Solidarity among bloggers

I note with interest that celeb gossip blogger 'Perez Hilton' has been allegedly assaulted at some Canadian music video awards show.

'Hilton' is in reality an overweight gay Latino wannabe called Mario Lavandeira, and he has for a long time now been desperate to parlay his blogging nerdery into a place at the table with those he spins scandal about.

Hence the bizarre scenario whereby this overtly gay man ends up judging the Miss America contest, which predictably results in controversy when he decides to get outraged because one girl's a devout Christian and doesn't agree with gay marriage.

I don't know if this pointless cretin was really hit or not. Certainly, he appears to have got his video camera out and filmed himself crying like a little girl, though.

So, buried under layer upon layer of self-importance and self-regard, is the tiny possibility that someone really did the world a favour by slapping this bitch up.

And the inadvertent comedy of those 'tweets', in which 'Hilton' pleaded with the public to rush to his hotel to help him with the 'bleeding' will raise a smile for some time yet.

Should I be showing more solidarity for my fellow blogger? Should I not show sympathy for someone unfairly struck down? After all, according to the self-publicist, 'violence is never the answer.'

Except, of course, if the question is: "What word beginning with V describes the sort of act of aggression that is the correct response to dealing with whining, self-important, duplicitous gossip queens without talent when they accost you at a music awards ceremony in Canada?"

Let me be clearer still: 'Perez Hilton' is the bleeding edge of all that's wrong in the modern media. He inhabits the nexus where the internet, web 2.0 and social networking intersect with reportage and old media.

You'd hope for better from such an intersection - a democratisation of information, perhaps. A gripping real-time account of revolutions, such as we thought, for a second, we were going to get in Iran (until we all realised that the protests are a CIA funded activity.)

Instead we get this poison - 'Perez Hilton' breathlessly puffing other pointless inanities, but most of all himself. It upsets me that people care enough about such vacuous irrelevances to keep 'Perez' thinking that he's important.

So that's why I'm delighted today to see that he's cupping his eye and crying for teacher, just like the mouthy, bitchy little wanker in the playground who thinks he's fantastic being full of cheek to all the other kids until eventually someone stops him with a fist.

Because it seems to me that 'Perez' is still living in the playground. A dose of playground morality, therefore, doesn't seem amiss.

Old Europe grows a set of balls

And about time too. German prosecutors have issued arrest warrants for the CIA spooks who kidnapped a German man and took him to be tortured in Afghanistan.

Mr Masri, right, is German of Lebanese descent. He was kidnapped by the CIA while living in the Macedonian capital, Skopje, on New Year's Eve, 2003.

Happy new year, waking up in Kabul about to be tortured by America's proxy medieval inquisitors, I don't think.

Obviously Mr Masri wants compensation for being flown across the planet with a bag over his head and being subsequently tortured for no good or legal reason.

Italian prosecutors are also about to indict CIA operatives and Italian nationals for arranging and carrying out a kidnapping on Italian soil.

The whole world knows that America is kidnapping people at will in any country they choose and taking them to remote parts of the world, beyond media scrutiny, to be tortured. All in the name of the war on terror.

In fact, this is the war OF terror. Remember Paster Niemoller's famous statement about the climate in Germany during the Thirties:

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

Will you demand that your Government stop being complicit in kidnap and torture and start prosecuting US agents and troops that kidnap, torture or transport kidnap and torture victims through your country? Will you do it before the CIA start kidnapping you, or your family or your friends or neighbours?

Germany is remembering that it is a sovereign nation that upholds the rule of law. So is Italy. When will Ireland and Britain remember they are not the 51st and 52nd states, and begin to insist on inspecting the shady planes full of spooks that come in the night to refuel at Shannon and Prestwick?

If your Government won't listen to you when you ask them to stop supporting kidnap and torture, then it's time to get rid of them. Their hands are as equally covered in blood. Tell your local political representatives that. And keep telling them until you can remove them from office or until they decide that human rights and the rule of law are worth respecting again.

Idiots rule

Like the song goes, idiots rule. But for them to rule, then a large proportion of the rest of us have to follow. Which makes us the even bigger idiots. How does this work? Let's examine a few current examples:

1. China expects to be short by about 30 million marriageable women by 2020. This one's not rocket science. They couldn't have seen it coming?

Okay, so first the Government tells you to stop breeding under pain of death and prescribes stringent laws punishing people for having more than one child. What to do? Overthrow your mad-as-a-brush government is what.

Don't listen to the idiots - if you do, you end up killing your girl children and your sole son will have no one to marry when he grows up, which he will have to do entirely surrounded by other lads, which will probably make him gay.

2. A thousand Poles have applied to join the PSNI. Again, when you throw the doors open for half of Eastern Europe to come in, sooner or later those people are going to want the nice public sector sinecure jobs instead of the nasty meat-packing ones. This one could have been predicted.

But again, idiots rule. Why? Well, primarily because such is the endemic xenophobia in Northern Ireland that Polish officers could expect plenty of trouble everywhere they go.

Also because there does not appear to be sufficient vetting of the candidates, and because even Poles with police experience back East are unlikely to be suitable due to the fact that up until not very long ago their police were psychos suppressing the people.

Not unlike the PSNI, you say? Fair enough. As you were, gentlemen.

Don't listen to the idiots who reckon you deserve a yellow-pack police service, people. My suggestion? When PC Pawel comes knocking on the door, conduct your conversation in Irish or Ulster-Scots. If he arrests you, appeal to Nuala O'Loan. You'll get off, you'll get millions in compensation and Pawel will be deported.

3. Also, little Albania has shown up the rest of us so-called civilised countries by taking in as refugees those people who, after five years (Happy Birthday, Gitmo!) of incarceration by the US in Guantanamo Bay, have been proved innocent but are unable to return to their homelands for fear of death.

America is sending these people to Albania because, of course, it fears for their safety and is concerned about human rights in their countries of origin, which include Uzbekistan, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

According to the US State Department's deputy director for War Crimes (yes, they really have such a role in Government, and no, she isn't pursuing George W!), one Sandy Hodgkinson, "The US position is clear."

Tell us what that position is please, Sandy?

"We will not send individuals to places where we believe it is more than likely they will be tortured," she says. So that's nice and clear. Except for one thing: The US sent them to be tortured BEFORE they got to Gitmo, and the entire time they were held against all international law and human rights IN Gitmo.

Among the places, Gitmo incarcerents were sent to be tortured by the CIA are Uzbekistan and Egypt, ironically enough. So why the sudden crisis of conscience when letting them out?

Yes, idiots rule alright. Don't listen to the idiots who tell you they're concerned about torture and human rights while they're simultaneously practising torture and ignoring human rights. Their double-think permits them to rule you despite their being idiots.

Criticising my authority is CLASSIFIED!

And the Big Brother state creeps ever closer in America.

The latest move in the war on liberty is Georgie Boy's attempt to declare criticism of his policies in Iraq as classified material.

When a former CIA analyst, who was once a senior member of Bush's administration and a director of the US national security council, attempted to let Dubya know he'd repeatedly ballsed up chances to get along with Iran, his report was declared top secret and the White House threatened to sue him if he went public.

However, being former CIA, Mr Flynt Leverett (devastating spy name he has too, don't you think?) had already cleared his report with them and knew it wasn't classified in the slightest. So Georgie's boys were spoofing. Again.

Perhaps he'll seek to sue the Pentagon next, after their own latest report revealed that the American occupation in Iraq is going to hell in a handbasket.