Chomsky speaks

[Brad De Long]

>Certainly Chomsky's account of US government behavior toward East Timor is
>to be preferred to the State Department version, which Michael Pollock
>presents (complete with their wheezes, e.g., "...complications and
>uncertainties of the post-cold war world...").  His patronizing and
>ill-informed remarks on Chomsky (whom he finds "stuck in the past") should
>be compared with what Chomsky has actually written, e.g., the following
>from last fall:
>
>                                Oct 23, 1999
>
>                    East Timor Is Not Yesterday's Story
>
>                              By Noam Chomsky
>
>   According to recent reports, the UN mission in East Timor has been
>   able to account for just over 150,000 people out of an estimated
>   population of 850,000. It reports that 260,000 "are now languishing in
>   squalid refugee camps in West Timor under the effective control of the
>   militias after either fleeing or being forcibly removed from their
>   homes," and that another 100,000 have been relocated to other parts of
>   Indonesia.

So that's 350,000 slaughtered in the past two years?

Brad DeLong