MPs in the British Labour Party voting for government proposals to bomb Syria.
I advocate reverse doorstepping to give them the respect they deserve.
Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East), Ian Austin (Dudley North), Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West), Kevin Barron (Rother Valley), Margaret Beckett (Derby South), Hilary Benn (Leeds Central), Luciana Berger (Liverpool Wavertree), Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South & Cleveland East), Ben Bradshaw (Exeter), Chris Bryant (Rhondda), Alan Campbell (Tynemouth), Jenny Chapman (Darlington), Vernon Coaker (Gedling), Ann Coffey (Stockport), Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract & Castleford), Neil Coyle (Bermondsey & Old Southwark), Mary Creagh (Wakefield), Stella Creasy (Walthamstow), Simon Danczuk (Rochdale), Wayne David (Caerphilly), Gloria De Piero (Ashfield), Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South & Penarth), Jim Dowd (Lewisham West & Penge), Michael Dugher (Barnsley East), Angela Eagle (Wallasey), Maria Eagle (Garston & Halewood), Louise Ellman (Liverpool Riverside), Frank Field (Birkenhead), Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar & Limehouse), Colleen Fletcher (Coventry North East), Caroline Flint (Don Valley), Harriet Harman (Camberwell & Peckham), Margaret Hodge (Barking), George Howarth (Knowsley), Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central), Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central), Alan Johnson (Hull West & Hessle), Graham Jones (Hyndburn), Helen Jones (Warrington North), Kevan Jones (Durham North), Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South), Liz Kendall (Leicester West), Dr Peter Kyle (Hove), Chris Leslie (Nottingham East), Holly Lynch (Halifax), Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham & Morden), Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East), Conor McGinn (St Helens North), Alison McGovern (Wirral South), Bridget Phillipson (Houghton & Sunderland South), Jamie Reed (Copeland), Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East), Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West), Joan Ryan (Enfield North), Lucy Powell (Manchester Central), Ruth Smeeth (Stoke-on-Trent North), Angela Smith (Penistone & Stocksbridge), John Spellar (Warley), Gisela Stuart (Birmingham Edgbaston), Gareth Thomas (Harrow West), Anna Turley (Redcar), Chuka Umunna (Streatham), Keith Vaz (Leicester East), Tom Watson (West Bromwich East), Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) and John Woodcock (Barrow & Furness).
BuT
Of course a post industrial white party in the opposition of a fading imperial power was always going to have a problem stopping western revenge attacks after the pre climate conference violence in France.
And
Turkey and Iran, and your respective social constellations are the keys.
May your elites interbreed, interests align, hearts bond strongly and skills grow masterfully together.
There aren't enough cards in a pack,
Or violence with which to attack,
Blair's line of defence to Assad,
Through Tony Benn's son's revenge bombing charade.
For what it's worth I wish Momentum good LUCK,
This tradition's destroying the earth,
Boiling grannies alive on sustainable jive,
Pouring bombs on the darker nation's hurt.
What to do, what to do, what to do,
From all we have learnt since 2002,
Assemblage & rhizome, let's transform this biome,
Not (further) poison those dear Syrian's stew.
There are only a few decent sources of information through which I can learn something just, trustworthy and intelligent about Syria/Iraq, the troubled resistance movements there and the unfolding ISIS nightmare. The Black American journalist Bilal Abdul Kareem is one of them, VICE magazine sometimes ( Ghosts of Aleppo), then there is CAGE.
CAGE are a pretty inspiring and courageous UK research and advocacy organisation who work to protect the rights of those caught at the bum end of the war on terror, in particular salafi-orientated Muslim males and their families but by extension all of us. They are supported by the wider community of Muslims as well as non Muslims and represent a trajectory that evolved from Stop Police Terror to Stop Political Terror campaigns which grew into Caged Prisoners. It is significant that far sighted people in the community ( and a few institutional funders) have established and supported institution like CAGE to protect a vulnerable community, despite the government clamping down on its bank accounts and personnel, cynically detaining them and preventing them from intervening to try and assist Alan Henning.
Following a press conference earlier this week on the official unveiling of Jihadi John, of ISIS execution video infamy, as Westminster University alumnus Mohammad Emwazi, the knives are out for CAGE again. And surprise surprise, its not objective critique based on a holistic view of what they presented. The establishment refuses to take responsibility for a problem which belongs to the whole of us and despite their heads in the sand, we are in a moment where we can think through alienation in the UK more broadly than the narrow interests of securocrats dictate.
Insulating White Supremacism from its recent history
The course determining contribution of the United Kingdom to creating the conditions of possibility for ISIS was the brazen disregard for decency and rule of law demonstrated by its participation in the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. These wars involved a lot of killing of innocents, creating new instabilities and grizzly videos of death and destruction on a mass scale. As anti-war protesters and activists, we failed to stop this rain of white supremacist state terrorism and have to live in its consequences. Those responsible for promoting these wars insulate themselves from their complicity when they go on the offensive against organisations defending the legitimate rights of people caught up in forces greater than all of us. It is only decent to remind them of the blood on their hands every time they feign and moral high ground.
A lot of the anger at CAGE is because they do not play the emotional condemnation game ttry to force on them. Although it is cringeworthy to watch people apologise for acts for which they have no responsibility, it makes sense to reassure alarmed publics, and some are better than others at it. To me, progress looks like connecting to root causes and producing epistemically autonomously framed research and guidance on the matter, whilst putting in its rightful place vis-a-vis other matters. If we look at the national risk register, its communicable diseases, not terrorism thats on top. If I look at near history, the consumer zombie riots following the extrajudicial killing of Mark Duggan are actually more scary. If I look to the future, its petroindustrial capitalism that is destroying life on this earth.
And these are all interlinked.
Rattling the CAGE
CAGE's enemies in the establishment are many and evidently dislike their evidence based analysis of the UK intelligence community's contribution to the production of terrorism. But then, what else would you expect when you try and hold 'intelligence' services accountable for their contributions to ruining the life of someone Muhammad Emwazi / Jihadi John who would later become a poster boy for ISIS video executions? A bit of public relations perhaps?
I worry for the physical safety of the CAGE people on the ground as there are psychopaths in charge at the charity commission, the gutter press and hand in glove with the ultra right groups.
Embedded below is video of the recent CAGE press conference about their contact with Emzawi/Jihadi Jon. It has set the cat amongst the pigeons and inspired a wave of whiteous indignation. Newspapers, especially on the right, but also on the liberal-left, are blubbering on about CAGE as ISIS apologists. Usama Hasan and the Quilliam Foundation's handlers are firing of commands on their remote controls; and NATO-backed human rights groups like Amnesty International have been taking repetitional risk avoidance measures. However, heroes like the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust have backed the groups right to ask legitimate questions.
The CAGE-Emwazi email trail has been put online here, for those of us prone to travelling whilst Muslim, activism or both, it makes for depressing but necessary reading.
Russell Brands Trews analysis looks at the bigger picture and is worth taking in also, but we are still left without public exploration of the spiritual wisdom and analysis that these transformations cry out for.
The fossil fuels will have the last laugh
Yesterday British MPs voted overwhelmingly in support of the third war on Iraq, in my lifetime. In doing so they further endanger the people of Iraq, Syria and Britain, and simultaneously strengthen the white supremacy that they are groomed and encultured to service. It feels like a horrible rerun of 2003, with no lessons learnt and a weaker, wearier opposition.
ISIS do seem to go out of their way to conveniently stamp bastard on everything that they touch, so you really need a decolonial humanic backbone to see through the smoke and mirrors here. The whiteous;y indignant, yet hypnotic 'So what's your solution' disqualification of dissent sung with the war drum creates a false urgency (like the 45 minute Weapons of Mass Distraction lie). Beneath this, the general shallowness of MPs, who are consumers like the rest of us, can be relied upon to deliver the most foolish verdict on the most dubious information. (Remember Jeremy Bowen and The BBC are embedded with Assad The Dog.)
Like in 2003, the anti war opposition is pushed will be marginalised by the masters of this war as they make a dog's dinner out the dogs dinner they co-produced since 2003 out of the dog's dinner they co-produced since 1991.
Beneath There Is No Alternative, lies White Supremacy
Of course there are always a myriad of alternative options to the violence on the table, the thing is that they wont make white structures of power feel like they are saving the world, and that is how they want to feel. Nevertheless, yesterday Caroline Lucas of the Green Party articulated a decent alternative vision of the issue here, while the Stop the War Coalition protests unfolded in multiple locations. The gay rights activist Peter Tatchell, another Green, proposed that the secular liberal-left PKK be armed up for the occasion.
White supremacy is at the heart of this matter, as evidenced by the comparative value accorded to human life. Non white life is waste, trash, unless an agenda can be wrapped around it. It is also a crying shame that we in parts deploy such devaluation of life. Apologies for the commodification-thinking that using such quantities, devoid of soul as we enumerate.
According to Iraq Body Count, since 2003 invasion of Iraq 195 000 humans have been killed. An academic, cluster -sample based effort put the 2003-11 war caused figure of death at 500 000. It is thought that another 500 000, mainly children were killed due to the US imposed sanctions.
Who can forget former US secretary of State Madeline Albright's words that this 'difficult price' was 'worth it'? What, in her mind, was the prize for such a price.
The acts of Saddam remain inscribed on the Iraqi power elite and population. If we attributes all the deaths of the Iran-Iraq war to him, as well has his internal 'contributions' , of Anfal in 1988 against Shia Kurds who sided with Iran, the chemical gas attack on Halabja in 1988 and attacks to suppress uprising Kurds and Shia after the 1991 Gulf War the figure of death may well rise to the million scale.
For reference, 1988 Iraq's official population was 17 million, 1991 18 million and 2013 33 million.
..and its Death Sciences
Technologies of death, domination and transfer develop. From chemical war of the 80s, and stealth 'precision' bombing in the 90s, to daisy cutters and drones more recently. During the Iran-Iraq war George W Bush's Secretary of Attack Donald Rumsfeld met in secret with Saddam to assist him fight Iran, linking him to US suppliers of anthrax and bubonic plague.
During the post 2003 occupation;s disbanding of Iraq's defeated army and debaathification of the civil services armed and empowered inept, corrupt and largely sectarian elites, who couldn't in the end fight for shit and ran away from ISIS leaving their American supplied weapons for free.
This is important to recall the moral high ground that the protagonists of this war assemblage leverage off ISIS, having just recently helped Israel get away with mass murder.
This foolishness is a multi-agent plaza, and I feel awful that my taxes are funding this Coalition government's hi-tech savagery. The deadly hypocrisy of it all is not lost on the Mirror, who provide the following contextualising cost loss estimates (which do not of course account for the damage done to Iraqi life and property by said munitions).
Every £33,000 hour a Tornado flies is equivalent to hiring a nurse for a year.
Fire a £1m Tomahawk missile and it takes out a school full of teachers.
Drop a £2m Storm Shadow guided bomb and bang goes the annual bedroom tax of 2,750 households.
I can't help but feel that there would have need no macho posturing if the Scottish referendum had resulted in a successful Yes. But the malaise that makes the Iraqis so vulnerable is refracted within our own communities nearer to home.
Interummahtics
I am a long way from figuring out the internal dynamics of this but Muslim narratives on Iraq vary enormously if you pay attention and don't zone out when the other sect is talking. Fundamentally, I believe our problem is with Ridiculisation and not the War on Terror industry's framing of Radicalisation, and that we must be creative, ecological and decolonial in thought, partnership and political practice.
My focus in recent years has not been on Syria, but Bangladesh, but some things are pretty obvious. It is the self-immolatingly anti-shia scaredy pants of the Arab petroSunnis who seem to have done most to sectarianise the battle for justice in Syria, and the idea that one can overthrow a professionally trained army state with some AKs, has weakened the Palestinian cause. The Arab Sting has really hurt and its beneficiaries are laughing.
Back to Iraq, and we know that a section of Iraqi Shia ex-exiles and kids have always been pro US invasion since before 2003, for valid practical reasons like not wanting their heads kicked in by Saddam any longer. This year especially, the broader Shia part of us, better articulated by young up and coming middle class friendly journalists in the MSM, and not dulled by fucking lobotomising impacts of salaphication has participated, along with Iranian religious authorities in helping to put ISIS at center stage, and backgrounding the legitimate resistance to the Syrian regime.
Social media, though not influential as it thinks itself, is an important space for self affirmation and a kind of forumulaic and visual political dhikr. In many ways the UKbased #No2ISIS campaign resembled the 2013 #SaveBangladesh one, however it was shitter and its alignment with establishment agenda gave it an additionally naff character.
In the field, several brave young Muslim and non Syrian medics like Shaheed Isa Abdur Rahman have been martyred assisting people's humanitarian needs. Our community is open handed, alhamdulillah, and Aid convoys have come and gone (some more clueless than others). Many young people, sociopaths included, now find themselves in the theater of war.
Qualitatively and quantitatively, it feels insufficient, and much of the Ummah probably feels this way. Perhaps only Turkey has done the M word justice as a whole, and it is outfits like their IHH that we could support rather than DIY approaches that will be surveilled and disrupted the shit out of. There are long term resettlement issues in Turkey, and they will be challenged for years to come.
How do we know?
A much loved Shayk was speaking to a gathering of educators recently, he warned people not to meddle on the internet in things they knew nothing about. Perhaps he meant trying to find out whats going on in a non consumptive way, which carries the hazard of being state recrimination.
Unlike during the Chechen wars, the post 9/11 clampdown on physical vitality on the internet makes it harder for systematic alternative and fact based news services to establish themselves. It is a pity that this conflagration has rendered the otherwise great Robert Fisk absolutely useless. Instead we have been 'treated' to all manner of narcissistic and bloody minded rudeboy warriors trying insane methods to redeem their pasts as well as the much discussed ISIS antiporn.
Its not impossible to find out some things though, even officially. An Essex born ambulance driver told Channel 4 earlier this week that a Brit, not fighting for ISIS, had been killed in US airstrikes and the American Muslim journalist, Bilal Abdul Raheem (blog) remains an unusually awesome and reflectful source on these matters. VICE, that annoying, lewd hipster outfit has really raised its reporting game. Its recent feature, The Ghosts of Aleppo gives us an insight into the day to day life of the resistance of the Islamic front in one of humankind's oldest continuously occupied cities.
Ummahtic heteregoneity
There are probably British Muslims fighting on all three (basic) sides of the Syria conflict with all manner of different ethical commitments, capabilities and motivations. However, they are, as they were in Bosnia, a minor part of the battlefield theater, despite the hulabaloo. One of Bilal Abdur Raheem's recent reports suggested that Western fighters may be trapped in ISIS, a friend of mine who went on a convoy or two said that Syrians were so happy to see Muslims from the West, since most of them would get taken away by ISIS as soon as they arrived. Gatekeepers wherever you turn ey?
Like I said earlier, Iraq features very differently in the Shia sacred and civilisational geographies than it does in the world of the Arab Sunni. The prevailing view is that Maliki wasn't so bad, and that Syria was a case of external destabilisation in Israel's favour. At the Gaza protests, letterers dotted Hyde Park building equivalences between the ISIS and Israeli agendas. After all, ISIS did sweet fuck all to counter Israeli aggression.
Many of the more excitable Sunnis, were initially pro turning the tables on Assad The Dog, in those heady days of the Arab Sting, we were stung hard with a non critical spirit and unhelpful emotional stoking from certain saudi 'scholars' inexplicably allowed into the UK to bait people. (Duas to all the real scholars in Saudi who have lost position and social mobility for their commitments to truth.) Not to mention the deranged Shia Kuwaiti whose bumsexology pushes the envelope in human worm relations ( erm courtesy of MEMRI).
The lazy days of illusions of a Muslim bloc thinking need to be put back in the draw and the practical politics of transnational heart to heart decolonial alliance building embarked upon. I think most people, save those vying for attention would be inclined to agree.
Labour Efnic Politricks?
Unusually, the Labour member for Bethnal Green and Bow, Rushanara Ali, well known as a thoroughly compromised person of colour, abstained from the vote yesterday and resigned her position in the shadow cabinet. An admirable looking position to take on the face of it.
I must confess that I normally love Mulberries ( ITs a school in the ganj) because these begums are so awesome and are a vital part of the future. But perhaps this one got lobotomised at Oxford during her enwhitening PPE there and reprogrammed into an anodyne new Labour vessel. The investigation continues.
I remember the Altab Ali park protest rally at the beating of Rizwan Hussain at Dhaka Airport in 2008, a noble venture which was in the process of being coopted by the sheer numbers of loser unclejis. Ms Ali was very interested to know which of us were local residents she could 'enrol', and we thought she was a tactless schmoozer. However, she made an interesting attempt to hash out and dignified diasporic position on what the Bangladesh government had effectively and violently told the younger generation of Brilhetis ( British-Sylhetis).
Later in 2010, Rushanara Ali was voted into power as part of joint British Labour Party - Bangladesh Awami League's power games, and her silence on that government's massacre, and the British government's silence about the massacre, in Dhaka last May is despicable. Until she addresses this as she should I do not believe that her self interested gesture politics should be taken at face value.
There are plenty of manageable persons of colour on the conveyor belt.
Watch now as every Salafi organisation
Becomes the Quilliam Foundation
As white power demands
Disciplines and threatens
to institutionally disarm.
Saudi, a Labia,
Engourged with black gold
Petroindustrial prostitute
To the colonial present
With an amateur fetish,
For fucking things up even more.
King Faisal's remains
are turning in their grave.
Check your twitter and read,
Some sociopaths wrapped in a flag
To cover their negritude and inadequacy
To provide every securocrat
With a compelling business case
To do as they please.
The Miley Cyrusification of the Mujahideen
Completed, one selfie at a time.
Wrapped up in false governance plan,
A parody of Four Lions.
I don't really believe the govt media ISIS hype.
After all these same people Covered up the massacre in Dhaka, last year.
Selective human rights industrialism
From people armed to the teeth.
The Mujahid remains an honourific and lofty role,
No matter what you are alleged to have done, or do.
Or how stupid, misled or evil you might be.
Remember Yilmaz?
The Danish trainer,
Is that skilled sweet man still alive?
I remember late President Mashkadov,
And who undermined, sullied and killed that struggle?
The 90s seems so long ago now.
The Euphrates remains constricted,
By Saddam's Dams.
You have your southern chums
By their balls,
What was it that poor Moursi said?
'We will defend the Aswan dam with our blood.'
This is no upgrade,
Not even decolonial lemonade
So what is your plan
'Khalifahman'?
Watch the fucking British State
And its minions on Fleet Street
Ooze rivers of whiteous indignation.
They who completed Syria's murder of Dr Isa Abdur Rahman.
Now demand condemnothon in perpetuity
Compensating with airtime
Proportional to how high you'll jump.
A penny for the Guy?
Take a bow RaDickle Middle Way, QWillyam and company,
You have succeeded in making things worse.
Did your Key Performance Indickators go like this?
Number of apparent scholars delegitimised?
Coefficient of suffocation?
Extent of toolboyhood
Coefficient of wardrobe expansion?
Miles misled per testicle
Mistrust multiplied
Humans humiliated
Sequins of sufism supplied
Litres of liberalism lubricated.
Centimetres of salafism supersceded
Or maybe we could use carbon,
You've burned an awful lot of jet fuel.
So the racist, genocidal and terrorist powers,
Who empowered Saddam
Then starved Iraqis to death,
To protect obese Kuwaitis and Saudis,
Buried them in the sand,
raped them (just bad apples of course)
Piled up their bodies, selfied, defingered, burned and pummelled
With uranium till they gave birth to dear disfigured babies
Have the fucking gall
To demand you condemn ISIS
Like performing monkeys.
