Get Carter
Yesterday, US ex-President “Jimmy” Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize. The TV coverage universally acclaimed his “tireless work for peace”; the prize, they said, was “well-deserved”. Channel 4 News reported on how hard he strove to end the terrible violence in East Timor in 1999 while Clinton and Blair stood by.
However, they neglected to recall that in 1977, when “the Indonesians literally began to run out of weapons in its campaign to destroy the Timorese” following their invasion in 1975 (as encouraged by Kissinger, that other Peace Prize winner), Carter, no doubt inspired by his love of peace, “stepped in and increased military aid and weapons sales to the Indonesians, which resulted in Indonesia’s stepped up campaigns of 1978 to 1980 when the level of killing reached genocidal levels.” (text from Sunil Sharma in ZMAG). Thereby Carter brought peace to over 200,000 people in East Timor; the peace, that is, of the [mass] grave. Why was this not mentioned? No, really, why not?
Other Splinters posts of interest:
- Welcome to the World A new country was added…
- He tells the truth
- The easy bit
- Liberia
- Angela Carter and "Justin Aveneer"
