Monday 31 August 2009

carnival curfew: an early bedtime for multiculturalism


last year: police cut off the carnival music at 8pm and provoked a riot in notting hill.

this year: aside from advance-raids on the homes of carnival-goers who meet with their disapproval, the police are ensuring their revenge by stopping the parade at 6.30pm, in the shameless hope of provoking even greater civil disturbance - which will ultimately give the metropolitan police 'just cause' for closing the notting hill carnival down for good...

...and then we would witness the inevitable evolution of the illegal carnival - attendance at which would amount to a far more blatant political statement than participation in the current carnival, which, in connivance with a compromised community, is controlled and organised by a repressive police authority...well...6.30pm finish?...can't be a black people's party, can it? that's even a bit early for white people...

and where is trevor phillips* whilst his friends in scotland yard are cracking down on carnival with a horde of mounted troops that would have been the envy of genghis khan? he's sitting on his hands - when, by rights, he should be co-ordinating dawn busts on potentially pernicious and subversive promenaders ahead of their empirically british 'last night' at albert hall.

but fair play to him - trevor phillips is making a fine job of monitoring the content of this very blog thanks to his obama-backing, phone-bugging, pc-hacking, islamophobic associates in the guido fawkes hinterland.

*head of the equality and human rights commission

Sunday 23 August 2009

a tribute to president barack obama


for some obscure reason, there are people who assume that i am unhappy about the ascension of barack obama to the white house...but i am not...well...i felt in my heart-of-hearts that mr mccain cut a more genuine, warm and fatherly figure...and as a war-veteran could have made military decisions with more comprehension and compassion...and less rabid blood-lust...but in fact i am truly ecstatic that we finally have the first afro-american president of the u s of a...really...because now there truly is no black or white - just people who are either for or against this.

nice one barack.

Wednesday 19 August 2009

slurping in the slime-trail of trevor phillips: kwame kwei-armah gets lost up love's blind alley


kwame kwei-armah looks up to barack obama as the father-figure of 21st century civil-rights' activism and seems to have stereotyped barack obama as a modern-day william tell. well mr kwei-armah, i hope you trust your saviour's aim, son, because playwrights who go round with their eyes screwed tight shut are fuck all use to anyone.

our obama moment on comment is free, guardian.co.uk, 6th november 2008:

"Kwame Kwei-Armah
I make my living with words, which as you might expect gives me the greatest respect for their power, resilience, sheer and almost exclusive contribution and exploration to that which I believe most worthy – but it also allows me to understand and respect their limitations. And this, the election of Barack Obama to the office of the most powerful person in the world, is one such moment where my facility for words can never, should probably never, capture what it is that is going on in my heart.

I don't think I even know what is going on in my heart. But as I left the shores of the United States on Monday night – where everyone's nerves were on show – and although I have always maintained cautious optimism when it came to believing in Barack's success, I found myself having to rebuke those nerves and hold onto the mantra, the now iconic mantra, "Yes we can". And yes we did.

I ran about my house at 4am, as I screamed and woke my children to the chant, "We have a black president". We? Who is we? I honestly thought that I may have been going mad – for the tears and the screaming just would not stop. No matter how much I tried to calm myself it just would not stop and I thought I was going to go insane with joy and pride as I hugged my 12-year-old son and he said, "Dad, we have a black president"; and as my 16-year-old son asked if I believed that would happen in my lifetime and I replied, "Yes, the moment I heard Obama's 2004 speech in Boston"; and as I listened to my daughter, full of sleep, say "I need to go to an Obama party".

I knew that deep in my heart, despite all my words, that maybe I didn't quite ever believe that I would see this day. But now I have – my only sadness is that his mother and father, and my mother, were not here to see this. What a day, what a sleepless day, but a magnificent day."

and so now the first black president has proved himself to be a dirty double-talking war-criminal, where's the criticism wanker?

Saturday 15 August 2009

the welfare state: bromide of the people


turns off society

celebrity nothing but the truth


i wonder whether obama-worshipping celebrities like jocelyn jee esien and chris rock were duped into supporting the current united states administration, and its war-crimes in the middle east, or whether they were always just ingrained islamophobic crusaders simply gagging to re-inforce the white man's prejudices, who found this presidency an irresistably golden opportunity to vent their repressed church-blessed hatred.

my money's on the latter option, but when, in time, barack obama's popularity fails and the gloss dross turns to disowning him, i suspect that cynical intellectuals such as jocelyn jee esien and chris rock will be claiming the former.

Wednesday 5 August 2009

notice to readers: beware cheap imitations


i do hereby wish to declare that, i, spark up, have not commented on the guido fawkes bog-wall since early january - except once, as "spark up".