Leave Your Memory at the Door

A visitor to this blog left the following comment in the open thread below:

NPR had a piece on the death of Indonesia's former President Mohammed Suharto, which, though its complete and utter omission, verified the public's general ignorance as truth: That the United States government, and specifically the CIA, had no role whatsoever to play in his criminal rule, or in massive number of murders his regime perpetrated in the name of "anti-communism". And the US certainly didn't give the go-ahead to Suharto's invasion and slaughter of East Timor.

As this reader points out Nurse Michael Sullivan's report on Weekend Edition Sunday is so contemptuous of the historical record as to be criminal. Oh, Sullivan does mention that "many accuse Suharto of unleashing one of the greatest mass killings of the twentieth century - the deaths of more than half a million suspected Indonesian communists and ethnic Chinese," but you'd never know that the US was directly involved in planning and executing this mass murder or in approving and supporting the East Timor genocide (see this page from ETAN if you want to explore links on this).

The basic thrust of the piece was that in spite of being a pathological murderer and torturer Suharto did a lot of good for Indonesia - improving health, education and the economy. (Yeah, and Stalin essentially industrialized the Soviet Union, too.)

The Bells

If you've never read it, check out Poe's poem "The Bells." Before you subject yourself to Linda Wertheimer's banal bell tribute to Gerald Ford on today's Saturday Morning Edition, consider these lines from Poe's lovely work:

Hear the tolling of the bells,
Iron bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
In the silence of the night
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy menace of their tone!

Or better still listen to Phil Ochs fine rendition of the poem (it's free).

Now gear yourself up for the Wertheimer's minutiea of how the bells will ring at the National Cathedral for Gerald Ford's funeral. You'll learn how the biggest bell will ring slowly 38 times for the 38th President, how there will be a muffled bell ringing where the bells will have their clappers wrapped in leather "to soften the strike and signal that this is a somber and important occasion." The details and the weepy emotionalism are excruciating. Linda tells us that on Tuesday she'll listen to the funeral on the radio ("maybe sneak a peak at TV"!) - but she'll "also step out on [her] back porch and listen to the bells mourning his death and marking his life."

I'd like to recommend that she do a little compassion exercise while she's worshiping deceased Dear Leader. She could imagine that the great, big bell ringing just once a minute for each of the 250,000 East Timorese that Gerald Ford helped to wipe off the face of the earth. That minimal tribute would take 4167 hours or 174 days. I guess that would be asking a lot of any sane person, so how about just one peal each second. That would only take about 70 hours, or not quite three days. Or she could - like NPR - just figure that those people's lives not only don't merit a ringing of bells, but aren't even worth mentioning.

Compare and Contrast

NPR is rightly giving a lot of coverage to the continuing horror of genocide and warfare in Darfur. Now imagine if the slaughter in Darfur led by the Sudanese government had been given the go-ahead by a sitting US President, and imagine that the US was continuing to supply the Sudanese and the Janjaweed with the weapons they were using. You'd hope that when that President died, NPR would give significant coverage of such vile behavior.

Today offers a comparable situation. By any comparison, the Indonesian genocide against East Timor was as grievous as the situation in Darfur. At the time, President Gerald Ford was an active participant in launching the genocidal invasion of East Timor by Indonesia in 1975 and his administration continued to arm and support the Indonesians. In addition to that disgrace, Ford contributed to the horrors in Chile, Argentina, and Angola. That is the history, but on NPR's eulogies for President Ford you won't hear one word about it. Here's what was aired this morning:

• "...he successfully led the country through a difficult period." (Renee Montagne)
• "...a man whose calm and straightforward demeanor helped steer the nation through some turbulent times." (Pam Fessler)
• "Every American young and old owes [Ford] a heartfelt thanks." (from the 2000 Republican Convention)
• "Did he in fact help heal the nation?" (Renee Montagne) and John Greene answers "There’s no question that the country believed he helped heal it."

NPR neglected to mention the Ford - East Timor connection last month, and today continues this whitewashed history. Listeners do have other options, especially Democracy Now! which had much fuller coverage this morning of the Ford legacy.