[New Word] Apologenterprise

The business of seeking publicity and currying favour in exchange for reassuring people and apologising for something you didn't do.

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.

[Documentary] Jeremy Scahill's Dirty Wars and an Interview with Pakistani activist Hassan Niazi

The Case of Talha Ahsan: What is going on and what can I do?

Imagine that your child, sibling, relative or friend is taken from you and detained for years without trial.  They are accused of 'terrorism-related' crimes by a superpower waging war on its enemies.  Would you turn away from them or take notice?

Justice, dignity, humanity and mercy are crucial principles in our lives, which is why we must know what we can and do what we can for Talha Ahsan. 

Talha  is a 31 year old poet from Tooting who has been imprisoned for coming onto 6 years, without evidence or trial, pending extradition to the USA. Born and bred in London, Talha comes from a Muslim Bangladeshi background and is diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism.  A shy bookish young man, with a first class honours degree in Arabic from SOAS, he continues to write poetry from prison. At the time of his arrest in July 2006 he was due to be interviewed for a job as a librarian, we are poorer without him.

The USA government requested his extradition from the UK under dubious 'terrorism' related charges and the compliant British authorities did not even scrutinise the evidence against him properly.  Talha, his family and supporters are campaigning for a fair UK trial, which we believe is not possible in the USA.  Achieving justice whilst Muslim is hard, and we must exercise courage, skill and unity of purpose to get it. It is not a ready-made meal.

We must act immediately to build momentum in our communities. From July, as the Olympics capture public attention, Talha may be extradited to the rapturous applause of much of the media, who will drown out the injustice with dehumanising images of men with beards, hooks for hands and loathsome angry preachers.  We know that the story is different, but we need to share this story amongst our families, friends and neighbours and do it justice. 

Muslims in the UK are blessed with many favours but also endangered. Like the Irish throughout the Troubles in Northern Ireland, we are proving easy to accuse, lock up and ignore. We request your support for Talha and others in similar situations help us establish a justice-making, supportive community of principles. There is no shortage of things to do.

• Become informed, organised and mobilised about the issues
• Attend the Public Meeting in Central London on 23^rd May*
• Speak to our close ones about and promote the Free Talha campaign
• Remember Talha in our prayers
• Champion the cause in our organisations
• Write to Talha (who can still receive correspondence so long as he is on these shores)
• Write to the media
• Write to your MP, make it relevant to them, it is surprising how little they know.

To learn more about the case visit www.freetalha.org

 

You can also get involved through social media: find the FreeTalha Ahsan page on Facebook, follow the @freetalha Twitter account and tweet #freetalha

*The Public Meeting will feature Salma Yaqoob, Gareth Pierce, Riz Ahmed and Bruce Kent and take place from 6pm - 8pm at Hend House, 233 Shaftesbury Avenue, London WC2H 8EE. Nearest tube: Tottenham Court Road  http://www.facebook.com/events/283339501756605/

City of Fear

A dispatches documentary which aired on Channel 4 last night.

Its a view of the bereaved victims of suicide bombings in Islamabad in recent years, including one ar the Islamic University. Shows the english speaking police meeting and talking to cameras which felt unusual, but it is Islamabad, the admin capital.

Anybody remember Karachi cops?

Such a documentary would not have been aired in Pakistan, but was tailored for the UK audience. Struck me how the scale of the problem is so different in Pak. I'm used to hearing twisted BS in the UK and secularist opportunist idiocy in Desh amplifying and blamestorming. Lots of heat and no light.

The UK, and the west in general simply use the violent threat as a legitimation tool, ploughing large amounts of resources into a peripheral physical threat. However, cities of Pakistan, mosques, universities, international 'development' institutions etc. face these threats continually.

This reality really puts whiteously indignant complaints about Pakistan and TWAT into perspective.

The situation and experience frames the fanatic problem differently. Duas to folks figuring out what is going on, avoiding the self serving logics churned out by the extremism policy industry and its clients.

And acting to complete a vision of a country that promised so much more.

non-hegemonic thoughts on the case of the stabbing of stephen timms

Stabbing for Justice in Iraq

I do honestly wonder when it was that Anwar al Awlaki transformed from public islamic scholar into 'preacher of hate' and 'AQs spiritual leader in yemen'. Following the train of whiteous indignation doesn't really help. I want to know what flipped his switch or is this a category error. You see he is not in my cross hairs, my hairs do not meet in a cross. Yet I am cross.

One cannot take imperial labelling at face value, either. I pity the jury that has to made head or tail of these matters. Their every judgement will probably be unjust and wrong. I think some of the answers to these questions will be found in the heads of white people interpreting 4 lions and in the closed environments of jury deliberations of certain criminal cases.

Which is why the case of the Stephen Timms MP stabber is interesting. As well as being a sad and pathetic waste of talent, it defies the gender/discipline/race characterisation of the 'al kaida inspired'. That is assuming that listening to al awlaki on youtube is 'self radicalising'.

Where does her responsibility start and end? Anwar al awlaki is held responsibly for this specific act as a youtube video was viewed.

Roshanara C is going to spend a lot of time in jail. British MPs who aided and abetted the destruction of iraq will spend no jail time. They are shielded from accountability and justice by moronic force fields that I cant quite fathom.

Arguments, if you could call them arguments, of 'We didnt know it would end up like this' bleed into arguments of 'Saddam was worse' and 'How is this helping iraq?'

Meanwhile, theres an interesting Turkish film out in a couple of days.