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.
Man did pretty well during the last Carbon dioxide peak of 400 parts per million
HOW bad is the carbon peak? The BBC:
Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have broken through a symbolic mark.
Daily measurements of CO2 at a US government agency lab on Hawaii have topped 400 parts per million for the first time.
The station, which sits on the Mauna Loa volcano, feeds its numbers into a continuous record of the concentration of the gas stretching back to 1958.
The Washington Post:
…scientists say it may have been 10 million years ago that Earth last encountered this much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The first modern humans only appeared in Africa about 200,000 years ago.
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Posted: 12th, May 2013 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
All the mad and dangerous views on Barrister Barbara Hewson’s words on Operation Yewtree and child abuse
BARBARA Hewson is a barrister. She was awarded an honorary fellowship of the University of Westminster for services to law. On the website of her employers, Hardwicke, we learn:
Amongst her many achievements, her citation referred to her work for equality for women at the Bar and in helping found the Association of Women Barristers; her championing of the rights of pregnant women to refuse medical treatment (R(S) v Collins, St George’s Health Care NHS Trust & Anr [1999] Fam 26); and her work defending home birth midwives’ right to practise, in both Ireland and England.
She fought to prove that Gareth Oates, an autistic 18-year-old who killed himself in front of a train, “had been neglected by many agencies”. She has written about family courts and how the State can abuse to vulnerable.
She has a particular interest in reproductive rights, and was the first member of the Bar to receive the Lawyer’s ‘Barrister of the Year’ Award, for her pioneering work opposing court-ordered treatment of pregnant women.
Hewson has a record of speaking truth to power. So. What do we make of her views on Operation Yewtree, the Met’s investigation of historical sex abuse sparked by revelations on Sir Jimmy Savile?
Hewson writes in Spiked:
I do not support the persecution of old men. The manipulation of the rule of law by the Savile Inquisition – otherwise known as Operation Yewtree – and its attendant zealots poses a far graver threat to society than anything Jimmy Savile ever did.
And with that a media shitstorm erupted:
Now even a deputy speaker of the House of Commons is accused of male rape. This is an unfortunate consequence of the present mania for policing all aspects of personal life under the mantra of ‘child protection’.
We have been here before. England has a long history of do-gooders seeking to stamp out their version of sexual misconduct by force of the criminal law. In the eighteenth century, the quaintly named Society for the Reformation of Manners funded prosecutions of brothels, playwrights and gay men.
In the 1880s, the Social Purity movement repeatedly tried to increase the age of consent for girls from 13 to 16, despite parliament’s resistance. At that time, puberty for girls was at age 15 (now it is 10). The movement’s supporters portrayed women as fragile creatures needing protection from men’s animal impulses. Their efforts were finally rewarded after the maverick editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, WT Stead, set up his own secret commission to expose the sins of those in high places.
After procuring a 13-year-old girl, Stead ran a lurid exposé of the sex industry, memorably entitled ‘The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon’. His voyeuristic accounts under such titles as ‘Strapping girls down’ and ‘Why the cries of the victims are not heard’ electrified the Victorian public. The ensuing moral panic resulted in the age of consent being raised in 1885, as well as the criminalisation of gross indecency between men.
By contrast, the goings-on at the BBC in past decades are not a patch on what Stead exposed. Taking girls to one’s dressing room, bottom pinching and groping in cars hardly rank in the annals of depravity with flogging and rape in padded rooms. Yet the Victorian narrative of innocents despoiled by nasty men endures.
What is strikingly different today is how Britain’s law-enforcement apparatus has been infiltrated by moral crusaders, like the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) and the National Association for People Abused in Childhood (NAPAC). Both groups take part in Operation Yewtree, which looks into alleged offences both by and not by Savile.
These pressure groups have a vested interest in universalising the notion of abuse, making it almost as prevalent as original sin, but with the modern complication that it carries no possibility of redemption, only ‘survival’. The problem with this approach is that it makes abuse banal, and reduces the sympathy that we should feel for victims of really serious assaults (1).
But the most remarkable facet of the Savile scandal is how adult complainants are invited to act like children. Hence we have witnessed the strange spectacle of mature adults calling a children’s charity to complain about the distant past.
The NSPCC and the Metropolitan Police Force produced a joint report into Savile’s alleged offending in January 2013, called Giving Victims a Voice. It states: ‘The volume of the allegations that have been made, most of them dating back many years, has made this an unusual and complex inquiry. On the whole victims are not known to each other [sic] and taken together their accounts paint a compelling picture of widespread sexual abuse by a predatory sex offender. We are therefore referring to them as “victims” rather than “complainants” and are not presenting the evidence they have provided as unproven allegations [italics added].’ The report also states that ‘more work still needs to be done to ensure that the vulnerable feel that the scales of justice have been rebalanced’.
Note how the police and NSPCC assume the roles of judge and jury. What neither acknowledges is that this national trawl for historical victims was an open invitation to all manner of folk to reinterpret their experience of the past as one of victimisation (2).
The acute problems of proof which stale allegations entail also generates a demand that criminal courts should afford accusers therapy, by giving them ‘a voice’. This function is far removed from the courts’ traditional role, in which the state must prove defendants guilty beyond reasonable doubt.
What this infantilising of adult complainants ultimately requires is that we re-model our criminal-justice system on child-welfare courts. These courts (as I have written in spiked previously) have for some decades now applied a model of therapeutic jurisprudence, in which ‘the best interests of the child’ are paramount.
It is depressing, but true, that many reforms introduced in the name of child protection involve sweeping attacks on fundamental Anglo-American legal rights and safeguards, such as the presumption of innocence. This has ominous consequences for the rule of law, as US judge Arthur Christean pointed out: ‘Therapeutic jurisprudence marks a major and in many ways a truly radical shift in the historic function of courts of law and the basic purpose for which they have been established under our form of government. It also marks a fundamental shift in judges’ loyalty away from principles of due process and toward particular social policies. These policies are less concerned with judicial impartiality and fair hearings and more concerned with achieving particular results…’
The therapeutic model has certain analogies with a Soviet-style conception of justice, which emphasises outcomes over processes. It’s not difficult, then, to see why some celebrity elderly defendants, thrust into the glare of hostile publicity, including Dalek-style utterances from the police (‘offenders have nowhere to hide’), may conclude that resistance is useless. But the low-level misdemeanours with which Stuart Hall was charged are nothing like serious crime.
Touching a 17-year-old’s breast, kissing a 13-year-old, or putting one’s hand up a 16-year-old’s skirt, are not remotely comparable to the horrors of the Ealing Vicarage assaults and gang rape, or the Fordingbridge gang rape and murders, both dating from 1986. Anyone suggesting otherwise has lost touch with reality.
Ordinarily, Hall’s misdemeanors would not be prosecuted, and certainly not decades after the event. What we have here is the manipulation of the British criminal-justice system to produce scapegoats on demand. It is a grotesque spectacle.
It’s interesting that two complainants who waived anonymity have told how they rebuffed Hall’s advances. That is, they dealt with it at the time. Re-framing such experiences, as one solicitor did, as a ‘horrible personal tragedy’ is ironic, given that tragoidia means the fall of an honourable, worthy and important protagonist.
It’s time to end this prurient charade, which has nothing to do with justice or the public interest. Adults and law-enforcement agencies must stop fetishising victimhood. Instead, we should focus on arming today’s youngsters with the savoir-faire and social skills to avoid drifting into compromising situations, and prosecute modern crime. As for law reform, now regrettably necessary, my recommendations are: remove complainant anonymity; introduce a strict statute of limitations for criminal prosecutions and civil actions; and reduce the age of consent to 13.
Right, then. What reactions did that get?
Daily Mail: “Outrage at barrister who called Stuart Hall’s crimes ‘low level'”
Miss Hewson, who is an abortion rights specialist, said the arrests of Rolf Harris, Dave Lee Travis, Jim Davidson and Max Clifford were driven by the need to produce ‘scapegoats on demand’.
But Susan Harrison, 61, who was indecently assaulted by Hall when she was 16, said it was wrong to make light of his crimes.‘To call them low-level misdemeanours is not only incredibly hurtful to all the victims it is also utterly ridiculous,’ she said. ‘I don’t think Miss Hewson understands what it is like to be on the receiving end of this kind of abuse from a man who is trusted by your family and by society as a whole. What he did to me went on to ruin my life and I am still dealing with the aftermath now and to call it low level is just offensive.’
Alan Collins, of Pannone Solicitors, which represents many of Savile’s and 83-year-old Hall’s victims, called her comments ‘crazy’ and ‘ignorant’.
And worse still:
Hardwicke Chambers, where she is a junior barrister, expressed shock and said they were investigating.
The Mail then ads for reason not entirely clear:
Miss Hewson, 52, lives in a £1million home in Islington, North London…
I care, actually. I am uncomfortable with people’s names being bandied about before they are charged, and uncomfortable with the McCarthyite vigour with which those names are offered up to the public’s slavering maws, though, of course, the counter-argument is that naming names helps other victims come forward. I am also uncomfortable with the question of proof decades after an alleged event. But I care a lot.
Last week a high-profile barrister called Barbara Hewson wrote an article that called for the age of consent to be lowered to 13, on the basis that some of the Yewtree crimes were “low-level” and led only to “the persecution of old men”. What this amounted to, she wrote, was “the manipulation of the British criminal justice system to produce scapegoats on demand. It is a grotesque spectacle.”
Hewson got both barrels for her article (which you can read at spiked-online.com), but the piece put forward a reasoned and intelligent argument. I know from conversations I’ve had that many people agree with her on the “low-level” front, if not the age of consent part; and I know that many people think that some of the women coming forward are opportunistic, in it for the money and possibly either exaggerating or lying outright.
I strongly disagree with Hewson, though I can understand why she makes some of the points that she does. And despite the outrage her remarks have provoked, she speaks for more people than her detractors imagine (I’m ignoring the age of consent part because it’s just mad — a rapist’s charter).
Peter Watt, director of the NSPCC helpline:
“These outdated and simply ill-informed views would be shocking to hear from anyone but to hear them from a highly experienced barrister simply beggars belief. Stuart Hall has pleaded guilty to abusing children as young as nine years old, we think most people would agree that crimes of this nature are incredibly serious. Thankfully the law, and most people, are very clear on this matter. To minimise and trivialise the impact of these offences for victims in this way is all but denying that they have in fact suffered abuse at all. Any suggestion of lowering the age of consent could put more young people at risk from those who prey on vulnerable young people.”
We are shocked by the views expressed in Barbara Hewson’s article in Spiked (8 May 2013).
We did not see or approve the article pre-publication and we completely dissociate ourselves from its content and any related views she may have expressed via social media or any other media outlets.
Fleet Street Fox (Daily Mirror):
But there is a third option if we want to rid the world of paedophiles. It would be easier, and quicker, but it would take a bit of selling to the voters.
We could legalise it.
She quotes Hewson. Then:
We could do all that, but we probably won’t on the basis that it’s ABSOLUTELY BARKING MAD. If we have a time limit on some of the most serious crimes it’s possible to commit, we’ll need one on everything. Nazi war criminals? Oh, forget them. Genocidal Serbs? Too long ago. Fred West? Look, it was the 1970s, things were different then.
If we lower the age of consent we’ll be making adulthood happen faster. Sex at 13, driving at 14, let ‘em vote and marry and pay taxes and leave school and oh look at that, it’s the 19th century again. And anyone who goes to the police or their teacher with a complaint of sexual abuse will have their name and face plastered on posters all over the neighbourhood under the phrase ‘STUPID CHILD’.
…
There would be no rapists, no paedophiles, no victims, and the police could get back to the important business of arresting journalists who’ve embarrassed the rich and powerful.
The long-term effect would be that the TV presenters, dirty old men, perverts, and local oddballs of the future would be the only people to go unmolested…
When I was 13 I had thick NHS specs, braces, acne and a mullet. I communicated by slamming doors and overdoing the eyeliner.
Sex was not only the last thing on my mind, it was terrifying and utterly impossible. I couldn’t consent to being looked at, never mind anything more.
Yet as bonkers as all this sounds someone has suggested it.
Barrister Barbara Hewson says Operation Yewtree is akin to the Spanish Inquisition, that do-gooders tackling child abuse is similar to making homosexuality illegal, and that ‘low-level misdemeanours’ such as those Stuart Hall confessed to last week should not be prosecuted.
Except no-one is burning paedophiles alive, paedophilia is nowhere near the same as sexual activity between consenting adults, and Stuart Hall did not just touch someone’s bum.
He confessed to assaulting girls aged nine to 17 in a variety of ways, some minor and some more serious. Not a single one of them consented to it, regardless of whether they were legally able to.
One told how ‘ I was never aroused, so there was a lot of blood’ .
There must have been people who felt uneasy as Operation Yewtree, set up initially to investigate crimes committed by the late paedophile Jimmy Savile, transmuted into a sort of big-game hunt, with TV stars instead of elephants as targets – but they said nothing, because to show any doubts about the conduct of the investigation is to invite accusations of belittling child abuse…
…the vehemence of the reaction against Barbara Hewson demonstrates that she was certainly right to compare the public mood around this issue to a witch-hunt, since it is in the nature of witch-hunts to not only shout down opposition, but also to attack what you think someone said, or what you wish they’d said, rather than what they did say.
Some of the more hysterical reactions to Hewson’s Spiked article even said that she was trying to protect child abusers from prosecution, or that she was blaming victims for not being streetwise enough to resist rapists, which is crazy.
All she said was that it is important to draw distinctions between acts we morally disapprove of and those which are actually criminal.
Rape Crisis England & Wales:
Rape Crisis (England and Wales) is shocked and deeply concerned by the offensive, ill-informed and damaging on-line article from barrister Barbara Hewson regarding Operation Yewtree.
Her opening assertion – that ongoing legal investigations pose a ‘far graver threat to society’ than a prominent public figure who raped and sexually assaulted women and children across decades – suggests a cynical attempt to self-publicise by generating controversy for its own sake. This impression is supported by all the comments that follow in the rest of the article.
From the range of objectionable points Ms Hewson makes, Rape Crisis is particularly concerned by her apparent attack on and dismissal of the experiences of adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. This betrays not only a complete lack of empathy but also an ignorance of the long-term impacts of sexual violence that is particularly dangerous in a legal professional.
Of the 60,000 women and girls our Rape Crisis Centres provide specialist support to each year, over 60% have come to us because of an incident of sexual violence that happened more than three years ago and we know that around a third of those sexually abused as children reach adulthood without having told anyone about it. The women we work with tell us that prominent amongst the numerous reasons for this, as well as the power and control wielded by their abusers, are shame, self-blame and a fear of not being believed, all of which are perpetuated and reinforced by the kinds of views Ms Hewson so aggressively presents in her article.
In this context, Rape Crisis (England and Wales) also finds it incomprehensible that a legal professional would call for the removal of sexual violence victims’ right to lifelong anonymity. When we know that only around 15% of the estimated 85,000 women who are raped and 400,000 who are sexually assaulted in England and Wales every year ever report to the police, it is unjustifiable to suggest that adding to the stress and trauma of the experience for victims can do anything to improve levels of justice.
Let me tell you, Ms Hewson, victimhood is not something to be fetished or enjoyed. As many have already said your remarks represent the fear that all victims have of being disbelieved and the accusations of being attention seeking liars who enjoy victimhood. Abuse is something that haunts and damages you for the rest of your life, effects all the decisions you make, the friends and relationships you choose, the relationships with your family and how you feel about yourself. It will have you awake screaming & crying in the middle of the night, make you afraid of your own shadow and make you hate yourself and the body you live in. It can make you want to hurt yourself, cause resentment and anger towards others and makes it hard to trust anyone. Your remarks show just how much you, as a supposedly impartial party, know nothing about the experience of a victim.
I am one of the victims you seem to know so much about. I have twice been subjected to the selfish actions of a man, a family friend, in a position of power who wanted to rape a trusting little girl, initially aged just 11 and then 13, who didn’t understand what was going on…
I am still living with extreme feelings of worthlessness and the urge to hurt myself because of the damage sexual abuse has done to me…
Ms Hewson, the fact that you as an esteemed barrister in a position of authority see it fit to perpetuate the rape apologism and victim blaming that is already so prevalent in our society and prevents victims coming forward, speaks volumes about how out of touch you are and how little you understand about sexual abuse. It’s all very well from your privileged position to fire off soundbites about “fetishing victimhood” and “persecuting old men”, but you cannot even begin to understand how damaging, disrespectful and false those statements are.
I no longer work in the field of law enforcement but I believe that it is still the case that in order for charges to be brought the CPS must consider that they have a reasonable chance of obtaining a conviction. I agree that the media’s habit of gleefully naming every individual arrested as part of Yewtree is unpleasant and unnecessary, and perhaps gives credence to the suggestion that those accused of rape should also be granted anonymity. However this is no reason for stripping rape complainants of their right to anonymity.
Ms Hewson continues “It’s time to end this prurient charade, which has nothing to do with justice or the public interest. Adults and law-enforcement agencies must stop fetishising victimhood. Instead, we should focus on arming today’s youngsters with the savoir-faire and social skills to avoid drifting into compromising situations, and prosecute modern crime.”. It’s almost as though she’s claiming that with the right skills and knowledge sexual predators can be avoided – a common theme of victim-blaming. But as a barrister surely Ms Hewson knows that rape and sexual assault is never the fault of the victim? I agree that young people should be taught what is and isn’t acceptable in terms of sexual behaviour but that in no way means that assault can be avoided if one has the appropriate “social skills”.
Although Ms Hewson’s article has moments where it is interesting and thought-provoking it is also ill-considered and her employers, Hardwicke Chambers, have been quick to distance themselves from it. It is a shame that this article seems likely to overshadow her reputation as a passionate advocate for abortion rights and her opposition to the court-ordered treatment of pregnant women. I hope that Ms Hewson’s views aren’t widely shared among her fellow legal professionals; meanwhile I imagine there are few victims of sexual assault or rape who would want her in their courtroom.
Hewson says critics have called for her to be raped.
She adds:
To illustrate that:
And:
One critic demands Hewson be made unemployed:
Others agree with her:
Posted: 12th, May 2013 | In: Reviews | Comments (3)
The top ten FA Cup Final Songs ever (plus rosettes, goal action flick books and Super-8 films)
ONCE upon a time, we are always told, the FA Cup Final was one of only two games shown live on television each year. (The other being the England v Scotland fixture in the late and unlamented Home International tournament.)
And in the days before video recorders, there were few opportunities to relive those magical moments.
You could look at your rosette, with its odd-looking cup.
You could read your official match programme, with its pages of Double Diamond ads (and in the case of the 1946 final, the news that, along with their “stockings”, Charlton Athletic wore white knickers, and Derby black).
You could watch a goal again and again by flicking the pages of a flip-book.
You could buy Super-8 films – if you had a projector, and weren’t too bothered about burning the living room curtains as the celluloid caught light.
Or more timid souls might have opted for a souvenir LP of the match commentary.
For most, however, the gift that kept giving was the Cup Final Song, usually sung by the lads themselves and carefully mixed to hide the vocal shortcomings therein. Some made the pop charts; others disappeared into oblivion. Here’s ten of the best.
10. Liverpool
The Anfield Rap came from left-field before the 1988 FA Cup final against Wimbledon and the only fond memory of that occasion for Reds fans.
9. Stoke City
The Potters’ ponderous We’ll Be With You was the soundtrack for their far-from-ponderous League Cup victory in 1972.
8. Arsenal
Good Old Arsenal is a strange hybrid. The tune is ‘Rule Britannia’ and the lyrics (such as they are) were penned by Jimmy Hill – a man with no connection to the club.
7. Everton
Plenty of club songs in their locker, including this effort from the sixties.
But their representative here is Here We Go – an interesting take on the theme song from the miners’ strike. In another interesting twist, it was recorded after their 1984 FA Cup win.
6. Leeds United
A-side Leeds United made the charts, but like a Beatles single, it was the B-side (Leeds! Leeds! Leeds! commonly known as Marching On Together) that endured.
5. Chelsea
The Pensioners’ anthem Blue Is The Colour was recorded not for the famous 1970 FA Cup Final, but for the 1972 League Cup Final, which they lost to Stoke. This video shows the recording session, including a very drunk Alan Hudson, who probably hadn’t recovered in time for the final.
4. West Ham United
A valiant, if somewhat dated, reggae version of the Hammers standard, performed by Bonzo, Sir Trev and pals for the 1975 FA Cup Final against Fulham.
3 Crystal Palace
The Dave Clark Five’s Glad All Over became the Palace anthem during the 1960s, so it was the obvious choice for the team to record for the Wembley debut in the 1990 FA Cup Final.
2 Tottenham Hotspur
Spurs had plenty of cup form in the studio. The Cockerel Chorus hit the carts in the early 1970s with Nice One Cyril, and a decade later came Ossie’s Dream, recorded by Chas & Dave with the ‘Tottingham’ squad. The duo would go on to pen two more cup final tunes: Hot Shot Tottenham in 1987 and, best of the lot, Tottenham, Tottenham in 1982. Here it is on Top of the Pops.
1 Millwall
Not an obvious choice, perhaps, but a classic nonetheless. Recorded decades before the club’s first FA Cup Final in 2004, Let ’Em Come was the theme tune for the road to Wembley. A rousing tune with pleasingly menacing undertones.
Posted: 12th, May 2013 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Sports | Comment
How to conceal the smell of cannabis
“We were wondering what was going on because two men were painting the outside of the shop every day. They did not appear to be professional painters. They were just wearing jeans and things. I think some people in the street had noticed the smell. They were obviously hoping that the fresh paint smell would cover it up.”
“The smell was just the jam or cream inside the cakes.”
Student owns teacher: Jeff Bliss is right
THE three things that stand out in this video of classroom rebel Jeff Bliss, 18, at Duncanville High School, Texas:
1. The student is right
2. The other students don;t say a thing or back him up to put him down
3. The patient teacher listens and debates with him
Teaching by handing students test papers to fill in has become the norm in too many schools. It’s lazy. It teaches only compliance.
Posted: 10th, May 2013 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
78,000 apply to live and die on Mars, because they hate Earth, clearly
SOME people hate Earth so much that they’ve applied to live on Mars, even though Mars looks like an arid death hole. More than 78,000 people from 120 different countries have applied to leave Earth, which frankly makes them traitors and we should round them up and boo them into oblivion.
The openings come from a new reality TV series from Dutch non-profit organisation Mars One.
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Posted: 10th, May 2013 | In: Reviews, Technology | Comment (1)
Bangladesh cheap clothing factories: 8 die in fire – survivor pulled from Rana Savar debris 17 days building collapsed killing 1,000
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Nominative determinism: Mr And Mrs Speed jailed for dealing amphetamines
NOMINATIVE Determinism takes us to Nottingham Crown Court to see a couple sentenced to two-and-a-half years choky for possessing amphetamines with intent to supply. Daniel, 36, and Abigail Speed did not blame fate for their lot.
Marijuana Man runs out of weed (video)
MARIJUANA Man run out of weed. Just say “no, thank you.”
Feel the Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
How Ariel Castro tortured Amanda Berry, Michele Knight and Gina DeJesus
AMANDA Berry, Michele Knight and Gina DeJesus “were chained in the basement during the first years of their captivity…”
As for their keeper:
“In the note found in [Ariel] Castro’s Seymour Avenue home in Cleveland after his arrest, the former school-bus driver scoffed at the stupidity of his captives for getting into his car on the days they vanished….”
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Posted: 9th, May 2013 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
Charles Ramsey becomes the victim of a media hatchet job – gutter press turn on black hero
CHARLES Ramsey is a hero. He did the right thing when he heard Amanda Berry hollering and broke down the door to save her, a young child, Michele Knight and Gina DeJesus.
Connor Simpson told his readers:
No one is saying that Charles Ramsey isn’t worthy of the “hero” mantle.
Two days on and they are. Katherine Bindley writes in the HuffPost:
Charles Ramsey, the Cleveland man who has been hailed as a hero for his role in helping to free three women from the house where police say they were held, has a criminal record that includes a history of domestic violence.
So what? He’s not on trial. The women’s kidnappers and rapists soon will be. Ramsey was just the right man in the right place at the right time. The media made him a star and the internet made him a meme. He’s just being himself.
Bindley adds:
As praise for Ramsey’s actions continue to surface from media outlets, it remains to be seen how his past will affect the public’s perceptions of his character.
Nice, eh. Mr Ramsey rescues three women from sexual slavery and gets his character questioned by a hack. He’s not standing for public office. He’s not pontificating on the lives of others. He’s a man who did the right thing.
The media has praised Ramsey in recent days in part because he said he thought kidnapping victim Amanda Berry, whom he heard screaming from a neighbour’s house, was a victim of domestic violence when he went to help her.
The media praised him. Does he give a toss what the media thinks of him? Did he give toss what the media would think of him when he kicked in that front door? He did the right thing and then, when questioned by the TV news, spoke candidly. But Bindley sits in judgement in the court of popular opinion. She continues:
However, that fact — coupled with Ramsey’s remarks about how he had been raised to help women in distress — now seems to stand in contrast to his past behavior.
What a hideous, cowardly hatchet job.
The Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart updated a flattering article about Ramsey to reflect the new information, but he said it did nothing to change his mind about the man’s status as a hero.
Having questioned Mr Ramsey’s character, Bindley now defers to another writer who made an opinion. Bindley is inviting her readers to debate Ramsey. Revolting.
And then the aforesaid Simpson gets wind of Ramsey’s rap sheet.
Charles Ramsey is still a hero for the good he did. He undeniably helped save three women from a horrific situation that’s straight out of the worst, most exploitive horror movie you can imagine.
But…
But that doesn’t change the reality that he has a history of violence himself.
Send the man down!
Posted: 9th, May 2013 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment (1)
Monaco tries to salve its chronic short man syndrome by seeping into the sea
MONACO is, like Dubai, a country suffering from small-man syndrome. It wants to be bigger. It’s wearing the flashy gold watch, driving a sports car and attracting celebrity friends but it remains small. Monaco is further damaged by being a very small version of France, that venue for scholastic exchanges, romance, booze cruises, burning sheep and car-b-cues. Monaco’s a foreigner’s view of an al fresco French drawing room, a gilded, gaudy, snooty, ultra-conservative bastion of monied minds, opulence, esoteric watch brands and tackiness.
Maybe it can improve if it can grow? The country is taking bids for a six-hectare (14-acre) development project of land drained of the sea. You have until 23 July to design a new district for Monaco’s new district by 2024.
New Monaco will be environmentally friendly and favour pedestrians and cyclists. Residences will be blocks of flats. Can it be that New Monaco will look like an old Russian slum, the locals all emigres recapturing the mood of Stalin’s Steppes, their heads swaddled in Dr Nip ‘n’ Tuck’s scarves as they affect a look of a housewife taking a Siberian winter full in the face – at least until the stitches mend?
Monaco is seeping into the Med like a sewage outlet of greed. It’s good for the little men, of course.
Come on in, the water’s shallow…
Cleveland hero Charles Ramsey was raised right (video)
CHARLES Ramsey was raised right. The man who saved Amanda Berry, Michele Knight and Gina DeJesus is a star. “I’m the definition of a man, bro'”. Here he is on the telly:
Posted: 8th, May 2013 | In: Reviews, TV & Radio | Comment
Married high school teacher Jennifer Vigil, 31 allegedly forced 18-year-old to have sex with her
IN other news: “Married high school teacher Jennifer Vigil, 31, allegedly pounced on her now 18-year-old victim at Pojoaque Valley High School…”
Charles Ramsey sings and memes (Reginald D Hunter is busy)
CHARLES Ramsey, break-out-star of the kidnapping, imprisonment, enslavement and likely rape of three women in Cleveland, Ohio, is now a singer.
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Who stole the bear’s bicycle? Circus performer seeks new act
WHO stole the bear’s bicycle? The thief struck as the bear was scheduled to perform at a circus in the Russian republic of Tatarstan.
The story goes that Timofei the bear was deeply upset at not being able to cycle around in circles that he stopped eating. Timofei’s trainer is merely “hysterical”.
The steel bicycle is unfit for humans who don’t look like bears.
Edith Crocker’s Teddy Bears ride motorbikes in Harringay, London, back in 1950. Back then bikes were the go-ahead transport. Nowadays, what with global warming and rising fuel costs, bears have turend to push bikes.
Bikes for short bears, London, 1950.
Noel Edmonds’ big break into light entertainments, 1953.
Bears at Peter Storm
During an act of the new clown-owned circus, Hans Grocker shows his high-riding bear during the opening run in Hamburg, Germany on March 27, 1951. “The bear is programmed as the only one in the world which can ride a bicycle as high as this one. He gets on and off with a ladder.”
Good with a ladder, you say? Was the missing bike stored in an upstairs room..?
Skills of Defensive Driving – Episodes 1 to 5 (1973)
IN Skills of Defensive Driving, the Australia Department of Transport pops the sex comedy soundtrack into the player and keep your eyes on the road. This was made by Film Australia in 1973:
Episode 2: Easter Time
Episode 3: The Car Behind
Episode 4: The Head On Collision
Great intro. An inspiration for Police Squad.
Episode 5: Cross-roads crash
Spotter: Jalopnik
Robber thwarted by a face full of chilli
WHEN you’re faced with someone trying to rob you, it is difficult not to freeze in terror. However, that’s the polar opposite of Joanna Tarnoski’s actions as she dealt with Tyrone Holmwood, who got a little hot-headed.
Tyrone was trying to rob the till at a takeaway shop in Sydney, but it all got a bit too hot to handle for the bozo as he soon found he had a bucket of chilli on his stupid head.
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Madeleine McCann gets dragged into the Amanda Berry story – Charlene Downs and Ben Needham are ignored
THE story of Amanda Berry, Michelle Knight and Gina DeJesus’s escape from a suburban prison is made made relevant to a British audience by the mention of missing child Madeleine McCann, the benchmark of not only missing children but now of all missing teenagers and women, too.
Alison Philips writes in the Mirror:
Inspiring mothers who fought for missing daughters keep hope of Madeleine McCann miracle alive
A miracle is a happening so incredible is must be the work of God.
The discovery of three women held captive in a house for 10 years can only have reignited hope Madeleine may one day be found.
Indeed, Gina DeJesus’s aunt Sandra Ruiz said: “If you don’t believe in miracles, I suggest you think again.”
From the perspective of the missing women’s loved one their reappearance after ten years of nothing must seem like a miracle. But from the victims’ viewpoint, it must be anything but. They endured captivity at the hands of three men.
What happened to Madeleine McCann remains a mystery. When she vanished, the Mirror conjured six theories, none of which involved the supernatural or God. The Mirror’s six theories of what happened to the innocent child were: “PAEDOPHILE GANG”, the “LONE PAEDOPHILE”, the “JEALOUS MOTHER”, “DROWNED”, the “OPPORTUNIST PAEDOPHILE” and the “CHILDLESS COUPLE”.
Alison Philips then watches the parents:
Last weekend Kate McCann boarded a flight alone to return to Portugal where her daughter Madeleine was abducted almost exactly six years ago. She was going back to the spot where she lost her three-year-old daughter and to the moment she last saw her, tucked up in bed with Cuddle Cat.
Kate was also going back to where she lost her own life, the life she had before it became defined by loss forever. The pain of returning to that whitewashed town on the Algarve must be horrific.
And yet friends say Kate does it to feel close to Madeleine.
This is news, how?
Presumably immersing herself in the pain of her loss is preferable to that awful alternative – forgetting about her little girl. And Kate can’t do that. She more than anyone knows that she wasn’t there when her daughter needed her most.
So now she must fight for the rest of her life to ensure that if Madeleine is still alive, she knows her mother is there for her now.
That’s pretty brutal by Philips. isn’t it. She says Kate McCann’s search for her daughter is in part inspired by notions that she let her daughter down. How does that make Kate McCann an “inspiring mother” as the title to Philip’s piece states?
We don’t yet know Amanda Berry, 16, Gina DeJesus, then 14, and Michelle Knight, then 22, were kidnapped. But we do know they were out in public at the time.
Philips then speculates:
Even if she is dead, Kate’s job remains to keep her daughter’s memory alive because while memory remains, so does life.
In appearing to salute Kate McCann, Philips now says the tabloids’ Our Maddie might be dead. Theta’s the very thing the McCanns’ campaign to find her doesn’t want us to think.
Indeed Kate and Gerry said:
“The discovery of these young women reaffirms our hope of finding Madeleine, which has never diminished. Their recovery is also further evidence that children are sometimes abducted and kept for long periods. So we ask the public to remain vigilant in the ongoing search for Madeleine. Our thoughts are with the women in America and their families.”
But this is an opportunistic and wholly shallow article the intent of which is to fill space by linking events on Cleveland to British readers. Philips then writes:
And this week Kate’s pain must be even more acute as the discovery of three women held captive in an American house for 10 years can only have reignited hope that Madeleine may too one day be found.
They must have. Just as they must have when Jaycee Dugard was found alive and when Elizabeth Fritzl emerged from erh father’s cellar.
The tabloids never say how such events give hope to Andrew Gosden’s parents, Charlene Downes’s loved ones or Ben Needham’s mother. The points of reference have been set. Madeleine McCann is the benchmark for all missing children.
Philips ploughs on:
Like Kate McCann, the mothers of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight, had fought tirelessly to keep the stories of their missing daughters in the public eye in the hope that one day it might help bring them home.
Amanda Berry’s mother was led up the garden path by psychics. Gina DeJesus’s father campaigned tirelessly, marking the anniversary of her disappearance with a rally. We know next to nothing of Michelle Knight. Philips makes an assumption.
Gina DeJesus’ mother Nancy Ruiz had plastered posters of her missing daughter all around the neighbourhood after she went missing aged 14 as she walked home one day from school. One of the posters somehow made it into the home where she was chained up.
However bad her life must have been in that suburban dungeon – and it must have been horrific – there must have been some crumb of comfort for Gina knowing her mum was still looking for her, waiting for her to return.
Oh, please. The kidnapped teen got a crumb of comfort from a poster that points to what she didn’t have, what was ripped from her? That’s comforting? It sounds more like torture.
Just as Amanda Berry’s mother Louwana Miller scoured the streets for her daughter until she made herself sick and finally died, broken-hearted, seven years ago.
And that is why Kate McCann cannot give up her search, however painful it might be.
Even if it is the remotest chance, she has to ensure if Madeleine is alive she knows her mother is waiting for her.
How does she ensure what Madeleine knows that, then?
These mothers were all extraordinary in their own way in refusing to stop fighting for their missing daughters.
No. They were not ALL extraordinary. They did exactly what any rational, loving mother would be expected to if their child vanished. They are ordinary women thrust into extraordinary circumstances.
But in another way they were totally ordinary – isn’t it what any mother would hope to do in this situation? And that’s what is extraordinary about motherhood – the superhuman strength it gives to women.
Philips has thus managed to make the extraordinary story ordinary. Who dare say tabloids only deal in sensationalism?
“The nightmare is over,” Cleveland FBI Special Agent Stephen Anthony said during a press conference yesterday in Ohio. For Kate McCann the nightmare goes on until she either dies herself or Madeleine is found.
Every day she must relive the nightmare for Madeleine, just as the mothers of Amanda, Gina and Michelle did for 10 years. In doing so, these dedicated women are an inspiration to mothers everywhere.
They inspire mothers to be, erm, ordinary?
Posted: 8th, May 2013 | In: Madeleine McCann, Reviews | Comments (2)
Amanda Berry, Michelle Knight and Gina DeJesus news round-up: sex, popsicles and experts
AMANDA Berry, Michelle Knight and Gina DeJesus news round-up.
The three women from Cleveland, Ohio, are back with their families. Ariel Castro (52), a former bus driver, and his two brothers, Pedro (54) and Onil (50) have been arrested.
The Child:
Amanda Berry emerged form the hosue with a six-year-old child.
ABC News: “Cleveland Girl Born in Captivity ‘Smiling,’ Eating Popsicles”
The Dungeon:
Daily Star (front page): “Sex Slaves Chained For 10 Years in Dungeon”
“They had five babies in shackles”
Daily Mirror (front page): “Five Babies Born in Brothers Grim Dungeon”
NYDaily News: “Three kidnapping victims were repeatedly raped, resulting in 5 pregnancies: sources
What sources? We’re not told. It’s just sources. Still, sex sells…
Police would not say how the women were taken captive or how they were hidden in the neighborhood where they had vanished. Investigators also would not say whether they were kept in restraints inside the house or sexually assaulted.
The Women:
The Times (front page): “Police praises the courage of women who survived ten years of captivity”
The Castros:
Irish Times: “The son of a Cleveland man suspected of abducting three women interviewed the mother of one of the kidnapped women months after her disappearance, while working as a student journalist.”
In a bizarre twist in the remarkable story of three women freed on Monday after a decade in captivity, it emerged yesterday that the son of Ariel Castro, one of the suspected kidnappers, interviewed the mother of Gina DeJesus, a 14-year-old who went missing in April 2004.
Castro’s son, writing at the time as Ariel Castro but now known as Anthony Castro, interviewed the mother Nancy Ruiz for an article in a local newspaper in 2004, seemingly unaware of his father’s alleged role in the teenager’s disappearance.
Asked by a local news station about his 2004 interview and the events of recent days, Anthony Castro, now 31, said: “This is beyond comprehension . . . I’m truly stunned right now.” The older Ariel Castro (52), a former bus driver, and his two brothers, Pedro (54) and Onil (50) were arrested on Monday after one of the women, Amanda Berry, escaped with help from a neighbour and alerted police.
“Help me, I am Amanda Berry,” the 27-year-old woman told police in a hysterical call to 911 emergency services from a neighbour’s house. “I’ve been kidnapped and I’ve been missing for 10 years. And I’m . . . I’m here, I’m free now.”
The Police:
Four years ago, in another poverty-stricken part of town, police were heavily criticized following the discovery of 11 women’s bodies in the home and backyard of Anthony Sowell, who was later convicted of murder and sentenced to death.
The families of Sowell’s victims accused police of failing to properly investigate the disappearances because most of the women were addicted to drugs and poor. For months, the stench of death hung over the house, but it was blamed on a sausage factory next door…
This time, two neighbors said they called police to the Castro house on separate occasions.
Elsie Cintron, who lives three houses away, said her daughter saw a naked woman crawling in the backyard several years ago and called police. “But they didn’t take it seriously,” she said.
Another neighbor, Israel Lugo, said he heard pounding on some of the doors of the house in November 2011. Lugo said officers knocked on the front door, but no one answered. “They walked to side of the house and then left,” he said.
“Everyone in the neighborhood did what they had to do,” said Lupe Collins, who is close to relatives of the women. “The police didn’t do their job.”
There had been signs that something was amiss inside the two-story house with faded paint, which sits on a street packed with small homes with open porches just steps away from a gas station and a Caribbean grocery. Neighbors said that several years ago, a naked woman was seen crawling on her hands and knees in the back yard, and pounding was heard on the doors in 2011. Police showed up each time but stayed outside, the neighbors said.
The home in a heavily Latino neighborhood was owned by Ariel Castro, 52, a former school bus driver who was arrested along with his brothers, Pedro Castro, 54, and Onil Castro, 50.
City officials said children and family services investigators had gone to the home in January 2004, when two of the girls were missing, because Ariel Castro had left a child on a school bus.
Investigators “knocked on the door but were unsuccessful in connection with making any contact with anyone inside that home,” Cleveland Mayor Frank G. Jackson said at a news conference, adding that officials “have no indication that any of the neighbors, bystanders, witnesses or anyone else has ever called regarding any information regarding activity that occurred at that house on Seymour Avenue.’’
That’s not what Charles Ramsey said. The hero of the hour said the Castros were normal guys.
Atlantic Wire: “Charles Ramsey Is an Internet Hero for All the Wrong Reasons”
No one is saying that Charles Ramsey isn’t worthy of the “hero” mantle. He helped save three women who were held captive — brutally — in his Cleveland neighborhood for over a decade. But the Internet’s instant meme-ification of this man — a lower-income black man talking about a horrible crime, played on repeat at the expense of stereotypes and with the blinders fully up about the truth — it’s all a little gross, no?
The Loved Ones:
Gina’s aunt Sandra Ruiz: “If you don’t believe in miracles, I suggest you think again.”
The Experts:
The Telegraph: “Kidnap experts say it is possible the three women held prisoner in a Cleveland house may have developed a bond with their kidnappers, reports Colin Freeman”
What might seem the most obvious theory, that the house was some kind of cleverly-disguised jail, is not the necessarily the most likely. While police said on Tuesday that they thought the three girls had been tied up, kidnap specialists point out that holding them prisoners against their will would be difficult to do without neighbours becoming suspicious, especially over a long period of time.
ABC: Psychic Who Said Amanda Berry Was Dead Silent After Berry Is Found Alive
Sylvia Browne has gone oddly quiet.
Posted: 8th, May 2013 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
I was the face of Vladimir Tretchikoff’s Chinese Girl
PEOPLE in famous pictures presents Monika Pon-su-san, the subject of Vladimir Tretchikoff’s portrait Chinese Girl. Says she of the reassuringly expensive artwork, that helped make the artist “significant”:
“I thought I looked like a monster from a horror film – I pulled an ugly face and said ‘Ugh – green face!’ ”
…
“I liked him very much. He was a funny man – we always laughed a lot. In all, I was paid six pounds and five shillings for the work. He had a class of about 20 pupils. All the time I was sitting for him they could see me but I was never allowed to see the painting – it always had its back to me.
I would nag him: “What are you going to call it?” He said that a name would come to him later on. It was only at the end of the six or 10 weeks – I can’t remember exactly how long it took – on the night his exhibition opened that he said it was called Chinese Girl. I thought that was very ordinary.
Well, yes. It is. Like the simple name, the picture makes you notice what’s not there.
Spotter: BBC
BBC blocks licence fee payers from accessing BBC websites
APOLOGIES if a bit slow to pick this up, but WTF? In attempting to read the story on researchers who ‘printed’ a 3D kidney, I got this message:
BBC Future (international version)
We’re sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee. It is run commercially by BBC Worldwide, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BBC, the profits made from it go back to BBC programme-makers to help fund great new BBC programmes. You can find out more about BBC Worldwide and its digital activities at www.bbcworldwide.com.
It’s the BBC. It’s all funded by the bloody licence fee. The BBC have taken our money under pain of law and used it to invest in a business the investors – us|! – are barred from seeing it. That’s just wrong.
BBC Worldwide Limited is the main commercial arm and a wholly owned subsidiary of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) which operates in the UK and over 200 countries around the world. The company is self-funded and exists to exploit the value of the BBC’s assets for the benefit of the licence fee payer and invest in public service programming in return for rights.
No. It can’t be. It trades off the company we created. It even uses its name to get kudos and trust. It’s called BBC WORLDWIDE LIMITED.
We acquire the commercial rights to great programmes such as Doctor Who, Top Gear and Dancing with the Stars and find ways of earning money from these rights across different media and markets.
Those negotiations to acquire the rights to BBC shows must be bloody brutal, eh.
In 2011/12, BBC Worldwide generated headline profits of £155 million on headline sales of £1085 million and returned £216 million to the BBC. For more detailed performance information please see our Annual Review website.
Good-oh. But why can’t we Brits see the stuff you sell?
In April 2009, the company was awarded the Queen’s Award for Enterprise, recognising the company’s substantial growth in earnings over the previous three years.
What a cosy arrangement.
BBC Worldwide operates under the BBC Charter and Agreement, which sets out the following four commercial criteria with which our activities must comply. BBC Worldwide must:
Fit with the BBC’s Public Purposes set out in the Charter
Be commercially efficient
Not jeopardise the good reputation of the BBC or the value of the BBC brands
Comply with the BBC’s Fair Trading Guidelines and avoid distorting the market.
How can the BBC not distort the market? If you’re British and own a telly you have to give the sods money…
Kid confronts illegally parked police officer getting food and goes viral in the process
OVER in America, they have a funny relationship with the police. Basically, they revere and loathe their force in equal measure. Wait, that’s like every country in the Western world.
One difference is, is that Americans are much better at being wise-asses with their police, and a video of a 12 year old boy confronting a police officer has gone viral.
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The Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight story in photos and timeline
AUGUST 23, 2002: Michelle Knight, 22, disappears.
April 21, 2003: Amanda Berry is 16. On the eve of her 17th birthday she finishes her shift at Burger King and heads home. She never makes it. (Photo above: Berry and her sister and daughter, 6, who was born in captivity.)
August, 2, 2004, Gina DeJesus, 14, vanishes. (Pictured below.)
2004: Gina’s father Felix appealed for help:
Gian’s mother believed her daughter was kidnapped and sold as a prostitute.
November 2004: Amanda Berry’s mother, Louwana Miller (below) speaks to psychic Sylvia Brown on the Montel Williams show. Browne tells Miller that her daughter is dead.
March 2, 2006: Louwana Miller dies age 43.
May 6, 2013: Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight are rescued from a Cleveland, Ohio, home owned by Ariel Castro. He and his two brothers are under arrest.
Charles Ramsey rescues them:
“I knew something was wrong when a little pretty white girl runs into black man’s arms” – Charles Ramsey
The house at 2207 Seymour Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio:
