Listmembers,
I am going to abuse this bandwidth this morning to ask you all to please
think very carefully about the apparent hypocrisy of the US's failure to act
to protect the innocent people of East Timor who are now again being
slaughtered because they dared to express their desire for independence from
Indonesia.
I for one find it hard to swallow after the months of "concern" over the
plight of the Kosovar Albanians. Even more hard to swallow because we sold
and gave arms to the Indonesian government 25 years ago and essentially
facilitated their outright genocide against the people of East Timor. We
have a responsibility in this situation (in my opinion greater than the one
we had in the Balkans), but apparently for all our lip service to protecting
freedom and democracy whatever that responsibility is takes a back seat to
our economic and political interests in that region.
I think you might find some relevance here as our racism (the Timorese are
not white-skinned Europeans) plays a role. We certainly are selective about
which genocides we wring our hands over!
I hope that you will alert your students to this matter. I hope you will
think about this, not put it out of your minds so quickly, and perhaps spread
the word among your colleagues too.
Thanks for reading this post.
Nancy Melucci
Faux Full-Timer
El Camino College
Torrance, CA
"It is impossible to love justice and to love one's country." - Camus
