Lee Camp: New Docs Show America Knew about Indonesian Genocide

In this clip from RT America’s Redacted Tonight, comedian Lee Camp talks about the recent findings from 39 declassified documents that the American government was fully aware of the mid-1960s genocide in Indonesia. The docs came from the American embassy in Jakarta. The killing was launched by the Indonesian dictator, Suharto, against real or suspected members of the Communist party. Over a million people were butchered. Suharto continued as president for the next thirty years, looting billions from his country. The radical American magazine, Mother Jones, called the carnage ‘the biggest genocide you’ve never heard of’. Another reputable paper named Suharto as the world’s most corrupt politicians. Camp jokes that it’s a very crowded field, like finding the sleaziest Hollywood producer at Harvey Weinstein’s pool party.

Before he talks about this, however, he discusses the Dow Jones index recording a massive rise, as the banks that screwed the American people carry on as usual and resist proper regulation and oversight.

From what I’ve read, the declassified docs about Indonesia are just the tip of the iceberg. A number of historians have argued that not only did America know about the genocide carried out between 1965-66, but that Suharto had the full backing of America. The parapolitics magazine, Lobster, carried a very detailed article about it back in the 1990s.

There is also a very, very grim documentary about the massacres, which talked to the families of the victims and the generals and government officials responsible. I haven’t seen it, but I’ve read some of the reviews that have called it ‘harrowing’. And I’ve no doubt it is, considering the subject matter. And what is particularly disgusting is that those responsible show no remorse whatsoever.

Prof Paul Rogers on ISIS’ Blowback War

This month’s (December 2015) issue of Justpeace, the newsletter of the Roman Catholic peace movement, Pax Christi, carries an article ‘The Paris Atrocity, and After’, by prof Paul Rogers. Rogers is professor of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford. In his article he analyses the Paris attacks, and their intended consequences. He makes the point that the massacres had three purposes, and were ultimately intended to provoke the West into retaliating so the Islamists could gain further recruits in Syria and Iraq as the true defenders of Muslims. Identifying the three aims of the attack, he writes

The first is to demonstrate that in the wake of the destruction of Russia’s Metrojet over Sinai and the bombing in Beirut on November 12, ISIS has now gone truly international. Thus its modus operandi has reached the level of the loose al-Qaida affiliates in the post-9/11 years: Islamabad, Bali, Madrid, London, Jakarta, Istanbul, Mombasa, Amman, Sinai, Casablanca, Djerba in Tunisia – and many more. This is potentially a very major change since ISIS has so far concentrated primarily on its territorial base, in contrast to the old al-Qaida movement.

The second is to further damage intercommunal relations, not just in Paris but across western Europe and further afield. An accelerating Islamophobia suits ISIS in its quest to attract more recruits from recent diasporas and more established migrant communities, many members of whom now feel thoroughly insecure and greatly worried and even fearful of the hardening of attitudes towards them.

The third is to provoke and incite France and other states to intensify the war against ISIS – in Syria, Iraq, and anywhere else that it, or its affiliates, make progress.

ISIS wants war. It presents itself as the true guardian of Islam under attack from the ‘Crusader west’. This message, though pernicious and dangerous, is currently being encouraged by the progressive withdrawal of all Middle Eastern states from active involvement in the airstrikes against ISIS in Syria.

The air war in Syria was in early 2015 led by the United States with the participation of France, Australia, Canada, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Jordan. In recent months, however, the four Arab states have ceased bombing. In addition, Justin Trudeau’s new government in Canada is withdrawing all CF-18 strike-aircraft from Syria and Iraq, and Australia is reported to have paused its operations in Syria since the Russians started separate air attacks (almost all against non-ISIS anti-Assad rebels). That leaves just the US and France. So in Syria at least, ISIS can easily claim that a ‘crusader onslaught’ is taking place.

Furthermore, the sustained air assault of the last 15 months, with close to 10,000 targets hit, has not pushed ISIS into retreat. In the first 11 months of the air war, to July 2015, the US-led coalition killed 15,000 ISIS supporters. By October, that had risen to 20,000, yet a Pentagon source said that the total number of ISIS fighters was unchanged at 20,000-30,000. (USA Today, 12 October 2015).

In an extraordinary admission, US intelligence sources say there has been a surge in recruits to ISIS in spite of the air war and the losses. In September 2014, 15,000 recruits were reported to have joined from 80 countries; a year later the figure had risen to 30,000 from 100 countries.

In blunt terms, ISIS is actually being strengthened by the air war, and it can be assumed that it wants more. The movement vigorously and insistently peddles the message of ‘Islam under attack’; and though it is disliked and hated by the great majority of Muslims worldwide, the message strikes enough of a chord with a small minority to serve ISIS’s aim of creating this purist if brutal caliphate.

Prof Rogers writes a weekly article on security at the Open Democracy website. The full article originally appeared there on 14 November. The website’s address is http://www.opendemocracy.net.