BlackMan Time

Archive for June, 2008

There has been some controversy in the media recently about the inappropriateness of size zero models, particularly in regards to their health. I happen to agree that deliberately keeping your size down to an emaciated level is not right.

This photo below (don’t know any ownership details) speaks much louder than I could in support of whatever I could say. So, I’m keeping it thin…

Your comments please?

Bill Clinton is the kind of man I hope to God I never become as I get older: a bitter and twisted person who thinks the world owes him a favour.

Maybe it’s because his wife Hilary was making public love to Barack Obama in a bid to affect public unity within the US Democrats party. Or perhaps it’s the fact that Obama did not have good things to say about his presidency. Whatever it is has made Clinton bitter.

If the comments attributed to those around him are to be believed then Clinton is well out of line to tell friends that Obama would have to “kiss my ass” if he wants to get his support. Personally, I’d rather make out with Lucifer’s sister, but then I’m not running for US presidency.

But who is Bill Clinton really trying to fool here? His presidency was a disgrace and history will only remember him as that guy who made out with an intern working for him. Not to mention his multiple affairs. He will be consigned to the footnote of history as a mere gigolo, figure of fun and ridicule.

Try as hard as I might I cannot think of anything I can really lift my hat off and say: “well done Bill Clinton” for. Yet he wants the already accomplished Obama to kiss his probably renk and rancid arse?

In my view Bill Clinton should be the one kissing Obama’s arse. Even then it would a great privilege for the infidelity-challenged former US president to have that honour.

I hope Obama in his quest to become first Black US President does not bow down to a man with an unsavoury mind and an arse of a face resembling the one in the photo above. Even if he has to stoop before he can conquer the White House, Obama ought to show some kind of self respect!

It takes a ’special’ breed of animal to be a politician. You have to be ruthless one moment, two-faced the next, a liar and deceiver mostly but a hypocrite probably all of the time. Having acting skills is also handy, of course!

In the world of a politician all that matters is public opinion and being seen to do the right thing. It doesn’t matter if you’re only pretending because you hope to conjure deception, to conceal the unpleasant truth from anyone intelligent enough to notice your politricks. What you choose to call ’spin’ is what I prefer to call a lie’.

Seeing US Presidential candidate Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton parade around America, in a place called Unity would you believe, is weird. Only a few short weeks ago they were bitter rivals vying to become The Chosen One to represent the Democrats in the race for the White House top job.

In fact Hilary Clinton even expressed a distant hope Obama could be assassinated just like John F. Kennedy 40 years previously. Now, here they are being all chums with Obama paying homage saying “Hilary Clinton Rocks” and she fawning over him like a smitten interracial lover.

This is all to affect an effrontery of unity to give Obama a fighting chance to become the first Black US President. This is a great dream and I really hope it comes through. But affecting unity with Hilary Clinton in a place called Unity? Come on, who are you kidding?

You are what you eat so I try my best to eat only the freshest, organically grown quality food. Very occasionally I go off the rails and order a take-away but anytime I do this I know I’m taking a big risk because you never know what you’ll be getting with this kind of food service.

I admit I’m very cautious this way because I feel you just cannot trust every commercial enterprise when it comes to preparing and delivering a product like food to you.

Although you hope they take great care in their hygiene and food preparation, it is surprising how easy it is for them to get away with dishing up rotten, stale or toxic food just to make their living.

I wish I was joking.

There will many among you who might thing: “lighten up, things aren’t as bad as you say!” but some experiences I have had has made me the way I am. I remember one period when I used to order pizza from Domino’s, Papa Johns or any of the high street fastfood pizza places and the quality of my pizza seemed to depend on whether I had given a tip for the last delivery!

If I had given no tip last time this pizza would give me the runs and bad diarrhoea. I soon stopped ordering from them.

Sometimes I used to look at the mozzarella cheese and notice how white it looked when it was hot but when it became cool or even cold, it looked translucent like plastic! Then when you heated it up again it became white. I started to think that maybe they were using radio-active material to make this cheese instead of buffalo milk.

These days I prefer to make my own pizzas because at least I know what’s in them. It’s nice, safer and don’t give me the runs. Preparing them is time-consuming but fun, especially if you make them with someone who’s sense of adventure mirrors your own!

The American government wants to force airline and cruise line companies to collect digital fingerprints of all foreigners before they depart the United States, starting in August 2009.

But the airline industry and embassies of 34 countries, including the members of the European Union, are urging the U.S. government to withdraw the plan, saying it would cost much more to implement than the George W. Bush-led proposal has indicated it will cost.

They also cite it is not their duty to enforce immigration and border security laws but the U.S. government’s. They further raised privacy concerns about companies collecting fingerprints.

This opposition is shaping up to become a major battle with Congress and the Bush administration, which want the new plan established quickly. The obvious major question here is: “Why the urgency? What’s the justification for enforcing such a decidedly Big Brother act when there is no apparent need for it, especially at a time when many airline industry companies are fighting for their economic survival?

The plan to track exiting foreign visitors is part of a program known as US-VISIT, an initiative that Congress first promoted in 1996 and launched after Sept. 11, 2001 to use fingerprints and digital photographs to automate the processing of visitors entering and exiting the country.

But the emphasis has been placed on identifying incoming visitors where photographing travellers at the point of entry, currently implemented, is easily done. Setting up systems to record exits is much more costly and this is why the US government is sneakily trying to pass on the cost to the travel industry itself.

There is a lot of fight to come in this story!

From time to time I bump into people who feel they have to tell me about Channel 4’s Big Brother programme and the latest ‘events’ happening on that game show. Honestly, people, I really do not care!

The way how they present their opinions you would think Big Brother is a vital life-important elixir you have to get a daily dose of, else you die.

Well, I’m sorry, I don’t feel the same way and I wish people would just shut the eff up and stop putting me in the category of someone who cares what a bunch of idle people sitting around a glamorous house, doing idle things do.

I don’t mind being a killjoy when it comes to something as crass as watching pointless games show.

There may be a point to Big Brother to provide entertainment to those who need this kind of recreation. Unfortunately I

Usually you have to look behind and beyond reported mainstream news to get at the real news. What is presented is not often what is happening. The situation currently enfolding in Zimbabwe is one that requires such an open eye, mind and independent scrutiny because what is being presented is far from the truth.

For instance, just who is Western media trying to fool with their generally negative reports about Zimbabwe and their spectacularly caustic slant on Robert Mugabe’s presidency?

Why are they all so united in painting a bad picture of Mugabe when they all know that the real situation is not the one they are reporting? Or, could they all be right and is Mugabe Satan incarnate enjoying the fat of the land while his people suffer?

To examine this you have to consider that the media is nothing more than just a public relations vehicle through which the interests of various power groups are promoted in one way or another. After all dispensing information as news has long been a major propaganda exercise ostensibly used to inform the public, but invariably it is also used to misinform.

Misinformation?

But who is to gain from such alleged misinformation? And why should they be interested in demonising Mugabe, a man who rose to power from an African freedom fighter to the longstanding leader of an impoverished African nation?

You don’t have to look very far for that answer: Britain, America and their western allies including Russia, France and The Netherlands.

The reality is they don’t want an independent African nation in any shape or form and when Mugabe, a former member of their exclusive world power club, demonstrated he wasn’t going to play puppet to their regime, that’s when the demonising began.

Privately they have been tempting and pressuring Mugabe to “give up power and we will give Zimbabwe all the economic help it needs” while sitting back watching for the de facto sanctions they have applied to cripple the country, sending inflation and price hikes through the roof.

Two-Faced Westerners

Meanwhile two-faced Western governments headed by Gordon Brown of Britain and George W. Bush of America are white mailing Mugabe, privately pleading with him to give up power in exchange for economic aide. This is being done at the same time as labelling Mugabe a ‘criminal cabal’, to quote Gordon Brown’s description.

In another prong attack they’ve unlisted the Western media’s help in their dirty spin attack, trying to galvanise international support against Mugabe who by no means is a saint but is steadfast in his desire not to give up Zimbabwe for it to be shared up among colonialist powers as the spoils of a dirty media war.

By Western media I’m talking about organisations such as ABC, BBC, CNN, Fox, MSNBC and others. They all take great pride in telling their audience how things are really bad in Zimbabwe with very high inflation, hardships and misery cause by Mugabe’s leadership. But, what they fail to mention is that this hardship is being caused by the international community’s sanctions against Zimbabwe.

God Puppet

With a limited ability to do international trade any country would struggle and Zimbabwe is no different. And still Mugabe remains saying: “Only God alone can remove me from power.”

Then you have their puppet-in-waiting Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the main opposition party who has taken refuge in the Dutch Embassy, singing from the same hymn sheet by proclaiming that the situation in Zimbabwe is so violent that he is not contesting the re-run election anymore because his life is in danger.

Now the UN and others are pushing for international peacekeepers (armed soldiers) to be sent into Zimbabwe. Yet, there is no war being fought in the country, just the effects of the sanctions taking effect. They fervently hope this will force Mugabe to step down from power so that they can enjoy the land and its resources.

I couldn’t have made this up, even if I had tried…

As a nation of people Americans are an anomaly. Around 92% of them declare themselves to be believers in God or a universal spirit and 58% said they pray privately every day and consider religion an important part of their lives.

Americans in California are less likely than others to consider religion “very important” in their lives or to be “absolutely certain” in their belief in God. They also pray less than others and are less inclined to take the word of God literally. And they are ready to embrace “more than one true way” of interpreting their religious teachings.

Fifty-nine percent said that homosexuality should be accepted by society, compared with 50% of people nationwide who hold that view.

All these stats come courtesy of the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey and what they reveal is that Americans are a (gun-loving!) nation of God Lovers; the parenthesis is just my focus!

What do the stats mean to you?

I’ve never really understood supermodel Naomi Campbell’s public persona. On one level I could quite easily dismiss her as being yet another attractive but vain attention seeker who plies a profession where she regularly flashes her flesh publicly for money.

Outside of polite circles they have a term for that. In the world of fashion they call it modelling.

At times she makes me cringe or wince but I am usually reacting to her from the lopsided reports I get about her in the mainstream press.

When it comes to her latest shenanigans over her alleged bad behaviour on a British Airways flight, I am bemused but behind her 100%. She has said that BA staff called her a golliwog model and treated her badly and that’s why she hit out against them. I believe her in this instance because I too can testify to BA’s bad behaviour…

British Airways Thieves

A few years ago a BA member of staff stole my wallet while I was on a flight from London to Kingston, Jamaica. It had apparently fallen out of my pocket but when I confronted her about it she denied stealing, despite the fact several passengers saw her pick up the wallet.

The wallet was later returned to me by the Florida’s Dade County police – minus around six hundred pounds cash but with other things in tact. BA did compensate me by upgrading my travel to first class but I would have preferred my money back to be honest.

So Naomi and I share a common dislike of BA which has positioned them in the business marketplace as the world’s favourite airline. They certainly aren’t my favourite since the action of their thieving staff member makes me hate them passionately.

I’d rather fly with Naomi Campbell on this issue because I am confident she understands what it feels like to be slighted by the actions of a corporate giant.

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PHOTO: Naomi Campbell wearing a T-shirt from her own OmiPeace charity fashion line consisting of shirts, tops, caps with peace printed on them in the shape of the African continent.

For the first time in its history a British premiere league club has appointed a BlackMan to be their new manager. That man, of course, is 40-year-old former England captain Paul Ince, who has been given a three-year contract to manage Blackburn Rovers.

One of the most significant things about this deal is that Ince is not strictly speaking qualified to do this job because he lacks the necessary Uefa Pro Licence qualification. Getting this licence requires around 240 hours of study and usually takes a year to gain. But Ince was given a special two years dispensation to earn his licence.

Blackburn also revealed that Ince, who in only his first season with MK Dons led them to the League Two title as well as the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy, was their number one target following Mark Hughes’s exit to Manchester City.

So essentially he was head-hunted, to coin a phrase. For me this means that those entrusted in making the decision to approach Ince would have weighed up the fact that he is a potentially fantastic manager first and was not blind-sided by his skin colour. This is a very positive thing.

Ince will now be officially presented as Blackburn’s manager on Tuesday. But, for now, it is good news, a great achievement to Black football manager aspirants and a historical moment all around.

May many more be forthcoming!