US "Human Rights" Government, Subservient Media & East Timor

[In] December 1975 Indonesia invaded East Timor, surely with the collusion of the United States. The invasion took place a few hours after President Ford and Henry Kissinger left Jakarta. The Indonesian army was 90 percent armed with American arms… The United States has been in fact the primary force in both providing the armaments required for the invasion and also providing diplomatic cover and trying to prevent – successfully in this case – any knowledge of the consequences from spreading throughout the world. (p. 247, “Ideological Reconstruction after Vietnam (7 June 1979)”)

… It is known in small Third World countries, and they take it very seriously. And there are occasional exceptions in the West. But it has been extremely difficult against the concentrated opposition of the Western powers, and especially in the face of the almost total refusal of the mass media in the West to provide any information whatsoever, except the State Department propaganda, about these ongoing massacres. In fact, it is one of the most extreme examples that I know of that demonstrates the fundamentally totalitarian character of the Western mass media and their subservience to the power of the major imperialist states. (p. 249, “Ideological Reconstruction after Vietnam (7 June 1979)”)

Right now, the part of the population that’s still alive [in East Timor] is mostly starving to death under conditions that American aid officials privately say are quite comparable to what exists in Cambodia. And the media refuse to publish a word about this. A few of them have published what is for the most part Indonesian government propaganda, but the majority of them haven’t said anything at all. Now in this case, the American media are behaving precisely in the manner of a totalitarian state-controlled press. But they’re doing if for their own interests. (p. 256, “On Human Rights and Ideology (October 1979)”)

… Indonesia has been a valued ally [of the United States] since the military regime demonstrated its anti-communist credentials by presiding over the massacres of many hundreds of thousands of people in 1965-66, then turning the country into a “paradise for investors,” who are impeded in their plunder of the country’s wealth only by the rapacity and corruption of the leadership. For this reason, the great crusade for “human rights” must ignore the misery of Timor – or more accurately, must lend its constant and increasing support to abetting the Indonesian atrocities and vastly extending their scale, while the press searches for evidence of Communist crimes. (p. 263, “An American View of the Ideological Confrontation of Out Time (3 February 1980)”)

… I don’t agree that the Carter administration has any concern for human rights. I think it has a human rights rhetoric that is perfectly consistent with supplying armaments for some of the world. On the other hand, it was from a propaganda point of view very effective to suddenly raise the human rights banner in 1976, at a time when there had been a great deal of revulsion over the obvious American role in repressing human rights throughout the world.
… Now as far as I know, no great power in the world in history has ever followed a human-rights policy – certainly not this administration. (pp. 253 – 254, “On Human Rights and Ideology (October 1979)”)