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.
The Sandy Hook massacre: Obama makes martyrs of the dead as media fetishises grief and fear
THE Sandy Hook massacre features on the cover of the UK press.
In March 2012, 16 Afghan civilians were killed by U.S. Army Soldier Robert Bales, allegedly.
Can you name them? Did President Obama weep on the TV? Was it front-page news in the UK?
The Sun leads with news of the massacre in Sandy Hook. But how can it justify such intense coverage? The US is accessible. We share the same language. America invented rolling news and burnished news anchors and reporters into personalities, dispatched to deliver not the facts but news the audience will enjoy. Last week the news was obsessed with the death of Jacintha Saldanha, the “Royal nurse” who had committed suicide. This week we’re invited to gawp at terrible events in small town in Connecticut.
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Posted: 17th, December 2012 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment (1)
Computer games made Adam Lanza do it – not guns, then
WHY did “polite” Adam Lanza do it? Edmund H. Mahony and Dave Altimari write:
In just minutes, Lanza — a withdrawn, emotionally detached 20-year-old who lived with his mother and is said to have played graphically violent computer video games — would kill 26 people in the country’s second-largest mass killing.
Twenty-year-old is “said ” to have played shoot ’em up video games. He most likely also had listened to rap music, masturbated to porn, played table-tennis, watched TV news and tried smoking. Well, so they say.
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Posted: 16th, December 2012 | In: Reviews | Comments (4)
Adam Lanza gets debated: who speaks for these, the victims?
WHEN Adam Lanza ran amuck at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the talk was of guns and what made the 20-year-old do it. The media and experts try to make sense of the senseless. The victims are silent. Amidst all the talk, there is a terrible silence. Who speaks for them?
Posted: 16th, December 2012 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
Sandy Hook Elementary School: Rupert Murdoch’s wants better gun control – his bodyguards agree
SANDY Hook Elementary School: Adam Lana didn’t use automatic weapons. He didn’t need to. The guns his mother kept at home were enough to massacre so many.
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Sandy Hook Elementary School: the gun lobby are child killers
SANDY Hook Elementary School: Adam Gopnick on guns in the New Yorker:
After the Aurora killings, I did a few debates with advocates for the child-killing lobby—sorry, the gun lobby—and, without exception and with a mad vehemence, they told the same old lies: it doesn’t happen here more often than elsewhere (yes, it does); more people are protected by guns than killed by them (no, they aren’t—that’s a flat-out fabrication); guns don’t kill people, people do; and all the other perverted lies that people who can only be called knowing accessories to murder continue to repeat, people who are in their own way every bit as twisted and crazy as the killers whom they defend. (That they are often the same people who pretend outrage at the loss of a single embryo only makes the craziness still crazier.)…
The people who fight and lobby and legislate to make guns regularly available are complicit in the murder of those children…congratulate yourself on living in the child-gun-massacre capital of the known universe.
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Posted: 16th, December 2012 | In: Reviews | Comments (12)
Sandy Hook Elementary School: blame global warming
SANDY Hook Elementary School: In the New York Review of Books, Gary Wills writes:
It was the sacrifice we as a culture made, and continually make, to our demonic god. We guarantee that crazed man after crazed man will have a flood of killing power readily supplied him. We have to make that offering, out of devotion to our Moloch, our god. The gun is our Moloch. We sacrifice children to him daily—sometimes, as at Sandy Hook, by directly throwing them into the fire-hose of bullets from our protected private killing machines, sometimes by blighting our children’s lives by the death of a parent, a schoolmate, a teacher, a protector…
The fact that the gun is a reverenced god can be seen in its manifold and apparently resistless powers. How do we worship it? Let us count the ways:
It has the power to destroy the reasoning process. It forbids making logical connections. We are required to deny that there is any connection between the fact that we have the greatest number of guns in private hands and the greatest number of deaths from them. Denial on this scale always comes from or is protected by religious fundamentalism. Thus do we deny global warming, or evolution, or biblical errancy. Reason is helpless before such abject faith.
He’s just linked global warming to mass murder.
Posted: 16th, December 2012 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
Feb. 16, 1978: The Sex Pistol meet Ronald Biggs and ‘Nazi’ Jim Fetter
FLASHBACK to Feb. 16, 1978: Malcolm McLaren, center top, is seen with British rock group, the Sex Pistols during a news conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. From left, are: Steve Jones, Jim Fetter wearing World War II German uniform,Paul Cook, and Ronald Biggs.
When the Sex Pistols toured the USA and hit Cain’s Ballroom
Posted: 16th, December 2012 | In: Celebrities, Flashback | Comment
Kim Wilde hammered, in reindeer antlers and singing on a train
KIM Wilde hammered, in reindeer antlers and singing on a train. You can stick your stadium gigs. The mobile nanoconcert is here:
Spotter: Karen
Sandy Hook Elementary School: how do you report on horror?
SANDY Hook Elementary School Newtown, Conn.? How do British newspapers report on the actions of Adam Lanza that led to 27 dead and hundreds of lives scarred? In Britain we stop and stare. This is a foreign news event. But it isn’t entirely. America is the another Britain. We see ourselves. The landscape is familiar. Language matters.
Adam Lanza is dead. He murdered his mother mother Nancy Jean Lanza. He shot dead 20 children. He murdered head teacher Dawn Hochsprung, 47, first grade teacher Victoria Soto, 27, and school psychologist Mary Sherlach, 56.
He used two guns – guns registered to his mother. The school was no-gun zone. Adam Lanza forced his way in. Had only the security had guns to keep him out…
We can focus on the goodness
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Sandy Hook Elementary School: remove guns from people who didn’t do it?
THE Sandy Hook Elementary School, in Newtown, Connecticut: Should guns be banned? Glenn Reynolds:
“After a shooting spree,” author William Burroughs once said, “they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it.” Burroughs continued: “I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.”
Plenty of people — especially among America’s political and journalistic classes — feel differently. They’d be much more comfortable seeing ordinary Americans disarmed. And whenever there is a mass shooting, or other gun incident that snags the headlines, they do their best to exploit the tragedy and push for laws that would, well, take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it.
There are a lot of problems with this approach, but one of the most significant is this one: It doesn’t work.
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Posted: 15th, December 2012 | In: Reviews | Comments (5)
Ski bores turn to golf as slopes turn green
IS it snowing? In 2000, The Independent’s expert told us: ““Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past.”
“Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past”
The New York Times continues to be worried about those expensive winter pursuits:
Rising Temperatures Threaten Fundamental Change for Ski Slopes Whether this winter turns out to be warm or cold, scientists say that climate change means the long-term outlook for skiers everywhere is bleak. The threat of global warming hangs over almost every resort, from Sugarloaf in Maine to Squaw Valley in California. As temperatures rise, analysts predict that scores of the nation’s ski centers, especially those at lower elevations and latitudes, will eventually vanish. Under certain warming forecasts, more than half of the 103 ski resorts in the Northeast will not be able to maintain a 100-day season by 2039, according to a study to be published next year by Daniel Scott, director of the Interdisciplinary Center on Climate Change at the University of Waterloo in Ontario.
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Adam Lanza becomes a rolling news hero
HOW should the media talk about Adam Lanza, the 20-year-old killer who murdered his mother and so many at Sandy Hook Elementary School? Guessing is one option.
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Neurofibromatosis sufferer looks beyond wife’s disability
TO Jammu and Kashmir, India, where Mohammad Latif Khatana, 32, and Salima, 25, are showing off their newborn daughter Ulfat. Mr Khatan is afflicted by Neurofibromatosis. Mrs Khatana, Salima, was born with one foot.
They found love. Or as the Sun puts it:
Man with no face and woman with one leg have baby girl … who is perfectly healthy
He does have a face. And given the phrasing of that headline, you’d think it good of Mohammad to look beyind his wife’s disability:
Adam Lanza: the quiet, well-behaved, shy, noisy, evil boy everyone knew (photos)
WHAT do we know of Adam Lanza, the 20-year-old who killed himself, his mother, Nancy Jena Lanza, and 27 others at Sandy Hook Elementary School Newtown, Conn.? Not much. Still, the experts in Big Media are guessing. Some of them might be the same experts who were analysing Ryan Lanza’s tweets when Adam’s older bother, for it is he, was protesting his innocence and being very much alive.
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Posted: 15th, December 2012 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Adam Lanza photos: Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre
ADAM Lanza is dead. He is believed to have murdered his mother, Nancy Jean Lanza, and 27 others at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newton, Connecticut. He was 20. His older brother, Ryan Lana, 24, is helping police with their enquiries. You can read about how he learnt of the horror here. As for Adam Lanza, well, he was “rambunctious“, “on medication”, “such a nice kid“, “intelligent and shy“, was “obviously not well“, had “a checkered past and a personality disorder“, was “a quiet honours student“, “evil” and “well-behaved“. Such are the facts…
Black Friday 2012 was the largest gun sale day in US history
BLACK Friday 2012 was reportedly “the largest gun sales day in recorded history”. Yo. Ho. Oh!
Posted: 14th, December 2012 | In: Reviews, The Consumer | Comments (4)
Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre: why Adam Lanza did it
WHY did Adam Lanza, 20, murder so many at Sandy Hook Elementary School Newtown, Conn.?
The New York Post says he did it:
Adam Lanza, 20, shot his mother dead and targeted her kindergarten class at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., sources said. Sources also told The Post that Lanza’s mother was a teacher at the school and he “had a dispute with her.”
Lanza is dead inside the school.
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Ryan Lanza photos? Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre
IS this the face of Ryan Lanza, the man police suspect murderd 27 people in Newton, Connecticut? His mother is a teacher at the Sandy Hook Elementary School. He was 24. He was born in Newton. He lived in New Jersey. Well, so say Reuters and CNN. On Facebook, Ryan Lanza says it’s not him. How can it be? The killer is dead.
Reactions to the massacre and news here.
So is this man below Ryan Lanza, the killer? Well, no, it seems it’s not.
The Jersey Journal’s Brett Wilshe says he spoke to the Lanza pictured below. The photo is all over the internet and has featured on TV news.The HuffPo says it’s him.
Ryan Lanza says the killer might have stolen his ID.
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Posted: 14th, December 2012 | In: Reviews | Comments (4)
Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre: photos, reactions and Ryan and Adam Lanza
AT the Sandy Hook Elementary School, in Newtown, Connecticut 27 28 people have been murdered – 18 22 of which are children. The school teaches children aged 5 to 10. The suspect is named by the HuffPo and others as Ryan Lanza. That’s wrong.
The Post is now reporting that the shooter was Adam Lanza, 20, and that his brother Ryan is not considered a suspect. Adam is dead. Ryan is being questioned by police.
His divorced mother, Nancy Jean Lanza, taught at the school. It is thought Adam Lanza killed her at her home before heading to the school.
He murdered with this gun.
@HuffPostMedia: CNN says the shooter is named Ryan Lanza
Lieutenant Paul Vance tells media: “The scene is secure, the situation is secure, we will notify you when we come back for a briefing as quickly as we can.”
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Posted: 14th, December 2012 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
April Jones is still missing at Christmas
THEY’VE still not found April Jones. The five-year-old disappeared from near her family home in Machynlleth, Powys, on 1 October 2012. The Home Office says it has money to continue the search. Dyfed-Powys Police has the resources.
Supt Ian John tells media:
“This week again we have had 16 search teams, comprising a search leader and six officers, as well as twelve CSI dogs with their handlers out on the mountain and valleys in and around Machynlleth, in all weathers, carrying out systematic and methodical searches of the challenging terrain. Specialist teams from other agencies and organisations have been searching rivers and the sea; mines and quarries; and various other confined spaces on the hillsides of Machynlleth.
“Volunteers from a number of mountain rescue teams have walked for miles over the mountain sides all working together looking for clues and evidence that may help us find April. We will keep looking until we are satisfied that we have exhausted all lines of inquiry.”
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The Sun says Gangnam Style killed Burnley man
WHEN Eamonn Kilbride passed away, the Lancashire Telegraph reported that the father-of-three collapsed and died at the Thwaites Brewery party at Whitehall Country Club, Darwen. He had been “dancing at his office Christmas party in front of his wife and work colleagues”. Grim. He was just 46. That’s sobering.
He succumbed to acute heart failure. His wife, Julie Kilbride, was celebrating her birthday at the same do.
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How carrots won World War Two
CARROTS played their part in World War Two. Carrots would win the war. And, as luck had it, there were lots and lots and lots of them. Too many. The Ministry of Food had an idea: get shot of the surplus of carrots by marketing them as part of the war effort.
“This is a food war. Every extra row of vegetables in allotments saves shipping… the battle on the kitchen front cannot be won without help from the kitchen garden.
Isn’t an hour in the garden better than an hour in the queue?” – Lord Woolton, Minister of Food, 1941.
Carrots enable you to see in the dark – and best spot the Germans:
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Posted: 13th, December 2012 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, The Consumer | Comment
Caroline Wozniacki is a racist? Is blacking up always wrong?
WAS it racist? Was Caroline Wozniacki’s impersonation of Serena Williams racist? We’d say it wasn’t. Williams has made fun of her own body shape. She brought up the size of her backside, so it’s fair game. Right? It’s all about intent and tone. In the post-Macpherson Report UK, of course, you can be unintentionally racist. If you think its racist, then it is. You can be an unwitting racist. He told us: “…any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or by any other person.”
So. Are these people racist (via)?
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Posted: 13th, December 2012 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
