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The election -- our long national nightmare -- is over.
Bob Dole, who holds several records for Federal Election Commission fundraising violations, is done growling about dirty money. Bill Clinton, who received votes from less than a quarter of the electorate, is claiming a popular mandate.
Past or future, they're still just two guys trying to sell us a bridge.
So now Clinton will again assume the (false) mantle of The Most Powerful Person In The World, and Dole will return home to his Archer Daniels Midland condo in Florida -- not Kansas -- and realize that he isn't even The Most Powerful Person At The Breakfast Table.
>From another Congress of Newtants, we can expect two more years of
[deregulation] (a code word for increased corporate monopolization and lowered environmental and safety standards) and [reform] (the dismantling of legal measures through which working people can fight back).
How much more? By this time next year, look for open discussion of converting the Social Security system into a corporate investment scheme along the Chilean model.
Taking economics lessons from the third world would be disturbing enough. That Chile is still largely influenced by Augusto Pinochet, a Mussolini wannabe installed in 1973 by the CIA on behalf of ITT and some mining companies, should tell you something about where we're headed.
It also tells you a lot about the Indonesia deal.
Let's back up. Since Clinton churns out scandals the way AOL sends out floppy disks, it's easy to get confused and think he exposed John Huang to Paula Jones.
If only.
Indonesia has wads of timber, mineral, and oil resources which multinationals want. When the Dutch were unable to maintain Indonesia as a colony after World War II, most locals thought it made more sense for Indonesians to profit from the land than, say, some fat guy from Louisiana. So the CIA threw its usual spaz: shout "communist," install a grungy dicator and his thugs, and enjoy the savagery. Over a half-million people died in the coup of 1965.
Thirty-odd years later, the CIA's guy, Suharto, is still there -- cutting deals, robbing the treasury, and beating the crap out of people. As a result, forced labor is rampant, folks work 60-hour weeks for about [eight dollars], and the country is mutating into one big strip mine.
This works very well for Freeport McMoRan, Westinghouse, and dozens of other big nasties. Are you wearing Nikes right now? Peek inside and see where they were made. Then wipe your feet. There's blood on them.
Clinton's support for this evil mess is what the Riady/Lippo payoffs are all about.
There's more.
Grab a globe and you'll notice that Indonesia's borders were arbitrarily drawn around and through a bunch of islands, one of which is Timor.
The western half of Timor was colonized by the Dutch, so it became part of Indonesia. East Timor was colonized by Portugal, who didn't leave until 1975.
Naturally, the people of East Timor wanted independence. Suharto wanted Timor's plunder, so he invited President Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger over for a chat, apparently to ask permission. Within hours, the Indonesian army invaded and began slaughtering the Timorese.
The genocide claimed more than a third of the population, and the brutality continues to this day.
The real scandal? The U.S. provides Suharto almost all of his weapons.
The GOP won't pursue any of this because: many of their leaders are also financed by the mining and timber guys' bloodmoney; pursuing the subject will increase public pressure for legit campaign reforms (as would a sincere inquiry into the International Paper payoff at Whitewater); and most folks, Senators included, just don't give a damn about a bunch of bleeding Asians.
The Paula Jones and Filegate cases have no such downsides, so that's what Limbaugh and crew will yap about from here on in. America will probably forget about Indonesia by Christmas.
If only Indonesia could forget about us.
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Bob Harris is a political humorist who has lectured at over 275 colleges nationwide.
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