Now that the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee is over, we can look back at it and ask: was it worth it?
Some people believe it was a great thing for the country: it brought people together, it produced community harmony and made us proud to be British.
For others, however, not only was it a further strain on our economy but it celebrated an unelected and undemocratic ruling family.
What’s your take?
It has been over a week since the Kony 2012 video went viral. The video, by Invisible Children, is now nearing 80 million views on YouTube. One of the most vociferous critics of the campaign is musician and political activist, Lowkey.
I spoke to Lowkey about the video.
What did you think of the video?
“I think the Kony 2012 campaign has had a manipulative and negative affect on the younger generation. But it has made the older generation question this level of emotional manipulation. That the answer to everything is the US military and has made people question what Africom actually is. And why the US feels the need to expand its military presence in Africa. It then leads people to the idea that the US is essentially trying to have a counter weight to Chinese elevation in the region.”
Why are you against US military intervention?
“I think Africom was founded by George Bush in 2006 and it clearly sets out its aim to increase US military prescence in Africa. However, the majority of African countries rejected Africom which means it had to have its Headquarters in Germany, imagine that.
However Nigeria was one government which welcomed Africom and Uganda is another government that is now welcoming US military expansion. Now unless you are those specific people within those governments, you will not view the presence of the US military on your land as something positive. We also need to remember that these countries welcoming US military presence have very, very, very questionable human rights records and very questionable histories, with regards to democracy – this word that we band about, if you ask Kony what his objective is, he says democracy – now it’s amazing how we have someone in Africa saying his objective is democracy and he is the number one enemy. Yet we have people in other parts of the world, like in the Middle East, who have not said explicitly that their aim is democracy and we are, without question, supporting them.
Do you feel there is hypocrisy taking place?
If you are a US citizen and your first point of call for war criminals is not your own government, then you do not really have the wider interests of humanity at heart. The US is accused of far more heinous crimes than Joseph Kony. Essentially, this video is encouraging youth to look at things in a very simplistic and damaging way. If you use Joseph Kony 2012 by Invisible Children as the pretext, you can take anyone to any point of the world and say there is a bad person doing something bad to these people – that’s the only explanation you need to give. And then you say the only solution is US military involvement in the land. My God. You can justify anything, absolutely anything. That was the whole idea of the video. It was him explaining to his son the situation in this very simplistic way. There was no intention to explain the wider context of the situation.
It’s not saying this bad thing is happening we need your money to make it better, which is one thing. It is saying we need your money and your voice to expand what is a stated aim of US policy. It’s not as if Africom didn’t happen. That’s what they’ve been trying for years, and it hasn’t been working very well. And this is what the Nato campaign in Libya was largely about: the expansion of Africom. What’s so manipulative and horrible about it, is that they use genuine emotions that people have that are natural. How could you not feel for somebody whose brother has died? People are not made of stone.
What should happen to Joseph Kony?
Kony himself is utterly irrelevant. That’s why it’s so strange. They put Hitler and Bin Laden there [on the poster] and Kony there. Well you know which ideological perspective they are coming from. And you know who they are talking to and who they are talking for, most importantly. Most people who are worried about human life are not going to view the solution as being the US military. The solution has never been US military because it has never worked way, never.
And, finally, why did you delete Twitter?
I find it’s a distraction. Twitter is different to Facebook in that any little thing that people think they just Tweet it, and I would rather not know. I would prefer to concentrate on my music. Saying that, music hasn’t been the number one thing on my mind at the moment, rather than being a good musician or good artist – I’ve been reading a lot – and I would rather be a good and more all round person.
You can find Lowkey on Facebook here
His latest album, Soundtrack to the Struggle can be found on iTunes
Follow me @omar_shahid
Dear Humanity,
We will soon be entering 2012 – the beginning of the end. I am not a conspiracy theorist, and I do not think the world is going to end next year, but I believe we are going to witness a nexus of events that will change the world forever.
2011 was one of the most historic and memorable years in living history: from the Arab awakening; to the killing of bin Laden; the continuos downturn of the world economies as well as the Japan earthquake; we have seen events unfold that will shape the course of 2012.
There is no rescuing the euro crisis: nobody actually knows what is going to happen to the economies across Europe. America, too, is in an unimaginable amount of debt and there are little signs of improvement. Many political analysts are predicting that the US will attack Iran next year and this — as analysts suggest — could lead to World War III. You can read more about that here
If you haven’t realised by now, our countries are controlled by big corporations who care about profits over people. I was just in the U.S. – a country where the media, big food corporations and the pharmaceutical industry are all ‘in it together’. The media repeats adverts of junk food over and over again until it is indelibly printed within our subconscious; we are then given man-made drugs when we become ill, which, at best, suppresses our sickness. Never will the corporations and pharmaceutical industry recommend natural remedies – which are far more effective and better for us – simply because it will detract from their profits. Unlike here in Britain, the health care system in the U.S. is private – money is therefore made when people become ill. Get it?
Food, however, is just one of the means used to keep us in our sullen and stuporous state of somnolent sleep. The music industry and the major record labels will keep churning out the likes of Rihanna, Lady Gaga and Justin Beiber to keep us entertained and divert our attention away from what’s important in life.
We saw people demonstrating against the wealthy ’1%’ across the world this year – people’s consciousness is slowly changing and, because of the state of the world economy, people are unwilling to put up with corporate greed and capitalism.
Gil Scot-Heron’s famous line The Revolution Will Not Be Televised has been banded around a lot this year. One meaning of the phrase could be: true revolution occurs in the mind first before manifesting outwardly. And it’s true, little progress will be made in our society until we change our inward states. We have to first free ourselves from the shackles of our avaricious desires before we can change ourselves and, ultimately, implement freedom and change in society.
My intuition – whatever that may be – tells me that we need to prepare ourselves for whatever occurs next year. Things are changing and changing fast. We have been sleeping for far too long, it’s time to wake up. Unfortunately, what we don’t realise is if we worked together – and stop killing and betraying one another – we would achieve far more together than we could ever do individually. Our short-sightedness and untamed inner self doesn’t always allow us to see it that way, however.
Truly, we are one human family but we often forget this. The Arabic word for human, Insaan, comes from the root word to forget. Our natural state is therefore inclined towards forgetfulness and headlessness. But these states manifest in people who are diverted away from Reality through mindless entertainment. People who are awake have a piercing insight into Reality. So let’s prepare ourselves and awaken to a new year which is in our hands, not theirs.
Your brother in humanity,
Omar Shahid
For the past decade, the public has heard vociferous rhetoric from the White House and the Israeli government about Iran and their nuclear capabilities. In November 2002, the then Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon said “the day after” the Iraq war ends, full attention should be given to Iran.
The Iraq invasion officially ended this month, so we must now ask: what now? According to Gerald Celente, who has accurately forecasted major political events for 30 years and is the founder of The Trends Research Institute, not only are we going to see “economic martial law” in 2012, because we cannot “salvage” the “collapsing financial system” but we could see “World War III”. Celente believes with the “Israeli issue heating up”, the problems in Syria continuing (Syria, of course, being best friends with Iran) and the West wanting the fall of both of these regimes, we are seeing it “all come together”.
The Guardian asserted in November: “Britain’s armed forces are stepping up their contingency planning for potential military action against Iran.” And, with the US presidential elections nearing, President Barack Obama’s main hope will be to reverse the state of his country’s economy. If he fails to do this, he will look for ways to divert people’s attention and thus bolster his chances for re-election. According to political analyst Edward Spannaus, the Obama Administration’s strategy for re-election is to start wars, but if the US were to “attack Iran,” it would “end up in a World War III.”
The investigative journalist John Pilger said in this New Statesman article: “The Pentagon has no plans to occupy all of Iran, it has in its sights a strip of land that runs along the border with Iraq. This is Khuzestan, home to 90 percent of Iran’s oil.” Celente, however, believes the reason for a potential attack on Iran would be because of economic reasons. He said: “The entire financial system is collapsing…and when all else fails, they take you to war. And they [the west] are going to do it again.”
According to this Al Jazeera article by M.J. Rosenberg, Robert Baer — a former CIA officer who was primarily assigned to the Middle East – forecasted in 2011 that Israel would attack Iran and drag the US into another major war. Baer, however, predicted that Israel would attack Iran before September 2011 and turned out to be wrong – but, according to Rosenberg, Baer has named Israeli security figures that have said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are hell-bent on going to war. If this is the case, perhaps it is only a matter of time before Israel initiates an attack.
Former Mossad chief, Meir Dagan, said earlier this year that a strike on Iran’s nuclear instillations would be “stupid” and could lead to “a war”. He added: “It is the kind of thing where we know how it starts, but not how it will end.”
What would happen if Iran was attacked? ”We would make them regret such a mistake and would severely punish them [Israel and the US],” said Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi, Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces.
Bruce Reidel, formerly special assistant to Obama and former CIA analyst, said: “The Iranians have the capacity to retaliate against America not only in the Middle East and the Persian gulf – but in Afghanistan where we have 90,000 troops and where the Iranians have well-established links to the Taliban.”
Afghanistan and Pakistan have both suffered since 9/11 and the relationship between the US and Pakistan has deteriorated so much that, according to Mirza Aslam Baig, former Pakistani Chief of Army Staff, the two countries could go to war in the near future.
Pakistan is the only Islamic country in the world to possess nuclear weapons and with its weakening infrastructure, increasing instability and swelling relations with the US – Iran is not the only country the Obama administration could face problems with – Pakistan is too.
2011 has been one of the most historic and turbulent years in living memory. From the Japan earthquake; to the Arab revolutions, leading to demise of vicious dictators; and the killing of Osama Bin Laden – we have seen a paradigm shift across the world. The ramifications of the shift in geo-politics are still unclear and what 2012 will produce is anyone’s guess. What is blindingly obvious though, is 2012 will be inexorably determined by the action or inaction, of the Obama administration. Whenever the US interfere around the world, it normally ends in disaster. Let’s hope if they do again, it doesn’t end in the biggest disaster of all.
