483 1717
Fax: +41 56 483 1799

CNA Group Ltd
CNA is as Sesdaq listed company headquartered in Singapore. It was, in 2005, awarded a contract for the expansion of Yangon International Airport. Under the contract C.N.A. will design, supply, install and commission 24 engineering systems for the airport terminals. The project is to be completed by early 2007 but the CEO has commented “we will continue to expand our presence in the region (Myanmar).”

Ms. Amanda Shen
CNA Group Ltd (Singapore Headquarters)
28 Kaki Bukit Crescent
Kaki Bukit Techpark 1
Singapore 416259

Fax: + 65 68429606
Email: amandashen@can.com.sg

Crown Relocations
Crown Relocations is a Hong Kong based company with offices in the UK. It is employed by governments, corporations and non-government agencies to arrange relocation of staff when they need to work overseas. Crown has an office in Burma that facilitates the transfer of expat staff employed by foreign investors in Burma. Crown strongly defends foreign investment in Burma.

Managing Director
Crown Worldwide Ltd.
19 Stonefield Way
London
South Ruislip
Middlesex HA4 OBJ
UK

Fax: 020 8839 8155
Email: london@crownrelo.com

Danford Equities Corporation
Danford Equities Corporation is an Australian oil company owned by Twinza Oil. It signed a production sharing and exploration contract with state-owned Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise in November 2006. It covers the Yetagun East Block. Twinza Oil’s CEO, Bill Clough, boasts of the company’s “close relationship” with the regime. Gas exports are the regime’s largest source of income.

Managing Director
Twinza Oil
Head Office & Principal Registered Office
Level 6
251 St Georges Terrace
Perth
Western Australia 6000

Daewoo International Corporation
Daewoo is a South Korean conglomerate with interests ranging from oil and gas, to grain, televisions and cars. It is a partner in the Bay of Bengal gas exploration project in Burma which could earn the regime hundreds of millions of dollars. Daewoo Motors also has a car assembly plant which is a joint venture with Myanmar Automobile and Diesel Industries (MADI). MADI is owned and controlled by the regime. In addition, Daewoo supplies IT services to the regime, and has timber manufacturing and clothing interests in Burma.

Lee Tae-Yong
Chief Executive Officer
541 5-Ga Namdaemunno,
Chung Gu,
C.P.O Box 2810
Seoul
Korea

Fax: 00 8227539489

Managing Director
Daewoo Int’l London Branch Office
Missing Link House,
3 Eastbury Road,
Northwood
Middlesex HA6 3AB
UK

Fax: 00 441923 833 487
E-mail: iplee@daewoo.co.uk

DBS Group Holdings Ltd
DBS Group Holdings Ltd is the holding company of DBS bank and is one of the largest companies in terms of market capitalisation listed on the Singapore Exchange, with total assets amounting to over S$180 billion. Included in its international banking network is a representative office in Burma.

DBS Bank
6 Shenton Way
DBS Tower One
Singapore 068809

Diethelm Keller/STA Travel
Diethelm Keller Group is a private Swiss company with a wide range of investments, including Diethelm Travel, which operates holiday tours to Burma. Diethelm boasts that it pioneered tourism to Burma. Diethelm also owns STA travel. Aung San Suu Kyi has asked tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy. Forced and child labour was used to develop many tourist facilities.

Andreas W. Keller
Diethelm Keller Holding Ltd
Muhlebachstrasse 20
8032 Zurich
Switzerland

Fax 00 411 1 265 3399
Email: info@diethelmkeller.com

Dragon Travel
Dragon Travel is a travel company based in Wales that organises tours to Burma. Aung San Suu Kyi and the Burmese democracy movement have asked tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy. Forced and child labour was used to develop many tourist facilities.

Managing Director
Dragon Tours & Travel Ltd.
13 Howells Crescent
Llandaff
Cardiff
CF5 2AJ
UK

Email: sales@dragontravel.co.uk

Dive the World – NEW
Based in Thailand, Dive the World facilitates diving holidays to Burma. Their promotional materials state, “You will be accompanied by an immigration official for the duration of your cruise … therefore, every cruise is supervised by the Burmese authorities and is extremely safe”. Aung San Suu Kyi and the democracy movement have asked for tourists not to visit Burma at the present time.

Sheldon Hey, General Manager
Dive the World
Ratuthid Road
Patong Beach
Phuket
83150 Thailand

Phone: +66 83 5057794
Fax: +66 76 344736
Email: Burma@Dive-The-World.com
Web: http://www.DiveTheWorldBurma.com

Dusit Thani Hotels – NEW
Based in Thailand, Dusit Thani Hotels took over the management of the luxury 211-room Inya Lake Hotel in Rangoon in 2002. It is regarded as the one of the most luxurious places to stay in Rangoon, Aung San Suu Kyi, and the country’s democracy movement asks tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy. Forced and child labour was used to develop many tourist facilities.

The Dusit Thani Building
946 Rama IV Road
Bangkok 10500
Thailand
Tel: +66 2200 9999
Fax: +66 2 636 3630

EGAT
The Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) Public Limited Company is a subsidiary of Thailand’s state run power utility, EGAT, formed to increase private sector involvement in electricity supply. EGAT Plc signed a Memorandum of Understanding in late 2005, with the Burmese military junta for the construction of a series of five hydro electric dams along the Salween river. The project will not only secure electricity for Thailand, but also much needed income for the SPDC.

Kraisi Kanasuta
EGAT Plc.
53 Moo 2 Charunsanitwong Road
Bangkruai
Nonthaburi 11130
Thailand

Email: Hydro_eng@egat.com

Elder Treks – NEW
Based in Toronto, Elder Treks is a tour organiser that specialises in ‘small group adventures for travellers 50 plus’. Describing Burma as a ‘sublime country’, it organises 18-day holidays to Burma. Aung San Suu Kyi and the democracy movement have repeatedly asked for tourists not to visit Burma, as it helps funds the regime and gives it legitimacy.

Gary Murtagh
President, Elder Treks
597 Markham Street
Toronto
Ontario M6G 2L7
Canada
Tel: +1 (0)808 234 1714
Web: www.eldertreks.com
Email: adventure@eldertreks.com

Essar Group
Essar Group is an Indian conglomerate. In 2005 its Essar Oil subsidiary signed contracts with the regime to make onshore and offshore explorations for oil and gas.

Shashi Ruia
Chairman
Essar Group
Essar House
11 Keshavrao Khadye Marg
Mahalaxmi
Mumbai – 400 034
India

Email: corporatecommunications@essar.com

First Choice Expeditions – NEW
First Choice Expeditions is an American company who, with its associated companies Country Walkers and Travcoa, have in the past or currently sell holidays to Burma. Aung San Suu Kyi and the Burmese democracy movement have asked tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy. Many of Burma’s tourists facilities were built with forced labour.

Managing Director
First Choice Expeditions
4340 Von Karman Ave.
Suite 400
Newport Beach
CA 92660
USA

Focus Energy
Focus Energy is a small British oil company – registered in the Virgin Islands. Focus Energy operates and develops onshore oil fields in Burma. It began operations in 1997, and in late 2004 announced a new investment of 4 million dollars to drill new wells.

Maurie Drew
General Manager
Focus Energy Ltd
Focus House
Mya Yeik Nyo Royal Estate
20 Pale Street
Bahan Tshp
Yangon
Burma

Fodor’s/Random House
Fodor’s is an American publishing company that specialises in travel guides. Their South East Asia guide includes a section on Burma which helps facilitate tourism to the country. Fodor’s is part of the Random House publishing group. Aung San Suu Kyi has asked tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy. Forced and child labour was used to develop many tourist facilities.

Managing Director
Random House, Inc.
1745 Broadway
New York,
NY 10019
USA

FOSCE – NEW
FOSCE is a German company that is involved with the Yeywa dam project in Burma, which has been associated with human rights abuses. Dam projects in Burma have been associated with forced relocations, extrajudicial killings, forced labour, death by labour and torture.

The Chief Executive
FOSCE Lorentzenstr.
30 Bad Oldesloe
23843 Germany

Fraser and Neave, Limited – NEW
Fraser and Neave is a Singaporean company that operates a brewery in Burma in joint venture with the state owned Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd, their joint venture is called Myanmar Brewey Limited (MBL). MBL produces brands such as Tiger Beer and Myanmar Beer; exporting to 10 countries including Malaysia, Singapore, India and China. The venture generates significant income for the Burmese regime.

Corporate Communications
Fraser and Neave, Limited
#21-00 Alexandra Point
438 Alexandra Road
Singapore 119958
G

Gas Authority of India Ltd (GAIL)
GAIL is an Indian gas company. It is a partner is the massive Shwe gas field consortium off the coast of Burma. It has a 10% stake.

The Chairman
GAIL (India) Limited
16,Bhikaiji Cama Place
New Delhi – 110 066
India

Gecko’s Adventures
Gecko’s describes itself as a travel company for ‘grassroots adventures’. It is a sister company of Peregrine Adventures, which has offices in Australia and the UK. Gecko’s organises tours to Burma.

Managing Director
Gecko’s Adventures
First Floor,
8 Clerewater Place,
Lower Way,
Thatcham,
Berkshire
RG19 3RF

Email: sales@peregrineadventures.com

Managing Director
Gecko’s Adventures
258 Lonsdale St
Melbourne VIC 3000
Australia

Email: websales@peregrine.net.au

Geopetrol
Geopetrol is a private oil and gas exploration, and production, company. Through GoldPetrol, the company’s joint venture with Interra Resources, this French based firm has a participating interest in two major oil producing fields in the sub-Salin basin of Burma. It plans to undertake further development drilling to significantly increase its production.

Geopetrol
Gildo Pastor Center
7 Rue Du Gabian
MC 98000
Monaco
France

Fax: + 377 9310 1250
Email: contact@geoholding.com

German Travel Network – NEW
The German Travel Network is a German tourism company which organises holidays to Burma. Aung San Suu Kyi has asked tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy. Forced and child labour was used to develop many tourist facilities.

Managing Director
German Travel Network
Bahnhofstrasse 22
91126 Schwabach
Germany
Fax: +49 9122 634 526

Ginnacle Import-Export Pte Ltd
Ginnacle is a company located in Singapore involved in the sales and marketing of Burmese teak lumber, decking and furniture. The Burmese regime owns all teak plantations in Burma and teak sales earn the regime millions of pounds every year.

Ginnacle Import-Export Pte Ltd
7500A Beach Road
05-318, The Plaza
Singapore 199591

Fax: + (65) 6 296 6629
Email: teakwood@singnet.com.sg

GMS Power Public Company Limited – NEW
GMS is one of Thailand’s largest power developers, with its parent company MDX group it is involved in the Salween Dam project, in Eastern Burma. The US$ 6 billion project has led to over 300,000 people being forcibly relocated and the militarisation of the surrounding area which has resulted in an increase in reports of torture, extrajudicial killing and other human rights abuses. Over four fifths of the electricity from the project will be exported to Thailand.

Managing Director
GMS Power Public Company Limited
14th floor, The Column Tower
199 Ratchadapisek Road
Klongtoey
Bankok, 10110
Thailand

Golden Aaron Pte. Ltd
Golden Aaron Pte. Ltd. is a Singaporean oil corporation. The company is part of a consortium which in 2005 signed three production sharing contracts with state run Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise, to explore for oil and gas in Burma, both on and offshore. It is a project which will undoubtedly provide the Burmese junta with a large and valuable source of income. The same consortium signed similar deals in 2004.

Golden Aaron Pte. Ltd.
3 Shenton Way 10-01
Shenton House
Singapore 068805

Gold Water Resources Co Ltd. – NEW
Gold Water Resources is a leading Chinese power company which is involved in the Salween Dam project, in Eastern Burma. The US$ 6 billion project has led to over 300,000 people being forcibly relocated and the militarisation of the surrounding area which has resulted in an increase in reports of torture, extrajudicial killing and other human rights abuses. Over four fifths of the electricity from the project will be exported to Thailand.

No Contact detail available

Hanergy/Farsighted Investment Group – NEW
Hanergy, also known as Farsighted Investment Group, is a Chinese power company which is involved in the Salween Dam project, in Eastern Burma. The US$ 6 billion project has led to over 300,000 people being forcibly relocated and the militarisation of the surrounding area which has resulted in an increase in reports of torture, extrajudicial killing and other human rights abuses. Over four fifths of the electricity from the project will be exported to Thailand.

Managing Director
Hanergy/Farsighted Investement Group
North of Floor 11
Office Building of Capital Times Square
No. 88 Xichang’an Jie
Xi Cheng District
Beijing 100031
People’s Republic of China

Tel: +86-10-83914567
Fax: +86-10-83914666
Email: office@farsighted.cn
Web: www.farsighted.cn/english

Hapag-Lloyd
Hapag-Lloyd is a German container shipping line and holiday cruise operator. Its container division has an office in Burma as part of its operation to export Burmese products. Hapag-Lloyd Cruises includes Burma on their cruises in Asia. Hapag-Lloyd is active in the UK container shipping market.

Michael Behrendt
Chairman
Hapag-Lloyd AG
Ballindamm 25
D-20095 Hamburg
Germany

Managing Director
Hapag-Lloyd UK
48a Cambridge Road
Hapag-Lloyd House
Barking
Essex IG11 8HH
UK

Fax: 0044 20 8507 4165

Helicopters New Zealand
Helicopters New Zealand (NZ) are a New Zealand helicopter hire company that specialises in helicopter hire for difficult environments, including the oil and gas industry. Helicopters NZ have been hired by Daewoo to work on the Shwe gas field.

Managing Director
Helicopters NZ
Private Bag 9
Nelson
New Zealand

Fax: 00 643 5475598
Email: enquiries@helicoptersnz.com

Hunter Publishing/Nelles Guides
Hunter Publishing is an American publishing company that produces a guide to Burma under its Nelles Guide imprint. Aung San Suu Kyi has asked tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy. Forced and child labour was used to develop many tourist facilities.

Managing Director
Hunter Publishing
PO Box 746
Walpole,
MA 02081
USA

Email: comments@hunterpublishing.com

Hutchison Whampoa/3 Mobile/Superdrug
Hutchison Whampoa Ltd is a Hong Kong based company with a wide range of investments around the world. In Burma it operates Myanmar International Terminals Thilawa (MITT), a major port in Burma. It describes these port terminals as “strategically positioned to facilitate and service Myanmar’s international trade.” In the UK, Hutchison owns 3 Mobile, Superdrug, three major ports – Felixstowe, Harwich International and Thamesport, and has major stakes in luxury property developments such as Royal Gate in Kensington, Belgravia Place near Sloane Square and Albion Wharf in Chelsea.

Mr. Li Ka-shing
Hutchison Whampoa Limited
22/F Hutchison House
10 Harcourt Road
Central
Hong Kong

Email: info@hutchison-whampoa.com
Email: laurac@hwl.com.hk
I

Impact Publications
Impact Publications is an American publishing company that publishes a guide to Burma. The guide is available in several countries. Aung San Suu Kyi has asked tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy. Forced and child labour was used to develop many tourist facilities. Impact Publications have sent abusive emails to people writing to express their concern about Impact promoting tourism to Burma.

Ron and Caryl Krannich
Impact Publications
9104 Manassas Drive, Suite N
Manassas Park, VA 20111-5211
USA
Fax: 00 1 703 3359486
Email: krannich@starpower.net

Insight Guides
Insight Guides is an independent publishing company that produces holiday guides, including a guide to Burma that promotes tourism to the country. Aung San Suu Kyi has asked tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy. Forced and child labour was used to develop many tourist facilities.

Managing Director
Insight Guides
58 Borough High Street
London SE1 1XF
UK

Fax: 0044 20 7403 0290
Email: feedback@insightguides.co.uk
Email: pr@insightguides.co.uk

Interra Resources
Singapore listed Interra Resource’s principal activities are the exploration and operation of oil fields for the production of crude petroleum. It operates in Indonesia and Burma. In Burma its subsidiary Goldwater Oil was the first foreign oil company to extract oil in Burma. It is currently engaged in oil and gas exploration and production through its jointly controlled venture with Geopetrol called Goldpetrol.

Interra Resources Limited
391A Orchard Road 13-06
Ngee Ann City Tower A
Singapore 238873

Fax:+ (65) 6738 1170
Email: interra@interraresources.com

Itera Group
Itera Group is a Russian oil and gas company. In September 2006 it signed a production sharing contract for oil and gas exploration with the regime.

Igor Viktorich Makarov
Chariman
Itera Group
117209, Sevastopolsky Prospekt,
28, Bldg1
Moscow
Russian Federation

Itochu Corporation Ltd – NEW
Marubeni-Itochu is a joint venture company between two Japanese steel companies, Marubeni and Itochu. Marubeni-Itochu’s subsidiary in Burma, Myanma Steel Industries Co., Ltd, supplies steel tubulars to the gas industry in Burma. Gas revenues are a major source of revenue for the Burmese regime, supplying over $2.7 billion in 2006.

Managing Director
Itochu Corporation Ltd
37990
Kita-Aoyama 2-chome
Minato-ku
Tokyo 107-8077
Japan

Ivanhoe Mines
Ivanhoe Mines is a Canadian mining company which was the largest foreign mining investor in Burma operating the Monywa Copper mine in a joint venture with the regime. Rail and power infrastructure in the area of the mine was built using forced labour. It is estimated that the mine could be earning the regime over $40 million a year. Following pressure from a business partner Ivanhoe attempted to sell its interests in the mine in 2006. Having failed to find a buyer the mine has been put into a trust. However Ivanhoe and the regime still receive the profits from this project.

Robert Friedland
Ivanhoe Mines
World Trade Centre
Suite 654-999 Canada Place
Vancouver BC
Canada V6C 3E1

Email: info@ivanhoemines.com

Jet Gold Corp
Jet Gold Corp is a Canadian mining company. Its major focus is searching for gold in Shan state in Burma.

Robert L Card
President
Jet Gold Corp
1102 – 475 Howe Street
Vancouver, BC
Canada V6C 2B3

Fax: 00 1 604 687 7848
Email: info@jetgoldcorp.com

Jetstar Asia – NEW
Jetstar Asia promotes Burma as a tourist destination and flies to the country in partnership with regime owned Myanmar Airways International. Burma’s democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and the country’s democracy movement asks tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy. Forced and child labour was used to develop many tourist facilities. Jetstar Asia is based in Singapore and is a partnership between Qantas, who hold the controlling 49% share, Tony Chew, FF Wong and Temasek Holdings.

Managing Director
Jetstar Asia
Qantas Centre
203 Coward Street
Mascot NSW 2020
Australia

Journeys International, Inc. – NEW
Journeys International is an American tour holiday company that sells tours to Burma. Aung San Suu Kyi and the Burmese democracy movement have asked tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy. Many of Burma’s tourists facilities were built with forced labour.

Managing Director
Journeys International, Inc.
107 Aprill Drive
Suite 3
Ann Arbor
MI 48103-1903
USA
Fax +1 734 665 2945

JSC Zarubezhneft Joint Stock Company – NEW
JSC Zarubezhneft is a Russian oil and gas company which has interests in the gas sector in Burma, specifically the M-8 block. The gas sector is the regime’s chief source of income generating over $2.7 billion in 2006.

Managing Director
(JSC) Zarubezhneft Joint Stock Company
Building 1
9/1/1 Armiansky pereulok
Moscow 101990
Russian Federation

Kajima
Kajima is a Japanese construction company with contracts all over the world. Kajima has an office in Burma and has undertaken several construction contracts for the regime. In the UK, Kajima has won several PFI projects, including building schools in Camden and Ealing.

Managing Director
Kajima Europe UK
Grove House
248a Marylebone Road
London NW1 6JZ
UK

Fax 0044 20 7465 8634
Email: haverstockmail@kajima.co.uk

Managing Director
Kajima Head Office
2-7, Motoakasaka 1-chome
Minato-ku
Tokyo, 107-8388
Japan

Keppel Corporation
Singapore’s Keppel Corporation is a multinational corporation with interests in three key business areas: Offshore and Marine, Property and Infrastructure. Its property wing- Keppel Land has a presence in eight Asian countries including Burma where it owns the Sedona Hotels in Rangoon and Mandalay.

Keppel Corporation Ltd.
Group Corporate Communications
1 HarbourFront Avenue
18-01 Keppel Bay Tower
Singapore 098632

Fax: + (65) 6413 645
Email: keppelgroup@kepcorp.com

Kerry Logistics Group/Kuok Group
Kerry Logistics is a goods transport logistics company with branches in 12 countries, including the UK. Kerry Logistics also operates in Burma, facilitating the export of Burmese goods. Kerry Logistics is part of the Singaporean conglomerate, Kuok Group.

Managing Director
Kerry Logistics (UK) Ltd
Unit 1 Broadoak Industrial Park
Ashburton Road West
Trafford Park
Manchester
M17 1RW
UK

Fax: 0044 161 872 9016

Kuok Nock Nien
Kuok Group
No. 1 Kim Seng Promenade, #07-01
Great World City
Singapore 237994

Kinden Corporation – NEW
Kinden is a Japanese engineering company with investments in Burma. The company’s investments, such as the Yangon Commercial Tower, help provide funding to the Burmese regime.

Managing Director
Kinden Corporation
2-1-21 Kudan-Minami,
Chiyoda-ku
Tokyo 102-8628
Japan

KOGAS
KOGAS – The Korea Gas Corporation – is a South Korean gas company. KOGAS is a partner is the massive Shwe gas field consortium off the coast of Burma. It has a 10% stake.

The President
KOGAS
215 Chongja-dong
Paundang-gu
Songnam
Kyanggi-do
463-754
Korea

Email: kogasmaster@kogas.or.kr

Kordia – NEW
Kordia is a New Zealand state owned telecoms company which has been undertaking contract work for the Burmese regime. Kordia operates in Burma through a joint venture company called Kordia Solutions Thailand with the Thai firm Alt Inter Corporation. Their joint venture company has been working on a $80,000 contract with the regime owned Myanmar Post and Telecommunications on mobile phone towers in Burma. Mobile phone services are strictly controlled in Burma and it is extremely difficult for ordinary citizens to afford or acquire a mobile phone. However for supporters of the regime it is relatively easy to acquire a phone through the pro-regime Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA). It is reported that the USDA members raise funds by selling mobile phones, which they acquire due to their close ties to the regime.

Managing Director
Kordia
Level 4 , Fidelity House
81 Carlton Gore Road
Newmarket
Auckland 1023
New Zealand

Kunming Hydroelectric Investigation, design and Research Institute – NEW
Kunming is a XX company that is involved with a hydroelectricity project in Burma that has been associated with human rights abuses. Dam projects in Burma have been associated with forced relocations, extrajudicial killings, forced labour, death by labour and torture.

The Chief Executive
Kunming Hydroelectric Investigation, design and Research Institute

115 East Road, people in Kunming
50051
Zip Code: 650051
China

Tel:0871-3062043 Tel :0871-3062043

Tel: 0871-3162550 Fax :0871-3162550
Email: khidi@public.km.yn.cn

Kuoni – NEW
Kuoni describes itself as “one of Europe’s leading tourist travel corporations” and “Britain’s best luxury travel and tour operator”. The company sells tours to Burma through its French and Spanish brochures as well as through its subsidiary Asian Trails. In 2003 the company stopped selling tours to Burma but backtracked on the decision and recommenced selling tours in 2005. Aung San Suu Kyi has asked tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy. Forced and child labour was used to develop many tourist facilities.

The Chief Executive
Kuoni Travel Holding Ltd.
Neue Hard 7
CH-8010 Zurich
Switzerland
Fax: 00 41 44 271 52 82

Leeward Capital Corp
Leeward Capital Corp are a Canadian mining company. They are in a joint venture with the regime to mine and export amber.

Managing Director
Leeward Capital Corp
Unit 4, 1922 – 9th Avenue SE
Calgary, Alberta T2G 0V2
Canada

Email: president@leewardcapital.com

Lonely Planet
Lonely Planet is an Australian multinational publishing company specialising in travel guides. Lonely Planet publishes a guide to Burma, which encourages tourists to visit the country. On October 1st 2007 the BBC’s commercial arm, BBC Worldwide, bought a 75% stake in Lonely Planet. Lonely Planet vigorously defends tourism to Burma, attempting to undermine calls by Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma’s democracy movement for tourists to stay away. The BBC charter states that the activities of BBC Worldwide must not “jeopardise the reputation of the BBC or the value of the BBC brand”. BBC Worldwide maintains that Lonely Planet will continue to publish its Burma guidebook; even though the book fails to warn readers which hotels are regime owned or highlight which tourists facilities were built or prepared for tourism with forced labour (such as the “ huge gleaming” airport in Mandalay and Mrauk U in Rakhaing State). The Burmese regime has identified tourism as a vital source of income.

Judy Slatyer
Chief Executive
Lonely Planet
90 Maribyrnong Street
Footscray, Victoria 3011
AUSTRALIA

Fax: 00 61 3 8379 8111
Email: talk2us@lonelyplanet.com.au

Lumber Mart SDN BHD – NEW
Lumber Mart International is a Malaysian company that exports Burmese timber products. The company plans to establish over 100 wood based factories in Burma. The Burmese regime owns all teak plantations in Burma and teak sales earn the regime millions of pounds every year.

Mr Charles Lee
Lumber Mart SDN BHD
No.2, Jalan Teknologi 3/1
Selangor Science Park 1
Kota Damansara
47810 Petaling Jaya
Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia

Maersk
A.P.Møller Maersk is a Danish multinational company that specialises in shipping, but also has interests in oil & gas exploration, air transport, and supermarkets. In Burma Maersk act as a shipping agent through a company set up to act as their local representative. The agent – Win Trade Ltd – arranges exports from Burma using the regime owned Myanmar Five Star Line. Maersk are joint owners of Dansk Supermarket, Denmark’s second largest supermarket chain, which includes Netto supermarkets.

Jess Søderberg
Chief Executive Officer
A.P. Møller
Esplanaden 50
1098 Copenhagen K
Denmark

Email: cphinfo@maersk.com

Marubeni
Marubeni is a Japanese company with interests ranging from oil and gas to clothing and timber. In Burma they helped finance the Monywa Copper mine developed by Ivanhoe. Marubeni-Itochu is a joint venture between Marubeni and another Japanese steel companies, Itochu. Their subsidiary in Burma, Myanma Steel Industries Co., Ltd, supplies steel tubulars to the gas industry in Burma. Gas revenues are a major source of revenue for the Burmese regime; supplying over $2.7 billion in 2006. In the UK Marubeni develops oil and gas reserves in the North Sea.

Managing Director
Marubeni UK Plc
120 Moorgate Street
London EC2M 6SS

Fax: 020 7826 8686

Managing Director
Marubeni
4-2 Ohtemachi 1-chome
Chiyoda-ku,
Tokyo 100-8088,
Japan

Fax: 00 813 3282 2455

MDX PCL – NEW
MDX is one of Thailand’s largest power developers, with its subsidiary GMS Power Public Company it is involved in the Salween Dam project, , in Eastern Burma. The US$ 6 billion project has led to over 300,000 people being forcibly relocated and the militarisation of the surrounding area, which has resulted in an increase in reports of torture, extrajudicial killing and other human rights abuses. Over four fifths of the electricity from the project will be exported to Thailand.

Managing Director
MDX PCL
International public company
12A/F 199 Ratchadapisek Rd
Khlong-Toei
Bangkok
Thailand

Mekong Travel
Mekong Travel is a travel company based in Buckinghamshire which specialises in holidays to Indochina, including Burma. On their website they describe how decades of isolation as a result of military dictatorship “have preserved here many of the traditional features, physical and cultural, which have been lost in other Asian countries.”

Managing Director
Mekong Travel
16 Ledborough Wood
Beaconsfield
Buckinghamshire HP9 2DJ
UK
Fax: 01494 681631
Email: go@mekong-travel.com

Mitsubishi – NEW
Mitsubishi describes itself as “Japan’s largest general trading company”. The company maintains an office in Rangoon, where it facilitates the distribution and sale of numerous products and services. Historically, Mitsubishi has invested US $70 million in the Yetagun gas project; Nippon Oil is also a Mitsubishi Company. Mitsubishi also carries out work for the Myanmar Port Authority, supplying cranes and dredgers – by increasing the capacity of Rangoon Port the company is enabling the regime to increase the profits it makes from trade.

Mitsubishi Corporation
Mitsubishi Shoji Building
3-1, Marunouchi 2-Chome,
Chiyoda-ku,
Tokyo, 100-8086,
Japan

Mitsubishi Corporation (UK Office)
Mid City Place
71 High Holborn
London
WC1V 6BA
United Kingdom

Tel: 020 7025 3000
Fax: 020 7025 3499

Mitsui OSK Lines
M.O.L is a global business concerned with marine shipping and logistics in what it calls a ‘truly borderless transportation network that brings goods to market all over the world’. Yangon is one of the company’s major calling ports.

Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Ltd.
1-1 Toranomon 2-chome
Minato-ku
Tokyo 105-8688
Japan

Fax: +81-3-3587-7734

Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance
Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance is one of Japan’s largest non-life insurers with a workforce of over 13,000 and a net income in 2006 of over 124,000 million yen. Included in its large overseas network is a representative office in Yangon.

Takeo Inokuchi- Chairman and CEO
Hiroyuki Uemura- President and CEO
Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Company
27-2, Shinkawa 2-Chome
Chuo-ku
Tokyo 104-8252
Japan

Fax: + 81 3 3297 6888

Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Company (Europe) Ltd.
6th Floor, New London House
6 London Street
London
EC3R 7LP

Fax: 020 7816 0220

Mountain Travel Sobek
Mountain Travel Sobek is an adventure travel company with offices in the US and UK. They operate tours to Burma. Aung San Suu Kyi has asked tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy. Forced and child labour was used to develop many tourist facilities.

Managing Director
Mountain Travel Sobek U.K.
67, Verney Avenue
High Wycombe
Bucks HP12 3ND
UK

Fax: 01494 465526
Email: sales@mtsobekeu.com
Email: info@mtsobek.com

MPRL E&P Pte Ltd. – NEW
With headquarters in Singapore, and registered in the British Virgin Islands, MPRL E&P was founded in 1996, when it was in a joint venture with Baker Hughes; it is now in 100% charge of the Mann Oil Field on which it has already invested approximately US$ 90 million, making it the third largest investor in the onshore oil projects in Burma. In January 2006 it signed another contract with the state-owned MOGE for the development of the offshore Block A-6, in a deal over five years worth a minimum of US$ 35.5 million to the junta. The company plans to increase its investment in the country yet further, stating ‘MPRL believes that there are still many opportunities to expand further in the country and MPRL has in fact applied for additional onshore acreage’. The gas sector is the regime’s chief source of income generating over $2.7 billion in 2006.

Mr Terence J. Howe
MPRL E&P Pte Ltd.
20 Cecil Street
#13-02, Equity Plaza
Singapore 04970
Web: www.mprlep.com
Email: cm-mprl@mprlnet.com.mm

New Horizons Travels and Tours Ltd
New Horizons Travels and Tours is a London based company that organises holidays to Burma. They promote them through their website burmaexpeditions.com.

MiMi Tin Tun
New Horizons Travels & Tours Ltd.
50 Burrard Road
West Hampstead
London NW6 1DD
UK

Nikko Hotels International/Japan Airlines
Nikko Hotels International, a subsidiary of Japan Airlines, owns hotels all over the world. In Burma Nikko operate the Hotel Nikko Royal Lake Yangon. In the UK they own the Montcalm-Hotel Nikko London.

Shosuke Machida
Chief Executive
Nikko Hotels
JAL Bldg.
2-4-11, Higashishinagawa,
Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo 104-0002
JAPAN

Fax: 00 81-3-3458-3950
Email: akatz@nikkohotels.com
Email: montcalm@montcalm.co.uk

Managing Director
Japan Airlines
JAL Bldg.
2-4-11, Higashishinagawa,
Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo 104-0002
JAPAN

Fax: 00 81-3-3458-3950

Nippon Oil
Japanese oil firm Nippon Oil are one of the joint venture partners developing the Yadana offshore gas field in Burma, which earns the military regime millions of dollars. It is part of the Mitsubishi group of companies.

Fumiaki Watari
President
Nippon Oil
3-12 Nishi Shimbashi 1-chome
Minato-ku, Tokyo 105 8412, Japan

A Suzuki
Managing Director
Nippon Oil Exploration and Production UK Ltd
38 Finsbury Square
London EC2A 1PX
UK

Fax: 020 7309 7676

Noble Caledonia
Noble Caledonia is a British holiday cruise company offering cruises all over the world. Their brochure includes cruises on the Irrawaddy River in Burma. Aung San Suu Kyi has asked tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy. Forced and child labour was used to develop many tourist facilities.

Managing Director
Noble Caledonia Limited
2 Chester Close, Belgravia,
London SW1X 7BE

Fax: 020 7245 0388
Email: info@noble-caledonia.co.uk

NYK Shipping
NYK is the world’s largest shipping company. It transports garment exports from Burma. Since being placed on the Dirty List in 2004 NYK has taken some welcome steps to reduce its involvement in Burma. It has stopped carrying timber exports from Burma and its American subsidiary Crystal Cruises has stopped visiting Burma. NYK has significant operations in the UK, operating out of ports across the country.

President
NYK Line
3-2, Marunouchi 2 Chome
Chiyoda-Ku, Tokyo
100-0005 Japan

Fax: 00 8133284 6105

Managing Director
NYK Line Europe
CityPoint, 1 Ropemaker Street
London EC2Y 9NY

Fax: 020 7090 2404

OCBC Bank
OCBC Bank is Singapore’s longest established bank, and is today one of Asia’s leading financial services groups with gross assets of S$136 billion. The group has a global network of more than 310 branches and representative offices in 15 countries including Burma.

OCBC Bank
65 Chulia Street
OCBC Centre
Singapore 049513

Fax: +65 6535 7477
Email: corpcomms@ocbc.com.sg

Old Burma Tour and Trading Co
This Florida based company, with offices in Rangoon, is a provider of custom made tours of Burma. Aung San Suu Kyi has asked tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy. Further, forced labour has been used to develop certain tourist facilities.

Old Burma Tour and Trading Company
1825 Ponce De Leon Boulevard
P.O. Box 383
Coral Gables, Florida
33134 USA

Fax: 305 569 0074
Email: info@oldburma.com

ONGC Videsh
ONGC Videsh is one of the largest companies in India. It is a partner in the massive Shwe gas field consortium off the coast of Burma. It has a 20% stake.

Subir Raha
Chairman
ONGC VIDESH
6th Floor, “Kailash”
26, Kasturba Gandhi Marg,
New Delhi 110 001
India

Fax: 00 91 11 23730369

Orient Express
Orient Express has its registered office in Bermuda, is managed from London, and is listed on the New York stock exchange. The company specialises mainly in hotels, but also offers holidays to Burma including ‘Road to Mandalay’ cruises on the Irrawaddy River. It has expanded its interests in Burma by taking a stake in the Pansea hotel chain – now rebranded as ‘Pansea Orient Express’ – which has a hotel in Rangoon. Pansea Orient Express is also building a new hotel in Bagan, Burma.

James B. Sherwood
Chairman
Orient-Express Hotels Ltd
Sea Containers House
20 Upper Ground
London SE1 9PF

Fax: 020 7805 5938

Peregrine Adventures
Peregrine Adventures is an Australian travel company with an office in London. Peregrine offers 12 day tours of Burma. Aung San Suu Kyi has asked tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy. Forced and child labour was used to develop many tourist facilities.

Managing Director
Peregrine Tours
First Floor, 8 Clerewater Place,
Lower Way, Thatcham
Berkshire RG19 3RF

Email: sales@peregrineadventures.com

Managing Director
Peregrine Adventures
258 Lonsdale St
Melbourne VIC 3000
Australia

Email: websales@peregrineadventures.com

Petronas
Petronas is a Malaysian state owned oil and gas company. It has several contracts with the regime in Burma to extract and explore for oil and gas in the country.

Tan Sri Datuk Seri Azizan Zainul Abidin
Chairman
Petronas, Tower 1
Petronas Twin Towers
50088 Kuala Lumpa
Malaysia

Email: ooiinnhoe@petronas.com.my

PETROVIETNAM – NEW
Wholly owned by the Vietnamese government, PETROVIETNAM (officially known as the Vietnam Oil and Gas Corporation) is responsible for all oil and gas production in that country. In August of 2007, PETROVIETNAM entered into an agreement with the regime’s ‘Myanmar Energy Planning Department’ for the “strategic cooperation in oil and gas”.

The Chief Executive
PETROVIETNAM
22 Ngo Quyen Street
Hoan Kiem District
Hanoi
Vietnam
Phone: 84-4-8252526
Fax: 84-4-8265942
Email: hdqt@hn.pv.com.vn
Web: www.petrovietnam.com.vn

Pettitts
Pettitts is a travel company based in Kent. They offer a 9 day tour of Burma. They are one of the few travel companies to mention that there are ethical problems with visiting Burma. Aung San Suu Kyi has asked tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy. Forced and child labour was used to develop many tourist facilities.

Steven Pettitt
Managing Director
Pettitts
Bayham House
12-16 Grosvenor Road
Tunbridge Wells
Kent TN1 2AB

Fax: 01892 521500
Email: pettitts@btclick.com

PSL Energy Services Ltd. – NEW
PSL Energy Services is a UK based oil and gas company which provides services to companies operating in Burma. The gas sector is the regime’s chief source of income generating over $2.7 billion in 2006.

Managing Director
PSL Energy Services Ltd.
Badentoy Avenue
Portlethan
Aberdeen AB12 4YB
UK

PTTEP
PTTEP – The PTT Exploration and Production Company, is a Thai company that is largely state owned. PTTEP owns a 25.5 % stake in the Yadana gas field in Burma, and a 19.3% stake in the Yetagun field. PTTEP is also planning to expand its operations in Burma.

Mr. Maroot Mrigadat
President
PTT Exploration and Production Public Company Limited
PTTEP Office Bldg.
555 Vibhavadi-Rangsit Rd.
Chatuchak,
Bangkok 10900
Thailand

Fax: 00 66 2537 4444

Purple Dragon
Purple Dragon is a sister company of Thailand based Utopia Tours. It specialises in holidays for gays and lesbians. Aung San Suu Kyi has asked tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy. Forced and child labour was used to develop many tourist facilities.

Managing Director
Purple Dragon
Door East Ltd.
119/5-10 Suriwong Road
Bangkok 10500
THAILAND

Qantas – NEW
Qantas holds a controlling majority 49% stake in Jetstar Asia. Despite stating in 2004 that Qantas and Jetstar Asia would “do the right thing” on Burma and expressing support for the democracy movement’s call for tourists not to holiday in Burma. Jetstar Asia now promotes Burma as a tourist destination. It flies to the country in partnership with regime owned Myanmar Airways International. Burma’s democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and the country’s democracy movement asks tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy. Forced and child labour was used to develop many tourist facilities. Jetstar Asia is based in Singapore and is a partnership between Qantas, who hold the controlling 49% share, Tony Chew, FF Wong and Temasek Holdings.

Managing Director
Qantas Centre
Level 9
Building A
203 Coward Street
MASCOT
NSW
AUSTRALIA 2020
Tel: +61 2 9691 3636
Fax: +61 2 9691 3339

Ratchaburi Co – NEW
Ratchaburi Co. is a leading Thai power company which is involved in the Salween Dam project, in Eastern Burma. The US$ 6 billion project has led to over 300,000 people being forcibly relocated and the militarisation of the surrounding area which has resulted in an increase in reports of torture, extrajudicial killing and other human rights abuses. Over four fifths of the electricity from the project will be exported to Thailand.

Managing Director
Ratchaburi Co
SCB Park Plaza East,
Tower 3,
Fl. 20th,
19 Ratchadapisek Rd.
Chatuchak
Bangkok, 10900
Thailand

Road to Mandalay
Road to Mandalay is a travel and export company based in Burma and the UK. In Burma it operates under the name Golden Pagoda Travel. Aung San Suu Kyi has asked tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy. Forced and child labour was used to develop many tourist facilities.

Gerry Haines
Road to Mandalay
c/o 16 Wynnstay Road
Broughton
Flintshire CH4 0RE

SapuraCrest Petroleum Bhd
SapuraCrest is a leading oil and gas services provider in the Southeast Asia region, with further projects in Australia, the Middle East, and India. The company has been involved in offshore oil and gas drilling in Burma.

SapuraCrest Petroleum Bhd
7 Jalan Tasik
The Mines Resort City
43300 Seri Kembangan
Selangor
Malaysia

Tel: +603 8659 8800
Fax: +603 8659 8811

SBM Offshore
SBM Offshore is a Dutch company formerly known as IHC Caland. It is a management holding company of a group of international companies working as suppliers to the offshore oil and gas industry on a global basis. It owns and operates a Floating Storage and Offloading System in Burma under a long term lease contract with Petronas.

SBM Offshore N.V.
PO Box 31
3100 AA Schiedam
The Netherlands

Fax: +31 (0) 10 232 0999

Scansia Sdn Bhd
Scansia Sdn Bhd is a Malaysian company. Scansia Myanmar manufactures garden furniture in a plant in Rangoon. All its timber is purchased from the regime owned company Myanmar Timber Enterprise (MTE). Scansia also give 20 percent of the profits from their Burmese operations to the regime.

Mr Arve Verleite
Managing Director
Scansia Sdn Bhd
98 Lorong Semartak 4
Taman semarak
0900 Kulim, Kedah Darul Aman
Malaysia

Schenker
Schenker is a German logistics company with an office in Rangoon, through which it facilitates the export of Burmese goods. Schenker also has offices in several UK ports.

The President
Schenker AG
Corporate Communications
Alfredstrasse 81
45130 Essen
Germany

Fax: 00 49 201 8781 8495
Email: info@schenker.com

Schlumberger
Schlumberger is a technology company, which operates all over the world. Schlumberger Oilfield Services operates offshore gas rigs in Burma. It also operates oil rigs in UK waters in the North Sea.

Managing Director
Schlumberger Oilfield Services
Unit 1, Enterprise Drive,
Westhill Industrial Estate
Westhill
Aberdeenshire AB32 6TQ

Fax: 01224 385601
Email: ukinfo@slb.com

Andrew Gould
Chairman
Schlumberger
153 E. 53rd St., 57th floor
New York,
NY 10022-4624
USA

Fax: 00 1 212 350 94 57

SGS Group
SGS Group, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, is a global leader in the inspection, verification, testing and certification industry. It has over 34,000 employees and a presence in well over 120 countries. This includes Burma where it has a subsidiary – SGS (Myanmar) Ltd which plays a key role in the facilitation of Burma’s international trading.

SGS Societe Generale de Surveillance S.A.
1 place des Alpes
P.O. Box 2152
1211 Geneva 1
Switzerland

Fax: + (41 22) 739.98.86
Email: enquiries@sgs.com

Shangri-La Hotels
Shangri-La Hotels is a Singaporean hotel company. It operates the Traders hotel in Rangoon. Aung San Suu Kyi has asked tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy. Forced and child labour was used to develop many tourist facilities. In the UK, Shangri-La plans to operate an opulent 5 star hotel in the proposed ‘shard of glass’ tower block at London Bridge.

Managing Director
Shangri-La International Hotel Management Ltd
21/F CITIC Tower
1 Tim Mei Avenue, Central
Hong Kong SAR

Fax: 00 852 2599 3131

Siam Divers – NEW
Siam Divers is a Thailand based tourism company which organises diving safaris and adventures in Thailand and Burma. Aung San Suu Kyi has asked tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy. Forced and child labour was used to develop many tourist facilities.

Managing Director
Siam Divers
68/14 Soi Katekwan,
Mu 2,
Kata Beach
Phuket 83100
Thailand

Sichuan Machinery Equipment Import Export Co.- NEW
Sochuan Machinery is a Chinese company that is involved with a hydroelectricity project in Burma that has been associated with human rights abuses. Dam projects in Burma have been associated with forced relocations, extrajudicial killings, forced labour, death by labour and torture.

The Chief Executive
Sichuan Machinery Equipment Import Export Co.
2 Tongfuxiang
Xiyulongst.

Chengdu
sichuan
P.R. China

Fax: 86-28-6743535 6743571
Tel: 86-28-6743535 6755264
E-mail:scmcmtr@scsti.ac.cn

Siemens
Siemens are a German engineering and technology company operating all over the world. Siemens are supplying gas turbines to Total for a new platform in the Yadana gas field.

Chairman
Siemens
Wittelsbacher Platz 2
D-80333 Munchen
Germany

Email: welcome.pgi@siemens.com

Silverbird Travel
Silverbird Travel is a London based travel company that operates tours to Burma. Aung San Suu Kyi has asked tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy. Forced and child labour was used to develop many tourist facilities.

Managing Director
SilverBird Travel
4 Northfields Prospect
Putney Bridge Road
London SW18 1PE

Fax: 020 8875 1874
Email: mail@silverbird.co.uk

Silver Wave Energy – NEW
Silver Wave Energy is Singapore registered but also has links to Russia and India. It has interested in Onshore Block B-2 and Offshore block A-7 in Burma. It reportedly has close links with the Burmese regime. The gas sector is the regime’s chief source of income generating over $2.7 billion in 2006.

Managing Director
Silver Wave Energy
714 Traders Hotel
Yangon
Myanmar

Sinohydro Corporation – NEW
In June 2006, Sinohydro (formerly known as China National Water Resources and Hydropower Engineering Corporation) signed a deal with EGAT (see above) and the Burmese military junta to construct a US $1 billion dam at Hat Gyi, in Karen state. Forced relocations have been recorded in Karen state. Sinohydro – China’s largest dam constructor – has been previously criticized by the Chinese government over “safety or environmental pollution accidents”.

No. 22 West Road Che Gongzhuang
Hai Dian District
Beijing 100044
People’s Republic of China
Email: infocenter@sinohydro.com
Web: www.sinohydro.com/english

Sompo Japan
Sompo Japan is a Japanese insurance company that provides insurance and reinsurance services to companies operating in Burma. Sompo Japan has offices across the world, including in the UK.

Hirosho Hirano
President
Sompo Japan
26-1, Nishi-Shinjuku 1-chome
Shinjuku-ku
Tokyo 160-8338
Japan

Sri Asia Tourism
Sri Asia Tourism service is a Burmese travel company offering holidays to Burma through offices in the UK and Australia.

Managing Director
Sri Asia Tourism
1A Gregory Place
Kensington, London W8 4NG

Fax: 020 7938 2194
Email: ameriuk@dircon.co.uk

Steppes Travel/Steppes East
Steppes East is a UK travel company offering holidays to Burma. They continue to operate tours to the country despite Nicholas A G Laing of Steppes East admitting to the Burma Campaign UK that: “Myanmar is a highly controversial subject which I have yet to fathom.” Aung San Suu Kyi has asked tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy. Forced and child labour was used to develop many tourist facilities.

Nick Laing
Managing Director
Steppes East
51 Castle Street
Gloucestershire GL7 1QD

Fax: 01285 885888
Email: nick@steppeseast.co.uk

Sumitomo Corporation
Sumitomo Corporation is a Japanese conglomerate with extensive financial interests in the UK. Sumitomo is in a joint venture with Myanmar General and Maintenance Industries (MGMI) producing steel. MGMI is owned and controlled by the military regime.

Motoyuki Oka
President and Chief Executive
Sumitomo Corporation
1-8-11 Harumi, Chuo-ku
Tokyo 104-8610
Japan

Mr Takaaki Shibata
Managing Director
Sumitomo Corporation Europe Plc
Vinters’ Place,
68 Upper Thames Street
London EC4V 3BJ

Fax: 020 7246 3921
Email: info@sumitomocorp.co.uk

Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group
SMFG was established in 2002 as a holding company for the Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC). SMBC came into existence the preceding year through the merger of the Sakura Bank and the Sumitomo Bank. SMBC operates a representative office in Yangon and, through the services it provides, serves to facilitate trade and financial transactions in Burma.

Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group
Investor Relations Department
1-1 Yurakucho 1-chome
Chiyoda-ku
Tokyo 100-0006
Japan

Tel: + 81-3-5512-3411

Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation Europe Limited
Temple Court
11 Queen Victoria Street
London
EC4N 4TA

Fax: 020 7236 0049

SUN Group Enterprises Pvt Ltd – NEW
The Sun Group is an Indian investment group that has interests in the offshore M-8 block in Burma. The gas sector is the regime’s chief source of income generating over $2.7 billion in 2006.

Managing Director
SUN Group Enterprises Pvt Ltd
8th Floor
Meridien Commercial Tower
Raisina Road
New Delhi 110001
India

Sun Wood Industries
Sun Wood Industries is a Thailand timber exporter which sources teak from Burma. Timber exports are an important source of income for the regime.

Managing Director
Sun Wood Industries
75/4 Moo 2 Udomsorayuth Rd
Klong Jig
Nabg-Pa-In
Ayuthaya 13160
Thailand

Email: info@sunwoodgroup.com

Sutech Engineering Co Ltd
Bangkok-based Sutech Engineering Company is primarily involved in the construction and running of processing mills. In Burma it is engaged in the production and processing of sugar in conjunction with the state run Myanmar Sugarcane Enterprise and Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC). In late 2006 it agreed a further joint venture with the MEC for the construction of what will be Burma’s largest sugar mill.

Sutech Engineering Co. Ltd
17th Floor Sinn Sathorm Tower
77/64 Krungthonburi Klongsarn
Bangkok 10600
Thailand

Fax: +66 (0) 2440-0208
Email: info@suenco.co.th

Suzuki
Suzuki’s main business is the manufacture of cars and motorbikes. In 1998 Suzuki invested $6.9 million to set up a joint venture with Myanmar Automobile & Diesel Engine Industries (MADI). MADI is controlled by the military regime. Suzuki owns 60% of the business, MADI 30% with the remaining 10% split between two Burmese companies with close government links.

Managing Director
Suzuki GB PLC
46-62 Gatwick Rd
Crawley
West Sussex RH10 2XF

Osamu Suzuki
Chairman
Suzuki Head Office
300 Takatsuka
Hamamatsu
Japan

Swift
Swift is a financial services co-operative company owned and controlled by many of the world’s largest banks, including Citibank, HSBC and ABN Amro. Swift hosts an electronic network that banks use to make transfers to each other. Following the imposition of financial sanctions by the United States government in August 2003 the regime faced a crisis, unable to use dollars in financial transactions. Swift came to their aid, making four Burmese banks part of its network. The regime is now able to avoid US financial sanctions by making financial transfers in Euros using Swift’s network.

Jaap Kamp
Chairman, Swift
C/O ABN AMRO Bank N.V.
Head Office
Gustav Mahlerlaan 10
1082 PP Amsterdam
The Netherlands

Leonard H Schrank
Chief Executive Officer
Swift
Avenue Adèle 1
B-1310 La Hulpe
Belgium

Fax: 00 32 2 655 32 26
Email: kara.condon@swift.com

Managing Director
Swift
7th floor, The Corn Exchange
55 Mark Lane
London EC3R 7NE

Fax: 020 7762 2222

Taiga Consultant Ltd
Taiga Consultant Ltd is a Canadian geological consulting firm. Taiga has an office in Burma and works closely with the regime exploring for base and precious metals.

Managing Director
Taiga Consultants Ltd
No 4, 1944 – 9th Avenue SE
Calgary,
Alberta T2G 0V2
Canada

Email: taigaltd@taiga-ltd.com

Taisei
The Taisei Corporation is a Tokyo headquartered transnational construction and civil engineering corporation. With employees numbering nearly 10,000 and a history of involvement in over 50 countries worldwide, the corporation maintains a branch in Yangon. Their involvement there has included a leading role in the upgrade of Yangon International Airport alongside the Myanmar Construction Ministry, as well as office renovations for leading banks.

Taisei Corporation
1-25-1, Nishi-Shinjuku
Shinjuku-ku
Tokyo, 163-0606
Japan

Fax: +81 3 3345 0481

Tata – NEW
Tata is an Indian Conglomerate with investments all over the world. In 2008 it bought Jaguar and Land Rover, it also owns Tetley Tea and Corus. Tata has a wide range of investments in Burma many of which fund the regime. Their interests in Burma include the timber, tourism, energy, vehicle and information technology sectors. Tata companies have sold vehicles directly to the regime.

Managing Director
TATA group
Bombay House
24 Hoimodi Street
Fort, Bombay 1
40001
India

David Good,
Chief representative for North America
Tata Sons (US)
1700, North Moore
St Suite 1005
Arlington, VA 22209
USA

Tennyson Travel
Tennyson Travel is a UK travel company that trades under the name Visit Vietnam. As well as tours to Vietnam it also operates tours to Burma, which it advertises in national newspapers. Aung San Suu Kyi has asked tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy. Forced and child labour was used to develop many tourist facilities. Tennyson Travel also trades as Visit Asia.

Hung Nguyen
Managing Director
Tennyson Travel
30-32 Fulham High Street
London SW6 3LQ

Fax: 020 7736 5672
Email: tennyson@visitvietnam.co.uk

Total Oil
Total is in a joint venture with the military regime developing an offshore gas field in the Andaman sea. The gas is exported to Thailand through a pipeline that travels 65 kilometres through Burma. Total is one of the biggest foreign investors in Burma.

Christophe de Margerie
Chief Executive
Total
2 Place de la Coupole
La Defense 6
92400 Courbevoie
France

Managing Director
Total Holdings UK Limited
33 Cavendish Square
London W1G OPW

Fax: 020 7416 4497

Toyota – NEW
Toyota is the world’s biggest car manufacturer. One of Toyota’s subsidiaries, Toyota Tsusho, is in Business with Suzuki and Myanmar Automobile & Diesel Engine Industries (MADI). MADI is controlled by the military regime. Vehicles from this joint venture are used by the Burmese military.

Graham Smith
Senior Vice President
Toyota
Toyota Motor Europe NV/SA
Avenue Du Bourget 60
Borgetlaan 60
B-1140 Brussels
Belgium

Miguel Fonseca,
Toyota (GB)
Great Burgh
Burgh Heath
Epsom
Surrey
KT18 5UX

Mr Kiyoshi Tojo
General Manager
Europe Division
Toyota Motor Corporation
Toyota City
1 Toyota-Cho
Toyota
Aichi
471-8571
Japan.

Trailblazer Guides
Trailblazer Guides publishes a guide to South East Asia that includes a section on Burma. This section facilitates tourism to the country. Aung San Suu Kyi has asked tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy. Forced and child labour was used to develop many tourist facilities.

Managing Director
Trailblazer Publications
The Old Manse, Tower Rd
Hindhead
Surrey GU26 6SU

Fax: 01428 607571
Email: info@trailblazer-guides.com

Trans Indus Ltd
Trans Indus is a British holiday company that operates tours to Burma. Aung San Suu Kyi has asked tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy. Forced and child labour was used to develop many tourist facilities.

Managing Director
Trans Indus Ltd
Northumberland House,
11 The Pavement, Popes Lane,
Ealing,
London W5 4NG

Travel World Media
Travel World Media owns Elephantguide.com. Elephantguide.com is an online travel guide which includes a section facilitating tourism to Burma.

Managing Director
Travel World Media
Court Lodge
Avening,
Tetbury
Gloucestershire, GL8 8NY

Email: feedback@elephantguide.com

Twinza Oil – NEW
Twinza Oil, parent company of Danford Equities, is an Australian company that works in the oil and gas sector in Burma. Its CEO, Bill Clough, boasts of the company’s “close relationship” with the regime. Gas exports are the regime’s largest source of income.

Managing Director
Twinza Oil
Head Office & Principal Registered Office
Level 6
251 St Georges Terrace
Perth
Western Australia 6000

The Ultimate Travel Company/Worldwide Journeys & Expeditions
Worldwide Journeys is part of The Ultimate Travel Company. It offers tours to Burma. No mention is made of the military dictatorship. . Aung San Suu Kyi has asked tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy. Forced and child labour was used to develop many tourist facilities.

Nick Van Gruisen
Managing Director
The Ultimate Travel Company
27 Vanston Place
London
SW6 1AZ

Fax: 020 7828 4856
Email: enquiry@theultimatetravelcompany.co.uk

Undiscovered Destinations Ltd – NEW
Undiscovered Destinations is a UK based specialist tour operator which runs four different tour trips to Burma, from 4 days beach holidays to 18 day cultural tours. Aung San Suu Kyi and the Burmese democracy movement have asked tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy.

Managing Director
Undiscovered Destinations Ltd
Saville Exchange
Howard Street
North Shields
Tyne and Wear
NE30 1SE

United Overseas Bank Group
The United Overseas Bank was founded in 1935 and is today a leading bank in Singapore and a dominant player in Asia-Pacific. As of 31 December 2005, the UOB Group had total assets of S$145.1 billion and shareholders’ equity of S$14.9 billion. UOB has a global network of branches, offices and subsidiaries, one such office being in Burma. UOB also has diversified interests and through its subsidiary United Overseas Land the group operates the Park Royal Yangon hotel.

United Overseas Bank Ltd.
80 Raffles Place
UOB Plaza
Singapore 048624

Utopia Tours
Utopia Tours is a travel company based in Thailand which specialises in holidays for gays and lesbians. It advertises tours to Burma in Gay and Lesbian media in the UK. Aung San Suu Kyi has asked tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy. Forced and child labour was used to develop many tourist facilities.

Managing Director
Utopia Tours
Door East Ltd.
119/5-10 Suriwong Road
Bangkok 10500,
THAILAND

Email: info@utopia-tours.com
V
Voyages to Asia
Voyages to Asia operates tours to Burma and other countries in Asia. Aung San Suu Kyi has asked tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy. Forced and child labour was used to develop many tourist facilities.

Castle House
Castle Street
Hereford
HR1 2NW
Telephone: 0845 838 5474
Y

Yunnan Joint Power Development Company NEW
Yunnan Joint Power is a Chinese company that is involved with a hydroelectricity project in Burma that has been associated with human rights abuses. Dam projects in Burma have been associated with forced relocations, extrajudicial killings, forced labour, death by labour and torture.

No address available.

Zarubezhneft
JSC Zarubezhneft is a Russian oil and gas company. In September 2006 it signed a production sharing contract for oil and gas exploration with the regime.

Nikolay Tokarev
Director Geneneral
Zarubezhneft
Building 1, 9/1/1 Armiansky pereulok
Moscow 101990
Russian Federation

Email: nestro@nestro.ru

Journal of Reformed Theology is out

The latest issue of Journal of Reformed Theology (Volume 2, Number 2, 2008) is out and includes the following articles:

Cornelius van der Kooi, The Appeal to the Inner Testimony of the Spirit, especially in H. Bavinck

Abstract: “The Reformation took-deliberately and freely-its position in the religious subject.” In this article, the argument is made that Bavinck has not formulated a strong position with this statement; but rather, a dubious starting point for Reformed theology. The question is whether this thesis, with its focus on the subject, can still be maintained in this manner within the current ecumenical situation, or whether it is imperative that it be adjusted.

Jason A. Goroncy, ‘That God May Have Mercy Upon All’: A Review-Essay of Matthias Gockel’s Barth and Schleiermacher on the Doctrine of Election

Abstract: The doctrine of election lies at the heart of Reformed theology. This essay offers a review of Matthias Gockel’s recent comparison between two of Reformed theology’s greatest voices: that of Friedrich Schleiermacher and Karl Barth. Gockel outlines Schleiermacher’s contribution to the doctrine before turning to consider its modifications in Barth’s work. The advance of these two thinkers on this issue has significant implications for the ongoing questions of universal election and universal salvation. Consequently, the possibility of an apokatastasis panton arises naturally from their theology. This possibility is briefly explored.

Oliver D. Crisp, The Election of Jesus Christ

Abstract: In modern theology the election of Christ is often associated with the work of Karl Barth. In this paper, I offer an alternative account of Christ’s election in dialogue with the Post-Reformation Reformed tradition. It turns out that, contrary to popular belief, there is no single ‘Reformed’ doctrine of election; a range of views has been tolerated in the tradition. I set out one particular construal of the election of Christ that stays within the confessional parameters of Reformed theology, while arguing, contrary to some Reformed divines, that Christ is the cause and foundation of election.

Ad Prosman, A Dutch Response to Nihilism: an Evaluation of K.H. Miskotte’s Interaction with Nietzsche

Abstract: This article discusses the way in which the Dutch theologian K.H. Miskotte interpreted the nihilism of Friedrich Nietzsche. It will be pointed out that religion is the central notion of Miskotte’s approach of Nietzsche. Discussing this theme, it will be necessary to pay attention to the concept of Nietzsche’s nihilism. From there we receive a clearer insight in the interaction between Miskotte and Nietzsche. It is expected that examining nihilism and the interaction with nihilism will be helpful to contextualize theology. The method of Miskotte is attractive because he does not evaluate nihilism in a philosophical manner, but he counters it by the Thora. Belief stands against belief. Nevertheless we can ask whether Miskotte’s concept of religion is adequate enough to tackle the problems we have to deal with in our nihilistic culture. Is Miskotte right when he connects nihilism and religion, and what kind of religion is he connecting with nihilism?

Mechteld Jansen, Indonesian and Moluccan Immigrant Churches in the Netherlands: Missionary History and Challenge

Abstract: As a result of immigration of many Christians from all parts of the world to the Netherlands, about 1,000 ‘immigrant churches’ have been established in the country during the last decades. This paper focuses on two churches in the Netherlands that mainly consist of members of Asian descent: the Gereja Kristen Indonesia Nederlands (GKIN) and the Geredja Indjili Maluku (GIM). Both are Protestant churches that have a history within the Netherlands for many years. Since these churches are not very well-known in the worldwide family of Reformed churches, I will describe their historical and cultural backgrounds quite extensively. This also includes the Dutch missionary involvement with the former Dutch colony of Indonesia. Subsequently, I will turn to their actual situation, and my main question will be how they view and carry out their missionary vocation in Dutch society. In the final section, it will be maintained that these churches do not simply mirror the missionary approach of the Dutch in Indonesia, but they consider themselves partners with other churches in a revised mission in which their own features can be a blessing for the whole Dutch society.