Re: (Partial) response to Michael's plea

[Eugene Coyle <eugenecoyle@xxxxxxx>]

bantam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> G'day Pen-pals,
>
> >The brutality in Palestine is unconscionable.  When is the last time we
>
> heard about East Timor?  Or has it fallen off the map?  Even Colombia no
>
> longer merits a mention.<
>
> It is nobody's interests - nobody who matters, that is - to pursue the
> East Timor story too much.  One Oz journo (Lindsay Murdoch of the Sydney
> Morning Herald / Age stable - Oz's best papers) who started digging into
> resdual issues has got himself deported.  Nobody reported what happened
> when Indonesia closed the West Timor refugee camps, nobody has had
> anything to say about the fact that many of the men who disappeared at
> the time of the outrages have never been seen again (I fear forced
> resettlement is a more likelihood for missing women and kids than it is
> for missing men ... ), and nobody's saying anything about what ever
> happened in the East Timor enclave in northern West Timor.  Howard wants
> to do business with Sukarnoputri on the matter of stopping the flow of
> boat-people to Australia from corrupt army-and police-run embarkation
> points, as what remains of his government's battered credibility at home
> depends on his inconscionable policies regarding desperate foreigners
> being vindicated.  So, yeah,  East Timor's off the map.  We need but
> guess at what's going on in regional Colombia, and we won't be far
> wrong, alas ...
>
> >I think what is missing is an overall narrative to tie things together
> so
> that each crisis does not appear as an unrelated episode -- so that the
> activists in various social justice movement can draw upon the strength
> of
> each other.<
>
> The following doesn't cover all bases, but it's a concise and timely
> reminder of where we're at on some crucial criteria, I think.  It ain't
> quite the end of the world, but ya can see it from here ...
>

Put Venezuela on the list, where now some labor leaders seem to be taking
their turn in following a script out of CIA headquarters.

Gene Coyle