Sunday, October 19, 2008

Alan Nairn Nailed This Almost Four Years Ago



I've edited out many of the proper nouns in the following excerpt from a transcript of Alan Nairn's January 14, 2005 phone interview on Democracy Now!. The method I call myth-jacking, part of Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine, comes through loud and clear.


ALLAN NAIRN: .... And now these supplies are being piled up there and either resold ... or, as the person that I spoke to put it, used as a political instrument in the villages. They go out to the villages and first demand that villagers present their special I.D. card issued by the police, given only to people who are certified as not being opponents of the army, and they demand they swear allegiance to the state ....

JUAN GONZALEZ: Allan, what do you make of ... U.S. officials saying they think that that’s actually a reasonable request?

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, it’s probably a little confusing to people looking from the outside. ...but if the White House and the Pentagon have their way, those [people] are in for a cruel trick, ... That is, if the White House and Pentagon succeed, and in fact this Wednesday, Paul Wolfowitz, who is the Deputy Defense Secretary, had a series of meetings in Washington with top generals and brought in some outside consultants where they planned a campaign to restore the U.S. military .... Wolfowitz himself has personally been three times to Aceh. He’s about to go over to Indonesia.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to award-winning journalist, Allan Nairn, who has won numerous journalistic honors... You talk about deputy director of defense, Paul Wolfowitz who’s headed over there now. Well-known for being one of the architects of the invasion of Iraq, was a former ambassador to Indonesia, so knows well what was going on. What was his role and how does it continue today now?

ALLAN NAIRN: Wolfowitz was a big backer of Suharto and the Indonesian military and at every stage he has pressed for further backing for the Indonesian armed forces. So, now he is going to try to use this opportunity to break the current congressional restrictions. Right now, due to grassroots activism all across the United States, and due to bipartisan congressional response to that activism, there are severe restrictions in place on what the Pentagon can actually do... These were put in after the various massacres.... But Wolfowitz is now trying to break them to further equip the ... military, which would be disastrous for people....

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