[New Term] Epistemic Autism

Def: The inability to comprehend that which one has not cultivated the mind for.

Epistemic Autism is a problem in multi-disciplinary research collaboration, complex organisational management as well as political life.

The seculibs of Bangladesh, who wear liberalism to secure white privilege, have so little knowledge of islamic dynamic culture, that their misframing of Hefazot-e-Islam has translated into the Motijheel Massacre.

Unable to distinguish students of Maulana Madani from Maulana Moududi, and dismissive of anybody able to, their inhumanity, arrogance and shamelessness continues to corrupt intellectual, organisational and justice-making for everybody else.

Beware of Macauley's Minutemen and Minutewomen

Verified footage of police brutality in Bangladesh during May 5th Hefazot protest and May 6th Motijheel Massacre

My warning to dear readers is that this is not for children and will cause your heart to quiver. 

Denial and exaggeration are both wrong, so I am posting these videos so you can see for yourself,  understand and be moved towards justice.

Police brutality against protesters during the day of 5th May


Police firing into unarmed crowds, Beating, possibly killing protesters as they lay writhing on the ground.

Police brutality against protesters during the early hours of 6th May


Police firing into unarmed crowds, denying medical attention and killing people. Rapid Action Battalion-2 very much involved. Testimony from two of the injured.

Decolonial Duas

For more information

Resource Page on Dhaka Massacre
Bangladesh Government cracks down of protesters with impunity

Burying bad news in Bangladesh, as Begum Reshmi, a survivor of the Rana Plaza Disaster is found alive after 17 days

Watch us wrap our middle class guilt over Begum Reshmi who by the grace of Allah and no one else, survived 17 days under the rubble of the Awami league gangster's building that was rented by brac bank and callous garments factories and built dangerously on the land of a Hindu uncle of ours, whose home was looted in the ruins.

We entomb her in tyranny, concrete and mangled steel, then have the audacity to feel good at her 'resilience'.

To some, who will know who they are, I have this to say. No you aren't good, and you have no right to feel good, you callous and bloody minded people who cry crocodile tears but actually have a very limited sympathy for fellow humans as we see in your complicity in the cover up of police brutality just down the road in motijheel. #justsaying

My, My, My Sultana

I saw the fight of the right as I passed her N-GO 

I smelt the smog of confounding developmentshire 

She was The Guardian  (of the liberation narrative)

As she deceived you I watched you and made up new lines

My, my, my, Sultana 

Why, why, why, Sultana 

I could see that that game was no good for me 

But you were lost like a slave that no one could free 

That dreadful time, when she crossed that red line, she was stating 

That human rights were only for people like her 

She blea-ted whiteous indignation

We felt the pulse of the truth and then she lied some more 

My, my, my Sultana

Why, why, why Sultana

So before they come to break down the door 

I tell you Sultana you're a civilisational flaw 

She blea-ted whiteous indignation

We felt the pulse of the truth and then she lied some more 

My, my, my, Sultana 

Why, why, why, Sultana

So before they come to break down the door 

Retraction Sultana we just will not take any more 

Retire Sultana we just will not take any more

Resource Page on Dhaka Massacre

A terrible sorrowful atrocity has occurred in Bangladesh.  It is being covered up so I'm putting together this resource page to make a stable reference point.

There was a massacre of religious protesters at 245am Sunday 5th May around the Water Lily statue in Motijeel, Dhaka's business district.  Massive force was used, 10 000 personnel, a whole range of weaponry and darkness.

The deed was committed by a mixture of armed forces: the Bangladesh Police, the Bangladesh Border Guards and the Rapid Action Battalion, which is notorious for 'crossfire'. For the record, the Border Guards have a grisly history, they mutinied a few years ago killing many officers and their families. There will also have been involvement from armed Awami League aligned thugs, like Sohel Rana, whose building collapse killed more than 600 people so recently.


Documents
Here is an article from The Khichuri contextualising the massacre, an alert from the Asian Human Rights Commission and a report from Bangladesh Human Rights organisation Odhikar that details the press control and carting away of bodies.

These articles probably appeal to those with time and inclination to read. They may have appeal to nerds like me, and hopefully institutions out there in the world, but in these fast times of facebook timelines and skepticism documentary images have a grounding role to play.
Like. Share. RT. Forward.

Pictures
If you have a Flickr account Feb28.com have a picture library here. This group came into being following an earlier government killing spree. Know that there is danger in looking at these with a heart that yearns for The Spectacle, The Numbers Game and The Competition of Cruelties. These are humans, and what remains, they are sacred and having a sense of the sacred resists the commodification of suffering that neo-liberal capitalism drives. I believe these are innocent men killed in the act of protest against a hegemonic and morally bankrupt regime. It is staggering, that many Bangladeshis, like those on the Blogger and Online Activist Network are still at the point of arguing that these kinds images are all photo shopped, fake and conspiratorial. But think about the dominant national indoctrination processes and narrow historical spoon feeds and it makes more sense.

Pictures tell us a frozen snapshot, whereas human stories go right into us.


Videos
In the video below, a taxi driver secretly films a policeman involved in the massacre, the policeman describes his view and when the driver asks him if he feels bad, he expresses no remorse. I pray for the safety of this taxi driver.



Sometimes people want to hear someone like them tell them the story. In this video log from Dhaka Medical Hospital, A north American development worker,  not known for holding sympathies with 'Muslim extremists' bravely puts his life on the line to report on the dead and the dying.



In the last video there are no people, just their blood stains. Lord grant them healing, high station and forgiveness, make us better protection for each other.



So, why is this happening and why isn't anybody doing reporting anything?

This didn't come out of the blue, we saw it coming but the Shahbag spectacle over the past few months was a successful diversion of energy. The government has been arresting non compliant media  heads for some time. (Mir Quasem, Mahmudur RAhman). Shortly after the killing spree, the UK-trained Rapid Action Battalion seized the transmitters and shut down Diganta TV and Islamic TV. 

The international media is appalling, and embarrassingly it is secular liberal gatekeepers of Bangladeshi origin are falsely spinning this story in the BBC (Sabir Mustafa) and Aljazeera (@ShamiminLondon).  Just enough to secure indifference for brown men with beards far away who dont play liberal.

From facebook I learn that much of the  Dhaka urban middle class is in denial. There is a tendency to turn this into a commodified spectacle of numbers and heart crushing imagery of human savagery.  The Shahbag aligned have decided that the massacre is all about denying their movement and are acting accordingly. The most prominent facebook group detailing the atrocity, Basher Kellah, is inspired by the Bamboo Fort of Titu Mir, the political-religious reformer who battled landlords and colonialism. It is in dire need of an editorial policy. To be a foolish friend is sometimes worse than being an enemy.

From my point of view I find confirmation that the secular liberal intelligentsia's hegemony is a big, deadly problem. I hope others can see this. Some say they want evidence and without evidence they can't do anything. Sadly, they do not require such evidence when accusing Islamists of heinous crimes with no proper investigation. Crookery, like selective humanitarianism, is rife, especially in the Daily Star, the new Dhaka Tribune, and the Ain o Salish Kendro human rights group.

I call on junior journalists to revolt and leak like Bradley Manning did.

What saddens me even more is how these alien powers in the capital do not regard the religious protesters as proper human beings, have misframed them and their demands, dehumanised them and made it possible for the government to brush-fire them while they prayed and slept in the dark

Some say that Hasina Wajed's government could not have done this without outside approval, and maybe India, USA and/or the UK had some role in this murderous foolishness. After the last coup I wouldn't be surprised. Yet the fact remains that the primary political control rod rests with us, the Bangladeshis, whatever that means anymore.

What shall be done?

1. Learn how to argue uphill against both brown and white prejudices
2. Help spread the story, out of respect those who wont be returning to their homes and families and people in future
3. Engage Awami League School forces in principled debate with superior information and argument.
4. Lobby elected representatives
5. Contest unfair reporting
6. Call out intellectual crooks who infantalise and mislead our people.
7. Think carefully and creatively about what to do next
8. Do not allow Hasina, Foreign Minister Dipu Moni,  Home Minister Alamgir and company to travel the world without meeting protest.
9. Prevent desperate Bangladeshi MPs from looting public resources in the last days of their government through their diplomatic privileges.

Bangladesh Government cracks down on protests with impunity

Yesterday Hefazot-e-Islam (deshi deobandis) and friends marched back to Dhaka to press for their 13 points one month after the Long March which went surprisingly peacefully. I have written about the points in detail in a separate post, yesterdays points were slightly reformulated and included the protection of religious minorities this time. Sadly this time, the government lashed out a full armoury of police, paramilitaries and thugs with deadly effect. Hundreds may have been killed.

Hundreds of thousands, if not a million protesters turned up in a show of seriousness and desire to have their legitimate concerns widely recognised. TalukdarShaheb has published a photoblog of the day as he saw it.

Police, the disgraced and rebranded Border Guards and ruling party aligned thuds, shot at and beat protesters in the day, and in the wee hours of the morning today appear to have prosecuted a massacre in the business district of Motijhil. A friend, by no means an Islamist (...yet) has told me enough from the scene for me not to be able to write it off as bluster from any of the three cyber groups, Basherkella, SaveBangladesh  or Feb28.org.

The crackdown has been systematic. The British-trained Rapid Action Battalion has raided and closed Diganta TV and Islam TV channels. I am told that plain-clothes intelligence agents are keeping the countries madrassas under constant surveillance. The Secular liberal establishment, do not regard the attacked as human beings and are too lazy to push back the hand that fed them all their lives.

We might not agree with the protests demands completely but the right to life, assemble, protest and dignity are non negotiable. It is a shame that most human rights warriors in Bangladesh are cowards and strategic with it comes to standing up for the oppressed.

What is to be done and who is to do it?
As ever it depends on our knowledge, position and location.

1. The moving Prayer of the Oppressed connects us to the divine in a political justice kind of way.
2. Write to your MP, or other (s)elected representative. If you are from the USA, try to find out if this crackdown was endorsed by them.
3. Try to establish truth from chaff, avoiding the risk of self-delusions.
4. Withdraw support for this Government, on family and other scales.  
5. The terrorism industry is often bored and looking for its next hapless victim, do not feed this monster by misframing the Hefazot.
6. Demand fairer coverage of Bangladesh, make lazy journalists aware of the gate keeper distortion.
7. Think, act, write, act, dream, act, see, act, seed. 

Savarectomy

I used to go to Savar to visit the graves of my Khala and Khalu, I guess I passed the site of the building collapse, I think of it as a sad place of dokholocracy, where the MPs and criminals rain injustice and selfishness, with beards, mustaches and clean shaven impunity.

• Innalillahi wa inna ilayhi rajiun
• More than 200 people have been killed by callousness from the corrupt business-politics nexus in Bangladesh. Thats thousands of people affected, bereaved, orphaned and widowed. In the words of one of the seculib twat I read disregarding the police killings of young Islamists recently, 'thats less than a ferry accident'
• Awami League leader Sohel Rana's Rana Plaza  in Savar wasn't built to Buliding Code and wasn't evacuated when BUET experts said it wasn't fit for use. The Bank (BRAC Bank) on the two lower floors didn't make its employees come into work on Wednesday, but the garments factories did, under threat of dismissal.
• The distribution of distress (worker, bereaved, orphaned) and duress (architect-client, factory-buyer, factory-worker) is discussed with fervour in virtual, professional and business communities.
• The Garments owners Association, the BGMEA, have offered 1 lakh Tk (less than £1000) for each of the dead and expelled the five factories.
• People are doing what they can to clear rubble, rescue, offer free medical treatment,  donate blood and erm, retweet.
• Leadership from the top is sorely lacking. This puts a dampener on the governments plan to use the garments workers against Hefazots rally, this makes an anti government, pro transform coalition more possible.
• The deeper causes of the dangerous conditions are inherent to the interacting cultures of capitalism that make the garments and construction industries. Blaming Primark must not be a distraction from the politics of more-than-just-cleaning-up, and neither should protecting brand bangladesh, if there ever was such a thing.

I was mulling over the word hifz, which means protection, and the higher objectives, the maqasid, of the shariah, which I've often argued should shape Muslim societies, organisations and selves. They speak of protection and promotion of faith, life, dignity, lineage, intellect and property.

Now Begum Rokeya, Maulanas Bhashani and Madani might be credible moral authorities to invoke when we might imagine a cooperative movement called "Hefazat un Nisa" that secures safety, dignity, family friendliness and vertical mobility to the labour force, in the spirit with which Aminul Islam worked 

Far off right? deshi Islamism is pretty indistinguishable from neoliberalism, right? Maybe now, but was heartening to hear about Farida Akhter's engagement with Hefazat's demands.

Earth Day is Ecolonial Developmentia

Social and corporate media awash,
With depoliticising subcutaneous tosh,
They tell me the Earth of days just has one,
Per solar revolution, ya haqq, what clean fun!

In Zalzala, the Earthquake, we humans might learn,
The value of actions as fossil fuels burn,
See on the Day of His Judgement,  she'll speak of our deeds,
Without sponsors watching will we be on our knees?

Words make worlds and actions, contextual small,
They move in between us, burrowing through walls,
So which ones have meaning? and which ones are void,
Of gut clenching reality? which ones are just toys?

Developmentors and developmentees playing with time,
With Internships and nervous ticks they serve up moonshine,
Like "Keep Calm and Save the Earth"
That was vs in worth war 2 for what its worth.

So step away from that leaflet, that advert that graphic,
Atomic weights are what matter, make justice not traffic,
Have a go NGO, waft totemic incense,
I see who you are, I know your pair-rents.

The Zine Fair

The DIY Cultures Zine Fair was a townstorming hoot. 

Resistive love politics and craft in cahoots.

A marvellous antidote to consumable culture,

Well-marketed emptiness and corporate Thatcher.

From the bullied young hipsters expressing their self,

To hydroponic transfusions and sewing self-help,

Strangeways, Extradition, Unemployment as Freedom

Creative exchange blew the top off the kingdom.

[New Word] Boka Haram

Anti-inspired by some misled tool boys and frequently murderous brother-mines in Nigeria, Boka (stupid) Haram (unlawful) is valuable concept to prevent intellectual retardation upon newly adorning religiosity.

One of the higher objectives of the sharia, is the protection and promotion of intellect, without which stupidistans can only grow, courtesy of the salafi triangle, or pirisms of many a blend.