Emeritus Professor Stuart Rees deserves his own special award. After
all, as the founder of the so-called Sydney Peace Prize not only has he been
handing out gongs for the past 14 years, but he’s also set himself up as an expert
on who does and doesn’t deserve one.
Stuart’s award, which warrants being bestowed upon him at a
glittering taxpayer-funded ceremony in the Great Hall of Sydney Uni, should be
enscribed “for services towards the promotion of left-wing extremism, political
bias and the unrelenting quest to create gratuitous offense and generate divisive
controversy for no meaningful outcome.”
The award, of course, will be in recognition of Stuart’s sterling
and relentless efforts to promote division and conflict by offering free PR and
a bucketload of taxpayers loot to a dubious selection of “peace-loving” individuals,
ranging from John Pilger and Hanan Ashwari to Noam Chomsky. (Common thread?
Hatred of Israel, hatred of the US. Modus operandi? Complaining about complex
and tragic political situations, but never coming up with any constructive
solutions other than advocating violence towards Jews and/or Americans.)
Stuart’s most recent foray into the world of awards saw him pouring
scorn and derision on John Howard for receiving the Queen’s Order of Merit in
her New Year’s honours list.
“The invisible Buckingham Palace pundits overlooked his cruel record,” Rees
sneered at the conclusion of a lengthy article attacking Howard both as a
leader and as a human being, “and have given him an honour he does not
deserve.” For Stuart, our Head of State recognizing our second-longest serving
Prime Minister for his contribution to public service is undeserved.
Rees takes great exception to many aspects of Howard’s period in office,
citing dark conspiracy theories about Guantanamo Bay, the Iraq war, his “cruel
treatment of asylum seekers,” the failed referendum for a republic (it was all
Howard’s fault, natch) and so on.
Stuart clearly sees little merit in the fact that Howard’s legacy was a
well-functioning society, unencumbered with debt, that helped bring freedom to East
Timor, sought to bring democratic values to Iraq and Afghanistan and is one of
the most stable, prosperous, peaceful and envied country’s in the world.
Arguably, the Arab Spring, with its overthrowing of despots, owes more
not to the whining efforts of Rees’s sorry collection of extremists, but
rather, to the people of the Middle East desiring to share in the democratic
values they get a glimpse of in only two of their neighbours; Israel and Iraq.
Strangely, in belittling the winner of four elections, Rees has chosen
to ignore his own criticism of people who are disgruntled by awards he himself
has doled out.
“We don’t think that derision is an appropriate form of
commentary. When people have lost, they resort to character assassination,”
complained Rees a few years ago, when yet again one of the recipients of his
oxymoronic peace prize turned out to be someone loathed by the conservative
side of politics.
Sound words. Worthy of an award.
No comments:
Post a Comment