Wolfowitz's tenure in Indonesia eyed

[Tanuki]

"JAKARTA, Indonesia - The controversy surrounding World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz spotlights a lack of ethics that was apparent two decades ago when he was U.S. ambassador to Indonesia, say critics who recall how he failed to speak out against corruption and rights abuses. Today, as head of the bank, Wolfowitz has been arguing that corruption is crippling the world's poorest nations. But that was "the very thing he closed his eyes to" when he served as ambassador from 1986 to 1989 during the regime of the dictator Suharto, said pro-democracy activist Binny Buchori. "He's a hypocrite," she said. "He should quit."
.....
But Jeffrey Winters, a professor of political economy at Northwestern University, said that Wolfowitz's past career already showed he was ill fit to run the World Bank. "From the very beginning, I felt this was the wrong person for the job," said Winters.
He pointed to the radical deregulation of Indonesia's banking sector in 1988, promoted by Wolfowitz's economic team and international lenders. It "opened the floodgates for local crony conglomerates to set up private banks and take in deposits from a trusting public." With no rule of law, there was no oversight and no supervision, he said.
......
"The foxes were running wild in the financial chicken coop and no one, including Wolfowitz, pressured the Indonesians to design safeguards to protect the public's deposits," he said. One result was the 1997-98 financial crisis "that plunged tens of millions into abject poverty."
......
Suharto, who ruled for 32 years, was toppled in 1998 by pro-democracy demonstrations. The former dictator's family has been accused of embezzling an estimated $35 billion in state funds during his regime, according to corruption watchdog Transparency International. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed under the dictator's brutal reign."

(more at link)
http://www.examiner.com/a-710373~Wolfowitz_s_Tenure_in_Indonesia_Eyed.html?cid=rss-World

[Swamp Rat]

1. k&r

[woodsprite]

2. Maybe we need to call them the Rape-blicans, since that's what they're doing to the US. n/t

[IChing]

3. I didn't realize he had his nasty comb lips on that blot in history.

These guys are like bad pennies always showing up again and again
with bad people and plots throughout history.

[UTUSN]

4. K&R for alrighty-then!!1 n/t

[peacetalksforall]

5. Oil interests put him there just like oil interests put him at the WorldBank

Found this very pointed article on a web site - provides much background on the U.S. involvement in Indonesia for corporate purposes. Anyone surprised. I tried to snip the part that covers the years when Wolfowitz was there. (We know Aceh on Sumatra from the tsunami)

Nightmare in Indonesia: The Roots of the Bush-Cheney's Oil Government
By Cheryl Seal

snipped:

" Any protestors against this reign of terror are treated viciously. Of
course, Mobil and ExxonMobil have claimed total ignorance of such abuses, despite repeated complaints, despite the fact that Mobil (ExxonMobil) pays the military millions of dollars each year for the use of the military, despite the fact that their own earth-moving equipment has been used to dig mass graves and its roads have been used as regular routes for transporting prisoners and bodies. Mass graves dug with Mobil equipment were identified at Sentag Hill and Tengkorak (Skull) Hill in North Aceh in 1998 by human rights investigators. Bottom line: the company is ultimately in complete control of the situation, as was clearly pointed up by the chaos their recent suspension of production
caused.


It was in 1998, during the increasing controversy over Mobil's activities that Exxon and Mobil merged, becoming ExxonMobil. Now, to the outside world, especially to the U.S., which, alas, rarely pays attention to the details of what is happening beyond its own borders, the name "ExxonMobil" would seem like a whole new horse of a different color. As a "nice touch," around the same time, Exxon started pushing its touchy-feely "we're so good to the environment" Save the Tiger PR campaign (how could these nice people ever do those awful things the Aceh accuse them of?). The company has recently also donated millions of dollars to malaria research. So self-sacrificing! Especially, since malaria will
be a major problem and (God forbid!) expense for the company as it deploys workers into new unexploited mosquito-laden forests in Indonesia. But a look through the company's history reveals one clear point: this monster does nothing that is not completely motivated from self-interest.


In any case, the merger hasn't abated the carnage centered around the North Aceh facility. Last year, a human rights worker named Jafar Siddiq Hamzah, who was born in Aceh and lived for a while in Queens, NY, began receiving death threats after he started investigating Mobil's transgressions. Soon after, he was kidnapped. A month later, his tortured, mutilated body was found, along with those of four other human rights workers. Within days of this tragedy, Safwan Idris, a promising candidate for Aceh governor, was found murdered as well. Human rights investigators have condemned the company and the U.S. for their complicity, direct or indirect, in the bloodbaths. Indonesian Democracy Japan has asserted that the U.S. "by association, is guilty of major human rights violations." No wonder they don't want us on the UN human rights commission.

But human rights apparently pale in comparison to the stakes for which
Mobil and the Indonesian government are playing. Through the 1990s, one-fourth of all Mobil's global revenue came from the North Aceh facility. One corporate VP calls the facility "the jewel in the company's crown." If so, it is like the gory Hope diamond. Meanwhile, the Indonesian government scoops in an estimated $2 billion per year from the plant.


Things have, if one can imagine it, gotten worse in the past year and a
half. On October 20, 1999, Wahid was elected the new President of Indonesia by the People's Consultiuve Assembly (not by the PEOPLE, mind you). Almost immediately, Wahid sought to pass legislation to release foreign firms like ExxonMobil from regulatory approval requirements. Then, on February 28, 2000, just four months after being named Pres., Wahid appointed Henry Kissinger, one of the original authors of the nation's ongoing woes, as his advisor. On the same day, in fact the same hour (undoubtedly because the two things are so intimately intertwined), Wahid announced half a dozen new appointments to
Pertanima and the mineral industry - an industry close to Indonesian gold mine majority stock holder Kissinger's "heart" (or the black hole where one may once have been)."

snipped

This came from a web site titled American Progressive Friends Network. I hope this is an approved link. Wery lengthy article, but a good learning tool.

http://www.apfn.org/APFN/bush-cheney.htm
Their home page lead article is bout depledted uranium.

[mod mom]

6. One result was the 1997-98 financial crisis "that plunged tens of millions into abject poverty."

May he burn in eternal hell!