To the left - Rihanna introduces VEVO to YouTube

I was taking a look at Introducing VEVO: A New Music Video Destination Powered by YouTube. 

There's a YouTube vid clip there with a girl (pictured, right) talking - "Rihanna introduces VEVO to YouTube".

Rihanna has a crick in her neck?

I think I have heard of her - I think she must be an American pop singer anyway, as she referred to "lyrics" and herself as "...artists like me".

Her appearance was distracting. Her face seemed to be covered in makeup, mascara and false eyelashes and she had a silly obscuring hat and these weird puffed-up shoulder pads on her jacket that made her look deformed. (Why do people do this to themselves?) Despite how she looks in the vid clip, I reckoned that she was probably quite attractive underneath it all and had normal shaped shoulders and nice hair under that hat. I have no idea what her singing voice might be like, but her speaking voice was clear and she enunciated her words clearly in English with an American accent.

I watched the clip twice without really listening too much to what she was saying, because there seemed to be something wrong with her, and my attention was distracted, focussed on watching her upper body movements.

Open Season

I do not like angry, pissed-off, violent, hard or pure noise music - typically "metal" or "heavy metal" stuff, for example, like Metallica, or Motorhead (except as a joke, as in the track "Killed by Death") - and I really detest rap (especially gangsta rap).
However, I have to give a thumbs-up (respect!) to the group Stuck Mojo, and their album, "Southern Born Killers" - in particular a vid track called "Open Season" (lyrics). I have seen that track described as a kind of nu-metal rap piece of music, and it also seems to have gangsta overtones. As such, I really shouldn't like it at all, and, as music, I reckon it stinks, but I find I do like it nontheless because:
(a) It would have to be one of the most intelligent pieces of prose put to music/rap that I have ever come across.
(b) It seems to be a real in-your-face voice of the times - potentially offensive to some (tough luck), and probably controversial, but also something which could well resonate with millions of the silent majority around the world today who may be getting increasingly pissed off with being told how to lead their lives and think, by fascists.
The fact that this piece of music has come out of America and not some other part of the Western world has surprised me - you see, I thought the US had gone soft. Now I wonder if this track mightn't indicate that our transatlantic cousins are made of culturally and morally sterner stuff than the rest of us - except maybe the Danish and the Dutch.

"If you step in my hood,
It's understood,
It's open season."

This stuff is absolutely classic. It is sooo good that I wouldn't be surprised if it were subsequently revealed that the American secret services have been taking lessons from the British secret services in market communications and propaganda. Either way, it could mark the beginnings of a genuine societal backlash to the imposition of ideological conformism and fascism in America. Time will tell.
Check out Stuck Mojo's track "Open Season" here.
Check out Stuck Mojo's related track "I'm American" here.
Peace, bro.

UK Foreign Office whistleblower cleared in secrets case

This BBC news item reports that a civil servant at the Foreign Office has been cleared of breaching the Official Secrets Act.

Derek Pasquill said he had been "completely vindicated"

Derek Pasquill, 48, of west London, was accused of making damaging disclosures by leaking confidential documents to the New Statesman and the Observer.

The papers were said to refer to secret CIA flights and the UK's contact with Muslim groups.

His lawyer said a prosecution decision to drop charges was "vindication" that what he did was in the public interest.

Mr Pasquill said:

• that he had been through a "very unpleasant ordeal" but that he had been "completely vindicated in my actions in exposing dangerous government policy and changing its priorities".
• that he felt the information was of "such importance" that it was right to leak the documents to a journalist "in order for that information to be discussed and debated".
• "I thought this information deserved to make an impact in public and I took the steps that I did on that basis".
• that it was better to have these issues debated in public than leave them to "a small group of officials who are driving a policy".

New Statesman editor John Kampfner described Mr Pasquill's prosecution as a "misguided and malicious move" (by the Foreign Office). Mr Pasquill, who was arrested in 2006, remains suspended on full pay from his job as a desk worker. Having failed to prosecute, the Foreign Office said that passing on official documents was "absolutely contrary" to good government, and suggested that Mr Pasquill "may be subject to internal disciplinary procedures". No shortage of vindictiveness there.