Barack Obama...

The tears are rolling down the faces. Crowds are hissing and booing, shrieking and singing, hugging and kissing. I'm sitting on a sofa, in Nottingham, connected through cyberspace and satellite to the most significant election that I have ever and possibly will ever see.

John McCain is losing gracefully (because there is always a next time) and thanking the Lord, who didn't turn up for him today, and making verbal love with America because nothing means more to him than being an American. The failure is his, not his supporters apparently. Doubtless members of the audience are cursing today, the day that a man they would still like to refer to as a slave, is just about to enter the White House.

He may have just lost his mind, he just called Sarah Palin 'one the best campaigners he has ever seen'. I truly hope I never see her botox stretched face on a publication or TV screen ever again. The fact is, the republicans have had their time, they can boo and hiss all they want but the time for blatant free-market economics mixed with a lust for war and appetite for oil has come to an end.

'Americans never quit, never surrender and never hide from history'. Wise Words by Senator McCain. They don't quit of course, not in Vietnam, not in Iraq. They don't surrender, to the will of the rich, no not at all. And hide from history, of course not, they always talk about the Bay of Pigs, about supporting General Pinochet, about arming Osama Bin Laden, nothing to be ashamed of, nothing at all.

They're expecting a million on the street of Chicago tonight. A million on a general election night. That wouldn't happen here and I wonder why. Because our politics is about real issues or because our politics offers no real change. Who knows?
We just don't do sexy and loud. The Americans are good at least at one of those.

4.34. McCain 48% Obama 51%. No noticeable third party. Does everyone only believe in one of two frighteningly similar viewpoints? That. Is. Fucking. Scary. Why do less than 1% of the 'most free country in the world' manage to see more than two options? I wonder if party funding has anything to do with it?

1 in 3 black American boys born in 2001 will go to prison. 1 in 5 black men in the USA today have been to prison. He has a lot to do. He needs to close Guantanamo Bay as well. So stop black boys fucking up their lives and close the most high profil illegal detention centre in the world. It's a start isn't it. Can he also get out of the middle east? Stop supporting the Israeli state with Nuclear weopans? Provide socialised healthcare, free at the point of use? Make America drive less? Get rid of the death penalty? Stop the CIA undermiming nations that have a political system to the left of centre? Provide proper aid to developing nations? Spend less on the military and more on social services?

No. He. Can't.

Gore Vidal: 'They love war, they love money' The Republicans. Nice.

I want more pictures of republicans crying, hopefully wrapped in American Flags. I'd also like to see someone speak, just one person who doesn't feel proud of their country. Proud of what? Taking 8 years to work out that cutting taxes for the rich, waging war on the poor and creating more and more instability in the world? Why don't people realise how moronic, base and immature blind patriotism can be? How do so many people have the allout nerve to suggest that America is a place where those who work hard for what they want will succeed? If that's the case why, in a country of 40% non-white, do we see so few black and hispanic people with power and money? Because they don't work hard enough, don't fucking insult us.

Sen. Obama has just dragged his poor children and wife onto a stage in Chicago. They'll all develop horrible drug habits.

'Hello Chicago, if there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible?...'
'Communism Barack?'
He speaks so well, it pisses me off. He's listing all the people who have voted. The 'United States of America'. How long until god gets a shout out? He is spewing garbage, it sounds pretty though. Thousands of flags are waving. He's being nice about McCain, a man he clealy hates but who has been in a POW camp, can't criticise him then. Thanking his wife and kids, who he has just promised a puppy. Ok here goes, his dead grandmother is watching, that's odd because she's..erm...dead.

This is dull. Thanking the whole fucking world. Let me guess, he's gonna thank us soon, or them, the people who went out and voted. Yep. 'IT belongs to you'.
10 American flags waving behind him.

A new spirit of patriotism. Fuck this. It's ten past 5.

Climate Camp. No Reflection. Just Pictures. Thanks Max

The other fight

It was always going to be a stressful week. Eleven different events over 5 days, meeting speakers, renting staging, publicising, sitting through long talks that you leave knowing no more than when you went in. The stress however, is not entirely because of One World Week. It is all to easy to forget sometimes, when you're in the office until late at night, that a life exists outside of fighting for a better world.
Then it hits you, and you have to take stock, other things do matter. You're in love, your mind is stuck on repeat and it isn't dwelling on global warming or freeing tibet.
I'm forcing myself to write tonight- i'm tired, it's late and tomorrow beckons. I don't want it to come too soon.

Foregone conclusion

They look so different. One a good-looking, smiling, tall black man. The other short, old, white and seemingly without the ability to smile without scaring children. The differences between them are not just superficial, they come from different parts the USA, they have grown up differently, they have joined political parties who see themselves as on opposite sides of the spectrum. Yett, despite the tussles, the millions of hard earned dollars they have spent insulting each other, the apparent disparities, they are not such a world apart.

Subscribing to capitalism is to be expected in a country that has spent the best part of the last century locking up, torturing and waging wars upon those who oppose it. Barack Obama's tax rise for the rich is seen as radical, but as he keeps insisting 95% of people will not see a rise. The logical inadequacies are there for all to see. In a country where there is widespread poverty, inadequate healthcare for 30m, a crumbling education system and racial inequality like almost no other place on earth, noone is talking about redistributing the wealth of the 'poor over taxed middle class' and sending it the lowest earners in society. Politics needn't bother itself with the working class: They don't vote, they don't pay much tax and there aren't enough of them anymore. The United States could look no further than its European allies to realise the benefits of progressive taxation.
Why in a country that has such high expecations of the services they use is there not a mass movement for a truly fair health system that is free at the point of use?

Capitalism is not the only subscription that the three hundred million Americans are exposed to. In a world with increasingly little resource for more and more people it seems only too obvious that we must try and use less, buy less and conserve what we have. Not in American. Less is bad. More is good. Why buy less when you can buy something else? Why drive less when you can buy a car which is slightly less harmful to the environment? In fact why not buy two? Why not invest in coal and oil technology and blindly sign up to nuclear power instead of trying to curb your embarrassing appaetite for energy? Why not, when you have 3% of the worlds population, use 25% of it's oil? Why don't they wake up? I don't think anyone's realise that they are sleeping yet.

I want to look forward to a bushless world. A world without aggressive neo-liberalism, without post-colonial war projects, without a neo-conservative christian crusade but that is what we are signing up to when we hold our new, black, young hero aloft. We are signing up to god-driven, nationalistic, war supporting, free market capitalism with just a few tweaks. I don't resent you America but we're all fucked.

I have been institutionalised

Time has dissapeared without my knowledge or consent and I shall not attempt a retrospective roundup of what has been or what I have become because neither have much interest or value to them. To summarise though my life- personal, political, private and public has taken a turn. My age is no longer tied down to the number of years that I have existed for, I have responsibilities that, only 9 months ago, were not even close to my imagination.

Without being too downbeat about all of this blog malarky, or simply being innacurate, I don't expect anyone to ever read this except maybe me, just like I have done in the last few minutes- it amused and entertained me to look back on my thoughts about things metamorphise over the last few years and I want that to continue. I want to feel my cheeks burn red as I sit in a room by myself as I face my own naivety and for that reason I shall try and bring some more of me into to this, because afterall I am a thrilling person. Proof of that can be found in my mental lifestyle: I work until well past dark, most days. I wake up early for meetings. I eat the same packaged sandwhich about 4 days a week. There is a distinct possibility that I have fallen in love with my bike.

But why do I fight?

I want to say this ' I fight because I feel, no I know, that I will make a difference to those who are less fortunate than me. I will stand up for those who are weak, make rich those who are poor and defend our planet for future generations'.

But why do I fight?

I fight because without the fight I am one of many. I fight because I am well-off, I am middle-class and I need to feel needed. I genuinely do fight because injustice, like nothing else, makes me fucking angry, and that is enough.

And what am I fighting?

Bureacracy mostly and laziness and apathy and my own habits that give no example at all to those who I spend my life preaching to. I fight my friends who believe that sexism is natural or who think that the free market will fix our problems. I fight myself when, at the end of the day I want to curl up and cry rather than face the next day answering emails or justifying myself in an increasingly ill informed and close minded world. I fight those who think that there is a 'time and place for protests' and that time and place is far away from anyone who can hear. I fight those who think they can't make a difference or who have tried and failed. I fight my mind when it wants to miss the next meeting and ring my girlfriend and talk idly about this and that. I fight the urge to get drunk and dance when I have to go to a lecture.

I have been institutionalised.