>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?
We should have _clearly_ opposed "peace-keepers" and argued against the ETAN, Australian unionists, etc. that called for an imperial military intervention. An unpopular position among liberals & leftists at that time, yes, but we should have.
It appears to me that, with each recent imperial military intervention, the ranks of the anti-imperialist left have been thinning fast (sometimes due to defection, other times because of an absence of a clear position, half-hearted participation, preoccupation with "pro-Saddam/pro-Milo/pro-X"-baiting, etc.). This trend is likely to continue, if we don't learn anything from Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, etc.
BTW, I saw a few people who were carrying "Free Tibet" placards in the Ellipse on A16. It's good that there weren't many more, but it's disturbing that there were some. A honeymoon between AFL-CIO and youthful activists may portend the dropping of anti-imperialism from the youth agenda altogether (except for a handful of socialist youths). It sure looks like young American leftists have come to be more critical of nationalisms of other nations than American nationalism. (Many said to me that they were offended by Serbian-Americans' display of their flag and that they decided not to come to anti-war protests because of Serb nationalism; whereas few activists made the AFL-CIO's flag-waving & nationalism an excuse for their non-participation in Seattle & A16, for instance. I notice asymmetry here.)
Yoshie