Obama's Envoy to Afghanistan/Pakistan- Richard Holbrooke

[chlamor]

Richard Charles Albert Holbrooke is "a Vice Chairman of Perseus LLC and is a former Vice Chairman of Credit Suisse First Boston and a former Managing Director of Lehman Brothers." He is a Director of Refugees International "serving as chairman of Refugees International from 1996 to 1999, two-time board member of the International Rescue Committee, founding chairman of the American Academy in Berlin, director of the Council on Foreign Relations." [1]

Holbrooke "most recently served as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from 1999 until 2001 and was a member of President William Jefferson Clinton's cabinet. As Assistant Secretary of State for Europe from 1994 until 1996, he was the chief architect of the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords that ended the war in Bosnia. From 1993 through 1994, he was the U.S. Ambassador to Germany. During the James Earl Carter, Jr. Administration from 1977 through 1981, he served as the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, and was in charge of U.S. relations with China at the time Sino-American relations were normalized in December 1978. After joining the Foreign Service in 1962, he held assignments in Vietnam, the State Department and the White House."

"Ambassador Holbrooke has been a Peace Corps Director in Morocco, the Managing Editor of Foreign Policy, and has written numerous articles, two books (To End A War, a memoir of the Dayton negotiations, and Counsel to the President, Clark M. Clifford's memoir (as co-author), and one volume of The Pentagon Papers. He has received twelve honorary degrees and numerous awards, including six Nobel Peace Prize nominations."

"Ambassador Holbrooke serves as a Board Member of AIG, Coca-Cola, AOL Time Warner and Human Genome Sciences. On the non-governmental organization side, he serves as Chairman of the American Academy in Berlin, a center for U.S.-German cultural exchange, and President/CEO of the Global Business Council on HIV/AIDS. He is also a member of the Board of Refugees International (and former Chairman), the Council on Foreign Relations, the National Endowment for Democracy, the American Museum of Natural History, the Telluride Foundation, the International Advisory Board, the Citizens Committee and the Africa-America Institute.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?ti ... _Holbrooke

Richard Holbrooke

Like Albright, Holbrooke will have major sway over U.S. policy, whether or not he gets an official job. A career diplomat since the Vietnam War, Holbrooke's most recent government post was as President Clinton's ambassador to the U.N. Among the many violent policies he helped implement and enforce was the U.S.-backed Indonesian genocide in East Timor. Holbrooke was an Assistant Secretary of State in the late 1970s at the height of the slaughter and was the point man on East Timor for the Carter Administration.

According to Brad Simpson, director of the Indonesia and East Timor Documentation Project at the National Security Archive at George Washington University, "It was Holbrooke and Zbigniew Brzezinski [another top Obama advisor], both now leading lights in the Democratic Party, who played point in trying to frustrate the efforts of congressional human-rights activists to try and condition or stop U.S. military assistance to Indonesia, and in fact accelerated the flow of weapons to Indonesia at the height of the genocide."

Holbrooke, too, was a major player in the dismantling of Yugoslavia and praised the bombing of Serb Television, which killed 16 media workers, as a significant victory. (The man who ordered that bombing, now-retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark, is another Obama foreign policy insider who could end up in his cabinet. While Clark is known for being relatively progressive on social issues, as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, he ordered bombings and attacks that Amnesty International labeled war crimes.)

Like many in Obama's foreign policy circle, Holbrooke also supported the Iraq war. In early 2003, shortly after then-Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech to the UN, where he presented the administration's fraud-laden case for war to the UN (a speech Powell has since called a "blot" on his reputation), Holbrooke said: "It was a masterful job of diplomacy by Colin Powell and his colleagues, and it does not require a second vote to go to war. … Saddam is the most dangerous government leader in the world today, he poses a threat to the region, he could pose a larger threat if he got weapons of mass destruction deployed, and we have a legitimate right to take action."

http://la.indymedia.org/news/2008/11/222404.php

RICHARD HOLBROOK SHOULD BE PROSECUTED FOR BEING AN ACCOMPLICE IN THE GENOCIDE IN BOSNIA

According to a professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law and an attorney for the Bosnian association of genocide survivors from the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica "the Mothers of Srebrenica" professor Francis A. Boyle, Richard Holbrook, who was Assistant U.S. Secretary of State in mid 90s, had a collusion with Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic, who has been charged by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) with genocide, extermination, murder, deportation, inhumane acts, and other crimes against Bosnian civilians,committed during the 1992-1995 Serbian aggression against Bosnia.

"All evidence and records at hand indicate that Holbrooke was an accomplice in the genocide," the lawyer told the Azerbaijani Trend News Agency.

“But certainly Holbrooke aided and abetted war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and ethnic cleansing by Karadzic against the Bosnians,” Boyle, who was official juridical advisor for Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic and the representative of Bosnian Government at the International Court, said.

On 31 July, speaking to the Hague Tribunal,Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic, stated there is an agreement between him and Holbrook, former representative of the United Stated in the UN, who is very often "credited" to be the architect of the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement,but should be actually fully credited for helping the genocidal Serbian fascist aggressor commit genocide against Bosnians by ,first of all,supporting the criminal arms embargo against Bosnian government that left Bosnia and the Bosnian people without basic means to protect themselves during the 1992-1995 Serbian,Montenegrin and Croatian aggressions against Bosnia and by forcing the Bosnian leaders in 1995 to "legalize" the genocidal Serbian fascist creature in Bosnia "RS".

“In 1996, Holbrooke proposed me to abandon the public life and the United States would fulfil its obligations instead,” said Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic.

U.S. State Department denied the statement. According to an official of the U.S. State Department Sean McCormack, Holbrooke did not conclude any agreement with Karadzic.

However,lots of facts prove there was an agreement between American fascist Richard Holbrooke and Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic.

Brother of Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic, Luka Karadzic confirmed there is a bygone agreement between Karadzic and Holbrooke, Interfax, a Russian non-governmental news agency ,reported.

Boyle is confident there is much truth in Karadzic’s statement.

“Of course I was not privy to any personal conversations between Holbrooke and Karadzic. But certainly Holbrooke aided and abetted war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and ethnic cleansing by Karadzic against the Bosnians,” Boyle said.

“Holbrooke should be on trial in The Hague with Karadzic as an accomplice in the genocide,” he said.

Moreover, the attorney is confident the same is true for Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Kofi Annan, Yasushi Akashi, David Owen, Thorvald Stoltenberg, and Carl Bildt.

Boyle said it would be very inconvenient for all of these individuals and their Masters for Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic to defend himself they way he apparently plans to do so.

"Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic knows everything about how Western ‘mediators’ promoted his crimes," said Boyle.

“So I will be keeping a close eye on these war crimes proceedings in order to use this new information against these people on behalf of my clients the Mothers of Srebrenica,” said Boyle.

The task of the Bosnian association of genocide survivors from the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica "the Mothers of Srebrenica" is to search for more than 10,000 Bosnian civilians from Srebrenica missing in European largest massacre, committed by the genocidal Serbian fascist aggressor, on July 11, 1995.

The lawyer is sure that but he will be able to use his new information against these Western ‘mediators’ and diplomats in order to hold them accountable to his clients for the massacre.

“At the end of the day Karadzic will be spending the rest of his life in prison, where he should have been for quite some time in any event,” Boyle said.

Professor Boyle was the one who convinced the former ICTY Prosecutor Carla DelPonte to indict Serbian war criminal Slobodan Milosevic for every crime in the ICTY Statute, including genocide.

According to lawyer, earlier the arrest of Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic was undesirable, but possible for West.

"During the peace negotiations, Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic has been given visas to come and negotiate in Geneva. And in New York. The State Department let Karadzic come to New York to the Vance-Owen carve-up negotiations, with a US visa. The State Department was obliged under the Geneva Convention to apprehend Karadzic," Boyle said.

"The US had an absolute obligation to apprehend Karadzic if he showed up in New York, and to open an investigation, and to prosecute,instead, they're giving him a visa and secret service protection in New York," he said.

“They defended war criminals and those who committed genocide. These are big powers,” Boyle said.

How Holbrooke Lied His Way into a War
Sam Husseini
http://www.uruknet.de/?p=49466

Richard Holbrooke, Samantha Power, and the “Worthy-Genocide” Establishment, by Edward S. Herman
http://one-state.net/herman2.html

Richard Holbrooke: A Hillary Clinton Neocon
by Joshua Frank
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/07/r ... -democrat/

200,000 Skeletons in Richard Holbrooke's Closet?
by Sunil Sharma
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles/ ... -Timor.htm

The Dismantling of Yugoslavia: A Study in Inhumanitarian Intervention (and a Western Liberal-Left Intellectual and Moral Collapse)
Edward S. Herman and David Peterson
http://www.monthlyreview.org/1007herman-peterson1.php

Public Strategies, Inc.

Public Strategies, Inc. says on its website that:

"Public Strategies offers counsel using a new business model:

* defining the public in a new way, as customers, employees, stockholders, voters, and political leaders
* bringing a unique mix of talent combining corporate, government, policy, and entrepreneurial experience
* identifying and managing public risk" [1]

PSI specializes in crisis management PR. Its website boasts, "Public Strategies has helped many corporations involved in high-profile crises successfully weather the storm and better prepare for the possibility of future turbulence. From the 'war room' to the public hearing room, the courtroom and America's living rooms, Public Strategies is many corporations' first phone call for crisis response." PSI's website then extends this invitation to crisis-afflicted corporations: "Trying to put out a fire at this very moment? No matter where you are or what time it is, don't hesitate to call. Our crisis team can work anywhere and they never sleep." [2]

Ownership

In August 2006, the giant advertising and PR conglomerate WPP announced that it had bought PSI. Brand Republic noted that in 2005 PSI employed 175 staff and had revenuse of $38.5 million. [3]

Clients

In 2004, Public Strategies, Inc. was engaged by Diebold Election Systems to perform crisis-management public relations work. Its employee David Bear was given an apparently full-time role with Diebold [4].

In June 2005, PSI was hired by the major video news release (VNR) company, Medialink Worldwide. Medialink retained PSI "to keep an ear to the ground" on discussions and proposals regarding VNR labeling before the U.S. Congress and Federal Communications Commission CEO Laurence Moskowitz told O'Dwyer's PR Daily. Working with Medialink are PSI's John Krueger and William Moore. Moore is the former chief of staff to Rep. David Price, a founding member of the Congressional "Future of American Media Caucus" that was established in April 2005. [5]

In February 2007, O'Dwyer's reported that Public Strategies "is bolstering PR for the record $43.8 billion buyout of Texas power company TXU. ... The buyout is expected to face regulatory, political and environmental concerns and the parties involved immediately moved to head off any immediate fallout. The news release announcing the buyout said the deal has been endorsed by Environmental Defense and the Natural Resources Defense Council." [6]

Public Strategies Disappearing Advisory Board

In October 2004 PSI stated on its website (now dead link) (Internet Archive copy) (screengrab) that "Public Strategies' Advisory Board is comprised of some of the most highly regarded political, business, and communications experts in the world." However, by July 2005 only one, former Governor Ann Richards, remained.

The other six - José Angel Gurría, former Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, James Johnson, Thomas Meredith, former Ambassador Lyndon Olson, and former Ambassador Renato Ruggiero - were no longer listed on the company's website. Nor did Public Strategies mention whether the Advisory Board still existed.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?ti ... ies%2C_Inc.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

[chlamor]

Obama’s new foreign policy team prepares escalated bloodletting in Afghanistan and Pakistan
Patrick Martin

24 January 2009

In a series of meetings and public appearances Wednesday and Thursday, and with the first military strikes of his administration, President Barack Obama has given a clear signal that he plans intensified bloodshed in Afghanistan and Pakistan as the US escalates its military intervention in Central and South Asia.

Missiles fired from unmanned Predator drones struck two targets inside Pakistan Friday morning, killing at least 18 people. As is always the case with such exercises in remote-controlled murder, US officials claimed they were targeting Al Qaeda, although even US media accounts admitted that the majority of those killed were local residents.

Three missiles struck the village of Zharki in North Waziristan, killing ten people, of whom five were described by US "security sources" as Al Qaeda militants. A few hours later, another missile hit a house in South Waziristan, killing eight people whose identities were not known.

The strikes were the latest in a series of more than two dozen such attacks since last August, and Pentagon officials said they had carried out the attacks under existing authority from the outgoing Bush administration, while keeping the new president fully informed of the action.

The death toll from the missile campaign, according to Pakistani government figures, numbers at least 263 people. Even US government officials claim only a handful of those killed had any ties to Al Qaeda or the Taliban.

The attacks on sovereign Pakistani territory are blatant violations of international law, which the regime in Islamabad protests verbally, while continuing to accept billions in US subsidies to the country's military.

Obama and his newly confirmed secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, staged what amounted to a political rally at the State Department Thursday, at which they announced the appointment of two new US pro-consuls to the region.

Former senator George Mitchell is to reprise his role from the Clinton administration as the US envoy to the Middle East. Former UN Ambassador Richard Holbrooke is special US representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The different titles reflect different roles. Mitchell has been given responsibility for reviving and supervising negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, as well as between Israel and neighboring Arab states. His job is strictly diplomatic.

Holbrooke is to work with the US-backed regimes in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as the US military command in Kabul, to coordinate joint action against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. He is not labeled an "envoy," according to the State Department, because he will have input into military policy as well as diplomacy, and because he will not be negotiating with the Taliban—a rebuff to pleas for such talks by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and some European countries.

Clinton called the two appointments "a loud and clear signal ... that our nation is once again capable of demonstrating global leadership." Obama said the two would "convey our seriousness of purpose" in both areas.

Mitchell chaired the negotiations in Northern Ireland that led to the 1998 Good Friday agreement, under which the IRA disarmed and Irish Republican politicians have joined the provincial government. He later chaired a commission on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict whose report, delivered in April 2001, was ignored by the incoming Bush administration because it called for a freeze on Israeli settlements on the West Bank.

Israeli officials, and particularly the right-wing Likud Party, which is favored to win the country's February 10 parliamentary elections, have openly expressed their distrust of Mitchell, who is partially of Lebanese-American ancestry (his mother was a Maronite Christian).

Mitchell's appointment cannot disguise the fundamental policy of US imperialism in the region, which makes use of the Zionist regime as its military spearhead against the Arab masses. Both Obama and Clinton, to whom Mitchell will report, have made clear their support for the 24-day Israeli onslaught on Gaza, in which more than 1,300 Palestinians lost their lives, and over 5,000 were wounded.

The selection of Holbrooke is even more ominous, since he has long served as one of the most ruthless representatives of American imperialism, going all the way back to his early days in the Foreign Service in Vietnam. He came to public notice as the leader of the US diplomatic team at the 1995 talks on the crisis in the former Yugoslavia, held in Dayton, Ohio, that concluded with a US-imposed settlement in the civil war in Bosnia.

In his encouragement of ethnic cleansing by the Croatian regime of Franjo Tudjman, which drove a quarter million Serbs out of the Krajina region of southern Croatia in a 1995 offensive, Holbrooke could deservedly face war crimes charges. He later boasted, in his memoir of the Dayton talks: "Tudjman wanted clarification of the American position. He bluntly asked for my personal views. I indicated my general support for the offensive ... I told Tudjman the offensive had great value to the negotiations. It would be much easier to retain at the table what had been won on the battlefield than to get the Serbs to give up territory they had controlled for several years."

Holbrooke was fully aware at the time of the Dayton talks that the Croatian Army was carrying out atrocities against the Serbs, and was later quoted saying, "We 'hired' these guys to be our junkyard dogs because we were desperate. We need to try to 'control' them. But this is no time to get squeamish about things." He will now seek to find new "junkyard dogs" to do the dirty work of American imperialism in south and central Asia.

In his remarks at the State Department rally, Obama reiterated his concern over what he called a "deteriorating situation" in both Afghanistan and Pakistan," a region that is "the central front" of the struggle against terrorism. This language, echoing George W. Bush's description of Iraq, underscores the new administration's commitment to military subjugation of the Afghan population and wider attacks on the Pakistani population of the border region, largely Pushtun-speaking and linked by tribal ties to the majority Pushtun population in Afghanistan.

Clinton said that Holbrooke's mandate would be to "coordinate across the entire government an effort to achieve United States' strategic goals in the region." These goals have little to do with the remnants of Al Qaeda hiding out in the mountains along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The real focus of the intervention, under Obama as much as under Bush, is to establish the United States as the principal power in the oil-rich region of Central Asia.

The renewed focus on military problems in Afghanistan was signaled as well by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who has been retained in his position during the transition from Bush to Obama. He told a press conference Thursday that US goals in Afghanistan had been "too broad and too far into the future. We need more concrete goals that can be achieved realistically within three to five years, in terms of reestablishing control in certain areas, providing security for the population, going after al-Qaeda, preventing the reestablishment of terrorism."

There is mounting anxiety in the Pentagon over the viability of US supply lines to Afghanistan, especially if the force on the ground is doubled, as Obama plans. Two-thirds of US supplies go through Pakistan and convoys through the Khyber Pass to Afghanistan have come under repeated attacks. General David Petraeus, the former Iraq commander who was promoted to head the US Central Command, with responsibility for war planning throughout the region, recently completed a trip through Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgystan, seeking agreements on expanding US supply shipments through those countries. He reported on his findings to the Obama White House on Wednesday.

According to a report in the New York Times January 22, another major concern of US military authorities in Afghanistan is the strengthening of Taliban influence in the southern provinces around Kandahar, patrolled now mainly by British, Canadian and Dutch troops, who are spread thinly through a vast area.

The Times reporter noted worriedly: "It is perhaps in Kandahar, one of the provincial capitals, where the lack of troops is most evident. About 3,000 Canadian soldiers are assigned to secure the city, home to about 500,000 people. In a recent visit, this reporter traveled the city for five days and did not see a single Canadian soldier on the streets. The lack of troops has allowed the Taliban to mount significant attacks inside the city."


www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/fore-j24.shtml

[ninakat]

Chomsky: No Change Coming With Obama

The following is a Press TV interview with respected American author, political analyst and world-renowned linguist, Professor Noam Chomsky.

By Press TV

January 24, 2009 -- -Press TV: Professor Chomsky, we better start with Pakistan. The White House not commenting on the killings of people [in cross-border drone attacks from Afghanistan into Pakistan]. Richard Holbrooke, someone whom you've written about in the context of Yugoslavia, is the man [President Barack] Obama has chosen to solve the situation.

Chomsky: Well, it was pretty clear that Obama would accept the Bush doctrine that the United States can bomb Pakistan freely, and there have been many case which are quite serious.

There has been for example a great deal of chaos and fighting in Bajaur province, which is a adjacent to Afghanistan and tribal leaders- others there- have traced it to the bombing of a madrassa school which killed 80 to 95 people, which I don't think was even reported in the United states, it was reported in the Pakistani press of course.

The author of the article reporting it, a well-known nuclear physicist, Pervez Hoodbhoy pointed out at the time that this kind of massacre will of course engender terror and reactions, which will even threaten the state of Pakistan. And that has been what is happening. We are now seeing more of it.

The first message of the Pakistani government to General [David] Petraeus, the American General when he took command of the region was that they did not want any more bombings in Pakistan.

Actually, the first message to the new Obama administration by President [Hamid] Karzai of Afghanistan was the same, that he wanted no more bombings. He also said that he wants a timetable for the withdrawal of the foreign troops, US and other troops, from Afghanistan. That was of course just ignored.

Press TV: And these three foreign envoys, well the third one has not been announced yet perhaps, but some people are expressing optimism about George Mitchell's position as Middle East envoy.

Richard Holbrooke, which have looked at. We have talked to the former Bosnian foreign minister here, who seemed to imply that he may even have had a role in the say so for the Srebrenica massacre, and of course, Dennis Ross is being talked about as an envoy for Iran.

Chomsky: well Holbrooke has a pretty awful record, not so much Yugoslavia, but earlier. For example, In the Indonesian atrocities in eastern Timor, where he was the official in charge, and evaded to stop the US support for them, and all together it's a very spotty record.

George Mitchell is, of the various appointments that have been made, he is the most decent let's say. He has a pretty decent record. He achieved something in Northern Ireland, but of course, in that case there was an objective.

The objective was that the British would put an end to the resort to violence in response to IRA terror and would attend to the legitimate grievances that were the source of the terror. He did manage that, Britain did pay attention to the grievances, and the terror stopped- so that was successful.

But there is no such outcome sketched in the Middle East, specially the Israel-Palestine problem. I mean, there is a solution, a straightforward solution very similar to the British one. Israel could stop its US-backed crimes in the occupied territories and then presumably the reaction to them would stop. But that's not on the agenda.

In fact, President Obama just had a press conference, which was quite interesting in that respect. He praised the parabolic peace initiative, the Saudi initiative endorsed by the Arab League, and said it had constructive elements. It called for the normalization of relation with Israel, and he called on the Arab states to proceed with those "constructive elements," namely the normalization of relations.

But that is a gross falsification of the Arab League initiative. The Arab League initiative called for accepting a two-state settlement on the international border, which has been a long-standing international consensus and said if that can be achieved then Arab states can normalize relations with Israel.

Well, Obama skipped the first part, the crucial part, the core of the resolution, because that imposes an obligation on the United States. The United States has stood alone for over thirty years in blocking this international consensus, by now it has totally isolated the US and Israel.

Europe and now a lot of other countries have accepted it. Hamas has accepted it for years, the Palestinian Authority of course, the Arab League now for many years [have accepted it]. The US and Israel block it, not just in words, but they are blocking it in actions constantly, (this is) happening every day in the occupied territories and also in the siege of Gaza and other atrocities.

So when he skips that it is purposeful. That entails that the US is not going to join the world in seeking to implement a diplomatic settlement, and if that is the case, Mitchell's mission is vacuous.

Press TV: Is there a contradiction in that George Mitchell of course did speak to members of the Sinn Féin, their military wing of course of the IRA.

At the same time, well on this channel [Press TV] we have been covering the Gaza conflict, its headquarters were bombed, and now we are being told that Israeli soldiers will not give their names, and the names of people are not being released for fear of prosecution.

And yet, some were saying that Obama did say that the border should be opened. Should we see any change in policy there?

Chomsky: He did say that, but he did not mention the fact that it was in the context of a lot other demands. And Israel will also say, sure the borders should be opened but he still refuses to speak to the elected government (i.e. Hamas), quite different from Mitchell in Northern Ireland.

It means Palestinians will have to be punished for voting in a free election, the way the US did not want them to, and he endorsed the Condoleezza Rice-Tzipi Livni agreement to close the Egyptian-Gaza order, which is quite an act of imperial arrogance.

It is not their border, and in fact, Egypt strongly objected to that. But Obama continued. He says we have to make sure that no arms are smuggled through the tunnels into the Gaza Strip. But he said nothing about the vast dispatch of far more lethal arms to Israel.

In fact, right in the middle of the Gaza attack, December 31, the Pentagon announced that it was commissioning a German ship to send 3,000 tons of war material to Israel. That did not work out, because the government of Greece prevented it but it was supposed to go through Greece but it could all go through somewhere else. This is right in the middle of the attack on Gaza.

Actually there were very little reporting, very few inquiries. The Pentagon responded in an interesting way. They said, well this material won't be used for the attack on Gaza, in fact they knew that Israel had plans to stop the attack right before the inauguration, so that Obama would not have to say anything about it.

But the Pentagon said that this material is being used for pre-positioning for US forces. In other words, this has been going for a long time, but this is extending and reinforcing the role of Israel as a US military base on the edge of the major oil producing regions of the world. If they are ever asked why they are doing it, they will say for defense or stability, but it is just a base for further aggressive action.

Press TV: Robert Gates and Admiral [Mike] Mullen have been talking about the 16-month timeline for withdrawal from Iraq is just one of the options, a slight difference from what Obama has been saying in the campaign. And, Hillary Clinton famously said she was prepared to obliterate all of Iran and kill 70 million citizens. On Iraq and Iran what do you see as changes?

Chomsky: What happened in Iraq is extremely interesting and important. The few correspondents with real experience any whom know something have understood it. Patrick Cockburn, Jonathan Steele and one or two others.

What has happened is that there was a remarkable campaign of non-violent resistance in Iraq, which compelled the United States, step-by-step, to back away from its programs and its goals. They compelled the US occupying forces to allow an election, which the US did not want and tried to evade in all sorts of ways.

Then they went on from there to force the United States to accept at least formally a status of forces agreement, which if the Obama administration lives up to it, will abandon most of the US war aims. It will eliminate the huge permanent military bases that the US has built in Iraq. It will mean the US will not control decisions over how the oil resources will be accessed and used. And in fact just every war aim is gone.

Of course there is a question of whether the US will live up to it and what you are reporting is among the serious indications that they are trying to evade living up to it. But what happened there is really significant, and a real credit to the people of Iraq, who have suffered miserably. I mean, the country has been absolutely destroyed, but they did manage to get the US to back away formally from its major war aims.

In the case of Iran, Obama's statements have not been as inflammatory as Clinton's, but they amount to pretty much the same thing. He said all options are open. Well, what does all options mean? Presumably that includes nuclear war, you know, that is an option.

There is no indication that he is willing to take the steps, say, that the American population wants. An overwhelming majority of the American population for years has been in favor, has agreed with the Non-Aligned Movement, that Iran should have the rights granted to the signers of the non-proliferation treaty, in fact to develop nuclear energy.

It should not have the right to develop nuclear weapons, and more interestingly about the same percentages, about 75 to 80%, call for the establishment of a nuclear weapons free zone in the region, which would include Iran, Israel, and any US forces deployment there, within all kinds of verifications and so on.

That could eliminate probably one of the major sources of the conflict. There is no indication that the Obama administration has any thought of doing anything about this.

Press TV: Just finally Professor Chomsky, the US economy, of course where you are -that is dominating the news and the lives all Americans and arguably the people around the world- and this 825 billion dollar package. How do you think the Obama people are going to handle this?

Chomsky: Nobody really knows. I mean, what is happening with the economy is not well understood. It is based on extremely opaque financial manipulations, which are quite hard to decode. I mean, the general process is understood, but whether the $800 billion, or probably larger government stimulus, will overcome this crisis, is not known.

The first $350 billion have already been spent- that is the so-called part bailout but that went into the pockets of banks. They were supposed to start lending freely, but they just decided not to do it. They would rather enrich themselves, restore their own capital, and take over other banks- mergers and acquisition and so on.

Whether the next stimulus will have an effect depends very much on how it is handled, whether it is monitored, so that it is used for constructive purposes. [It relies] also on factors that are just not known, like how deep this crisis is going to be.

It is a worldwide crisis and it is very serious. It is suddenly striking that the ways that Western countries are approaching the crisis is exactly the same as the model that they enforce on the Third World when there is a crisis.

So when Indonesia has a crisis, Argentina and everyone else, they are supposed to raise interest rates very high and privatize the economy, and cut down on public spending, measures like that. In the West, it is the exact opposite: lower interest rates to zero, move towards nationalization if necessary, pour money into the economy, have huge debts.

That is exactly the opposite of how the Third World is supposed to pay off its debts, and that this seems to pass without comment is remarkable. These measures for the West are ones that might get the economy moving again, while it has been a disaster for others.

[chlamor]

Timorese Skeletons in Holbrooke's Closet

by Brooke Shelby Biggs
Nov. 18, 1999

The irony of US Ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke's visit to East Timor in the coming week will not be lost on any East Timorese whose memories go back to the 1970s.

Holbrooke is scheduled to arrive in Dili Monday, where he will meet with Timorese leader Xanana Gusmão, and then visit East Timorese refugee camps in Indonesian West Timor. He met this week with another East Timorese political leader, José Ramos-Horta, about plans for the UN to take over the temporary administration of the newly independent nation. But Holbrooke may have a tough time convincing the East Timorese that he's suddenly on their side.

Holbrooke was Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs in the Ford administration's State Department, an agency largely responsible for the United States' covert aid to Indonesia and its military just before and during that country's invasion of the tiny half-island in 1975. As a State Department official who worked with Holbrooke in the 1970s recently told The New York Times' Anthony Lewis, the department's policy on East Timor "wasn't a policy of benign neglect, it was a policy of malign neglect."

As the department's ranking Pacific Asia official, Holbrooke was then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's right-hand man on matters related to Indonesia. As State Department documents have since revealed, Kissinger knew in advance that Indonesia, fortified with US-suppled weapons, intended to invade East Timor. Not only did the State Department not try to prevent the invasion, it worked after the fact to undermine the United Nations' denunciations of Indonesia for doing so. It was Holbrooke who often took on the task of justifying this policy.

A UN Security Council resolution calling for Indonesia's withdrawal was passed in 1976, with only the US and Japan abstaining. That US abstention was the work of Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY), who at the time coincidentally had the job Holbrooke now holds: US Representative to the United Nations. As he bragged in his memoirs, Moynihan was assigned the task of undermining the UN's efforts to stop Indonesia's invasion and occupation of East Timor: "The US Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook [against Indonesia]. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success."

In later testimony defending US policy in East Timor, Holbrooke repeatedly played down the brutality of the Indonesian occupation. In 1979, Indonesia reported that East Timor's population had shrunk by 10 percent because of "civil war and starvation." Analysts with Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International now say the population had shrunk by far more than that, and that the causes were primarily Indonesian military violence against civilians, and starvation caused by the military's use of napalm to deforest the region and poison its farmland. Holbrooke, however, told a Congressional committee that the desperate hunger in East Timor had nothing to do with the Indonesians' invasion, but was the result of years of neglect during Portuguese rule. That the starvation did not reach desperate levels until several years after the Portuguese left the colony evidently did not strike Holbrooke as contradictory.

In his June 1980 testimony before the House subcommittee on foreign relations, Holbrooke dismissed Timorese refugees' accounts of ongoing brutal fighting between the Indonesian military and the resistance guerrillas, saying that the guerrillas had "ceased to pose a significant problem" by early 1979. Twenty years later, it's clear that there was never any halt in the battle.

Holbrooke has made a name for himself in recent years as a champion of the downtrodden in Bosnia and Kosovo; but back in 1980, he declared that Indonesia was "perhaps one of the greatest nations in the world."

Now Holbrooke makes his way to Dili as a white-knight representative of the United Nations, which is responsible for freeing East Timor from Indonesia. Whether he can keep a straight face while doing so remains to be seen.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/special ... rooke.html

[chlamor]

anaxarchos comments:

Holbrooke is a murderous dog...
« Reply #2 on: January 25, 2009, 11:07:21 PM »
East Timor was the only part of the Indonesian islands which was colonized by Portugal rather than by Holland. During the Second World War, a very significant resistance developed on the Portuguese half of the island and over 60,000 of Timor's population of less than a million were killed. In the 1960s, a national liberation movement called the Frente Revolucionária de Timor-Leste Independente (FRETILIN) began fighting a guerrilla war against Portuguese colonialism.

In 1965, the post colonial and nonaligned Indonesian government of Sukarno was overthrown by a military junta led by General Suharto, who had been a colonial cop and a Japanese collaborator during WW2. Suharto's coup was engineered by the CIA and led to one of the most murderous purges in postwar history. Nearly 500,000 members and sympathizers of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) were killed.

In 1975, Portuguese fascism was finally overthrown and the Portuguese colonies rapidly moved towards independence. The elected government in East Timor was led by FRETILIN but was in power only a few days before Timor was invaded by Indonesia. FRETILIN resisted in a twenty five year guerrilla war which saw the deaths of 200,000 East Timorese (half by murder and the other half by starvation and disease) - fully 1 in 5 of the entire population. East Timor finally won its independence in 2002.

Holbrooke was the architect of that genocide, increasing the tempo of Indonesion "counterinsurgency" many times during his tenure, increasing military aid to the Indonesians as often, using every trick to block sanctions against Indonesia in the UN security council and war crimes investigations by both the U.S. Congress and the Hague Tribunal.

This is not just an asshole, but a world-class dog. Obama might as well recruit from the SS into this "bipartisan team"...

Originally posted here:
http://socialistindependent.org/board/i ... topic=63.0



Nicolau dos Reis Lobato
Founder of FRETILIN
First Prime Minister of East Timor (November 28 to December 7, 1975)
Murdered by the Indonesian Army on December 31, 1978