I was looking at some streetart on flickr when I spotted this rather interesting piece. It immediately struck me as something from the artist Banksy, and it depicts a ‘teddy’ bear with a Molotov cocktail in attacking position. If you look at the full wall you will actually see that it is aiming at three British riot police, with the caption ‘The Mild Mild West’.

There are many different conclusions you can draw from this, and really that is what makes real art. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, and the real artists are those who depict that. Probably the most effective image this portrays in my opinion, would be that of “something different” being the “enemy”, and to emphasise this even further he uses the usually soft and cuddley “teddy bear” armed with – not a gun – but a Molotov cocktail. The choice of weapon further adds to the ‘difference’ as it is the usual weapon of the underdog, the usually branded “terrorist” and so on.

I added a comment in response to the first comment on the picture which said “how d’ya know he’s not a suicide bomber teddy.” saying “apparently hes not arab looking enough. Pathetic stereotypes. Love the artwork though..“. You see, when someone sees something fighting against the system – and I don’t necessarily mean physically – they automatically assume that they are the “terrorist” or the “suicide bomber” and so on. One never stops to question the actions and intentions.

I was extremely surprised to receive an email from the uploader of the picture:

Firstly thanks for your comments much appreciated, I thought I’d mail you instead of replying through comments as this all makes me angry as well and I’m trying to keep the political me under control here. I couldn’t agree with you more about the stereotyping that’s been going on, a while ago I heard the comment “not all Muslims are terrorists but all terrorists are Muslims” used on T.V. with no outcry at all, unbelievable. However the thing that’s really angering me at the moment is this letter bomber that’s just been caught, at least 7 bombs, maybe another 5, sent through the post, and he gets described as a poor misunderstood fool who temporarily lost his reason. I’ve looked a bit and all the definitions of terrorism I can find mention bombs but I suppose John Reid knows better than me, of course this bomber is a white geeky looking cyclist so maybe that’s why he’s not a terrorist.

Anyway I just wanted to say that as a white brit I find the Muslim communities response to this “racist” attitude from the government and media to be dignified and proportionate and I applaud all who can show restraint in the face of this seemingly unending assault on their culture. I also look forward to the day when we all stop being distracted by these differences that are imposed on us by our so called leaders, start to look at the real problems and deal with the cause not the effect.

What did I take of this? Well I wrote in my response:

Wow. Didn’t expect such a powerful response, and believe me we appreciate the support that many reasonable people from the British community have offered without any real need to do so.

Funny thing is – technically I’m as much British as you are, in fact, what does it take to constitute being ‘British’? I was born here, have a British passport, yet for some reason I’m more of a threat then you because I believe in a religion that actually enforces Peace and Justice as its core values.

You’re not to be so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it – Malcolm X

Almost 450,000 requests were made to monitor people’s telephone calls, e-mails and post by secret agencies and other authorised bodies in just over a year, the spying watchdog said yesterday.

» Times Article

Should you be scared? Well yeah, if your brown, Muslim or Brazilian looking I’d watch my back. That’s not actually a joke, you see people often rant about the so-called monitoring that people are subject to, and honestly, we usually ignore it. When it comes to your community then you realise that perhaps its time to start being careful – why? Because they don’t need much to get you into a whole load of trouble and when I say they don’t need much, I mean that. Read my book review on Enemy Combatant which tells of how Moazzam Begg was held for 3 years for nothing. You think that couldn’t be you?

Now being careful and being cowardice are two different things. Speak your mind, speak the truth. We need to remember that at the end of the day, we will be held accountable by the fairest of judges.

Actually saw this one one of the slashdot comments, perhaps something very applicable…

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
-Attributed to Pastor Martin Niemoller

Extremely random article? Yeah I’m sorry…

Watch it and worry. Read the comments for an interesting analysis!

My Rating: 5/5

Enemy Combatant: A British Muslim’s Journey to Guantanamo and Back

Review

When I was in Year 10 in January 2005 I did a presentation to my English class on the indefinite detention of potentially innocent human beings in Gunatanamo Bay. Handing out some of the few pictures actually available from the media and articles describing the horrific events that took place in Guantanamo to the class showed some interest, in particular a cutting from a newspaper highlighting the release of 4 Britons, one of whom I have come to know as Moazzam Begg.

Almost two years later, at ExpoIslamia in Manchester I saw a book which immediately struck me as something of interest. I found it difficult to relate from my initial studies into the crimes in Guantanamo to this book, something that you will only really understand when you read it. The personality enclosed in a book is so much more powerful then any article you could read in the newspaper or any piece on the TV news, and this book does not differ.

I guess a question that could easily be asked is what is there to gain from reading this book? Honestly I think you will gain from reading anything, the amount of knowledge to be gained from books is immense, unfortunately something I know I haven’t really been taking advantage of recently.

The thing about this book is that even though it is completely factual, it portrays the story as something which makes you attached to Moazzam’s ‘journey’. You ultimately feel weak and helpless sat there in your warm sofa reading about someone no different to yourself being taken from his home in Pakistan into 3 years of illegal detention. He is British and lived but an hour away from me. The only real difference was his choice to help his Muslim brothers suffering in other countries, something which we all strive to do.

The journey takes you from England to Bosnia, Pakistan to Afghanistan, Bagram to Cuba and finally back to England. A mixture of emotions run through you as you read about the terrors, the praying, the lack of food, the torture – psychological and physical, the excitement of small acts of kindness. If you don’t cry at least once when reading this book you have a heart of stone or just really didn’t read it.
Ensnared within this steel quagmire,
Our view holds little to admire,
So to the darkness we retire,
Amidst the chime of the razor wire.
I opened the file I kept with the research I did on Guantanamo in year 10 and suddenly I could put a real picture to the faces of the people talked about in the articles. I could put a real image to the few pictures of the camps in Guantanamo. It’s funny how you think you’re well educated on the problems of the world until you really learn just how deep it goes. The example of Moazzam’s father becoming active in campaigning for his son’s release really touched me:

“Old feuds between my father and his siblings had stopped, and they had come together. People who hadn’t spoken to one another for years had turned up to my fathers house and offered him their complete support. I had come home to a united family”

Astonished that out of so much evil has come some good. There are so many things to say about this book, but really – just read it. You will truly see what a mess we are in today, what our governments are doing beyond the laws, how people just like us are suffering for no apparent reason. “You do NOT have the RIGHT to remain silent.” (used by Amnesty protestors against Guantanamo).

Perhaps it is time to starting making a difference.

Notes:

• Publishers of a quarterly magazine, Common Sense. There are numerous articles available, there, online.
  • The most recent issue of Common Sense includes a number of articles of advice, about interaction with the media.
  • The special publications of Common Sense include matters about the form and the rights of the nation and the people of of Palestine.
• The answers in the Question and answer forum are made across a broad range of compelling, contemporary and historic subjects, and made upon apparent, broad knowledge, as after study — e.g. ranges: Islamic national rule, as was made of the last caliphate, in Turkey; Armenian genocide in Turkey; nations of Palestine, Iraq, Turkey, US, and UK; Halal economics; Halal food.
• Denoted_[1] as being the only registered Islamic political party in the UK.

ZDNet.co.uk reveals that a state-of-the-art computer system installed in a public swimming pool in Wales detected the motionless girl at the bottom of a extremely deep swimming pool and informed the life guard of her whereabouts and how long she had been there for. The computer managed to alert the lifeguard after 30 seconds of her being in the water.

The local council installed the system after lifeguards were having problems seeing to the bottom of the pool in the deep end and cost around £65,000 to install. The computer detects whether someone is in distress by calculating swimmer’s trajectory in the pool using both above water and underwater cameras installed around the pool.

You can read more about it here…
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-5845447.html

You can see more pictures of the system here…
http://news.com.com/2300-1012_3-5845482-3.html

Microsoft’s latest version of DRM (Digital Rights Management), which was designed to put a stop to hacker’s getting around the licences imposed on downloaded music, could be exploited once again.

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/cmusings/2005/04/14

Ever since Microsoft released its DRM technology, rookie hackers have been trying to get around it to get more for their money from services such as Apple’s iTunes and Napster. However, professionals have decided to take on the daunting task of decoding Microsoft’s encryption methods.

The reason for this taking on this lengthy process is not just out of spite. The community of hackers lead by the infamous Cody Brocious are said to be undergoing this daunting task to allow them to code a universal music download client that can run on Linux and take advantage from both iTunes and Napster.

Cody insists that his project merely allows consumers to listen to their music on whatever platform they want to, however in order to achieve this Brocious and his team had to crack Microsoft’s DRM management code in order to play protected files on a non-Windows platform.

The hacked client doesn’t re-code the protected sound file – instead it just strips the DRM protection headers and tags from the file and decrypts the file permanently. This process however will only work with tracks downloaded with the ‘improved’ client as the encryption key needed to perform these tasks are only send to your computer when you 1st download the sound file.

There have been other ways you could get around the DRM rights but they have all relied on the same principle of setting up a loop-back in your sound card (the line-out [speakers] port is connected to the line-in port) where the songs are streamed and then recorded using a separate program. However this method means you have to play each song you want to recode all the way through and would mean you lose quality and tag information. For this reason, DRM has never really had any threats.

But the idea of being able to remove DRM on-the-fly poses an enormous threat to the major record labels. With the newly-introduced subscription packages from services like Napster, people could pay as little as £9.95 per month and they could download as many songs as they wanted to do and copy/rip/listen to them when/where they want to. They could then cancel their subscription after the 1st month and they’d have 1000s of tracks for less than a penny a song.

But is this idea so wrong, I personally believe that if you pay for your music (whether it’s by subscription or per track), then you have the right to do what you want with it. You should be able to freely upload it to your MP3 player or be able to burn it to a CD without having to pay any extra.

This country is made everyone a ambassador so that they have a say in this country, so there is always an opinion poll so people can shape this country on how you want it to be.

And finally King Danny 1 invaded Eel pie island as his own and believes that he has access to 103,000 soldiers and has 32.1 billion dollars well so he thinks, I will continue to watch this programme BBC 2 Wednesdays    10.00 p.m

Sign up to his country here

Go to public opinion, shape his country here

Read King Danny 1 Diary here

 "I am utterly against the punishing of innocent people for the crimes of the guilty, whether it is done on the underground of London or the streets of Falluja by George Bush’s air force". George Galloway MP

Lets face it, there aren’t many likeable politicians in the western (and of course everywhere else) governments today, so it feels good to say that I’ve always had respect for George Galloway and his views towards the current situations. I’ve attended seminars and talks with George Galloway as a guest and I’ve always been delighted with his impressive knowledge of the truth towards the atrocities that are occurring all over the world, for example, I was very much intrigued by what he had to say at the FOSIS conference about Palestine and the truthful views he portrayed about the happenings there.

Because of this i’m happy to report another article by ICH which is poiting out some of the great acheviements of George Galloway in the UK’s politics. 

Imagine, for a moment, that the US was invaded by an army from Saudi Arabia for the transparent purpose of securing America’s great natural wealth. And, imagine that tens of thousands of American people were killed in that invasion, entire cities were leveled as reprisal for resisting, and scores of Americans were tortured and humiliated in the most despicable manner. 

What type of man would risk his own life to travel to the United States to fight for the liberation of the American people from Saudi oppression? 

A terrorist or a martyr?

Its funny, you know, how after years of campaigning against the war in Iraq – people finally start to realise this simple concept which is incredibly real! This is what we’ve been saying since the year 2000 but of course no one seems to learn from history and yet again thousands of innocents die due to the ignorance of a minority with a bit of power.

Those who doubt what I say should consider Blair’s news conference yesterday, where he rattled-off a whole new list of repressive measures to be directed at Muslims. Mimicking his Crawford mentor, Blair has decided that he has the right to unilaterally make law from his perch at 10 Downing St. without the consent of Parliament. The fatuous PM now claims the power to close down mosques, deport, clerics and shut down web sites where the views don’t meet the dubious standards of the state. Additionally, Israeli trained police-units have been deployed on London’s streets with orders to "shoot to kill" terror suspects (or fleeing Brazilians) if there is a perceived risk to public safety. 

ICH [ article cont ]

Speaks for itself doesn’t it?

 That’s why we need guys like Galloway who’ll stand up and take a few hardy swings at the scoundrels in power. His words put a little steel in everyone’s spine; and we’re going to need it, too. There’s plenty of bad road ahead.