Bougainville has been poisoned and plundered. Its people endured a military blockade which prevented food, medical supplies, fuel, and arms from reaching the island, and which killed 10 percent of the island's population. Most of the casualties claimed by that blockade were not armed combatants, but women and children. The world never saw pictures of the starving children of Bougainville because the blockade blocked out journalists, as well.

The American and European Left complain endlessly about the Iraq embargo which, unlike the Bougainville blockade, allows the delivery of medicine and food. The Iraq embargo is premised on protecting the safety of the whole world, by reducing Saddam Hussein's capacity for construction of weapons of mass destruction. In contrast, the Bougainville blockade served mainly the interests of an oppressive clique. Yet while Kofi Annan bemoans the Iraq embargo, the U.N. was complicit in the Bougainville blockade