Hard to know where to start. This is the result, partly, of poor Australian foreign policy over a couple of decades, by governments of all parties. We had to lead the way out of it, because we had some responsibility for creating it by recognising Indonesia's conquest of East Timor, and then profiting from it through a deal over (guess what?) minerals. There has always been a strong voice of opposition in Australia to the official line.

On Timor, I think we have to recognise by now that we are witnessing a pattern of human behaviour that emerges anywhere under some kinds of circumstance. The people who are doing it are actually just like us, as well as the people it is being done to being just like us.

Even in Australia, and I imagine in American history, there have been massacres of native populations, by armed civilians operating with the tacit or active support of police and military. In Tasmania, which is an island State of Australia, the entire Aboriginal population was systematically hunted down and killed. That was in the last century, but the most recent Aboriginal massacre by police (Skull Creek, Western Australia), was les than thirty years ago. Currently they are searching for the grave of an Aboriginal freedom fighter from the last century, so that they can reunite the body with the head, which was removed by the authorities and sent to England where it was placed on display. All peoples at all times have been capable of barbarism.

Indonesia is a large and powerful nation that is economically, politically and socially very unstable. Dreadful as are the events on East Timor, further mishandling of the situation could cause a similar pattern of events involving much larger numbers of people in other areas.

The world is not really equipped to respond to outbreaks of genocidal violence, such as have occurred in Rwanda, Somalia, Kosovo, Sudan, Armenia. Northern Ireland, without massive military intervention, would probably have gone the same way. Some, such as south Africa, have managed to pull back from the brink.

While I believe we do have to intervene, with speed and sureness, we also have to think from scratch about the world, the nature of people, their distribution over its surface, the idea of 'nations', the distribution of wealth. Otherwise it will keep happening, it will be very nasty, and we won't be able to control it.

Sorry if that's a tad heavy for Mudcat, but you did ask!