Buzz bars were pretty good. Can you still get them now? Georgie Pie used to sell them with icecream sundaes.

Dave tries hard to soften and nulify New Zealand inperialism doesn't he.

Gilbert and Sulivan my tits.

What a joke.

Maybe Dave is looking for a safe Labour seat in the next election but one, who knows, who cares.

DOWN WITH THE LABOUR GOVERNMENT AND ALL GOVENMENTS

NZ is not an imperialist country. If the WSWS bothers to go back to its Leninist roots it will find that imperialism is the rule of finance capital.

Can anyone tell us were is NZ's finance capital?

Could it be the windfall profits from stolen state assets sitting in US pension funds or Swiss Banks?

Could it be in the tax dodges that Australian banks use to avoid paying tax on their billions of profits exported from NZ?

Or could it be NZs slavish deregulation removal of tariffs ahead of any of its trading partners without any pistol to its head, and its dependence on a few relatively unprocessed exports?

NZs role in supplying troops to the US and Australia to police Pacific Islands is not evidence of its own imperialist status, but rather desperate attempts by its drooling class to prove its loyalty to its imperialist neighbours in the buying better markets and prices for its exports.

Once upon a time it strutted about the Gilbert and Sullivan Islands in tiny ships pretending it was a "modern major general". Today it downloads a few polis and police from rattling hercs like the proverbial weakling on steroids.

That the Green MP Metiria Turei was in the Solomons in the lead-up to the rigged elections, helping to certify them as 'free and fair'. Maybe they should send her to tell the same lies for imperialism the next time there's a vote in raq or Afghanistan.

As soon as she got back from the Solomons Turei went camping at the Happy Valley mine site. Didn't she notice that thanks to the imperialist occupation multinational companies are ripping up the Solomons, devastating the environment with their mines?

Turei is either a) incredibly stupid or b) a shill for imperialism. Some anarcho-feminist!

"a 1984 riot that erupted during a demonstration in Auckland over the free-market policies being implemented by the Lange-Douglas Labour government"

Never heard of such a thing, any details?

I think Goff was referencing the 1984 Queen Street riot that erupted when police closed down a free concert in Aotea Square put on by a local radio station, possibly DD Smash's finest moment(probably their only fine moment).

A guy I knew years ago told me he scored six Buzz Bars and a second-hand socket set during the looting, but I don't think that qualifies it as an anti-free market demonstration.

i wish i had been alive to go and score six buzz bars and a second-hand socket set. one day i was on the ferry home a couple of months back and this i got talking to this guy casue me and him both had bikes and he started tellling me about how he owned this company called south pacific timber which uses wood that "comes from sustainable yield forests in the Solomon Islands."
its probably worth diggin in to, but i bet south pacific timber is part of the imperialist problem in the solomons.
"The disturbing scenes in the Solomon Islands of civil unrest and calamitous violence against property are an example of what can happen when logging industry corruption is allowed to continue unchallenged." from www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0604/S00334.htm

DOWN WITH THE LABOUR GOVERNMENT AND ALL GOVENMENTS

I agree, but what's that got to do with whether NZ is imperialist or not?

You can't soften something that does not exist.

That does not mean NZ is any the less ruthless in sending in the troops. And of course those troops are in the service of imperialism, but not NZ imperialism.

As a real anarchist I suppose you think Lenin's definition of imperialism also applied to the Bolsheviks. The WSWS that wrote the article above doesnt, however, and should know better.

Pity so many anarchists supported the deployment of NZ troops in East Timor. One high-profile anarchist even went on the radio in Wgtn to urge deployment.

I had a choice between a buzz bar and a chocolate fish yesterday. Chocolate fish every time. Crisp dark chocolate shell with melty-spongy pink mallow inside. Yum.

I thought a buzz bar was a cut-down cattle prod favoured by Rotorua cops and commissioners.

"Pity so many anarchists supported the deployment of NZ troops in East Timor. One high-profile anarchist even went on the radio in Wgtn to urge deployment."

Well I remember clearly an Auckland Anarchist group during the APEC free east timor demonstration vehemently opposing the deployment of troops and suggesting weapons aid instead. I think the then SWO was doing the same.

Which anarchist group was that? I wasn't aware there was one in Auckland. Full credit to them if they did oppose the intervention.

One of the Buchanan brothers went on Wgtn radio calling for the invasion - he was apparently sandwiched between Clinton and Shipley, and all three were saying the same thing.

To their credit the SWO opposed the intervention at the time, but they didn't come to the protests Workers Power and the Communist Workers Group organised against the intervention, and a couple of years later they did an apparent flip-flop, running a fawning interview in their paper with a supporter of the intervention during which Socialist Worker editor Dave Colyer claimed that the country had been 'freed'. Well, look at the place now...

"Chocolate fish every time. Crisp dark chocolate shell with melty-spongy pink mallow inside. Yum."

Yeah chocolate fish are great. Not sure which I'd choose if I had a choice between a choc fish and a buzzbar though. Probably I'd be very indecisive.

It wasn't me who was on the radio backing NZ military intervention in East Timor as I was doing environmental restoration work on Raoul Island at the time and the lazy NZ media didn't bother to track me down there for comment (to be fair we only had an unreliable radio communication system there then). I probably would have backed NZ intervention at the time as the best of a bad bunch of options. I've yet to hear anyone offer much alternative other than pretty slogans.

I've yet to hear anything about this anti-free trade riot, so I guess the World Socialist Website got its history wrong. I have to admit, though that I may have made a historical error myself - on reflection, I think I mixed up two incidents involving Auckland punks and stolen confectionary. The six Buzz Bars were the ones stolen by a different punk from The Warehouse in a different incident some years later. I cannot be absolutely sure what kind of chocolate bars were the ones looted during the Auckland riot, they may have been Buzz Bars, but could have been something else. Can any anarchist historians help me with this point?

By the way, pity so many anarchists accept fake "mallow" made of God knows what (but definitely not the root of the marshmallow plant as per the genuine recipe) as the real thing.

"Which anarchist group was that?"

I have no idea, but it was a bunch of punk kids and they had huge black banners with Timor messages, (A)'s and black/red flags and were wearing masks. They were also milling around the one tree hill occupation whent he tree was cut down during APEC.

I suspect I'm the "high profile anarchist" mentioned, not sure what "high profile" means - I thought back then I had a far higher profile as an East Timor solidarity activist than an anarchist. I can't actually remember a radio interview, I remember saying to a TV crew that for once I supported sending NZ troops overseas - I can't remember urging their deployment but I did support sending them (I didn't watch the TV report so I've no idea which bit they used). It's pretty pointless justifying yourself when you're up against marxist dogma, but for the record all the Timorese organisations we were in contact with were calling for peacekeeping troops and no-one was offering an alternative. The alternatives I suppose were to let Fretelin battle the Indonesian-backed militias, risk another escalation of Indonesian intervention and at best have another civil war in East Timor, at worst another brutal Indonesian crack-down. I suspect a few marxists would have liked to see Fretelin fighting on for another decade (with or without NZ weapons aid) in the hopes that the survivors would install a genuine hard-line socialist government and bugger the Timorese who died in the process. I don't think any of us were unnder any illusions about the future of East Timor as a capitalist /imperialist or whatever dominated micro-state but that seemed like a better option than letting Indonesia keep up transmigrasi while torturing, killing and forcibly sterilising the East Timorese.

As I'd expect, the current Timorese government are probably stuffing things up - that's the nature of governments, but looking at the place now it still sounds better than it did under Indonesian occupation or would be in full blown war.

Of course a third alternative would have been an international solidarity campaign where workers blacked Indonesian goods and isolated the country until the East Timorese where freed. I didn't see any marxists with their union contacts and close relationship with the workers getting off their bums and organising any such campaign in New Zealand or anywhere else. I don't see them doing it now to support West Papuans or Achenese. I read marxist papers fairly regularly in the 1980s and don't recall much mention of East Timor at all. It looks like the marxist left in New Zealand followed the NZ government line that East Timor was a lost cause. It wasn't until a few anarchists, christians and human-rights liberals started organising after the Dili massacre in 1991 that the issue of East Timor's independence regained some prominence in New Zealand. Most marxist groups did bugger all for the East Timorese, (but all credit to a couple of marxists who did work on the campaign) apart from offering smug critiques of their demands from their comfy armchairs or posturing demands like 'weapons aid' that they knew bloody well had no possiblity of happening - I doubt whether any NZ marxist groups managed to send a single bullet to Fretelin - but were made in the interests of making the micro-group feel radical and good about following the correct marxist line but did absolutely nothing to address the realities faced by the East Timorese.

Joe Buchanan

You were duped Joe. There was no need to send bullets or guns to Falintil - they had plenty. The only problems was that their leaders had locked them away in cantons deep in the coutnryside, so that they couldn't fight back when the poorly-armed and trained militia started attacking civilians after the referendum.

Within weeks the force you supported sending was killing East Timorese demonstrators. Today Human Rights Watch calls East Timor a state where the police murder, torture, and rape with impunity, and opposition leader Angela Feitas says the situation is worse than it was in 1999.

The yellow East Timor leaders you mistook for representatives of the people are today Bush's biggest supporters in Asia. Foreign Minister Ramos-Horta is an outspoken supporter of the invasion of Iraq and a staunch critic of the Palestinian intifada.

And thanks to dupes like you, the Australian army was able to shrug off the post-Vietnam stigma attached to foreign intervention, and the stage was set for Howard to win sizeable public support the War Of Terror and the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Solomons.

How can someone call themselves an anarchist and at the same time call on the repressive apparatus of an imperialist state (i.e. NZ) to help carry out the national liberation of a Third World country?

I guess it just goes to show that most of the so-called "anarchists" in this country are nothing more than liberal reformists posing as radicals. Makes you wonder if these people have ever heard of Bakunin or Marx?

Mind you, I suppose it's better than the other main current in so-called NZ "anarchism" which doesn't even get as far as bourgeois catchphrases like "human rights" - advocating instead the rights of snails, farm animals and pond algae!

I may be a dyed-in-the-wool "authoritarian" Leninist, but give me some genuine class struggle anarchists to debate with any day over these cretins!

Supporting troop deployments in East Timor has about as much in common with anarchism as support for the Maori Party and the Greens i.e. none at all

P.S. I never thought I could end up sounding like an ultra-left CWG type on indymedia, but these erstwhile anarchists would make even most Alliance members I know seem progressive by comparison!

OK Scott, I don't mind being called a dupe, but I am curious to know what practical steps you were taking in the 1990s, also curious to know what your evidence is that Falantil had plenty of bullets, and if so why some marxist parties called for "weapons aid". Also curious to know why you regard Angela Freitas' comments as valid given she is currently calling for more foreign intervention? I'm not up on Timorese politics thses days but isn't she part of the "worker's" party that claims affinty with the Australian Labour Party and made accomodations with the Indonesians - the party lead by her father who was an Indonesian MP and part of Sukanoputri's party?

As for rank and filer I agree that supporting sending NZ troops isn't particularly anarchist - never said it was - I'd like to have seen a broad solidarity campaign of the sort I suggested, but when we were trying to get support for the Timorese struggle (apart form a few individuals) where were the marxist groups? Looking around for "genuine class struggle anarchists" to score points in e-mail debates with while the Timorese were dying?

Joe Buchanan

For starters have a look at the post and hyperlinks at:
east-timor-on-the-brink-of-civil-war-whos.html

But the best online source is the searchable archives of the World Socialist Website at www.wsws.org They have an enormous amount of stuff on the subject - they actually quote from bourgeois papers like The Australian at the time of the crisis, where commentators and editorialists were commenting on the 'tremendous restraint' shown by Falintil.

I am constantly amazed by the type of bitter vilification that seemingly sensible activists indulge in.

I am an anarchist who has worked on human rights issues in Acheh. The struggle is clearly nationalist and the aim of the rebel group is the installation of an independent democracy for Achehnese. It appears through the work of civil society groups in Acheh that the majority of people in Acheh want a referendum to form a such a state. It is from the work of these groups that I took the lead to advocate for a referendum for Acheh in New Zealand with the local Achehnese community.

There is a contradiction between being an anarchist supporting the aspirations of a people who wish to form a new state with all the inherent problems that entails. However anarchism with its clearer analysis of power relationships would show that local people close to the problems of having a murderous army and militias on your damn doorstep probably have a better idea of what is best than I do as a privileged anarcho-socialist in New Zealand. I'm really not sure if this is an anarchist concept though, or just stating the bloody obvious.

During my time working on this campaign, I have tried without much luck to find unions and left political contacts in Acheh and Indonesia. It is very hard to work out how to inspire local union involvement in this campaign, since there are virtually no unions in Acheh that I can find, unlike for example Burma where there is considerable interest in the CTU.

The one workplace struggle that I was aware of at the Mobil Plant in Lhokseumawe happened quickly and in a media blackout it was pretty hard to find information on. It was also hard to get current information from the Labour Rights human rights campaign at the same plant:

www.laborrights.org/press/ExxonMobil/exxonappeal_abcnews_030906.htm

Perhaps there is more that can be done now that martial law has ended and peace has been restored, but it is unlikely.

I am still happier having made my small contribution to making New Zealanders more aware of what is happening in an area not much further away than Perth. Not every struggle leads to revolution - but this one has meant that more Achehnese will probably have a chance to actually be alive and live to come to their own conclusions about how they want to organise socially and economically.

Good on you John. I'm not opposed to the setting up of independent states in places like Aceh - it's just that I want them to really be independent states, not semi-colonies and military bases for imperialism where people live miserable lives. If you want to know why a lot of people are bitter at the role that some on the left played as cheerleaders for imperialism in East Timor (and more recently as cheerleaders for imperialism in the Solomons and Zimbabwe) have a look at this Human Rights Watch report on the country's security forces:

hrw.org/reports/2006/easttimor0406/6.htm

Some liberation. Real independence means gaining control of your resources, and breaking out of the system of imperialism. That means anti-capitalist revolution. The theory of permanent or uninterrupted revolution was developed by Marx and later Trotsky as a way of reconciling nationalism and the fact that in undeveloped countries dominated by imperialism real national independence is impossible without anti-capitalist revolution. It's worth taking a look at.

Sorry that was a dead link I posted above; I meant
to post:
readingthemaps.blogspot.com/2006/05/east-timor-on-brink-of-civil-war-whos.html

I've just put a quick update on news from ET with a few hyperlinks up at:

readingthemaps.blogspot.com/2006/05/east-timor-update.html

"Good on you John. I'm not opposed to the setting up of independent states in places like Aceh - it's just that I want them to really be independent states, not semi-colonies and military bases for imperialism where people live miserable lives. If you want to know why a lot of people are bitter at the role that some on the left played as cheerleaders for imperialism in East Timor (and more recently as cheerleaders for imperialism in the Solomons and Zimbabwe) have a look at this Human Rights Watch report on the country's security forces:"

"Good on you John. I'm not opposed to the setting up of independent states in places like Aceh - it's just that I want them to really be independent states, not semi-colonies and military bases for imperialism"

Given that on the one hand the NZ government has participated more substantially in US and Australian military adventures in the Middle East and the Solomon Islands, has also more than a few US Bases on its soil, and is according to CAFCA wide open to transnationals - I'm not sure of the difference. We might be happier to live here - but we appear no less independent of the interests of the US and Australia.

Further to this, I understood that the Timor Leste government had been unusually forthright (at least for diplomatic circles) with Australia and the continued problem of theft of their resources.

Clearly our police force has some level of accountability and is not known for the regular or heavy-handed use of torture.

However the issue of sexual violence in East Timor is a lot wider and to in part rests on the state terrorism inflicted on the place by Indonesia. It would seem that NZ has similar issues with sexual violence given the statistics, and the string of rape cases involving police officers gives some indication of the culture of the NZ police and NZ wider society.

If you are interested in finding out more about the problems of sexual violence in Timor Leste, this NGO which is specifically working on this issue may be worthwhile contacting.

www.alolafoundation.org/

"If you want to know why a lot of people are bitter at the role that some on the left played as cheerleaders for imperialism in East Timor (and more recently as cheerleaders for imperialism in the Solomons and Zimbabwe)"

You seem to be bundling a whole bunch of people and issues here. A number of anarchists were involved in campaigning for free for the East Timorese, I don't think any anarchist has come out in support of the Solomon's invasion or called for state interference in Zimbawbe.

There are further parallels though between East Timor and Acheh. It is extremely unlikely if it wasn't for the tsunami that peace-keepers would have been an option on the way to independence for a variety of reasons. If it had been and Achehnese civil society had supported this, I believe I would probably have advocated for this too. It is also clear given its resources and geo-strategic location that any state who assisted (in particular the US) would have been acting its self-interest. And like the East Timorese were I'm sure, the Achehnese would have gone in to that future with their eyes wide open.

John, unless you're a paid up member of the ruling class they're not "our police force".
Their behaviour at any protest or picket line demonstrates who the bastards are accountable to.

I have a charming vision of the last two hoary old Marxists sitting around in a collectivised rest home in fifty years time croaking to each other "These anarchists aren't up to much, eh? Back in 1999 we shouted much more radical slogans than they did... didn't we just... heh heh heh!"

The Marxists seem very keen to whinge about anarchists these days. When you have nothing useful to offer people suffering oppression, I guess harrassing other activist is a way to while away the time.

I've yet to hear any practical suggestions of how the East Timorese could have been better helped in 1999. All the Marxists can offer is "Try and stay alive for a few more decades, we'll organise an anti-capitalist revolution one day... Hey, our slogans are really radical, aren't they!"

Fair point Don, yes I meant our in the context of people who live in NZ , this was clumsy given their obvious role in the capitalist system and active role in working against opposition to the ruling class.

Sam: the East Timorese didn't need our 'help' in liberating themselves in 1999. Their own forces were capable of doing job. Unfortunately, as my original blog post and the World Socialist Website archives point out (the latter in much greater detail), their rotten leadership was intent on securing a US-backed intervention, and was able to dupe people like Joe and yourself into making this politically possible by presenting the intervention as a 'humanitarian' and 'necessary' one. Most of the Esst Timorese 'solidarity' movement was used to cement the power of imperialism over East Timor and the careers of people like Gusmao and Ramos-Horta.

It's no surprise that the East Timorese leadership has gone on to be Bush's closest ally in the region in the War of Terror, and that Foreign Minister Jose Ramos-Horta has devoted acres of print in publications like the New York Times to the 'humanitarian' reasons for the invasion of Iraq.

You ridicule the Marxist groups that refused to join in the requests for a military intervention by imperialism in East Timor and suggest they didn't really care about the East Timorese. But what did people like you have to say when the Australasian troops and East Timorese police opened fire on Dili unemployed demonstrators in December 1999?

The only people I know of who wrote about this atrocity were Marxists. It is Marxist publications like the World Socialist Website, Class Struggle, and even the Aussie paper of the Sparts (the first publication to expose the 1999 massacre) which have at least told the truth about the situation in East Timor. You and Joe, on the other hand, still seem to be in denial. The country is on the brink of civil war, the police are massacring demonstrators, and Joe writes that 'the government are probably stuffing things up'. Talk about an understatement.

John: a number of anarchists participated in the demonstration held in Auckland lat year calling for imperialist action against Zimbabwe, and the black cat website carried an article which argued for sanctions against the Zimbabwean people.

I'm not sure about the Solomons, though I seem to recall Sam arguing for the intervention here.

Would you seriously support a US-sanctioned occupation of Aceh, after all we've learned about US imperialism in the last few years?

The point in ET, as in the Solomons, West Papua etc is that imperialism is always the main cause of the oppression of these former colonies. As the main cause imperialism cannot be the solution, even temporarily.

It is true that Indonesia's occupation was every bit as bloody as any direct invasion by imperialism. But Indonesia was a proxy of the US in the region. The US backed and helped organise the Suharto coup in 1965 which killed between 500,000 and 1,000,000, to stop 'communism' from spreading in the region.

US complicity in the 1975 invasion of ET when the Dutch withdrew was to stop the ET declaration of independence turning towards communism. It was also a reward to Suharto for allowing the yanks to dominate Indonesia's economy. Again Aust/NZ turned a blind eye.

Some 25 years and 300,000 deaths later imperialism masquerading as 'humanitarians' directly took back ET from Indonesia, no doubt as an insurance policy after their strong-man Suharto had been overthrown by a surge of peoples' power. There was no telling that the situation in Indonesia might have turned revolutionary.

The pretext was the Indonesian military's last-ditch attempt to retain hold of their 25 year business investments in ET. This could have been stopped by an armed peoples' resistance, but that was not part of the deal struck with the UN to keep ET safe for imperialism. That deal required the virtual demobilising of Falintil. Why? Because a people's war would not only have defeated the Indonesia milias but probably removed the new national bourgeois leadership and upset Australia's claims to Timor Sea oil. Not only that, an armed struggle of that sort would have reverberated through the whole of Aceh, West Papua etc independence movements, and even more critically added strength to the workers and students struggle in Java itself.

--------------------------------------
From Class Struggle Sept-October 1999

East Timor – A national revolution betrayed.

Long before the overwhelming vote for Independence on August 30, the explosion of violence in East Timor was totally predictable. Ever since the leaders of Fretilin were forced to abandon the armed struggle for the peaceful process of UN negotiated solution, it was clear Indonesia would not give up without a fight. The Golkar regime has made no secret of its purpose in bringing in migrants and arming paramilitaries. It wants to hang on to East Timor because it is has rich resources. Its illegal occupation has been backed by the US, Australia and NZ for 24 years.

In the face of this reality, to believe that it was possible to make a peaceful transition to independence is a criminal betrayal of the people of East Timor.

The only course possible from the start has been for armed struggle to defend the Independent state of East Timor declared by Fretilin in 1975. In the crisis today, workers around the world must call for the right to self-defence of the East Timorese, for a total ban on any military and political support for the Indonesian regime, and demand the immediate withdrawal of all Indonesian and paramilitary forces!

A Victory for the Armed Resistance.

The overwhelming vote for independence has not set off massive celebrations among the 78.5% who survived 25 years of repression to vote for separation. Instead it has sparked off a mounting campaign of terror by the pro-Jakarta armed thugs. Daily reports show the growing civil war being waged by the small minority of paramilitaries. They are being allowed free reign to terrorise and murder pro-independence supporters. Their purpose is to act as proxies for the Indonesian regime to destabilise the process of secession to keep control of at least the territories with the richest resources in the West adjoining West Timor.

This crisis is the result of 25 years of Indonesian occupation and resettlement of East Timor. After many years of military campaigns to destroy Fretilin, the downfall of Suhato brought the fate of East Timor to a head. Habibie only agreed to a referendum under pressure from the US which wants to pose as the champion of 'human rights'. No doubt Habibie expected that the years of brutal repression and the policy of deliberate resettling migrants in East Timor would have ensured a majority for integration with Indonesia. Now that the result is such a resounding victory for Independence, Jakarta is attempting to once more hang onto the territory by force.

It will take the Jakarta regime until November to ratify the vote. Only then will it agree to the UN implementing the transition to independence. This gives the pro-Jakarta forces over two months in which to occupy the key regions they want to retain and to politically cleanse these regions of Independencias. When the UN finally gets into gear it will be too late to undo the genocide.

Can the "West" intervene unilaterally?

Yes it can. The US sidestepped the UN last year over Iraq, and more recently in unleashing the NATO bombing of Kosovo. But will it, and ought it to intervene? The peacenik left in the West, including Australia and NZ, was softened up to the point of giving backhanded support to the US in Kosovo. While opposing NATO's bombing in principle, it blamed Milosovic's "ethnic cleansing" of Kosovo for the intervention. The effect was to qualify its opposition to NATO by calling for NATO to turn itself into a 'peacekeeping' force in a soveriegn territory in the name of 'human rights'.

The same with East Timor. While preferring a UN solution, most of the 'left' are calling for immediate action by the US to defend the 'human rights' of the people of East Timor.

This is like calling on the tiger to guard the calf. The US was the main backer, along with Australia and NZ, of Indonesia's invasion of East Timor in the first place. It is total hypocrisy, to suppose that the biggest enemy of East Timor's declaration of Independence in 1975, can now turn around and be the defender of 'human rights'.

When East Timor was decolonised by Portugal in 1975, its militant front, Fretilin, declared an independent state. The US, about to lose the war in Vietnam, and paranoid about the spread of communism (it helped Suharto to massacre of 1 million communists in Java in 1965) called on Suharto to suppress the Fretilin. Specifically, the US wanted to retain acces to the deep sea passage for its submarines to the south of Timor.

It was this support, plus that of Australia and NZ (the US's South Pacific lackey states) that gave Indonesia the backing it needed in the UN to cover up its murderous occupation as some sort of 'development'.

Malcolm Fraser, Prime Minister of Australia defended Indonesia's invasion in the hope of gaining access to oil in the Timor Gap. Bob Hawke turned a blind eye. So did the former Labor hero, Gough Whitlam. Each time they covered up the genocide, Indonesia was able to mount further bloody campaigns.

New Zealand also backed Indonesia, refusing to vote for UN resolutions condemning the invasion. David Lange, as Prime Minister in the Fourth Labour Government, rather than vote against Indonesia's occupation of East Timor, claimed that he could personally persuade Suharto to 'sanitise' its rule of East Timor. The abject failure of Lange's hyper egoism, along with the naivety of the pacifist left has contributed to the situation where Fretilin has been militarily isolated and forced to appeal to UN diplomacy to gain independence.

Armed struggle.

For revolutionaries there is only one course of action against Indonesian occupation – that of armed struggle. As the students in Jakarta have shown over the last two years mass, direct action comes up against the state forces. The insurgents in Aceh have learned the same lesson.

But this bloody lesson has been part of the education of the East Timorese for nearly 25 years! It has cost the lives of more than 200,000 innocent people! Now 1000's of more lives are to be sacrificed to the altar of peaceful negotiation. There can be no better demonstration of the necessity of armed struggle than the fight of the East Timorese for their independence.

For workers around the world there are a number of actions that can be taken to build international solidarity with the independence struggle.

First, all workers must defend the right of masses in East Timor to defend themselves against the paramilitary terror. No faith in US intervention or UN safe havens! For material aid to the East Timor Resistance! For the formation of self-defence committees!

Second, international workers action to blockade Indonesia's armed forces must be taken. NZ has military cooperation pacts with Jakarta, and contracts to service military aircraft. NZ workers must impose bans on any goods and services going to the Indonesian military!

Third, we must call on the workers, students and poor peasants of Indonesia to demand that Habibie and Sukarnoputri remove all Indonesian military and paramilitary forces from East Timor. For the convocation of a Constituent Assembly! For workers, peasants and soldiers councils and militia!

Fourth, we must call on Indonesian workers and students to immediately recognise and demand the right to self-determination of East Timor and all other independence movements that have popular backing. Only by doing so will those seccessionist movements be able to choose freely to secede or stay as 'autonomous' regions of Indonesia. For a Federation of Socialist Republics of Indonesia!

Scott - as I pointed out previously I wasn't involved in East Timor solidarity in 1999, so I'm unlikely to have commented on atrocities by Australasian troops. There's an awful lot goes on in the world I don't comment on.

I didn't ridicule Marxists for not joining in calls for military intervention in East Timor - I ridiculed them for not doing anything useful or being able to offer a realistic alternative to intervention. So you wrote about atrocities in your newspapers? Big deal.

As for "the East Timorese didn't need our help", OK if that's what you think, fair enough, you can sit back and relax. The East Timorese seemed to disagree, and your belief that Fretelin was capable of taking on the Indonesian military seems to me to be a wild fantasy.

I don't recall ever arguing in favour of intervention in the Solomons. I don't know a great deal about the situation there.

'The East Timorese seemed to disagree'

No, Jose Ramos-Horta disagreed. But who could possibly doubt that he represented the East Timorese? What a fount of decency the man is!
state-of-flux.blogspot.com/2005/10/jose-ramos-horta-on-iraq.html

As far as the ability of Falintil to combat the militia go, check out the WSWS archives from September 2003 and see the Aussie establishment cooing over the 'tremendous restraint' they were showing - or Ramos-Horta and Gusmao were forcing them to show by having them locked up in cantons in the countryside.

Check out the revised estimates of the death toll from the militia rampages, too - it was closer to 600 than the 6000 claimed at the time of the intervention. This doesn't mean it wasn't a crime against humanity, but notice how the figures were blown up to try to justify intervention. (The same thing happened in Kosovo about the same time.)

If you think the inability of the left to help organise the military defence of East Timor is what justifies appealing to US allies to do the job, then you ought to join Ramos-Horta in backing the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Green Party in backing the invasion of the Solomons. After all, the left couldn't organise military defences of vulnerable people in these situations, either. The Marxist left didn't have any 'realistic' way of protecting Kurds from Saddam when it opposed the invasion of Iraq, either. The logic of your argument leads down a slippery slope.

"Would you seriously support a US-sanctioned occupation of Aceh, after all we've learned about US imperialism in the last few years?"

There are too many unknowns in this question and scenario to actually answer it properly. If I take your meaning of US-sanctioned occupation of Acheh to mean an invasion of the province by US-led troops for the purpose of securing resources then obviously I do not and have never supported this.

I would like to point out that really even considering this scenario becoming a reality is more than a bit nutty.

"John: a number of anarchists participated in the demonstration held in Auckland lat year calling for imperialist action against Zimbabwe, and the black cat website carried an article which argued for sanctions against the Zimbabwean people."

Scott, our website (which is now only an archive) carried feeds of other websites (including GPJA). We made no public statement or anything of the sorts about that particular issue.

Simon

Scott, now your are just being silly. You seem to be trying to claim that because Ramos-Horta wanted support, and he doesn't represent the East Timorese, the rest of the population must not have wanted support! Have you any evidence that the bulk of East Timorese didn't want foreign help?

Likewise, saying that the Falintil forces were prevented from fighting is not evidence that they would have won if they had been allowed to fight. They'd had 26 years of not winning and were outnumbered by the Indonesian military by about 300 to one (that's taking the higher estimates for Falintil's strength and assuming they had sufficent arms, which appears to not have been the case).

What point are you trying to make by claiming the death toll was exaggerated?

Saying if you support military intervention in one case, you have to support it in another makes no sense whatsoever.

You have made two arguments to justify the military intervention.

1. That the East Timorese couldn't defeat the militia on their own

2. That the left couldn't offer any viable practical way of helping them

I think the first point is wrong and the second is right but irrelevant. I've pointed you towards the WSWS's excellent work which IMO shows that the ET leadership set its people up to be massacred so as to mobilise public opinion overseas and make a military intervention possible in 1999.

Your second point is of course correct. The left was not going to be able to organise its own military force to go to East Timor in 1999. But what I'm pointing out with the examples of Iraq and Afghanistan is that this doesn't mean you should go and look for imperialists to do the job.
We couldn't protect the Kurds from Saddam - does that mean we wanted the US to invade Iraq?

To make things clearer let's assume for the sake of argument that your first point as well as your second is correct. Let's assume that Falintil couldn't defeat the militia. That still wouldn't mean that you should support an intervention, for two reasons. In the first place, imperialism always makes things worse in the long run, as we are seeing now in East Timor.

In the second place, and more importantly, imperialism is a global system and if you strengthen it in one place you will strengthen it in others. This fact is very clear when we consider the way that the occupation of East Timor helped the Australian armed forces overcome the stigma of Vietnam and enabled John Howard to gather enough public support to participate in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The East Timor intervention has also served as a model for an aggressive new Australasian policy of recolonising 'failing states' in the Pacific. The Solomons intervention would not have been possible without the precedent in East Timor. But you don't seem even to have registered this, judging from your comments on the Solomons.

The only way forward for the left is across the board unconditional opposition to all deployments of troops from imperialist countries and their allies.

What about deployments of troops from 'non-imperialist' countries?

It depends who's running the show and whether progressive ends are being served. If I'd been around in the 70s I'd have completely supported the Cuban deployments to Africa to fight apartheid and colonialism; I'd also have supported the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia and the Tanzanian invasion of Uganda.

But if occupations organised in the US or other imperialist countries and designed to support the ends of imperialist foreign policy are overseen by troops from Third World countries then they're not supportable. There were plenty of Fijian troops in East Timor, but that didn't mean they were representng the interests of the Third World. The same goes for the Mongolians in Iraq.

(sorry posting that again without the typos)

As far as addressing argument one, you've offered no evidence that Falintil, after 26 years of defeat and stalemate, could have won militarily. You claim they had plenty of bullets and guns, yet various other sources cite their inability to arm available troops. You refer to a "poorly armed" militia, ignoring the Kopassus and other Indonesian forces present. All you offer in support are the banalities on WSWS which, as I pointed out, managed to invent an anti-free trade riot in Auckland as evidence to attack its enemies.

Your argument that certain military interventions are equivalent appears to rest on a simplistic Marxist view of the world - that particular western countries are "imperialist" and their interventions are inherently worse than other invasions. You seem to ignore the wholesale brutality of the Indonesian invasion of occupation of East Timor - it wasn't "imperialist" so can't be as bad as an "imperialist" occupation. This is plain daft and only supported by a blinkered world view.

You might have forgotten it, but the Aussie military participated in the 1991 war on Iraq, well before the intervention in East Timor removed the "stigma of Viet Nam". You offer no evidence that the intervention in the Solomons wouldn't have been possible without East Timor, just a bland assertion. (And what comments of mine on the Solomons are you referring to?)

The only way forward for the left is across the board unconditional opposition to all dogmatic and simplistic formulas and a willingness to engage with realities rather than serve up sterile and useless analyses as an excuse for inaction.

Much of this feels like empty posturing of the "we're more radical than you" variety, probably tinged with the frustration of knowing you've really got nothing to offer anyone but pie in the sky.

Well Scott, whoever you are, I'd say my dilemma at the time came down to supporting a group of people who I didn't agree with on everything. Such is the real world. You can avoid it by working in marxist micro-groups where you all subscribe to the same view on everything if you like. I'd say your idea that Falantil could have defeated the militias is pretty naive and smacks of marxists' tendency to romanticise the capabilities of the armed wings of resistance groups. I presume by your statement that the militias were "poorly armed and trained" and "used homemade weapons" you reject the reports of TNI soldiers in civvies inside in the militias, and of TNI co-ordination and support for the militias? All the Timorese I knew at the time saw the militias as an attempt by Indonesia to ferment a so-called civil war as an excuse for a crackdown, and if nothing better was available saw intervention by NZ/Australian troops as a far better option than another Indonesian intervention. So would I if I was in their situation. I guess you might prefer to go with the Indonesian occupation in the hope that after another decade or two of genocide a genuine national liberation might occur. Personally I think it's a fantasy to suggest that Falantil could have routed the militias, expelled the still sizable TNI force that remained in East Timor and protected the border with West Timor from Militia/TNI incursions, as well as resisting any full scale operations launched by the Indonesians using the fighting as an excuse to "restore order'. You can build-up up these sort of fanatsies if you need some post-hoc rationalisation of your ideology, but I don't find WSWS's work at all convincing.

Anyway, I don't know who you are and hardly care if you think I'm a "dupe". Its the East Timorese you need to convince. If the Timorese were opposing the sending of NZ troops I'd have supported them. I was in contact with a fair number of East Timorese at the time of the referendum and subsequent events and didn't encounter any Timorese who were opposing sending NZ troops. Not one. And they were certainly not all Ramos Horta's people. I also never met a Timorese who thought that a military victory was possible. The Timorese were terrified that militia violence would lead to so-called civil war and be used to justify another Indonesian crackdown. And scared for their lives, not scared that their pet ideology might be put at risk.

So where are the East Timorese in your analysis? In your blogspot story there is only one direct quote from an East Timorese, it's a pretty selective quote, and it's from a pro-capitalist opposition MP who is currently calling for more military intervention to prevent a 1975-style civil war. You also consistently misspell her name - haven't you heard of her before? Opinions from other Timorese in your story seem to be paraphrased from mainstream media reports. Have you actually talked to any East Timorese?

BTW I searched through the Human Rights Watch report you recommend and can't find any reference to the police murdering with impunity as you claim - the report refers to serious beatings that have left people hospitalised but not murder. This doesn't mean that the human rights abuses reported aren't a serious concern, but it sounds a far cry from the abuses under the Indonesian military and by the militias, and suggests that you either didn't read the report or you're exaggerating to suit your thesis. I agree that there is a continuity of repression by state forces in East Timor from the days of Indonesian occupation up until now as Human Rights Watch and other groups makes clear, but if you think that imperialism has made things worse in East Timor I can only assume that you have no idea of the scale of human rights abuse that went on under the Indonesians.

As for the supposed exaggeration of deaths during the militia rampages, Human Rights Watch, who you seem to regard as credible, puts the number of deaths at 1400. I remember at the time there were figures in the several thousand deaths being suggested and we were all relieved when later reports were much lower. I don't know where you where at the time but communications were completely breaking down. we had some contact with Dili and reports from the north of East Timor, but no-one, including the East Timorese I was talking to, knew much about what was happening in the south and in Oecusse. I think the high numbers can be explained by the breakdown in of communication that made it near impossible to know what was going on in the more remote areas. I don't think anyone who was around at the time would feel the need to come up with a conspiracy theory to explain this or suggest that exaggeration was deliberate.

Anyway I doubt whether either of us will convince the other so I'll leave you to put your ideas into action. There are plenty of struggling people who need support, the West Papuans and the Solomon Islanders spring to mind. If you think your ideas are the way to go then why don't you try and convince the West Papuans to take them on and support a genuine national liberation in West Papua? You can get back to me in ten years and let me know how much your analysis has improved things.

Joe Buchanan

Most Kurds supported the invasion of their country by the US - did Joe? Same logic, innit?

"Your argument that certain military interventions are equivalent appears to rest on a simplistic Marxist view of the world - that particular western countries are "imperialist" and their interventions are inherently worse than other invasions."

"Inherently worse". Meaning - nastier - killing more people?

Not giving out enough chocolate fish?

That is not what marxists mean in this context.

Imperialism has an agenda of maximising capitalist profits and they do that using their soldiery and their police. That is why marxists oppose imperialism and the use of their state forces in international disputes.

And if you must know, we are all for pie today, not in the sky, that's just your idea.

'Leave Iraq' call as warships head for East Timor
Tuesday, 16 May 2006, 8:36 pm
Press Release: Australian Green Party
'Leave Iraq' call as warships head for East Timor

"The colossal blunder of involving Australia in Iraq is highlighted by neighbourhood tensions in East Timor, West Papua, Bougainville, the Solomon Islands and Fiji and the strain on Australia's military capacity, Greens leader Bob Brown said today as two Australian warships were dispatched towards East Timor.

"Prime Minister Howard should recall our armed services from Iraq,"
Senator Brown said.

"That decision, besides making Australia more prone to terrorist attack, makes us less able to cover multiple crises in our neighbourhood.

"The PM should be touring our troubled neighbourhood capitals instead of more comforting stops in Washington, London and Dublin," Senator Brown said.

"No dominant power in history has brought to bear the righteous force or generous countenance of the United States of America.

With American leadership, we can build a better world -- not just for us, but for all."

Mr Howard said Australia and America should "stay the course" and "finish the job" in Iraq.

And he said Australia would do its own bit in the Pacific region to help "countries making the often difficult journey to democracy" by sharing our "profound interest in free and secure global commerce" and values such as "freedom, openness, tolerance and mutual respect".
www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,19184351%255E663,00.html

I think the recent events in Timor Leste would have probably have happened anyway even if Fretelin had miraculously defeated the might of the Indonesian Military and the peace keeping mission never happened. Most of the nation's infrastructure and around a third of the population was destroyed by the Indonesian Military during the occupation. No western nation would want to give aid to the newly independent Timor Leste without the nation being subject to strict neo-liberal structural adjustment programmes.

Australia's claim to the Timor Gap oil was not based on their role in the peace keeping mission but rather a treaty signed between the Australian government and Indonesia's Suharto dictatorship in 1990. Timor Leste's actions aren't only controlled by its need for aid from the West but also its need to not upset Indonesia. Very few war criminals and militia leaders from the occupation period have been tried before a court.

The riots by soldiers and Timorese citizens last month were caused by poverty and anger at the slow pace of change. Remember that Apartheid in South Africa was ended without foreign intervention (well apart from some Cubans) and the ANC, like Fretelin, have been constrained from any meaningful social policies or wealth redistribution by World Bank policies.

"I think the recent events in Timor Leste would have probably have happened anyway even if Fretelin had miraculously defeated the might of the Indonesian Military and the peace keeping mission never happened. Most of the nation's infrastructure and around a third of the population was destroyed by the Indonesian Military during the occupation. No western nation would want to give aid to the newly independent Timor Leste without the nation being subject to strict neo-liberal structural adjustment programmes."

OK so lets lower our sights to liberation that fits the World Banks Agenda. Because if we aim any higher and actually liberate ourselves well then have to immediately de-liberate ourselves to fit in with the neo-liberators.

"Australia's claim to the Timor Gap oil was not based on their role in the peace keeping mission but rather a treaty signed between the Australian government and Indonesia's Suharto dictatorship in 1990. Timor Leste's actions aren't only controlled by its need for aid from the West but also its need to not upset Indonesia. Very few war criminals and militia leaders from the occupation period have been tried before a court."

But Suharto was gone by 1999. So how better to ensure a new contract on favorable terms than to occupy the other party? East Timor's policies today are deals done by Gusmao and co with imperialim to split the oil profits. That's why the people have seen fuck all development.

"The riots by soldiers and Timorese citizens last month were caused by poverty and anger at the slow pace of change. Remember that Apartheid in South Africa was ended without foreign intervention (well apart from some Cubans) and the ANC, like Fretelin, have been constrained from any meaningful social policies or wealth redistribution by World Bank policies."

Would Fretilin would have ended up like the ANC anyway? Who knows? CWG didnt support a vote for the ANC as it was committed to power sharing with the former apartheid parties. Nor would we have supported any imperialist intervention. Sooner or later the masses will kick out the corrupt leadership of the ANC, just as they will kick out the corrupt Fretilin leadership.

Coverage in the Herald today including the latest on the Fretilin conference and a pic of the soldiers' protest on April 28th:
www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm
Looks like Alkatari is determined to cling to power...

"Opponents claim Alkatiri is arrogant, autocratic, confrontational and out of touch, and blame him for the crisis in the Army that led to 594 soldiers - 40 per cent of its strength - being forced from its ranks.

Alkatiri's response put Timor on its latest razor's edge. Lashing out at "hooligans", provocateurs and "destabilising" critics, he threatened to resign as Prime Minister if he was dumped from the Fretilin leadership. His supporters threatened bloodshed if he was rolled by Guterres.

As the Weekend Herald went to press it appeared Alkatiri would survive, following a change from secret ballot to a show of hands for yesterday's vote. His rivals claimed the move would intimidate many of the 571 voting delegates at the Sunrise Convention Centre, especially public servants depending on Government goodwill for their jobs."

And the Press has a short piece on the Oz-NZ defence talks in Queenstown, which are expected to focus on ET and the Solomons:
www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/thepress/0,2106,3673641a6009,00.html

Money quote:
"New Zealand and Australia have sunk huge resources into stabilising the two countries and there are growing fears that investment is in jeopardy."

I'm sure the Green Party and ET 'solidarity' activists like Maire Leadbeater will be able to find a way of rephrasing that in warm fuzzy 'left' language and justifying new infusions of troops...

"But Suharto was gone by 1999"

Yes but many of his regime's terrible laws and international treaties remained.

"So how better to ensure a new contract on favorable terms than to occupy the other party? East Timor's policies today are deals done by Gusmao and co with imperialim to split the oil profits."

For several years Gusmao's government had tense negotiations with Australia over the maritime boundary between the two nations. Things aren't as simple as you make them sound. Australia wanted to keep in place the 1990 which would have seen Australia get most of the oil and gas. Timor Leste refused to give up all the fields, so Australia was forced to give a better (though still unjust) deal. This happened well after the peace keeping mission had ended.

"Sooner or later the masses will kick out the corrupt leadership of the ANC, just as they will kick out the corrupt Fretilin leadership."

For sure. I went to talk in Auckland by the Secretary of the Socialist Party of Timor, Avelino da Silva, last year. He said that in Timor Leste there are 16 political parties and Fretelin has plenty of failings that are causing discontent (as you know). So Fretelin isn't a be all and end all party of government, as what has happened in some other newly liberated countries where the national liberation movement has become a post-independence dictatorship (Eritrea for example).

By the way everyone the article from the NZ Herald that Scott has posted a link to is well worth a read. Good job for posting it.

Scott, I think your criticisms of Maire Leadbeater are quite unjust. She actually engages with and listens to people from Timor Leste to find out what they want rather than just yelling out from the sidelines and quoting pro-intervention capitalist Timorese MPs to justify your anti-intervention perspective. By constantly frothing at the mouth about NZ's peace keeping operation in Timor you seem to nearly absolve the Indonesian Military (and its Western backers including many NZ governments) of responsibility for how terrible things in the country are now.

Her or the Indonesian Human Rights Committee haven't said anything about sending new troops to Timor Leste. Recently the group has been calling for NZ to pay reperations to Timor Leste's people for this country's despicable support for the Indonesian occupation. That would be much better than sending troops wouldn't it? Or does nothing but World wide Trotskyite revolution make you happy? Any small step for the better is "bourgeoisie reformism :P (yes this is tongue in cheek so please don't get angry hehe)

I've never actually mentioned Leadbeater before. But assuming she's quoted accurately in the Herald today, she's telling lies to defend Alkatari from his opponents' criticisms and excuse the massacre of his opponents on and after April the 28th.

According to the reports I've seen the rebellious soldiers aren't on the whole former Falintil troops who've had difficulty adjusting to life in a national army, as Leadbeater claims - they're young soldiers who are complaining about their treatment at the hands of old Falintil commanders linked to the Fretilin leadership, as well as militia retreads who've ended up in high positions in the police.

It's very sad that Leadbeater, who did so much work spreading the word about the Indonesian occupation abuses in East Timor, has now got into a position where she feels compelled to become an apologist for similar abuses in Fretilin-ruled East Timor. She can't bring herself to admit that Fretilin's leaders weren't what she thought they were, and so she covers up the real reasons for the soldiers' rebellion. Isn't this worth criticising? According to the report from East Timor I posted on indymedia a week ago, 67 people have been killed by the security forces since the police riot of April the 28th. These deaths can't be blamed on Indonesia.

I haven't had time to back through the WSWS's archive of East Timor articles properly, but this piece from September 1999 has a lot of facts about the Fretilin leadership's role in setting up the massacre of civilians by the militia, and about the way that the Aussie establishment saw the intervention as a way of overcoming the stigma of Vietnam and getting the Aussie military back into action overseas:
www.wsws.org/articles/1999/sep1999/tim-s17.shtml

A couple of quotes:

Our critic writes: “Then, what a joke, you call for 'the unified struggle of the masses through the entire Indonesian archipelago' and absolutely nothing else! All very well in theory, and easy for you to say writing safely in Melbourne. But absolutely no help to the people of East Timor!

“WE ARE TALKING ABOUT DEFENCELESS WOMEN AND CHILDREN, and brave journalists and UNIMET (sic) officers refusing to leave them... and all you can do is quote the shameful past and intellectual theory.”

In fact, it is precisely the theoretical orientation of the East Timorese leadership, backed to the hilt by the coalition of protest organisers, that has led to the defenceless position of the East Timorese masses.

At no stage did the National Council for Timorese Resistance (CNRT) leaders appeal to the Timorese people to fight the armed thugs let loose by the army. Nor did they extend a call to the Indonesian working class and students, who just 18 months ago rose up against the Suharto dictatorship, to join with them in struggle against both the army and the regime. Never did they attempt to explain the connection between the army's brutality towards the Timorese and its use of similar methods throughout the whole of Indonesia.

Why were no defence squads set up? Where were the guerilla fighters when the massacres were underway? Why did they not seek to mobilise and organise the vast majority of the population—who, after all, had defied death threats and voted for independence—to resist the murderous gangs?

An article in Tuesday's Australian Financial Review provides some answers. Written by Asia-Pacific editor, Peter Hartcher, it is entitled "As ordered, 3,000 Falantil guerillas sit on the sidelines".

Based on information received from CNRT leader Jose Ramos Horta, Hartcher reports that the 3,000 guerillas “who have spent the past 24 years evading Indonesian troops in East Timor's jungles, are now sitting still in a contained area—a condition of the May 5 United Nations agreement governing the independence ballot.”

Two thousand of them have remained “in cantonment in the Waimori Camp, four hours from Dili, and about another 1,000 in other parts of the territory.”

“It's incredible, an incredible sense of discipline,” Horta remarked, adding that the guerillas were “under the orders of Xanana Gusmao”.

Hartcher comments: “While it may seem quixotically principled to keep an agreement which Indonesia has blatantly disregarded, it is actually very shrewd politics.

“The international community has mobilised against the Indonesian army's brutal attacks on the East Timorese because it is an unambiguous case of the strong and well armed oppressing the weak and defenceless. As a morality play, it is a stark case of evil preying on innocence.

“But if the guerillas had responded to the TNI outrages by leaving the cantonment areas and resuming hostilities, the turmoil would have been cast instantly as a civil war.”

In other words, had the Falantil, the military arm of Fretilin, resisted the armed militia and defended their own people, then East Timor would have been abandoned by the Western powers.

And appealing to those same powers, not mobilising the masses, has been the cornerstone of the CNRT's “struggle for self-determination”. In reality, it means securing Western support for a mini-statelet that will be totally dependent for its existence on financial investment and political recognition from the various imperialist powers.

Like the Tamils, the Palestinians and the Kurds, the East Timorese masses have been used as nothing but pawns, while their leaders jockey and manoeuvre on the international diplomatic stage.

The logic of military intervention

The political line of the demonstrations is creating the conditions where the top echeleons of the military can begin to implement a long-held agenda.

For decades, they have been hamstrung by the “Vietnam Syndrome”—mass popular opposition to the deployment of Australian troops outside the country.

As Wednesday's Australian Financial Review editorialised:

“...as a result of Vietnam it became politically impossible for governments to propose military action abroad... and Australia's diplomatic engagement with the region reinforced the domestic taboo on discussion of military intervention in the region.”

Now the “taboo” has been lifted, thanks to the chanters of “troops in!” Moreover, military spending will be increased—paid for, according to Treasurer Peter Costello, out of cuts to government spending on education, health and welfare.

The AFR editorial continued: “The calls for action in Timor are ironic because many of those who fostered the political climate in which the army was run down were the loudest in demanding Australia intervene there. This call to arms has, for the first time in decades, given broad legitimacy to the proposition that Australia should be able to intervene militarily outside its territory. This raises the possibility of building a domestic consensus, not just in favour of increased defence spending, but of changing the structure of the defence force.”

In other words, the Australian political and military elite owe a major debt of gratitude to the protest leaders. For the first time in more than a generation, they can dust off their uniforms, flex their military muscles throughout the region, and prepare to place the full financial burden on the backs of the working class.

The following and my additions are from another thread, it's probably better to put it back here, rather than have it spew over in to a small campaign to get Trevor Loudon to admit he's wrong.

For my part, I regreted calling Scott a complete arse almost immediately after. He was only being an arse.

Scott said "Haven't you heard, Don? According to Sam imperialism can be progressive when it takes on particularly backward places like Indonesia. Tssk tssk."

John said "You're making this shit up Scott. Stop being a complete arse."

Scott said, Sam said: 'You seem to ignore the wholesale brutality of the Indonesian invasion of occupation of East Timor - it wasn't "imperialist" so can't be as bad as an "imperialist" occupation. This is plain daft and only supported by a blinkered world view.'

I say Sam actually meant: "As far as I can see the first part is his translation of what you were saying - not his view. I imagine his view being that the full blown pattern of oppression which when you read the reports of what the TNI and militias get up to when left unchecked is a hell of a lot worse than what the NZ peacekeepers etc did. The question is not how backward the country is (however you measure this), but how many people are going to have their lives devastated - and in a good many cases cut horribly short"

I think myself: "Personally, the Indonesian government's role in suppressing minorities who assert themselves is colonial and imperialist. To understand this, you only have to look at the transmigrasi programme, the support for militias and terrorist groups, influx of troops, and where the money flows out of the province to.

I guess you have to ask, which is the lesser evil.

One of the problems here might be that we have different views of what is imperialist.

East Timor is now a troubled small state with both dangerous allies and opponents. I still think that this looks a better situation than they were in, in the 90s. Please find a reputable Timor Leste group that says otherwise.

You still haven't as far as I've been able to read answered one of my fundamental questions - how is the situation in East Timor particularly different from our own as a small country in the Pacific surrounded largely by dangerous allies and friends?

Yes, I agree that deployment of troops as peacekeepers and to implement aid is usually also part of an economic programme. Yes, I agree that often this effort is token, and can make the situation worse - I think the engineers in Iraq are a spectacular demonstration of this. I also agree that we should point out failures, problems and economic links for all deployments. Many deployments we should if we have resources actively work against. However, I completely disagree with your analysis that the peacekeepers deployed to Timor Leste made the situation worse."

Have blogged about Maire Leadbeater's response to the crisis in ET at:
readingthemaps.blogspot.com/2006/05/apologising-for-alkatiri.html

Anyone heard whether Alkatiri has survived as PM?

You still have managed to ignore my questions and what I've said. I find this strange.

this is all getting rather depressing

As far as I remember at the time (and Scotts last post seems to back this up) the east timorese rebels did sit on the sideslines as a deliberate strategy aimed at appealing to western intervention. This would (and has) inevitably led to the current situation, and yes it did lead to a strengthening of Austrlia and NZs will to use military force in the south pacific.
Anarchists should have been very critical of the NZ govt. but we werent. and some 'prominent anarchists' were spokespeople for the free east timor movement, which may may have limited their ability to criticise the ET resistance strategy (or they might have actually support the strategy I dunno).
so, it is fair to say that anarchists failed to criticise the NZ govt. what we should have done is urge the ET resistance to defend people from the militias (on the radio even) and do something practical to help. Its not our job to support NZ military operations anywhere, even if there is no practical alternative. Its also fair to say the marxists had no practical alternative. This is because the left (including anarchists) is weak and inefective.
So we should be thinking about how to change that because we all know this will happen again. Its happening now in the Solomons and and will be happening for years to come all around the pacific. Fiji is all fucked up. The King of Tonga will die very soon. and theres no one else around to oppose what Phil Goff and co will be doing to crush anyone in the pacific who opposes the idea that the west, Australia and NZ should run those countries. We should start thinking now, what are we gonna do to oppose NZ military intervention in the pacific right now. That is far more important than winning this argument about what went wrong a few years ago. we all fucked up and we all failed. and we will fail again if the anarchists insist on being very wishy washy about the NZ military and the marxists insist on embarassing the anarchists while doing nothing practical to to ensure that next time the same thing wont happen again

I doubt it - problem is, dear chap with no name, that when you ask Scott for facts and evidence, he replies with another bunch of assertions lacking either.

His thesis that Falantil could have won by military means seesm backed by nothing more than wishful thinking by himself and his fellow travellers.

To back his claim that things are worse now than in 1999, he quotes a Human Rights Watch report which suggests no such thing and the rhetoric of a pro-capitalist opposition leader who's party managed an astounding 0.56% of the vote in the last elections (which makes her party slightly less successful then Destiny New Zealand). Now that in itself doesn't make her wrong, but it's hardly conclusive evidence either. If he was able to establish that among the East Timorese (who are in a position to know) it is widely considered that the current situation is worse than the days of the Indonesian occupation, he might have a point, but just saying something three times doesn't make it true.

And when I refer to NZ intervention as "at the time... the best of a bad bunch of options" and Scott cites me as saying "imperialism can be progressive", its obvious we are speaking a different language (and obvious that Scott is just out to discredit his opponents rather than debate the issues).

I've read nothing to persuade me this isn't just more pseudo-Marxist revisionist crud.

Which questions?

If you define imperialism in the dictionary sense as military conquest/occupation then, sure, Indonesia is imperialist. But them so are Rwanda (occupying parts of the Congo), Morocco (Western Sahara), and Papua New Guinea (Bougainville). Even worse, Japan and Germany amongst others aren't imperialist, and haven't been since 1945. Pretty silly huh?

Where do you disagree with Lenin's theory of imperialism?

What is the difference between the state of East Timor and the state of NZ in terms of influence by imperialist powers? (I've asked this a couple of times now)

Another question was: "I still think that this looks a better situation than they were in, in the 90s. Please find a reputable Timor Leste group that says otherwise."

And finally, from what I've read of Lenin's analysis I don't think I really do disagree with the mechanics. Possibly a bit unclear on all the details, and there have been significant changes in the world economy since Lenin's time which he based his premises upon. My point is how is Indonesia in terms of how it operates and this does not just include flooding its provinces with forces but a whole imperialist economic programme which goes along with it.

My question is how was what was being done by Indonesia in East Timor different from what is happening in Iraq in terms of imperialism?

My suspicion is that you have fetishised the imperialist adventures of the US and Australia while blindly ignoring others.

Tolstoy said: "I'm curious what you mean by "pseudo-Marxist revisionist crud."

Hope the farm's going well.

Tolstoy actually said: "I've read nothing to persuade me this isn't just more pseudo-Marxist revisionist crud."

I'm curious what you mean by "pseudo-Marxist revisionist crud."

Hope the farm's going well.

I'm getting a bit bored with Scott's 97% fact-free mix of Marxist mysticism with a touch of pop psychology. But to answer the anonymous 'Marxist':

"Most Kurds supported the invasion of their country by the US - did Joe? Same logic, innit?"

Uh, no. In case you're geography and history is a little weak, the Kurds and the East Timorese are different people, in a different situation at a different time.

It's nice to pretend that everything in the world follows the same model, and saves a lot of time finding out facts and applying an analysis, but when you've read, or experienced, a bit of history, you'll find the world is inconveniently complex.

"what we should have done is urge the ET resistance to defend people from the militias"

Mr G, as was pointed out previously, the East Timorese firmly believed that the whole point of militia violence was to provoke a conflict and thus justify an Indonesian military crackdown. So why on earth should "we" have urged them to walk into this trap? This is a bit being in a situation where a large group of cops are trying to goad somebody into hitting them in order to justify an assault and arrest, and you coming along and advising that somebody to go for it.

" a bit bored with Scott's 97% fact-free mix of Marxist mysticism with a touch of pop psychology".

Maybe reffuting Scotts arguments instead of calling them names might aliviate Sam's boredom.