[Peace] News notes for May 19 (part 2 of 2)

[C. G. Estabrook]

[continued from part 1]

WEDNESDAY, MAY 15, 2002

A NON-EVENT IN US & ISRAEL. A retired general was convicted of disclosing
classified information related to Israel's nuclear program but cleared of
charges that he intended to harm state security. Brig. Gen. Yitzhak
Yaakov, 76, who also has American citizen- ship, was head of weapons
development for the military for a decade. The conviction, which carries a
sentence of up to 15 years, cited unpublished manuscripts of a memoir and
novel that Mr. Yaakov sent to publishers in the United States. He was
arrested last year after giving interviews to an Israeli reporter, whose
article was banned by the military censor. [NYT - BUT NOT ON WEBSITE &
BURIED IN A COLUMN. THE US CANNOT ADMIT WHAT THE WORLD KNOWS, THAT ISRAEL
HAS HUNDREDS OF NUKES IN VIOLATION OF NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY.]

THURSDAY, MAY 16, 2002

HOW OTHERS SEE US. Public debate in America has now become a question of
loyalty. What a sad place New York City has become. A vibrant,
disputatious town with a worldwide reputation for loud voices and strongly
expressed opinions is tip-toeing around in whispers. Grief over the
casualties of the twin towers massacre is not the reason (those wounds are
slowly healing), but a stifling conformity which muzzles public discourse
on US foreign policy, the war on terrorism and Israel. [Jonathan Steele,
GUARDIAN]

FRIDAY, MAY 17, 2002

HEADLINE TO WHICH WHITE HOUSE OBJECTED. "Bush Knew": Intelligence
officials warned President Bush in the weeks before Sept. 11 that Osama
bin Laden and his terror henchmen might have been plotting to hijack
passenger airliners, the White House said last night. But Bush's spokesman
said the administration believed bin Laden was merely plotting a
"traditional" hijacking. [NY POST]

WAITING FOR AN EXCUSE. President Bush was expected to sign detailed plans
for a worldwide war against al-Qaida two days before Sept. 11 but did not
have the chance before the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington,
U.S. and foreign sources told NBC News. The document, a formal National
Security Presidential Directive, amounted to a "game plan to remove
al-Qaida from the face of the Earth," one of the sources told NBC News'
Jim Miklaszewski.The plan dealt with all aspects of a war against
al-Qaida, ranging from diplomatic initiatives to military operations in
Afghanistan, the sources said on condition of anonymity. In many respects,
the directive, as described to NBC News, outlined essentially the same war
plan that the White House, the CIA and the Pentagon put into action after
the Sept. 11 attacks. The administration most likely was able to respond
so quickly to the attacks because it simply had to pull the plans "off the
shelf," Miklaszewski said.The United States first would have sought to
persuade other countries to cooperate in the campaign by sharing
intelligence and using their law enforcement agencies to round up al-Qaida
suspects The plans also called for a freeze on al-Qaida financial accounts
worldwide and a drive to disrupt the group's money laundering. The
document mapped out covert operations aimed at al-Qaida cells in about 60
counties.In another striking parallel to the war plan adopted after Sept.
11, the security directive included efforts to persuade Afghanistan's
Taliban government to turn al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden over to the
United States, with provisions to use military force if it refused.
Officials did not believe that Bush had had the opportunity to closely
review the document in the two days between its submission and the Sept.
11 attacks. But it had been submitted to national security adviser
Condoleezza Rice, and the officials said Bush knew about it and had been
expected to sign it.The couching of the plans as a formal security
directive is significant, Miklaszewski reported, because it indicates that
the United States intended a full-scale assault on al-Qaida even if the
Sept. 11 attacks had not occurred. Such directives are top-secret
documents that are formally drafted only after they have been approved at
the highest levels of the White House, and represent decisions that are to
be implemented imminently. Such a directive would normally be approved
with the president's knowledge by his Principals Committee, which in
Bush's White House includes Rice, Attorney General John Ashcroft, Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Treasury
Secretary Paul O'Neill and CIA Director George Tenet, among other senior
administration officials. [MSNBC]

 [A SURPRISINGLY GOOD SHOW ON PBS, BILL MOYERS' "NOW" DISCUSSES CLASS IN
AMERICA ON FRIDAY NIGHT.]

SATURDAY, MAY 18, 2002

CUI BONO? Newspapers in Germany, France, Russia and London reported in the
months before September 11th of a blizzard of warnings delivered to the
Bush administration from all points on the compass. The German
intelligence service BND warned American and Israeli agencies that
terrorists were planning to hijack commercial aircraft and use them as
weapons to attack important American targets. Egypt warned of a similar
plane-based plot against Bush during the G-8 summit in Genoa last June, a
warning taken so seriously that anti-aircraft batteries were placed around
Columbus Airport in Italy. Last August, Russian intelligence services
notified the CIA that 25 terrorist pilots had been trained for suicide
missions, and Putin himself confirmed that this warning was delivered "in
the strongest possible terms" specifically regarding threats to airports
and government buildings. In that same month, the Israeli security agency
Mossad issued a warning to both the FBI and CIA that up to 200 bin Laden
followers were planning a major assault on America, aimed at vulnerable
targets. The Los Angeles Times later confirmed via unnamed US officials
that the Mossad warnings had been received .... Bush has personally used
9/11 to earn laughs at the expense of the dead, and to make some fast cash
for the Republican Party. On no less than eight occasions, Bush has made
his "trifecta" joke before fawning GOP audiences. Based on a reported
campaign 2000 promise that he would not raid social security or enter
deficit spending unless the rise of war, recession or national emergency,
Bush has since 9/11 remarked that he "hit the trifecta" and was safe to
crack open the taxpayer piggy bank. The joke never failed to earn laughs
from the crowd. It was recently revealed that the GOP was selling photos
of Bush's activities on September 11th as a fundraising gimmick, an act
that Al Gore has labeled "disgraceful." [TRUTHOUT]

HOW OTHERS SEES US (II). "Bowling for Columbine," Michael Moore's film on
gun culture, is shown at Cannes; cf. AG Ashcroft on 2nd Amendment.

YOU JUST CAN'T GET GOOD DRUGS ANYMORE. The NYT and the WP front news that
pharmaceutical corporation Schering-Plough will have to pay $500 million
in fines to the federal government for failure to resolve quality-control
problems at four of its plants, a record penalty for this type of
infraction. The FDA had concluded that the drugmaker, producer of Claritin
and some 200 other medicines, had factory violations (speculation has it
that some products came with insufficient amounts of active drug
ingredients) at 90 percent of the company's products since 1998.
Inexplicably, the stock price of Schering-Plough rose five percent
yesterday. [SLATE]

HOW WE SAVED AFGHANISTAN. Thousands of former Taliban fighters are being
held prisoner by a US ally in Afghanistan in conditions that resemble
Auschwitz, a European Union envoy said. In the prison at Shebarghan, in
northern Afghanistan, Klaus-Peter Klaiber, the EU's envoy, came face to
face with the reality of the war in Afghanistan. "The people have nothing
on their bones any more," Mr Klaiber told the Agence France Presse news
agency. "They are being treated like cattle, crammed into tents. The
kitchen, you cannot imagine. There were ghost-like figures just stirring
soup." More than 2,000 former Taliban fighters are held at the camp in
Shebarghan, the main base of General Abdul Rashid Dostum, one of the most
powerful warlords in Afghanistan and an important US ally in the war
against the Taliban. . . . Like the fighters who died in Qalai Janghi,
many of the 2,000 men being held at Shebarghan were captured at the end of
the siege of Kunduz, among the last two Taliban strongholds in
Afghanistan. The Independent was refused entry to the prison in Shebarghan
in November last year, but Mr Klaiber was more successful. What he found
was horrifying. Concern has been expressed about the condition of captured
Taliban being held at an American base on Cuba, but Guantanamo is nothing
to Shebarghan. The men being held there are being fed on thin soup, and
some 400 are so malnourished they are being given emergency rations from
the Red Cross. Some are held in rooms only 1.5 metres square. The
prisoners at Shebarghan are ethnic Pashtuns, who dominated the Taliban.
Now Afghanistan's other ethnic groups, including General Dostum's Uzbeks,
are wreaking their revenge, often on innocent civilians, women and
children. The US and its allies have done nothing to stop it, and continue
to claim the war has made life better for ordinary Afghans. [INDEPENDENT]

SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2002

WOT IS GOOD FOR SOME. The CIA is currently expanding "at its fastest rate
since the Vietnam War era." CIA officials are quite upfront-and quite
happy-about this. "'Today, the year 2002, I have more spies stealing more
secrets than at any time in the history of the CIA,' Jim ["Clandestine"]
Pavitt, head of the agency's clandestine service, told a Duke University
Law School conference last month," write the LAT. Meanwhile, the CIA's
executive director "Buzzy" Krongard "told a group of Washington investment
advisors in October that the Bush administration had 'showered' the CIA
with cash and power. 'Today, there is only one rule, and that is, there
are no rules,' he said." Now we all feel safer. [LA TIMES]

ABOMINATION. East Timor became an independent state today (Monday) with
obscenely, Bill Clinton attending as representative of the US. (For the
Clinton adminsitration, Suharto, the former Indonesian dictatror and
beneficiarly of the CIA-directed 1965 massacre that killed a million
people, was "our kind of guy" -- that's right, he was.)  See the articles
below.

THE ECONOMIC ROACH MOTEL: THE DATA CHECK IN, BUT THEY DON'T CHECK OUT? As
the giant U.S. economy zooms out of its first recession in a decade, some
doomsayers keep sounding alarm bells that the rebound is poised to sour
into a deeper funk -- a so-called "double-dip" recession. The grim
scenario goes something like this: consumer spending stumbles,
unemployment shoots higher, stocks head for another nosedive, dormant
inflation turns into suffocating deflation. And the Federal Reserve,
having already slashed short-term rates to 40-year lows of 1.75 percent to
spur growth, will have little room left to cut rates any more. "The odds
of a double-dip in the U.S. economy are not nearly as low as you have been
led to believe," warned Stephen Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley.
[REUTERS]

DEMO DOWNPLAYED IN US PRESS (II). Some 100,000 anti-globalization
demonstrators rallied peacefully through the center of Madrid on Sunday,
chanting against capitalism and war and dancing to the beating of drums.
Organizers said nearly 200,000 protesters marched behind banners that
read: "No against the exploitation of Latin America" and "Against war and
the Europe of capitalism." Many chanted "Another world is possible."
Police placed the figure at 100,000.  Some Palestinian and Cuban flags
could be seen as well as a reproduction of a caravel with "Colombia. State
terrorism. No to the paramilitarism" written in the sail.  It was the last
and the biggest of three demonstrations that were held over the weekend in
the Spanish capital to protest European-Latin American summit, which
gathered some 50 government leaders from the European Union, Central and
South America and the Caribbean. The summit ended Saturday ... The rallies
were called by the Social trans-Atlantic Forum, which includes some 60 to
70 social and political groups. [AP]

CONSERVATIVE COLUMNIST ON USES OF NEWS; SEE LAST LINE. Seated next to
Donald Rumsfeld last  Tuesday as he drank coffee at the Pentagon with
reporters  in the Godfrey Sperling group, I asked the secretary  of
defense to confirm or deny whether suicide  hijacker Mohamed Atta met an
Iraqi secret service operative  in Prague and then returned to the United
States to  die in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "I don't know  whether
he did or didn't," Rumsfeld replied. In those eight words, the defense
chief confirmed published reports that there is no  evidence placing the
presumed leader of the terrorist  attacks in the Czech capital--with or
without Iraqi  spymaster Ahmed al-Ani. His alleged presence in Prague is
the  solitary piece of evidence that could link Saddam  Hussein's
dictatorial regime to the carnage at the World  Trade Center. Rumsfeld
followed his terse response  to my Atta question with an explanation of
why  it really doesn't matter. A connection with the Sept.  11 attacks, he
made clear, is not necessary to justify  U.S. military action against Iraq
to remove Saddam from  power. The cause for war is alleged development of
weapons  of mass destruction by the Baghdad regime. Why, then, do ardent
attack-Iraq  advocates outside the government--William Safire, Kenneth
Adelman, James Woolsey--cling to the reality of the  imagined meeting in
Prague? Because President Bush  would be alone in the world if he ordered
the attack  without an Iraqi connection to Sept. 11. It is impossible to
prove whether  Atta was or was not in Prague in April 2001 as first
claimed last October by Czech Interior Minister Stanislav  Gross, but
these are the facts: Atta definitely did  not travel under his own name
back and forth from the  Czech Republic. The 9/11 terrorists always
traveled in  the open. For Atta to have used an assumed name would be  a
radically different method of operation. The  sole evidence for the Prague
meeting is the word of  Czech officials, who are now divided and confused.
The CIA does not want to be dragged  into public debate with New York
Times columnist Safire,  and its officials insist that "we don't have a
dog in  that fight." In truth, however, cool-headed analysts  at Langley
see no evidence whatever of the Prague  meeting and in their gut believe
it did not take place. Is there evidence of any other Iraqi  connection to
9/11? "I don't discuss intelligence  information," Rumsfeld replied. In
fact, there is  none. Responding to my question whether it made any
difference to U.S. policy on Iraq, he said, "I don't  know how to answer
it." He then depicted terrorist  nations--"Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, I
suppose North Korea"- -working together to develop weapons of mass
destruction. This could mean the death of "potentially hundreds of
thousands of people." Responding to another reporter's  question, Rumsfeld
said "the nuclear weapon . . . is  somewhat more difficult to develop,
maintain and  use than, for example, biological weapons," adding,  "I
would elevate the biological risk." Indeed, nobody  in the U.S. government
takes seriously statements  by former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu on  his recent visit to Washington that Iraq can deliver a
nuclear bomb here in a suitcase. Whether the Iraqis possess biological
capability is unknown and debatable. Former UN arms  inspector Scott
Ritter contends Iraq's biowar  factories and their equipment were
destroyed. Without "acquisition of a large amount of new technology,"
Ritter has said, "I don't see Iraq being able to do high- quality
production on a large scale of bioweapons." While Ritter's detractors are
many, his allegations  never have been contradicted. There is justifiable
belief in the  White House, the Pentagon and even the State  Department
that the world-- not to mention Iraq--will be better  and safer without
Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. But that  does not justify to the world the
overthrowing of a  government. That is why ace reporter Bill Safire
writes column after column insisting that the  Prague meeting took place.
That is also why national  security expert Ken Adelman insisted April 29
on CNN's "Crossfire" that Atta "went 7,000 miles to meet with  one of the
Iraq intelligence officers in Prague." Even if it never happened, the
meeting is essential to justify a U.S. attack on Iraq. [Robert Novak,
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES]

	*	*	*

Sunday, May 19, 2002 in the Observer of London 
Indonesia Uses War on Terror to Win US Arms 
by Ed Vulliamy in New York and John Aglionby in Maliana 

On the eve of East Timor's independence, the United States plans to resume
its controversial and bloodstained military aid program to Indonesia, the
new state's former invader and oppressor. 

At midnight, the country will become the world's newest nation after
two-and-a-half years of UN rule, 24 years of often brutal Indonesian
occupation and more than three centuries of Portuguese colonization. 

The celebrations will be attended by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan,
former US President Bill Clinton, Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio and
Australian Prime Minister John Howard. But the person attracting most
attention is Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri, long-standing
opponent of East Timorese independence. 

She was among the first leaders to visit George Bush in the Oval Office
after 11 September. And she has been able to take advantage of America's
war on terror with the resumption of military aid which Clinton suspended
in 1999, after the orgy of killing that followed Timor's independence
vote, when it was disclosed that civilians had been massacred by
US-trained troops. 

Within a week, Bush is expected to present the US Congress with a $16
million package to train and equip counter-terrorism police units and a
rapid response force in the Indonesian army. The provision is hidden in a
foreign aid Bill mainly concerned with Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

Pressure to resume the program comes from the Pentagon, specifically
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a hardline ambassador to Jakarta
during the Reagan administration. Defense officials from each country met
officially last month for the first time since aid was suspended. 

The proposal has invoked an outcry from human rights groups based in the
US, Britain and Jakarta and from local activists trying to highlight
massacres and other abuses of civilians by the Indonesian military, its
cohorts and the police. 

Even the Bush administration's State Department report on Indonesia noted
that its human rights record 'remains poor - Security forces were
responsible for numerous instances of, at times, indiscriminate shooting
of civilians, torture, rape, beatings and other abuse'. 

Amnesty International described the proposed aid package as 'a green light
for the Indonesian military'. 

Amnesty's Indonesia researcher, Lucia Wither, said: 'To renew aid at this
moment, when even a casual observer would have acute concerns over the
increasing power of the army and what is happening to human rights, is a
clear message that the US really doesn't care whether there is any
accountability over what happens in Timor or anywhere else. 

'This should be about preventing what happened in Timor happening in other
regions.' 

But attention is also being focused on other regions seeking independence,
including Aceh, Molucca and Papua. Human rights groups fear that the
military will use the fresh influx of aid from the US to add to its brutal
record. 

In East Timor itself, pleasure at independence is tinged with bitterness.
In Maliana, a picturesque hill town close to the border with Indonesia, a
mass was starting early to give people the chance to be in the capital
Dili, 70 miles to the east, for tonight's celebrations. 

But the attendance was sparse and the mass itself, in a country where 41
per cent of the population are below the poverty line and life expectancy
stands at 56, was not so much a celebration as a memorial service for the
thousands of residents of the district killed under the Jakarta regime. 

It is clear that this community is still tied to the past. Silvino
Noronha, 40, a driver for the outgoing UN administrators, is typical when
he says the town will never truly celebrate until the perpetrators of the
carnage that left more than 90 per cent of the buildings destroyed are
brought to justice. 

'People are not rejoicing because we still feel broken-hearted,' he said.
'The hurt will be very hard to cure if the killers are not brought to
court.' 

However, Annan, on his way to the celebrations, yesterday played down
suggestions that there should an international war crimes tribunal similar
to those dealing with Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. He said that the
Indonesian government should proceed with its own trial of 18 suspects -
among them several high-ranking military and government officials - in a
specially-convened human rights court in Jakarta. 

Few observers believe that the defendants - many of whom have influential
civilian and military backers - will face justice in Indonesia's
notoriously corrupt legal system. New York-based Human Rights Watch said:
'There is widespread skepticism that trials under way in Jakarta before
Indonesian ad hoc tribunals will bring accountability.' 

For less serious crimes, the national Truth, Reception and Reconciliation
Commission will first hold private-truth-telling sessions, then community
reconciliation hearings. 

'It's crucial for everyone in East Timor to know what happened,' says
Isabel Amaral Guterres, one of the seven national commissioners. 'It's
necessary to have justice and reconciliation if the nation wants to go
forward.' 

East Timor's charismatic resistance leader-turned-president-elect, Xanana
Gus mao, curiously disagrees. Justice has moved off his list of priorities
and he is even talking about amnesties. 

'My priority is social justice,' he said. '[People] want to send children
to school or hospital if they are sick. It's a case of balancing the
importance of justice.' 

But there was general agreement that Indonesia's dispatch of six naval
vessels to East Timor to accompany Megawati as she attended the
celebrations had been singularly tactless. East Timor's Foreign Minister,
Jose Ramos-Horta, said: 'We are not angry, just puzzled by this
ostentatious display of navy hardware.' 

ZNet Commentary
East Timor Independence Day: May 20, 2002 May 20, 2002
By Cynthia Peters 

When is hopelessness a reasonable response to a terrible situation?

Surely, the East Timorese people during the last quarter of the last
century might have been forgiven for succumbing to despair. After all,
this half-island nation had been invaded and illegally occupied by the
neighboring military giant, Indonesia, which was aided and abetted by the
world's most powerful nations. The rest of the international community
mostly stood by and watched while U.S.- and British-made weapons helped
kill a third of the East Timorese population, devastate villages, and send
hundreds of thousands into hiding in the jungle.

British journalist John Pilger wrote that when he first entered the
country in 1993, he had "no idea that much of the country was a mass
grave, marked by paths that end abruptly, fields inexplicably bulldozed,
earth inexplicably covered with tarmac; and by the legions of crosses that
march all the way from Tata Mai Lau, the highest peak, 10,000 feet above
sea level, down to Lake Tacitolu, where a calvary line of crosses looks
across to where the Pope said mass in 1989 in full view of a crescent of
hard salt sand beneath which, say local people, lie human remains."

But now Tacitolu will play a far different role in East Timorese history.
It will be the home of the main Independence Day events scheduled for
midnight on May 19th. On May 20th, East Timor will become the world's
newest nation, gaining independence after nearly 500 years of Portuguese
colonial rule, 24 years of  Indonesian occupation, and two years of
transition time under the UN.

This is a magnificent moment in world history, for many reasons, not least
of which is that it is a victory "won after great hardship and against
overwhelming odds." The East Timor Action Network's (ETAN's) open letter
to the people of East Timor continues, "Your victory against occupation by
the fourth largest country backed by the world's most powerful nation
gives hope and inspiration to all who work for genuine democracy, human
rights and self-determination."

While the East Timorese honor us with their gift of exemplary courage and
resilience, "the world's most powerful nation" prepares its own trademark
birthday gift -- resumption of military aid to Indonesia, East Timor's
neighboring human rights abuser. Already responsible for more than 200,000
East Timorese deaths during the occupation, the Indonesian military left
East Timor in a "smoking ruin" (according to Human Rights Watch) in the
weeks immediately following East Timor's independence referendum in August
1999. 

Despite the fact that not a single military officer has yet to be held
criminally responsible in a court of law, and despite the Indonesian
military's ongoing domestic human rights abuses, President Bush and his
administration are paving the way toward restoring military aid.

Defense Secretary Rumsfeld recently stated, "I think it is unfortunate
that the United States does not today have military-to-military
relationships with Indonesia. I am certainly hopeful that we will be able
to re-establish them in one way or another." 

The administration has already taken several steps to override important
Congressional restrictions on military aid for Indonesia. In December,
federal funding was approved for a "Regional Defense Counter-Terrorism
Fellowship Program." 

Congressional human rights restrictions won't limit who can participate in
the new program, as it is directly administered by Rumsfeld's Defense
Department. In March, as part of a supplemental appropriations request,
President Bush asked for $16 million to train Indonesian military, police
and civilian personnel in "counter-terrorism, humanitarian and
peacekeeping activities." If this request is approved, tens of millions
more could be made available for training, military equipment, and other
military assistance.

While Bill Clinton and former assistant secretary of state for East Asian
and Pacific Affairs Richard Holbrooke help the East Timorese celebrate
their independence on May 20th, tens of thousands of forcibly displaced
East Timorese will not be able to attend the festivities. For two and a
half years, they have been stuck in refugee camps in West Timor, where
they are essentially held captive by Indonesian paramilitary guards.

Among the many challenges East Timor faces as a new nation is avoiding the
pitfalls of debt that so many developing countries experience. ETAN/U.S.
and East Timor solidarity activists around the world aim to support East
Timor's desire to use funding for health care, education, and rebuilding
the country's infrastructure, rather than servicing high-interest loans. 

"Activists have a unique chance to take pre-emptive action -- to prevent
the stranglehold of structural adjustment, loans, and the vicious cycle of
poverty from putting its deadly grip on the new country," according to
ETAN. (Inter Press Service, Emad Mekay, May 13, 2002) 

Many formerly colonized nations gain political independence only to find
their economies largely dictated by outside forces, namely, the
international financial institutions that make grants and loans available
but only with specific strings attached.

At the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, this year, a delegate
from East Timor asked Noam Chomsky's advice about how East Timor might
negotiate entering the global economy, specifically how it might avoid
losing its hard-won independence now that it is vulnerable to the
extremely powerful international financial institutions. 

Chomsky answered that only the East Timorese could decide how to best make
their way through these difficult decisions, but he advised that they be
students of their own history. In particular, they should look at their
own remarkable struggle, how they were victorious in what could rightfully
have been called a lost cause, and how they eschewed hopelessness in the
most desperate of situations.

On May 20th this year, take a moment to celebrate with the East Timorese.
As activists, our lives are crowded with crises. We constantly sift
through devastating news and make impossible judgements about how best to
respond. Winning seems impossible. It is tempting to consider giving up.
But the East Timorese did not. They organized. They waited. They
eventually won. If they can do it...

The struggle continues.

*******

Contact the East Timor Action Network (www.etan.org) to see how you can
help stop resumption of military aid to Indonesia, pressure the UN for an
international tribunal for Indonesia's war criminals, bring the East
Timorese refugees home, and help keep East Timor debt free. Listen to Amy
Goodman's broadcast of Independence Day events by logging on to
www.democracynow.org.

********

Cynthia Peters is a freelance writer, editor and political activist. She
can be reached at cynthia at zmag.org. Thanks to ETAN for help with this
piece.

END