REFLECTION: On the desire to write ...

It feels like ages since I last visited this blog. I haven't had anything published since late 2011 when I ventured into the contentious issue of gay marriage. After that, a heap of family, work, personal and health issues took over.

This blog represents a difficult time of recovery. There is stuff here I'm somewhat embarrassed to read. There is also stuff that was noticed by editors and producers and lots of readers, stuff which I am proud of.

If it wasn't for this blog, I'd never have ventured into my humble attempts at opinion journalism. I'd never have had sufficient writing practice to write an 85,000 word manuscript.

But believe it or not, writing is tiresome. Write now, I'm trying to gather energy to write some more. But I'm finding it hard. Writers' block isn't the problem. It's more like writer's fatigue.

So what should I do? Someone suggested I should return to blogging. So I'll give it a go and see what happens.

I always considered myself a rarity, someone who used conservative and/or liberal ideas to reach conclusions commonly associated with the allegedly monolithic Left. I think many opinion page editors couldn't understand me. Or perhaps the more conservative of them regarded me as a rat in the ranks.

Plus many editors couldn't understand why I was so offended when they would publish anything I wrote about Islam and/or Pakistan and/or the Middle East but nothing I wrote about subjects that really interested me e.g. Australian politics, the law or workplace relations. They must have thought my allegedly unpronounceable name made me an expert on all things exotic but a novice on anything more familiar.

There were exceptions. The Canberra Times and The Age were awesome. Crikey and New Matilda (and in my earlier days, Webdiary) were superb. There were others also. And doing book reviews for The Oz was always a joy.

So now the task ahead is to try and return to what was being done before. Or to go back to the future. Whatever. Though not with the same frequency as the time when I was averaging 3 articles a week. A return to blogging is a start. So watch this space.

Words 2012 © Irfan Yusuf



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MEDIA: Yet another trumped-up News Limited burqa controversy ...

It starts from a News Limited local paper and then makes its way into News Limited tabloids and finally onto the News Limited group-blog.

Down there on Planet Murdoch, a place where people of certain faiths are regarded as having genetic defects, it is big news. But up here on Planet Earth, no one seems to give a shit.

And perhaps Planet Irf shouldn't either. Back to work ...

Words © 2010 Irfan Yusuf

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MEDIA/BLOGS: Bolt gets bitchy!

When I first read Andrew Bolt's vicious personal attack on ALP Federal Minister Kate Ellis on his bog following her recent appearance in Grazia magazine, I imagined it must have been jealousy on his part. Heck, if Alexander Downer can wear 8 inch stilettos, why can't Bolt?

But I never expected such a bitchy headline ...

Thick head flaunts thin body ...

... and then makes this extraordinary remark in his blogpost ...

I know Kate Ellis didn’t get her job thanks to her brains ...

So how did she get her job, Andrew? Methinks MP's tend to get their jobs by convincing the electorate to vote for them. Is Andrew Bolt prepared to suggest in writing how Ellis got her job? Or is he afraid of getting another tap on the shoulder from his in-house lawyers?

Perhaps Bolt's problem is that most female politicians don't look more like this ...

BLOGS: Andrew Bolt's tabloid excuses ...

Excuses, excuses. Andrew Bolt is full of them. And after reading this entry on his blog, I'm convinced Bolt is full of it.

Bolt has a serious dilemna.

I now face a moral dilemma. My intention has been to allow on this blog a discussion that is as free as possible - freer, in fact, than you will find on virtually any other blog. Even my worst critics, several of whom post here almost every day, will concede that I have enabled just that.

(At least they will until they are banned!)

And the debate has also at times degenerated into nasty slanging matches, particularly when overworked moderators, flooded by as many as 12,000 comments in a week, have let through things we did not properly read or consider.

Why didn't you properly read them? Doesn't your moderation policy say that you will read them? Aren't you legally obliged to read them now that you have made a representation to this effect?

... suggestions are being made that by allowing a platform that includes in the crowd of thousands a few cranks - students? leftists trying to cause michief? nutters?- that perhaps the ABC should think twice before inviting me on. Silly, I know, but I suspect this is not an issue that will go away. And then there’s the real risk that one day we’ll slip up and allow on a comment that will get us sued, with me dragged into it once more as the man who “allowed” this all to happen.

Andrew, you know full well the identity of many of those defamatory, offensive and racist leaving comments on your blog.

But maybe I'm being harsh. Maybe I should consider the moral dimension to all this.

So as you can see, against my duty, as I perhaps arrogantly perceive it, to allow as free a discussion as possible, there is my ego and my self-interest in protecting my reputation. I should also admit that taking off the comments function should free up more than 10 hours of every choked week. What’s more, reading and checking those comments that I can get to can eat at my optimisim as well as my time. You should see the stuff we must delete - or, rather, you shouldn’t.

We don't need to read what you delete, Andrew. What you allow through is worse than bad. Readers can read this long litany of examples and judge for themselves.

Bolt has no more excuses left. There is no real moral dilemma. There is the law. Bolt must obey the law, just like the rest of us. Bolt must follow his own moderation charter. He must not publish material that is racist, sexist, homophobic etc. He must not breach anti-vilification laws, and he must not publish comments that breach such laws.

So what if he must moderate 12,000 comments a week. He works for News Limited. He works for a multi-billion dollar enterprise. And such an enterprise and its employees must obey the law just like the rest of us. There's no moral dilemma involved in the Rule of Law.

If Bolt continues to make excuses and continues to rebuff the law, there could well be consequences, both for him and his employers. It's as simple as that.

BLOG: Daily Telegraph opinion editor publishes call to virtual Muslim genocide ...

I wonder if Michael Danby will make a speech in Parliament about this.

Tim Blair, far-Right opinion editor of the Sydney tabloid Daily Telegraph, published a comment on his blog that literally calls for Mecca to be destroyed and facilitated all-out war in South Asia and the Middle East involving invasions of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria etc.

Here it is:

The US should have immediately attacked Mecca with a nuclear strike and brought the war to the heart of Islam.

They should have let the Indians off the leash to do what they want with Pakistan and Afghanistan, told the Israelis that they can smash the Jordanians, Syrians and Gypos, then landed half the USMC in Libya and Lebanon and steamrolled east and south until they linked up with the Israelis.

The US Army and the other half of the USMC should have been deployed to the Gulf and launched an invasion of Saudi and Iraq and pushed toward Syria.

Everyone else should have been told to eff off until the job was done and then some.

This is where Bush failed. He was too soft on them. Too soft.

Islam delende est.

murph of Blackheath (Reply)
Sun 13 Sep 09 (12:06am)

Wholesale massacre and genocide. Tim Blair allows it on. He thinks it satisfied his newspaper's moderation policy. His editor Gary Linnell doesn't seem to mind. And the Member for Federal Ports hasn't said a word yet.

But hey, it isn't racist to call for people to be murdered and bombed and turned into compost on the basis of their deemed religion. I mean, religion is a matter of choice, isn't it? And Muslims aren't a race, are they? It ain't genocide, is it?

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


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INDONESIA: Tabloid expert declares terrorists poised to take over ...

Daily Telegraph resident blogger Tim Blair is worried about Indonesia being on the verge of taken over by the likes of Noordin Top. Apparently there are Noordin Tops in schools across Indonesia.

Understanding the cultures of non-Western countries and non-white peoples isn't one of Blair's strengths. So it's not surprising that Blair can't notice it's highly unlikely that Indonesian boarding schools are filled with Malaysians.

And what of these boarding schools? Well, Blair describes Indonesia's pesantren as ...

... these terror-breeding fundo-pods ...

... and after noting that there are 45,000 of these, states ...

The scale of the problem becomes clear. It’s broad-based rather than Top-down, you could say.

Yes, that was quite amusing. What's even more amusing is Blair's refusal to do some basic elementary research on indigenous Indonesian boarding schools and their role in Indonesian society, instead of writing them all off as terror factories.

And we all know about these nasty Indonesian schools. Blair's ideological compatriots in the US were busy during the last US Presidential Election trying to prove that US President Obama attended an Indonesian pesantran.

If Indonesian boarding schools were such terror factories, surely the biggest terrorist on the planet is this bloke. Still, Blair isn't the only "expert" to pontificate on pesantren.

HUMOUR: Bolt becomes colour blind ...

Andrew Bolt, the Herald Sun's token Dutch columnist, has succumbed to a strange case of colour-blindness.

Writing on his bog (no, that wasn't a typo), Bolt uses the headline:

Only racist if whites are punching, not punched

He complains that we only call violence racist when it is committed by whites against non-whites, not by non-whites against whites.



And his first example was this story involving the suspended sentence of a former Macedonian army soldier Edmond Malikovski who was part of a gang calling itself "Noble Park Bosnians".

So white people are now being punched by nasty non-whites from Macedonia and Bosnia Herzegovina and the media refuses to report it for what it is - racist violence. How terrible. And in case any readers have trouble recognising just how non-white Bosnians and Macedonians are, here are some photos of Bosnian girls holding up their national flag ...



... and here are some dark-skinned Macedonian girls.


Feel free to suggest any cures for Andrew's colour blindness by writing to him at BoltA@heraldsun.com.au.



Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


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MEDIA/BLOGS: Introducing Usama bin Ladin's new recruit ...

Usama bin Ladin has being trying desperately to convince young Muslims living in Western countries of certain things ...

a. That his terrorist agenda is perfectly consistent with Islam.

b. That Muslims living in countries like Australia will always be marginalised and never accepted as full citizens.

c. That Muslims have an obligation to join his struggle against ... um ... he's not quite sure. Possibly the West, possibly Muslim rulers, possibly Shia Muslims, possibly Muslims who don't support his agenda.

Anyway, bin Ladin's popularity in nominally Muslim countries has been waning. But in Australia, bin Ladin has found an important ally. Here's a photo of Usama bin Ladin's most important Australian propagandist.




Only someone with bin Ladin's mentality, jaundice and ignorance could pen words like this:

The rise of yet another Islamist terror group suggests there is something in Muslim or Arabic culture peculiarly susceptible to the call to violence ... While false, there is yet a grain of truth in the maxim that while not every Muslim is a terrorist, every terrorist is a Muslim.

I always thought Arabic was the name of a language, not a culture. And what on earth is "Muslim" culture? Do Muslims all share a single culture that is distinct from every other culture? What are the features of this culture? Where do I find it? On which planet? In which galaxy?

And Andrew bin Bolt's monocultural jihadists are ever-ready to assist:

Charles replied to Andrew
Wed 05 Aug 09 (11:08am)
I don’t really buy this idea that extremism is a ‘perversion’ of Islam. One strong characteristic of Bin laden and the others is that they are very thorough in justifying their own actions in terms of the principles of Islam, and the Quran, far more so than most ‘moderates’. Their actions are consistent with those of Mohammad himself and his successors.

cohenite replied to mick maggs
Wed 05 Aug 09 (11:54am)
... Islam has a declared intention of dominating the world; so we have the most oppressive type of social structure the world has seen stating their war against the rest; not even communism did this and the nazis were not as brazen.

Al Qaeda, al Schmaeda, Al Shabaab, al schlabbab: what’s the difference?
Certainly not skin color. All follow the Koran and the hadith, the sayings and tradition of their profit Muhammad.
Looking for differences among these groups is an unnecessary detraction.
A single Muslim who takes his religion seriously can be afflicted by “Sudden Jihad Syndrome”, how many examples do you want?
Red Baron of Sydney (Reply)
Wed 05 Aug 09 (10:41am)

“...something in Muslim or Arabic culture peculiarly susceptible to the call to violence.”
Yes, it’s called “the Koran”, with its insistence that The Believer either: 1) calls on the infidel to convert; 2) that the infidel accepts an inferior status (dhimmitude), or; 3) the infidel is killed.
Alex of Belconnen (Reply)
Wed 05 Aug 09 (10:48am)

Shaykh bin Bolt must be mighty pleased that he has assisted bin Ladin. And the Herald Sun, Australia's biggest selling newspaper, must be happy that it has provided a platform for bin-Ladinesque sentiment.

UPDATE I: Another priceless Bolt blogpost from yesteryear.

UPDATE II: Actually, there's another sense in which Bolt is doing bin Ladin's work. I spoke about this some years back during an interview with Terry Lane on Radio National's The National Interest. Here is an excerpt from that interview during which I discuss how Liberal backbenchers calling for hijab to be banned from state schools were assisting bin Ladin.

... I think what we're seeing is a Talibanisation in Australia of our culture. Bronwyn Bishop, Sophie Panopoulos, these represent the Talibanisation of Australia. We're seeing al-Qae'da in an Australian form coming out, demonising people, demonising Muslims. This is what al-Qae'da wants. I mean Bronwyn Bishop and Sophie Panopoulos are doing Osama bin Laden's work. Osama bin Laden doesn't have to lift a finger, because he's got Liberal backbenchers doing the work for him. He wants Muslims to feel marginalised in this country, a community that's been at the heart of this country of mainstream Australia for over 150 years. He wants them to feel marginalised. He doesn't have to do anything because he's got Bronnie and Sophie doing it for him. So Osama will be sitting in a cave, clapping his hands when he reads some of the - I mean he's probably got his laptop with him, he's clicking on to the ABC website, and there he is in his cave saying oh, very good Bronwyn, thank you, thank you.

Bronwyn was, naturally, somewhat disturbed by my remarks and immediately hit the airwaves with her response. You can read it all here.

UPDATE III: It looks like the only support Bolt can muster on the blohosphere is from one of tabloid moron Tim Blair's mates who calls him/her/itself Margo's Maid. This poor imbecile has decided that the ultimate sources for defending Bolt's lunacy consist of:

1. a Wikipedia entry;

2. a WikiAnswers entry; and

3. a single wacko internet discussion forum run by a bunch of kids!

Seriously, with scholarly expertise like that, who needs to consult with the works of people like this chap, this bloke and this lady?




Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf




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BLOGS/IDIOCY: Tim Blair gives yet more room to Hizbut Tahrir loopies ...

Hizbut Tahrir (or "HT" for short) are a political party that wants to re-establish the Caliphate using various means. These include handing out pamphlets at mosques after Friday prayers, sticking up posters on Matthews Street Punchbowl and holding conferences in various parts of Sydney.

I've been to one of their conferences. Not terribly interesting affairs. But I have written about them. Here's something appearing in The Age some years back:

HT teaches that active involvement in democratic politics represents a fundamental breach of the sacred law. Democracy and secularism are declared un-Islamic, voting is forbidden and membership of secular political parties regarded as virtual apostasy. HT insists Muslims work outside the system and re-invent a more "Islamic" wheel, an approach seen by the well-integrated majority of Muslims as an exercise in futility.

Although HT's goal is the re-establishment of the caliphate, they have no clear plan of action. At this stage, HT does little more than distribute pamphlets and hold conferences.

And for something less serious, here's an excerpt from a piece in NewMatilda:

... the Muhammadiyah, one of Indonesia's two main Islamic 'churches.' At last count, the youth group of Muhammadiyah consists of a handful of members around 10 million. The other group, Nahdhatul Ulama (NU) has around 20 million in its youth wing and around 40 million in its senior wing.

The Indonesian wing of HT has around 150,000 members. Excuse me while I check my blood pressure ...

... HT's clumsily expressed methodology attracts so few people, and their ideology is so fringe, that they'll be lucky to take even a first step toward achieving any caliphate. HT should be compared less to al-Qaeda and more to the galaxy of loony socialist groups on campus seeking to establish socialism.

Suffice it to say that HT can't exactly count me as one of their media buddies. And they know it. Look at what they had to say about my piece at the Muslim Village idiots' forums.

Of course, there are some places where the HT crowd know their message will be reproduced almost unadulterated. Fringe attracts fringe, and the fringe fruitloop who edits the opinion page of Sydney's Daily Teleraph has shown his willingness to print entire press releases of HT as op-eds. Tim Blair is one of the few friends on the media HT can count on.

Which made me curious as to why Blair would describe yours truly as one of HT's "media defenders". Does Blair know something that even hard-headed HT aparatchiks don't?

When it comes to hpolding narrow-minded tunnel-visioned nonsensical positions and attract mainly complete morons to their discussions, Blair and HT have plenty in common.



Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


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BLOGS/CRIKEY: Sydney Writers' Festival does blogging ...

To blog or not to blog? That was just one of the questions posed by moderator Rachel Hills to a panel of bloggers, journalists and one burnt-out ex-journalist at a Sydney Writers' Festival gig on Sunday.

The panel consisted of former Sydney Morning Herald scribe and Webdiary founder Margo Kingston, blogger and author Anthony Loewenstein, blogger and tabloid opinion editor Tim Blair and blogger and former editor of Girlfriend magazine Erica Bartle. Their task was to test the following proposition:

If bloggers are all wannabe journalists and journalists are all complacent hacks, why do so few manage to cross over?

The discussion was fairly free-flowing and surprisingly civil, given what one participant has written about two of the others. I'll summarise in "first person" what each speaker said at various points.

Kingston: Paul McGeogh kinda pushed me into citizen journalism via what was once the Herald's Webdiary, and I'm not sure whether to thank or sue him. The interaction with readers was the best thing that happened to me in journalism. Webdiary contributors included concerned expats and rural readers. Journos often put on a persona of detachment because they don't want their own personal failings exposed whilst quite happy to expose the same failings in others. Many future blog-related jobs will be about moderating comments, and those employed have a high burnout rate. Currently sub-editors do this.

Loewenstein: Why can't journalists also be advocates? Many effectively advocate despite the veneer of objectivity. Studies have shown that the vast majority of media stories are generated from one source or press release. Journos rarely talk to real people, content to talk to each other. In many non-Western countries, bloggers are the only source of non-state information and take enormous risks, many jailed and tortured.

Bartle: There are no rules in blogging, unlike journalism. Blogs provide a superficial readership experience. I rarely spend an hour online reading a feature article. So much womens magazine journalism is just googling or desktop journalism, with not enough going out into the "fashion trenches". Rarely do magazine writers speak to people beyond fixed contact lists. Journalist hopefuls should be careful with what they put online as potential employers may not like what you write even if it's well-written.

Blair: I started blogging after a long career in journalism for Time Magazine and the Daily Telegraph. I'm somewhat lazy and the short form of blogging suited me. When you write a blog post, you can't help but tell something about yourself (perhaps something like this?). Blog journalists are surprisingly thin-skinned. I encourage young upcoming journos to blog. It's like an online CV. In these recessionary times, blogging can lead to employment. The Daily Telegraph doesn't have paid comment moderators (Yep, we can tell).

And what did the chairperson have to say? My notes show Rachel Hills saying she only found a few bloggers in mainstream media interesting enough to visit.

First published in Crikey on 25 May 2009.

UPDATE I: A regular commenter on Tim Blair's bog recently commented on the SWF discussion here. Tim leaves his own comment. Readers can draw their own conclusions.

GREECE: Immigration crisis ...

Though some far-Right bloggers treat recent Greek riots as the result of certain groups behaving badly, the situation is far more complex.

The following clip from AlJazeera English illustrates that the violence is a two-way street, and that much of it is incited by those having views as ugly as the blogger hyperlinked above.

The text accompanying this video is reproduced below.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf

Greece's illegal immigrants represent a part of Europe's black economy, often exploited and living in extreme poverty. In Athens, the capital, many say they have no where else to go.

While Greece has been seeking help from the European Union to strengthen its borders, tensions between Greeks and immigrants remain high.

Al Jazeera's Nicole Itano has more.

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MEDIA/CRIKEY: More hate from Andrew Bolt's fan club ...

There's a fair degree of scepticism among some circles about President Obama's latest video message to the Iranian people to coincide with Nowruz, the Persian new year. Among the sceptics is Andrew Bolt.

But many readers will be sceptical of Bolt's ability to decide what is or isn't sensible discourse fit for publication on the Herald Sun website. One wonders what Herald Sun advertisers would think if they realised their precious dollars were going toward the publication of the following sentiments:

The Dean of Doonside (Reply) Sun 22 Mar 09 (09:52am)
"In the Islamic world, they look at negotiations as surrender."

Barry of Round replied to the Dean Sun 22 Mar 09 (10:52am)
"Insightful. Best bomb them in that case."

Larry replied to the Dean Sun 22 Mar 09 (01:10pm):
"Barry of Round, bombing them, back to the stone age where their politico-religious philosophy belongs, would indeed be the only thing they understand. Islam has no such thing as a peace treaty, just hudna, to be entered into when weaker than the opposition, and only lasting long enough for them to gather the strength to have another go. You don’t negotiate with that, you shoot it."

So the best way to deal with the Muslim customers of Herald Sun advertisers is a combination of shooting them and bombing them and their neighbourhoods back into the Stone Age. I'd love to see Andrew Bolt justify this kind of stuff when he appears on Q&A this Thursday night.

First published in the Crikey daily mail for Monday 23 March 2009.

UPDATE I: I have been informed that the moderators of Mr Bolt's blog have reluctantly removed these comments.

BLOGS/COMMENT: At least he's not African or Middle Eastern ...

And in breaking news, someone tried go shoot Melbourne gangland figure Desmond Moran. Desmond's brother Lewis was murdered in 2004. It's unclear whether the shooting was gangland related. You can read about it here.

Though it's unlikely you'll get to read about it here. After all, some Herald Sun bloggers seem to show greater interest in violent crime and underworld activity when persons of African or Lebanese heritage are involved - especially when the "they" people are the victims.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf




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CRIKEY: Herald Sun commenters calls for Pakistan to be wiped off the map ...

The Governor of Pakistan's Punjab province is convinced the recent Lahore bombings were the work of the Lashkar-i-Tayyiba (LeT) terrorist group believed responsible for the Bombay attacks last November. At the time of writing, no-one has claimed responsibility for the attack that killed six Pakistani policemen and two passers-by.

Eight Pakistanis dead. And one Pakistani umpire in a critical condition in hospital. But that didn't stop Andrew Bolt and his fellow moderators from allowing this comment to be posted on his Herald Sun blog:

Peter of Mt Eliza
replied to George P
Tue 03 Mar 09 (08:30pm)
Time for a Carthaginian solution. If you don't understand, brush up on your history. It works. Brutal - yes. Effective – Yes.

Peter of Mt Eliza has posted a comment literally calling for the complete annihilation of Pakistan as a nation state; that the best way to deal with 200 million Pakistanis is to do to them what the Romans did to the people of Carthage in 146BC. He calls upon readers to brush up on their history. I've just brushed up on mine. The results are frightening.

The Romans sacked Carthage, massacred hundreds of thousands, enslaved tens of thousands and destroyed the city completely. Out of some 2-400,000 Carthaginians, around 150,000 perished. It's the kind of stuff you learn in high school history lessons. According to Yale genocide historian Professor Ben Kiernan, the Roman strategy in Carthage

... fits the modern legal definition of the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention: the intentional destruction 'in whole or in part, [of] a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such'.

And so the Herald Sun's blog moderators have out-done themselves. They have allowed a comment to be moderated on the blog of their star columnist which calls for a modern nation-state to be wiped off the map.

Eat your heart out, Ahmedinejad! Then again, maybe not ...

An edited version of this article was first published in Crikey on 4 March 2009.