Paris Tragedy, Clichés and Cycle of Backlash

Two weeks ago Paris was hit by the massacre of its inhabitants who were enjoying the start of weekend. A total of 130 people lost their lives and hundreds were injured. The loss of innocent life said to be the highest since the world war. Most of us were in a shock and were trying to get our heads round the extent of the tragedy and feeling sorry for the friends and families of the victims. A group of people, however, could not wait for the blood of the victims to dry and started to exploit the tragedy for their twisted agendas. They were firing up tweets, blogs and rants on the media, generally spouting hate. Their behaviour was against all human values of sympathy and respect for the dead. Following is a sample of their tweets:

Barefoot Syrian refugees with
her 3 young children in Europe

 The target of these tweets, refugees fleeing war zone of Syria and other conflict zones. These people have been criticising European Governments for allowing Brown Muslim Refugees into the white Judeo- Christian West. These hate preachers and fear mongers have been opposing the policies of the European Union, in particular the German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Threy cheered countries like Hungry for putting obstacles in the miserably hard journey of refugees, which has taken lives of thousands. This exploitation of Paris tragedy shows the depravity of these people. Despite their hateful views, they are the respectable face of the racism/ Islamophbia. In fact some of them are part of a network of Islamophobic industry including the Gatestone Institute and their subsidiaries like the Henry Jackson society and supporters of sub-subsidiaries such as the Quilliam foundation. These are the respectable faces of the hate mongering fraternity. Together they inspire, incite and radicalise ordinary people who don’t just tweet vile abusive and threatening tweets but put that in practice. The inflammatory language used by our media and Politicians doesn't help. The use of words like hoards, swarms and swamping doesn’t help.

When something like Paris tragedy happens clichés such as “they hate the West“ are banded about. However, no one explains that why the large parts of the West like, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, etc are spared of such attacks. Why only countries involved in the conflicts have been targeted by these people? Of course there are other clichés like “they hate our values”, “they hate our lifestyle” and “they love death while we love life”. This message is reinforced with “they are barbarians and savages”. This language stems from the feelings of superiority and racist attitudes that are prevalent on both sides of the Atlantic. The attitudes which have been responsible for deaths of unarmed black people in the US and gave rise to the black lives matter movement. This kind of language is also designed to cover up the failures to integrate generations of descendants of migrants who are the main culprits in Paris like tragedies. Furthermore, it is easier to blame people far away for the atrocities than accept the circumstances leading to the enfranchisement of own citizens.

Denial seems to be the name of the game when comes to wars and its consequences. It has been used by the Pentagon after bombing weddings and hospitals etc. Denial of the motives of attacks on the westerners and on the western soil is also part of the same strategy. Recently, Ken Livingston made remarks about 7/7 bombers on a tv programme, saying that they (bombers) gave their life because of a political cause and our actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Blair supporter Matt Forde, who was also a panelist on the same programme, tried to shut Ken Livingston by claiming that it was offenssive to the victims of 7/7 bombing. It is this kind of bullying which is keeping us from discussing the real issues, which are keeping us in a cycle of unending violence. The reality is that only one of the mass murderers of Paris was known for his IS supporting activities. The rest were not known to be religious or known for any extremist tendencies. Some of them ran a bar which was closed for illegal activities, couple of months before the atrocity. It seems that they had become radicalised within that short period of time. Furthermore, at the time of their murderous activity they were high on drugs, not on any kind of religious fervour.      

It is the people like Maajid Nawaz and the sponsors of Quilliam Foundation with their rhetoric of ideology, who have been spreading fear of Islam and Muslims. Then they turn around and claim that there is no such thing as Islamophobia. Over the years, they have been casting increasingly wider net to label all Muslims as Islamists, non violent extremists, etc. The reality is that apart from a cultish group of approx. 200 to 300, which doesn’t believe in the democratic society, the vast majority of Muslims have always taken part in the democratic processes. There have been Muslim councillors and lord mayors going as far back as 1970s and 1980s. There are number of Muslim MPs and ministers in the cabinet and shadow cabinets. The reality is that Quilliam, their sponsors and so called prevent programme is doing real damage to the active participation of Muslims in Politics, Education, Employment, Media, etc. Maybe that is the goal of their sponsors; to undermine, disenfranchise, and suppress the voice of the Muslim community.  

Coming back to the Paris tragedy, there was an immediate backlash from the French in the form of bombing of the alleged capital of Daesh, Raqqa. Bearing in mind that France is already bombing in Syria, why didn't they bomb Raqqa before? Is it because the risk to the civilian population is greater in Raqqa than in other places? If that is the case then how bombing Raqqa civilians will improve their security? Now France has asked UK to join them in the bombing campaign over Syria, where risk of killing civilian population is greater. Although our Government has made an unconvincing case to join France in the bombing campaign in Syria, they may still get approval from the parliament. There is however a concern about the alleged remarks attributed to the PM David Cameron, that people opposing the proposed action in Syria are terrorist sympthisers. This unfortunately confirms that debate is suppressed at the highest level.

After the Paris attacks media talked about backlash against the Muslim citizens of the West. It was an odd prediction as they had nothing to do with what had happened in Paris. However, the backlash has happened, mainly due to the media rhetoric and headlines like in the Sun below. We must not forget the wide spread incitement and abuse on the social media.

The results are painfully clear to the victims of Islamophobic/ racist attacks. Although victims of such abuse are people of all ages, often it is the women who bear the brunt of this hate crime. Most victims are targeted because of their obvious visibility as Arabic/ Asian appearance and this sometimes results in attacks on other brown coloured non Muslim communities too. Women are targeted for such abuse as they are doubly visible as Muslims because of their colour and dress/ hijab and because, like the terrorists, they are probably considered a soft target.

Politicians are no better in addressing the problem. Only the Labour MPs have raised the issue in the Parliament. Shadow equalities minister Kate Green MP raised her concerns about the staggering 300% increase in, already high, Islamophobic attacks. As far as the Government is concerned, they have been busy enacting/ introducing annual instalments of counter terrorism/ extremism legislation / regulations. The Prime Minister has been making major speeches on the prevention strategy. PM and his minister's strong statements and so called prevent programme, has created an atmosphere of suspicion affecting whole of the Muslim community. The role of this approach in the increasing number of Islamophobic attacks and discrimination, affecting daily life from education, employment, public service to charitable activities, can not be denied. Government's reliance on selected individuals and organisations for advice and consultation and not the mainstream communities is responsible for some of its ill thought policies. Unfortunately some of the advisors are motivated by their own agendas. This became clear in the saga of the Cage UK, an organisation named by the Prime Minister in one of his speeches. As it happens the courts disagreed with the assessments made by the people advising him and attacking the charitable status of the organisation.

During the debate on Syria, conservative MP Rahman Chishti raised his concerns about the use of the words Islamic State, which have been abandoned by the UN, US, EU, France and many more, in favour of the Arabic name Daesh.  He said to the PM that the using Islamic State instead of Daesh was giving rise to Islamophobia. PM David Cameron’s response was that dropping Islamic State in favour of Daesh would risk losing the public. Obviously what he was more concerned about losing public support to extend bombing strikes in Syria. Furthermore, he was probably worried about the loss of support from the right wing press and organisations. This supports the idea that such terms are often used for political purposes which is a reckless attitude as it has devastating consequences.

 PM has at many times said that the UK government operates strong anti extremism policies, which he says are the toughest in the world (even Gatestone Institute calls it draconian). However, it seems the government has failed to conduct a thorough impact assessment. Apart from paying lip service, the government has shown no enthusiasm to tackle the scourge of Islamophbia. During the attack on Gaza in 2014, criticism of Israel was described as anti-semitic, by people like Douglas Murray. This is not to say that their weren’t anti-Semitic incidents, there were. This resulted in a robust response by the government to reassure the Jewish community and a parliamentary report on the issue was published.

Now that the parliament has voted to extend the bombing campaign into Syria, there is a risk that any negative implications will undoubtedly result in backlash against the Muslims. Therefore, it is imparitive that the Government reassures the community by acknowledging the existence of the problem of Islamophobia and take steps to reassure the community. Furthermore, it should consult mainstream Muslims to develop strategy to counter and safeguard Muslim citizens. This is important as anti-Muslim hate crime can only lead to disenfranchisement, which is believed to be a major factor in so called radicalisation. 

Democracy, Media and the Pressure Groups

Voting in Labour Leadership Elections closed at mid day yesterday. This has been an historic election in many ways. First of all it is the first leadership election with no block vote for the Trade Unions or the MPs. A truly democratic system of one member one vote is not only open to the Labour Party members but also to the wider electorate who could sign up to be party supporters. This revolutionary idea allows party to test the popularity of the elected leader. This election is also historic as it is likely to break from party’s recent past and allow it to reconnect with the masses and the democratic principles of “Government of the people by the people, for the people”. Furthermore, hopefully it will revive the founding principles of the welfare state and equality for all. Whatever the result on Saturday, the Labour party will have to change from a mare reflection of the Tory party, to a radical force with alternative ideas.

These leadership elections will also be remembered for the dirty tricks, not only of the establishment, the Tory party members, Blair and Blairites and the media. Everyone who took part in the dirty campaign has their own reasons. Recent labour leadership is worried about the scrutiny of their actions/ inactions during their reign. The establishment is worried about loosening of their stranglehold on power. The Tory party is worried about having a proper opposition, questioning their ideological policies of austerity, failure to invest for growth and using the same old trick of selling public assets to balance the books. The elections will also be remembered for excessive column inches and air time used to smear attack and undermine one candidate. However, they could not find anything in Jeremy Corbyn’s personal life or 30 year of public service to attack him. They were forced to admit that he is a nice and principled man. However, their attempts to attack him on various policy discussion papers and economic proposals were scuppered when number of economists including Noble Prize winner supported his plans.   

When all else, including Jeremy Corbyn’s vest and dress sense and all the jibes of Trotskyite, etc failed, dirty tricks were deployed. Some people latched onto his support for the Palestinian cause and desire for a dialogue to end the conflict and suffering of Palestinians. Allegations of Anti-Semitism, racism and bigotry started to fly. This attack was started by the Jewish Chronicle and was immediately picked up by the cabal of “literati”, “journalists”, think tanks”; the so called “liberal left”. Soon there were blogs, articles, tweets and media repeated the same allegations. One ex Tory minister and the Sun columnist, Louise devoted a good part of a month on this propaganda. When she and her colleagues at sister newspaper the Times couldn’t find a shred of evidence against Jeremy Corbyn to support their allegations, they resorted to attacking his supporters. They abused their positions as “journalists” to malign the unsuspecting public for supporting a principled man.   

This shows the depth of depravity some people will go to protect their interests. The unholy alliance between so called liberal left and Tories and suspect nationalist and racist groups isn’t new. They don’t have any principled position and they would forge alliances with anyone to achieve their goals of creating disorder. They support disorder around the world and at home by promoting views of interventionist policies and attacking migrant communities at home and in the West. They would support Tory government and Blairites in return for support of their views. In other words they are not Liberals, leftists or even Tories, they are just a pressure group with their own aims. They aim to silent people by insinuations, harassment, often bare faced lies and bullying.

The result hasn’t been declared but these people including media pundits are developing new narratives to attack Jeremy Corbyn. One of the common question is that can he be a Prime Minister. They did the same to Ed Milliband and attacked his personality. They forced him, a Jewish man, to eat a bacon sandwich and then ridiculed it. They succeeded in persuading him to hide his stated left leaning policies to develop rhetoric similar to the Tories. The result, public was left confused which resulted in a massive defeat for the Labour. We are now left with unprecedented austerity cuts with lasting effects on our lives. The Tories have always cut the essential services and sold public assets to balance the books. For example they cut youth services and then sold school playgrounds leaving our youth nowhere to go.

It is the Left which always had vision of welfare of the masses and investment for growth. They created National Health Service to make it available to all. They invested in the Education to give everyone chance to improve their lives. They cleared the slums and improved living conditions by investing in Public Housing and duties on Councils to house homeless and those in need. They brought rent controls and minimum standards for housing. They brought equality legislations to include all minority groups. They introduced welfare state and benefits for those in need including growing families, unemployed, infirm and disabled. They invested in industries including ship building, mining, aeronautical, steel, etc. They invested in the defence industries and the defence forces and introduced nuclear technology. On the other hand the Tory governments, instead of investing and modernising to make it competitive, sold or closed these industries and helped to diminish the manufacturing industries. 

Whatever happens on Saturday, Jeremy Corbyn has already started a debate and conversation with the masses to present an alternative to the same old same old. If he wins he will need our support to succeed in his mission. Don’t be distracted by the questions such as whether Jeremy Corbyn is Prime Minister material or whether he wants to be the Prime Minister, as the general elections are years away. What is important is the need to help him develop alternative policies to that of austerity, diminishing public services and welfare state. We need someone to take us away from the tried and failed interventionist and military adventures and to advocate diplomacy and dialogue to resolve conflicts at home and abroad.

Finally, a plea to the Journalists, I know you love spin and analysis but wont it be refreshing to see a politician with straight answers to straight questions. So please don’t resort to usual dirty tricks respect democratic choice for public good. Public is yearning for change from the same old deceptive rhetoric, you know it makes sense. There is no point making the same plea to the liberal left and other pressure groups as they are hell bent on peomoting disorder.

Legalised Discrimination

In the recent weeks new laws and Bills have been introduced by a country that claims to be a western democracy, despite it being located in the Middle East. These measures include 20 year prison term for throwing stones, collective punishment of demolishing homes and now the Nationality Bill declaring it a religious state. The implications for the indigenous population are that they can be deprived of, already diluted, rights of citizenship. The indigenous population has already seen confiscation of their land, farms and homes and influx of Western Citizens settled on that land. These new settlements, populated by people who are neither refugees nor economic migrants, are often built in a way that it divides existing communities who are then forced to use long routes, separate roads and paths. It increases presence of not only the armed police and army but also abuse , threats, harassment from armed settlers, who arrive with already developed prejudices.

There is no other country in the world which has such discriminative and inhumane laws. I am of course talking about Israel which claims to be a modern democracy. However, her actions do not support this grand claim, they show that Israel operates a discriminative and apartheid based system against the Palestinians / Arabs. This kind of behaviour was previously seen in the colonised countries, most recently in the apartheid state of South Africa.  There are clear similarities between the apartheid regime and Israel. South Africans claimed to be superior on the basis of colour and their western ancestry. Same can be said about Israelis, who have descended from the white western communities. Like South African apartheid regime, Israeli survival is dependent on the trade and aid from the West.     

We in the West believe that we are living in secular societies where human rights of all are protected. We claim to have systems and legislations that promote and protect equal rights of all and the justice system is not based on punishment and revenge but Justice and rehabilitation. We tell rest of the world that we have democratic systems that protects right to air views openly without any repercussions. We have the free and open society with freedom of thought and where disagreements are resolved with intellectual debate and discussion. We proudly take on causes of the people, who are persecuted for their views, politics, religion, ethnicity or who are at odds with their government.

With all the above virtues of civility, how come there is no outcry about the injustices in Israel? Why do our politicians accept Israel as a democratic country? Why does the United Nations look incompetent and incapable of enforcing the Resolutions passed for a period spanning several decades? Why do US keep blocking any resolutions which condemn the massacres carried out by Israel?  Why does the West continue to ignore the outrage felt by their citizens? Why are Palestinians left to struggle under the oppression of this apartheid state?

The answer probably lies in the fact that some of the virtues we were proud of are fast becoming a distant memory. There has been a drip-drip erosion of the very foundations of civilisation which was the envy of the world. The pity is that this erosion has been caused by deliberate action of our politicians and power Hungary civil administration. It has been supported by the people who claim to be people of science and reason, intellectuals, media in general and journalists who fail to carry out their job properly and opt to fill their column with sensationalist headlines not thought provoking analytical pieces.

The turn of the century has not only brought us the dark incident of 9/11, it also brought the darkness in our thinking. It replaced rationality with child like how dare they do this to us. Our politicians, media and intellectuals see terrorists everywhere. This has given our security services to demand for ever more powers and tools. Same applies to US where we have seen that their Police and other domestic forces are now armed better than their armed forces. These forces now believe that they can literally get away with murder.

The reality is that the UK has an extensive experience of dealing with terrorism. We had adequate legislation and experienced security forces to deal with the issue of terrorism. Yes, modernisation was needed to cope with the technological advances. However, this attitude of how dare they, exceptionalism and fear of others, has lead to irrational thinking and legislation which is not thought through. This has resulted in the annual enactment of new legislation and regulations. Often such legislation is brought in a short space of time without proper thought and procedures.

The purpose of good legislation is to be long lasting to bring desired results without bringing unintended implications.. This requires full impact assessment and need for safeguards to prevent unintended and discriminatory effects on the wider communities. When you start saying that you want to control people’s thought processes, freedom of speech, freedom of movement, you betray the freedoms you preach. Furthermore, when you know that the legislation is having adverse affects on the wider community but start to justify it on perceived threats rather than actual events you are not a democrat.

If anything our experiences in the Northern Ireland tell us that despite extensive security measures we were unable to stop acts of terrorism and murder both in the Northern Ireland and on the mainland. With this in mind it is even more surprising that UK has been churning out legislation this way. There is continuous development of hardening of rhetoric. In the recent weeks our politicians and media has used terms like treason, exclusion and detention. This has now been presented as yet another terrorism bill. These proposed measures are more akin to internment, an outdated practice, than a positive measure to bring desired results.

The annual assaults on the freedoms are sinister when white groups and some banned terror groups are allowed to raise funds and are given safe passage to the battlefields. Also people who train and fight with foreign armies are excluded, even if they have been accused of committing atrocities/ war crimes. Furthermore, mercenaries disguised as volunteers and private security firms like G4S and Blackwater are allowed to operate freely.

I wonder why the Prime Minister made the announcement, about the current terrorism bill, in the Australian. I think it is now a policy to revive the old commonwealth plus USA against the alleged threat from the new commonwealth. May be the Prime Minister was impressed by the Australian policy of holding asylum seekers in detention centres based off her shores. Britain has it’s own detention centres but nothing like the Australian or USA’s Guantanamo Bay. Britain had previously unsuccessfully tried an off shore detention centre on a floating ship. May be this time it could build one on Thames Estuary/ Boris Island. Who needs an airport when you need to intern “terrorists”.  

What is surprising is that the old Commonwealth countries and USA, all English speaking, seems to have similar policies. Other countries in the West and other parts of the world has also experienced terrorism but somehow they have managed to keep things in perspective. Spain, for example, has not only experienced internal terrorism it also suffered the most deadliest post 9/11 attack in Europe, managed to deal with issue without draconian laws. Draconian laws, along with the negative rhetoric from politicians and media can only lead to more frustration and alienation. 

Is it a coincident that the same governments who treat their minority communities with discriminative and draconian legislation are also the countries that support Israel? These countries not only support Israel, they supply Israel arms and ammunition to carry out the atrocities. They allow their citizens to fight alongside Israeli armed forces and the highest number of settlers housed in the illegal settlements built on the stolen land are from these countries. They host the organisations that spread propaganda in favour of Israel and spread hate and hysteria about the minorities in these countries. Their state media has sister organisations BBC, ABC, CBC, etc. and private media like Sky which also broadcasts in all of these countries directly or through sister channels.

Despite the advances and popularity of the social media, mainstream media has a very important role to play. Mainstream media which has the ability to reach millions at home and abroad has a responsibility to inform and question our politicians. Unfortunately the mainstream media is in a stranglehold of certain class of people who control the agenda. They make more fuss about a dissident in China than pay attention to the plight of Rohingya in Burma. They are more concerned about the imprisonment of a businessman or a pop group in Russia than the suppression of Kashmiris. They would rather condemn Putin for helping the Ukranians against the Right wing neo Nazi’s than criticise Netnayhu who, as far as the Palestinians and reasonable people are concerned, is a brutal dictator.

In short, you can’t expect governments that operate discriminatory policies and legislation to condemn the discriminatory policies of Israel. It is for us the public to speak up for the Palestinians who are suffering from occupation, oppression, discrimination and increasingly dehumanisation by the Israel and her supporters based in Europe Australia and North America. We must remain steadfast in our support for the Palestinians and their right to freedom and continue to voice our disgust at the shameful apartheid dictatorship of Israel.