[New Game] WikiLeak Wishing Well

A new game of wonder is set to light the dinner tables, chatrooms and tunnels of struggle this year. It starts of with the line

If Santa Julian was to come down your chimney with a WikiLeak, what would you like it to concern?

We aren't allowed to define what its content could be, but simply its concern.

[I would like the banter surrounding the banishment and extraditions of the poet Talha Ahsan to be known more officially. Lord Carlisle, Theresa May, US ambassador and UK judiciary...]

Following his Chiristmas Sermon from Mount Ecuador, The troubled Wiki Leaks lightning rod Julian Assange promised many more WikiLeaks to come in 2013.



Following the leaks from the Bangladesh War Crimes Tribunal, I went through some of the WikiCables from the US Embassy in Dhaka. Its funny how new happenings can breathe a different life into old data. I think more should be done with the data and that it hasnt been used particularly deftly yet.

I am justifiably in contempt of this Kangaroo Court

Tribunalgate is quite fluid these days.

Last night the Economist mumbled something about lawyers and  clearly stated that they were handed data of communications between Justice Nizamul Huq and Dr Ahmad Ziauddin (17 hours audio, 230 emails) and did not solicit them. The comments below the article are amazing, with raw relief from many at the sight of their truth finally in print, as well as secular-takfiri bloodymindedness that we have come to expect from people holding firmly onto the master narrative. Its quite a sad reflection on our internal conversation and adab (manners) that 1971 has become such an infantalising matter, enfooling and humiliating.

Legal eagle BangaliVabna finds the Economist a little limp-wristed, gives an insight into the tribunals social context and what they have already done to split, confuse and make fools out of the Bangladeshi nation.  David Bergman made an appeal to civil society to show some spine, but more conservative blogs haven't yet commented.

These tribunals don't end impunity, they reconstitute it.

In the real world, a journalist from the Bangladeshi newspaper Amar Desh (My Country)  wrote something brave,  based on what I imagine is the same data that the Economist received.  We probably won't see the western liberal media falling over themselves to protect him, but we should, as he really pushed the boat out. Mahmudur Rahman, the editor of the paper, might also come in for a spot of bother and Awami ultra violence.

The main exhibit of this post is an audio file of what appears to be a conversation between the Judge and the Academic-Activist. Whoever organised this information retrieval from deep inside the rotten core of the Bangladeshi injustice system has done well to make people who will not otherwise listen, look the lie in the face.

This post wiki wolf whistle features them complaining about ministers setting them unrealistic deadlines and discussing how to massage the judgement so that it appears like it meets the standards expected by western powers. In passing Ziauddin observes that the Bangladeshi public will not be critical about this process at all. It seems to me that they are cooking up a judgement. It seems that a key ideological campaigner is having more representation in the tribunal than the accused, whose defence witnesses are denied, kidnapped and written off.

Somehow I can't see myself wearing a t-shirts saying 'Bangladeshi Justice for Bangladeshi Citizens' at this moment in time. These situations do get you thinking about the nature of the human intellect, its moral detuning and role in power play. You can listen to some more of the alleged audio on SonarBangla and make up your own mind.

When I was on field work in Bangladesh, during the last-but-one government, a young man, who had a small mobile phone shop by the oncoming River Jamuna said to me:

Over here, the educated people try to make fools of the illiterate.

bad poem alert.

 

 The day their music died

The Awami League of Liars stared
Their version of the past declared,
An exaggerated Jatra play
A power game, a truth to flay

No party is exonerated,
Our ranks were still quite decimated,
Yet, may the future flow uphill in wonder,
With dignity and hope not blunder.

We recognise that modus operandi,
Can only beg for foreign candy,
Terrorise and halt the nation,
With political emaciation

Noble souls,
Our thoughts controlled,
Questions patrolled,
Now, may His truth unfold.

Distraction-Gate: Assange addresses supporters and cops in Knightsbridge and rape rings around*

* All of the below could be wrong of course.

Julian Assange, of WikiLeaks took the initiative on eid day this Sunday with the second of 2 eid presents, the first being Egyptian PM Mursi's decision to attend the Non Aligned Movement Summit in Tehran starting 26th August.

In his address from the balcony of the tiny Ecuadorian Embassy behind Harrods, the Gulf-owned temple of hyper consumerism he declared that Bradley Manning should be free, and that if he did what he is alleged to have done, he would be a hero.

The press  in the UK are unusually hateful of him, and this is not helped by the foolish phlegminism emanating from usually sound people, often clustering around the comments of George Galloway, but forever skirting around the socio-sequential political context of the sexual assault allegations.

There is a documentary from Australia called Sex, Lies and Julian Assange that provides a sound 'noise' inoculation and discursive accelerant. The video keeps moving from youtube link to you tube link, so if the link below doesn't work please google it.

The two accusing ladies are not the same as each other, but they are represented by the same lawyer, Claes Borgstrom, who plays for a trial when the Australian journalist, who looks like he's stepped out of a 1980s time machine, asked about how much this looks like a stitch-up.

Theres a lot of Swedish Democratic Party politics entangled in this too, which is to be expected given the events of August 2010 depicted in the documentary. Borgstom is a member and gender spokesperson. Anna Ardin, Assange's chief accuser ( and bizarrely one time fixer and host) is a member, as is her friend Irmeli Krans, the police investigator and testimony fiddler of the less assertive accuser.

The liberal phlegminist toolkit deployed to occlude the imperative of deimperialisation is the same one that enables the whiteously indignant to bomb Afghani women to liberate them. I feel like we are moving backwards and haven't learnt to avoid catching the dust thrown in our eyes.

***

What is with the obsession with sex that it attracts more interest and concern than the revelations of US forces mowing down civilians with their guns from helicopters and all that wiki leaking has told us about the ugly face of US aggression?

What is is about the British press that makes them so superficial and gullible if not outright corrupt?

***

To my political instinct, what we have here is not an opportunity to booleanise human rights and freedom of speech, but to prosecute a deimperialising agenda and not be taken for feminist fools.

There is a spectrum of viewpoints on Distraction-gate, I'll only dwell on three women's perpectives, because you probably have had contact with the general crapola out there already and the male defences by Milne, Greenwald and Murray.

First up, two years ago prominent thirdwave feminist Naomi Wolf deconstructed the allegations in an interview with Amy Goodman of DemocracyNow!

Last year she wrote an article detailing 8 things she found suspect about the case against Assange, and more recent interview with RussiaToday she talks about the US clampdown on dissent.

Laurie Penny reflects her own experience of rape as a teenager through the allegations against Assange and the weird statements of a US politician here. Its a lot more personal than her Independent article. Rape brings out primary political values and principles in a lot of young gender activists, many of whom have been busy pinning differently-informed-insertion-consent-survivors-know-best decision narratives on me. 

Lindsay German puts a more mature left perspective on the matter. Most of the Respect party people (Salma Yaqoob, Kate Hudson) are distancing themselves from the Galloway unhelpful videocast which was seized by the gendustry and usual suspects to create further dust and distraction.

German also brings up something that I have got halal and tayeb beef with, even if its probably the case that both Lindsay and the post-Sunday phlegminists haven't seen the documentary.

We live in a highly sexualised culture where women are expected to be sexually available - but at the same time are still treated as if they in some way contributed to a rape or sexual assault when they dress or behave in a certain way.

I don't expect sexual availability thank you very much, I find all this availing tiresome and degrading. Haya is the value of inherent modesty, an internal moral compass, which I will use it instead of chastity. Haya is to be promoted in all manners, with dignity. modern left, and right leaders, and hackers disappoint, but haya isn't their point.

We live in a multifaceted hypocrisy where men and women get away with different wrongs at a social level and laws written to protect the dignity of women are often used by men to take out grudges. Haya is still a socio-ethical goal, so if you ask me about sex crime, id have to say they are pretty widespread and have been declassified as off limits for a while in the west.

Promiscuous people and adult starstruck political roadies have rights that are hard to discern in the midst of the sexual rites they play.  Rape is Rape is Rape is an atomising, time slicing , disempowering stubborn slogan.  Consider this, that if you are in someone's bed so fleetingly, throwing them crayfish parties after allegedly being raped by them and seemingly collaborating with copartners to create criminal facts on the ground with your pal the copper, it is difficult to to consider you a noncontributer.

Look at me, not even four witnesses and already down the rabbit hole. Knowing social realities, prevention is better than legal recourse hence the social shariah's discouragement from even approaching such relations. and speculations.

***

Other resources:
Seamus Milne (Tuesday) on Don't lose sight of why the US is out to get Julian Assange
Craig Murray  (Tuesday/Wednesday) on Naming Ardin on Newsnight and the BBC's opposite policies on this case and that of DSK
Glenn Greenwald (Wednesday) on The bizarre, unhealthy blinding media contempt for Julian Assange
George Galloway (Saturday, oddly) a webcast that has been chopped and recruited by the Anti Wikileaks brigades

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

 

RAB and wikiLeaks

The Rapid Action Battalion was set up by the recent past BNP-led coalition government, because it was thought that the existing forces of the country were unable to deal with law and order problems. Black bandanas, black dogs, girl RAB, black jeeps, black shades. Don't mess... unless you are the state, in which case they will do your bidding.

Crossfire killings occurred in plentitude, but the people - many of them - felt some protection from some of that everyday violence that they are subjected too and have become 'entitled to' expect. Shahidul Alam, a photographic artist did an exhibition of crossfire killings, much to the establishment's chagrin.

As the caretaker governments made way for the current Awami League regime, the organisation can be seen to have become more vulnerable to war on terror distorting field.

Its a disgrace that secular fundamentalists play up the 'islamist menace' in the country ahead of the everyday violence. Every body knows that the lions share of violence is committed by the main parties. As a distraction tool, I can totally see how internal muppets of various political stripings used RAB as a card to cushy up to the state terrorists that are the UK and the US.

So as whiteous indignation follows the Guardian spin of UK coalition support of RAB i do wonder how it has been coached and trained by the bastard forces of these here colonials. RAB is an instrument of the drunken awami league government  and its users now. Just like the human rights bitches for hire we see in Bangladesh, and much of the South, being so managerial in sanctioning who can be human and who cant.

RAB needs to cake a decolonial route, and promote life, not death. The Guardian needs to get over and temper its 'death squad' imagery, however sexy and latin american-CIA assisted it sounds. I suppose they are listening to partial voices from Bangladesh who are happy to decontextualise, amplify extra-judicial killing and silence the great social problem of violent crime and gangsterism.

UK taxpayers getting all hoity toity about the evil crap they sponsor overseas (iraq/afghanistan anyone?!?) seems pretty rich to me.They need to recalibrate.