Wednesday, July 8, 2009

A Normal, Minimal-Choice Election

The International Herald Tribune headlined it "A Proudly Normal Election" in Indonesia, and it was -- a minimal-choice election, as normally happens in most countries (Jacob Ramsay, "A Proudly Normal Election, " International Herald Tribune, July 8, 2009).

This election was a de facto choice among three mass-killing Suharto generals -- each of them old US proteges -- one of whom actually embodied the specter of something like fascist dictatorship, and people voted for the smoothest, least frightening general, the incumbent, Gen. Susilo.

But it was impossible on the ballot to vote for the poor or to vote against killing civilians, because none of the candidates, pre-screened by the establishment, stood for anything like that: these were candidates of the rich, and of murder.

Gen. Susilo had most of the army and most of the rich people behind him, so he had most of the media propaganda and also most of the campaign money.

In Indonesia a lot of poor people like the election season because they get direct cash bribes. Party messengers come to their homes and give each family several dollars, and this time everyone I met said Gen. Susilo's footmen gave the most money.

Beyond that, his two rivals were repulsive to many people. They selected as their running mates the two most hated generals in the country. One, Gen. Prabowo, has a neo-fascist style and made his name as a hands-on torturer and as Suharto's son-in-law, and the other, Gen. Wiranto, saved the army in 1998 when he threatened a Tienanmen-style massacre of demonstrators if they challenged the army after toppling Suharto.

So compared to those two, Gen. Susilo seemed less bloodthirsty, even though he's been high in the chain of command for some of the country's most famous massacres, including Jakarta '96, occupied East Timor '99, Aceh in the early 2000s, and as President he's backed nationwide police torture and army torture and murder in sealed-off Papua, and has a practice of arresting people who insult him or who hoist local independence flags. Economically, Gen. Susilo broke the law and canceled severance pay for workers, and hunger and diarrhea have been increasing nationwide, especially in Nusatenggara in eastern Indonesia.

But he's done all that smoothly. He's seen as smart, and he gets lots of foreign money. The US and investors like him because he does the necessary killing and holds down wages discreetly -- without bragging about it -- and he lets them take minerals and forests and labor while demanding smaller bribes than Suharto.

And at the same time he's made life better for city elites, lots of condos and spectacular malls. If you have money, life in Jakarta can be Valhalla. That gets him good press coverage.

But if you're poor, police thugs will come and bulldoze your home to put up those fancy condos, and your chances of working, eating, or putting your kid through primary school are the same or worse than before Susilo.

So the Herald Tribune is right, this was a normal election. There was voting but there wasn't much choice.

Link to view this posting in Arabic translation.

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Monday, February 2, 2009

Common Sense. Empty Talk. What Does It Take to Get a Meal Here, an Earthquake?

In Indonesia, the government-funded Muslim Ulema's Council (MUI) has recently issued two remarkable fatwas that, first, prohibit smoking by pregnant women, children, or people in public spaces, and that second, forbid potential voters from abstaining -- or from voting for candidates who aren't "credible" --, since these voting choices could be seen as being "dangerous for the state" (Ali Mustafa Yaqud, Deputy Chief of the Fatwa Commission, Metro TV, February 3, 2009, Western Indonesia Time).

The edicts are refreshing for those who want to breathe well, and for those who seek political insight into the fact that "the state" -- even when it's a strongarm state -- usually wants and needs some legitimacy, and often seeks it through voting, but voting on its terms, sans thoughts, options or people that are not "credible."

In the late 1960s, surveys of US business leaders showed -- amazingly, to today's mentalities -- that they actually feared revolution in the United States. Today hardly anyone even imagines it.

Today you have Marxists for Obama, and former Marxists who worked for Bush (the neo-cons) . In today's America, as in most of the world, revolution is no longer credible.

But, then again, looser talkers are now saying the same about what's called capitalism, or at least about Wall Street investment banking, which was about as solid and credible as you could get, until those weeks last September, when, as they say, it suddenly vanished into air, taking potentially lifesaving billions of imagined dollars with it (potentially lifesaving, that is, if those dollars had been used for things like food, instead of finance fun)(On the concepts of rich people's imagined and/or cybered money vs. poor people's earthbound earnings, see News and Comment postings of June 3, 2008 ["Drawing Your Last Breath Hungry. Burma, Food Crisis, Wall Street, and the World Economy"] and Nov. 21, 2007 ["Bangladesh and Wall Street After the Flood: Two Different Kinds of Property."]).

It's said that sensitivity to ground shifts tends to depend on an organism's constitution. Some claim that horses feel earthquakes before we do. And even among people, it does seem to be true that some are slower on the uptake than others.

I once sat in a Sumatra eating hall wondering why screaming people all around me were stampeding, until I looked up and noticed that the hanging light bulb was swaying back-and-forth as the earth quaked.

The MUI -- originally created by the dictator, Suharto, is showing some deep political insight. You want people on board. You want people signed-on. As their spokesman put it: "We must have a credible president."

But if people get off, refuse to affix their X's or signatures, run politically amok (an Indonesian word) -- what then?

What do presidents do, even if their boys have guns? That depends, in part, on how many guns.

But the point is this: sometimes rulers win, and -- also -- sometimes they don't win.

With conditions right, the mountains really do tremble.

And politics is not geology.

In politics, the rocks can think. They can meet and say 'Let's have an earthquake.'

People tried it in Central America and got smashed. Red huipiles ran moist with grief tears.

But people are now trying it in South America -- and from places like Bolivia, there are tremors.

When a person gets tremors, which -- for a person -- is bad, they may find, bizarrely, that nicotine helps.

But when a state gets the shakes, suppression can get messy, so preemption is clearly preferable. Thus, the minimal-choice election. Thus, the demagogue who stirs hope, but not food pots.

In the Indonesian language, to say something is 'empty talk' ('omong kosong') is to say something harshly insulting. It's worse than, in English or Spanish, crying 'bullshit!' or 'mierda!,' which makes sense, since bad as feces can be, empty talk can be even more damaging socially, especially, say, if it's on the ballot, and if the sum total of your political choice in life is voting either for package of empty talk A or package of empty talk B.

In such situations, common sense works, and it translates into any language:

It doesn't matter what they say. It matters what they do. And if they don't do it, get up and make them do it.

You could call that 'Do it yourself.' You could call it 'Revolution.'

But as the old US borscht-belt joke says, "You can call me anything you want. Just don't call me late for dinner."



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Saturday, January 31, 2009

'Enemy of the Prevailing Order.' Democracy, and Saying 'Enough!'

In urban areas with street crime the idealized figure of the honest cop has long been deeply popular, especially among children.

Asked what he wants to be, a young boy in a poor household cries out, eagerly, "Polisi!," and, on getting his ear twisted by an angry mother, amends, "Allright, I'll be a doctor!"

Actually, his chances of rising to doctorhood are slim -- no spare money, no free education -- but they may be greater than those of his becoming an honest cop, since that's a species that, in this community, only seems to exist on cartoon TV.

The police almost never enter the alley (which happens to be in Indonesia) except via proxy cop-protected drug hoodlums, but poor adults with real, off-screen, experience know that to see a police officer is to tense up and then brace for a shakedown (or beating), even if you're feeling idealistic and furious enough to walk into a station to report a crime. (The practice of demanding a bribe from someone trying to report a crime sets up an infinity paradox, since the demand is itself a crime, and to report that one you'd have to pay again...)

At one of the main traffic roundabouts there's an enormous full-color poster of three top uniformed commanders, in medals, posing sternly under the slogan "Honesty"! It commemorates World Anti-Corruption Day and is directly across the street from a huge new bright-blue brothel that's advertised, in part, as a hotel, but if you walk in and ask about a hotel room, they laugh, and can't stop laughing.

This facility is on the former turf of the legendary crime lord, Olo, who went down in a power struggle with the old district police chief, Sutanto, who later became the national police commander under the president, Gen. Susilo, who ran for and won office on a platform of anti-corruption.

The other big posters are for April elections, the largest of them being for two mass-murdering, US-protege generals (Prabowo and Wiranto, Adm. Dennis Blair's old associate [See News and Comment postings of Jan. 6, 9, and 22, 2009, as well as Dec. 7, 2007]), and -- perhaps with the male electorate in mind -- for several parliamentary candidates who also happen to be beautiful women.

Elections would be one thing if you could vote consequentially against official murder, against withholding food from the starving, and against things like police-as-criminals. But elections become something else if you can't cast such big choice votes. In such typical cases, elections become diversions of popular hope and energy that end up legitimating and reinforcing unjust orders rather than reforming them.

But even if you get a rare chance to vote on basics, or on sensitive power issues, watch out if you're invadable, since if you vote wrong, there could be trouble.

Condoleeza Rice pushed for the '06 Gaza / West Bank election that Hamas surprised her by winning, and which was acknowledged by President Bush as valid, before he OK'd punishment (see footnote).

On Bloomberg TV this week, from Davos, George Soros, when asked about plunging oil prices, said that the drop was unfortunate in that it's, for example, hurting Dubai property, but on the other hand "however it's not all bad news because the main oil producing countries have been the enemies of the prevailing world order" and the price drop is now hurting them, specifically Russia, Iran, and Venezuela, where, Soros said "It's not so easy to finance a Bolivarian revolution with $40 oil."

Soros, anticipating further good news regarding Hugo Chavez, said "probably his days are numbered" -- and estimated that Chavez would last less than a year, which means that according to the world's top "democracy-promotion" funder, Venezuela's freely elected president (whose legal term is due to last 4 more years) should perhaps start looking out his window, looking not for voters, but tanks ("For the Record," Bloomberg TV, aired Jan. 30, 2009).

More fundamentallly, one might wish to hope that a major US left-liberal like Soros might also want to consider himself to be an " enem[y] of the prevailing world order," a world order in which, as a text scroll from Davos noted: "More than 24,000 people die of hunger every day" (CNN International, January 30, '09, during an interview with the Oxfam executive director). But that would be a poorly informed hope, at least regarding billionaires (who could each personally feed those 24,000 people, instead of choosing not to), and also regarding most anyone in the current top US leadership and funding strata.

But, given free will, it is indeed possible for them, and especially, less-rich people, to say 'Enough!'

If something kills innocent people en masse, it deserves to have enemies.

If a rich-world figure says they're pro-democracy, start off by asking them this: How would they feel about running the UN Security Council based on direct world popular vote, instead of nuclear weapons (vetoes are now held by the Permanent Five, the immediate-post-WWII nuclear powers), and the same with the world distribution of wealth and key questions of murder law enforcement?

That's not to suggest democracy as cure-all. Rule by the people is largely myth. Except possibly in small (non-family) groups, strong people will tend to dominate -- the questions are under what constraints; don't pretend everyone's in charge.

But the point here is merely that when today's rich leaders talk democracy, or just talk elections, they usually don't mean it if that raises the specter of a world with less-insanely-skewed wealth or power, or of a world where honest cops run around in life -- and not just on cartoon TV, arresting any evildoer who has wrongly caused, or permitted, people's deaths.

---
Footnote:

Bush said, for what it's worth as testament to pre-punishment homage to democracy:

"[T]he Palestinians had an election yesterday, the results of which remind me about the power of democracy. You see, when you give people the vote, you give people a chance to express themselves at the polls, they -- and if they're unhappy with the status quo, they'll let you know. That's the great thing about democracy: It provides a look into society. And yesterday, the turnout was significant, as I understand it. And there was a peaceful process as people went to the polls. And that's positive. What was also positive is that it's a wakeup call to the leadership. Obviously, [Palestinian] people were not happy with the status quo. The people are demanding honest government. The people want services. They want to be able to raise their children in an environment in which they can get a decent education and they can find health care. And so the elections should open the eyes of the old guard there in the Palestinian territories. I like the competition of ideas. I like people that have to go out and say, 'Vote for me and here's what I'm going to do.' There's something healthy about a system that does that. And so the elections yesterday were very interesting" ("President Bush Holds a White House Press Conference," transcript, The Washington Post, January 26, 2006).

Link to view this posting in Russian translation.

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Thursday, January 29, 2009

A Shift Toward Worker Power? The Time is Ripe to Tip the System, Now

In bad situations, people lower their standards for what it is that constitutes good news.

There's a very sick man with a withered arm, but it hasn't been amputated, contrary to what a garbled, and panic-inducing, report had indicated.

Similarly, a boy has been coughing for three months, but a TB test says it isn't TB.

Saying this, the parent, on a cell phone from the Burma border can be heard shivering in the rare cold, even though the family has just invested in a blanket -- their second, which is now handy, since for three nights they've been sleeping in the forest to dodge police who (in a case of bad good news) aren't seeking bribes, but are instead seeking to catch people and -- word has it -- ship them to Naypyidaw (the capital) for one year's bondage labor.

The question always is, bad compared to what? One person's dump is another's home hearth.

And that can be said literally, since, not far from that coughing family, there is a garbage dump where others live in slime, but they live there not as bottom-dwellers but as, relatively speaking, rich aunts and uncles -- economic migrants -- who periodically transfer money back home, since by picking (and living) trash they make more cash than do their relatives on, or off, the farm in Burma.

There are dump cities around the world.

In Guatemala, they feature vultures (the bird kind). In the Philippines there are frequent dump-slides, killing people.

And in Cambodia, the New York Times just visited a dump city, and used the existence of this particular hell to argue against labor standards on the grounds that if people would only work more cheaply that would create more jobs for, say, dump dwellers, on the neoliberal assumption that capitalists don't currently have enough desperate, oppressed, potential workers to choose from (See Nicholas D. Kristof, "Where Sweatshops Are a Dream," The New York Times, January 14, 2009).

Very poor people can indeed be delighted when what we call a sweatshop comes to town (see News and Comment posting of Nov. 8, 2007, "Duduk - Duduk, Ngobrol - Ngobrol. Sitting Around Talking, in Indonesia."), but what the Times misses is that they would be even more delighted if it paid them better wages, didn't rape and fondle the female workers, didn't spray them with toxics, etc.

Whether or not that happens and whether or not enough jobs get created depends crucially on the balance of power.

When workers are weak, it is indeed true that cutting labor standards can get more factories built, but by that Times/Davos/Burma-junta logic of job creation you should also abolish the minimum wage, permit prostitution, even permit human bondage/ slavery, since each of those steps would indeed -- under weak-worker conditions -- induce the creation of new jobs (Inconsistently, the Times editorially does support the minimum wage, and that Times writer, has, as it happens, crusaded against poor-country prostitution).

A better job-creation solution is to change the power balance and make workers strong, in which case capital is the one that has to take bad news as good, adjust their expectations downward, and realize that if they want to put their capital to work they'll have to pay people enough to, say, eat well.

Its true that, depending on what kind of historical moment one is in, such a job solution may not always be pragmatic.

If say, for example, interest rates were high, capital could say: 'Screw these workers, who needs a factory? For now, we'll just put our money in Citibank!'

Or if capital were riding higher than usual in political leverage it could just say to a government bent on imposing laws to strengthen workers: 'Screw you, government. What do we businesses need from you? What are you going to do, bribe us?'

But of course, those are not the conditions that exist today.

Today, in what's called the financial crisis (though for those hungry, life has always been "crisis," even when rich people were calling it "prosperity"), interest rates are very low and business needs a lot from government.

Workers (or unemployed) are, of course, today still more vulnerable than bosses, but the key changeable variable now is government: it has leverage, perhaps unprecedented leverage, as businesses pant for government's bailout trillions.

And vis-a-vis worker-staffed production, businesses need to get that revivified, since stashing cash in banks is not now hugely rewarding.

Which is to say, this could be a moment for a power shift -- from workers being weak to being strong -- but only if people force government to kick in on the workers' side, to, for one thing, use its leverage and condition bailouts on deep, thoroughgoing reforms that hugely elevate labor standards, not cut them, and that alter how capital is owned and controlled so that the crisis-induced power shift stays permanent and maybe even opens the door to a more rational, less-killing, system that, at the least, does not starve people.

That's not current rich-world government policy and angry workers aren't currently mobilized.

But they could be, if some see without illusion that this strange moment could be their opening.

It could be, if they make it so, without waiting for team Obama.

Sad but true, but US economic policy is now shaped by the man, Prof. Lawrence Summers, who wrote the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics entry on "Unemployment" and observed -- to the great pleasure of Bush Jr.'s advisers -- that "If unemployment insurance were eliminated, the unemployment rate would drop ... Another cause of long-term unemployment is unionization ..." (Lawrence H. Summers, "Unemployment," The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, 2008).

These Summers quotations were highlighted on the blog of Bush's old economics chief, Gregory Mankiw, of Harvard, who told neoliberals not to worry too much about the orientation of Obama Democrats.

Mankiw wrote: "What would you call a group of economists who are skeptical of regulating mortgage markets, who think unemployment insurance and unions increase unemployment, who say that tax hikes retard economic growth, and who believe that the recovery from the Great Depression was a monetary phenomenon rather than the result of New Deal fiscal policy? No, it is not a right-wing cabal. It's Team Obama ..." ("The Next Team," Greg Mankiw's Blog, www.gregmankiw.blogspot.com , Nov. 30, 2008. Mankiw followed with extensive quotations from Summers and other Obama economists).

Again, such neoliberal thinking only works in a political weak-worker environment.

But that doesn't have to be the environment now -- and for the future, unless workers decide, by inaction, to politically amputate their own arms.


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Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Breaking News: SE Asia Groups Claim to Plan Retaliation for Gaza Killings. Said to Target Israeli Government, Intel in Bangkok, Manila, Singapore.

By Allan Nairn

In response to Israeli terror attacks on Gaza that killed hundreds of civilians, Southeast Asia Islamist terror groups are now said to be planning retaliation against Israeli government offices, including Mossad intelligence, in Bangkok, Manila, and Singapore.

This account comes from Southeast Asia civilian sources who speak directly to some group leaders and who have in the past provided accurate information on their activities.

Such groups have frequently murdered civilians en masse, as in the Bali nightclub bombings, but are now claiming that they want to answer the Israeli mass murders of civilians in Gaza by targeting the closest thing to Israeli combatants in the Southeast Asia region, the offices housing Israeli intelligence and military sales and training operations.

They further claim, according to these sources, that they are not currently targeting Americans due to a supposed belief that new President Obama may change US policy.

The sources for this report, themselves religious Muslims, say they condemn the groups' tactics but share their anger at Israeli forces' repeated killings of civilians.

It is not clear if the planning talk is just bravado, or if it's true they'll just target combatants, since -- like their Israeli and US counterparts -- these groups have repeatedly shown their willingness to kill many civilians to make a point. (Islamist terror leaders like Bin Laden and Abu Bakar Baasyir frequently state this openly; for a rare, frank statement of near-identical Western pro-terror thinking see Thomas L. Friedman, who writes approvingly that in Gaza, Israel was "trying to 'educate' Hamas" by attacking not just Hamas combatants but also by "inflicting" "heavy pain on the Gaza population," just as in Israel's attack on Lebanon '06 "the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians..." Thomas L. Friedman, "Israel's Goals in Gaza?," New York Times, January 13, 2009. Also see News and Comment posting of Nov. 28, 2007, "Thomas L. Friedman and the Bali Bombers. Cold-Blooded Celebrity").


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Monday, January 26, 2009

A "Swiss cheese," "Bantustan" Palestine. A Recidivist America.

President Obama has just given an interview to Al - Arabiya Saudi/UAE TV which is being celebrated as "a sign that [he] is extending th[e] hand of friendship to the Arab world" (CNN International anchor, Jan. 26, 2009, US eastern time).

He said "I can't respect terrorist organizations that would kill innocent civilians, and we will hunt them down" -- hunt them down and give them money, weapons, and training, if his actions so far are any guide, since Obama appears to be continuing the US practice of backing organizations that kill innocent civilians (ie., commit terrorism), eg., the Saudi, Egyptian, Jordanian, Iraqi, and Israeli armed and security forces, and the compliant elements of the Palestinian Authority's various armed wings .

But perhaps more remarkable than this repetition of an old sound-good work-bad US formula was his implication that he was prepared to flaunt the law more defiantly than Bush did.

Though the World Court has ruled that all Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories are illegal, Bush, like Clinton, had maintained the fiction that most of the settlements are OK but that there is a small fraction of them -- some newer outposts -- that are "illegal" and have to go.

But when asked about settlements, Obama did not even stand by this Bush nano-concession to legality, instead stating merely that a Palestinian state would have to be "contiguous," ie., that the pieces would have to be attached, a formula consistent with what Bush once called a "Swiss cheese" Palestine (which Bush said would be bad), or, in more precise terms, what Ariel Sharon once called a Palestine of Apartheid-style "Bantustans" (which Sharon said would be good). (See Khaled Abu Toameh, "'Palestine can't be Swiss cheese'," Jerusalem Post [Israel], Jan. 10, 2008 for a report of Bush's press conference; Akiva Eldar, "People and Politics/ Sharon's Bantustans Are Far From Copenhagen's Hope," Haaretz [Israel], May 13, 2003 for a report of prime minister Sharon's Bantustan discussion with former Italian prime minister Massimo D'Alema).

It's unclear whether the US bureaucracy will stand by this apparent small escalation of Bush's law-defiance (Washington's dictatorial Arab clients already have enough trouble from their oppressed publics), but it is what Obama said, and he's a lawyer who often speaks carefully.

It just indicates that, as on other big matters, the US government tends to be recidivist, feeling that it can pick and choose whether to respect or break the law.


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Sunday, January 25, 2009

Hero Journalist J. A. Belo Being Persecuted, Needs Support.

Many cultures have equivalents of the English-language saying "No good deed goes unpunished," maybe because there's sometimes something about decent people that can make them look like easy targets.

When East Timor was in its heroic phase, enduring tribulations that made the Bible look placid, one of the heroes was a young aspiring journalist named Jose Antonio Belo.

When, amidst liberation, Belo took me on a tour of the place where he had been tortured, he pointed to a spot where a message had been scrawled in blood by a co-detainee who hadn't made it.

(Belo and colleagues were hung from the rafters by SGI, a special Indonesian Intel unit incorporating BIA and Kopassus Group 4, both with special US intel liaison. The Indonesian armed forces illegally occupying East Timor were, as a whole, US-backed, but these commando /intel outfits that electroshocked Belo and others got special US funding, training and encouragement, all this in the Clinton years; see my "Indonesia's 'Disappeared'," The Nation [US] June 8, 1998 at http://www.etan.org/news/news2/disapprd.htm, "Indonesia's Killers," The Nation [US], March 30, 1998 at http://www.etan.org/news/news2/killers.htm, and my September 30, 1999 testimony to the US House International Operations and Human Rights Subcommittee of the House Committee on International Relations "Hearing on the Humanitarian Crisis in East Timor" at http://www.etan.org/legislation/999bhear.htm ).

Today East Timor is independent, thanks to people like J.A. Belo, and, as a result, East Timorese now live more normal-scale injustice, instead of epic daily massacre.

One of the remarkable things about Jose Belo was that, even as his homeland was burning, he still stayed devoted to the ideal of accurate handling of facts.

But now that devotion has gotten him in trouble once again since he's reported facts about a high official that that official -- Timor Leste's Justice Minister, Lucia Lobato, doesn't like, and so she's trying to jail and/or heavily fine him based on Timor's criminal defamation law which, incredibly, has been lifted wholesale from the laws of their old oppressor/occupier, Indonesia, and under which, as one official told Belo, it doesn't matter if the facts are accurate.

The newspaper which Belo now edits, Tempo Semanal, includes material in Tetum, Portuguese, and English and can be seen online and contacted at:

www.temposemanaltimor.blogspot.com
Email: tempo.semanal@gmail.com and/e/ka Taraleu@hotmail.com
Mobile/Telemovél: +670 723 4852

The International Federation of Journalists (www.ifj.org) and the East Timor and Indonesia Action Network (www.etan.org) have expressed support for Belo, but he needs resources and allies to defend himself and continue speaking as a free man.


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Saturday, January 24, 2009

The Torture Ban that Doesn't Ban Torture: Obama's Rules Keep It Intact, and Could Even Accord With an Increase in US-Sponsored Torture Worldwide.

If you're lying on the slab still breathing, with your torturer hanging over you, you don't much care if he is an American or a mere United States - sponsored trainee.

When President Obama declared flatly this week that "the United States will not torture" many people wrongly believed that he'd shut the practice down, when in fact he'd merely repositioned it.

Obama's Executive Order bans some -- not all -- US officials from torturing but it does not ban any of them, himself included, from sponsoring torture overseas.

Indeed, his policy change affects only a slight percentage of US-culpable tortures and could be completely consistent with an increase in US-backed torture worldwide.

The catch lies in the fact that since Vietnam, when US forces often tortured directly, the US has mainly seen its torture done for it by proxy -- paying, arming, training and guiding foreigners doing it, but usually being careful to keep Americans at least one discreet step removed.

That is, the US tended to do it that way until Bush and Cheney changed protocol, and had many Americans laying on hands, and sometimes taking digital photos.

The result was a public relations fiasco that enraged the US establishment since by exposing US techniques to the world it diminished US power.

But despite the outrage, the fact of the matter was that the Bush/Cheney tortures being done by Americans were a negligible percentage of all of the tortures being done by US clients.

For every torment inflicted directly by Americans in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and the secret prisons, there were many times more being meted out by US-sponsored foreign forces.

Those forces were and are operating with US military, intelligence, financial or other backing in Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Jordan, Indonesia, Thailand, Uzbekistan, Colombia, Nigeria, and the Philippines, to name some places, not to mention the tortures sans-American-hands by the US-backed Iraqis and Afghans.

What the Obama dictum ostensibly knocks off is that small percentage of torture now done by Americans while retaining the overwhelming bulk of the system's torture, which is done by foreigners under US patronage.

Obama could stop backing foreign forces that torture, but he has chosen not to do so.

His Executive Order instead merely pertains to treatment of "...an individual in the custody or under the effective control of an officer, employee, or other agent of the United States Government, or detained within a facility owned, operated, or controlled by a department or agency of the United States, in any armed conflict..." which means that it doesn't even prohibit direct torture by Americans outside environments of "armed conflict," which is where much torture happens anyway since many repressive regimes aren't in armed conflict.

And even if, as Obama says, "the United States will not torture," it can still pay, train, equip and guide foreign torturers, and see to it that they, and their US patrons, don't face local or international justice.

This is a return to the status quo ante, the torture regime of Ford through Clinton, which, year by year, often produced more US-backed strapped-down agony than was produced during the Bush/Cheney years.

Under the old -- now new again -- proxy regime Americans would, say, teach interrogation/torture, then stand in the next room as the victims screamed, feeding questions to their foreign pupils. That's the way the US did it in El Salvador under JFK through Bush Sr. (For details see my "Behind the Death Squads: An exclusive report on the U.S. role in El Salvador’s official terror," The Progressive, May, 1984 ; the US Senate Intelligence Committee report that piece sparked is still classified, but the feeding of questions was confirmed to me by Intelligence Committee Senators. See also my "Confessions of a Death Squad Officer," The Progressive, March, 1986, and my "Comment," The New Yorker, Oct. 15, 1990,[regarding law, the US, and El Salvador]).

In Guatemala under Bush Sr. and Clinton (Obama's foreign policy mentors) the US backed the army's G-2 death squad which kept comprehensive files on dissidents and then electroshocked them or cut off their hands. (The file/ surveillance system was launched for them in the '60s and '70s by CIA/ State/ AID/ special forces; for the history see "Behind the Death Squads," cited above, and the books of Prof. Michael McClintock).

The Americans on the ground in the Guatemala operation, some of whom I encountered and named, effectively helped to run the G-2 but, themselves, tiptoed around its torture chambers. (See my "C.I.A. Death Squad," The Nation [US], April 17, 1995, "The Country Team," The Nation [US], June 5, 1995, letter exchange with US Ambassador Stroock, The Nation [US], May 29, 1995, and Allan Nairn and Jean-Marie Simon, "Bureaucracy of Death," The New Republic, June 30, 1986).

It was a similar story in Bush Sr. and Clinton's Haiti -- an operation run by today's Obama people -- where the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) helped launch the terrorist group FRAPH, the CIA paid its leader, and FRAPH itsef laid the machetes on Haitian civilians, torturing and killing as US proxies. (See my "Behind Haiti's paramilitaries: our man in FRAPH," The Nation [US], Oct 24, 1994, and "He's our S.O.B.," The Nation [US], Oct. 31, 1994; the story was later confirmed on ABC TV's "This Week" by US Secretary of State Warren Christopher).

In today's Thailand -- a country that hardly comes to mind when most people think of torture -- special police and militaries get US gear and training for things like "target selection" and then go out and torture Thai Malay Muslms in the rebel deep south, and also sometimes (mainly Buddhist) Burmese refugees and exploited northern and west coast workers.

Not long ago I visited a key Thai interrogator who spoke frankly about army/ police/ intel torture and then closed our discussion by saying "Look at this," and invited me into his back room.

It was an up to date museum of plaques, photos and awards from US and Western intelligence, including commendations from the CIA counter-terrorism center (then run by people now staffing Obama), one-on-one photos with high US figures, including George W. Bush, a medal from Bush, various US intel/ FBI/ military training certificates, a photo of him with an Israeli colleague beside a tank in the Occupied Territories, and Mossad, Shin Bet, Singaporean, and other interrogation implements and mementos.

On my way out, the Thai intel man remarked that he was due to re-visit Langley soon.

His role is typical. There are thousands like him worldwide. US proxy torture dwarfs that at Guantanamo.

Many Americans, to their credit, hate torture. The Bush/Cheney escapade exposed that.

But to stop it they must get the facts and see that Obama's ban does not stop it, and indeed could even accord with an increase in US-sponsored torture crime.

In lieu of action, the system will grind on tonight. More shocks, suffocations, deep burns. And the convergence of thousands of complex minds on one simple thought: 'Please, let me die.'

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Thursday, January 22, 2009

Breaking News: US Intel Nominee Lied About '99 Massacre. US, Church Documents Show Adm. Dennis Blair Knew of Church Killings Before Crucial Meeting.

By Allan Nairn

On the eve of his Senate confirmation hearing (due for 10am, Thurs. Jan. 22), new information has emerged showing that Adm. Dennis Blair -- President Obama's nominee for US Director of National Intelligence -- lied about his knowledge of a terrorist massacre that occured before a pivotal meeting in which Blair offered support and US aid to the commander of the massacre forces.

The massacre took place at the Liquica Catholic church in Indonesian-occupied East Timor two days before Blair met face-to-face with the Indonesian armed forces commander, Gen. Wiranto (the massacre occurred on April 6, 1999; Blair and Wiranto met April 8).

A classified US cable shows that rather than telling Wiranto to stop the killing, Blair invited Wiranto to be his guest in Hawaii, offered him new US military aid, and told the Indonesian general that he was "working hard" on his behalf, lobbying the US government to restore US military training aid for Indonesia. (That training had been cut off by Congress after the 1991 Dili, Timor massacre; for an account of the US cable and the April 8, '99 Blair-Wiranto meeting see News and Comment posting of Jan. 6, 2009 at http://www.allannairn.com/2009/01/admiral-dennis-blair-prospective-obama.html).

Blair's support at that crucial April 8 meeting buoyed Wiranto, and his forces increased the Timor killings, which came to include new attacks on churches and clergy, mass arsons, and political rapes. (For a detailed chronology based on a UN report, see News and Comment posting of Jan. 9, 2009 at http://www.allannairn.com/2009/01/blair-church-massacre-continued.html).

Since I disclosed the contents of that Blair-Wiranto meeting in a report filed in 1999 (see Allan Nairn, "US Complicity in Timor," The Nation [US], Sept. 27, 1999, reprinted in the Jan. 6 '09 News and Comment posting referenced above), Blair has defended himself by claiming that he went into the meeting with Wiranto not yet knowing of the Liquica massacre.

The Associated Press reported this month, in a January 9 dispatch: "Blair has said he only learned of the massacre a few days after the meeting." (Pamela Hess, "Obama to finalize national security team Friday," Associated Press, Friday Jan. 9, 2009, 4:22 am ET; Blair made the same claim to the Washington Post: Dana Priest, "Standing Up to State and Congress," September 30, 2000).

But now, contemporaneous records have emerged -- from the US Embassy in Jakarta, and from the Catholic Church -- showing that the massacre was publicly described by Timor's Bishop one day before the Blair-Wiranto meeting, and that while Blair was in Jakarta preparing for the meeting, US officials who were there with him were discussing the massacre in graphic detail.

One written message from a US official even noted: "In the face of the scores of horrible slash wounds at Liquica, there are no surgeons to treat them."

The US official was referring to the fact that, as had been disclosed at the Timor Bishop's April 7 press conference, dozens of refugees sheltering in the church had been hacked to death with machetes, but as Blair and Wiranto prepared to meet, some of those slashed were still alive.

Another Jakarta dispatch by senior US personnel written prior to the Blair-Wiranto sitdown refers explicitly to Blair's presence, to his impending meeting with Wiranto, and, crucially, to the detail and rough death toll of the already-known Liquica massacre.

"[W]e have the CINCPAC here today (Command[e]r in Chief of the Pacific]," the message said, referring to Blair by title; and it stated, in regard to what Wiranto's men had done: "Now we may have 40 people -- who were cowering in a church -- dead."

Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, had made the key facts of the massacre clear in his April 7, 1999 press conference, which took place the day before the Blair-Wiranto meeting.

Belo was accompanied by Father Rafael Dos Santos, the Liquica pastor who survived the massacre. Their authoritative accounts received same-day coverage in the Western and local press and were also recounted in church bulletins and in US intelligence and diplomatic traffic.

For Blair to claim that he did not know of these materials or his US colleagues' discussions taking place all around him is to strain credulity to the breaking point, especially since he's being nominated as intelligence chief, and since his meeting with Wiranto was cleared by Washington precisely to address the Timor crisis.

Bishop Belo and Father Dos Santos said the following in their publicly broadcast remarks. This account is excerpted from "Timorese Bishop says more than 25 killed in church massacre," DILI, East Timor, April 7 [1999], (AFP):

"Nobel peace laureate Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo accused Indonesian-backed militia on Wednesday [April 7] of massacring more than 25 people in East Timor outside a church. Belo was speaking at a press conference with Father Rafael Dos Santos who described how refugees sheltering in his church and home at Liquisa [an alternate spelling of Liquica], 30 kilometers (20 miles) west of the Timorese capital Dili, were hacked down with machetes. Dos Santos said Indonesian mobile brigade police stood behind the militia during the attack, and fired into the air. When the attack began 'people ran for cover wherever they could,' he said. Some ran into his house and some into the church before being forced out when troops fired teargas into the buildings. 'When they came out of the church, their eyes streaming, they were mown down, hacked to death with machetes, by the Besi Merah Putih (Red and White Iron militia),' he said ... Belo travelled to Liquisa earlier Wednesday to visit the site of the attack with Indonesia's East Timor military commander Colonel Tono Suratman. 'I have a paper from the military commander that there were 25 bodies inside the priest's house,' he said, 'but according to other witnesses outside around the church there were other bodies. I don't know exactly how many.' Belo had been quoted by the Portugese news agency Lusa on Tuesday [April 6] as saying he had first been informed by the Indonesian military of the deaths of 40 people in the church and five in the priest's house... 'Firstly I am sad, for what happened in Liquisa ... secondly I am ashamed to be a citizen of the (Indonesian) republic. It has taken us back to the middle ages,' Belo said."

We shall now see where the Senate takes us.

(For another contemporaneous -- April 7, pre - Blair/Wiranto meeting -- public report of the massacre see the report of Yayasan HAK, the leading independent East Timorese human rights group, summarized at http://etan.org/et99/april/3-10/6yayasan.htm).

Readers can reach the US Senate Intelligence Committee, which is holding today's confirmation hearing on Blair, through the US Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121.

Via the switchboard they can also reach the offices of Senators on the committee. Key members include the committee chair, Sen. Diane Feinstein, the ranking Republican, Sen. Kit Bond, Sen. Ron Wyden, who has said he will question Blair about Timor, Sen. Russ Feingold, a longtime critic of US aid to the Indonesian military, and Sen. Barbara Mikulski, who has also criticized the US policy.

A Jan. 22 '09 Democracy Now! broadcast version of this report can be found at
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/1/22/report_intel_nominee_adm_dennis_blair .

A YouTube excerpt of that broadcast is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eRMV0CV4ms



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Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Killer in Chief. Obama's Choice: Will this President Murder Civilians?

Barack Obama said during this campaign -- speaking of a notional US president -- that he should be able to do more than one thing at a time, which is sound advice for any person.

As Americans today justly celebrate their sweet win over the country's own racism they should at the same time see that they are now installing the world's new killer in chief.

Obama , on taking office, will inherit a state pre-programmed in ways that kill civilians, a vast, globe-spanning machine on autopilot, unconstrained by murder law.

As president, Obama will instantly become the world's number one arms dealer, number one trainer of secret police, number one detonator of bombs, and number one sponsor of forces, US and foreign, that by objective definition do terrorism.

Obama can stop that. He can cry halt, order: 'Stop civilian killings. Now.'

If he truly does, he'll be a hero worthy of Dr. King, of the freedom giants he rode.

If not, he'll become responsible for mass murders, and the first victims will likely fall sometime between today's swearing-in and the last inaugural ball.



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Friday, January 9, 2009

The Blair Church Massacre, Continued. A Chronology of the Timor Killings.

It is now reported that Admiral Dennis Blair is due to be nominated later today as President-elect Obama's new US Director of National Intelligence.

Blair was implicated in the 1999 East Timor church massacres (See posting of January 6, 2009, "Admiral Dennis Blair. Prospective Obama Appointee Aided Perpetrators of 1999 Church Killings").

Below is a detailed chronology of the killings and related events, based on a UN report.

Though Blair was instructed to tell the killers -- the armed forces of Indonesia -- to stop, he chose not to do so. He did the opposite. He offered them support and US aid, instead, and the killings intensified. They culminated with the torching of the Bishop's house (plus executions), a church massacre of perhaps 200, in Suai, a slaughter at the Catholic diocesan office, the rapes and assassinations of clergy, the burning of perhaps 80% of Timor's housing, and the murders of more than 1,000 civilians.

US cables reported Blair's repeated proffers of support to the Indonesian commander, Gen. Wiranto. UN, CIA, human rights, and international press reports recorded the consequences.

The chronology is based on "ANNEX B - Select Chronology May 1998 - October 1999" of "Crimes Against Humanity in East Timor: Their Nature and Causes" by UN human rights consultant James Dunn, a retired Australian diplomat formerly posted to Timor, who wrote it for UNTAET, the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor. The text below is excerpted from the Dunn report except for the material in square brackets.


1998

May 21: President Suharto [a general, the longtime dictator] of Indonesia is forced from power, and replaced by his vice-president, Dr B J Habibie.

June 9: President Habibie states (to Reuters) that he will consider offering
special status to [Indonesian occupied] East Timor.

June 15: An estimated 15,000 students demonstrate in Dili [Timor's capital], calling for referendum [a UN-supervised vote on independence for Timor], and release of Xanana Gusmao [the imprisoned East Timorese resistance leader]...

August 12: Maj Gen Damiri and Col Tono Suratnam [of TNI, the Indonesian armed forces, run by Gen. Wiranto]meet with [militia leaders] Joao Tavares, Eurico Guterres and Cancio de Carvalho, and tell them they must organise "to protect integration [ie. continuation of the Indonesian occupation]."...

October 6:[Occupation] Governor Abilio Soares demands that all government employees, who oppose integration [the occupation of Timor], resign immediately.

October 11: Rally of 30,000 in Dili calls for Governor's resignation.

October 12: Thousands protest in Baucau [Timor's second city] against TNI
[Wiranto's occupying Indonesian armed forces].

November 1: TNI [Indonesian armed forces] troops carry out a series of raids on villages in Manufahi district.

November 4: Several hundred Kopassus [US-trained Indonesian TNI special forces]
troops reportedly arrive in Kupang for deployment in East Timor.

November 20: UN Secretary General expresses concern over violence in E Timor...

December 27: TNI troops, with Gada Paksi [militia], arrest and allegedly torture four
civilians, and destroy several homes in Maubara district.


1999

January 3: Mahidi Militia kill and injure independence supporters in Ainaro [a town in Timor].

January 24-25: Mahidi [militia], with TNI [Indonesian armed forces] involvement, kill 4 in Zumalai [a town in Timor].

January 27: It is announced in Jakarta that [Indonesian President] Habibie will ask the MPR [the upper house of the Indonesian legislature] to approve independence [for occupied East Timor] if a special vote for autonomy [permanent, modified occupation]
is rejected.

February 8: Bishop Belo and Jose Ramos Horta [a Timorese leader,and, with Bishop Belo, a Nobel Peace Prize winner] declare that East Timor should become independent, after a period of Autonomy.

February 15: BMP [militia] group and local TNI attack Guiso village in Maubara district and arrest several persons.

February 16: According to South China Morning Post report Lt. Col. Yayat
Sudradjat, head of [TNI's US-trained] Kopassus Intelligence unit (SGI) convenes a meeting of militia leaders and calls for killing of pro-independence leaders and their families.

February 17: [Militia leader] Joao Tavares reportedly tells meeting of sub-district and village heads in Bobonaro [,Timor] that they will be sacked if they fail to mobilise their citizens to attend pro-[Indonesian] government rally in Balibo [,Timor].

February 19: [Militia leader] Tavares tells Balibo rally that there will be war if people reject the [TNI-backed] autonomy [modified occupation] proposal.

February 22: General Wiranto states in Jakarta that TNI will continue to
deploy the militia to help Polri [the Indonesian national police, also under
Wiranto's supervision] maintain security.

February 24: Two Timorese shot dead in Dili, apparently not by militia, but
by TNI troops in civilian clothes.

February 25: Portuguese Prime Minister [Portugal is the former colonial power
in Timor] calls for UN presence in East Timor....

[March 3: Admiral Blair, chief of US armed forces in the Pacific, tells the US Congress House Armed Services Committee that TNI, the Indonesian armed forces, are
" the main instrument for order" in Indonesia and that their leaders have
"a strong sense of commitment to the constitution." Blair is testifying
in support of new US aid to the TNI.]

March 4: A classified Australian Defence Intelligence Organisation report
concludes that TNI "are clearly protecting, and some instances operating
with, militants'. It notes that TNI 'could apprehend or easily control
pro-Indonesian militants, but has chosen not to."

March 8: More than 1,000 Timorese from Guiso village are reported to have
fled into mountains after militia attacks.

March 11: In New York it is announced that Jakarta and Lisbon have agreed to
give Timorese a vote on their future.

[Timorese leader Xanana] Gusmao and [militia leader] Tavares agree to cooperate for a cease-fire.

March 16: BMP militia surround the Carmelite convent in Maubara, accuse the
nuns of supporting independence movement, and threaten to kill them.

March 26: According to one of those present, at a meeting with militia
leaders, [Indonesian occupation] Governor Abilio Soares orders that priests and nuns
should be killed.

April 6: At Liquica as many as 50 Timorese located in the church compound are
murdered by BMP militia, with TNI involvement. Gusmao calls on Falintil [the Timorese]forces to defend themselves. General Wiranto tells media that the massacre
was the result of conflict between 'rival groups'.

[A subsequent CIA cable says of the massacre at Liquica: "“Indonesian military
had colluded with pro-Jakarta militia forces in events preceding the attack and
were present in some numbers at the time of the killings.”]

[April 8: Admiral Blair meets General Wiranto in Jakarta, offers him reassurance
and new US military aid, invites him to Hawaii as his guest, offers specific aid
for BRIMOB -- a unit that helped stage the Liquica massacre, and offers
to lobby the US Congress to restore the TNI's US IMET military
training which was cut off by Congress after a 1991 army massacre
at a Catholic cemetery in Dili. Contrary to his instructions from the White House and State Department, Blair does not tell Wiranto to shut the militias down.]

April 12: At Cailaco in Bobonaro area, six villagers are kidnapped and then
murdered by Halilintar [militia] and TNI troops in house of Manuel Soares Gama. A
Falintil [Timorese resistance] group retaliates, killing Gama and 2 TNI troops.

April 13: In revenge attack a force of TNI and militia, led by Lt Col.
Burhanuddin Siagian and Joao Tavares reportedly kidnap, torture and then kill
six Cailaco villagers.

April 16: Belarmino da Cruz, a brother of Lopez, is reportedly killed at
Laclubar.

April 17: Massacre at home of Manuel Carrascalao [a Timorese leader].
Manuelito, Manuel's son, and at least 11 others are killed by Aitarak [militia]
and BMP [militia] members, following a militia rally, addressed by
[Indonesian army] Colonel Tono Suratman.

Team Alpha militia murder Virgilio de Sousa, an independence supporter, at
his home in Bauro, Lospalos [Timor].

[April 18: Admiral Blair calls General Wiranto and once again offers
him new US aid and assurances of support. Blair once again declines
to tell Wiranto to stop the massacres and militias, even though the
call had been arranged at State Department behest to get Blair
to correct his earlier April 8 failure to tell Wiranto to stop the killings.
Indonesian officers say Wiranto is delighted with Blair's continued
support, and takes it as a US green light to escalate the militia terror.]

April 20: [Timorese leader] Jose Ramos Horta calls for international sanctions
against Indonesia. General Wiranto visits Dili, and claims security situation is
under control.

[A Top Secret US Senior Executive Intelligence Brief states “to restore stability,
the Indonesian security forces must stop supporting the militias and adopt a
neutral posture.” But that is not what Admiral Blair tells Gen. Wiranto,
and support for the militias continues. ]

April 21: Evaristo Lopes believed dead after being arrested by Kopassus [Indonesian
Army special forces] and Team Alpha militia in Los Palos.

Falintil and militia leaders sign peace agreement at Bishop's residence in
Dili, which envisages setting up of a Joint Commission on Peace and Stability.

April 23: Catholic Church reports that between 42 and 100 persons killed by
militia units in Suai.

According to Australian Defence Intelligence Organisation report General
Wiranto had chosen to ignore the violent behaviour of TNI and militia forces
in Timor.

April 24: After two days of talks Portuguese and Indonesian officials reach
broad agreement on autonomy package and referendum [vote on independence]
, but security arrangements are yet to be resolved.

April 26: Commission on Peace and Stability for East Timor created with
representatives from pro-integration [occupation], pro-independence,
local government, military, police, Church and KOMNASHAM [Indonesian government
human rights commission]..

April 27: At meeting with Australian Prime Minister Howard, [Indonesian President]
Dr Habibie promises to hold a [Timor] self-determination ballot under UN supervision
on 8 August.

April 28: [TNI Col.] Suratman promises that pro-integration [occupation]militias
would be disarmed in coming weeks.

April 30: Report that bodies of 11 pro-integrationists found in Bauhati.

May 1: Sakunar militia, led by Simao Lopes, established in Oecussi....

May 3: [TNI] Kopassus troops and militia members reportedly kill Domingos Soares
Aparicio near Viqueque.

May 4: Mateus Soares Monis, of Sagadate, Baucau, is arrested and killed by
[TNI] Kopassus troops.

May 5: Agreement between Indonesia, Portugal, and the UN on a referendum for
East Timor is signed in New York. It provides for international experts to
help set up and supervise the ballot, and for unarmed police to observe the
process. Responsibility for security, however, rests with ABRI forces [another,
previous, name for TNI]..

May 7: The UN Security Council passes Resolution 136, in support of 5 May
Agreement, and moves quickly to commence its implementation.

May 9: [TNI] Maj. Gen. Damiri tells media that disarmament of militia and
pro-independence forces was 'proceeding smoothly' and that security situation
was now under control.

[May 10: A Top Secret CIA Intelligence Report notes that “local commanders
would have required at least tacit approval from headquarters in Jakarta to
allow the militias the blatant free hand they have enjoyed.”]

May 18: More than 30 Timorese reported killed by militia in Atara.

May 23: [Indonesian] President Habibie promises to release [Timorese leader]
Xanana [Gusmao] after ballot.

May 24: The SYSG [a UN body] urges the Security Council to send a team of
military advisers to East Timor, as Indonesian authorities was not maintaining
security there. After 3 day visit, Special Envoy Soragjee tells Habibie that
all East Timorese must be disarmed.

[Col.] Timbul Silaen, Kapolri [head of the Indonesian national police], tells
media that his police were neutral and 'had done as best as possible to
prevent violence.'

May 27: The Security Council expresses its deep concern at the continuing
violence in East Timor.

May 28: The [official government-backed] Peace and Justice Commission
reports that militia were compiling lists of pro-independence leaders, with the
assistance of intelligence agencies, so that they could be targeted if the
consultation result were to go against the autonomy [modified occupation] proposal...

June 5: Lamberto da Costa and another person reported killed after arrest by
joint TNI/BMP [militia] members. 11 others reported killed.

June 6: BMP militia force 23 women into domestic and sexual slavery in Maubara,
Liquica (KPP HAM [Indonesian human rights] Report)...

Eduardo Pereira, 50, is killed at Liquica, reportedly by 4 BMP [militia] members who
accused him of supporting Falintil.

June 11: The Security Council passes Resolution 1246, formally establishing
UNAMET [the United Nations Mission in East Timor].

The Australian Foreign Ministry announces that it has information that the
TNI [Indonesian armed forces] has actively encouraged and supported the
pro-integration [pro-occupation] militia.

June 15: UNAMET staff unexpectedly witness BMP militia destroying Leotela
village, and beating locals, with TNI watching.

June 23: The UN, citing unsatisfactory security conditions, postpones
referendum to 22 August. General Wiranto records his disagreement with the
postponement.

June 26: Bishop attends peace talks in Jakarta. Jose Ramos Horta and Xanana
[Timorese leaders] allowed to attend.

June 29: Seven UN officials injured in Maliana [a Timor town] in attack by
pro-autonomy mob [pro-occupation]. The UN Security Council President
subsequently expresses his grave concern at attack. SYSG [a UN body]
report states that security situation in East Timor not yet
conducive to holding of ballot.

July 4: A UN driver is shot during militia attack on UNAMET staff and aid
workers in Liquica and Maliana.

July 7: Indonesia sends extra 1,200 police to East Timor, in response to
international concern at security problems.

July 8: UNAMET staff in Maliana witness 60-80 militia being given military
training, reportedly organised by local TNI nco [non-commissioned officer].

July 10: Falintil [the Timorese resistance] proclaims cease-fire...

[July 14: Admiral Blair's Pacific Command naval chief, Admiral Archie
Clemins, goes to Jakarta to tell Indonesian officers that the US wants
to more fully "re-engage" with the Indonesian armed forces and proposes
that a joint US-TNI military facility be established in Surabaya, Indonesia. For detail see my testimony to the US House International Operations And Human Rights Subcommittee of the House Committee on International Relations, September 30, 1999, available at http://www.etan.org/legislation/999bhear.htm ]

July 14: Wiranto declares that there was no cause to deploy UN troops in East
Timor, which would in any case violate the May 5 Agreement.

July 16: Voter registration begins, with one militiaman killed during a clash.

August 4: Voter registration ends, with 438,000 registered...

August 8: Pro-independence and pro-integration [pro-occupation] leaders
sign code of conduct agreement, as a commitment to referendum. General Wiranto declares that surrendering of weapons is prerequisite to peaceful implementation of the ballot.

August 11: Two Timorese killed in Viqueque, and two others wounded in attack
by 59/75 Junior Militia on a poll information centre. SYSG calls for more
Indonesian police to be deployed in Timor, and for more international police
monitors.

August 12: Wiranto issues assurance that military will ensure security during
post-ballot period, and will accept outcome of the ballot.

August 13: [TNI] Colonel Suratnam is replaced by [TNI] Colonel Noer Muis.

August 16: Three Timorese are reportedly killed in Maliana by militia.

August 22: [TNI Col.] Noer Muis warns of bloodshed before and after
the announcement of the results of the ballot. Admitted to mounting
tensions in Suai.

August 25: [TNI Col.] Noer Muis says that security forces would face a big problem if
pro-independence won, and it would incite reaction of their opponents. But
'possibility of war and violence would be very small if pro-integration
[pro-occupation] faction won'.

August 26: [Militia leader] Eurico Guterres tells rally of 15,000 in Dili that
East Timor will become a sea of fire if independence is declared. After the rally two
Timorese are killed by Aitarak militia in a brawl, witnessed by Indonesian
police who failed to intervene....

August 28: In Los Palos village chief Verissimo Quintas is killed by militia,
who accused him of supporting CNRT [Timorese pro-independence
group]..

Militia force journalists and UN staff out of Maliana where two locals are
then killed.

Kapolri [Indonesian national police chief] Silaen declares that his forces
are adequate for security.

[Indonesian Foreign Minister] Alatas rejects need for peacekeeping force
in East Timor.

August 29: CNRT [pro-independence] offices in Dili, Ambeno and Los Palos
are destroyed by militia.

A senior UN field officer reports that TNI troops have stockpiled 400 M-16
rifles in Maliana, and that local commander (Lt Col Siagian) is planning to
carry attacks with militia on those who vote for independence.

August 30: The consultation ballot is held in East Timor, with more than 97%
of registered voters participating

Polling station at Gleno attacked by more than 50 militia.

August 31: Militia attacks in Dili, Gleno, Ermera, Aileu, Ambeno and
Maliana leave 11 killed, including 3 UN local staff.

United Front for East Timor Autonomy [militia group] accuses UNAMET of bias
and describes consultation as "garbage."

[Indonesian Foreign Minister] Alatas praises the referendum.

September 1: Thousands of Indonesians and pro-integrationist [pro-occupation]
Timorese start fleeing to West Timor.

September 2: UN Special Envoy Jamsheed Marker endorses Indonesian management
of security in East Timor. Portuguese, however, ask Security Council to
prepare contingency plans for peacekeeping force.

September 3: UNAMET staff in Maliana evacuate to Dili after militia attacks.

General Wiranto announces that in order "to face unexpected circumstances"
two battalions of troops had been dispatched to East Timor. He said that "he
had just heard that the situation in Timor had returned to normal."

September 4: The results of the plebiscite are officially announced at the
Mahkota Hotel, with 78.5% voting against autonomy option [ie. in favor
of Timor independence, an end to the 24-year occupation].

Within an hour of the announcement militia, many in TNI uniforms but with
Aitarak [militia] cloaks, pour into Dili, and destruction of the city begins. An early target is the Mahkota Hotel.

In Maliana Halilintar and Dadurus Merah Putih militias, in tandem with TNI
troops, begin a campaign of destruction, and kill several locals including
two UNAMET staff.

September 5: A violent operation is launched throughout East Timor,
apparently launched by the TNI with code-names Wiradharma and Guntur. 25
refugees in the Camara Ecclesiastica [Catholic diocesan office]killed by
Aitarak militia.

US Civpol offer wounded in militia attack near Liquica.

September 6: Killings and destruction at Bishop Belo's house. Refugees
forcibly evicted, several believed murdered.

Refugees also forcibly removed from ICR [Red Cross] compound.

Suai massacre at Ave Maria Church. More than 200 persons seeking refuge are
brutally killed by Mahidin and Laksaur militia, with TNI and BRIMOB support.
Colonel Sediono and Lieutenant Sugito played leading roles in the attack and
the disposal of bodies. Several woman who survived the attack were later
taken to local military (Kodim) headquarters and raped.

President Habibie imposes martial law in East Timor, and places Major
General. Kiki Syahnakri in charge.

September 7: Many East Timorese university students, returning to Dili from
Java, are reported to have been killed, and some of the women raped.

Bishop Belo is evacuated from Dili to Darwin [Australia]. Xanana [Gusmao] is
released from house arrest and taken to British Embassy in Jakarta.

September 8: Maliana Police Station massacre. More than 50 persons are killed
by Dadurus Merah Putih militia at Maliana Police Station, with TNI backing.

Timorese killed at Tumin and Kiobiselo in Oecussi in militia attack, with TNI
involvement.

Killings reported in other parts of East Timor.

Military and militia activities in Dili reflect close cooperation, under
TNI command.

[Official] Indonesian Commission on Human Rights condemns the violence, noting
complicity of [Indonesian] security forces.

Massive operation to force East Timorese to go to West Timor on commandeered
or military vehicles gets under way, accompanied by massive systematic
destruction.

September 9: As many as 14 persons killed near Batugade by militia and TNI
ncos.

UN decides to evacuate all its staff to Darwin [,Australia].

US suspends military ties to Indonesia.

Indonesian MPR [legislative upper house] accepts results of [Timor] ballot.

September 10: Massacre at Passabe, Oecussi, by Sakunar militia, assisted by
troops from [TNI's] 745 Battalion.

Reverend Ximenes is killed on road from Dili to Baucau.

UN Secretary General calls on Indonesia immediately to accept peacekeeping
force.

US President Clinton say that "it is now clear that the Indonesian military
is aiding and abetting the militia violence. This is unacceptable." [Though,
as the CIA and public reports reflected, it had been clear from the start.]

September 11: A German priest, Albert Garim, and a Timorese are killed at
Dare, allegedly by [TNI] Kopassus troops.

UN Security Council delegation, with General Wiranto, visits Dili.

September 12: Killings reported at Ainaro, Los Palos and Baucau by militia
and TNI.

Indonesian Government formally agrees to peacekeeping force intervention.

September 13: Indonesia allows international food and airdrops in East Timor.

September 14: Two Timorese killed at Raifun village.

UNAMET staff and 1,400 Timorese evacuated from Dili to Darwin.

The EU bans arms sales to Indonesia.

September 15: UN Security Council Resolution 1264 approves Interfet
[International Force for East Timor] deployment.

September 16: [TNI] Maj Gen Syahnakri denies TNI support for militias.

September 17: TNI withdraw from East Timor begins, and UN aerial food drop
commences.

September 19: Interfet commander, Maj.Gen. Peter Cosgrove, meets with Maj Gen
Syahnakri in Dili.

September 20: Seven Timorese killed by Sakunar militia in Ambeno, Oecussi.

Interfet commences deployment in Dili, without incident.

September 21: As [TNI] Battalion 745 withdraws to West Timor, its soldiers
reportedly kill Timorese and destroy houses. Financial Times journalist,
Sander Thoenes is murdered by [Batallion] 745 troops in the Becora area...

September 23: Militia groups start flooding into West Timor, and TNI troops
begin burning their barracks and other buildings.

September 24: UNHCR reaches an agreement to aid refugees in West Timor.

September 25: Massacre in Lautem area when Team Alpha militia ambush vehicle
carrying nuns, brothers and an Indonesian journalist. Nine person are killed
and their bodies mutilated.

September 27: The UN CHR calls for an international commission to investigate
violations in East Timor.

September 29: Militia reportedly kill two persons in Maliana.

October 3: Interfet troops push towards the western part of East Timor.

October 6: Bishop Belo returns to East Timor.

October 8: East Timorese refugees start returning from West Timor.

October 9: One militiaman is killed and two wounded when engaged by Interfet
troops near border.

October 13: UN officials report that about 400,000 East Timorese are missing.

October 20: Indonesia's MPR passes a decree, annulling the formal
incorporation [Indonesian military takeover] of East Timor, which took
place in July 1976.

October 25: The UN Security Council, in Resolution 1272, creates UNTAET.

October 26: East Timor is taken over by the UN and Sergio Vieira de Mello is
appointed as transitional administrator.

[End of chronology based on the UN Dunn report.]

--------------
The think tank of Obama's transition chief, John Podesta, writes that the choice of Admiral Blair, among others, is "indicative of Obama's intent to work within the rule of law in fighting terrorism" ("Putting the Law Back Into Intelligence," The Progress Report, Center for American Progress, January 6, 2009).

Did Blair "work within the rule of law" in 1999 Indonesia/Timor?

If Obama thinks he didn't, Blair should be prosecuted, not appointed. And if Obama thinks he did, then sponsoring mass killing of civilians is legal, and is indeed the kind of conduct to be rewarded in Obama's Washington.


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Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Admiral Dennis Blair. Prospective Obama Appointee Aided Perpetrators of 1999 Church Killings.

Reports say that President-elect Obama wants to nominate retired Admiral Dennis Blair as the new United States Director of National Intelligence.

In 1999, in the midst of massacres of East Timor civilians and churches, Admiral Blair gave support to the perpetrators, the armed forces of Indonesia.

Two days after a massacre at Liquica that left flesh hanging from the church walls, Blair contacted the Indonesian commander, offered him US aid, and according to classified US cables, failed to tell him to stop the attacks.

Reassured by the evident support from Blair, then the US Pacific Command chief, the Indonesian commander, General Wiranto, escalated the attacks.

The Indonesian forces subsequently struck the Red Cross and the Bishop's residence, killing more than a thousand as they went, burning churches and raping nuns.

They were trying to derail a free election, taking place under UN auspices, that eventually ended Jakarta's illegal occupation of East Timor.

I disclosed the cables documenting Blair's proffers of support to Gen. Wiranto in a dispatch from Timor published in the September 27, 1999 Nation magazine.

Blair did not deny the report, and when I later asked President Clinton about it, he also did not deny it. Instead, Clinton pleaded ignorance and said I'd have to ask Blair.

The Nation report is reprinted below.

(Note: Though the Indonesian military denied responsibility for the murders, UN and CIA reports say otherwise. One CIA cable later declassified at the request of Prof. Brad Simpson of the National Security Archives says of the Liquica massacre that "“Indonesian military had colluded with pro-Jakarta militia forces in events preceding the attack and were present in some numbers at the time of the killings.” It was immediately after those killings that Blair offered new aid to that military.)

---

THE NATION [US]
September 27, 1999

US Complicity in Timor

While the Indonesian military's thugs continue their rampage in East Timor, most foreign reporters have fled the country. As of September 7, frequent Nation contributor and award-winning journalist Allan Nairn was believed to be the only US reporter still there. Nairn left the besieged UN compound and walked the streets of Dili, where he hid in abandoned houses as he observed troops and militia burning and looting. Nairn has been writing about the troubles there for years. In 1991, after being badly beaten by Indonesian troops while witnessing the massacre of several hundred East Timorese, he was declared a "threat to national security" and banned from the country. He has entered several times illegally since then. In his most recent Nation dispatch from East Timor, on March 30, 1998, Nairn disclosed the continuing US military training of Indonesian troops implicated in the torture and killing of civilians. He filed this report by satellite telephone to The Nation through Amy Goodman, host of Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now!

--The Editors

Dili, East Timor

It is by now clear to most East Timorese and a few Westerners still left here that the militias are a wing of the TNI/ABRI, the Indonesian armed forces. Recently, for example, I was picked up by militiamen who turned out to be working for a uniformed colonel of the National Police. [Editors' note: The Indonesian government has denied any connection between the militias and either the police or the military.] But there is another important political fact that is not known here or in the international community. Although the US government has publicly reprimanded the Indonesian Army for the militias, the US military has, behind the scenes and contrary to Congressional intent, been backing the TNI.

US officials say that this past April, as militia terror escalated, a top US officer was dispatched to give a message to Jakarta. Adm. Dennis Blair, the US Commander in Chief of the Pacific, leader of all US military forces in the Pacific region, was sent to meet with General Wiranto, the Indonesian armed forces commander, on April 8. Blair's mission, as one senior US official told me, was to tell Wiranto that the time had come to shut the militia operation down. The gravity of the meeting was heightened by the fact that two days before, the militias had committed a horrific machete massacre at the Catholic church in Liquiça, Timor. YAYASAN HAK, a Timorese human rights group, estimated that many dozens of civilians were murdered. Some of the victims' flesh was reportedly stuck to the walls of the church and a pastor's house. But Admiral Blair, fully briefed on Liquiça, quickly made clear at the meeting with Wiranto that he was there to reassure the TNI chief. According to a classified cable on the meeting, circulating at Pacific Command headquarters in Hawaii, Blair, rather than telling Wiranto to shut the militias down, instead offered him a series of promises of new US assistance.

According to the cable, which was drafted by Col. Joseph Daves, US military attaché in Jakarta, Admiral Blair "told the armed forces chief that he looks forward to the time when [the army will] resume its proper role as a leader in the region. He invited General Wiranto to come to Hawaii as his guest in conjunction with the next round of bilateral defense discussions in the July-August '99 time frame. He said Pacific command is prepared to support a subject matter expert exchange for doctrinal development. He expects that approval will be granted to send a small team to provide technical assistance to police and...selected TNI personnel on crowd control measures."

Admiral Blair at no point told Wiranto to stop the militia operation, going the other way by inviting him to be his personal guest in Hawaii. Blair told Wiranto that the United States would initiate this new riot-control training for the Indonesian armed forces. This was quite significant, because it would be the first new US training program for the Indonesian military since 1992. Although State Department officials had been assured in writing that only police and no soldiers would be part of this training, Blair told Wiranto that, yes, soldiers could be included. So although Blair was sent in with the mission of telling Wiranto to shut the militias down, he did the opposite.

Indonesian officers I spoke to said Wiranto was delighted by the meeting. They took this as a green light to proceed with the militia operation. The only reference in the classified cable to the militias was the following: "Wiranto was emphatic: as long as East Timor is an integral part of the territory of Indonesia, Armed Forces have responsibility to maintain peace and stability in the region. Wiranto said the military will take steps to disarm FALINTIL pro-independence group concurrently with the WANRA militia force. Admiral Blair reminded Wiranto that fairly or unfairly the international community looks at East Timor as a barometer of progress for Indonesian reform. Most importantly, the process of change in East Timor could proceed peacefully, he said."

So that was it. No admonition. When Wiranto referred to disarming the WANRA force, he was talking about another militia force, different from the one that was staging attacks on Timorese civilians. When word got back to the State Department that Blair had said these things in a meeting, an "eyes only" cable was dispatched from the State Department to Ambassador Stapleton Roy at the embassy in Jakarta. The thrust of this cable was that what Blair had done was unacceptable and that it must be reversed. As a result of that cable from Washington to Roy, a corrective phone call was arranged between General Wiranto and Admiral Blair. That call took place on April 18.

I have the official report on that phone call, which was written by Blair's aide, Lieut. Col. Tom Sidwell. According to the account of the call and according to US military officials I spoke to, once again Blair failed to tell Wiranto to shut the militias down. In fact, Blair instead permitted Wiranto to make, in essence, a political speech saying the same thing he had said before. Here is one passage from the account: "General Wiranto denies that TNI and the police supported any one group during the incidents"--meaning during the military attacks. "General Wiranto will go to East Timor tomorrow to emphasize three things:...Timorese, especially the two disputing groups, to solve the problem peacefully with dialogue; 2) encourage the militia to disarm; 3) make the situation peaceful and solve the problem." At no point did Blair demand that the militias be shut down, and in fact this call was followed by escalating militia violence and increases in concrete, new US military assistance to Indonesia, including the sending in of a US Air Force trainer just weeks ago to train the Indonesian Air Force.

Allan Nairn


Link to ETAN East Timor & Indonesia Action Network site for official reports on the 1999 killings and for a petition regarding the prospective Blair nomination

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