From: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!CAD:ucbesvax!turner Newsgroups: net.college Title: Re: Orphaned Response - (nf) Article-I.D.: ucbcad.809 Posted: Thu Mar 10 01:36:29 1983 Received: Fri Mar 11 02:53:33 1983 #R:mitccc:-33400:ucbesvax:2900006:000:3172 ucbesvax!turner Feb 17 17:08:00 1983 In response to this question: What's this about how the last time "they" (apparently foreign oppressed workers) had a forum, the US installed a regime that shut them up? If you're so big on concrete examples, why do you make vague references like this? To what are you referring? Pardon me - I sometimes assume that people know something about U.S. interventions, while at the same time attacking the news media and educational system which buries such items. In Indonesia, several MILLION people died in a military take-over in 1965. The presence of the CIA has been confirmed, but their precise role is conveniently hazy. Continuing U.S. support for that regime was seen in 1979 during the Carter administration, when Indonesia invaded East Timor, a recently-decolonized Portuguese possession. At that time, the State Department counted the total casualties in the small thousands. This was contradicted by sources in the Indonesia government who unapologetically offered figures in the tens of thousands. The figures of independent relief agencies are in the HUNDREDS of thousands, including famine deaths resulting from the withholding of international food aid to war refugees. In all, Indonesia seems to have wiped out a third of the population of this small country. The U.S. role was one of being the source of uninterrupted supply of arms to the Indonesian invading army. Guatemala has been characterized by Amnesty International as having the worst human rights record in the western hemisphere. These rights violations are generally of the most straightforward kind: decimation (and sometimes outright extermination) of Indian villages suspected of harboring rebels. The Catholic church has problems keeping its mission priests alive in this country. When its current dictator, Rios Montt, had to face the moral ambiguity of being a Catholic and presiding over a regime that kills priests, he simply converted to a protestant sect (Maranatha Ministries, which is also a suspected funnel for CIA arms and personnel.) This govern- ment is so bad that Congress almost always votes down any military or police aid. (Some civilian aviation parts are starting to go through, however.) Reagan likes it, though. He thinks they've been given a bad rap. The Phillipines goes back too far to follow under the category of OBSCURE regions where U.S. foreign policy has translated into totalitarianism. You can actually read about this in history text- books. Even now, though, one reads in the papers about how Marcos' party got 95% of the vote in some election, with no mention of the fact that voting is mandatory, and that anyone who stands for election in an opposing party is usually found dead in a ditch outside the city limits sometime before election day. (Actually, people don't even try anymore, from what I understand.) I'll go on, if you like. But it's all been written about, believe me. Would you like a bibliography? It would save me some typing. Michael Turner