• "This is the story of how the 'global economy' in Asia was spawned in the bloodbath that bought General Suharto to power in Indonesia in 1965-66. It draws on recently released documents that describe a remarkable meeting in 1967 of the world's most powerful corporate figures, at which they carved up the Indonesian economy, sector by sector."

• "This was done in the most spectacular way,' Jeffrey Winters, professor at Northwestern University, Chicago, told me. 'They divided up into five different sections: mining in one room, services in another, light industry in another, banking and finance in another...You had these big corporate people going around the table, saying [to Suharto's people] this is what we need: this, this and this, and they basically designed the legal infrastructure for investment in Indonesia.' As a result, a mountain of copper and gold, nickel and bauxite, was handed out to American transnational companies. A group of American, Japanese and French companies got the tropical forests of Sumatra; and so on."

• "Under Sukarno. Indonesia had few debts; he had thrown out the World Bank, limited the power of the oil companies and publicly told the Americans to 'go to hell' with their loans. Now the big loans rolled in, mostly from the World Bank, which had the job of tutoring the 'model pupil' on behalf of the IGGI [Inter-Governmental Group on Indonesia] godfathers. 'Indonesia' said an official of the bank, 'is the best thing that's happened to Uncle Sam since World War Two."

• "I asked one of Suharto's representatives at the 1967 meeting, Emil Salim, if anyone had mentioned that up to a million people had died violently in bringing the new 'global economy' to Indonesia. 'No that was not on the agenda.' he replied. 'We didn't have television then."

• "In our universities, Indonesian scholars approved Suharto's big lie about a 'communist coup; being the cause of the killings, while western corporations anointed his regime's 'stability'. The silence lasted more than a quarter of a century, until is was broken by the cries of Suharto's victims in East Timor: a second genocide conducted with western military backing."

Indonesia's Annexation of East Timor
The web site of the Institute for Policy Research and Development (IPRD) carries an article, by its Executive Director and author on human rights issues, Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed. The paper analyses the role of western foreign policy in creating conflict and sabotaging peace in Indonesia and East Timor. This is not a tame confirmation of the "official truth," such as John Pilger accuses many Australian academics of producing. It is an independent and thorough review of the known facts, including those surrounding the invasion of East Timor and the massacre of more than a third of the population of that former Portuguese colony. Some excerpts follow.

• On the installation of Suharto and the cleansing of the Communist PKI party:

  "The Indonesian army went after the Communists and the people they felt traditionally supported the Communists. The result was a bloodbath that the New York times described in terms of half a million to a million and a half dead. The Australian secret service, closer to Indonesia, put the figure at closer to two million - the rivers clogged with the bodies of the dead."

  "The CIA subsequently published a cover story through the Library of Congress, in which it was alleged that the PKI had supported an insurrection that had been put down by the Indonesian army. However Stockwell notes that in its own internal reports, the CIA referred to the operation as a classic success in which the U.S. had "targeted the world's third largest Communist Party and aided the Indonesian army by providing thousands of names of suspected individuals and completely eliminated from the face of the earth not only the party but the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia who tended to support the Communists. Simply put, this is a classic case of genocide that was engineered by the CIA and cited as a model to be copied elsewhere." It was only much later - in the summer of 1990 - that the U.S. State Department acknowledged its crucial role in engineering the coup. .."

• On the annexation of East Timor:

  "The entire operation was approved of by the Western powers. General Suharto only began publicly affirming that the independence of East Timor would not be accepted after visiting the main foreign investors in Indonesia - the United States, Canada, Japan - and confirming their support for the invasion. Once this was achieved, in July 1975, Suharto commanded his Generals to bring to fruition their plans to create instability within East Timor to prepare for an invasion whose pretext would be to 'restore calm'."

  "On 17 September 1975, the CIA reported that : "Jakarta is now sending guerrilla units into the Portuguese half of the island in order to provoke incidents that would provide the Indonesians with the excuse to invade." Not long [after] on 14th October, the CIA informed the principal U.S. officers that: "Indonesian units are to attack the town of Maliana. the troops participating in the operation will wear uniforms without insignia and are to carry older, soviet-made weapons so as not to be identified as Indonesian regulars." ... "

  [The attack went through Balibo to Maliana, the next town up the road. Fretilin forces had withdrawn from Balibo, and the Australian Channel 7 team were the last people remaining. They had no knowledge that this would prove to be fatal, as the Feds had kept that information to themselves.]

  "In accord with the grim reality behind 'decolonisation', it was covertly decided by Western governments that the right of the East Timorese people to self-determination would be ignored and suppressed for the sake of various political and economic designs. That Fretilin intended to pursue a variety of egalitarian social programmes to utilise domestic resources for the benefit of the indigenous people clearly had a role in motivating this policy, in accordance with the 'domino' theory. The United States had thus given the Indonesian regime its secret approval of the invasion, with President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger having visited the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, only hours before the invasion commenced, Former CIA operations officer Phillip Liechty affirms: "Suharto was given the green light [by the U.S.] to do what he did. There was discussion in the Embassy and in traffic with the State Department about the problems that would be created for us if the public and Congress became aware of the level and type of military assistance that was going to Indonesia at that time [approximately 90 per cent of its arms]. It was covered under the justification that it was 'for training purposes'." ... "

  "The Australian Ambassador to Jakarta, Richard Woolcott, who was also notified by Indonesia of the oncoming invasion, similarly advised in a secret cable to the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs on 17th August 1975, to "leave events to take their course... and act in a way which would be designed to minimise the public impact in Australia and show private understanding to Indonesia of their problems." He admitted that this was a "pragmatic rather than a principled stand". Elaborating, he mused:

  "I wonder whether the [Australian] government is aware of the interest of the Ministry of Minerals and Energy in the Timor situation. It would seem to me that the Department might well have an interest in closing the present gap in the agreed sea border and this could be much more readily negotiated with Indonesia... than with Portugal or independent East Timor."

  Clearly, hegemonic economic interests in both Indonesia and Timor were crucial in the formulation of Western policies."

• On the fate of the East Timorese people during the Indonesian invasion:

  "On 7 December we awoke and heard this big noise of planes and saw parachutes and planes covering the light - it became dark because of them, so many. Then there were shots and we went inside and kept listening to more and more shooting. In the afternoon some Timorese came and told us everyone must come to surrender at headquarters... Once we got there they divided us: the women and children and old men to one side, and on the other young boys [and men].. then an Indonesian screams an order and we hear machine guns running through the men. We see the boys and men dying right there. Some see their husbands die. We look at each other stunned. We think they are going to kill us next. All of us just turn and pick up the children and babies and run screaming, wild, everywhere... [later] my sister went to look for her husband and son. On her way she met a friend crying who told her, 'don't bother going there. I have just seen my cousin being eaten by a dog. They are all dead. Only the dogs are alive there."

  .....An East Timorese named Eloise, who lived in Dili.

  "At midday [on December 7] they take six of us to work at the harbour... [where] we have to pick up... dead bodies... There were a lot of iron pipes on the wharf and we must tie the dead bodies on to them with parachute rope and throw them into the sea... [Chinese Timorese from a Dili suburb] came in groups of two or three or four, stood on the wharf and were shot. One group after the other coming and coming, killed and thrown into the sea. Two were couples, one with young children who went with relatives. The other couple were elderly, and the rest were men... The Indonesians tell them to stand in line and face the sea and then they were shot with a machine gun. Four people in that first sixteen of us... were father and son, but the Indonesians didn't know this. There on the wharf they kill the other son and his father is one of the six of us who must tie and throw his body."

  .....Mr Siong, a Chinese Timorese, who lived in Dili.

  "... on 27/9/83 they called my father and my wife, and not far from the camp, they told my father to dig his own grave and when they saw that it was deep enough to receive him, they machine-gunned him into the grave. They next told my pregnant wife to dig her own grave, but she insisted that the preferred to share my father's grave. They then pushed her into the grave and killed her in the same manner as my father."

  .....An East Timorese named Vigilo, writing of the period of Indonesian occupation. He went on to join Fretilin and was captured and killed some time later.

  "The Indonesian invasion began with massive human rights violations from the outset. Looting, rape and killing of civilians was a feature of the invasion with dozens dragged to the dock and executed in the first days. This pattern of contempt for basic human rights continued throughout the occupation ... The Indonesian forces used conventional and napalm bombing to destroy the base of the population and their ability to grow food... Torture of civilians and resistance fighters by the Indonesian military has been widespread. Imprisonment in East Timor will normally lead to physical abuse. Types of torture that have been frequently reported including rape, electric shocks, burning with cigarettes, removal of nails, soldiers bouncing on chairs positioned on people's bare toes, beating with fists, rifle butts or clubs, immersion in water to the point of suffocation and threatened or real execution. ..."

  ....From an Amnesty International report, which also estimates that by 1985 up to half a million people had been killed or displaced.

• On the death toll in East Timor.

  "It is certain that more than 200,000 East Timorese were killed in the years since the invasion. An authoritative report by the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Australian Parliament for instance recorded that "at least 200,000" East Timorese had been killed. It should be stressed however that this oft-cited figure is actually very conservative. According to specialist Gabriel Defert based on statistical data available from the Portuguese and Indonesian authorities, and from the Catholic Church, between December 1975 and December 1981, an average of 308,000 Timorese lost their lives; this constituted about 44 per cent of the population before the invasion. Similarly Indonesian Professor George Aditjondro, formerly of Salatiga University in Java, concluded from his study of Indonesian army data that in fact 300,000 Timorese had been killed in the first years following the invasion."

• On the approval of Indonesia's genocidal actions by Western nations.

  "... when Suharto visited Washington in 1995, despite the necessary rhetorical public remarks about America's deep human rights concerns, the visit remained entirely cordial. In fact, a senior Clinton official revealingly declared that Suharto was "our kind of guy", exposing what the U.S. expects of its regional Third World clients. These sentiments were echoed unanimously by other Western governments.

  Events a year after the invasion of East Timor provide ample explanation for this admiration for the Indonesian military regime and its policies of genocide and ethnic cleansing. Negotiations began between an Australian company and Indonesia on extending the vast oil resources on both the island itself and in the Timor Gap, the sea bed between Timor and Australia which is just off the coast of East Timor. ... A month after the Dili massacre, the Australian government alone approved with Indonesia eleven oil production contracts for exploitation of a jointly controlled area of the sea. As Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans put it, the gains to be made from East Timor under the Timor Gap Treaty in terms of oil amounted to "zillions of dollars". Due to such business opportunities, the Clinton administration played its humanitarian role by blocking an amendment to the Foreign Appropriations Bill voted for by the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee which asked the President to consult with Congress to determine whether improvements in the human rights situation have occurred before approving arms-sales. We may remind ourselves that the demarcation of the territorial waters in the economic interests of the most powerful Western nations had already been discussed with the Portuguese government before the invasion; the results had not been in conformity with the wishes of the major powers. ... "

One does not even have to read between the lines to know the motive for the 1975 Indonesian invasion of East Timor, the facts are widely known and published. The US and other western powers wanted access to the oil beneath the ocean area known as the Timor Gap. Australian authorities were aware of the plot and they played their part in it. Despite the Australian Embassy in Jakarta having been advised of the Indonesian intention to send guerrilla units through Balibo, and on to Maliana - three days before the scheduled date of the attack - the Aussie Feds followed advice to "stay out of it". As a result, the Channel 7 News Crew in Balibo were left to the tender mercies of the Kopassandha, and the East Timorese people were abandoned to a similar fate.

Despite his closeness to the events, the Australian Ambassador in Jakarta, Richard Woolcott, is not the main villain in this sorry story. The real blame lies with the politicians and mandrins in Canberra who were, and still are, so totally controlled by the thinking and policies of the American Military Industrial Complex (AMIC). The groundwork for this dominant influence of the Australian government was initiated in 1947, following the influx of US troops and officials during the latter part of World War II. During and immediately following the Vietnam war (1964 to 1973) the AMIC intensified its control efforts. The CIA greatly extended its covert operations within Australia at this time, using various American owned organisations for Non-Official Cover (NOC) of its agents. In the ensuing years the AMIC has been able to exploit this penetration of Australian governments and political parties until, today, the country functions as a de facto State of the American Empire.

When your spouse two-times you and advances the interests of an interloper over your interests, you have the right to divorce them. This is exactly the situation that pertains today in Australia. The Feds are two-timing the people in favour of the interests of the AMIC, and the Australian people have the right to a divorce. Despite the claims of the Fed's lawyers that such talk is seditious, sedition doesn't come into it. Secession is the right of any region or city in circumstances where the obligations of the contract embodied in the Constitution are not being met. This is particularly so when the elected government consistently lies to its constituents and acts in the interests of external parties rather than the interests of the citizens it purports to represent.

The UN Intervention In East Timor
When the truth about what had been happening in East Timor under the genocidal occupation policies of Indonesia finally began to be known to ordinary people in the West there had to be change of plan. The contracts to exploit the oil reserves of the Timor Gap were proceeding but it was no longer practical for Western interests to negotiate new seabed boundaries with Indonesia, because its Generals and their murderous practices had now come under the spotlight of world opinion. So, the UN made a belated appearance on the ground in East Timor, to organise a referendum on whether the people wished their territory to become independent of Indonesia, which it had never historically been a part of.

Despite very severe harassment of the surviving East Timorese people, the vote, in August 1999, was 78 per cent in favour of independence. Many local people had died to ensure this poll result and many others had risked their own lives and those of their families for the same end. They wanted to be rid of the murderous Indonesian military, and they wanted to develop the rich mineral and other resources of their island for the benefit of their own society. The Western powers had other ideas, they allowed the Indonesian Generals to embark on a further campaign of genocide and mass transportation of large segments of the population to West Timor.

When these atrocities were unmasked the UN sent a military force to East Timor, at the invitation of the very Generals who were directing the genocide there. Before they withdrew, the Indonesian military (the TNI) burnt Dili to the ground, thus ensuring that the fledgling nation would be dependent on aid and in a weak negotiating position with regard to the development of the riches of the Timor Gap. Indonesia had made a show of objecting to the inclusion of Australian forces in the UN peacekeeping force, however Jakarta and Canberra were most probably working together.

Australia initially proposed a development of the Timor Gap and the redefinition of territorial boundaries on its seabed. However, it subsequently retreated from that position, to the great disillusionment of the East Timorese.

Besides wishing to pay less for the oil the Australian Feds now want the processing plant built on Australian soil, rather than in East Timor. As well as securing a major revenue stream for Australia the relocation of the processing plant removes it from the path of any renewed invasion of East Timor, now The Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, by the Indonesian Generals. Those particular 'orang tempurs' still count East Timor as Indonesian territory, and aim to recapture it, with the approval of their Western backers and arms suppliers, principally the United States.

The Bloody Path To Independence
If they survive as a sovereign nation, which is by no means certain, the people of East Timor will have bitter memories of their treatment by Indonesia, the UN, and Australia. Uncle Slam was always there in the background, but it was these three that carried out the strategy to seize the wealth of this potentially rich area. The Indonesians did the killing and terrorising, the UN delayed its intervention to give them time, and Australia picked up the management of the oil concessions, once it became clear that world opinion would debar Indonesia from this role.

The suffering of the East Timorese following their courageous vote for independence was horrific. Here are some further excerpts form the Institute for Policy Research and Development document.

• On the referendum:

  "The UN-supervised elections were eventually held on 30th August 1999 after continual delays for many months due to pro-Jakarta paramilitary violence. In an intense climate of fear and terror, the East Timorese people emerged courageously to cast their votes. Seventy eight per cent of registered voters chose independence, despite violent Indonesian army efforts to terrorise the population into accepting Indonesian hegemony. ...

  The policy of the Western powers behind the front of United Nations is however, disconcerting and revealing. In response to public outrage at Indonesia's occupation of East Timor, the Western powers under U.S. leadership insisted on holding elections in a repressive, militarised environment which had been perpetuated by intensive Western military aid to Indonesia. Throughout the period leading up to the elections, the East Timorese people were living in terror due to ABR/TNI-backed death squads. Pro-integration paramilitaries armed and trained by Indonesia were threatening and slaughtering pro-independence civilians and activists with escalating impunity.

  The tactic bears an uncanny resemblance to U.S. tactics in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua. Elections can only be meaningful if certain significant conditions are met ensuring that the people are able to make an independent choice free from external pressure. In a militarised environment characterised by coercion, terror and repression of those who are supportive of the independence movement, the relevance of elections becomes negligible. Given that the Western powers had made no significant efforts toward demilitarising the region and halting the ongoing repression of the East Timorese by Indonesian forces, their covert aim is clear."

• On the Post-Election Atrocities:

  "The escalation of the ongoing campaign to subjugate East Timor occurred in the aftermath of the UN-supervised elections when it was found that the indigenous population voted against the interests of the Indonesian army and its Western supporters. Pro-Indonesian head-hunters rampaged through East Timor as vain appeals were made to the international community to 'prevent the genocide'. By 6th September 1999, more than 200 East Timorese were reported dead overnight and over 150,000 fleeing. Witnesses reported seeing 'at least 100 heads on stakes', lining the road from Dili to Atambua. ...

  Other reports stated that Indonesian troops were 'cleansing' town after town, 'herding refugees on to the roads or into trucks and buses, and dumping them across the border in West Timor", and that there were 'increasing fears that authorities may be forced to abandon the ballot, making it impossible to either verify it or check on claimed irregularities'. ...

  Indonesia's objectives included 'shipping the whole population of Dili and other major towns to West Timor and replacing them with West Timorese who are against independence.

  One Indonesian military document leaked to the East Timor resistance in June, revealed that "the province had been split into four 'killing zones'... The Indonesian army has also provided the militias with helicopters, communications equipment, cars and computers". ...

  Further orders were given in early May in another army document urging that 'Massacres should be carried out from village to village after the announcement of the ballot if the pro-independence supporters win.' The East Timorese independence movement 'should be eliminated from its leadership down to its roots'. "

• On Internal Findings Against the Indonesian Generals:

  "The Indonesian National Commission for Human Rights has documented the consequent genocidal atrocities of the militias, concluding from its inquiry that they were directed, controlled and funded by the Indonesian army, Max Lane reported for the Australian-based Action in solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor (ASIET):

  "For the first time since 1974, a public split has emerged within the Indonesian army's top generals over how best to preserve the political authority of the Indonesian armed forces (TNI). The split has been provoked by the inquiry launched by the Indonesian National Commission for Human Rights into the events in East Timor that followed the August 30 referendum. The commissoner's inquiry is headed by the outspoken human rights lawyer Munir, who led the campaign which exposed the military's role in the kidnapping and disappearance of student activists in 1998 and 1999. The inquiry has revealed the extent to which the TNI organised the militia that terrorised East Timor before and after August 30. To date, it has been confirmed that militia gangs, such as Aitarak (headed by the murderous Eunco Guterres), Besi Merah Putih and others were installed as the official civil militia by the Indonesian government. The inquiry also stated its opinion that the 'Ganard document' which set out a scorched earth plan should Jakarta lose the August 30 referendum, was a genuine document. ... The commission believed that charges against the officers should be seriously considered. However, the commission cannot itself prosecute Wiranto or any other generals; only the Wahid government can make such a decision. ...

  The uncompromising nature of the questioning from Munir and other commission lawyers has provoked a publicly hostile response from military spokespeople. In November, General Sudrajat, spokesperson for Armed Forces headquarters, stated that 'the TNI's soldiers would be angry if their generals were treated roughly'."

• On the Belated UN Intervention:

  "Under massive pressure from numerous public bodies, the West belatedly ended significant military ties and halted loans, assenting to the intervention of a UN peacekeeping force in East Timor with the permission of the Indonesian government. ... UN intervention was in fact designed to impress and deceive the public at home while the Western powers and their Indonesian client regime could continue to mutually secure their strategic and economic interests. ...

  The UN thus rewarded the complicity of the Indonesian military by granting responsibility for the main decisions on negotiations about the UN mission, to the very head of the Indonesian armed forces who had been covertly directing the brutalisation of East Timor himself - to the awareness of Western intelligence services, who had also previously informed the UN. General Wiranto's responsibility for the Indonesian operation in East Timor, including the direction of both military and paramilitary death squads, was well understood by the West.

  Dinny Hawes of the Catholic Institute for International Relations has summarised the overall impact of Indonesia's scorched earth policy, supported by the Western powers:

  '... shells of buildings stood blackened and roofless, one after the other, with hardly a house intact. The departing Indonesian army and their local militias ensured that the new country really is starting from scratch. This small country has lost its infrastructure - almost all of it in the capital Dili and other main towns - its structure of governance, and its health and education systems. Some 75 per cent of its population was displaced in one month after 25 years of occupation that saw a third of the population murdered by the Indonesian occupiers or die from disease of starvation - genocide proportionately greater than either Pol pot's mass murders in Cambodia or the Rwandan massacres of 1997'."

Gentle Justice for the Generals
Despite the above critiques of the systematic persecution and extermination of pro-independence East Timorese, none of the major players - the Indonesian army Generals - have been brought to account by the Indonesian justice system. The East Timor Action Network (ETAN) reported on the 2003 proceedings on their web site. Here are some excerpts:

• "In the months following 1999's devastation, two UN bodies called for the establishment of an international tribunal. Instead, Indonesia promised to try its own and eventually established the Ad Hoc Human Rights Court of East Timor.

  Of the 18 people tried by the ad hoc court, all but 16 were acquitted. All but one of those convicted received less than the legal minimum sentence, and all remain free pending an appeal."

• "The Indonesian court has been criticised for its limited mandate, with jurisdiction over only three of East Timor's 13 districts during just two months (April and September 1999) of a 24-year military occupation. Indonesia will not try anyone for the many atrocities that occurred outside of these very narrow time periods and locations.

  The defendants were primarily accused of failing to prevent the actions of others rather than for acts they may have directly committed. The prosecution repeatedly described the violence in 1999 as the result of conflict among East Timorese factions and portrayed the UN administration of the referendum as biased and anti-Indonesian."

• "None of the top-ranking officers and officials named by Indonesia's own human rights commission in January 2000 was seriously investigated, much less indicated. Powerful military officers routinely attended the court in an effort to intimidate. Fearing for their safety, most East Timorese witnesses called to testify refused. Those who did were harassed. The prosecution failed to make use of vast amounts of UN documentation available to them as evidence."

• "The joint UN-East Timor Serious Crimes Unit has indicated a number of high-ranking Indonesian officials, including General Wiranto, the commander-in-chief and defence minister in 1999. However, Indonesia refuses to extradite anyone to East Timor.

  Earlier this year, former Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid called the Indonesian court 'corrupt'. He said it 'has no rigor or influence. Everything can be bought and while things are like this it will not be possible to achieve justice for Timor'."

Nazis To Our North
There is essentially no difference between Hitler's invasion of Poland and the Indonesian General's invasion of East Timor. The former Portuguese colony had never been a part of Indonesia. It was not a question of claiming back what was theirs, but of taking advantage of Western backing to grab territory rich in minerals and oil. Nor is there much difference between the genocide that Hitler's regime inflicted on the Jews and other populations, and the genocide that the Indonesian Generals unleashed on the East Timorese. However, there is a huge difference between the justice dealt out to the Nazis at Nuremberg in 1945-46, and that applied to the Indonesian Generals by an Indonesian court. As the demonstrator's placard in the above illustration says: "Indonesian Justice is a Joke".

The reluctance of Indonesia to prosecute Indonesians for war crimes and human rights abuses should not surprise us. The Nazis would hardly have tried the SS for what went on at Auschwitz, Belsen or Buchenwald. What should alarm us is that nobody in the Australian government has been willing to say boo to a goose about the rape, pillage and murder inflicted on the East Timorese people by Indonesia. The fact that it has happened right on our doorstep should also be ringing warning-bells; non-stop, 24/7. There are Nazis to our north.

The Bali Bombings
The horrific bombings of the Sari Club and Paddy's Bar in Bali, on October 12, 2002, considerably strengthened the hand of the US, Great Britain, and Australia in pursuing the War on Terror. Here was an opportunity to harden the hearts of the Australian and US public against Islamic fundamentalists. It was also a chance for the Indonesian government to justify harsh measures in the war against terrorists and secessionists, such at those in the province of Aceh.

In Australia, a heightened public awareness of the threat of terrorism on the mainland created an opportunity for the Feds to introduce draconian legislation that is designed to remove established rights and strengthen the powers of the authorities to ruthlessly crush all forms of dissent.

Eighty eight of the 202 fatalities resulting from the attack were Australian nationals. There were also many Australian casualties, some of these people will never fully recover from the horrendous burns they suffered. Oddly, many of the bodies of the victims of the atrocity could not be readily assembled into individual's remains, even with modern genetic and forensic technologies being available via the Australian Federal Police (AFP). On March 1, 2003, some 185 body parts (not whole cadavers) were cremated in a ceremony at the Mumbul Cemetery. At that time it was stated that another 43 fragmentary remains were still held at the morgue, pending final disposition by the investigators.

There are reports that in one Balinese kampong that provided labour to the clubs in Kuta Beach, seven empty coffins were buried, because there were no identifiable remains of the missing workers. It was as if they had been vaporised. Scores of people, mainly locals, are thought to have disappeared without trace.

[The above text is reproduced, almost verbatim, from the separate 2nd Renaissance document, which is available as a download on Freenet. There are many more details about the Bali bombing included in that freesite. The following discussion is solely concerned with various indications of deceit and misinformation on the part of the joint Indonesian-Australian investigation team. I apologise to the loved ones of the dead and injured from the Bali megablast, for raising what must for them be painful considerations, but the many discrepancies in the official truth need to be debated and resolved.]

Unanswered Questions About The Bali Megablast
Although they have been accepted as factual by the Australian media, the findings of the joint investigation team into the Bali megablast do not ring true. Given that there is a long, well documented, history of collusion and deceit involving the Indonesian and Australian Feds, (stretching from Holt's time to Howard's current administration) the official 'truth' about the bombings needs to be rigorously questioned by ordinary Australians and Indonesians.

The following discrepancies in the findings of the official investigation should not be construed as an attack on the individual investigators involved. When one works for the Feds it is usually difficult, not to mention dangerous, to break ranks and point to inconsistencies in findings and conclusions that support a "desired' outcome. This applies to both Australian and Indonesian investigators. The issue is not the competence or integrity of the people charged with undertaking the analysis of the blast site. What is sought here are answers to questions which could, depending on the truths uncovered, change forever the conclusions about who planned and carried out the attack, what type of bomb was used, where it was placed, and what might have been the real motives behind that dreadful taking of the lives of so many innocent people in such a violent manner.

The unanswered questions about the Bali megablast are simply these:

• How could a van bomb made up of the chemicals and explosives found to have been used by Amrozi and his associates cause the large crater in the road in front of the Sari Club?

• Why did the Indonesian authorities quickly excavate the crater and dump the material from it far out to sea? If this was really a Hindu 'cleansing ceremony' where is the documentary evidence of such a practice? What do the traditional Balians say about the existence of such a ceremony? If there really is such a ceremony, is it usual to excavate the site?

• How could a bomb of the type found to have been constructed and detonated by Amrozi cause such enormous blast damage to nearby reinforced concrete structures? How can an explosive mixture that is only capable of generating an overpressure of between 2 PSI and 10 PSI do damage that required an overpressure of some 3,500 PSI?

• Why were the said reinforced structures immediately demolished and the rubble disposed of by dumping it far out to sea?

• How could the relatively low powered explosive mixture cause such horrific burns to the victims of the bombing - injuries that one Australian burns specialist described as the worst she had ever seen in 20 years of medical practice? The constituents of the bomb said to have been made by Amrozi were not exact napalm-like - were they?

• What sort of device could produce such a combination of searing heat and high-velocity debris that terrible 70 to 90 per cent burns were produced in many of the victims, including their throats and lungs?

• What sort of device could cause some victims to disappear without trace; to in effect vaporise? How could a simple motorcycle mechanic from a rural village, such as Amrozi was, acquire the expertise to build such a terrible weapon?

• The type of bomb that Amrozi is alleged to have built would not affect the power in Kuta Beach. At least, not unless it was detonated in a sub-station instead of a van parked in the set-down area outside the Sari Club. But there was a power outage. It was widespread, and it occurred between the first and second blasts. What caused this phenomenal coincidence of a power outage seconds before the main blast? What could explain it?

• Why did a few people who were, from reliable reports, quite close to the second explosion survive (such as an Australian Army Officer, Captain Rodney Cocks, who was on leave in Bali from a posting as a UNMO in East Timor), while others seem to have been completely vaporised?

Those are the main questions about the actual megablast. There is one other question that also needs to be asked. It is about the fate of the self-confessed perpetrator of the Bali bombings, Amrozi bin Nurhasyim.

• Since executions in Indonesia are by firing squad, with the victim hooded, and only prison officials present; how will the outside world, including the families of the people killed or injured by the Bali megablast, be sure that it is really Amrozi who is killed, and not some other poor wretch selected for the purpose by the Indonesian authorities? Does Amrozi have a 'deal' with the CIA, like so many others who have 'assisted' that agency in many situations and countries around the world? Might Amrozi survive, to run a fast-food outlet in Florida?

Some Probable Bali Megablast Explanations
From outside the investigation it is not possible to be sure of the likely answers to questions such as those above. Only the Indonesian and Australian authorities are in a position to fully examine the evidence, or what's left of it. However, it is possible to identify most of the likely answers. A few of these follow, and there is further detail on the 2nd Renaissance freesite.

Blasts are not difficult to understand, and many of the joint-investigation team for the Bali megablast would have full knowledge of the way in which blasts behave. Basically a blast follows the path of least resistance. Look at the diagram and you'll see what I mean.

When a bomb explodes above-ground, as in a car or van, the blast is unlikely to make much of a crater. There might be a small indentation on soft ground but never a 5 foot deep and 20 feet wide hole such as that caused by the main bomb outside the Sari Club.

If the charge were to be weighted down from above, such as by placing it under sandbags of concrete blocks, a larger crater would result. But with normal car or van bombs there is little or no cratering. This is well known to explosives experts.

When a bomb explodes below-ground, as in a bomb placed in a drain or buried beneath a road, there will be a crater. If the bomb is buried deep enough and it has great explosive capacity, a large crater can be formed. The crater formed outside the Sari Club at Kuta beach fitted this scenario. Explosives experts would have recognised this instantly, as soon as they saw the bomb site.

Take a look at the image of the crater from the Bali megablast. It was huge. No bomb composed of the ingredients alleged to have been used by Amrozi could have caused this outcome. Captain Rodney Cocks has training and experience in the military use of explosives for demolition. Commenting on the crater he said, "You need a lot of bang to get through and make that sort of hole. That second bomb was huge."

Besides being qualified to assess such matters, Captain Cocks is also a remarkably lucky man. By chance, it appears that when he left Paddy's Bar and walked towards an Internet Cafe, he positioned himself in the 'null zone' below the rising diagonal blast vector of the bomb in the storm drain. Had the second bomb been detonated in a van in the pick-up area of the Sari Club, as the official truth states, Captain Cocks would certainly have been killed by it. As you can see from the diagram above, there is no 'null zone' in the case of an above-ground explosion.

When a qualified investigator looks at the aftermath of a bomb explosion the first facts that register in their mind relate to the level of damage evident in surrounding structures and the nature of the injuries suffered by victims of the blast. Even before traces of explosive are found and analysed these indications can tell a specialist what combinations of explosives and what size of device might have been responsible. Any competent forensic scientist with a knowledge of explosives characteristics can also tell, with absolute certainty, what types of device and combinations of explosives could not have done the damage.

It is important to realise that larger amounts of an explosive don't result in a higher overpressure, only in a greater radius of damage. Doubling the amount of a chemical explosive, such as C4, will not result in extra damage near ground zero, it will simply widen the circle of damage that is possible from C4's overpressure.Blast damage is caused in accordance with one of the most important laws of physics, Newton's inverse square law. If one knows the overpressure of the explosive or combination of explosives used, and the radius of the circle of damage, the amount of explosive required can be determined by simple mathematics.

The investigators from the Indonesian and Australian governments were faced with incontrovertible evidence of a massive blast outside the Sari Club. None of the explosives available to local Islamic terrorists could cause the structural damage and injuries, including truly terrible burns that were evident after the blast. The specialist investigators from both countries would have realised this. However they were obviously not permitted to say so. Instead, they made a number of feeble attempts to lay the blame on a primitive low explosive detergent bomb that Amrozi confessed to manufacturing and deploying.

Independent commentators, such as Robert S. Finnegan of the Jakarta Post, and various demolition specialists have panned the official explanation about the types of explosives that caused the megablast outside the Sari Club. Here are just a few excerpts from what has been written:

• "The claim that the Bali bomb was made from potassium chlorate [the variant stolen in Java] is pure idiocy. ..Yes you can make a crude weapon from 90% potassium chlorate and 10% paraffin , but it is an incredibly slow and entirely low-explosive. Provided the weapon did not detonate prematurely [a real risk with this unstable compound] four hundred pounds of potassium chlorate and paraffin slurry with a Power Gel initiator might make a mess of Kuta Beach high street, but it could manage little else."

• "Day after day, investigators trotted out different explosives and combinations of explosives purportedly responsible for the blasts. In addition to C4 and RDX there was now TNT, Ammonium Nitrate, HMX, Semtex, PETN, Chlorate and napalm. Everything but the kitchen sink."

• "..had the originators of the napalm theory studied up on the material before opening their mouths they would have known that napalm leaves a sticky, smelly residue on everything, including the victims. This was not in evidence at the blast site or the Sanglah burn ward and morgue, where the burn victims were taken."

• "With the police claiming (off and on) that Amrozi, Mukhlas and Samudra (who allegedly at one point denied involvement in the Bali bombings) were the perpetrators of the blasts, then why do the official investigators not know EXACTLY the type of device used in the main bombing and its precise composition? To put it quite simply, how can we have a bomber or bombers in the absence of a bomb?"

In November, 2002, The Age newspaper (based in Melbourne, Australia) reported the musings of the official investigation team. In part, the article said:

• "About 10 to 15 seconds later a second bomb went off. This device exploded in the van outside the Sari Club. Australian investigators believe it included between 50 and 150 kilograms of the chemical substance chlorate, an industrial salt used to manufacture herbicides and bleaches used in paper milling.

  Chlorate becomes an explosive when mixed with certain other chemicals. The bomb may also have been a mix of products, including the easily obtained fertiliser, ammonium nitrate."

• "... [commander of the joint Indonesian-Australia police investigation] said yesterday in Canberra: "The explosion itself resulted in a tremendous release of energy. This essentially caused a pressure wave, followed by fragmentation, which was also then followed by a large fire. This is what contributed to the devastation seen at the Sari Club. A measure of the force of the blast is that it was heard up to 15 kilometres away."

  "It may be some assurance to the families and friends of victims to know that those who lost their lives in the Sari Club, did so very, very quickly, such was the size of the blast" he said."

Mercifully then, the victims who were vaporised by the megablast, and of whom no trace of remains were to be found, did not suffer. But a fertiliser bomb is simply not capable of vaporising people in this manner. The Omagh car bomb detonated in Northern Ireland in 1998 was composed of a mixture of fertiliser, fuel oil and the high-explosive Semtex. This 500lb device killed 29 people, but it did not cause a crater of any sort. Moreover, the remains of all the victims of the Omagh bomb were readily identifiable by using modern forensic techniques. Nobody has ever been vaporised by a bomb in Northern Ireland and disappeared completely. But it happened in Bali.

To say that there was a vast discrepancy between the accounts of the Bali megablast that were fed to the Australian public and those propagated in Asia and other parts of the world, would be a considerable understatement. The latter versions of the nature of the main blast differed markedly from the official truth disseminated by the Australian Feds. You and I can only speculate as to why this was so. But it is fair to say that public anger against Islamic terrorists, as a result of the Bali atrocity, made it far easier for the Australian government to justify its participation in the War on Terror and the invasion of Iraq.

The bombings at the American Consulate and Paddy's Bar were horrific enough, but the main blast, outside the Sari Club that was regularly patronised by Australians, was uniquely terrible.

• "One burn patient demands a huge amount of attention if they're going to survive, particularly with the percentages we're talking about. Some of the burns we calculated were up to 70 percent-plus on the individual and quite a lot of them were full thickness burns and unfortunately not a lot of superficial burns."

• "She had burns to the facial area, burns to the respiratory system, making breathing almost impossible and base of skull injuries producing brain swelling, making it very difficult for us to manage without appropriate equipment."

• NSW State Wide Severe Burns Unit chairman and Concord Hospital burn injury unit director Peter Haertsch said he had never seen civilian casualties like those he had operated on in the previous 24 hours.

  "I've seen plenty of burns but I've not seen this combination of injury, it's something you wouldn't see in civilian life and it's something I haven't seen in 22 years of burns surgery."

It can safely be said that none of the explosive concoctions touted by the joint Indonesian-Australian investigative team could generate a thermochemical blast that could cause such burns. None of the explosives that came to be incorporated in the official truth about the Bali megablast could have burnt the victims so horrendously. Indeed, Amrozi's bomb would have tended to extinguish fires rather than start them.

The main blast at Bali spontaneously ignited automobiles parked two blocks away and instantly set fire to more than two dozen buildings in the immediate area. No fertiliser bomb would be capable of causing such incendiary effects. Nor would it cause the awful flash burns suffered by so many victims that night.

Here are some excerpts from the eye-witness report of the Australian Army officer, Captain Rodney Cocks.

• On the flash burns:

  "I was very lucky, I think I got a few cuts on my feet but nothing major. I was wearing shorts, T-shirt and thongs at the time. I consider myself one of the luckiest people alive, I really do."

  "By the time I picked myself up there were already people moving out away from the scene. I picked one girl up there - she had burns all over her body, so I grabbed her. I later heard she'd been assessed as having burns to 95% of her body and that she hadn't survived her injuries"

  "We regrouped. got our people, helped the people we could, which, you know, was just bloody impossible, there were just so many people injured."

• Of the scene at the hospital he said:

  "That was just an absolute nightmare. There's just bodies everywhere, blood everywhere, just death and destruction everywhere and just so many Australians..."

• Of the morgue:

  "The bodies were just...the floor was littered with burnt corpses. it was just awful...some of these bodies you couldn't tell, you know, whether they were male of female, young, old, Indonesian, Australian..."

Here are some other accounts of what it was like at the hospital, where the still living and recognisable victims were taken:

• "...had been on the dance floor at the Sari. The blast injured her in both legs - one so badly it had to be amputated - and the fire burnt her severely. But she was alive, like scores of other Australians in the hospital."

• "Some of them did not have IV fluid, their cannulas were not in properly. They had been put onto beds and just left there. They had urine and vomit and excreta all around them."

• "Doctors conducted escharotomies, slicing through burnt skin on arms and legs to release pressure, saving the limbs. They used scalpel blades purchased from pharmacies by Australian volunteers. They had only the scalpel heads, not the blade holders. There was no morphine of pethidine and patients were given ibuprofen in a drip form, which can harm the kidneys. Patients felt the operation, many screamed in agony as it was conducted."

• "The burns were dreadful. Some people had breathed in flame and cooked their internal organs."

• "He died on me twice on the way to the airport. We got him onto the plane but sadly he died on the trip. One young girl died on the way to the airport. But we ended up evacuating 65 people from Sanglah Hospital."

• "A young woman died on the tarmac at 3am. She was known only as Ms X as she had no family or friends with her."

The flash burns suffered by victims of the Bali megablast have been directly compared to those made by the ultraviolet emissions that characterise nuclear explosions, and independent analysts have concluded that both the nature of the burns and the blast damage to reinforced concrete structures support the view that a micro-nuke had been detonated from a drain under the road near the Sari Club. People in Australia know little of this hypothesis, but it was widely discussed in Asia and debated in the Indonesian parliament.

Here are some excerpts from media reports at the time:

• "On Monday 18 November, Indonesian Parliamentary Speaker Amien Rais said he questioned the validity of the police conclusion that Amrozi was the main perpetrator of the Bali bombings which claimed more than 187 lives. Rais was supported by Deputy House Speaker A. M. Fatwa who stated, "My conscience says that he is not a key actor. I don't believe that Amrozi has the capability to make all kinds of preparations for the bombings, like setting off a kind of nuclear bomb in Bali."

• "These pointed observations by two of the most powerful politicians in Indonesia, designed to counter deliberate Australian police and media disinformation about the bombing in Kuta Beach, were then recorded verbatim in the official Indonesian parliamentary transcripts. A wide range of media outlets in Asia and the Middle East reported Rais and Fatwa's comments, which were predictably ignored in Australia and America."

Amien Rais is was a strident opponent of the Suharto regime and gave up his position as head of Muhammadiyah, Indonesia's second largest Muslim organisation, to enter politics and stand against Suharto in 1998. Although he studied in the United States, Rais opposes the globalisation of Indonesia's natural resources and wealth for the benefit of Western nations and corporations. He and A. M. Fatwa called the Bali bombing the way many people in Asia saw it. The Australian media reported Bali the way the Canberra Feds wanted it to be seen by the Australian people. They pointedly ignored the notion of a micro-nuke because it completely rules out the possibility that the atrocity was planned and organised by local Islamic terrorists. Only a few, mainly Western, military powers are known to possess miniaturised nuclear weapons designed for the strategic demolition of structures such as bridges and dams. Amrozi couldn't have sourced such a device or known how to deploy it for greatest effect.

The terrible flash burns and the apparent vaporisation of victims close to the detonation point, but outside the null zone created by the sides of the crater, strongly support the notion that the device that caused the main blast was nuclear. We can't be sure of this, and any evidence that could have established the micro-nuke theory as fact is now at the bottom of the ocean many miles off Bali. However, the possibility of a micro-nuke fits the known facts far better than the official truth about the nature of the main bomb.

Direct parallels can certainly be drawn between the badly burnt living and the dreadfully burnt dead at Bali, in 2002, and those at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in 1945. There weren't many photographs released that showed the incinerated bodies from the Bali megablast, but people who saw those corpses with their own eyes might well find the images of the dead from the 1945 explosions in Japan to be eerily similar. Unlike most thermochemical explosions, which tend to dismember but not necessarily burn victims, a thermonuclear explosion invariably sears the flesh of anyone in the path of its ultraviolet flash.

The widespread power outage in Kuta Beach just seconds before the main blast might have been a coincidence, although it does not seem to have been satisfactorily explained as such by the authorities. On the other hand, for the micro-nuke hypothesis to be true, there would have had to have been just such an event.

When a nuclear device goes critical, before it explodes, a Source Region Electromagnetic Pulse [SREMP] is emitted. The resultant overload of electrical grids and circuits in the region of the device is one of its telltale signatures, along with the nature of the blast damage and the horrific flash and radiation burns inflicted on victims. The following excerpts are from sources that describe the electromagnetic effects of a nuclear weapon.

• "The pulse travels through all mediums at the speed of light."

• "Enormous induced electric currents are generated in wires, antennas and metal objects....Commercial electrical grids are immense EMP antennas and would be subjected to voltage surges far exceeding those generated by lightning, and over vastly greater areas."

The fact that Captain Cocks' account of the power failure in Kuta Beach seconds before the megablast outside the Sari Club appeared on the front page of the Australian Army Newspaper and on the Australian Army web site, was not what someone in Canberra wanted. It is reported that the Army was instructed to remove the article, with its description of an SREMP effect given by a credible Army officer, from the Army web site, on ministerial orders. Apparently, it was duly removed but reinstated on the countermanding order of a very senior officer. As of the time of researching this matter, August 2003, the account by Captain Cocks was still to be found on the official Australian Army web site, but it was by then in the archives area.

The following are eye witness reports and quotes culled from many published shortly after October 12, 2002.

• "The first blast sent hundreds of tourists and many local people rushing out of Paddy's onto the already crowded Legian street. Then the explosion outside the Sari went off with a much more powerful blast, shredding flesh and metal, hurling people and cars horizontally through the air."

• "I got about 30 meters down the street and then I heard one blast and I thought, 'What was that?'

  Then the power cut...all the power went out. I didn't think bomb. I didn't think anything at that stage.

  And then, probably, I'd say two seconds later, there was just the huge flash, and I was just covered in glass, put on the ground, and it just started...it was like hell on earth."

• "The sound seemed to get louder and quieter and it was all over the place. When I looked up to the sky. I found it to be a bright red ball with pure white smoke rising from it in mushroom form."

• "It was AC/DC times 100. Then there was an unbelievable silence."

• "I saw heaps of people burning and dying around me. It was an inferno. I saw one guy whose leg had been blown open - he couldn't walk - he was just lying there screaming. I saw another man with severe facial burns "

• "It's the faces of the people you made eye contact with I'll never forget. For the ones you just passed on it's okay, but the ones you looked in their eyes, I can't get them out of my head, the blood down the faces, their fear."

• "One woman had lost the whole bottom half of her body. A Balinese man was crawling up the lane. He had no feet. We took six people into the hotel where we could help them. We did everything we could for them. But how they suffered."

• "Many of the wounds, especially burns were extreme. Injuries included fractures, head and chest injuries, respiratory problems, but overwhelmingly burns."

• "Brave men were pulling out corpses at a rate of one every two minutes. All were charred beyond recognition, locked in poses which showed the agony of their dying. One was welded in a sitting position to what remained of a steel chair frame."

Again I'll say it. None of these eye-witness accounts fit with the official truth that the main blast was caused by a crude detergent bomb assembled by an Islamic motorcycle mechanic with a grudge against Westerners. However, the nature of the terrible flash burns, the blast damage on reinforced concrete structures, and the power outage just split-seconds before the main bomb exploded, do fit the hypothesis that a micro-nuclear device was concealed in a drain beneath Legian street.

The antics of the Indonesian authorities in rapidly 'cleansing' the main blast site of tons of earth and rubble, and of demolishing reinforced concrete structures and also disposing of that material far out to sea, similarly point to the liklihood that the main device was nuclear.

Whether there is any chance of detecting radioactivity due to the detonation of a micro-nuke at Bali is problematic. Modern 'suitcase-bombs' are not nearly as dirty as the original atomic weapons of 1945. There is speculation on the Internet, and that is about all it is, as to whether the device could have lacked a 'nuclear reflector' made of Uranium 238. It is said that since the later devices, known to have been developed by the US and Israel, only use 99.7 per cent pure Plutonium, the radiation traces will be undetectable to normal Geiger-counters. This is because those instruments detect Gamma particles and these would not be present if the device used pure Plutonium 239. However, this argument ignores the fact that the observed power outage indicates that an SREMP effect occurred, and this is generated by Gamma rays.

So it seems that if the main blast was caused by a micro-nuke, that device emitted Gamma rays and would also have left radioactive Gamma particles that could be detected by a Geiger-counter. However, the location of the bomb site close to a beach, in a monsoonal zone where it rains frequently, would soon result in most radioactive traces from a small device being washed out to sea. Given the excavation and demolition that went on, and the dumping of that material in the ocean, it is unlikely that there is significant radiation left at Kuta Beach. It should, by now, be quite safe to visit the area.

Victims of the Bali megablast, and members of the Australian Federal Police (AFP) who formed the joint Indonesian-Australian investigation team, might have been exposed to harmful radiation. A number of burns victims who were repatriated to Australia are said to have died mysteriously, from inidentified causes not having anything to do with their burns. The AFP members worked in the blast area which would have presented dangers from airborne particles for up to 300 hours after the blast. Indonesian police wore protective gloves and face masks but the AFP personnel can be seen in photographs without such protection. It seems that they later wore proper protective clothing, as evidenced by the following excerpt from a report by Robert S. Finnegan in the Jakarta Post.

• "So are members of the Australian investigative team now prepared to say exactly which explosives were used to make the Bali bomb? Well, no, they have now fallen atypically silent, apart from making irrelevant and inane remarks about the bombers having 'amazing chemical skills' and 'the ability to build very sophisticated weapons.' And for the first time in many weeks, these same investigators have suddenly decided to wear full-length protective clothing, including face masks and airtight hoods."

For the information of victims or AFP members who might have been exposed to radioactivity, here are some excerpts from the National Terror Resource Center (NTARC) website:

• Symptoms

  "People in the immediate vicinity of a suitcase nuke or suitcase bomb detonation would likely die from the force of the conventional explosion itself. Some survivors of the blast might die of radiation poisoning in the weeks afterward. Those further away from the explosion might suffer radiation sickness in the days and weeks afterward, but recover. Over time, risks of cancer in the affected area would rise, but perhaps only slightly.

  A mix of physical symptoms must be used to judge the seriousness of exposure. Impact of radiation poisoning also changes if the body has experienced burns or physical trauma. In the case of treatable victims, extensive medical treatment [for radiation effects] may be needed for more than two months after exposure.

  Some symptoms may include vomiting, headache, fatigue, weakness, diarrhoea, thermal burn-like skin effects, secondary infections, recurring bleeding and hair loss."

• Treatment

  "If detection and decontamination occurs soon after exposure, about 95 percent of external radioactive material can be removed by taking off the victim's clothing and shoes and washing with water. Further decontamination may require the use of bleaches of other mild abrasives.

  Treatment of a victim within the first six weeks to two months after exposure is vital and is determined by what types of radioactive isotopes the victim was exposed to.

  Medical personnel will treat victims for hemorrhage and shock. Open wounds are usually irrigated to cleanse them of any radioactive traces. Amputation of limbs may occur if a wound is highly contaminated and functional recovery isn't likely.

  If radioactive material is ingested, treatment is given to reduce absorption and enhance excretion and elimination. It includes stomach pumping or giving the victim laxatives or aluminium antacids, among other things.

  If radioactive material has gotten into a victim's internal organs and tissues, treatment includes giving the patient various blocking and diluting agents, such as potassium iodide, to decrease absorption. Mobilising agents such as ammonium chloride, diuretics, expectorants and inhalants are given to a patient to force the tissues to release the harmful isotopes. Other treatments involve chelating agents. When ingested, these agents bind with some metals more strongly than others to form a stable complex that, when soluble, are more easily excreted through the kidneys."

It should be noted that since US authorities continue to deny the harmful effects of depleted uranium munitions, which contain the same Uranium 238 that is associated with the production of Gamma rays and the SREMP effect power outage that appears to have been present in Bali, there is no mention of those dangers in the above information. Besides the increased risk of cancers the main danger of exposure to Uranium 238 residues is the likelihood of birth defects in children conceived following the exposure. The latter is officially denied, but if you download the 2nd Renaissance freesite and browse the section on Afghanistan, you will see what I am warning of.

If, as seems very probable, a micro-nuke was detonated in a drain near the Sari Club there is a pressing question about who was responsible. As Amien Rais and A. M. Fatwa argued in the Indonesian National Assembly, it is most unlikely that Amrozi could have been behind it. If it really was a terrorist attack, these were far more sophisticated and well connected operators than Amrozi or any of his associates could possibly be. If, on the other hand, the Bali bombing was a false flag operation, designed to benefit one or more governments, the suspects must be found among those nations that have nuclear armaments.

The nation states that are declared nuclear powers are the United States, China, the United Kingdom, Russia, France, India, and Pakistan. Those known to possess nuclear capability and some weapons include Israel, South Africa, and North Korea. Australia is not publicly said to have any nuclear capability, but it has enrichment facilities capable of producing weapons grade uranium and plutonium.

There are a number of sites on the WWW that lay the blame on Israel. They claim, among other things, that the Israeli nuclear production plant, at Dimora in the Negev desert, is the only facility capable of making 99.8 per cent pure Plutonium. And they argue that the inability of Geiger-counters to detect radioactivity at the Bali bomb site indicates that the device used this grade of Plutonium, which only generates Alpha radiation that is undetectable by meters built to trace Gamma particles. But, as mentioned earlier, the observed power outage suggests that an SREMP effect occurred, and this implies that Gamma radiation was emitted. Gamma radiation implies a device that used a Uranium 238 reflector. Both Russia and the US are known to have micro-nukes of this type, and South Africa also produced some during the apartheid era, with the help of the US and Israel. Personally, I find the argument, that Israel might have been so concerned to bring Australia into the War on Terror that it would assassinate so many young Australians on holiday in Bali, quite unconvincing.

Firstly, the history of collusion between the US, the Indonesian Generals, and the Canberra Feds, to secure and plunder the resources of Asia, under the guise of fighting Communism and of bringing the benefits of globalisation to the region, makes them prime suspects. Secondly, the War on Terror is wider than the Middle East conflict. Hardening public opinion in Australia against terrorists would have had global aims and objectives, only the first of which was to 'liberate' the Arab countries. While that cause might be seen to be in Israel's interests, that nation has no record of interference in Asian economics and politics. On the other hand the US and Australia have been dealing with the Generals in Indonesia for decades. The long term aim would seem to have been to bring Australia into an ongoing series of confined wars and 'regime changes' within Asia, in the name of a War on Terror.

There will be those who retort that this idea is as much a 'conspiracy theory' as is that about Zionists bombing Bali. Not so! What I am describing is simply history repeating itself. The 2nd Renaissance freesite expounds this further, but in essence, the old economic and political order is now staging a rearguard action against a social transformation due to new information technologies. This was exactly the response of the Old Order of Dark Ages Europe when it was confronted with the moveable-type printing press. There are direct parallels between the War on Terror and the earlier War on Witches. Both serve to remove freedoms and enhance control so that an old order can continue for a little longer. What I am propounding is observed history, not a conspiracy theory.

But why don't I think the Bali bomb was a micro-nuke obtained by al-Qaeda, from some 80 such items unaccounted for by Russia, and provided to Jemaah Islamiah to strike at Australians in the same manner that 911 struck at Americans? Because I have yet to see, after 3 years, any clear and verifiable evidence that it was Islamic terrorists who were responsible for the 911 attack in New York that murdered more than three thousand innocent people. Not a single terrorist has been caught and nailed with a conviction in respect of that attack. Instead, the US has been turned from the preeminent example of free-choice and liberty on this planet to a police state in which shadowy federal agencies are no longer accountable to the people, and where the option of torture as a means of gaining admissible evidence for court proceedings is being seriously considered. It is the Dark Ages crack-down on witches writ large, only this time they're called terrorists - and they, like the witches, probably don't exist.

These days, few people seriously believe in witches, but many seem to believe that a few terrorists could take over several airliners, using box-cutters to subdue hundreds of other passengers, avoiding the US Air Force, executing precise high-G manoeuvres without aerobatic training, and causing the complete collapse of the World Trade Center towers without damaging surrounding structures. Well I don't. And I hope that, in due course the American people will see the impossibility of the official truth about 911 and the Bin Laden myth.

A Google search finds around 9,670,000 instances of "Bin Laden" but we are asked to believe that the US and its Coalition of the Willing partners are unable to find any trace of him, except for poor quality (and unverifiable) video tapes which pop up before elections, and other timely events. I feel sure that in due course the people of America will come to see the absurdity of the lies that underpin the War on Terror, and decide on some 'regime change' a lot closer to home than Afghanistan and Iraq.

Divorcing The Feds
Whether a micro-nuke was detonated at Bali, and whether it was a false flag operation or a genuine terrorist attack remains speculative. However, there is no doubt whatsoever that the findings of the joint investigation by Indonesian and Australian police are completely implausible. Our government has lied to us in this matter. That is without doubt.

When your spouse lies to you and repeatedly acts to decieve you, then you can separate from them and gain a divorce. You are quite entitled to take such action because the marriage 'contract' has been broken. Without openness and honesty there can not be a viable marriage.

When your spouse hops into bed with a gent wearing a star-spangled shirt and red and white striped trousers, that's infidelity and - again - you are quite entitled to a divorce. The open-ended FTA that the Auzzie Feds have agreed with the US Feds is not about free trade, it's about globalisation. Globalisation of our minerals, our water, our forests, our radio spectrum, our brands, our hospitals, our ports, our tollways, everything we have. That star-spangled guy wants it all, in the name of free trade, and so he can continue to live in the style he's become accustomed to.

When the kids you lovingly raised to be wonderful young men and women are drawn into an endless War on Terror, by that same guy in the striped pants and your sleep-around spouse in Canberra, you need to get a divorce. Otherwise your kids will end up scrounging for vehicle armour in some god-forsaken rubbish tip on the edge of the next city or town to be 'liberated'. In the Middle East, in Asia, in Africa, in South America - anywhere and everywhere. Thousands of wonderful young Americans have already met this fate; fighting an enemy they can't see, to avenge a crime they can't verify, in a place that was quite habitable before they came, but is a radioactive wasteland now.

If your spouse turns into a serial killer you are entitled to a divorce. If our government turns into a bunch of gangsters and war criminals the same logic applies. We are entitled to divorce them, and we should.

Act Like The Ants
This divorce is not about attacking the Feds, it's about leaving them. There is no call for revolution, no need to overthrow anything. We just have to abandon the failed concept of the nation state, and go about building a better society for future generations.

Ordinary folk feel powerless in the face of the organised deception and exploitation that is being practised by an unholy alliance of central governments, corporations and media networks. Individually, ordinary people seem and feel so insignificant that their voice can be, and generally is, ignored. Individually, ordinary people lack financial and other resources to confront the legions of lawyers that the Feds and corporations can muster, and they correctly assess their chances in the adversarial and often corrupt 'justice' systems of their federation, as very slim indeed.

Collectively, however, ordinary citizens have two huge levers that they can use to not only make their views heard, but also make them prevail. These too-little-used levers are:

• Superior Numbers - that can far outweigh the power of governments and corporations to counter and control public opinion and individual resolve.

• Communal Communication Abilities - That enable ordinary people to carry on dialogue, share and refine ideas, and formulate common goals and strategies for achieving them.

Ants are individually puny opponents for small vertebrates and even humans yet, army ants, fire ants, and others, are fully capable of attacking and killing much larger prey, if they are hungry enough or angry enough. The strength of the ants lies in their superior numbers and their instinctive hive model of organisation.

The natural, some would say instinctive, organisation model for humans is the tribe. But there is no suggestion here of Aussie neo-tribes attacking or harming the less numerous members of big government and big business organisations that are structured along institutional and militarist lines. Any physical attack on the forces of the Old World Order (OWO) would not only violate the sixth commandment, it would fail to advance humanity or benefit society in any way. No, the conflict between the OWO and the rest of us is a battle of ideas and, as such, it holds great potential as a transformational force that will benefit all of humanity - even those people who are presently on the side of federalism, capitalism and a creeping totalitarian control of the many by a few.

If several dozen people decide to renounce their citizenship and cease to pay taxes or show allegiance to a federation, they will have a problem. Once several thousand people decide to take such action the ownership of the problem will start to shift towards the Feds and away from the secessionists. Should a few million families elect to abandon the old federal system and form one or more free cities, there will be very little that governments can do about it, at least in the sense of physical coercion and application of legal provisions and the rule of law. There will just be too many secessionists, as there can often be too many ants facing much larger and seemingly more powerful opponents.

Know The Main Target - Federalism !
The Internet is a huge source of information and ideas. There are a myriad of causes and crusades on the WWW. Just about everything we need to design a new society is there already, but it is not sufficiently organised or focussed.

The two major problems with the present publishing of information and theories on the Internet are to be found in the lack of cohesive models that 'join the dots' between disparate areas of research and knowledge; and in a failure to focus the aim of all the dissent on a single correct target. The first source of weakness is the internalised nature of most of the web sites and discussion groups. There are lots of specialists who are working 'down in the weeds' of their subject areas, but there are very few authors and commentators providing integration and overviews of the material.

The second source of weakness is due to a general failure to challenge the status quo. As the prize-winning author Daniel Quinn correctly notes, most people continue to believe that the way we live now is the way we were meant to live. Thus the various activists and cybertribes continue to focus on stopping the decline of society and the slide into a globalised market dominated by a relatively few unethical, uncaring, corporations.

Nearly all the dissent and criticism on the Internet is aimed at entities that are perceived to be breaking down the way we live now and building a 'New World Order' in which they have unchallenged control and power. However, as the world enters an age of magical new spike technologies and abundance, the single correct target of informed dissent is BIG GOVERNMENTS. Particularly centralised federal governments.

Without the biased, often corrupt and unethical, support of big governments, big business will become powerless and non-viable.

Without big government and its centralised legal systems and military forces, the shadowy 'string pullers' who presently manipulate world events will have no convenient leverage points. Their hidden power will vanish, and they will be unable to exert any real influence over a myriad of neo-tribes and free cities.

The goal of community dialogue, on the Internet and face-to-face in parks and coffee shops, must be a raised awareness of the need to abandon the way we live now, and the institutions that control how we live now.

Lothar,
December, 2004

One Million Australians For Schapelle