The Death of Nelson Mandela & Political Opportunism

I like many of you were saddened to hear of the death of Nelson Mandela, a man who stuck to his unshakeable beliefs and principles in the most trying of circumstances, becoming the focal point of a struggle that would eventually break the apartheid era regime in South Africa.

Instead of writing about the great man himself, what I want to talk about firstly is the impact he had on me personally and to then look at the sickening levels of hypocrisy shown by the political and media classes who have cynically abused his death as an opportunity to gain some desperately needed cachet.

As a child of the 1980’s, one of my first realisations of political action were seeing my parents close down their bank accounts with Barclays Bank for their support of the apartheid regime in South Africa. Before my tenth birthday, I had become accustomed to checking the labels on our fruits and vegetables, if it came from “The Cape” or from companies that were operating in South Africa, then they were not bought.

These were my early roots of being politicised, as an act of solidarity to those in South Africa.

The Boycott Divestment & Sanctions broke the back of the apartheid regime in South Africa & the exact same thing can happen in Israel.

The similarity between apartheid era South Africa and that of modern day Israel are plain for all to see. You can read more about this on an earlier article I wrote for MPACUK titled “The World Against Israeli Apartheid”

The mainstream press in Britain has been gushing in its praise for Nelson Mandela, but in their desire to remove him from politics & make him a saint does him a disservice.

The western narrative has become of a saintly Nelson Mandela that turned the other cheek, that there is no room for his type of radical politics.

Today, as you see whitewashed images of a post-prison, unarmed, grandfatherly Nelson Mandela, please remember that he was someone who had the pride and courage to take up arms against his oppressor. Mandela fought in a guerilla war against white supremacy in South Africa, as did many others all across the world. It was the CIA that alerted the South African authorities to Mandela’s location, which is what led to his 27 years behind bars and the medical condition which felled him today. The American government was responsible for that crime.

So when you see the likes of Obama and his fellow politicians crying their crocodile tears later today remember that today, they imprison the modern day Mandela’s, that they murder the modern day Mandela’s with their drone strikes, remember that these are the politicians that arm the apartheid government of Israel to wreak war and destruction in Palestine and that these are the politicians that do everything they can to crush the kind of dissenting voice that Nelson Mandela stood for.

Our very own David Cameron (probably Gideon Osbourne & Boris Johnson) was part of the Conservative Federation of Students in 1985 when they produced this “Hang Mandela” poster

If that wasn’t enough, in 1989, David Cameron marked Nelson Mandela’s 26th year in prison sipping wine with the apartheid state’s rulers.

The hypocrisy of certain people shouldn’t go unchecked:

Conservative Home had a bit more of a realism to their piece “Mandela and the Right” where they stated, without attempting to deny their previous hatred of Mandela:

“In some quarters of the Right when I was a student, there was sympathy for apartheid (on the racist ground that black people are the inferiors of others) and, in a few cases, outright support.  It felt foul then, and the memory of it is no nicer now.”

After Nelson Mandela was released from prison he wrote an open letter to (one of Rupert Murdoch’s key lieutenants at the Murdoch owned New York Times) the unashamed zionist propagandist Thomas Friedman, stating:

“The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is not just an issue of military occupation and Israel is not a country that was established “normally” and happened to occupy another country in 1967. Palestinians are not struggling for a “state” but for freedom, liberation and equality, just like we were struggling for freedom in South Africa”

A few years ago, I wrote about the story of Islam’s resistance to colonialism & apartheid in South Africa and how it echoed Nelson Mandela’s struggle.

Not only was Nelson Mandela listed as a terrorist by both Reagan’s US & Thatcher’s UK Governments, but his party, the African National Congress, or the ANC, was listed as a terrorist organisation.

How many of today’s terrorists in future will be remembered as ‘brave apartheid fighters,’ or ‘brave freedom fighters?’

Mandela was openly welcomed and coveted the world over by kings and queens, prime ministers and presidents.

Yet how was it that so called “great leaders” like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan designated Nelson Mandela a ‘terrorist,’ and his party, a ‘terrorist organisation?’ for simply wanting self determination from the white, European colonial powers and to give back the indigenous people back their land and their rights, in their own country.

To sum it all up, as my brother said

We Muslims should be the first to appreciate the lessons that Nelson Mandela taught us in his struggle for freedom.

Those who dismiss the death of Mandela as just the death of another man do not appreciate what his life meant to the oppressed of his time, and to those oppressed now.

Angola “Bans Islam & Dismantles Mosques”

The country of Angola has reportedly “banned Islam”, “dismantled & destroyed Mosques”, with Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos stating:

“This is the final end of Islamic influence in our country”

The liberal establishment has been very quiet on this one, I suspect if it had been a Muslim country banning Christianity the reaction would be slightly different.

A couple of points to note.

Ever since AmeriKKKa set up its AFRICOM command structure, terrorism and instability has sky rocketed. I’d say it’s part and parcel of US foreign policy to destabilise swathes of Africa. I’m sure some clever person out there has mapped these incidents and correlated them to prove my theory.

It’s probably not the smartest of ideas to ban religious practices if your rebuilding your country after the end of a 27-year civil war. When Governments starts to persecute groups of people within their own country you get genocide, Hutu’s, Tutsi’s, Rwanda are three words that spring to mind.

Like many of you, I watched the Islamic GPU conference over the course of the last weekend & had the following themes of human rights, citizenship, peaceful mutual coexistence and global unity rammed down my throat for fourty eight hours, as if these are concepts that alien to Muslims and that we have to prove that we are worthy and able to live upto such lofty ideals.

Of course no one in their right mind would ask if any other nation state is worthy.

Maybe the President needs to read his own bible “love one another as I have loved you” before deciding to adopt American policy.

Maybe it’s just another indicative sign of the times.

We debate endlessly where we should put our hands when standing in prayer, while the enemy cuts of our legs.

Why did a US CIA drone kill Taliban leader days before peace talks?

It’s my assertion that whenever “The Enemy” wishes to enter peace talks, it’s “The West” that refuses terms and responds with violence. The CIA assassination of TTP leader Hakimullah Mehsud is the most recent example of this long standing policy of blatant aggression.

The Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif recently invited Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of the Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan for high level, direct peace talks. Days before the meeting and in direct violation of Pakistani sovereignty, the CIA assassinated Mehsud along with 25 other people in a drone bombing in the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) of northern Pakistan.

Negotiating a settlement with the Taliban is the only option left to “The West”, one they openly admitted and committed to in the summer.

The context for the drone strike has to raise the question of whether John Brennan, head of the CIA, is deliberately attempting to forestall any peace in the region. Why was Hakimullah Mehsud killed when he agreed to peace talks?

This of course isn’t the first time such peace talks have been derailed by Western aggression.

The Pakistani Taliban will of course seek revenge and will bomb mainland Pakistan as a response.

So who stands to gain?

In June 2011 Radio 4′s Today Show had a very interesting  discussion with Michael Semple, the former Deputy to the EU Special Representative for Afghanistan and a key proponent of talking to the Taliban. Here’s what he had to say on the subject:

Western military theory is based primarily on Carl von Clausewitz’s teachings, what is taught in every single military academy is;

“War is not merely a political act, but also a political instrument, a continuation of political relations, a carrying out of the same by other means”

The Afghan War Logs showed the true nature of the Afghan War, one that the media doesn’t report on.

Is it democracy that keeps western nations at war? Or the armies and the vested interests now massed behind them?

President Eisenhower’s farewell message to America was a simple warning against the “disastrous rise of misplaced power” of a “military-industrial complex” with “unwarranted influence on government”.

A burgeoning defence establishment, backed by large corporate interests, would one day employ so many people as to corrupt the political system. (His original draft even referred to a “military-industrial-congressional complex”.) This lobby, said Eisenhower, could become so huge as to “endanger our liberties and democratic processes”.

I wonder what Eisenhower would make of today’s America, with a military grown from 3.5 million people to 5 million. The western nations face less of a threat to their integrity and security than ever in history, yet their defence industries cry for ever more money and ever more things to do.

The cold war strategist, George Kennan, wrote prophetically:

“Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial complex would have to remain, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented.”

That adversary is Islam and virtually every single country that has a large Muslim population.

The war on terror has fulfilled this prophecy fears, as Britain has followed America’s lead and sunk into a swamp of kidnapping, torture and imprisonment without trial.

The belligerent posture of the US and Britain towards the Muslim world has fostered antagonism and moderate threats in response. The bombing of extremist targets in Pakistan is an invitation for terrorists to attack us, and then a need for defence against such attack. A self fulfilling perpetual cycle of violence.

Only last week three British Royal Marines went on trial charged with murdering an Afghan man in cold blood while in their custody.

Meanwhile, the opportunity cost of appeasing the complex is astronomical.

 “Every gun that is made is a theft from those who hunger”

For each long range cruise missile and bomber built a hospital ward and a classroom in Britain doesn’t get built.

As long as bullets are fired in war, there will be a company profiting from their sale, with the invention of the global war against terrorism, it provides a blank cheque opportunity for the defence industry – the military industrial complex – the scenery maybe variable – Iraq or Afghanistan – the money source remains the constant and the end result remains constant.

Yet your average Daily Mail reading Britain will be fed the myth that “they hate us for our freedom & democracy”.

It’s because our militarised media is so strong that no one will believe that it’s possible that our armed forces are capable of committing such evil acts such as breaking into people’s homes, killing them while they slept and then burning their bodies.

Still want to know why they hate us?

It becomes hard to be taken seriously if you are talking peace, yet continue to kill the people you want to bring to the negotiating table.

War is a conduit to achieve a political objective, if you have no political objective to achieve, or the remit is changed regularly as has been the case in Afghanistan, then you are in a perpetual state of war, a never ending war, that has no end game in sight.

Violence begets violence, a deadly self-fulfilling foreign policy prophecy.

Al-Shabaab’s Nairobi Mall Attack Tied to “Disastrous American Foreign Policy in Somalia”

It’s my simple assertion that the recent attacks in Nairobi are yet again another reaction that are tied to a disastrous western foreign policy in Africa, where violence simply begets violence.

What’s so fascinating about the reporting on the reactions to the War OF Terror, is the way almost all of it ignores history, as if it is a conflict happening in another time.

The recent attacks in Kenya are a case in point. In the wake of this tragic event, we have been deluged by a wave of terror experts that warn us about yet another dark mediaeval movement that harbours incomprehensible fanatics who want to destroy the West.

In our simplified media, with its sound bite driven propaganda culture, little to no context is given as to why people resort to such violent acts.

But it’s only when you start looking into “the West’s” foreign policy in East Africa over the last twenty years, that you can begin to form the context into which you can build a truer and fuller construct around.

This is yet again another reaction tied to a disastrous western foreign policy.

Jeremy Scahill, author of “Dirty Wars” talks about Al-Shabaab’s Nairobi mall rampage and its ties to “disastrous” western meddling in Somalia.

In the early 2000′s, the Bush administration made a disastrous decision to put all these warlords on the CIA payroll, they named them the “Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter Terrorism” in Somalia and Kenya.

This group was used as an assassination squad.

Most terrorism experts said there were no more than a dozen individuals linked to Al-Qaeda in Somalia after 9/11.

So the CIA hires these warlords to ostensibly hunt these people down, but instead they end up murdering vast numbers of people who were Imams or religious scholars, and in some cases they would literally chop people’s heads off and bring them to their American CIA liaisons, saying “this is so and so and I’ve killed them”.

What you had was an utterly ruthless and thuggish collection of CIA sponsored warlords murdering people at the behest of the CIA.

These actions sparked a revolt against the warlords, with coalitions of religious figures across Somalia forming “The Islamic Courts Union”, which consisted of twelve regional sharia based courts that had imposed law and order in their own respective areas, coming together to form one united body, pooling their resources to overthrow the CIA warlords in Mogadishu.

When the Islamic Courts Union took Mogadishu, overthrowing the CIA backed warlords, they in turn imposed a brutal but effective form of governance in Mogadishu. Effective in the sense that it stabilised the city, crime rates plummeted and they reopened the ports.

Almost everyone apart from the Bush era administration would agree that it was the only moment since Siad Barre’s regime fell in 1991 that there had been anything resembling stability in Mogadishu. The CIA had been kicked out and the Islamic Courts Union was in control.

The US then partners with the Ethiopian dictatorship and Ethiopia launches an overt invasion into Somalia to overthrow the Islamic Courts Union.

Once the proxy war had succeeded, JSOC, America’s Joint Special Operations Command and the CIA use the cover of this overt invasion to go in and start hunting down and assassinating the leaders of the Islamic Courts Union.

The Islamic Courts Union is totally destroyed and Somalia returns to a state of lawlessness, brutality and civil war, coupled with the fact you now have American backed Ethiopians who are committing rape, murdering civilians, torturing people, setting up their own prison camps and rendering people back to Ethiopia.

In the midst of all this, a group of no bodies called Al-Shabaab, say ‘We will be the vanguard against the US backed Ethiopians, we will take up arms and we will defend Somalia, mixing the rhetoric of Bin Laden and Somali nationalism.’

The simple point is this, groups such as Al-Shabaab were non-players in Somalia, and it’s the American backed warlords and the overthrowing of local governments, such as the Islamic Courts Union, which ends up creating the very force that the Americans claim they were trying to fight in the first place.

A deadly self-fulfilling prophecy, where violence begets violence.

Precisely the same manner in which the chaos in Yemen today is a direct result of “the West’s” secret war forty years ago.

Since this was first written, America launched co-ordinated raids in both Libya and Somalia to grab so called “highly prized assets”. What isn’t known is how many civilians were killed in these raids and what kind of further resentment this will build from the children of those men and women killed in years to come. This won’t garner many column inches in the mainstream media.

As violence begets violence, you can expect this cyclical scenario to continue, just don’t fool yourself into believing that people carry out such acts without a reason.

This article also appeared on the MPACUK website

How a Muslim can avoid “Breaking Bad”

I saw this Jumma Khutbah from Shaykh Suhaib Webb, that related the TV show “Breaking Bad” with the decisions, we Muslims make.

I haven’t wrote my own Jumma Reminder for some time but after hearing this Khutbah, I wanted to share it with you all.

I watched the show Breaking Bad for years, the term itself is a colloquialism popular in the American Southwest referring to when someone has taken a turn off the path of the straight and narrow, when they’ve deviated from what’s right.

What you see with the lead character in this show, Walter White is a man that willingly abandons the light for darkness. It’s a core lesson for many of us – to have īmān and then consciously choose to take another path. Our ultimate fate is the cumulative effect of our decisions and deeds – and even if we don’t see the consequences immediately (as happens in the show), we will eventually.

Shaykh Suhaib Webb articulates the themes very well, the theology of Breaking Bad and how to avoiding becoming Walter White:

1. Understand choices – “Indeed we showed him to the way (of truth)….”

2. There is no moral neutrality – Choices breed consequences for the soul and life. “Every soul will bear its burden.”

3. Test and trials cannot be addressed with narcissism. Walter said, “For once I want a say in this,” but submission. The first leads to calamity, the second leads to futuhaat.

4. Sin and moral decline are a slow burn – don’t underestimate thoughts. Breaking bad took 5 seasons. Al-Ghazzali said, “Zina starts in the mind.” Ibn al-Qayyim said that Satan “Is forebearing; he will wait to catch you when you are weak.”

5. Trust in Allah means through the good and the bad – hardships should not be used as an excuse. “Fear Allah wherever you are.” Wherever you are means you physical, spiritual and mental states must be aware that, “At least you know God see you!”

6. Understand the value of the Hereafter vs. This life. If that is there, Walter will never exist. “Paradise is surrounded by difficulties.”

7. Sins are a slippery slope – once you fall in, it is hard to get out. Walter got better and still sold meth. In the Qu’ran we find the story of people whose boat was rocked by a storm and “supplicated to God in earnest” but, when they were saved, “Ran through the earth in insolence.”

8. Blessings can be curses if they are not met with a renewed commitment to God. Walter’s wealth is a curse as is health and other niam. It is not so much about what, buy who it is used. Even the Qur’an can be a potential threat to a person, “The Qur’an is a proof for you or against you.” Hadith

Moral decline is based on a few things – often intangibles – Fear, Illness, Doubt and Desires. Fight them with knowledge, ihsan, love good friends (Walter was a loner and Jesse needs loves), and understanding the value of the Hereafter.

The following formula plays out in our lives every day: Fear and Fear (of God) or Fear and (love of God) or Fear (of God) and Love of this life happen everyday in our lives. Clean hearts are able to see through that and make choices based on divine teachings and a good support system,

The theology of Breaking bad is a lesson in how a person can lose his moral compass by making a series of choices that are rooted in fear.

On a final note, the fatalism of breaking bad is problematic. Some folks do evil and do not see it in this life. Walter continues to get worse. Some folks do good and don’t see it. The unseen and how a person is addressed in this world is rooted in the divine knowledge. Fatalism is not a means to measure Good or evil. The book and the sunna are!

In my thoughts and Duah’s as always.

Your brother……Akh

The full article can be read on the MuslimMatters website

What were the SAS doing in the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi?

What was an armed SAS officer doing in the Westgate shopping centre in Nairobi when Al-Shabaab struck?

Supposedly, he was off duty…..so that explains why he had a

“gun tucked into his waistband, he was pictured helping two women from the complex”

While the white man terror expert media salivates over the “White Widow”, it’s being reported that:

“Two British Special Forces advisers and several MI6 agents were involved”

….. as orchestrator’s of the carnage or simply as good samaritans who just happened to be on the scene?

Britain’s top diplomat in Kenya is Christian Philip Hollier Turner.

Prior to his appointment in Kenya, Turner was the UK Foreign Office’s Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

As such he had responsibility for all UK policy and operations in this region which has been wrecked by the CIA-NATO’s Arab Spring firestorm.

Prior to this, Turner served variously as First Secretary in the British Embassy in Washington, as Private Secretary to the Prime Minister and in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit.

Turner is a close friend of the UK’s ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould, a self confessed Zionist, who was heavily implicated in the Liam Fox, Adam Werrity, Mossad cover up at the FCO.

There was a massive government cover-up over the Werritty connection to Mossad and the role of British Ambassador to Israel Matthew Gould, and their neo-con plan to start a war with Iran.

I no longer believe any official narrative that is played on the media.

Can someone else be behind the attack in Nairobi?

It was proved that Israeli Mossad agents were caught red handed in Cairo in the final stages of launching terrorist attacks in Egypt, hoping to pin the blame on the people’s revolution that was overthrowing Mubarak at the time.

I suspected that the AlQaeda underwear bomber was working for the CIA and a couple of years later, he was confirmed as a CIA asset.

Our very own Mi6 aren’t too shabby either, they had one Adil Hadi al Jazairi Bin Hamlili on their payroll whilst he was an Al-Qaeda operative carrying out bombing campaigns.

There are great similarities between this current terrorist attack in Nairobi and the Mumbai attack that happened a few years ago. The official narrative in Mumbai was that Muslim extremists from Pakistan had carried out the mission.

What you never heard on the mainstream media was that it was proved that CIA agent David Headley was the mastermind behind the terrorist plot and is now serving 35 years in prison.

Since the open war against Islam began, western intelligence agencies have had their plans revealed in the public domain on several occasions, when one of their Muslim assets have not played the game like their masters have wished.

I’ve been documenting cases under “Creating The Terror Threat” for some time now, to provide you with a map of how the Gladio game is played out.

Always question the official narrative, no matter how genuine it seems.

Aaron Alexis, Washington Shooter is a Buddhist, Not a Terrorist

The Washington shooter was a Buddhist

Has he been described as a terrorist or is he simply the wrong religion?

All Buddhists should come out and apologise for the shootings, there’s an urgent need for Buddhist leaders to stand up against the rampant extremism running in their communities in America and in Myanmar/Burma.

From a hidden bunker in the mountains of Nepal, the Dalai Lama is the spiritual head of a secret terror network that ordered the Washington shooter to carry out his deadly mission.

Sounds ridiculous right?

But this is the exact type of propaganda you hear on the news everytime a Muslim has anything to do with an act of terrorism.

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