Tony, I agree with much of what you said, but I must object to you lumping
in East Timor with the other two. East Timor was conquered and exploited
with the support of the U.S and Australia. 200,000 people were killed using
American weapons, and agreements were signed with Australia to share the ill
gotten oil reserves. The western world would have much rather had the
Indonesians take care of East Timor in there own way, and in fact did that
until the hypocrisy of the hands off policy, in the wake of Kosovo, became
to obvious for even the corporate media to ignore. I would bet the
Australian government did not want to go into East Timor, but was forced to
by public outrage. I agree though that no one should have had to go in, the
U.S had simply to say a firm word both publicly and privately to the
Indonesian military and all atrocities would have stopped. Incidentally
there are still many thousands of East Timor refugees being kept in
concentration camp conditions within West Timor, that nobody seems to be
talking about. If Indonesia was seriously slipping out of U.S imperialist
control you can bet we would not go a day without hearing about the
horrendous human rights abuses.
Regards, Aaron
>
>About two years ago, an explosion of emotion burst forth, as certain
>comrades began to incessantly talk about the need to support the 'right
>to self determination'. � � They hawked back to Moses, no make that
>Lenin, to justify the sermons that they launched against others. � �
>Those others, were supposedly renegade socialists that had supposedly
>violated fundamental laws of Marxism by not supporting oppressed groups
>searching for self determination
>
>It soon became apparent, that these emotionally distraught Marxists,
>became only overwraught in the cases of 3 national struggles. � �
>Other struggles seemed to not provoke any real interest at all. � �
>The three cases were....Kosovo, Chechnya, and East Timor. � � Why
>weren't these comrades cheering so wildly for the self determination
>struggles of other groups?
>
>Why Kosovo, Chechnya, and East Timor? � Why not for The Basques,
>Kurds, or Kashmir? � �
>
>It's basic support for democracy, just as basic also, as the right of
>women to control their own bodies, just as men do.
>So what was wrong with this imbalanced situation of Leftists cheering
>for 'self determination', while bombs were falling from imperialist
>planes? � � Why did the pro-self determinationists, limit themselves
>only to propagandizeing around the cases of these 3 out of the way
>locales? � � Was that all that there was to socialist support to
>self determination?
>
>The question that arose is.... don't marxists also support self
>determination for regions? � � Don't they also support self
>determination for multi-national countries under the gun? Do we voice
>support for self determination of oppressed, but only principally when
>our own capitalists seem to be pushing for it, for some group or
>another?
>
>The most natural thing in the world for a socialist that truly supported
>fighting for the self determination of oppressed minorities, would be to
>support self determination for entire countries, and not just fractions
>of populations in far away regions. � What do I mean by this?
>
>Let's pose a question. � When was the last time one heard of
>socialists supporting the right to self determination of The Balkans
>(what used to be called Yugoslavia, though that was not the entire
>Balkan region)? Has anyone been on the bandwagon advocating the right to
>self determination for Russia, or for Indonesia?
>
>Do multi-national countries have no right, in their entirity, to self
>determination free from imperialist control? � � Of course they do.
>How about an even simpler question?
>Why don't American socialists ever talk about supporting self
>determination of those societies opposing US control? � � Is self
>determination something that we support in Kosovo, East Timor, and
>Chechnya, but not in Colombia?
>
>That's right, Colombia is in a life or death struggle fighting for its
>own self determination. � � Isn't it rather puerile, to use Lenion
>and Trotsky's names to support self determination of minority groupings
>in multi-national countries, where the majority nationality is being
>attacked by imperialism? And then be unable to use this concept in
>support of defending Colombia?
>
>Colombia has an oppressed minority being attacked by a dominant ethnic
>group, the Anglo-Saxon capitalists that run the US. � � This is what
>supporting self determination is all about. � � Call for it,
>Comrades. � � Label Colombia's struggle as being one for self
>determination. Colombians, Black, Indigenous, in between, and all
>others, are all struggling for their self determination from US
>dictates.
>
>What happened to this principle of marxism, where it has now become so
>degraded in usage? � � One of the old arguments used to support the
>Vietnamese in their resistance to the US, was that they simply had the
>right to self determination. � � � They had the right to be free
>of the French, and free of the United States. � � � End of
>argument.
>
>This is different from the argument that nations have the right to be
>allied with Australia, to be allied with the US, etc. .... by splitting
>off from the nation bloc they are in. � � � This is a degradation
>and distortion of the idea of supporting self determination.
>
>The simple world reality, is that most self determination struggles in
>the world involve the US. � � That's because the US seeks to run the
>affairs of the rest of the world. � � But many World socialist
>groups don't ever talk about the struggle for self determination in such
>terms. � � Why not? � � � Many have reduced down this concept
>of supporting self determination, to supporting only those national
>groups in alliance with the US.
>
>Comrades in the US need to support the struggle of Mexico for self
>determination from the US. � � Mexicans are currently losing this
>struggle. There are also struggles for self determination from
>Okinawa to Vieques to Turkey to Korea. � � Communists need to
>reclaim this concept from the Social Democratic Left allies of US
>imperialism. � � � And they need to reclaim the concept away from
>the degenerated Trotskyist groups that hang around the tails of the
>labor union leaderships.
>
>These Trotskyist grouplets, were the ones most adamant about lecturing
>on the need to support self determination for Albanian Kosovars,
>Chechens, and Timorese, yet most silent to use the concept anywhere
>else. Either support self determination consistently, or get off the
>soapbox of piled up Trotsky writings. � � Supporting self
>determination is more than just a concept to pull out when your nation
>is pummelling another. Or even when your nation is merely taking
>advantage of the disintegration of another.
>
>Support for self determination should call for NATO troops out of the
>former Soviet Union and The Balkans. � � And it should be for a call
>to get the Australians out of Timor, not a call to send the Aussies in.
>
>Support for self determination is a call for the imperialist countries
>to dismantle their militaries, tear up their foreign bases, and go home.
>It is not a call to build new bases in Bosnia, Timor, or Kosovo. � �
>It is not a call for Indonesia to dismantle it's military, while
>Australia keeps theirs.
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