an obesity stimulus...,
2008-01-25 12:30:25
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sexing up the intelligence...,
2008-01-28 01:26:09
no justice for the wicked:
General Suharto has peacefully kicked the bucket, friends and family fondly remember stability, corruption. Any mention of the million or so victims of the purges he helped the CIA orchestrate during his 1965 coup, or the hundreds of thousands of East Timorese he slaughtered in his US backed invasion and occupation of that country in 1975, would be indecent on such a glorious occasion as this monster's untimely and injudicious demise.
Instead, I'd like to call attention to Subversion as Foreign Policy by Audrey and the late George Kahin - much of it freely available on google books - an extensive account of the CIA's sustained intervention in Indonesia for over a decade, leading up to Suharto's genocidal rule.
The US government tried to buy elections, and when that didn't work it tried to overthrow the government, and when that didn't work it tried to break off oil-rich provinces from the country, and when that didn't work it called publicly for national uprisings against the government, and when that didn't work it simply started bombing the country, and when, at last, that didn't work they turned to the same US-supported military they had been incoherently organizing rebellions against and started naming names.
To quote an adroit observation from JFK, "No wonder Sukarno doesn't like us very much. He has to sit down with people who tried to overthrow him."
Aimed at changing the character of that country's government to conform to what were perceived to be American interests,
it actually strengthened those elements the administration had sought to eliminate or weaken and destroyed those
whom it wished to reinforce.
The most immediate and at the same time most long term of the effects of the civil
war were the strengthening of both the army and the presidency and the destruction
of parliamentary government.
The history of American foreign relations antagonisms is a viscious circle of self-fulfilling prophecies. I suppose that's what happens when a government is dominated by raving, paranoid loons, and the brief periods of rule by cynical crooks serving the interests of their inhuman business associates will
be remembered fondly as the distant pinnacle of American democracy.
