[New Word] Salafilter

A required socio-technical device for something awesome that you don't want salaphies to fuck up.

Post Labour, political labours

Last weeks UK local elections were quite interesting. Lutfur Rahman's Aspire giving the Tower Hamlet's Labour Party a bloody nose, the Green Party not losing so many deposits and Forest Green Rovers getting promoted to Division One of the English Football league were delicious Eid presents, which may have cause Mother Earth to smile. The Project for the decolonisation of Northern Ireland issue is also slowly edging forward, though perhaps more due to English Brexit Idiocracy.

We must not sell ourselves to (re)Colonial Labour,  at least not so cheaply , neither should we labour for figures and cliques that mean us harm. Of course plenty will, a cursory glance at Muslamicate vote winners reminds us of this, however this is opportunity too, to watch them like Sabre Toothed Tigers.

Lutfur Rahman's comeback and (re)endorsement from the electorate was surprising, but probably only because I've been more anti-social than usual in recent months and years. I would also like to think that, post Trojan Horse podcast, a wider circle of people were bothered enough to see through the bitter personal jealousy ( with Helal Abbas in the [alleged] role of Rizwana Dar) furnishing the powerful  and racist establishment stitch up operation which forced him out last time. The prejudice and injustice of the UK courts system was instructive to watch as always.

It has been more than 15 years since Tower Hamlets became politically so liquid, with the then Blairite war mongering MP Oona King being felled by a public revulsed at the British state's role in the murder of so many Iraq and Afghanistan. And then it went Galloway, Respect, Lutfur1, Coup, Corbynjaan1, ChickenCoup, Corbynjaan2, Covid, Lutfur2.  Khaldunian up-down arcs all inclusive

Though inspiring, we shouldn't take the wrong lessons from TH's political liquidity and expect snap transformations amongst the politically marginalised, atomised, tribalised subjects of Other London Boroughs.

Independent Network candidates have begun to stand up and organise, especially in urban areas where Labour Parties have taken people for granted. They are a great opportunity to expand scrutiny of the corrupt and colonial shenanigans of the Labour Right in the interlocked fields of housing, education, health, planning and environment. They achieved several hundred votes in several places, which is a perceptible demonstration of joint agency, which will only grow as people wise up to the snakiness that is business as usual and business as usual with redder branding.

I look forward to political local media productions of increasing dialogical learning power over the coming years.

COVID Adaptation Phase X: Reflection from DopeSick

OxyContin: Between Malevolence, Incompetence, Suffering, Grief and 'Denying History'

There is a really moving docudrama called Dopesick about the opioid scandal in the US. It is the story of how Purdue Pharma, owned by the Sackler family, relentlessly pushed and profited from a pain relief drug that killed and destroyed thousands of American people's lives. It is not a unique story, but certainly becoming canonical in global public awareness, I hope.

Produced by Hulu and available in the UK on Disney,  it is a great introduction to how evil pharmaceutical companies and medical regulators can be, how duped medical professionals can be and how powerless their victims are, unless something virtuous, sustained and unrelenting aligned in the direction of justice is mobilised. Even though the series delivers its own dopamine hits and ends on a positive note, e.g. state authorities taking Purdue to court and winning damages, basically the wealthy have gotten away with corporate murder. 

While many cultural institutions in the US have removed the name of the Sackler family from the buildings that these Greedy Sacklers sucked out of their victims, Britain's cheapskate institutions have been slower off the mark. There is a devilish Opium Warrior irony to New Labour's gutless wonder folding his dismissal of moral responsibility into his brush off of the righteous iconoclasm pouring out of the murder of George Floyd.

What has this got to do with the pandemic?

Maybe we feel that the NHS protects us from these excesses, with NICE pathways, the negotiating position of such huge buying power and all the good doctors and nurses trying their hardest with Borg-like collectivity....

For healthy, transformative adaptation in the direction of Justice, I feel that we must continue to empower each other to know better what is being done to us, and navigate our own miXtrust issues, the n(sh)arr(ll)owness of publicly permitted discourse, the feelings of different sorts of traumatised health workers, the highly compromised edicts of the surveillance state, what is knowable on the sciences front and what is doable about all these things on the life front.

I intend to update/improve this annotated list.

Resources

Pfizer were recently forced to release some data on adverse affects reported after their vaccine. To scale my concern, the unknowable unknown that bothers me much more than this is the number of people killed and harmed in underreported places.

There are three youtube channels I've found interesting and I'm at least a 7 on the Ivermectin Hoper Spectrum.

Dr John Campbell an experienced academic nurse who has been video blogging about the disease since before anyone in the UK too it seriously. More enthusiastic about Vitamin D than, say decoloniality. Getting more and more pissed at medical corruption with time.

Dr Tim Spektor and The ZOE Project (Aka Dr Poo) academic and doctor based at KCL who focusses on gut health and nutrition. His spin off company has taken a Citizen Science approach to understanding disease prevalence and changing symptoms and the years have rolled on. Unlikely to sing from the minaret that Machine Leaning and Citizen Science are sh!t.

Dr Mubeen Syed (Aka Dr Beanz) , US based physician and medical educator who has great drawing skills and gets very science in a human biology sort of fashion.

One channel I've found infuriatingly egotistical but keep an eye on sometimes to anticipate what 'outrage' might pop out of some people. 

The Dark Horse podcast - husband and wife biologists in the sin bin combo Brett Weinstein and Heather Heying are a challenge, their (q)white popularity illustrates the epistemic autism of many STEM people, most of whom lack the erudition to express themselves with such conviction and self certainty. Weinstein got himself cancelled from cushier academic life a few years back. Penchant for antiIslam guests and evolutionary explanations for their underpants.

All Watched Over by Algora-isms of Graceless Transaction

Unfortunately neoliberalistan won't be late to any party.

The Destitution and Diet of Muslim people have been minced by its grinders. Consider the depiction of suffering in the ummahtic heartlands for fundraising, and the proliferation of a deadly, (sac)religious meat market and ancillary hospitality sector.

It was only a matter of time before the marriage industry cranked up the volume of humiliation. No, this post isn't about SingleMuslim.com and Penny Appeal.

In the months and years to come, the activities of a company called Muzmatch and its recent viral ad campaign will come under increasing scrutiny. They may even become a site of.... righteous violence.... for a change. Though knowing me, they will probably make a stack of money and reproduce themselves highly effectively.

A few weeks ago a story of an enterprising Punjabi Pakistani Muslim chap using billboards to advertise for a wife  started going the rounds. He wanted salvation from an arranged marriage, presumably not the one that him and his parents emerged from. Folks were amused, 'rooting for the guy', ' wondering, 'what if that were a south asian girl?' or seizing the opportunity to cover muslims for whitey . 

Today, or yesterday, it began to emerge that Malik is a viral marketing scheme for a Muslim Matrimonial website called Muzmatch. It is founder and run by a Manchester Uni CompSci grad who worked at Morgan Stanley as an algorithmic trader. At the time of typing, the brother's LinkedIn profile reads;

**HIRING ENGINEERS AND MARKETERS/CREATIVES muzmatch.com/careers**
**SORRY NO RECRUITERS - SAVE BOTH OF OUR TIME AND DON'T BOTHER PLZ**

Left the world of Investment Banking to pursue a career as an Entrepreneur. Currently Founder and CEO of muzmatch (backed by Silicon Valley based Y Combinator) - a revolutionary mobile startup which has raised $9M to shape the way Muslims find their partner. 

Previously Vice President with 9 years experience at a Tier one investment Bank within the Portfolio Trading desk - primarily responsible for managing the Program Trading Risk Book as well as trading $3bn Index Rebalance events.

Muzmatch does exactly what you would expect it to do: algorithmically create and exploit Musalmugs. The founder-brother likely doesn't see this campaign, or indeed business as an epic bumwave, but revels in his becoming the shadow of a fart of a Mark Zuckerberg wannabe.