#security guards against bring terrorised

[hamletteprinceofdenmark]

Dave Torres and Mike Schmidt need to start a union against The Horrors fr

[onaperduamedee]

About the WIP ask: Disco - Carnage; and Doctor Who - Dices - etc in arcadia ego! Besides, about all of these WIPs, wish you all the good luck! Enjoy writing. :)

Aww, thank you very much! It means a lot. I hope you are doing well; it’s always a joy to see you here, even if for a quick hello. Here it goes:

Disco –Carnage

Much lessgrim that the title may suggest. I started it just after the Emperor wasbrought back to the Discovery and we were joking with @michyeosseo about how fun itwould be to have Star Trek : Discovery bring down the Emperor a peg, like Straxin Doctor Who. And we were tossing ideas about everyone being turned on andterrified by the Emperor and the comedic potential in the situation. To allowfor more comedic room, I imagined an AU where basically everything I hatedabout the multiple plot twists in the Mirrorverse is fixed in the most preposterous way (mushroom!Hugh, the Discovery is now an half-sentient ship, they all chase a mythical space dragon to go back to their universe, etc) andfrankly it was hilarious, joyful and cathartic.

Case inpoint:

“And shekilled no one?”

“She is afast learner.”

“A fastun-learner, I would say. She was extremely proficient at killing.”

“Still is.She saved all of our lives last time.”

“I wouldrather she did not terrorise the soup.”

“That’s aterrible way to refer to Saru! She moved past that.”

“No, Rhys,the actual soup. Last time I checked the mess she was staring down at the bowlof soup and it was making everyone uncomfortable.”

“You haveto admit she’s a good cook.”

“Yes,fortunately Airiam is a better engineer and will get the replicator running bythe end of the day and we won’t have to chaperone the cook looking like afascist supermodel while she picks up vegetables.”

It’s silly crackfic material where everyone gets a chance to shine and make the Emperor the butt of the joke. I wasthinking about renaming it The Dictator and the Mushroom but onlyFrench-speaking Spirou-loving nerds would understand the joke.

Doctor Who — Dices —  et in arcadia ego

One of mymost ambitious projects for Who. It’s Trenzalore from Tasha Lem’s point ofview, through meetings with River at different ages, Kovarian and Clara. It’s aboutfaith, in God, in the Doctor, in one’s work; it’s about war and the price forpeace, the danger of interference or non-interference, politics, betrayals and religious extremism, accepting death and the consequences one’s personal sacrifices can have onothers, etc. The themes are complex, even if the structure isn’t that much; it’sone of those occasions where I feel the insufficiency of my historical andphilosophical baggage and it has been blocking me for years. I am still enthusiastic about what I wrote and hope I can read and learn enough to reach thelevel of complex thinking required for it one day.

It has funparts though:

“Noble Tasha Lem?”

She heard the click of the doors andthe chains at the prisoner’s feet. She didn’t raise her head from the reportsshe was skimming, not before the guard had left the secure private cellrequested for the occasion.

Head absently cocked, her eyes hadtime to trail up boring slippers and bland kakis before seeing stars. 

Tashaflew across the cell.

River Song had punched Tasha; herfist met her jaw from under, with just enough measured strength to chip one ofher teeth. But contained, definitely contained, Tasha mused while staggeringbackwards. Her back was crushed against the wall, while the sheets flew around,distressed. She growled, pondering whether or not to call for the guard. Thisshould not have happened.

“What was that for?” Tasha massagedher jaw, not very eager to bend before her attacker for the sake of splatteredreports.

“Fifty years ago,” River Song began,as if opening a course on contemporary History, standing tall on her two feet. ”Youcame to me with an apology I did not need, for something you had not done, forsomething you could not prevent, for something that was necessary.”

 Thank you again for asking!

WIP game

[thanidiel]

Establishment

[Taking place in some fuck-off time bubble a month after the current phase of the Kris storyline]

From the green horizon that divides Dawnspire Province from its Kingdom whole, a curious sight greets the scarce workers tending the plots of winter-wheat surrounding ailing Autumnvale.

Like the rolling fields of the Goldsea, the Sun, posed overhead, shines onto a glinting sea of bodies. Two-hundred men and women, all donning the winged greathelm of the Phoenix Guard, march in unison along the stone-laid road set centuries prior and maintained since. In the center of their army, space is made for the movement of herded cattle and wagon; evidencing that these elves had no intention to return to the bounty of the Dawnspire garrison any time soon.

At the head of this formation, two horseriders post to the rhythmic trot that leads them closer and closer towards the approaching village. To the left, overtaken by the other, a woman with a mass of hair as black as the beast ‘tween her knees. To the right, a figure with the same greathelm as the host behind them: their body below bathed in red and slivering gold (striking against the white of their steed) and in their hand, standard breaches skyward. Large and paramount, the weathered, scarlet, symbol of Tyr’s Hand, and beneath, the more vivid gold and crimson of the Sunguard.

Once, the movement of such armies along this route between Quel’Thalas and its Dawnspire whether in war or peace was a regular occurrence. Now, the flow of migration that met Autumnvale has trickled to near-nothingness beyond the most bold, or desperate, of elves.

So unique this sight is, the marching host observes the quick withdrawal of the labourers specked all along the soon-to-be-harvested green of winter-wheat towards the disrepair of the village.

Allowing no pause, the army draws ever-steady to the very edges of the farmland surrounding the village buildings within. And that is when the leading figure releases their grip on the reins of their companion. Their unoccupied hand raises high and flat into the air. A succession of shouts and the two hundred come to clean halt in moments with the thud of feet and the ache of wagon wheels.

Once the din of noise settles, the low feminine that had been in quiet discussion to the woman to her right raises to a high thunder that carries over the army and to the ears of the villagers already beginning to gather in the square ahead.

“Harthen! Establish the company’s encampment along the plain. Lynxfury, Dragonsroar, Hawkspear Platoons - you are with me. Assemble behind me in phalanx as the others disperse. Gather the supplies we spoke of last night, the wagon marked with yellow paint.”

The Captain’s vision lolls lazily to regard her partner; a feat that is, by no means, done easily with the weight of her greathelm. her volume lowers to something only heard to Bricini.

“Get the fuck out of my sight. I don’t need you.”

“Oh, Light, you’re such a romantic. Say it again. Once more. With feeling.”

“I mean it - you can’t fuck this up. Go take a nap in one of the supply wagons.”

“I! Want! ...to see my girlfriend, my partner, in her element. Is that so unbearable to deal with?”

“Yes.”

“I’m gonna be in the crowd.”

“Get off the horse, then.”

“But–”

The Phoenix Guard presses her knees into the bare flanks of her mare and bends her head to murmur into its ear. A slow, precise, walk of its hooves commences with another flourishing wave of left hand towards the gathered thirty-six behind them.

Flowing around the dismounting Dawnmender, the soldiers make their way to the center of Autumnvale: where, already, about half of its population has gathered in curious interest towards the seemingly paused army. Worry, hope, fear, caution: she catches all of these murmured sentiments through the whispering people. Very few seem to have recognised her from past days.

The soldiers move in quiet succession around the barren market stalls and prominent statue that make up the core of the square. Ultimately, presenting themselves to where the crowd has condensed the most, towards where the square bleeds into the majority of the sprawling buildings.

From there, one squad breaks from the three-platoon-strong phalanx and quickly establish themselves a large, empty, space behind the Duskward. Unslinging their packs from their shoulders, they work to establish a framework of wooden pole and stake in the earth interspersed between the pieces of stonery below - displaying the reason for the long roll of fabric that spanned the length of the phalanx before it.

In the meantime, Thanidiel pulls herself from the saddle of the dirt-slicked and pale horse below her. Clutching the reins of the placid animal in her left hand, she steps forward towards the crowd. She continues her silent march, closer and closer, to the growing citizenry. Until the phalanx’s backline steps backwards over the tarp to heft it up in smooth coordination and the whole of the formation strides to cover the space made between the working six.

Only then, she brings herself to a squared halt. From her slitted visor, the newly-instated Kin’taris gazes upon the sampling of her wards before her. Many are too young for work, with disproportionate bodies and stringy muscles to their bones. Some are too old for work, with curled, shriveled, bone and hair of fading pigment. Few of those who do not take to the sides of either caretaker or charge possess the weight of true adulthood, even their ears lack length. She could not even call what she had to work with here as ‘scraps.’

The doubled standard raises overhead, the noon-sun catching along the lengths of weighty fabric, and crashes down towards the earth in one beat (of course, it had cantripped an hours’ time before to cut through and settle in the soil as well as it does: thank the Sun for the unsuccessful arcanists ‘mongst the men). Her hand goes for the lip of her greathelm shortly after, already unstrapped from her head before they had entered village, and pulls away the heavy metal.

In the woman’s grip, the armour-piece fall to clatter against the golden steel of her chausses. Easing the ache sparked down her muscles from a motion more theatrical than based in her usual practicality, she hefts the same shoulder in a rolling motion. The draping mantle of a once-great lynx shakes around her in the process as Thanidiel lofts the strong of her imperious chin upward, flicking aside loose curls of her platinum hair. Her one eye falls upon the approach of Sir Reval through the villagers.

She thunders.

“Hail, People of Autumnvale!

Above all, I provide to you condolences concerning the passing of Besari Vella. The most deep of sorrows gripped me the day it was discovered that the efforts of your’s, Kin’taros Reval, Serdari Truefeather, and myself, failed to preserve the life of your own.

As we all know well, however, we, Children of the fallen Blood, must push on with the clockwork of the seasons ahead of us no matter the grief that clutches our breasts. We must honor the memory of not only the late Besari, but those that fell around her, as the Sun and Earth return their bodies to the wheat. Thus, your Serdar has assigned me, Thanidiel Highdawn, to warden these lands under the charge of Kin’taris.

From this point forward, Sir Reval and his troops are dismissed from garrison. His Lord has greater needs of his talent in regions beyond here.

The absence of his skill and the absence of his soldiers emphasises the gaping void that these foreign wars have exacted upon Autumnvale. In exchange; I bring you not only replacement, but I promise you growing respite of the burdens felt here.

Here is a fraction of the able-bodies I have brought you:”

In practiced unison, the thirty soldiers planted behind the Captain all remove their grandiose phoenix helms from themselves - all daring to throw the priceless armour forward with the lob of Thanidiel’s own signature of battle. All displaying the vibrant youth in their taut skin and seafoam eyes staring out to the Citizenry.

The winged gold falls in a rain of metallic racket, rolling this way and that way to strike either stone or the rims of the crowd’s well-worn boots. The Phoenix Guard allows the din to fall down to creaking hints, though not long enough for the people to recover from stupour.

“—the largest misconception suffered by the World is that soldiers eke their livelihoods on the sole spill of blood. We come here to alleviate such falsehood. We will work. We will perform our duties to not only the protection of Autumnvale, but its succour as well.

Aye, People of Autumnvale, we will harvest the ready bounty of your fields alongside you. We will repair what the Broken Men have razed here and more. We will take your ill and your hurt into our camps with open arms. We will assure that there is always bread in your bellies and a fire for your bones. And never shall we ask of you of anything but to live your lives as you ought to live them, anywhere where the Serdar’s Sun strikes the grasses.

Not only will we assist in the going-ons of the village, but we will work to revive the trade route that runs here from Dawnspire to Western High Home. The Broken Men that we all once called siblings terrorise our livelihoods. Telchis Truefeather, as both Serdar and Archon, possesses little patience for Oathbreakers, especially those who would exert their sorrow with ill upon their former loved ones.

It is his Will and, thus, mine to provide security to this region once more and reestablish the flow of trade. We would have Autumnvale’s square and streets filled to the brim with merchant stalls and first-privy to the goods that flow between this province and beyond - as the days of past prosperity.

So it all shall become and be.

I will make myself available here, in this square, for the People as long as there are troubles to plague us; I refuse to spend a single copper of your funds nor hour of your time to repair Sunvalor Estate, a pointless indulgence that benefits only myself.

I want all remaining businesspeople and those you call leaders to speak with me in orderly fashion during meal or passing times over the next week. I wish to evaluate what we are missing here in terms of resources and specialised labour to better my judgement of Autumnvale’s needs going forwards.

Please disperse and return to your days. The army beyond your fields will make rounds starting on the morrow to find and make work with you. Step forward if there are words to be passed.

Belono sil'aru, Tel rea Belore’dorei.”

Having refined to good time in the days prior, Thanidiel’s speech commences right as the crimson and gold tarp is completely fastened and secured to the Commander’s tent established. Pushing out a lengthy breath of repose from her lips, the woman passes off her reins to one of the soldiers now breaking from formation to recover their helmets. She accepts trade of her distinct helm, with its engraved horses into its fore, in return.

The Duskward pulls on the standard she had plunged into the earth minutes ago, turning away from the din of cheering younglings. She notes the squad from before, periodically jogging in and out of the tent with her needed furnishings in the wagon that had followed some distance away: table and stool, bed, armour-and-weapon stands, maps, papers, inks, quills. Their Captain drives her standard back into the ground where it near brushes against the pulled-back tent flap behind it.

The hours drone on in the aftermath of her introduction in a flurry of countless conversations hunched in stool, and painstaking notes generated by the new Kin’taris - a library of cross-reference birthed in a days’ half and promising much more in the length of this evaluation period.

By the time nightfall truly engulfs the village - the woman’s eye strains in throbbing pain, not to mention her spine and backside. She drains her waterskin like she had escaped the heat of Hellfire once again with the exit of the last tradesperson (a carpenter lamenting the lack of lumber for needed reconstruction) into the darkness beyond.

The thrumming relief in her breast is palpable when, minutes later, the smell of just-cooked beef wafts in through the tent opening. Followed by a characteristic smirk and wild of black hair.

[Appearance by @jessipalooza | Mentions/interest of @felthier @azriah ]

[dulwichdiverter]

WHEN THE REVOLUTION COMES

We chat to rap legends The Last Poets ahead of a rare upcoming appearance at the Dulwich Festival    

Words by Emma Love

Even if you’re not familiar with groundbreaking American spoken-word collective The Last Poets, the chances are you’ll have heard their verses somewhere before.

Over the past five decades, their lyrics have been sampled by everyone from Snoop Dogg to 50 Cent and Dr Dre, and they have influenced generations of hip hop and soul artists with their gritty, straight-talking, often rallying political poetry that tackles heavy-hitting subjects such as gun crime and racism.

Yet, while they have often been labelled “the godfathers of hip hop”, the ever-shifting poetry collective hasn’t released any new material together for more than 20 years – until now.

Two members of the core group, Umar Bin Hassan and Abiodun Oyewole, along with conga drummer and percussionist Donn Babatunde, are back with a new album titled Understand What Black Is and, in a rare appearance, they will be in conversation as part of this year’s Dulwich Festival.

It’s all a far cry from when Umar and Abiodun first met at a college in Ohio back in 1968. The Last Poets, including Abiodun, arrived to perform and Umar was working at the college as a security guard. Abiodun refused to sign in at the gate.

“I pulled up my khaki jacket, showed him my gun and said, ‘You either check in, or you check out,’” recalls Umar of their initial heated exchange. “I watched the group on stage and it messed me up. I knew I wanted to do what they were doing so we sat down afterwards, cut down the rhetoric and started talking properly.”

Soon after, Umar was fired from his job for being one of the organisers of a riot – “the black community were tired of the police humiliating our fathers and grandfathers so we protested” – and decided to leave Ohio for New York, where the group was based.

“I pawned my sister’s record player for 25 dollars so I could pay the bus fare; I arrived in Harlem with 22 cents and a couple of poems in my pocket.”

His performing initiation was a week later at a Catholic school. “I read three of my own poems and the group asked the crowd if I was good enough to join The Last Poets. The nuns were turning red but the little white kids loved it,” he says.

The group’s big break came two years later when record producer Alan Douglas (who made Jimi Hendrix a star) came to Harlem to hear them perform and persuaded them to make a spoken word album.

When it finally came out in 1970, the eponymous album, which is considered to be the first hip hop album of all time and featured the iconic track When the Revolution Comes, became a huge overnight hit and reached the top 30 in the US album chart.

“Boom: it took off just like that and we sold 500,000 copies through word of mouth. Suddenly the record company was saying, ‘This stuff can work, this whole hip hop sound could really be something.’ So we changed the industry more than many people realise.”

As much as the delivery of their rhyming poetry was a precursor to hip hop, it was also their message, born out of the black civil rights movement, which really struck a chord at the time.

“We talked about loving one another and standing up against police brutality; we were trying to uplift the black community,” says Umar.

“People would come and see us perform in Harlem, in Brooklyn; everybody loved The Last Poets because we were poets of the people. We had that connection with the community that a lot of groups simply didn’t have.”

A year later in 1971, their second album, This is Madness, was so controversial that it landed them on President Nixon’s Counter-Intelligence Programming list.

By the mid 1970s the group had begun to splinter (the first time Umar left was in 1975) and by the end of the decade they had split completely. Yet even though they weren’t together their lyrics could still be heard, sampled by NWA (100 Miles and Runnin’), Notorious BIG (Party and Bullshit) and Public Enemy (Tie Goes to the Runner), among others.

Over the years several members made albums individually, but for Umar and Abiodun, it wasn’t until the early 90s that they seriously started writing poetry and working together again. “I went to Abiodun’s house and said, ‘We still got something to say to the kids. We have to take our crown back; no one can do spoken word like we can.’”

Realising that they would need a congo drummer, Donn Babatunde, whom they both already knew, seemed like the obvious choice. He has been playing with them ever since, interpreting their words and creating rhythms to emphasise their message, which is as relevant today as ever.

The pair started collaborating with artists such as Common (Umar appeared on Grammy-nominated track, The Corner) and Nas, which introduced their rhymes to a whole new generation.

“We love groups such as Wu-Tang Clan. Whenever we meet them on the streets they come and hug us and show their respect,” says Umar. “What we don’t like are those hip hop artists who talk about bitches in the hood and killing other brothers. We weren’t about that; we were always trying to bring the community together rather than terrorise it.

“I think things are going to change though, with artists like Kendrick Lamar,” he adds, citing the rapper who won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for music (the first non jazz or classical artist in history to win). “Apparently he’s a big fan of The Last Poets so I think we’re going to meet him soon.”

The pair are also keen to encourage new talent: Abiodun hosts weekly open house poetry readings to constructively critique and nurture upcoming poets and teaches creative writing at Columbia University in New York City.

Right now though, all their focus is on the new album. Produced by British funk jazz artist Ben Lamdin (also known as Nostalgia 77) and Prince Fatty who specialises in reggae, it’s a marked change for The Last Poets. “The producers said, ‘Let’s try some reggae’. It’s something different and kind of cool,” says Umar.

While the title track, Understand What Black Is, was written in an effort to define black (“It is not a colour, it is the basis of all colours. It is not a complexion, it is a reflection of all complexions called humans”), another track – North, East, West, South – pays tribute to Prince’s 2003 album of instrumentals, News.

“That poem took me about a year to write, then I heard the News album and the musicianship was amazing. I was left wondering if it was jazz, classical, rock or maybe something new but all those images that I write about came to me from listening to that album,” says Umar.

And, while he says the album draws on their individual personal journeys, as always with The Last Poets, there is also a deeper message to be heard.

“We’ve put some of the lessons we’ve learned into this album but at the end of the day all of us are human beings: gay, bisexual, black, white; everyone just wants to be loved, appreciated and respected.”

......................................

The new album, Understand What Black Is, is released on May 19. The Last Poets: Celebrating 50 years event takes place at Dulwich College on May 20. To book tickets, go to tinyurl.com/thelastpoets

[southeastasianists]

Exiled dissident Dang Xuan Dieu recounts the horror of his imprisonment in Vietnam to Mong Palatino.

I first learned about the case of Vietnamese activist Dang Xuan Dieu in 2014. His friends and supporters were appealing for global support after they learned that Dieu was being mistreated in prison. This was despite a 2013 ruling from the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention stating that Dieu’s arrest in 2011 violated international laws.

So why was he arrested by the Vietnam government? Dieu is an engineer, contributing citizen journalist for the Vietnam Redemptorist News, and member of Viet Tan Democratic Party which is banned in Vietnam.

He was charged for violating Section 79 of the country’s Penal Code which refers to an attempt to overthrow the government. This law is notorious because it is often used by authorities to silence dissenters.

Dieu is an advocate of peaceful activism to effect change in Vietnam. However, he is considered a national security threat by the Vietnam government, and sentenced to 13 years in prison. But this didn’t stop human rights groups, law scholars and even the European Union from actively campaigning for his release. The international pressure eventually succeeded in persuading the Vietnam government to set him free last January, and Dieu was immediately exiled to France.

I managed to have an e-mail interview with Dieu who shared his prison ordeal and his message to the international community.

[Mong Palatino] Can you briefly narrate the circumstances of your arrest and the case filed against you by the Vietnamese government?

[Dang Dieu] I was detained by Tan Son Nhat Airport security in Saigon and handed over to plainclothes police as I alighted my plane from Thailand on 30 July, 2011. They arrested me without any reason or formal charges nor was there any documentation. They confiscated my possessions including my laptop, mobile phone, money and camera before stripping me to conduct a body examination. On 11 August, 2011 I was formally charged with “conducting activities aimed at overthrowing the people’s administration.”

After 17 months of investigation, which concluded  I was a member of pro-democracy group Viet Tan and participated in a “non-violent struggle” training, I was sentenced to 13 years prison and five years house arrest by Vietnamese authorities on 9 January, 2013.

[MP] Why do you think you received the harshest prison sentence of 13 years?

[DD] I was clearly told by security police before my trial: “If you don’t accept the charges, you will definitely be sentenced to 15 years. If you accept the charges, you would only be sentenced to three to four years, up to you.” Even if my case was fabricated, the sentence was based on me and my confession. So if I “confessed” what would they get in return? In a democratic society people exercising their political rights by forming or participating in a political party is normal. In Vietnam, the Communist Party is afraid of people choosing to participate in Viet Tan or any other political group and so has persecuted me and many others. For me, a 13-year prison sentence isn’t an unexpected ordeal.

[MP] How did you endure the brutal prison conditions for six years?

[DD] Some of the things I endured over the past six years in prison were truly horrific. I currently face issues with my memory, not remembering details and I needed to forget some of the experiences in order to survive  prison and be able to hold myself up before I was released.

It was only two days after my arrest that I was placed in a small cell with thugs (one who was sentenced to life for murdering two people) who tortured, extorted money, and forced me to be a slave. They shouted obscenities, terrorised and physically beat me three times; they defamed my family, town and religion for six ongoing months because I chose not to accept the charges and I chose not to wear the prison uniform forced upon me. I pleaded many times to prison authorities to move me to another cell but to no avail. The people in my cell slandered me, making up stories that I was against the prison guards so I was disciplined three times, shackled in a dark, smelly cell with no water to use for 10 days.

The continuous injustices led me and other prisoners to hold multiple hunger strikes, totalling more than 100 days and starving ourselves (only one meal a day) for more than 300 straight days. The first time I held a hunger strike, prison guards didn’t give me water for the first three days. The other times I striked, they prevented me from buying utensils and food for 12 months until intervention from the EU delegation. I have to say, I endured a prison within a prison within a prison.

[MP] What is the situation of other detained democracy activists?

[DD] There have been activists who were released and subsequently detained including Nguyen Van Oai, Le Thanh Tung, Tran Anh Kim and Can Thi Theu.

In relation to the case of 14 Catholic youth in which I was a part of, Ho Duc Hoa and Nguyen Dang Minh Man remain imprisoned, sentenced up to 13 years and eight years respectively in poor prison conditions. There are dozens of elderly activists over 60-years-old who have been sentenced to lengthy terms in extreme prison conditions.

Innocent activists such as Truong Minh Tam and Nguyen Van Oai have been defamed and accused of “deliberate infliction of injury”, “resisting persons on duty”, and “fraudulent appropriation of property.”

[MP] What specific political reforms are urgently needed to protect the rights of bloggers and ordinary citizens?

[DD] Vietnamese authorities have used sweeping national security provisions to silence critics including Articles 79, 88 and 258 of the Vietnamese Penal Code, which are easily interpreted and applied to charge me and many other political prisoners. These articles need to be removed and Vietnamese authorities must also immediately and unconditionally release all democracy, human rights and land rights activists.

There must be a fundamental reform of the legal system that prevents any form of political organisation outside the Vietnamese Communist Party. It is through this that the protection of human rights can be realised, including the right to form organisations, engage in political advocacy, impart information, and worship freely.

[MP] What is your message to the international community?

[DD] It is heartbreaking to hear about the number of people who have been publicly beaten, humiliated and unjustly detained over the past few years.

I know that the international community’s advocacy work has been important for Vietnamese and in particular, peaceful activists. Releasing prisoners of conscience ahead of schedule is a testament to this. However, the number has been small and many have been exiled overseas. When people are released, the government will continue to arrest others.

I hope the international community will continue to raise their voice, to monitor and to ensure the Vietnam government’s proper treatment of people. Strong international pressure will protect and force Vietnamese authorities to release political prisoners.

I would also like to deeply thank the international human rights organisations, governments and people around the world for their ongoing support and for speaking up about my case and others over the past six years. It is through this that we are able to bring peaceful change in my homeland and my fellow countrymen will have the right to freedom of belief, speech and action and ultimately, choice.

Mong Palatino is a Filipino activist, blogger and former legislator. He is the Southeast Asia editor of Global Voices.

Translated from Vietnamese by Don Le.

[clubofinfo]

Expert: Back in the 1950s, the US intelligence community coined a term: “blowback”. It referred to the unintended consequences of a covert operation that ended up damaging one’s own cause. There are mounting indications that the intensifying campaign by the Israel lobby in the UK against Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the parliamentary opposition, is starting to have precisely such self-harming repercussions. A campaign of smears In the three years since he was elected to lead the Labour party, Corbyn has faced non-stop accusations that his party has an endemic “anti-Semitism problem”, despite all evidence to the contrary. Of late, Corbyn himself has become the chief target of such allegations. Last month the Daily Mail led a media mauling of Corbyn over disparaging comments he made in 2013 about a small group of pro-Israel zealots who had come to disrupt a Palestinian solidarity meeting. His reference to them as “Zionists”, it was claimed, served as code for “Jews” and was therefore anti-Semitic. Mounting evidence in both the UK and the US, where there has been a similar escalation of attacks on pro-Palestinian activists, often related to the international boycott movement (BDS), suggests that the Israeli government is taking a significant, if covert, role in coordinating and directing such efforts to sully the reputation of prominent critics. Corbyn’s supporters have argued instead that he is being subjected to a campaign of smears to oust him from the leadership because of his very public championing over many decades of the Palestinian cause. Israel lobbyists Al-Jazeera has produced two separate undercover documentary series on Israel lobbyists’ efforts in the UK and US to interfere in each country’s politics – probably in violation of local laws. Only the UK series has been aired so far. It showed an Israeli embassy official, Shai Masot, both plotting to “take down” a Conservative government minister seen as too sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and helping to create an anti-Corbyn front organisation in the Labour party. Masot worked closely with two key pro-Israel groups in Labour, the Jewish Labour Movement and Labour Friends of Israel. The latter includes some 80 Labour MPs. Under apparent pressure from the Israel lobby in the US, the series on the US lobby was suppressed. Last week Alain Gresh, the former editor of Le Monde diplomatique, published significant quotes from that censored documentary after viewing it secretly in Dubai. The US lobby’s aims and practices, as reported by Gresh, closely echo what has happened in the UK to Corbyn, as he has faced relentless allegations of anti-Semitism. The US documentary reportedly shows that Israel’s strategic affairs ministry has taken a leading role in directing the US lobby’s efforts. According to Gresh, senior members of the lobby are caught on camera admitting that they have built up a network of spies to gather information on prominent critics of Israel. In Gresh’s transcripted excerpts, Jacob Baime, executive director of the Israel on Campus Coalition, a group of organisations fighting BDS, states: “When I got here a few years ago, the budget was $3,000. Today it’s like a million and a half [dollars], or more. … It’s a massive budget.” “It’s psychological warfare,” he adds, noting how the smears damage the targeted groups: “They either shut down, or they spend time investigating [the accusations against them] instead of attacking Israel. It’s extremely effective.” David Hazony, a senior member of another lobby group, The Israel Project, explains that a pressing aim is to curb political speech critical of Israel: What’s a bigger problem is the Democratic Party, the Bernie Sanders people, bringing all the anti-Israel people into the Democratic Party. Then being pro-Israel becomes less a bipartisan issue, and then every time the White House changes, the policies towards Israel change. That becomes a dangerous thing for Israel. No discussion These reported quotes confirm much of what was already suspected. More than a decade ago scholars John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt wrote a book examining the composition and role of the powerful pro-Israel lobby in the US. But until the broadcasting of the Al-Jazeera documentary last year no comparable effort had been made to shine a light on the situation in the UK. In fact, there was almost no discussion or even acknowledgment of the role of an Israel lobby in British public and political life. That is changing rapidly. Through its constant attacks on Corbyn, British activists are looking less like disparate individuals sympathetic to Israel and more recognisably like a US-style lobby – highly organised, on-message and all too ready to throw their weight around. The lobby was always there, of course. And, as in the US, it embraces a much wider body of support than right-wing Jewish leadership organisations like the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council, or hardline lobbyists such as the Community Security Trust and BICOM. The earliest Zionists That should not surprise us. The earliest Zionists were not Jews but fundamentalist Christians. In the US, the largest group of Zionists by far are Christian evangelicals who believe that the return of Jews to the Promised Land is the key to unlocking the second coming of the Messiah and an apocalyptic end-times. Though embraced by Israel, many of these Christian fundamentalists hold anti-Semitic views. In Britain, there is an unacknowledged legacy of anti-Semitic Christian support for Zionism. Lord Balfour, a devout Christian who regularly voiced bigotry towards Jews, was also the man who committed the British government in 1917 to create a home for Jews in Palestine. That set in motion today’s conflict between Israel and the native Palestinian population. In addition, many British gentiles, like other Europeans, live with understandable guilt about the Holocaust. One of the largest and most effective groups in Corbyn’s parliamentary party is Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), most of whose members are not Jewish. LFI takes some of the party’s most senior politicians on all-expenses-paid trips to Israel to wine and dine them as they are subjected to Israeli propaganda. Dozens of Labour MPs have remained loyal to LFI even as the organisation has repeatedly refused to criticise Israel over undeniable war crimes. When Israeli snipers executed dozens of unarmed demonstrators in Gaza in May, the LFI took to Twitter to blame Hamas for the deaths, not Israel. After facing a massive backlash online, the LFI simply deleted the tweet. A double whammy Historically the Israel lobby could remain relatively low-profile in the UK because it faced few challenges. Its role was chiefly to enforce a political orthodoxy about Israel in line with Britain’s role as Washington’s foreign policy junior partner. No British leader looked likely to step far from the Washington consensus. Until Corbyn. The Israel lobby in the UK now faces a double whammy. First, since Donald Trump entered the White House, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dropped any pretence that Israel is willing to concede a Palestinian state, whatever the Palestinians do. Instead, Israel has isolated the Palestinian leadership diplomatically while seeking to terrorise the Palestinian population into absolute submission. That was all too clear over the summer when those Israeli snipers picked off demonstrators each week in Gaza. As a result, the Israel lobby stands more exposed than ever. It can no longer buy time for Israeli expansionism by credibly claiming, as it once did, that Israel seeks peace. Second, Israel’s partisans in the UK were caught off-guard by the unexpected rise of Corbyn to a place that puts him in sight of being the next prime minister. The use of social media by his supporters, meanwhile, has provided a counter-weight to the vilification campaign being amplified by the British media. The media have been only too willing to assist in the smearing of the Labour leader because they have their own separate interests in seeing Corbyn gone. He is a threat to the corporate business interests they represent. But not only has the messenger – the Israel lobby – now come under proper scrutiny for the first time, so has its message. Lack of irony The success of the lobby had depended not only on it remaining largely out of view. It also expected to shore up a largely pro-Israel environment without drawing attention to what was being advocated, beyond unquestioned soundbites. In doing so, it was able to entirely ignore those who had paid the price for Israel’s diplomatic impunity – the Palestinians. The campaign against Corbyn has not only forced the lobby to come out into the open, but the backlash to its campaign has forced the lobby to articulate for the first time what exactly it believes and what is at stake. The latest furore over Corbyn concerns a Youtube video of him speaking at a pro-Palestinian meeting in 2013, two years before he became Labour leader. He has been widely denounced in the media for making disparaging remarks about a small group of hardline pro-Israel partisans well-known for disrupting such meetings. He referred to them as “Zionists” and suggested that the reaction of this particular hardline group to a speech by the Palestinian ambassador had betrayed their lack of appreciation of “English irony”. Israel’s lobby, echoed by many liberal journalists, has suggested that Corbyn was using “Zionist” as code word for “Jew”, and that he had implied that all Jews – not the handful of pro-Israel zealots in attendance – lacked traits of Englishness. This, they say, was yet further evidence of his anti-semitism. Jonathan Sacks, Britain’s former chief rabbi, told the New Statesman last week that Corbyn’s comment was “the most offensive statement made by a senior British politician since Enoch Powell’s 1968 ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech”. In that notorious speech, the right-wing politician sought to incite race hatred of immigrants. Calling Corbyn an “anti-Semite”, Sacks added: “It undermines the existence of an entire group of British citizens by depicting them as essentially alien.” Treacherous words In a now familiar pattern to lobby claims, Sacks relied on the false premise that all Jews are Zionists. He conflated a religious or ethnic category with a political ideology. The Labour leader has held his ground on this occasion, pointing out that he was using the term “in the accurate political sense and not as a euphemism for Jewish people”. Others have noted that his accusers – many of them senior journalists – are the ones lacking a sense of irony. Corbyn was not “otherising” Jews, he was highlighting a paradox not confirming a prejudice: that a small group of Britons were so immersed in their partisan cause, Israel, that it had blinded them to the “English irony” employed by a foreigner, the Palestinian ambassador. However, the terms “anti-Semitism” and “Zionism” are likely to prove more treacherous to weaponise against Corbyn than the lobby thinks. As the anti-Semitism controversy is constantly reignited, a much clearer picture of the lobby’s implied logic is emerging, as illustrated by the hyperbolic, verging on delusional, language of Rabbi Sacks. The argument goes something like this: Israel is the only safe haven for Jews in times of trouble – and the only thing that stands between them and a future Holocaust. The movement that created Israel was the Zionist movement. Today most Jews are Zionists and believe Israel is at the core of their identity. Therefore, if you are too critical of Israel or Zionism, you must wish bad things for the Jewish people. That makes you an anti-Semite. Problematic premises It probably doesn’t require a logician to understand that there are several highly problematic premises propping up this argument. Let’s concentrate on two. The first is that it depends on a worldview in which the non-Jew is assumed to be anti-Semite until proven otherwise. For that reason Jews need to be eternally vigilant and distrustful of those outside their “tribe”. If that sounds improbable, it shouldn’t. That is exactly the lesson of the Holocaust taught to children in Israel from kindergarten onwards. Israel derives no universal message from the Holocaust. Its schools do not teach that we must avoid stigmatising others, and discourage sectarian and tribal indentifications that fuel prejudice and bigotry. How could it? After all, Israel’s core ideology, political Zionism, is premised on the idea of tribal and sectarian exclusivity – the “ingathering of exiles” to create a Jewish state. In Israel, the Holocaust supplies a different lesson. It teaches that Jews are under permanent threat from non-Jews, and that their only defence is to seek collective protection in a highly militarised state, armed with nuclear weapons. This idea was encapsulated in the famous saying by the late Israeli general Moshe Dayan: “Israel must be seen as a mad dog; too dangerous to bother.” A ‘globalised virus’ Israel’s ugly, self-serving tribal reading of history has been slowly spreading to Jews in Europe and the US. Fifteen years ago, a US scholar, Daniel J Goldhagen, published an influential essay in the Jewish weekly Forward titled “The Globalisation of anti-Semitism”. In it, he argued that anti-Semitism was a virus that could lie dormant for periods but would always find new ways to reinfect its hosts. “Globalized anti-Semitism has become part of the substructure of prejudice in the world,” he wrote. “It is relentlessly international in its focus on Israel at the center of the most conflict-ridden region today.” This theory is also known as the “new anti-Semitism”, a form of Jew hatred much harder to identify than the right-wing anti-Semitism of old. Through mutation, the new anti-Semitism had concealed its hatred of Jews by appearing to focus on Israel and dressing itself up in left-wing garb. Perhaps not surprisingly, given his latest comments about Corbyn, that is also an approximation of the argument made by Rabbi Sacks in a 2016 essay in which he writes: “Anti-Semitism is a virus that survives by mutating.” In a sign of how this kind of paranoia is becoming slowly normalised in Europe too, the Guardian published a commentary by a British journalist last month explaining her decision, Israel-style, to teach her three-year-old daughter about the Holocaust and anti-Semitism. That, she hoped, would prepare her child for eventualities such as Corbyn becoming prime minister. But the increasing adoption of Israel’s tribalist doctrine among sections of the British Jewish community – and the related weaponisation of anti-Semitism – is likely to shed further light on what kind of a state hardline Zionists uphold as at the core of their identity. Paradoxically, the new anti-Semitism turns the tables by legitimising – in fact, necessitating – Jewish racism towards gentiles. Rather than Corbyn stigmatising Jews – except in some feverish imaginations – it is the pro-Israel lobby stigmatising non-Jews, by claiming that they are all tainted by Jew hatred, whether they know it or not. The more the lobby kicks up a hysteria about Corbyn’s supposed anti-Semitism, the clearer it becomes that the lobby regards much of the non-Jewish public as suspect too. Palestinians made invisible The other obvious lacuna in the lobby’s logic is that it only works if we completely remove the Palestinians from the story of Zionism and Israel. The idea of a harm-free Zionism might have been credible had it been possible to establish a Jewish state on an empty piece of land, as the early Zionists claimed Palestine to be. In reality there was a large native population who had to be displaced first. Israel’s creation as a Jewish state in 1948 was possible only if the Zionist movement undertook two steps that violate modern conceptions of human rights and liberal democratic practice. First, Israel had to carry out large-scale ethnic cleansing, forcing more than 80 per cent of the native Palestinian population outside the new borders of the Jewish state it created on the Palestinians’ homeland. Then, it needed to deny the small surviving community of Palestinians inside Israel the same rights as Israeli Jews, to ghettoise them and stop them from bringing their expelled relatives back to their homes. These weren’t poor choices made by flawed Israeli politicians. They were absolutely essential to the success of a Zionist project to create and maintain a Jewish state. The ethnic cleansing of 1948 and the structural racism of the Jewish state were unmentionable topics in “legitimate” public debates about Israel until very recently. That has been changing, in part because it has become much harder to conceal what kind of state Israel is. Its self-harming behaviour includes its recent decision to make explicit the state’s institutionalised racism with the passage in July of the Nation-State Basic Law. That law gives constitutional weight to the denial of equal rights to a fifth of Israel’s population, those who are Palestinian. The backlash against Corbyn and other Palestinian solidarity activists is evidence of the lobby’s fears that they can no longer hold the line against a growing realisation by western publics that there was a cost to Zionism’s success. That price was paid by Palestinians, and there has yet been no historical reckoning over their suffering. By veiling the historical record, Israel and the Zionist movement have avoided the kind of truth and reconciliation process that led to the ending of apartheid in South Africa. The lobby prefers that Israel’s version of apartheid continues. Loss of moral compass If there is one individual who personifies the loss of a moral compass in the weaponisation of anti-Semitism against Corbyn and Israel’s critics, it is Rabbi Sacks. Asked by the New Statesman what he thinks of the new Nation-State Basic Law, the normally erudite Sacks suddenly becomes lost for words. He asks a friend, or in his case his brother, for the answer: “I’m not an expert on this. My brother is, I’m not. He’s a lawyer in Jerusalem. He tells me that there’s absolutely nothing apartheid about this, it’s just correcting a lacuna… As far as I understand, it’s a technical process that has none of the implications that have been levelled at it.” Sacks, it seems, cannot identify apartheid when it is staring him the face, as long as it is disguised as “Jewish”. Similarly, he is blind to the history of Zionism and the mass dispossession of Palestinians in the 1948 Nakba. He tells the New Statesman: “Jews did not wish to come back to their land [Palestine] to make any other people [Palestinians] suffer, and that goes very deep in the Jewish heart.” Not so deep, it seems, that Sacks can even identify who had to suffer to make possible that Jewish “return”. In a critique of Sacks’ lengthy 2016 essay on anti-Semitism, a liberal Jewish commentator Peter Beinart noted that the rabbi had mentioned the “Palestinians” by name only once. He berated Sacks for equating anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism: By denying that [Palestinians] might have any reason besides bigotry to dislike Zionism, it denies their historical experience and turns them into mere vessels for Jew-hatred. Thus, it does to Palestinians what anti-Semitism does to Jews. It dehumanizes them. Topsy-turvy world In a world that was not topsy-turvy, it would be Sacks and the Israel lobby that were being publicly upbraided for their racism. Instead Corbyn is being vilified by a wide spectrum of supposedly informed opinion in the UK – Jewish and non-Jewish alike – for standing in solidarity with Palestinians. It is, remember, the Palestinian people who have been the victims of more than a century of collusion between European colonialism and Zionism, and today are still being oppressed by an anachronistic ethnic state, Israel, determined to privilege its Jewishness at all costs. The lobby and its supporters are not just seeking to silence Corbyn. They also intend to silence the Palestinians and the growing ranks of people who choose to stand in solidarity with the Palestinians. But while the lobby may be winning on its own limited terms in harming Corbyn in mainstream discourse, deeper processes are exposing and weakening the lobby. It is overplaying its hand. A strong lobby is one that is largely invisible, one that – like the financial and arms industries – has no need to flex its muscles. In making so much noise to damage Corbyn, the Israel lobby is also for the first time being forced to bring out into the open the racist premises that always underpinned its arguments. Over time, that exposure is going to harm, not benefit, the apologists for Israel. • First published in Middle East Eye http://clubof.info/