Radio Australia Today Editorial
Archive for August, 2009
Could George W. have been right?
31 August 2009
Think back a few years when the then-U.S. president George W. Bush pronounced that North Korea and Iran were two elements in an Axis of Evil.
The world groaned at this most undiplomatic of statements, and with some reason.
Casting insults never brings good results in world affairs. If anything, the statement further estranged North Korea and Iran from the United States at a time when detente would have been much more useful (after all, at the time, January 2002, George Bush was battling public opinion in trying to convince his people about an incursion into Iraq, just over a year away).
Then this morning comes the news that an Australian ship was found to have containers on board that held weapons from North Korea bound for Iran. The ship’s crew apparently didn’t know anything about their explosive cargo. According to the Age paper in Melbourne, the ship’s manifest said that the containers held machinery parts, and the seamen were horrified at the danger they had unwittingly been facing.
We don’t know who put the weapons in the containers, except to say that the containers were loaded on the ship in China, possibly in Shanghai, and that doesn’t help us much.
It’s been nearly eight years since George W. made his famous Axis of Evil statement, and at last, only months after he left office, comes some kind of evidence that there is some kind of weapons relationship between Iran and North Korea, although whether it was a relationship between governments or between private groups is not known yet.
The news that his warning might have had some merit, and that there is a possible relationship between North Korea and Iran, would be of little comfort to George W. Bush, a man who ended his terms of office as one of the unpopular presidents, and who left a chain of wildfires for his successor to clean up.
- Phil
Senator Ted Kennedy. A bad boy made good.
27 August 2009
With the news of U.S. Senator Edward Moore Kennedy dying yesterday, the long-running dynasty that held influence in the highest reaches of American politics also comes to an end.
Not quite. He does have a son in the U.S. House of Representatives and several nephews in politics, but when it comes to the original clan, Ted Kennedy was the last.
It all started ingloriously with a father, Joe Kennedy who was reputed to have made his fortune through some dubious connections in liquor dealing in the notorious thirties, but who, with his wife Rose, instilled a spirit of public service and liberalism in their many children.
The eldest of the children and the great family hope, Joe junior, died in the second world war. His next brother, John Fitzgerald Kennedy almost died in that same war, but of course went on to become a young president in a white house dubbed Camelot. He served barely a thousand days before being killed by assassins on that notorious November afternoon in Dallas, Texas in 1963. His Attorney-General was his brother Robert who, shattered by the death of his brother, vacillated over whether to put himself in the firing line and run for president. It was not long after he made the decision to run in 1968 that he too was killed, this time by a young Palestinian who has always claimed that he did it because of RFK’s policy towards arabs. In recent years conspiracy theories have surfaced about the murder too.
With RFK gone, that brought the world’s eyes to Ted Kennedy, the last surviving brother. The weight of liberal expectation was placed on Ted’s shoulders, and there was never any doubt that he would run for president. He was already a senator, and had been one since he was 30.
An incident the next year involving a young woman drowning in a submerged car driven by Ted Kennedy ended any presidential hopes he may have had, and to many Americans, and not just conservative ones, the words of his father weighed on him with some truth. Joe Kennedy had said that Ted was the one Kennedy who was most likely to get caught. Ironically, Ted Kennedy never served jailed time over the drowning incident, but he indeed was caught and guilty in a large part of the public mind.
It is a testament though that Ted Kennedy spent the next 40 years atoning for the death by working almost purely for the American people as the leading voice of the left in the Senate. He worked hard for health care reform. Although he didn’t succeed in getting the changes that he wanted and the country needed, he died with the moniker as the most influential senator in the last fifty years.
And that’s not a bad legacy for anyone, let lone a Kennedy.
– Phil
Terror suspect hates Aussies, and refuses to stand.
26 August 2009
It’s probably no great surprise that headline, but that’s the headline in one of the Australian papers, referring to a man accused of the biggest terrorist plot in Australia’s history.
The man who supposedly hates so many people was in court, accused of plotting to go into the Holsworthy army base which is south-west of Sydney, firing weapons and trying to kill as many soldiers and other people until they themselves were killed.
Yesterday in court, the suspect and his supporters refused to stand for the magistrate, something that is required in this country. The refusal might not appear to be a big thing, but there are a couple of aspects to it. For a start, the magistrate would not accept the argument that the refusal to stand was based on religious beliefs, and said he believed the accused was just trying to make a political point. If right, it was a bit silly for the accused to do this, you might think, since he was trying to get the magistrate to grant him bail.
Another point is that refusal may well be seen as a snub for the Australian legal process and authorities, and could be seen as underlining the allegations made by the prosecutors, that the accused hates Australians, and in fact hates anyone who does not follow Islam.
So, if the prosecutor is to be believed, this is not a fatwa, this is not a religious point, this is a crime that is about hate, about xenophobia, about belief of superiority.
The prosecution is yet to make its case, and a jury is yet to decide on whether it has legs, but one thing’s for sure, the people who will decide this case will do it without the hate, prejudice and ill-will that the prosecutors claim was behind the alleged terror plot.
- Phil
Michael Jackson’s cause of death.
25 August 2009
Two months after the death of pop star Michael Jackson, there’s finally news about what caused his death.
Nothing has been absolutely confirmed, but the Los Angeles Times has printed an excerpt from an unsealed affadavit that says that the powerful anaesthetic Propofol was found in his body. Not just an amount of the drug, but a lethal amount of the drug. Also in the affadavit is the claim that Jackson’s personal doctor told detectives he gave Jackson the drug to treat insomnia.
Of course it’s up to the coroner to decide whether that lethal amount of the drug was the direct cause of Jackson’s death, but to have a lethal amount of a drug suggests that something was terribly amiss, and if not the primary cause of death, the drug would have killed him anyway.
We’re not going to know the full story until police are sure what actually killed Michael Jackson, and have investigated what role his doctors had in the death. It is usual for coroners’ reports to make recommendations for the laying of charges against people who the coroner thinks was culpable in the death.
There are obviously still plenty of questions. Jackson’s burial date has been changed from this week to next week. The fact that his body is still being kept above ground means that the investigators are still hoping that the body will continue to offer clues about what caused his demise.
Expect another media circus when Jackson is buried. Expect yet another when the coroner releases the report. If someone is charged over the death, this will be an on-going sensation.
The Jackson family may well bury the body of their beloved Michael next week, but they will not be left in peace for a long time to come.
– Phil
Fires in Athens. My grandma’s house.
24 August 2009
I don’t know if I’ve told you story of my grandmother’s house in Athens.
It’s in a hilly place called Pendeli on the north-east outskirts.
My grandmother Olga was given the house in the second world war when the Germans were invading the country, and her employer, a european ambassador, was recalled back home for his own safety. Olga was working as a governess for his kids and just as he was leaving, he gave the Pendeli house to her, probably figuring that the Germans would take it anyway. It was a beautiful house perched on a hill, wth an outlook towards Athens. He left the house full of tasteful furniture and a car, his one generous move making Olga richer than she had ever been.
The complication was that Olga was working at the time for the Greek underground, and it was only a matter of months before the extremely efficient German intelligence services would catch up with her. When she was caught, she used her skills as an actress to plant enough doubt in their minds about her culpability, so instead of executing her, she was thrown in jail. When Olga was allowed out six months later she returned to Pendeli to find her house had been occupied by the Germans, who had taken everything out of it.
Still the house survived. It survived the war and even survived Olga.
With the news of the fires burning around Athens today, it seems that maybe the house has finally succumbed. The fire has burnt on the top of Pendeli, which is exactly where this house with the colourful history was placed.
The possible loss of one house is not the most important issue for Greece right now. The burning of the millions of trees, the lungs of Athens, will cause many more environmental problems, but if Olga’s house has gone, then that’s a part of my family’s life, and an interesting part of Athens’ history that has gone too.
– Phil
