Jozef Imrich, name worthy of Kafka, has his finger on the pulse of any irony of interest and shares his findings to keep you in-the-know with the savviest trend setters and infomaniacs.
''I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.''
-Kurt Vonnegut
A government where representatives are elected without a vote may not sound like a democracy, but in some regional New South Wales local governments that is what is happening.
When NSW council elections are held on Saturday, September 14, a lack of candidates will mean 14 councils out of 128 will appoint nominees unopposed.
All but one of the affected councils is in regional NSW.
It is a big shift from 25 years ago when only one council went uncontested in the 1999 election.
More than 120 people running in the New South Wales local government elections have been identified by researchers as possible “fringe” candidates, including conspiracy theorists and people backed by a high-profile anti-lockdown campaigner.
A Sydney councillor has strenuously denied his comments in a recent email about “Arabs” were inflammatory, insisting he was quoting a former Israeli Prime Minister.
Cr D’Souza had replied to an email from a concerned resident who called on councillors to support a Gaza ceasefire motion at last week’s meeting.
The ceasefire motion referred to the ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict after Hamas’ brutal October 7 attack which saw almost 1200 Israelis killed.
Since then, at least 18,787 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli attacks.
Despite support from four Greens councillors, the ceasefire motion was lost.
In his email, Cr D’Souza wrote: “Peace will only come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate the Jews”.
Australia Palestine Advocacy Network president Nasser Mashni, also a son of a Palestinian refugee, said Cr D’Souza’s response was anti-Palestinian, “appalling and dangerous”.
“[It] invisibilises the fact that the Israeli Government has slaughtered over 19,000 Palestinians, 70 per cent of them women and children, during the past 10 weeks,” Mr Mashni said.
Mr Mashni said it further inflamed what he says are already alarming rates of racism and discrimination experienced by Palestinians in Australia and the broader Muslim community.
Cr D’Souza has strenously denied that his comment was “racist”.
Given Cr D’Souza served as Randwick mayor from 2015 until 2017, Mr Mashni said it was “simply beyond belief [he] would peddle these inflammatory … messages to his community”.
He continued that “these comments not only show that he is completely out of touch with community values” but should have Randwick constituents and Cr D’Souza’s fellow councillors “questioning whether he is fit for public office”.
When contacted for comment, Cr D’Souza said he was “Indian and black and [has] been the victim of racism and bigotry” all his life.
“Why now [would] I become a perpetrator of … bigotry,” he said.
“My comments were not meant to offend, but add context to the matter being debated.”
Cr D’Souza apologised if anyone was offended by his comments because “they were not meant to offend, but to inform and reason why a ceasefire may not be possible now”.
He said he “only quoted Prime Minister Golda Meir” who in an autobiography said “peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us”.
A Randwick Council spokesman said “the matter is currently being reviewed”.
This is one of the best and most correct self-help books. Bryan describes it as follows:
I’ve been writing economically-inspired self-help essays for almost two decades, Self-Help Is Like a Vaccine compiles the most helpful 5-7% of my advice.
Of Bryan’s recent string of books, this is the one I agree with the most. Bryan offers some further description:
Like my other books of essays, Self-Help Is Like a Vaccine is divided into four parts.
The first, “Unilateral Action,” argues that despite popular nay-saying and “Can’t-Do” mentalities, you have a vast menu of unexplored choices. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. While most “minorities of one” are fools, cautious experimentation and appreciation of good track records, not conformism, is the wise response.
The next section, “Life Hacks,” offers a bunch of specific suggestions for improving your life. Only one hack has to work out to instantly justify your purchase of the book.
“Professor Homeschool” brings together all of my best pieces on teaching my own kids. I have over a decade’s experience: I taught the twins for grades 7-12, all four kids for Covid, and my 10th-grader is working one room away from me as I write. Except during Covid, homeschooling is a fair bit of extra work, but if you’re still curious, I’ve got a pile of time-tested advice.
I close the book with “How to Dale Carnegie.” As you may know, I’m a huge fan of his classic How to Win Friends and Influence People. Not because I’m naturally a people-pleaser; I’m not. But with Dale’s help, I have managed to make thousands of friends all over the planet. Few skills are more useful, both emotionally and materially.
Gooey-Prickles or Prickly-Goo. “Prickly people are precise, rigorous, logical — they like everything chopped up and clear. Goo people like it vague, big picture, random, imprecise, incomplete and irrational.”
