Key Posts Category
Ed Miliband V The Sun: mercilessly monstering and mocking Red Ed
Once upon a time, Labour Party leader Ed Miliband liked the Sun. It was his newspaper of choice.
Ed Miliband was in ‘Sun Country’. And he liked it:
He read it wherever he went.
And then Ed Miliband realised that the Sun was not exactly on his side. He could try and try but the Sun wasn’t going to be won over. Indeed, the Sun started to mock him.
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Posted: 9th, April 2015 | In: Key Posts, Politicians, Reviews | Comment
Did Andreas Lubitz murder for fame? Maria W. should not be believed
Did Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz see mass murder as his route to eternal fame? The BBC says he did. Maybe. It repeats a line someone billed as Maria W. gave to German tabloid Bild. This source says Lubitz told her:
“One day I’m going to do something that will change the whole system, and everyone will know my name and remember.”
We are left to wonder why such a comment is not fully attributed? If “Maria W”, who says she dated Lubitz for five months, wants to speak to the Press, why not use her full name?
Whatever the truth of her story, the BBC has been willing to amplify it. It should be careful. As USA Today writes on the same matter, the woman is only Lubitz’s “purported former girlfriend”. The BBC makes no such claim for circumspection. It simply states that she had been his girlfriend:
Behind an internet paywall, Bild’s front-page story makes Lubitz’s apparent words the main reason why he did it and so many people died:
He threatened: “One day, everyone will know my name”
All facts say Bild and the BBC. But USA Today notes:
The claims could not immediately be verified independently.
The Daily Mail reports on Maria’s W’s words:
She said he even warned her that he was going to commit an act so heinous that his name would be remembered for ever.
The woman, known only as Maria W, revealed to German newspaper Bild how he ominously told her last year: ‘One day I will do something that will change the whole system, and then all will know my name and remember it.’
When she heard about the airliner crash, she remembered Lubitz’s menacing prophecy.
‘I never knew what he meant, but now it makes sense,’ she said.
With so many innocent people killed, it would be a sound idea to check the source before reporting her words as fact.
The Telegraph repeats more from knowing Maria W.:
“He did it because he realised that because of his health problems his big dream of a job with Lufthansa; a job as captain and as a long haul pilot was as good as impossible… We spoke a lot about work and then he became another person. He became agitated about the circumstances in which he had to work, too little money, anxiety about his contract and too much pressure.”
Lubitz began work at Lufthanasa back in September 2013. Did he so soon after scoring his dream job job kill 149 people becaue of the pressure? Lubitz had previously worked at a Burger King behind a carwash, “flipping Whoppers and frying fries and talking to co-workers about his dream”. And after working as a fast food wallah he found his dream-job soul-destroying?
Carsten Spohr, chief executive of Lufthansa, has gone on the record:
“The co-pilot interrupted his training for six years, I would be interested to know why. I cannot tell you anything about the reasons of this interruption, but anybody who interrupts the training has to do a lot of tests so the competence and fitness would be checked again.”
Do we believe without question what the ex-lover says?
A Germanwings colleague who worked with Lubitz, one Frank Woiton, contradicts Maria W’s view:
“He wasn’t a person who you thought would commit suicide. He seemed very happy, and he wanted to become a captain for long-distance flights. He was very good at his job.”
Such are the facts…
#NUSWomen15: jazz hands are the new clapping and other beyond parody motions
#NUSWomen15: Putting Policy into Action. So runs the slogan for the National Union of Students get together:
This year, on March 24 until the 26, hundreds of women will be descending upon Solihull for the best three days of the year: Women’s Conference.
Alongside debates on sex work (it should decriminalised) and money, motions to be debated include:
Motion 101: Putting pronouns on the cards
Submitted by: NUS LGBT Committee
Conference Believes:
1. Pronouns are used in the English language to replace nouns in order to make conversation easier. An example of the use of a pronoun is when referring to somebody instead of using their name.
2. The current delegate name badges at all NUS conferences and events simply state the delegate’s name, their constituent membership and if they attend an HE or an FE institution.
3. Delegates who use gender neutral pronouns currently have to write this on their badges themselves to ensure other delegates use their correct preferred pronouns.Conference Further Believes:
1. Delegates currently having to manually write their pronouns on their badges may make them feel uncomfortable, othered, or outed as trans* (despite the safe space policy).
2. NUS Women’s Campaign is open to all who self-define as women, including (if they wish) those with complex gender identities which include ‘woman’, and those who experience oppression as women. The campaign affirms that self-definition of gender identity and pronouns are at the sole discretion of the individual in question.
3. Delegates to NUS Women’s conference may use pronouns that are not she/her, and encouraging all delegates to specify their pronouns will foster a culture of not assuming pronouns based on gender presentation and help ensure that everyone’s preferred gender pronouns are upheld.
4. All delegates specifying their pronouns and asking each other for pronouns may help to ensure that delegates are not misgendered, as this can make delegates feel unsafe or trigger gender dysphoria.
Conference Resolves:
1. To ask all delegates attending NUS conferences and events for their pronouns at the point of registration (this would be a blank box which text could be typed into).
2. To print pronouns on all delegate’s badges.
3. To continue to reiterate when establishing the safe space policy that all delegates should respect and uphold each other’s pronouns.
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Posted: 24th, March 2015 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (2)
The Ashya King ‘miracle’ hits the Coalition with a £250m NHS proton therapy lie
When Brett and Naghmeh King told the story of their son Ashya King’s treatment to the Sun, the scoop was front-page news. Readers wanted to know what happened next to the desperatly ill child – Ashya is age 5 – who went on the run from the NHS in search of alternative proton beam therapy treatment.
The front page declares that the Kings were “hunted like criminals”. They were. Hampshire Police obtained a European arrest warrant for the parents on the issue of ‘neglect’. The papers told readers the boy had “hours to live“. The Mirror said it was “24 hours”. The Sun said it was “weeks“.
The message was that the parents were placing their child in mortal danger.
One journalist billed them as weirdos who belonged to “a millennial religious cult“.
The Daily Mirror reported:
Missing Ashya King has been spotted with his parents at a Spanish holiday resort, an expat said, as police battled to find the terminally ill boy.
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Posted: 24th, March 2015 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment (1)
The greatest news pun ever: Jilted Jun and one Rong don’t make it right
To China, for what must be the greatest news pun of the century.
The story involves Wu Hsia, 21, his ex-girlfriend Jun Tang, 20, and his new lover Rong Tsao, 22.
Jilted Jun said that Rong was a moron. Wu should be with her. Jilted Jun went on and on and on. She wanted to woo Wu.
Wu has doubts. So. He thought it a good idea to meet both the women. The rendevous would take place in a park by a river.
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Westminster paedophiles: Bulic Forsythe, when PIE went gay and the death of scepticism
Bulic Forsythe
Westminster paedophiles: a look at reporting on allegations that VIPs abused and murdered children in the 1970s and 1980s.
The Daily Mirror brings news: “VIP paedophile scandal: Police pinpoint ‘dungeon’ flat linked to abuse parties and child murder”
Keir Mudie and Mark Conrad report that police have “identified a luxury flat in Pimlico, London, which is connected to a large cellar believed to have been used as a ‘holding area’ for abuse victims”.
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Posted: 16th, March 2015 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment (1)
Indie band Ex Cops open letter to McDonald’s who asked them to play for burgers during SXSW
Happy day for Amalie Bruun and Brian Harding. The pop duo known as Ex Cops are invited to play at the Austin, Texas, SXSW. It would be just great. Think of the exposure. Think of the fans. Don’t think of the money because the invite from McDonald’s wants you to appear for free.
The Ex Cops’ replied via their Facebook page:
‘McDonald’s asked us to play SXSW. This is Brian’s open letter about it.
This week our band was asked to play the McDonald’s Showcase at the annual South by Southwest, also known to music insiders as “SXSW.”
Their selling point was that this was “a great opportunity for additional exposure,” and that “McDonald’s will have their global digital team on site to meet with the bands, help with cross promotion, etc”
I don’t, and doubt that they know what this means either.
Getting past that rhetoric, at the very least a big corporation like McDonald’s can at least pay their talent a little. Right?
“There isn’t a budget for an artist fee (unfortunately)”
As of 2013, McDonalds is valued at 90.3 billion dollars.
I won’t get into the internet semantics of things you’ve probably seen on your Facebook feed; like that thing where it takes a McDonald’s worker 4 months to earn what the CEO makes in an hour, or their GMO love affair, and I will certainly spare you the bounty of photos showing how they treat their animals.
In lieu of being paid like a real artist, or anyone who is employed to do a service, McDonald’s assures us that we will “be featured on screens throughout the event, as well as POSSIBLY mentioned on McDonald’s social media accounts like Facebook (57MM likes!)”
We recently headlined a show at the Brooklyn venue Baby’s Alright. They are by no means a DIY venue, but they are still an independent small business. The owners are people our age who used to book shows at Pianos and busted their asses to open a venue of their own in Brooklyn.
While I haven’t asked Billy or Zach how much they make annually (that would be weird) I’m going to guess they’re not looking at brownstones in Prospect Park at the moment. Yet when we played, we were paid very very fairly, were provided with drink tickets, and each band member fed a full entree from their menu (try the Brussels sprouts)
I will also go ahead and save time for any schill / troll rebuttals; “Are the other showcases paying you? No one is holding a gun to your head!” This is true. It is our choice (pretty much) to fly to Austin, play shows without soundcheck, and get paid nothing to a little. But hear this loud and clear, we LOVE making music, it is what we do, and despite some of its very apparent flaws, SXSW still provides a decent venue to be heard by some people who are really there to hear new music and not just do blow with dudes who wear square toe loafers.
It is a horrifying and gross reality when one sees the true nature of corporations and their pathetic attempts to achieve relevance with millennials. Doritos received a lot of flack for their stage a couple years ago, but i’m going to assume they paid Lady Gaga.
Oh, I almost forgot; “McDonald’s will offer free food to all audience members”
I don’t doubt that tons of bands will kowtow to this lame, lame attempt at a rock show. And I’m aware that to achieve any exposure is a Herculean task in 2015, but the Boethian Wheel is a real thing, and this will continue to exist if we, as artists, keep saying yes in exchange for a taste of success. Even if smells like a shitty Fish filet.’
Can you be a burger artiste? Just wondering because McDonald’s have a few opportunities – all unpaid – for anyone who can pump sauce into intersting shapes…
Posted: 7th, March 2015 | In: Key Posts, Music, The Consumer | Comment
Paddy Power’s all-white cast calls every Chelsea fan a racist
Yesterday at Wembley Chelsea defeated Spurs 2-0 to win the Capital One Cup. But more importantly there was NO race riot. No white men in manmade fibres stopped a black man from boarding the Tube nor did they brawl with the self-styled ‘Yid Army’.
Police did make five arrests on the day. But none was for racist chanting.
To go with the police threats that they “may” arrest fans for racist chanting was Paddy Power offering football fans the opportunity to “PROVE YOU’RE NOT RACIST”.
We had hoped this was a lampooning of the police and the shrill and censorious anti-racsim outfit Kick It Out whose leader had called for Wembley to be “swamped” with moralising police officers, as if merely being a football fan made you a suspected Nazi (or vice versa).
But it was not. It really was the chance to be an un-racist, to publicly showcase that you were one of the enlightened, like David Cameron, every national newspaper editor, the Royal Family, the Metropolitan Police Force and pretty much everywhere else where a dark face is not a stain on the cue balls but a sign of the white leader’s moral goodness.
Said Paddy Power:
Chelsea fans were invited to ‘prove they’re not prejudiced’ before today’s Capital One Cup final – by having their photo taken with a Sikh, a Muslim woman in a burka, a black man and a woman in a wheelchair. The diversity-laden Kodak moment was designed to give the majority of Chelsea fans the chance to show that they don’t have an irresistible urge to racially abuse a black man when they see one – and to encourage fellow fans to ‘prove they’re not prejudiced’.
Why not a Sikh man in a burqa, a black man in a skirt and Hassidic Jew hat, a Muslim woman dressed as a glamour model and a woman in full Nazi regalia sat in a wheelchair? Come on. If you’re going to counter stereotypes, think a little.
Having branded all Chelsea fans as racists – and it is tempting for all football fans to now sing that song heard on the Paris Metro and wave a verbal two-fingers at the anti-football bigots ( ‘We‘re racist, we‘re racist, and that’s the way we like it, we like it, we like it‘) – we cast a glance at Paddy Power’s ‘bloggers’.
The writer in the bottom right corner could be black, as could the two albinos. Two out of the 24 appear to be women. But it doesn’t look all that diverse, even if you count the man with the ‘revese burqa’ across his eyes.
A look at Paddy Power’s board of directors reveals one woman from 11 members. No brown faces. No Asian, Muslim or Jewish names. But one is French.
And, unforgivably, none of this all-white board is hugging a black man.
And that’s racist!
Posted: 2nd, March 2015 | In: Key Posts, Sports | Comment (1)
Jack Chick: One Man’s Comic-Book Crusade For Humanity
Chick Career: one man’s comic-book crusade for humanity
Are you worried about the growing menace of the Homosexual-Catholic-Islamic-Satanist-Masonic-Alien conspiracy to promote evolutionism, fornication, pornography, pornography, paedophilia, pop music, alcohol and drugs?
No?
Well in that case, it’s high time you got acquainted with Jack Chick – crazy name, crazy guy – and his body of enlightening works.
I first became aware of Jack when I purchased This Was Your Life for a few pence in a Christian bookshop many decades ago. Its primitive and unsubtle visual style intrigued me, as did the way it crudely homed in on the childlike insecurities that lurk within us. Here it is, animated for your convenience (with an extra ending that is definitely NOT in Jack’s original)…
But if the theme of the prodigal son is a familiar one, Jack’s other work takes us to nightmare scenarios far beyond the normal scriptural pastures, where the very existence of the human race hangs in the balance…
So who is Jack Chick? And how did this unlikely evangelist embark on his pioneering cartooning career?
According to his website, ‘As he grew, Jack was constantly drawing, and honing skills that God would later use in a great way.’
A great – some might say mysterious –way indeed.
Jack got off to an inauspicious start: ‘While in high school, none of the Christians would have anything to do with him because of his bad language. They all agreed not to witness to him, convinced that he was the last guy on earth who would ever accept Jesus Christ.’
After high school, Jack studied drama, went in the army, and eventually became an actor.
Then one day his mother-in-law insisted that he listen to Charles E Fuller’s Old Fashioned Revival Hour on the radio, during which Jack fell to his knees ‘and my life was changed forever’.
First he borrowed $800 from the credit union to fund the initial printing of Why No Revival?
Then, while out driving, Jack spotted some teenagers on the street. ‘At the time, I didn’t like teenagers or their rebellion,’ he recalled. ‘But, all of a sudden, the power of God hit me and my heart broke and I was overcome with the realisation that these teens were probably on their way to hell. With tears pouring down my face, I pulled my car off the road and wrote as fast as I could, as God poured the story into my mind.’
The result? A Demon’s Nightmare
Jack’s boss told him that the Chinese people had been won over to Communism through mass distribution of cartoon booklets, and this planted the seed of a plan in his fertile mind.
When invited to speak at a local prison, he prepared a flip chart to illustrate his speech. So successful was his performance that ‘nine of the eleven inmates present trusted Christ as their Saviour’.
The artwork from his talk formed the basis of This Was Your Life, the seminal ‘Chick Tract’ mentioned earlier.
The early tracts were not an instant hit.
‘A lot of the bookstores were really outraged at some guy using these cartoons to present the gospel,’ remembered Jack. ‘They thought it was sacrilegious.’
Half a century later, however, with hundreds of tracts translated into a hundred tongues, Chick claims a combined sales figure of 750 million: ‘His burden has always been to get the gospel into the hands of millions of lost people around the world. He wanted to be a missionary himself, but his new wife wanted no part of missionary life. Her aunt had been a missionary in Africa. While pregnant, she was being carried across a river on a stretcher, when one of those carrying her lost a leg to an alligator. But God had other plans. He wanted Jack to stay home and produce effective gospel literature that missionaries could use to win the lost. As a result, many missionaries love Chick tracts and use them to reach multitudes they could never reach one on one. Today, over fifty years after writing his first tract, God is still giving Jack Chick new gospel tracts. In fact, he is now producing some of his most popular work. As of this writing, five of the ten most popular Chick tracts in stock have been written in the last year or two.’
Jack’s tracts bring new and vivid illustrations of Christian tenets. In The Execution, a murderer is spared the gallows – only to discover (to his horror) that his own mother offered to be hanged in his place, just as Jesus died for our sins. In Flight 144, a Christian couple who have spent 50 years doing good works around the world in God’s name are killed in a plane crash and refused entry to heaven because good works don’t save sinners – only God can. In Heart Trouble, a man visits a cardiologist who tells him that he will die (‘everybody dies’) and that everyone is born with a heart problem: ‘the ugly things down deep in your heart that we can’t see… But God does.’ In Lisa (now no longer available but posted online by Chick’s detractors) a doctor informs a father that he has given his young daughter an STD – then saves his soul by introducing him to Jesus. In Big Daddy? a crazed teacher throws a boy out of his class for questioning the theory of evolution.
And so on. Targets range from the world’s biggest religions, science, abortion and homosexuality through to Santa Claus, Halloween, Harry Potter, and Dungeons and Dragons.
Many people seem to find it amusing to republish the distinctive Chick Tracts online, with amended text that ridicules Jack’s urgent message.
Some claim that Jack is a bigot and a hater. Others, that he is delusional and mad.
The latter share their delight in Jack Chick’s nightmarish visions at The Chick Tract Club.
But for the real thing, and the fount of all such wisdom, visit the home of Chick and count your blessings.
Posted: 2nd, March 2015 | In: Books, Celebrities, Key Posts, Strange But True | Comment
Cliff Richard: sex, sinners, Kaddie fiddlers and a desire to bury the singer alive
Daily Mirror
Cliff Richard – still Sir Cliff Richard – is on the front page of all the tabloids.
The Mirror (front page): “Cliff Richard Facing New Sex Claims”
Not too long ago that shocker would have been that Sir Cliff had ever had sex, preferring tennis and al fresco singing to nookie. Now we read that “police are probing new claims of sex abuse with Sir Cliff Richard are more alleged victims came forward”. An “officer”, revealed to be South Yorkshire Police Chief Constable David Crompton, says”This investigation has increased significantly.”
Crompton made his comment in a letter to Home Affiars Committee chariman Keith Vaz.
Page 9: “I have no idea where these absurd & untrue allegations come from,” says Cliff. The Mirror fails to tell its readers that Cliff said that on his Facebook page:
I have no idea where these absurd and untrue allegations come from. The police have not disclosed details to me. I have never, in my life, assaulted anyone and I remain confident that the truth will prevail. I have cooperated fully with the police, and will, of course, continue to do so.
Beyond stating that the allegations are completely false, it would not be appropriate for me to say anything further until the investigation has concluded, which I hope will be very soon. In the meantime, I would, again, like to thank everyone for supporting me through this unbelievably difficult period.
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Posted: 26th, February 2015 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Rotherham abuse: UKIP bigots target Islam as the deniers get away with it
Rotherham: a look at the story of abuse, prejudice and dereliction of duty in Yorkshire.
What we know is that happened in the past. But what we really want to know is what’s happening now? But the conversation is obsessed with matters of historic sex abuse in Rotherham and elsewhere by gangs of men of mainly Pakistani origin is not allowing us to see the now.
The temptation is to believe that with this abuse high on the news cycle, the assaults on vulnerable and underage girls by gangs of sexual deviants is over. Scared of exposure and prison, the criminals have stopped.
That is, of course, wrong.
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Posted: 21st, February 2015 | In: Key Posts, Politicians, Reviews | Comments (5)
David Cameron and the elite should thank the Chelsea racists for their Paris show
A man has been barred from riding the Paris Metro by a gaggle of Cheslea fans. The episode is caught on video. The Chelsea fans are white. The man trying to board the train is black. Some Chelsea fans sing about being racist and enjoying it.
And – kaboom! – a small, nasty incident in a foreign city becomes a huge deal. The elite wade in.
The Sun leads with the news:
On Page 5, readers are ordered to “FIND PIGS OF PARIS”. The Sun says “an international hunt” is under way for the dicks who sang “We’re racist and that’s the way we like it” and giving full throat to the refrain “Where were you in World War 2?”
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Posted: 19th, February 2015 | In: Chelsea, Key Posts, Politicians, Reviews, Sports | Comment
Can we talk about Muslim anti-semitism?
Can we talk about Jews? Can we look at who hates them most? It’s a contest between the far-right, the far-left, Church of England vicars, priests and Muslims.
Karen Armstrong, once a nun and the “respected author of bestsellers like A History of God and The Case for God, answers the question whether religion is the principal cause of violence”. A few choice cuts from her interview with Nieuwwij.nl cause eyebrows to be raised:
“Terrorism has nothing to do with Muhammad, any more than the Crusades had anything to do with Jesus. There is nothing in the Islam that is more violent than Christianity. All religions have been violent, including Christianity. There was nothing in the Muslim world like antisemitism.”
And:
“The supermarket attack in Paris was about Palestine, about Isis. It had nothing to do with antisemitism…”
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Posted: 18th, February 2015 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
The tabloid story of Devinder Kainth, Sandro Rottman and not Katie Price nor Princess Beatrice
The tabloid story of Devinder Kainth, Sandro Rottman and not Katie Price nor Princess Beatrice in Sotogrande.
By now you’ll be wondering what Katie Price has been up to. How are the kids and her husband-of-the-moment? Today brings new front page of Katie Price news. In “STAR’S LINK TO PERV” (Sun) and “Katie Price link to the German paedo” (Star) the tabloids lead with photos of Price and Sandro Rottman, a 43-year-old who had the misfortune to be killed in a Spanish eatery.
In 2009, the “killed perv” met Price in Sotogrande, the sprawling golfer holding bay on the Costa del Sol. Both newspapers have a photo of Price posing with Rottman, who very soon after the headlines becomes a “suspected paedophile” (Sun) and “peadophile in inverted commas (Star)
Rottman was arrested in January for allegedly possessing child pornography. He never stood trial.
Price only met him a couple of times when she visited Sotogrande.
And if it is the celebrity angle you crave in this story of brutality and allged child abuse then the Telegraph chimes in with:
Sotogrande is an upmarket resort and has been a favourite of Sarah Ferguson and her daughters Beatrice and Eugenie
Like Price and her children, the princesses never met Rottman.
The Star ups Rottman’s notoriety a notch by saying he “allegedly roamed the Costa del Sol taking snaps of children leading him to being banned from bars in Stotgtande”.
Did it. There is no proof that any bar bans were based on his alleged deviant behaviour.
What he definitely is is dead, having been “attacked by Brit dad Devinder Kainth, 40” (Sun), who, reportedly, spotted Rottman taking photos of his three children, found more snapshots on the German’s ipad and, allegedly, punched him hard enough to kill him.
The Daily Mail ignores the Sun’s empathetic “Brit dad” and labels Kaith: “Fitness fanatic with matching Range Rovers and blonde bombshell girlfriend held over killing.” Readers are told:
Yesterday, details emerged of the attack on Saturday night. The owner of the Spinnaker restaurant told the Mail: ‘After an afternoon of friendly chatter, the British man suddenly told his family to leave.
‘Devinder looked at Sandro’s iPad and found pictures of his family which had been taken earlier that evening. He was shouting: “Why have you taken these?” Suddenly he told his family to get out of the bar. Five seconds later he hit Sandro so hard he fell to the floor. I think this knocked him out, or at least dazed him.
‘Then Devinder went crazy and started hitting Sandro. He must have hit him at least 20 times in the face and head. [Sandro] had blood gurgling from his mouth. He was choking and struggling to breathe. He also had a big lump on the side of his head – no other visible cuts – just this big lump. Then he was unconscious like he was in a coma. The waitress started screaming for help. We were all shaking and trembling. When [Devinder] ran out of energy, he calmly got up and walked out the door.’
That is eqiuipped with a photo of Devinder’s lover, the “blonde head turner” Gemma Hawkins and couple’s three children, who appear without faces:
Anorak readers might well laugh. This is the Mail that loves to ogle the kids, commenting on their lithe limbs and sex appeal.
The Mail then adds:
Rottman is said to have once been so drunk he fell into the sea and had to be rescued. He limped and is said to have been treated for a liver problem.
Kainth is a gym fanatic who worked out on most days and did gruelling Crossfit classes. He has a three-bedroom house in the area and once owned a supermarket in nearby Casares, but it has closed, sources said.
A neighbour said: ‘The last time I saw him and his partner here was last August. They had an argument round the pool one day. I couldn’t understand what they were saying but he seemed very aggressive. His girlfriend left in tears and started throwing his clothes out of the window.’
But the Mirror has heard enough. It picks a side, leading with the headline:
Kainth Davinder: Chilling photograph shows suspected paedophile ‘killed by British millionaire dad’ holding young child at pool
We don’t know the identity of the child with Rottman in the July 2013 photo. And because Rottman never was vonvicted of being a paedo, we can conclude that the snapshot is only chilling if you belive he was a danger to the public. You might be more chilled by the thought of having your dinner interrupted by a man being beaten to death at another table.
The Indy sees the same photos taken from Rottman’s twiter account and notes:
Mr Rottman, who was a web designer, recently posted a photo on Twitter of himself at the exclusive resort of El Octogono Beach Club in Sotogrande, holding a young child. He wrote: ‘Just finished a day with the most beautiful girl in the Beach Club of Sotogrande. Hope one day I will have one my own.’
He has other photos, too, like these:
Kermit and the fragrant beauties have yet to tell all.
But Devinder Kainth will go his talking in court. He’s been charged with homicide.
Posted: 12th, February 2015 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Free Speech: the Charlie Hebdo lie seduces the thought police
Few of us in the UK had heard of Charlie Hebdo, the satirical French magazine, before so many of its staff were murdered by Islamists. David Cameron announced on Twitter that he was joining that ‘unity’ rally in Paris “to celebrate the values of Charlie Hebdo“.
Everyone was for free speech and a free Press. The French so love it their creepy sounding Minister of Culture hands state subsidies to French newspapers. With money comes control.
France’s two most prestigious newspapers, “Le Monde” and “Le Figaro”, received more than €16 million in government subsidies each… The catholic newspaper “La Croix” got over €10 million while the communist “L’Humanité” received almost €7 million in public subsidies, the Ministry’s website shows…
The regional daily “Ouest France” follows close behind Le Monde and Le Figaro on the on the list, receiving over €10.4 million in 2013…France’s press sector also benefits from a low 2.1% rate of VAT. In addition, French journalists enjoy advantageous tax privileges which are supposed to compensate for professional expenses… [full list here].
That freedom of the press looks a lot like state control.
Add to that the assaults on free speech on univerity campuses, the attempt to shut down debate on global warming, no debate on gay marriage and – well, you name it – and you wonder what Cameroa and every other leader who declared they are Charlie Hebdo thought they were supporting.
And so to the news that Wiltshire Police “have apologised after an officer visited a newsagent requesting details of customers who bought French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in the wake of the Paris massacre”.
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Posted: 10th, February 2015 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Measles are for cool kids: extracts from Melanie’s Marvelous Measles (the only book you’ll ever read!)
MEASLES are back. And that’s cool. Measles is the hipster disease.
The great thing about measles is that they are FREE! But even then some mums and dads are too uptight to get with the cool.
But in Melanie’s Marvelous Measles these stiffs can get down (six feet under -ed). The books costs. But it is worth it?
Let’s see:
The author/publisher writes on Amazon:
“Melanie’s Marvelous Measles was written to educate children on the benefits of having measles and how you can heal from them naturally and successfully. Often today, we are being bombarded with messages from vested interests to fear all diseases in order for someone to sell some potion or vaccine, when, in fact, history shows that in industrialized countries, these diseases are quite benign and, according to natural health sources, beneficial to the body. Having raised three children vaccine-free and childhood disease-free, I have experienced many times when my children’s vaccinated peers succumb to the childhood diseases they were vaccinated against. Surprisingly, there were times when my unvaccinated children were blamed for their peers’ sickness. Something which is just not possible when they didn’t have the diseases at all. Stephanie Messenger lives in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, and devotes her life to educating people about vaccine dangers and supporting families in their natural health choices. She has the support of many natural therapists and natural-minded doctors.”
The author writes:
This book takes children aged 4 – 10 years on a journey of discovering about the ineffectiveness of vaccinations, while teaching them to embrace childhood disease, heal if they get a disease, and build their immune systems naturally.
Readers on Amazon love it!
Buy now and buy only ONCE!
And don’t forget to rub it all over youir infected kid before passing it on!
Note: She also wrote this:
Sarah Visits a Naturopath
A children’s storybook written by Stephanie MessengerThis book exposes children aged 4 – 10 years, to the idea that they create most of their ill health by the choices they make. It encourages them to listen to the messages their bodies give them. Sarah visits a naturopath to get advice on staying well according to nature’s laws.
A naturopath speaks…
Posted: 9th, February 2015 | In: Books, Key Posts, Strange But True | Comment
It never was genocide in Kosovo: truth emerges on Tony Blair’s moral war
Remember when Tony Blair took the country to war in the Balkans? Just as in Iraq, this too was a moral crusade to spare the world from evil. Britain’s part in the Blakans war chimed with Tony Blair’s aim to give the country a unifying identity based on sound morals. In 1999, the then Prime Minister opined:
‘We need to find a new national moral purpose for this new generation. People want to live in a society that is without prejudice, but is with rules. Government can play its part, but parents have to play their part. There’s got to be a partnership between Government and the country to lay the foundations of that moral purpose.’
Blair was talking abour the young and pregnant, who needed to be made aware that their choices were morally wrong. But he could have easily been talking about Iraq and the Balkans. Blair was hawkish on war against the Serbs and their leader Slobodan Milošević.
Blair explained why?
There were big strategic interests that would have justified intervention in their own right. But I felt that this was the closest thing to racial genocide that I’ve seen in Europe since the Second World War. I didn’t feel that we could simply stand aside from that if we had the means, which we did, to intervene and to stop it.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 7th, February 2015 | In: Key Posts, Politicians, Reviews | Comment (1)
Rotherham: What the police did with teenage ‘prostitutes’, Pakistani men and complicit councillors
(Clockwise from top left) Mohsin Khan, 21, Razwan Razaq, 30, Adil Hussain, 20, Zafran Ramzan, 21, and Umar Razaq, 24, from Rotherham
PC Hassan Ali was killed crossing a Road in Sheffield. He was stuck by a blue Vauxhall Corsa on January 28. PC Hassan Ali served with South Yorkshire Police as neighbourhood policing officer based in Rotherham. He had 18 years service with the force.
He wasn’t on duty at the time of his death. We can’t be certain what was going through Mr Hasan’s mind before he was killed. But this Sky News headline encourages us to guess:
Rotherham Abuse Scandal Policeman Dies
That is followed by:
The death of PC Hassan Ali, who was reportedly being investigated by the police watchdog, is not being treated as suspicious.
That report is in the Sheffield Star:
South Yorkshire Police said Pc H assan Ali, 44, died today after he was involved in a collision in Sheffield last month when was off-duty. It is understood that complaints had been made about Pc Ali which related to the scandal involving the sexual exploitation of children in Rotherham and he was under investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC).
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 7th, February 2015 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment (1)
Fragile ladies and raping males: welcome to life on University campus
Are all students rapsits and absuers-in-waiting? Spiked reports that 26 British univestities banned the Sun and the Daily Star as part of the ‘No More Page 3 campaign’; 21 student unions forbid the student body from listening to Robin Thicke song Blurred Lines on campus; Bristol University’s student union banned sales of Charlie Hebdo – the magazine that became the totem of free speech was banned because it would fail the college’s ‘safe space’ policy.
Eighteen per cent of unions have “safe space” policies, protecting students from material deemed offensive, and more than two-thirds of these were judged to place significant restrictions on freedom of speech.
Sheffield Student Union banned Eminem. Students at Oxford Univesity banned a debate on abortion. The UCL Student Union banned the college’s Nietzsche Club. King’s College Students banned Israel. The University of East Anglia Students banned a UKIP MP. The NUS banned free Speech and refsued to condemn for fear of looking Islamophobic. And our favourite was the London School of Economics, which banned T-shirts.
The assumption is that allowing anything that a loon or agenda-driven censor could decry as ‘racist’, ‘sexist’ or ‘homophobic’ would trigger race riots and convince slack-jawed male students that women’s rights, equality and debate are wrong.
It also assumes that the colleges will be complicit in any resulting crimes, having failed to police free thought they will make victims less aware of the perils to their physical and mental wellbeing. Student are no longer adults with free thhought and passionate ideas. They are idiots how must be coddled.
Ashe Schow is astounded:
For the past several years, activists have been telling us that any suggestion relating to protecting oneself from becoming a victim is victim-blaming. Tell a woman not to walk down dark alleys at night, and you’re essentially telling her that it’s her fault if she ends up being assaulted, robbed or murdered.
But now, outright bans on risky behavior — all in the interest of protecting women — are suddenly coming back into fashion.
First, sorority women at the University of Virginia were banned from attending parties with boys this weekend by their own National Panhellenic Conference. The reason for the ban, which carries undisclosed sanctions if broken, was “safety concerns,” due to sexual assault allegations in the past.
The message is clear: Keep women from partying and they won’t be sexually assaulted.
How is that not victim blaming?
As if the U.Va. ban wasn’t bad enough (it was based off of a discredited rape allegation in Rolling Stone, after all), Dartmouth has decided to ban hard liquor on campus — in part to cut down on sexual assaults.
It was just last year that telling women not to drink so much was considered victim blaming, but now it’s okay?
We seem to be going back in time; telling women where they can go, whom they can associate with — even what they can drink. At least it’s all in the name of protecting us poor, fragile ladies, am I right?
It’s not just the ladies. It’s all student minds.
Photo via.
Posted: 2nd, February 2015 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Internet journalist don’t need a union to tell them George Bush had a plastic turkey for Thanksgiving
Anorak has employed journalists for over 15 years. And not one – not one – has been a union member. Why not? The Washington Post’s Lydia DePillis knows:
There are two fundamental forces at work here: One is the loss of leverage, with more aspiring journalists than there are jobs and an environment in which content is becoming increasingly commoditized. The other is a shift in identity, with a generation of younger workers less familiar with unions who’ve built personal brands that they can transfer to other media companies.
But those other media companies don’t pay all that well. And they are desperate. The Daily Telegraph, for instance, used to be a venerable institution. It’s not any longer. These are, at the time of writing, the ‘Most Viewed’ stories on the Telegraph‘s website:
Does any budding journalist still dream of writing for the Telegraph?
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 1st, February 2015 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Ban kosher, halal, veils and circumcision and stop the barbabric Jew and the cruel Muslim
The Times‘ “Environment Editor” wants to tell Times readers about religious slaughter of animals. You might think this a religious matter, a story based on Jewish and Muslim covenants with God. But it’s not. It’s about welfare and civilised forms of animal slaughter. It’s about making our country’s environment better. Just as the calls to ban circumcision are not an attack on Judaism or Islam but a sane move to end barbarism. It’s all about being better human beings. Got it?
First they came for the clothes.
Then a court in Cologne, Germany, came for the circumcisisors, “to respect fundamental rights of children”. Sure Genesis says: “And ye shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of a covenant betwixt Me and you.” But the Council of Europe says cicumcision is “a violation of the physical integrity of children”. It says all 47 nations in the Council’s zone will “initiate a public debate, including intercultural and interreligious dialogue, aimed at reaching a large consensus on the rights of children to protection against violations of their physical integrity according to human rights standards”. Member states should “adopt specific legal provisions to ensure that certain operations and practices will not be carried out before a child is old enough to be consulted”.
No snips. No Jews. Sever the link between parents and child. Your God is dead.
Jonathan Sacks wrote:
Did the court know that circumcision is the most ancient ritual in the history of Judaism, dating back almost 4,000 years to the days of Abraham? Did it know that Spinoza, not religious but together with John Locke the father of European liberalism, wrote that brit mila in and of itself had the power to sustain Jewish identity through the centuries? Did it know that banning mila was the route chosen by two of the worst enemies the Jewish people ever had, the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV and the Roman emperor Hadrian, both of whom set out to extinguish not only Jews but also Judaism? Either the court knew these things or it did not. If it did not, then how was it competent to assess the claim of religious liberty? If it did, then there are judges in Germany quite willing to say to religious Jews, in effect, “If you don’t like it, leave.”
So. Stop it. Stop the Jew.
Then they come for the halal and kosher meat.
Because human spiritualism takes second place to the feelings of a chicken reared for food. Because adults and parents are not as important as the State’s children. One set of beliefs offends another.
But it is in no way racist of bigoted to single out the halal and kosher chickens; it’s an animal rights issue, dummy.
You ban circumcision not because you hate Jews and seek to undo what they believe to be part of an ancient agreement with God; you ban it because the kids are being abused. You look at the Muslim woman in their veil, portray her clothing as a stain on her human rights and you ban it.
Did the Dutch get it right when they banned kosher and halal meat? If these arcane Others will not yield to the culture of goodness, the trusty Dutch will force them to, it being what the dumb animals deserve. It’s not racist. It’s not intolerant. It’s just, you know, correct.
In the film Der ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew), the Nazis portray Jews as rejoicing in the suffering of animals. They were not “civislied Europeans”. They did love the cow and the hen like noble Germans. It’s not racism – it’s just doing what’s right and decent.
The Times then trails its story like this:
Muslims calls? Muslim demands are leading to more unstunned animals being killed for meat? It’s an odd headline.
Online readers then get this news of “lambs to slaughter”:
The image is very much that these religious methods are cruel and wrong. And, don’t forget, it’s an environmental issue. Adelaide surgeon Dr Paul Cowie once championed a new environmentalist cause:
We will save many litres of water if more men were circumcised because there would be less fiddling in the shower to keep it clean.
Stop the Jew and the Muslim and save the children, the animals and the planet.
The Times goes on:
The number of animals killed in halal abattoirs without being stunned first has soared because of campaigning by Muslims for traditional methods of slaughter. Halal and kosher abattoirs cut the throats of 2.4 million sheep and goats without stunning in the latest recorded year, an increase of 60 per cent, according to the British Veterinary Association’s analysis of surveys by the Food Standards Agency.
And:
The agency found that, in halal premises, 37 per cent of sheep and goats, 25 per cent of cattle and 16 per cent of poultry were killed without being stunned, a procedure that renders the animals insensitive to pain before they are slaughtered.
So they say…
Cattle take up to two minutes to lose consciousness after their throats are cut, meaning that they might experience pain for that period. Poultry can take two and half minutes or more to lose consciousness and sheep 20 seconds, according to the European Food Safety Authority’s scientific panel on animal health and welfare.
The increase has prompted leading vets to renew their call for an end to religious exemptions from animal welfare rules. John Blackwell, the BVA’s president, said that the practice “unnecessarily compromises animal welfare at the time of death”.
So says the vet. And then it gets really nasty:
In an interview with The Times last year he called for religious slaughter to be banned if Muslims and Jews refused to adopt a more humane method of killing.
End your traditions. Stop being a Jew and a Muslim. Be more humane. Be less barbaric.
The BVA’s petition on the government’s website calling for a ban on non-stun slaughter yesterday passed its goal of 100,000 signatures, which is the number which the government says may prompt a debate in the House of Commons.
Listen to the non-Jew and non-Muslim and become a better Jew or Muslim.
Mr Blackwell said that the response to the petition showed the strength of public opinion on the issue. “We urge the chairman of the backbench business committee to honour the epetition and pledge that an end to non-stun slaughter will be debated at the first opportunity in the next parliament,” he said.
If this does not strike you as wrong. If this does not strike you as intolerant, illiberal and an assault on Jews and Muslims. If you think the State knows better than ancient religions, parents and God. If you think that then you are a dangerous fool…
Posted: 30th, January 2015 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (3)
The Emperor buys new clothes at Noma, where the ants spin gold
Ever eat at Noma, “the world’s best restaurant”. Noma’s based at the Oriantal Mandarin hotel in Tokyo, Japan:
We are delighted to announce that Noma at Mandarin Oriental, Tokyo will be extended for two more weeks due to overwhelming demand. The world’s #1 restaurant will now be open from 9 January to 14 February 2015 except for Sundays.
This is a picture of one of the meals:
As you gastronauts pop along to the garden centre for a budget Noma experience, the few will be tucking into their table centrepieces :
Fixed Menu + Wine pairing: (40,200 Yen + 24,700 Yen)
Fixed Menu + Juice pairing: (40,200 Yen + 16,500 Yen)
Fixed Menu: (40,200 Yen, with an option to pay for wine or other beverages à la carte on the day)
Private Dining Room: our private dining room will have a maximum capacity of 10 guests and will also be offered a selection of the above menu options. Smaller parties are welcome to book the private dining room, however please note that there will be a minimum spend of 618,000 Yen.Please note that all prices are subject to 8% consumption tax, 13% service charge. Prices above do not include the cost of aperitif, water, tea/coffee, or avec.
Avec! 40,200 Yen is around $350. The dishes looks sublime. These are on offer at Noma’s Denmark HQ:
Ingrid Marie and herbs
Reindeer moss and cep mushrooms
Blackcurrant and rose petals
Beef tartare and ants
Smoked and pickled quail egg
Cucumber and scallop fudge
White cabbage and samphire
Caramelized milk and monkfish liver
Sea urchin and duck
Æbleskiver with greens
Burnt onion and walnut oil
Squid and broccoli
Fennel and parsley
Langoustine and nasturtium
Radish and yeast
Pumpkin, kelp and beechnuts
Beetroot and plum
Sloe berries and aromatic herbs
Cured egg yolk, potato and rose oil
Roasted bone marrow
Cabbage and nasturtium flowers
Aronia berries and söl
Potato, plum and plum kernel
Three treats
Anything stand out? The poor Ingrid Marie (lovely girl)? The moss? The live ants? And they’re on the menu in Tokyo, too:
Noma Tokyo’s tasting menu, which costs 149,500 yen ($1,265) for two people, has a showstopper opening course: jumbo shrimp, so recently killed that they are still twitching, served with about a dozen tiny black ants for seasoning.
The dish is a take on botan ebi, or shrimp sushi, with the ants providing “flavors of the Nagano forest.” Businessweek explains that the dish takes advantage “of the bugs’ natural reserves of formic acid, which can mimic the sourness of citrus.” A reviewer for the Japan Times said that the ants’ “little pinpricks of sharp acidity” are “a perfect accent for the sweet, pink flesh” of the shrimp.
Noma’s chef René Redzepi served ants over over cabbage leaves dressed with crème fraîche at his London eatery.
You might think the smarter set are being had, fed unseasoned cheap protein as a delicacy. But Matt ‘The Talc’, who has foraged at some of the pop-up mobile farm shops by London’s finesest restautants (you man bins? – ed) assures us that ants and moss have never done him any harm. But, then, he used to be the Emperor and before the charity shop gave him a dressing gown could be seen about town dressed in his wonderful suit of pure-spun gold.
Posted: 29th, January 2015 | In: Key Posts, The Consumer | Comment
Murder online: the logic that links viewing with doing is shaky
Jamie Reynolds, 23, murdered 17-year-old Georgia Williams. He was sentenved to life imprisonment.
In sentencing Reynolds at Stafford Crown Court, Mr Justice Alan Wilkie told him he “had the potential to progressing to become a serial killer”.
The Daily Mail notes:
After his arrest, detectives found 16,800 images and 72 videos of extreme pornography on his computer. Some of the images were doctored pictures of girls and women he knew, with ropes digitally drawn around their necks. He had penned up to 40 short stories with graphic descriptions of sexual violence against women and had also written a script detailing a girl’s murder.
Reynolds planned for murder:
After taking a series of innocent pictures of the teenager, Reynolds persuaded her to stand on the box with the rope around her neck. He then bound Georgia’s hands together before kicking the box away causing the pretty teenage RAF cadet to asphyxiate. After she died, Reynolds – who hoarded hardcore ‘snuff’ movies featuring sexual killings – stripped Georgia and abused her lifeless body.
The Mail’s reference to the victim’s look is absurd. The paper adds:
In court it emerges that Reynolds began hunting for clips of women being strangled six years before the attack. When he was arrested police found 16,800 images and 72 videos of extreme pornography on his computer.
Reynolds had previous. It emerged in court Reynolds was handed a police caution in 2008, aged 17, for trying to strangle another teenage girl.
The IPCC has announced that Devon and Cornwall Police are investigating West Mercia’s handling of the case.
But what about the porn? The Mail makes a link between it and Reynolds’ actions:
Lord Thomas, who threw out Reynolds’ appeal against his whole life term last year, said the case ‘left me in no doubt at all that the peddling of pornography on the internet had a dramatic effect on the individual’.
He added: ‘What is available to download and to see is simply horrific and it played a real part in the way in which this particular murder was carried out.’
The Mail then editorialises:
He told the Commons justice committee the crime in May 2013 had been influenced – and intensified – by pornography. It was hard to believe, he said, that Reynolds could have come up with his sickening plan without first reading about similar fantasies or offences online.
But he could have read books, magazines of even the Mail’s report on how he committed his crime:
He even set up a homemade gallows made from an upturned red recycling box beneath a rope which was attached to the loft hatch.
Got that? Ok, now away you go.
Jamie Reynolds is a depraved killer. He looked and hoarded repulsive images. So. Eveyrone who looks at such eimages must be suspected of being a killer-in-waiting. they are guilty in thought. And that goes for Daily Mail readers who can enjoy such stories as:
And that’s if Mail readers aren’t being invited to ogle pre-teen girls.
Jamie Reynolds didn’t just look at porn. He also made up stories. But can only killer be made to represent all of us? If you don’t trust humanity it can:
Michael Ellis, a barrister and Tory MP, said the Lord Chief Justice’s evidence was significant because judges knew better than almost anyone about the driving forces behind offences…
He added: ‘If the impression he has been left with, having dealt with some of the most serious cases, that extreme pornography is influencing some crimes, then I think that is very persuasive.’
It might be persuasive. But that doesn’t make it right. The Mail then adds:
In October 2012, Mark Bridger was jailed for a whole-life term after being found guilty of killing five-year-old April Jones a year earlier. He had searched for images of child abuse and rape.
And in May 2013, Stuart Hazell was jailed for murdering 12-year-old Tia Sharp after scouring the internet for vile child porn using terms such as ‘violent forced rape’ and ‘incest’.
The link between what you see and what you do is flimsy. Do video games make you violent? Did video nasties turn the sane into rapists and human flesh eaters? Those 1980s video nasties are now sold as classic movies. The logic that links viewing with doing is shaky.
In 1930 Sergei Eisenstein was bemused as to why the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) bbanned his Battleship Potemkin, appraising the censors:
“One of them is blind and probably deals with the silent films; another one is deaf and so gets the sound films; the third one chose to die while I was in London.”
So ban it. Ban the video nasties. Ban the computer games that look so real. Ban the porn. Prevent everyone from seeing lest individuals confuse entertainment for reality and run amuck. People are so slack-jawed and empty that watching a film will turn them and you into a murderer. People do not think for themselves. The censors will view it, decide on its worth and ban it.
What a terrible view of humanity we are being sold.
We should tolerate individual fantasies that are not acted upon with harmful consequences. Don’t ban it. Debate it. Hold it up for discussion, mockery, riducle and question.
Posted: 29th, January 2015 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Anti-Semitism is justified: views on the war on Jews and its causes
Thoughts on anti-semitism. One thing a Jew cannot do is fail. The other thing a Jew can always do is be held responsible for what their co-religionists do.
Rev. Bruce Shipman echoes the BBC’s man on the scene in an open published in the New York Times:
To the Editor:
Deborah E. Lipstadt makes far too little of the relationship between Israel’s policies in the West Bank and Gaza and growing anti-Semitism in Europe and beyond.
The trend to which she alludes parallels the carnage in Gaza over the last five years, not to mention the perpetually stalled peace talks and the continuing occupation of the West Bank.
As hope for a two-state solution fades and Palestinian casualties continue to mount, the best antidote to anti-Semitism would be for Israel’s patrons abroad to press the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for final-status resolution to the Palestinian question.
(Rev.) BRUCE M. SHIPMAN
Groton, Conn., Aug. 21, 2014
Bruce Shipman is Episcopal chaplain at Yale.
Jews will spot the codes in his letter. Jews must pay for whatever another Jew does.
Anti-Semitism is justified.
His words and his tone are not untypical of the ‘knowing’, they who can empathise and set about teaching the Jew how to see suffering.
The BBC:
Mrs May said the attack on the supermarket in France was “a chilling reminder of anti-Semitism, not just in France but the recent anti-Semitic prejudice that we sadly have seen in this country.
“I know that many Jewish people in this country are feeling vulnerable and fearful and you’re saying that you’re anxious for your families, for your children and yourselves.
“I never thought I would see the day when members of the Jewish community in the United Kingdom would say they were fearful of remaining here in the United Kingdom”…
“Without its Jews, Britain would not be Britain, just as without its Muslims, Britain would not be Britain – without its Sikhs, Hindus, Christians and people of other faiths, Britain would not be Britain.”
She said she was “deeply distressed” by the YouGov survey showing a large proportion of Britons holding antisemitic views.
The poll:
Antisemitic views have been shown to be rampant among British people according to the results of a new polls.
One in four Britons were shown to believe that Jews ‘chase money more than other people’, according to a poll by YouGov.
Meanwhile the new survey showed that 17 per cent of respondent believe that Jewish people think themselves better than others.
A similar proportion felt that Jewish people have too much power in the media.
A separate poll also revealed that more than half of all British Jews feel that antisemitism has begun to echo the widespread anti-Jewish hatred of the 1930s, according to the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA).
France has the largest Jewish community remaining in Europe, but Norman Lebrecht, a French Jew whose family has been in France at least since 1727 (when the first records exist), decided last week that he is leaving. Nor is he alone…
French Jews are leaving for two main reasons: because they don’t feel welcome, and because they don’t feel safe. They don’t feel welcome because a rising tide of anti-Semitism has poisoned the atmosphere in France over the past couple of decades. It’s not so much the old anti-Semitism of the pre-War variety as a new anti-Semitism brought on by a wave of Muslim immigration, though the two have reinforced one another.
And they don’t feel safe because of attacks on Jews. As the Chief Rabbi of France,Haim Korsia, notes, it’s not just last week’s attacks on a Kosher deli and on the Charlie Hebdo news weekly: “Jews have been killed and there were the shootings in Toulouse and in Brussels. In general, Jews feel vulnerable in our society. The Jews who were murdered were targeted specifically because they were Jewish.”
… European nations are facing population deficits, and they’ve replaced those missing Jews with Muslim immigrants who — unlike the Jews — are for the most part far less educated, don’t really consider themselves part of European society, and have no particularly strong desire to integrate into it, which bodes poorly. As Eugene Volokh — himself an immigrant to the United States — observes, in a democracy, when you let in immigrants, you are letting in your future rulers.
An exodus of French Jews is already underway and accelerating rapidly. In 2012, there were just over 1,900 immigrants to Israel from France. The following year nearly 3,400 French Jews emigrated; in 2014 approximately 7,000 left. For the first time ever, France heads the list of countries of origin for immigrants to Israel, and the ministry of immigration absorption expects another 10,000 French Jews to arrive in 2015.
That would mean more than 22,000 Jews fleeing France for Israel in the space of just four years, nearly 4.5 percent of the country’s Jewish population. The departure of 100,000 French Jews might once have been inconceivable. No longer. In a survey last spring of France’s Jewish community, the largest in Europe, three out of four respondents said they were considering emigrating.
These are staggering numbers — all the more so in a “Jewish community that has been in place for centuries and feels itself deeply attached to being French,” as Daniel Jonah Goldhagen has written. But what is driving so many Jews to leave “is not Israel’s pull…. It is France’s push.”
Over the past 15 years, that “push” — violent eruptions of French antisemitism — has grown relentless.
Many of your fears about becoming a victim of terrorism are invented. So long as you are not Jewish.
Whenever Martin Niemöller’s warning is quoted, it is always used in the past tense. But as the Paris attacks proved, they are still coming for the Jews. In reality, they have never stopped coming for the Jews…
The reaction from outside the Jewish community follows the same pattern. Like Simon Jenkins and Polly Toynbee, we try to hide behind a veil of self-centered proportionality. Or, we cry “look over there!” Yes the Jewish community is under threat, but what about the “revenge” attacks being launched against the Muslim community? Or we deploy the “some of my best friends are Jewish” argument. Yes some Jews are being targeted. But look at what’s happening to the Palestinians. Should we really be surprised? Yes, obviously we must condemn the “terrorists”. But don’t we have an obligation to try to understand them as well?
And what lies at the heart of this response? If we’re honest, if we’re really honest, it’s that those of us who are not part of the Jewish community have subconsciously – and shamefully – come to the view that being a target of terrorism is merely one of the occupational hazards of being a Jew…
We need to say: “They came for the Jews. And I spoke out. Because I am not a Jew”.
A lot of progressives seem to think they are immune from anti-Semitism, or even being tolerant of anti-Semitism, because they have neither racist nor Christian antipathy to Jews, the two most recently prominent forms. They, in other words, do not consciously hate, or even dislike, Jews. But when the Left has decided that colonialism, fundamentalist religion and ethnic nationalism are the great evils of the modern world, and then so many “progressives” focus on Israel as the exemplar of these evils, despite many, many other more worthy choices, one wonders if they fully understand what anti-Semitism is really all about.
Matti Friedman wonders why Israel is always at the top of the news cycle. Why Hamas, a group that pledge to kill every Jew, is not framed as an enemy to things we should hold dear.
For centuries, stateless Jews played the role of a lightning rod for ill will among the majority population. They were a symbol of things that were wrong. Did you want to make the point that greed was bad? Jews were greedy. Cowardice? Jews were cowardly. Were you a Communist? Jews were capitalists. Were you a capitalist? In that case, Jews were Communists. Moral failure was the essential trait of the Jew. It was their role in Christian tradition—the only reason European society knew or cared about them in the first place.
Like many Jews who grew up late in the 20th century in friendly Western cities, I dismissed such ideas as the feverish memories of my grandparents. One thing I have learned—and I’m not alone this summer—is that I was foolish to have done so. Today, people in the West tend to believe the ills of the age are racism, colonialism, and militarism. The world’s only Jewish country has done less harm than most countries on earth, and more good—and yet when people went looking for a country that would symbolize the sins of our new post-colonial, post-militaristic, post-ethnic dream-world, the country they chose was this one.
When the people responsible for explaining the world to the world, journalists, cover the Jews’ war as more worthy of attention than any other, when they portray the Jews of Israel as the party obviously in the wrong, when they omit all possible justifications for the Jews’ actions and obscure the true face of their enemies, what they are saying to their readers—whether they intend to or not—is that Jews are the worst people on earth. The Jews are a symbol of the evils that civilized people are taught from an early age to abhor. International press coverage has become a morality play starring a familiar villain.
Some readers might remember that Britain participated in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the fallout from which has now killed more than three times the number of people ever killed in the Israel-Arab conflict; yet in Britain, protesters furiously condemn Jewish militarism. White people in London and Paris whose parents not long ago had themselves fanned by dark people in the sitting rooms of Rangoon or Algiers condemn Jewish “colonialism.” Americans who live in places called “Manhattan” or “Seattle” condemn Jews for displacing the native people of Palestine. Russian reporters condemn Israel’s brutal military tactics. Belgian reporters condemn Israel’s treatment of Africans. When Israel opened a transportation service for Palestinian workers in the occupied West Bank a few years ago, American news consumers could read about Israel “segregating buses.” And there are a lot of people in Europe, and not just in Germany, who enjoy hearing the Jews accused of genocide.
You don’t need to be a history professor, or a psychiatrist, to understand what’s going on. Having rehabilitated themselves against considerable odds in a minute corner of the earth, the descendants of powerless people who were pushed out of Europe and the Islamic Middle East have become what their grandparents were—the pool into which the world spits. The Jews of Israel are the screen onto which it has become socially acceptable to project the things you hate about yourself and your own country. The tool through which this psychological projection is executed is the international press.
The first head of the hydra-like monster of medieval anti-Semitic conspiracy theories was the implied parallel between Israeli treatment of Palestinians and Nazis’ treatment of the Jews. This is a de facto cousin of Holocaust denial, as it diminishes and trivialises what really happened then…
Since 9/11 and Iraq, a millenarian cauldron of old-fashioned anti-Semitic conspiracy theories claims that secretive Jews (the wicked “neo-cons”) are controlling Bush, Blair and the media, and even arranged 9/11. Anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism have become interchangeable…
Until 9/11, Anglo-Jewry had become accustomed to prejudiced coverage of Israel. But if you were not a Zionist, as many Jews are not, you did not need to worry. Since 9/11, and particularly post-Iraq, we have witnessed a sea change. It is as if, in the mythical scale of 9/11, al-Qaeda had unlocked a forgotten cultural capsule of anti-Semitic myths, sealed and forgotten since the Nazis, the Black Hundreds and the medieval blood libels. Just words? But words matter in a violent world. This weird and scary nonsense is an international phenomenon, not a British one. Despite it, Britain retains the easygoing tolerance and pragmatism, the sources of her greatness. It is still better to be a Jew in England than anywhere else
And that’s true…
Posted: 20th, January 2015 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
