Discontent Boils Over in East Timor
* Social discontent boils over in East Timor protests By John Ward and Peter Symonds 6 December 2002 At least two people have been killed and more than 20 injured in clashes with police and soldiers during two days of protests and rioting by students and unemployed youth in the East Timorese capital of Dili. The situation remains tense after the government imposed an overnight curfew on Wednesday and called for UN troops to help police guard key buildings and patrol the city's streets. Most shops and businesses, as well as the university and high schools, were closed yesterday. A protest by students erupted on Tuesday after police entered a high school to arrest a student for alleged involvement in gang violence. On Wednesday morning, at least 500 students and others gathered outside police headquarters in Dili to protest the arrest. President Xanana Gusmao came to the police station to appeal for calm but was ignored and had to be escorted inside as stones began to fly. Police responded to the stone-throwing by firing warning shots then shooting into the crowd, killing at least one student, and then stirred even more resentment when they tried to grab the body. Enraged students were joined by others in a rampage directed at the government, the UN and foreign-owned businesses. Protestors looted and burned shops, vehicles and other buildings, including the residence of Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri, the parliament building and the Dili mosque. East Timorese officials have announced that two people were killed-one of them a 14-year-old student, Honorio Ximenes-but the death toll could be higher. Eyewitnesses claim that the police shot and killed up to five people. Saturnino Saldaha, a doctor at the Dili hospital, said the facility had been swamped by seriously injured young people and created an urgent need for blood. About 80 people have been arrested on looting and other charges and are being detained at a UN facility at Tasieolo outside Dili Interior Affairs Minister Rogerio Lobato baldly asserted that the protests were an orchestrated manoeuvre to topple the government. He and other officials alleged that the CDP-RDTL (Popular Defence Committee-Democratic Republic of East Timor) was behind the rioting. The group, which opposes the UN presence and calls for full independence for East Timor, has organised a number of anti-government protests. The government is clearly looking for a scapegoat to deflect attention from the failure of their own policies. There is a huge social divide between a tiny elite of government officials, businessmen, foreign officials, aid workers and troops and the vast majority of the population, most of whom are unemployed and living below the poverty line. Young people, in particular, are angry that their prospects for an education and a job are extremely small. Among the businesses ransacked on Wednesday was the Australian-owned Hello Mister supermarket, which specialises in supplying imported goods to UN and other foreign workers. While UN troops and officials are paid hefty living allowances of $US100 a day, most East Timorese are struggling to survive from day to day. The few who have jobs earn an average of about $6 a week. Estimates of the jobless rate vary between 70 and 80 percent. Moreover, it has worsened since East Timor formally declared independence on May 20, as the number of UN personnel has been reduced. The difficulties facing villagers in rural areas have been compounded by a severe drought. Even with the official poverty rate set at just US 50 cents a day, a UN survey last year found that 60 percent of people in rural areas were living in poverty. Education and health services are rudimentary. Many East Timorese have begun to feel betrayed as the promises that accompanied the Australian-led UN military intervention into East Timor have failed to materialise. Clearly nervous about the situation, Australian Prime Minister John Howard phoned his counterpart in Dili to pledge financial assistance-to bolster the police and judiciary, not to alleviate the underlying social crisis. The view that the Alkatiri administration governs for a small elite has been reinforced by its decision to impose Portuguese, the language of the former colonial power, as the country's official language. Most of the population-around 90 percent-speak only Bahasa Indonesia or Tetum and other local languages and are thus excluded from government jobs and alienated from parliament, the courts and other official institutions. ...Unable to address the social and economic problems facing the majority of the population, the government is signalling its intention of cracking down on any political opposition. In doing so, it rests almost exclusively on 4,700 foreign troops and police still in East Timor under the UN flag. Significantly, Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta, speaking from Madrid, called on the UN
Re: Re: East Timor: In Dire Straits
Michael Perelman : Wierd. It speaks of a UN gravy train, but I thought that the UN joined the US in railroading E. Timor to sign away much of the oil rights. You could be right about the US role, but please see the article Timor: Oil and Troubled Waters posted by me. Australian subscribers to the List would know more about this issue than me. Ulhas
Keep East Timor out of IMF/WB debt
How to keep even one small country free of the chains of IMF debt?? Forwarded from Stop IMF email list, these are the campaigning efforts of the East Timor Action Network below. But is East Timor right to refuse loans? Cruel though the workings of a currency board might be, would it not allow the local population to retain their locally produced surplus as their economic activity starts to recover? At least they would not have to subsidize finance capitalists for the rest of their lives, however cruel the dispararities of the level means of production in different countries in the world. So is the East Timor Action Network right to encourage charity to East Timor, and the brave citizens of East Timor to be dependent on international charity? Chris Burford London The World's Newest Country Must Remain Debt-Free! East Timor's May 20 Independence Threatened by Donors' Economic Chains Act NOW to Support Real, People-Centered Development On May 20, East Timor will celebrate its first Independence Day. But the jubilation may be short-lived. A lack of funds could stand in the way of East Timor's commitment to use future revenues to secure healthcare and education for its people rather than to service a debt to wealthy states and financial institutions. The East Timorese government has joined with civil society in making poverty alleviation its highest priority. Top officials have publicly affirmed their determination to avoid the debt trap faced by so many countries in the Global South, and a no loans policy has been put into place. The challenge is that the nascent government faces an estimated US $154-$184 million shortfall in its already lean budget for the first three years of independence. Compared to the US military budget, this sum is peanuts; the U.S. pays more for one F-22 fighter plane. But for East Timor, it could represent the difference between life and debt. Activists have a unique chance to take preemptive action - to prevent the stranglehold of structural adjustment, loans, and the vicious cycle of poverty from putting its deadly grip on the new country. On May 14 and 15, donor countries and international financial institutions (IFIs) will hold a pledging conference to cover the financing gap in Dili, East Timor's capital. With concerted grassroots pressure from within the U.S. and other countries, we can make sure that grants with no strings attached cover the gap in its entirety. Otherwise, East Timor may have no choice but to resort to loans with terms dictated by the IMF, World Bank, and Asian Development Bank. We must not let this happen. WHAT YOU CAN DO - Call, fax, and email your Senators, Representative, and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. Tell your Senators and Representative - The U.S. government should build on its recent support for East Timor by helping to meet its short-term budget gap. - The U.S. should not allow East Timor to go into debt immediately after independence. With their country devastated by Indonesian occupation, the East Timorese are among the poorest on the planet. They should not be forced to choose between feeding the hungry and servicing a debt. - East Timor represents the first chance for both the administration and Congress to put statements about global eradication of poverty into action by taking preemptive measures. The U.S. government should make the most generous donation possible at the May pledging conference in East Timor, funding at least 25% of the expected financing gap in East Timor's recurrent and development budget. Grants must not be tied to the crippling conditions of structural adjustment. - The Senator/Representative should use every opportunity to ensure this by (1) voicing this most important concern to Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage by phone or letter; and (2) working with other Members of Congress to attain the necessary funds through appropriations and/or State Department monies. Phone calls and faxes are generally more effective than emails. The congressional switchboard number is 202-224-3121, or check http://www.congress.org on the Internet for fax or e-mail information. Tell Deputy Secretary of State Armitage: - The U.S. government should build on its recent support for East Timor by helping to meet its short-term budget gap. The U.S. should not allow East Timor to go into debt immediately after independence. With their country devastated by Indonesian occupation, the East Timorese are among the poorest on the planet. They should not be forced to choose between feeding the hungry and servicing a debt. - The administration has recently emphasized the importance of poverty eradication and the futility of the world's poorest countries drowning in debt. East Timor represents the first chance for the administration to put their words into action and take preemptive measures. - The U.S. government must pledge to finance at least 25% of the needed funds to cover East Timor's
East Timor
The brutality in Palestine is unconscionable. When is the last time we heard about East Timor? Or has it fallen off the map? Even Colombia no longer merits a mention. Here's a couple of recent items on East Timor. I have a recent statement by Foreign Minister Dr Jose Ramos-Horta to the UN Security Council if anyone is interested. Bill - Original Message - From: Maggie Helwig [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2002 3:12 PM Subject: [Tapol-etimor-l] SMH/Hamish McDonald: Timor Gas Billions All At Sea Sydney Morning Herald March 27, 2002 Timor gas billions all at sea By Hamish McDonald, International Editor Australia yesterday announced it would no longer submit to international legal rulings on maritime boundaries - after leading lawyers advised East Timor that Canberra was poised to rob it of tens of billions of dollars in oil and gas revenue. The Attorney-General, Daryl Williams, and the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, said Australia would henceforth exclude maritime boundaries from compulsory dispute settlements in the International Court of Justice - the World Court sitting at The Hague - and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. The statement came after a weekend seminar in Dili heard expert legal advice that East Timor should own most of the biggest natural gas fields so far discovered in the sea, including the huge Greater Sunrise resource being developed by Woodside, Shell, Phillips and Osaka Gas. The former head of the United States oil company Unocal, John Imle, also disputed the widely accepted view that the deep Timor Trench, north of these fields, blocked a pipeline to East Timor. This view has been the basis of plans to land the gas near Darwin, giving billions of dollars in industrial spin-offs to Australia. East Timor may be offered the funds to mount a case at the World Court by a US oil company, PetroTimor, which has a separate dispute with Canberra over offshore oil concessions. The prospect has rung alarm bells in the Federal and Northern Territory governments, although the offices of Mr Williams and Mr Downer denied yesterday's decision was linked to the Timor Sea issue, and had been considered for quite some time. The ministers said Australia's strong view is that any maritime boundary dispute is best settled by negotiation rather than litigation. It is not clear, however, that Canberra has evaded a World Court case. A lawyer advising PetroTimor, Ron Nathans of the Sydney law firm Deacons, said the announcement did not mean Australia was immediately out of the court's ambit. Australia is not out of it today, Mr Nathans said. Australia cannot just walk away. The advice has also caused consternation in East Timor, which has been getting ready to sign a petroleum development treaty with Australia, based on current boundaries and giving a revenue split in the joint zone of 90:10 in Dili's favour, almost as soon as it attains independence. East Timor's chief negotiator, Mari Alkatiri, who is likely to be the new nation's first prime minister, has flown hurriedly to London with a UN legal officer to seek urgent advice. Mr Nathan said although the draft treaty with Australia, agreed by negotiators last July, set aside any boundary disputes, it could be seen as acquiescence in claims by parties affected by a future attempt to change the boundaries. The Dili seminar heard advice from two international law experts, Professor Vaughan Lowe of Oxford University and the Sydney barrister Christopher Ward, that current maritime law would swing the lateral boundaries of East Timor's offshore zone to the east and west, giving it at least 80 per cent of the Greater Sunrise fields and potentially 100 per cent - as opposed to the 20 per cent under present boundaries. A leading oil and gas engineer, Geoffrey McKee, said that over the economic life of Greater Sunrise - 2009 to 2050 - such changed boundaries would give East Timor up to $US36 billion ($68 billion) more in government revenue than the $US8 billion it can now expect. Australia's share would shrink from $US28 billion to nothing. East Timor could expect to add almost $US4 billion more from the small Laminaria/Corallina oil fields on the western side of the joint zone, and from the Bayu-Undan field inside the zone. ___ Tapol-etimor-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.greennet.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/tapol-etimor-l Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~ - Access Your PC from Anywhere It's Easy. It's Fun. - Free Download. http://us.click.yahoo.com/v7DM_D/7XkDAA/JLMGAA/6xSolB/TM -~- Indonesia Human Rights Committee is a solidarity organization which aims to build links between the people of New Zealand and Indonesia by developing network with the groups
Generals in court for actions in East Timor
www.sfgate.com Return to regular view Generals in court for actions in East Timor Rights activists worry it's 'show trial' Ian Timberlake, Chronicle Foreign Service Thursday, March 14, 2002 ©2002 San Francisco Chronicle URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/03/14/MN220924.DTL Jakarta -- A long-delayed human-rights trial to probe the 1999 violence in East Timor begins today amid concerns that high-ranking Indonesian military officers will escape justice. The military is still powerful, so it's difficult for the government to take them to court, said Hendardi, chairman of the Indonesian Legal Aid and Human Rights Association. Like many Indonesians, he has only one name. Three generals are among the 18 suspects accused of crimes against humanity following the vote by East Timor's residents in favor of independence from Indonesian rule. The other defendants include 10 police and military commanders, two government officials and three pro-Indonesia militia gang leaders. More than two years ago, Indonesian forces ended a 24-year occupation of East Timor with an orgy of arson, looting and murder that killed an estimated 1,000 East Timorese and forced more than 200,000 into Indonesian-controlled West Timor. Tens of thousands of refugees are still not allowed to return home. East Timor is under U.N. administration until full independence is declared May 20 after its people vote for a president. The trials, which are likely to continue for months, will focus attention on President Megawati Sukarnoputri's close relationship with the military, which backed her rise to power last July. INDONESIA-U.S. MILITARY TIES The legal proceedings will also have long-term implications for ties between the world's most populous Muslim nation and the U.S. military, which were essentially suspended because of the East Timor violence. Under the Leahy Amendment, U.S. military sales and training assistance to Indonesia are suspended until certain conditions are met, including effective measures to bring to justice members of the armed forces and militia groups suspected of rights abuses. Many human-rights observers doubt that the panel of at least three judges will find any of the generals guilty. Indonesian courts are notoriously corrupt and susceptible to political pressure. They are holding (the trial) to meet demands made by the international community. It's more like a show trial, said Hilmar Farid, 34, a rights activist who has worked extensively in East Timor. The first cases scheduled to be heard involve East Timor's former police chief, Col. Timbul Silaen, and governor, Abilio Soares. The highest-ranking suspects are Maj. Gen. Adam Damiri, former head of the regional military command, and Col. Tono Suratman, who was the top soldier in East Timor. Suratman and Silaen were promoted to brigadier general after the 1999 bloodletting. A later report by the Indonesian National Commission on Human Rights accused the military and police of setting up, arming and coordinating the militias that terrorized East Timorese to dissuade them from supporting independence. The court will hear about an attack that killed more than 50 at a church in Liquica, an assault on the home of a pro-independence leader that left at least 12 dead, and the massacre of some 200 refugees and three priests who sought shelter at a church in Suai. SEPARATE U.N. COURT A U.N. court in East Timor is simultaneously hearing human-rights cases and has sentenced 10 militia leaders to jail terms of up to 33 years. U.N. prosecutors have also indicted two Indonesian soldiers and nine militiamen for what was allegedly an attempt to exterminate educated young men. The suspects are believed to be in Indonesia, and Jakarta has made no effort to find them. Albert Hasibuan, who headed the probe by the Indonesian rights commission, says a little bit of compromise is going on between Megawati, the military and the attorney general's office. When Hasibuan's panel ruled in early 2000 that military officers should be held responsible, then-President Abdurrahman Wahid dismissed the armed forces commander, Gen. Wiranto. Wiranto is noticeably absent from the list of the accused, which Hendardi says is proof of a deal. The whole process is being managed in a way to keep these principal figures of the TNI (armed forces) out of trouble, said a Western diplomat. Hendardi believes a recent decision to allow a separate military command in Aceh province, where a military campaign to stamp out armed separatists has left hundreds of people dead this year, was a trade-off with the army to allow the trials to go forward. Yet another Western diplomat has a more positive view, arguing that the Megawati government is making a serious effort to achieve justice and that although the military may not like the trials, they accept the judicial process. COURT'S SCOPE LIMITED Even if all the suspects show up in court
East Timor
Yoshie writes: Forward planning indeed. I believe that the CNRT may be expected to become what the ANC has become. = MK: No doubt. You can add Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland and, should it ever come to pass in Scotland, the Scottish National Party. Nationalism is no substitute for proletarian internationalism. Sorry if that sounds more than one generation out of date, but I can't think of a snappier, more with-it phrase that captures what I'm trying to convey here. But there's more to East Timor than bourgeois nationalism. Basic survival was at stake. = Now, back to the work of Peter Galbraith. His political career concerning Iraq, the Balkans, East Timor has been emblematic of liberal internationalism. Don't let the lucrative oil deal blind you to it. = MK: Blind me to what? That East Timor is being incorporated into the liberal capitalist family? How shocking. Like his father (John Kenneth) Peter Galbraith is trying to engineer the best outcome within the confines of the status quo. It's an honourable course of action if not usually blessed with the likelihood of success. But compared to the policies enacted by Suharto/Wiranto it's a major improvement, as is the outcome so engineered. That does not equate to ultimately desirable. But it's better than the preceding 25 years. His effective rebuke of Howard/Downer is also a further illuminatory reminder -- as if any were needed -- of the disgusting position adopted by the Australian ruling class throughout this entire sorry episode. By extension, of course, guilty parties include Australia's partners in the Echelon/CAZAB network which sanctioned the buttressing of anti-communist geopolitics that Suharto's invasion (begun as Ford and Kissinger flew out of Djakarta) represented. One of the saddest aspects is that even someone as emblematic of progressive social democracy like Gough Whitlam -- who, like Harold Wilson, was not afraid of trying to assert control over his US-dominated foreign and security policy -- could nevertheless wash his hands of the original invasion as merely an internal matter for the Indonesian government. Yoshie, you've been good at pushing people for programmes of late. You've also been good at probing my presumed approval of the present reconstruction process in Indonesia. Would you have preferred the uninterrupted subjugation of East Timor by General Wiranto and his citizens' militias safe in the knowledge that Empire, as depicted by Hardt and Negri, was being somehow thwarted? If so, and given the IMF's involvement in Indonesian political economy, why couldn't Empire be just as capable of incorporating a bloodily subjugated Indonesian-occupied East Timor as it is a nominally independent and safer one? What exactly is our disagreement here? Michael K.
Re: East Timor
I am surprised that you do not mention that Galbraith is the sone of John K. Galbraith. On Mon, Jul 16, 2001 at 11:38:42AM +0300, Keaney Michael wrote: Yoshie writes: Forward planning indeed. I believe that the CNRT may be expected to become what the ANC has become. = MK: No doubt. You can add Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland and, should it ever come to pass in Scotland, the Scottish National Party. Nationalism is no substitute for proletarian internationalism. Sorry if that sounds more than one generation out of date, but I can't think of a snappier, more with-it phrase that captures what I'm trying to convey here. But there's more to East Timor than bourgeois nationalism. Basic survival was at stake. = Now, back to the work of Peter Galbraith. His political career concerning Iraq, the Balkans, East Timor has been emblematic of liberal internationalism. Don't let the lucrative oil deal blind you to it. = MK: Blind me to what? That East Timor is being incorporated into the liberal capitalist family? How shocking. Like his father (John Kenneth) Peter Galbraith is trying to engineer the best outcome within the confines of the status quo. It's an honourable course of action if not usually blessed with the likelihood of success. But compared to the policies enacted by Suharto/Wiranto it's a major improvement, as is the outcome so engineered. That does not equate to ultimately desirable. But it's better than the preceding 25 years. His effective rebuke of Howard/Downer is also a further illuminatory reminder -- as if any were needed -- of the disgusting position adopted by the Australian ruling class throughout this entire sorry episode. By extension, of course, guilty parties include Australia's partners in the Echelon/CAZAB network which sanctioned the buttressing of anti-communist geopolitics that Suharto's invasion (begun as Ford and Kissinger flew out of Djakarta) represented. One of the saddest aspects is that even someone as emblematic of progressive social democracy like Gough Whitlam -- who, like Harold Wilson, was not afraid of trying to assert control over his US-dominated foreign and security policy -- could nevertheless wash his hands of the original invasion as merely an internal matter for the Indonesian government. Yoshie, you've been good at pushing people for programmes of late. You've also been good at probing my presumed approval of the present reconstruction process in Indonesia. Would you have preferred the uninterrupted subjugation of East Timor by General Wiranto and his citizens' militias safe in the knowledge that Empire, as depicted by Hardt and Negri, was being somehow thwarted? If so, and given the IMF's involvement in Indonesian political economy, why couldn't Empire be just as capable of incorporating a bloodily subjugated Indonesian-occupied East Timor as it is a nominally independent and safer one? What exactly is our disagreement here? Michael K. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: East Timor
Is James K. Galbraith at U. Texas, Austin, another son? Michael Pugliese - Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, July 16, 2001 8:59 AM Subject: [PEN-L:15194] Re: East Timor I am surprised that you do not mention that Galbraith is the sone of John K. Galbraith. On Mon, Jul 16, 2001 at 11:38:42AM +0300, Keaney Michael wrote: Yoshie writes: Forward planning indeed. I believe that the CNRT may be expected to become what the ANC has become. = MK: No doubt. You can add Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland and, should it ever come to pass in Scotland, the Scottish National Party. Nationalism is no substitute for proletarian internationalism. Sorry if that sounds more than one generation out of date, but I can't think of a snappier, more with-it phrase that captures what I'm trying to convey here. But there's more to East Timor than bourgeois nationalism. Basic survival was at stake. = Now, back to the work of Peter Galbraith. His political career concerning Iraq, the Balkans, East Timor has been emblematic of liberal internationalism. Don't let the lucrative oil deal blind you to it. = MK: Blind me to what? That East Timor is being incorporated into the liberal capitalist family? How shocking. Like his father (John Kenneth) Peter Galbraith is trying to engineer the best outcome within the confines of the status quo. It's an honourable course of action if not usually blessed with the likelihood of success. But compared to the policies enacted by Suharto/Wiranto it's a major improvement, as is the outcome so engineered. That does not equate to ultimately desirable. But it's better than the preceding 25 years. His effective rebuke of Howard/Downer is also a further illuminatory reminder -- as if any were needed -- of the disgusting position adopted by the Australian ruling class throughout this entire sorry episode. By extension, of course, guilty parties include Australia's partners in the Echelon/CAZAB network which sanctioned the buttressing of anti-communist geopolitics that Suharto's invasion (begun as Ford and Kissinger flew out of Djakarta) represented. One of the saddest aspects is that even someone as emblematic of progressive social democracy like Gough Whitlam -- who, like Harold Wilson, was not afraid of trying to assert control over his US-dominated foreign and security policy -- could nevertheless wash his hands of the original invasion as merely an internal matter for the Indonesian government. Yoshie, you've been good at pushing people for programmes of late. You've also been good at probing my presumed approval of the present reconstruction process in Indonesia. Would you have preferred the uninterrupted subjugation of East Timor by General Wiranto and his citizens' militias safe in the knowledge that Empire, as depicted by Hardt and Negri, was being somehow thwarted? If so, and given the IMF's involvement in Indonesian political economy, why couldn't Empire be just as capable of incorporating a bloodily subjugated Indonesian-occupied East Timor as it is a nominally independent and safer one? What exactly is our disagreement here? Michael K. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: East Timor
yes. On Mon, Jul 16, 2001 at 10:06:52AM -0700, Michael Pugliese wrote: Is James K. Galbraith at U. Texas, Austin, another son? Michael Pugliese --- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Re: Re: East Timor
good grief. your reputation as the king of dish gossip is reduced to ashes. mbs Is James K. Galbraith at U. Texas, Austin, another son? Michael Pugliese
Re: RE: Re: Re: East Timor
Heh! I assume he is! BTW, once I shook hands with JKG. Tall man, and I'm 6 foot 5 Michael Howling Woof Pugliese P.S. www.bobdylan.com sez new Mr. Zimmerman in stores soon. - Original Message - From: Max Sawicky [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, July 16, 2001 10:41 AM Subject: [PEN-L:15197] RE: Re: Re: East Timor good grief. your reputation as the king of dish gossip is reduced to ashes. mbs Is James K. Galbraith at U. Texas, Austin, another son? Michael Pugliese
Re: East Timor
Michael Keaney posted: (Thanks to Alan Bradley on the Marxism list for the following.) The following article appears in the current issue of Green Left Weekly (http://www.greenleft.org.au/): Who gains most from New Timor gap treaty? On July 5, representatives of the East Timor Transitional Cabinet, the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor and the Australian government met in Dili and signed the Timor Sea Arrangement, concluding 10 months of negotiating and wrangling over a new deal to replace the Timor Gap treaty. The new agreement represents a moral and political victory for East Timor, with the Howard government finally conceding to the demands pushed by UNTAET representative Peter Galbraith and East Timorese negotiators Mari Alkatiri and Jose Ramos Horta that East Timor receive at least a 90% share of the royalties from oil and gas developments in the area currently covered by the joint zone of co-operation. The new agreement will mean East Timor will receive an estimated $7 billion in revenue from royalties over a 20-year period, providing a crucial source of income for the devastated and newly independent nation. From the outset, the Howard government negotiating team - headed by foreign minister Alexander Downer, resources minister Nick Minchin and attorney-general Daryl Williams - have sought to obstruct East Timor from asserting its rights under international law. The back down by the Australian government was not motivated by concerns of helping East Timor. It was primarily motivated by the desire to safeguard the interests of oil and gas companies operating in the Timor Gap and the financial windfall for itself and the Northern Territory government ensuring that Darwin becomes the transit port for the export of East Timorese oil and gas. On top of this, the Howard government was also keenly aware that with East Timor gaining a better royalty deal, this offered another justification not to provide more humanitarian aid and assistance to East Timor. Both the Coalition government and the Labor opposition want to diminish as much as possible responsibility (and any notion of compensation) for the part played by Australia in supporting the 24-year-long Indonesian military occupation. How generous really is this new agreement? Certainly the royalties will make a big difference for East Timor, but the spin-off for US and Australian oil companies operating in the Timor Sea (and for the Northern Territory and Australian governments) is enormous by comparison. Some $13 billion is expected to be invested in new pipelines and downstream processing in the Northern Territory. The Northern Territory treasury department estimates that these projects will generate $50 billion in economic activity in the NT over the next 20 years. Downer asserts that the new deal is a fair and just agreement, an agreement with a true basis in international law. An article by Alkatiri and Galbraith in the July 6 Sydney Morning Herald gives a more accurate appraisal of the agreement. They wrote: The new Timor Sea treaty is a fair deal for East Timor and an even better deal for Australia and the companies developing oil and gas in the Timor Sea ... [the agreement] also rights a historic wrong. It will not make East Timor rich. However, if the money is well spent, it will give the people of East Timor the opportunity to escape the grinding poverty that is the legacy of occupation and war. They added that: Under international law, East Timor is entitled to a seabed boundary at the mid-point between East Timor and Australia. This would give East Timor not 90 per cent, but 100 per cent of the oil and gas in the Timor Sea. Thus while it may look like Australia is making a major concession in moving from the 50/50 revenue sharing it had under the Indonesia treaty to the 90/10 split in this new treaty, it is more than fair for Australia. And, as Galbraith noted following the signing of the agreement, it provides a hell of a lot more certainty than they [energy companies] had under a treaty with Indonesia in which they were in effect making investment in stolen property. The Green Left Weekly is quite right to point out that Australia is not being generous in signing the new Gap deal. As the Vancouver Sun says below, there is even more: * The Vancouver Sun July 7, 2001 Saturday FINAL EDITION SECTION: BUSINESS, Pg. B6 Jonathan Manthorpe HEADLINE: Minority oil interest means hope for E. Timor BYLINE: Jonathan Manthorpe ...When Australia negotiated the first treaty with Indonesia in 1989, it included a requirement that Jakarta give financial incentives to the oil companies because of the risks involved. Canberra insisted on the same incentives -- $2.27 US back to the companies for every $1 US invested -- in the new agreement. East Timor's negotiators were forced to agree, but have promised they will tax the incentive payments * What's missing altogether from the GLW perspective
East Timor
(Thanks to Alan Bradley on the Marxism list for the following.) The following article appears in the current issue of Green Left Weekly (http://www.greenleft.org.au/): Who gains most from New Timor gap treaty? On July 5, representatives of the East Timor Transitional Cabinet, the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor and the Australian government met in Dili and signed the Timor Sea Arrangement, concluding 10 months of negotiating and wrangling over a new deal to replace the Timor Gap treaty. The new agreement represents a moral and political victory for East Timor, with the Howard government finally conceding to the demands pushed by UNTAET representative Peter Galbraith and East Timorese negotiators Mari Alkatiri and Jose Ramos Horta that East Timor receive at least a 90% share of the royalties from oil and gas developments in the area currently covered by the joint zone of co-operation. The new agreement will mean East Timor will receive an estimated $7 billion in revenue from royalties over a 20-year period, providing a crucial source of income for the devastated and newly independent nation. From the outset, the Howard government negotiating team - headed by foreign minister Alexander Downer, resources minister Nick Minchin and attorney-general Daryl Williams - have sought to obstruct East Timor from asserting its rights under international law. The back down by the Australian government was not motivated by concerns of helping East Timor. It was primarily motivated by the desire to safeguard the interests of oil and gas companies operating in the Timor Gap and the financial windfall for itself and the Northern Territory government ensuring that Darwin becomes the transit port for the export of East Timorese oil and gas. On top of this, the Howard government was also keenly aware that with East Timor gaining a better royalty deal, this offered another justification not to provide more humanitarian aid and assistance to East Timor. Both the Coalition government and the Labor opposition want to diminish as much as possible responsibility (and any notion of compensation) for the part played by Australia in supporting the 24-year-long Indonesian military occupation. How generous really is this new agreement? Certainly the royalties will make a big difference for East Timor, but the spin-off for US and Australian oil companies operating in the Timor Sea (and for the Northern Territory and Australian governments) is enormous by comparison. Some $13 billion is expected to be invested in new pipelines and downstream processing in the Northern Territory. The Northern Territory treasury department estimates that these projects will generate $50 billion in economic activity in the NT over the next 20 years. Downer asserts that the new deal is a fair and just agreement, an agreement with a true basis in international law. An article by Alkatiri and Galbraith in the July 6 Sydney Morning Herald gives a more accurate appraisal of the agreement. They wrote: The new Timor Sea treaty is a fair deal for East Timor and an even better deal for Australia and the companies developing oil and gas in the Timor Sea ... [the agreement] also rights a historic wrong. It will not make East Timor rich. However, if the money is well spent, it will give the people of East Timor the opportunity to escape the grinding poverty that is the legacy of occupation and war. They added that: Under international law, East Timor is entitled to a seabed boundary at the mid-point between East Timor and Australia. This would give East Timor not 90 per cent, but 100 per cent of the oil and gas in the Timor Sea. Thus while it may look like Australia is making a major concession in moving from the 50/50 revenue sharing it had under the Indonesia treaty to the 90/10 split in this new treaty, it is more than fair for Australia. And, as Galbraith noted following the signing of the agreement, it provides a hell of a lot more certainty than they [energy companies] had under a treaty with Indonesia in which they were in effect making investment in stolen property. Still, the companies and the Australian government are far from satisfied. The corporate media have started a new scare campaign over the prospect that East Timor's new constituent assembly, due to be elected in August, may seek changes before ratifying the treaty or impose at some future date a higher fiscal regime upon companies operating in the Timor Sea. If a future East Timorese government chooses to make such changes, this is an entirely justifiable and reasonable action to take. The people of East Timor will need as much solidarity as possible in the coming years to defend their newly one independence from the greedy moves of companies in the Timor Sea and the profits-before-people foreign policy of the Australian government. = Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
East Timor/United Nations
Penners Further to the recent list debate concerning the role of the UN, here is some more evidence confirming the self-interested alarmism of NATO as it seeks to invent a new enemy for itself in an expanded role in the war on drugs. The Observer on 1 April already published an article describing the Taliban's success in eradicating opium production, together with the unfortunate stoppage of funding for the UN's drug control programme: Sceptics have questioned whether the Taliban have genuinely eradicated poppy cultivation. But all the evidence suggests they have. 'All the indicators are that they have done it. The prices have increased dramatically,' one informed UN source in Kabul admitted last week. The UN's Drug Control Programme (UNDCP), meanwhile, which compensated farmers who switched from opium to other crops, was scrapped in December because of a lack of funding from the US and other donors. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4163206,00.html Of course, the fanatical pursuit of Osama bin Laden, together with geopolitical intrigue surrounding the Caspian Sea and Central Asian oil reserves generally, are the real reasons for US and NATO attention to this region. Aid urged for Taliban's anti-drug fight Financial Times, Jun 27, 2001 By FARHAN BOKHARI It is vital that Afghanistan's western donors help the Taliban government sustain a year-long ban on opium production, the United Nations' senior official in the fight against drug production and trafficking has warned. The warning came ahead of the UN's international day against drug abuse and illicit drug trafficking yesterday. A UN Drug Control Programme report on global illicit drug trends for 2001 acknowledges the Taliban's spectacular success in curbing opium cultivation, which has led to a sharp fall in opium supplies to global markets. Western drug officials said that more than 3,000 tonnes, or 60 per cent of the global supply, may have vanished in the past year, following the Taliban decree banning poppy cultivation. The ban was in line with Islamic teachings, which prohibit the cultivation of substances used for producing drugs. The Taliban is otherwise unpopular with the western world, usually being in the spotlight for controversial moves such as the demolition of ancient statues of the Buddha, banning women from working in most professions or ordering the small minority of Hindus to wear yellow badges to distinguish themselves from Muslims. The biggest cause of the Taliban's isolation remains its refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden, the Saudi militant who lives in Afghanistan and is wanted by the US in connection with the 1998 bombings at two US embassies in East Africa. In an interview, Pino Arlacchi, executive director of the UN's Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention in Vienna, said: People should be aware that the ball is now in the court of the international community and we should take account of all aspects of the situation. I am very proud of this result. Mr Arlacchi said the Taliban's ban was partly driven by the recognition that opium production was a concern for western countries. But he said the international community, particularly European countries who are direct beneficiaries of the Afghan poppy, should be aware that there should be medium to long-term solutions. The solution is development. In a reference to Afghanistan's growing impoverishment, the UN's report warned that the country was likely to remain one of the world's poorest countries for the foreseeable future. Twenty-one years of protracted instability, war and political unrest have led to extreme malnutrition, extreme poverty, illiteracy and the world's fourth highest rate of child mortality. Full article at: http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/articles.html?print=trueid=010627 001459 Compare with Lord Robertson's strategy for NATO: http://csf.colorado.edu/pen-l/2001II/msg02901.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
East Timor/United Nations
Penners Further to the recent list debate concerning the role of the UN, here is some more evidence confirming the self-interested alarmism of NATO as it seeks to invent a new enemy for itself in an expanded role in the war on drugs. The Observer on 1 April already published an article describing the Taliban's success in eradicating opium production, together with the unfortunate stoppage of funding for the UN's drug control programme: Sceptics have questioned whether the Taliban have genuinely eradicated poppy cultivation. But all the evidence suggests they have. 'All the indicators are that they have done it. The prices have increased dramatically,' one informed UN source in Kabul admitted last week. The UN's Drug Control Programme (UNDCP), meanwhile, which compensated farmers who switched from opium to other crops, was scrapped in December because of a lack of funding from the US and other donors. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4163206,00.html Of course, the fanatical pursuit of Osama bin Laden, together with geopolitical intrigue surrounding the Caspian Sea and Central Asian oil reserves generally, are the real reasons for US and NATO attention to this region. Aid urged for Taliban's anti-drug fight Financial Times, Jun 27, 2001 By FARHAN BOKHARI It is vital that Afghanistan's western donors help the Taliban government sustain a year-long ban on opium production, the United Nations' senior official in the fight against drug production and trafficking has warned. The warning came ahead of the UN's international day against drug abuse and illicit drug trafficking yesterday. A UN Drug Control Programme report on global illicit drug trends for 2001 acknowledges the Taliban's spectacular success in curbing opium cultivation, which has led to a sharp fall in opium supplies to global markets. Western drug officials said that more than 3,000 tonnes, or 60 per cent of the global supply, may have vanished in the past year, following the Taliban decree banning poppy cultivation. The ban was in line with Islamic teachings, which prohibit the cultivation of substances used for producing drugs. The Taliban is otherwise unpopular with the western world, usually being in the spotlight for controversial moves such as the demolition of ancient statues of the Buddha, banning women from working in most professions or ordering the small minority of Hindus to wear yellow badges to distinguish themselves from Muslims. The biggest cause of the Taliban's isolation remains its refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden, the Saudi militant who lives in Afghanistan and is wanted by the US in connection with the 1998 bombings at two US embassies in East Africa. In an interview, Pino Arlacchi, executive director of the UN's Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention in Vienna, said: People should be aware that the ball is now in the court of the international community and we should take account of all aspects of the situation. I am very proud of this result. Mr Arlacchi said the Taliban's ban was partly driven by the recognition that opium production was a concern for western countries. But he said the international community, particularly European countries who are direct beneficiaries of the Afghan poppy, should be aware that there should be medium to long-term solutions. The solution is development. In a reference to Afghanistan's growing impoverishment, the UN's report warned that the country was likely to remain one of the world's poorest countries for the foreseeable future. Twenty-one years of protracted instability, war and political unrest have led to extreme malnutrition, extreme poverty, illiteracy and the world's fourth highest rate of child mortality. Full article at: http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/articles.html?print=trueid=0106 27001459 Compare with Lord Robertson's strategy for NATO: http://csf.colorado.edu/pen-l/2001II/msg02901.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
East Timor/United Nations
Yoshie writes: Michael Keaney says: Yoshie, having gone upmarket with the FT and the Oil and Gas Journal: Upmarket? You're such a snob, Michael! :- = MK: It's important to maintain standards. = The integrity of Indonesia was its preferred option, rather than risk the fragmentation of a multi-ethnic state and thereby all its investments there, as well as lucrative arms contracts. The USA initially thought the same thing with regard to Yugoslavia. However, times change, and quick. Indonesia is becoming ungovernable by either the local despot (like Suharto) or the local democrat (like Wahid), due to the continuing fallouts of the Asian financial crisis that have added to decentralizing dynamics of ethnicized conflicts (provinces against the central government). snip How do you restore a good investment climate here? Think like Machiavelli's Prince. Support the Indonesian government crush separatist rebels? If so, who is to do the job? Wahid appears incompetent, businessmen complain of corruptions of the government. Which successor to pick? Any likely candidate? What will be the rebels' response to strong-arm tactics? What's an alternative? Make deals with the rebels, fragmenting Indonesia managing its pieces? Unilaterally? Multilaterally? Hedge your bets? It's not a matter of principle. It's a matter of expediency: what works? = MK: True, but it sometimes takes time for big capital to catch up with events. They had a large vested interest in the ancien regime, having put it into place originally via the mass slaughter of communists, suspected fellow travellers and anyone else who got in the way. Suharto was utterly reliable until the East Asian crisis, brought on by the Wall Street-Treasury complex's wresting of control from the military-industrial complex, thereby rendering former Cold War allies crony capitalists and requiring a good dose of deregulation, liberalisation and subjection to the sort of plunder by international capital that they themselves had inflicted upon their own populations. Habibie was originally intended as Suharto Mk II, but as he and his backers found out to their cost, events were moving fast beyond their control. Had they not, then the international community would quite happily have allowed the continued extermination of the East Timorese, as it had for the preceding 24 years. And the UN's intervention can be explained not as a result of US panic over its investments, but Australian concern to protect its Timor Gap Treaty, together with public outcry over the slaughter. But now that the UN has effectively stabilised the situation, of course US capital can start to cherry pick, especially since it already dominates Australia, which can be used as a proxy. But that is after the fact. We must remember that there are other nations within the UN that see it as one of the few available vehicles for the furtherance of what they perceive to be their own interests (independent of the US, however illusory that might be in practice). One of these nations is Portugal, which, as the former colonial power, retains an interest in East Timor and has used the UN and the International Court of Justice to repeatedly oppose Australian de facto recognition of the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. It's thanks to even the small and essentially negligible actions of countries like Portugal that Helms et al cannot countenance a fully functional UN unless it absolutely adheres to a US line. The IMF is so much better at these things. So is NATO. = Empire may be good for the East Timorese elite. This is ET Foreign Minister Jose Ramos-Horta speaking like Hardt Negri: = MK: I daresay that most anything would look better to Ramos Horta et al. than the sort of integration practised by Suharto, Wiranto and their gang. I don't think we need worry too much about what Ramos Horta has to say on this. As Doug reminded us, globalisation means very little, or whatever you want it to mean, so how are we to know exactly how Ramos-Horta understands the term? Secondly, what of the Cold War and its end? Didn't that have something to do with the unravelling of the old order? Then there is the aforementioned IMF and the Summers plan for world domination. And then there are the contradictions internal to the Indonesian political economy itself, which could not have continued as it had, if only because of the impending demise of Suharto himself and the consequent fight for succession and potential for reconfiguration of political alliances, etc. I'll try to get back to your earlier post re Empire, but at this point I'll say that Hardt and Negri are not the only ones to be theorising the US's global reach. I've mentioned the work of Martin Shaw in the Wilson Plot review I'm struggling to finish (largely because punters like you keep interrupting me with good posts). His Theory of the Global State I am currently reading, but I'm nowhere near finished
East Timor/United Nations
Penners While I agree with Michael P.'s efforts to head off another retread argument over the merits of humanitarian intervention, I think there is some useful new material to be discussed here, and that involves the evolving role and position of the United Nations. Putting my cards on the table, I stand with Rob in his assessment that Gareth Evans is a major improvement on General Wiranto, and that the intensely worrying events still unfolding in West Timor ought to be attracting much wider attention than it ever has during this entire crisis. This, despite Evans' own prior complicity in the actions of Wiranto and his boss, Suharto, as he brokered the Timor Gap Treaty entitling Australian companies a large share of the spoils of whatever oil was recovered from East Timorese waters, effectively sealing the recognition of the illegal occupation of East Timor by Indonesia that in 1975 was so casually dismissed by the otherwise progressive Gough Whitlam as an internal matter for the Indonesian government. This, despite the condemnation of the United Nations (against the cynical efforts of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, warming the seat so capably filled later by Jeane Kirkpatrick). The crumbling of the Portuguese empire at this time led the Kissinger State Department and the CIA to instigate some of the most disgusting foreign policy ever perpetrated by the US, as civil wars were deliberately created in Angola (with the creation of UNITA under the psychotic Jonas Savimbi) and the MNR in Mozambique (assisted by Ian Smith's Rhodesia, eager to get at Mugabe's Zanu-PF forces holed up there). The role of Vorster-led South Africa was of crucial importance here, as anti-Communism took precedence over such trifles as self-determination and basic human rights (the flexibility of freedom and democracy knows no bounds). The same logic sanctioned the Indonesians' incorporation of East Timor, thus cementing the geopolitical barrier containing communist East Asia and shielding Australia. Evans, in his new guise as chief of the International Crisis Group (see http://csf.colorado.edu/pen-l/2001II/msg03042.html) is presently conducting a holding operation, trying to protect his Timor Gap Treaty in a clear conflict of interest that is being undermined by the UN's own Peter Galbraith. Of course you might expect Galbraith to be merely acting in the interests of his ultimate US masters in bringing under their control the spoils that would otherwise accrue to the Australians. However, it appears that this is not the case. In fact, assuming the identity of US interests and the UN ignores much of recent history and the frustration felt by some of the most egregious imperialists in the US, such as Jesse Helms, who, very helpfully and clearly, spelt out his vision of the UN as an arm of US foreign policy as the only guarantee of it ever getting unequivocal US political and financial support. Helms admits this is unlikely, for as long as the UN is home to such undemocratic regimes as China and Cuba, who have no business telling the US what to do. Come to that, no one, regardless of their political circumstances, has any business telling the US what to do: Intervening in cases of widespread oppression and massive human rights abuses is not a new concept for the United States. The American people have a long history of doing so. During the 1980s, this policy was called the Reagan Doctrine. In some cases, America assisted freedom fighters around the world who were seeking to overthrow corrupt regimes, providing them with weaponry, training and intelligence. In other cases, the United States intervened directly.In still others, such as in Central and Eastern Europe, America supported peaceful opposition movements with moral, financial and covert assistance. In each case, it was America's intention to help bring down oppressive regimes. The dramatic expansion of freedom in the last decade of the twentieth century has been a direct result of these policies. In none of these instances, however, did the United States ask for or receive the approval of the United Nations to 'legitimize' its actions. And yet the secretary-general now declares that the United Nations Security Council is the 'sole source of legitimacy on the use of force' in the world. It is a fanciful notion that free peoples need to seek the approval of an international body (a quarter of whose memberships are totalitarian dictatorships, according to Freedom House's 1999/2000 _Freedom in the World_) to lend support to nations struggling to break the chains of tyranny. The United Nations has no power to grant or decline legitimacy to such actions. They are _inherently_ legitimate ... If the United Nations is to survive into the twenty-first century, it must recognize its limitations. The demands of the United States have not changed much since Henry Cabot Lodge laid out a set of conditions for joining the League of Nations eighty years ago: We want to ensure
Re: East Timor/United Nations
Michael Keaney says Of course, now that the Soviet Union no longer exists, the United Nations is more than ever a tool of territorial and economic ambitions by the USA and its allies. Put in old-school Marxist terms, the UN is not an expression of Empire but imperialism. Power grabs by big fish in the ocean at the expense of smaller fish--rather than Kantian pieties--is the only way to understand the United Nations. (see http://csf.colorado.edu/pen-l/2001II/msg03491.html) ... we should bear in mind that many of a distinctly different political persuasion, and at the very heart of US power, would disagree, precisely because they regard the UN as out of control. Now of course, thanks to Senator Jeffords, Senator Helms no longer sits from on high throwing his cardboard thunderbolts at maps highlighting Cuba, China, North Korea and Venezuela. But it's a safe bet that the largely insulated (from Congressional scrutiny) process of foreign policy will enable the noticeably unilateralist Bush administration carry on in Uncle Jesse's fine tradition. And that tradition involves both circumventing and undermining the credibility of the UN, precisely because it is not under the sort of control that large sections of the United States power elite regards as its divine right/manifest destiny. * The New York Times May 29, 2001, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section A; Page 15; Column 5; Editorial Desk HEADLINE: Foreign Affairs; 95 to 5 BYLINE: By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN; Gail Collins is on vacation. Ever since the U.S. got voted off the island at the U.N. Human Rights Commission three weeks ago, Congress has been hopping mad and the U.N.-haters have been on a tear. So I have an idea: Let's quit the U.N. That's right, let's just walk. Most of its members don't speak English anyway. What an insult! Let's just shut it down and turn it into another Trump Tower. That Security Council table would make a perfect sushi bar. No? You don't want to leave the U.N. to the Europeans and Russians? Then let's stop bellyaching about the U.N., and manipulating our dues, and start taking it seriously for what it is -- a global forum that spends 95 percent of its energy endorsing the wars and peacekeeping missions that the U.S. wants endorsed, or taking on the thankless humanitarian missions that the U.S. would like done but doesn't want to do itself. The U.N. actually spends only 5 percent of its time annoying the U.S. Not a bad deal ...[T]here are now 16 U.N. peacekeeping missions. For the past decade, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Fiji and Nepal have been doing U.N. peacekeeping that the U.S. wants done but doesn't want to do itself. These poor countries do U.N. peacekeeping to earn extra cash, and have been paying the salaries of the U.N. peacekeepers themselves, while waiting for years for the U.S. to pay its dues. So the world's richest country has been taking interest-free loans from the world's poorest, dollar-a-day economies. That's embarrassing. All these problems would exist whether the U.N. were there or not. So what the U.N. provides 95 percent of the time is a body for coordinating our response to problems we care about. And it does it in a way that ensures that the burden of costs is shared, so that the U.S. doesn't have to pay alone, and that the burden of responsibility is shared, so that wars the U.S. wants fought, or the peace accords the U.S. wants kept, have a global stamp of approval, not made-in-U.S.A * All in all, the U.N. is a pretty good deal for the U.S. Yoshie
East Timor/United Nations
. The new world order proclaimed by Bush, Sr. was a miscalculation that, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the UN would buckle quickly under US hegemony. This did not happen, as the troublesome Arab countries, among others demonstrated. The seeds of discontent sown in East Asia thanks to US heavy-handedness via its vastly more dependable IMF arm have further rendered cooperation within the UN problematic for the US. Bombing the Chinese embassy as part of a NATO action further alienated the Chinese. And so on. Sure thing -- the UN is handy for the US as a means of socialising the costs of its global security policies. The powers concerned can look forward to mild sops in return. But the issue here is not one of either/or. More like both/and. Let me explain. The US itself is torn between wanting to control everything and the costs that would involve. The UN is a useful mechanism of spreading costs (i.e. financial, bodybags), and is delegated lower priority tasks like Africa, East Timor, cleaning up NATO's mess in Kosovo, and Southern Lebanon (though, pointedly, not Palestine). This was apparent in the US's efforts to screw wads of cash out of Japan during the Gulf War. But where the US really wants to ensure an outcome commensurate with its wishes, it's NATO that is now assuming the privileged role of preferred instrument. Even within NATO, there are tensions about control and costs, as the controversy over the proposed European Rapid Reaction Force reveals. But we should not confuse the contradictions of US foreign policy with a regard for the UN as retaining a status commensurate with that which supposedly legitimated the Korean war. And NATO, as a separate vested interest, with its own quasi-autonomous organisational capability, is eager in this post-Cold War world to find a new role for itself. NATO would be a good case study for the public choice people in this respect. And to go back to the slime ball who was quoted extensively by Yoshie -- what's in it for him? Friedman is not a Dubya/Helms unilateralist. He belongs to the Clinton/Gore/Summers globalist gang, who would very much like to employ the UN as a worldwide legitimator of neoliberal globalism, and as such can welcome China as a strategic partner and potential WTO-member because it's with economic means and legal procedures that their world will take shape. However, the more pressing requirements of global crisis management required them to give priority to NATO, at the UN's expense, NATO being more readily pliable. Bush et al. are stuck in a Cold War timewarp mixed in with lashings of James Monroe, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge and John Foster Dulles for good measure. Both recipes are disgusting. Both, despite their differences, produce the same purgative discharge: namely, the marginalisation of the UN. And please, don't ever, ever, throw large quantities of Thomas Friedman's drivel at me ever again. I assure you that, whatever you may think I have done to you in the past, it was purely unintentional, accidental, coincidental, and not worthy of such a low blow. Michael K.
Re: East Timor/United Nations
No Welcome For the World In Utah Towns BY THOMAS BURR [EMAIL PROTECTED] (c) 2001, THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE Tuesday, June 26, 2001 Most city councils have enough to do keeping the streets clean and safe. Not La Verkin and Virgin. The rural southern Utah towns have taken on the United Nations. The international organization has not exactly overrun them, but the two town councils are considering ordinances that would erase all traces of the United Nations in their communities, citing concerns the body is usurping the sovereignty of the United States. We've been pushed far enough, and long enough, La Verkin Mayor Dan Howard said Monday. We're tired of marching to [the U.N.] agenda. Maybe now we can start to march on our own agenda. Maybe La Verkin is the crucible to get the rest of the cities and the national government to listen. [snip] http://www.sltrib.com/2001/jun/06262001/utah/108851.htm - Original Message - From: Keaney Michael [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2001 5:44 AM Subject: [PEN-L:14183] East Timor/United Nations Yoshie forwards the following trash from Thomas Friedman: * The New York Times May 29, 2001, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section A; Page 15; Column 5; Editorial Desk HEADLINE: Foreign Affairs; 95 to 5 BYLINE: By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN; Gail Collins is on vacation. Ever since the U.S. got voted off the island at the U.N. Human Rights Commission three weeks ago, Congress has been hopping mad and the U.N.-haters have been on a tear. So I have an idea: Let's quit the U.N. That's right, let's just walk. Most of its members don't speak English anyway. What an insult! Let's just shut it down and turn it into another Trump Tower. That Security Council table would make a perfect sushi bar. No? You don't want to leave the U.N. to the Europeans and Russians? Then let's stop bellyaching about the U.N., and manipulating our dues, and start taking it seriously for what it is -- a global forum that spends 95 percent of its energy endorsing the wars and peacekeeping missions that the U.S. wants endorsed, or taking on the thankless humanitarian missions that the U.S. would like done but doesn't want to do itself. The U.N. actually spends only 5 percent of its time annoying the U.S. Not a bad deal ...[T]here are now 16 U.N. peacekeeping missions. For the past decade, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Fiji and Nepal have been doing U.N. peacekeeping that the U.S. wants done but doesn't want to do itself. These poor countries do U.N. peacekeeping to earn extra cash, and have been paying the salaries of the U.N. peacekeepers themselves, while waiting for years for the U.S. to pay its dues. So the world's richest country has been taking interest-free loans from the world's poorest, dollar-a-day economies. That's embarrassing. All these problems would exist whether the U.N. were there or not. So what the U.N. provides 95 percent of the time is a body for coordinating our response to problems we care about. And it does it in a way that ensures that the burden of costs is shared, so that the U.S. doesn't have to pay alone, and that the burden of responsibility is shared, so that wars the U.S. wants fought, or the peace accords the U.S. wants kept, have a global stamp of approval, not made-in-U.S.A * All in all, the U.N. is a pretty good deal for the U.S. = It pains me greatly that you, of all people, should bring to the fore the unspeakable garbage perpetrated by someone Louis P., with great understatement, calls the New York Times superpimp. Words fail me in my efforts to record the feelings of revulsion and disgust that cause me to swoon every time I clap eyes on his strenuously laboured efforts at wit, reason, persuasion, propaganda. I'm having great difficulty composing myself sufficiently to put together this reply. Nevertheless, let's try to look beyond Friedman's dysentry -- always a good policy, and particularly effective in this case. The new world order of Bush Sr. was painstakingly constructed and, once completed, immensely fragile. So much so, that it shattered almost immediately, with the coalition of forces ranged against Saddam Hussein steadily shrinking. Getting UN endorsement of the necessarily limited actions undertaken by the US against Iraq was both time-consuming and an affront to aforementioned notions of divine right/manifest destiny. Ever since that experience, the US has been engaged in a campaign of undermining the UN, using it only as a fig-leaf of legitimacy when it suits. The UN has taken the rap for countless failed peace missions, which failed because they were not properly supported by the countries, led by the US, that supposedly sponsored them in the first place. Thus we hear now of the UN's last chance in Sierra Leone, while the UN carries the great shame, apparently, of failing to hault the Rwandan massacre in time
Re: East Timor/United Nations
At 12:19 PM +0300 6/28/01, Keaney Michael wrote: Putting my cards on the table, I stand with Rob in his assessment that Gareth Evans is a major improvement on General Wiranto, and that the intensely worrying events still unfolding in West Timor ought to be attracting much wider attention than it ever has during this entire crisis. This, despite Evans' own prior complicity in the actions of Wiranto and his boss, Suharto, as he brokered the Timor Gap Treaty entitling Australian companies a large share of the spoils of whatever oil was recovered from East Timorese waters, effectively sealing the recognition of the illegal occupation of East Timor by Indonesia that in 1975 was so casually dismissed by the otherwise progressive Gough Whitlam as an internal matter for the Indonesian government. snip Evans, in his new guise as chief of the International Crisis Group (see http://csf.colorado.edu/pen-l/2001II/msg03042.html) is presently conducting a holding operation, trying to protect his Timor Gap Treaty in a clear conflict of interest that is being undermined by the UN's own Peter Galbraith. Of course you might expect Galbraith to be merely acting in the interests of his ultimate US masters in bringing under their control the spoils that would otherwise accrue to the Australians. * Financial Times (London) May 17, 2001, Thursday London Edition 1 SECTION: INTERNATIONAL ECONOMY; Pg. 10 HEADLINE: Hope for Timor Gap agreement GAS EXPLORATION EAST TIMOR AND AUSTRALIA HAGGLE OVER RESOURCE-RICH WATERS: BYLINE: By VIRGINIA MARSH and TOM MCCAWLEY DATELINE: SYDNEY and JAKARTA Australia and East Timor are edging towards agreement on a critical new treaty to govern the Timor Gap, paving the way for development of the substantial gas deposits in the resource-rich waters that divide the two neighbours. Speedy conclusion of the treaty is vital for East Timor - which in late 1999 voted to secede from Indonesia - because revenues from the developments will provide the impoverished new state with its main source of income. Based on exploration to date, the Timor Gap fields contain 500m barrels of oil equivalent, worth some USDollars 17bn (Pounds 12bn) at today's prices. East Timor has a budget this year of USDollars 60m, is entirely reliant on foreign aid and is being run by a United Nations-led transition government (Untaet) ahead of elections for a national assembly due later this year. Negotiations on a new treaty began eight months ago and there has been concern among oil companies working in the region over delays in reaching agreement. But Peter Galbraith, Untaet minister for political affairs and East Timor's chief negotiator in the talks, said in an interview yesterday there had been substantial progress in the negotiations. Australian officials added that further talks were due to take place in Dili, the East Timorese capital, next week. After initially proposing to split revenues on a 60:40 basis, Australia is now believed to be offering the state an 85 per cent share. East Timor, however, is holding out for 90 per cent. If we had applied international law, we would have won 100 per cent of the revenues, said Mari Alkatiri, a senior East Timorese official involved in the talks. We are negotiating to maintain a good relationship. Australia has been under pressure to give East Timor a far greater share of the revenues to help the former Portuguese colony become a viable, independent state. Depending on the outcome of the negotiations - which also cover sea boundaries - Untaet expects the fields to generate USDollars 100m-USDollars 500m in annual revenues a year, transforming East Timor's economic prospects. Gross domestic product in the territory is about USDollars 250 per capita with most of its population living on subsistence farming. The two sides are under pressure to agree a framework for the treaty by early July to enable development of Bayu-Undan, the first field, to proceed. Phillips Petroleum, the US group that operates the field where production is set to begin in late 2003, has a July deadline to give the go-ahead for construction of a 500km pipeline to Darwin. It also needs to finalise cornerstone supply contracts in the coming three months, including a deal worth up to ADollars 7bn (Pounds 2.6bn) to supply liquefied natural gas from the Timor Sea to El Paso, the US energy group, mainly for use in California. This is not a new deadline. It was known nine months ago, said Jim Godlove, the company's Darwin area manager. The entire set of gas export contracts could be jeopardised (if the treaty is not agreed in time). For more reports see www.ft.com/globaleconomy * * Copyright 2001 PennWell Publishing Company Oil Gas Journal April 9, 2001 SECTION: TRANSPORTATION; Pg. 62 HEADLINE: Australian LNG coming to California Phillips Petroleum Co. and El Paso Corp. plan to deliver Timor Sea LNG to southern California and Mexico's Baja California
East Timor/United Nations
Yoshie, having gone upmarket with the FT and the Oil and Gas Journal: Again, it doesn't look like a bad deal for the USA. = So? The US is perfectly capable of improvising and making the best of a second-best outcome, even if that supposedly second-best outcome is in fact the best for capital (capitalists don't always get it right, nor are they typically unanimous). The integrity of Indonesia was its preferred option, rather than risk the fragmentation of a multi-ethnic state and thereby all its investments there, as well as lucrative arms contracts. The same logic prevailed during the Gulf War, as efforts to incite rebellions against Saddam by the Kurds and the Shi'ites were cynically nullified by the wisdom of Kissinger and his ilk who intoned on the regional security problems raised by the potential division of Iraq into several statelets. And Galbraith's efforts to secure revenues for the East Timorese have extracted a great deal more than the Australians were originally prepared to go for. John Howard originally argued for the continuing validity of the original Timor Gap Treaty. The succinct summary of the treaty provided below shows what was at stake for the Australian government: http://www.caa.org.au/publications/briefing/timor_gap_treaty/treaty.html If you want the full version: http://www.mastiffassociation.org/docs/nation/austr/timgt.htm Like I said in my original post, East Timor is being fully incorporated into the global capitalist system. That's not a bad deal for the USA -- by definition, it never is. But it's a damn sight better than the alternative originally sanctioned by the US, UK and Australia that was the original preferred option of those noted exponents of humanitarian intervention. As for the UN, no amount of condemnatory resolutions that issue from the security council or general assembly can or will override the wishes of the US, which can well afford to bypass what it regards as largely a tiresome and needlessly expensive institution which is too unpredictable and uncontrollable to be given any major responsibilities that accord with priority US interests. Michael K.
Re: East Timor/United Nations
Michael Keaney wrote: The UN has taken the rap for countless failed peace missions, which failed because they were not properly supported by the countries, led by the US, that supposedly sponsored them in the first place. Failed in what sense, though? That UN missions haven't definitively solved conflicts brought peace? That's not the point of the UN missions, however. The point is to construct Empire as discussed by Hardt Negri others (however partial their discussion may be): the end of old sovereignty (however compromised by imperialism), the beginning of Empire legitimated now as an enforcer of human rights guarantor against genocide, with its police, judges, social workers, etc. Sure thing -- the UN is handy for the US as a means of socialising the costs of its global security policies. The powers concerned can look forward to mild sops in return. But the issue here is not one of either/or. More like both/and. Let me explain. The US itself is torn between wanting to control everything and the costs that would involve. The UN is a useful mechanism of spreading costs (i.e. financial, bodybags), and is delegated lower priority tasks like Africa, East Timor, cleaning up NATO's mess in Kosovo, and Southern Lebanon (though, pointedly, not Palestine). This was apparent in the US's efforts to screw wads of cash out of Japan during the Gulf War. But where the US really wants to ensure an outcome commensurate with its wishes, it's NATO that is now assuming the privileged role of preferred instrument. Even within NATO, there are tensions about control and costs, as the controversy over the proposed European Rapid Reaction Force reveals. But we should not confuse the contradictions of US foreign policy with a regard for the UN as retaining a status commensurate with that which supposedly legitimated the Korean war. And NATO, as a separate vested interest, with its own quasi-autonomous organisational capability, is eager in this post-Cold War world to find a new role for itself. NATO would be a good case study for the public choice people in this respect. It's indeed both/and. NATO to punish the truly recalcitrant, the UN for the rest, under Empire. You said earlier: At 12:19 PM +0300 6/28/01, Keaney Michael wrote: Putting my cards on the table, I stand with Rob in his assessment that Gareth Evans is a major improvement on General Wiranto At 12:19 PM +0300 6/28/01, Keaney Michael wrote: Louis continues: The only answer really is to overthrow the US government and send all the criminals like Clinton, Bush Sr. and Jr. to prison. That's how world peace will be achieved, not by providing left apologetics for their criminal behavior. Absolutely true, but, let's face it, a distant dream, however noble. At least many East Timorese can now live to fight another day. In this regard, Hardt Negri capture an aspect of how Empire comes into being (though they neglect others). H N do not think of Empire-building as a project unilaterally imposed from above by the ruling class the imperial elite. In a typical Autonomist post-modern fashion, they see the Empire rising from below: In our time this desire [for the internationalization and globalization of relationships, beyond national boundaries] that was set in motion by the multitude has been addressed (in a strange and perverted but nonetheless real way) by the construction of Empire. One might even say that the construction of Empire and its global networks is a _response_ to the various struggles against the modern machines of power, and specifically to class struggle driven by the multitude's desire for liberation (43). The multitude's desire for liberation, in this particular instance of Empire-building, includes the East Timorese' righteous aspiration for independence from Indonesia supported by sympathy solidarity of good people like you, Chomsky, activists for ETAN, trade unionists in Australia, and so on. The same goes for the Balkans, Rwanda, etc. In the process, however, new precedents for future interventions get set, new frameworks for managing the fallouts of old new conflicts (many of them fallouts of the SAPs) formed, new structures of feelings (international bureaucrats peacekeepers are better than local despots) come into being. National sovereignty is coming to an end (except for the USA) because the multitude want human rights under capitalism (an impossibility), rights cannot be enforced without military powers -- hence the birth of Empire. Yoshie
Re: East Timor/United Nations
Michael the K wrote: The crumbling of the Portuguese empire at this time led the Kissinger State Department and the CIA to instigate some of the most disgusting foreign policy ever perpetrated by the US, as civil wars were deliberately created in Angola (with the creation of UNITA under the psychotic Jonas Savimbi) for what it's worth, UNITA wasn't created from above. Rather, it arose as part of the war of liberation against Portugal. Savimbi was probably corrupt from the start, but he sounded like a revolutionary for awhile. Maybe he's an example of power corrupting. In any case, Kissinger found him to be a worthy representative of the free world. Also, China supported him for quite awhile. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: East Timor/United Nations
Michael K. wrote: But East Timor is not the Korean War, and the UN has long ceased to be synonymous with US foreign policy. Even the Korean War's use of the UN as a fig-leaf for US intervention was an exception, the result of the USSR's representative's walk-out from the Security Council. We shouldn't treat the UN as merely a puppet of US foreign policy (as Louis seems to do, just as he sees the black bourgeoisie in the US as mere puppets of Nixon). Given the way the Security Council dominates, it represents the balance of forces between the big powers, so that it usually reflects the collective interests of the center, with the US riding herd, especially nowadays, with the USSR off the stage. Divisions within the imperialist bloc allow for some good things to happen. And the General Assembly does have some power, so that people like Jesse Helms have to fight to increase US influence. The role of the US UN in East Timor seems to be a matter of: we messed this place up (by allowing our ally a free hand), but there's no other force to clean it up. Take it or leave it. Until the left actually has force on the international level, we're stuck with that horrible choice. Until then, we have to ferret out and tell the truth about what's happening there. It's not the UN that will do good things in East Timor as much as the left's efforts to countervail the greedy power of the US and similar forces. Even that pressure can be perverted, however, as seen in the leftist veneer that was sometimes used to dress up the war against Serbia. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: East Timor/United Nations
Michael Keaney says: Yoshie, having gone upmarket with the FT and the Oil and Gas Journal: Upmarket? You're such a snob, Michael! :- The integrity of Indonesia was its preferred option, rather than risk the fragmentation of a multi-ethnic state and thereby all its investments there, as well as lucrative arms contracts. The USA initially thought the same thing with regard to Yugoslavia. However, times change, and quick. Indonesia is becoming ungovernable by either the local despot (like Suharto) or the local democrat (like Wahid), due to the continuing fallouts of the Asian financial crisis that have added to decentralizing dynamics of ethnicized conflicts (provinces against the central government). * The Times (London) April 2, 2001, Monday SECTION: Business HEADLINE: Ethnic violence threatens world energy security BYLINE: Carl Mortished Mortars fired at its Indonesian liquefied natural gas plant have forced Exxon to shut it down EXXONMOBIL's gasfield on the island of Sumatra was hit by mortar fire last month. Live explosives landed inside the compound of a gas control centre, but its staff escaped injury. Exxon's operations in Aceh, the northern tip of Indonesia, are being targeted in a guerrilla war waged by separatists against the Indonesian state. An Exxon plane was fired upon, wounding two local staff, company buses have been targeted with remote-controlled bombs planted in the road and other vehicles have been hijacked. There have been 28 attacks over the past month - firefights, bombings and assaults on vehicles - but the mortar attack early last month was particularly frightening, Bill Cumming, information officer for the oil company in Indonesia, says. The facility was not designed to withstand military attack,'' he said. If they had hit certain bits of equipment, there would have been a catastrophic explosion. The control unit collects natural gas from Exxon's wells and cleans it for delivery to PT Arun NGL, a liquefied natural gas plant owned by Pertamina, the Indonesian state energy company. The plant lowers the gas temperature to minus 160C at which point it liquefies. It is then loaded on ships destined for power stations in Japan, Korea and Taiwan. No one knows what might happen if an LNG plant were hit with explosives. A study on a receiving terminal in Boston suggested that the liquid fuel could spread for miles, freezing everything in its path. Only then would it vaporise and ignite. Exxon is not hanging around to find out what really happens. On March 9 the company announced it was shutting down its operations in Aceh and pulling its staff out of the area. Last week the conflict escalated, with the army accused of murdering three human-rights workers on an official visit to the region. It is a bitter blow for the Americans. The PT Arun NGL plant was a company maker for Mobil, which discovered the Arun gasfield. At its peak in the early 1990s, Arun was shipping 13 million tonnes of LNG and the plant was delivering a quarter of Mobil's profits. Since then, production has been on the wane but last year the company loaded 117 cargoes, totalling some 6.5 million tonnes. Deutsche Bank's analysts reckon that ExxonMobil would have earned Pounds 500 million this year from its Sumatra operation, until the shooting began. They must be devastated (the plant) has stopped, Paul Sankey, oil analyst for Deutsche, says. The plant is paid off. It's a money machine. This is no local difficulty. LNG is critical to the world's energy security and Indonesia, racked by civil strife, is a big exporter. TotalfinaElf, the French oil and gas company is a big investor in Bontang, Indonesia's largest LNG plant, located on the eastern side of the island of Borneo. Exporting 20 million tonnes of LNG per year, worth some $ 7 million (Pounds 4.9 million) per day in revenues, the plant is vital for Indonesia's financial security. However, the state of Kalimantan is no tropical paradise. Ethnic rivalry has led to a murderous campaign by indigenous Dayak tribal people against immigrants. So far the Bontang plant has escaped the mayhem. East of Borneo, another troubled island is awaiting a big foreign investment. Our own BP wants to develop Tangguh, a gasfield in Irian Jaya. It is reputed to contain 18 trillion cu ft of reserves. An LNG plant will convert the gas molecules into dollar bills for BP. The market is likely to be China, where BP has just won a contract to build an LNG receiving terminal in Guangdong. Unfortunately, Irian Jaya is a political and social pressure cooker. General Suharto, the former dictator, sought to dominate the remote islands of Indonesia's archipelago by colonising them with settlers from Java. The policy has brought open warfare to East Timor, guerrilla fighting to Aceh and civil strife in Borneo. Many believe that Irian Jaya could become the next East Timor, with the local, Christian Papuan people turning
Re: Re: East Timor/United Nations
We shouldn't treat the UN as merely a puppet of US foreign policy (as Louis seems to do, just as he sees the black bourgeoisie in the US as mere puppets of Nixon). This is one of those sentences that Michael Perelman says are not necessary. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Re: Re: East Timor/United Nations
A Complicated War: The Harrowing of Mozambique William Finnegan Annotation Powerful, instructive, and full of humanity, this book challenges the current understanding of the war that has turned Mozambique-a naturally rich country-into the world's poorest nation. Before going to Mozambique, William Finnegan saw the war, like so many foreign observers, through a South African lens, viewing the conflict as apartheid's forward defense. This lens was shattered by what he witnessed and what he heard from Mozambicans, especially those who had lived with the bandidos armado, the armed bandits otherwise known as the Renamo rebels. The shifting, wrenching, ground-level stories that people told combine to form an account of the war more local and nuanced, more complex, more African-than anything that has been politically convenient to describe. A Complicated War combines frontline reporting, personal narrative, political analysis, and comparative scholarship to present a picture of a Mozambique harrowed by profound local conflicts-ethnic, religious, political and personal. Finnegan writes that South Africa's domination and destabilization are basic elements of Mozambique's plight, but he offers a subtle description and analysis that will allow us to see the post-apartheid region from a new, more realistic, if less comfortable, point of view. A brilliant, sometimes devastating eyewitness report of the civil war . . . that has killed a million Mozambicans. (New York Times Book Review) Vivid and arresting. . . . [A] sense of balance and insight distinguishes this book from the many tract-like accounts that have previously been written about Mozambique. (Michael Massing, Times Literary Supplement) Writing about a country asphysically and intellectually inaccessible as Mozambique takes courage, patience, and especially a willingness to pay attention to the particular. Finnegan has all of these. He brings to his subject a reporter's instinct for the facts of the story and a writer's sensitivity to character and language. (George Packer, Los Angeles Times) This engrossing, sensitive account . . . details the results of a savage war that began in 1975, a year after Mozambique gained indepence from Portugal. . . . A small classic about anarchy and the difficulties of nation building in post-colonial Africa. (Publishers Weekly) Author Bio: William Finnegan is the author of Crossing the Line: A Year in the Land of Apartheid (1986) and Dateline Soweto: Travels with Black South African Reporters (1988). He is a staff writer for The New Yorker. Cold War Guerrilla: Jonas Savimbi, the U. S. Media and the Angolan War, Vol. 31 Elaine Windrich From the Publisher This is first book on U.S. policy in Angola during the 1980s. It shows how the Reagan administration led the U.S. media to inflate the importance of Jonas Savimbi as a freedom fighter and to intensify the civil war in Angola. This well-researched and moving case study shows how the Reagan administration adopted Savimbi as an ally in the crusade against Third World governments supported by the Soviet Union and how the mainstream media followed the administration's agenda and right-wing views about the civil war in Angola. This text provides insights about how the U.S. media covers African and Third World issues in the 1990s during the Bush administration as well. The State, Violence and Development: The Political Economy of War in Mozambique, 1975-1992 Mark F. Chingono - Original Message - From: Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2001 7:15 AM Subject: [PEN-L:14198] Re: East Timor/United Nations Michael the K wrote: The crumbling of the Portuguese empire at this time led the Kissinger State Department and the CIA to instigate some of the most disgusting foreign policy ever perpetrated by the US, as civil wars were deliberately created in Angola (with the creation of UNITA under the psychotic Jonas Savimbi) for what it's worth, UNITA wasn't created from above. Rather, it arose as part of the war of liberation against Portugal. Savimbi was probably corrupt from the start, but he sounded like a revolutionary for awhile. Maybe he's an example of power corrupting. In any case, Kissinger found him to be a worthy representative of the free world. Also, China supported him for quite awhile. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: East Timor ( was Abundance (was Naderism)
- Original Message - From: Rob Schaap [EMAIL PROTECTED] G'day Lou, This is an excellent publication, although I sharply disagree with their support of UN troops in East Timor and the Mideast. -*What I can't come at* is damning the west for going in to prevent actual -slaughter from turning into almost inevitable genocide, no matter how much the -west helped to produce the constituent circumstances. Actually, what is amazing about the condemnation of support by the West for the East Timorese is that for decades Chomsky and others have made the fact that the West did nothing back in the 1970s to stop the initial invasion and mass murder as proof that it had a double standard of letting its allies commit genocide while condemning others like Cambodia. If the US and Australia had done nothing and let Indonesia slaughter the East Timorese, I guarantee that those like Louis and others who condemned intervention would use the lack of intervention as proof of the willful indifference of the West to genocide. (Note Louis's post on the failure of the West to save the Jews from the Nazis). Creating damned-if-you-do rhetorical attacks on opponents is all fine as propaganda, but it ultimately has little intellectual heft and eventually the hypocrisy does undermine the credibility of those playing the game. The US is condemned for failure to intervene against allies, except when it does take out allies or support movements that the Left supports (see East Timor or Haiti), well that is just ideological justification to support the broader interventionist policies. Which may be true, but that is convincing only to those already agreeing with the analysis that whatever the US or the West does must by definition be bad; for everyone else, opposing interventions like East Timor does more to make left opponents look hypocritical than undermine support for the Western regimes. -- Nathan Newman
Re: Re: East Timor ( was Abundance (was Naderism)
Nathan Newman: Actually, what is amazing about the condemnation of support by the West for the East Timorese is that for decades Chomsky and others have made the fact that the West did nothing back in the 1970s to stop the initial invasion and mass murder as proof that it had a double standard of letting its allies commit genocide while condemning others like Cambodia. Actually, Chomsky stresses that there is a single standard: mass murder in the name of corporate profits. If the US and Australia had done nothing and let Indonesia slaughter the East Timorese, I guarantee that those like Louis and others who condemned intervention would use the lack of intervention as proof of the willful indifference of the West to genocide. (Note Louis's post on the failure of the West to save the Jews from the Nazis). I am opposed to US intervention in principle. Period. Although I would have supported Vietnam's intervention into Cambodia or Tanzania's into Uganda against Idi Amin. There is a class difference. Creating damned-if-you-do rhetorical attacks on opponents is all fine as propaganda, but it ultimately has little intellectual heft and eventually the hypocrisy does undermine the credibility of those playing the game. The US is condemned for failure to intervene against allies, except when it does take out allies or support movements that the Left supports (see East Timor or Haiti), well that is just ideological justification to support the broader interventionist policies. The only answer really is to overthrow the US government and send all the criminals like Clinton, Bush Sr. and Jr. to prison. That's how world peace will be achieved, not by providing left apologetics for their criminal behavior. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Re: Re: East Timor ( was Abundance (was Naderism)
Let us suppose, for purposes of argument, that this little syllogism is correct in its premises, and that one can reduce genocide to capitalism, and capitalism to the USA. [I can't help but point out, however, if only in passing, that the formulation has the effect of allowing one to elide all of the instances of genocide we have faced in the immediate past, from the slaughter of Tsutsis and non-genocidal Hutus in Rwanda to the rapacious 'ethnic cleansing' undertaken by the forces under the command of Milosevic in the former Yugoslavia; it also manages to avoid discussions of such little matters as the death of millions of Ukrainians, Crimeans, Baltic nationalities of Estonians, etc. under Stalin, and the auto-genocide of Pol Pot.] What is proposed is that the East Timorese should lie down and accept slaughter at the hands of the Indonesians, rather than call for UN intervention, in order to maintain an ideological argument for building an alternative to American capitalism. The thought that an ideological alternative based on the sacrifice of entire peoples to genocide might not be very attractive to the great mass of working people does not seem to have crossed this mind. The main cause of genocide in the world is capitalism. The main capitalist power in the world is the USA. By providing legitimacy to its adventures overseas, we undercut our ability to present ourselves to working people as a political alternative. For an interesting take on humanitarian interventions, I recommend an article by Steve Shalom on znet at: http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/ShalomHumnCri.html. Here is an excerpt on the classic instance of the dubious character of such interventions. Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 212-98-6869 Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass -- .
Re: Re: Re: East Timor ( was Abundance (was Naderism)
a greater Albania. All of the half-dozen references in Nexis to ethnically clean or ethnic cleansing over the next seven years attribute the phrase to Albanian nationalists. The New York Times returned to the Kosovo issue in 1986, when the paper's Henry Kamm (4/28/86) reported that Slavic Yugoslavians blame ethnic Albanians for continuing assaults, rape and vandalism. They believe their aim is to drive non-Albanians out of the province. He reported suspicions by Slavs that the autonomous Communist authorities in Kosovo were covering up anti-Slavic crimes, including arson at a nunnery and the brutal mutilation of a Serbian farmer. Kamm quoted a prescient Western diplomat who described Kosovo as Yugoslavia's single greatest problem. By 1987, the Times was portraying a dire situation in Kosovo. David Binder reported (11/1/87): Ethnic Albanians in the Government have manipulated public funds and regulations to take over land belonging to Serbs . Slavic Orthodox churches have been attacked, and flags have been torn down. Wells have been poisoned and crops burned. Slavic boys have been knifed, and some young ethnic Albanians have been told by their elders to rape Serbian girls . As Slavs flee the protracted violence, Kosovo is becoming what ethnic Albanian nationalists have been demanding for years, and especially strongly since the bloody rioting by ethnic Albanians in Pristina in 1981--an 'ethnically pure' Albanian region, a 'Republic of Kosovo' in all but name. This is the situation--at least as perceived by Serbs--that led to Milosevic's infamous 1987 speech promising protection of Serbs, and later resulted in the revocation of Kosovo's autonomy. Despite being easily available on Nexis, virtually none of this material has found its way into contemporary coverage of Kosovo, in the New York Times or anywhere else. Consistent skepticism It may be, of course, that some of the charges levied against Albanian nationalists during the '80s were exaggerated or even fabricated by politically motivated Serbs. Those who are tempted to dismiss these accounts based on this possibility, however, should be careful to apply the same critical standards to media coverage of anti-Albanian atrocities in the '90s. The current coverage of Serbian crimes, if anything, should be viewed with even greater skepticism, since Yugoslavia has now become an official enemy of the U.S., and establishment reporting generally shows a strong bias against such countries. (See Manufacturing Consent, Herman and Chomsky.) And if one suggests that the New York Times had a peculiar anti-Albanian bias in the '80s, one still has to explain why similar reports of proto-ethnic cleansing appeared in the Washington Post (11/29/86) and the Financial Times (7/20/82, 7/22/86). It would not be responsible journalism, of course, to imply that crimes against ethnic Slavs justify assaults of even greater magnitude against ethnic Albanians. The challenge of reporting on a cycle of violence is to make sure that the wounds nursed by each side are not presented as if they vindicate further violence. The Times' Binder makes an attempt at this in his November 1, 1987 piece: Many Yugoslavs blame the troubles on the ethnic Albanians, but the matter is more complex in a country with as many nationalities and religions as Yugoslavia's and involves economic development, law, politics, families and flags. As recently as 20 years ago, the Slavic majority treated ethnic Albanians as inferiors to be employed as hewers of wood and carriers of heating coal. The ethnic Albanians, who now number 2 million, were officially deemed a minority, not a constituent nationality, as they are today. Of course, it's not always the case that both sides are equally or even partially at fault in an ethnic conflict: The Holocaust was not a response to historic crimes committed by German Jews against German Christians, and the people of East Timor did not provoke an Indonesian invasion by anti-Javanese pogroms. The question of historical responsibility is one that must be answered through careful research and reporting. Overwhelmingly, the U.S. media have failed to do that research, instead relying on a simplified, truncated official history that serves NATO's propaganda purposes more than it serves the citizenry's need for a complete and accurate context. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Re: Re: Re: Re: East Timor ( was Abundance (was Naderism)
was in relation to the Albanian nationalists' program for Kosovo: The nationalists have a two-point platform, the Times' Marvine Howe quotes a Communist (and ethnically Albanian) official in Kosovo (7/12/82), first to establish what they call an ethnically clean Albanian republic and then the merger with Albania to form a greater Albania. All of the half-dozen references in Nexis to ethnically clean or ethnic cleansing over the next seven years attribute the phrase to Albanian nationalists. The New York Times returned to the Kosovo issue in 1986, when the paper's Henry Kamm (4/28/86) reported that Slavic Yugoslavians blame ethnic Albanians for continuing assaults, rape and vandalism. They believe their aim is to drive non-Albanians out of the province. He reported suspicions by Slavs that the autonomous Communist authorities in Kosovo were covering up anti-Slavic crimes, including arson at a nunnery and the brutal mutilation of a Serbian farmer. Kamm quoted a prescient Western diplomat who described Kosovo as Yugoslavia's single greatest problem. By 1987, the Times was portraying a dire situation in Kosovo. David Binder reported (11/1/87): Ethnic Albanians in the Government have manipulated public funds and regulations to take over land belonging to Serbs . Slavic Orthodox churches have been attacked, and flags have been torn down. Wells have been poisoned and crops burned. Slavic boys have been knifed, and some young ethnic Albanians have been told by their elders to rape Serbian girls . As Slavs flee the protracted violence, Kosovo is becoming what ethnic Albanian nationalists have been demanding for years, and especially strongly since the bloody rioting by ethnic Albanians in Pristina in 1981--an 'ethnically pure' Albanian region, a 'Republic of Kosovo' in all but name. This is the situation--at least as perceived by Serbs--that led to Milosevic's infamous 1987 speech promising protection of Serbs, and later resulted in the revocation of Kosovo's autonomy. Despite being easily available on Nexis, virtually none of this material has found its way into contemporary coverage of Kosovo, in the New York Times or anywhere else. Consistent skepticism It may be, of course, that some of the charges levied against Albanian nationalists during the '80s were exaggerated or even fabricated by politically motivated Serbs. Those who are tempted to dismiss these accounts based on this possibility, however, should be careful to apply the same critical standards to media coverage of anti-Albanian atrocities in the '90s. The current coverage of Serbian crimes, if anything, should be viewed with even greater skepticism, since Yugoslavia has now become an official enemy of the U.S., and establishment reporting generally shows a strong bias against such countries. (See Manufacturing Consent, Herman and Chomsky.) And if one suggests that the New York Times had a peculiar anti-Albanian bias in the '80s, one still has to explain why similar reports of proto-ethnic cleansing appeared in the Washington Post (11/29/86) and the Financial Times (7/20/82, 7/22/86). It would not be responsible journalism, of course, to imply that crimes against ethnic Slavs justify assaults of even greater magnitude against ethnic Albanians. The challenge of reporting on a cycle of violence is to make sure that the wounds nursed by each side are not presented as if they vindicate further violence. The Times' Binder makes an attempt at this in his November 1, 1987 piece: Many Yugoslavs blame the troubles on the ethnic Albanians, but the matter is more complex in a country with as many nationalities and religions as Yugoslavia's and involves economic development, law, politics, families and flags. As recently as 20 years ago, the Slavic majority treated ethnic Albanians as inferiors to be employed as hewers of wood and carriers of heating coal. The ethnic Albanians, who now number 2 million, were officially deemed a minority, not a constituent nationality, as they are today. Of course, it's not always the case that both sides are equally or even partially at fault in an ethnic conflict: The Holocaust was not a response to historic crimes committed by German Jews against German Christians, and the people of East Timor did not provoke an Indonesian invasion by anti-Javanese pogroms. The question of historical responsibility is one that must be answered through careful research and reporting. Overwhelmingly, the U.S. media have failed to do that research, instead relying on a simplified, truncated official history that serves NATO's propaganda purposes more than it serves the citizenry's need for a complete and accurate context. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: East Timor ( was Abundance (was Naderism)
I am sure that my history is unreliable, by the lights of the history of former Yugoslavia according to Milosevic and his apologists. No doubt my history of Rwanda is also unreliable, by the lights of the history of Hutu Power and their apologists. And so on. I have yet to learn of the perpetrators of acts of genocide who did not find some reason to blame their victims, from the American campaign against the indigenous people of this content to the Nazis' denunciations of Jews to the genocidal Hutus' complaints against the Tsutsis. There is always some historical event, no matter how remote [Serbian ultra-nationalists love to go back centuries], which can be presented as justification for blood baths. Too bad that anyone who knows the first thing about the recent history of Kosova knows that prior to the repression begun by Milosevic, the Albanian majority in the province was organized behind a non-violent movement seeking national autonomy and full rights. The problem is that your history is unreliable. For example, the first occurrence of ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia was directed against the Serbs of Kosovo. Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 212-98-6869 Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass -- .
East Timor occupation to continue
According to CNN a senior UN official has reported that the UN administration of East Timor, started in 1999, should continue another 3 years, despite elections in August. This announcement appears to have attracted no controversy. A campaign for the occupation was spearheaded by Noam Chomsky, and surprisingly for once, the imperialists decided not to placate the anti-democratic tendencies in Indonesia. But make no mistake, this UN regime, was imposed under pain of economic destruction by the IMF. Its politics and economics are those of the IMF, and steps towards a more radical socialist future by the local people will be blocked. Also there will be oppression of the muslim minority, perhaps including some deaths. Nevertheless it is also in the interests of the majority of the working people of the Indonesia archipelago that a cycle of ethnic/religious cleansing is damped down, and that the population of East Timor do not swell the slums of Jakarta forming an even larger reserve army of labour, to drive down the price of labour power of everyone. But global anarchists and pure left wing critics of capitalism should note that this is a decision by an embryonic world government to maintain peacekeeping with the barrel of a gun. It is in the interests of global finance capital. And it is progressive. Or do people think that the lack of dead bodies of Christians found by the peace keeping forces shows that talk of genocide was spurious? In which case the economics of this occupation are even clearer. Chris Burford London
'Free' East Timor
Penners That the present situation is better than that which prevailed under Indonesian rule (and "withdrawal") is no excuse for what the present occupiers are doing. Responsible for overseeing the "reconstruction" of East Timor is a body called the International Crisis Group (http://www.intl-crisis-group.org) which comprises the usual collection of Trilateral Commission great and good (and is a neat way of bypassing the formalities of UN participation). Of the three leading ICG board members, former Australian foreign minister and ICG President and Chief Executive Gareth Evans is "handling" East Timor. Evans, as foreign minister under both Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, signed the notorious Timor Gap oil exploration deal with the Indonesian government, carving up the rights to reserves in the Timor Sea. In so doing he was following in a long tradition of Australian Labor Party handwashing over the Indonesian occupation, beginning with Gough Whitlam's dismissal of the invasion as "an internal matter" for the Indonesian government. The biography of Evans supplied by the ICG's website relates that, among other achievements, he was named "Australian Humanist of the Year" in 1990. Now Evans is well placed to ensure that the agreements he signed remain in force, and the position taken by the Australian government and its acolytes is so brazen that others involved in the UN operation there are dismayed by the apparent lack of restraint. Among those who appear to be fighting on behalf of the Timorese is Peter Galbraith (son of John Kenneth). Articles at http://etan.org/et2000c/october/22-31/23aust.htm http://etan.org/et2000c/october/22-31/24etreci.htm http://etan.org/et2000c/october/15-21/17toil.htm
'Free' East Timor
Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2000 17:53:19 +1300 From: Philip Ferguson [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: 'Free' East Timor The following article appeared in the Australian magazine 'Socialist Alternative' #45, September 2000. John Howard and the media haven't let up about how wonderfully East Timor is progressing as an independent country and how proud we should all be of Australian troops in East Timor. According to their logic, the struggles of East Timorese people are all over, and the United Nations transitional government is to be congratulated. This report from Kate Habgood, working with students in East Timor, demonstrates how far these claims are from the truth. After fighting off 500 years of Portuguese colonialism and 25 years of Indonesian colonialism, East Timorese are once again second-class citizens in their own country. Nine months after the arrival of the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET), East Timor is widely regarded here as the UN's greatest failure yet. A colossal, top-heavy bureaucracy sits on the harbour in Dili. The head of the administration, Sergio Vieira de Mello, has sweeping powers which effectively make him an autocrat. It wasn't long before students re-named one branch of the UN's tentacles, the National Consultative Council, "Nepotisme, Collusi, Corrupsi", recognising that the NCC's job was to approve every decision made by the UN and that it worked only in the interests of its members. Protests against UNTAET came to a head in April. The central focus was the lack of job opportunities for Timorese, but also about the fact that, six months after UNTAET's arrival, Dili still consisted of piles of rubble and blackened structures. The UN responded with reams of propaganda about how only private and foreign investment could rebuild the nation, and the biggest danger was of producing a civil service on the scale of Indonesia's. One particularly lovely example was an article in their newspaper about a good bloke called Eddie Taylor, who out of the goodness of his heart came from Bali to assist with the rebuilding. Eddie employs dozens of local staff in his construction company, restaurant and god knows what else. His restaurant, phil's grill, sits near the airport. International staff can drink $4 beers and eat $12 meals while groups of unemployed East Timorese sit on the embankment above the restaurant, watching them. Most, if not all, of Eddie's local staff would be receiving less than a main meal per day. These cockroach capitalists are not willing to share more than a tiny fraction of their quickly accumulating wealth with the Timorese. The notorious Timor Lodge is run by Wayne Thomas and a consortium of Australians, including Liberal Party president Shane Stone. The hotel is situated on a former Indonesian army barracks, officially the property of UNTAET. Thomas has been credited with introducing prostitution to East Timor and was most recently rumoured to be caught importing bullets. Staff receiving 25,000 rupiah ($A5) a week at the Timor Lodge earlier this year struck for higher wages and won 40,000 rupiah. However, a week later they were handed a lump of money and told never to show their faces on the property again. In other areas, local Timorese staff are often treated with contempt, ordered around as photocopy dogsbodies and denied higher wages because of "lack of skills". The UN still has a general practice of hiring only English speakers. The disparity between local and international salaries is emerging as one of the biggest issues. Local wages have been set in accordance with the current price of goods. The NGOs (Non Goverment Organisations) have drafted an agreement with "an explicit understanding between employing agencies that they will adhere to these salaries in order to minimise the poaching of employees." These salaries start at $A4.36 a day for unskilled labour. Many goods for sale in the Dili markets are more expensive than in Australia. Bus fares before the ballot were Rp100 (2 cents), now they are Rp1,000. Kerosene has doubled in price while petrol, which is now brought to East Timor exclusively by an Australian company, has quadrupled. One Timorese student estimates that an adequate wage to feed, clothe and support a family of eight or nine people is around $A30-$35 a day. A "bottom of the pile" wage for international staff is around $US40,000 a year, while for Timorese it's $US360. For example, an apprentice carpenter in Maliana gets $US1.50 a day - plus rice. The UN justifies this in an internal document (written to respond to sticky questions from locals) stating: "National staff's remuneration is set according to local salary conditions. International staff are paid according to international salary scales, based on the cost of living elsewhere." The UN argues that it is legitimate to invest more money in the maintenance of UNTAET rather than in rebuilding the
[PEN-L:12512] FW: East Timor update
Australia's under side Canberra has looked the other way to protect western business interests in Indonesia John Pilger The Guardian, Tuesday October 5, 1999 What is the "international community" really doing in East Timor? After their arrival almost two weeks ago, Australian troops have secured only the capital, Dili, and a few towns. In West Timor, fewer than a dozen foreign aid workers struggle to guarantee the safety of 230,000 refugees, including 35,000 children, while the power of life and death remains with the Indonesian military. An explanation is offered in a remarkable interview given by John Howard, the Australian prime minister, in which he described his government as Washington's deputy sheriff. What mattered was the "stability" of Indonesia, and the protection of western business interests. His honesty, or garrulousness, is to be applauded, along with his historical accuracy. From the Boxer rebellion to Vietnam, Australians have fought the battles of the great imperial powers. In 1989, Australian troops were sent to Bougainville, an island off Papua New Guinea, and site of a huge mining operation by the multinational Rio Tinto. The Bougainvilleans had taken over the mine and the island, in a bid for independence. East Timor is no exception. When Australia's then prime minister Gough Whitlam met the Indonesian dictator Suharto in 1974, his message was that the Portuguese colony was Jakarta's for the taking. The two leaders, reported the Melbourne Age, "agreed last weekend that the best and most realistic future for Timor was association with Indonesia". The East Timorese were not asked. One year later, Indonesia invaded. As the UN security council deliberated on how to respond, the US secretly re-armed the invaders while the Australian representative at the UN, Ralph Harry, presented the invasion as a civil war with "elements" of the Indonesian military. In 1982, Whitlam, although no longer in office, made an extraordinary appearance at the UN, where he declared: "It is high time the question of East Timor was voted off the UN agenda." As he spoke, the sea around East Timor was being explored by Australian companies for vast deposits of oil and gas: a preliminary act of grand larceny at the centrepiece of the Australian establishment's "special relationship" with the Indonesian dictatorship. Richard Woolcott, Canberra's ambassador in Jakarta who had been tipped off by the Indonesians that they planned to invade East Timor, set up a propaganda body, the Indonesia-Australia Institute, funded by the government. On its board was Paul Kelly, editor-in-chief of Australia's only national newspaper, the Australian, owned by Rupert Murdoch. Kelly introduced other editors to Suharto in Jakarta and his newspaper described the dictatorship, one of the most blood-soaked of the late 20th century, as "moderate". For years, none of them heard, or wanted to hear, the cries of the East Timorese. In 1991, when it was impossible to ignore evidence that hundreds of unarmed East Timorese had been killed in the Santa Cruz cemetery inDili, the Australian foreign minister, Gareth Evans, described the massacre as an "aberration". Major-General Sintog Panjaitan, the senior Indonesian officer responsible for the massacre, was invited to Canberra as an honoured guest of the Australian military. Ali Alatas, Indonesia's foreign minister and principal apologist for that and other massacres, was awarded the Order of Australia, the country's highest honour. While Prime Minister Bob Hawke raged against Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, saying that "big countries can't expect to invade little countries and get away with it", he neglected to mention that Australia had recognised Indonesia's illegal occupation of its small, defenceless neighbour. A "historic" military pact with Jakarta followed, including plans for Indonesian-Australian operations in "counter-terrorism". The proud heirs of Anzac were formally integrated into Indonesia's war effort against the East Timorese. In July last year, a senior Australian aid worker in East Timor warned that the Indonesian military was setting up militia gangs. He was dismissed as "alarmist". In November, Canberra was told that a 400-member assassination squad of the Indonesian special forces, Kopassus, had been sent to East Timor. The defence minister, John Moore, flew to Jakarta and reassured the regime that Australian policy was to "prop up the institution [of the military] as best we can". As this summer's bloody events unfolded, the Howard government was told by Australian intelligence that Indonesia planned a "scorched earth" in East Timor following the independence vote. Yet it was on Australia's insistence that the UN gave the Indonesian military responsibility for the security of the independence referendum in A
[PEN-L:12411] Oz and East Timor: a telling timeline
September 13: John Howard proudly proclaims he has 'no regrets' over East Timor: "If I had my time over again, I would not have handled things any differently." Now back to a summarising timeline as gleaned from John Lyons's article 'The Secret Timor Dossier' (*THE BULLETIN* October 12 1999, pp 24 to 29) October 1998: Australia has evidence that a militia has been dedicated to intimidating pro-independence voters in the case of a vote. Oz doesn't pass this on to the Yanks, but US official Stanley Roth foresees 'internecine violence' anyway. December 1998: Primeminister Howard writes the struggling President Habibie to congratulate him and encourage him to pursue his offer to the East Timorese of 'autonomy'. This strengthens the hand of those close to Habibie who want rid of a one-billion-dollar lemon. January 27: Habibie goes the extra yard, and a vote for self-determination is on offer. The US and Portugal want peacekeepers then and there. Downer strongly argues against it - it'd be undiplomatic to evince distrust of the Indonesians. Even ET leaders Xanana Gusmao and Bishop Belo think it's all going too quickly. February 23 1999: Questioned about this, Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas not only does not parry Downer's question about the arming of the militias, but calls this 'a legitimate arming of auxiliaries'. (see March 9) February 25: Downer asks that, in the event of the vote for independence he expects, Indonesia's military behave itself. US official Roth foresees the possibility of a provocateur-led bloodbath and, ultimately, a Wiranto presidency. Downer recommends both of 'em be sweet to Wiranto and talks Roth out of challenging Wiranto and Prabowo. Roth recommends a peacekeeping force and Downer declines (Peter Vaughese of the Primeminister's Department chimes in on Downer's side - yet a few weeks later, Howard himself will insist he was always arguing FOR such a force). The prescient Roth avers there'll ultimately have to be one, anyway. February 27: Downer again argues against Portugese Foreign Minister Jaime Gama's stance that a fully fledged peace-keeping force should oversee the vote. March 4: DIO tells Oz government that the Indonesian military are helping the militias and that Wiranto is turning a blind eye. Downer now suddenly expresses reservations that the militias are being armed at all. March 9: Downer tells journalist Laurie Oakes that Alatas has assured him the militias are not being armed. March 29: The UN Secretariat warns of a 'precarious' transition and some pressing 'security issues'. April 6: Liquica slaughter. April 14: Oz Foreign Affairs official Neil Mules repeats Oz's anti-peace-keeping stance to the concerned Portugese. April 17: Slaughter in Dili. Roth says it's getting 'out of hand'. April 19: ALL Oz's intelligence agencies have now told Howard that large scale violence is likely. Howard rings Habibie and expresses disappointment at ABRI performance in ET. Wants a meeting. April 21: ABRI and some Easat Timorese people formalise peace between them. Oz Foreign Affairs internally calls this 'unnegotiated' and 'short on delivery', in short 'a substitute for real action by TNI'. April 27: Bali summit. Habibie promises stability and Howard asks for an international police presence - the UN will fix the strength of this force, and Habibie agrees. April 30: Downer tells Albright 2-300 cops should be about right. April 28: Howard says on radio that 'there isn't any doubt that the Indonesians through this process are committed to the laying down of arms'. He said he was 'delighted' with 'em. Lyons writes that, in actual fact, Australia now considers it has 'overwhelming evidence' that Wiranto is directly linked to the East Timorese militias. May 21: DSD presents the Oz government with persuasive evidence of the Wiranto/militia link. June 14: Downer presents this evidence to the UN. June 16/17: Downer tells Roth that the UN don't want the vote postponed. It'd only encourage the militias. June 21: Oz Defence No. 2 Air Marshall Doug Riding confronts the Indonesian military chiefs with proof of their establishment, support and coordination of the militias (through their Kopassus regiment). Apparently makes Lt Gen. Bambang Yudhoyono rather cross. June 29: First militia assault on UN bases at Maliana, Liquica and Viqueque. July 10: Kofi Annan expresses increasing concern. July 16: Fateful voter registration commences. July 28-31: Downer visits Djakarta and Dili. Exerts diplomatic pressure - and then pops off to London to watch the cricket (editor's note). August 16-17: Oz and US officials meet and agree to not to do anything that might upset 'a sensitive period'. August 19: Oz Foreign Affairs recommends police and military liaison be ready for early commitment. August 30: 98.6% of registered voters turn out, and 78.5% of 'em vote for independence. Foreign Affairs calls this a t
[PEN-L:11831] Re: Re: Re: M-TH: East Timor
G'day all, I hear Ambon has been isolated by the Indonesian authorities. No transport or public communications in or out. Just a bunch of well-armed troops, some very poorly armed Christian seccessionists, and lots of people whose views on the matter just aren't going to matter. The drawn-out angst-ridden denouement of the great Indonesian saga is at hand, I reckon. And we're gonna hear very little about it while East Timor is kept bubbling along. Which takes but a couple of killings here, a bit of burning there ... Neat. Cheers, Rob.
[PEN-L:11711] Re: Re: M-TH: East Timor
G'day all, Just thought you'd like an impression of how Oz could've sold the East Timorese intervention so most in the region would buy it, and didn't. Big boys like the US have some sort of excuse for insensitive arrogant stupidity, but what's ours? 'Globalisation' is a long road with lots of off-ramps - and we're not all that far up it, I reckon. Anyway, the full story is at: http://news.com.au/frame_loader.htm?/news_content/national_content/4263591.htm PM's doctrine under seige By GREG SHERIDAN 25sep99 JOHN Howard's Doctrine, which would see Australia becoming the US's "deputy" in Asia, was under attack last night by South-East Asian leaders who branded it racist and a threat to regional ties. South-East Asian politicians said the doctrine was arrogant and had done more damage to Australia's relations with Asia than anything since the White Australia immigration policy.
[PEN-L:11636] Re: Re: Marxist response to East Timor
G'day Penpals, The Indonesian army has drafted a new internal security law, has put its very best into the national capital, and has done all any Indonesian could ever expect of its self-annointed champions. And today a couple of thousand students were just too resolute for it. Those scrawny students know an aspiring junta when they see one. And I reckon they're not gonna let it happen. They had a win today, and they're not going to forget what it tastes like. They're doin' it for themselves in a political culture that has tried to teach them for half a century that they have nothing to do with these things. Today it killed four of their number in a vain attempt to make the point. A lot of the PRD's membership and a lot of Ambonese, Acehian, West Irianese and Kalimantese dissidents might yet live long lives because of these young folk. Which makes it a Marxist enough response for me. Give me a compradorial liberal democrat before an opportunistic uniformed murderer every time! Good on ya, Djakarta! Cheers, Rob.
[PEN-L:11637] Progressive Unity, was Re: Australia, East Timor, Conscription
to tailing the Democratic Party (or hoping to reform it). Within that unity there remain very important differences (as the recent debate in pen-l on origins shows), but I would suggest that those who agree on these two issues should (using the Chinese vocabulary) regard other differences as "contradictions among the people." Carrol What a load of crap. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:11635] Progressive Unity, was Re: Australia, East Timor, Conscription
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote (on lbo):
Gary MacLennan wrote on Lou's marxism list:
[SNIP]
I have no idea whether DSP will oppose conscription or not. Who can say
with Social Democrats? It should of course put an end to their stupid claim
to have forced the government to send troops to East Timor. But I doubt
it will do that. They will retreat even further into the laager and throw
shit over the walls at their left critics. *
One of the reasons these military interventions are fought in the name of
"humanitarianism" is to overcome one of the remaining effects of the
Vietnam War: many people's opposition (in America, Australia, and
elsewhere) to see their own countrymen dying in a protracted war.
[SNIP}
It seems to me that in the last months (particularly since the u.s.
aggression in Yugoslavia) at least two principles of unity of a
future progressive coalition have emerged: a principled opposition
to all u.s. ("humanitarian") intervention and opposition (in the u.s.)
to tailing the Democratic Party (or hoping to reform it). Within
that unity there remain very important differences (as the recent
debate in pen-l on origins shows), but I would suggest that
those who agree on these two issues should (using the Chinese
vocabulary) regard other differences as "contradictions among
the people."
Carrol
[PEN-L:11516] Re: Marxist response to East Timor
At 13:38 22/09/99 -0400, Louis Proyect wrote: Jim Devine: But I'd like to know why you think that the Solidarity group violated Marxist principles in their position on E. Timor. I believe that they back the principle of the right of self-determination of nations, including the independence of E. Timor. They just have a different interpretation of the efficacy of the UN in helping E. Timor achieve achieve this goal than I do (or you do). That is, it's a disagreement concerning fact rather than principle. The United Nations, especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union, is a instrument to promote imperialist hegemony. And it has no other contradictory aspect contained within itself? despite the following remark? - the General Assembly has passed many worthy motions in recent years, including the controversial "Zionism = Racism" one. Chris Burford London
[PEN-L:11546] RE: Re: Re: Re: Marxist response to East Timor
Brad is correct that we all do not need to work on every issue. Maybe he can tell us more about Primus's study. Does he come up with anything new? Brad De Long wrote: It's on the web at http://www.cbpp.org/8-22-99wel.htm It's an important paper, the first to signal with empirical evidence that something is rotten in welfare reform. It provoked an echo on the WaPo editorial page. Primus analyzes data from 95 to 97, a 'before and after' snapshot of welfare reform and shows that income among the lowest quintile of single women with children has decreased, notwithstanding the macro-boom. Other good stuff too. Highly recommended. mbs
[PEN-L:11552] Re: Re: Re: Re: Marxist response to East Timor
Brad is correct that we all do not need to work on every issue. Maybe he can tell us more about Primus's study. Does he come up with anything new? Basically that people kicked off of welfare think that they are no longer eligible for food stamps (even though they are)--and that the state offices don't tell them that they can still get food stamps... Brad
[PEN-L:11553] Re: Marxist response to East Timor
Brad is correct that we all do not need to work on every issue. Maybe he can tell us more about Primus's study. Does he come up with anything new? Brad De Long wrote: It's on the web at http://www.cbpp.org/8-22-99wel.htm It's an important paper, the first to signal with empirical evidence that something is rotten in welfare reform. It provoked an echo on the WaPo editorial page. Primus analyzes data from 95 to 97, a 'before and after' snapshot of welfare reform and shows that income among the lowest quintile of single women with children has decreased, notwithstanding the macro-boom. Other good stuff too. Highly recommended. mbs And if these are the effects of welfare reform in--ahem!--the strongest American economy in a generation... Brad DeLong
[PEN-L:11531] Re: Re: Marxist response to East Timor
Please note that the assumption that "something" has to be be done is strictly a result of the way in which the bourgeois press treats the world, carefully picking out what "problems" demand solution and what problems do not even exist. The problem of severe malnutrition for those children in the U.S. whose mothers were kicked off welfare does not exist. The problem of [you name it] does not exist. The only problem in the world now is in East Timor. (Never mind the deaths of children from disease and malnutrition in Iraq.) Why do you immediately feel that whenever the bourgeois press yelps every marxist must mount her silver stallion with a Hi Ho Silver, Away!??? There is nothing we can do except continue developing and (when possible) spreading our understanding of imperialism and its role in the world today. Nothing any marxist does will save so much as one sprained finger in East Timor. It is either self-indulgence or ignorance to think "we" have to "do something." What have you done today to increase wages in South Africa? What have you done today to reduce malaria in Guatemala? What have you done today to reduce the prison population in the FSU? Carrol Nothing. But in the past week I have called four reporters, and told them that they really should make sure that someone on their publication is working on Wendell Primus's findings about "extreme poverty" and the 1996 welfare "reform"--that this is going to become a very, very big issue when the next recession hits (or possibly before during the Democratic primaries), and that they will be sorry then that they didn't build up the knowledge base now to effectively cover it... Brad DeLong
[PEN-L:11474] Re: Re: Marxist response to East Timor
G'day Yoshie, According to various posts and news articles, Australian unionists sprang into activism, using union bans, no less. If only they hadn't called for Australian/UN 'peace-keepers' and instead targeted the Australian government for its past support of the Indonesian occupation of East Timor and present design of expanding its regional imperialist stature, it would have made a Marxist sense, I think. Every part of the entire Australian left (including sections of the ALP itself) has been moaning about Australia's outrageous actions re East Timor since late 1975. The media ignored it, but it was always there. However, judging by what they actualy did, I have to regrettably conclude that their actions basically reinforced the direction in which the Australian government wanted to go. Perhaps, it was planned that way from the top. They did what the occasion demanded, I guess. Noone was gonna interview them for their rare insights into regional geopolitics, and it wouldn't have saved a soul if they had. But bans were gonna make louder the guilty stirrings of a populace. And I don't think there was any elite planning involved either (Oz's elite have never evinced either the understanding or the interest) - in fact, this government very loudly and persistently tried to stuff the rising profile of East Timorese aspirations back into its box right up to March of this year. I think the government has been forced to lead this charge by across-the-board sentiment (just as nearly all our Golkar-snogging foreign editors were forced to turn arse-about on the issue - even Murdoch's boys) - now there are political points in resolve and salience, so that's the way we're going. The strategic comfort is that we may just be getting in with a new generation of compradorial elite in Djakarta - maybe (and I agree with Max that standing by on some abstract principle while the dominant section of the military have their ghastly way would have neither short nor long-term advantages for anyone but them - unfortunately that's not to say the short-term plus for the locals is gonna translate into long-term benefits either, but you have to play the hands as they come). Cheers, Rob.
[PEN-L:11468] RE: Marxist response to East Timor
As one willing to have his mind changed by superior argument, regardless of its geographical source, what would be the principled Marxist response to the problems of East Timor? I am sufficiently familiar with the awful history, and recognise the culpability, complicity, duplicity, involvement, etc., of the Western powers. What I want to know is, what is to be done given the present conjuncture? Elementary. The progressive role for East Timorese is to serve as martyrs to Euro-centric "marxist" (sic) ideology. God forbid that some of them were actually rescued by the UN, or even worse, by an imperialist nation. It would lend undeserved credit to liberal capitalism and/or social democracy, confuse the people, and retard the Struggle. Hey, waiter! Where the hell is my latte mocha? [sip] mbs
[PEN-L:11470] Marxist response to East Timor
Michael Keany: As one willing to have his mind changed by superior argument, regardless of its geographical source, what would be the principled Marxist response to the problems of East Timor? I am sufficiently familiar with the awful history, and recognise the culpability, complicity, duplicity, involvement, etc., of the Western powers. What I want to know is, what is to be done given the present conjuncture? I am not sure who you are referring to when you ask "what is to be done". Does this mean what the UN should do? Or the radical movement? I can only answer the second question. The radical movement should do everything in its power to assist East Timorese self-determination. The concrete slogans and forms of action should conform--as always--to the objective situation. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:11471] Marxist response to East Timor
Elementary. The progressive role for East Timorese is to serve as martyrs to Euro-centric "marxist" (sic) ideology. God forbid that some of them were actually rescued by the UN, or even worse, by an imperialist nation. It would lend undeserved credit to liberal capitalism and/or social democracy, confuse the people, and retard the Struggle. Hey, waiter! Where the hell is my latte mocha? mbs [From Sept. 21, Guardian] The Real Reason For The United Nation's Peacekeeping Role In East Timor Is To Maintain Indonesian Control By John Pilger For the few of us who reported East Timor long before it was finally declared news, the "disclosures" last weekend that Washington had trained Indonesia's death squads are bizarre. That the American, British and Australian governments have underwritten proportionally the greatest savagery since the Holocaust has been a matter of unambiguous record for a quarter of a century. All it needed was reporting. In December 1975, after US secretary of state Henry Kissinger returned from Jakarta, having given Suharto the green light to invade East Timor, he called his staff together and discussed how a congressional ban on arms to Indonesia could be circumvented. "Can't we construe a communist government [in East Timor] as self-defense?" he asked. Told this would not work, Kissinger gave orders that he wanted arms shipments secretly "started again in January". A few weeks later, on January 23 1976, the US ambassador to the United Nations, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, sent a top-secret cable to Kissinger in which he boasted about the "considerable progress" he had made in blocking UN action on East Timor. Moynihan later wrote: "The department of state desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective [on East Timor]. This task was given to me and I carried it through with no inconsiderable success." Since then, there have been overwhelming evidence that the US, Britain and Australia have trained and armed Indonesian special forces known as Kopassus, the equivalent of the Nazi Waffen-SS, who spearheaded the invasion of East Timor and bear much of the responsibility for the death of a third of the population. In the US, Kopassus officers have been trained in the tactics of CIA's "phoenix program" in Vietnam, which was the systematic extermination of tens of thousands of peasants. In Britain, senior Kopassus officers given training include the main identified in an Australian inquiry as the officer who ordered the murder of two Australian TV teams in East Timor in 1974. Last year defense secretary George Robertson urged the sale of armored vehicles to the Kopassus commander, General Prabowo, whom he described as "an enlightened officer, keen [on] human rights". The Kopassus killers have received perhaps their warmest welcome in nearby Australia, where the Australian SAS have trained them in "hostile interrogation" at their base at Swanbourne near Perth. When my film investigating the west's role in East Timor, Death Of A Nation, opened in Perth in 1994, Australian federal police went to the cinema and demanded to know who had told the manager he could show it "without special permission". It was therefore not surprising that on his arrival in East Timor on Sunday, Major-General Peter Cosgove, the Australian commander of the UN force, made a point of congratulating the Indonesian military for its "first class" assistance and offered reassurances that his job was not to "disarm the militias". The militias are, of course, the Indonesian military, Promoted to mythical importance by journalists gulled by western government officials and diplomats, many are not East Timorese at all, but Indonesian soldiers in disguise. In secretly briefing its own government, Australian intelligence described the militias as merely the facade of an Indonesian "scorched earth" conspiracy, aimed at de-populating East Timor, and directed by none other than General Wiranto, the defense minister. Last April, Wiranto was visited by Admiral Dennis Blair, US commander in chief in the Pacific who assured him of continued US backing,. "Wiranto was delighted," reported Alan Nairn in the New York Nation, "[and] took this as a green light to proceed with the militia operation." Two weeks ago, President Clinton declared East Timor "still part of Indonesia" - a little like saying, in 1940, that occupied France was a part of Nazi Germany. The real agenda for the UN "peacekeeping" is to ensure that East Timor, while nominally independent in the future, remains under the sway of Jakarta and western business interests. For the Australian government, the urgent priority is to maintain the piratical Timor Gap treaty with Indonesia, which divides up East Timor's vast oil and gas reserves. For the British, in one sense the empire was re
[PEN-L:11478] Re: Marxist response to East Timor
Michael Keaney wrote: it is up to people like us to ensure that those countries sponsoring the intervention are pressured into a following a genuinely humanitarian course NO! NO! NO! Back in the 1950s there was a fad of "The height of" jokes. The height of arrogance was a flea approaching an elephant with intentions of rape. That seems to me a good model for your view that anything at all in this instance is "up to us." Our responsibility is to continue various random efforts to build our strength to the point where it makes sense to say something is up to us. And I want to emphasize the random because we are at present too weak to consult with each other on non-random choices of action. Fussing about what we should do in East Timor is counterproductive in respect to our real responsibilities. Carrol
[PEN-L:11481] Marxist response to East Timor
Carrol Cox wrote: There is a quite false assumption here that there is always something to be done. This case, unfortunately, is one in which the first response has to be: There is nothing to be done. Please note that the assumption that "something" has to be be done is strictly a result of the way in which the bourgeois press treats the world, carefully picking out what "problems" demand solution and what problems do not even exist. The problem of severe malnutrition for those children in the U.S. whose mothers were kicked off welfare does not exist. The problem of [you name it] does not exist. The only problem in the world now is in East Timor. (Never mind the deaths of children from disease and malnutrition in Iraq.) Why do you immediately feel that whenever the bourgeois press yelps every marxist must mount her silver stallion with a Hi Ho Silver, Away!??? Radicals and progressives have, for 24 years, been campaigning on behalf of the people of East Timor. Radicals and progressives were, for many years prior to the acknowledgment of the Western political and media establishment, campaigning against apartheid in South Africa. My concern for East Timor predates 1999. I am hardly alone in this respect (see John Pilger article). The situation today, however, is very different from that that has prevailed over the previous 24 years. That the bourgeois news media is aware of the situation means that greater awareness of the gravity of the situation, together with the history behind it, including Western complicity, duplicity, racism, etc., is more likely to result. Informed, articulate critique from radical and progressive sources is more likely than ever before to make its way into outlets which reach the wider population. It's a matter of recognising the change in circumstances and, armed with understanding, acting as best one can. There is nothing we can do except continue developing and (when possible) spreading our understanding of imperialism and its role in the world today. Maybe if I shout loud enough the folks stranded in the mountains of East Timor in fear for their lives, and fortunate enough to understand English, will gain a better understanding of the evils of U.S. hegemonic imperialist global capitalist enslaving racist eurocentric exploitation. Or something like that. Nothing any marxist does will save so much as one sprained finger in East Timor. It is either self-indulgence or ignorance to think "we" have to "do something." What have you done today to increase wages in South Africa? What have you done today to reduce malaria in Guatemala? What have you done today to reduce the prison population in the FSU? This can be interpreted as a convenient "excuse me". Or hopeless nihilism. I believe that the efforts of dedicated campaigners like John Pilger and Amnesty International and all other radical and progressive campaigners combined have helped to bring about a set of circumstances favourable to those concerned to bring about change in Western governments' policies towards Indonesia and East Timor. We cannot rely on our governments to act in good faith. That is why "doing something" is now more vital than ever, keeping the pressure on that they will not renege and continue the dirty dealing which has been the shameful history of this particular episode. Is this naive? Maybe. But it's a whole lot more inspiring than your "tough-minded", "realistic" hand-washing which, for all its avowedly progressive rationale, ends up being as precisely tough-minded and realistic as Henry Kissinger and all those other players of the great global Cold War game. Michael
[PEN-L:11487] Marxist response to East Timor
Jim Devine: But I'd like to know why you think that the Solidarity group violated Marxist principles in their position on E. Timor. I believe that they back the principle of the right of self-determination of nations, including the independence of E. Timor. They just have a different interpretation of the efficacy of the UN in helping E. Timor achieve achieve this goal than I do (or you do). That is, it's a disagreement concerning fact rather than principle. The United Nations, especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union, is a instrument to promote imperialist hegemony. In the Phyllis Bennis excerpt I posted yesterday, it was clear that the founders had this in mind. This is especially true with respect to military interventions which are under the control of the Security Council. The right-wing hostility toward the UN tends to confuse these questions, since the General Assembly has passed many worthy motions in recent years, including the controversial "Zionism = Racism" one. However, from a class standpoint, the UN is identical to all the other regional security formations like the OAS, SEATO, ANZUS, etc. The only difference is that the region encompasses the entire planet and there are more illusions in it. The UN is to questions of war and peace as the IMF is to economic questions. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:11502] Re: Marxist response to East Timor
Louis Proyect wrote: Jim Devine: But I'd like to know why you think that the Solidarity group violated Marxist principles in their position on E. Timor. I believe that they back the principle of the right of self-determination of nations, including the independence of E. Timor. They just have a different interpretation of the efficacy of the UN in helping E. Timor achieve achieve this goal than I do (or you do). That is, it's a disagreement concerning fact rather than principle. The United Nations, especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union, is a instrument to promote imperialist hegemony. I agree -- and that is why in my post on this target I expressed extreme displeasure at Solidarity's stand on East Timor (or that part of it which represents or implies a distorted view of the United Nations). But Jim is I think right that it is a mistake of fact, not principle, which was why I called it a wrong application of marxist principle. I think the point worth worrying a little bit, because it bears on our thinking as to the fundamental principles of organization and policy on which the marxist left may some day unite. For my own part, I begin to see unity around opposition to all u.s. intervention around the world as fundamental, but I think we can fight that out without pronouncing it an issue of "marxist principle." Your reply to Jim is (I think) wholly right in its description of the U.N. -- but doesn't touch on the actual point Jim made (re fact vs. principle). U.S. imperialism at the present time the main enemy of the world's peoples. That is my judgment, but I don't want to make it a matter of "marxist vs non-marxist." Carrol
[PEN-L:11482] RE: Re: Marxist response to East Timor
New bumper sticker: Practice acts of random sectarianism and senseless defeatism. mbs it is up to people like us to ensure that those countries sponsoring the intervention are pressured into a following a genuinely humanitarian course . . . Our responsibility is to continue various random efforts to build our strength to the point where it makes sense to say something is up to us. . . .
[PEN-L:11480] Re: Marxist response to East Timor
Michael Keany: As one willing to have his mind changed by superior argument, regardless of its geographical source, what would be the principled Marxist response to the problems of East Timor? I am sufficiently familiar with the awful history, and recognise the culpability, complicity, duplicity, involvement, etc., of the Western powers. What I want to know is, what is to be done given the present conjuncture? Louis P: I am not sure who you are referring to when you ask "what is to be done". Does this mean what the UN should do? Or the radical movement? I can only answer the second question. The radical movement should do everything in its power to assist East Timorese self-determination. The concrete slogans and forms of action should conform--as always--to the objective situation. It seems to me that East Timorese self-determination is basically a dead duck and has been so since the US unleashed its dog of war, Indonesia, in 1975. But I'd like to know why you think that the Solidarity group violated Marxist principles in their position on E. Timor. I believe that they back the principle of the right of self-determination of nations, including the independence of E. Timor. They just have a different interpretation of the efficacy of the UN in helping E. Timor achieve achieve this goal than I do (or you do). That is, it's a disagreement concerning fact rather than principle. BTW, Carrol, it really doesn't help anyone to say that Soldarity's statement was poor. Why was it poor? (BTW, the fact that the US opposed UN intervention for a long time suggests that maybe the UN is okay. (cf. Sandy Berger.) But the fox has already ravaged the henhouse and the US has moved in to make sure that UN intervention serves the US power elite's interests. So, that point no longer applies.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/JDevine.html
[PEN-L:11477] Re: Marxist response to East Timor
Michael Keaney wrote: Louis, As one willing to have his mind changed by superior argument, regardless of its geographical source, what would be the principled Marxist response to the problems of East Timor? I am sufficiently familiar with the awful history, and recognise the culpability, complicity, duplicity, involvement, etc., of the Western powers. What I want to know is, what is to be done given the present conjuncture? There is a quite false assumption here that there is always something to be done. This case, unfortunately, is one in which the first response has to be: There is nothing to be done. Please note that the assumption that "something" has to be be done is strictly a result of the way in which the bourgeois press treats the world, carefully picking out what "problems" demand solution and what problems do not even exist. The problem of severe malnutrition for those children in the U.S. whose mothers were kicked off welfare does not exist. The problem of [you name it] does not exist. The only problem in the world now is in East Timor. (Never mind the deaths of children from disease and malnutrition in Iraq.) Why do you immediately feel that whenever the bourgeois press yelps every marxist must mount her silver stallion with a Hi Ho Silver, Away!??? There is nothing we can do except continue developing and (when possible) spreading our understanding of imperialism and its role in the world today. Nothing any marxist does will save so much as one sprained finger in East Timor. It is either self-indulgence or ignorance to think "we" have to "do something." What have you done today to increase wages in South Africa? What have you done today to reduce malaria in Guatemala? What have you done today to reduce the prison population in the FSU? Carrol
[PEN-L:11473] Marxist response to East Timor
Louis Thanks for forwarding the Pilger article. I have great respect for John Pilger and all that he has done in campaigning not only for East Timor, but on behalf of the Australian aborigines and Cambodians, among many others. If only there were more like him. He may be correct about the motives governing the Western (primarily Australian) response to the situation there. However, there is another case which would suggest that because of the increasingly belligerent anti-Westernism among elements of the ruling clique (ironic as that is, given the West's role in propping them up, even now), East Timor provides a useful pretext whereby a segment of "Indonesian" territory remains under Western influence. The West can also claim to lend moral support to other oppressed minorities in Indonesia's presently fractious state, East Timor being the precedent for further intervention, should the "need" arise. Given Indonesia's former status as bulwark against the communist north, there is clearly a "security issue" arising from such instability. There is also the East Timor Gap Treaty assigning oil exploration and extraction rights to protect. Whether or not East Timor ends up like another Haiti, or just simply yet another pawn in the great game of global capitalism, there is also the indisputable fact of the wanton slaughter of its population by the occupiers, and the illegality of that occupation. East Timor was a newly independent, sovereign state when invaded. The invasion violated all relevant aspects of the UN Charter. The UN should have been there in 1975. I support the UN's presence there now, and it is up to people like us to ensure that those countries sponsoring the intervention are pressured into a following a genuinely humanitarian course of action rather than a cynical exercise in dividing spoils. (Just getting my government to stop delivering fighter aircraft is proving difficult.) This I would consider as agreeing with your recommendation that the "radical movement should do everything in its power to assist East Timorese self-determination." Concrete slogans alone are of little help to the East Timorese. But I do believe that partly motivating Western support for this UN initiative is the wider exposure of both the atrocities and Western complicity in these. Our governments are more sensitive now, than ever before during the last 24 years, to charges of appeasement, complicity, culpability, duplicity, racism, etc. Witness Robin Cook's pathetic performance, mentioned by Pilger. And it is a blessing, however unintended, that the US is so up to its neck in the detritus arising from this matter that it has not taken "leadership", which would have immediately discredited the entire exercise, given the undoubtedly inadequate handling of the situation that would follow. Pilger is absolutely correct to expose the less than humanitarian rationale behind our governments' actions. That such motives exist is little excuse for not saving the lives of helpless people - after all, their suffering and slaughter is what makes us angry, isn't it? Or is death to be their only liberation? Michael
[PEN-L:11469] Re: Marxist response to East Timor
E. Timor will become like Haiti. The capitalist countries will ensure that a neo-liberal regime rules and that Australia (or maybe the U.S.) will get control of the oil. Michael Keaney wrote: As one willing to have his mind changed by superior argument, regardless of its geographical source, what would be the principled Marxist response to the problems of East Timor? I am sufficiently familiar with the awful history, and recognise the culpability, complicity, duplicity, involvement, etc., of the Western powers. What I want to know is, what is to be done given the present conjuncture? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:11466] Re: Marxist response to East Timor
Michael Keaney wrote: As one willing to have his mind changed by superior argument, regardless of its geographical source, what would be the principled Marxist response to the problems of East Timor? I am sufficiently familiar with the awful history, and recognise the culpability, complicity, duplicity, involvement, etc., of the Western powers. What I want to know is, what is to be done given the present conjuncture? According to various posts and news articles, Australian unionists sprang into activism, using union bans, no less. If only they hadn't called for Australian/UN 'peace-keepers' and instead targeted the Australian government for its past support of the Indonesian occupation of East Timor and present design of expanding its regional imperialist stature, it would have made a Marxist sense, I think. However, judging by what they actualy did, I have to regrettably conclude that their actions basically reinforced the direction in which the Australian government wanted to go. Perhaps, it was planned that way from the top. Yoshie
[PEN-L:11464] Marxist response to East Timor
BTW, unless things have changed drastically, the guy some have dismissed as "Eurocentric" (Bob Brenner) is a leader of Solidarity. Not that one thing has much to do with another, but Solidarity has just endorsed UN troops in East Timor, a clear violation of Marxist principles. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html) Louis, As one willing to have his mind changed by superior argument, regardless of its geographical source, what would be the principled Marxist response to the problems of East Timor? I am sufficiently familiar with the awful history, and recognise the culpability, complicity, duplicity, involvement, etc., of the Western powers. What I want to know is, what is to be done given the present conjuncture? Michael
[PEN-L:11401] Reporting from East Timor - a feminist perspective?
Courage under fire Do women behave differently to men in war zones? Victoria Brittain talks to fellow correspondent, Irene Slegt, one of the last three journalists who stayed to report the violence that has erupted since the referendum in East Timor The Guardian, Monday September 20, 1999 Was it chance that the last three journalists left in the United Nations compound in the East Timor capital of Dili were women? Irene Slegt, a Dutch journalist, photographer and longtime BBC stringer, became the voice to the outside world of 1,500 desperate Timorese who had taken refuge in the compound and faced certain death if the UN plans to abandon them had been carried out. Her two companions were the Dutch writer Minka Nijhuis and Marie Colvin of the Sunday Times. All three had distinguished records of bravery already, but their collective role in Timor was one for women to be proud of and goes to the heart of some key differences between men and women. As one of Irene's friends put it: "She's the kind of woman who is prepared to feel an emotional sympathy for the people she's working among, where a man would override that in the interest of commonsense." As Irene herself puts it: "We all had the motivation to stay with the people and we operated as a team. We shared information, had companionship... with a man there it would have been more difficult." In the intensity of war even outsiders find themselves uncomfortably revealed, shorn of the props and mannerisms which allow most people, men in particular, to mask themselves most of the time. Men's response to fear is usually bravado, and in war some male journalists do the same: they become obsessed with weapons and start identifying with the military as role models, in the hope of feeling stronger and braver themselves. Women's response is to identify with the people whose intimate lives are shattered. Irene has no hesitation in saying about women journalists what many of us would hesitate to put into words: "We are more courageous... you see men losing it quicker." It is true that none of my women friends who have worked, or still do, in war zones would choose a male photographer or companion for a dangerous trip and neither would I. You can never count on men not to come over macho at a tense moment and put the whole team in danger. Journalists used to be self-reliant loners, as the great Polish journalist, Ryszard Kapuscinski wrote recently, but new technology and the demands of corporate ownership has turned them, he argued, into something quite different. Kapuscinski would be at home with Irene and Minka - down-to-earth, hard-working, knowledgeable, and without a trace of self-dramatisation. Before East Timor, both women had specialised, unfashionably, in working in closed countries, such as Burma and Tibet. "It's difficult - I don't go officially and because I'm a freelance I don't have to bother with editors who would not want to send someone in case of endangering relations with some government or because of having repercussions on a bureau somewhere." None of the repression they have seen in Tibet or Burma compared with what has happened in East Timor in the last weeks, according to Irene. "In Tibet, for instance, the countryside still has its culture; in Timor the Indonesians have taken the culture and the religion by targeting priests, nuns, churches. The social fabric is gone with people completely scattered - the UN was the last safe haven. "When you look into old people's eyes you see them completely withdrawn. When you speak to them, they literally can not speak. Maybe the young people will have the resilience to start again." Both Dutch women were already in Dili to write books, and committed to staying on after the independence referendum, albeit under no illusions about how violent it was to become. "In fact, everyone in the UN knew what was likely to happen but they made a big, big miscalculation about what the Indonesians would do," says Irene. The women watched first the television networks pull out their teams, for security reasons, then the news agencies. "I can't remember any big story ever where the agencies pulled out," says Irene. Minka's newspaper put pressure on her to leave with the others, but she continued to file and eventually the editor called to congratulate her on her work. "The Indonesians got what they wanted. In a week 480 out of 500 journalists left." The women resisted going into the UN compound for as long as possi ble, until the military came to their hotel looking for them. Once there, they still travelled into town whenever they could, driven by an acute sense of responsibility to tell the world about the deepening catastrophe. Despite the danger, Irene is cool. "I wasn't that scared - you just have to plan carefully, and go in the morning when the militias are not drunk." Each day, t
[PEN-L:11292] Oil and imperialism in East Timor
EAST TIMOR ABRI Inc By George J. Aditjondro Sydney Morning Herald May 8, 1999 THE fighting between the Indonesian-backed pro-integration militias and supporters of independence in East Timor cannot be understood fully without taking into account the substantial holdings in the province of the former Indonesian president Soeharto and his family. These interests include 564,867 hectares of land. They are holdings that CNRT, the umbrella organisation of the East Timorese resistance movement, has made clear it would seize if Timor becomes an independent state. The Soeharto landholdings stretch from the western border to the eastern tip of East Timor and include 50,000 hectares of timber plantations allocated to Bob Hasan, one of the Soeharto family's business operators, and tens of thousands of hectares of sugarcan plantations on the southern coast controlled by Soeharto's children. The best marble deposits in Timor, at Manatuto, are owned by Siti Hardiyanti Rukmana, Soeharto's eldest daughter, who also has a monopoly over coffee production and export from East Timor, through a company of hers in Dili. These Soeharto interests are closely intertwined with the business interests of generals who had served under Soeharto during the invasion and annexation of East Timor, and other military operations. Batara Indra, an Indonesian conglomerate backed by retired generals Benny Moerdani and Dading Kalbuadi, who co-ordinated the operation that led to the killings of five Australian-based journalists at Balibo in 1975, controls the sandalwood forests of East Timor and the production and export of sandalwood oil. Batara Indra also exports Buddhist statues to Taiwan and Catholic statues to Italy, made from East Timorese sandalwood or marble. Most of the hotels and the only cinema in Dili are owned by Batara Indra. The large construction firms in Dili, involved in all major infrastructure projects - including building the irrigation canals and ditches for Indonesian "trans- migrants" - either belong to Moerdani's Batara Indra Group, or to the Anak Liambau Group of the Jakarta-appointed Governor of East Timor, Jose Abilio Soares. The Governor's family is also closely involved with the Soeharto family's businesses. Gil Alves, a brother-in-law of Governor Abilio, operates the alcohol sticker monopoly of Soeharto's grandson, Ari Haryo Wibowo, also known as Ari Sigit. Alves is also involved in a drinking water company, Aquamor, and a textile company, PT Dilitex, that are closely linked with Siti Hedijanti Harijadi, Soeharto's middle daughter who is married to the sacked General Prabowo Subianto. Looking at the leading figures of the pro-integration forces in East Timor, it is not difficult to find their links to the Soeharto family or to their own property interests in the province. Top of the list is Governor Abilio, once a protege of Prabowo when the latter was still head of the Indonesian Army's special force, Kopassus. Basilio Araujo, the spokeperson of the pro-integration forces, is also the deputy head of the provincial investment board, the body that decides who is allowed to invest in East Timor. Even the current army commander of East Timor, Colonel Tono Suratman, has Soeharto connections. His family are the co-owners of a pearling company, PT Kima Surya Lestari Mutiara, with Prabowo's wife. This company has pearl diving operations offshore from Flores and Lombok, west of Timor. Due to its high-level connections, this Suratman-Prabowo joint venture was allowed to operate within the boundaries of the Komodo National Park, in Flores, without even paying any royalties to the Nusa Tenggara Timur province, where the park is located. The entire top brass of the Indonesian Army and civilian bureaucracy in East Timor are closely interlinked with Soeharto's former inner circle, which has in turn been taken over by his successor, B.J. Habibie. Even the Indonesian Armed Forces commander, General Wiranto, has Soeharto connections, since all the army charities which are now under his patronage are co-shareholders of many of the Soeharto family's timber concessions and telecommunication companies. The Soeharto family's interests in East Timor may be small compared with their holdings in the rest of Indonesia, but their holdings in East Timor include the three onshore oil wells that were discovered in the '60s - the Suai Loro in Covalima, Aliambata in Vikeke, and Pualaca in Manatuto. And between those three wells lie vast untapped oil reserves. The Soeharto family has also made preparations to venture into the Timor Sea oil reserves. Last year, it set up a new oil company in Perth, Genindo Western Petroleum Propriety Limited. The company is headed by Bambang Trihatmodjo, Soeharto's middle son. Bambang and younger brother Tommy also own two Singapore-based oil and gas tanker fleets that operate in the seas between Indonesia and north-east Asia. No doubt they would be eager to be involved in a sim
[PEN-L:11267] Re: East Timor, Kosovo, and Kuwait
Nathan, The difference between Kosovo and the other cases is that the aggressor is a client state. We have no need to call for military intervention. All the U.S. needs to do is to call off its dogs and they will comply. Several of us have mentioned that we think that the introduction of foreign troops will not help. In the case of Kuwait, if April Glespie had told Saddam not to invade, I suspect that it might not have happened, especially if the U.S. would have agreed to support some of Saddam's grievances concerning oil. In the case of Kosovo, intervention was a total and ongoing disaster. The U.S. and the EU countries had put pressure on Yugoslavia, weakening the state and supporting seperatist movements. We have had all of this discussion before. What can be gained from repeating it? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
[PEN-L:11266] Re: East Timor, Kosovo, and Kuwait
I don't know how one could get a dependable nose count on the questions Nathan raises, but I will report on my own count among those whose history I know. Without exception (that is, among those with whom I am still in contact) the people I worked with in Central America Solidarity in the '80s have all agreed with me in condemning all three of the interventions. There is no instance since WW 2 in which U.S. intervention of any sort and of any kind outside its borders has not been disastrous both for those attacked and those allegedly aided. I see no reason that this should change at any time in the foreseeable future. A study of any give U.S. intervention in the future should not be for the sake of reaching a judgment on it but for the sake of gathering ammunition with which to attack it. Carrol
[PEN-L:11264] East Timor, Kosovo, and Kuwait
To avoid a bit of the beating the dead horse thing, I will try to be as unpolemical as possible in this post and hope for the same in the responses. With East Timor, Kosovo and Kuwait, we have three key situations of a larger local power seeking to dominate a smaller region with aspirations of independence, followed by some sort of multilateral intervention with US involvement. Now, there are folks out there who have supported interventions in all three cases - although only a marginal number would identify as leftists. There are also folks who opposed all interventions, even sanctions, in any of these cases - a few stray pacificists and maybe Pat Buchanan. Most self-identified leftists have opposed at least one of these interventions (most predominantly Iraq) and support some form of intervention against Indonesia over East Timor, if only economic sanctions against Indonesia (similar sanctions against Iraq being deemed forms of mass murder by many of those same leftists). I frankly see large similarities in Kosovo and East Timor, where many of the leftists who condemned any NATO intervention as inherently unjust are denouncing FAILURE of the US and other Western countries to strongly intervene as a terrible thing. That some urge economic sanctions only goes so far as a difference, since economic sanctions against Iraq are denounced as imperialistic. Now, of course there are many views and ways to make consistent stories out of these differing positions, but it would ease polemics if folks could admit that the distinctions are confusing and often complicated, so we could all be a little less quick to denounce as a betrayal either calls for intervention or a reluctance to support intervention in specific cases. But in the name of focusing discussion, I made up the following table comparing some aspects where the interventions in question differ, with some hope that might explain some of the differences in reaction. Note: "Local Power" means Iraq, Indonesia and/or the Serbian government respectively, "population" refers to population in Kuwait, East Timor, and/or Kosovo KUWAIT EAST TIMOR KOSOVO Historical claim of distinct societyLow Medium High Contempory Desire of population for Independence *High High Military Brutality of Local Power MediumExtreme Medium to High (disputed) Cultural Repression by Local Power ?High High Ties of population to US activists None-Low High Low Socialist tradition in Local Power High Low High Self-interest of US in Intervention High Low Low-to-medium (disputed) * Note that in Iraq, Kuwaiti CITIZENS had strong desire for independence, but many of the much larger category of residents such as Palestinians welcomed the invasion. ? Little time to see what kind of cultural repression Iraq might have imposed. Kuwait has obvious failings as a sympathetic symbol of independence, from its exploitation of its internal foreign workers, its artificial history and role in promoting inequality of resources within the region, and the relatively low level of violence by Iraq when it conquered the country (despite the propaganda). With the naked self-interest of the US intervention, the general left revulsion against the Gulf War is pretty clear. In some areas, on the other hand, Kosovo has a greater claim to independence, since the Kosovar Albanians have a long history as a distinct society, while the East Timorese like the Kuwaitis are more a product of artificial colonial divisions of the map than more historic divisions (although the high levels of Catholicism in East Timor give it a distinct cast from Muslim-dominated Indonesia). On the other hand, the extremity of Indonesian violence there gives Kosovo one of the strongest bases for claiming "irreconcilable differences" with a home country. But I think it is also fair to highlight issues such as the "ties to US activists" as explaining some of the differences in attitudes towards the two areas. Given Chomsky's writings, the East Timorese figures of resistance are much more in left consciousness than folks like Rugova ever were, despite the fact that the Kosovar nonviolent resistance in the 90s has much that was admirable. The US and other left activists' sympathy for the socialist tradition of the Serb regime versus the distaste for the more capitalist Indonesian regime also play a role in this reaction, despite the fact that for the Timorese and Kosovars, the official ideology of the Local Power mattered little for the repressive police apparatus that really governed their lives. I
[PEN-L:11188] Fw: Please call for East Timor today
- Original Message - From: Dr Alan Cheney To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, September 17, 1999 9:15 AM Subject: Please call for East Timor today Very Urgent Action AlertSeptember 16, 1999Phone Your Representative and Senators Immediately to Unblock ReliefShipments to East Timor and to Support HR 2809 and S.1568The situation of the refugees in East Timor is dire. According to the U.N.Food and Agricultural Organization, about 200,000 East Timorese are at riskof starvation if they do not immediately receive relief supplies. But theIndonesian military (TNI) is not cooperating. The TNI is effectivelyblocking Australian efforts to drop relief packages (see article below).As part of your calls to your Congressional Representative and Senators togarner support for HR 2809 and S.1568 (see the Urgent Action of September15), urge Congress and the Senate to work to put immediate pressure onJakarta to stop the blocking of the relief airdrops.The congressional switchboard number is 202-224-3121 or checkwww.congress.gov or www.visi.com/juan/congress/for additional contact information. Apologies to non-U.S. recipients. Please call your local East Timor action group and ask how you can help.For more information, contact Karen Orenstein at 202-544-6911 or[EMAIL PROTECTED].=East Timor relief drops delayed by Indonesian military: PMSYDNEY, Sept 16 (AFP) - Australian Prime Minister John Howard said aiddrops into East Timor were not likely to go ahead Thursday because thesafety of the planes could not be assured.Howard told Channel Nine television Australia had yet to get an Indonesianmilitary guarantee they would not shoot down the planes carryingmuch-needed aid.He said difficulties were being experienced because there were no clearlines of command in Indonesia."We had hoped today," Howard said. "The prospect of that, I was told a fewfor more minutes ago, are not all that bright because we're still havingtrouble getting certain assurances from the Indonesian military authorities."We can't take the risk of the planes being shot down because they'reneeded for other things but we want to get the aid in as soon as possible."Now we're working on that over time. We've got the approval of theIndonesian minister but we haven't got the approval of the Indonesianmilitary."Australian troops will help deliver the aid once it arrives on the ground."Under the United Nations resolution, one of the tasks of the force is tofacilitate the provision of humanitarian assistance," Howard said.END
[PEN-L:10998] East Timor, Clinton, the World Bank
The following is from Lou's marxism list. I'll pass this on without any comments. Yoshie * Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 15:30:40 +1200 From: Philip L Ferguson [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yesterday I sent an email which had stuff that Fretilin leader Jose Ramos Horta said in a major interview on a TV current affairs programme here on Monday night (Sept 13). I didn't have my notes from the interview at the time, so thought I'd repost it, with my notes. Horta had just met Clinton and he said that the meeting confirmed his view of Clinton as "a very warm, caring and compassionate person". He stated that Clinton is the Western leader who has most raised the question of East Timor. He then praised Madeleine Albright. He then moved on to praise the speech Clinton made last week and the positive role of US world leadership. He then said, "we have to do everything to support Habibie" whom , he said, had made a "brave, courageous decision" in relation to East Timor. Horta then echoed UN Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson* and argued for a UN_initiated War Crimes Tribunal on Indonesian Crimes in East Timor. Asked about rebuilding East Timor, he said Fretilin people had been busy lining up a lot of overseas investors for reconstruction work and that there was a meeting set up with the World Bank later this year. Philip Ferguson * Mary Robinson was president of Ireland in the late 80s/early 90s. She has a long record of support for the partition of Ireland and British imperialism, along with a liberal social conscience. *
[PEN-L:10992] Re: M-TH: East Timor
The plot sickens ... Wiranto has apparently given notice that he may resign after army day (October 5) and join the presidential race (to be concluded in November). He will, of course, keep his job as Minister for Defence. A lot of Indonesians are for it if the west doesn't shore up the Habibie/Megawati 'transition' options here and now by accepting their invitations to go in, save some lives, make the idea of a truly civilian presidency look credible, and take the initiative from the uniforms. Of course, now that Wiranto has gone for it, he may feel moved to shore himself up by presenting a foreign (especially decisively white) intervention as an assault on Indonesian sovereignty - which would split the population, 'necessitate' nationwide martial control, and kick up some useful belligerent fear and loathing. But that's all so much wind, I think. Things are turning out just as our betters had it in mind for them to turn out ... Cheers, Rob.
[PEN-L:10937] teaching and East Timor
First I would like to thank those in OZ for providing sharper perspectives and analyses for all of us. I have long supported an end to military aid by the US to Indonesia and have supported independence for East Timor. But I must say that I am watching these recent developments very warily. Do we really know what is going on? In any case, in light of that and the thread on geezers in academia, I thought I would throw something out about teaching and all this, at least my teaching. I teach in a pretty conservative school and regularly teach Principles of Economics. Needless to say it is a constant effort to try to shake these people up and make them think etc etc etc. A lot of them are business majors who don't even want to be in there and resent the hell out of me. Aware of this on the first day of the semester I always give a "pep talk" on why studying economics is important even if someone finds it boring or hard. I usually give a speech about how many world events are driven from behind the scenes by economic motives, even if these do not determine everything, and usually give some provocative examples. During most of this decade I have been stuck on providing a particular contrast, namely that between US policy in Kuwait and the Persian Gulf and that in East Timor. It usually is not hard to get students to recognize that the reason the US fought the PG war was because of oil and not particularly because of all the highblown rhetoric about defending poor little Kuwait against an allegedly evil invader. But then I would point out that the legal situation has been almost the same with East Timor, invaded in 1975 by a much larger and more powerful neighbor illegally, an invasion condemned by the UN. But nobody was doing anything about it. Why not? Of course this became a lesson in other things as well, since, hey, we are supposed to be teaching students about "global awareness" as well as "critical thinking" (or at least we used to be supposed to be doing that before the latest round of dumbing down the curriculum really got going). I would ask, "Can anyone tell us where East Timor is and who its powerful invading neighbor is?" Sometimes I would actually get somebody who would know. But more often nobody could answer either question. I would then give hints, such as that the invading neighbor has the fourth largest population in the world (this would allow for asking who has the first, second, and third largest populations, which seems to be easier to get out of them), and that it has the largest Muslim population of any nation in the world. If this did not draw forth an answer (sometimes by now it was guessed) I would start asking them where in the world we are talking about? Usually by the time it got pinned down to Southeast Asia somebody would finally get it. Anyway, it has proven to be useful exercise in political economy. I shall not mourn if it disappears as an example due to East Timor finally achieving its independence, although I suppose none of us should hold our breaths too long over what form that might take. Barkley Rosser
[PEN-L:10910] Pilger on East Timor
Jakarta's godfathers It is grotesque hypocrisy for Tony Blair to weep for the children of Dunblane John Pilger The Guardian, Tuesday September 7, 1999 Having finally discovered East Timor, most of the media have now left, blaming a "descent into violence". The long, silent years mock these words. The descent began almost a quarter of a century ago when Indonesian special forces invaded the defenceless Portuguese colony. On December 7, 1975, a lone radio voice rose and fell in the static: "The soldiers are killing indiscriminately. Women and children are being shot in the streets. This is an appeal for international help. This is an SOS - please help us." No help came, because the western democracies were secret partners in a crime as great and enduring as any this century; proportionally, not even Pol Pot matched Suharto's spree. Air Force One, carrying President Ford and his secretary of state Henry Kissinger, climbed out of Indonesian airspace the day the bloodbath began. "They came and gave Suharto the green light," Philip Liechty, the CIA desk officer in Jakarta at the time, told me. "The invasion was delayed two days so they could get the hell out. We were ordered to give the Indonesian military everything they wanted. I saw all the hard intelligence; the place was a free-fire zone. Women and children were herded into school buildings that were set alight - and all because we didn't want some little country being neutral or leftist at the United Nations." And all because western capital regarded Indonesia as a "prize". Having been tipped off about the invasion, the British ambassador cabled the foreign office that it was in Britain's interests for Indone sia to "absorb the territory as soon and as unobtrusively as possible". Since then, the foreign office has lied incessantly about East Timor - not misled, lied. When the film I made with David Munro and Max Stahl, Death of a Nation, disclosed the extent to which the British were involved, especially the use of British Aerospace Hawk fighter aircraft in East Timor, officials of the south-east Asian department tried to denigrate and smear East Timorese witnesses to the Hawks' bombing raids, whose relatives had been killed and maimed by British cluster bombs. When Robin Cook's predecessor, David Owen, licensed the sale of the first Hawks to Indonesia in 1978, he dismissed reports of the East Timorese death toll, then well over 60,000 or 10% of the population, as "exaggerated". For almost 20 years, the BBC and the major western news agencies preferred to "cover" East Timor from Jakarta, which was like reporting on a Nazi-occupied country from Berlin. The coverage was minute; not offending the invader and keeping your visa became all-important. A Jakarta-based BBC correspondent told me that my film, made undercover in East Timor, had "made life very difficult for us here". In Whitehall, a refined system of flattery worked well. Senior broadcasters and commentators popped into the foreign office without any material favours expected. For them, the flattery and "access" were enough. Thus, both Tory and Labour governments, Indonesia's biggest weapons suppliers, were able to go about their business of complicity in genocide unchallenged, bar the efforts of a few honourable exceptions. More recently, the grotesque hypocrisy of Tony Blair weeping for the children of Dunblane, then sending machine guns that mow down children in East Timor, was ignored. So was Robin Cook's epic cynicism, allowing him to leap from telling parliament in 1994 that Hawk aircraft had been "observed on bombing runs in East Timor in most years since 1984" to denying his own words - to the public-relations stunt of an "ethical" foreign policy while his functionaries lied to journalists that no Hawks were operational in East Timor. Now that Hawks have been visible to all over East Timor, Baroness Symonds, who has the Orwellian title of defence procurement minister, insults the intelligence and humanity of Radio 4 listeners by lecturing a deferential James Naughtie on "rights". East Timor's tormentors should have British weapons because they "have a right under the United Nations charter to defend themselves". Moreover, "they have a right" to come to next week's British government-sponsored arms fair in Surrey, the biggest ever. Last year, her government approved the sale of £625bn in arms, a record never reached by the Tories and surpassed only by the US. Tomorrow, the East Timorese leader, Xanana Gusmao, is due to be released from house arrest in Jakarta. If he returns to his homeland, he is likely
[PEN-L:10885] Re: Chomsky interviewed on East Timor
At 17:27 11/09/99 -0400, you wrote: East Timor on the Brink Noam Chomsky interviewed by David Barsamian KGNU, Boulder, September 8, 1999 Very interesting point about the skirmishing with China for potential leadership in South East Asia:- One of the reasons why the U.S. is maybe hanging back, apart from the fact that Indonesia is a loyal, rich client and there are plenty of U.S. corporations operating there and they don't care one way or another about the Timorese, quite apart from all of those things, which have been operative for quite a long time, there's another problem looming right now. It doesn't get reported much. A couple of days ago the Chinese President Ziang Zemin was in Thailand. He made a very strong speech which got a lot of attention in Southeast Asia in which he condemned U.S. "gunboat diplomacy" and economic neocolonialism. He talked, not in detail, but he discussed security arrangements between China and ASEAN, the Southeast Asian countries. According to the limited press coverage from Southeast Asia, the Thai elites welcomed this because they are glad to see a counterforce to the U.S., which much of the world is very much afraid of now. China is clearly offering some kind of security arrangement in which it will be the center. That means also an economic bloc with the Southeast Asian countries or part of them, maybe Japan ultimately brought in, and North Asia, that would exclude or at least marginalize the U.S. You have to remember that the major concern of the U.S. in that region of the world since the Second World War has been to prevent that from happening. That has been the driving concern behind the remilitarization of U.S. allies, including Japan, the Indochina war, the U.S. clandestine operations in 1958 which tried to break up Indonesia, which at that time was neutralist and right on to the present. They didn't care much about Russia. They didn't have a Cold War connection. But it was a concern that the countries of the region might accommodate to China, as it was put in internal documents, and create a kind of an Asian bloc in which the U.S. would not have privileged access and control. I can't imagine that Washington policymakers aren't aware of this. Indonesian generals may be thinking of it, too, thinking that it offers them a certain degree of leverage against even mild U.S. pressures. BUT This is a place where the U.S. has plenty of leverage, can act to stop something which, if the U.S. doesn't act, might turn into a Rwanda, and that's not an exaggeration. DB: What suggestions would you make to ordinary Americans, listeners to this broadcast or readers of this interview, what can they do? NC: There is one last chance to save the Timorese from utter disaster. I stress "utter." They've already suffered enormous disaster. In a very short time span, in the next couple of days, probably, unless the U.S. government takes a decisive, open stand, this thing may be past rescue. It's only going to happen in one way, if there's a lot of public pressure on the White House. Otherwise it won't happen. This has been a horror story for twenty-five years. It's now very likely culminating, and there isn't much time to do anything about it. DB: Thanks very much. The number for the White House comment line is (202) 456-1414. From Habibie's statement today it looks as if the US has taken a "decisive open stand" which may avert "utter disaster". It has also taken a stand behind the scenes, and tried to talk Wiranto round, with some apparent success. I think it is important in criticising imperialism convincingly, to see the difference from the time of the coup by Suharto, when the US was openly backing anti-democratic regimes in the name of anti-communism, to the 90's when the policy is to call for maximum global economic freedom (for finance capital) plus support for bourgeois democratic rights in all states. This is a contradiction that has to be analysed dialectically. In terms of the rights of the East Timorese the US may now be progressive, as they may in the case of Anwar Ibrahim, but in relation to the national bourgeoisie and the people of Malaysia and other South East Asian countries, they are oppressive. The present outcome appears at least nominally to respect the United Nations even though it has been achieved by massive financial threats mainly from the US. It appears to have accommodated to the wishes of China, and appears to have avoided an attack on the Indonesian armed forces. The fact that Clinton may have largely done what Chomsky has appealed for him to do, signals that the critique of US and British imperialism needs to go deeper. The West has applied the stick of economic sanctions. They have said nothing about a positive economic plan for the reconstruction of the region and the promotion of mutual cooperation among the islands of the archipelago. Even when there is a positive aspect to their pol
[PEN-L:10866] Re: East Timor
G'day all, 'Turns out that someone in Djakarta had arranged for huge holding camps to be set up in West Timor at least four days before the referendum (camps that are apparently 'processing' 2 people a day - some dying mysteriously and many being sent to other islands). Making news also is an unconfirmed phonecall to Australian media that a huge mass killing if taking place in a town south of Dili. Just cleaning up before the humanitarian mission finally comes in, I expect. Hope they find some humans to be caring and sharing about. We can only hope that the 40 or so who apparently made it into the hills haven't already starved to death. And we can only hope some mechanism might be instituted by which the forcibly removed can get back home. This latter is the less likely, as I expect the media won't make too much noise about it. Sigh, Rob.
[PEN-L:10855] Chomsky interviewed on East Timor
East Timor on the Brink Noam Chomsky interviewed by David Barsamian KGNU, Boulder, September 8, 1999 DB: Noam Chomsky, long-time political activist, writer and professor of linguistics at MIT, is the author of numerous books and articles on U.S. foreign policy, international affairs and human rights. Among his many books are Year 501, Keeping the Rabble in Line, World Orders Old and New, Class Warfare and The Common Good. His new book is The New Military Humanism. This special edition of Alternative Radio will focus on East Timor, which is once again a killing field with mass murders, expulsionsaand ethnic cleansing. According to a story in this today's New York Times, East Timorese are being rounded up and forcibly moved across the border to Indonesian West Timor. Joining us from his home in Massachusetts is MIT professor Noam Chomsky, who was, along with his colleague Ed Herman, probably the first to write about East Timor in their book Washington Connection and Third World Fascism. Noam, the situation in East Timor has gone from bad to worse. You have written an article for the MoJo Wire on why Americans should care about East Timor. NC: The primary reason is that there's a lot that we can do about it. The second reason is it's a huge catastrophe. Actually, it's considerably worse than when I wrote a couple of weeks ago. And there is a bit of history involved. The U.S. has been directly and crucially involved in supporting the Indonesian invasion, arming it, carrying it through the worst atrocities, which were in the late 1970s under the Carter Administration and pretty much right up till today. But putting aside history, we can do a lot. This is a place where the U.S. has plenty of leverage, can act to stop something which, if the U.S. doesn't act, might turn into a Rwanda, and that's not an exaggeration. DB: In your essay you say that "President Clinton needs no instructions on how to proceed." Then you go on to describe some events that happened in late 1997 and in the spring of 1998. What exactly went on? NC: What went on is that General Suharto, who had been the darling of the U.S. and the West generally ever since he took power in 1965, carrying out a huge mass murder, the CIA compared it to the slaughters of Hitler and Stalin and Mao, described it as one of the great mass murders of the twentieth century, it was very much applauded here. He wiped out the main, the only popular-based political movement, a party of the left, killed hundreds of thousands of peasants, opened the place up to Western investment, virtual robbery, and that was greeted very warmly. And so it remained, through atrocity after atrocity, including the invasion of East Timor, which was supported very decisively by the U.S. and up until 1997. In 1997 he made his first mistake. One thing was he was beginning to lose control. If your friendly dictator loses control, he's not much use. The other was, he developed an unsuspected soft spot. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), meaning the U.S., was imposing quite harsh economic programs which were punishing the general population for the robbery carried out by a tiny Indonesian elite, and Suharto, for whatever reason, maybe fearing internal turmoil, was dragging his feet on implementing these. Then came a series of rather dramatic events. They weren't much reported here, but they were noticed in Indonesia, widely, in fact. In February 1998, the head of the IMF, Michel Camdessus, flew into Jakarta and effectively ordered Suharto to sign onto the IMF rules. There was a picture taken which was widely circulated in Jakarta and Australia showing a kind of humble Suharto sitting at a table with a pen and an imperious-looking Camdessus standing over him with his arms folded and some kind of caption saying, Typical colonial stance. Shortly after that, in May 1998, Madeleine Albright telephoned Suharto and told him that Washington had decided that the time had come for what she called a "democratic transition," meaning, Step down. Four hours later, he stepped down. This isn't just cause and effect. There are many other factors. It's not just pushing buttons. But it does symbolize the nature of the relationship. There's very good reason to believe that if the Clinton Administration took a strong stand, made it very clear to the Indonesian generals that this particular game is over, it would be over. I doubt very much, though there is talk about an intervention force, which the U.S. is refusing to make any commitment to, and about sanctions, which the U.S. is also dragging its feet on, and there are other, even weaker measures that could be considered that could be very effective, such as, for example, threatening the Indonesian generals with war crimes trials, which is a serious threat for them. It means they're locked up in their own countries for a long time. One of the Indonesian generals, the architect of the massacre in Dili, it's already happened t
[PEN-L:10706] URGENT: Act now for East Timor
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Nicola Bullard Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 1999 3:36 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: URGENT: Act now for East Timor Friends - As part of the international effort to maintain pressure on the UN and the Government of Indonesia to act immediately to stop the massacre in East Timor, we are circulating this statement. Please sign on and return the statement to [EMAIL PROTECTED] by 5pm Bangkok time on Thursday 9 September. We will consolidate the list and fax the statement to the UN, ASEAN, the Government of Indonesia and APEC heads of state immediately. Please use the statement in any other way that is useful. Thankyou. Nicola Bullard Sept. 7, 1999 To Secretary General Kofi Annan. United Nations; Secretary General Rodolfo Severino, Association of Southeast Asian Nations; all heads of state; the community of nations End the Terror in East Timor The world failed East Timor once, in 1975, when it offered little protest to the bloody annexation of that country by Indonesia. Key international actors, including Australia, the United States, and ASEAN, either supported the takeover behind the scenes or tacitly approved of it. For the next 24 years, many governments engaged in a conspiracy of silence as over 200,000 Timorese lost their lives under Jakartas harsh rule. The world cannot afford to fail the people of East Timor again. As Indonesian troops and Indonesia-supported militiamen wreak mayhem on the people after the historic vote for independence last week, it is imperative that we act to prevent an act of ethnic cleansing on the scale of Bosnia and Kosovo. The United Nations must immediately constitute an armed peacekeeping mission and send it to Timor within hours. Every minute now counts if we are to prevent a massive massacre. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) must condemn the Indonesian governments abetting the massacre and offer police and troops from its member countrieswith the exception of Indonesia--to serve as the core of the peacekeeping mission. Indonesia must immediately withdraw its police and soldiers, disarm the militiamen, and stop expelling Timorese from their homeland on the pretext of helping them escape the violence. Indonesia must immediately recognize the overwhelming vote for independence, release Xanana Gusmao, and allow Gusmao, Jose Ramos Horta, and other key Timorese leaders to freely travel through Indonesia and to East Timor to participate in constituting a government. The UN General Assembly must convoke a special session to immediately recognize East Timors independence and impose sanctions on Indonesia for failing to provide the order and security that it promised in the Tripartite Agreement of May 5, 1999. The big powers, as well as Australia and New Zealand, must refrain from taking unilateral military action, the short term gains of which would be outweighed by the long- term instability to which such an action would plunge Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. The international community must act now to spare a small nation whose identity was forged in 24 years of heroic defiance of repression from further bloodshed. Council for Alternative Security in the Asia-Pacific Focus on the Global South Focus on the Global South (FOCUS) c/o CUSRI, Chulalongkorn University Bangkok 10330 THAILAND Tel: 662 218 7363/7364/7365/7383 Fax: 662 255 9976 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web Page http://www.focusweb.org
[PEN-L:10716] Re: URGENT: Act now for East Timor
Max Sawicky wrote: -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Nicola Bullard Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 1999 3:36 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: URGENT: Act now for East Timor Friends - As part of the international effort to maintain pressure on the UN and the Government of Indonesia to act immediately to stop the massacre in East Timor, we are circulating this statement. Please sign on and return the statement tom.mezzera@ focusweb.org by 5pm Bangkok time on Thursday 9 September. We will consolidate the list and fax the statement to the UN, ASEAN, the Government of Indonesia and APEC heads of state immediately. Please use the statement in any other way that is useful. Thankyou. Nicola Bullard Sept. 7, 1999 To Secretary General Kofi Annan. United Nations; Secretary General Rodolfo Severino, Association of Southeast Asian Nations; all heads of state; the community of nations End the Terror in East Timor The world failed East Timor once, in 1975, when it offered little protest to the bloody annexation of that country by Indonesia. Key international actors, including Australia, the United States, and ASEAN, either supported the takeover behind the scenes or tacitly approved of it. For the next 24 years, many governments engaged in a conspiracy of silence as over 200,000 Timorese lost their lives under Jakartas harsh rule. The world cannot afford to fail the people of East Timor again. As Indonesian troops and Indonesia-supported militiamen wreak mayhem on the people after the historic vote for independence last week, it is imperative that we act to prevent an act of ethnic cleansing on the scale of Bosnia and Kosovo. The United Nations must immediately constitute an armed peacekeeping mission and send it to Timor within hours. Every minute now counts if we are to prevent a massive massacre. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) must condemn the Indonesian governments abetting the massacre and offer police and troops from its member countrieswith the exception of Indonesia--to serve as the core of the peacekeeping mission. Indonesia must immediately withdraw its police and soldiers, disarm the militiamen, and stop expelling Timorese from their homeland on the pretext of helping them escape the violence. Indonesia must immediately recognize the overwhelming vote for independence, release Xanana Gusmao, and allow Gusmao, Jose Ramos Horta, and other key Timorese leaders to freely travel through Indonesia and to East Timor to participate in constituting a government. The UN General Assembly must convoke a special session to immediately recognize East Timors independence and impose sanctions on Indonesia for failing to provide the order and security that it promised in the Tripartite Agreement of May 5, 1999. The big powers, as well as Australia and New Zealand, must refrain from taking unilateral military action, the short term gains of which would be outweighed by the long- term instability to which such an action would plunge Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. The international community must act now to spare a small nation whose identity was forged in 24 years of heroic defiance of repression from further bloodshed. Council for Alternative Security in the Asia-Pacific Focus on the Global South Focus on the Global South (FOCUS) c/o CUSRI, Chulalongkorn University Bangkok 10330 THAILAND Tel: 662 218 7363/7364/7365/7383 Fax: 662 255 9976 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web Page http://www.focusweb.org Ole Fjord Larsen, secretary, the formative world parliament of the united peoples http://www.unitedpeoples.net
[PEN-L:10724] Urgent: tell IMF and World Bank to help East Timor
East Timor is now literally burning, with hundreds of thousands of people driven from their homes in the last few days, hundreds killed. The United Nations is pulling out of East Timor tonight (US time), which may be the prelude to an unfathomable slaughter of Timorese by Indonesian forces in the days to come. There is good reason to believe this can all be stopped, if the U.S. and the "international community" applies sufficient pressure. Among other things, this should mean a cut off of all funds to Indonesia from the World Bank and IMF. The Fund and Bank have both condemned the violence in East Timor, but this is easily brushed off by Indonesia. It is critical that both institutions immediately deliver forceful messages that funds will be cut off, indefinitely, unless the terror in Timor comes to an immediate end. Action on these matters is incredibly time sensitive, so please call right away. At the Bank, call World Bank President James Wolfensohn at 202-458-2907 (fax: 202-522-0355). Urge him to suspend financial assistance to Indonesia unless it complies immediately with UN demands to end the violence in East Timor. Also call the Executive Director for the United States to the World Bank, Ms. Jan Piercy at 202-458-0110 (fax: 202-477-2967). Ask that the U.S. demand the suspension of assistance to Indonesia. At the Fund, call 202-623-7000 and ask for Managing Director Michel Camdessus (fax: 202-623-4661). Urge him to suspend financial assistance to Indonesia unless it complies immediately with UN demands to end the violence in East Timor. Also call the U.S. representative to the IMF, Karin Lissakers, 202-623-7759 (fax: 202-623-4940). Again, ask that the U.S. demand the suspension of assistance to Indonesia. Please spread this alert widely. An alert from the East Timor Action Network follows below. Robert Weissman Essential Information | Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] **** East Timor Action Network (ETAN) URGENT ACTION ALERT U.S. Government Inaction Results in More Death as Wave After Wave of Violence Sweeps East Timor Call Today to Demand an End to the Killing. Your action can save lives! Less than 24 hours after the UN announced that more than 78% of registered voters in East Timor voted to reject Indonesia's autonomy package, Indonesian military and paramilitary forces sharply escalated their campaign of terror. All observers from the International Federation for East Timor Observer Project (IFET-OP) have been forced to evacuate East Timor due to rampant violence by both paramilitary forces and TNI (Indonesian military forces), including the Kopassus Special Forces, known for its atrocious human rights abuses. Dili is burning; the streets are deserted and refugees are amassing in churches and other relief centers. Many children are among the dead. Paramilitary forces roam the streets of Dili unimpeded, while joint militia/army roadblocks block entrance to and exit from the capitol. The paramilitaries and TNI are systematically targeting buildings which house refugees. With the evacuation of UN staff and media from outlying towns, foreign observers are unable to confirm the extent of violence outside Dili, but it is believed to be severe. Hundreds of houses have been burned and dozens killed in Maliana alone. Reports have come in of mutilated bodies littering the road to West Timor. Thousands more East Timorese are now refugees, many of them forced onto trucks headed for unknown destinations. TNI must withdraw immediately from East Timor. The U.S. must offer full support for increased UN personnel and an expanded UN mission mandate. The UN must be granted control of administration and security in East Timor. The U.S. must cut off all military and financial assistance immediately! ** CALL Defense Secretary William Cohen at 703-692-7100 (fax: 703-697-9080). Demand that the United States cut off all remaining military aid to Indonesia until it removes its troops from East Timor and disbands the paramilitary groups roaming the streets. ** CALL World Bank President James Wolfensohn at 202-458-2907 (fax: 202-522-0355). Urge him to suspend financial assistance to Indonesia unless it complies immediately with UN demands to end the violence in East Timor. Also call the Executive Director for the United States to the World Bank, Ms. Jan Piercy at 202-458-0110 (fax: 202-477-2967). Demand that the U.S. support the suspension of assistance to Indonesia. ** CALL your senators and representative. Urge them to call Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, President Clinton, and Secretary of Defense William Cohen directly. The Congressional switchboard number is 202-224-3121 or check http://www.congress.gov for contact information on individual offices. ** CALL Assistant Secretary of State Stanley Roth at 202-647-9596. Don't let the staff transfer you to the Indonesia desk. You want this messag
[PEN-L:10718] TOP PRIORITY ALERT ON EAST TIMOR: PLEASE TAKE ACTION *NOW*!
Note that this ETAN/Peace Action alert gives you useful things to do, even if you're undecided on the "humanitarian intervention" question: demand immediate cessation of US military aid to Indonesia demand immediate cessation of IMF/WB "assistance" to Indonesia both of which are evil things anyway, even on a good day. -bob naiman -- Forwarded message -- Date: Wed, 8 Sep 1999 13:35:33 -0400 From: Van Gosse Subject: TOP PRIORITY ALERT ON EAST TIMOR: PLEASE TAKE ACTION *NOW*! TO: All members, affiliates, board members and activists of Peace Action FROM: Van Gosse, Organizing Director Attached is the latest from our friends in ETAN. We should act on this immediately by making those calls and sending those faxes. Please do this today!--East Timor is going up in flames. **** East Timor Action Network (ETAN) URGENT ACTION ALERT U.S. Government Inaction Results in More Death as Wave After Wave of Violence Sweeps East Timor Call Today to Demand an End to the Killing. Your action can save lives! Less than 24 hours after the UN announced that more than 78% of registered voters in East Timor voted to reject Indonesia's autonomy package, Indonesian military and paramilitary forces sharply escalated their campaign of terror. All observers from the International Federation for East Timor Observer Project (IFET-OP) have been forced to evacuate East Timor due to rampant violence by both paramilitary forces and TNI (Indonesian military forces), including the Kopassus Special Forces, known for its atrocious human rights abuses. Dili is burning; the streets are deserted and refugees are amassing in churches and other relief centers. Many children are among the dead. Paramilitary forces roam the streets of Dili unimpeded, while joint militia/army roadblocks block entrance to and exit from the capitol. The paramilitaries and TNI are systematically targeting buildings which house refugees. With the evacuation of UN staff and media from outlying towns, foreign observers are unable to confirm the extent of violence outside Dili, but it is believed to be severe. Hundreds of houses have been burned and dozens killed in Maliana alone. Reports have come in of mutilated bodies littering the road to West Timor. Thousands more East Timorese are now refugees, many of them forced onto trucks headed for unknown destinations. TNI must withdraw immediately from East Timor. The U.S. must offer full support for increased UN personnel and an expanded UN mission mandate. The UN must be granted control of administration and security in East Timor. The U.S. must cut off all military and financial assistance immediately! ** CALL Defense Secretary William Cohen at 703-692-7100 (fax: 703-697-9080). Demand that the United States cut off all remaining military aid to Indonesia until it removes its troops from East Timor and disbands the paramilitary groups roaming the streets. ** CALL World Bank President James Wolfensohn at 202-458-2907 (fax: 202-522-0355). Urge him to suspend financial assistance to Indonesia unless it complies immediately with UN demands to end the violence in East Timor. Also call the Executive Director for the United States to the World Bank, Ms. Jan Piercy at 202-458-0110 (fax: 202-477-2967). Demand that the U.S. support the suspension of assistance to Indonesia. ** CALL your senators and representative. Urge them to call Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, President Clinton, and Secretary of Defense William Cohen directly. The Congressional switchboard number is 202-224-3121 or check http://www.congress.gov for contact information on individual offices. ** CALL Assistant Secretary of State Stanley Roth at 202-647-9596. Don't let the staff transfer you to the Indonesia desk. You want this message to reach Roth himself. The Indonesia desk officers are already doing what they can. For more information, contact Karen at the New York ETAN office at 914-428-7299 or [EMAIL PROTECTED], or Brad Simpson at IFET at 773-255-7949. --- Robert Naiman [EMAIL PROTECTED] Preamble Center 1737 21st NW Washington, DC 20009 phone: 202-265-3263 x277 fax: 202-265-3647 http://www.preamble.org/ ---
[PEN-L:10715] Re: URGENT: Act now for East Timor
Max Sawicky wrote: -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Nicola Bullard Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 1999 3:36 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: URGENT: Act now for East Timor Friends - As part of the international effort to maintain pressure on the UN and the Government of Indonesia to act immediately to stop the massacre in East Timor, we are circulating this statement. Please sign on and return the statement to [EMAIL PROTECTED] by 5pm Bangkok time on Thursday 9 September. We will consolidate the list and fax the statement to the UN, ASEAN, the Government of Indonesia and APEC heads of state immediately. Please use the statement in any other way that is useful. Thankyou. Nicola Bullard Sept. 7, 1999 To Secretary General Kofi Annan. United Nations; Secretary General Rodolfo Severino, Association of Southeast Asian Nations; all heads of state; the community of nations End the Terror in East Timor The world failed East Timor once, in 1975, when it offered little protest to the bloody annexation of that country by Indonesia. Key international actors, including Australia, the United States, and ASEAN, either supported the takeover behind the scenes or tacitly approved of it. For the next 24 years, many governments engaged in a conspiracy of silence as over 200,000 Timorese lost their lives under Jakartas harsh rule. The world cannot afford to fail the people of East Timor again. As Indonesian troops and Indonesia-supported militiamen wreak mayhem on the people after the historic vote for independence last week, it is imperative that we act to prevent an act of ethnic cleansing on the scale of Bosnia and Kosovo. The United Nations must immediately constitute an armed peacekeeping mission and send it to Timor within hours. Every minute now counts if we are to prevent a massive massacre. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) must condemn the Indonesian governments abetting the massacre and offer police and troops from its member countrieswith the exception of Indonesia--to serve as the core of the peacekeeping mission. Indonesia must immediately withdraw its police and soldiers, disarm the militiamen, and stop expelling Timorese from their homeland on the pretext of helping them escape the violence. Indonesia must immediately recognize the overwhelming vote for independence, release Xanana Gusmao, and allow Gusmao, Jose Ramos Horta, and other key Timorese leaders to freely travel through Indonesia and to East Timor to participate in constituting a government. The UN General Assembly must convoke a special session to immediately recognize East Timors independence and impose sanctions on Indonesia for failing to provide the order and security that it promised in the Tripartite Agreement of May 5, 1999. The big powers, as well as Australia and New Zealand, must refrain from taking unilateral military action, the short term gains of which would be outweighed by the long- term instability to which such an action would plunge Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. The international community must act now to spare a small nation whose identity was forged in 24 years of heroic defiance of repression from further bloodshed. Council for Alternative Security in the Asia-Pacific Focus on the Global South Focus on the Global South (FOCUS) c/o CUSRI, Chulalongkorn University Bangkok 10330 THAILAND Tel: 662 218 7363/7364/7365/7383 Fax: 662 255 9976 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web Page http://www.focusweb.org Ole Fjord Larsen, secretary, the formative world parliament of the united peoples
[PEN-L:10655] Urgent action is needed on East Timor
September 6, 1999 Dear friends, Urgent action is required from progressive and democratic forces around the world to counter the bloodbath being perpetrated in East Timor by the Indonesian Army and their thugs. We urge you to organise or support demonstrations, pickets, vigils outside Indonesian Embassies and Consulates or the offices of Garuda Airlines. Daily demonstrations are taking place around Australia, with nationally coordinated actions scheduled for September 10 and September 11. These actions have been called by East Timorese organisations in Australia, the Australian trade union movement, the National Union of Students, and Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor. Resistance, the socialist youth organisation, has called for a national walkout of high school students to join the protests on Friday September 10. We ask that these dates be made International Days of Action demanding that the Indonesian Army Stop the Bloodbath, Withdraw from East Timor, and Recognise the vote for an Independent East Timor, and that governments support the request of the East Timorese for troops to assist with the withdrawal of the Indonesian military.. Attached below is a statement issued today by the National Executive of the Democratic Socialist Party of Australia. Also attached is a statement from the Indonesian Peoples Democratic Party. Please circulate these statements widely. Further information is available from the web site of ASIET: http://www.peg.apc.org/~asiet. (Please note that ASIET's web site will soon be moving to http://www.asiet.org.au/ The following articles from the issue of Green Left Weekly printed today contain useful background information on what's happening in East Timor and Indonesia. If you don't have easy access to the web and would prefer to have these articles emailed to you, send a message to Green Left Weekly: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Militias on the offensive around East Timor, By Sam King (from Dili) http://www.greenleft.org.au/current/375p15.htm East Timor: what role for peacekeepers? By Jon Land http://www.greenleft.org.au/current/375p3.htm One more battle won (editorial) http://www.greenleft.org.au/current/375p3b.htm How Indonesia tried to rig the vote, By Stephen Marks http://www.greenleft.org.au/current/375p19.htm A party's incredible journey (5 weeks with the PRD) By Max Lane http://www.greenleft.org.au/current/375p16.htm Dita Sari: Rely on the strength of the people, By Jonathan Singer http://www.greenleft.org.au/current/375p17.htm In solidarity, John Percy National Secretary Democratic Socialist Party Australia [EMAIL PROTECTED] __ UN/Australia must act NOW to stop bloodbath in East Timor! Statement by the National Executive of the Democratic Socialist Party (September 6, 1999) The Democratic Socialist Party calls on all supporters of democracy to mobilise to demand that the Australian government insist that the United Nations authorise the immediate dispatch of Australian troops to East Timor. The task of these troops must be to assist the East Timorese resistance forces to stop the current bloodbath being organised by the Indonesian armed forces (TNI) and police (Polri). This can only be achieved through the disarming of the pro-Jakarta terror gangs. In addition, these troops must supervise the rapid withdrawal of all Indonesian military and police personnel from East Timor so as to enable the East Timorese to take full control of their nation's affairs. All East Timorese national liberation forces have called for immediate UN-authorised military intervention in East Timor to stop the TNI/Polri-organised bloodbath. If the United Nations Security Council continues to argue that an international military force cannot be sent to East Timor without the Indonesian government's agreement, then the Australian government should act unilaterally and send its armed forces into East Timor to end the TNI/Polri-organised terror campaign. The argument that the UN cannot authorise the sending of an armed security force to East Timor without the Indonesian government's approval is utterly hypocritical since the UN has never recognised Indonesia's claim of sovereignty over East Timor. In the August 30 ballot the overwhelming majority of the East Timorese nation, in the face of a massive campaign of intimidation by TNI/Polri-directed terror gangs (``pro-integration militias''), clearly expressed their desire for independence from the Indonesian state. Prime Minister Howard and Foreign Minister Downer also make the argument that Australian military forces cannot be sent to help the East Timorese people halt the TNI/Polri's campaign terror and mass murder without Jakarta's (that is, without the Indonesian military's) prior agreement. This stance is simply the continuation of the policy that Australian governments, both Labor and Liberal, have had for 24 years of sacrificing the democratic rights of the East Timorese people
[PEN-L:2643] A Classic Australian Orwellianism on East Timor
A friend of mine wrote to me this morning saying that Indonesia is allowing E. Timor independence. Says he heard about it on the BBC, though NPR had nothing. I'm dubious, but I went and searched for "East Timor" on my company's web-site, to see if anyone had been talking about this. I came upon a classic piece of Orwellian double-talk by the Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer: At the time, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said that while Australia now supported self-determination for East Timor, the policy change did not extend to supporting full independence - something demanded by separatist guerrillas. So, "self-determination" does not equal "full independence". Those folks are so clever! Note also the "separatist guerrillas" bit: it is the guerrillas who are "separatist" (and you are only separatist if you are separating from something legitimate, otherwise you are "freedom fighters", etc.). This is from an article from the East Timor International Support Center (ETISC), that I think first appeared in the *Indonesian Observer* of today (1/27). The article can be seen in its entirety at http://www.dejanews.com/article/437301877. I'm not sure, but you also may be able to find this on their web-site, http://www.easttimor.com. Bill
[PEN-L:12527] East Timor Arbitrary Detention (fwd)
Date: Fri, 19 Sep 1997 18:36:40 + From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: East Timor Arbitrary Detention EAST TIMOR HUMAN RIGHTS CENTRE 124 Napier St Fitzroy 3065 Australia PO BOX 1413 Collingwood 3066 Australia Tel: 61 3 9415 8225 Fax: 61 3 9416 2746 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Director: Ms Maria Brett Chair: Bishop Hilton Deakin __ URGENT ACTION 19 September 1997 NAMES:Joaquim Santana Constancio Chantal dos Santos, 21 Fernao Malta Lebre Jojo dos Santos Ivo Miranda Francisco Caldeira Julio Santana Jose Ximenes Domingos Natalino Soares (no first name) Laurindo Alkino Da Costa Fernando Lere Nuno dos Santos VIOLATION:Arbitrary Detention LOCATION: Semarang, Indonesia and Dili, East Timor Ref: UA 23/97 The East Timor Human Rights Centre (ETHRC) holds grave fears for the safety of up to thirteen East Timorese men who were arrested in Semarang, Indonesia and Dili in East Timor. ETHRC sources have reported that Joaquim Santana, Domingos Natalino, Fernao Malta Lebre, Ivo Miranda and Julio Santana are currently detained at POLDA (local police station) in Semarang following their arrest on 14 September, 1997. According to the Indonesian daily newspaper, "Republika", three other East Timorese students, Nano, Soares (no first name) and Laurindo Alkino Da Costa were arrested on the same day and are also believed to be in detention at POLDA. According to the Indonesian report, the three youths were arrested in relation to an alleged bomb explosion at a house in Demak, east Semarang, that took place on Saturday 13 September. The Indonesian report states that another five unidentified East Timorese students are being held in detention at POLDA in relation to the alleged bomb explosion. It is not clear whether the unidentified five are the same as Joaquim Santana, Domingos Natalino, Fernao Malta Lebre, Ivo Miranda and Julio Santana, however it is believed they are the same people. Other sources have reported that two other East Timorese men, Fernando Lere and Nuno dos Santos, are also being held at POLDA in relation to the incident. ETHRC sources have confirmed that Constancio Chantal dos Santos, Jojo dos Santos, Francisco Caldeira and Jose Ximenes are currently in police custody at POLRES (Regional Police Headquarters) in Dili. The men were arrested at 8am on 16 September after disembarking in Dili. According to Amnesty International, the arrests are believed to be related to bombs found on the men by the Indonesian authorities. It is believed Constancio Chantal dos Santos and Jojo dos Santos have been accused of breaching Articles 106, 108 and 110 of the Indonesian Criminal Code (KUHP). These articles relate to rebellion against the state. The two men have also been accused of violating another law in relation to the use of weapons. The ETHRC believes the incidents in Semarang and Dili are related. The East Timor Human Rights Centre holds grave fears for the safety of the thirteen East Timorese men as East Timorese detainees are routinely subjected to torture and ill-treatment while in military or police custody, especially if they are denied access to their families and independent legal council. RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send faxes/telegrams/express/airmail letters in English, Bahasa Indonesia or your own language: * seeking clarification of the identities of the East Timorese detained at POLDA in Semarang and POLRES in Dili; * seeking details of the charges (if any) against Jaoquim Santana, Domingos Natalino, Fernao Malta Lebre, Ivo Miranda, Julio Santana, Soares, Laurindo Alkino Da Costa, Nuno dos Santos, Fernando Lere, Francisco Caldeira and Jose Ximenes and calling for their immediate and unconditional release if they have not been charged with a recognisable offence under existing laws; * seeking assurances that none of the detainees will face torture or ill-treatment in detention and that they will be treated humanely and in accordance with international standards; and * seeking assurances that they will have access to their families and independent legal representation. SEND APPEALS TO: 1. MILITARY COMMANDER REGION IX/UDAYANA (includes East Timor) General Syahrir MS Pangdam IX/Udayana Markas Besar KODAM IX/Udayana Denpasar, Bali INDONESIA Telephone: +62 361 228 095 Telegrams: Pangdam IX/Udayana, Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia 2. CHIEF OF POLICE FOR EAST TIMOR Colonel Atok Rismanto Kapolda Timor Timur Dili, East Timor INDONESIA Telegrams: Kapolda, Dili, East Timor ALSO SEND COPIES TO: 3. MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS Ali Alatas S.H. Menteri Luar Negeri Jl. Medan Taman Pejambon No. 6 Jakarta
[PEN-L:6889] Oct. 28 for Indonesia East Timor (fwd)
From: asiet [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Oct. 28 for Indonesia East Timor Path: asiet Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1996 04:58 AEST ROUND-UP OF ACTIONS BEING ORGANISED FOR OCTOBER 28 AS OF THURSDAY, OCTOBER 24, 1996. FURTHER INFORMATION WILL BE REPORTED AS IT COMES TO HAND. In solidarity, Max Lane. *** Australia 1. There will be 24hr hunger strikes in all Australian state capital cities, the national capital, Canberra, and two provincial cities. There will be associated public meetings and piuckets outside the embassies (where there is one) in all cities. Video schowings and educational stalls are attached to most hunger strike locations. Trade union involvement is taking the form of participation by trade unionists in the pulic meetings. Participation varuies from provinve to province. Australia's four biggest trade unions are involved, at one lebvel or another - sometimes state branch. They include: * Maritime Union of Australia (speakers, endorsement) * Construction, Forestry, Mining and Engineering Union (speakers from strike committe, official endorsement ion sone cities) * Community and Public Sector Union (endorsement, speakers) * Amalgamated Metal Workers Union (AMWU) In the state of South Australia, an initiative taken in conjunction is the establishment of a Women Trade Unionists in Solidatarity with Dita Sari network. This is being initiated by the South Australian Secretary of the Community and Public Sector Union. Also participating in a 48hr hunger strike is the Secondary High School Students Union in New South Wales state. The activities have been sponsored by a wide range of groups, again varying from state to state. These range from the various progressive political parties, other solidarity groups, Aboriginal groups, etc In all states, where there is an East Timorese community, East Timorese representatives are participating. 2. India. A demonstration is being organised outside the Indonesian Embassy in new Delhi. Human rights, student and trade unions groups will participate in this and a following press conference. There is a public meeting at the Jawargal nehru university in Delhi. The main trade union group involved is the All India Congress of Trade Unions, who are sponsoring the visit to India by Nico Warouw, International Representative of the PRD. Follow-up demonstrations are being held in Calcutta, also with Nico Warouw particpating. 3. The Philippines. The BMP (Philippines Worker Solidarity), the largest trade union grouping in Manila, will be organising a picket outside the Indonesian Embassy. 4. South Africa A picket is being organised outside the Indonesian Embassy in Pretoria. It is being officially organised by the African National Congress (ANC), the Conress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the SOuth African Communist Party (SACP). 5. The Netherlands Two days of activities in Amstedam, Rotterdam and The Hague, based around a 24hr hunger strike. Activities include poetry readings, video showings, various speakers etc. The actions are organised by Coordinationgroup for Solidarity to Support Peoples Resistence in Indonesia/Supporting Movement for the Democratisation in Indonesia ( CSVI/GPDI) , SAP (Sosialist Labour Party), LCKW (Landelijk Commitee Koppeling Wet), Werkgroep PURNAMA (UTRECHT), HVP (HAAG'S PEACE PLATFORM), YTI (Yayasan Tragedi Indonesia), AKSI SETIAKAWAN 6. Germany German parliamentarians, including from the Party of Democratic Socialism, will visit the Indonesian Embassy in a protest activity on October 28. They will also hand over petitions to the Indonesian Embassy. There will be two press onferences in the parliaments of Saxony and Berlin, which will include statements by Indonesia eye-witnesses. 7. New Zealand The East Timor solidarity committee is organising a demonstration on Friday October 25 as part of the International Day. 8. London TAPOL is organising a picket outside the Embassy on October 28. 9. United States There will be a protest at noon on the 28th in front of the Clinton/Gore headquarters here in San Francisco (Van Ness and Post Streets), using the hook of the scandal over the Indonesian campaign contributions to focus on US military and economic ties. We are demanding an end to US arm sales and military aid, support for Indonesian workers right to organize; freedom for all political prisoners and self-determination for East Timor. The action is organized by Global Exchange, the East Timor Action Network, The East Timor Religious Outreach and the International Action Center. We are trying to get key laobr leaders and religious figures to speak, we will be carrying bags of money into the headquarters, and do some "guerrilla theater." The International Action Center in New York, founded by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, are planning a picket and rally (Oct. 28, 5:00-6:00 p.m.) at the
[PEN-L:1547] Solidarity with East Timor
November 20, 1995 Dear Sister/Brother: December 7, 1995 is the 20th anniversary of Indonesia's invasion of East Timor. This will mark 20 years of genocide, and remarkably, 20 years of determined resistance by the people of East Timor. In solidarity with actions planned by the resistance movement in East Timor, as well as actions planned by social justice organizations world- wide, the East Timor Alert Network will host a press conference on Parliament Hill at 10am on Thursday December 7. Speakers will include Jean-Claude Parrot, Svend Robinson, Sunera Thobani, and of course, Isabel Galhos, the first Timorese woman to escape to Canada. The purpose of this event is to show broadening national support for our campaign to end the Canadian government's diplomatic, economic and military support for the Indonesian government. In particular, we will demand that the Canadian government use this occasion to announce an official arms embargo and an end to the supply of any military equipment to Indonesia. In addition, ETAN will call on the Canadian government to publicly state its support for self-determination for East Timor. Canadian companies currently profit by supplying equipment to the Indonesian military which is carrying out the genocide of the East Timorese people, and which is well-known for suppressing workers' rights in Indonesia. (For more information on increasing Canadian military sales to Indonesia, please refer to the attached document). The Canadian government argues that this equipment is not "arms," and that this trade leads to dialogue and human rights. You can help us show the Canadian government that this is not acceptable, and that concern about this issue is not limited to a few activists in Canada. We are asking the leadership of all major trade unions and social justice organizations to demonstrate this by taking the following actions: Please fax Prime Minister Jean Chretien before December 6, and inform him that your organization supports our call for an official arms embargo against Indonesia. Copies should be sent to Andre Ouellet, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Roy MacLaren, Minister for International Trade, and to H.E. Parwoto, Indonesian Ambassador to Canada. Please issue a national news release on the afternoon of December 6, publicizing your participation in this campaign, and attach a copy of the letter sent to the Prime Minister. This will ensure that our press conference gets the attention it deserves. Please fax a copy to Kerry Pither at CUPW's national office, at (613) 563-7861. Please copy and circulate this material to all levels of your organization, and urge others to participate by taking the same actions. If you have any concerns or questions, I can be reached at CUPW's national office at (613) 236-7230 ext. 7940. Thank you for your support. Your show of solidarity will make an enormous difference to this struggle. In Solidarity, Kerry Pither ETAN National Solidarity Project Addresses and fax numbers: Prime Minister Jean Chretien House of Commons Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6 fax: (613) 941-6900 Roy MacLaren, Minister for International Trade Andre Ouellet, Minister for Foreign Affairs Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Lester B. Pearson Building Ottawa, ON K1A 0G2 fax: (613) 996-4309 H.E. Parwoto, Indonesian Ambassador to Canada Embassy of Indonesia 287 MacLaren St. Ottawa, ON K2P 0L9 fax: (613) 563-2858 November 20, 1995 Dear Sisters and Brothers: Many of you heard Bella Galhos speak at the CLC 3rd National Human Rights Conference on November 13. Thank you for your generous donations, which totalled $1250.00 and enabled us to pay her refugee "head tax." We had several requests for information and for action ideas, and the CLC has generously offered to get this to you. Attached is a document prepared by ETAN's National Solidarity Project appealing to trade unions for increased support. In addition to the action ideas outlined in this document, ETAN would like to urge you to help us make our upcoming campaign a success. December 7, 1995 is the 20th anniversary of Indonesia's invasion of East Timor. This will mark 20 years of genocide, and remarkably, 20 years of determined resistance by the people of East Timor. In solidarity with actions planned by the resistance movement in East Timor, as well as actions planned by social justice organizations world- wide, the East Timor Alert Network will host a press conference on Parliament Hill at 10am on Thursday December 7. Speakers will include Jean-Claude Parrot, Svend Robinson, Sunera Thobani, and of course, Isabel Galhos. The purpose of this event is to show broadening national support for our campaign to end the Canadian government's diplomatic, economic and military support for the Indonesian government. In particular, we will demand that the Canadian government use this occasion to announce an official arm
