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.

ttbn,
I didn't like Keatinge as PM either but what he said the other night was not about politics. It was about dumb-crap Australian Journalists dragging Australia towards a serious conflict with people who are unsurprisingly, getting just as pi$$ed off with the Journos as we all are.

AC,

You the Putin lapdog must be desperate to try and shift this discussion to Iraq. WTF does this thread have to do with Iraq? The US is not fighting the war just supporting the brave Ukrainians against the illegal and unprovoked invasion of their country.

Putin is now a war criminal and will be arrested if he steps out of Russia and into most countries. More arrest warrants are going to be issued.

The Chinese must be laughing their heads off at Australians !

It's great that ShadowMinister has mentioned western philosophers to provide a background to PolSci and perhaps Realpolitik.

I found it interesting that Existentialist Philosophy describes very different systems of thought- Sartre very different from Nietzsche. I found Sartre to be scary. I would consider that Communism is the antithesis of existence- consuming the universe itself in a terrible whirlpool- one wonders how the universe can exist where the possibility of anti-existence exists.

I suspect that both are somewhat consistent in conclusion within their founding assumptions- the objections are often more interesting reading.

Amusing to think of Chomsky telling people not to listen given a linguist-ian- like an author telling people not to read. But Chomsky has recently been objecting to some woke paradigms- to his credit- I'm not sure if it makes up for harm done

Sorry ShadowMinister was quoting Keating- I suppose that Keating was shifting the blame to his teachers- this was often done with errant princes- maybe this is a good argument to have better teachers- and to turn our eyes to the role and potential of The Academy both for bad and good. Perhaps The Academy has too much power. Why did they create the Lyceum? To create the ideal philosopher ruler- but humans are not. Returning to first principles Plato acknowledges that society needs to nurture individuals (not families)- but Confucius saw the family as the atom of society. Maybe this is the reason the Roman's declined into Kingdoms based on powerful families.

Penny wise and pound foolish