Monthly Archives: March 2012

Confessions of an Internet Troll

Dear Diary,

I know it was only yesterday that I wrote to you but I’m really struggling with this addiction. I promised myself this morning that I wouldn’t do it again. I couldn’t help myself. FFS. Today will be the last day, I promise.

Guess who I saw today outside my bedroom window this afternoon? Jack. Yeah, Jack Mitchell. I felt like jumping out my window and fu**ing him up. The pain and torment he put me through as a child was unbearable. I still remember coming home from school and crying. My mum could hardly console me, I mean, how could she? I was suicidal. Bloody bully. I should have killed him and ended the bullying once and for all. Yeah, that’s right – in the same way he mentally tortured me, I should have physically tortured him: cut him into little pieces, like him cut me up inside.

Oh, guess what? It’s been one year today since I cut my contract with them. I should bloody expose them for what they do. When the intelligence service first approached me, I was probably the biggest, baddest troll on the Internet, baby. I could go two whole days without sleep, just commenting: YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, but my favourite was The Guardian. I use to comment on the odd article on Islam, but they told me I had to search and wait for anything on Islam to come out and comment on it. While I was at it, I thought I would have a quick bash at anything that came out about Christianity. Those were the good old days, I caused so much mischief, friction and arguments between all these stupid, religious people. I mean, if these organised religions were true, why are their followers so easily wound up by what I say? These religious people are hypocrites. They’re suppose to be all holy, yet they come at me and start swearing and come down to the same level that I went. Ha, idiots.

But like I was saying, I need to stop all this. I need to get myself a job, seriously. Living off my mum isn’t good. I should become a columnist, actually. Why don’t The Guardian hire me? I always see all these articles and I’m thinking, these columnists don’t even know what they are talking about. I’m much better than them. I bet I’ve read more books than any of them – my vocabulary is insane. It’s probably better than Will Self’s. If I did get hired by The Guardian I reckon my friend would be jealous of me. Gareth, or should I say FreeThinker1, would probably troll on me!

Okay, tomorrow is a new day. No more commenting. I’m going to go out into this cold, cruel and callous world, a world where there is no love. Perhaps, I’ll find love…

Yours,

Terry123

This blog should not be read on face value, look at the italicised words to comprehend the inner meanings.

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An Interview With Lowkey on the ‘Manipulative’ Joseph Kony 2012 Campaign

It has been over a week since the Kony 2012 video went viral. The video, by Invisible Children, is now nearing 80 million views on YouTube. One of the most vociferous critics of the campaign is musician and political activist, Lowkey.

I spoke to Lowkey about the video.

What did you think of the video?

“I think the Kony 2012 campaign has had a manipulative and negative affect on the younger generation. But it has made the older generation question this level of emotional manipulation. That the answer to everything is the US military and has made people question what Africom actually is. And why the US feels the need to expand its military presence in Africa. It then leads people to the idea that the US is essentially trying to have a counter weight to Chinese elevation in the region.”

Why are you against US military intervention?

“I think Africom was founded by George Bush in 2006 and it clearly sets out its aim to increase US military prescence in Africa. However, the majority of African countries rejected Africom which means it had to have its Headquarters in Germany, imagine that.

However Nigeria was one government which welcomed Africom and Uganda is another  government that is now welcoming US military expansion. Now unless you are those specific people within those governments, you will not view the presence of the US military on your land as something positive. We also need to remember that these countries welcoming US military presence have very, very, very questionable human rights records and very questionable histories, with regards to democracy – this word that we band about, if you ask Kony what his objective is, he says democracy – now it’s amazing how we have someone in Africa saying his objective is democracy and he is the number one enemy. Yet we have people in other parts of the world, like in the Middle East, who have not said explicitly that their aim is democracy and we are, without question, supporting them.

Do you feel there is hypocrisy taking place?

If you are a US citizen and your first point of call for war criminals is not your own government, then you do not really have the wider interests of humanity at heart. The US is accused of far more heinous crimes than Joseph Kony. Essentially, this video is encouraging youth to look at things in a very simplistic and damaging way. If you use Joseph Kony 2012 by Invisible Children as the pretext, you can take anyone to any point of the world and say there is a bad person doing something bad to these people – that’s the only explanation you need to give. And then you say the only solution is US military involvement in the land. My God. You can justify anything, absolutely anything. That was the whole idea of the video. It was him explaining to his son the situation in this very simplistic way. There was no intention to explain the wider context of the situation.

It’s not saying this bad thing is happening we need your money to make it better, which is one thing. It is saying we need your money and your voice to expand what is a stated aim of US policy. It’s not as if Africom didn’t happen. That’s what they’ve been trying for years, and it hasn’t been working very well. And this is what the Nato campaign in Libya was largely about: the expansion of Africom. What’s so manipulative and horrible about it, is that they use genuine emotions that people have that are natural. How could you not feel for somebody whose brother has died? People are not made of stone.

What should happen to Joseph Kony?

Kony himself is utterly irrelevant. That’s why it’s so strange. They put Hitler and Bin Laden there [on the poster] and Kony there. Well you know which ideological perspective they are coming from. And you know who they are talking to and who they are talking for, most importantly. Most people who are worried about human life are not going to view the solution as being the US military. The solution has never been US military because it has never worked way, never.

And, finally, why did you delete Twitter?

I find it’s a distraction. Twitter is different to Facebook in that any little thing that people think they just Tweet it, and I would rather not know. I would prefer to concentrate on my music. Saying that, music hasn’t been the number one thing on my mind at the moment, rather than being a good musician or good artist – I’ve been reading a lot – and I would rather be a good and more all round person.

You can find Lowkey on Facebook here

His latest album, Soundtrack to the Struggle can be found on iTunes

Follow me @omar_shahid

Interview With Talib Kweli on US Politics, Hip-Hop, Drake, The Five Percent & The Occupy Movement

Talib Kweli – an internationally renowned American rapper and a celebrity within the hip-hop scene – once said: “I don’t fuck with politics.” Yet, when asked about his views on the upcoming US elections he becomes animated: “Politics is as entertaining as a soap opera. [President] Obama plays an ill political game, if there were no term limits, he would be President for a very long time!” he says. He also expresses his views on the Republican candidates. “Some of the political rhetoric coming out of conservative right in Americasounds like the same thing that set the stage for Nazi Germany.”

Kweli, known for his politically conscious music, has just finished touring the UK with British-born rappers Lowkey and Mic Righteous – also known for their “conscious” lyrics. “I’m not actually that familiar with them,” he admits in his softly spoken voice, perhaps the antithesis of the bravado with which many other rappers speak. “But I’m looking forward to getting more familiar with them.” It is not just his meek voice that stands out, his diction does too. Kweli, the eldest of two sons, grew up in a highly educated household: his mother Brenda Greene is an English professor and his father an administrator at Adelphi University. Isn’t strange, then, that he decided to pursue a career in rap? “My parents are writers and the writers of my generation are rappers,” he says.

During secondary school Kweli met Mos Def aka Yasiin Bey, a Grammy award winning emcee and DJ Hi-Tech, an American producer and rapper. These encounters would prove pivotal to Kweli’s career: in 1998, he combined with Mos Def to release the seminal album Black Star and teamed up with Hi-Tech, to release Train of Thought, both considered hip-hop classics. While the albums didn’t sell millions, they received critical acclaim and earned the respect of many fellow rappers. Now, five solo albums later (although not all of his records lived up to their expectation) Kweli, 36, is married to DJ Eque as of 2009 – and has two children from his former partner Darcel Turner.

Kweli, who insists his name be pronounced “Kwali”, rose to prominence amid the renaissance of Afrocentric, politically motivated hip-hop in the 90s but, since then, there has been an increase in music which – he believes – portrays, “sex and drugs…the gangster lifestyle…and just having a good time.”

“When I first came, hip-hop was about opening people’s consciousness but now even the great lyricists – J Cole, Kendrick Lamar – are rapping more about having fun,” he says. “Kwali” has never had an ostentatious demeanour – the big chains, flash cars and extravagant lifestyle associated with most high-profile rappers doesn’t seem to apply to him. Likewise, his physical features don’t particularly make him distinguishable: he stands at a height of around 5’8 inches and his soft features resemble that of any other Afro-American.

What does he make of the rampant materialism endemic in mainstream hip-hop? “I’m able to differentiate between what an artist creates based on how he grew up and what he creates as an individual. Jay Z the rapper, is different to Sean Carter. The same way as Arnold Schwarzenegger is different to The Terminator. It’s entertainment – I’m not here to judge.”

In a recent radio interview DMX, humorously, talked about why he doesn’t like fellow rapper Drake. What does Kweli think of Drake? “He is a shining example for mainstream artists – he is a really good rapper, singer and he can write, he is like a triple threat.” Many people have criticised Drake and Lil Wayne, both signed to Cash Money, for doing music purely for the money. Kweli disagrees and raises his voice: “I think that’s a very, very unfair, ill-informed criticism. They [the critics] are not really in hip-hop if they think like that. They just listen to the radio and end up getting sick of them and their lyrics. They forget they [Drake, Wayne and Kanye West] come from somewhere – how many people listened to Wayne’s first album? But everybody knows Carter IV.”

Many critics of hip-hop have claimed that it isn’t the “same” and isn’t as “good” as it used to be. Kweli again becomes annoyed: “Why should hip hop be the same? When I was first listening to hip hop in ’87, you had older artists saying this music is shit. The Cold Crust Brothers didn’t like LL Cool J, now he is  classic MC. They thought he was a young snotty nose punk. People look at things in their own perspective. If we could all see through the same eyes we would welcome new artists.”

Unlike many of Cash Money’s artists, Kweli’s music has always been synonymous with truthfulness and honesty. His views on the current political climate in America reflect this honesty. “A lot of American’s are greedy and selfish so they only want to listen to these messages [from the Republicans]. He describes these messages as “moronic,” “stupid,” “ignorant”. Kweli then speaks about the problems in American society. “The education system isn’t geared so that we know anything that goes on in the world; it doesn’t set you up to be part of the world either. The reason why America is having a crisis in education, science, and finance, is because we’re not prepared to deal with a world that is interconnected.”

One political movement Kweli has taken an interest in is the Occupy protests. Kweli says that he grew up in a protest culture and believes they are a “natural” part of society. “People aren’t just accepting things as they are; people are peeling layers back and seeing things for how they really are.”

Kweli, like many other black rappers have dabbled in the Five Percent Nation, an American organisation that believes 10% of the world’s inhabitants know the truth of existence, 85% live in ignorance and the remaining five percent know the truth and are determined the spread it. “I’ve got huge respect for the five percent,” he says. “When I was a teenager, I dabbled in the five percent, I also dabbled into Rastafarianism and Islam, I was trying to discover myself. I’m very much in touch with my spirituality now. I don’t claim to follow a particular religion.”

Why has he now disassociated himself from the five percent? “Disassociate is a strong word. I don’t like dogma. Even atheists will disagree with me but there is dogma to atheism, there’s a dogma to the five percent, whether people say there is or not. I would like to take something from every thought process. Nothing turned me off [the five percent] it makes a lot of sense, it makes as much sense as Christianity to me,” he says. “But I’d rather be open to see and receive everything,” he adds.


Why Religion is For Extremists

Human beings, by their nature, are extreme. Religion merely redirects this extremeness into the form of worship. Some people, for example, will follow their religion to the dot – they have a literal interpretation and if someone tells them anything otherwise, they will reject it. Those who are extreme in their religious practises, would arguably be extreme in other ways if they weren’t controlled by their religion. Instead of doing a lot of worship, they would perhaps feel a greater inclination to do that which is bad: maybe become druggies, drunkards, incessant fornicators or whatever. Religion therefore acts as a mechanism to keep a human being under control.

The atheist, on the other hand, will often exert them extremeness by ridiculing those who believe in a Divine entity or a follow religion. The atheist only has their own moral compass to judge right from wrong – but often, they will do good. Many atheists are more ethical than the religious, they are also sometimes more “spiritual” than the religious, but at the very tip of their consciousness, they haven’t realised that they are indeed believers in the ultimate Reality, too – presuming that there is one.

An atheist just said to me: “[Religion] are like bad low-budget movies that demand criticism and ridicule regardless if people get offended.” This is extremism.

What many of us fail to do in our age is delve deep into the intellectual and esoteric meanings of religion. We treat science and philosophy as pursuits of rigorous study, but religion as something simple for simple people. We shouldn’t deny something’s veracity simply because, on the surface, it may appear simple or “ridiculous”.

Religion is therefore a mechanism to rewire one’s personality from one which is purely instinctual, animalistic and profane, into one where we act from our innermost being which is pure and transcendent. Religion forces us to act out certain rituals, and be kind to one another – and threatens us with punishment if we don’t – so that it becomes normal to us. We, eventually, no longer have to be told to do something, it emanates from within us naturally.