Wednesday, April 30, 2008

The Paradox of Newsmakers

The recent spate of speeches of Rev Wright and his speeches. They aren’t Obama’s. Yet they are affecting Obama. Why? Because the media keeps reporting on it and drawing parallels with Obama.

Watching the Situation Room last night and this time it wasn’t my favourite character Cafferty that made the best point, it was the other guy. Wolf Blitzer the host asked if this issue will go away and the ‘other guy’ said yes, it will if we the media stop talking about it. Good point, and in that spirit . . . .


Cannot fathom why that devil in Austria did what he did to his daughter. I am gobsmacked. Some people are asking if Austria needs to look at itself to see why these things happen and how such evil can spring from there (remember the other girl who was held captive for years and who could forget Hitler). Don’t know but you do start to wonder . . .

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Campaigning for the Presidency must be a bitch but . . .

Just watching the Situation Room on CNN – they are of course covering the US Democratic primaries. I was just thinking how strongly these guys must feel about being President. The campaigning looks incredibly hard- you have to permanently be on, have to deal with all of the negative ads, the constant debating, TV appearances and interviews.

But at the same time what a massive impact for good you can have on not only the US but the world if you do win.

They were just saying how Clinton has the white blue collar vote and Obama has the black and young vote. It’s a shame it has come to this (largely because of the heavy negative ads and comments by Clinton). If they ran together they are a shoo-in in November but that boat gawn long time!

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Mbeki is a ****bwoy!

What the ***? What is Mbeki’s problem?

Me miss, me miss!

He’s a damn jackass!

How is it possible for any sane person with a functioning brain to keep on supporting the despot Mugabe? Wa’ppen, him cya see the sufferation the people dem in Zimbabwe are under? Is he blind? Pathologically stupid? A moron? You betchya.

It is time for African leaders to rise up and take care of business. My word, how long will they be willing to see their own people suffer? Lord knows I am sick of seeing my fellow black people suffer. It was bad enough when they were suffering under the ‘downpression’ of the white man, but when it is your own people who are doing it – and in Mugabe’s case, a former freedom fighter who was responsible for building his country up into the success it was, it beggars belief that his fellow leaders in the region can keep still much less quiet.

I am so sick of this crap. If they don’t sort it out soon, there will be nothing left but for the white man to step in again – please African leaders, clean up hour own mess. Backside!

Friday, April 04, 2008

The Suffering of Black People

Just saw a documentary on Channel 4. The series is called ‘Unreported World’ and as the title suggests, it focuses on stories that might not get much attention. This one was on the practice of Voodoo in Benin, a very poor West African nation. It was particularly heartbreaking because poor families spend money they have to work very hard for to pay for expensive voodoo ceremonies that they feel pressed to take part in or rather to have their children take part in. The programme also mentioned that because of the cost, children are often taken out of school to take part in these ceremonies and so their schooling ends.

One woman didn’t have the money to take her obviously mentally retarded three year old daughter to the doctors. So she took the child to the local voodoo convent to be ‘trained.’ This will cost her 200 pounds, five years’ salary for her.

Many of the people on Unreported World are black, extremely poor and seem to live in a reality that has been created by their society that adds innumerable levels of suffering on top of the existing ones of poverty. At some point HRH and I had to ask ourselves – what is it about our ethnic group that seems to want to sustain the misery?

Now of course I know that other ethnic groups do so too – I also know that there are many groups of black people throughout the world who are suffering for reasons that have nothing to do with themselves. Here I am focusing on black people because I am one and because we seem to suffer the most. But be honest, many are suffering on top of suffering and the top layer is their own cause. I’m talking about the relentless killing of each other in ongoing civil wars; in the case of the above programme, ‘priests’ knowingly making their own people suffer even more by imposing incredible costs on already poor and ignorant people. In the case if Zimbabwe, a leader who knows full well what it is like to not only live under oppression but to fight to be freed from it, yet imposing an even worse oppression on his own people. Do your own research and you can see what I am talking about. If we are to rise as a people we need to stop shooting ourselves in the collective foot and need to have a much more sophisticated way of dealing with our own differences.

Thursday, April 03, 2008

Messing With House

Here in the UK we have just started the season of House where he has about 20 odd doctors working for him a la The Apprentice, so excuse me if this is old news.

Why oh why have they fiddled around with the format? They still have Cameron, Chase and Foreman in the shows – all in their own new jobs so they’re still paying them plus the 20 odd new guys. Many of these 20 odd actors are pretty well known and they all talk so they must have to be paid a bit. Seems like an expensive and disconcerting way to present the programme. I don’t like it myself and I hope the fact that they still have Foreman, Chase and Cameron means that the original team will get back together again. We will see . . .