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Friday, October 31, 2003
THE WORD IS Auntie's Media Watch is running its monocular over those cheeky Australian Jews who have been complaining about anti-Israel bias. There's little prospect that Media Watch will produce better than its usual travesty, but in the spirit of optimistic public citizenship Uncle contributes this small sample to the long list. First there's Liz Jackson's stitch-up reported in the blog below. Second there's this episode from the Sultana of the seriously-biassed, Linda Mottram, and correspondent Mark Willacy. Willacy's thesis is this: when Palestinian children tell him "The Jews, I feel afraid of them and I hate them because they are Jews," the responsibility lies entirely with Israel. He details a sad case to give the view credibility. When On many occasions, I've seen Palestinian children, some as young as four or five, throwing rocks at tanks, while others actually try to clamber aboard these steel Goliaths this can only be evidence for Israeli monstrousness. There is another possible explanation of course, involving the inculcation of racial hatred and political violence by some parents, the kind who support Hamas and the other leaders of the Intifada, and help create the circumstances in which bullets fly and the innocent get killed. Willacy concludes with this editorial disguised as reporting: "I don't think the Israelis will ever leave," Naseem says, "but we will struggle and we will use suicide bombs against them to make them leave." This all spouts from the mouth of a 10-year-old boy – the future of a region already mired in violence and killing. You get the picture. Suicide bombing grows naturally from the experience of Israeli actions, which are pointless, arbitrary and cruel. In case you're thinking that Willacy might be using hard cases to support misleading conclusions, Mottram introduces the Willacy material with this assertion: In violence which does not discriminate, 500 Palestinian children have now been killed. Thousands more have been wounded and psychologically damaged by the Israeli occupation. That should clear it up. Israeli violence is indiscriminate, full-stop. And health workers say that the unrelenting violence is breeding another generation of Palestinian fighters. It has created thousands of Palestinians incapable of moral restraint in their struggle with Israel. So say "health workers" whose judgement is always non-political, balanced and intelligent. Just ask the Australian Medical Association. She not only supports the Willacy doctrine that the Israeli actions are arbitrary, but gives it a scale to justify Willacy's construction of a simple causal chain from that supposed arbitrary violence to an organised campaign of young people detonating nail bombs among Israeli civilians. But is it true? Reader MW draws attention to the evidence on the casualties of the current Intifada documented by the other side. It claims, in a detailed analysis, that * 80% of Israelis killed in the Intifada were non-combatants, * 46% of Palestinians killed were non-combatants, including the rock-throwers, and * the number of children killed at about one fifth of that claimed by Linda Mottram, depending, of course, where you draw the line between childhood and young adulthood. The figures also show the overwhelming preponderance of teenagers and those in their early twenties among Palestinian combatants. A mature-age Palestinian fatality is a rare bird indeed. So where do Mottram's 500 children come from? We don't know, but perhaps by demoting young thugs and terrorists to childhood when they are dead. This is indeed the line taken by the Palestinian human rights monitors, who treat as children anyone below the age of 18, combatants included. But Mark Willacy is using much younger people. Even so, the Palestians' total of 'children' killed is 148. Let them repeat that: Total number of children killed in the Aqsa Intifada is 148. And if, as the ICT figuring claims, 43% of non-combatant deaths in this conflict are Israeli, will Mark and Linda next do an item justifying racial hatred, murder and violence on the part of Israeli civilians? Perhaps. Perhaps not. EQUAL IN BADNESS? Who really wants to blow our teeth out through the back of our heads, whether we live in New York, Sydney, Riyadh, Jakarta, Moscow or New Delhi? Does the short list include Rumsfeld, Rice and Wolfowitz, as well as Sammy bin Laden and his mates? Sure does, according to Amin Saikal, who's paid a good salary by one of our more reputable universities to be an expert on mid-East affairs: The Bush Administration's policy behaviour has turned Iraq into a dangerous battleground between two extremist groups - the reborn Christians and neo-conservatives who dominate the Administration, and al-Qaeda and its supporters who have gained an unprecedented degree of acceptability in the Muslim world - over the future of world order. Not hard to see why Sammy has gained an unprecedented degree of acceptability in the Muslim world when those who hold public positions like Saikal, reputedly a man of moderate opinion, give him such strong moral support. AUNTIE IS A SKILLED UNDERTAKER when it comes to good news about Iraq. I think this is the first time the following facts have been aired an our ABC: ...all hospitals and schools now reopened, electricity supply back to pre-war levels and Iraqis now overseeing many affairs of state. But now look at how well it was buried! Blasts rock Baghdad Reporter: Robin Denslow KERRY O'BRIEN: Welcome to the program. A decidedly nervous Baghdad is taking stock today after its worst day of attacks for two months - five attacks, as many as 40 dead, 200 wounded. In the ensuing confusion, US military generals are at odds over who's behind the attacks - one blaming foreign nationals and possibly Al Qaeda, the other blaming Saddam loyalists. Either way, there's a developing view of an insecure capital where US troops and Iraqi police are extremely limited in their capacity to prevent such attacks. US President Bush would prefer to have to focus on the positive achievements in post-war Iraq - all hospitals and schools now reopened, electricity supply back to pre-war levels and Iraqis now overseeing many affairs of state. On Auntie's news service, as ABCwatch predicted at the beginning of the war to liberate Iraq, you need to watch the direction of the defeats if you want to know which side is winning. Thursday, October 30, 2003
IT AIN'T EASY BEING SERIOUSLY BIASSED Sometimes the talent is plain stubborn, as Elizabeth Jackson discovers: MIGUEL MORATINOS: I know that we are, it's very difficult, I think there will be two main steps. First, I know it's very difficult, we are asking the Palestinians to do unilateral action in this step, but I think it's true at this stage – you want to change the attitude of Israel and you want to also influence the American involvement in the region - I think the Palestinians should stop immediately all kind of military action, all kind of terror activities, etcetera. ELIZABETH JACKSON: So you blame the US, do you, for that? MIGUEL MORATINOS: No, no, ...So I think first there is Palestinian unilateral action to be taken, and secondly a strong involvement of the international community to monitor seriously the obligation and responsibility of both sides, Israelis and Palestinians. Oh well, a good communard doesn't give in that easily. ELIZABETH JACKSON: Let me ask you, what do you make of the controversy over here in Sydney about the peace prize, the Sydney Peace Prize? I don't know whether you're familiar with this, it's supposed to be presented to the Palestinian academic, Dr Hanan Ashrawi, but there are groups within Australia, Israeli groups, who are pressuring various people to prevent her from receiving the prize. Does she deserve a peace prize in your view? Do you know her? Ms Jackson can see through those nominally-Australian Jews! Auntie knows who's pulling the strings. MIGUEL MORATINOS: ... You make a call in Israel, not in Sydney, you will find that the majority of Israeli people will support Hanan Ashrawi. ELIZABETH JACKSON: Oh really. So in Israel they'd be quite happy to award her a peace prize, but not in Australia? MIGUEL MORATINOS: Of course. She's been supportive of people-to-people activity. She has a lot of friends in Israel. Pity the Elders in Jerusalem can't get the message to Zion's Aussie branch. Do you think Ms Jackson can push the line a bit further to the left? You bet. ELIZABETH JACKSON: What then do you think of efforts by some members of Australia's Jewish community to prevent Hanan Ashrawi from receiving this peace prize? What do you think that says? MIGUEL MORATINOS: I have no elements [comments], I… been my first day here in Australia... . But, if she insists: ...It's a lack of information, probably. You are too far from the Middle East and people don't know the reality, the daily reality of these people. There you go. Australian Jews take orders from the Middle East, and the rest of us too far away to notice. I don't think the EU's Ambassador Moratinos really deserved to have that job done on him, but he's old enough to have seen it coming. Monday, October 27, 2003
OUR AM PROGRAMME has done an item on Chris Corrigan, boss of a company that has boosted efficiency on our strategically important waterfront by about 50%. Would there be any bias, do you think? Try these: The warrior of the waterfront the transport mogul transport Czar Echoing the views of the New Right in the 1980s the multimillionaire HAMISH ROBERTSON: That was Stephen Long And that, Paul, is Trotskyite radio. Auntie knows that any Marxist union has the right to put a 50% tax on our imports and exports. Even if Corrigan can pay their members more than they were getting before, and put those without useful work into luxurious retirements. At your expense. PUBLIC BROADCASTERS ARE ONLY HUMAN as the WSJ finds out when it takes a look at WNET's "Human Rights 101" multi-media spectacular . On one thing we agree: These are indeed "complex topics." But a review of the listed human-rights organizations yields little hint of complexity. To the contrary, with the exception of Freedom House, the resources students will find here are pretty much those you might expect to be given by, well, the Democratic National Committee. That might not be surprising: WNET is the same station that a few years back was embarrassed when it was found swapping mailing lists with the DNC and a host of other, mainly Democratic groups. If their subscribers like their bias, that's cool, I suppose. Provided they don't advertise themselves as an impartial source of information. But what's Auntie's excuse? Thanks BM. THE TITLE SAYS ENOUGH to damn Auntie's latest theatrical acquisition: Stephen Sewell’s acclaimed play Myth, Propaganda and Disaster in Nazi Germany and Contemporary America. Only an optimist would read on hoping to find irony. IF ALAN RAMSAY IS CAPABLE of self-reflection, today's letters to Henny Herald should put a finger up his orifice. He's really pulled the anti-semitic crowd. Slatts has listed them. Sunday, October 26, 2003
O WISE READERS of ABCwatch. Seventy percent of those of you who voted in the mini-poll, before the passage of time made it a cheat, predicted that Uncle's imagination would be inadequate to conceive the course taken by Bilious Bob Brown when our Parliament resumed on Friday last. Indeed it was. Instead of confronting the Speaker's authority with his democratic Right to be Loud in the popular chamber of our Parliament, Bob sent in the reserves. Not the relatives of those helping the US army with its enquiries at Guantanamo Bay, but a couple of Free Tibet lobbyists and a Chinese pro-democracy activist. These good people, for whose causes Uncle's feelings run more often warm than cold, were supposed to heckle President Hu Jintao from the Strangers' Gallery of the House of Representatives. Before their willingness to abuse the hospitality of their host country could be tested, Bilious Bob's guests were shepherded from one section of the gallery to another, where a glass barrier is provided to allow our rowdier citizens - like school students - to behave in their normal manner without disrupting the business of Parliament. This was done at the direction of Speaker Neil Andrew, after a bout of last-minute lobbying that must have been really exciting. But you know all this. What I want to record is Bilious Bob's explicit extension of the Right to be Loud in the National Parliament from our elected representatives, even your elected representatives, to those people Bob elects to enter the public gallery. If you think that's a bit rich, check this out: The Chinese, so successful at suppressing freedom of speech in their homeland, had convinced the Australian parliament to do the same. So, if the elected head of our elected Chamber decides not to let three unelected people dictate the way our elected House receives a foreign head of state, he is "suppressing freedom of speech". This remarkable assessment comes from a journalist rejoicing in the title of "Chief Political Reporter" for our national newspaper, The Australian, Steve Lewis. Clearly Bilious Bob has a constituency out there. Like columnist for the Henny, Mike Carlton: Brown did no more than exercise a parliamentarian's right to speak in Parliament. What it may have lacked in courtesy, I suppose, it more than made up in its assertion of a once much valued trait of the Australian character - a robust questioning of authority. Those who argue that Australia still has some way to go before it can claim any maturity as a democracy will never lack supporting evidence. STRANGE FRUIT from the endorsement of Palestinian activist Hanan Ashrawi by the Sydney Peace Prize committee. Henny Herald's political sourpuss, Alan Ramsay, builds his defence of Ashrawi's selection on one of the strangest concoctions to find its way into public debate. It seems Professor Stuart Rees, director of the Sydney Peace Prize Foundation had a telephone conversation with Kathryn Greiner, a former member of his committee who helped select Ashrawi but is now having second thoughts. Columnist Ramsay has happened across a "file note" of a telephone conversation between Greiner and Rees, and reprints some of it verbatim. It shows Greiner being a simple-minded pragmatist, and Rees, of course, a man of firm principle in the face of the cruel Jewish Lobby. The puzzling thing is this: both parties recorded in the file note speak in polished prose. Unlike a transcript of any telephone conversation you've ever heard. Here's a sample of Rees's file note of Rees. It sounds like it was transcribed verbatim while he was spontaneously creating it on the phone to Greiner: SR: "Kathryn, we need to avoid the trap of even using the language of 'one side'. That's not the issue. We are being bullied and intimidated and you are asking that we give way to it. The letter writers and the phone callers who this group encourage have spent weeks bullying a 25-year-old colleague of mine who handles the foundation's administration. You are asking me to collude with bullying." In other words, it's a fiction. Written by Rees, and swallowed without the aid of olive oil by a columnist who appears to be even more desperate for cheap grist than our Gastropod. Apart from such concocted attacks on those who oppose the award, Ramsay offers not one scrap of evidence on Ashrawi's views on how peace might be arranged between the Palestinians and Israel. Or one reason why some Israeli equivalent might not be at least as worthy. Weird politics. Uncle's suggestion is that "Peace Prizes" be replaced by "Prizes for People Whose Politics We Really Like". Then we could save all this unseemly spatting. |