Feedback on East Timor
There's been quite a bit, as parts of my posts on the subject wash up on distant shores of the internet. On a bloggers' forum based in Australia there was a putdown of one of my posts by a bloke living in Lisbon; he spiced his critique up with all sorts of nice jibes, which is probably why it had been removed by the time I went to copy and paste it this morning. Damn. Here's something more positive, from an Australian who asks some very good questions:
This is the first account of the situation on East Timor that actually makes sense to me. The coverage on the mainstream press is disjointed and confusing despite the presence of reporters on the ground.
From a distance it seems the only explanation that makes sense is that the Australian Government is backing elements of the Freitlin Government to protect its own business interests in East Timor. What other explanation can there be for mobilising numerous warships, planes and sending 1300 troops into East Timor. As if we would do all this because we care about a handful of deaths in a nearby third world country. 180,000 Timorese died under the Indonesian Occupation and successive Australian Governments didnt even blink. Now 2 deaths in a shoot out are supposedly the reason we are sending in a massive military force!
Since the industrial action taken by 1/3 of the army - all we have seen is the East Timorese Government take is heavy handed actions - ie shooting at people. It obviously had no intentions of trying to find a peaceful solution to this situation.
Where is Xanana Gusmao - he supposedly signed the request to send in troop - he is the President. Tonight Brendan Nelson was the TV and said he was not in contact with him and didnt even know where he was - or the PM for that matter. The troops are on the ground even before terms of engagement have been agreed upon.
The whole thing is completely dodgy - if we gave two shits about the welfare of the Timorese we wouldnt be stealing their oil.
This is the first account of the situation on East Timor that actually makes sense to me. The coverage on the mainstream press is disjointed and confusing despite the presence of reporters on the ground.
From a distance it seems the only explanation that makes sense is that the Australian Government is backing elements of the Freitlin Government to protect its own business interests in East Timor. What other explanation can there be for mobilising numerous warships, planes and sending 1300 troops into East Timor. As if we would do all this because we care about a handful of deaths in a nearby third world country. 180,000 Timorese died under the Indonesian Occupation and successive Australian Governments didnt even blink. Now 2 deaths in a shoot out are supposedly the reason we are sending in a massive military force!
Since the industrial action taken by 1/3 of the army - all we have seen is the East Timorese Government take is heavy handed actions - ie shooting at people. It obviously had no intentions of trying to find a peaceful solution to this situation.
Where is Xanana Gusmao - he supposedly signed the request to send in troop - he is the President. Tonight Brendan Nelson was the TV and said he was not in contact with him and didnt even know where he was - or the PM for that matter. The troops are on the ground even before terms of engagement have been agreed upon.
The whole thing is completely dodgy - if we gave two shits about the welfare of the Timorese we wouldnt be stealing their oil.
posted by maps at 5/26/2006 09:42:00 am
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