Questions about Apartheid Australia sent to Q&A for the 24 May 2010 program "Democracy, Death and Taxes", panellists: Acclaimed authors Peter Carey, Lionel Shriver and John Ralston Saul; Indigenous academic Marcia Langton; and former Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser.
Needless to say none of these Questions were asked.
1. Question for Professor Marcia Langton: Northern Territory Indigenous Australians are subject to gross, race-based discrimination, excluded from the protection of the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act and their annual death rate is 2.4% as compared to 5% for Jews in Nazi-occupied France. Is this a slow Aboriginal Genocide by an Apartheid Australia?
Answer: Yes.
For the shocking details see "Aboriginal Genocide":
http://sites.google.com/site/aboriginalgenocide/ and Gideon Polya “Polish Holocaust, Afghan Holocaust And Western Holocaust Denial”, Countercurrents, 17 April 2010: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya170410.htm .
2. Question for the panel: like Northern Territory Indigenous Australians, Australia’s Afghan and Tamil refugee subjects have had their human rights suspended in a race-specific fashion in violation of international conventions and the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act. Who is next and does Australia risk international sanctions as were successfully applied to Apartheid South Africa?
Answer: Who indeed? The next country to be invaded by the US.
For shocking details of Australia's violation of international humanitarian conventions and and national law see
Gideon Polya, “Genocide-Complicit Apartheid Australia Jails Refugees
Fleeing Afghan Genocide And Tamil Genocide”, Countercurrents, 11 April 2010: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya110410.htm .
Comment on a remarkable Q&A program.
This was a very rare Q&A that departed from the usual format of 4 right wing MPs and commentators plus one informed and sensible panellist. This panel was excellent and the only MP was former conservative Australian PM Malcolm Fraser whose decency and humanity have made him (together with Greens leader Dr Bob Brown) the effective if unelected leader of the opposition in Australia for the last dozen years.
The highlight of this program was this extraordinary statement from panellist Peter Carey (outstanding Australian novelist) exposing Mainstream Media lying.
Peter Carey on media censorship (panel discussion on ABC TV Q&A, Monday 24 May 2010: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s2901978.htm ), quote:
“TONY JONES [ABC presenter]: All right, let's hear from Peter [re truth and lying in public life]..
PETER CAREY: I keep on thinking about the role of the medial generally in this and how the media is always so continually hysterical about people lying and not telling the truth. And if I really think there's a big problem in our society today, it's that the media is not telling the truth to people and they know what it is. If you really want to know what's happening the world, you go out and get drunk with journalists and they will tell you what isn't in the papers. So they're living - these guys are living every day with the reality of a proprietor, say, or a corporation who owns them will not permit them to tell what they know to be true. So, okay, this guy lied. He's not a good person because he did it but I think the hysteria is about a bigger, bigger issue, which is we are not being honestly reported to. And if there was, you know, Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction but...
MALCOLM FRASER [former Australian PM}: But they knew he didn't.
PETER CAREY: Yeah.
TONY JONES: They knew he didn't, you say?
MALCOLM FRASER: Yes.
PETER CAREY: Yes.
TONY JONES: You mean the Howard Government knew he didn't?
MALCOLM FRASER: It should have. I think the British Government did, the American Government did and the Australian Government should have.”
End quote.
According to CNN (4 January 2008): “President Bush and his top aides publicly made 935 false statements about the security risk posed by Iraq in the two years following September 11, 2001, according to a study released Tuesday by two nonprofit journalism groups. "In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003," reads an overview of the examination, conducted by the Center for Public Integrity and its affiliated group, the Fund for Independence in Journalism.”
Yet the above Mainstream CNN report to a Mainstream audience about egregious Bush lying came about 5 years too late to save Iraq . As former conservative Australian PM Malcolm Fraser stated recently (see above) about the UK and US Governments having pre-invasion knowledge that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction: “I think the British Government did, the American Government did and the Australian Government should have”. The ongoing Iraqi Holocaust and Iraqi Genocide has been associated with 1.4 million post-invasion violent deaths, 1.1 million post-invasion non-violent excess deaths, 2.5 million post-invasion violent and non-violent excess deaths, 0.8 million post-invasion under-5 infant deaths, and 5-6 million refugees. Indeed in the period 1990-2010, Iraq (current population 30 million) has suffered 4.4 million violent and non-violent excess deaths, and 2.0 million under-5 infant deaths, (see “Iraqi Holocaust, Iraqi Genocide: http://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholocaustiraqigenocide/ ).
For detailed discussion see Gideon Polya, “Rare Ethical Writers Expose Mainstream Media Lying”, Countercurrents, 29 May 2010: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya290510.htm .