MixTogether & Friends

Over on his personal blog Pickled Politics, Sunny Hundal and some of his shabbier friends have resorted to using my real name and accusing me of writing certain comments.

Nothing wrong with that in itself. However, Sunny Hundal has also banned me from commenting on Pickled Politics, so I am unable to speak there and defend myself.

These are the sleazy tactics Sunny Hundal has to employ to get ahead: banning his critics and then abusing them when they cannot argue back.

Sunny Hundal - Moron In Chief

Update: Guido Fawkes has linked to this post on Dizzy Thinks today. Seems I’m not the only one who’s got Sunny Hundal’s number…

Back in May of this year, MixTogether & Friends noted that Jon Cruddas was proposing an interesting change of tone within the Labour party regarding common British values. We promised to keep an eye on who Cruddas endorsed as Labour leader.

Jon Cruddas: progressive English patriotism

Today Jon Cruddas came out in support of David Miliband.

The New Statesman has the exclusive on Cruddas‘ support for Miliband. Cruddas points to two speeches David Miliband made earlier this year that helped him to decide:

“I’m endorsing David,” Cruddas says now, “because of a couple of contributions he has made — one was the column on Englishness he wrote in [the N.S. 5 July issue]. Another was his Keir Hardie Memorial Lecture [on 9 July]. What was interesting to me about this was when he started talking about belonging and neighbourliness and community, more communitarian politics, which is where I think Labour has to go.

Key quote from Miliband’s column on Englishness:

[Tony Blair] failed to take sufficient account and respond fast enough to the real struggles that many communities faced in confronting the impacts of globalisation – migration, low wages and public services under strain.

As we said here back in May, one of the worst effects of migration and Multiculturalism has been a lack of willingness to tackle social problems within minority groups: forced marriage, female genital mutilation, cousin marriage and inbreeding, to name a few.

Even Sunny Hundal (who has been hiding in the shadows over the Dispatches: When Cousins Marry documentary) has had to admit that the Cruddas Miliband ticket implies a shift towards a more ‘progressive English patriotism’.

All of this can only be good news for free marriage campaigners, and so for what it is worth MixTogether & Friends would like to back David Miliband too.

On Monday, Channel 4 will be showing a Dispatches programme called ‘When Cousins Marry‘.

Despite the inclusion of a token white couple (who are not even first cousins) the show is primarily about sections of the Asian Muslim community who habitually engage in cousin marriage, and the illnesses this causes among their children.

Dispatches reveals the tragic consequences of first cousin marriage in Britain. Every year such marriages cause hundreds of children to be born with terrible disabilities; one third of whom are so ill that they die before they are five years old.

The practice is most common in Britain’s Pakistani community, in which more than 50% of people marry their first cousin, and in Bradford 75% of ethnic Pakistanis follow the tradition.

The documentary is also very definitely about the shady politics surrounding this issue.

Presenter Tazeen Ahmed remarks:

…we approached 16 MPs with a significant number of British Pakistani constituents for interview – every one of them declined. We also asked 30 MPs with high populations of British Pakistanis in their constituencies to give their views in a short survey. Only one, who wanted to remain anonymous, responded telling us that anyone who tried to talk about it risked being attacked politically. Former Labour MP Ann Cryer believes it is political correctness that is preventing politicians from raising the subject. ‘It’s fear that they’ll be accused of racism or demonization’, she says, adding that she too has been lambasted for discussing it in the past.

From MixTogether’s point of view, the programme also touches on the all-important freedom to choose a marriage partner:

However, some young people told us that they sometimes face extreme pressure from their families to marry their first cousins. I met ‘Zara’ who was born and raised in the UK. When she was 16, she was pressurised into marrying her cousin from Pakistan. She says ‘I was emotionally blackmailed, my husband’s family went on a hunger strike, they said we are going to commit suicide and that it was matter of their honour because I had been engaged to my cousin for a long time.’

All of these aspects to the programme place it squarely within the remit of Sunny Hundal, who has built a career as a journalist out of commenting on political issues that impact on the Asian community. He is currently trying to re-shape the Left and promote ‘grass roots participation’ in politics, and he has recently joined the Labour party.  Yet in recent times Hundal has made virtually no comment on forced marriage and related issues. This is sometimes left to his deputy Rumbold on Pickled Politics, but seems to never get Hundal’s personal seal of approval. He reserves comment on Muslim issues to areas where he can attack his political opponents.

Yet here is a TV programme with very obvious potential benefits to the Muslim community and to a lot of young Asians. It also highlights an area where freedom of speech is being restricted amongst our political representatives in Parliament. There is no doubt that Dispatches: When Cousins Marry will add credibility to the case being made by forced marriage campaigners.

The question is whether Hundal will put his personal credibility on the line and call for a response on this issue from his readers.

This blog will definitely be watching…

Update: Predictably no response whatsoever from Sunny Hundal. He has left it to Rumbold on Pickled Politics to do his usual performance, flagging big issues so that Hundal can wash his hands of them.

If the English Defence League or BNP were responsible for the same rate of hospitalisations of British Pakistani children as genetic disease, do you think Sunny Hundal would stay silent?

Hundal used the Asian card to get where he is, but now he won’t lift a finger to campaign personally on issues that affect real Asian kids.

Sunny Hundal has imposed an arbitrary, permanent ban on this author from his blog Pickled Politics.

Hundal: Paranoid.

Only a couple of months ago, Harry’s Place asked ‘What is the point of Sunny Hundal?’. We are still no closer to an answer.

Blogging- if it is really supposed to matter at all- has to be about the exchange of ideas. The privilege of a blog owner is to be able to set the agenda on a blog. After that, only irrelevant spam and illegal/bigoted comments should be censored. Blocking contributors because of personal grudges or because you don’t like the alternative viewpoint being offered is not consistent with the spirit of free speech or of democracy.

Unfortunately Sunny Hundal only suffers democracy grudgingly. More balanced political bloggers see democracy as a process involving all sides, where nobody is arrogant enough to think that their point of view is exclusively correct. Sunny takes a paranoid view of politics as warfare, where anyone who disagrees with him has to be ‘destroyed‘.  Hilariously, his latest post is an irony-free attempt to claim the moral high ground over a neo-con blogger who was driven by inner sadness to spew pages of partisan bile out on blogs. He cannot see that he has become what he claims to hate.

There is no reciprocal ban on Sunny Hundal at MixTogether & Friends.

However we can fully understand why he is keeping his head down over here after the humiliating flop that was his alleged attempt to ‘Save the Asian Network’ with a ‘Bhangra Flashmob’. Excruciating.

Update: I’m clearly not the only one who has been banned by Hundal. I wonder if the Guardian know how much he is manipulating the available content on his blogs?

Punch Records, organisers of the Birmingham Bhangra Flashmob last Saturday, have posted videos of their event.

It looks to have been even more of a flop than the London Bhangra Flashmob, with hardly anyone involved who was not one of the organisers (in the black T-shirts). The BBC Asian Network is headquartered in Birmingham’s Mailbox shopping centre, so it is hugely symbolic that the Birmingham protest was a dismal failure.

There is not one picture or video clip from last weekend’s demos- London or Birmingham- that would convince anyone of a national demand for the Asian Network. If the organisers of these events were even sincere about saving the station, they have failed and have now consigned it to its fate.

In future, if people want to go in the press and try to chat big chat like they know what it’s all about, they really need to be sure they can deliver.

Otherwise they just look like jokers.

This is a video of yesterday’s Bhangra Flashmob.

Billed by organiser Sunny Hundal as ‘The World’s first and biggest BHANGRA FLASHMOB‘, the invitation was sent out to 10,000 people (mostly Asian) on Facebook.

As the video shows towards the end, only a handful of people came to this ‘flashmob’, and around 10 of them were the organisers. The large crowd of (mostly non-Asian) people shown dancing in the video are all from the ‘Save 6 Music’ demo that was held in the same place at the same time.

This is  realistically the final curtain for the Asian Network as a national station.

If the biggest   ego name in Asian media cannot gather enough support to even merit a look (or a news story) from the BBC, then it is game over.

Sunny Hundal‘s reputation, already damaged by his political miscalculation in backing the Liberal Democrats at the general election, has also taken a heavy blow through failing to organise a significant demonstration. The Guardian might like to think twice about mindlessly re-printing his press-releases in the future.

As we have said repeatedly on this blog, the Asian Network cannot win back all the listeners it has lost by simply doing more of the same.

Anyone watching that video can see beyond doubt that the VAST majority of British Asians simply do not care about the station in its current form. If they do not care, then there is no reason anyone else nationally should care either.  If there was a shred of honesty among anyone on that stage, they would admit that the station needs a radical content overhaul to make it relevant to modern British Asians.

MixTogether.org’s committee and members stand ready to consult with the Asian Network on content that would win it a loyal audience among mixed couples. We proposed this to the management last year as a way of raising the audience numbers, but our idea was rejected.

Now it looks distinctly like the station is sleepwalking into irrelevance, along with Sunny Hundal.

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Update-  Twitter reactions to the demo:

Tigerstyle

“London demo to #SaveBBCAsianNetwork was weak!!! I’m SHOCKED!!! I cud count the brown people on my fingers and toes it was that WEAK!!!!”

“Maybe we shoud resign to the fact that most Asian British artists are comfortable being “non-concious” and passive. What u guys think?”

Audio Dakoos

“Calling all unsigned, introducing and rising star artists in brit asian music, these bhangra artists have had their time, now its our time.”

“We dont need to stand under the shadow of bhangra artist nemore. go out their & do your thing. Rnb, Hip Hop, Dubstep, Dnb. get it out there.”

“& lets start scrapping the word Desi.”

Bobby Friction

“lost in shoreditch…wid da pinot grigio white. music…not radio, not desi, or anything else…is future.x”

Click here for the latest on Sunny Hundal.

Sunny Hundal: Moron-In-Chief

The latest ‘witty’ offering from Sunny Hundal on Pickled Politics perfectly sums up why he is new-media’s Moron-In-Chief.

In a post self-categorised as ‘humour’, he has this to say about Amnesty International’s 2010 General Election Lobbying Guide:

What kind of an agenda is this? Listening to the recent rhetoric of wingnuts I was under the impression that Amnesty had signed up with Al-Qaeda and whole-heartedly joined the jihadi struggle against the west. This is soooo disappointing. And to think my expectations were raised that they’d be endorsing the Hamas covenant! What the hell are they doing actually being concerned about women’s health and human rights? I thought that was the job of Nick Cohen, Christopher Hitchens and Salman Rushdie?

This post was made immediately after a sincere article by his lieutenant Rumbold, concerning a tour of British schools by survivors of forced marriage.

So, to be clear, Hundal has:

1) Used the launch of Amnesty International’s document as nothing more than a cheap excuse to make digs at his ideological opponents.

2) Dug up the dispute that has just died down concerning Amnesty and Gita Sahgal: a dispute made all the more bitter and rancorous at its height by his own inflammatory posting and arbitrary comment deletion.

3) Used his failed attempt at ‘humour’ to try and eclipse a sincere post on forced marriage.

Amnesty International’s communications team won’t be too pleased that their launch was hijacked for cheap point scoring. Hundal’s post re-opens very recent wounds that Amnesty would prefer to heal quickly.

Post-conflict work for women’s rights in the Middle East is an enormously important subject. It is scarcely an appropriate vehicle for ‘humour’, even if the post had actually been funny. Yet to look overseas at women’s rights issues is to ignore pressing problems that have yet to be resolved at home. If Hundal was really so concerned with women’s health and human rights then he should start by looking in his own back yard.

Unfortunately forced marriage is Hundal’s least favourite topic. It is a social problem affecting British Asians which he cannot blame on his usual hate figures, so he tries to avoid it and leave it to Rumbold to talk about. In the run up to this election, Labour ministers have cut vital funding to British women’s groups who fight forced marriage, yet Hundal has not posted any personal responses to that disgraceful move. How ‘progressive’.

Given the grandiose aims of Hundal’s Liberal Conspiracy and Progressive Generation Network projects, he will need to come up with practical ideas to combat honour-related crimes in Britain (and abroad) at some point. For now though, expect to hear about it only when it can be used to further his hard-left wing political agenda in the cheapest possible way.

It looks like the Moron-In-Chief is here to stay.

The Independent reports that survivors of forced marriage are to tour the country, attempting to empower children to access vital local services:

Survivors of forced marriage go on UK tour – Independent

“Each summer hundreds of girls and boys, largely from South Asian communities, travel with their families to India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, where they are forced into marriages… Those working to stop the practice say the period just before the summer holiday is always their busiest time of the year. They hope that prompting survivors to tell their own stories will encourage children at risk to come forward and local authorities to take those fears seriously when they do.”

We wish Karma Nirvana the very best of luck with this vital work, and commend them for boldly communicating their message in this way. Yet it is sad to see them launching another drive to hammer this message home. The same ‘news’ about children being at risk of forced marriage was brought up before last year’s summer holidays.

What exactly was it about this very serious message that was not communicated properly to schools last year? Why are Karma Nirvana having to devote precious time and energy to repeating the same message?

It does not take a genius to work out that there is a direct correlation between the relative concentration of an Asian community and the incidence of forced marriage and honour based violence in that area. The areas considered most at risk are the areas with the highest concentrations of Asian families: Derby, Nottingham, Huddersfield, Leicester, Oldham, Hounslow, Middlesbrough, Newcastle, Bradford and Leeds (as reported by the Independent)*.

Yet apparently the Police, local councils and teachers in those areas are not sufficiently aware of the problems underneath their noses. Instead it requires a group of volunteers to tell under-16s that they are at risk of kidnap, druggings, beatings, rape and possibly murder, in the HOPE that they will access local authority assistance, and the HOPE that the local authority will respond appropriately. Here’s hoping.

It is a disgrace that the only group prepared to tour well-known problem areas is Karma Nirvana. This is a deep-rooted social problem that requires focus and resources to eradicate. One charity cannot do it alone.

EVERYONE knows what forced marriage and honour based violence are, and where they mainly occur.  The Government knows where the problems are; so does the Opposition.

Without a shadow of a doubt, so does the whole of the tiny Asian Media clique that controls the newspapers, radio stations and blogs with the power to speak to and influence those communities.

There used to be a concern that misplaced cultural sensitivity was leading the ‘white establishment’ to overlook the plight of young Asian women and men. Today the problem is a misplaced cultural loyalty among the ‘Asian establishment’  that is preventing those who could help the most from pitching in.

The supposedly ‘Asian tinged’ Pickled Politics blog run by Sunny Hundal has stopped reporting on cases like those of Geeta Aulakh and Aliza Mirza, and no longer runs news items like the Karma Nirvana tour. It regularly carries news items about the BNP, but is yet to compare the BNP threat to the problems that Karma Nirvana are trying to highlight. It is clear where the more immediate danger to young Asians actually lies: BNP members are not kidnapping ‘hundreds of girls and boys’ and forcing them into marriage.

Similarly the BBC Asian Network is not doing enough to help. They insist that their phone-ins are sufficient as a way to air difficult issues. If that was true, we would have seen a drop in the number of forced marriages by now. Instead the number of reported forced marriages and honour crimes has rocketed in the last 3 years.

It is not true to say that the BBC Asian Network is doing anything like enough to help, and the Police statistics prove it.

How much more help would it be if someone like Bobby Friction gave a bit of public support to campaigners against forced marriage. It should be no more controversial than supporting, say, an anti-racist or anti-bullying charity, so what is the problem? Why is the whole Asian Network- from Managers to DJs- incapable of admitting that they could do more? If they are serious about tackling the issues that dominate their phone-ins, why don’t they ask the volunteers and campaigners who actually fight honour crimes what they should do? Instead they arrogantly assume that they are doing enough- THEY AREN’T.

Karma Nirvana deserve admiration, respect and donations as they prepare to tour the country.  Whether those in the Asian Media who should be helping them deserve the privileged positions they occupy is another question.

*Those areas map almost exactly onto the 5 proposed service areas for the new BBC Asian Network.

Commentator Sunny Hundal has finally mentioned BBC Asian Network on his Pickled Politics blog. Until recently he has had his say via Asians In Media where nobody can comment.

In his latest post, he gives 5 reasons why the Asian Network should not be axed. They are:

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1) It would reduce competition

2) [the Asian Network is] A source of talent for the BBC and rest of the media

3) It would create ‘parallel lives’

4) It would abandon Asian license fee payers

5) [It would] Remove a vital platform for British Asian culture

Nowhere in his list is there any mention of the most vulnerable and marginalised members of the Asian community: those who have been disowned, or who have fled home to escape forced marriages or other forms of child abuse and domestic violence. There is no mention of those who would like some content for mixed race families, despite the hostility to race mixing in some Asian households. Sunny Hundal knows very well that MixTogether members submitted a widely-supported proposal to the Asian Network last year for this kind of content.

Left wing commentators like Hundal are fond of challenging dominant paradigms. Be it U.S. cultural hegemony or the power of organised religion, they usually have something negative to say about them (and they are often right). When it comes to the dominant paradigm of Asian life in this country however, there is a deafening silence from these ‘principled’ commentators.

In fact across Asian media- in print, on the radio and on TV- those who choose or are forced to live a life outside the traditional community structures are made almost completely invisible.  Lip service is paid to their plight in the form of ‘debates’ and the occasional  documentary or story piece, but that is as far as it goes. There is a terror of admitting how deep these problems go, so they are covered up behind a glossy screen of Bollywood and bhangra, fair-skinned models and fabulous clothes.

The Asian Network has spent £12m a year on its service. Meanwhile charities who work with the most vulnerable in the Asian community have had their funding cut. Karma Nirvana has had to cut its Honour Helpline service. Where is the fairness in giving £12m of License Fee money to a station aimed at the Asian community when that station does next to nothing to help struggling Asian charities?

Those who find themselves outside the dominant paradigm of Asian life in the UK are rarely seen and never heard. The tiny group of professionals who hold influence within Asian media (and yes many of them owe their careers to the BBC) know that they hold the power to change the outcome for these most vulnerable members of the Asian community. So why do they choose to ignore them?

Is a British woman who has been cut off from her Asian roots by her family for most of her life not a license fee payer too?  Does she pay her license fee to fund an Asian station to treat her as if she is invisible? Does she pay to fund ‘debates’ where there is always a call from some hardline traditionalist to remind her why she has been locked out of her own culture?

Are British license fee payers paying the Asian Network to propagate the dominant Asian social paradigm that so many young Asians want to escape from?

And if so, why should the station be saved?

Update: I have emailed Virendra Sharma MP, who is supporting an early day motion on the Asian Network, urging him to take MixTogether’s perspective on board.

After the news broke on Friday that BBC Asian Network faces the axe along with 6 music, campaigns were launched to save the stations.

Both are visible on Twitter, whare the #saveasiannetwork campaign has been attracting regular posts from interested parties including the Asian Network’s Bobby Friction and other artists and producers.

Bobby Friction invited all supporters of the network to email him in order to begin mounting a resistance to the rumoured closure.

I have emailed him to offer the support of MixTogether and members of other established organisations.

If people are serious about campaigning to save the Asian Network, they will need the support of reutable organisations, not just the same artists, DJs and producers who have always been with them. If any future administration is to be convinced of the merits of a BBC Asian service, that service will need a more radical social agenda as well as more listeners. Programming aimed at those who have survived disownment / forced marriage / rejection of a non-Asian partner would deliver both.

A rejection of our offer of help with this campaign would give a clear indication of the direction it is going in.

I hope to hear back from the organisers. They need the credibility that that we have to offer.

Update: there are also Facebook campaign groups here and here.