Corporate media scribblers never cease to amaze with their antics. Take the Sydney Morning Herald's Kirsty Needham for example.
The visit of "the saffron-robed superstar who has transcended his nation's cause to become an oracle for Western TV cameras searching for wisdom and truth in a modern age," aka the Dalai Lama, has prompted her to reflect - or should that be 'meditate'? - on the "laughable" contradiction between HH's popularity with the public and "the desire for most Australian politicians to officially fly under the radar on Tibet." (China's Tibetan whispers hit Dalai Lama visit, The Sun-Herald, 16/6/13)
This, Needham tells us, is because "Beijing disapproves of official meetings or recognition of the Dalai Lama," and "federal and state parliaments, mindful of the trade relationship, comply."
Now as if this kind of craven compliance were not deplorable enough, Needham's exposed something more overt:
"[T]his weekend's visit to Sydney has prompted a new phase in the propaganda war from China that appears to have caught a number of Australia's politicians off guard. Taking a step beyond denying Australia from giving official recognition to the Dalai Lama, the Chinese government has gained Australian political endorsement of its censorship of Tibet."
What she's referring to is an exhibition of photographs on the subject of Tibet, which opened at Sydney's Darling Harbour just prior to the Dalai Lama's visit. Funny that! This, she points out, was sponsored by China Tibet Online, China's "biggest voice on the internet on the topic of Tibet."
"Photographs show state Liberal MP Daryl Maquire, chairman of the NSW Parliament's Asia-Pacific Friendship Group, opening the exhibition on behalf of Premier Barry O'Farrell a fortnight ago. Maguire also held a press conference for Chinese media at State Parliament. The website's editorial says: 'The images on show reflecting Tibetan people's religious freedom and daily life have dramatically enhanced Australian understanding of Tibet and rebutted the shameless lies made by a few Western politicians and the dalai clique'."
As you'd expect, Needham approached Maquire for a comment:
"Questioned on why he had opened the exhibition, Maguire said the NSW Parliament didn't get involved in foreign policy issues, which were a federal matter, and compared the Tibetan situation to the civil war in Syria. 'We don't side with one side or another', he said."
(Got that? The NSW Parliament didn't get involved in foreign policy issues. Hello? China aside, if you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll be aware that the NSW Parliament, under the regime of Baruch O'Farrell, has become such a hotbed of support for the state of Israel that I've been forced to refer to it as the 'NSW Knesset'. For first timers to this most bizarre metamorphosis, which no corporate media hack has ever seen fit to explore, just click on the 'Barry O'Farrell' label below, read, and be amazed.)
Needham righteously concludes that "by officially endorsing the show at its launch, the NSW Parliament has done exactly that [ie side with China]. The images have been used by the Chinese government in its propaganda war."
Now the reader may well feel inclined to sign off with a 'Good onya, Kirsty Needham, for striking a blow for oppressed Tibetans, unmasking China's shameless propaganda war in Australia, and naming Beijing's useful fools in the NSW Parliament', but there's another angle entirely to this story:
How is it that a journalist specialising in the coverage of state politics can blow the whistle on a low-key Chinese propaganda stunt endorsed by the O'Farrell government, yet show not the least interest in investigating (let alone blowing the whistle on) the blatant pro-Israel propaganda war being waged by useful fools on both sides of the political divide in the NSW Parliament?
Could the fact that Needham was rambammed* back in 2007, when deputy foreign editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, have something to do with it?
Upon her return from a NSW Jewish Board of Deputies 'Journalists Mission' to Israel, the Australian Jewish News reported her as saying that "she was impressed by the vibrant multiculturalism, community spirit and vigorous media debate in the country, and added that her visit to the Lebanese border and the town of Sderot had allowed her to witness the fear Israelis are forced to live with daily." (Journalists reassess Israel, 22/2/08)
Hm... sounds suspiciously like an endorsement to me!
[*On this phenomenon, see my constantly updated 30/3/09 post I've been to Israel too.]
Showing posts with label Tibet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tibet. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Friday, August 14, 2009
Snake Oil Salesmen
The Australian's foreign editor Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan dispenses 'sage' advice to Uighur freedom fighter Rebiya Kadeer:
"She needs to see her immensely successful visit to Australia as a template for how she should campaign throughout the West. The most important lesson she must learn from her time here is that she and the Uighur movement must definitively abandon any quest for a separate state. I had a long conversation with Kadeer in Melbourne and the formulation she uses is that the Uighur movement is not asking for independence or for autonomy but for self-determination... [This formulation] is extremely dangerous. Self-determination always means independence... Tibet's Dalai Lama, whom Kadeer greatly admires, does not support an independent Tibetan nation. Rather, he wants Tibet to remain part of China but to enjoy cultural and regional autonomy. As a result many Western leaders, including Kevin Rudd and John Howard before him, have been able to meet the Dalai Lama as a spiritual leader and endorse better human rights for Tibetans." (Uighurs must fight for rights within China: If Rebiya Kadeer is wise, she will follow the example of the Dalai Lama, 13/8/09)
What a stunning coincidence! It just so happens that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu also advocates autonomy for the Palestinians writhing under the heel of his army's jackboot, but not statehood. And as the Australian mainstream media's foremost spruiker of the Likud line, it just wouldn't do for Sheridan to be advocating for one brand of self-determination while denying another, now would it? Nor do we want Kadeer pursuing a policy that might result in 'inappropriate' analogies being drawn between Chinese and Israeli colonialism. So Rebiya, abjure Uighur statehood, and go for autonomy within China instead. Do a Dalai and get to visit wonderful places like Australia, where you too can chat with the likes of Kevin Krudd himself.
Not, of course, that all those years of abjuring statehood and kowtowing to China has done anything to advance the Tibetan cause. In fact, the Dalai Lama has finally admitted to having been there and done that:
"'The situation inside Tibet is almost like a military occupation', I heard the Dalai Lama tell an interviewer last November... 'Everywhere. Everywhere, fear, terror. I cannot remain indifferent'. Just moments before, with equal directness and urgency, he had said, 'I have to accept failure. In terms of the Chinese government becoming more lenient [in Chinese-occupied Tibet], my policy has failed. We have to accept reality'... [The Dalai Lama] acknowledged... his 'Middle way' policy - of not seeking full independence from China for Tibet, but only a 'genuine and meaningful autonomy', whereby China could control Tibet's defense policy and foreign affairs, while Tibetans might enjoy the freedom to take care of their culture, their religion, and their special environment - was coming under more and more criticism. So, he said, he would step aside and allow others to come up with a 'new, wiser, realistic' approach." ('A Hell on Earth', Pico Iyer, The New York Review of Books, 9/4/09)
And what, precisely, is it that Sheridan doesn't like about "the quest for a separate state"? "Once you start on the process of ethnic separatism you never stop. The logic is inexorable; why should I be a minority in your state when I can make you a minority in my state? That way lies ethnic cleansing and perhaps genocidal violence... "
What a coincidence! Just what the Chinese have been accusing the Dalai Lama of doing: "China terminated its regular meetings with [the Dalai Lama's] envoys, essentially accusing him of arguing for ethnic cleansing." (ibid)
And speaking of coincidences, that's just what the Israelis and their supporters, who want to hang on to their illegal West Bank/East Jerusalem colonies, have been accusing those who call for their removal:
"If you can't convince 'em, accuse 'em. That's the advice from The Israel Project (TIP) for pro-Israel activists answering questions about settlements. Rather than try to defend Israeli settlements, change the subject. If that doesn't work, try accusing those who advocate removing Jewish settlements of promoting 'a kind of ethnic cleansing to move all Jews' from the West Bank." (Change the policy, or change the subject? Douglas M Bloomfield, njjewishnews.com, 9/7/09)
And speaking of Israeli colonies, what's the latest Sheridan line on those?:
"Obama's obsession with settlements in the West Bank and even in East Jerusalem, as if the entire Middle East, no, the entire Muslim world, hinged on this minor matter, is in the deepest sense irrational." (Obama gets serious on Middle East, The Australian, 1/8/09)
There you go, Rebiya, stop banging on about such a "minor matter" as Chinese colonization of your homeland - it's just not healthy!
Sheridan wasn't the only one whispering in Kadeer's ear, though. She also met with federal Labor MP Michael Danby, crusader for human rights everywhere - everywhere but Palestine, that is.
In an opinion piece on the Stern Hu case in The Australian, Danby referred to China's "brutal crackdowns in Tibet and Xinjiang, and their clumsy local interventions over the Olympic torch and attempts to stifle Rebiya Kadeer at the Melbourne International Film Festival and at the National Press Club..." (Let's not appease Beijing, 14/8/09)
Again - quite coincidentally - he too was an advocate for doing the Dalai:
"Danby was one of two parliamentarians to speak at Sunday's controversial film premiere of The 10 Conditions of Love - a documentary on Kadeer's life - the other was Greens leader Senator Bob Brown... At the premiere, Danby delivered a message to Kadeer supporters from his good friend, the Dalai Lama. 'He asked me to convey to you in Melbourne that she is another one of the national leaders who is a paradigm of non-violence', Danby told the audience." (Danby v China, The Australian Jewish News, 14/8/09)
Danby, who is chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Tibet group*, was off in India last month paying a visit to the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, the capital of Tibet's government-in-exile. There, according to the AJN, his "eyes were opened."
To what, exactly? To the chalk and cheese difference - I kid you not - between Dharamsala and... Ramallah! Take it away AJN:
"The thing that would strike you if you went there is that everything is so well organised... Everything is so frugal, everything is so modest, but they have institutions for archives, for medicine, an institute of the arts with Tibetan artists, institutions for refugees, for retraining nuns. What strikes you is that here is a people who get no support from the United Nations, not a dollar, who get very little assistance from any government apart from the Indian government... who have everything'. Danby... contrasted the set-up in Dharamsala with the Palestinian government in Ramallah. 'The difference in the mentality and institutions is something', he said. 'Here you have Ramallah, [and] the Palestinians, who are having butter gorged down their throats by the United Nations, by the European Union, and yet they don't have anything by comparison with the Tibetans. It is not something that you can really make a wider point about outside the Jewish community, but inside the Jewish community people would understand. It is so maddening to see this."
[*Along with Melissa Parke (Labor MP), Peter Slipper (Liberal MP), Greens senators Sarah Hanson-Young and Scott Ludlum and independent Senator Nick Xenophon.]
What can one say about a man who would use Tibetan suffering as grist for his pro-Israel propaganda? That there might be some significant differences* between the cases of Dharamsala and Ramallah is obviously neither here nor there for Danby. Never miss an opportunity to attempt to score a cheap propaganda point for Israel.
[*When was the last time, for example, Chinese tanks, armored personnel carriers, and bulldozers moved into Dharamsala, destroying its water mains, cutting its electric lines or digging up its roads? When was the last time the PLA stationed snipers on its high buildings and erected road blocks? When was the last time Chinese tanks and bulldozers attacked the compound of the Dalai Lama, confining him to the basement? This was, of course, the fate of Ramallah on just Day 1 of Israel's Operation Defensive Shield (29/3/02-21/4/02). And how many Tibetans live outside its borders? A mere 2%, compared with over half of the Palestinian nation.]
With 'friends' like these, Rebiya, who needs enemies?
"She needs to see her immensely successful visit to Australia as a template for how she should campaign throughout the West. The most important lesson she must learn from her time here is that she and the Uighur movement must definitively abandon any quest for a separate state. I had a long conversation with Kadeer in Melbourne and the formulation she uses is that the Uighur movement is not asking for independence or for autonomy but for self-determination... [This formulation] is extremely dangerous. Self-determination always means independence... Tibet's Dalai Lama, whom Kadeer greatly admires, does not support an independent Tibetan nation. Rather, he wants Tibet to remain part of China but to enjoy cultural and regional autonomy. As a result many Western leaders, including Kevin Rudd and John Howard before him, have been able to meet the Dalai Lama as a spiritual leader and endorse better human rights for Tibetans." (Uighurs must fight for rights within China: If Rebiya Kadeer is wise, she will follow the example of the Dalai Lama, 13/8/09)
What a stunning coincidence! It just so happens that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu also advocates autonomy for the Palestinians writhing under the heel of his army's jackboot, but not statehood. And as the Australian mainstream media's foremost spruiker of the Likud line, it just wouldn't do for Sheridan to be advocating for one brand of self-determination while denying another, now would it? Nor do we want Kadeer pursuing a policy that might result in 'inappropriate' analogies being drawn between Chinese and Israeli colonialism. So Rebiya, abjure Uighur statehood, and go for autonomy within China instead. Do a Dalai and get to visit wonderful places like Australia, where you too can chat with the likes of Kevin Krudd himself.
Not, of course, that all those years of abjuring statehood and kowtowing to China has done anything to advance the Tibetan cause. In fact, the Dalai Lama has finally admitted to having been there and done that:
"'The situation inside Tibet is almost like a military occupation', I heard the Dalai Lama tell an interviewer last November... 'Everywhere. Everywhere, fear, terror. I cannot remain indifferent'. Just moments before, with equal directness and urgency, he had said, 'I have to accept failure. In terms of the Chinese government becoming more lenient [in Chinese-occupied Tibet], my policy has failed. We have to accept reality'... [The Dalai Lama] acknowledged... his 'Middle way' policy - of not seeking full independence from China for Tibet, but only a 'genuine and meaningful autonomy', whereby China could control Tibet's defense policy and foreign affairs, while Tibetans might enjoy the freedom to take care of their culture, their religion, and their special environment - was coming under more and more criticism. So, he said, he would step aside and allow others to come up with a 'new, wiser, realistic' approach." ('A Hell on Earth', Pico Iyer, The New York Review of Books, 9/4/09)
And what, precisely, is it that Sheridan doesn't like about "the quest for a separate state"? "Once you start on the process of ethnic separatism you never stop. The logic is inexorable; why should I be a minority in your state when I can make you a minority in my state? That way lies ethnic cleansing and perhaps genocidal violence... "
What a coincidence! Just what the Chinese have been accusing the Dalai Lama of doing: "China terminated its regular meetings with [the Dalai Lama's] envoys, essentially accusing him of arguing for ethnic cleansing." (ibid)
And speaking of coincidences, that's just what the Israelis and their supporters, who want to hang on to their illegal West Bank/East Jerusalem colonies, have been accusing those who call for their removal:
"If you can't convince 'em, accuse 'em. That's the advice from The Israel Project (TIP) for pro-Israel activists answering questions about settlements. Rather than try to defend Israeli settlements, change the subject. If that doesn't work, try accusing those who advocate removing Jewish settlements of promoting 'a kind of ethnic cleansing to move all Jews' from the West Bank." (Change the policy, or change the subject? Douglas M Bloomfield, njjewishnews.com, 9/7/09)
And speaking of Israeli colonies, what's the latest Sheridan line on those?:
"Obama's obsession with settlements in the West Bank and even in East Jerusalem, as if the entire Middle East, no, the entire Muslim world, hinged on this minor matter, is in the deepest sense irrational." (Obama gets serious on Middle East, The Australian, 1/8/09)
There you go, Rebiya, stop banging on about such a "minor matter" as Chinese colonization of your homeland - it's just not healthy!
Sheridan wasn't the only one whispering in Kadeer's ear, though. She also met with federal Labor MP Michael Danby, crusader for human rights everywhere - everywhere but Palestine, that is.
In an opinion piece on the Stern Hu case in The Australian, Danby referred to China's "brutal crackdowns in Tibet and Xinjiang, and their clumsy local interventions over the Olympic torch and attempts to stifle Rebiya Kadeer at the Melbourne International Film Festival and at the National Press Club..." (Let's not appease Beijing, 14/8/09)
Again - quite coincidentally - he too was an advocate for doing the Dalai:
"Danby was one of two parliamentarians to speak at Sunday's controversial film premiere of The 10 Conditions of Love - a documentary on Kadeer's life - the other was Greens leader Senator Bob Brown... At the premiere, Danby delivered a message to Kadeer supporters from his good friend, the Dalai Lama. 'He asked me to convey to you in Melbourne that she is another one of the national leaders who is a paradigm of non-violence', Danby told the audience." (Danby v China, The Australian Jewish News, 14/8/09)
Danby, who is chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Tibet group*, was off in India last month paying a visit to the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, the capital of Tibet's government-in-exile. There, according to the AJN, his "eyes were opened."
To what, exactly? To the chalk and cheese difference - I kid you not - between Dharamsala and... Ramallah! Take it away AJN:
"The thing that would strike you if you went there is that everything is so well organised... Everything is so frugal, everything is so modest, but they have institutions for archives, for medicine, an institute of the arts with Tibetan artists, institutions for refugees, for retraining nuns. What strikes you is that here is a people who get no support from the United Nations, not a dollar, who get very little assistance from any government apart from the Indian government... who have everything'. Danby... contrasted the set-up in Dharamsala with the Palestinian government in Ramallah. 'The difference in the mentality and institutions is something', he said. 'Here you have Ramallah, [and] the Palestinians, who are having butter gorged down their throats by the United Nations, by the European Union, and yet they don't have anything by comparison with the Tibetans. It is not something that you can really make a wider point about outside the Jewish community, but inside the Jewish community people would understand. It is so maddening to see this."
[*Along with Melissa Parke (Labor MP), Peter Slipper (Liberal MP), Greens senators Sarah Hanson-Young and Scott Ludlum and independent Senator Nick Xenophon.]
What can one say about a man who would use Tibetan suffering as grist for his pro-Israel propaganda? That there might be some significant differences* between the cases of Dharamsala and Ramallah is obviously neither here nor there for Danby. Never miss an opportunity to attempt to score a cheap propaganda point for Israel.
[*When was the last time, for example, Chinese tanks, armored personnel carriers, and bulldozers moved into Dharamsala, destroying its water mains, cutting its electric lines or digging up its roads? When was the last time the PLA stationed snipers on its high buildings and erected road blocks? When was the last time Chinese tanks and bulldozers attacked the compound of the Dalai Lama, confining him to the basement? This was, of course, the fate of Ramallah on just Day 1 of Israel's Operation Defensive Shield (29/3/02-21/4/02). And how many Tibetans live outside its borders? A mere 2%, compared with over half of the Palestinian nation.]
With 'friends' like these, Rebiya, who needs enemies?
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
The Dalai Lama & Friends
In the Dalai Lama's speech on the 50th anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan uprising against Chinese occupation (10/3/59), he described the occupation of his homeland as "hell on earth." "These 50 years," he said, "have brought untold suffering and destruction to the land and people of Tibet."
The Dalai Lama's characterisation of Chinese occupation is searingly accurate. There is no such thing as a benign occupation. Never has been, never will be. Understanding this, our hearts go out to the suffering people of Tibet, just as they do to the people of Palestine for whom the Israeli occupation is also hell on earth.
Yet how does one explain the man's woefully inadequate comments back in January as the Israelis mercilessly hammered the Palestinian population of Gaza? "Israelis and Palestinians must stop fighting and start respecting each other," he is reported to have said at an international forum. (Dalai Lama urges Israel & Palestine to stop fighting, tibetsun.com, 18/1/09) It's as though he's commenting on a war between equals and simply cannot see that Israel is to Palestine as China is to Tibet. Considering his international reputation, what does this tell us about the Dalai Lama's capacity for knowledge, understanding, and empathy?
Nor does the Dalai Lama seem to have any qualms about visiting the Israeli occupier, having been there twice, playing to capacity audiences. In fact, he seems to resonate with a certain kind of Israeli: "The buzz that I feel exists around his current visit [2006] leads me to think that... there is a deep yearning for a saviour, a Messiah... The disappearance of our father figure Ariel Sharon and the victory of Hamas in the recent Palestinian elections do not add to our inner peace." (israelarabpeace.blogspot.com, 17/2/06).
This sad case of selective concern - seeing hell only in Tibet - even extends to Australia where Tibet's spiritual leader has found an ally in Labor MP for Melbourne Ports and Israel, Michael Danby, chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Tibet group,* which includes Greens' leader Bob Brown (who isn't, to my knowledge, in any way perturbed by the company he keeps).
[*Danby is also secretary of the parliamentary Australia/Israel Friendship Group & deputy chair of the Australia/US Parliamentary Friendship Committee.]
But I suppose we shouln't be too hard on Danby. After all, he's just bravely faced down the Chinese occupation of Tibet in the form of the Chinese ambassador who had the chutzpah to ask him in a letter to "refrain from attending" a "'Tibetan independence' activity" scheduled for March 10 outside federal parliament. This fearless supporter of Israel, the United States, and Tibet (in that order) was in no way dismayed, telling the Sydney Morning Herald, "We are free and independent here. As the Australian people would expect, no self-respecting MP would respond to a letter like this." (China tells MP to avoid Tibet rally, Cynthia Banham, 10/3/09) What a mensch!
Now I'm going to make a prediction here. Danby's prevailing on Rudd, even as I write, to give this meddlesome ambassador... hell. Not that I'm omniscient, of course, but I did read in one of his speeches on his website that "Rudd has persistently and publicly denounced Iran's bellicosity and I have personally witnessed his formal and excruciating dressing down of a senior Iranian [diplomat?], following President Ahmadinejad's first threat to destroy Israel." (Time for change Down Under, 7/10/07) Just remember, you read it first on Middle East Reality Check.
The Dalai Lama's characterisation of Chinese occupation is searingly accurate. There is no such thing as a benign occupation. Never has been, never will be. Understanding this, our hearts go out to the suffering people of Tibet, just as they do to the people of Palestine for whom the Israeli occupation is also hell on earth.
Yet how does one explain the man's woefully inadequate comments back in January as the Israelis mercilessly hammered the Palestinian population of Gaza? "Israelis and Palestinians must stop fighting and start respecting each other," he is reported to have said at an international forum. (Dalai Lama urges Israel & Palestine to stop fighting, tibetsun.com, 18/1/09) It's as though he's commenting on a war between equals and simply cannot see that Israel is to Palestine as China is to Tibet. Considering his international reputation, what does this tell us about the Dalai Lama's capacity for knowledge, understanding, and empathy?
Nor does the Dalai Lama seem to have any qualms about visiting the Israeli occupier, having been there twice, playing to capacity audiences. In fact, he seems to resonate with a certain kind of Israeli: "The buzz that I feel exists around his current visit [2006] leads me to think that... there is a deep yearning for a saviour, a Messiah... The disappearance of our father figure Ariel Sharon and the victory of Hamas in the recent Palestinian elections do not add to our inner peace." (israelarabpeace.blogspot.com, 17/2/06).
This sad case of selective concern - seeing hell only in Tibet - even extends to Australia where Tibet's spiritual leader has found an ally in Labor MP for Melbourne Ports and Israel, Michael Danby, chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Tibet group,* which includes Greens' leader Bob Brown (who isn't, to my knowledge, in any way perturbed by the company he keeps).
[*Danby is also secretary of the parliamentary Australia/Israel Friendship Group & deputy chair of the Australia/US Parliamentary Friendship Committee.]
But I suppose we shouln't be too hard on Danby. After all, he's just bravely faced down the Chinese occupation of Tibet in the form of the Chinese ambassador who had the chutzpah to ask him in a letter to "refrain from attending" a "'Tibetan independence' activity" scheduled for March 10 outside federal parliament. This fearless supporter of Israel, the United States, and Tibet (in that order) was in no way dismayed, telling the Sydney Morning Herald, "We are free and independent here. As the Australian people would expect, no self-respecting MP would respond to a letter like this." (China tells MP to avoid Tibet rally, Cynthia Banham, 10/3/09) What a mensch!
Now I'm going to make a prediction here. Danby's prevailing on Rudd, even as I write, to give this meddlesome ambassador... hell. Not that I'm omniscient, of course, but I did read in one of his speeches on his website that "Rudd has persistently and publicly denounced Iran's bellicosity and I have personally witnessed his formal and excruciating dressing down of a senior Iranian [diplomat?], following President Ahmadinejad's first threat to destroy Israel." (Time for change Down Under, 7/10/07) Just remember, you read it first on Middle East Reality Check.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Some Zhengyou are More Equal Than Other Zhengyou
"Unfazed by the growing diplomatic unrest, [Australian Prime Minister] Kevin Rudd has told the Chinese in their own language there are 'significant human rights problems in Tibet'... Mr Rudd told the university students he came as a 'true friend' - zhengyou - not a critic..." (I'm saying it in plain Mandarin: fix Tibet, Phillip Coorey, SMH, 10/4/08
Judging by letters to the establishment press, Rudd's stocks as a statesman and supposed speaker of 'truth to power' have soared. There were, however, a handful of dissenters:-
"How dare Kevin Rudd tell the Chinese that there have been human rights violations in Tibet. Would he do the same and tell the Israelis that there are gross human rights violations in Palestine? On the contrary, at a recent dinner organised by an Australian Jewish organization, he went to great lengths to say that Australians and Israelis are the same type of people." Letter, Simon Chan, The Age, 11/4/08
"If Kevin Rudd thinks that his manufactured 'dispute' with China will convince Australians that he is anything other than a pro-Chinese apologist, then he should think again. To describe the events in Tibet as 'human rights problems' is a gross insult to the Tibetan people. Equally, why didn't he once mention democracy or freedom of speech in China? The silence was equally deafening about Hu Jia and Yang Chunlin, two dissidents recently jailed for 3 and 5 years respectively. Their 'crimes' were to criticise the Communist Party of China and 'incite subversion of state power'. It's obvious that the Prime minister's statements in China are designed for a domestic audience, not to actually effect change..." Letter, Jeremy C Browne, The Age, 11/4/08
"Kevin Rudd does not need to learn Hebrew to call on Israel to end its gross violations of Palestinian human rights. He can say it in plain English." Letter, Ali Kazak, The Australian, 12/4/08
Among the pundits, veteran SMH journalist Alan Ramsey, who only last month had castigated Rudd for kowtowing to the Israelis in federal parliament (See my posts, The Israeli Occupation of Federal Parliament 1 & 5), was having second thoughts about the man: "To publicly stand up to the Chinese, in their own capital, in their own language, on an issue so sensitive to the planet's last great totalitarian state - and, since May last year, Australia's biggest (in dollars) trading partner - is something no visiting head of government, of any kind, has ever done, let alone one from this country. To say it took courage and no little risk only parrots the obvious. What it took was leadership of the most dramatic kind. In recent years, we have been force-fed national leadership, wrapped in the flag, that gloried in sticking its head up the backside of Washington and its dependent satellite in the Middle East. To have an Australian prime minister behave as Rudd has done in Beijing is to think that maybe he is different after all and not just another political control freak with a brain as big as his smile. The bloke is worth watching." (12/4/08)
Ramsey's otherwise polar opposite over at The Australian, Foreign Editor Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, was even more impressed, gushing : "...Kevin Rudd this week has produced his own cultural revolution... For Rudd has shown the world that it is possible to be a good friend of China and still speak to the Chinese leadership frankly and in public about its appalling human rights practices. This is a profound revolution.... it is a radical departure from the practice of John Howard, who preferred to concentrate on what he and the Chinese had in common... No Western leader, with the partial exception of US presidents, does what Rudd did this week: criticise the Chinese over human rights abuses in Tibet before he arrives, in fact in a joint press conference with US President George W Bush. Repeat the criticism in London. Absorb furious official Chinese protests in Beijing and Canberra, then go to China and repeat the offence in public, in front of a Chinese audience." (12/4/08)
Our pundits, it seems, are easily pleased - the dissenting letters are closer to the mark. If our supposedly fearless Australian Helmsman is really concerned about the human rights of downtrodden people, how is one to explain why, as a zhengyou of both China and Israel, he can say boo to the former about Tibetan human rights, but remain mum about Palestinian rights? And, not only not say boo, but host a parliamentary party for the buggers to boot! A partial answer must surely lie in the fact that the parliamentary wing of the Labor Party has not only not been captured by the China lobby, but that the latter, in so far as it even exists, has nowhere near the clout of the Israel lobby.
Author and Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation Michael Lind's comparison of ethnic lobbies in the US may perhaps have some relevance here: "Most ethnic lobbies...have based their power on votes, not money... The influence of these lobbies has usually been confined to the cities and states in which particular ethnic groups have been concentrated... The Israel lobby, however, is not primarily a traditional ethnic voter machine; it is an ethnic donor machine. Unique among ethno-political machines in the US, the Israel lobby has emulated the techniques of national lobbies based on economic interests (both industry groups and unions) or social issues (the National Rifle Association, pro- and anti-abortion groups) . The lobby uses nationwide campaign donations, often funnelled through local 'astroturf' (phony grassroots) organizations... to influence members of Congress in areas where there are few Jewish voters. Stephen Steinlight [former director of national affairs at the American Jewish Committee], in an essay for the Center for Immigration Studies, describes how the Israel lobby uses donations to influence elected officials: 'Unless and until the triumph of campaign finance reform is complete...the great material wealth of the Jewish community will continue to give it significant advantages. We will continue to court and be courted by key figures in Congress. That power is exerted within the political system from the local to national levels through soft money, and especially the provision of out-of-state funds to candidates sympathetic to Israel'. Steinlight adds: 'For perhaps another generation... the Jewish community is thus in a position to divide and conquer and enter into selective coalitions that support our agendas'." Distorting US Foreign Policy: The Israel Lobby & American Power, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, 5/02
For Rudd to really be a zhengyou to the wretched of the earth, he'd need to be equally critical of China and the US (throw in Russia and a host of other international bovver boys here), with an understanding that both, in their own way, have essentially embraced the worldview of the Israeli right - what US author/activist Naomi Klein calls the Likud doctrine: "Common wisdom has it that after 9/11 a new era of geopolitics was ushered in, defined by what is usually called the Bush doctrine: pre-emptive wars, attacks on terrorist infrastructure (read: entire countries), an insistence that all the enemy understands is force. In fact, it would be more accurate to call this rigid worldview the Likud doctrine. What happened on September 11, 2001, is that the Likud doctrine, previously targeted against Palestinians, was picked up by the most powerful country on earth and applied on a global scale. Call it the Likudisation of the world: the real legacy of 9/11. On September 11 George Bush went looking for a political philosophy to guide him in his role as 'war president'. He found that philosophy in the Likud doctrine, handed to him ready-made by the ardent Likudniks ensconced in the White House. In the 3 years since [now 7], the Bush White House has applied this logic with chilling consistency to its global war on terror - complete with the pathologising of the 'Muslim mind'. It was the guiding philosophy in Afghanistan and Iraq, and may well extend to Iran and Syria. Bush has cast the US in the same role in which Israel casts itself, facing the same threat. In this narrative the US is fighting a never-ending battle for its survival against irrational forces that seek its total extermination."(Beware the Likud doctrine, Guardian, 10/9/04)
It is the Likud doctrine, which allows every manifestation of resistance by the oppressed to be labelled terrorism by their oppressors, that has provided the rhetoric for China's crackdown on the Tibetans: "Far from heeding international calls for dialogue with the Dalai Lama, China has accused Tibet's exiled god-king of colluding with Muslim terrorists to destabilise the country before the Olympic Games... The People's Daily said that the Dalai Lama had never abandoned violence after fleeing China in 1959 after a failed revolt against Beijing. 'The Dalai Lama is scheming to take the Beijing Olympics hostage to force the Chinese Government to make concessions to Tibetan independence'. It also accused Tibet's spiritual leader of planning attacks with the aid of violent Uighur separatist groups seeking an independent East Turkestan for their largely Muslim people in the northwestern Xinjiang region of China. It said: 'The Dalai clique has also strengthened collusion with East Turkestan terror organizations and planned terror activities in Tibet'. " (China accuses Dalai Lama of being a terrorist, The Times, 24/3/08)
This talk of collusion with China's equally colonized, oppressed (and conveniently) Muslim Uighur population to the north of Tibet in East Turkestan (Xinjiang), is hardly coincidental, the whole point being that, post 9/11, once discreet movements of national resistance to colonial oppression, can now be lumped together and smeared, Israeli fashion, as generic Islamist terrorists bent on an irrational course of Dalek-like extermination of all we (and supposedly 'the Middle East's only democracy') hold dear. Simply slap on the convenient and durable Made-in-Israel 'War on Terror' label and all is forgiven, whether in the occupied Palestinian territories, Tibet, East Turkestan, Afghanistan, Iraq or Chechnya.
In being "passionately pro-Israel;"* in describing the US as an "overwhelming force for good in the world;"** and in swallowing the Likud doctrine all the way to Afghanistan and Iraq, Rudd is actually doing his bit to bury the hopes and aspirations of millions of Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans, Uighers and Tibetans.
* Rudd outlines foreign policy vision, AM, Radio National, http://www.abc.net.au/, 27/3/08
** Kevin Rudd on the ALP and Israel, The Religion Report, Radio National, 3/11/04
Judging by letters to the establishment press, Rudd's stocks as a statesman and supposed speaker of 'truth to power' have soared. There were, however, a handful of dissenters:-
"How dare Kevin Rudd tell the Chinese that there have been human rights violations in Tibet. Would he do the same and tell the Israelis that there are gross human rights violations in Palestine? On the contrary, at a recent dinner organised by an Australian Jewish organization, he went to great lengths to say that Australians and Israelis are the same type of people." Letter, Simon Chan, The Age, 11/4/08
"If Kevin Rudd thinks that his manufactured 'dispute' with China will convince Australians that he is anything other than a pro-Chinese apologist, then he should think again. To describe the events in Tibet as 'human rights problems' is a gross insult to the Tibetan people. Equally, why didn't he once mention democracy or freedom of speech in China? The silence was equally deafening about Hu Jia and Yang Chunlin, two dissidents recently jailed for 3 and 5 years respectively. Their 'crimes' were to criticise the Communist Party of China and 'incite subversion of state power'. It's obvious that the Prime minister's statements in China are designed for a domestic audience, not to actually effect change..." Letter, Jeremy C Browne, The Age, 11/4/08
"Kevin Rudd does not need to learn Hebrew to call on Israel to end its gross violations of Palestinian human rights. He can say it in plain English." Letter, Ali Kazak, The Australian, 12/4/08
Among the pundits, veteran SMH journalist Alan Ramsey, who only last month had castigated Rudd for kowtowing to the Israelis in federal parliament (See my posts, The Israeli Occupation of Federal Parliament 1 & 5), was having second thoughts about the man: "To publicly stand up to the Chinese, in their own capital, in their own language, on an issue so sensitive to the planet's last great totalitarian state - and, since May last year, Australia's biggest (in dollars) trading partner - is something no visiting head of government, of any kind, has ever done, let alone one from this country. To say it took courage and no little risk only parrots the obvious. What it took was leadership of the most dramatic kind. In recent years, we have been force-fed national leadership, wrapped in the flag, that gloried in sticking its head up the backside of Washington and its dependent satellite in the Middle East. To have an Australian prime minister behave as Rudd has done in Beijing is to think that maybe he is different after all and not just another political control freak with a brain as big as his smile. The bloke is worth watching." (12/4/08)
Ramsey's otherwise polar opposite over at The Australian, Foreign Editor Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, was even more impressed, gushing : "...Kevin Rudd this week has produced his own cultural revolution... For Rudd has shown the world that it is possible to be a good friend of China and still speak to the Chinese leadership frankly and in public about its appalling human rights practices. This is a profound revolution.... it is a radical departure from the practice of John Howard, who preferred to concentrate on what he and the Chinese had in common... No Western leader, with the partial exception of US presidents, does what Rudd did this week: criticise the Chinese over human rights abuses in Tibet before he arrives, in fact in a joint press conference with US President George W Bush. Repeat the criticism in London. Absorb furious official Chinese protests in Beijing and Canberra, then go to China and repeat the offence in public, in front of a Chinese audience." (12/4/08)
Our pundits, it seems, are easily pleased - the dissenting letters are closer to the mark. If our supposedly fearless Australian Helmsman is really concerned about the human rights of downtrodden people, how is one to explain why, as a zhengyou of both China and Israel, he can say boo to the former about Tibetan human rights, but remain mum about Palestinian rights? And, not only not say boo, but host a parliamentary party for the buggers to boot! A partial answer must surely lie in the fact that the parliamentary wing of the Labor Party has not only not been captured by the China lobby, but that the latter, in so far as it even exists, has nowhere near the clout of the Israel lobby.
Author and Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation Michael Lind's comparison of ethnic lobbies in the US may perhaps have some relevance here: "Most ethnic lobbies...have based their power on votes, not money... The influence of these lobbies has usually been confined to the cities and states in which particular ethnic groups have been concentrated... The Israel lobby, however, is not primarily a traditional ethnic voter machine; it is an ethnic donor machine. Unique among ethno-political machines in the US, the Israel lobby has emulated the techniques of national lobbies based on economic interests (both industry groups and unions) or social issues (the National Rifle Association, pro- and anti-abortion groups) . The lobby uses nationwide campaign donations, often funnelled through local 'astroturf' (phony grassroots) organizations... to influence members of Congress in areas where there are few Jewish voters. Stephen Steinlight [former director of national affairs at the American Jewish Committee], in an essay for the Center for Immigration Studies, describes how the Israel lobby uses donations to influence elected officials: 'Unless and until the triumph of campaign finance reform is complete...the great material wealth of the Jewish community will continue to give it significant advantages. We will continue to court and be courted by key figures in Congress. That power is exerted within the political system from the local to national levels through soft money, and especially the provision of out-of-state funds to candidates sympathetic to Israel'. Steinlight adds: 'For perhaps another generation... the Jewish community is thus in a position to divide and conquer and enter into selective coalitions that support our agendas'." Distorting US Foreign Policy: The Israel Lobby & American Power, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, 5/02
For Rudd to really be a zhengyou to the wretched of the earth, he'd need to be equally critical of China and the US (throw in Russia and a host of other international bovver boys here), with an understanding that both, in their own way, have essentially embraced the worldview of the Israeli right - what US author/activist Naomi Klein calls the Likud doctrine: "Common wisdom has it that after 9/11 a new era of geopolitics was ushered in, defined by what is usually called the Bush doctrine: pre-emptive wars, attacks on terrorist infrastructure (read: entire countries), an insistence that all the enemy understands is force. In fact, it would be more accurate to call this rigid worldview the Likud doctrine. What happened on September 11, 2001, is that the Likud doctrine, previously targeted against Palestinians, was picked up by the most powerful country on earth and applied on a global scale. Call it the Likudisation of the world: the real legacy of 9/11. On September 11 George Bush went looking for a political philosophy to guide him in his role as 'war president'. He found that philosophy in the Likud doctrine, handed to him ready-made by the ardent Likudniks ensconced in the White House. In the 3 years since [now 7], the Bush White House has applied this logic with chilling consistency to its global war on terror - complete with the pathologising of the 'Muslim mind'. It was the guiding philosophy in Afghanistan and Iraq, and may well extend to Iran and Syria. Bush has cast the US in the same role in which Israel casts itself, facing the same threat. In this narrative the US is fighting a never-ending battle for its survival against irrational forces that seek its total extermination."(Beware the Likud doctrine, Guardian, 10/9/04)
It is the Likud doctrine, which allows every manifestation of resistance by the oppressed to be labelled terrorism by their oppressors, that has provided the rhetoric for China's crackdown on the Tibetans: "Far from heeding international calls for dialogue with the Dalai Lama, China has accused Tibet's exiled god-king of colluding with Muslim terrorists to destabilise the country before the Olympic Games... The People's Daily said that the Dalai Lama had never abandoned violence after fleeing China in 1959 after a failed revolt against Beijing. 'The Dalai Lama is scheming to take the Beijing Olympics hostage to force the Chinese Government to make concessions to Tibetan independence'. It also accused Tibet's spiritual leader of planning attacks with the aid of violent Uighur separatist groups seeking an independent East Turkestan for their largely Muslim people in the northwestern Xinjiang region of China. It said: 'The Dalai clique has also strengthened collusion with East Turkestan terror organizations and planned terror activities in Tibet'. " (China accuses Dalai Lama of being a terrorist, The Times, 24/3/08)
This talk of collusion with China's equally colonized, oppressed (and conveniently) Muslim Uighur population to the north of Tibet in East Turkestan (Xinjiang), is hardly coincidental, the whole point being that, post 9/11, once discreet movements of national resistance to colonial oppression, can now be lumped together and smeared, Israeli fashion, as generic Islamist terrorists bent on an irrational course of Dalek-like extermination of all we (and supposedly 'the Middle East's only democracy') hold dear. Simply slap on the convenient and durable Made-in-Israel 'War on Terror' label and all is forgiven, whether in the occupied Palestinian territories, Tibet, East Turkestan, Afghanistan, Iraq or Chechnya.
In being "passionately pro-Israel;"* in describing the US as an "overwhelming force for good in the world;"** and in swallowing the Likud doctrine all the way to Afghanistan and Iraq, Rudd is actually doing his bit to bury the hopes and aspirations of millions of Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans, Uighers and Tibetans.
* Rudd outlines foreign policy vision, AM, Radio National, http://www.abc.net.au/, 27/3/08
** Kevin Rudd on the ALP and Israel, The Religion Report, Radio National, 3/11/04
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Shameless
If you had been inclined to think The Australian's Easter editorial of 20/3/08, TIME OF CELEBRATION: Easter's mysteries offer insight and happiness, was going to be about, well, Easter and its significance, you'd have been greatly mistaken. Some excerpts:-
"As Cardinal George Pell reminds Australians today, Jesus Christ was a Jewish man...He lived amid political strife in the Middle East. Brutality was rife and forgiveness rare. Gathering with his disciples for the Jewish Passover the night before he died...that final Passover supper cemented a Judeo-Christian tradition that has shaped humanity, and more often than not been an influence for good."
"This week, 2 Palestinians stabbed an Israeli man through the head at the entrance to Jerusalem's Old City. A few days before, Hamas, the Palestinian leadership in the Gaza Strip, danced in jubilation over the slaughter of 8 young Jewish students at a Jerusalem seminary. A few weeks earlier, Israel and Hamas exchanged rocket fire that killed more than 130 Palestinians, including several dozen children, and 4 Israelis. If the region where Christ walked is to achieve sustainable peace in coming decades, or even the next century, a strong spirit of forgiveness and magnanimity will be required by all involved, backed by generous support and encouragement from friends and allies. Often, all this seems as improbable as the resurrection is to a sceptic. Occasionally, however, the world enjoys a glimpse of the level of long-term goodwill that would be required. German Chancellor Angela Merkel's 60th anniversary visit to Israel this week represented a triumph of goodness over evil. In a nation of 7 million, including 250,000 Holocaust survivors and millions of their children and grandchildren, it was a high point of history. In 1945, it would have been unimaginable. The now-solid friendship between the Jewish state and Germany could not have developed without generosity in the hearts of both peoples, and Germany facing up to its duty to make reparation and atonement for its murder of 6 million Jews. It did, it sought pardon, and it was forgiven. The distance travelled is an example of how the darkest and most bitter relationships can be transformed through the light of goodness. No less a commitment would be required to secure Middle East peace, based on a fair and sustainable two-state solution. But unless militant Islamic regimes come to terms with Israel's legitimate right to exist in its ancient homeland, the world will look back in another 60 years and grieve for thousands more lives lost and more opportunities for peace squandered."
And if you had been inclined to think that a letter in The Australian 0f 19/3/08 on the subject of Tibet was really going to be about, well, Tibet and its struggle for freedom, you'd also have been very much mistaken:-
"Tibetans have suffered the most brutal of occupations and oppression of their human rights. And yet they have never resorted to blowing themselves up or murdering Chinese schoolchildren. Why is it, then, Palestinians and Islamist groups - who have used suicide bombings - appear to attract so much more attention from so-called human rights activists who have barely a word to say about far worse examples of oppression in the Arab and communist world. The Chinese Government must be grateful they aren't Jewish." Gary Slezak, Chatswood, NSW
Shameless.
[At the risk of giving Gazza a bad case of cognitive dissonance, I wonder what he'd make of the Israeli Haredi fanatic who gave a messianic* Jewish boy from the West Bank settlement of Ariel a Purim gift - which exploded in his face. (* Messianic Jews believe that Jesus was the Messiah) See Haaretz, 25/3/08]
"As Cardinal George Pell reminds Australians today, Jesus Christ was a Jewish man...He lived amid political strife in the Middle East. Brutality was rife and forgiveness rare. Gathering with his disciples for the Jewish Passover the night before he died...that final Passover supper cemented a Judeo-Christian tradition that has shaped humanity, and more often than not been an influence for good."
"This week, 2 Palestinians stabbed an Israeli man through the head at the entrance to Jerusalem's Old City. A few days before, Hamas, the Palestinian leadership in the Gaza Strip, danced in jubilation over the slaughter of 8 young Jewish students at a Jerusalem seminary. A few weeks earlier, Israel and Hamas exchanged rocket fire that killed more than 130 Palestinians, including several dozen children, and 4 Israelis. If the region where Christ walked is to achieve sustainable peace in coming decades, or even the next century, a strong spirit of forgiveness and magnanimity will be required by all involved, backed by generous support and encouragement from friends and allies. Often, all this seems as improbable as the resurrection is to a sceptic. Occasionally, however, the world enjoys a glimpse of the level of long-term goodwill that would be required. German Chancellor Angela Merkel's 60th anniversary visit to Israel this week represented a triumph of goodness over evil. In a nation of 7 million, including 250,000 Holocaust survivors and millions of their children and grandchildren, it was a high point of history. In 1945, it would have been unimaginable. The now-solid friendship between the Jewish state and Germany could not have developed without generosity in the hearts of both peoples, and Germany facing up to its duty to make reparation and atonement for its murder of 6 million Jews. It did, it sought pardon, and it was forgiven. The distance travelled is an example of how the darkest and most bitter relationships can be transformed through the light of goodness. No less a commitment would be required to secure Middle East peace, based on a fair and sustainable two-state solution. But unless militant Islamic regimes come to terms with Israel's legitimate right to exist in its ancient homeland, the world will look back in another 60 years and grieve for thousands more lives lost and more opportunities for peace squandered."
And if you had been inclined to think that a letter in The Australian 0f 19/3/08 on the subject of Tibet was really going to be about, well, Tibet and its struggle for freedom, you'd also have been very much mistaken:-
"Tibetans have suffered the most brutal of occupations and oppression of their human rights. And yet they have never resorted to blowing themselves up or murdering Chinese schoolchildren. Why is it, then, Palestinians and Islamist groups - who have used suicide bombings - appear to attract so much more attention from so-called human rights activists who have barely a word to say about far worse examples of oppression in the Arab and communist world. The Chinese Government must be grateful they aren't Jewish." Gary Slezak, Chatswood, NSW
Shameless.
[At the risk of giving Gazza a bad case of cognitive dissonance, I wonder what he'd make of the Israeli Haredi fanatic who gave a messianic* Jewish boy from the West Bank settlement of Ariel a Purim gift - which exploded in his face. (* Messianic Jews believe that Jesus was the Messiah) See Haaretz, 25/3/08]
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