East Timor as a UN Colony

[Peter K.]

>East Timor, like Kosovo & Bosnia, is now living the life of a new
>kind of Colony run by international bureaucrats, foreign aid workers,
>& of course multinational military forces.  According to Gusmão, the
[clip]
>Do I hear a deafening silence of leftists?  Well, the topic is surely
>not as interesting as how the mass media covers American anarchist
>politics.

Yoshie, one has to admire your high standards. I understand that the U.S.
and other countries (and the U.N. sorta) were the source of East Timor's
misery in the first place, but once Indonesia had been pressured into
granting East Timor a chance to vote for independence (I'm not clear on the
details on that) as they ended up doing and the violence started, what then?
I realize that's a Hobson's Choice, but what should the left, here or
Australia or elsewhere, do now. Advocate "Juche"? Agitate for more direct
aid? Point out that a lot of suffering could have been avoided had Clinton
made a simple phone call early on? What's the East Timor Action Network up
to?

Peter