Chris, what is this crap? Either I can't read the English language any more, or you are saying that _I_ have the option to send in humanitarian aid, diplomatically threaten Jakarta, bomb bridges, etc. Oh yeah? The U.S. government has those options, maybe the U.K. government does as well, whereas obviously no individual leftist reading this list has any options available to him except a./i. or maybe, in the very long term, h.
But clearly neither the U.S. nor the U.K. is going to do a damn thing to help East Timor; the U.S. government has masterminded and underwritten the persecution of East Timor for the last three decades, do you think they intend to suddenly undo their efforts of the last thity years?
The ruling class of the West perceived Yugoslavia as a threat, because it was at one time a socialist country, and the Yugo working class had the temerity to imagine that they had economic rights. That's why the West spent the last decade dismembering Yugoslavia, that's why Rugova has been marginalized, because his pacifism interfered with the West's plans to slice up Yugoslavia by armed force, that's why the West looked the other way as the KLA flooded Europe with heroin, and that's why, even with NATO troops right there on the ground, NATO has done exactly zero to protect Serbian civilians in Kosovo against ethnic cleansing and widespread, systematic terrorist murder.
On the contrary, Indonesia, to the West, appears a fine place to generate wealth for its ruling class. For example, you can get workers to assemble high-tech products, such as H-P printers, for small change per hour, and when Starbuck's sells someone a cup of coffee for two and a half dollars, they need only forward a couple of pennies to the rights-free serfs who actually grow the coffee, leaving a fatter profit margin for the management in Seattle.
The ruling class of the West doesn't give a damn about the human rights of Indonesia's working class, any more than it gives a damn about any working class rights anywhere - in fact, it is obviously the long term project of capital to destroy working class rights everywhere on the globe. I'll bet neither the U.S. nor the U.K. government will lift a finger over the Indonesian government's continuing slaughter in East Timor.
Yours WDK - WKiernan at concentric.net