24.7.14

Sabir Mustafa's selfie with Sheikh Hasina

The one thing you can rely on from a broad section of deshis, is their vanity.

Below is an exhibit of one of those bits of Facebook ephemera that tell us a story of how sycophancy works among a certain circle of people in Bangladesh. It is a photograph and comment stream from the BBC World Service Bengali Editor Sabir Mustafa with Prime Minister of Bangladesh. It was taken at the London Hilton on Park Lane in the early afternoon of 23rd July 2014, where Hasina is staying with a retinue of 56 people to attend David Cameron's Girl Summit on FGM and early marriage. 

FGM, which is what the papers have made a bit deal about, is not an issue in Bangladesh, but I guess she was required as some  kind of senior ethnic presence, to pose for the camera like a good moderate Muslim woman awaiting a gallant white man to rescue her. Her car was reportedly pelted with shoes leaving Downing Street. 

Its all pretty pathetic really, I would really have liked to have seen a section of decolonial protest register their disapproval of Hasina and her regime in a significant, dignified and  more creative way.  Hasina's Information Minister Hasanul Huq Inu was egged some months ago, and it was very meaningful but could have been so much more. This Saturday's demonstration for Palestine passes close by the hotel, and the Tarawih prayers at the Qatari-Mayfair mosque are on the doorstep. 

It is an indictment of the arabcentric and feebleness of deshward activism amongst our generation in the UK, that this illegitimate regime's officials and securocrats, with blood on their hands, can to and fro from Dhaka to London without any hindrance.

Midnight waaz anybody? Maybe next time.

Both Hasina and Mustafa have been instrumental in the manipulation of the fascistic mood and the production of unfreedom in Bangladesh, where a sham government rules and opposition expression and mobilisation remains suppressed and the fear of poverty still immobilises the middle class.

The monument of this period in Bangladesh's near history is the massacre and cover up of unarmed protesters on 5th-6th May 2013. This unfolded under Hasina's watch, by Dhaka Met Police Commissioner Benazir Ahmed's hand and was rendered away by Sabir Mustafa's white privileged pen.

It is interesting that Sabir Mustafa posts a lot about Palestine, but does not see the resemblance between what he and his female selfie partner do and what the Israeli state is up to.  

The ideology and kitsch culture of Jionijom, more so than Climate Change, remains the biggest threat to life, love and civilisation in the space we call Bangladesh.

Here's to growing out of it.


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23.7.14

Salma Hashmi's Muslim NATO for Palestine and its underlying Ummahtography

A Pakistani politician made some interesting remarks recently. Salma Hashemi, a figure from the Pakistan Muslim League Quaid-e-Azam faction made a very obvious statement regarding the uselessness of condemnatory statements at Israels slaughter of the citizens of Gaza.

A joint army, she said would be formed if 'Muslim countries' were serious. The withdrawal of Arab deposits in western banks, and an oil embargo could be used to express this seriousness, and a joint Islamic bank running established with the deposits of monarchs and elites. It was something very King Faisalesque, the last king of Saudi of any merit (knocked by the US, of course).

I think Begum Hashmi's desire matches that of hundreds of millions of people, however it assumes that petrodollars are some kind of common ummahtic resource, and that the monarchs and elites are part of the solution, not the problem. There's also a bit of the Hindustani manslave about the arabcentricity of resources she speaks of. If anything, our learning from the previous generation should include the limitations of Arab oil wealth, and Saudi developmentia.

Speaking of which, the elites of Egypt and Saudi Arabia have so far escaped much of the wrath directed at Israel. Their ommittment to maintaining their lifestyle transcends anything remotely leading to liberation for anyone.

Turkey so far, and to a limited extent Tunisia, are the only Muslim majority countries to have acted with positive integer value on the matter of Palestine. Generally speaking, there isn't enough trust between and within predominantly Muslim societies, even before we get to the issue of capability amd ummahtic teamwork. Besides their militaries have been long been fattened and defanged through serving tyrants and UN leacekeeping contracts.

That said, it was sickening to read that Egypt turned back one of their medical supply planes from reaching Gazans. Those stupid stupid Egyptions who ran for Tamarod and Sisi last year are responsible for so much of the misery unfolding aross the Rafa border. Last year the fascistic demons busy in Israeli society fight now possessed them, not to mention the Salafis who played a foolish role as well.

Israeli apologists are correct to point out the Muslim-on-Muslim killings blind spot.

So can we quit Ummahtic Cloud Cockoo land and grow up, grounded, open hearted and output oriented? Because,even if Palestine were freed and Israel subdued, that human infrastructure would not necessarily benefit oppressed people closer to our circles of influence.

My counter proposal to Begum Salma is this, if we were serious about establishing justice, we would be doing it, close by, and therefore be skilled with it and of greater assistance to the beleagered Palestinians.




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22.7.14

White House Muslim

Please let me introduce myself
I am a (wo)man of influence and taste
I've been around since the Ummah began
Sold out many a Muslim's faith

I was around when Mir Jafar let down
Bengal for the East India Company men.
I made sure I went to Downing Street
As they bombed my Afghan brethren

I'm pleased to meet you
I hope you guessed my name
What is that troubling you?
Are you just jealous of my fame?


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21.7.14

Hasina's London GirlSummit visit and the Israeli (pre)occupation

All struggles for justice are connected.

As Israel continues to grind Palestinians to death in manners which underline their moral and spiritual disconnection from those victims of European slaughter in WW2, I write about a despot in Dhaka, in London now for a development charade.  Last weekend Central London thronged and beeped in solidarity with Palestine (illustrated beautifully here). I suspect there will be nothing but a whimper upon the arrival of this destructive sociopathic woman and her (shopping) entourage, and this is my whimper.  

Bangladesh: A Situation Report

Sheikh Hasina Wajed is the self-selected PM of a dynamic and detaic country numbering 160 million human souls. I say self-selected because she ran (s)elections on January 5th 2014 which disenfranchised the majority of the country's electorate. Although tolerated by the international community, make no mistake, she is an illegitimate leader. 

In 1905, Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain of Rangpur wrote a short work of science fiction in English called Sultana's Dream, about a country called Ladyland where women ruled the roost, men couldn't even be trusted with embroidery, and the sun and rain were harnessed for human needs. What is being lived in Bangladesh more closely resembles Rokeya's Nightmare.

As far as the vital values of freedom, dignity and hope go, today's Bangladeshis are arguably more captive, humiliated and hopeless than they have been for more than 100 years. Britain funds this captivity, humiliation and hopelessness to the sum of at least £250 million a year, by supporting the lifestyles and egos of Dhaka's upper middle class, its own development professionals and consoling the oppressed in desh with palliative and depoliticising civilising missions.

Global Hypernationalist Mood Music and the Meaninglessness of Development

Maybe you had noticed the nasty case of hypernationalism going round, powerfully polarising and disfiguring the already wounded societies that it preys on, from the rise of the far right across Europe to the ultimate civilisational facepalm that was the Tamarod enabled coup in Egypt. We see it in Israel as we do in Bangladesh,  but whereas Israel's government controls a version that runs on Zionism and lashes out violently at black Jews and Arabs, Bangladesh's Awami League is younger, manipulates the forces of Jionijom and lashes out violently at Urdu speakers, garments workers, Rohingyas and the religious establishment. 

Deshi opposition activists might find the term similar to Chetonase, a recently identified enzyme prevailing among a section of Bangladeshi society which turns decent people's brains and backbones to mush. However, although the ballpark is the same, Jionijom is more like a magnetic field than a condiment. Initially coined in 2007 by an mishearing friend on a long car journey (who was probably fuming at the latest peak in Israeli violence) it is an ideology that build itself on metaphors of race, jealousy and bloodletting. It was probably not intended but is the sum of bad situations, misjudgment and pronounciation.

Hasina's Awami League government fomented an ugly ultra-nationalism last year, through the Shahbag movement, to establish an environment in which it could operate with impunity. As opposition leaders and media were silenced and locked up the government could even commit a massacre ( like on 5-6th May 2013) and get away with  blaming its victims, for now.  When eventually properly investigated, her government's massacre of 5-6th May 2013 in Dhaka will be a stand out crime of the time, and the perpetrators will say 'we did it for development'. 

Remember that this is an establishment which  produced the April 2014 Rana Plaza garments factory disaster, which reopened our eyes to the truth behind the working conditions of women (and men), in the name of 'development'.

The London Girl Summit that Hasina is scheduled to attend is a joint production of the UK government and UNICEF focusing on FGM and child marriage. FGM is not an issue as far as I am aware in Bangladesh, though (subjectively determined) early marriage and (frankly political) forced marriage are. I do not doubt that the UK and Bangladesh governments have the employees, signboard painters and NGOs to talk about and appear to be active on the issues, my concern is whether they have the moral integrity and legitimacy to transform societies for the better. As the UK's development spend has been observed to increasingly line up with its military interests, the ridiculousness of the scene grows exponentially. 

I wonder what the women and children victims of the regime, who live in its fearful shadow and have been denied life, family, justice and audience make of the situation.

Kutupalong: Bangladesh's very own Gaza, of sorts

South American Football Appreciation and Palestine are issues of virtual national unity in Bangladesh, uniting the most rabid Shahbager and ICS member under one banner, if not manner. Somebody pointed out that is was because Palestine was a safe issue, and its true, there is no reputational risk, let alone actual danger in verbally railing against injustices committed by Israel.

The continuing crimes of Jionijom soaked Bengali Nationalism however are not such popular issues. In Bangladesh and in deshi-ancestored communities overseas. Recently, A A Gill, the right-wing London Times food-critic wrote a heartful article on the Rohingyas trapped in appalling conditions for decades in the Kutupalong Camp in Bangladesh. The attitudes of the government officials spoken to is sickening and the clampdown on protests regarding poor conditions ruthless.  The case of Urdu speakers being burned alive  and the fate met by Hefazot e Islam only confirms an uncomfortable truth about the leges we have to stand on.

Decolonial Duas for Desh and Palestine.




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