From: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!CAD:ucbesvax!turner
Newsgroups: net.college
Title: Re: Re: J. Kirkpatrick at U.C. Berkeley - (nf)
Article-I.D.: ucbcad.631
Posted: Fri Feb 18 02:05:10 1983
Received: Fri Feb 18 06:18:49 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