Wanker Of The Day

It's a toss-up of tossers: who can fawn over the dead dictator best? Murdoch's Greg Sheridan and the Australian government's former front man, Richard Woolcott, go head-to-head.

For more informed discussion, see Prof. Quiggin and especially John Pilger:

In 1993, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Australian Parliament reported that "at least 200,000" had died under Indonesia's occupation: almost a third of the population. And yet East Timor's horror, which was foretold and nurtured by the U.S., Britain, and Australia, was actually a sequel. "No single American action in the period after 1945," wrote the historian Gabriel Kolko, "was as bloodthirsty as its role in Indonesia, for it tried to initiate the massacre." He was referring to Suharto's seizure of power in 1965-1966, which caused the violent deaths of up to a million people.

To understand the significance of Suharto, who died on Sunday, is to look beneath the surface of the current world order: the so-called global economy and the ruthless cynicism of those who run it...

ICH hosts Pilger's video, Death Of A Nation. Sometimes you wonder why people like Pilger have not been killed, and then you realise the mistake that dictators like Suharto tend to make: overstretch has a killer backlash effect.

Would the Bali bombings have happened if Australia had not supported Suharto and Bush?