David Kato: In Memoriam

You may not know who David Kato Kisule is, I think you should.

He was a very brave man doing the right thing, an openly gay, gay rights campaigner in a backwater for human rights: Uganda; itself the ugliest jewel in the twisted crown of African homophobia.

And I say was because on the 26th January 2011 he was murdered.

The police, themselves a government tool for the repression, murder and torture of gay men, have stated that his death has nothing to do with his sexuality.

We shall see. In reality, I doubt we will, such is the weight of state approved homophobia in Uganda.

I blogged on this disgraceful phenomena back in June of last year but David Kato's strength and bravery stand out for recognition in the face of such wide spread and deep-set bigotry. Uganda is competing enthusiastically for the worst place in the world to be gay (indeed the upsetting BBC documentary on Uganda has that very title), with it's threats of making homosexuality punishable by death, it's creation of legislation so people snitch on suspected homosexuals (parents are encouraged to hand in their own children, to be humanely killed I imagine, like sickly animals) and this atmosphere of terror leads to gay people being forced to live in slums, rejected by their families and at constant risk of state approved violence.

There is a real appetite in Uganda for the execution of homosexuals, not only because the government endorses such backwards views but because lies are spread about homosexuality. Lies that have a classic ring to them, as they were once used (and still are by hardcore bigots, idiots and certain Daily Mail journalists) here in the UK: homosexuality goes hand in hand with pedophilia, it's effects your lifespan, sexuality as a choice that thus can be cured etc.

David Kato lobbied for gay people's human rights in the face of all of this, out and proud in a country where this put his life in immediate and terrifying danger.

An amazing man, I salute him, his death is a terrible loss but this cause will not go unheeded.

Russian Rap

When I was in the Ukraine I had a wee bit of free time to watch Ukrainian tele, in between nearly being set on fire and eating borsch with pampushka and I observed a strange phenomenon...

Russian rap.

Yes, Russia makes rap music, which struck me as odd because Russia doesn't contain many black people. I sat and watched the Russian rap music videos, which to all intents and purposes, resembled modern rap music videos but with one crucial element missing: black people.

To be clear, I have no problem with white people rapping, nor do I see rap as a preserve of black people but there is no doubt that rap and hip-hop has it's roots firmly in black American culture and is the key contemporary musical form of black America and indeed, blackness.

That's why Russian rap surprised me, an inherently black form presented with no black people.

The other stark paradox is that Russia is wracked with racism and bigotry, not just the long tradition Russia has of anti-Semitism and anti-Polonism but of hatred towards anyone deemed non-Russian.

Russia is suffering an epidemic of racially motivated killing and violence, with some 85,000 neo-Nazi's and a casual but pernicious racism being entrenched in Russian culture, which finds an easy target in the easily differentiated matter of skin colour.

People of African or Afro-Carribean decent in Russia are so often abused, either violently or verbally, that they have ceased to report it and assaults are merely part of their existence.

Which is why I have a problem with Russian rap, it must be popular, otherwise the music videos wouldn't be in rotation but it exists in a country where blackness, the very root of the musical formula they are exploiting, is despised.

What an awful dis-connect, typical of small-minded racists. Bigotry makes the lives of black people awful in Russia, whilst a fundamentally black music form is paraded on television by white rappers and is clearly popular.

I know white people have been stealing black culture for some time but this really stretches the very limits of belief.

Acting Adventures in the Ukraine

I spent the start of this week in the Ukraine acting.

It was a shoot for a commercial in which I play a cuckoo trapped inside a clock that will air in, of all places, Kazakhstan.

It was a weird experience.

I knew that Ukraine was going to be different from the moment we landed, as soon as the plane thudded onto the runway, the Ukrainians around me were unbuckling seat belts and trying to extract their excessive volume of hand luggage from the overhead racks. British Airways staff resorted to shouting at them to stop it and forcing people to re-do up their seat belts and I noted on the return journey, special voiceovers in Ukrainian came over the Tannoy, their content most certainly related to STAYING IN YOUR FUCKING SEAT YOU MENTAL UKRAINIAN.

In a fit of very British pique I did not remove my seatbelt until the light was switched off, by which time most the Ukrainians were all stood, ready to leave and staring at me as if I were mad.

In my time there I noted a people brusque, rude, slap-dash and corruption-ridden (I witnessed it first hand by traffic police and in the regular efforts to short change me in shops); and a world away from my experience with people in Poland and the Czech Republic. I felt very far away from home in a place a long way East and oddly, very, very Russian. The Cyrillic didn't help I'm sure, neither did the collapsing Khrushchyovka, awful roads, incessant gloom and quite possibly the worst food I've had anywhere in the world.

The shoot itself was a gruelling effort, 19 hours stuck in a Brezhnev era Soviet film studio/nuclear bunker (I kid you not, underneath us was a huge dis-used bunker and warning signs about what to do if you were hit by a nuclear bomb, ie: die) that was patrolled by feral dogs and flat-faced Ukrainian crones.

It was made bearable by the incredible Swedish director, who I've had the real honour of working with before and the excellent Norwegian DOP. And I've no doubt the end product will look awesome and be hilariously funny, in spite of all the breathtaking incompetence, Health and Safety in flagrante (such as chainsawing the set with wild abandon to rapturous applause) and leaking roofs.

If I'm honest, my rather negative tone about my Ukrainian experience may be related to the fact the crew NEARY SET ME ON FUCKING FIRE AND THEN LAUGHED ABOUT IT. I won't go into detail but it involves flame, a massive un-flame-proofed bird suit and the two meeting in unholy unison.

I'm glad I've been, glad to have my first job of the year but also glad to be back home in one piece. I'll leave you with some pictures I took of the dilapidated Communist film studio.

Foreign Trash

Foreign Trash.

This way.

Welcome to America.

Get out.

Heh.

I've kept quiet on the attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords, an act of terrorism that claimed innocents lives. I don't quite have the heart to unpick it all and to mourn yet another downward step in America's spiralling malaise, to imagine the predictable but no less vile response if the murderer had been a Muslim, or black (or God forbid, both...I can smell the salivating from here); where mental health issues, drug addiction and dysfunctional background would not have mattered one jot in the FAUX NEWS driven witch-hunt.

Instead, we have to watch as he is painted as yet another mentally deranged maniac, when in reality Jared Loughner is just one of millions mentally deranged maniacs that are being manipulated, agitated to the point of extreme action. Their derangement a product of the poisonous political atmosphere in America.

Still, we are left with a pretty ugly picture as the Republicans, especially the Tea Party febrile, fevered, fervent Republicans, led by that cunt Sarah Palin, deny any responsibility for their nasty, bitter language that has become the language of politics in the US. They shrug and genuinely think they have nothing coming to them, that the hateful lies, fiction and running political interference has no impact at all on people's perceptions.

The bile must be touching the back of their tongues.

Either that or the dis-connect is so great they've ripped a hole in time and space.

They draw the Democrats into pointing fingers because the left knows that if this could be pinned on them, it would be and with full force. And so the atmosphere darkens even further.

I made the mistake of engaging with a few mini-Jared Loughners on Twitter, fearful, angry types with plenty of bile to spill whilst calling you on the bile you were spilling, seeing theirs as holy bile, righteous bile and yours as plain old bile, Communist bile, Leftist bile, Socialist bile; all the while missing the point that they were so full of hate, so full of ignorance and confusion that they too could be that man with a gun in their hand, shooting children, women, judges and politicians, trained as they are like Pavlov's dogs to take back what is theirs through their Second Amendment rights.

I think I give up on this foreign trash.

I think.

Who will survive in America?


Kanye West- Who Will Survive in America from Miko Yung on Vimeo.

Our Story Will Be Told Brother Death (You're Never Over)

You'd have killed me man. Punched me on the tit or summat.

I was busy feeling mardy today, too easy sometimes to get all grumpy over nothing, to get all vexed over nowt like a right ponce. You know me right? Like I have anything to be mardy about? I'm alive for a start, have my health and a beautiful woman who loves me and I'm shooting a film and then going to a casting for a great play...fuck, my life is transformed; things too good to be true. What a fine life.

Then my Eva-Jane let me know some good news about our play "Our Style is Legendary", casting is going well and things are coming together on all fronts, exciting developments and it hit me hard, smacked me right out of my self-indulgent bullshit like a punch to the solar plexus.

Our story will be told Brother Death, people will come and watch versions of me and you nobbing around, mostly speaking verbatim what we said to each other all those fucking years ago homes, word-spears being thrown 20 years and still hitting the target as true as they did then. And that ain't even the best bit.

The best bit is you'll live again my Brother, you'll fucking be alive again my sweet boy, you'll be alive again for every single show, like a beautiful re-run and our story will be told and people will laugh and cry and hate us and love us and you will live again.

And I'll be there, every night, tears in my eyes, living every moment because you know me, I don't believe in that God bullshit, you're in a hole in the ground Brother but you live on in my heart and in our play and people will be able to see you as I saw you and love you.

I miss you.

I think of you often.

I really miss you.

I'll never forgot you homes.

Hope I make you proud.

I love you.

It's the best memoriam I could ever give you Mike.

I dedicate this song to you.

Peace.

Falling Off Of The Cusp

As promised, I share here that what was yesterday a moment of being "On The Cusp" has become a moment of falling off of that cusp, as I did not get the acting job in question.

On reflection, or as a device to cushion the blow, it was not as big a deal as I made out; it was merely yet another commercial but the money and director involved gave the job an extra air of kudos but I think I got ahead of myself and carried away about it's importance.

Doing commercials is a case of ever decreasing circles, the more you do the less you can then do, over exposure is a killer, this job would have been the nail in the coffin. I'm talking a good game of course but not getting this job means I can do the feature film I mentioned with Keith Chegwin and also do a theatre casting for a great wee show. I'm lucky enough to be able to have these options.

I suppose what galled me about this job was that people involved made me feel that it was mine, even at the casting today and so you build expectations, hopes, plan what you will do with the money and whatnot.

Acting is a career where sometimes the best man does not get the job and this was the case, I was the best man but the reason I didn't get the job? And if this doesn't speak volumes about the line of work I've chosen...I wasn't from Yorkshire.

That's right, it was all down to the county I was from.

You couldn't make it up.

Legalise Gay

Some good news.

On the 4th August of this year a federal court judge by the name of Vaughn Walker overturned the Californian ban on gay marriage, the simply awful Proposition 8.

Judge Vaughn Walker made it very clear that the state of California cannot ban gays and lesbians from marrying because it violates America's constitution. Of course, this will not end here and an appeal is bound to happen and it will, no doubt, finally trundle all the way to the Supreme Court. As it should because this awful mess needs to be sorted out but make no mistake, this is an important step forward in the civil rights of America's gay community.

It is a shame that we are even here in the first place but humanity, it seems to me, moves far too slowly as a mass, to keep up with the it's own individual progressions. And the fight to recognise marriages (let us not faff about with terms such as "domestic unions" or "civil partnerships" but marraige, any other term for it is patronising and demeaning to same sex couples) between gay couples will, as it always does, bring out the foulest homophobic bile and prejudice.

Good.

This kind of filth needs to be exposed to the withering white heat/white light of fact and reason.

Judge Vaughn Walker's own words on the matter, in his ruling, provide us that care about the human rights of gay people, with a fine centrepiece to our argument, as we look to change hearts and minds of those of a more prejudiced mindset.

Surgically and methodically Judge Walker made it clear that gay couples seeking marriage are not seeking a new right but merely the same right as heterosexuals, a right that is a civil and not religious matter (thus jettisoning the religious bigots whose holy books forbid all kinds of fun activities, that the aforementioned religious bigots pick and mix from to suit their own moral mores). He also made it clear that procreative capacity has no bearing on marriage, after all, infertile heterosexuals can, of course, marry.

Why this is crucial is that any appellate court accepting the appeal must refer to the body of evidence that this trial has established and to overturn Judge Walker's ruling, a court would have to find a flaw in his logic.

Which will be an awfully big ask.

Further breaking news today regarding Judge Vaughn Walker is that, hopefully, same-sex marriages will  once again be able to resume in the state of California.

Even Arnie thinks so...

Last Two Days: Acting Summation

Pretty wise.

I like to think so, last two days have been a nice collection, a nice condensation of what acting is, or what acting is for me anyway. What makes me wise I suppose.

First up was yesterday, finishing off a four-day workshop on Harold Pinter with the legend that is Harry Burton, a real honour and it ended with a wee showing of our work. I was good, the scene was good, it was all good. Confidence, as always, high.

Then, after a few drinks with workshop comrades and the lovely mates that had turned out to support me, legged it to the excellent Roxy Bar and Screen in SE1, to do a Q&A with director Julian Kemp at a screening of "My Last Five Girlfriends", my feature film debut.

I sat there and watched my big face up on the big screen and marvelled, once again, at how far I've come and although I had arrived at the screening anonymous, as I made my way to the front with Julian to take questions, I became famous, an object, to one degree of another, of famousness, of celebrity, of the viewed. What's wonderful, at the place I am, is that I can then leave the screening and become anonymous again and slide out of SE1 on the Northern Line, Northbound, changing at Leicester Square.

And then came today...

I should probably precis this by saying that I am very good at auditioning and whether I get the job or not, I nearly always leave a casting feeling as if I did my very best.

Today I had a relatively important casting for the BBC, relatively important because anything for the BBC is important and because it was a casting director I'd not had the pleasure of meeting yet. I have had equally or more important castings this year. I prepared, as always, meticulously and tubed it to White City, Westbound, changing at Oxford Circus.

During the casting preamble I had little feeling of what was about to occur. I shall spare the details but I fucked up quite badly and although it was by no means a bad audition, it was not up to my usually high standard, which considering the importance of the casting made it all the worse.

To be very clear, I hate the part of me that fucked up, I want to kill it, smash it to pieces because life is all about opportunities and each and everyone has got to be taken, even if it, as is often the case, is all there is. The myth of things leading to other things is a destructive one, I believe in opportunity for opportunity's sake, each on it's own merits.

My anger is slowly subsiding at my error, it still burns but this sting of my perceived defeat will kill off any further failure for the foreseeable future. And by kill off I mean smashed to fucking bits.

However, no regrets, press on, better to be pretty wise then pretty fucking stupid.

Fuck This Guy

I love this photo.

Bravo that man.

I can't stand bigots, may they be ridiculed wherever they are found.

And we all know that if there is a God, he or she will most definitely hate homophobes, bigots and the prejudiced.

Have a good Wednesday...what's left of it that is.

Female Circumcision: a Polite Term For Cutting a Girl's Genitals

I found it shocking that the mutilation of a girl's genitals occurs in such vast swathes of the world, it is a profoundly disturbing left over of ancient, anti-female violence, carried out by men as a device to repress, control and, to a certain extent, destroy femininity.

I will not go into the depraved details of female genital cutting, plenty of information can be found on the practice, needless to say in most cases it involves the removal of the clitoris, to strip the female of an organ that enables sexual pleasure and of course orgasm.

This is no doubt rooted in perverse, phallocentric thinking; to brutally destroy female pleasure in sexual intercourse, to win back sex from the sullied mewling of the feminine. I do wonder who thought up this act of uber-violence, of inter-gender warfare, what it stemmed from. One can guess, we are all familiar with the clumsy, ill-thought out desires of man and the ease at which he turns to violence in order to force his will.

Ancient man can perhaps be forgiven for this base, backward error but what alarms me more is that it is still practised.

Precise figures are hard to come by, a conservative estimate is that some 130 million women are effected around the world, with 3 million girls vulnerable to genital mutilation each and every year; a raft of fresh victims.

Sadly, Africa is the continent most blighted with the evil practice, in a band that stretches east to west across the continent. Imagine if you will this band peaks at its extremities: on the east that gives us Egypt, Somalia et al and on the west hand side we have Mauritania, Mali and Sierra Leone. The band thins but is still present in Chad, Nigeria, Ghana etc.

Nations at the extremities have a figure of over 80% of the female population having experienced genital mutilation, which is bewildering in its scope. Even those in the slimmer sections of this awful band have rates between 20 and 40%. When one thinks the device used to carry out this practice is usually a razor blade or broken glass, with battery acid used to staunch the heavy bleeding, the speed with which this barbaric act must come to an end becomes even clearer.

Twitter Still Sucks Ass But...

I'm on it!

Oh the shame of it!

Oh the pure hypocrisy!

Look, before you pass judgement on me, the reason for signing up was two fold:

1) I started to worry that some Internet stalker nob would create a Twitter account in my name and be a douchebag, so I went and did a baggsy before any web-ponce could. Which I think is fair.

2) I had to get in contact with Notts rapper Wariko and the only way I could do so was through his Twitter. Hence my starting up of an account.

Shamefully, I found myself, for want of anything else to do, tweeting about eating wasabi nuts.

I do solemnly swear to only make tweets about non-tedious stuff from now on in.

You get me?

In My Beginning is My End

Bluster.

I love that word.

Bluster is something the world of blogging (digitised opinion) is full of and I've played my part.

Political commentary has found an apt home in the world of blogging, most of the top blogs ply their trade opining on the issues of the day, shouting from the rafters their opinions from one side of the wire or other. And then there are the army of comment-whores, either fishing for a fight or cheerleading the agenda.

Seems to me a lot of people are just seeking a bit of human contact by proxy, even if it is brutal.

And so we return to bluster, because so much of political commentary now, whether blog based or not, is all about provocation, obsessed with prediction, interpretation and telling those who actually have real power what to do.

It's all pretty shrill, instant and intrusive and has long ago drifted into bluster but particularly cruel and sharp bluster; desperate for an audience. And let's linger on this audience, which seems to be regressing in terms of what it can handle, we are mostly left with a puerile simplicity littered with Unique Selling Points but little élan.

In this cruel 24-hour news cycle nothing ever stays news for long. Drop it and move on.

The end result is a lot of bluster and the UK joining the US in becoming increasingly immature about how it engages with politics and its politicians.

Which is a damn shame.

2 Months After the Vote: From Lib Dem to Labour

(This blog post was commissioned by Claude over at Hagley Road to Ladywood, where it is cross-posted)

This year’s General Election seems long ago now, I’ve filed it far away in the recesses of my mind, politics, in the UK at least, has lost it’s luster for me and I’ve now gone back to obsessing about American exceptionalism, female genital mutilation and South African crime rates.

What killed it for me was voting Liberal Democrat, as I did in 2005, as they represent (or so I thought) my views the closest and then had to watch the bastards power-grab a horrible little deal with the dreaded Conservatives.

But before I turned my back on UK politics in an extraordinarily tedious fit of pique, I did something quite dramatic: I joined the Labour Party.

I was raised in a very Tory household and as soon as I could I wanted to vote Labour, because it seemed to me the team in blue represented something cruel, mean-spirited and negative; features all shared by my Tory father. So from 1994 onwards I was a devout Labour boy and only when they broke my heart by getting us into an illegal and terrible war, as well as a catalogue of human rights infringements and a slow and horrible metamorphosis into a cruel, mean-spirited and negative political party (are we really turning into America with no choice at all between the Devil and the very deep, very blue and terrifying sea?), I turned to my ideological bed-fellows: the Lib Dems.

It seemed a perfect policy fit and with the election this year the golden bastards actually stood a chance of winning. Thanks to the archaic joys of our electoral system and also not as many people voting for them as expected (always a problem in an election) they were left as kingmakers and decided, even though 15.4 million Brits had voted for left of centre parties rather then the 10.7 million that had turned blue, to back David Cameron and his entourage.

Ouch. That hurt.

And I mean really hurt. And perhaps my hurt is irrational, flawed and riddled with an utter loathing of the Tories and everything they stand for and perhaps, in a stumbling through kind of way, the current Con-Dem alliance is doing alright (even though VAT increases kill us all, especially the poor and why some focused tax hikes on rich folk like me aren’t an option I’ll never know) but I voted for a party of the left, a liberal party because I was sick to death of Labour’s Tory transformation and my vote was betrayed. Where has the left gone?

And yes, I did just say betrayed, for this is a love affair and Nick Clegg has given me chlamydia.

So I decided to cheat on him with my old lover (this relationship and sexual transmitted disease metaphor is starting to run aground isn’t it?) and commit because I see no other options for those of us on the left to turn to, options that actually have power within their reach, rather than hopes and dreams. What use are they?

Germany 4 England 1

Oh dear.

What a strange match that was, I haven't the heart for in depth analysis, thank goodness I am half German so one side of my family roots can match on, the English side is utterly de-moralised.

England were crushed.

We actually didn't play that badly as far as I was concerned, a bit leaden at times but not awful. What killed us was the goal that was disallowed, that would've given the game a different air. Perhaps we'd still have got destroyed but by a smaller margin, which would've been some consolation I suppose. Fundamentally, we were done by two simple counter attacking goals and we had a real goal ruled out, the match could've gone so differently.

Having said that, if we had got through, serious problems would've gone un-explored.

From the short tournament, veteran goalie James came out with honour, as did the awesome Ashley Cole. We always knew our centre-halves lacked pace but they don't lack heart. Johnson at right-back still needs work but he does look good when he presses on.

Barry is a keeper but I'd prefer Hargreaves, perhaps both as many top teams have, Lampard did nothing all World Cup, little surprise it was his goal that was ruled out. Gerrard was out of position and thus half the player he can be but Milner is a top player, he can do much wherever he plays.

I suppose the killer blow was just how bad Rooney was. He was shocking, if he had been any other player he would've been subbed and dropped but Capello and the rest of us, prayed, hoped that he would find that spark...that something.

It never came and England go home.

Shed Your Tears And Walk Away

Yesterday Eva-Jane and I paid a visit to the ICA to watch an amazing documentary called "Shed Your Tears And Walk Away" and it is a phenomenal piece of film making, of sheer raw pain and a bleak reflection of the reality of life for large swathes of British people.

I urge you to see it or get on DVD when and if it comes out, it is an outstanding piece of filmmaking that documents a side of British life that is rarely seen. A life of drink, nihilism, drugs, friendship and a loss of a basic survival instinct; a sense of being trapped, of being utterly lost.

It is based in Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire but in reality, it could be a documentary of absolutely anywhere in the UK where hope has been lost and there is nothing, seemingly, to lose. One fear is that the situation in Hebden Bridge is seen as unique from this documentary, when it is endemic in the UK.

It reminded me, quite painfully, of elements of my own life, to be clear though, I was always on the periphery of social circles like this but it was, at times, like watching my own friends from the long distant past as they self-destructed and, crippled by fear, kept destroying themselves.

One of the reasons I left Nottingham was to avoid bumping into people from the past, letting me know who else was now dead, mad, locked up, fucked up. Text messages asking if I'd heard that so and so had hung himself or held up another beer-off, old muck-a-bouts begging us for a fiver.

The walking dead. Our British underclass. Nothing to do but shed your tears and walk away.

England 0 Algeria 0

Oh my good God, that was fucking awful.

You know, I chortled to myself, upon watching France getting thrashed by Mexico 2-0, that England, for all their flaws, will never play sans heart, soul and spirit like the French. We may be bad sometimes but we'll never stoop to that level.

And lo, it came to pass, against an awful Algerian team (something I am grateful for, if they had been any good we would've been crushed like dogs, their number 15 Ziani is perhaps the worst player I've ever seen at a World Cup) we drew nil-nil and played like the French.

And it wasn't even that Algeria were offering tight banks of four and defending well, we could and did break them down, when we managed to string a few basic passes together but that was a rare occurrence indeed.

Quite simply, England played with no heart, no passion and utterly crippled by fear, fear of what I've no idea and if they were apprehensive against Algeria, they will be frozen solid by anguish as they have to beat Slovenia. Wednesday promises to be a terrifying and possibly deeply distressing day. I can't wait...

It feels slightly pointless to investigate England player by player, James was at least impressive, although he had nothing to do but should at least give us a strong figure in goal as the Slovenians pepper us with attacks. In fact, the whole defence looked good, in a solid and untested way that is and we will miss Carragher, who had a good game. Johnson and Cole did well at full back but needed to push on more, occasionally Glenn Johnson looked a bit at sea backtracking but this was hidden by the sheer incompetence of the rest of the team.

Midfield was dire, aside from Barry, who was my man of the match, even though he was a leaky with his passing at times but he covered so well and gave us shape, this will be much needed against Slovenia. Lampard went missing again, taking three touches when he should be taking one, whilst pal Gerrard was also AWOL, leaving Barry to carry all the weight. Lennon was alright at running in straight lines at pace but Wright-Phillips, when he came on, gave us more energy and effort, I hope he starts on Wednesday.

But it was upfront that my heart got broke. Heskey was okay but perhaps now has to go the way of the dinosaur, although I don't think Defoe or Crouch really gives us much. It was Rooney that destroyed me, his touch was awful, he seemed empty of ideas and effort; utterly crap and if he wasn't Rooney he would've been subbed and that cannot be good. He is our best player and he was a million miles away from being any good at all.

I have no idea where we go from here, surely it can't get worse and that seems to be our only succour.

Worryingly, it looks as if the problem exists solely in the mind of the players, what has riddled them with such paralysing fear, I have no idea. How can you be scared of losing if you've not even tried to succeed?

Here's to Wednesday, when I hope England find themselves again and make us proud and fight and battle and do their very best for themselves and for us, so the boo-boys will be silenced and our best player won't feel the need to do this...

Forced Into the Closet by Violence

I have blogged before on the awful state of Lesbian/Gay/Bi-Sexual/Transgender civil rights in many developing nations around the world. Whether it be brutal anti-lesbian violence in South Africa, which actually is the only African country to have the rights of LGBT people written into it's constitution (not that that stops disgusting acts of "corrective" rape, beatings and murder...what a vile idea), or the catalogue of murders and legal repression in the Muslim worlds and the Caribbean, of their LGBT communities.

Being a "developing country" it seems is a perfect excuse for being backwards, excusing cruel and unusual behaviour by claiming it is crucial a part of the indigenous culture and preserving the way things have always been, in the face of ever-advancing Western cultural mores.

It is Africa that has recently thrust itself into the hideous spotlight of homophobia and criminalising natural behaviours. Whether is be Malawi deeming homosexuality unnatural and indecent; Burundi criminalising gay sex; Zambia connecting homosexuality with Satanism, or Uganda offering up the death penalty for anyone homosexual. 

The list goes on, with most of them leaning on ancient, colonial anti-sodomy legislation (something that India has just repealed in a huge step forward) and being encouraged by an infestation of American conservative evangelical Christians, peddling their homophobic nonsense.

It is not just Africa of course that fines, lashes, whips and imprisons it's homosexuals. Iran and Afghanistan both put them to death but it is in Iran's legislation that an interesting facet starts to appear, one that is shared by many of these homophobic nations.

In Iran, lesbians are only put to death upon the fourth conviction for the "crime" of homosexuality, they are, in a sense, let off the hook for the first three indiscretions (aside from the 300 lashes they would have received) and in many of these backward nations, lesbianism is not even mentioned in the law books; as if love between women is of a lower threshold and value perhaps or, just whisper it, offering a titillation factor to this chauvinistic, moral weaklings.

It is a truism to suggest that how a country treats it's vulnerable is a good measure of how well it treats the rest of it's citizens and by the current state of LGBT rights in many developing nations, this does not bode at all well.

See Some Grown Men Cry

No, not them, as they are foreigners and their feelings don't count...

And neither am I talking about this guy, as I am not utterly convinced he's a grown man and he's a fictional character. What I am talking about is the footy manager legend that is José Mourinho and Italian mentalist centre-half Marco Materazzi.

For those of you that don't know, Mourinho won everything with F.C. Internazionale Milano this season and is now off to those bloody greedy, hording bastards Real Madrid, leaving behind an absolutely gutted Materazzi.

Watch the two men, share their pain and weep with them...

Daft Racist Moved His Comedy Gold...AND I FOUND THEM!

Following on from yesterday's post, I have managed to track "Arrylad" down, who has now changed his moniker to Lee B'stard and moved to the Hooligan Central YouTube channel, where he can be seen spouting his horse shit.

Textbook.

Highlights of the hilariously stupid short film are, aside from the delusion that America is watching and the anti-Communist twat is wearing a T-Shirt with Cuba on it...

"Okay, never been to America, okay, only people I know from America are on the Internet, okay."

"9/11, the most horrific thing that has ever happened in this world."

"I'm Islamophobic right, if I see somebody in a burqa, I have a fit, falling on the floor convulsing."

"It's not Islamophobic to not want your children to be blown up on a bus to school, right, or beheaded on the Internet, right."

"You Americans should be fucking ashamed of yourselves."

Here is the video in all it's glory:



And you can see what Dramatic Cat thinks about that...



Have a grand weekend.

Letters Home From Vietnam

"The trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised and we shall be changed...Oh, death, where is thy sting, where thy victory? If God be for us, who can be against us?"

Not too long ago I finished reading the utterly excellent "Dear America: Letters Home From Vietnam", as part of my continuing education into that particular war and the lives of the soldiers in it.

It is a collection of letters from a US military personnel that documents the war from the inside-out and it is a harrowing, powerful read that can't help but make the reader transfer his or her thoughts to those that currently serve in Iraq and Afghanistan...never mind the other brewing conflicts around the globe.

After each letter, which may be of the most mundane sort, or uplifting, or terrifyingly gripping, or just plain heartbreaking; you then discover the outcome for the author: whether KIA, WIA, MIA or currently working as a deckhand on a tugboat, or a financial manager for Pacific Bell. This acts as the punctuation and I found myself, as the end of each letter approached, rushing to discover what happened to the writer, hoping that, against all the odds they made it. Often they didn't.

The worst are perhaps those written by new fathers to their new children, not yet met, opening up their hearts with love for their not yet seen children, only to discover a piece of shrapnel ended any chance of father meeting son, or daughter meeting father.

The book goes on to be riddled with passages that level you, whether it be the words of Johnny Boy...

"I want to hold my head between my hands and run screaming away from here. I cry too, not much, just when I touch the sore spots. I'm hollow, Mrs Perko. I'm a shell and when I'm scared I rattle. I', no one to tell you about your son. I can't. I'm sorry."

Or the hard-edged rhyming funnies of PFC Thomas F. Smith...

I love my flag, I do, I do

Which floats upon the breeze

I also love my arms and legs

And neck and nose and knees

One little shell might spoil them all

Or give them such a twist

They would be of no use to me

I guess I won't enlist

I love my country, yes, I do

I hope her folks do well

Without our arms and legs and things

I think we'd look like hell

Young men with faces half shot off

Are unfit to be kissed

I've read in books it spoils their looks

I guess I won't enlist

Or the POW that survived some 6 years in captivity, writing fevered letters to his wife and family and making lists of what he would do if he was ever released, to only kill himself 4 months after being set free.

Amongst all the stillborn children, breastless women, old men stumbling in the dust, soldiers looting bodies, cookies from home, burning houses to the ground, pigeon-breasted fantasies, disowned veterans and dead best friends, there is this truth:

We are your sons, America

And you cannot change that

When you awake

We will still be here  

The last word both here and in the book is given to Eleanor Wimbish, in a letter to her son, as she visits that deep, black gash into the earth that is the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial...

"Dear Bill: Today is February 13, 1984. I came to this black wall again to see and touch your name and as I do I wonder if anyone ever stops to realize that next to your name, on this black wall, is your mother's heart."