14.10.14

[Political Tragicomedy Alert] A Diary of a Bad Man does PREVENT

Today around lunch time a piece of weird news was circulating the social media, that the maker of the YouTube phenomenon A Dairy of a Bad Man had sold out to Prevent, the UK government's deradicalisation programme. Sure enough, the BBC article, then the Leicester Mercury piece furnished us procrastinators with the sad tidings and a vivid of Muslim cultural degeneration's latest wrong turning.

We learn that PC Rizwaan Chothia, of the East Midlands Special Operations Unit's Prevent team coordinated the project on the same day as a secret trial of a terrorism suspect possibly alludes to an attempt to bring Tony Blair to a belated and worldly account via some kind of Bollywood dance move. Its worth noting that we might have expected better, as PC Rizwaan was subject to Islamophobic humiliation a few years back. I wonder if he 'gets' any of this?


A Dairy of a Bad Man has made me belly laugh at times, especially in its early physicality. Who can forget the classic tribute to the 'Roti or Rice?' dilemma, or Humza's Rap Battle with His Mum? Yet its not hard, even for a comedically challenged miseryguts like me, to notice how he found it hard to grow beyond the slapstick and toilet humour of the facebook/iphone degeneration. Salafis turned on him once they were guilt tripped by their seniors into disapproving of the fellow. His political commitments were admirable, appealing to followers to sign the Babar Ahmad petition, and objecting to Boris Johnson's hair in the run up to his recent reelection.


Think for Yourself is a royal bumwave of epic proportions

His Deradicalisation episode 'Think for Yourself' (above) is very unconvincing. See for yourself, he said, patronisingly. I'm struggling whether to rank it above or below that  #HappyMuslims video earlier this year. But its not just appalling cultural product, by any standards, its menacing. Think for Yourself appeals to viewers to snitch on their close ones, which is deeply Stasi-esque.

Perhaps the Muslim Oaf is an important dumbographic, but I think its been a mistake from Humza, who would appear to have sold himself, and his efforts out to the prevent agenda. Perhaps he made it all the more awful as an act of subversion, or was institutionally bullied into it - sixty eight excuses to go. I hope somebody close to him raises these issues and he considers his community with enough respect to dialogue on the issue.

Analyse the whole A Diary of a Badman experience, with ISIL's most recent propaganda offering 'Flames of War' (liveleak URL here, watch it carefully if you dare), and the whole problem of Muslim Ridiculisation is revealed.


1.10.14

Moazzam Begg to be freed, and why these issues should matter more to us

Moazzam Begg is an articulate, intelligent and justice hungry individual who has been locked up by the British authorities for 7 months. In parallel, CAGE the human rights organisation he works for has been targeted for harassment, in all manner of devious ways by the British deep state, from its right to keep a bank account, to its right to organise a public event.

Their crime is just being Muslims standing up for Muslims rendered into meat by the War on Terror Industry and investigating the British state's complicity in abuses of human rights. It is okay for a white middle class organisation to be in the business of documenting these kinds of things, but heaven forbid that the victimised pull their thumbs out of their arses.

Recently, CAGE published an analysis of the cradle to grave police state created for British Muslims by the Government's PREVENT strategy (Preventing Violent Extremism). It is a rare intellectual and legal push back for Muslims in the UK, but also globally empowering to the wider ummah, oppressive interests and frameworks from the core of the world system are readily exported and appropriated by cloned elites in the periphery and semi periphery.

A campaign image from Ramadan, within communities struggling 
with fear, mistrust, paranoia, pettiness and division

CAGE, which now has a branch in South Africa, is a bit of a departure from the script, most human rights organisations in the Muslim world are there to serve overseas interests and promote an exclusive, elitist secular liberal strategy. For example, the Dhaka based Ain O Salish Kendra, is virtually entirely funded from abroad and covers up, even justifies atrocities committed by 'secular liberal' friendly government. CAGE is good news in this respect.

The assembly of interests, personalities, ideas and objects responsible for Begg's recent internment ordeal wanted to send a clear message to the Muslim community. At the centre is the Conservative Home Minister Theresa May, but it is wider and more systemic than her. Moazzam was kidnapped by the state around the same time as the 'ISIS threat to UK' was being mediatised and the Trojan Hoax in Birmingham was staged to occupy a lot of people's time.


Theresa May at the Conservative Party conference yesterday, 
she is very interested in being Prime Minister, 
and abuse heavy insecurity is her forte

It is not unreasonable to assume that the state decapitation of effectively the only Muslim organisation standing up to the government's smothering and community disabling, co-opting and dehumanising prevent agenda was strategic.

Today all charges have been dropped against him and he is set to be freed from Belmarsh prison. We wish him a joyous reunification with his dear ones and listen eagerly to what he will say, or write, next. I remember that just before he was ripped out from his family home in a dawn raid, he tweeted along the lines of having come to know of something particularly sickening in the world.

He has the mind, spine and the exposure to put together important pieces of the jigsaw of tyranny. This 2010 article written by him gives a flavour of how the BS machine works.

There are a lot of people very unjustly detained and the muscles to campaign for them must be supported by more and more muscles. Shaker Amer remains in Guantanamo Bay and last week Samiun Rahman, a young Londoner visiting Bangladesh to settle a family land dispute was stitched up by the police and the government (and some rogue family) in order to provide an 'UK-Bangladesh ISIS recruiter' story just in time for the UN General Assembly meeting.

The moral and intellectual bankruptcy of this kind of internment politics must be challenged at every level.