Fwd: article (war crimes/sigint)

[pho <photon@2600.org.au>]

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east timor war crimes article... some people might be interested.

> there is a concern that war crimes by the indonesian mil won't be outted
> because the West  has too much to lose in terms of dollars if they hassle
> Indonesia too much... the West probably has the evidence to accuse
> Indonesia of war crimes because of  surveillance systems like 'Echelon'
> operated by the UK-USA alliance...
> 
> what can we do?

----------------

> Section From Article : East Timor Is Not Yesterday's Story : By Noam Chomsky
> full article archived at Web archive:
> http://www.c2o.org/mailinglists/aus4freetimor
> 
> In Kosovo, preparation for war crimes trials has been underway since May,
> expedited at US-UK initiative, including unprecedented access to
> intelligence information. In East Timor, investigations are being discussed
> at leisure, with Indonesian participation and a tight deadline (Dec. 31). It
> is "an absolute joke, a complete whitewash," according to UN officials
> quoted in the British press. A spokesperson for Amnesty International added
> that the inquiry as planned "will cause East Timorese even more trauma than
> they have suffered already. It would be really insulting at this stage."
> Indonesian Generals "do not seem to be quaking in their boots," the
> Australian press reports. One reason is that "some of the most damning
> evidence is likely to be... material plucked from the air waves by
> sophisticated US and Australian electronic intercept equipment," and the
> Generals feel confident that their old friends will not let them down -- if
> only because the chain of responsibility might be hard to snap at just the
> right point.
> 
> There is also little effort to unearth evidence of atrocities in East Timor.
> In striking contrast, Kosovo has been swarming with police and medical
> forensic teams from the US and other countries in the hope of discovering
> large-scale atrocities that can be transmuted into justification for the
> NATO bombing of which they were the anticipated consequence -- as Milosevic
> had planned all along, it is now claimed, though NATO Commander General
> Wesley Clark reported a month after the bombing that the alleged plans "have
> never been shared with me" and that the NATO operation "was not designed [by
> the political leadership] as a means of blocking Serb ethnic cleansing....
> There was never any intent to do that. That was not the idea."
> 
> Commenting on Washington's refusal to lift a finger to help the victims of
> its crimes, the veteran Australian diplomat Richard Butler observed that "it
> has been made very clear to me by senior American analysts that the facts of
> the alliance essentially are that: the US will respond proportionally,
> defined largely in terms of its own interests and threat assessment..." The
> remarks were not offered in criticism of Washington; rather, of his fellow
> Australians, who do not comprehend the facts of life: that others are to
> shoulder the burdens, and face the costs -- which for Australia, may not be
> slight. It will hardly come as a great shock if a few years hence US
> corporations are cheerfully picking up the pieces in an Indonesia that
> resents Australian actions, but has few complaints about the overlord.

- pho

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