All Watched Over by Algora-isms of Graceless Transaction

Unfortunately neoliberalistan won't be late to any party.

The Destitution and Diet of Muslim people have been minced by its grinders. Consider the depiction of suffering in the ummahtic heartlands for fundraising, and the proliferation of a deadly, (sac)religious meat market and ancillary hospitality sector.

It was only a matter of time before the marriage industry cranked up the volume of humiliation. No, this post isn't about SingleMuslim.com and Penny Appeal.

In the months and years to come, the activities of a company called Muzmatch and its recent viral ad campaign will come under increasing scrutiny. They may even become a site of.... righteous violence.... for a change. Though knowing me, they will probably make a stack of money and reproduce themselves highly effectively.

A few weeks ago a story of an enterprising Punjabi Pakistani Muslim chap using billboards to advertise for a wife  started going the rounds. He wanted salvation from an arranged marriage, presumably not the one that him and his parents emerged from. Folks were amused, 'rooting for the guy', ' wondering, 'what if that were a south asian girl?' or seizing the opportunity to cover muslims for whitey . 

Today, or yesterday, it began to emerge that Malik is a viral marketing scheme for a Muslim Matrimonial website called Muzmatch. It is founder and run by a Manchester Uni CompSci grad who worked at Morgan Stanley as an algorithmic trader. At the time of typing, the brother's LinkedIn profile reads;

**HIRING ENGINEERS AND MARKETERS/CREATIVES muzmatch.com/careers**
**SORRY NO RECRUITERS - SAVE BOTH OF OUR TIME AND DON'T BOTHER PLZ**

Left the world of Investment Banking to pursue a career as an Entrepreneur. Currently Founder and CEO of muzmatch (backed by Silicon Valley based Y Combinator) - a revolutionary mobile startup which has raised $9M to shape the way Muslims find their partner. 

Previously Vice President with 9 years experience at a Tier one investment Bank within the Portfolio Trading desk - primarily responsible for managing the Program Trading Risk Book as well as trading $3bn Index Rebalance events.

Muzmatch does exactly what you would expect it to do: algorithmically create and exploit Musalmugs. The founder-brother likely doesn't see this campaign, or indeed business as an epic bumwave, but revels in his becoming the shadow of a fart of a Mark Zuckerberg wannabe.

 

[New Word] Sustainabelly

A desire for permanence of the corporate and consumer selves.

[New Word] Compound Stupidity

Person A has a specific stupidity affecting multiple dimensions of their thought and being. In close proximity to Person B their combined reach and powers of stupidity are elevated to more than the sum of their wholes. The affect of time and companionship has an interesting affect on compound stupidity.

mejdoul recall

Be Good to Yourself,

We washed the dates

In hepatitis A infected feaces

Yet all you can talk about is that particular Bastard state,

Not your own

Sweetness

All The Prime Minister's Men: AJE light up Sheikh Hasina's Tentacles of State Terror

Media coverage of Bangladesh is generally appalling for a number of reasons that aren't particularly empowering to retell, so I was happy to learn that the Al Jazeera Investigations team were releasing something which promised justice-making learning juice.

So many have been killed, injured, disappeared, bereaved, terrified, pauperised, stolen from and misled at this point that anything is welcome. I will comment on the programme as it unfolds into this world but for now please watch it for some insight into the devilish regime holding the futures of 160 million souls at gunpoint.

The mantras deployed by the powerful to make this go away are interesting to follow.

Government's rebuttal (1st Feb)

Blames Jamaat off the bat and goes at David Bergman for the actual crime of disputing Bangladesh war death numerology in a completely different document. Bangladesh is secular democratic development miracle, how dare you embarrass us in front of our development funders, property investment opportunities, gun runners and alternative citizenship providers.

Military rebuttal (3rd Feb)

Highlights include admitting poor due diligence and exposing their UN Peacekeeping gravy train.

Awami League next Generation critique of the documentary (5th Feb)

General Aziz's one time collaborator-turned-whistleblower 'Sami' makes his story known to the Bergman & Khalil News Company (7th Feb)

At least someone with a platform in Dhaka is seeing clearly and hasn't been terrified into a lobotomising stupor (10th Feb)

Prime Minister Hasina's Foreign Affairs Adviser Gowher Rizvi interviewed on DW (10th Feb)

Kanak Sarwar's very illuminating interview with writer retd Capt Shahidul Islam below ( Bangla) (15 Feb) A Must Watch

The unfortunate folks in charge of comms at Bangladesh Army HQ issue a fuller vituperative response  ( 16 Feb)

[New Word] Mixtrust

Realisation that these malevolent incompetent bastards are deadly, but there is much khayr in the mix, and that over-dismissal is deadly too.

[New Word] Gelatinated

That feeling when there's something you won't be able to have the pleasure of consuming, in this life.

Embarking upon a (Bengal) Famine Remembrance Month

More than 71 years ago millions of souls in Bengal were starved to death, past skin and bones. I do not believe that we collectively know and honour their humiliation and suffering in our spiritual, educational, creative and political lives. 

Racist colonial indifference and impoverishment of our ancestor's lives from the British Occupation, pettier power games, commercial interests and ecological issues collided to produce the greatest regional loss of life in considerable time. Many of the powerful structures and patterns at work during that Bengal Famine live on - the utter disregard for our people's lives displayed by government machines, corporate profiteering and the fear and close memory of destitution that have shaped features in our upbringings.

As the coronavirus threatens the lives of elders with closer personal access to those times, political despair grows deeper and the threats of human accelerated Climate destabilisation continue to manifest, the golden thread of our transformative process must be to build new and productive learning capacities and dispositions. 

White British Remembrances of war dead perform a role in the reproduction of a certain self image. My reflection isn't to call for the inclusion of colonially indentured fighters in that self-image but to address the wounds and scar tissues of colonial savagery, always.

So, at every staging ground on our journey, of formal education or otherwise, let us open our books and hearts at the Bengal Famine page of 1943

[New Word] ASlashing

A method by which a wide alliance of capital and colonial actors ensures political, economic and racial supremacy over you and those who dare challenge its unassailability.

See also, The Trope-a-Dope Technique

Covid Adaptation I

If over the next weeks and months we seek and commit to adapting the way we live and learn we will be safer.

Building practical social infrastructure
People around the world have been rendered disorganised and controllable by government lockdown politics. But we must find ways of organising and developing new methods of doing things together and relating.

HomeSchooling training
Most of us didn't tool ourselves up for this, but there are lots of resources and opportunities to share, sharpen and design in this space. There will be a discontinuity to the academic rhythm this year, prepare for it and use it to glide our learning relationships into a better place and mitigate the humanity deficit of most online provision.

Diary
Keep a diary about every interaction you have with public authorities, about your own experiments and experiences. It will be vital reflective leaning personally and record.  e.g. In the UK, what are your schools telling you, what has your experience of 111, the GP , housing authorities and others been like?

Vitamin D
Yes, big doses.  It wont wash away racism or move you to a bigger house, but its cheap and there are lots of benefits to it.

Dietary Transformation
Hard but battling every comorbidity has multiple benefits and the biggest wars are in the head.  I am told that Type 2 Diabetes is possible to reverse, especially if you are early on. Obviously this is even harder with older people. eg. Substituting brown rice for white rice. Shifting from south asian diet to mediterranean one.

Improving cleaning regimes
Far UVC is showing promise in becoming a relatively safe anti covid light source. Indoor Air quality improvers and instrumentation are particularly advanced in Asian cities and quite available.

Compensating the imperilled.
Every cleaner, deliverer,  driver, child minder, carer and tenant should be accorded increasing pay ( decreasing rent) , rahmah , protection and respect.

Just distribution of adaptation load.
A lot of these things could end up increasing the load on women, but that should be preempted. In the sense of the most marginalised having the biggest adaptation load, this is sadly the truth, but it can be mitigated by creative collectivism which is what community-wide adaptation is and why point 1 is where it is.