sorry but I don't really get what you're saying about the bbc , is there a new programme out from the brick lane author ? bit confused as to what your news article is about

I think the article is about intolerance for authors that might say something that somebody, as a result of their religion might somehow find offensive and who then assumes that everybody of that religion and or community will also be stupid enough to take offence at.

Of course that would mean that the people of said community are not capable of making their own minds up and need 'community' / 'spiritual' leaders to do it for them, as the original poster seems to be doing and has done before.

Patronising and offensive, hmm i wonder who that might be???!!!

Burn the books and the authors its the only way to keep dangerous ideas from the masses and keep us in control with our spiritual nonsense.

They did a long interview via their ethnic surrogate 'black'-linked entity, Brenda Emmaus, who does for the BBC under their alleged 'arts coverage' what Condoleezza Rice does for GW Bush with here appearances on the Bush projects and their installations.

The interview was apparently done over an alleged centre allegedly opened by Monica Ali in Brick Lane.

There was no local knowledge about the alleged opening at all. But the BBC was the only medium that launched the thing. Any others who might have been allowed in must have been, can have been only as tokens, as extensions of the agenda that the BBC is engaged in pushing.

Had there been genuine and openly exercise local peoples and community participation, there would definitely be no attendance by this very pro-Empire tool that the BBC have found in the European person they are flaunting as ‘Monica Ali’ painting her at the exe4osne of a very Asian part of the population in culture, in language, in tradition and in philosophy. And in agenda.

That is why it was appropriate to describe the bogus, BBC-staged incident as the BBC's relaunching of Monica Ali at the expense of and against the community in the Brick Lane area.


Just as the BBC created the fiction that Satan Rushdie was a mere writer being reviled for his alleged freedom to write, so the BBC have now employed the very European person to do down the human rights of the significantly Asian part of the population of the UK.

It is only over time that we shall see just how highly organised the BBC's plan with this very BBC-pliable 'Monica' has been.

The BBC as the most resourced media constituent of the British state [cultural and political, long term and short term] are also engaged in creating a political fiction, in that they have intervened via the so-called children's programme Blue Peter, to foist on the Bethnal Green and Bow constituency another very compliant, BBC-pliable, pro-racist, token who may appear to be passable as a 'representative' of the community that includes Brick Lane come the possible selection formality within the New Labour party.

In each case, the BBC is actively embarked on suppressing the genuine people and the genuine active members of the local community.

The implications on democracy deficit and social exclusion as caused and exacerbated by the BBC are immense. But the BBC is not likely to stop its Empire revivalist plots, schemes and projects.

The thing that appears to have upset the original poster is that Monica Ali is the patron of a new community centre for young people in the Brick Lane area. Oh and the BBC reported the fact.

Outrageous.

Just curious Mr. Seel what have you done for the Brick Lane community? anything at all? or are you just a mouthpiece for the bigoted, sexist views of the conservative hardcore religious right wing in Brick Lane?

we can allow that if the bbc will tell the truth about us. but the bbc never wants to tell the truth.

So Blue Peter's part of the conspiracy as well, is it? Crikey. There I was thinking it was a rather tame children's programme, but it's part of an evil racist plot by the state to promote "ethnic surrogates", or whatever the phrase was you came up with. Who knows what evil lurks at the heart of the Tellytubbies and Balamory?

Incidentally, you write that "the BBC created the fiction that Satan Rushdie was a mere writer being reviled for his alleged freedom to write".

Erm, Salman Rushdie seemed like a writer who was attacked for what he wrote to me. You calling him "Satan" only makes that clearer. And when you say "alleged freedom to write", do you mean people shouldn't have a freedom to write? Have you ever actually bothered to read the Satanic Verses? Didn't think so.

What are you talking about - and more to the point who are you to allow or not allow anybody to do anything.

Whats your problem with the BBC? the fact that they report things that you dont like? Perhaps mentioning that there are other opinions in the Brick Lane area than yours, the fact that not everybody that lives there conforms to your religious nonsense? The fact that some women are capable of being their own people and expressing opinions and not being the property of a man who gets his info from some outdated commentary in a book that is long past its sell by date?

Explain please what exactly is your problem with both the BBC and Monica Ali. and if you can put it into plain English rather than the pseudo political ranting of Mr. Seel that would be helpful too.

Seelseelot
Brick Lane
London E1

11.1.2007

Let’s take a look at some of the words used in the conali comments in response to our posts about the racist revivalist BBC relaunch of the European racist agenda-woman disguised as an Asian woman to do down the community in Brick Lane London

‘Bigoted’, ‘sexist’, ‘mouthpiece’

Why is bigoted being used against us?

After all, all the English, - especially the Oxford English and the USA’s Merriam Webster [plus] dictionaries define the word bigoted in ways that would make oru work so far about the BBC be correctly describable as Enlightening.

So whoever conali is, must be the product and the instrument of a really dark, evil force here, backing the BBC’s satanic imposition of the racist image upon the people of Brick Lane and calling the image ‘Monica Ali’ as if that would fool us.

It has not fooled us. And the proof is in our availability to dispose of the tricks that the racist are playing via the BBCX.

And we do include in that list the agents of the agenda setting racist. Like we have named Brenda Emanus. She personifies the contrick that cultiural racist imperialists have been so adept at operating.

Brenda Emanus was promoted – launched [in her time] on the popular scene in the racist landscape of Thatcher-era ‘British media and arts’ precisely because of her suitability or applicability as an extension of the racist, imperialists cultural norm, so that she could be deployed as the equivalent of a media brainwasher Trojan horse.

She looks almost ‘black’ but she performs a very anti-black function. Just like Samira Ahmed deos against the Asian, Muslim peoples and their collective mage when she appears infront of the cameras on Channel four news. Or when she goes under cover to spy on the peoples of Afghanistan and Iran and reports back for the utilisation by her racist imperialist masters and controllers engaged on the revived conquest of the very territories that the ‘Asian, almost Muslim’-appearing Samira Ahmed contrives to belong to or ‘come from’!

It is on those scales and in that overall imperialist context that we used the phrases that we did.

The least that we could be categorised as ought to have been educational, didactic. Not bigoted.

So to put that pro-racist emotive word against our post, even though that is a most inappropriate word, is proof of the evil intents of the author/s of the post hiding under the conali ‘name’.

We are not one individual. We are a movement for the protection of our community and what we post is the result of considerable reflections on our part.

The word ‘sexist’ too is banal and inappropriate.

Would we be called sexist if we had criticised Margaret Thatcher? Or is it the right word because we dared cite the roles for empire being played in their different locations by Condoleezza Rice and Brenda Emanus – and by the European woman misnamed and mis-promoted as Monica ‘Ali’?

Supposing that Hillary Rodham turns out to be the USA Democrats’ next official candidate and supposing further that she does get into the White House and then launches an even more monstrous attack on the planet than has so far been evident with the regime of GW Bush, would critics of her conduct be asked to refrain from giving expression to the serious cause for concern lest the critics be labelled ‘sexist’?

That would be absurd. And inappropriate.

Likewise, our identification of the role being assigned by the racist to the ethnicity-linked tool they are calling Monica Ali, cannot be suppressed only because the perpetrator of the cultural crime is apparently of the female gender.

We could only be asked to look at our stance on gender of the perpetrator if we were addressing our attention to their violations of our community based on the perpetrator’s gender as different from their conduct itself!


Finally, ‘mouthpiece’

That presupposes that the people who form the ordinary community in the area where Brick Lane is are incapable of feeling insulted, are unable to distinguish between a plant and a real thing and above all, not willing and able to speak out.

Nobody needs a ‘mouthpiece’ to tell the truth.

We are a community and we do what any self-respecting community does. And has to do. To defend ourselves.

If those who plot to attack us do not like that then that is showing our effectiveness in defeding ouir comunity and our image. For that is why we are up and speaking out.

Leave us alone and get the BBC to remove all their surrogates and tokens. Away from Brick Lane.

If the BBC genuinely exists as the neutral teller of the truth then let us face us and show the deep, serious views and evidence we have to express through the BBC.

We pay the licence fee just like everybody else.

So you couldnt articulate what your problem is without resort to strange pseudo political language.

I assume that you use that type of language to hide your real issues which to me, from what you have written appear to be a problem with women expressing an opinion. You attack them for not being real asians, that is outrageous, and bigoted. Why are they not proper Asians because they dont stay at home and do what they are told? Is that your problem. Or is it because they dont agree with you.

And sexist yes, your remarks about not being able to criticise Thatcher or Hilary Clinton are nonsensical. They could be criticised quite well enough on their actions alone without any refernece to their gender. And what is the bit about Afghanistan and the reporting from there? Whats your problem with that?

You appear not to like Ms. Ali because she dared to write something that you find offensive. You appear not to like the BBC because they reported it. Have you read any of the other BBC reports that have been about Brick Lane over the years? Probably not, but then you probably haven't read the book Brick Lane either.

What do you base your opinions on? Its not a book of some kind is it by any chance? An old book written by a man?

Oh and i will add to your attributes: not only do i think you are bigoted and sexist but i believe you are a racist too.

I quote from the forthcoming essay in defence of the people and the community in the Brick Lane area and the dissection of the racists' use of their ethnic surrogate tools such as their current tool Monica 'Ali'



“Think what your stupid statements mean before you do the posts.

We expose your bigotry and the bigotry of your entire classes of liars. So your answer is to call us bigots !

We call you racists and we show you up with evidence. So you repeat the same as if that will stick when you hurl it at us!

What remnants of brains would do that!

We are used to the propensity of racist fabricators who use racists' tools like Monica Ali to create camouflages against the community they attack.

Do not expect us to allow you to tell lies and go unchallenged on your likes.

I will discuss some of the virulent racist comments being hurled at the brick lane people especially those who speak out against the violence of Monica Ali’s lies…”


However, I would like to say that monali is a very dedicated violator of our community. Whatever the real name behind that word may be. It is possible that monali is a resident of Toynbee hall. Or involved with the Toynbee hall project.

Ort ‘monali’ may be, like ‘Norville B’ a part of the composite sued by the BBC and others whose racist lying is pointed out sometimes buy the members of communities which the BBC lie against.

We live in an area that is frequently noted for social exclusion, deprivation.

Only on 30 December 2006, a resident in a Toynbee Hall housing flat died of fatal injures he must have sustained whilst in his flat.

Did Toynbee Hall express any apologies fro the lax security?

Did they apologise for any of the socially exclusive, apartheid projects that they have been aiding and abetting by their apartehid projects?

No, they were discreetly able to brief parts of the media glorifying the image of the late John Profumo, as different from shedding any authentic, non-racist, non-imperialist light from their grandiose presumptuous self-references on the victim of the murder.

It was that same Toynbee Hall that arranged in de facto secrecy and in predictable apartheid exclusivity for the two fingers to the Brick Lane community held on 10 January 2007 to reimpose the image of Monica Ali in the area.

Very significant.

And to be told that some of our comments in telling the truth in defence of oru community against such apartheid bases like the Toynbee Hall is not only a vindication of the justness of our comments but a reinforcement of the imperative that we cannot allow the institutions of racist social engineering to get away with their projects including the Monica Ali project.

We must expect the racists to be so pathetic that their only recourse is to call us racist because we correctly point out and diagnose their racist states of minds and their racist careers.

Monica shall NOT pass!

And Nor will the Toynbee Hall apartheidist who have shown their racist colours by staging this new insult against the community that Monica Ali insulted and mispainted…

So in summary - you are opposed to a new community centre in your area that will help young people in a range of different ways because one of the patrons wrote a work of fiction that you have taken a dislike to. And the BBC, who have reported from Iran and Afghanistan, probably also in a way that you dislike, reported the fact.

All seems fair and balanced to me. Carry on with all the good work that you do for your community. I would be interested to hear what it is.

I would also be interested to hear exactley what your problem with Toynbee Hall is, nothing to do with the founders and ambassadors is it by any chance?

This place also offers a range of assistance to deprived members of the Tower Hamlets Community. Your opposition has nothing to do with the fact that it offers advice and assistance to Bangladeshi women does it?

If you could outline the facts that you allude to and the instances of racsim and unfair reporting of the Brick Lane Community that would be very helpful. Sadly making vague accusations of bias without actually mentioning particular incidents in your bizarre pseudo-political language are not all that helpful. Makes it look like the rantings of a man with a grudge.

Please do enlighten me.

Mohammed Monali

Im, gonna get crucified here . but I read her book and actually enjoyed it , wasn't the best book I've read but it was enjoyable, in simple language can anyone tell me what is the problem with it as the news posters article comes across as garbled rhetoric and I'm struggling to make sense of his words

Just if you could also clear some other things up please regarding your reference to the death that you mentioned:

"Only on 30 December 2006, a resident in a Toynbee Hall housing flat died of fatal injures he must have sustained whilst in his flat."

Well yes he did sustain the injuries in his flat as a result of two people breaking in and killing him (allegedly)

"Did Toynbee Hall express any apologies fro the lax security?"

Lax security, its a ground floor flat and the door was kicked in, not really the fault of Toynbee Hall I would have thought. I suggest that as the various news reports have reported that there is a problem with gangs in the area, as there are in many areas of London.

"Did they apologise for any of the socially exclusive, apartheid projects that they have been aiding and abetting by their apartehid projects? "

The Projects they run appear to actually be dealing with the sort of issues that lead to such incidents as above. I wonder what initiatives you have launched recently to deal with gangs, drugs and crime in the area? and from what i can see their projects dont discriminate on grounds of race, religion or sexuality.

"No, they were discreetly able to brief parts of the media glorifying the image of the late John Profumo, as different from shedding any authentic, non-racist, non-imperialist light from their grandiose presumptuous self-references on the victim of the murder."

The reports that i have read of the incident do make referenece to John Profumo, as the victim actually knew him, he was involved for a great number of years with Toynbee Hall as a volunteer and it is quite common journalist practise to make refernece to interesting facts associated with a news story. Hardly glorification of, as some of them rightly pointed out, the disgraced politician John Profumo.

Presumptous self-references on the victim of the murder? I assume you are refering to such references as:

"Describing Mr Rahman, he said: "He was a good man who was likely to help everyone. He was like a community worker ... " (From his son in law)

or this one: "Abul Azad, a project worker at the Surma Bangladeshi Pensioners' club where Mr Rahman was a regular, said: "He was a very good man."

And it also appears that the police have arrested two men in relation to the murder.

As concerned of Gipton and I have asked - what is your problem? Tower Hamlets is a poor and deprived area, there are problems with crime and drugs there. There are poverty issues there are all sorts of problems as there are all over London and the rest of the country. Mentioning them isnt a slur on the community. Burying your head in the sand and pretending the problems dont exist is tantamount to abetting the problem.

Where do you stand on the issues?

The basis of the row is that certain members of the Bangladeshi community have been upset by parts of Monica Ali's book Brick Lane.

They claim to be particularly offended by comments in the *fictional* book in which a *fictional* character makes some bigoted remarks, describing the Bangladeshis of Brick Lane "uneducated. Illiterate. Close-minded. Without ambition" and so on.

The comments by the fictional character are obviously unfair and untrue. Sadly, certain members of the community - who cannot accept that fictional characters sometimes say and do nasty things, have been going to town over it - and only making themselves look close-minded in the process.

Ironically, the best place to get a straightforward explanation of the fuss - rather than a paranoid, pompous rant full of pseudo-academic language - is...(fanfare please)... the BBC.

The row over Monica Ali's book Brick Lane dates back to 2003:
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/3287413.stm

but resurfaced again when filming began of an adaptation of Brick Lane last year:
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5229872.stm

1710
Sunday 14 January 2007


For those who take as 'normal and reasonable' the Times and the BBC in the same category and are not sceptical about the veracity of the expertise they see in the Times or on the BBC, here are a few sentences, quoted in full from the web site of the Times London newspapers, published on 11 January 2007. That date is interesting. It was the day after the BBC did their relaunch [10 January 2007].

The Times piece quite briefly disposes of the myth that the so-called work of fiction attributed to the so-called write Monica 'Ali' was a brilliant work of art worthy of popularity, reverence even!


Quoting from the Times, London, website 11 January 2007

"
BRICK LANE
by Monica Ali

Why you shouldn't read it UK Bangladeshis wrote to the publishers calling the book "shameful" for it's alleged representation of the Bangladeshi community as "uneducated," "illiterate," "close-minded" and "without ambition". The publishers, presumably overjoyed at the extra publicity, responded by reiterating their pride at having published the literary sensation of the year. Despite the book being critically acclaimed and making it on to every books of the year list, the characters are unconvincing, the pace plodding, and the plot sloppy. Also, everyone's been talking about it for ages now - you don't want to be last season do you?

Bluffer's guide Nazneen, a young Bangladeshi woman moves to East London following an arranged marriage to a man 20 years her senior. She speaks next-to-no English, and soon finds herself a virtual prisoner in the looming tower blocks surrounding Brick Lane. Her husband's endless plans and ideas, along with his insistence that she saw off the corns on his feet with nail scissors, sorely try her patience. But she has no choice other than settle down to her new life, in distress and confusion. Then Tower Hamlet's voices begin to clamour, and radical ideas shake her world again.


"

The people who have been condemning the so-called Monica ‘Ali’ ‘book of fiction’ against Brick Lane are in fact among the wide, vast, huge majority of critics who have by their action, given the true verdict on this over-promoted work of literary corruption trade.

The 'Operation Monica Ali against Brick Lane' could only have been conceived of by relying on and replicating the most persistent line obedient in the racist UK press.

It was not even researched by the sop-called author.

She has confessed as much in her own words.

Just like the racist, empire revivers of the previous decades, this one was conceived of in a typically doubly dishonest way – to make money and to peddle the cultural imperialist lie that fits in with the international imperialist agenda.

No one who has actually suffered the awful experience of actually reading the majority of the so-called works of fiction by the other ‘ethnicity’, ‘race’ religion’-pegged works of coition promoted by the racist British literary publishing monopoly, can truthfully say that these are genuine works of fiction, defined in the broad sense in which fiction has to be defined if it is to be separated from works of racist effrontery concealed in the guises of ethnicity-related or language-related or religion-related tools of awe-inspiring ‘literary’ talents!

This applies to both those tools that have been imposed on the public mind in the past 30 years in the UK as well as to their counterparts who have been the recipients of similar promotions by the racist British empire operating such tools in the various occupied countries.

The list is too long to repeat here.

The point is made.

In every one of the so-called works of fiction, there is one very shameless line of treachery and betrayal against the community under the distortive attack.

The same applies to the literary tools of empire such as V S Naipaul – who has so disgraced the slogan about fiction being work of pure or in the main, imagination – that some of his alleged ‘literary’ writings leave no room for allowing for any imagination: so full are they of the stench of soullessness and corruption bred by his depravity that despite being given two of the racist empire’s most lauded accolades – a British Knighthood and Norwegian Nobel- V S Naipaul is treated as a pariah by most members of whatever part of the world population he is supposed to belong to or identify with.

Except that section, which is thrilled by any new ‘fictional’ ‘achievement’ that attacks another community which just happens to be Muslim!

Today’s comments as reported by the ‘news’ programme ‘The World This Weekend’ on BBC Radio 4, by Gordon Brown’s almost-certain deputy [de facto] Ed Balls, about the ‘Muslims’ and the ‘Islamic terrorism’, contain as many seeds of discord as they did when such utterances were made by any of Tony Blair’s own publicists five years ago.

The ‘Muslims’ are not a work of fiction. They are as real as any other part of the top topics that are admitted to be of the utmost importance to the success or failure of the would-be occupant at No. 10 Downing Street.

And nor is Brick Lane.

It would be exceedingly irresponsible to dismiss the people in the area in the additionally offensive way that some of the backers of the Monica Ali Insult ‘book’ have been doing.

If Monica Ali is a real person with free thoughts that are of substance in their own right [as different from being the seeds sown in her by racists and co-racists operating her as the tool that her 'Brick Lane' has proved her to have been], then let her go and find some real imagination in her alleged brains and create a land and a place that is not only not like Brick Lane but is not objectively identifiable as Brick Lane nor is it called Brick Lane.

To call her project an act of literary position would be too kind.

To those who want to critics the Bangladeshis for speaking out against this outrage, let us remember that it was in the Brick Lane in 1971 that some of the most important community mobilisations took place for the them future state of Bangladesh.

Many other similarly historic events have taken place – and |ARE continuing to take place in Brick Lane.

That is why it is too important an area and a name to be allowed to be treated in the way that it ahs been treated: as a byword for racist bigots and their co-fundamentalists empire loyalists to use as a trigger to utter any sort of rubbish so long as they can put in the same sentence the highly untenable, inappropriate, sub-literate and unjustifiable words like ‘bigots’ ‘reaction’ ‘old’ ‘traditional’ etc.

... I was just starting to lose the will to live reading through some of that.

So, in effect, some people are annoyed because a book said things about them that they didn't like very much?

FFS - is there even an argument here???

Dear Mr. Seel,

What a fantastic response.

You didnt actually answer any of the points i raised in my email, but then i suppose that is because you cant.

It appears that you are fairly even handed in your hatred of Asian writers, it isnt just Monica Ali but others as well. So when are we going to burn the books, soon i hope, its the only answer.

You really do come across as an ignorant bigot who needs to get out a little more. By all means defend your community, but perhaps your time would be better spent defending it from real threats, such as crime and gang violence rather than these make believe threats that you think are posed by works of fiction. You do your community a disservice.

One more point before I sign off from this thread:

Bemoaning the fact that the British Press is racist, pro-imperialst etc etc as you have done and then using an article that appears in one of the more right wing, pro-imperialist publications is not a good strategy, it rather undermines you in my opinion. (that is also true of many others on indymedia who complaain about inaccuracy in the mainstream press until one of them writes a piece that agrees with their point of view).