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.
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.