East Timor and Kosovo

[W. Kiernan]

Chris Burford wrote:
> 
> ...Massacres are occurring now in hundreds. Journalists fear to
> witness them, and the total figures are probably already in the
> thousands. The fascist militia are herding the population into
> confined areas, including, interestingly, onto the beaches...
> 
> ...So the options for the west, and for any progressive left winger
> who might hope to influence western governments rather than writing
> passive propagandist articles of withering cynicism, are
> 
> a) do nothing (always an option)
> 
> b) send in humanitarian aid (always an option, sounds good, and will
> undoubtedly happen)
> 
> c) evacuate the refugees, as many of the half a million population
> that the militias want to expel to make the remainder cower and give
> up their right to self-determination. Settle them in Australia.
> Queensland might be climatically most similar and there could be
> psycho-educational programs and laws to manage a racist backlash.
> 
> d) arm the independence fighters for what has to be a war of
> independence.
> 
> e) order the Indonesian military out on pain of attack, by Australian
> forces (to minimise the risk of a single member of the US armed forces
> being killed.
> 
> f) ride out any protests by China including the fact that it is
> reported it would veto a "peace force" in the UN security council
> 
> g) bomb bridges in Jakarta (trying this time to avoid the Chinese
> embassy).
> 
> h) reform the global capitalist system and the United Nations so
> there is an accepted system of world governance
> 
> i) do nothing, an option always present, and always worth repeating.
> 
> But if leftists think they avoid any responsibility however small, by
> deciding to steer clear of all the pitfalls of partial solutions
> whether reformist or less reformist, they should not assume that they
> are not involved.
> 
> Because they are, because the system of capitalism is global.
> 
> And "do nothing" is also involvement in the concrete situation.

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