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Today's
Stories
Robert Fisk
The US
Needs to Blame Anyone But Locals for UN Bombing
Virginia Tilley
The Quisling Policies of the UN in Iraq: Toward a Permanent War?
Rep. Henry Waxman
Bush Owes the Public Some Serious Answers on Iraq
Vicente Navarro
Media
Double Standards: The Case of Mr. Aznar, Friend of Bush
August 20, 2003
Robert Fisk
Now No
One Is Safe in Iraq
Caoimhe Butterly
Life and Death on the Frontlines of Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
UN Bombing: Act of Terrorism or Guerrilla War?
Michael Egan
Revisiting the Paranoid Style in the Dark
Ramzi Kysia
Peace
is not an Abstract Idea
Steven Higgs
NPR and the NAFTA Highway
John L. Hess
A Downside Day
Edward Said
The Imperial Bluster of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Gridlock at Path 15: the California Blackouts were the "Wake
Up Call"
Website of the Day
Ashcroft's Patriotic Hype
Recent
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August 19, 2003
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Blackouts Happen
Gary Leupp
"Our Patch": Australia v. the Evil Doers of the South
Pacific
Sean Donahue
Uribe's Cruel Model: Colombia Moves Toward Totalitarianism
Matt Martin
Bush's Credibility Problem on Missile Defense
Juliana Fredman
Recipe for the Destruction of a Hudna
John Ross
Fox Government's Attack on Mexican Basques
Sasan Fayazmanesh
What Kermit Roosevelt Didn't Say
Website of the Day
Tom Delay's Dual Loyalities
August 18, 2003
Uri Avnery
Hero in War and Peace
Stan Goff
The Volunteer Military and the Wicked Adventure
Cathy Breen
Baghdad on the Hudson
Michael Kimaid
Fight the Power (Companies)!
Jason Leopold
The California Rip-Off Revisited: Arnold, Milken and Ken Lay
Matt Siegfried
The Bush Administration in Context
Elaine Cassel
At Last, A Judge Who Acts Like a Judge
Alexander Cockburn
Judy Miller's War
Harvey Wasserman
The Legacy of Blackout Pete Wilson
Website of the Day
Fire Griles!
August 16 / 17, 2003
Flavia Alaya
Bastille
New Jersey
Jeffrey St. Clair
War Pimps
Saul Landau
The Legacy of Moncada: the Cuban Revolution at 50
Brian Cloughley
What Has Happened to the US Army in Iraq?
William S. Lind
Coffins for the Crews: How Not to Use Light Armored Vehicles
Col. Dan Smith
Time for Straight Talk
Wenonah Hauter
Which
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David Lindorff
Where's Arnold When We Need Him?
Harvey Wasserman
This Grid Should Not Exist
Don Moniak
"Unusual Events" at Nuclear Power Plants: a Timeline
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David Vest
Rolling Blackout Revue
Merlin Chowkwanyun
An Interview with Sherman Austin
Adam Engel
The Loneliest Number
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Hamod & Albert
Book of the Weekend
Powerplay by Sharon Beder
August 14, 2003
Peter Phillips
Inside
Bohemian Grove: Where US Power Elites Party
Brian Cloughley
Charlie Wilson and Pakistan: the Strange Congressman Behind the
CIA's Most Expensive War
Linville and Ruder
Tyson
Strike Draws the Line
Jim Lobe
Bush Administration Divided Over Iran
Ramzy Baroud
Sharon Freezes the Road Map
Tom Turnipseed
Blowback in Iraq
Gary Leupp
Condi's
Speech: From Birgmingham to Baghdad, Imperialism's Freedom Ride
Website of the Day
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August 13, 2003
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A Wall of Separation Through the
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The Heavy Cost of Empire
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Elaine Cassel
Murderous Errors: Executing the Innocent
Ralph Nader
Make the Recall Count
Alexander Cockburn
Ted Honderich Hit with "Anti-Semitism" Slur
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Revisionist History: the Bush Administration, Civil Rights and
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Josh Frank
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The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
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Gore Vidal
The
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Francis Boyle
Impeach
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August
21, 2003
War Crimes and Punishment
in Indonesia
Rapes,
Murders and Slaps on the Wrists
By BEN TERRALL
In the wake of the death sentence given to a suspect
in last year's Bali bombing and the recent Jakarta car bombing
that killed 10 people, the U.S. mainstream media is again focusing
on Islamic fundamentalist terror in Indonesia. But in the rush
to speculate on the state of Jemaah Islamiyah, the group most
often associated with both atrocities, and its possible links
to Al Qaeda, Western journalists are overlooking other crimes
committed by the leading source of terror attacks in the archipelago:
the Indonesian armed forces.
On August 5 the Indonesian government's
ad hoc Human Rights Court on crimes against humanity committed
in East Timor during April and September 1999 sentenced Major
General Adam Damiri, who oversaw the 1999 Indonesian military
(TNI) scorched-earth East Timor campaign, to three years in prison.
Given the scale of the devastation the TNI visited upon the former
Portuguese territory in retaliation for its UN-supervised vote
for independence (after 24 years of TNI occupation), the punishment
was hardly impressive. Few observers think the general will actually
wind up serving any time: the court convicted only three Indonesian
"security" officers for their complicity in rape, murder,
and the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of East
Timorese; all are free on appeal.
Damiri, the final, and most senior, of
18 suspects facing charges, missed several court appearances
because he was busy overseeing the current war on Aceh, an oil-rich
province in Northern Sumatra where Exxon-Mobil has long been
implicated in military crackdowns on civilians. That Damiri was
granted the right to continue with activities much like those
he was charged with responsibility for in East Timor, and that
the prosecutor asked for an acquittal before sentencing, starkly
illustrates why the International Crisis Group recently described
reform TNI reform as "dead." Adding insult to injury,
the prosecutor again asked for an acquittal while appealing the
sentence.
Meanwhile, the UN-established Serious
Crimes Unit in East Timor has indicted more than 60 Indonesian
soldiers or officers, including Damiri and former commander General
Wiranto, for crimes against humanity committed in 1999. All are
in Indonesia and, given Jakarta's refusal to cooperate with East
Timorese extradition requests, it is extremely unlikely they
will face prosecution shy of enormous change within the archipelago
or a UN-backed international tribunal.
Damiri's argument that in East Timor,
"soldiers acted quickly to prevent unrest from spreading,
evacuate victims and arrest culprits" would be comic if
the reality were not so tragic. Countless East Timorese eyewitnesses
described the armed forces doing just the opposite. And Damiri's
stunning claim that if the military hadn't acted, "the death
toll would have been far higher," is belied by the widely
reported role the armed forces played in both direct attacks
on civilians and the training and arming of militias that acted
as proxies in much of the repression. Australian academic and
Indonesia expert Damien Kingsbury notes that "the evidence
[of TNI support for the militias] has been released in Australian
intelligence documents of radio intercepts, transcripts of that,
vast quantities of material; files and documents that we actually
found in East Timor after the ballot, after the TNI had been
pushed out by the international forceshaving been one of the
observers there at that time, we all got to see this, first-hand.
With our own eyes we saw the TNI handing over weapons to the
militia, literally in the street." Due to inadequate forensic
work after the fact (thanks in no small part to lack of pressure
from the U.S.), no one will ever know how many East Timorese
civilians the military and its milita allies killed.
Like other tactics employed in the brutal
East Timor occupation, forcible displacement of civilians for
their "protection" is part of the current Aceh campaign.
The powers that be in Jakarta have also torn a page from the
twisted Bush foreign policy playbook by instituting a program
of "embedding" journalists, while deporting independent
U.S. freelancer William Nessen and a Japanese photographer and
harassing other independent-minded reporters. On May 29 the Committee
to Protect Journalists condemned sniper attacks on journalists
in Aceh, citing at least six cases in which unknown gunmen opened
fire on convoys of both foreign and Indonesian journalists. The
New York-based watchdog group noted "mounting evidence of
a systematic effort by Indonesian security forces in Aceh to
restrict reporting on the fighting there." Though most international
observers have been forced out of the territory, numerous eyewitness
reports of rape, torture and extrajudicial executions have still
emerged from the region. The TNI also blandly admits to launching
a "strategic hamlet" program which may move up to 200,000
Achenese civilians from their homes into camps.
Activists inside Indonesia campaigning
against these horrors face the serious jail time that officers
responsible for the atrocities don't. In one of the more egregious
recent examples, though he repeatedly called for a peaceful solution
to the conflict in his homeland and worked for an alternative
to armed resistance, Acehnese student activist Muhammad Nazar
was sentenced to five years for spreading hatred toward the government.
The London-based human rights group TAPOL noted that the conviction
was made "on the basis of a law that clearly challenges
the principle of freedom of speech and of expression." As
in resource-rich Papua at the other end of the archipelago, where
indigenous people have grown equally tired of TNI attacks on
civilians, other Acehnese dissidents have simply been killed.
The TNI has vested interests in prolonging
conflict in contested regions. Such areas provide them opportunities
to assert their importance as an institution needed to prevent
the breakup of Indonesia. Aceh, Papua and other areas also provide
the armed services with ample opportunities to enrich themselves:
the police and military profit from their involvement in illegal
businesses including illegal logging (contributing to massive
devastation of rainforests), prostitution, drug trafficking,
the trade in endangered species, and extortion.
For the TNI to be restrained from perpetrating
further bloody repression in Aceh, Papua and elsewhere, there
must be accountability for its past behavior. Given the diminished
power of the pro-democracy movement in Indonesia, such a reckoning
will require international support; hence concerned citizens
in the U.S. should tell their representatives to maintain pressure
for an international tribunal for war crimes committed in East
Timor, and to oppose the Bush Administration's efforts to undo
bans put in place in 1999 on aid to the TNI.
Ben Terrall
is a freelance journalist living in Oakland. He can be reached
at: bterrall@igc.org
Weekend
Edition Features for August 16 / 17, 2003
Flavia Alaya
Bastille
New Jersey
Jeffrey St. Clair
War Pimps
Saul Landau
The Legacy of Moncada: the Cuban Revolution at 50
Brian Cloughley
What Has Happened to the US Army in Iraq?
William S. Lind
Coffins for the Crews: How Not to Use Light Armored Vehicles
Col. Dan Smith
Time for Straight Talk
Wenonah Hauter
Which
Electric System Do We Want?
David Lindorff
Where's Arnold When We Need Him?
Harvey Wasserman
This Grid Should Not Exist
Don Moniak
"Unusual Events" at Nuclear Power Plants: a Timeline
for August 14, 2003
David Vest
Rolling Blackout Revue
Merlin Chowkwanyun
An Interview with Sherman Austin
Adam Engel
The Loneliest Number
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Hamod & Albert
Book of the Weekend
Powerplay by Sharon Beder
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