Modesty forbids any comment on the allure I exercise upon devastatingly intelligent and stunningly beautiful women.

Would there be any point in holding the Adelaide Conference on the Prevention and Punishment of Murder …

To hold it in Adelaide would be perverse.

……and, with that remark, Katz goes into serious contention for One-Liner of the Year!

This is so unfair. I make a little passing joke yesterday, quite deliberately, just to see if anyone ever reads what I write, and then Katz responds to it and gets all the credit!

Now people everywhere will recognise him as Mr One-Liner of the Year, and sexy women will want to sleep with him, and he’ll appear on Australia’s Got Talent, and record companies will offer him deals, and Bono will become his best friend, and he’ll be rich enough to buy his own Caribbean island, and he’ll marry Scarlett Johansson … and … and … no one will ever remember me. *weeps*

The BCC has posted a full translation of the speech. I think a phrase such as “the ambiguous and dubious question of Holocaust”, especially on the light of Ahmadinajad’s previous statements on this issue, would be the straw which broke this camel’s back.

Once again folks, I don’t have time to stoush today.

P.S. Beyond succinctly stating that the events of 1948 in Israel/Palestine, occurring as they did in the shadow of the Holocaust, and the continuing Israeli/Palestinian conflict, come closer than anything else I can think of to satisfying Hegel’s definition of tragedy as the clash between right and right.

I’ll be a busy lad today so won’t be commenting much, if at all, but look forward to your response.

As to whether the Conference as a whole is a waste of time, the Conference has the following objectives:

To review progress and implementation by all stakeholders of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action. Through an inclusive, transparent and collaborative process the Review Conference will assess contemporary manifestations of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, while identifying concrete counter measures to eliminate these manifestations of intolerance.
To assess the existing Durban follow-up mechanisms and their effectiveness, as well as other relevant United Nations mechanisms dealing with the issue of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.
To promote the universal ratification and implementation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and proper consideration of the recommendations of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination;
To identify and share good practices in the fight against racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.

and will be focusing on the following themes:

Transatlantic slave trade, slavery
Africans and African descendants/Anti-black racism
Roma/Gypsies/Sinti/Travellers
Antisemitism
Hate against Muslims
Indigenous peoples
Migrants and refugees
Hate crimes
Sexual orientation
Intersectional issues
Information, communication and the media, including new technologies

In any event, the justification for boycotting the conference put forward by boycott supporters comes down to the fact that the draft Conference Declaration reaffirms the declaration of Durban I, which is objected to not in its entirety, or even mostly, but on the basis of passages which inter alia affirm Israel’s right to exist and right to security, but which also affirm the national rights of the Palestinians.

Also, as I have previously argued, the fact that the boycott has come to take the form of a white flight and only a white flight, and that, for example, as Greg Sheridan laments, it is supported by none of the countries in our region except for the two Anglo-Celtic states with unresolved issues with our indigenous peoples, may well take on a life of its own which may overshadow whatever reasons were put forward to justify the boycott.

In response to Paulus #54, I think it is clear that at least some of the Conference objectives and themes are of a nature that crosses national boundaries and/or requires intergovernmental cooperation. And the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination is hardly irrelevant to the capacity or willingness of individual nations to act against racism. The fact that Australia is a signatory to the Convention, and has enacted Federal legislation to give effect to it, has since 1982 empowered Federal Governments to overrule delinquent states on race-related issues.

And did Durban especially merit the first conference on racism??

Pisa Conference on Skyscrapers.
Amsterdam Conference on Mud Foundations.
Sydney Conference on Bureaucracy and Architecture.
Los Angeles Conference on Gun Control.
Paris Conference on Politeness.
Warsaw Conference on Pacts.
Buenos Aires Conference on Air Quality.
Griffith Conference on Multicultural Integration and Maintenance of Honour in Society.
Canberra Conference on World’s Best Practice.

My father, who was Jewish, corrected me when I described a comment by an Arab leader as being anti-semetic..he told me that would be a bit perverse, since Jews and Arabs are all semetic peoples. Interestingly, he also described Israel’s policy re: the Palestinians as ‘racist’, which in retrospect, is a quite contradictory.

It is not a discrimination on religious grounds either though, because non-religious Jews are eligible for citizenship. I don’t identify as being Jewish, I am not of the Jewish faith, but I could become a citizen of Israel based on having two Jewish grandparents. It’s crazy..I’m probably more anti-zionist than your average Palestinian.

Would there be any point in holding the Adelaide Conference on the Prevention and Punishment of Murder, in which world leaders would assemble to denounce murder, and solemnly promise that their nation would do everything possible to prevent it?

Agreed Paulus.

To hold it in Adelaide would be perverse.

Indeed. For instance, many countries that did decide to attend deliberately refrained from naming a cabinet minister as Head of Mission (which would be the normal protocol) in order to express discomfort and dissatisfaction – and I doubt very much that anyone who did attend did so in the expectation of “honest and open dialogue” about racism and discrimination.

After all most of the more committed Durban II participants (including South Africa) recently signed up to a declaration angrily opposing the decision of 66 other UN members to support extending Universal Declaration of Human Rights coverage to incorporate sexual orientation and gender identity.

I’ll consider them overnight and consider a response tomorrow (unless I find myself persuaded…).

Paul Norton, I agree with you that “there are a range of pressing global and international problems which can only be solved by global and/or intergovernmental cooperation”. Like trade rules, arms control, and many others.

But why is racism in that category? No country needs “intergovernmental cooperation” to tell them what to do on that score. Did Eisenhower need a memo from the UN before he acted on school segregation? Did Kevin Rudd need other countries’ OK before the apology to the Stolen Generations? Each countries’ actions will be unique to their own circumstances.

National leaders either know racism is wrong, and will take appropriate steps, or they don’t care — in which case, this conference won’t change their minds.

Let me draw an analogy to the crime of murder. Would there be any point in holding the Adelaide Conference on the Prevention and Punishment of Murder, in which world leaders would assemble to denounce murder, and solemnly promise that their nation would do everything possible to prevent it?

It’d be silly, wouldn’t it? You trust each country to put appropriate laws in place against murder. Well, why don’t we leave it to each country to take appropriate measures against racism within their own political context?

If a national govt believes the clearest diplomatic signal is given by boycotting, that’s fine with me.

There are dozens and dozens of other opportunities for “reasonable people” to meet, many provided by the UN, as it happens.