AP: Indonesians Demand U.S. Pullout From Iraq

[Hissyspit]

http://my.earthlink.net/article/int?guid=20060304/440a7050_3ca6_1552620060305325706035

Indonesians Demand U.S. Pullout From Iraq
From Associated Press
March 05, 2006 12:17 AM EST

JAKARTA, Indonesia - Several thousand Muslims demonstrated in front of the U.S. Embassy in Indonesia's capital Sunday to protest the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hizbut Tahrir, the group organizing the rally, had predicted tens of thousands would attend, but the crowd appeared to number about 5,000, roughly half of them women and children.

About 2,000 policemen kept the protesters away from the embassy compound, which is ringed by two concrete walls and barbed wire. The mission's main office block is set about 100 yards away from the outer wall, behind a courtyard and parking lot.

"U.S.A. out of Iraq," chanted the demonstrators. They also carried placards condemning Israel and a U.S. mining company - New Orleans-based Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. - which is accused of causing an environmental disaster at its Grasberg mine in Papua province.

"This is an example of real colonialism, there is no other reason for them to be (in Iraq)," Muhammad Ismail Yusanto, one of the organizers, told the gathering. He demanded that the West "stop the propaganda campaign against Islam in the guise of the war on terrorism."

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[Igel]

1. And it's rather a pity that they

reserve the most important bit of info, on Hizb ut-Tahrir, for the end; too bad they couldn't have been more ... shall we say, informative? The way they put it makes it sound so inoffensive.

[IndianaGreen]

2. They also protested the Grasberg mine, world's largest copper

operation. I found this info thru google:

Below a Mountain of Wealth, a River of Waste
By Jane Perlez and Raymond Bonner
The New York Times
Tuesday December 27, 2005

JAKARTA, Indonesia - The closest most people will ever get to remote Papua, or the operations of Freeport-McMoRan, is a computer tour using Google Earth to swoop down over the rain forests and glacier-capped mountains where the American company mines the world's largest gold reserve.

With a few taps on a keyboard, satellite images quickly reveal the deepening spiral that Freeport has bored out of its Grasberg mine as it pursues a virtually bottomless store of gold hidden inside. They also show a spreading soot-colored bruise of almost a billion tons of mine waste that the New Orleans-based company has dumped directly into a jungle river of what had been one of the world's last untouched landscapes.

What is far harder to discern is the intricate web of political and military ties that have helped shield Freeport from the rising pressures that other gold miners have faced to clean up their practices. Only lightly touched by a scant regulatory regime, and cloaked in the protection of the military, Freeport has managed to maintain a nearly impenetrable redoubt on the easternmost Indonesian province as it taps one of the country's richest assets.

Months of investigation by The New York Times revealed a level of contacts and financial support to the military not fully disclosed by Freeport, despite years of requests by shareholders concerned about potential violations of American laws and the company's relations with a military whose human rights record is so blighted that the United States severed ties for a dozen years until November.

Company records obtained by The Times show that from 1998 through 2004, Freeport gave military and police generals, colonels, majors and captains, and military units, nearly $20 million. Individual commanders received tens of thousands of dollars, in one case up to $150,000, according to the documents. They were provided by an individual close to Freeport and confirmed as authentic by current and former employees.

http://safecom.org.au/freeport.htm

[flordehinojos]

3. does this following quote ...

..."the group organizing the rally, had predicted tens of thousands would attend, but the crowd appeared to number about 5,000, roughly half of them women and children."

make the protest any less serious? the AP writer seems to imply that.

[IndianaGreen]

4. American reporters are notorious for downplaying numbers

whether we speak of anti-Bush protests overseas, antiwar protests at home, or number of civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[flordehinojos]

7. i wonder if protesting the news organization which DOWNPLAYS THE BUSH

protests, or which downplays any of the bushes and their evil would net us all into jail, or into free speech zones (since we would not be protesting bush directly)?

these bushes all are :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: material of the worst kind!

[Hissyspit]

5. READ the whole article. There is all kinds of downplaying

in it.

[flordehinojos]

6. IF WE COULD ALL GET TOGETHER AND PROTEST THE AP...

wonder if they would keep us IN free speech zones to protest the AP since we would not directly be protesting BUSH?