To defend his delusions about China in a press club interview, Keating tried to play down the detention, torture and forced sterilization of about 1500 000 Uighurs.

"Every genocide in the 20th century had Western intellectuals willing to downplay it. Heidegger rallied in defence of Nazism and minimised the Holocaust. Jean-Paul Sartre dismissed reports of gulags when they emerged from Stalinist Russia. Michel Foucault was a committed Maoist and, when refugees described cities being emptied in Pol Pot’s Cambodia, Noam Chomsky cautioned Westerners against listening.

Sometimes called “tyrannophiles”, due to their sympathy for tyrants, the reasons Western intellectuals have defended totalitarian regimes differ according to time and place. Some intellectuals sympathized with Stalin because they believed in the promise of Marxist-Leninism. Others were naive, and could legitimately appeal to ignorance. Others simply possessed contempt for the West."

Paul Keating has no excuse. This loathsome rhetoric should end his being taken seriously ever again.

Keating isn't an "intellectual". Wasn't the only job that he held briefly before going on the public payroll that of a railway clerk or some such?

I listened to the journalists asking Keatinge the questions & if his answers are deemed out of order than those accusing him being out of order should take a very long look at themselves.
Had one of the journos asked a reasonable question I have no doubt they would have received a reasonable answer.
It wasn't a minute too soon that a political figure said things that need to be said when indoctrinated & highly ignorant mutts are mouthing off.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
The Iraq Body Count project documents 185,000–208,000 violent civilian deaths through February 2020 in their table.
All estimates of Iraq War casualties are disputed.

If you're going to start counting things shadowminister, do it properly.
Where's your WMD's you good little US lapdog?

What's the total number of civilian deaths from wars and revolutions initiated by the US since world war II?

Come back to me with your whining when you have a realistic estimate.

Two questions last night to Keating not before broadcast had him looking like a demented rabbit in a spotlight.

This genius Keating who brought us 17% interest rates, and is now an apologist for Communist China, left school at age of of 14, to work as a pay clerk with Sydney Council's electricity distributor. I wonder how mistakes he made there.