October 29, 2008

HELLFIRE DESCRIBED


All you need to know in a lecture which sounds like it is being delivered by Chris Eubank. I didn't even know he was a Muslim.

October 24, 2008

MALUNG TV NEWS

I had three punctures today on two different bikes. Life is trying to tell me something important? Lets find out.

Before all that I cycled to Whitechapel to buy some dv tapes. You know, I thought- fuck it. Lets take up filming mad Muslims again. See what happens. This time, I am much calmer, much more certain of what I am doing and why I am doing it. Hamza and Atilla was a very painful, obsessive, emotionally draining experience. I've had a lot of time off, during which time I have become very good friends with Musa Ahmet. In five years I've had zero financial success, but I've got to know Musa, so I don't care. Its all been worth it.

A friend of mine asked me to pick up some tailors chalk. I knew a place a little further north of the river. I cycled up brick lane to pick up a breakfast from one of the famous bagel shops. As I cycled off I saw a face I recognized but couldn't put a name to. I sat and thought for a second, then turned round.

"Are you Mousa Brown?"

"Dave Bones!"

The last time I had seen this Mousa he was behind bullet proof glass at Woolwich crown court. It was good to see him as a free man, carrying on with his life. We talked for ages about the court case. I had missed his testimony, but the court reporter who I had become friends with told me he had made a good account of himself.

It sounded like I had missed the most interesting part of the trial.

"I made Farrel look like an idiot. He only asked me one question which actually related to the charge I was on."

He said the Police had suppressed tapes which would clear him, and distorted tapes in places so they appeared to say something else. He said at one point after he was charged a policeman came in to the interview room at Paddington green and said

"Salaam Aleikum! Don't worry, we know you are not a terrorist. I can help you."

He reckoned the whole trial was ridiculous. He was aware of the tensions between Atilla and Hamid from first hand in Belmarsh but didn't believe either were bad people.

"Run a terror organisation? Hamid couldn't run a bath."

He said that in pre trial arrangements The judge had banned them from referring to an expert from the 21/7 trial who had said that what they were talking about was from the Koran. During his testimony he had tried to refer to the guy as someone who could help the jury a couple of times and the judge and prosecution had objected, leading the jury to smell a rat. One time when he dismissed the jury for lunch the judge had held Mousa back.

"I know very well what you are up to. What do you think you are playing at?" he asked.

"I am trying to defend myself." said Mousa.

He said that the Police had released his minibus and his sprinter van almost immediately after he had got out. His wife had declared them off the road for the 18 months he was inside. Within days a tow truck came to pick one of them up as untaxed. He suspected the Police had a hand in this.

"Inside I wouldn't talk to the screws. They suspected me of this and that. I don't hide what I think of people. I got arrested doing what I have always done for twenty years. I pray five times a day. I am a Muslim."

He said he wouldn't want to repeat the experience but he had learned from it.

"I bet you steer clear of Muslim groups now no? Have you been back to Speakers Corner?" I asked.

He said that he had a couple of times.

When I got back home I offered to help a friend down the road to pick up a couple of bags of tiling glue for his floor on our bikes. We cycled along the river. I had puncture number one near the millennium dome. The tube was so old I couldn't get the valve undone so I had to push the bike to B+Q to get some hacksaw blades. My friend carried a spare tube, but it was an ultra thin one for a racer. Luckily with 25kg of floor glue on the handlebars it went not too far from home.

A couple of hours later I borrowed a bike and headed up to east London at the invitation of Abu Waleed. As there is a bit of interest in what I am doing now my tourist camera no longer cuts it, so it is always a scrabble to find friends with professional cameras who are actually interested enough in what I do to lend a hand.

Funnily enough, the person who has always shown the most interest is a girl who is as facially pierced as I am. Obviously with Muslims strict rules of segregation this posses a problem. I had emailed Mr Walled earlier. He told me the room in which they met had a curtain down the middle and she would have to be on the other side.

We arrived to find the London School of Sharreah was under an east London railway arch. There were maybe 12 British Asian guys in their early twenties and through the curtain I think I could see two females in Muslim dress. My camera woman friend set up on the other side.

Abu Waleed talks very fast. He makes a lot of jokes, more than Hamza. He isn't angry like Hamza was some times and Atilla was most of the time in Finsbury park. He is happy to critisize other Muslim scholars by name, and does so a lot. Scholars he respects are Hamza, Bakri who he calls Sheik Omar, Al Faisal, and he also spoke well of a Palestinian sheik who he left his audience to guess. I would assume he is referring to Abu Qatada.

At no point did he remotely glorify terrorism, or encourage his audience in any acts of violence, but he would indulge in a lot of black humour about the situation Muslims find themselves in. I could see why he was charismatic to the group in front of him and how what he said and the way he said it would be relevant to their lives. I was bemused at how often I heard the unmistakable chuckle of my friend with the camera through the curtain. The atmosphere Waleed projects is very relaxed. People would duck out to answer their mobile phones and interupted whenever they liked, mostly to ask him to repeat his justifications from the Koran.

At the end of his talk he thought I was going to ask questions. I had made loads of notes after our phone conversation the other day but hadn't brought them as I knew we would need much more time to go through everything and I was too knackered to attempt questioning at 10 pm on a friday. I asked him to think of a place he would be comfortable to sit down for an afternoon to film properly.

On the way home we stopped in my favourite east end pakistani dinner.

"They believe things I would disagree with but they are OK really as people aren't they?" said my camerawoman.

"I think so. I think we are more extreme than they are" I agreed.

I had puncture number three on the way back.

I will put up some clips of what Abu Waleed had to say on youtube soon as.

October 23, 2008

AL-QAIDA MANCHESTER

POLICE investigating a Cheetham Hill taxi driver found the names and mobile phone numbers of high ranking members of al-Qaida written on a piece of paper at his home, a terror expert told a court...

Its a good job this trial is in Manchester or I'd be hooked..

October 22, 2008

FIRST AND SECOND

via Rightwingsparkle. Its hotting up over there!

Sunny's Guardian Article

...Last year, a British born and trained journalist of Pakistani origin, Waseem Mahmood, got together a bunch of well-known Pakistani actors and singers to compose a song against terrorism titled Yeh Hum Naheen (This is not us). It quickly became a sensation and inspired a petition against terrorism launched earlier this year that enlisted the help of over 9,000 volunteers to gather over 60 million signatures from across the country. It is being entered into the Guinness Books of Records as the biggest petition ever...

WHO ARE YOU?

The U.S. said its forces "may have mistakenly killed and injured" Afghan soldiers in what may have been a case of mistaken identity "on both sides."


October 21, 2008

WICKED



Found this on Last fm. I don't know why I like it, its cliched bollocks lyric wise. I miss Jamaica.

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE FLOATING OVER NORWICH

via Mr Camel

A FORMER Top Gun told yesterday how he was ordered to shoot down a massive UFO — over NORWICH.

RAF controllers told US pilot Milton Torres to “lock on” and launch all 24 of his rockets over the city.

Tale ... Milton Torres as a young man, and today

Tale ... Milton Torres as a young man, and today

But as he came within seconds of firing at the alien intruder — “the size of an aircraft carrier” on his radar — it vanished at 10,000mph.

The amazing close encounter is revealed in secret Ministry of Defence X-Files which are declassified today.

Milton said: “It was some kind of alien snooping over England. I guess we’ll never know what it was.”

UPDATE: Also from Mr Camel check this floating over Turkey

October 18, 2008

WHAT IS HAPPENING TO TV?

Its all crap isn't it. Dumming down? Well er.. No. I can't quite believe this. I turned up at a friends house to see Paul Merton sitting down with a bunch of Sadhus in a circle. Anyone who has been to India knows what happens next. But Paul Merton? On prime time TV? Cut to the advert break. I've seen people watch people do drugs on TV, I've seen a very scientific presentation of a couple of guys out of their heads on Fly Agarics being observed by scientists but a presenter doing a chillum?

Watching Paul Merton taking a first pussy puff I was still thinking, no. As he got into it and started laughing, so did I. Wonderful. The program is reviewed in the Telegraph here. If you scroll down there are some hilariously stuffy comments from Telegraph reading Indians. They haven't posted my comment- yet.

This got me thinking about what I've seen recently. Dawn Porter really isn't my kind of girl, but the way she got into sexual experimentation with Lesbians and Free lovers has been majestic TV, and Anne Richardsons Sex education show is proper, honest liberation.

The cream of the crop which I was totally unaware of has got to be The Angel in the North- Jamie Oliver. We raved about his School Dinners series over on Socialistwanker. Watching him "Hit the North" was just beautiful. Seeing someone use their celebrity and ambition for such a wholesome concept is just fucking faultless, and is also beautifully made drama. Jamie is a real champion of the common man, and woman.

All of the above programs (except Paul Merton) are available on 4oD.

UPDATE: Paul Merton in India is on demand here!! You need to register but its free.

also:

Comedian Paul Merton has deeply offended the British Hindu community in the first part of his new series on India

October 17, 2008

LOOK AT THE GROUND

Britain's military chiefs should "hang their heads in shame", was a coroner's damning verdict, as he ruled that a catalogue of failures and a lack of crucial equipment was to blame for the death of a British solider in a minefield in Afghanistan.

Now I'm not an expert but sending a fucking Chinook into a minefield? To rescue someone?

NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO VOTE


Steal Back Your Vote! from Greg Palast on Vimeo.

October 15, 2008

YOU LIKE IT?

Single Ladies

(I embeded the video but I couldn't get it to stop autoplaying)

New Single from Beyonce, all these chicks look a bit foreshortened considering they are wearing such high heels. They don't look so frightened standing next to her as the original line up of Destinys Child used to so she must have relaxed a bit. Sounds like someone was playing Sapce Invaders in the background while they were recording. Like it? Well you shoulda put a fuckin ring on it innit.

ABU WALEED

I'm an old mate of Atilla so don't worry I won't kill u!

I've been following the tabloid sensations of Abu Waleed over the last coupla weeks. As I said I never met him and questioned the tabloids associating him with Finsbury park. He emailed last night and phoned this morning. We had a long chat about a lot of things Hamza, Atilla, Quilliam Foundation, MI-5, Al Mujaharoun, Bakri, Abdullah Al Faisal, Al Qaida etc. I wrote four or five pages of notes.

We covered stuff from the 1990s right up to the present. Most interestingly for me, he filled me in on the tension between Al Muj and Finsbury park I used to hear about when I was up there and the difference in media style and focus between Hamza and Bakri over the years. He speaks quite fast and I don't do shorthand but I think I got everything. After the roller coaster of knowing Atilla I haven't been jumping to delve back into the story of Fundamental Islam in the UK but talking to Abu Waleed, like talking to Atilla I can't help but be intrigued by the particularly modern British nature of someone talking about such an age old religion.

I am a bit tied up at the mo but I will translate my notes over the next coupla days.

October 14, 2008

US EMBASSY TERRORISED


OK. I went up. No Police. No media. No "Beheading" placards and no Muslims I recognized from Finsbury. I didn't stay long as I got a puncture on the way and had to pick my bike up on the way back. I saw an interesting painting in some posh gallery. I don't know if you can make it out with the reflection in the glass. its some sort of bondage scene.

PREACHERS OF HATE

A term coined by the media, and denied by Hamza and Atilla is adopted by Islam4UK who are protesting today outside the US Embassy in London.


"Indeed, there has been an excellent example for you in Ibrahim and those with him, when they said to their people, ‘Verily, we are free from you and whatever you worship besides Allah! We have rejected you, and between us and you is hostility and hatred forever, until you believe in Allah Alone." [Al-Mumtahinah, 60:4]

This was the da'wah (preaching) and hikmah (wisdom) of Ibrahim (AS) and his followers - who, if alive today, would undoubtedly be accused of preaching hatred. His da'wah was not diluted or sugar-coated, to please the authorities or sceptical disbelievers. Rather, his message was a message of hate for those who disbelieved in Allah (SWT) and a message of love, peace and glad tidings for the servants and worshippers of Almighty Allah (SWT).



This is my preachers of hate video from Finsbury park in 2003

October 13, 2008

Two of Britain's biggest high street banks will in effect be nationalised today in a dramatic move by the Government that follows a day of international negotiations aimed at co-ordinating a pan-European approach to the global financial crisis.

The Apprentice has always been the show I have loved hating on this blog, but I thought Alan Sugar seemed to be talking sense in The Mirror today.

I'm wondering again whether this boom and bust isn't the game of a very few people who are laughing at us. It all just looks too scripted. For all the good times we had smileyBlair, and waiting in the wings this prudent, safe guy in charge of the money. Then just as he takes charge- what do you know? The economy crashes and he comes out stern faced, leading the world. Did they not know all this was going to happen? But I don't believe in conspiracy theories eh.

CONTINUES

October 12, 2008

Hostages

Iran condemned a decision by British authorities Saturday to release from prison the only surviving member of a group of gunmen who seized the Iranian embassy in London in 1980. Several newspapers reported Friday that Fowzi Nejad, 50, would be freed within days after serving 27 years in jail.

On my travels I have met someone who was in jail with this guy. I will make inquiries..

You can do it pimp Lucious!

October 07, 2008

The Hidden World of Lap Dancing

Fascinating. Sorry, I mean disgusting. Shocking. I wasn't titillated by that at all. I bet the journalist wasn't either. Tough work. Narrated by Mark Bonner. Sorry I meant Bonnar.

Seriously though for a second, this is like the story of the emperors new clothes. Really? Dancers get up close and personal in lap dancing clubs? Really? Some of them offer sex for £250-£300? That's not really a surprise is it. The programme, for those who watched it in genuine horror pitched it just right though. If this is going on, it should be answerable to the community around it. Fat cats can open these places and there is nothing residents, councillors or MPs can do about it. What is the answer? Red light districts set up and regulated to protect everyone maybe? Places where everything goes and undercover doco makers can bring their cameras out into the open?

I don't know. I have a bit of experience working in strip joints a long long time ago when I err... wasn't very well. I remember when there was a mass exodus of the more, shall we say "up market" looking girls to lap dance clubs. I am not really for or against regulation. All of this would exist somewhere wouldn't it. I've never had a lap dance. I think treatment like this guy was subjected to for his money would drive me fucking mad. It drove me mad enough looking at naked girls from behind a bar all day and night.

Seeing nakedness and not touching it is too frustrating for me. Seeing it and touching it if you pay for it, well that is beyond my experience. I have never been offered sex by a prostitute. Maybe once through a window in Amsterdam. In my experience, bar a very very few who are absolute gems, these sort of women are just addicted to the money. A lot of them are intelligent but lazy to try something which might be more of a struggle, but which might actually reward them rather than returning them to the same place. As the guy in the film says they are very skilled, but they are hypnotised by basic, and when you get down to it, very boring capitalism.

Do read the review of this show on Stephs blog and also on The F-Word

Also, for a really amazing take on all this from one of the rare gems read ex-Millenial girl from the beginning. You won't be disappointed

October 06, 2008

And the Bile Filled Lecturer...

Abu Waleed in the Midlands

And the bile-filled lecturer even joked about Al-Qaida handing out suicide-bomber backpacks in youth centres and snooker halls.

In video clips posted on popular website Youtube, Waleed mocks the British intelligence services and warns they have underestimated the strength of the violent jihad movement in the UK.


Is there a difference between what the guy actually says in the video and how they present what he is saying?

October 04, 2008

TACKLING EXTREMISM



This is very interesting. I've seen this guy before. Choosing my words very carefully as one who talks to these "extremist" types on occasion, I think he has often said things I can relate to as sensible. Obviously he is a lot closer than the useless expensive horse shit about "tackling extwemism" which comes from government. Because he is taking government money a lot of Muslims are going to say that he has made a deal with Zionists and kaffirs and is therefore a kaffir.

This has been edited to tell a story, media types are pinning their hopes on this guy. I'd like to see the raw footage. Not surprisingly I am ominously drawn to attend one of these meetings. I can be honest and say that although I have a huge amount of disagreement with these guys they are brave to still be meeting like this. I don't know what they are saying, I don't trust that a true picture of what they are saying is making it to TV. I saw Hamza preach for too long to make that mistake.

Watching Inyat Bungawala describing them as hooligans who can't be reasoned with made me smile, remembering Finsbury park. Were they hooligans? Yeah, some of them. And as so many were masked in was very hard to tell the difference between hooligan and sincere Muslim. When Atilla gets out I'm going to ask him the truth behind all this- as far as Finsbury is concerned anyway.

I have no idea who these lot are or if anyone ex-Finsbury has drifted toward them. As I have said before everyone Finsbury when I used to go there thought Choudary, Bakri et al were MI-5.

"We don't say any of this and are demonized and arrested. They say everything and remain free?"

There is a loud voice inside me saying "No! Don't do it! Stay away! Stick to your music, find a new chick to entertain yourself."

Christ knows

October 02, 2008

Obama

...Sir Nigel's letter, though initially drafted by his political staff, is an intensely personal assessment of Mr Obama and is based largely on the ambassador's owns observations from the campaign trail...

October 01, 2008

FRONTLINE

From the Frontline Club



I think the sound works now, if not try here

This is a fantastic talk given by Palestinian journalist based in London Abdul Bari Atwan who has interviewed Bin Laden and pops up on the news every so often. He keeps things light at the beginning, but is very honest and direct about his feelings for his homeland by the end. Fascinating guy.