Hellraiser

09 Feb 2009 - Chinese New Year.
The Mandarin Hotel caught fire two months before completion after some unauthorised fireworks were carried on by the next-door Central Chinese TV headquarters (huge weird shaped cubic building on the picture).
Some fireworks landed on the roof of the hotel and the fire enfulfed the whole building in less than 15 minutes. As the fire spread, the authority tried to apply censorship but it didn't stop foreigners and locals from recording footages and taking pictures.
The whole affair became a running joke as "The CCTV caused the major event of the year and failed to cover it!"

No matter how pink they want it to look like, blue still draws to dark..

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: David Cameron's message is that Muslims are not wanted


Muslims and migrants are being used to distract people from the planned chaos implemented by this unpopular coalition. It is politicking of the worst kind

The Indenpendent – Monday, 7 Feb 20011

Not many dawns have passed since the sparky Tory chairwoman Sayeeda Warsi spoke up about the "dinner table" libelling of all Muslims, now routine, normalised, unremarkable, intimate, uncontested. I see and hear it, too – prejudices passed around with the balsamic vinegar or ketchup. Some Muslims deserve castigation and worse for the terrible things they do. I frequently denounce them in my columns. But sweeping, indiscriminate execration of any collective is abhorrent and must be confronted. Warsi did that, knowing her words would infuriate right-wing Tories who can't stand the brown little upstart.

Now, how will she react to her leader, who has amplified the small talk of bigotry and boomed it through a megaphone, perhaps to slap her down? I found Cameron's speech in Munich indefensible even though I completely agree with some observations and policy ideas. We discussed these two years back when we met in his office for over an hour. Self-exclusion, special pleading, women's rights, community oppression, anti-democratic attitudes, terrorism, the spread of Wahhabi Islam are serious problems and growing. Laissez-faire multicultural policies do not serve our times. State institutions should fund shared spaces, crossover ideas, openness and modernity. Many of us Muslims would be with David Cameron if his speech hadn't shown him to be selective, hypocritical, calculating, woefully indifferent to Muslim victims of relentless racism and chauvinism. He was speaking the words of white extremists but in posh. There was so much that was objectionable – where he spoke, what he said, the timing, the purposes loitering behind the fine façade of his personality.

By speaking out in Munich he allied himself with the ghastly Angela Merkel who delivered a similarly provocative sermon last autumn. Racism is rife in both countries; in both nations, millions of their own natives rigidly hold on to their languages and cultures. Think of those Germans who go abroad on holiday and stay in walled-off camps where only German is spoken. Countless Britons are similarly against integration with the people of unfamiliar countries they visit or migrate to. I would rather have my tongue chopped off than lose my mellifluous home languages. To learn and love English shouldn't mean the destruction of world languages, most of which we are lucky enough to have on our isles.

Remember the PM was at an international security council when he let rip – an outrage. Diversity is one of our greatest assets, an antidote to militancy not its cause. A new study by the Runnymede Trust in Birmingham shows young citizens are more bonded and at ease with difference than their elders in that multifarious city. As the speech progressed, you realised that Cameron's problem isn't cultural difference. It's the people whom marauding Christian Crusaders called "curs", wretched Mohammedans. Cameron isn't troubled by Hassidic enclaves, Orthodox Jewish dress codes, or their religiously sanctioned gender inequality and stubborn self-removal from mainstream societies. I have been rebuffed by a veiled Muslim woman and a Hassidic Jewish one when I tried to talk to their children. And the other day a young white mum told her daughter to come away from me, the "Paki". Moreover, those who only want to live with their own in white heartlands are thought to be no threat to integration – they are only doing what comes naturally. Little official concern is expressed about crimes committed by various non-Muslim ethnic groups against each other, against Muslims or white Britons. Even more disgracefully, Tories ignore racists who terrorise people of colour. How unfair is that?

Our PM, in effect, identified himself with the abominable English Defence League when he spoke up a day before the league marched through Luton shouting abuse. Are these the laudable British values we must embrace? Hot-headed Muslims will be even more convinced they are not wanted in the land of their birth.

The next charge: hypocrisy. This Government is enthusiastically funding schools for separatists – from snooty white middle-classes, to pedantic, purist Hindus, nutty, evangelical Christians, and introverted, uncompromising Muslims. How does that foster integration? Michael Gove has just been accused by Bradford City Council of encouraging segregation by funding a new free school started up by Ayub Ismail, who wants to ensure his pupils are not "absorbed into the dominant culture". Saudis are allowed by our Government to brainwash Muslims who are then despised. The Tory party's right and left buttocks move in different directions. Not clever nor consistent with the PM's Big Message of the week.

So why is he doing it? When politicians are in trouble they pick on "outsiders", put them into stocks so the people can turn on them and relieve their feelings of frustration. Andrew Lansley, now in charge of health, said shamelessly in 1995 that they were using the anti-immigration card because it played well with voters. Recently he blamed migrants for a rise in TB in Britain, a link that used healthcare concerns to whip up xenophobic panic. Cameron himself designed the disgraceful anti-refugee campaign for Michael Howard in 2005.

The German Marshall Fund has just published a comparative survey of attitudes to migrants in Western countries. Britons, noted The Economist, are shown up as a "mean-minded lot" – negative, hostile, paranoid. I don't believe that is the full picture. Britain is also uniquely receptive – which is why so many of us would not live elsewhere. But it is going through a seriously bad mood and Cameron is exploiting that.

I accept our citizens are unnerved by those British Muslims who make endless demands, are full of wrath and murderous plans, or choose ghettoisation. However, the widespread national unhappiness is created by policies pushed through by this Government. Muslims and migrants are being used to distract people from the planned chaos implemented by this unpopular coalition. It is politicking of the worst kind. Which is why it must be opposed vehemently. As the daughter of a survivor said to me at the Holocaust Memorial Day in January: "We Jews must look to our failings and crimes. But when outsiders try to use that for their devilish reasons, we know where we must stand." Me too.

Pictures from the World



A woman walks at a mass grave site at Titanyen, on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, Haiti.



And the winner is...

Mrs Clinton for this comment after Khodorkosky's case outcome:

"Today's conviction ... raises serious questions about selective prosecution – and about the rule of law being overshadowed by political considerations," said the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. "This and similar cases have a negative impact on Russia's reputation for fulfilling its international human rights obligations."

I don't know if Mrs Clinton has but reading the Wikileaks cables and the recent development in Assange case show that the US are nowhere near a good place to judge other countries' reputation, political considerations and human rights oligations!

Well done, though, for winning the most self-righteous, hypocritcial comment of the year! What an achievement!

So, England lost the World Cup...again!

    I feel like reading the press in France after we lost the Olympic Games to London. That was exactly the same story of being “betrayed”, “stabbed in the back” by people who promised their votes and ended up voting for London. We had countless analysis by every journalist telling, showing us, proving us what a bunch of irrelevant, plutocrats they all were after France run a whole dossier and campaign saying we deserved the Olympic Games because we hadn’t had them for decades, that even if the Games are Greek, it’s a French man who brought them back to life. The arguments were that Paris was the most beautiful, welcoming, ready, prepared cities among all the ones in competition. That France was the most touristic country in the world so it would be anyone’s favourite place to go to for the Olympic Games: to compete or to attend.

    All based on bovine, down-looking on everyone else arrogance! And that’s exactly what England did. Yes, they are all plutocratic Popes whose only concern is to enjoy finally getting a grip of power, looking down on everyone else and make more money. But nothing much different from the ones who are running the FA, openly despising every other league in the world and whose only motivation is to find new ways to conquer new markets in Asia, for instance. Remember the Premier League match abroad from Scudamore who is now lecturing the FIFA?

    But I can’t believe the extends of insanity England reached to get votes: presents, free seats at the Olympic Games, free hotel rooms, free diners, free lunches…“Here’s the Queen's knicker drawers. Take whatever you want, it’s all yours!”…England went beneath itself, bending backwards, grovelling and battling eyelashes, sending David Beckham thinking the FIFA board would fall for him, his PR smile, dyed hair, scruffy looks like any other teenage girls and boys. And Prince William was very useful…very useful for the papers to say “How dare they lie to a prince?” Well England sent him there so he can kiss their bottom so I don’t think them supposedly lying (we don’t even know if it’s true) is the problem here.

    England’s naivety and desperation is beyond pathetic. At no point, England looked at themselves asking any question! No we’re still saying we were the best and we deserved it because all the others were crap!  It’s like looking at a 5 year-old throwing a tantrum because he was at one point promised (so HE says!) a biscuit but ended with nothing because another got it.

    Sorry, we are blaming the BBC for having good, truthful journalists who did a brilliant and necessary job of investigation but dared exposing the reality of FIFA. Realities the England Bid Team were happy to ignore.

Morning sickness

 

I had to wake up with that!

The Guardian will pay for this...

The good, the bad and the ugly.

    Sorry for the lack of posting. I have been horrendously busy with studying for my PGCE. I gather and gather but never go further than storing in my "Blog" file. Moreover the Internet where I live in London is crap at the moment. Hopefully, we'll get Virgin very soon and, fingers crossed, I won't need 30 minutes to read just an e-mail anymore.

    So here are a few posts. The good, the bad and the ugly. I left a lot of things out. Especially a whole feature on Stephen Ireland who's probably the most vulgar, bling bling nouveau riche I have ever seen in the history of the no-world!

    The likes who has aquariums made of cristal, huge Land Rovers with customised golden plates and pink bumbers, velvet pink and grey cushions in a big bedroom where his wife's Chihuahua is sleeping.

    Yes he's a footballer. Yes, he plays for Manchester City. Yes, he shaves his head and looks like a cock! How did you guess?

Joan Smith: Hague's problem is sense, not sexuality

Rumours about the Foreign Secretary's love life have circulated for years, but it is using Ffion to prop up his story that is shocking


The Independent - Sunday, 5 September 2010

First, a little history: in 1999, a Conservative MP called Shaun Woodward was one of the party's frontbench spokesmen. When his leader, William Hague, committed the Tories to opposing the abolition of Section 28 of the 1988 Local Government Act – a notorious piece of legislation which outlawed the "promotion of homosexuality" – Woodward refused to toe the line. Hague sacked him and Woodward defected to Labour, where he enjoyed a meteoric rise and later became a cabinet minister.

Hague was unrepentant and a few weeks later he chose the Daily Mail, the traditional defender of "family values", to underline his support for Section 28. "It prevents, mainly through deterrence, public authorities from engaging in the sort of inappropriate activity that resulted in such public disquiet in the 1980s," he wrote early in 2000. When the Labour government finally got round to repealing Section 28 in 2003, Hague (no longer Tory leader) voted to keep it.

While there are grounds for thinking that Hague is conflicted, if not confused, on the issue of gay rights his extraordinary behaviour last week, when he issued a detailed statement about his marriage in an attempt to quash rumours that he has had gay relationships, suggests he is also confused about the boundaries between public and private life.

Hague is now a cabinet minister, occupying the grand suite of offices in King Charles Street, London SW1, from which the Foreign Secretary presides over Britain's relations with the rest of the world. It's hardly as though he starts each morning with an empty diary, but four days ago one of the top items on his agenda was the delicate matter of his wife's gynaecological history.

In a spectacularly misguided attempt to counter rumours about his sexual orientation, Hague revealed that he and his wife Ffion (they married in 1997) have been trying to have children and she has suffered a series of miscarriages. One consequence was a rash of features about the misery caused by miscarriage, but the dominant reaction was bewilderment and a degree of distaste.

If Hague was, as it appeared, using intimate details of his marriage to "prove" that he wasn't gay, it didn't seem to have occurred to him that many gay men get married and have children, a circumstance confirmed last weekend by an announcement from Crispin Blunt, a ministerial colleague. The Tory MP and prisons minister announced that he had separated from his wife of 20 years, with whom he has two children, and decided to "come to terms" with his homosexuality.

Clearly, a couple's reproductive history is not definitive proof of heterosexuality, which makes Hague's decision to expose himself and his wife in this way all the more perplexing. The Conservative Party is supposed to be more tolerant and sophisticated about sexual matters than it has been in the past, a shift signalled by David Cameron's public apology last year for his party's support for Section 28.

Would it matter a jot if Hague were gay, or indeed bisexual, given that there are increasing numbers of self-identified gay MPs and ministers at Westminster? This isn't 1984, when the decision of Labour's Chris Smith to come out as the country's first openly gay MP was rightly seen as brave and ground-breaking.

In that sense, it's hard not to see the Foreign Secretary's problems as largely of his own making. Rumours about Hague's sexuality have circulated at Westminster for years, and if he was troubled by them, it was hardly sensible to share hotel rooms during the general election campaign with a handsome young aide, Chris Myers.

It was even less sensible to appoint the same young man – he is only 25, and does not have obvious qualifications for the job – to a coveted post as one of his special advisers. Last week, Myers resigned, leaving Hague to observe testily during a press conference with the German foreign minister that his former aide was "fed up with the political world – and who can blame him?"

It wasn't the only occasion in the past few days when Hague appeared not to understand how he had got himself, his wife and Myers into this unhappy situation. At the heart of the matter isn't so much a question about his sexuality – he denies being gay and no one has to date produced any evidence to the contrary – but his inconsistent attitude to homosexuality. During his campaign to become leader of the Tory party, Hague unexpectedly supported the idea of gay marriage, and in his Daily Mail article a decade ago, he said he believed that the age of consent for gay people should be 16.

But in the very same article, he made it clear that he would impose a three-line whip on Tory MPs to ensure that they supported the homophobic Section 28. The gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell was sufficiently incensed to reveal that Hague had responded to a letter from the pressure group OutRage! and "refused to support gay equality" on a whole series of issues.

Hague is described on websites as voting "moderately" against equal rights for gay people. Some of his remarks last week – he described the rumours about himself and Myers as "malicious" and denied that he'd ever had an "improper" relationship with a man – suggest that his personal views on homosexuality are out of step in a world where gay couples are able to celebrate civil partnerships. When the rumours about him were at their height, he had the option of facing them down, limiting himself to an unequivocal denial and getting on with his job. Instead, he added fuel to the bonfire with a tasteless and defensive overreaction.

These days, most of us don't mind whether politicians are gay or straight, but an incontestable fact has emerged from the most catastrophic attempt at damage limitation that British politics has seen for many a year. Now we know that the person who cares most passionately about the Foreign Secretary's sexual orientation is none other than William Hague.

I just love Marina Hyde!

Gold-plated failure gives England no escape from the boo-boys


The fate of the Frank Lampard iPod proves that the country has still not forgiven the national team

Marina Hyde - The Guardian, 05.08.2010

Absorb enough tabloidese and eventually it owns your neurons. A friend recently recalled a conversation he'd once had with a former Republic of Ireland international about an awkward spell at one club. Without a shred of sarcasm, the player had reflected: "I suppose I became a target for the boo-boys." It is sadly not on record whether the chap in question described himself routinely as "wantaway", or used the styling canoodle in favour of kiss.

But our business today is with the aforementioned boo-boys, whom many expect to be out in force next week when England meet Hungary at Wembley in a friendly. Indeed, England will have to hope that the Hungary players are very friendly, as the diminished crowd is rather less likely to recreate the atmosphere of a convivial afternoon in Central Perk for the disappointed World Cup squad. Or "misfiring millionaires", if you prefer the technical term.

The FA is so worried about the possible reception that it has issued a statement apparently drafted by a marriage-guidance counsellor, declaring: "We accept it is going to take time to rebuild the trust with the fans."

And yet, does it? The thing about the England of recent years is that even when you think you have seen it all, they always find a way of disappointing you further. Only days ago, the sheer scale of the trust-building task was once again underscored by the tale of the gold-plated Frank Lampard iPods. Have you heard this one? Let me summarise: 5,000 gold-plated iPods bearing Frank Lampard's lasered signature are to be melted down after demand for the £599 product failed to materialise in the wake of the World Cup. Do take a moment to digest those details.

Writing in this space before the tournament, I recalled all those dementedly self-regarding autobiographies that followed the 2006 World Cup tournament, of which Frank's was such a standout example. Yet at no stage, not even in my most grimly cynical moments, did I suspect that the once-bitten Frank was at that very moment lending his lasered imprimatur to something that even in a crowded marketplace would manage to redefine early 21st century tosserage.

If you had to distil the very essence of hubris into a single product, you would surely be left with a gold-plated Frank Lampard iPod. The fact that the brainwave was created in association with a firm backed on Dragon's Den merely crystallises the cloth-brained, soul-sapping nullity of the age in which we are doomed to live.

Oddly, though, that isn't the slogan the manufacturers have gone for. "We may have over-ordered due to World Cup hopes," trills a company spokesman, "but that's no reflection on Frank's popularity."

I think you'll find it is, dear. But it's also a reflection on so much more than that, not least the ongoing commitment by Premier League megastars to live their commercial lives as such obvious parables of pride before a fall that a child of six could understand them.

And so it is that the gold from the remaindered Lampard iPods is to be recovered and melted down to make Hello Kitty ones (genuinely). While the literary stars of 2006 might have shrugged off their journey to the bargain bin, there are few more sledgehammer metaphors for failure than having to be literally melted down. It happens at Madame Tussauds, where waxen celebrities deemed to be passé are stripped for parts to create more vogueish stars. Terry Wogan claims to have been melted down to make Ant and Dec (A colleague doing an article about the museum once saw Richard Branson's head in a sink, though that might have just been for maintenance).

I should point out that in the event of the Lampard iPods selling like hot cakes, Frank's agent claims he was to donate royalties to charity. But that event clearly didn't come to pass. As things stand, Lampard is arguably the world's worst alchemist, his influence contriving to turn actual gold into worthless tat.

He is also emblematic of the FA's difficulties in heading off the so-called boo-boys. The "Club England" senior executives can insist all they like that the players aren't arrogant and that they do care – and I suspect they are mostly right, and that some complex psychological meltdown befalls perfectly decent footballers whenever they don the England shirt. But when even the man who is always so flatteringly assumed to be the cleverest among them is bunging his signature on gold-plated iPods, why on earth should England's dwindling band of paying customers be expected to make the distinction?

Worth it?

The Times is going behind the scenes on the set of Prince of Persia.

The only good reason to do that would be to lurk behind the shower curtains in Jake's trailer. Otherwise...

Cesspit from Heaven.

This morning is the press:

"Bishop 'blames Jews' for criticism of Catholic church record on abuse"

So Catholic priests from all over the world are raping little children, the Vatican is covering it and refuse to act on it...and amazingly they found another way to blame the Jews!

My, they never change, do they?

The US hide it, we have to forward it.

I'm starting to become what I loathe in people. I'm starting to draw this pathological hatered of the US and I hate that even more because it's something I don't seem to have any control on.

Sure I like some part of it but it's always linked to open-minded sitcoms or music or basically just art which is probably the part of their identity they undervalue the most.

I've come to hate them without my brain but with my heart but it's dangerous but the heart is something you can't control whatsoever.

I hate them because of things like that. Every major power do the same but I think the US insufferable righteousness and ever moralising speech makes it even worse!

Wikileaks reveals video showing US air crew shooting down Iraqi civilians

Footage of July 2007 attack made public as Pentagon identifies website as threat to national security

• Chris McGreal in Washington
• guardian.co.uk, Monday 5 April 2010 20.52 BST
• Article history

A secret video showing US air crew falsely claiming to have encountered a firefight in Baghdad and then laughing at the dead after launching an air strike that killed a dozen people, including two Iraqis working for Reuters news agency, was revealed by Wikileaks today.

The footage of the July 2007 attack was made public in a move that will further anger the Pentagon, which has drawn up a report identifying the whistleblower website as a threat to national security. The US defence department was embarrassed when that confidential report appeared on the Wikileaks site last month alongside a slew of military documents.

The release of the video from Baghdad also comes shortly after the US military admitted that its special forces attempted to cover up the killings of three Afghan women in a raid in February by digging the bullets out of their bodies.

The newly released video of the Baghdad attacks was recorded on one of two Apache helicopters hunting for insurgents on 12 July 2007. Among the dead were a 22-year-old Reuters photographer, Namir Noor-Eldeen, and his driver, Saeed Chmagh, 40. The Pentagon blocked an attempt by Reuters to obtain the video through a freedom of information request. Wikileaks director Julian Assange said his organisation had to break through encryption by the military to view it.

In the recording, the helicopter crews can be heard discussing the scene on the street below. One American claims to have spotted six people with AK-47s and one with a rocket-propelled grenade. It is unclear if some of the men are armed but Noor-Eldeen can be seen with a camera. Chmagh is talking on his mobile phone.

One of the helicopter crew is then heard saying that one of the group is shooting. But the video shows there is no shooting or even pointing of weapons. The men are standing around, apparently unperturbed.

The lead helicopter, using the moniker Crazyhorse, opens fire. "Hahaha. I hit 'em," shouts one of the American crew. Another responds a little later: "Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards."

One of the men on the ground, believed to be Chmagh, is seen wounded and trying to crawl to safety. One of the helicopter crew is heard wishing for the man to reach for a gun, even though there is none visible nearby, so he has the pretext for opening fire: "All you gotta do is pick up a weapon." A van draws up next to the wounded man and Iraqis climb out. They are unarmed and start to carry the victim to the vehicle in what would appear to be an attempt to get him to hospital. One of the helicopters opens fire with armour-piercing shells. "Look at that. Right through the windshield," says one of the crew. Another responds with a laugh.

Sitting behind the windscreen were two children who were wounded.

After ground forces arrive and the children are discovered, the American air crew blame the Iraqis. "Well it's their fault for bringing kids in to a battle," says one. "That's right," says another.

Initially the US military said that all the dead were insurgents. Then it claimed the helicopters reacted to an active firefight. Assange said that the video demonstrated that neither claim was true.

"Why would anyone be so relaxed with two Apaches if someone was carrying an RPG and that person was an enemy of the United States?" he said. "The behaviour of the pilots is like a computer game. When Saeed is crawling, clearly unable to do anything, their response is: come on buddy, we want to kill you, just pick up a weapon ... It appears to be a desire to get a higher score, or a higher number of kills."

Wikileaks says it will shortly release a second secret US military video showing the deaths of civilians in an attack in Afghanistan. The Pentagon has been seeking ways to prevent classified material appearing on Wikileaks, including through "criminal sanctions". Wikileaks has made public classified US army reports on weapons, military units and battle strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Pentagon report, reflecting the depth of paranoia about where Wikileaks is obtaining its material, speculates that the CIA may be responsible. But perhaps most embarrassing leak for the US defence department was that of the 2008 report itself which appeared on the Wikileaks site last month.

You don't believe it? Here's the video!



I know it's unspeakable. It's the US. It's Liberty for Iraquis just like it was Liberty for Vietnamese...

This comes from http://wikileaks.org/

Yes, for once my gaydar was right!

It was back in August 2008, I did a whole entry about that. In French, at that time, so it wasn’t for everyone: Ricky High-Time-For-A-Coming-Out-Martin

I basically said that I thought it was very strange that Ricky Martin, a 38 yo outstandingly handsome, gorgeous, rich, famous and successful man doesn’t have a wife or a girlfriend or even an ex somewhere and has to call for a surrogate mother to have children. Then there were his looks but with all the “metrosexual” today, we never know. Look at Beckham or Ronaldo, all dressed up, more made up and acting gayer than us fairies!

And today, from the Guardian, so not some bloody tabloids!

Ricky Martin announces he is gay

Martin, who has previously dodged questions about his sexual orientation, finally ended years of speculation with a post on his website

James Meikle

Singer Ricky Martin has ended years of speculation about his sexuality by declaring himself "a fortunate homosexual man".

Martin, who has previously dodged questions about his sexual orientation, finally came out on his website, saying the birth of his two sons and writing his memoirs had led to his decision.

Writing in both English and Spanish, the Puerto Rico-born singer, who has sold more than 60 million albums worldwide, said: "To keep living as I did up until today would be to indirectly diminish the glow that my kids where (sic) born with."

The 38-year-old crossover star, whose biggest worldwide hit was Livin' la Vida Loca, said: "Many people told me: 'Ricky it's not important', 'it's not worth it', 'all the years you've worked and everything you've built will collapse', 'many people in the world are not ready to accept your truth, your reality, your nature'.

"Because all this advice came from people who I love dearly, I decided to move on with my life not sharing with the world my entire truth. Allowing myself to be seduced by fear and insecurity became a self-fulfilling prophecy of sabotage. Today I take full responsibility for my decisions and my actions."

Martin, whose sons were born to a surrogate mother in 2008, said he knew writing his as-yet unpublished memoirs was going to help free him from things that "were too heavy for me to keep inside ... Enough is enough. This has to change. This was not supposed to happen 5 or 10 years ago, it is supposed to happen now. Today is my day, this is my time, and this is my moment.

"These years in silence and reflection made me stronger and reminded me that acceptance has to come from within and that this kind of truth gives me the power to conquer emotions I didn't even know existed.

"What will happen from now on? It doesn't matter. I can only focus on what's happening to me in this moment. The word "happiness" takes on a new meaning for me as of today. It has been a very intense process.

"Every word that I write in this letter is born out of love, acceptance, detachment and real contentment. Writing this is a solid step towards my inner peace and vital part of my evolution.

"I am proud to say that I am a fortunate homosexual man. I am very blessed to be who I am."

Martin, who rose to fame with Latin boy band Menudo, became a solo artist in 1990. In 1994 he played a bartender and singer in the US TV soap General Hospital. He later starred on Broadway and started his own foundation to fight child-trafficking and protect children's rights.

I don't know why but I'm so happy he's come out! ^^

Love + conservatism = bollocks!

Joan Smith: Tories are romantic about marriage – and wrong

Sunday, 3 January 2010 - The Independent

The Tories are a bunch of hopeless romantics. They want us to get married and stay married, a message that might seem a little ill-timed as we emerge from ten days in close proximity to our loved ones.

Both main parties want more support for fathers, which is no bad thing, but the headline-grabbing bit of the Tories' agenda is tax advantages for married couples. Labour can't go down that route, but ministers have started saying they need to refocus policy on families rather than single mothers and children.

I wouldn't mind this if the debate had more connection with reality. What the Conservatives denounce as Britain's "broken society" applies to a minority of the population, and it's actually a series of interconnected problems which won't be solved by persuading everyone to get hitched.

First and foremost is the fact that too many teenage girls get pregnant, exposing themselves to a life of emotional instability and serial relationships. I don't want these girls to get married; I'd like them to be freed from the pressure to have sex too young, which can be achieved through compulsory sex education in schools. That's what the Government is proposing for older teenagers, acknowledging that many parents aren't equipped to do it, but it's prompted hysterical opposition from "pro-family" and religious pressure groups.

The Tories have bolted themselves to a lost cause – keeping sex within marriage – when most people no longer live like that. David Willetts, who speaks on family policy for the Conservatives, is worried that marriage is becoming the preserve of the educated middle class; the number of marriages has reached a historic low of 270,000 compared with almost half a million in 1972. But what that statistic means is another matter altogether.

The Tories are fond of quoting figures which suggest that married parents are more likely to stay together, but that may just say something about the kind of people who get married. Maybe they're more conventional or more affluent, but the notion of privileging them through the tax system is morally indefensible. If marriage is such a great institution, why do couples need to be bribed to enter it? Should those who leave a violent marriage really lose money? When the Home Office suggests that one woman in four will be a victim of domestic violence, this is not merely a theoretical question.

When politicians think about the family they mix up two issues: adult relationships and bringing up children. I'm keen on stable environments for adults and children but most of us are going to have two or three significant relationships in our longer lifetimes. In that sense, lifelong marriage is way past its sell-by date, creating unrealistic expectations which leave couples unprepared when they decide to split. What they need isn't tax breaks to stay married; it's practical advice on how to remain co-parents when the intimate and sexual aspects of their relationship are over.

Labour should have more to offer on this than the Conservatives, given that several members of the present Cabinet have chosen unconventional domestic arrangements.

Instead of allowing the Tories to make the running on family policy, ministers should build on one of the outstanding successes of Labour's period in office by extending civil partnerships to heterosexual couples. It's a reform that would be simple, progressive and popular – and which would expose the Tories' pointless nostalgia for the family of the 1950s.

To the great speech, I shall be grateful

Ireland has just voted a law punishing the crime of blasphemy that states that one can say anything that would target religion in any of its form. Hello again, the Inquisition!

Atheist Ireland (my new best friends) delibrately published blasphemeous quotes from famous people. Here's my favourite so far:

Richard Dawkins:

"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."

Eventually, I'll do something about the God of Christians, what a lovely person he is indeed just quoting what's been said, not in the Bible, but arround us everyday.

Quand on n'a rien à dire, on ferme sa gueule!

Ce matin, France Inter. Reportage à la 24h chrono/Urgences sur un fait totalement sans interêt: un fan de Toulouse s'est fait aggresser à Belgrade.

Beaucoup de mots biens longs et angoissants qui font professionel pour décrire comment va le mec: traumatisme cranien, aggravation de l'état de santé générale, angine de poitrine avec complication thrombotique et risque de fibrilation intraventriculaire, encéphalite méningitique façon myopatie de Duchêne...amanite phaloïde anticonstitutionnelle, enfin des trucs comme ça.

Et en ouverture une déclaration du minis...enfin de Rama Yade qui a dit: "Je condamne la violence dans le sport".

Rama Yade est le genre de minis...enfin de figure politique qui a chaque fois qu'il se passe quelque chose a des déclarations toutes prêtes et totalement sans interêt dont elle change un ou deux mots en fonction des situations.

Donc un fan aggressé à Belgrade. Déjà, ils en parlent comme si le mec s'était fait aggresser dans un quartier chic: "Quelle surprise!" Enfin c'est Belgrade, connards! Et le mec est un fan de football donc je ne pense pas qu'il se prelassait gentiment sans un mot avec un bouquin de Sartre dans un café huppé du quartiers des ambassades.

Alors "un fan de sport aggressé à Belgrade". On ne sais pas si le "fan de Toulouse" fut déterminant dans l'histoire mais Rama Yade condamne la violence dans le sport.

Demain, 10 autres femmes vont mourrir sous les coups de leur mari et quand les médias arrêteront de faire l'impasse dessus, Rama Yade viendra condamner la violence dans le couple.

A la fin de l'année, le bilan des morts sur la route en France depassera encore les 5000 et Rama Yade viendra condamner la violence sur la route.

Une mémé se fait arracher son sac à main, une du journal de TF1 avec interview du boucher, du facteur, de l'épicier arabe (avec sous-titres bien qu'il parle parfaitement français) et du patron de bar/tabac avec toutes les cigarettes bien en vue derrière...Et Rama Yade condamne la violence dans la rue.

Un lion attaque une gazelle et Rama Yade condamne la violence dans la savane africaine.

C'est inutile, c'est creux, ça ne sert à rien, ça ne change rien mais ça fait parler de soi.

Et en France, les journalistes sont très contents, ils ont leur citation d'entrée. Pas de commentaire, pas d'interview poussée pour savoir ce qu'elle compte faire de concret car ils sont trop occupés à feuilleter le Dictionnaire de la Médecine afin de mettre plus de suspens dans leurs reportages débiles.

Bienvenue à Cuba.

For those who don't speak French: what happened basically is our president went to visit some hardworking people in a factory.
But everytime he went the last times, the 'hardworking workers' welcomed him with shovels, rotten fruits and criticism (how dare they?!). Then he did what he always does and called them "fuckers!" in front of the tely.

So this time, France became Cuba/China/North Korea and all the potential opposants were removed from their machines and kept away from the factory before the President arrive. And replaced by other workers from other factories (all volunteers) and very important: They must NOT be taller than the President for the speech he did after they all subimissively greeted the Almighty Dictator with smiles and praises so everyone can see how loved and appreciated the Dictator is.

I said dictator?! Sorry I mean President. After all that's also how the head of state's called in China...

Washington can never seem to understand...

Robert Fisk: Democracy will not bring freedom

The Independent - Friday, 21 August

So they voted. But for what? Democracy? Certainly not "Jeffersonian" democracy, as President Obama reminded us. Yes, the Afghans wanted to vote. They showed great courage in the face of the Taliban's threats. But there's a problem.

It's not just the stitched-up Karzai administration that will almost certainly return, nor the war criminals he employs (Abdul Rashid Dostum should be in the dock at The Hague for war crimes, not in Kabul), nor the corruption and the hideous human rights abuses, but the unassailable fact that ethnically-divided societies vote on ethnic lines.

I doubt if anyone in Afghanistan voted yesterday because of the policies of their favourite candidate. They voted for whoever their ethnic leaders told them to vote for. Hence Karzai asked Dostum to deliver him the Uzbek vote. Abdullah Abdullah relies on the Tajik vote, Karzai on the Pashtuns.

It's always the same. In Iraq, the Shia voted in a Shia government. And in Lebanon, Sunni Muslims and a large section of the Christian community voted to keep the Shia out of power. This is not confined to the Muslim world. How many Northern Ireland Protestants vote for Sinn Fein?

But our problem in Afghanistan goes further than this. We still think we can offer Afghans the fruits of our all-so-perfect Western society. We still believe in the Age of Enlightenment and that all we have to do is fiddle with Afghan laws and leave behind us a democratic, gender-equal, human rights-filled society.

True, there are brave souls who fight for this in Afghanistan – and pay for their struggle with their lives – but if you walk into a remote village in, say, Nangarhar province, you can no more persuade its tribal elders of the benefits of women's education than you could persuade Henry VIII of the benefits of parliamentary democracy. Thus the benefits we wish to bestow upon the people of Afghanistan are either cherry-picked (the money comes in handy for the government's corrupt coffers and the election reinforces tribal loyalties) or ignored. In the meantime, Nato soldiers go on dying for the pitiful illusion that we can clean the place up. We can't. We are not going to.

In the end, the people of these foreign fields must decide their own future and develop their societies as and when they wish. Back in 2001, things were different. Had we hoovered up every gun in the land, we might have done some good. Instead, the Americans sloshed millions of dollars at the mass murderers who had originally helped to destroy the place so that they would fight on our side.

Then we wandered off to Iraq and now we are back to fight in Afghanistan for hopelessly unachievable aims. Yes, I like to see people – women and men – voting. I think the Afghans wanted to vote. So, too, the Iraqis. But they also want freedom. Which is not necessarily the same as democracy.

R.I.P Common Sense

I have to say it here but it’s getting on my nerves (what else is new?) and I can’t really say it outside but I don’t feel anything about Michael Jackson passing away. I never liked a single of song but Scream with Janet Jackson, I don’t like his persona, his demeanour, his work…nothing! I like his sister but not him. Never have, never will.

It’s tragic, of course. Someone who dies so young is always tragic. Especially if you consider the last 20 years of his life that were not among the happiest, one would easily agree.

What’s getting on my nerve is the world-wide hypocrisy now that he’s dead. Everyone is deeply saddened, shocked and can barely hold back their tears everytime they think about him…as they say. This is absolutely sickening!

Three days ago, he was still a horrible lying monster everyone, but his very few true fans, was laughing at when they were not calling him a megalomaniac and schizophrenic paedophile. He was publically humiliated everytime he stepped outside, made ashamed of every single of his moves and words.

Lately countless reporters went to Neverland to grant us with pompous and judgmental constitution-length articles on the appalling state of the park and how lonely and pathetic he now was. We had articles and documentaries on his drinking problems, on his marriages, his children with some fatuous, self-righteous people who never knew him commentating on the dreadful father he was supposed to be.

We had articles and interviews that described him as irritating diva who was asking for a horrendous and highly unjustified price for his last tour.

And now he’s dead and here he is: the fallen angel, the greatest of the greats, the Ninth World Wonder (the Eighth is Beckham, of course…).

Here we are comparing him to people like Maria Theresa and Lady Diana.

The comparaison with Elvis is right for he had a immense talent and brought something new and refreshing to the world of music. Even if I don’t like what he did, no one can deny it and I won’t. But I will put my foot down and rile on everyone who has the indecency and the insanity to compare him to the likes of Lady Di.

Lady Di was a woman of selflessness. She puts her life in danger walking of landmine fields, she confronted the worst going to villages of Sahel and slums of Calcutta to help the poorest and most miserable in the world. She fought until the very end for people to open their eyes and help others.

She was the Princess of the People. Michael Jackson was the King of the Pop like Madonna is its Queen.

Is Madonna Lady Di? As much I love and worship her music, no!

Michael Jackson was a musician who never gave more than his music. So spare us the hypocrite tears, you cowards. You had let him down, you had forsaken him and let him rot alone with a bottle of vodka. You had rejected him then had fed yourself on the sour milk of his misery and slanders created by those who wanted him down.

Now I even have friends who have never once mentioned him when talking about music, never bought a single album and can’t even give the name of a single song from him but who are saying they are in painful mourning.

I have never liked him yet also never judged him. In that way, I might not be sad or in mourning as “the rest of the world” according to the press, but I’m a better person.

Will it...?

Gerald Scarfe for the Sunday Times.