Richard Farmer’s political bite-sized meaty chunks
|
Grim news on the housing front. There is no joy at all in the figures out this morning from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showing the decline in housing approvals is getting even steeper. For the month of November the trend estimate for total dwelling units approved was 26.1% down on a year ago with the seasonally adjusted measure showing a 34.7% fallo.
The trend figures for the individual states and territories suggest that Queensland is how being hit hard by the economic down turn.
Don’t move from the centre of the beach. Another example of how electorally successful politicians put up their ice cream stall right slap, bang in the centre of the beach that I wrote about earlier in the week. President elect Barack Obama has invited evangelical pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration even though Warren supported California’s Proposition 8 prohibiting the gay marriages that had been created by the state’s supreme court. The gay lobby are outraged that their man has deserted their cause while the political operatives interested in winning elections see it as a master stroke by a President determined to continue holding the middle ground. What makes news? Goodness knows how many people died in the conflicts in Africa in the last week. There are very few journalists around to count the bodies but it’s a fair bet that it leaves the 600 or so casualties in Gaza well behind in the body count. Yet throughout the world the military action by Israel in Palestine is headlines in the papers and dominating the television and radio news bulletins while the Congo and Darfur get nary a mention. I really don’t understand why it is so. In the Darfur conflict this century alone the estimate is of 400,000 deaths. And that pales in to insignificance compared with perhaps 1.8 million killed in the Congo. Yet there is no sense of outrage at these slaughters while Israel gets condemned as if it is some kind of mass murdering regime. Why, too, is there no general outrage at the barbaric deliberate slaughter of innocent civilians by Muslim suicide bombers comparable to that which is accompanying the peripheral killing of innocent civilians as the Israelis attempt to persuade Hamas to stop lobbing rockets on to the homes of ordinary Israelis? I find it hard to believe other than that anti Semitism is alive and well. Proof of the danger of chat shows. The Romanian Prime Minister Emil Boc can vouch for the fact that those light weight television chat shows are dangerous places for politicians. Watch him stride on to the transparent plastic stage to greet the host and another female guest on his nation’s Antena TV.
The incident itself happened several years ago but that evil YouTube has resurrected it and turned it into a video hit since Mr Boc became Prime Minister recently. It is reported that Opposition MPs pretend to fall over whenever he enters a room and others rub their rear ends in mock pain when he talks. In South Africa the MP Nhlanhla Nene has similarly become a YouTube star after going “a over t” when the chair he was sitting on for a serious interview collapsed under him.
|
|
|
|
11 Comments
Gee, a radical shift for Crikey toward reason!
A left of centre journo like Richard Farmer points out the bleedin’ obvious with respect to this conflict in Gaza even though its hidden within an odd perspective (with which I also concur) and couched under a sub-heading: “What makes news?”
Probably why Jonathan (I’m a rather crimson red shade of) Green removed Richard’ much loved Daily Media Wrap as punishment for his rational & ‘wide awake all senses open’ tendencies…….
Farmer’s comments on Gaza are in no way rational. What a ridiculous comment to make that because many people are being killed in Sudan and the Congo people should not talk about the hundreds of innocent people being killed in Gaza (a comment, that Farmer only chose to make, ironically, when he wanted to defend Israel, showing he is equally guilty of ignoring the thousands of African deaths - at east until it suits him). It is not anti-Semitism to want to talk about, be informed about, or even be critical of the Isreali government’s bombardment of, and attacks, on Gaza.
The fact that Farmer wants to be critical of even the fact that the attacks are being prominently reported is not something I would equate with a “reasoned” approach. The fact that he also wants to buy the Israeli government’s explanation of “stopping the rockets” as being the motivation for their attacks despite the vast wealth of evidence to the contrary also strikes me as a shift away “reason” rather than towards it.
The old anti-semitism chestnut. Must be very handy indeed to simply dismiss any critism of Israel’s actions with the catch all accusation. Further discussion is not required. Bit of a shame for the Palestinians who are dying in the hundreds.
Israel states that Hamas is a mortal enemy who seeks the destruction of Israel.
If someone encourages Palestians to join Hamas, surely they are anti-semitic.
Hamas will surely attract more recruits directly due to the latest Israel military actions.
Ergo - The Israel govermnet and the public that support them are anti-semitic.
As the Bush administration was for Al Queda, Israel is the most effective recruiter for Hamas.
Like many people over the last several years I have agonised over the conflicts in Darfur and Congo and wondered why more attention has not been paid while other, comparatively trivial stories have received plenty of airplay. To imply that interest and upset over the situation in Gaza must therefore be evidence of anti-Senitism partly explains why it is an accusation without much punch these days. It is simply over-played. And this accusation from a columnist whose following items are of politicians taking prat-falls on YouTube. Own goal, Richard!
If you are not for Israel, then you must be anti-Semitic.
When Israel kill civilians in the hundreds, with high precision weapons made in the USA, it is always an accident, a “peripheral” event. When suicide bombers kill themselves and a few civilians, it is a massacre.
We don’t hear much about Darfur because media like Crikey hardly report events from there.
Yep. Lots more people will die in the DRC than in Gaza this week. One problem with this comparison, though, is that every death demands a response, and that responses need to be tailored to context.
I write from Eastern Congo. I don’t have a magic solution to this conflict, but I can say with the rest of the humanitarian community that to stop the deaths here will require a co-ordinated and expensive effort by a host of actors.
Note, though, the greatest abuses – and the largest numbers of deaths - here come not from the battles being fought, but from the effects of war. Cholera season is upon us now, its effects magnified by displacement and lack of humanitarian access. Poverty is endemic, resulting not only in hunger and in attendant physical weakness but in coping strategies that include underage prostitution, the sale of children to fighting groups, and yet more violence.
Israel and Gaza, is a hugely complicated situation of course. But Israel has a functional government that has chosen to protect Palestinian civilians in the past and that is choosing not to do so now. To wave away that choice is to tell the Congolese government and others that if they want to use any force possible to slay their enemies then there are no rules.
When I go to the heads of the Congolese armed forces here and ask them not to let their men kill civilians, what can I say when they say that the Israelis, supported by my government, are doing the same thing, and that we do nothing?
Humanitarian Law, the rules of war, were written to protect civilians and others from the ravages of war. HL doesn’t pretend that conflict doesn’t exist; it seeks to mitigate its effects. To wave away the actions of a government like Israel damages those principles, sometimes the only thing we have to wave between civilians and death.
Yes, I hold democratic states to higher standards. Israel is capable of more. Let’s ask it of them.
So, a guy walks into a bar and he sees an odd scene playing out. A little guy runs up and punches a big guy in the back and then runs away. He does this over and over. Eventually the big guy gets sick of the punches and turns around and lays into the little guy. A flurry of punches and kicks. Some of them hit the peopel standing nearby. Collateral damage. The little guy deserved it. After all, he started it.
Now Richard, my question for you is this: If I think the big guy should not have been so ruthless and reckless in his retailliation, and I speak out about this, am I:
a) expressing a valid concern about the welfare of those not directly contributing to the fight;
b) showing awareness of the fact that in this particular conflict, neither party has a valid claim to the title of ‘innocient victim’; or
c) anti-semitic
Richard Farmer cites Harold Hotelling to explain why successful politicians adopt centrist positions, using an analogy of ice cream sellers on the beach. However he should read Anthony Downs’ An Economic Theory of Democracy which develops Hotelling’s work and explains why this is generally not the case. Firstly, the actual behaviour of politicians is influenced by the distribution of constituents across the policy dimension ie the spread of customers along the beach. There is not much point being in the middle if most people are up one end, as they are on many issues. And secondly, even if people are equally spread out, there is an incentive not to stray too far from the end point. An ice cream seller in the middle would soon lose most of its customers if competitors set up stalls a few meters on either side. This is why most centre parties in liberal democracies have, and always will be, minor parties.
“Why, too, is there no general outrage at the barbaric deliberate slaughter of innocent civilians by Muslim suicide bombers comparable to that which is accompanying the peripheral killing of innocent civilians as the Israelis attempt to persuade Hamas to stop lobbing rockets on to the homes of ordinary Israelis? I find it hard to believe other than that anti Semitism is alive and well.”
Maybe it’s because Israel is killing over a hundred Palestinians for every casualty of their own? Maybe because for every innocent Israeli child murdered Israel murders a hundred Palestinian children? Or is being able to do simple mathematics anti-semitic these days?
It’s pathetic how apologists for mass murder try to hide behind name calling, and it’s sad to see Richard Farmer join the line of people who attempt to justify the slaughter of innocents as ‘peripheral killing’.
Let’s be clear. Hamas are a pack of primative barbarians who have murdered a tiny proportion of the people Israel have. However those murders cannot be used to justify Israel’s vastly greater crimes.
As to why people are so focussed on Israel, it is in fact the opposite of anti-Semitism. It’s because “They’re one of us”, and so we expect better - especially since we in the West foot a large part of the bill.
Let us be absolutely clear. The United States Government wishes no harm upon the Apaches, Sioux or Shawnee, yet no nation on Earth would tolerate vandalism of it’s infrastructure or terrorist attacks upon it’s civilians. Unfortunately for the Indian tribes, some warriors hide among the civilian population, making horrible accidents such as Sand Creek inevitable.
There is no doubt the conflicts in Africa should always attract more attention than they do, but it is misleading of you to make a comparison between those conflicts and one in which a military power supplied by a vast arsenal of the best weapons the US can supply attacks from all sides 1.5 million people it has trapped without food and water in pitiful conditions in an open prison. That - along with bombing and shelling hospitals, ambulances, schools, universities, police stations , ministries, mosques and countless houses - is a war crime. Criticism of Israel’s savagery in support of a land grab is not anti-semitic, and you are simply deploying for Israel the usual tactic of accusing critics of anti-semitism. Shame on you for being so false and shallow.