Talk:Indonesia/archive 7

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The Massacre of one million civillians

its kind of incredible that you let people remove the fact that most people killed during the Suharto military coup were teachers, civillians and poor people.

And keep euphemisms like for instance on Suharto that he "by 1967, had "_maneuvered_" himself into the presidency. "

were are the massacres of one million _people_ ??? civillians!!! oh no , they were all godless "COMMUNISTS" .

this is worse than the Encyclopedia Britannica for gods sake!

it's Orwellian to the point of disgusting! 213.172.204.59 02:49, 12 November 2006 (UTC) 213.172.204.59

I am not really sure what you are trying to say. It mentions 100,000's of people. Sources are split on the exact amount - 1million is the upper limit of estimates. It was aimed at suppressing communisits but yes, some did use it as an excuse to take out old grievances. As for "_maneuvered_" himself into the presidency. ", that's what he did - there was a whole big political game. Killing 1 million people (assuming that is correct) doesn't automically make someone president. He was not officially declared president for another 2 years. What do you think happened in that time? You have to remember this is a summary article - it can't cover everything. There are links to more detailed articles - including this topic.
Do you have any specific recommendations for the article or just rantings? The information you provided in the article was too long - a concerted effort has been made to shrink 2000 years into a few paragraphs. Why not develop some of the linked detailed articles? Some room is left for some changes, but not the significant additions you proposed. Unfortunately, people are less likely to pay attention to combative rantings like yours above. You need to tone it down a bit.--Merbabu 03:01, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
UPDATE: I have noticed you have re-inserted your edit. In its current form it is inappropriate for the reasons I gave above. HOWEVER, it does perhaps underestimate the severity according to SOME sources. I will try to incorporate some of your points but shorten it and make it more neutral. Btw, communists were civilians - it is a political distinction. --Merbabu 03:12, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
UPDATE 2: I have now re-written it as follows (with request for citations from anon user):ncreasing tensions between the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) and the Indonesian military culminated in an abortive coup on 30 September 1965 which saw six top-ranking generals murdered in circumstances that remain contentious even today. A quick counter-coup led by Major General Suharto resulted in an anti-communist purge centered mainly in Java and Bali. Hundreds of thousands were killed [15] - some sources say as many as a million [citation needed] - in an event that went largely unreported in international media.[citation needed] Suharto capitalized on Sukarno's gravely weakened position and, by 1967, had maneuvered himself into the presidency --Merbabu 03:20, 12 November 2006 (UTC)


To your first insert: "it mentions" ?? what? who mentions what? " It mentions 100,000's of people. Sources are split"

Which sources are you refferring to here?

" It was aimed at suppressing communisits but yes, some did use it as an excuse to take out old grievances."

sources for this??

"some"? did what?

is this a _scientific_ accepted historical analysis? of the most under-reported and least known massacre in modern history?

usually one asks for more serious motives when over a 100.000 people are killed. usually a historian would ask who benefited? why?

exactly what does "old grieveances" mean? and what kind of a form of historical research term and conclusion is that?

I suggest you try watching John Pilgers interviews with several officials such as the UK ambassador to the region at the time, US officials and the old civillians who experienced the coup.

"Do you have any specific recommendations for the article or just rantings?"

Yes I have.

Find a historian that specialises on south-east asia.

Well,no. just find a proper historian.

"Why not develop some of the linked detailed articles?"

Ok.

but please, if you can, enlighten me on what part of/ why and how my information was "unappropriate".

one's led to wonder Who's soap box this really is?

well disguised euphemisms designed to tone down a massacre that more than just a few sources claim to be able to document is on the order of Rwanda...

That's just too much, and we all know it full well.

but do try reading som of Pilgers Works they are thoroughly documented

his documentary covering indonesia The New Rulers of the World (2002) is probably available to view on google video

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Pilger http://www.johnpilger.com/


Moved from my User Page:

On the Suharto coup and the following massacres

Soap box?

Thank you very much.

This is on the order of denying the holocaust.

Please try to check your own sources.

and come back with them and present them to peer reviewing please and let me hear the responses you get.

Foreign Government officials in indonesia at the time, UK ambassadors, US officials have been interviewed acknowledging the facts.

If you check the majority of credible unbiased sources, universities, verifiable,documented literature on the subject or wiki articles in any european country or try peer reviewing of the article with something more than conservative US universities, you should be able to get a better take on the subject.

But this is really over the top.

It also diminishes the value and the credibility of Wiki to the point of rendering it useless to any educational purposes.

Thanks a lot.

"soap box". Orwell Rolls in His grave. 213.172.204.59 03:28, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

The onus is on the editor to find the sources - not the other way around. See WP:CITE. Please note that I am not so much questioning the facts you put here, rather i (and no doubt the other editor) are questioning (1) the way it is written and (2) the suitability for this article. Also please note changes I have made to the article that incorporate some of your additions. --Merbabu 03:33, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I get it. it's the writing that "the communists" were actually civillians, poor farmers who happened tosympathized with the side that historically were their only chance of improving their living standards that is "unsuitable" for people to read? and diversive perhaps?

So therefore the article should say "commies" and not one million poor people were massacred in a CIA-instigated coup even though every major university on the western hemisphere has a ton of documents documenting exactly that.

what is this place? Joseph McCarthys wet dream??

"The 'Way' it is written"

I really wonder in which way we are allowed to write about the Nazis and the 911 massacre and their perpetrators...

Thanks a lot for clearing that up for me guys.

Thats just great. Thats just great...*jeez...*
213.172.204.59 06:02, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

sources on the indonesian massacres of 1965

just a quick google: indonesia + massacre, gave several sources.

And if google is anything to go by with their system of putting links to the most linked to and accepted in a kind of peer reviewing system, and having them appear first these should not be to extreme for even wikipedia to swallow.

http://www.hrea.org/

http://www.hrea.org/lists/hr-headlines/markup/msg02504.html

http://www.hrsolidarity.net/mainfile.php/2005vol15no06/2463/

http://www.hrsolidarity.net/mainfile.php/2005vol15no06/2465/

http://skeptically.org/socialism/id17.html

http://www.ahrchk.net/ua/indonesia1965/

http://www.ahrchk.net/index.php

(the asian human rights commisson)


INDONESIA: How the West backed the massacre of a million people


Clinton Fernandes The destruction of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), 40 years ago following the seizure of power by pro-US military officers headed by General Suharto was a decisive event in the history of South-East Asia in the second half of the 20th century.


By 1965, the PKI had three million members and was said to be the largest Communist party in the world outside of the Soviet Union and China. In addition to its large membership, about 15 million people had indirect connections to the party through their membership of peasant associations, labour unions and other social movement organisations led by PKI members. It was, according to a September 1, 1965, US National Intelligence Estimate, “by far the best organized and most dynamic entity in Indonesia”.

Within a few months of the October 1, 1965, Suharto-organised military coup, however, the PKI would be destroyed in a cataclysmic campaign of political terror and mass murder carried out by the Indonesian armed forces (ABRI) and right-wing Islamic organisations.

  • According to a 1968 study by the CIA, “in terms of the numbers killed the anti-PKI massacres in Indonesia rank as one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century, along with the Soviet purges of the 1930s, the Nazi mass murders during the Second World War, and the Maoist bloodbath of the early 1950s”. At least one million Indonesians were slaughtered in the anti-PKI massacres.

Nowadays, of course, Western policy-makers are trying to rehabilitate the Indonesian military's reputation in order to fight Jemaah Islamiyah.

This article, therefore, examines Western support for this anti-PKI terror campaign, which seriously weakened Indonesian political life and set the scene for the emergence of Islamic terrorism in the region. For reasons of space, it takes up the story after the massacres had commenced. Once the killings were underway, Western policy-makers and diplomats were keen to support the ABRI. The problem they faced was that President Sukarno's previous anti-imperialist rhetoric had resonated strongly with the Indonesian public. Any overt support would therefore serve only to expose the Indonesian army as a tool of the West.

Sukarno's towering reputation presented a significant obstacle. A deft touch was required. US ambassador Marshall Green understood that economic aid should not be offered because economic difficulties hurt the reputation of the civilian administration, not the army. His military contacts told him that there was an urgent need for food and clothing in Indonesia but it was more important to let Sukarno and his foreign minister, Subandrio, “stew in their own juice”.

Western media coverage

The information campaign in support of the killings was created along similar principles. The ABRI secretly urged that foreign news broadcasters not give the army “too much credit” or criticise Sukarno.

Instead, they should emphasise PKI “atrocities” and the party's role in the mutiny by left-wing ABRI officers that preceded the Suharto-led coup. While Sukarno could not be directly attacked, an Indonesian general offered to provide Western agencies background information on foreign minister Subandrio, who was regarded as more vulnerable.

Australian ambassador Keith Shann was told by his superiors that Radio Australia should never suggest that the ABRI was pro-Western or right-wing. Instead, credit for the anti-PKI campaign should be given to other organisations, such as Muslim and nationalist youth groups.

Radio Australia had an important role to play because of its high signal strength and huge audience in Indonesia. Its listeners included the elite as well as students, who liked it because it played rock music, which had been officially banned. It was therefore told to “be on guard against giving information to the Indonesian people that would be withheld by the Army-controlled internal media”.

The Australian ambassador worked to ensure that it gave “prominent coverage” to “reports of PKI involvement and Communist Chinese complicity” while playing down or not broadcasting “reports of divisions within the army specifically and armed services more generally”.

Another senior official recommended that Radio Australia “not do anything which would be helpful to the PKI”. Instead, it “should highlight reports tending to discredit the PKI and show its involvement in the losing cause”.

The US, Britain and Australia co-operated closely in the propaganda effort. Marshall Green urged Washington to “spread the story of PKI's guilt, treachery and brutality”, adding that this was “perhaps the most needed immediate assistance we can give army if we can find [a] way to do it without identifying it as [a] sole or largely US effort”.

  • The British Foreign Office hoped to “encourage anti-Communist Indonesians to more vigorous action in the hope of crushing Communism in Indonesia altogether”. Britain would emphasise “PKI brutality in murdering Generals and families, Chinese interference, particularly arms shipments, PKI subverting Indonesia as the agents of foreign Communists”.


  • British ambassador Sir Andrew Gilchrist wrote: “I have never concealed my belief that a little shooting in Indonesia would be an essential preliminary to effective change”.

Throughout this period, Western radio stations continued to recycle stories from Radio Jakarta or the army newspapers and broadcast them back to Indonesia. US embassy officials established a back-channel link through the US army attache in Jakarta, who regularly met with an aide to Suharto ally General Haris Nasution.

The US embassy also compiled lists of PKI leaders and thousands of senior members and handed them over to the Indonesian military. While these kinds of lists were based entirely on previous reporting by the PKI's press, they proved invaluable to the military which seemed “to lack even the simplest overt information on PKI leadership at the time”, according to a report Green sent to Washington in August 1966.

General Sukendro, a senior army intelligence officer, secretly approached the US embassy in early October 1965, asking for assistance in the army's operations against the PKI. This included supplying “small arms to arm Muslim and nationalist youths in Central Java for use against the PKI”.

Green authorised the provision of 50 million rupiahs to the Kap-Gestapu movement, which was leading the anti-PKI terror campaign. He advised the State Department that there was “no doubt whatsoever that Kap-Gestapu's activity is fully consonant with and coordinated by the army. We have had substantial intelligence reporting to support this.” Overall, the US provided the ABRI with money, medicines, communications equipment, weapons and intelligence. It was satisfied with the return it received on this investment.

On February 21, 1966, Sukarno tried to reshuffle his cabinet and sack General Nasution as defence minister.

But with the public cowed in fear of the killings, Sukarno's attempt to assert his authority failed. There were large demonstrations backed by the army, and on March 11 soldiers mounted a show of force outside the presidential palace. Sukarno signed a letter of authority handing over executive power to General Suharto.

He remained president until 1967, continuing to defend the PKI and to speak out against the massacres and anti-Chinese racism that accompanied them. Without access to the media, however, his speeches failed to achieve political traction.

  • In the wake of the massacres, Indonesia's pre-eminent cultural and intellectual organisations — the Peoples' Cultural Institute, the National Cultural Institute, and the Indonesian Scholars' Association — were shut down, and many of their members were arrested or imprisoned.
  • More than one and a half million Indonesians passed through a system of prisons and prison camps.

The PKI was physically annihilated, and popular organisations associated with it were suppressed.

  • The whole of Indonesian society was forcibly depoliticised. In village after village, local bureaucrats backed by the army imposed a control matrix of permits, rules and regulations. Citizens were required to obtain a “letter of clean circumstances” certifying that they and their extended families had not been associated with the left before 1965. Indonesian society became devoted to the prevention of any challenge to elite interests.



  • Control of the universities, newspapers and cultural institutions was handed to conservative writers and intellectuals, who collaborated with Suharto's New Order regime and did not oppose the jailing of their left-wing cultural rivals. Along with the violence, certain cultural values were strongly promoted. Discussion of personal, religious and consumerist issues was encouraged, while discussion of politics was considered to be in bad taste. The conservative establishment also monopolised Indonesia's external cultural relations.

Suharto would rule for more than 30 years until a popular uprising and a crisis-ridden economy forced his resignation on May 21, 1998.


[Dr Clinton Fernandes is a historian and author of Reluctant Saviour: Australia, Indonesia and the independence of East Timor (Scribe, 2004). He is currently a visiting fellow at the Australian National University.]

Asian Human Rights Commission

INDONESIA: Rehabilitation and Redress for Massacre Victims Essential for True Commemoration


Asian Human Rights Commission

(Ed. note: This statement was circulated by the Asian Human Rights Commission [AHRC] on Oct. 6, 2005.) A skull unearthed in a mass grave is believed to be one of the victims of Indonesia's 1965-1966 massacre that claimed the lives of an estimated 500,000 to three million people. (Photo: AHRC)

Forty years have passed since the occurrence of one of the largest and least known crimes against humanity of the 20th century: the 1965–1966 massacre of some half a million to a million unarmed civilians in Indonesia who were alleged to be Communists.

In addition to those killed, hundreds of thousands more were tortured and imprisoned, including political opponents of the ruling regime. The families of those killed or imprisoned were also victimised through a programme of institutional ostracism that denied them the opportunity to engage in normal economic and social life.

To this day, Sept. 30 is officially commemorated in Indonesia by mourning the six generals killed during the purported leftist coup attempt that Gen. Suharto used as the means to seize state power in 1965.

  • (note: people,especially military generals, who gain power through extreme violence are said to _seize_ power, not to have "maneuvered themselves into the presidency" , at the very least if one has some dignity to keep, this is the way one comments upon mass killings and mass murder in an honest and real world).


  • By contrast, nothing is officially said of the millions murdered afterwards. In fact, the survivors and family members of those targeted during the massacre continue to be discriminated against in every aspect of their lives. They have been imprisoned, dismissed from their jobs, denied access to education and faced social ostracism by having ex-Tapol (ex-political prisoner) put on their identification documents.

This is the case seven years after the downfall of Suharto and his New Order regime, which were responsible for the atrocity. Indonesia is presently being governed by its first elected president.

  • There can be no legitimacy to a government that ignores the massacre of a million of its citizens, however. Elected representatives have a responsibility to the people. By ignoring evidence painstakingly compiled by victims' families and concerned groups, eyewitness reports and the uncovering of mass graves, the Indonesian government is blatantly shirking this responsibility.

By continuing the institutional ostracism of the survivors through legal and social regulations that prevent them from enjoying their fundamental human rights, the present government is perpetuating the atrocities committed by its predecessors rather than upholding its reported commitment to human rights and democracy.

This year a week of activities was initiated by numerous groups to commemorate the massacre and inform the public of a truth that is still not officially being told. The activities included public discussions, the viewing of documentary films, the launching of books of victims' testimonies and a demonstration to the president's residence demanding that the victims be compensated and rehabilitated with dignity and honour. The focus of these activities continues to remain the same: the truth be told, enabling the victims to shed the stigma they have lived with for four decades.

This truth must begin with the revision of school textbooks.

Indonesian students are learning the same lessons of history as they did under the New Order regime. They learn that the country was threatened by communism and saved by quick army intervention. They learn a mythological account of the events surrounding Sept. 30. They learn nothing of the millions murdered in the bloodbath that followed.

Although these textbooks were earlier exchanged for ones that made no mention of the coup attempt and subsequent atrocities, they are in use again after the new ones were removed from school curriculums by the Ministry of National Education due to public complaints.

Like the education system, the country's legal system is also discriminatory in nature, leaving it unable to serve justice to the victims of the massacre.

A class action lawsuit by a group of individuals imprisoned after 1965–1966 was recently heard in court against the current and former presidents of Indonesia.

The victims, demanding the restoration of their honour and compensation for the discrimination they experience to date, were harassed and threatened when they appeared in court. The judge decided the case purely on jurisdictional issues, not on its merits (the court can apparently only hear cases that are filed within a certain period of time after the incident).

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission Bill, passed by the government in September 2004, is yet another act of injustice delivered to the victims. The bill omits any definition of who is a perpetrator and further forces the victims to forgive their perpetrators if they want compensation. According to the bill's provisions, only when the perpetrators are given amnesty by the government can the victims be given compensation, and amnesty is given after the victims grant forgiveness. While the commission is presently in the process of being established, it has understandably little support from victims and other concerned groups. Without provisions for genuine justice, which would include legal remedies for the prosecution and punishment of the perpetrators as well as compensation for the victims, the commission is a tool to whitewash the massacre rather than an attempt at reconciliation.

Genuine national reconciliation is possible only when the truth is told. To this end, the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) urges that school textbooks be immediately rewritten with accurate accounts of the events of 1965–1966 and that legal mechanisms be established for the purpose of giving redress to the victims as well as to monitor and investigate the existing forms of discrimination suffered by the survivors and family members. To aid these mechanisms, it is necessary to enact the Witness and Victim Protection Bill that is currently pending in Parliament. All concerned groups and individuals should urgently take these issues up with the relevant government agencies.

http://www.hrsolidarity.net/mainfile.php/2005vol15no06/2463/

Asian Human Rights Commission


Indonesia - Citing sources

From the Wiki page on Citing_sources

"Avoid weasel words such as, "Some people say ..." Instead, make your writing verifiable."

from the article on indonesia:

  • "_some sources say_ as many as a million [citation needed]

- in an event that went largely unreported in international media."[citation needed]
exactly.

Citations have been provided from: Asian Human Rights Commission, and others.

Please see further up above.
further notes:

  • The CIA itself were the first with the one million estimate.

Library of congress perhaps doesn't carry all the old or newly released CIA documents, but they have been quoted at length in several documentaries, including BBC ones.

if the CIA isn't always the best source, it is possible to talk to the victims and their organisations, which just in the last years have been started to get heard in the western media.

That it was largely unreported in the west is not only so blatantly obvious that it borders on the preposterous, not to mention that it seems to be much of the main part of the very reason why we are having this debate even in sites like wiki.

It is also verifiable for anyone who bothers checking newspapers in their national libraries or private institutions datyeing back to the time, or consulting a history department in any given university city throughout the world which has a minimum of proper freedom of expression and political independence.

if this doesn't suffice I suggest a well equipped bookstore that carries books intended for university studies in history, media-knowledge or human rights issues.

further notes &sources on the 1965 Indonesian Massacre

  • Here:coming more links and sources,book titles, scholars etc.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 213.172.204.59 (talk • contribs).
  • No one is doubting that the sources are out there. As has already been said, it is the way it is written.--Merbabu 07:25, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Response

I think you missed the point a bit. Many of us are familiar with this material. As I have said before, it is not the facts that we are disputing (in fact, some of your changes have been used), rather the way it is written (I've explained this but it in summary it is to do with the summary nature of this article). This is not the place for huge realms of information. Some of those references you have found can be used to replace the "citation required" IF appropriate. My other strong suggestion is you could put some of this info into the linked more detailed articles. Be careful of your style of writing - stick to the guidelines on the welcome note on you talk page. Try: History of Indonesia, Communist Party of Indonesia, Overthrow of Sukarno, Haji Mohammad Suharto. --Merbabu 07:02, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for all the hints on lexical writing
  • I do have to note though:
people,especially military generals,throughout history, who gain power through extreme violence, killings, regular massacres of hundreds of thousands of civillians, wether they be left inclined or right, are usually said to _seize_ power, not to have "maneuvered themselves into the presidency" , at the very least if one has some dignity and honesty towards the subject, this is the way one comments upon/refers to mass killings and mass murder in a proper way, in a hopefully, honest world.
213.172.204.59 16:54, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
I've explained this already. No matter what one's view on Suharto's involvement in the killings, or how brutal or unbrutal they were, didn't get there simply get to be president as a result of the killings. Maneucered refers to the polictical power play over 2 years.
Much (mot?) of the killings were over by early 1966. Suharto was not officially named president until March 1968. Over these two years there was a political power play (IN ADDITION) to the violence played out in the capital where power was slowly taken away from a now weakened, but once incredibly popular Sukarano. I really don't think it is that hard to grasp - maybe someone else can explain it. --Merbabu 23:19, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

You're absolutely right. It really isn't hard to "grasp" or understand at all. The orwellian languange notwithstanding. I just find it dishonest. No matter the means or the timeframe we still say that the nazis seized power after the burning of the Reichstag. we do not say that Hitler "manouvered" himself "into" power, as if alluding(?) that he gently slid himself into a chair or something, as if creating a no bigger mess than a crinkle in his pants .It's just that The ambiguity, "play of words" and euphemisms just shrieks out to anyone with half a consciousness. This is just what _I_ really don't think is "that hard to grasp", and yes likewise, maybe someone else can and will explain this view to you someday.
But hey, then again. Maybe it really _is_ like _you_ insinuate, that it's only me. Anyway. Thanks for clearing all that up for me. Great. Thanks. Jon smith (nom de guerre) 00:11, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Look, it's really simple. THe use of the word "maneuver" is not another word for to cover up the violence (WHICH IS MENTIONED) - it is describing a completely DIFFERENT but CONCURRENT process. BOTH the violence and the power plays are listed. TWO different events. Power play AND violence. BOTH happened. BOTH are mentioned. Suharto didn't remove Sukarno by the gun. Power play 1965 to 1968. And please cut out the sarcasm.--Merbabu 00:35, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
Irrespective of the violence largely on Java and Bali and erupted late 1965, Soeharto didn't march into the palace with a gun and remove Sukarno then and there. It was a gradual removal of power. did he play hard ball? No doubt. Was he deceitful - most likely. THe point is there was also a political struggle as well as bloodshed. maybe you are struggle with the need for wikipedia to read in a neutral sanatised and factual manner - it's not an Amnesty (God bless them) or some other political group's web site. --Merbabu 00:41, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
Changes made for clarity: A quick counter-coup led by Major General Suharto resulted in an violent anti-communist purge centered mainly in Java and Bali. Hundreds of thousands were killed [15] - some sources say as many as a million [citation needed] - in an event that went largely unreported in international media.[citation needed] Politically, Suharto capitalized on Sukarno's gravely weakened position in a drawn out power play between the two, and by March 1967 had maneuvered himself into the presidency.




  • in response to the above,last four lines :

The source(s) / citation(s) for "some sources say as many as a million [citation needed]is:
http://www.hrsolidarity.net/mainfile.php/2005vol15no06/2463/

on Human Rights Education Association
http://www.hrea.org/ you'll find:
http://www.hrea.org/lists/hr-headlines/markup/msg02504.html

Asian Human Rights Commission
http://www.ahrchk.net/ua/indonesia1965/

http://www.ahrchk.net/index.php

http://www.hrsolidarity.net/mainfile.php/2005vol15no06/2463/

http://www.hrsolidarity.net/mainfile.php/2005vol15no06/2465/

http://skeptically.org/socialism/id17.html


Another (actually several) source(s) is(are) found in the documentary on Indonesia and the new world economy, called "The New Rulers of the World" by acclaimed independent UK journalist John Pilger (aired on ITV, BBC etc.).

These include the interviews with US and UK officials, ambassadors,embassy personell from the region at the time and references to the first reports on the killings from the CIA reports themselves.

A link to the wikipedia page with this work should suffice.
Alternatively dig up a transcript, but I gather that refrencing a book and it's author is sufficient so I would imagine the same goes for this kind of documentary work (documentary films).

The same thing (all of the above) goes for the "citation needed" regarding the unnoticed claim / statement:
"in an event that went largely unreported in international media.[citation needed]" (refferring to).

Really Sorry if this seems a unreasonably harsh prerequisite,(that one should actually have to read the sources) but there you go.
I hope your moderators(correct term?) insert whatever pieces of this information you find worthy into the cites.

Frankly I'ts getting a bit tedious to be talking with people who place the emphasis on all the least important criticisms.
(Grammar(?) and spelling cleaned up somewhat for clarity of use for future readers). js.

Concerning all Wiki article debates - On bias and choice of words in reporting "facts"

  • Concering all controversial topics, and articles which may be under dispute.

Propaganda from the Middle of the Road
 The Centrist Ideology of the News Media

  • By Jeff Cohen


There is a notion -- widely believed in the mainstream media -- that while there is propaganda of the left and propaganda of the right, there is no such thing as propaganda of the center. In this view, the center doesn't produce propaganda, it produces straight news.


Mainstream journalists typically explain: "We don't tilt left, we don't tilt right. We're straight down the middle of the road. We're dead center." When mainstream journalists tell me during debates that "our news doesn't reflect bias of the left or the right," I ask them if they therefore admit to reflecting bias of the center. Journalists react as if I've uttered an absurdity: "Bias of the center! What's that?"

It is a strange concept to many in the media.They can accept that conservatism or rightism is an ideology that carries with it certain values and opinions, beliefs about the past, goals for the future. They can accept that leftism carries with it values, opinions, beliefs. But being in the center -- being a centrist -- is somehow not having an ideology at all.

Somehow centrism is not an "ism" carrying with it values, opinions and beliefs.

Center Not "Dead": It Moves

The journalistic center is not inert. It moves. It shifted slightly leftward in the mid-'70s in the wake of Watergate when reporters were allowed greater latitude for independent inquiry. In the '80s the journalistic center veered strongly rightward.

The two main establishment papers -- the New York Times and the Washington Post -- are the primary propaganda organs of the center, though editorially they've tilted rightward throughout the '80s. As soon as Ronald Reagan was inaugurated in 1981, for example, both papers began promoting White House charges that the Soviets were the primary source of terrorism in the world. Despite some conservative positions, however, the two papers are best seen as organs of the (corporate) center.

The centrists in TV news have also been tilting rightward. FAIR's study of Nightline, perhaps TV's most influential news show, found a conservative slant toward "experts" from the white, male establishment. The left was generally excluded. Nightline's four most frequent guests were all Reagan sympathizers: Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, Elliott Abrams and Jerry Falwell. MacNeil/Lehrer's guest list seems even more conservative and elite than Nightline's -- which is why the National Conservative Political Action Conference voted MacNeil/Lehrer "the most balanced network news program." According to The Progressive (7/87), co-anchor Jim Lehrer dislikes wasting time interviewing critics from peace or public interest groups, whom he refers to as "moaners" and "whiners."

But instead of belaboring the point that the centrist media are currently tilting rightward, I'd like to address some elements of centrist news propaganda that are somewhat constant.

Centrist Cliches

If, for simplicity's sake, we define the left as seeking substantial social reform toward a more equitable distribution of wealth and power, and we define the right as seeking to undo social reform and regulation toward a free marketplace that allows wide disparities in wealth and power, then we can define the political center as seeking to preserve the status quo, tinkering with the system only very prudently to work out what are seen as minor glitches, problems or inequities.

How do these three positions play out journalistically? Unlike left-wing or right-wing publications which are often on the attack, centrist propaganda emphasizes system-supporting news, frequently speaking in euphemisms. If scandals come to light, centrist propaganda often focuses less on the scandal than on how well "the system works" in fixing it. (This was the editorial drumbeat in the papers of record following both Watergate and Iran-Contra.) When it comes to foreign policy, centrist propaganda sometimes questions this or that tactic, but it never doubts that the goal of policy is anything other than promoting democracy, peace and human rights. Other countries may subvert, destabilize or support terrorism. The U.S. just wages peace.

If propaganda from the center only emphasized the upbeat, pointing so much to silver linings that it never acknowledged the existence of clouds, there'd be a credibility problem. The public wouldn't believe such bland, euphemistic reporting. So, in selective cases, centrist propaganda does talk tough about government tyrants -- especially if they're foreign tyrants or U.S. officials already deposed. (J. Edgar Hoover was one such tyrant, whose 50-year reign at the FBI was rigorously scrutinized by the mainstream media only after he was dead and buried.) And centrist propaganda can take a tough look at a social problem -- especially if it's deemed fixed or on its way to being fixed.

Euphemisms in the centrist press (putting a good news gloss on bad news) can be quite comical. Prime examples are found in headlines that miscapsulize the news. A New York Times article after a Moscow summit (6/2/88) quoted Margaret Thatcher commenting on Ronald Reagan: "Poor dear, there's nothing between his ears." The article's headline: "Thatcher Salute to Reagan Years".

Headlines about the Nicaraguan Contras were often unjustifiably upbeat. On Nov. 3, 1986, at a time the Reagan White House was stressing the Contras' new-found fighting ability (and after the New York Times had editorially endorsed Contra aid), the Times ran this headline: "A Day's Toll Shows Contras' Ability to Strike." The article described nothing more than a contra attack on an agricultural co-op which killed the director and nine civilians, several of them children. Similarly, a Washington Post news story (2/4/88) described a pre-dawn contra attack on a farming co-op, where a contra bullet left a young girl "lying in a ditch screaming for help." The headline: "Combat Performance of the Contras Said to Improve."

  • Blunt Talk...About The Other Guys

Centrist propaganda can sometimes contain blunt social criticism -- especially of someone else's system. A news story in the New York Times (7/23/89) on political discontent in Japan carried this headline: "Trembling at the Top: Japan's Ruling Elite Faces a Fed-Up People." The Times, which has little trouble identifying a "ruling elite" in Japan, has never been able to discern such an elite in the U.S. in all its voluminous reporting on our political-economic system.

According to centrist propaganda, not only is the U.S. without a "ruling elite," the U.S. is also without an "empire" -- unlike other countries. The big bad Soviet Union has an empire. Lowly Vietnam has an empire. In the thousands of mainstream news stories we've seen on the Nicaraguan revolution, never once has it been counterposed to "Washington's empire." In the New York Times, "U.S. imperialism" is one of those dubious concepts that only appears between quotation marks.

Is narrowing concentration of media ownership a grave problem in the U.S.? You wouldn't know it from the New York Times, which covered the Time Warner merger as just another business story, hardly mentioning threats to pluralism and the First Amendment. One of the few Times articles questioning the Time Warner merger -- "Time Deal Worrying Competitors"(3/7/89) -- featured the complaints of Robert Wright, president of little ole NBC, owned by GE.

But you shouldn't conclude that the New York Times is unconcerned about media concentration. The Times is concerned...at least in Italy. "Newspaper Deal in Italy Stirs Debate Over Press Freedom" (New York Times, 4/24/89) probed the handful of firms that owns Italy's press. The candid article cited complaints of Italian reporters that "concentration produces bland journalism, especially on economic matters and political issues close to their owners' hearts or pocketbooks." The Times quoted one journalist saying his boss doesn't have to interfere in the newsroom "because there's total self-censorship." If only the Times paid as much attention to owner influences and self-censorship at home.

Is there a wide disparity in living conditions between America's rich and America's poor -- between, for example, those who own or manage America's coal mines and the miners who work in them? Such contrasts could be graphically shown on TV and would probably attract big ratings. U.S. television is obsessed with Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, but not with juxtaposing the wealth of the rich against the poverty of, say, Donald Trump's kitchen workers or Lawrence Tisch's field hands.

This didn't stop ABC's Rick Inderfurth (World News Tonight, 7/21/89), who boldly took a film crew inside the ramshackle homes of striking coal miners and vividly contrasted that with the relative wealth of the mine managers. There's a catch: ABC's flirtation with Marxist agitprop dealt not with conditions in Virginia, but in the Soviet Union. (The militant strike against the Pittston coal company in Virginia -- occurring at the same time as the Soviet strike -- has been sparsely covered; the evening network newscasts devoted 36 minutes to the Soviet miners in eight days, twice the coverage of the U.S. strike over four months.) One wonders if a TV reporter presenting the same video class analysis of U.S. coal fields would have been fired for leftist bias.
the rest of the article can be found at:
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1492


Further Sources on the massacres and the regime overthrow

  • Reports from former CIA operative Ralph McGehee:

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA/McGehee_CIA_Indo.html
"The killings were part of a massive bloodletting after an abortive coup attempt taking, according to various estimates, between 250,000 and 1,000,000 lives and ultimately led to the overthrow of President Sukarno's government.


Since then a debate has simmered over what happened. A recent study based on information from former Johnson administration officials, asserted that "for months the U.S. "did their damnedest" through public pressure and more discreet methods, to prod the Indonesian army to move against Sukarno without success."
- CIA operative R.McGehee Ralph McGehee worked for the CIA from 1952 until 1977 and now writes about intelligence matters, notably the book Deadly Deceits -- My 25 years in the CIA (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1983). He has compiled a computer data base on CIA activities. Persons interested may write to him at: 422 Arkansas Ave., Herndon, VA 22070.


information on journalist Kathy Kadane's research into the massacres

http://www.antenna.nl/wvi/eng/ic/pki/kadane/dj.html

note from David Johnson: On May 21, 1990 the journalist Kathy Kadane working for States News Service published an article in the Washington Post, "U.S. Officials' Lists Aided Indonesian Bloodbath in '60s." On July 12, 1990 the New York Times published an article by Michael Wines, "C.I.A. Tie Asserted in Indonesia Purge." Wines' article contained criticism of Kadane's article by several of the U.S. officials that Kadane had interviewed and several other people. In response to the New York Times, States News Service distributed a 20-page memorandum to newspaper editors defending the accuracy of Kathy Kadane's work and including excerpts from the interviews that Kadane had made with the top three U.S. Embassy officials in 1965: Ambassador Marshall Green; Deputy Chief of Mission Jack Lydman; and political section chief Edward Masters.

Further information and reading on the Indonesian Massacres

  • Article excerpts from article by Isabelle Humphries, a British freelance journalist and Development Director at Sawt Al Amel (Laborer’s Voice), an organization supporting Palestinian workers inside Israel. She has an MA in Middle East Politics and is also a freelance writer for the Cairo Times.


[..]
...the following quotation from a February 1966 report from the British ambassador in Jakarta: “The killings in Bali had been particularly monstrous. In certain areas, it was felt that not enough people [emphasis in the original] had been killed.”


[..] In the 1960s, the West considered “Communism” not “Islamism” the devil incarnate. In the name of the war against the red enemy, hundreds of thousands were slaughtered across the southern hemisphere, from Asia to South America. While the West sometimes got its hands dirty, such as in Vietnam, generally it was seen as easier just to train and supervise a local proxy militia to do the killing for you. Indonesia is a prime example.

Forty years ago, under the leadership of Megawati’s father, Sukarno, Indonesia was part of a group of post-colonial states, like Nasser’s Egypt, that sought to create a non-aligned movement independent of both the West and the East.

In a cold war climate, anyone who was not with the West was automatically branded as with the enemy; the Soviets, irrespective of how much support was actually received from the USSR.


And thus the West, notably the US, the British and the Australians, saw it as their role to become involved in the overthrow of the government in Indonesia, the former Dutch colony.

And so the West became involved in undermining the Sukarno regime, through a simple method, using Suharto’s militia to kill the “communists.”


Detailed investigation by many journalists and academics, such as the American Kathy Kadane and Pilger have shown how active a role the Western powers played in Suharto’s killing spree.


The New York Times, July 6, 1966, reported the following from visiting Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt: “With 500 000 to a million communist sympathizers knocked off, I think it is safe to assume a reorientation has taken place.” (Does “reorientation” sound disturbingly like “regime change” to you?) Pilger states that nearly 80,000 were killed in this “reorientation” in Bali alone, “tourists who have since taken advantage of cheap package holidays to the island might reflect that beneath the car parks of several of the major tourist hotels are buried countless bodies.” A doubly haunting sentence when read after the recent attack.
The mountain of evidence indicating CIA involvement with the killings in Indonesia makes it impossible for critics to dismiss it as conspiracy theory. Last year the BBC and other mainstream media reported on the withdrawal of a state department textbook at the last minute, as it detailed too closely American involvement in the 1960s Indonesian “regime change.” Sections of the text however were published on George Washington University’s National Security Archive , and backed up evidence presented by investigators such as American journalist Kathy Kadane whose interviews with senior US personnel demonstrate that the US had passed “death lists” to the Suharto regime.
In 1990, Kadane published the findings of interviews that she conducted; “For the first time, U.S. officials acknowledge that in 1965 they systematically compiled comprehensive lists of Communist operatives, from top echelons down to village cadres. As many as 5,000 names were furnished to the Indonesian army, and the Americans later checked off the names of those who had been killed or captured, according to the U.S. officials,” she wrote in the San Francisco Examiner, May 20, 1990.
As an Australian, Pilger has shown particular interest in exposing Australian colonialism, a country that is often seen as benign or irrelevant. This Western assumption of Australian government political innocence was reflected in the tone of media analysis of the grieving Australian nation, in the wake of this recent killing of Australian citizens. Campaigning journalists have tried to alert a Western audience to the direct role played in the killing of hundreds of thousands of Indonesians, (not just in Bali). Yet in all the media coverage I watched, I heard no mention of the slaughter in Bali and across Indonesia less than 40 years ago.
Paying heed to the mistakes of the past has never been so important for the West, yet the majority of us are further away than we ever have been from engaging with the bloody legacy of colonialism. Why can’t we start addressing the right questions to ourselves as Westerners now, instead of sitting back, blaming the usual suspects, and waiting for the next group of random tourists, office workers or bus passengers to be hideously blown to pieces? We must take action in memory of the dead in Indonesia now, but in memory of them all, not just the latest two hundred victims.
from article at:
http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=Article_C&cid=1156077785844&pagename=Zone-English-Muslim_Affairs%2FMAELayout
Article excerpts from article by Isabelle Humphries, a British freelance journalist and Development Director at Sawt Al Amel (Laborer’s Voice), an organization supporting Palestinian workers inside Israel. She has an MA in Middle East Politics and is also a freelance writer for the Cairo Times.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by John Smith (nom de guerre) (talk • contribs).

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