CULTURE WARS: For the week ending 19 June 2011

[01] It seems New York Congressman Anthony Weiner is hiding the fact (?) that his untucking of his tackle is part of some devious form of taqiyya.

For those of you who don't know, the word taqiyya is an Arabic term used in Muslim jurisprudence. Basically what it means is that if someone pulls a gun out and threatens to shoot you if you confirm you are a Muslim, you are permitted to lie about your faith if it means you don't get shot. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

But according to some fruitloops in the mainstream Right of the United States, taqiyya is the mechanism by which Muslims, like their Jewish forebears, use deception and cunning to hide their true intentions - to take over the world. The protocols of the learned imams of ... um ... well everywhere!

Some rightwing Jews are also getting into the profoundly anti-Semitic act. Among them is Elaana Benador, who was once a darling of the neo-Cons and ran her own speakers bureau which had some of the most influential neo-Cons on its books.

Now Benador has turned her sights to former Congressman Anthony Weiner, claiming that he in fact is a secret Muslim. Her evidence goes something like this:

1. Some imam made a comment calling on Weiner's wife, Huma Abedin, to counsel her husband and have patience with him.

2. Huma Abedin comes from an Indian Muslim family.

3. The imam and Ms Anedin seem to be involved in some strange form of taqiyya.

4. The imam's excuse for Weiner is the kind of excuse that would only be made for a Muslim husband.

5. Weiner must have been converted to Zombi'ism after being his neck bitten by both the imam and Ms Abedin. He also became a Muslim.

Of course, this all means that Ms Abedin now has access to the upper echelons of power. She can use this access to ensure that by next week, the White House will have a Muslim president. That is, if it doesn't have one already.

Read more about it here and here.

COMMENT: The neo-Con fantasy comes unstuck

Here’s an example of the kind of fruitloop reasoning that makes so many American conservatives such a laughing stock:

Are the Arabs capable of democracy? And if so, can Americans be the agents of their transformation? The answer, of course, is that no one knows. The lack of a single democratic Arab government gives grounds for skepticism. The claim that something in Arab culture makes it resistant to democracy cannot be refuted until the first Arab democracy comes into being. (Joshua Muravchik, former resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute)

Here's a simple bullshit-free translation: Sorry, sand-niggers. Your raghead culture is inferior to ours. You can’t have democracy unless we become the agents of your change. Without us, you won’t get anywhere. In the meantime, we'll blame your culture for shoving down your throats dictators that you hate but that guarantee us access to cheap oil.

Ordinary Egyptians took a mere 18 days to show what a load of crap this thinking was. And who opposed their peaceful uprising? Why none other than a large number of the same American conservatives. Funny that.

UPDATE I: Here's a few choice words from an Australian of Egyptian heritage as reported in the Sun-Herald today:

... Nour Eldin Tarraf, a 35-year-old orthodontist who moved to Sydney from Cairo five years ago, said the real threat to Egypt's prosperity was not religion. ''I'm a Muslim who grew up in a building that was half-Muslim, half-Christian - no one cared,'' said Mr Tarraf, of the Sydney Egyptian Revolution Solidarity Committee.



''The real problem is corruption. It infiltrated every rank of Egyptian society, and changing that will not be easy.''

UPDATE II: Even those who sold Mubarak to the nation are suddenly trying to reinvent themselves. The Washington Post recently published a piece about the editor of a pro-Mubarak (as in state-owned) newspaper:

For now, Osama Saraya is still editor in chief of al-Ahram, the state-run Egyptian newspaper that has long been a deferential mouthpiece for the president and his ruling party. 

But his main preoccupation seems to be reinvention. 

Portraits of Hosni Mubarak no longer adorn his office walls (one is stashed under the television, others behind a curtain). Photographs of Saraya with top government officials have been turned upside down. 

It was only last week that Saraya was denouncing the chaos caused by pro-democracy demonstrators. His editorial in al-Ahram on Sunday carried a very different tune. 

"A salutation to the revolution and respect to its youth," Saraya wrote. "The corrupt in Egypt were only a few that led to the destruction of the country, and their era is gone now.''

Words © 2011 Irfan Yusuf


Joe Jackson - Right And Wrong



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POLITICS/COMMENT: Religious Freedom in the Land of the Free ...

This column was first published in NewMatilda on 17 January 2008.

_____________________

Barack Obama could convert to Judaism, have a sex-change operation and marry Daniel Pipes. He’d still be eligible for the top job, writes Irfan Yusuf

Here’s a memo to all you God-fearing American voters out there: Barack Obama is not a Muslim. He never has been, even if his biological father was a Kenyan Muslim and his step-father was an Indonesian Muslim. And even if he went to school in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority State.

So what exactly is Obama’s religious affiliation? Who knows? Indeed, who cares?

No Mormons please, we’re evangelical

Believe it or not, many Americans do. Just ask all those evangelical Christian Republican voters in Iowa who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for the smart and talented Mitt Romney, and that minority of Michigan Republicans who refused to vote for him.

Romney might be a self-made man. He might bring much needed political skills to the White House. Unlike a certain Texan who once appointed John Howard as his Deputy Sheriff, Romney might actually be able to string a sentence together without inadvertently injecting too much wit and wisdom.

But forget all that important stuff. What really matters to a huge number of Americans is that Romney is — perish the thought — a Mormon. You wouldn’t think he was, would you? Romney doesn’t wear a black name badge on the front of his coat or even sing his amended version of that old Christopher Cross song (which goes something like “When you get caught between the moon and Salt Lake City ).

But I guess for evangelical warriors, Romney’s faith is a deliberate deception of all those poor God-fearing real Christians.

In my high school year, I had two close mates, one Jewish and another Mormon. Ours was a low-church evangelical Anglican school, and our school chaplain one day decided to show us all a video called The God Makers. The video claimed to expose Mormon teachings, which Mormons allegedly hide from the rest of us.

After the movie, some evangelical kids poked fun at my Mormon friend, saying: “What kind of stupid religion teaches that men can become God?"

My Jewish mate retorted: “I know. It’s almost as dumb as claiming God became a man!"

You’d think American Republicans would show more maturity than a couple of 16-year-olds.



No (former) Muslims please, we’re Neo-con

Romney may not be prepared to disown his ancestral faith, but Democratic candidate Barack Obama can’t get enough of disowning his. Obama has used every opportunity to reassure Americans that he has absolutely no trace of Islam in him.

Obama sees Christianity as a faith mobilising people to pursue social justice. In this respect, his vision is similar to that of our own Kevin Rudd. Further, Obama’s statement on faith clearly states that religion shouldn’t be used to divide the nation.

Given the increasing diversity of America’s population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of non-believers.

But all this doesn’t help Obama. As American Muslim stand-up comedian Azhar Usman told one audience:

Check this guy out. He’s first name rhymes with Iraq. His middle name is Hussein, and his last name is almost Osama!

If you believe what lunar-Right commentators like Daniel Pipes say, you’d think Muslims were lining up to kill Mr almost-Osama. On Christmas Eve, FrontPageMagazine.com published a sectarian rant written by Pipes titled ‘Was Barack Obama a Muslim?’

Pipes concluded Obama was an ex-Muslim who converted to Christianity in his college years. Because of this, Pipes claims

Mainstream American Muslims … would … be angry at what they consider would be his apostasy.

I can’t find any evidence of mainstream American Muslims getting angry over Obama’s religious choices. Perhaps Pipes could show me the anger in this column by one of America’s most widely read Muslim writers?

Pipes doesn’t stop there. Eight days later, he provides evidence that ...

Obama was an irregularly practicing Muslim who rarely or occasionally prayed with his step-father in a mosque.

On that basis, Pipes titles his article ‘Confirmed: Barack Obama Practised Islam’.

On that basis, I can confirm that former Liberal Member for Parramatta, Ross Cameron, also practised Islam. On the day before his election to Federal Parliament in 1996, I took Cameron to a Friday prayer service. Cameron addressed worshippers, then joined them in prayers, copying all the postures of Islamic congregational worship. To this day, I’m not aware of a single Muslim from Parramatta or elsewhere who has threatened to kill Cameron for abandoning the faith.

Why God won’t get to vote in the US Elections

In 1786, Thomas Jefferson successfully moved Virginia’s Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom. In his autobiography, Jefferson praised the inclusiveness of the Statute which allowed for ...

... the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo and the Infidel to play an equal role in public life.

Other Founding Fathers made clear the new federal republic would allow followers of all religions and none to hold high office. This has been enshrined in the US Constitution, which states...

... no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

That means Hillary can become a Mormon, divorce Bill and become Mitt’s second wife. Obama can convert to Judaism, have a sex-change operation and marry Daniel Pipes. They’ll still be eligible for the top job.

American Neo-cons can only make an issue of a candidate’s faith by ignoring the clear intent of the Constitution. And to think they call themselves conservatives.

Words © 2010 Irfan Yusuf



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POLITICS: The Pros And Cons Of Neo-Cons

In his Quarterly Essay, Waleed Aly looks to the past for the future of conservatism in Australia, but Irfan Yusuf wonders what - and who - has been left out of his political vision ...

There's nothing like a fresh approach to Australian politics. And what could be fresher than that of a former executive member of a peak Islamic religious body, a young man with degrees in engineering and law, the author of a book and a ton of op-eds who now lectures in politics at Monash University?

Waleed Aly tells us that his Quarterly Essay - What's Right? The Future of Conservatism in Australia - is not just a treatise about the strategic direction of Coalition parties but that it also delves deeper into the conservative movement and its philosophical and ideological underpinnings.

Broadly, Aly argues that liberalism, with its emphasis on individual rights, added much-needed ideological flesh to conservatism which was historically allergic to ideology. Through the marriage of liberalism and conservatism, Aly shows how philosophies can sometimes collide and end up walking hand in hand.

Problems arose, however, when, some 30 years ago, a vicious streak of market-obsessed neo-liberalism tried to force itself onto the two political lovers, the resultant conservatism morphed into the unreal, defending the indefensible and undermining the very foundations of both conservatism and liberalism. Aly says it all started in the Western world with Maggie Thatcher and the late Ronald Reagan, both of whom adopted the basic economic ideas of Friedrich Hayek. (Surprisingly, he doesn't mention influential neo-liberal economist Milton Friedman).

In Australia, according to Aly, the neo-liberal revolution started in 1996 with the election of the Howard government. He is mistaken. In fact neo-liberalism was first adopted by the NSW Liberal government headed up by Nick Greiner and followed closely by the Victorian Liberal government of Jeff Kennett.

When Aly claims that neo-liberalism works in the unreal, what does he mean? His most significant example is climate change - neo-liberal neo-cons apparently have no way to support climate change action. He writes that:

In order for neo-liberalism to be preserved, climate change must, in the first instance, be denied ... The battle over the truth of climate-change science is therefore a political fight to the death for neo-liberalism.

Aly cites Nick Minchin and even this colourful former Thatcher adviser in support of this claim but he doesn't mention Thatcher herself, who, as far back as 1990, was under no illusions about the science of climate change or its consequences for environmental, economic and broader government policy.

Now to Aly's critique of modern neo-conservative liberalism's approach to multiculturalism. Aly takes the Howard government to task for its rhetoric toward Muslim communities in particular and migrants in general which was ostensibly about "integration" and social cohesion, but applied with alarming inconsistency. Hence Brendan Nelson can tell Muslim independent schools to "clear off" unless they teach Australian values but can still dish out millions to schools run by the Exclusive Brethren.

Aly writes that

... the cultural politics of neo-conservatism very quickly resort to a kind of groupism, prosecuting an identity politics of collectivism ... not simply the dispassionate application of a political philosophy ... a reactionary, combative doctrine that seeks out enemies it can destroy.

Muslims have in no way suffered the kinds of deprivations suffered by Australia's Indigenous peoples. On that basis, a prominent former spokesman for a Muslim peak body should surely recognise the greater injustice and identify the greater ideological evil. Aly's response?

ATSIC, native title, any kind of treaty and indeed almost the entire politics of symbolic reconciliation are very difficult to accommodate in a liberal conservative worldview ... One should be circumspect ... about explaining every liberal conservative position on these issues as the simple product of racism or colonialism. These factors may be present in varying degrees, but there is a strong philosophical dimension that is fundamental. (my italics)

So we should be wary of accusing conservatives of racism when they refuse to apologise to the stolen generation, even if they're inconsistent and have no reluctance to apologise to white stolen kids? Aly unpacks conservative rhetoric and it's underlying philosophy when used to prosecute one form of oppression and yet excuses the same process when used to execute and justify an even greater oppression. When it's done to migrants (especially Muslims), it is irrational, ideologically-charged prejudice but when much worse is done to those who have occupied this land for 400 centuries, it can have some philosophical justification and should not necessarily be seen as racism.

Muslims did suffer severe headaches and a fair few civil rights infringements during the Howard era, all in the name of national security. But Muslims have never had their social security benefits quarantined on the basis of their ethnic or religious identity. Muslims were not subject to a severe intervention which could only be implemented by suspending the operation of the Racial Discrimination Act and Muslims have not had their children stolen from them as part of a deliberate government policy.

Aly's inconsistency reflects a lack of empathy we sadly see all too often among defenders of multiculturalism, especially current and former "ethnic" leaders. Today's migrant brown man complains of the white man's prejudice toward him but neglects to recognise the responsibility of both white and brown migrants toward the continued dispossession of the original Australians. Muslim leaders should not expect empathy when they do not empathise toward those who have suffered much more and for much longer.

Those sympathetic to Aly's Muslim advocacy might also be uncomfortable with his deep reverence for Howard-s ideas. Indeed, Aly's admirers from that nebulous ideological place often referred to as "the Left" will be shocked to read him state that "the liberal and conservative traditions contain indispensible wisdom for the functioning of our politics." They might conclude, as I have, that Aly is finally confessing his own deep conservatism.

To be fair, what Aly reveres in the likes of Howard and Abbott (and what I also recognised in Abbott) is their commitment (or at least lip service) to basic conservative principles, not policies and programs. These principles can lead to policy outcomes with which people on both sides of the political spectrum will be comfortable.

Conservatives like decentralised power, gradual evolutionary change, not revolution. They are cautious and prefer the status quo without becoming captive to what Aly calls "reactionary nostalgia". Anti-racism is thus an inherently conservative idea, even if it has not been associated with contemporary manifestations of conservatism.

Aly's historical and philosophical range is impressive: the industrial revolution, the development of liberalism and its marriage to conservatism; and the more recent morphing of conservatism into neo-conservatism via a marriage with market-obsessed neo-liberalism.

That said, by the time I reached page 64 of this 105-page essay on the future of conservatism, I wondered when - and indeed whether - we would actually reach the Australian present, let alone the future.

I flicked to the "Sources" section where Aly presents his references. There are plenty of references to Edmund Burke, John Stuart Mill, Friedrich Hayek and others. Also mentioned were Michael Oakeshott, former UK Guardian journalist Melanie Phillips and even American neo-con Irving Kristol.

One surprising omission was Tony Abbott's Battlelines which was launched in late July 2009, probably before Aly first put pen to paper for his Quarterly Essay. One needn't agree with everything Abbott's book has to say (Lord knows I certainly don't), but it strikes me as extremely ambitious on Aly's part to even attempt to write about domestic conservative futures without exploring a comprehensive treatise of one of its prominent practitioners. Instead, Aly's discussion of the current Federal Coalition leader is limited to some speeches and articles where Abbott discusses multiculturalism, Muslims and climate change.

Aly's basic conclusion is that if conservatism in Australia is to have any future, it must retreat from market-obsessed and culturally reactionary neo-liberal conservatism and return to the old style liberal conservatism. Aly argues that Abbott's understanding of multiculturalism shows he has the nuance to begin this process (although he ignores Abbott's calls around this time for a new paternalism toward Indigenous peoples.)

But exactly how is this de-and-reconstruction of conservatism to be achieved? After reading Aly's essay, I'm still not sure. His broad brush of history, economics and political philosophy hovers around the topic but never quite nails it. He has little to say on what is billed as the central theme of his essay except a confession at the top of page 96 that: "I am not optimistic."

And if Aly's conservative prescription is followed, Indigenous Australians need not be optimistic either.

This review was first published in NewMatilda.

Words © 2010 Irfan Yusuf

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COMMENT: A miracle from Greg ...

People who don't believe in miracles should consider this.

Greg Sheridan has just had a column published in The Australian which:

a. acknowledges that Donald Rumsfeld did something wrong; and

b. does not cite some conversation Sheridan claims to have had with some world leader or unnamed overseas and allegedly influential source.

He's returning to earth! It's a miracle!!

COMMENT: Noooooooooooooooooooooo Fatso's

I’m sure readers will remember that show National Bingo Night. Readers of South Asian heritage will have particularly fond memories of the Bingo Commissioner who kicked so many goals for their ancestral culture in Australia with this classic performance.



How could we ever not forget?

Dr Tanveer Ahmed had more than just failed TV game shows in his comedic repertoire. Indeed, perhaps his best comic performance has been convincing the neo-Conservative Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) that he is also an eminently qualified to be appointed a visiting fellow with research interests in:

… Islamic affairs, South Asia and the health sector.

Ahmed’s expertise in and contributions to psychiatry are well documented. His latest contribution to Islamic affairs (whatever that phrase means) consists of a review of the book by yours truly, published in the Spring 2009 edition of Policy magazine published by the CIS.

Normally I wouldn’t waste $9.95 on this allegedly intellectual magazine. However, it had one of my all-time favourite writers - PJ O’Rourke - on the cover. Yet as I found out after I had parted with my cash, all they had from PJ was an interview he did with some bloke who does a radio show on Radio National. I could have just as easily read the same interview online on the ABC website for free! Indeed, I had already downloaded the podcast back in May!!

Anyway, Ahmed’s review makes interesting reading for his complete objectivity. He sticks to the issues. He avoids making personal attacks. He’s not interested in innuendo. Consider this paragraph:

Yusuf also fits the profile of those vulnerable to radicalisation in other ways, for it is the socially awkward who are most likely to turn to Islamist teachings for a sense of social connectedness, in much the same way that other disaffected adolescents may become punks or Goths. Yusuf writes of being bullied because of the colour of his skin while in primary school. He is also obese. In a recent New York Times op-ed piece, an Iranian blogger captured it beautifully when he describes the religious police as ‘those young men least likely to ever attract the opposite sex but then find the government tells them they are special and gives them guns to prove it.’

Ahmed continues with this prediction:

Yusuf will remain controversial and disliked by many, including some Muslims.

Yes, I am disliked by the likes of Keysar Trad, Andrew Bolt, Mark Steyn, Daniel Pipes, Tim Blair and Tanveer Ahmed. The latter two seem to relish making references to my physique. It is true. I am fat. Still, my message to them is ...


And for some ailments there is NOOOOOOOOOOOO cure. Not even if you are a medical practitioner.

UPDATE I: Speaking of Daniel Pipes, Ahmed's review describes Pipes as a "US Middle East expert". Ahmed famously shared the podium with Pipes arguing the proposition that Islam and democracy are incompatible. To argue that Islam and democracy are incompatible implies that Muslims cannot live as productive citizens in a democracy. Given that Pipes seems to believe that Barack Obama was (and possibly still is) a Muslim, one wonders how Pipes can explain a current or former Muslim now becoming President of arguably the world's most successful democracy.

UPDATE II: An interesting discussion on Tanveer's review can be found at the blog of Policy editor Andrew Norton here.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


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CRIKEY: Obama self-flagellating in Africa?

Some Africans weren’t happy that US President Barack Obama overlooked their country and selected Ghana for his first tour of sub-Saharan Africa. You can imagine how the Kenyans must have felt by Obama’s excuse:

In my father's own country of Kenya, I'm concerned about how the political parties do not seem to be moving into a permanent reconciliation that would allow the country to move forward. And Kenya is not alone in some of the problems that we've seen of late, post-election or pre-election.

Though Obama did have some nice things to say about Kenyan civil society.

Obama told the AllAfrica.com website he deliberately chose Ghana because of its stable democratic institutions:

Ghana has now undergone a couple of successful elections in which power was transferred peacefully, even a very close election ... by travelling to Ghana, we hope to highlight the effective governance that they have in place.

There was also an emotional visit by the Obama family to the Cape Coast Castle -- a former holding area for slaves to the Americas. The castle is lined with cannons, and slaves were kept in squalid dungeons before being shipped off to captivity or death.

Obama later remarked:

I'll never forget the image of my two young daughters, the descendants of Africans and African-Americans, walking through those doors of no return but then walking back (through) those doors.

He then compared slavery to the Holocaust, a comparison that has already upset some if the comments here and here are anything to go by.

But the most hysterical response to Obama’s speech to the Ghanaian Parliament came from the neo-Conservative Hudson Institute’s Anne Bayefsky, whose anger was unleashed at Forbes and The Australian.

Bayefsky compared Obama’s Ghana speech to his recent address in Cairo. Her conclusion? That Obama loves to ...

... [s]trok[e] Muslim and Arab nations" and that this "has become the hallmark of Obama's foreign policy.

Meanwhile ...

... Christian Africa was to be treated to no such self-flagellation ... The disparity between the scolding he gave in Ghana and the love-in he held in Cairo illuminates an incoherent and dangerous agenda.

The problem with this thesis, like so many things emerging from neo-Conservative thinktanks, is that it doesn’t involve too much thought.

Sub-Saharan Africa includes Muslim-majority states such as Djibouti (94%), Senegal (95%), Guinea (92%), Gambia (90%), Sierra Leone (65%) and Burkina Faso (65%).

Among African member states of the Organisation of Islamic Conference are: Uganda, Chad, Togo, Cameroon, Cote D’Ivoire, Nigeria and Mozambique.

So African Muslims were well-represented in both the Cairo love-in and the Ghana self-flagellation. Either that, or Bayefsky might learn some high school geography.

First published in Crikey on Tuesday 14 July 2009.

COMMENT: The columnist who wants to bomb Iranians accuses his opponents of not doing enough for them ...

Back in January 2007, Greg Sheridan praised former US President George W Bush for defying conventional wisdom and popular sentiment in his foreign policy adventures. His column of 11 January began with these words:

A US military strike against Iran must now be considered formally on the international agenda, following George W. Bush’s sombre, calm, but in substance extraordinarily bold address on Iraq . Bush accused Iran of providing material assistance for attacks on US troops in Iraq . It is hard to imagine a more serious accusation. What’s more, Bush promised to stop such Iranian actions. Whatever you think of Bush, he has a very high level of credibility when it comes to carrying out any threat he makes of military action.

Given Sheridan ’s near-obsessive grovelling of all things Bush, I have little doubt that Sheridan would have supported a full scale invasion of Iran . Forced regime change was good enough for the Iraqi goose, and in Sheridan ’s eyes would be just as good for the Iranian gander. Heck, what’s a few hundred thousand dead Iranian civilians?

Yet the other day Sheridan has the gall to claim that the so-called “Western human rights lobby” has been doing bugger-all to support Iranian protesters Sheridan would have been quite happy to see the Yanks and/or Israelis bomb the crap out of. Heck, just a week earlier Sheridan was happy to consider the utility of “a limited military strike” against Iran.

Now Sheridan claims that ...

[a]part from ethnic Iranians, there has hardly been a single demonstration in any Western capital in support of the Iranian democrats. Yet isn't there a class, in Australia and in the rest of the West, of people deeply concerned about human rights?

He then has a go at Louise Adler for criticising Israel and Michael Leunig for having a cartoon in an Iranian competition which he didn’t actually submit and had no idea was being submitted anyway. And what does all this prove?

[T]hat many Western human rights organisations, and many of the most self-congratulatory and morally vain posturers, are not interested in human rights at all. They are interested in advancing a soft Left sectarian agenda.

Actually, what it proves is that Sheridan doesn't know what he's talking about. He should name just one of his critics who has called upon Iran to be bombed and invaded in the manner he has. But then on Planet Sheridan, if you don’t draw a cartoon for Iranian protestors or you don’t march through the streets, you clearly don’t like Iranian democrats as much as if you’re happy to see them and their families blown up by American and/or Israeli bombs. Go figure.

CRIKEY: Trouble is that Turnbull's dead wood is right ...

Malcolm Turnbull didn’t become a multimillionaire by being a stranger to big business. This former merchant banker, lawyer, internet entrepreneur and corporate wheeler-and-dealer knows his Party’s relationship with sections of the business community is the closest financial and institutional equivalent it has to the ALP’s more formalised relationship with the trade union movement.

So when business donors threaten to turn the financial tap off if Turnbull doesn’t ...

... personally driv[e] a large scale renewal of MPs in the parliamentary party ...

... as reported in The Australian today, Turnbull will listen carefully.

There’s just one problem. The 14 MP’s listed as dead wood by these business donors include powerful forces in the NSW Right. While business donors may hold the purse strings of the NSW Party, the Right Wing holds the Party’s t-sticles.

Among those on the corporate hit list is NSW Senator Bill Heffernan. "Farmer Bill" (as the former President of Junee Shire Council is known in urban Party circles) was elected to the Senate some months after the Howard government was swept to power in March 1996. Heffernan employed a rightwing Young Liberal powerbroker named Nicholas Campbell. The NSW Right were at that time weak in both the Young Libs and the Big Libs, but their star was rising.

Today Mr Campbell is President of a NSW Liberal Party firmly controlled by the Right. Campbell is likely to use his considerable Machiavellian skills to protect his old employer’s position ... unless Campbell himself is Heffernan’s likely replacement.

The Right will also do anything to protect Bronwyn Bishop, whose electorate of Mackellar takes in the NSW State electorate of Pittwater currently held by 34 year old Rob Stokes.

A former environmental lawyer, Stokes served as electorate officer (read branch stacker) to former NSW Opposition Leader (and Liberal Left powerbroker) John Brogden. Together, they actively stacked local branches with lots of small-‘l’ liberals, to the extent that the Left almost had the numbers to challenge Mrs Bishop in a preselection.

Bishop was paranoid of Brogden and she wouldn’t exactly be stoked by the young Stokes. Her departure will almost certainly see a small "l" liberal be the next MP for the blue ribbon Liberal seat of Mackellar. A Left MP will employ Left staff with time and resources for factional work such as stacking the nearby branches of Tong Abbott in the adjoining seat.

So Turnbull is in a Catch-22. On the one hand, his Party may find its biggest donors withdrawing their financial support unless he brings in new talent. On the other hand, this could involve going to war against powerful rightwing warhorses in his home state. Watch this space.

Then again, my entire analysis might just be dismissed on the basis that the report in The Oz is just a case of Glenn Milne reproducing what he’s learned from Mr Costello’s office. In which case, nless Costello is again setting the scene for a possible challenge that is unlikely to eventuate, ignore this space.

First published in Crikey on Monday 4 May 2009.

CRIKEY: When will anti-war conservatives condemn the so-called war on terror?

The former opinion editor of The Australian (and no doubt author of numerous editorials in The Oz at the time) has made his position on the Iraq war, George W Bush and neo-Conservative foreign policy very clear. In The Oz today, Tom Switzer reminds his readers that he is "someone who strongly opposed the war from the outset ... long believed the Iraq invasion was unnecessary". Switzer disputes any link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, refers to the "incompetence" of former Prez Dubya and has a go at "the neo-conservative architects of this misbegotten venture". He reminds us also that "democracy was not an export commodity".

I needed Tom’s reminder. Like many who kept a vomit bag handy whilst reading The Australian at the time, I remember The Oz editorial and op-ed sections doing little more than accusing war critics of lacking patriotism. Switzer edited a page and wrote editorials singing lyrics written by Bush, Blair and our own Dubya, John W Howard.

I know many conservatives disagreed on Bush’s foreign policy adventures. From Pat Buchanan to Owen Harries, prominent non-neo-Con conservatives objected not only to war in Iraq but indeed the entire fiasco of torture, murder, mayhem and lawlessness packaged as the "War on Terror".

But can the man who brought Janet Albrechtsen to the national stage now honestly claim he was never a neo-Con after all? Is Switzer changing his tone in line with a new American administration, to shore up his position at the United States Study Centre at Sydney Uni? Can Switzer really legitimately claim to be a critic of the Iraq debacle?

Yes, he can.

As far back as May 2003, Switzer opposed the Iraquagmire in a book review for Quadrant. Switzer lamented the almost near-absence of anti-war sentiment among Australian conservatives when compared to their UK and US counterparts. In a Quadrant article in December ’05, Switzer and Neil Clark argued that conservatives down under "have practically wanted the Australian Army to serve as the American Foreign Legion". They argued the Iraq war was a profoundly unconservative war.

Now Switzer and other conservatives must acknowledge the Iraq war was part of a wider war on common sense, world peace, the rule of law and democratic values. Yes, two jets did hit the Twin Towers. Yes, bombs went off in Madrid, Bali, London etc. But did that make some "War on Terror" necessary?

There’s no point opposing the Iraq war if you still support all the nonsense associated with it. Nonsense like Guantanamo, like extraordinary rendition, like some crazed theory of the world being divided along neat cultural lines.

Conservatives like Switzer need to acknowledge that the so-called war on terror, not just its Iraqi component, may have had some good consequences and may have been well-intentioned. But by and large, it has been an unmitigated disaster.

First published in the Crikey daily alert on Monday 09 February 2009.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


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REFLECTION: Usama bin Reagan

It was 1982. I had just entered high school and had completed my first 2 years at an evangelical Anglican Cathedral School in the heart of Sydney's central business district. It was my first English class, and my army-officer-cum-English-teacher (who would remain my English teacher for the next four years) taught me one of life's important lessons.

English is all about writing. And the best way to learn how to write is to read. So make sure you do not start your first lesson in the morning without reading the Sydney Morning Herald.

Huh? Us adolescents reading a serious broadsheet read by men in suits on the train? Millard lectured us:

I have told you what I expect. And I know your parents all buy the Herald so you have no excuses.

He was right. My father has been buying the Herald since 1970. I doubt he has missed a single issue. And when he saw his son, the same kid who usually spent morning hours filling his ears with the musical lead of AC/DC, struggling through the local and international news stories, all my dad could say was Shabash! (Well done!)

Those were the days before the Oslo accords. So like most others, I read the Herald and believed that all Palestinians were a bunch of terrorists who hijack planes and kill Jews. And what made them worse is that they were aligned with the Soviets, those evil communists who invaded those poor people in Afghanistan.

Communists were bad in those days. But Mujahideen were good. Reagan was not just the president of the United States. He was also the Grand Ghazi, the Head Shaykh, the Murshid Effendi and the Master Mufti of the jihad against the Soviets.

Certainly that was the impression I got from reading the Herald, from watching 60 Minutes and from other news and current affairs sources.

Reagan and his advisers knew that they could not rely on the rabble of competing Afghan factions to fight the world's other superpower. He needed outside help. The Saudis and other Arab states were willing. Newspapers in Arab countries were advertising for volunteers to do Allah's (and the CIA's) work in Afghanistan. All the scholars and writers that Daniel Pipes loves to malign were used by Reagan and his murids in the Pentagon and various intelligence agencies for this cause.

I used to go to the mosque and hear khutbas about the great mujahideen. Some imams even said prayers for President Reagan. But Reagan had a secret weapon to unleash on the Soviets. It was the brains, the organizational ability and conservative fanaticism that Reagan probably wished he had in his own campaign team.

Reagan needed someone to coordinate the training, indoctrination and organization of the Arab volunteers. And who better than one of the favorite sons of a Saudi business family with close links to Reagan's own vice-president, George Bush. The Bin Ladins were huge fans of the old-style anti-Communist conservatives. Their errant son, Usama, had too much time and money on his hands. Better he be fighting a sacred cause in the desert than chasing skirts in the nightclubs of London and New York.

And so Usama bin Ladin became Usama bin Reagan. His job was to unleash as many 9/11's on the Soviets as possible. And all with the blessing of the Pentagon and the White House. Bin Ladin used his engineering skills and the ferocious devotion of his trainees to wreak havoc on Soviet forces.

Today of course, the Bush family is not exactly fond of Usama bin Reagan. They say they want him dead or alive. They said the same about Saddam Hussein. But for all we know, Saddam might be sitting in some 5-star hotel sipping champagne with the dude who runs Abu Ghraib prison, giving him tips on how many dogs it will take to rip the genitals off an Iraqi civilian. It takes a lot for the US government to mistreat their former employees.

What seriously pisses me off is how the neocons claim to hate Usama so much. Yet the way they are behaving benefits Usama's cause. What the hell am I talking about now?

Usama sits in his cave and babbles on about how the West is against all Muslims and how Western regimes are waging a war on Muslims. Of course, we all know that Muslims are doing a pretty good job at stuffing themselves up. They need no help from the West. Their own insistence on staying illiterate, broke, uncivilized, poor, uneducated, dictatorial and paranoid tends to place them on the civilizational backfoot. And when most of their so-called Islamic scholars and movements excel in these areas, it does not help.

Muslim minorities in the US, Australia, and other Western countries don�t help either. In the Australian state with the greatest concentration of Muslims (New South Wales, home of Sydney), we have an Islamic Council of NSW, a Supreme Islamic Council of NSW and a Muslim Council of NSW. All claim to legitimately represent Muslims here. In the US, you have some dude who wants to run a Supreme Islamic Council who labels 80% of Muslims as terrorists and extremists and wahhabists. With so-called leadership like that, is it any wonder we are in a mess?

However bad the condition of Muslims might be, I can say with great confidence that if Usama appeared in a Mosque in Sydney and tried to claim that the Australian government is out to target Islam and Muslims, he would be laughed out of the place.

By and large, Muslims just do not buy Usama's conspiratorial muck. Muslims know better. It is easy for Usama to make these bombastic claims. But he has not lived in a democratic, mature, liberal and free society. He has not lived in countries where (at least in terms of freedom and the rule of law), Islam is followed more than in most so-called Muslim countries. Try stopping an Aussie Muslim schoolgirl from wearing a hijab and be prepared to spend thousands in legal fees while she drags you through a range of courts and tribunals.

Muslims know Usama and his like are full of crap. For the time being. But there is a problem. The neocons seem to want Western Muslim communities to believe Usama.

How?

Conservative governments are handing Usama victory on a platter. Conservative governments, including the Howard Government in Australia, are helping to make Usama more believable. Let me give you a few examples.

The government claims to have implemented a tough immigration system. If you break or flout immigration laws, you can be detained and deported. So if you are an Afghan Hazara fleeing Hamid Karzai's drug lords, expect to spend at least 12 months in a detention center in the desert. And if you are an English backpacker who overstays, expect to ... well ... um ... expect to keep working and getting pissed at the pub!

We have anti-terror laws which are being beefed up. And we have a list of organizations regarded as terror groups. In the US, Dubya made a point of declaring certain Latin American and Northern Ireland groups to be terrorist groups. Not the Howard Government. It seems you cannot be a terrorist group unless you have some link to Islam.

Meanwhile, the bulk of the people who are being arrested and charged are people whose acts occurred years ago and (in at least one case) who actively cooperated with security officials and provided information that led to the arrest of the big guns overseas. The nature of the charges includes placing information online and training with certain groups. And I am offering no prizes for guessing which religious faith they all seem to belong to.

But the classic is the way Guantanamo detainees are being treated. Hey, at least John Walker Lindh was treated like a citizen. At least the English jumped up and down for their detainees. The way Prime Minister John Howard and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer are behaving, you'd think Mamdouh Habib and David Hicks (the two Australian detainees) are as guilty as sin and should be shot at dawn.

An Australian citizen who finds himself detained overseas can and should expect all manner of assistance from the Australian embassy in that country. We expect the Department of Foreign Affairs to place all diplomatic pressure on the detaining country, and try to come to some kind of arrangement which can ensure punishment which fits our standards of justice. The fact that the person has been detained for pedophilia or smuggling heroine or terrorism or for having the wrong colored socks is irrelevant.

But the Howard Government has effectively told David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib and their families to shove off. The fact that Hicks and Habib are Australian citizens is irrelevant.

Now I would like someone to point out where the Buddhist section is at the Guantanamo prison. I don't know of any army rabbis working at the complex to service the spiritual needs of inmates. And I did not hear of any sweets being distributed during Deevali. What I am trying to say is that membership of a particular religious denomination and detention at Guantanamo Bay tend to go hand-in-hand.

Our Foreign Minister makes sure that Australians convicted of molesting little boys in Indonesia are given all consular and other assistance and that Australians caught with white powder in the suitcases are not locked up for too long. But it appears that if you happen to be of the wrong religion and find yourself in a spot of bother in Cuba, don't expect Messrs. Howard and Downer to do anything to help you.

Seriously, I would love to think that all of this is just paranoid hogwash. But my Prime Minister and Foreign Minister are just not giving me reason to believe otherwise.

First published in MWU on June 13 2004.

COMMENT: Daniel and Gabby weep. Let's celebrate!

After predicting Barack Obama would go down a similar electoral path as former US Presidential candidate George McGovern, a dispondent Daniel Pipes writes this postscript on November 5:

Well, this prediction was badly wrong. To explain it away, I could point to the fall's financial problems, the media's bias, or to the McCain campaign's many errors, but there's a deeper issue here. I had confidence that the American people would reject Obama when they learned about his extremist political views, dubious associations, and biographical mysteries. I am astonished that these problems hardly registered, I feel bewildered by my own country, and apprehensive by what comes next.

A comment was left by "Gabby from australia" who compares Obama to Hitler and Stalin:

Hi I am Gabby from Australia here. I have been coming daily to this website for many years and i think that your usual ability to accurately predict outcomes and trends is still very accurate. I believe in you, absolutely ...

Pffffft. She continues:

Remember ww2? Hitler was the same type, a cult of personality and slick propaganda of goebbels, Stalin, Lenin, they all lied didn't they and gullible people still followedd them, the ends justifies the means. Anyone remember how they rise to power ended up? I do.

God help America under Obama.

God help Gabby! Continuing:

Obama-he admits his brothers and sisters all are muslims, yet he admits his dad and step dad was muslim. Yet, still he persisted and continued to persist with the lie he was not amuslim nor ever was which is orwellian in the extreme of denialibility. "plausible or believable deniability". Majority of his borhters and sisters are still in poverty in Kenya.

If you tell a lie often enough it will be told as fact. You just need to read read about the koran to know its all lies. "War is deceit muhammad said". Well America is at war, and teh greatest liar has been elected. Indeed , War is deceit.

His cousin ODINGA in Kenya he gave a million dollars to and helped advise and electioneer for "cuz"odinga is a rabid jihadst whom has forced shariah law on the population of 90 per cent non muslims in that land. The rest of his kenyan family celebrated his victory as "obama is a son of kenya" son indeed, he was born in Kenya in front of his black african kenyan muslim grandmother who admitted it during a telephone call to a certain Bishop. His family still are por in kenya, I wonder with bro obama as president how many free citzenships will he hand out- ODinga? his brothers and sisters aunties uncles, why stop there. Let the whole fricken tribe in. Bet he will.

I'm sorry. My sides are splitting and I have other stuff to write. You can read the rest of Gabby's rant here. You can even add your own comment. But just remember this golden rule:

Comments are screened for relevance, substance, and tone, and in some cases edited, before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome, but comments are rejected if scurrilous, off-topic, vulgar, ad hominem, or otherwise viewed as inappropriate.

If you want to see Daniel Pipes in person, watch out for his next Australian tour, perhaps again sponsored by AIJAC and/or the Centre for Independent Studies.

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf


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More on political erectness …

An old friend from my Young Liberal days recently asked me why I write so much for left-of-centre publications (he used the example of NewMatilda.com). “Have you become a leftie, Irf?” he asked.

(No doubt he’ll be shocked to learn that I’ve also commenced writing for the allegedly left-of-centre Jesuit ezine Eureka Street.)

My own views haven’t changed all that much. I’m still basically a supporter of the free market, even if I believe that it doesn’t always produce the most beneficial outcomes.

My problem is that I find so many Western conservatives have adopted a number of rather strange ideological habits. One of them is political erectness, a trait which I have identified here.

So what is real conservatism? I think real conservatism is a way of thinking which frowns upon revolutionary change. Conservatives realise human beings are human beings, and that any agenda for change has to be gradual and based on a thorough understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the status quo. If it ain't broke, fix it cautiously.

Much conservative policy-making these days treats human beings as pieces of computer hardware that merely require the right (or should that be Right?) ideological, policy and/or legislative software. With the proviso, of course, that the human beings involved are free of alien racial, ethnic, cultural or religious viruses.

Unfortunately most conservative politicians (and ideologues, editors and columnists) these days think that the only way to prove you’re really conservative is to reach positions on all issues that are completely opposite to what the Left has come up with. (And why should this surprise anyone? After all, so many of today's so-called conservatives are just ex-Lefties trying to get somewhere in the world.)

Anyone who defines themselves by what they don't stand for (as opposed to what they do stand for) is intellectually weak and deficient. When a conservative columnist attacks something just because it is expressed in a manner or has an outcome that someone on the Left might support, you can tell they aren't a real conservative.

Now if the Left happen to come up with an idea or policy which can also be reached using conservative reasoning, why should conservatives necessarily oppose it? They will only do so if they believe in political erectness.

Another weird thing about much modern conservatism is that it has forgotten the reality of human beings as multi-dimensional creatures. What I mean by this is that human beings have numerous layers of identity – culture, language, religion (or lack thereof) etc. Today many conservatives treat certain people as belonging to some group just because one layer of their identity is regarded as unpalatable (often for politically erect reasons).

This propensity to pigeon-hole people is a dangerous trend. Just because a person shares one layer of their identity with mass-murderers or terrorists, it doesn’t make that person a mass-murderer or a terrorist. Old-style conservatism looks at people as individuals. The new style of allegedly conservative political erectness allows its practitioners to impose negative characteristics on large numbers of individuals, often with absurd results.

Hence, some UK-based conservatives seem to think that virtually all peoples associated with Islam should be deemed terrorists. With Muslims, terrorism becomes the rule unless the Muslim can prove that they are sufficiently “moderate” (something that is often only provable when the Muslim becomes an ex-Muslim). Muslims who show signs of open devoutness are deemed especially suspect.

The irony of this thinking is that the first victim of the July 7 London bombings to be buried was a 21 year old devout Muslim bank clerk of Bangladeshi origin whose surname was … you guessed it … Islam. Indeed, at least 10% of the victims of this bombing had some religious, cultural and/or ancestral link to Islam.

In Australia, prior to the last election, similar reasoning was used by conservatives to demonise African migrants and indigenous Australians. Some conservative commentators even suggested that indigenous Australian cultures regard sexual assault of minors as normal. Some of these same commentators are today attacking those who are using WYD to highlight the plight of victims of sexual assault by clergy.

Political erectness isn’t about solving problems or coming up with sound policy. Rather, it now seems to be more about ghettoising individuals into groups and then imposing negative characteristics on them. Ironically, these individuals are then blamed for being part of ghettoes that exist only in the minds of their pseudo-conservative politically erect accusers.

If conservatives don’t watch out, they might find themselves going down the same disastrous road as German and Dutch right wing parties in the decades leading upto the Second World War.
Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf

COMMENT: UK neo-Con mass debaters withdraw from debate

As this is a family-friendly blog, I will refrain from using too much sexual innuendo.

A number of allegedly conservative Englishmen have been invited by organisers of the IslamExpo (IE) being held in London.

Among them is Douglas Murray, a writer for the CentreRight blog. Murray reproduces an open letter to the organisers of the IE explaining his withdrawal symptoms, which you can read here.

His reasons? Apparently one of the directors of IE has commenced defamation proceedings against another conservative blogger who produces the Harry's Place blog.

The result?

I will not come on a platform hosted by people carrying out legal action against a deeply admirable and informed proponent of free speech.

What a bunch of sooks these so-called conservatives are. They refuse to partake in a debate at a forum attended by at least 50,000 people. Then they wonder why people don't take them seriously.

In the past 6 months, I've had numerous phone calls from journalists and in-house lawyers working for a certain media organisation. They've threatened me with defamation action because of material I've written on this and other blogs. Yet if that same media organisation provides me with a venue to share my views and participate in debate, why should I refuse?

After all, just because one or two individuals within an organisation enjoy providing humble bloggers like myself with an enormous ego boost, it doesn't mean the entire organisation reads (let alone objects to) the contents of this blog.

Of course, the real reason these so-called conservatives don't wish to participate is that they don't wish their own views to be subjected to intelligent scrutiny. Murray and his co-horts are happy to label IE as part of a giant jihadist conspiracy to take over the Western world. They are happy to lead us to believe some directors of IE have links to groups often associated with theocratic Islam. Or groups or individuals who allegedly support groups or individuals associated with theocratic Islam. Or groups or individuals who allegedly support groups or individuals who allegedly support groups or individuals associated with theocratic Islam (the lattermost being people who, according to writers like Ed Husain, are just waiting for the right moment to blow up a bus or two).

But they won't be too happy if someone mentions their associations with political extremists such as the Israeli Likud Party which is opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state. They won't be happy for their support for the disastrous Iraq war or their own links to theocratic Christianity (and its allies in the neo-C0nservative movement) to be discussed.

They don't like engaging in debate because they prefer to engage in another exercise. One that rhymes with the words "mass debate".

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf

BLOGS: Blogging for sickos …

Guess what. Blogging is good for you.

Actually, not blogging as such. Scientific America reports in its May 2008 issue that “expressive writing” or “writing about personal experiences, thoughts and feelings” can be more than just therapeutic.

Apparently blogging of this kind can help people with a range of conditions, from HIV to cancer to sleep disorders. That’s presuming, of course, that you don’t blog at odd hours.

However, scientists haven’t yet seen exactly how this works. All they know is that it works.

Scientists’ understanding about the neurobiology underlying therapeutic writing must remain speculative for now. Attempts to image the brain before and after writing have yielded minimal information because the active regions are located so deep inside. Recent functional magnetic resonance imaging studies have shown that the brain lights up differently before, during and after writing, notes James Pennebaker, a psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin. But Pennebaker and others remain skeptical about the value of such images because they are hard to duplicate and quantify.

Most likely, writing activates a cluster of neurological pathways, and several researchers are committed to uncovering them. At the University of Arizona, psychologist and neuroscientist Richard Lane hopes to make brain-imaging techniques more relevant by using those techniques to study the neuroanatomy of emotions and their expressions. Nancy Morgan, lead author of the Oncologist study, is looking to conduct larger community-based and clinical trials of expressive writing. And Pennebaker is continuing to investigate the link between expressive writing and biological changes, such as improved sleep, that are integral to health. “I think the sleep angle is one of the more promising ones,” he says.

The health benefits of blogging have become so widely recognised that ...

Some hospitals have started hosting patient-authored blogs on their Web sites as clinicians begin to recognize the therapeutic value. Unlike a bedside journal, blogging offers the added benefit of receptive readers in similar situations, Morgan explains: “Individuals are connecting to one another and witnessing each other’s expressions—the basis for forming a community.”

So hanging out with sick people can make you feel better. Maybe that’s why so many sick people hang around this blog.


Surely this shit can't be good for you!

(Thanks to SJH)

CRIKEY: They should hang their heads over the Hicks farce ...

Even after David Hicks was released from Guantanamo Bay in a hasty fashion, allegedly conservative cultural warriors like Gerard Henderson and Andrew Bolt kept telling us: Don't have sympathy for this man. He's pleaded guilty so he must be a nasty terrorist!

Now, they should hang their heads in shame. All daily broadsheets are reporting former Guantanamo chief prosecutor US Air Force Colonel Mo Davis' claims that the entire military tribunal process has been a farce. According to Davis, evidence was obtained through prisoner abuse (i.e. torture), and the trials were subject to direct political influence.

Indeed, The Oz reports Davis as saying

... politicians had forced him to prosecute Hicks ... if it had been his choice, Hicks would not have been charged because the case against him was not serious enough.

In other words, Hicks should have been released without having to enter any plea.

Yet former Foreign Minister Alexander Downer kept insisting to us that Hicks would be afforded a fair trial. Indeed, the Howard government were pushing for the Hicks trial to be brought forward.

Essentially, they were pushing for an Australian citizen to be pushed through a kangaroo court system subject to political influence and where evidence was obtained using torture. Clearly the former government didn't regard the fate of an Australian citizen to be of any great importance.

Luckily for the Commonwealth, Hicks continues to instruct his legal team that he doesn't wish to litigate and just wants to get on with his life. Hicks' father says that Hicks is "not ready for anything yet". We can only hope that Hicks will reveal to us the true horror of the Guantanamo experience in a future book.

But just because there aren't any more Aussies at Guantanamo doesn't mean that we should stop making a fuss. Crikey has already reported the tragic case of an al-Jazeera journalist who continues to languish there. Canadian Omar Khadr, a child soldier when taken into US custody in Afghanistan, continues to be ignored by Canada's conservative government.

And the Alex Gibney film Taxi To The Dark Side which tells the story of an Afghan taxi driver beaten to death in US custody, asks some tough questions about the use of torture in the war against terrorism.

As more Australians lose their lives in this war, our government also needs to start asking some tough questions. If Western nations like Australia don't speak out about human rights abuses of our allies, what moral basis will we have to criticise other countries (such as China and Saudi Arabia) for their human rights abuses?

The time has come for the United States to close its Guantanamo Bay prisons and to end extraordinary rendition. Australia is among America's closest allies. We are perfectly positioned to impress upon our ally the self-defeating nature of fighting terror with torture.



Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf