Rob confesses:
I have to rant.
Australia still hasn't
a - withdrawn recognition of Indonesian sovereignty of East Timor
b - expressed open support for Habibie against Wiranto
c - withdrawn aid
d - withdrawn our embassy staff from Djakarta and expel the Indonesian staff
from Canberra
e - stopped training and cooperating with members of the Indonesian military
f - loudly proclaimed to the world that all should do the same
g - done a single fucking thing
Surprise, surprise. What does Rob expect of a sub-imperialist state?
Certainly not the truth. And it has done many things -- it's been
supporting all the policies Rob is appalled at. It is
a- deliberately maintaining recognition of Indonesian sovereignty over East
Timor
b- refusing to support the line Habibie has been peddling to the media
c- kept pumping in resources to Indonesia in the guise of aid
d- maintained full diplomatic relations with Indonesia
e- kept training and cooperating with the notoriously vicious and
reactionary Indonesian military
f- made sure that its imperialist allies know it's still toeing the line
g- busting a gut to kept all this the way it is and to keep a lid on any
potential public reaction.
I'd recommend Rob goes to the library and digs out the Collected Works of
Marx and Engels where he can read about Palmerston's (ie British
imperialism's) public agenda and secret real agenda in relation to Russia,
mainly in relation to the Crimean war. Vols 12, 13, 14 and 15. Then he'd
see what Chomsky, useful as he is, should really be doing. Of special
interest in Vol 12 is Marx on "Lord Palmerston", p 341, in Vol 13 Marx "The
Secret Diplomatic Correspondence" p 84, Vol 14 "Lord Palmerston" p 14 and
"Traditional English Policy" p 584, and Vol 15 "Revelations of the
Diplomatic History of the 18th century" p 25.
[snip]
The Indonesian military are slaughtering the men and removing the women and
kids to other islands. That's what they've done for decades. No surprises
there. Based on the media consensus that 4 women and children have been
forcibly removed, we're talking about the deaths of about 15000 men right
there. This is already so much bigger than Kosovo, the latter doesn't even
deserve to be in the same sentence. We have to keep in mind just how *big*
this is.
Rob shouldn't dismiss Kosova just because of differences in scale. What
Kosova has done is provide the working class of the imperialist countries
with a ringside seat at the kind of show the imperialists put on everywhere
and always. It's even made the intermediate strata sit up and think -- the
Guardian has a snap poll on readers' opinion regarding the need for UN
intervention, and at the moment opinion is equally divided. The usual
petty-bourgeois cop-out of running to the UN or some other fake-progressive
proxy for imperialism is dead in the water now, thanks to the experience
provided by first Bosnia then Kosova.
Wiranto is doing the same thing the 'new order' did in 1965, when last a
decisive section of the military didn't like the direction the government
was taking. A million people were killed then and I reckon a number of the
same order is not to be rejected as beyond possibility now. Oz and the US
stood by (indeed actively helped) then, and, based on the above
So what's new?
And thus to my second theme: just because the vast majority of people
strongly hold a view on something, our institutional context is such that
this sentiment has no hope of affecting anything. We are impotent in our
own country and our own world. More than ever, what Washington decides, and
what Canberra might expect it to decide, determines who lives and who dies.
Because we ignore history, we are caught by surprise at every turn. Because
we never think to look at the ideas that constitute us socially (like the
sovereignty of 'the individual' and concomitant notions of 'democracy'), we
have become helpless.
Like rabbits caught in the headlights of an approaching truck.
The extermination of a people is a lot more than the tolling of a bell, but
it is that, too. If we can but sit by and watch such an obscenity, in full
ghastly knowledge of what's happening, and if we find ourselves in an order
that reproduces these nightmares relentlessly, then we should at least
realise what it means. Someone will be next, and someone after that. And
there'll be nothing we'll be able to do about it unless we go back to
basics, learn the lessons of our history, and reject the sway of our
institutions. Or one day, it'll be our turn.
We're better than our institutions.
Sure, and nobody's forcing us to be in THEIR bloody institutions either.
What I'd say is that if we happen to wake up and "find ourselves" (oh my!)
"in an order that reproduces these nightmares relentlessly" then we should
hop out of bed and get into an alternative order that fights this.
It's not just a question of rejecting the sway of "our" (ie THEIR)
institutions, but of building counter-institutions able to
