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The Forum > Article Comments > The airbrushing of history - 1917 to 2017 > Comments

The airbrushing of history - 1917 to 2017 : Comments

By Jim Dowling, published 24/4/2017

I have been moved by the plight of the East Timorese since I was a young man and read about the Indonesian invasion in the daily news.

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“... the shameful role Australia was playing in supporting the  genocide in that country.”

Jim Dowling should be required to justify his outrageously libellous claim that Australia supported genocide in East Timor?

If he had said the same thing about an individual, his feet wouldn't touch the ground on the way to court. Why should these Fifth Columnists be allowed get away with bad-mouthing their country with statements that could be downright lies?
Posted by ttbn, Monday, 24 April 2017 10:37:25 AM
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While I may disagree with some things the author has said, his solutions and his methods, Whitlam and his Ministers were cynical, callous, Indonesia-appeasing SOBs.

Whitlam and his Labor government were wrong and after the action was taken there was very little that could be done to recover things.

"Whitlam's East Timor policies 'chilling'
May 17, 2007

The top foreign affairs official under the Whitlam government today slammed its policies on East Timor as "chilling".

Alan Renouf, 84, who had been head of the Department of Foreign Affairs selected by former prime minister Gough Whitlam, told a Sydney coroner of his conflicts over Mr Whitlam's policies towards Indonesia, which invaded East Timor in 1975.

He said a submission by a former ambassador in Jakarta, Richard Woolcott, advocating that the then Portuguese colony should become part of Indonesia, was "chilling in its simplification, in its simplicity".

He said it was not a policy that should have been adopted by a Labor government believing in self-determination or a lawyer like Mr Whitlam.

He said he had tried to stop Mr Whitlam removing self-determination from Australia's policy on East Timor in 1975, at a meeting with Indonesian President Soeharto in Townsville.

Mr Renouf, who is testifying at the Sydney inquest about the killing of five Australian-based newsmen at Balibo, East Timor, on October 16, 1975, said he had learned soon afterwards that the journalists had been killed during an Indonesian-led attack..."
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/whitlams-east-timor-policies-chilling/2007/05/17/1178995295462.html
Posted by leoj, Monday, 24 April 2017 11:39:49 AM
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Nothing good in things that aren't far left, Aye Jimmo?

Certainly Jimmo parrots his Irish Catholic Black Armband View of Australia's very positive secular history. Dowling is an anglicised form representing two unrelated clans: 1 - Ó Dúnlaing, noted as one of the seven septs of County Laois, the ancestral home called Fearann ua n-Dúnlaing (O'Dowling's Country).

Is East Timor (ET) becoming the Cuba of Southeast Asia that everyone feared? Just wait for ET to become dominated by a Chinese naval base in Dili Harbour and air base at Baucau. See map http://geology.com/world/east-timor-map.gif

Notice how ET's foreign policy is based on making Australia feel guilty.

ET blows its unearned oil/gas money on luxuries for ET's ruling, Portuguese speaking, Aristocracy. Meanwhile ET asks Australia and other neighbours for aid money to pay for ET's yearly national Budget.

Most of ET's ruling Aristocracy fled ET in 1974-75 then returned when it was safe AFTER the Australian LIBERATION of ET in 1999.
Posted by plantagenet, Monday, 24 April 2017 3:03:08 PM
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History is written by the winners.
Posted by Philip S, Tuesday, 25 April 2017 4:09:29 PM
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Lies would never become truth.
Posted by rollyczar, Tuesday, 25 April 2017 11:22:35 PM
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ttbn and others can write up a storm about the geostrategic implications of what Dowling has written here but anyone who followed the news in the Australian public domain over the period and paid attention knows very well that every word in the article is factually and morally true. Indonesia is an enemy of Australia and of liberty everywhere and its protection of war criminals and its antics over a non-Moslem regional governor show it has never changed its spots.

The constant appeasement of this vile product of wartime quislings remains a disgrace.
Posted by EmperorJulian, Monday, 1 May 2017 5:42:20 PM
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