We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

The rape of East Timor: “Sounds like fun”

Click here to access article and 51:05m video by John Pilger from OffGuardian. (Note: I didn't have time to view the video for this commentary.)

Here is a summary of the history of the Empire's early and worst crimes against humanity. Only war criminals resort to such crimes as this. At the time when these crimes were happening, I was only able to receive brief reports. This is an illustration of a censorship problem over news that the Empire doesn't want people to know. It is only many years later that we learn about the details, and then nobody seems to care enough. 

This is happening today with human rights criminals that are in control of the Empire, and we will have to wait many years to find out the whole story. Thanks to the web, we can learn about these events much earlier, but such reports will always be relegated to obscure websites that few people will access. It is our duty as activists to learn about these websites and the independent journalists and observers who often risk their lives and welfare to bring us reports. One such very credible journalist is Australian John Pilger who with the aid of more leaked documents brings us up-to-date with this summary history about this monstrous crime perpetrated many years ago by our capitalist masters.
Secret documents found in the Australian National Archives provide a glimpse of how one of the greatest crimes of the 20th century was executed and covered up. They also help us understand how and for whom the world is run.

The documents refer to East Timor, now known as Timor-Leste, and were written by diplomats in the Australian embassy in Jakarta. The date was November 1976....