News Category
Madeleine McCann: Christian Brueckner is innocent because circumstantial evidence is not enough
Christian Brueckner is innocent of any involvement in the vanishing of Madeleine McCann. If you doubt that statement is true, prove that it isn’t. That’s the challenge facing German prosecutors who believe the convicted peadophile stole the child and murdered her. “The disappearance of Madeleine McCann: Have they got the right man this time?” asks Martin Brunt, the Sky News reporter who has been hot on the heels of rumours. trolls and not a single meaningful development since Madeleine McCann went missing in May 2007 and became the media’s ‘Our Maddie’. Brunt has been speaking to lawyers. After a few paragraphs telling us who Christian Bruekner is, Brunt sums up the entire case against the infamous criminal:
The case against him is circumstantial – he is a convicted paedophile, he lived in the area, and on the night she disappeared, his mobile phone was in use nearby. The next day he changed the registration of one of his vehicles.
“Have they got the right man this time?,” ask Brunt seven paragraphs into his feature. Around 60 short paragrapahs later, Brunt concludes:
In fact, one source told me that Christian B may be no better a suspect for Madeleine’s abduction than two other principle targets.
They are the unnamed suspect, who may still be the subject of an undercover operation, and Euclides Monteiro, a sacked Ocean club waiter and thief who died two years after Madeleine vanished and was later eliminated from the inquiry.
The Mirror has a few words on the investigation. “Madeleine McCann investigators have ‘no smoking gun’ to charge Christian Brueckner,” trills the headline. Its worst than that. They have no gun. They have no smoke. They have a belief, an idea. German Prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters is doing the rounds, telling Portuguese media:
“All I can say is this is like a puzzle and there are many pieces that lead us to believe Christian B is responsible.”
Hold the book deal, Hans. You’re going to need more.
“One of the pieces is the signal from the mobile phone he was using at the time Madeleine McCann disappeared and has been shown to have been in the area of the Ocean Club resort where she was staying.”
You’ve 20 more chapters to fill, Hans. What else you got?
“The result of our investigation does not point in any way to the possibility the suspect might have kept Madeleine alive. We have nothing to indicate she could be alive. Everything we have points to her being dead. We have no margin of manoeuvre.”
Is that lost in translation – “no magian of manoeuvre”? Is that Google Translate for ‘we have no open mind’? Of course any good blockbuster needs a good plot. Goncalo Amaral is the Portuguese coppers who wrote a book about the case. Will any book Wolters writes reach a firmer conclusion, give us the definitive story?
Mr Wolters also rebutted claims made by disgraced former police officer Goncalo Amaral, who met with Brueckner’s defence lawyer Friedrich Fulscher last week in Portugal, that the German was being “scapegoated.”
A scapegoat?
The controversial ex-cop, who was removed from the initial Madeleine McCann investigation for criticising British police, is involved in an ongoing legal battle with her parents Kate and Gerry over his insistence she died by accident in their apartment and they covered it up…
German Belief v Portuguese Insistence? Or to put it another way: German Insistence v Portuguese Belief. Wolters continues:
“I know this former inspector speaks a lot and comments on our work. We’re not going to get into a war of words. All I will say is that we have carried out a very serious investigation and there is no indication whatsoever Madeleine McCann’s parents are linked to her disappearance. On the other hand we have a lot of evidence pointing to Christian B killing her. Goncalo Amaral knows how he reaches his conclusions and that’s not up to us to judge.”
To which the Sun thunders:
Kate and Gerry McCann are not suspects. They are on the record in the Star, sort of:
But Kate and Gerry “won’t believe she’s dead” until a body has been found, it is claimed. A source close to the family said: “Until a body is found and it is proved to be Madeleine’s, Kate and Gerry are not giving up hope. These latest ‘she’s dead but there’s no body’ theories have been repeated over the past three-and-a-half months but in all this time there appears to be no significant new development.”
At least someone is dealing in facts. The unnamed source – why unnamed and not on the record? – wants facts not theories.
Over to the Mail:
A German drifter and partner-in-crime of Madeleine McCann prime suspect Christian Brueckner has branded him an ‘evil psychopath’ who is ‘capable of taking a child’.
Manfred Seyferth, 64, said 43-year-old Brueckner was known as ‘The Climber’ for his ability to break into homes, and was robbing apartments in Praia da Luz the year the young girl vanished.
Seyferth, who acted as a key witness against Brueckner when he was jailed for the rape of an American woman in 2018, believes the peadophile is guilty of taking thee-year-old Madeleine from her parents’ holiday apartment in 2007.
He tells the Sun:
“Christian is a bad, bad man. He is evil. I never liked him and he is a psychopath. He is obsessed with small children and I didn’t like it. He always had a young girlfriend with him and I think he is easily capable of taking a small child.”
Oh?
“I think he may have something to do with Maddie.”
What of that rape case? Says the Sun:
Christian was convicted of attacking a 72-year-old woman in her own home at Praia da Luz in 2005.
Says the Mirror:
Brueckner, a German citizen, is currently in Justizvollzugsanstalt Kiel prison, where he is trying to overturn his sentence for raping a woman, 73, in Portugal.
Madeleine McCann is missing. It’s pretty much the only fact media and theorists can agree on.
Posted: 21st, September 2020 | In: Key Posts, Madeleine McCann, News, Tabloids | Comment
Madeleine McCann: Christian Brueckner for hire, puppies and imaginary babysitting
Last week Sky News presented an exclusive news feature on Madeleine McCann and the man German police suspect of kidnapping and murdering her, the convicted paedophile and rapist Christian Brueckner, oddly dubbed ‘Christian B’ in an internet-denying spot of Teutonic legalise. The report revealed nothing. Martin Brunt reviewed the hunches and theories, but could not shake that we only know one thing for certain: child vanished. Today the Sun has more developments. The suspect’s lawyer has “admitted” something. Oh, yes, you think. Has he broken client-brief confidentiality and given us the word on the depraved criminal? No.
The lawyer of prime Madeleine McCann suspect Christian B has admitted he would not trust his client around his kids. Friedrich Fuelscher “insisted that if he had a daughter he would not let the convicted paedophile look after her”.
Before we demand he adopt a girl and test the theory, we wonder what other jobs Fuelscher could admit his client is unsuited to. I’d go for the obvious (kindergarten teacher, toilet attendant and paediatric nurse) and then consider the more exotic (UN Special Envoy to Thailand). The jury is out on whether Brueckner would make a decent BBC presenter of family TV shows in which he makes children’s wishes come true. There’s been a vacancy at the Beeb ever since Jimmy Savile gibbered his last and was subsequently ruled to have been the biggest paedophile who ever lived.
The Sun’s story is based on what the daughter-less lawyer told the Mirror. “I’d let him look after my dogs but I wouldn’t let him look after my children or my daughter – if I had them,” says Fuelscher. “He could be my dogsitter, yes, but because of his record I would not let him look after my own daughter.”
As to the value of giving a convicted paedophile a puppy, well, Charlie has something to say about that:
Posted: 16th, September 2020 | In: Madeleine McCann, News, Tabloids | Comment
Chinese won’t buy Jo Malone candles from John Boyega – Star Wars actor censored in ‘racist’ China
Do Chinese people living in China not buy scented candles from black people, like the actor John Boyega? The London-born star has resigned his role as “global ambassador” for scented candle-makers Jo Malone because he wasn’t a global ambassador at all. He was the face of melted wax in the UK and some other places but for Chinese consumers he was replaced in an ad he made for them called ‘London Gent’ by Chinese actor Liu Haoran.
The company has apologised for the “misstep”. Not an error, then? Surely this was a plan, the brand appealing to their target market, doing its best to shift product in China. Ads are usually products of market research. Did Jo Malone poll the Chinese and find they like Liu better than they do John? Do they rate Liu as the celeb more likely to deliver a full-nosed blast of candle fumes? Can we see the marketing reports and questions asked?
Boyega says Jo Malone was “wrong” to have used another actor “without my consent or prior notice”. Well, quite. What’s the point of hiring the Star Wars actor to be your global ambassador if you don’t employ him globally?
“We deeply apologise for what, on our end, was a mistake in the local execution of the John Boyega campaign,” says Joe Malone in a mealy-mouthed statement. Does it suppose Chinese consumers are racist against black people? And did it just use John Boyega to show us that it isn’t?
Posted: 15th, September 2020 | In: Celebrities, News | Comment
Emma Barnett – interrogating the sins of the father
Emma Barnett is the new presenter of Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour. She’s a terrific interviewer, possessed of that that rare knack of coming over as warm and intelligent whilst her interviewee blinks in the crosshairs. The Indy calls Barnett the “feminist champion set to breathe new life into Woman’s Hour.” By way of a bonus to tabloid readers, Barnett’s backstory contains lurid tales. The Observer lays it out:
Her mother, Michelle, trained as special needs teacher, while her father, Ian, was a businessman who then became the centre of a sensational drama briefly in 2010 when it was revealed that he had run a series of brothels, with the tacit if grudging consent of the Greater Manchester Police.
You might want to know more about that. The Mail says the places at names like “Dolly Mixtures, Foreign Touch and Angels”. But having reported the broadest facts, the Observer is dismissive of anyone showing more interest:
Understandably perhaps, Barnett, who has otherwise spoken of a happy childhood, does not talk about this doubtless painful subject. It has, however, provoked a recent flurry of internet shaming attempts since the Woman’s Hour job announcement.
Internet shaming? Only a fool would blame to a woman for their father’s criminality. And then:
It is the kind of history-trawling, blame-gamery that will now shadow every move that Barnett makes.
When does research, which is useful, mutate into history trawling, which sounds bad? Does any of it affect her ability to do the job? Might it not help Barnett when the discussion turns to sex, crime and parents?
The Sun notes:
During her second year of university at Nottingham, Emma returned to Manchester to find her family home had been raided by police.
It was then that Emma discovered that her father, Ian Barnett, had suffered a dramatic financial change when she was aged 14 and this had driven him to become involved in illegal massage parlours.
Some sympathy for Mr Barnett from the Sun, then. In 2011, the Manchester Evening News’ headline was punchier:
Given the title “brothel baron”, the paper reported that he had “made more than £5m” from the business. Selling sex pays well. But what of the women working in the brothels in Shudehill, Cheetham Hill, Levenshulme and Altrincham? We hear of only one:
He was charged following a report a 19-year-old woman from Lithuania had been forced to work in the Shudehill brothel after being trafficked to Britain by an Albanian gang. She was rescued by police following a tip-off in 2005. Mr Barnett was jailed for three years and eight months in 2008 after he admitted keeping a string of brothels, controlling prostitution and conspiracy to control brothels.
An earlier proceeds of crime hearing was told clients would be charged £40 for an hour, with £25 going to the prostitute and the remainder to Mr Barnett. He made more than £5m over six years.
The Mail noted:
Barnett had been arrested after a Lithuanian teenager known as Rita was illegally smuggled into the country by an Albanian gang and ended up working at one of his brothels.
Police discovered that a photograph of her posted on the internet to advertise her services had been taken by a camera identical to one found in his Rolls-Royce.
Mr Barnett were ever arrested let alone charged with anything to do with smuggling or people trafficking. And neither was his good lady wife. The MEN again:
A TEACHING assistant has been convicted of laundering thousands of pounds made by her husband’s string of brothels.
Michele Barnett [sic], 55, a £7,000-a-year special needs teaching assistant at King David School in Prestwich, was sentenced to six months in jail, suspended for two years.
Manchester Crown Court heard mortgage payments on the mum’s lavish five-bedroom home in Ingledene Avenue, Broughton Park, were made with cash from the brothels of her husband Ian Barnett.
But…
Three judges at the Court of Appeal in London upheld a claim that a Manchester judge had wrongly ordered the confiscation of £4.2 million of brothel earnings made by Ian Barnett, 60, from Prestwich. Mr Barnett had already forfeited £21,000 in the first of his two convictions for operating brothels, preventing a judge from confiscating immoral earnings from the previous six years, under a legal technicality. He is now liable for £873,010 of immoral gains made after 2005.
The court heard that Mr Barnett’s prostitution businesses, “whilst not condoned by the local police, did receive a measure of tacit approval over a period of time.” Mr Barnett claimed that Greater Manchester Police gave a kind of legal permission to run his brothels in return for co-operation and assurances that his businesses did not involve drugs or under-age girls.
You can read the findings of Barnett v Regina online. And if you want to pour over one thing, how about this bit from the Mail’s report. Mr Barnett represented himself at the assets confiscation hearing at Manchester Crown Court:
From the witness stand, he repeatedly criticised police and insisted he had been a victim of an abuse of the judicial process.He questioned Judge David Hernandez, saying: ‘You have been a judge for what – a year?’ The judge responded: ‘I have told you, that line of argument does not assist you.’
Tenacious. Unflinching. And unafraid to back himself in a tight spot. Emma Barnett might well have something to thank her father for.
The topless Extinction Rebellion protest – photo
Go topless to prevent the extinction of all life on Earth. The Extinction Rebellion protesters did it because something “Can’t Bare the truth”. That’s a pun. But it’s not quite true – they were only half bare. And all women. The motto isn’t as effective as the “I’d rather go naked than wear fur” coined by Peta. But it’s less chaffing than the naked bike ride. why do people go naked to make point about Gaia – and what are sot of us looking at?
Shere Hite explains the female orgasm and how to have one – no s.hite
The Times obituary on Shere Hite (nee Shirley Diana Gregory; November 2, 1942 – September 9, 2020) looks at the career of the “controversial sexologist and feminist who shed new light on the female orgasm and once posed for Playboy”, noting: “she gave an even greater hostage to fortune by using s.hite as the first part of her email address.”
Her research conducted by a survey led her to a key finding: “I was making the point that clitoral stimulation wasn’t happening during coitus. That’s why women ‘have difficulty having orgasms’ – they don’t have difficulty when they stimulate themselves.”
Her career began with a campaign:
A Seventies advert for Olivetti typewriters depicted a sexy blonde at her typewriter, legs seductively crossed, red-lipsticked mouth pouting provocatively at the camera. “The typewriter that’s so smart that she doesn’t have to be,” crowed the caption. Members of the National Organisation for Women were so furious at this blatant display of sexism that they protested outside the company’s offices in New York.
One of their number was a striking, pale-skinned blonde who eventually admitted to the sisterhood that she was the model in the advert. It was a significant moment for the women’s movement: the not-so-dumb blonde was Shere Hite…
The biography on a site dedicated to her work, has more:
In her report, she posited a radical and utterly far-out theory: that women didn’t need men to give them an orgasm. From the time of Freud, it was widely accepted that women could only climax through penetrative sex – “the great male thrust” – and if they couldn’t, there must be something wrong with them. For frustrated women faking orgasm, the report was a godsend, alerting women to their own sexual power, and informing men of the existence of the clitoris.
But rather than welcoming Hite’s book, a serious academic study based on interviews with more than 3,000 women, the American male population saw it as an attack on their virility. Hite was cast as the witch queen of feminism, out to steal men’s mojo and turn women into onanistic she-devils. Playboy magazine dubbed it the “Hate Report”, but those who dismissed Hite as a Birkenstock-wearing militant man-hater were in for another shock when they discovered that Hite was actually a bit of a looker, and had posed naked in Playboy while studying at Columbia University. She had also posed provocatively in a typewriter ad to earn money for her college fees, but when she read the ad’s strapline, “The typewriter is so smart she doesn’t have to be”, she joined a feminist protest against the very ad she had appeared in.
The report went on to sell more than 50 million copies.
Sex sells. Olivetti and Shere Hite could agree on that.
Operation Moonshot: Matt Hancock is wrong about his own Covid-19 tests
Health Secretary Matt Hancock is talking rubbish when he says it’s “inappropriate” for people in England to seek a free Government Covid-19 tests when they don’t have any symptoms. The online system for getting tested has crashed. UK labs have reached capacity, meaning people are unable to book tests or being sent a long way from their home to get one.
In his ham-fisted attempt to blame to the very people seeking to do the right thing and get tested, Hancock cited the example of a school year group that all went for tests. It was “not appropriate” said Hancock. Also wrong are people who want a test before going on holiday, says Hancock.
Inappropriate is not a rule. It’s a judgement made by a man who can see his system failing and knows we can see it, too.
A few hours later, the British Journal of Medicine reported:
The UK government has drawn up plans to carry out up to 10 million covid-19 tests a day by early next year as part of a huge £100bn (€110bn; $130bn) expansion of its national testing programme, documents seen by The BMJ show.
The internal correspondence reveals that the government is prepared to almost match what it spends on the NHS in England each year (£130bn) to fund mass testing of the population “to support economic activity and a return to normal life” under its ambitious Operation Moonshot programme.
A briefing memo sent to the first minister and cabinet secretaries in Scotland, seen by The BMJ, says that the UK-wide Moonshot programme is expected to “cost over £100bn to deliver.” If achieved, the programme would allow testing of the entire UK population each week.
A separate PowerPoint presentation prepared for the government by the global management consulting firm Boston Consulting Group, also seen by The BMJ, says the plans had the potential to grow the UK’s testing capacity from the current 350 000 a day to up to 10 million tests a day by early 2021.
Operation Moonshot, indeed. What planet are Hancock and Johnson from and how did they reach this one?
The BBC then makes a half statement of fact:
The free tests are available to people with symptoms of coronavirus – a fever, new and continuous cough or a loss or change in sense of taste or smell.
Right. But that’s not all. Free tests are also available for people with no symptoms. As the Government site says:
But Hancock says:
…in the last couple of weeks we have seen an increase in demand, including an increase in demand for people who are not eligible for tests, and people who don’t have symptoms.”
You don’t need to have symptoms to be eligible for tests. He needs to read this own Government’s website. But still be blathers on:
“We have seen an increase of about 25% of people who are coming forward that don’t have symptoms and aren’t eligible. They don’t have a reason for it. I’ve even heard stories of people saying, ‘I’m going on holiday next week, therefore I’m going to get a test’. No – that is not what the testing system is there for. We’ve got to be firmer, I’m afraid, with the rules around eligibility for testing.”
You want a test to get on with your life but Hancock says you can’t have one because it is inappropriate. It isn’t. It’s spot on. The fault lies entirely with the Government’s lack of preparation.
Posted: 10th, September 2020 | In: News, Politicians | Comment
British commuters get free doses of murderous adrenaline with every train ride – study
According to the TUC, the total average UK commute takes up just less than an hour per day (58.4 minutes). Londoners having the longest commute (81 minutes). So does it figure that Londoners make for the better fighter pilots?
Dr Lewis, a fellow of the International Stress Management Association who led the HP research, observed: “The difference is that a riot policeman or a combat pilot have things they can do to combat the stress that is being triggered by the event. But the commuter, particularly on a train, cannot do anything about it at all. So it is this sense of helplessness combined with the stress that is perhaps the most worrying aspect of it…
“At best it’s a dismal experience; at worst it may well have health consequences. How much harm it is doing would depend on how robust your physical system is anyhow and how high your blood pressure goes. We have measured a systolic pressure [the force blood exerts on the artery walls when the heart beats] in the region of 170-180 in some people. These have been occasions when the person we’ve been monitoring has lost their temper and had a serious row. And under those circumstances you can have a heart attack.”
Source: The Times
Prince Harry and Meghan new Netflix series revealed
The Daily Star is upset. “Show us the money!” it demands. It’s a story about the LA-based Dook and Dutch-ass of Sussex-shire. The paper says they must repay the £2.4m British taxpayers forked out to do up Frogmore Cottage, their official UK residence. They have the cash, having secured a £75m Netflix deal.
The tabloid is outraged. But online, before you read about the Star’s demands for the greedy feckers to pay us back our dough, we read about those, er, trolls unable to appreciate the good work done by the minted hereditary titled toffs’ tireless campaign for equality. A pox on those “nasty keyboard warriors”:
In the tabloid world, Harry and Meghan are now people who you either like or don’t like. You cannot ignore them. It’s not allowed. And the Sussexes would not have it any other way.
“Our focus will be on creating content that informs but also gives hope,” says the couple. “As new parents, making inspirational family programming is also important to us.” Words that surely chime with many new parents pointing a phone camera at their little ‘un and dreaming of a £250 windfall from You’ve Been Framed.
Those Harry and Meghan TV schedules in full:
The Woke Awake Club – rise and shine with Archie
Harry’s Half Hour – Live cam footage of Harry trying to work out how you can be a hereditary peer and a champion for equality without being conflicted. Much hilarity ensues
Grandma’s Army – a look at various weaponry used to maintain social order in the UK, Commonwealth and British protectorates
Palace Break – Harry Windsor plans to bust his brother Wills Windsor out of a prison of living hell
The Frown – Meghan looks disapprovingly at footage of the Royal Family
Posted: 5th, September 2020 | In: News, Royal Family, Tabloids | Comment
Christopher Killick: man sentenced for voyeurism in a story that terrifies
In 2015 Emily Hunt woke up in a strange room with a stranger beside her. She was naked. She had not recollection of how she got there. She had never met him before. Five years on and Christoper Killick has been sentenced for voyeurism. His crime was to have filmed his naked and unconscious victim and kept the footage on his phone to masturbate to later. She thinks he drugged and raped her. The Crown Prosecution Service did not pursue that line of enquiry due to what they saw as lack of evidence. Also in the hotel room in London was a rucksack containing “condoms, Viagra and what was thought to be the hallucinogenic drug LSD”, says the Sun. Used condoms were found in the room.
At Stratford Magistrates’ Court, Killick was not sent to prison. He was ordered to pay £2,180 in fines and court costs. He must pay £5,000 in compensation to his victim. He must never try to contact her. He must undertake a 30 month community order, including completing the Horizon program to develop victim empathy skills and 30 days of rehab activity to perform as directed. But he’s free to walk the streets.
“I am very pleased with the sentence passed by the court today and the powerful comments made by the judge,” she says. “The recognition that this was a serious sexual offence, and the acknowledgement of the devastating impact it has had on my life, is the most important thing to me. It is appalling that it has taken five years of fighting to get to this point. I hope that in future no other victim of a sexual offence has to go through what I have experienced.”
Filming a partner during sex without consent is voyeurism. Until this year the CPS had stated filming someone naked in a private room did not constitute an offence if they had consented to being looked at naked. But Emily Hunt had no recollection of having given consent. She did recognise the man beside her. It’s a truly sinister story.
Jessica Krug is not black
Jessica Krug, a professor teaching history at George Washington University has apologised for claiming a black identity. She is not a “child of the ‘hood”, as her author bio claimed.
The Telegraph has read Krug’s mea culpa published on Medium, noting that Ms Krug is an “expert on Africa, Latin America, African-American history, imperialism and colonialism.” But less expert on self-awareness, it would seem.
“I am not a culture vulture. I am a culture leech,” she says. She blames her “cultural appropriation”, at least in part, on “mental health demons” triggered by “severe trauma”. She sounds more than tad unhappy as she notes, “I have lied in every breath I have taken.” “I can’t fix this. I have burned every bridge,” she adds.
“We are aware of the Medium post and are looking into the situation,” says Crystal Nosal, a spokesman with George Washington University. “We cannot comment further on personnel matters.”
Sky notes:
Many attested to meeting Ms Krug under the name Jess La Bombalera. A video posted online under the pseudonym shows her as she criticises “all these white New Yorkers who waited four hours with us to be able to speak and then did not yield their time for Black and Brown indigenous New Yorkers”.
In over 1000 words of ‘me’, she begins:
To an escalating degree over my adult life, I have eschewed my lived experience as a white Jewish child in suburban Kansas City under various assumed identities within a Blackness that I had no right to claim: first North African Blackness, then US rooted Blackness, then Caribbean rooted Bronx Blackness. I have not only claimed these identities as my own when I had absolutely no right to do so — when doing so is the very epitome of violence, of thievery and appropriation, of the myriad ways in which non-Black people continue to use and abuse Black identities and cultures — but I have formed intimate relationships with loving, compassionate people who have trusted and cared for me when I have deserved neither trust nor caring. People have fought together with me and have fought for me, and my continued appropriation of a Black Caribbean identity is not only, in the starkest terms, wrong — unethical, immoral, anti-Black, colonial — but it means that every step I’ve taken has gaslighted those whom I love.
So she taught whilst black, drove whilst black, shagged whilst black, wrote whilst black and all those other things that being black mark you for for special group status amongst white liberals. And academia lapped it up. And , no, she’s not a black Jew.
Previously: meet Rachel Dolezal – and him.
Soup and Shakes to fight the calorie counting hordes
When all else fails, attack fat people. It’ll take more than prodding to get the chubsters into shape. And the Guardian says, “It’ll take more than a soup-and-shakes diet plan to tackle obesity in the UK.” Such is the demonising of fat people you wonder why border patrols haven’t yet introduces a Hole In the Wall-style admissions policy. If you can slide though the right-sized gap, you can enter the UK.; if you can’t you can head to the USA. As the Telegraph notes, Britons “more likely to ‘fat-shame’ obese people than Americans.” That’s the power of guns for you – plus memories of the Dust Bowl and potato famine. A nation of immigrants remembers why it arrived, and over a stack of pancakes and syrup vows never to return.
Julian Baggini is unimpressed with all that ready grub. He wants to tell us about the “twin scourges of processed foods and food poverty”.
The human body is such a homeostatic, self-regulating system. Deprive it of calories and it starts to burn fewer of them, and tries to horde away any excess as fat. So all the time the dieter is congratulating themselves on their weight loss, their body is wondering what the hell is going on, and doing all it can to reverse it.
Hordes of calories – the one attacking your dinner plate?
…we have lots of evidence that people get fatter when they eat more highly processed foods, especially refined carbohydrates. They are also slimmer when they eat more home-cooked meals. So a serious anti-obesity strategy would require the government to take on the food industry’s promotion of highly processed foods.
He supports the government controlling what you can put inside your own body. To become the correct shape he wants “controls on business and greater redistribution of wealth”. Limit choice and the proles will thank their betters. One size fits all.
Je Suis Charlie: Charlie Hebdo republishes Mohammed cartoons
Remember all that ‘Je Suis Charlie’, the outpouring of solidarity after the deadly attack by Islamists on the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. The mag published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. On January 7 2015, in response Islamists murdered 12 people. This week Charlie Hebdo republished those cartoons, all 12 of them. “Tout ça pour ça,” says the headline – “All of that for this.”
Very soon 14 people will go on trial accused of helping the two Islamist attackers carry out their massacre. Hebdo has honoured the victims in the best way it can, by championing free speech and the right to cause offence – by mocking oppressive piety in all its guises, showing us how dumb humanity can be and that what we revere might just be another human with an active imagination. That does not mean you can be gratuitously offensive and rude. You need to make a point about shared humanity for satire to work best.
Too many who marched beneath the banners “Je Suis Charlie” are less champions of free thought and speech than they are against Muslims, possessed of monocular vision and the ugly inability to treat people are individuals, lumping all Muslims as something uniquely other and wrong.
People have asked the magazine to republish the images. And many doubtless just delighted in poking Islam and would be upset where their own beliefs caustically lampooned. But, as the magazine’s editorial says, the time was not right. There was no point.
“We have always refused to do so, not because it is prohibited – the law allows us to do so – but because there was a need for a good reason to do it, a reason which has meaning and which brings something to the debate,” it says. “To reproduce these cartoons in the week the trial over the January 2015 terrorist attacks opens seemed essential to us.”
Lead image: Pallbearers carry the casket of Charlie Hebdo cartoonist Bernard Verlhac, known as Tignous, decorated by friends and colleagues of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, at the city hall of Montreuil, on the outskirts of Paris, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2015
Adele: Bantu Knots fail to distract editors from singer’s stomach and breasts
Jerry Sadowitz once told a rude joke about Princess Diana, lampooning the obsession with women’s looks and fashion choices: “Breaking News – Princess Diana has put her hair in a bun and her **** in a toaster.” The singer Adele has put her hair in Bantu knots and her body in a bikini. “Happy what would be Notting Hill Carnival my beloved London GBJM,” said Adele as she brought a bit of carnival to her garden in Beverly Hills.
First the hair, which has upset a few people on Twitter. Billboard says, “The singer’s hair was intricately twisted in a style similar to Bantu knots, adorned with bright yellow feathers behind her head.” Sky tells readers that there were Bantu Knots, “a traditional African hairstyle in which the hair is twisted into a series of small coiled buns.” Just the thing to join in the celebration of Afro-Caribbean culture in the UK. Unless you have the blinkers on:
That tweet from the “CEO of Ernest Media Empire” was out of kilter with most people, whose views can be summed up best by Ciku Muiruri:
And in the UK, Adele’s bikini and hair a political matter:
The Times now steps in: “Cultural appropriation describes borrowing styles or items which are significant in a culture that is not theirs.” Did Adele seek permission to put her hair in Bantu Knots and wear a Jamaican flag bikini? And if she did, which body did she submit her outfit to for official approval? Says Naomi Campbell: “She looks hot. As a Jamaican girl myself, my girl has grown up in black culture. People forget she’s from Tottenham.” What if Adele was from rural Hampshire? Would that not give her a pass?
Matthew Phillip, executive director of the carnival, tells The Observer: “Yes, we say black lives matter, but it’s about promoting unity and inclusion. That’s why it was set up in the first place, to bring different communities together from different backgrounds.”
But bigger news than Adele’s hair is her weight:
What price Adele used her hair to distract attention from the media obsession with her weight? Look out for the Mail article, “Why Bantu Knots are slimming.”
Posted: 1st, September 2020 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, News | Comment
Harry Dunn: Coward Anne Sacoolas continues to evade justice
The wheels of justice turn slower than the wheels on the car allegedly driven by Anne Sacoolas when it hit Harry Dunn and killed him. Mr Dunn was just 19 when he died in a crash outside RAF Croughton last August. In the aftermath, American suspect Anne Sacoolas fled the UK.
The teenager’s parents have pushed for justice. But nothing has been done. They did moot plans to sue the USA. But now they’ve given up on that. The US state department says it is looking for a “reasonable resolution”. But nothing about the US actions in this matter have been reasonable. They have shielded one of their own. It stinks.
Sacoolas was charged with causing death by dangerous driving in December. The Home Office put in a request for her extradition. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo binned it. The US protects Anne Sacoolas, the wife of a US spook who claimed diplomatic immunity as Harry Dunn’s loved ones dealt with their intense grief. The right thing was for her to stay in the UK and help. But she ran. The US spirited her away.
UK Attorney General Suella Braverman is apparently considering the possibility of a virtual trial or a trial in Mrs Sacoolas’s absence. But that’s not justice. The accused needs to defence themselves. Anne Sacoolas will not do the right thing. She should be made to. She should be arrested.
Harry Dunn’s parents, Tim Dunn and Charlotte Charles, say they “can now see that the US government are working towards” Mrs Sacoolas facing the UK justice system. They can? Mrs Charles tells the BBC: “We are going through a living nightmare and we need closure. We will only get that when Mrs Sacoolas faces our justice system. We can now see that the US government are working towards that end.”
We can feel their pain. And we can see the futility of their campaign.
John DeBerry Jr. is right: from Kanosha to Portland Washington, America needs guts not violent segregation
Kenosha has been burnt and looted by what the Times calls “Black Lives Matter riots” – “parts of the city looking more like Syria than Wisconsin.” Anger and violence spread after Jacob Blake, an unarmed father of six with warrants for his arrest, was shot in the back seven times by a policeman as he opened his car door. Police say they found a knife in his car. But not on him. Jacob Blake is now paralysed and struggling to live. Police thought it fit to handcuff him to the hospital bed. The shooting of John Blake looks murderous. And in the streets, there’s trouble.
The Times quotes one local: “When you wrap yourself in that flag of BLM and you burn cities to the ground, people will remember. There’s a quiet majority out there.” Another adds: “It’s right that people are out here protesting. But the people burning shit? Nah. That’s all out-of-towners… It’s a mistake, because they make it about the destruction, not the message. Why would we burn our own shit down? The only store where you can get hair products for black folk, it’s burnt up. Why would we do that to ourselves?”
One voice on the HuffPo counters: “…rioting and looting are effective at growing a movement and making an issue come to the forefront. And these riots are destroying what last shreds of credibility President Trump had left, that and his terrible mishandling of the coronavirus, of course.” Adding: “That all of those people came into the streets because of rioting and looting, they participated in rioting and looting – that is the movement. And to say that it distracts from the movement or it’s what the state wants, I think reflects at best a really intense confusion, and at worst an innately anti-Black and anti-liberatory perspective.”
Add to the mayhem Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old heavily armed vigilante. The teenager described in many bulletins as a ‘fan of the police’ is accused of murdering two unarmed men and shooting another. One of the men killed courageously attacked Rittenhouse with a skateboard. You can look at the alleged perpetrator and wonder why anyone sane thinks driving 15 miles to walk around the streets with a huge gun slung over your shoulder is a good idea. Or you look at the victim and shape the narrative to fit an agenda:
The Guardian notes that Rittenhouse has been charged with possession of a dangerous weapon by someone under the age of 18. And then we get two facts which appear at odds with each other:
- “Under Wisconsin law, Rittenhouse, who is 17, was too young to legally posses the rifle he was alleged to have been carrying as he confronted protesters.”
- “Under Wisconsin law, anyone 17 or older is treated as an adult in the criminal justice system.”
One thing to note: Kyle Rittenhouse and his alleged victims are all white. Is that important? The epithet white is usually used to denigrate. Isn’t it time to stand as individuals?
John DeBerry, Democratic member of the Tennessee House of Representatives, wants people with “enough guts, enough integrity, enough citizenship and love of country” to stop focusing on race:
He’s right.
Posted: 30th, August 2020 | In: News, Politicians | Comment
Daily Express Megan Markle obsession makes Princess Diana statue blush
“Brought back together by mum,” says the Daily Mirror. It’s a story about Prince Wills and Harry Baseball Cap. A royal insider says moves to erect a statue to Princess Diana to mark what wold have been her 60th birthday will “help to heal old wounds”. The Express guesses that Wills and Harry will both be in attendance when the statue is unveiled. And Meghan Markle might be there, too. Today the Express has a scoop: “Meghan Markle’s obsession with Princess Diana exposed by former childhood friend”:
That just one of many Meghan Markle stories published by the Daily Express today – move that cold be called obsessive:
No fewer than 13 stories today on Meghan Markle – that’s not including the many more Express articles than namecheck her for SEO purposes.
As for being obsessed with Diana, well…
Such are the facts…
Posted: 29th, August 2020 | In: Key Posts, News, Royal Family, Tabloids | Comment
Tump for Coronavirus and ‘Get Your Knee Off Our Necks’
How Journalism Works, courtesy of the Washington Post.
On August 28, 2020 at 4:37 a.m., the WaPo noticed a “crowded White House” for Donald Trump’s latest address. The crowd was “largely devoid” of Covid-19 precautions – “few masks, little distancing.”
President Trump celebrated his renomination Thursday with a crowded party at the White House that offered a jarring contrast with a nation that is still widely shut down over fears of the coronavirus pandemic whose spread remains uncontrolled.
On August 28, 2020 at 5:26 p.m the WaPo spotted another crowd at the ‘Get Your Knee Off Our Necks’ march for racial equality:
If the topic is Covid-19, then one crowd looks very much like another crowd, right? The story on the march begins in a different tone to the one on Trump:
Thousands of protesters gathered Friday at the Lincoln Memorial to call for criminal justice reform and racial equality while honoring the 57th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” address from the same location.
Planning began in June after the funeral of George Floyd. Organizers say they want to highlight the civil rights issues of today and bring well-known speakers to address the crowd while also mitigating the spread of the novel coronavirus with strict safety protocols.
It’s not until paragraph 31 in the paper’s live blog, readers learn:
In some cases, there was little social distancing as the crowds moved closer to the Lincoln Memorial and the calls for justice boomed louder from the speakers. Most participants, however, did wear masks.
“Some cases” and “most” Or “few and “largely”? Pick your news. Fed your prejudice.
Posted: 28th, August 2020 | In: News, Politicians | Comment
Ten years of looking for Kyron Horman
Kyron Horman was last seen on June 4, 2010. Him step-mother, Terri Moulton Horman, dropped the seven-year-old at Skyline Elementary School in Portland, Oregon. He made it to the science exhibition. Moulton reportedly posted a picture on Facebook of Kyron standing in front of his tree frog exhibit. But he never made it to class. He was marked as absent. When he failed to arrive home on the school bus, Terry Horman called 911.
There have been no arrests. There has been no sign of him. We cannot be certain if any crime befell Kyron Horman. There are only theories and hunches.
The investigation is stuck, as it has been from day one. Only time moves on. This June, Kyron would have graduated from high school with the class of 2020.
Terri Horman was married to Kyron’s father, Kaine Horman, for six years. They divorced in 2013. Kyron’s mother, Desiree Young believes Terri Horman played some part in her son’s disappearance. But there is no evidence to support her allegation. And Terri Horman says she is innocent.
“Ten years is hard. I hope we aren’t here in a year,” says Desiree Young. “I want Terri to do the right thing and I want her to end this torture. We just want to bring Kyron home.”
Did he wander off? Says Desiree Young in a TV documentary:
“Kyron does not have very good eyes. He can’t see, so he’s not going to wander around. He’s also very shy and doesn’t trust people right away. That’s just not his style. I know that was a theory from the very beginning. But that’s not Kyron. He wouldn’t do that. He’s a pretty shy, timid child. He has a great wit and a sense of humor, but he doesn’t show it very often to people he doesn’t know. He doesn’t trust strangers. He prefers to be around his family.”
And..:
“The last day I saw Kyron was actually two weeks prior to June 4th. He was going to his father and stepmother’s house. But he didn’t want to go back. He wanted to stay with me. It was an emotional exchange. He had to actually be talked into going back. I tried to talk to him a little bit about what was going on, but he was not very forthcoming about what was upsetting him. I even talked to his father about it, but I was dismissed and told I was just overreacting. It was really upsetting and it was the last exchange I had with him. But he knew that I love him and that I was trying everything I could to remedy the situation within my power.”
If you know what happened to Kyron, you might be in line for a $50,000 reward. You can call The Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office on 503-261-2847.
Boris and the Bookshelves – books have been reduced to props
Did you see the books arranged behind Prime Minister Boris Johnson at Castle Rock school in Coalville, Leicestershire. Was the school librarian making a point in their choice of books to backdrop Boris? Titles on the top shelf included: Betrayed, The Resistance, The Subtle Knife, Fahrenheit 451, The Toll, Oliver Twist and Terry Pratchett’s genius Guards! Guards! What could it all mean asked the assembled hacks. “No comment,” said the school, which is, of course, a comment.
“Books seen behind Boris Johnson tell their own story,” says the Guardian headline. “Has a savvy school librarian or English teacher snatched a golden opportunity to have a pop at the PM in front of the nation?” asks a reporter from the TES. “Are the books behind Boris artfully arranged with a secret political agenda and commentary on the current government?” mused the Indy.
What you might not also have noticed is the PM’s words on the exams results fiasco. “I’m afraid your grades were almost derailed by a mutant algorithm,” guffed Boris. “I know how stressful that must have been for pupils up and down the country. I’m very, very glad that it has finally been sorted out.”
That mutant algorithm was coded by human beings. Sally Collier, the head of England’s exams regulator Ofqual has resigned. Jonathan Slater, the most senior civil servant in the Department for Education (DfE), is ‘stepping down’. But Gavin Williamson, the Secretary of State for Education, aka The Mutant, remains. Look for codes and symbols of defiance by all means, but in so doing try not to miss the obvious. Nearly 800 libraries have closed since 2010. Johnson holidayed amid the exam disaster-class, popping up to tell us that he was reading Lucretius’s On the Nature of Things.
Johnson, that school librarian and political pundits dialling in opinions from seats positioned in front of their bookshelves – watching on for signs of wrong-thinking by their peers and enemies – all assure us that books matter. But schoolchildren suffer through the lack of books and formal education. The local library has gone and there’s no longer a free space to sit, read the think. Books have been reduced to props. And that is telling.
Posted: 27th, August 2020 | In: Books, News, Politicians, Tabloids | Comment
Manchester United captain Harry Maguire called ‘unsportsmanlike’ by Greek prosecutor
Harry Maguire, the Manchester United, has been found guilty in a Greek court of repeated bodily harm, attempted bribery, violence against public employees and insult. United say he will remain their captain. Maguire says he’s innocent and will appeal the sentence of 21 months, 10 days in prison, suspended for three years. What was a minor incident on a Greek island is all over the news because Maguire is famous. And for that reason Greek lawyer Dr Ioannis Paradissis is invited to address the nation via BBC Radio 4. The prosecutor representing Maguire’s apparent victims tells the Today Programme:
“…[my clients] told me they are still waiting for an apology and they haven’t heard any and this is what I find quite shocking and quite unsportsmanlike, because fair play means when I’ve done something wrong, I apologise.”
It’s personal, no? Maguire might well be a berk, but when the prosecutor goes on the radio and alludes to the famous face’s job as playing some part in the incident, things look a bit odd, unfair even. Why should Maguire be “sportsmanlike” in a criminal court? It’s not sport. He’s not contesting the ref’s decision. He’s appealing a serious criminal conviction.
Posted: 26th, August 2020 | In: manchester united, News, Sports | Comment
How to raise your IQ: afford to live near a green space
The results of the survey are in. The greener the urban child’s world, the higher their IQ. Boffins have produced a paper which looked at linking access to parkland and gardens with doing well in intelligence tests. The work begins:
Exposure to green space has beneficial effects on several cognitive and behavioral aspects. However, to our knowledge, no study addressed intelligence as outcome. We investigated whether the level of urbanicity can modify the association of residential green space with intelligence and behavior in children.
The child in the high-rise apartment is not doing as well as the child living in a house by the park? The Telegraph sees the results:
Being raised in a greener environment boosts urban children’s intelligence and makes them better behaved, a study has found.
Researchers in Belgium found that living near parks, sports fields or community gardens raised city-dwelling children’s IQ levels and that they also exhibited less difficult behaviour. The paper, published in the journal Plos Medicine, found that an 3.3 per cent increase in green space within 3,000 metres of a child’s home was associated with a 2.6 point rise in overall IQ.
Got that? And then take a look at the property prices in you area and wonder why the people who earn the most money choose to live by the greener spaces. Is it because they have higher IQs? Or do they have more money and bigger incomes?
Madeleine McCann: Christian Brueckner’s pal, hope boosted, and two blond men
At the time of writing, Christian Brueckner remains innocent of any crimes relating to the vanishing of Madeleine McCann. The convicted paedophile is not unique. Everyone is assumed innocent because, as the Daily Star announces in a headline from the ‘no-news is still news’ school of journalism: “Madeleine McCann hopes boosted as charity says ‘no evidence she’s been harmed’.” It can be argued there is no evidence any crime befell the child. All we know is that she disappeared.
The Star is relaying an announcement on the website for the Madeleine Fund. The objects of the Madeleine Fund are:
To secure the safe return to her family of Madeleine McCann who was abducted in Praia da Luz, Portugal on Thursday 3rd May 2007;
To procure that Madeleine’s abduction is thoroughly investigated and that her abductors, as well as those who played or play any part in assisting them, are identified and brought to justice; and
To provide support, including financial assistance, to Madeleine’s family.
Kate McCann and Gerry McCann, Madeleine parents, are listed as two of the company’s six directors.
“There is absolutely nothing to suggest that Madeleine has been harmed. Madeleine is still missing and someone needs to be looking for her. She is young and vulnerable and needs our help. We love her dearly and miss her beyond words.”
The story is not one of hope being “boosted”, rather of hope being maintained in the absence of evidence to the contrary.
Over in the Sun, Christian Brueckner’s “friend” “has spoken of his horror at finding videos showing him raping an elderly woman”. The pal, named only as Manfred S, was “tracked down to Portugal by a German documentary”. For some reason we hear about the precise contents of one video, as if we need to know more than it was a “brutal rape” involving torture. Manfred “immediately alerted police about the videos which were found in Christian B’s house after he broke in while his pal was in prison.”
The paedophile rapist is a depraved criminal. This we know. But the Mail thinks we need to know more:
Madeleine McCann prime suspect was found with secret stash of 391 child porn photos and 68 vile videos, as court records reveal the full horror of crimes that landed Christian Brueckner in jail
As news of the sick bastard’s behaviour oozes into titillation, the Olive Press has an exclusive:
So too the Sun:
How does this link to the missing child? The Sun:
In Madeleine’s case, two sisters saw two blond men outside her family’s rental apartment in Praia da Luz hours before she disappeared.
One had blue eyes, like Christian B, while the other had green eyes.
According to police sources, Christian B and a mystery man of similar height were spotted drinking at a festival in the Algarve village of Messines ahead of the 2017 incident.
In March 2019, the Sun reported:
Jayne Jensen told the Netflix documentary The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann: “[My sister] was walking just slightly in front of me and then she stopped and looked back at me and motioned with her head. And it was here we saw the two men. I caught up with my sister and I said what was that about? She said – ‘Well, two single blonde men on their own’, which just made me chuckle. But they were wrongly placed, and that was that, until later that day when we had heard that Madeleine was taken it was only then piecing back – who were these guys?”
Who?
She said her and her sister “can’t be the only ones who saw them” and believes the men were there will the sole purpose: to take Madeleine.
Such are the facts.
Posted: 24th, August 2020 | In: Madeleine McCann, News, Tabloids | Comment
Manchester Untied captain Harry Maguire ‘threw a swing’ in Mykonos
Manchester United captain Harry Maguire has been spending part of his summer hols in a police station on the Greek island of Syros. United say Maguire is “fully co-operating with the Greek authorities” following an “alleged incident” on the neighbouring island of Mykonos. The Greek authorities claim Maguire was one of “three foreigners” arrested after an altercation with police officers.
The Sun says Maguire reports the allegation that on “a boozy break” to a “flash” resort, Maguire “punched a cop and tried to bribe officers in a bust-up in Mykonos”.
We hear from Mykonos Police spokesman Petros Vassilakis:
“All of the three were arrested but during the effort to do so, the other two, including the football player, got violent also. They threw down at least two policemen, hit them with their fists and kicked them.
“I can’t tell you what they were telling us. All English swear words against the authorities and against the work of the police.”
The Mail’s report has the Greek police spokesman talking about swings and roundabouts:
Maguire is to appear before a local prosecutor Saturday morning at 11.00am. Maguire’s lawyer said he denies all wrongdoing.
Posted: 21st, August 2020 | In: manchester united, News, Sports | Comment
Disaster prone Boeing 737 Max is gone; all hail the Boeing 737-8 (the same plane with a new name)
No need to worry, passengers. The Boeing’s 737 MAX jet, the not all that good plane grounded after two fatal crashes which killed 346 people – Boeing was accused of concealing information about the plane from regulators during the approval process – is no longer. It’s now a Boeing 737-8 aircraft. This year, customers have cancelled more than 400 orders for the 737. They can now order a much better 737-8, which is just like the other one but with a safer ‘8’ in the name.
It’s working! Boeing have issued a press release:
“Despite the current crisis, it is important to think about the future. To that end, we have agreed to order additional 737-8 aircraft. Following the rigorous checks that the 737 MAX is undergoing, I am convinced it will be the best aircraft in the world for many years to come,” said Grzegorz Polaniecki, general director and board member, Enter Air.
That’s two of the jets sold. Now to find people will to ride on them…
