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Ear to the Ground

Australia PM Calls Fires ‘Mass Murder’

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Posted on Feb 8, 2009
Composite of images from Wikimedia Commons

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd

Wildfires sweeping across southern Australia have killed more than 170 people, a number that is expected to rise. With news that arson could be to blame for some of the fires, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said, “There are no words to describe it other than mass murder.”

To put things in perspective, the previously worst wildfire in Australia’s history killed 75 people, with all the fatal injuries occurring on one day, Feb. 16, 1983.

BBC:

Officials believe some of the fires might have been started deliberately, an accusation Mr Rudd described as “a level of horror that few of us anticipated”.

“There are no words to describe it other than mass murder,” he said.

Many residents of fire-ravaged towns are now embroiled in a desperate search for friends and relatives missing since the flames tore through the tiny communities.

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By John, February 10, 2009 at 12:50 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

To call it “mass murder” deflects blame away from the government of Australia for its poor land and fire policies that set the stage for such an event.

An analogy: When an inherently unsafe building collapses due to over-crowding, or catches fire due to carelessness, is there not some degree of blame to be laid on the hands of those who are responsible for constructing or keeping the building? If we were to not point out this fact, wouldn’t it, in the end, allow other unsafe buildings to remain and endanger other people’s lives?

I don’t see the distinction in this case between the maintenance of poor land policies and poor buildings. It is the same moral equivalent.

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By Russian Paul, February 9, 2009 at 11:51 pm Link to this comment

Fadel - So some innocent civilians deserve to die more than other innocent civilians? Where does it end? Practically every country in the world has bloody hands…

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By cruxpuppy, February 9, 2009 at 9:16 pm Link to this comment

Thanks for reminding me, kath cantarella, that your heart is breaking because good people die, people you know and care about.

I was confused for a moment and thought I was gawd almighty.

I hope they find those mass murderers, those terrorists who put a match to the tinder.

It’s easy to forget that every life is precious, even the ones we don’t know.

I only wish we could understand that the life of the planet itself is also precious.

We don’t know that. We don’t even know what that means. We are not even 1% as smart as we think we are.

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By kath cantarella, February 9, 2009 at 5:51 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

Don’t call it ‘Fate’, don’t call it ‘Gaia’s Revenge’ or ‘God’s retribution’... it was hate-filled people with matches.

To Fadel and Jonny, a lot of those who died or are left grieving their spouses and children were/are the sort of people who would come running to help you if you needed them, though they don’t know you from Adam. Brian Naylor and his wife Moiree, the firefighters who lost everything, even their families, while saving others, the Buchannan kids, so many good and worthy people. You have no fucking idea. No one here is complaining about the lack of electricity and water.

Please have some humanity and shut up.

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By Verne Arnold, February 9, 2009 at 5:34 pm Link to this comment

The Gia Hypothesis; you gotta love it and smacks of truth.

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By cruxpuppy, February 9, 2009 at 3:28 pm Link to this comment

“Before this century is over, billions of us will die, and the few breeding pairs of people
that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.”  James Lovelock

Once upon a time so many generations ago that we’ve forgotten, human beings of our persuasion had the sensory acuity of the aboriginal tribe on the Andaman Islands that were in the midst of the tsunami disaster in the Indian Ocean in December ‘04. The tribe moved to high ground away from the coast line well before the 9.2 quake that generated the 45 foot tall tsunami. No member of this shy forest dwelling tribe was lost in the disaster because they knew it was coming and got out of the way.

There are aboriginals in Australia who retain this almost magical ability to understand the language of what Lovelock termed “Gaia”. These are not the abos who collect welfare checks or suffer from alcoholism, those who have lost their psychic connection to Gaia and become like us.

Everyone knows in their bones, so to speak, that climate change is a reality and that James Lovelock is correct when he talks about “the revenge of Gaia”. Maybe he’s extreme; it could be he’s mad as hell and he wants to scare people out of their complacency….and ignorance.

We’ll gradually recover our creaturehood, the knowledge of ourselves as one species among many sharing the planet. We’ll gradually recover our lost aboriginal knowledge and psychic ability if we don’t first destroy ourselves and our planet in a nuclear Armageddon.

Australia’s 1000 year drought has created a lot of kindling. If arsonists have set fires, they aren’t the cause of the disaster. Could be they are abos who relish the destruction of the European culture, or it could be that the land is so dry it caught fire when some fool didn’t crush his butt. Arson is not the point.

But politicians like to create scapegoats. Like the rest of us, they aren’t quick to embrace the truth.

We all know the truth. It is highly inconvenient.

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By 99jonny100, February 9, 2009 at 9:57 am Link to this comment

I wonder, is there such a thing as Instant Karma. Talk about “record” this and
that. How much time did it take to commit “mass murder” of Native Australian
peoples?  Kind of makes you think about God and his Master Plan, doesn’t it.
Between the heat, the fires and the plagues of of toads and kangaroos,Australia
is reaping their harvest today. Or was it some vengeful Aborigine drunk who
decided to set fires, to set things right? Noone will ever know. The lack of
ozone alone will be enough to cause “mass” emigration, or White Flight, from
that cursed land. Heaven help them now!

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By Fadel Abdallah, February 9, 2009 at 7:12 am Link to this comment

Remember Mr. Prime Minister when your country participated for many years in the evil war in Iraq?! So every Australian has innocent Iraqi blood on their hands! Now you’re asked to taste some of your own medicine, but the avenger now is not your victim; it’s a higher power that you don’t even recognize!

Let me repeat something I said several times before; and that’s you’re being visited now by NEMESIS-the Goddess of retribution, who punishes human transgression of the natural, right order of things and the arrogance, intransigence, greed, and evil that cause it!

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By Melburnian, February 9, 2009 at 2:21 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

These fires have left a lot of us here in Australia reeling with stunned horror and shock.  To help you northerners appreciate the scale of destruction, two towns have practically been wiped off the map in the fires—many residents escaped, but among those who stayed many remain unaccounted for or have been found dead.  The fires have remained within Victoria so far.

However, Mr Rudd (and a good number of letter writers in the local papers) seem to have lost their sense of perspective for the present.  There have been calls to prosecute arsonists under laws designed for terrorist suspects or to reinstate the death penalty.  While these responses are understandable in the current circumstances, they are most unfortunate and counter-productive.  Laws exist for the punishment of arsonists, and it is better to use those laws properly than to abuse laws that should never have been written.

In spite of the arrival of cooler weather new fire fronts have appeared.  On Saturday, which reached 46 degrees Celsius in Melbourne, ash from the fires near the edge of the city was being blown into buildings in the early afternoon.  In spite of being a large city, Melbourne remains very near the earliest fires of the weekend.  For more detailed coverage of events you can visit the following:

http://www.abc.net.au
http://www.theage.com.au

For readers here who are able to make donations, the Red Cross and Salvation Army are running appeal funds for providing shelter and relief to people who’ve lost their houses in the fires.

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By Chris Harries, February 9, 2009 at 1:11 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

Our Prime Minister’s reference to arsonists as ‘mass murderers’ is quite appropriate.

Less directly, the same terminology could be said for those in power who do not respond appropriately to warnings of catastrophic climate change, a crisis that is already affecting huge numbers of people worldwide. Scholars are predicting that 50 million people worldwide will be displaced by 2010 as a result of rising sea levels, chronic droughts, flood damage, wildfires desertification, dried up aquifers and so forth. That number may prove to be very conservative.

Whilst it can’t be conclusively proven that the bushfires and floods in Australia are caused by climate change, growing incidents of climate chaos are entirely within the forecasts of climatologists and weather forecasters. Our worst mistake would be to slowly adapt to them and accept this as normal, losing sight of what is causing it to happen.

By our failure to act we are all accomplices, as if we were literally lighting the matches. The whole of society needs to respond to the broader challenge with like mind.

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