Or, something else altogether?…It is a gratuitous and simplistic binary, but we could not help notice that the same week that amateur terrorist Nafis’ photo was plastered on a shrill and scaremongering media (with the words “Bangladeshi” attached to an escalating fear narrative), the other face of Bangladeshi youth in New York is The Cosmics’ brand new video.
It was a strange week of bizarro contrasts here in New York. On October 17th, a 21-year old patsy named Nafis was arrested for attempting to bomb the Federal Reserve building. Led into the plot by an FBI informant, sold a “bomb” by an FBI agent– Smells Like Teen Entrapment. While the bumbling Bangladesh Embassy (morons!) were still trying to claim he was a Rohingya, his father was giving interviews in Jatrabari (which is not in Burma) and saying how Nafis was a “good student” of NSU. But NSU quickly responded that he was on probation for bad grades. Hmm, NSU, the school known as “party central” and rumored to be the center for yabba drug craze a few years back. Should have stayed there Nafis!
So that was October 17th. The next day, October 18th, and utterly by coincidence, The Cosmics’ new video “Feelin’ so High” went live on YouTube. An infectious, trippy, spiraling, heady concoction. “I am feeling wonderful/ I may not be tomorrow/ so let’s go on and shoot the shit/we’ll kick it till we both broke”
The Cosmics are two Bangladeshi New Yorkers Ahad “Rupee G” Ali and Foysol “MIB” Rahman. MIB for “Made in Bangladesh.” The song features Rated PG, who is Philip Gomes. He’s the one smoking the blunt.
Who speaks for Bangladeshi New York? If we were forced to live in a world of crude binaries, we would take The Cosmics any day.
***
“All you suckas who don’t know me/I am made in Bangladesh/And I am nothing like those other dudes/my swag is filthy fresh
“Smoke some shit and get high/dance dance dance all night”
Cosmics used to rap in Bangla, but now their songs are entirely in English. We hope they will bring back the Bangla as well.
Here’s an older song:“Bap re bap”
আলাল ও দুলাল | ALAL O DULAL 
Reblogged this on Migrare | Migrate | Change.
What a ridiculous attempt at counter-weighing.
“Counterweighing”? Zeeshan, learn to read a little carefully.
Note the phrases “simplistic binary” and “bizarro contrasts.” Ergo, not counterweighing, but contrasting.
Contrasting? These are the 2 faces of the same tin penny.
Jihadi Phantasy is located within Pop culture, & ViceVersa. Coulda been wersa? These blunt smoking poseurs (nothing too extraordinary in that) are the same creative but politically clueless lot that become informants to avoid charges related to pot smoking and then confess all on facebook! As per the news today, of course.
All too human, and far better than real AQ evildoers but also living in a dream.
Dear Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition
Right, because one pot smoking informant speaks for all party boys, of course? Just like Nafis speaks for all Bangladeshi students?
Read the sentence: “If we were forced to live in a world of crude binaries, we would take The Cosmics any day.”
If.
We don’t live in world on binaries. And we won’t live in YOUR binaries either. NOT two sides of the same “tin penny.”
I have a lot of time for the Same Coin thesis, it gets me thinking about escapism through social and religious debauchery and what the social principle of ummatul wasata, integrative community, could mean today.
Of course ‘Yaar’ and ‘Fundo’ kind do not like to be considered in the same frame, but i think they depend on eachother to exist.
This is why Imran Khan is so much fun.
Fugstar,
A victimless “crime” is called debauchery. Some 21 year old kid in Queens wants to puff on a blunt on the weekend for stress-relief, and etao tomader shojjo hocche na. 😀
By the way, they both have day-jobs, so get off your superiority trip.
You are totally humorless. A grim party guest no doubt. :-p