... Battlescar Ontario ...

... sometimes in the combustive high drama of geo-political theatre you get a damp squib ... but this latest production of Summit G20 turned out to be a big deal ... a sort of coming out for Toronto, Ontario and Canada as a political stooge ... I mean ... stage ... a pretty ideal spot for a convention, eh, with its focal financial and shopping districts, two-line subway and that orderly, grid-like streetplan ...

... as we've seen, one of the problems in staging events with lofty agendas ... the South African World Cup, Vancouver's Olympics ... or a G20 summit ... is the actual cost and the not-always-obvious returns on the investment to the people who make up the local social infrastructure ... then there are those terms of fiscal inexactitude like ..."a billion dollars" ... that get tossed around as if rounding a figure to the nearest hundred-million is clarifying ... (can we get a G20 for two G8's and save ourselves 4G?) ...

... certainly one could see where the ... bulbous ... security budget from T-dot to Huntsville was deployed ... there were threats from all quarters ... real and perceived it matters not ... 'cos due dilligence is non-negotiable when anyone throws a party for such a high-profile gathering of guests ...

... the security forces seem to have worked close to the blueprint in tackling these threats ... but this remains troubling justification for the disproportionate hyper-expenditure it took to do so ...

... to those who watch these things, it has become de rigeur for summits of this kind to draw attention from public watchdogs, legitimately-motivated torch or cross-bearers and antagonistic contrarians ... it is within that latter group that you'll find the instigators and perpetrators of wanton destruction ... who by their actions seek to leave their mark in anti-social ways often to their own detriment and no-one's net gain ... like this angst-ridden saboteur who might have done better to stay away entirely ...













... inside the convention centre some global bargaining took place between football matches ... round-table, bi-lateral, in-camera, al fresco talks were held ... hands was shook (where's the fist-bump gone?) ... with the World Press Corps there to disseminate it all ...

... outside, shock-and-awe was droppin' on some anarchist ass and throngs got to hang close enough to say they were there when the rubber bullets flew ... I had just left town when the flex went down but they hit my Starbucks on Queen Street at John ... true to form the broken window instantly became art ...















.. if this all sounds cynical you shoulda heard me when I mentally flipped the script back to football and subbed Obama for Palin during the summary presidential Q&A ... every question was a potential Deep Water Horizon and had a trickier follow-up ... in other words ... Palin kryptonite ...

... nuff said ... when I stopped cringing I flushed that thought down the commode and moved on to contemplate the sheer enormity of the job the POTUS has on his hands ... engaged hotspots are ever-active and the U.S. is literally bleeding oil at the mouth of the Mississipi ... personally I'm thinkin' Barack should regulate that money-smile ... he's clearly familiar with the nuanced Jamaican phrase ... 'kin teet' ... (interptation; "skin teeth" - to smile, perhaps even obsequiously or disingenuously) ... it's handy in such crowds ...

... aaand when the smoke clears there are documents glittering in smiling promise but clouded by clause and condition ... agreements in principle at best ... leaving me to wonder if world leaders were to deal with the serious stuff in less distractingly overt fora ... develop a collaborative, Skype-type, HD cyber-summit to take care of the show-biz angle ... could they re-allocate funds for future gigs? ... I'm jus' sayin' ...

... in the run-up to the World Cup there were premonitions of crime and social unrest ... or hooliganism (which has not materialised despite an officiating faux pas or two) ... that this Ontario summit should be the scene of such babylonian behaviour while South Africa has held together is an irony which will please Pretoria but may mortify the Maple Leaf ...

... the man for the job ...

... we won't fully understand the impact of the life of the forty-fourth President of the United States until there is some context and hindsight around his time ... but for certain it will all have been observed comprehensively and ... chronicled ...












... the emergence of Barack Obama on the big stage continues to generate big ink ... this is a reflection of how universally significant are American fairytales, the twists-in-the-tale enshrined in its constitutional contradictions and its historical realities ... the circumstances of the United States of America's birth and growth are established and well studied around the world ... even more far-reaching is the glossy appeal of American marketing and culture ... it's true, Americanism is an amalgam of cultural influences and can claim to be a prototype and leader ...

... speaking of leaders ... since the earliest days of the nation until now, the head hombre (yes, it's always been a hombre but that's another discourse) has been an older (than me anyway) white bredda .... today as we all know by now, there's a younger (ditto) black bredda ... a first among firsts ....

... the popular new guy is going through his baptism rites/hazing rituals during these initial months of tenure, some of which can be said to come with the territory ... the biggest politico-post in the world ... still, one of the many noticeable consequences has been the racialized spike in polarity of the political polemic and its subtler cousin, the trading of tonal tenor-isms ...

... nazi-fied, Hitlerian and witch-doctored images ... even if extreme ... find exposure in places where enlightenment hasn't penetrated and arenas purporting to be eruptions of a "grass-roots movement" (an easily mis-appropriated descriptor) ... fueling opposition passions ... but far more frequently I've seen thoughtful iconographical representations of Barack Obama ... including several which are positive in connotation or cast our main man in the role of hero ...















... now, before you start buggin' out don't think for a second Barack and his team are claiming to be faster than a speeding bullet ... though I'm praying he is ... like the old American hero Superman (birthers where are you? ... he was born on another planet) ... but it doesn't hurt to align with a spit-curly, square-jawed, supernatural figure with a big reputation and a large constituency ... the guy would clean up in the UFC or a national party convention, 'cos kryptonite doesn't actually exist ... even though we're led to believe Saddam had a vial under his pillow and Ahmadinejad is in advanced stages of development ...

... the outlook of this U.S. administration appears to go beyond the left and right coasts ... Obama himself is a bit of a pan-cultural polymorph, so it's unsurprising to me that comparisons have extended to the closest thing we have to Superman on earth at the moment ... one lanky Lightning Bolt phenom ... regardless of the fact that he isn't American ...





















... this POTUS will know, instinctively, there's a wider world within which American magnificence must exist ... and dare to lead ... the world recognizes him in return and the opportunity is there for further iconic integration with the pantheon of global giants ... humans who have been right for their times, become emblematic of a purpose and have left legacies that outlive them ...

... there ought not to be any "grass-roots" movements to deify Barack because such regard is bestowed not engineered ... nor is there any payoff in politicising the figureheads who've achieved immortality via their own personal connection to God ... I've seen juxtapositions of Obama with Bob Marley, MLK, Marcus Garvey, Mandela ... even H.I.M. Haile Selassie ... counteracting those images previously referred to but deliberately omitted from this space ...

... in Bob's case there is scholarship on the comparisons between the Marley story and the unfolding Obama trajectory ... I recommend trying to track down UWI lecturer Dr. Matthew Smith's cover-story reasonings in The Beat magazine Vol 28 #1(2009) for cogency ... though a quick internet search will tell you this is not an isolated notion ...

... there will be those who see this as a trivialisation of the presidency and others who will seek to keep politricks away from the sanctity of the latter day prophet but there's a compelling synchronicity in the details despite the obvious differences ... the satirists, photographers and photoshoppers don't have to stretch to fit these two leaders-of-men into one sentence or a single frame.