Reviews Category
We don’t just report off-beat news, breaking news and digest the best and worst of the news media analysis and commentary. We give an original take on what happened and why. We add lols, satire, news photos and original content.
Madeleine McCann: The Private Detectives’ Secret E-Fits
MADELEINE McCann: Anorak’s at-a-glance look at the story in the news.
Image above: Undated image issued by the Metropolitan Police, as part of the investigations into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann in 2007, the original sketch (left) that a person made at the time together with a Met Police photo of the British holidaymaker (right) who they have spoken to and is seen here wearing the clothes he believes he may have been wearing that evening, This is the person police believe they have identified as the man who was seen by Jane Tanner carrying a child at about 21.15 near the apartment G5A.
The Sunday Times has a scoop:
Madeleine clues hidden for 5 years
The new prime suspect was first singled out by detectives in 2008. Their findings were suppressed. Insight reports
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 27th, October 2013 | In: Key Posts, Madeleine McCann, Reviews | Comment
A Map To Show What Every Country Is Best At
WHAT is your country best at? Doghouse Diaries has created a map to show us.
Read the rest of this entry »
Skigi: The World’s Youngest Critic Sees The Rise Of Motion Pictures At New York’s Vaudeville Show
IN December 1905, the first issue of Variety magazine featured an article by Skigie. Who he? He was the magazine publisher Sime Silverman’s 7-year-old son. The boy genius reviewed a vaudeville show. The best bit about it? The moving pictures. The boy was prescient. Moving pictures became big; vaudeville shrivelled.
Silverman’s son Sidne (1901–1950), succeeded him as publisher.
The first issue was sixteen pages long. It sold for a nickel.
Posted: 27th, October 2013 | In: Celebrities, Flashback | Comment
Advocacy Journalism Finds Global Warming Caused Australian Bushfires
THE bushfires in Australia were caused by military ordnance. So. Here’s Bryan Walsh in Time magazine:
Climate Change Affects Australia’s Epic Wildfires — No Matter What Prime Minister Says
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 27th, October 2013 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
What Makes A Great Newspaper Cartoon?
I LOVE newspaper and magazine cartoons. They break up the page, nail the story in a second and entertain the readers. New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff took us through the secret of a successful New Yorker cartoon in this lecture.He knows all about rejection. He submitted 2,000 cartoon to the New Yorker. He got 2,000 rejections. Then he got the job analysing other people’s “idea drawings”.
Read the rest of this entry »
Massive Chicken Terrorises Drivers In California
IF you saw a giant chicken crossing the road, would you pull over to let it cross safely? What about if the huge chicken was clearly not a chicken but a man dressed as one? Police in Lake Elsinore, California, dressed as a huge pecking bird to see if drivers yielded for pedestrians.
And – get this – drivers didn’t stop. Some sped up.
Read the rest of this entry »
JonBenet Ramsey: Colorado Grand Jury Wanted Parents Charged With Her Murder
WHAT happened to JonBenet Ramsey in 1996? The six-year-old beauty pageant contestant was found beaten and strangled in her Colorado home in December 1996.
Who did it? Some have blamed her parents.
In 1999, a grand jury in Colorado agreed to indict Patricia and John Bennet Ramsay for child abuse. But a District Attorney did not order a prosecution. The then DA Alex Hunter said there was not enough evidence to prosecute the Ramseys. He said:
“I and my prosecutorial team believe we do not have sufficient evidence to warrant the filing of charges against anyone who has been investigated at this time.”
The BBC notes:
US grand juries are convened in secret and tasked with determining whether enough evidence exists to bring a suspect to trial. But prosecutors must prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in order to convict – a substantially higher bar.
We know this because of a Freedom of Information Request filed by the Boulder Daily Camera.
Read the rest of this entry »
Get The Gypsy Blonde Child Snatchers: Reactions To Reporting On Maria
OTHERS have joined Anorak is denouncing the media for its unbridled bigotry in the story of “blonde angle” of Maria, the golden child ‘abducted’ by swarthy, “grooming”, feckless gypsies.
Rachel Shukert:
One doesn’t like to descend into comment sections, but a perusal of those on these latest stories is like peering into something out of the Malleus Maleficarum, or Borat. Americans, who for the most part see gypsies as something you dress up as on Halloween when your mom forgot to get you a real costume, express utter bafflement, while Europeans, who never tire of calling Americans out on their racism, insist on the toxicity of these people—their essential, unchanging, criminal nature; it’s who they are, they insist. It’s their culture. They can’t be changed, so they have to—somehow—be gotten rid of. (My favorite thread managed to both laud Hitler for killing the Roma along with the Jews, while blaming the Jews for the Roma not getting any credit for the Holocaust. And also, did you know we’re both capitalists and Bolsheviks? Blah blah blah.)
Read the rest of this entry »
Mod Cinema: Hard-To-Find 60s, 70s And 80s Films
ANORAK loves Mod Cinema, a home for hard-to-find 60s, 70s and 80s films you never knew you were looking for. The Mods put these movies on DVD. They are blasts of my youth, when everything at the cinema sounded echoey and on American TV shows the camera focused on a person’s face when they weren’t talking. And everyone looked a bit sweaty.
Read the rest of this entry »
Cruel Men Critisising Their Wives’ Coffee In 1950s And 1960s Adverts (And Her Revenge)
SHE makes terrible coffee. Sure, she has nice hair, pretty ankles and takes her prescription medication without any fuss, but that darn coffee is terrible. There is just no getting away from it.
Shaun Clayton made a study of male reactions to female coffee making in this video below. He took adverts from the 1950s and 1960s and “edited them down to just the moments when the guys were the biggest jerks to their wives about coffee”.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 25th, October 2013 | In: Flashback, The Consumer | Comment
Noam Chomsky Wipes The Floor With A 9/11 Truther: The Building 7 Debate
NOAM Chomsky had been speaking at the University of Florida when he invited questions. A 9/11 truth had a question. He talks of a consensus and:
“You’ve mentioned quite a few contradictions from the media and their presentations on things, and I think the most notorious case of this is with September 11, 2001. You wanted to see a consensus of engineers and specialists that understand the actual structures of these buildings and their possible collapse, and there is such a group. It’s called Architects and Engineers for 9-11 Truth…
“This consensus shows that Building 7, the third building that fell on 9/11, fell in freefall speed as the [National Institute of Standard and Technology] report acknowledges. Are you ready to come forward and jump on board with 9/11?”
Read the rest of this entry »
Gertrude Stein: A Great Rejection Letter And A Study Of The Back Of Her Head
ON April 19, 1912, Gertrude STrine received this letter from Arthur C Fifield, Publisher.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 25th, October 2013 | In: Books, Celebrities, Flashback | Comment
After Pepper Spray Cop University of California Welcomes TSA Groper Janet Napolitano To Molest Students
WHAT’S the monetary value of suffering? In California, they calculate it like this: the suffering you experience when a bored yet out-of-control cop pepper-sprays your face at point-blank range is worth eight thousand dollars less than the suffering said poor put-upon cop feels once he gets a reputation as the type who pepper-sprays harmless people in the face.
Seriously. Remember John “Pepper Spray” Pike? He’s the ex-Marine and former University of California at Davis policeman who became an Internet meme back in 2011, after he was recorded calmly walking down a line of student protesters sitting on a sidewalk pepper-spraying each one in the face.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 25th, October 2013 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment (1)
Tyne And Wear Metro Reminds Passengers Not To Get Decapitated On The Train
TYNE and Wear Metro have created a new safety video. Called “Don’t be insane, use your brain“, the video comes with a song and cartoon passengers being killed by decapitation and electricity.
Train operator DB Regio wants passengers to stop propping the doors open to let late arrivals onboard. They say it’s “madness”. Since April, 80 trains have been delayed this way. No-one has died. To correct thing to do is to let the doors close and then wave at the wet, tired and emotional passenger left standing on the platform.
Sharon Kelly, director of operations and customer services at DB Regio Tyne and Wear, says:
“We introduced platform announcements and put posters up on train doors to remind passengers that they shouldn’t obstruct the doors. But it doesn’t seem to have worked, because people are still doing it. It’s madness really. You wouldn’t stick your hand in the door of a bus that was about to leave a bus stop, would you? But that’s just what people are doing on the Metro.”
We hear you, Sharon. The only thing for it is to equip the doors with whirling blades or, better yet, a jihadi in every carriage ready to wield an axe lest the infidels tamper with the doors. Also, we’d like them to pilot a scheme whereby backpackers, anyone eating a kebab or shouting “Come on you lot, cheer up” is shot in the face.
YouTube link.
“
Posted: 25th, October 2013 | In: Reviews, The Consumer | Comment
Maria Is A Roma: How The Media Stoked Fears Of Gypsy Abductors Nicking Blond Children
MARIA, the gypsy girl found living on a Greek Roma camp, was not abducted. Sasha Ruseva, 38, and Atlan Rusev, 37, are her parents. Sasha is a Roma gypsy. The police have arrested her and Atlan, just as they arrested her adopted parents Hristos Salis, 39, and Eleftheria Dimopoulou, 40. Sasha and Atlan were pinched in the Bulgarian town of Nikolaevo.
Ms Ruseva says she fell pregnant in Greece. She had no money:
“I intended to go back and take my child home, but meanwhile I gave birth to two more kids so I was not able to go back.”
See her other children beklow.
So. The gypsies never did steal Maria, the blonde whose face was flashed around the world. The gypsies never did steal that child in Dublin, either. And there is not a shred of evidence that gypsies kidnapped Ben Needham or Madeleine McCann.
Time, then, to have a look at what the British Press said about blonde Maria:
Daily Mail:
Revealed: The rundown home where the four-year-old ‘Greek Maddie’ lived with her gypsy ‘abductors’
Daily Star: Maria was Our Maddie:
Daily Mirror:
His mother Kerry Needham, 41, said: “The authorities in Greece always told us, ‘Gipsies don’t steal babies’. Now we know they do. We are very optimistic this new information may help us find Ben.”
The Times told its readers:
The possibility of Gypsy involvement has been investigated in the abduction of two blonde-haired British children — Madeleine McCann in Portugal and Ben Needham in Greece.
Maria was seen dancing in a video. She was like a dancing bear, they said. She was the blonde angel, they said. The caring Mirror topped the chilling video with an advert for Gummy Bears:
Ian Murphy told Sun readers:
THE little girl rescued from a gypsy camp dances for her captors in this disturbing video handed to cops.
Lest you think the video of a blonde kid dancing was very ordinary, Murphy told us that what we were seeing was awful:
In the 29-second clip she twirls in circles in the middle of a sunny yard as a dark-haired woman watches. When the tot falters and stops the woman pushes her back into the centre of the screen and she starts again.
Those dark-haired demons. Never did trust them. Stick with Aryans, we say.
The Daily Mail had inverted commas:
First pictures of gypsy couple ‘who snatched Maria’ as they appear in court accused of abduction and facing up to 20 years in prison
Maria had “secrets“:
October 22
The Sun had more on that rescue:
THE mystery blonde girl rescued from a gypsy camp sits with the couple who posed as her parents for years.
Adding:
Fair-haired Madeleine, then nearly four, went missing from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in May 2007. Paedophile Raymond Helwett — who lived in the area at the time but died in 2010 — insisted she had been “stolen to order” by gypsies.
Blond Ben vanished on the Greek island of Kos in 1991, aged just 21 months. Five years later a local convict claimed he saw a child matching his description in the Farsala camp where Maria was found — and said gypsies told him the boy came from Kos.
That would be Helwett who never did confess to anything.
The Express then spotted Our Maddie with the gypsies:
Should they now give up hope?
Hell, no. The Star said there were 10 More Maddies:
October 23
A child living with Roma gypsies in Ireland is seized.
The Star saw – yep – you know who:
This Irish child underwent DNA tests to establish her identity and links to her family. After a few chemical experiments and State-sanctioned kidnapping, the child was in the care of the Irish state. What could go wrong? (She is now back home with her parents.)
Then the Express spotted Maddie:
The Mirror went further. It talked of an “ABDUCTION PANIC”.
The Sun had news on Maria:
Is this Maria? Missing US toddler link to ‘blonde angel’
Ws asked: These not-all-that-wealthy people nick your kids and then at no expense spared ship them to camps in Europe.
And know we know.
Still, no harm done. It was only the gypsies who got accused of running a global child-stealing racket – and no-one likes them, anyhow…
Posted: 24th, October 2013 | In: Key Posts, Madeleine McCann, Reviews | Comment (1)
Chemistry Teacher Took Smoking Students To (Periodic) Table Dancing Strip Club
TRAVIS Lechien was a chemistry teacher Hanover Central High School, Indiana. He’d been at the school for ten years. But now he’s gone, his reputation immersed in a cloud of the flavoured tobacco it’s alleged he shared with his students from a hookah pipe.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 24th, October 2013 | In: Reviews, Strange But True | Comment
Army Wife Ripped Off Young Son’s Scotum And Superglued It Back On
THOSE of you against circumcision should cock an ear to the story of the women who ripped off her six-year-old son’s scrotum then superglued it back on and waited for the bleeding to stop.
The women, one Jennifer Marie Vargas, 34, whose husband works as a soldier at the Joint Base San Antonio, has been arrested. She is accused of deliberately tearing off her son’s scrotum.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 24th, October 2013 | In: Reviews, Strange But True | Comment
Paul Dacre And Lord Leveson Make UCS School Open Days Interesting
IT’S a small world among the elite.
Paul Dacre, the Daily Mail editor, was a scholar at University College School in Hampstead, London.
Read the rest of this entry »
Climate Change Made Australian Military Start Bushfires (And Ate My Homework), Says Expert
THE Australian military firing ordnance triggered the bushfires in New South Wales. Those who saw it a sign of man-made global warming are left clutching at dry straws. One is Academic Janet Stanley, who tells us that if children started the blaze -as was thought – their actions were driven by climate change:
“With a child it might just be an accident, you know, it’s fun to watch a fire. You light it and in the circumstances that we’ve got at the moment with climate change it gets away when it probably wasn’t meant to get away.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Madeleine McCann: Portugal Dusts Off The Files
THE Daily Star was right,, Portuguese police have reopened the Madeleine McCann case. They shelved the file in 2008.
This is progress. 
Madeleine, from Leicestershire, vanished on May 7 2007.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 24th, October 2013 | In: Madeleine McCann, Reviews | Comment
Not A Hate Crime Video: East London Asian Gang Attacks White American Because He Was Drinking Beer On The Street?
AN East London gang has attacked an American man who was drinking beer on the street.
The attackers are Asian.
Francesco Hounye, 22, is not Asian. He’d been drinking in Brick Lane. He was on his way home to a friend’s flat.
The lunatics bottled Francesco and kicked him.
Scotland Yard said this is not a hate crime. Mr Hounye was targeted simply because he was “obviously not local”.
Got that? Not a hate crime.
Read the rest of this entry »
Take The Cambridge University Interview: A 10 Question Test
THESE Questions are from the Cambridge University Engineering degree interview. Clue: None of the answers are “My daddy’s very rich”, “I can row” or “MAYBE”.
Q1.
I start with a pint glass full of lemonade. I drink half of it and give it to you. You then drink half of what is left and give it back to me. I then drink half of what is left, and pass it back. We keep drinking half of the remaining lemonade then passing it across until there is a negligible amount of drink left. In total, what proportion of the pint did I drink?
1/3
5/8
2/3
3/4
none of the above
Read the rest of this entry »
Dublin Blonde Is A Gypsy: Media Gutted As Persecuted Roma Proved Innocent
THE blonde child taken from her darker parents and swabbed does have the same DNA as her parents. Yeah. The gypsies never did steal the blonde.
A member of the public called the Child Protection Unit at Tallaght Garda Station saying the blonde just didn’t fit with those gypsies. So. The police took the child away from her family. They did a test on her. They tested her parents. And it turns out that after the State kidnapping and medical experiments the gypsies are innocent.
What now for the tabloids?
Read the rest of this entry »
