Maracas1

Pilger instantly puts people's back up but what YOU say makes a bit more sense. Portugal ditching East Timor left an East Timor with a name "Democratic Republic" and Maoist aspirations (of some) that was off the tolerance meter for the non-Russian/Chinese/Cuban world.

Sincere Leftists (including Fretilin) tried too much, too soon, and had the whole "democratic" world including Suharto (bless it) breathing down its neck. Australia was but an accepting toady - as it is most things Indonesian.

"The present Government dominated by elites" True but a fair few in Fretilin are also of the completely dominating Mestico elite. Portugal has handicapped Timor Leste... with its language but provided nothing for the future. "Yes I think Portugese is an advantageous business language said the East Timorese businessman to the...Cardinal"

"squander the proceeds of the Petroleum Fund" The luxury car allowance or bribe offered to all ET MPs was impressively rejected by many in Fretilin but embraced by Centrist (Mercedes MPs) in a poor country.

Aussies "expressing political partisanship." All I've heard is that too many diggers act like an Army of Occupation and in favour of Kirsty's Old Man ;)

" early departure of the Portuguese " I agree - that Portugal did so little and enslaved so many East Timorese over the centuries that it should be ditched as the linguistic icon. Hanging on to that obscure Latin legacy for a country in Asia will not help the people.

BTW We have disagreed on much, and will again, but you're one of the best in OLO man :)

Pete
http://gentleseas.blogspot.com/2009/07/east-timor-potted-history.html

Pilger sure cops abuse for pointing out what really has gone on here and there. Come on, you guys. You're old enough to rather know the truth than remain in tutelage to the McCarthyite fantasies you were brought up and not see the world the way it is?
If you pretend something is otherwise than what it is you'll set a precedent whereby you may be warned not to stand on the road because a bus is coming, but deny it because your informant holds his face the wrong way?
Adjustment can be tiresome, but the alternative consequences scarcely bear contemplatiing for their severity. Down with ideological Maginot lines and fear not the truth which challenges cosy preconceptions, but sets us free.

Poor Johnny P,

Left on the sidelines again....

As usual and always JP struggles for relevance and is intimidated by the fact that the BALIBO film has drawn more attention to the plight of the East Timorese and the 6 murdered Australian based journalist, in 2 months, than he has been able to do in a whole lifetime.

I am taking some 20 people to see the film this afternoon. Will you and your mate David be out the front of the cinema with placards, perhaps with drafts of your own script? Your own version of history...

Why dont you head off to the funding bodies Johnny and try and get your own version made.

I am off to see an Australian film today.....SORRY!

trizzie

I am not exactly sure what responsibility exactly the Australian government of the time should take for journalists who willingly put themselves in dangerous situations. I am very sorry these men lost there lives – perhaps they should have headed advice at the time and left as the ABC journalists did. But I am sorrier for the East Timorese people who had no choice and no-where to go. But short of going to war with Indonesia on "behalf" of the East Timorese, (that would have been a great follow up to Vietnam…..) – I’m not sure what people expedited the Australian government at the time to do?

Perhaps, if anyone should be taking responsibility it should be channel seven for not taking seriously there OHS responsibilities to these employees particularly given they were standing to gain ratings from the emerging reports

Thanks Arjay,

I am glad to see people other than myself want the truth of 9/11 to be told.

I saw a 1 hour version (there are also 10 minute, 30 minute and 2 hour versions) of the Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (http://ae911truth.org) movie "Blueprint for Truth" last weekend and can thoroughly recommend it.

Some in attendance saw it as overly technical, but for may own part it is very helpful to see presented, in that way, the incontrovertible evidence that the 'collapses' of the WTC twin towers and WTC building 7, which was not even hit by an aircraft, were all controlled demolitions, rather than being the 3 unprecedented engineering disasters that all occurred on the one day, and never once before and never once since, as the US government claims that they were.

---

John Pilger, thank you for an informative and helpful article on Balibo. It is indeed an outrage that evidence that our own government (even if, sadly the otherwise towering Government of Gough Whitlam) was an accomplice in that terrible crime.

If you are paying attention to this forum, would you be able to tell us why you think it is that no left wing newspaper in this country, not even Green Left Weekly (see http://www.greenleft.org.au http://www.greenleft.org.au/donate.php), which you commend, has uttered a word anywhere about the raging controversy over 9/11.

People who I approach on the street who sell Green Left absolutely adamantly refuse to discuss 9/11 at all.

They will variously say, and often within the course of a single conversation, that the case of the 9/11 Truth Movement is rubbish or that it is not rubbish, but to publicly question 9/11 in the least will automatically subject them, and any cause with which they are associated, to instant and total ridicule.

That seems most odd.

Green Left chooses to defend the ground which accepts that terrorists, from the region in which our armies are now fighting wars that they say they oppose, did launch 9/11, 7/7 the Madrid bombings, Bali, etc, but refuse to even contemplate examining evidence that (tobecontinued)

(continuedfromabove) would enable them to shift to ground which I would have thought would be much easier to defend, that is, the ground on which it is maintained that the US government itself committed the crimes which it has knowingly and falsely blamed on so-called Muslim extremists.

Could you explain why you think that is?

Also, as we speak the New York City Coalition for Accountability Now (NYC CAN) is fighting the New York City Council in order to force it to put to a ballot at the General elections to be held in November a question that there be a proper investigation into 9/11, unlike the sham 9/11 Commission and NIST 'investigations'. Although 76,267 Ner Yorkers, well in excess of the required 30,000 have signed and 66% of New Yorkers want a new inquiry, the New York Town Clerk has refused to accept the petition (See http://nyccan.org and please give generously to their legal fund at http://nyccan.org/donate.php).

Can you tell me wheher or not you think there should be a new investigation into 9/11?