so great in some areas that bodies choked small rivers and streams and created sanitation problems.
After the purge, graduate students from Bandung and Djakarta were assigned the task of tallying the kill. They estimated in a report never officially released that the toll was a million.   Most sources.place it between 3-500, 000.  Another 120, 000 to 250, 000 were imprisoned and are still being used as labor forces.
After completing its roles in the massive blood-letting and the politically more important task of helping organize demonstrations to bring on the downfall of Sukarno, the "dynamo for the new order" was all set it apply its engineering skills in behalf of American corporations.
Indonesia is rich in barely-tapped resources, including copper, nickel, bauxite and lumber.   The corporations were in Indonesia to extract them practically before the stench from decaying human bodies had subsided. The biggest attraction is oil.   And the petroleum engineering students from Bandung are landing lucrative jobs.
But as is usually the case, the buck isn't passed very far when it's real money.   The generals running the country and the Kentucky-educated managerial engineers are doing fine, but the masses are just as bad off now if not worse than before.   And all the while the corporations are depleting the country's resources and keeping it in a state of arrested development in order to keep themselves indispensable.   The standard imperialism thing, you know.
Meanwhile, a Ford-funded program at Harvard, the Development Advisory Service, has come up with a plan to keep the farm peasants occupied.
"Ramparts" describes the program's application: "The agricultural plan is being implemented by the central government's agricultural extension service, whose top men were trained by a University of Kentucky program at the Bogor Agricultural Institute.   In effect, the agricultural agents have been given a monopoly in the sale of seed and the buying of rice, which puts them in a natural alliance with the local military commanders --who often control the rice transport business -- and the
local santri landlords whose higher returns are being used to quickly expand their holdings.   The peasants find themselves on the short end of the »tick, but if they raise a ruckus they are sabotaging a national program and must be PKI agents, and the soldiers are called in. "
So the UK-trained agriculturalists aren't doing bad at Bogor, either.
It is indisputable that most of the people connected with the UK projects in Bandung and Bogor had no conception of the real purposes behind their work.   They were people who took interest in their students and formed genuine friendships while they were in Indonesia. They thought they were doing something to help the people there.   They were used cynically by AID.
What all this means is that any university truly seeking to be an independent force in our society, as the ideal of a university demands, should reject out-of-hand any involvement with foreign-related or "defense"-re-lated agencies, private or governmental.   It should be clear by now that virtually any project or study, no matter how innocent-appearing on the surface, can be and is used for brazenly political and narrow interests, such as the manipulation of the Thai and Indonesian people and their societies.
UK officials lately have been joining their colleagues from universities across the country in warning of the dangers to their institutions posed by radicals who would "politicize" them.   Are they also concerned about the "politicizing" significance of 15 years' of helping to install or perpetuate reactionary and authoritarian governments and of serving as accessories to international exploitation ?
If the University of Kentucky has any genuine sense of moral outrage, it will immediately terminate its contract in Thailand (It's too late now to do anything about Indonesia) and deliver a few choice words to AID about its deceit.
If it has any integrity, it will at least terminate the contract.
Mason
this year, he was told his teaching ability and research could not be faulted -- just his "attitude toward research. " He specifically asked if his conviction had anything to do with it.   The answer was "no. " However, before his case went to the Grand Jury, Mason had had a talk with UK President Otis Singletary.   Single-tary said he had been under pressure to relieve Mason since his arrest but
had avoided doing so by saying Mason was merely accused and not convicted.   He added, Mason says, that he didn't see how he could resist the pressure if Mason were convicted.
Mason has undergone personal and political changes as a result of his experiences.   This is reflected in his new hair length and his clothes, but more particularly, in the deeper sense of despair in his manner.
"I think that for one thing, " he says, "going through that kind of scene, you move from a position of rejection to resistance.   I don't really feel as efficacious as I once did about working
inside the political structure to change it.   You tend to get co-opted and corrupted.   I think both things happened to me.   It's easy to say things not as strongly while you're a candidate as you would otherwise.   You're co-opted not by evil people, but by the process.'
And that's the story of a man who, by example, inadvertently proved the corruptness of a political system the liberals and others are so fond of telling us we have to work through. Gene Mason tried, and all he has to show for his efforts are a one-year prison sentence, a big debt and a lost job.   The people that set him up may think they've finished Gene Mason in Lexington.   They shouldn't be so sure; he's still trying and he's got lots of friends -- not more influential friends, just the plain kind.
GENE MASON DEFENSE FUND
As a result of his trial, Gene Mason still owes about $4, 000.   If you can help, please do so.   Send contributions to:
Gene Mason Defense Fund 458 West Third Street Lexington, Ky. 40508
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