A few days ago an article appeared on the Telegraph website, written by Andrew Gilligan. Peter Oborne's recent resignation from the publication gives us some flavour of what is going on there. Contrary to the piece's claims that there was anything radical at the heart of Whitehall, its just bum-licking as usual.
Gilligan is known for going after decent or half decent Muslim organisational forms and figures like bitch on heat on a mission from the deep state to cause maximum and unjust disruption to the scapegoats of its failed imperialistic policies abroad. After falling on bad times after failing to protect the life and dignity of Dr David Kelly, he was picked up by the now Mayor of London Boris Johnson during his time at the Spectator, and God knows who else. I argue that as far as the decolonial ummah in progress goes, he is the same category of individual as Anjem Choudhury, only fatter, balder, whiter and with a right to audience, not 'entertain'.
Both are highly dedicated and involved, wittingly or unwittingly in the assemblage of resources and interests that works to undermine any growth in our community's integrity, function and appeal. They and the many other stage devises like them are an invitation to observe and improve.
Gilligan's last target, Mayor Lutfur Rahman and his re-election prospects, did not fall over when pushed. It was a bungled attempted coup featuring the British Labour and Tory Parties, the BBC, the Bangladesh Awami League, the City of London, a creepy blogger and a washed up documentary maker. People from all over the world understood what was afoot and smiled at Luther's re-election. At the time of writing, Tower Hamlets Council is going through legal proceedings relating to the anti-Lutfur campaign run over last year's election campaign. In any case, it is the social cleansing of Tower Hamlets that is the long game to keep our eyes on, and that means citizen mobilisation, not simple nose counting exercises.
Which is why the recent article was annoying, as it shows the character gap in a man who runs an organisation that is meant to be monitoring Islamophobia, not fueling it.
It is a really sad feature of the late Whitethropocene, that colourful politicians on the make have become quite practiced at furthering their ambitions over the reputations, dignity and bones of others.
I saw this cringeworthy dishonour in Fiyaz Mughal's contribution to the Gilligan article, in particular his use of the term 'entryism', around which the journalist built the article, linking in with Gilligan's second most favourite Islamophobising trope, The Stratford Megamosque. Many others have noticed this skulduggery too, and I suspect Mr Mughal will now inhabit the spaces exploited by the likes of the Quilliam Foundation, which was probably part of his business plan. His clarification later, which has been taken off the website, made his supplication to his paymasters even clearer to the naked eye.
I guess Mr Mughal will be getting a good bollocking from his old friends and associates, and no doubt some strategic consolations and congratulations from his new ones, and the men who stroke cats.
Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
26.2.15
14.5.14
What happened to that deaf mute gravedigger who pointed out graves after the Dhaka Massacre?
Last year many terrible things happened in Bangladesh, and they will continue to until we figure and enact superior modes of collective mobilisation.
Last week marked a mourniversary of the biggest catastrophe, that of the Dhaka Massacre where scores (confirmed) or even hundreds (fearfully likely) lost their lives to government brutality unleashed on protesters from the 5th May into the 6th and beyond the confines of the city as the protesters made their way home.
A recently released eyewitness interview aside, information is difficult to come by, because Bangladesh is full of liars, lying for their lives.
Al Jazeera did feature the incident for a short while, calling out the government's number for the dead. One witness was a deaf, mute gravedigger pictured below. We thought him the bravest man in all of Dhaka when we saw him, innocent of the shit that those endowed with greater 'intellects' were spouting. But we had failed to realise how cowered the people of Dhaka are and how incompetent Al Jazeera is proving over Bangladesh.
Later, a government aligned TV station Ekattur screened a Fox-news style Shomikoron documentary fronted by Farzana Rupa challenging claims of government wrongdoing. This heartless, manipulative work, had full social media promotion from the UK-based ICSF and Swadinota Trust, not to mention much of the Shahbag International. It spent a lot of effort trying to discredit the Aljazeera and Odhikar reports and featured Police Commissioner Benazir Ahmed congratulating himself on avoiding a stampede and his zero casualty strategy.
Willful mistranslations of the protest aside, I was surprised that they got away with pulling out a Luqman Hujur from Odhikar's report, then setting off on an elaborate mission to find him still alive. If you try and search for any spelling of the name in the document (CNTRL + F), you come up with nothing. The repeated refrain to the audience to trust the TV crew because they were journalists was sickening, and I really do hope nobody was foolish enough to get caught by it.
I write this post to highlight their visit to the graveyard where the brother above worked, and the sight of him on crutches.Knowing what we do of the brutality of the Awami League directed cadres and security forces, a lynching is highly likely to have occurred here. Knowing what we do about how easy it is to buy people's voices Ekattur TV, Shomikoron and Farzana Rupa will be remembered here.
Last week marked a mourniversary of the biggest catastrophe, that of the Dhaka Massacre where scores (confirmed) or even hundreds (fearfully likely) lost their lives to government brutality unleashed on protesters from the 5th May into the 6th and beyond the confines of the city as the protesters made their way home.
A recently released eyewitness interview aside, information is difficult to come by, because Bangladesh is full of liars, lying for their lives.
Al Jazeera did feature the incident for a short while, calling out the government's number for the dead. One witness was a deaf, mute gravedigger pictured below. We thought him the bravest man in all of Dhaka when we saw him, innocent of the shit that those endowed with greater 'intellects' were spouting. But we had failed to realise how cowered the people of Dhaka are and how incompetent Al Jazeera is proving over Bangladesh.
Later, a government aligned TV station Ekattur screened a Fox-news style Shomikoron documentary fronted by Farzana Rupa challenging claims of government wrongdoing. This heartless, manipulative work, had full social media promotion from the UK-based ICSF and Swadinota Trust, not to mention much of the Shahbag International. It spent a lot of effort trying to discredit the Aljazeera and Odhikar reports and featured Police Commissioner Benazir Ahmed congratulating himself on avoiding a stampede and his zero casualty strategy.
Willful mistranslations of the protest aside, I was surprised that they got away with pulling out a Luqman Hujur from Odhikar's report, then setting off on an elaborate mission to find him still alive. If you try and search for any spelling of the name in the document (CNTRL + F), you come up with nothing. The repeated refrain to the audience to trust the TV crew because they were journalists was sickening, and I really do hope nobody was foolish enough to get caught by it.
I write this post to highlight their visit to the graveyard where the brother above worked, and the sight of him on crutches.Knowing what we do of the brutality of the Awami League directed cadres and security forces, a lynching is highly likely to have occurred here. Knowing what we do about how easy it is to buy people's voices Ekattur TV, Shomikoron and Farzana Rupa will be remembered here.
...
May the martyrs of Motijheel
Be granted high station
And spared the indignity
Of being whitened up
For the anglo-liberal gaze
Only to shift
When someone strips.
May they be spared
Political exploitation from home and abroad
From the frames of foolish friends and enemies.
Selling “Talibanisation or Secularization”
“We are the bulwarks against fundamentalism”, or
Some teenager’s notion of “Bangla Spring”
May the terrified
Reach safety
Wise counsel
And witness the facts
If they wish
Without intimidation, or
Fear of recrimination
As for those
Who cover up or dismiss
There is a word, in Arabic
Whose literal meaning
Has you down to a kaaf
3.6.13
Why we don't know enough about Motijheel? Why can't it be simple?
Last month an estimated 10 000 police and paramilitaries fired upon a crowds of up an estimated 100 000 unarmed and sleeping religious protesters in Motijheel, a heavily built up business district in Dhaka Bangladesh. They had come to challenge the religious defamation, denigration and abuse of religious figures by a number of increasingly powerful elements of society and government.
A government cover-up was undertaken, bodies cleared away, mass arrests, follow up operations and misinformation campaigns were waged. Censorship was no only ipmosed, but willingly supported by much of the national media and NGO crowd. Most of the dissenting media had already been silenced in preceding months and weeks. The channels that tried to cover events live were summarily shut down.
Here are some heart searing videos. Attack on Rally on 5th (day) Massacre on 6th (early morning)
The terrible events of 5th and 6th May in Dhaka game changing, but their causal relations with 1) the Bangladesh War Crimes Tribunals, 2) the Shahbag Movement and 3) the politics of election year haunt any attempt to establish the facts, raise the alarm and invoke a community of justice.
These relationships make finding the truth of the Motijheel Massacre fearful ground to tread, as this is hard to work though without challenging the formative national narrative, contemporary urban pop culture and its associated peer pressure and political distortion.
With such a lot of turmoil going on why should we try to make sense out of yet more trouble in Bangladesh? Isn't that the job of the media and investigative journalism?
But the gauntlet is that we must walk towards the clues and facts, pick them up, look at them and listen to the thousands of stories they tell us. Its not easy
1, 2, 3 Easy as ABC ?
In a recent ABC (Australia) radio programme some progress is made in explaining the tribunals, if just at least to register the, probably consensual absence of Bengali Muslims from telling the story and the Bangladeshi establishment positions of Meghna Guhatakurta, a Dhaka academic whose father was killed by pak forces in operation searchlight, who says that 'victims are satisfied with the tribunal process', and Australia based Bina D'Costa, who pronounces Pakistan is a very peculiar way, who says that the independent government drew on soviet sources for the 3 million (multidimensional bollocks).
Listen here, its rare to hear both sides in the same programme because the seculib block maintains a total non engagement with the substance of their increasingly coherent and articulate companion's discourse. Dr Guhatakurta complains that the victim's don't have the international resources and connections that those accused of war crimes have. I think this is odd, given that a third of the educated bangladeshis int he world talk about little else than 1971 and that their discourse dominates the establishment literature and media's bias against non secular people.
Toby Cadman, London-based barrister assisting the accused in the tribunals, and Sarmila Bose, Oxford-based researcher whose 'Dead Reckoning' book the Bangladeshi establishment has been discriminating against and avoiding the substance of for 2 years, also feature in the edited programme. I think radio/sound is a good medium of integrating contesting voices from around the globe. As a multipolar learning exchange with the truth as the objective is nigh on impossible without descending to a cat-fight or a massacre, the indignity of playing this out over the airwaves of whitey seems inevitable.
I remember when Brick Lane Circles hosted Sarmila Bose in London, (watch it on Vimeo here) the Awami League establishment tried to institute a boycott against the platform by scaring the curious away from it. One competing west Bengali researcher, Nayanika Mukherjee made an ass of herself at the event and is on record blowing her top of.
It is interesting that the official gatekeepers of the victims of 1971 should suggest 'you are marginalising our voice', with the symbolically unassailable identity of being orphaned by this carnage, part of the present knowledge producing establishment, urban, academic, female and not of the majority religion. On the contrary, I think the 1971 establishment narrative has the greatest global soft power projection and have spoken about the Double Standards of Evidence in relation to the Motijheel incident recently. Take the comparative coverage of yesterdays police brutality in Istanbul and last month's massacre of protesters in Motijheel.
#OccupyHypocrisy
In Turkey yesterday the AKP government's urban development thinking (bismillah capitalism) and use of police came in for attack as they cracked down violently on Occupygezi protesters, killing one. Hardcore ultra-nationalist CHP and global occupy infrastructure then became one and the global media jumped up and down, not out of interest for public spaces, but because of the opportunity to give a non-secular government a good kicking. The constructive alignment of interests show that its not killing that's a problem, but who you kill, and the reporting interests and relay infrastructure around them.
 |
| The corporate media has its weakness written into its business model. |
The #Occupy phenomena has been thoroughly captured by neoliberalism and bled of meaning for partisan national politicking. Frame your spectacle with occupy branding and range it against any political islam for easy digestibility and travel along the global left. Here we have Turkey' very own Shahbag movment, but with open alcohol, kissing (last week) and irresponsible (ab)use of mosque facilities.
Both government brutalities in Dhaka and Istanbul had equipment in common, the Otokar Kobra, a Turkish manufactured riot car. In the still captured here, a Dhaka Metropolitan Policeman is caught mid-fire in vehicle serial number 26. This is sad because Turkish Muslim political and civil society has done much for justice in Bangladesh and for the Rohingya. Chillingly, the Dhaka Metropolitan Police have been busy hobnobbing with the US Embassy over "Special Event Management"
 |
| A young Dhaka Metropolitan Police officer fires into an unarmed crowd of what looks like a Otokar Kobra vehicle in the early hours of 6th Feb. |
The reporting infrastructure around the Martyrs of Motihjeel has been poor and largely ignored. With the main human rights NGO, Sultana Kamal's 300 strong Ain-o-Salish Kendra taking the side of the government generally on annihilation of opposition, and specifically Motijheel and Tribunals issues, the role of alternatives, like the smaller Odhikar organisation have become more important. They were amongst the first to press release strongly on it after the killings and provide some good data in their monthly review document which can be read online, and ends in their own 13 points.
There are other resources, like the group blog Kaagoj, the indomitable Basherkella Facebook group phenomenon ( get an editor and watch your backs guys), the committed February 28 Info initiative (whose image library and analysis is worth soaking in) and the analytical Khichuri .
I'm not sure that Odhikar accessed them, and feel that there is a great deal of parallel work going on on discovering the truth behind the Motijheel incident, but for various, but ultimately inexcusable, reasons, the important questions, data and spadework is not being done.
In the meantime the Bangladesh government, led for now by the Awami League, has been able to clean the scene, deceive the public and turn this into a fundamentalist/militancy issue. The main opposition BNP is not interested in establishing the facts, Jamaat e Islami Bangladesh are still running for their lives and I really do not know how to describe the (non) function of Hefazot e Islam at present. As the primary oppressed party, condolences and counselling should be offered, not derision and parasitical questioning.
This leaves the knowledge gap quite huge, but it is out there, some of it is digital and accessible to us, some of it human and scared and politically muted, a lot of it physical, think of all the damage to the urban fabric of dhaka that tell stories, bullet holes, broken glass and general detritus. This has not been properly dealt with, people on the ground who have not taken the initiative.
So we must, warts and all.
Looking through the Diganta coverage of the day and the night is useful to get a feel for progression of violence during the day, but what we really need to piece together are the reflected experiences from the day,
- from Lalbagh Madrassa where Hefazot seniors were headquartered, and surrendered.
- through the events around the National Mosque in which police and Awami Aligned thugs attacked protesters from early afternoon,
- and Motijheel where the government violence centred,
- as well as Kachpur (12km away from Motijheel, where there are rumours of hindi speakers being involved) and Hathazari (near chittagong) madrasas where community's resisted government attacks after the .
Humans not numbers
I recently came to know of an undergraduate engineering student killed, or shaheed depending of your persuasion, in the government attack on Motijheel. His Facebook account tells us of a young man very much of the middle class, educated in Government Laboratory School and Dhaka City College before gaining entry to the county's most (only remaining?) prestigious institution. His avatar was a cartoon of two young muslim men hugging each other, he liked Lord of the Rings, used to tutor kids and volunteered as part of the youth wing of the Lion's club. He liked Arundhati Roy and The God of Small things. He last posted on 20th April and I wish I could to right by his parents. Many of the other victims of that day and night will not have had such digital presences as the much vaunted 'Digital Bangladesh' is an unequal techno joke. Today (Monday) the New Age of Dhaka even misspelled his names in a report that at least proved the Governments account of non lethal force, a death toll of 11 to be false.
Lord raise you Rehan Ahsan and protect your family from the terror of state abuse. Help truth and justice be made from these despicable events.
What should be done now?
The task for us at this point is not a matter of producing and consuming media but of demonstrating a new kind of, often quite remote, collaborative citizen science and humanity.
Corporate media has its biasing built into its very business model, and so its no surprise that Al Jazeera has steadily got worse in its Bangladesh coverage over the past months as it tries to break into the US market. What happened in Bangladesh on 5th / 6th May is bigger than any one party or social group, and therefore it is vital that a solid chunk of diverse people work on this issue in an effective manner which carries the scent of the way of things to come.
I recently came to know of an undergraduate engineering student killed, or shaheed depending of your persuasion, in the government attack on Motijheel. His Facebook account tells us of a young man very much of the middle class, educated in Government Laboratory School and Dhaka City College before gaining entry to the county's most (only remaining?) prestigious institution. His avatar was a cartoon of two young muslim men hugging each other, he liked Lord of the Rings, used to tutor kids and volunteered as part of the youth wing of the Lion's club. He liked Arundhati Roy and The God of Small things. He last posted on 20th April and I wish I could to right by his parents. Many of the other victims of that day and night will not have had such digital presences as the much vaunted 'Digital Bangladesh' is an unequal techno joke. Today (Monday) the New Age of Dhaka even misspelled his names in a report that at least proved the Governments account of non lethal force, a death toll of 11 to be false.
Lord raise you Rehan Ahsan and protect your family from the terror of state abuse. Help truth and justice be made from these despicable events.
What should be done now?
The task for us at this point is not a matter of producing and consuming media but of demonstrating a new kind of, often quite remote, collaborative citizen science and humanity.
Corporate media has its biasing built into its very business model, and so its no surprise that Al Jazeera has steadily got worse in its Bangladesh coverage over the past months as it tries to break into the US market. What happened in Bangladesh on 5th / 6th May is bigger than any one party or social group, and therefore it is vital that a solid chunk of diverse people work on this issue in an effective manner which carries the scent of the way of things to come.
30.5.13
16.5.13
Truth and diplomacy surrounding the Mothijheel Massacre, as the wheels come off the cover-op
Suppression of the news of the Bangladesh government's brutal action against religious protesters on May 6th is slowly fading, but the rearguard action is well underway.
With a welcome, surprisingly balanced but late Al Jazeera news piece on Tuesday (14th May), the government-leaning human rights organisation Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK) finally made a statement today (16th May), ten days after the killings. By contrast, the pro-opposition Odhikar made its first statement on 7th May. The ASK statement pasted below concentrates of entrenching government propaganda and red herrings, here it is below.
Just a single line out of a twenty line alludes to any wrongdoing on the government's behalf. Mark Regev would be proud of this one. For context, this organisation is headed by award winning human rights activist Sultana Kamal (satirised here), an expert witness in the discredited War Crimes Tribunals, and former advisor to the Caretaker Government that assumed power after the 2007 military coup.
Come, visit Bangladesh, where covering, covering up and recovering injustice is perhaps the biggest industry.
Who's Human Rights?
It should be noted that despite the rhetoric and funding, human rights are not for all in Bangladesh, but usually a for strategic and unchallenging few as well as the cameras. Although the 6th May Motijheel Massacre bears witness to many ills in Bangladeshi society, the most striking is of a donor-fattened corporate NGO class that is self-serving and incapable of seeing common humanity through its narrow ideological worldview. Such selective humanitarianism it important to call out loudly and internationally, as its sub-national and transnational politics is often glossed over and erased by its privileged native informants.
Framing the dead, diplomatically
On the government front, there is a big external public relations push by the establishment, with Bangladesh Foreign Minister Dr Dipu Moni holding the brief of presenting the Government's point of view. In her contribution to the recent Al Jazeera news piece she accuses injured and petrified demonstrators of pretending to be dead and getting up when poked by security forces.
Dr Moni, the international mouthpiece of this callous regime, is busy in the USA of late, addressing the party faithful (in Bangla) among the New York Bangladeshi diaspora, on Monday and scheduled in Washington DC to meet Secretary of State John Kerry tomorrow (17th). As 'US Ambassador-at-large for War Crimes' Stephen Rapp has been in Bangladesh over the past few days talking to people, it is difficult to know whether this meeting will be to receive further instructions or a scolding.
One can anticipate the Awami League government doing what it does best, accusing its opposition of what it is accused of by them, and playing the bulwark against fundamentalism. I cannot stand this injustice, can you?
 |
| This Dhaka grave digger had no hearing or speech, but still told the truth about the bodies he buried that night. Lord protect him and inspire us with his morality. |
With a welcome, surprisingly balanced but late Al Jazeera news piece on Tuesday (14th May), the government-leaning human rights organisation Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK) finally made a statement today (16th May), ten days after the killings. By contrast, the pro-opposition Odhikar made its first statement on 7th May. The ASK statement pasted below concentrates of entrenching government propaganda and red herrings, here it is below.
 |
| Statement on the website of ASK a prominent human rights organisation and gatekeeper. The date of the web page is 16th May, though the Bengali version carries a date of 13th. |
Come, visit Bangladesh, where covering, covering up and recovering injustice is perhaps the biggest industry.
Who's Human Rights?
It should be noted that despite the rhetoric and funding, human rights are not for all in Bangladesh, but usually a for strategic and unchallenging few as well as the cameras. Although the 6th May Motijheel Massacre bears witness to many ills in Bangladeshi society, the most striking is of a donor-fattened corporate NGO class that is self-serving and incapable of seeing common humanity through its narrow ideological worldview. Such selective humanitarianism it important to call out loudly and internationally, as its sub-national and transnational politics is often glossed over and erased by its privileged native informants.
Framing the dead, diplomatically
 |
| Foreign Minister Dipu Moni is on a damage control |
Dr Moni, the international mouthpiece of this callous regime, is busy in the USA of late, addressing the party faithful (in Bangla) among the New York Bangladeshi diaspora, on Monday and scheduled in Washington DC to meet Secretary of State John Kerry tomorrow (17th). As 'US Ambassador-at-large for War Crimes' Stephen Rapp has been in Bangladesh over the past few days talking to people, it is difficult to know whether this meeting will be to receive further instructions or a scolding.
One can anticipate the Awami League government doing what it does best, accusing its opposition of what it is accused of by them, and playing the bulwark against fundamentalism. I cannot stand this injustice, can you?
17.4.12
On Hezbullah leader's interview with WikiLeaks founder and detainee Julian Assange
I just saw the first show in the World Tomorrow series by Julian Assange on the Russia Today channel and believe it to be an important precedent in decolonial sense-making.
Before me, two prisoners of circumstance, one stuck in the UK under house arrest for over a year pending extradition and another holed up in Lebanon evading Israeli death squad, engaged in dialogue over airwaves provided by Russia. To the snorus of 'you Russian stooge', Assange maintains that he had full editorial control, and Russia Today for its part is quite comedic in its use of historical montage.
 |
| Yes, it was a little like listening in on a Skype call. |
Still, it beats the BBC World Service.
The two extraordinary gentlemen talked of Syria, Palestine, God, Tunisia, cryptography, liberation, courage under enemy fire and childhood, the kinds of things we the wee people talk about, but in somewhat more subversive, confident and powerful tones. It was a good half hour of viewing and also the first interview that the Lebanese leader has granted to the Occidental press since the last war he fought with Israel. He is an important leader of the Muslim world, the only one to have given an aggressor an ethical bloody nose in a while.
I remember being in Bangladesh during the 2006 Lebanon War and being happily surprised by Hezbollah's success at forcing out invaders who had killed over a 1000 Lebanese people, mostly civilians. The then Bangladesh government even named a new bridge over the Batakhali River after the group, though this solidarity was short-lived as it was renamed 'Hazrat Omar Farooq' shortly after.
I wonder why.
This is the crux of the matter, to work in politics, the media, or developmentia you are encouraged to blandly toe the line of power if you want to get ahead. You do not have autonomy over your own tongue, let alone your own mind. To get ahead in Labour, you need to tell the Muslim community what to do, especially if you are brown. Yes Mehdi, thanks Sukant.
We are interested in forward movement, not treading water, so establishing the ideas and human infrastructure to enunciate and be heard is a significant part of the battle.
As the UK government censors have pushed Iran's PressTV off our satellite boxes, and the diaspora continues to dissapoint, it is even harder for the interested public to hear what's going on. In this circumstance the Russian station is the natural place to go in a thoroughly unsatisfactory global sense-making ecology. The Guardian has published a predictably sneery and whiteously indignant review of the first show in Assange's series, and Al Jazeera's limitations are clear, let us all carry flames on in our hearts.
The picture of Nasrullah's mind that emerges is of a man who deserves a wider audience and has substantial back catalogue of inspirational achievements. I would have asked him about intra-ummah conflict resolution, but when pushed he did mention how he felt that the Tunisians were being a bunch of pussies misled by incomplete information and wrong information in cutting ties with the Syrian Government. He also has a more nuanced approach to the Syrian oppositions than others at a time when Newtonian mechanics seems to be the framework that Muslims are seeing the problem space.
In fact he came across like a cuddly uncle figure, and you almost forgot that this chap sits at the head of such an important constituent of West Asian (Shia) Ummahstructure, and one that doesn't confine itself to prayer beads and conference halls.
I am not very good at paying attention sometimes and found myself drifting of on the tail of one of his statements alluding to Our moral disgust with drug trafficking. I remember how many Iranians had died in the war against drugs coming in from Afghanistan and got myself thinking how a nonsecular and ensouled polity would engage with the problem of escapism, hopelessness and exploitation behind the rampant drug trade.
hmmm
Hezbullah and BRAC: a comparative study of non state actors and welfare.
Syed Hassan Nasrallah and Sir Fazle Adeb lock horns at Oh I See conference on Ummahtic Developmentia.
Nasrallah visits Mehfil, adopts a more Sushi Ummahtic praxis and.....
Nasrallah, Davutoglu and Assange in horse-sharing saga
Nasrallah opens 2016 Olympic ceremony as Brazil gives White Power the finger
5.1.11
Salman Taseer assassinated in Pakistan
Over the past few days news hasnt been good from the erstwhile West Pakistan. First the MQM Muhajir party pull out of the ruling PPP coalition turning it into a minority, then the bodyguard of the Governer of Punjab, the punjabi filled state of Pakistan, was assassinated by an individual assigned for his own protection.
Surely we belong to Allah, and the Him we return. (2:156)
The 26 year old killer's motive, cited in the press, was Taseer's solidarity with a poor rural christian lady, Asiya Bibi who converted from Islam, accused under redundant blasphemy laws that run contrary to the objectives of the sharia. Sunnarchic Societal Suicide. I hear that some people are of the careless, ruthless e-pinion of 'Taseer deserved it'.
Urdu speakers see Javed Ahmed Ghamidi's Islamic demolition of Pakistan's blasphemy laws here.
This dehumanisation, of both the christian and the politician reminds me of a conversation I had at a tea stall in Dhaka after the assassination of political scientist and intellectual 'inswinger' Aftab Ahmed (see the link for more detail).
'All those Dhaka University professors are atheist anyway'.
Specifically never further from the truth; demonstrative of a great gap and distrust between people and professors; and dehumanising of people who are atheist.
A man with literary heritage (his mother was the shali/sister-in-law of Faiz Ahmed Faiz), an accountant by training and institutionalised within the local elite schooling system, Taseer suffered under General Zia in the 80s but succeeded in establishing a telephony-finance-media corporate block which included The Daily Times, publisher of many amusing cartoons. He wasnt always successful at elections but was persistent with it and eventually appointed by a Musharraf-PPP complex.
Awaiting nur.
Surely we belong to Allah, and the Him we return. (2:156)
The 26 year old killer's motive, cited in the press, was Taseer's solidarity with a poor rural christian lady, Asiya Bibi who converted from Islam, accused under redundant blasphemy laws that run contrary to the objectives of the sharia. Sunnarchic Societal Suicide. I hear that some people are of the careless, ruthless e-pinion of 'Taseer deserved it'.
Urdu speakers see Javed Ahmed Ghamidi's Islamic demolition of Pakistan's blasphemy laws here.
This dehumanisation, of both the christian and the politician reminds me of a conversation I had at a tea stall in Dhaka after the assassination of political scientist and intellectual 'inswinger' Aftab Ahmed (see the link for more detail).
'All those Dhaka University professors are atheist anyway'.
Specifically never further from the truth; demonstrative of a great gap and distrust between people and professors; and dehumanising of people who are atheist.
A man with literary heritage (his mother was the shali/sister-in-law of Faiz Ahmed Faiz), an accountant by training and institutionalised within the local elite schooling system, Taseer suffered under General Zia in the 80s but succeeded in establishing a telephony-finance-media corporate block which included The Daily Times, publisher of many amusing cartoons. He wasnt always successful at elections but was persistent with it and eventually appointed by a Musharraf-PPP complex.
Awaiting nur.
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