WESTERN TERROR
From Potosi to Baghdad
Andre Vltchek
PT. Badak Merah Semesta
Contents
WESTERN TERROR
FROM POTOSI TO BAGHDAD
Copyright 2020 by Andre Vltchek
All rights reserved
Photos: Andre Vltchek
Cover Design by: Rossie Indira
Cover Photo by: Andre Vltchek
Layout by: Rossie Indira
First published in 2006
First published by PT. Badak Merah Semesta in 2016
Published by PT. Badak Merah Semesta
http://badak-merah.weebly.com
email: badak.merah.press@gmail.com
BOOKS BY ANDRE VLTCHEK
Non-fiction:
New Capital of Indonesia: Abandoning Destitute Jakarta, Moving to Plundered Borneo
Chinas Belt and Road Initiative: Connecting Countries Saving Millions of Lives
China and Ecological Civilization with John B. Cobb, Jr.
Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism
The Great October Socialist Revolution: Impact on the World and the Birth of Internationalism
Exposing Lies of the Empire
Fighting Against Western Imperialism
On Western Terrorism: From Hiroshima to Drone Warfare (with Noam Chomsky)
The World Order and Revolution! - Essays from the resistance (with Christopher Black & Peter Koenig)
Western Terror: From Potosi to Baghdad
Indonesia: Archipelago of Fear
Exile (with Pramoedya Ananta Toer & Rossie Indira)
Oceania Neocolonialism, Nukes & Bones
Fiction:
Aurora
Point of No Return
Nalezeny
Plays: Ghosts of Valparaiso and Conversations with James
PREFACE
S ince I was a very young man, I have been traveling all over the world, living in different countries, learning new languages, searching for good stories; political and personal. As time passed I was able to shed all racial and cultural preferences, accepting the world as it is rich and exciting in its diversity.
My work as a journalist and war correspondent took me to some far away (from the Western perspective) places: from East Timor and Papua to the Peruvian Andes, from Sri Lanka and Gujarat to Chiapas, from the frozen plains of Siberia to the hot, burning metal shacks of the Soweto Township near Johannesburg. I wrote fiction and poetry, but I also worked for some media giants like Asahi Shimbun in Tokyo, MFD in Prague, ABC News in the United States, even Hurriyet in Istanbul. And I also wrote for emerging publications in the Czech Republic, Peru, Indonesia, Nepal and many other places.
What I learned at fairly young age was that almost no major media wanted me to cover the real world; its complexity, its problems that go back to the period of colonialism. Nobody allowed me to write about the almost total Western economic, political and cultural control over the world. I tried to resist, to file good and honest stories from controversial places. Most of them were outright rejected or trimmed beyond recognition.
Colonia Dignidad never again!, I was told by the US based editor of the influential German magazine Der Stern, after offering him complete new evidence on brutality of a German Nazi camp in Southern Chile. All my stories about the insane Indonesian militarys genocidal actions in Ermera and other regions of East Timor were never even considered Suharto and his generals were western allies, benevolent authoritarian figures, our good lackeys.
Technology had been changing; from slowly crawling faxes to mobile phones, followed by satellite phones and digital cameras. Transmission of information and images became fast and reliable, but messages were increasingly shallow, unchallenging, lacking historical, cultural and philosophical insights. Despite the speed of transmission, people all over the world were being put on unappetizing diet of half-truths and shallow simplifications, often of outright lies. Consumers of the mainstream news channels and newspapers worldwide all fed from similar sources - were becoming increasingly indifferent, and almost phlegmatic.
Hunger, war and despair were no more shocking anybody. To worry about billions of people all over the world living in a gutter would gain one a label of extremist, radical, basically an outcast.
The plunder continued. Center of power of world order with its seeds in past centuries of colonial plunder moved to nontransparent boardrooms of multi-national companies. Elected governments were now serving business interests much more than interests of those who voted for them. Elections were becoming increasingly irrelevant as the mass media owned by the new masters of the universe decided which ideas and which political parties to promote. Fabled balance of power in the United States collapsed like a house of cards: one additional, unelected and unbalanced power big business - was now able to keep in check entire system painstakingly designed by the Founding Fathers.
The United Nations collapsed as well, becoming not much more than just another humiliated and powerless museum piece of some of the greatest aspirations of humanity. Its rebuffs of neo-colonial states were met by financial blackmail and threats to make it irrelevant something that already happened many years earlier. Considering that the United Nations is nothing else than an organization representing almost all nations of the world, what was actually made irrelevant was a will of the great majority of the countries on this planet.
I saw it all from both sides: from the rich North America, Japan, Singapore and Europe but also from desperate Honduras and Nicaragua, Swaziland and Bangladesh, Papua and East Timor.
I often fantasized about what would happen if our planet would be visited by a spaceship from other galaxy inhabited by much more developed and intelligent creatures that are truly cherishing equality and compassion, dignity as well as justice for all. What if they would circle the earth and listen to the speeches of our politicians and corporate heads, while watching through giant telescopes real life on the surface of our planet? My conclusion was that they would puke.
I myself could stomach it anymore. I left the mainstream, began writing books and articles for alternative media, and launched my own web-based magazine WCN (www.worldconfrontationnow.com). I put together good team of international journalists from every corner of the world, but soon realized that globalization served only those who were really big, not enthusiastic writers and reporters like me. While I was in some ways globalized as well (living all over the world, refusing to belong anywhere), I had been shown that I misunderstood the rules of the game: globalization was for the companies, it was for goods and services, for business - not for the members of the opposition. WCN with no geographical base, with no permanent mailing address and no bank willing to allow it to process credit card subscriptions eventually went to hibernation.
I became senior fellow at the Oakland Institute (www.oaklandinstitute.org), progressive political think-tank. Few months later I received an email from two great writers of Tony Christini and Mike Palecek, inviting me to become a cofounder of the new publishing house, which would promote political fiction. Few months later, Mainstay Press (www.mainstaypress.org) was born.
