UPDATE: Reading list ...

Aussie lawyer and freelancer Mustafa Qadri puts NewMatilda cyberspace to good use, providing some important background (and his own experiences on the ground) on what goes on inside one of the hottest conflict zones in the Middle East ...

Aid agencies have always had to coordinate their activities in Gaza with the Israeli army and that remains the case. The dirty little open secret is that Israeli army commanders routinely coordinate day-to-day affairs, such as the entry and exit of fuel convoys, with their Hamas counterparts.

The Gaza Strip is presently experiencing a serious humanitarian crisis due to an Israeli blockade that has been in force since the Hamas takeover. Around 80 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line. Access to energy and water has been heavily reduced while food prices have soared.

"I am unable to meet my family's needs," a man in Gaza told me two weeks ago. "Whenever I go to the market, I cannot find what I want, and if I find it, I cannot offer the prices."

He then asks this interesting question ...

If Israel can work with Hamas, why can't Australian charities?

Meanwhile, President and Founder of the Islamic Friendship Association of Lakem ... woops ... Australia (or as one of my Aussie Muslim mates described it to me, the "Trad Family Singers") Keysar Trad braves abuse from NewMatilda readers as he argues the case for polygamy for blokes. He then has some interesting things to say about yours truly ...

Over the past week or so, all that I experienced from the opponents of my views are attempts at censorship through public derision and unrelated questions that offer nothing to the debate. In newmatilda.com, Irfan Yusuf commented on my "large belly and hips" and on my representative capacity, as if this somehow refutes or deals directly with any aspect of my argument.

Was I the author of these comments concerning Keysar's physique? Let's have a read at the relevant paragraphs ...

As this is a family-friendly website, I won't be typing what else the daughters will probably be saying. I'm sure they will be far less polite than Virginia Haussegger was in Saturday's Canberra Times who writes of Keysar's "large belly and hips thrust confidently forward".

And as I grab the White Pages and look up Jenny Craig's number ...

Seriously, it isn't nice to quote people out of context. It's preferable to allow people space and room to say what they really feel, in their own words. Here's Keysar again, this time in another part of cyberspace ...

In my younger days, I wrote a 20-page thesis on love, attraction and emotions that is so complex (or so they tell me) that many readers drop with emotional exhaustion after the first few pages. It was an expression of my thought processes at that time in my life which neither defines me or my faith, even if that experience compelled me to purchase Professor Milad Doueihi’s well presented and researched A perverse history of the human heart which, despite being a very good book, is still waiting for me finish reading.

Personally, I think in all these debates Keysar means well. He should just keep out of them. Or even better, he should just stop generating them.

Anna Rose issues her fatwa on Professor Garnaut's draft climate change report (I guess she'd probably refer to it as a daft climate change report). She refers to energy companies and other participants in what Dr Guy Pearse would describe as "the Greenhouse Mafia" as the "polluter lobby". Take this, you nasty polluters ...

For Kevin Rudd to delay - or decrease the effectiveness of - the ETS because of pressure from the polluting industries is a slap in the face for the millions of ordinary Australians who elected him on a promise of effective climate action. Australians know that reducing greenhouse pollution will change our economy; but they're ready for those changes and they want leadership, not short-term populism.

The polluter lobby must not set the terms of the debate around climate solutions. Climate change is too important and the costs of inaction will affect every aspect of our economy and our lives.

Rose is honest enough to acknowedge her criticisms have been made before she's read the 600-page draft report. Then again, who has?

And I couldn't be bothered explaining why I basically agree with Donald Brook's argument on art and child porn. Although I might change my mind once I've actually read all of it!!

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf


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UPDATE: More of my crap ...

In case you have nothing better to do with your life, read about Maharaja Shane Warne, who might well become Bollywood's next dancing and miming sensation.

Rupert Murdoch has ordered Piersed Akumen to run in a Sydney by-election. Yeah, right. And pigs will fly, you say. Well, they certainly are flying in a seat in the English House of Commons. Click here to read about Uncle Rupert's candidate who is running on the platform of having people wipe their feet with the Magna Carta before walking into gaol for upto 42 days.

What is it with some American citizens? I reckon these guys might be onto something. Or if you don't like the song, perhaps try reading the book ...

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf


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COMMENT: Reading list ...

The folks at NewMatilda.com are serving up an intellectual feast of profiles and interviews from the Sydney Writers' Festival.

For those who think conservatives are, by definition, people without principle and a bunch of war-mongers (and for the rest of the world), I recommend reading Richard Broinowski's profile of American Professor of International Relations and Vietnam veteran Dr Andrew Bacevich. Here's a taste ...

Now Professor of International Relations at Boston University, Bacevich is a West Point graduate, a principled man on the conservative side of politics who considered it wrong for wealthy citizens to leave the fighting of America's wars to the poor and disadvantaged. He fought with the US Infantry in the southern highlands of Vietnam, and his son, a newly commissioned second lieutenant in the United States Army, volunteered for duty in Iraq ...
Bacevich is the author of The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War, one of the most trenchant accounts I have read about contemporary American military culture. It should give any thinking Australian pause about the growing influence of American doctrine, strategy, training, equipment and choice of weapons over the Australian Defence Force.

He asserts that modern American militarism began in the late 1960s as a reaction to the humiliating defeat in Vietnam. It was driven by military officers intent on rehabilitating their profession, intellectuals fearing that the loss of confidence at home was paving the way for the triumph of totalitarianism abroad, religious leaders dismayed by the collapse of moral values, strategists stung by the worthlessness of their war schemes, politicians on the make, and purveyors of pop culture looking for a buck.

NewMatilda boss Rod McGuinness talks food with the guru of food Michael Pollan. Try spreading these paragraphs with your hommus ...

Pollan acknowledges that the cheapest calories are soy and corn based ones - both heavily subsidised in the US. These are rife in popular food products such as bread, soft drink and TV dinners, found in formats such as soy lecithin, corn starches and high-fructose corn syrup (HFCP). When asked how we can be expected to eat better when the cheapest and most accessible food is largely unhealthy, Pollan says he sees the growth of farmers markets as critical. Although he doesn't suggest subsidising the production of perishable foods such as carrots and broccoli, he does believe policymakers should subsidise their cost to consumers.

Another strategy is learning to cook. Regardless of social class, studies indicate that people who cook their own food are healthier than those who don't. Education on better eating is important but what about education about the (less healthy) foods we currently eat?

Meanwhile, resident village-idiot Irfan Yusuf (no doubt genuine village idiots like Tim Blair and that dude from the Herald-Sun will quote me on that) celebrates a session of political mud-wrestling between Robert Manne and Tony Abbott ...

Most explosive of all was Abbott's call for a constitutional change to extend Commonwealth legislative powers. He might be right, but I somehow think we'll have to become a republic first. States-rights conservatives beware.

Abbott tried to paint himself as the underdog, recognising Tom Switzer, Christopher Pearson and Peter Coleman as the only conservatives in the audience. I'm not sure if many in the audience even recognised these names. This certainly didn't stop them from agreeing with Abbott's declaration that Kevin Rudd positioning himself as an economic conservative meant that we were now all conservatives.

Sadly, Abbott lost many of these sympathetic punters when he compared Nelson to "Australia's most successful conservative leader" - apprarently Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen.

Robert Manne didn't have it all his own way either. When an audience member asked Abbott and Manne whether they were aware of the concept of peak oil, Abbott may have looked silly for admitting he didn't know the precise meaning of the term, but at least he was honest. Manne attempted a vague explanation, which lead to a wave of frowns through the audience.

You guessed it. This SWF session was free!

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf


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UPDATE: Reading list ...

Writing all the way from Alice Springs, Jennifer Mills explains why an Obama victory is written in the stars. I won't even try to summarise it. Go read it yourself by clicking here.

Writing all the way from Sderot in Israel, Mustafa Qadri tells us about an Israeli town that is trying to cope with a barrage of Palestinian rocket attacks.

As I walked around Sderot, I could hear the intermittent boom of Israeli jets thundering over Gaza in the distance. Although physically separated there is no mistaking that Gaza and Sderot are linked.

"Well, it's sad to say but we [residents of Gaza and Sderot] share a common pain," Eric tells me. "We don't feel that we're bringing up our families in a safe environment and the economy here is deteriorating because people do not want to invest in areas that are conflict zones."

Read more here and discover why Qadri should give international law the flick (not that he's a bad lawyer) and consider becoming a foreign correspondent.

And writing from Canberra, Shakira Hussein provides some background on PM Kevin Rudd's refusal to hold a government inquiry into the Exclusive Brethren. She explains why she basically agrees with Kevin-07.

An inquiry that focuses on the Brethren will stigmatise all those who belong to the group, including those who may struggle with the direction the current leadership has taken. It is likely to make the group close in on itself, rather than let in any fresh air.

To be clear, specific problems like the flouting of family law orders should absolutely not be tolerated, but be treated like any other such abuse. But on a broader level, there needs to be a rethink of the way that government funding has empowered exclusivist religious institutions at the expense of social and religious pluralism.

You can read more here.

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf


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