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.
Wasted robot drone carrying six pounds of meth crashes on US border
ON the border between Tijuana and the USA, a drone helicopter carrying six pounds (2.72kg) of crystal meth has crashed. Well, if you’re flying that wasted accidents can happen. Just look at the state of that drugs bot.
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Gotcha! The Sun used Page 3 to mock the snooty and the the smug
Yes, there’s a lot of soap, showbiz and sex – plus, of course, those women in varying states of undress. But this is a paper with an extremely high story count – and many of its stories are important. Some of them even relate to foreign affairs.
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Page 3 Stunnas, The Suffragette, Fascist Mary Richardson and the Rokeby Venus at the National Gallery
As Brendan O’Neill writes of the shrill campaing to ban the Sun’s naff Page 3:
All this talk of ridding Britain of the scourge of Page 3 brings to mind the Suffragette Mary Richardson, who in 1914 took a knife into the National Gallery and slashed Velazquez’s ‘Rokeby Venus’. “I didn’t like the way men visitors gaped at it all day long.” Richardson later became the head of the women’s section of the British Union of Fascists.
That story is well told on Flashbak: The Suffragette and Fascist Mary Richardson and the Rokeby Venus at the National Gallery
Posted: 22nd, January 2015 | In: Politicians, Reviews | Comment
Prince Andrew’s foot fetish orgy and an underage sex ‘slave’ star in The Jeffrey Epstein Mystery
Prince Andrew and Virgina Roberts share the Sun’s front page. It’s the story of sex and slavery.
It’s the story of “MY SEX WITH ANDY AND 8 GIRLS.” Wow! Prince Andrew had sex with “girls”?! Eight of them!??!
The story begins:
THE “slave” who claims she was forced to sleep with Prince Andrew said he once had sex with her and eight girls.
Roberts is the self-confessed ‘slave’ who fled her paedophile captor whilst on a massage learning course in Thailand.
Virginia Roberts, 31, said the orgy took place on his paedo pal Jeffrey Epstein’s private island.
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Posted: 22nd, January 2015 | In: Reviews, Royal Family | Comment
Good news with Nicole Neal from Bournemouth: The Sun brings back Page 3
After a very brief hiatus. the Sun has restored topless stunnas to its page 3.
Bring it on Nicole Neal from Bournemouth:
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The fat-abusing Sun says the fat suffer ‘nightmare abuse’
In “SUN GIRL’S DAY FROM HELL”, Amy Jones (size 8) pulls on a fat suit and heads off to: the gym (“A child points and laughs”); the bus stop (“A gaggle of kids point and giggle”); lunch (“customers stare as I order the Steakhouse Meal”); the pub (“no one rushes to serve me”); a saucy lingerie shop (the cut-away playsuit is not in her size); and the Tube (I’m me with accusatory stares”).
Good job fat tourist Amy can pull off her ridiculous rubbery get-up (Why do they stare? Why?) and put an end to the “abuse”. At her Sun desk, Amy says “40 percent of Brits are the target to personal insults at least once a week”. She learns that “criticism is unhelpful when it comes to losing weight”.
Amy Jones may care to flick through back copies of the Sun and learn that a fat suit is one thing but get fat and – look out! – her collegues will be on her:
There is Fat Wayne Rooney, who is mocked-up and mocked by the Sun:
And a few more examples of “nightmare abuse”:
Images via: Bloggerheads and Bizarrescience
Je Suis Charlie Hebdo: When the NUJ stopped the Daily Star lampooning radical Islam
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
The NUJ’s general secretay Michelle Stanistreet was on the ‘Je Suis Charlie’ march following the murders of Chartlie Hebdo staff. The NUJ made this announcement:
“This is not the first time that enemies of press freedom have attempted to muzzle journalists who use their pens to ridicule all purveyors of hatred. Beyond the massacre committed at Charlie Hebdo, the principles of liberty of expression are at stake: freedom to criticize, the caricature and to denounce. It is appropriate to quote Albert Londres: ‘Our job is neither to please people or to do them wrong, it is to use our pens to go to the heart of things even if it hurts.’…
“The extraordinary upsurge of solidarity in France and in many other European countries is a wonderful boost for defenders of these treasures liberties – above all the freedom of expression.”
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Posted: 21st, January 2015 | In: Reviews | Comments (3)
Conservative MPs and Daily Express poll sensation: 11.7% people want out of the EU
The Daily Express has news: “80% want to quit the EU.”
On December 10, the Express brought news:
Some 46.6 per cent would vote “out” while just 34.3 per cent would vote “in”, with 19.1 per cent undecided.
In December 2014, the Express has other news.
46.6% became 51% is now 80%. Things move fast in Eu poll-ville.
The Express is getting mroe and more in-tune with its readers.
The Express and UKIP are in chorus:
Nigel Farage sees the 80% and tweets:
But what about that 80%? Martyn Brown notes:
BRITAIN is marching towards the EU exit door today after eight out of 10 people voted to leave in a historic poll.
That eight in ten:
Some 14,581 people voted – 11,706 of them want the UK to quit compared with 2,725 who want to remain part of the EU. The mini-referendum – the first on the issue since 1975 – was organised by two senior Tory backbenchers and a prospective Tory MP.
Three Tories conducted a poll. Who was polled?
The Tory poll was organised across three neighbouring parliamentary constituencies by Peter Bone, MP for Wellingborough, Philip Hollobone, MP for Kettering, and Tom Pursglove, who is standing as Tory candidate for Corby and East Northamptonshire at this year’s general election.
So. A poll of three constituencies speaks for the entire UK?
Following the count, carried out in the London offices of the Daily Express yesterday, Mr Bone said: “Eight out of 10 people who took part want to come out of Europe – that is extraordinary.
“It is very, very, very clear they want to come out.”
So. Of the people who actually replied to the poll, 780% want out. How many did not respond to the poll?
The voting exercise was the biggest poll on the issue since the national referendum in June 1975.
Ballot papers were delivered to 100,000 households in the three constituencies between May and the end of last year.
There were a total of 150 spoiled papers.
11,706 people of 100,000 in Northamptonshire wants to leave the EU. That’s 11.7%.
PS: The Express previously reported: “Ballot papers will be delivered to 150,000 households in the three constituencies after the polls close for the European Parliament elections on May 22.”
Posted: 21st, January 2015 | In: Politicians, Reviews | Comment
Westminster paedophiles: PIE, Grafton Close dies and ‘allegations of unnatural sexual proclivities’ on file
Westmisnter paedophiles: a look at the story of child abuse in VIP circles in the 1970s and 1980s.
Tom Parmenter tells Sky News viwers:
A secret Government file has been unearthed that documents “unnatural” sexual behaviour taking place when the Westminster paedophile scandal was at its height. It has been kept under lock and key for 35 years on grounds of national security – but will now be released to the child abuse inquiry established by the Government.
Aren’t those claims of a Westmisnter paedophile scandal? And isn’t the Westmisnter peedophile scandal at its height now?
Security and intelligence expert Dr Chris Murphy stumbled across it last November while searching documents at the National Archives in Kew. He was immediately alerted by the title: “PREM19/588 – SECURITY. Allegations against former public [word missing] of unnatural sexual proclivities; security aspects 1980 Oct 27 – 1981 Mar 20.”
Dr Murphy, a Lecturer in Intelligence Studies at Salford, says:
“I was looking through the ‘PREM’ Prime Minister file series for the 1980s. I think I did a double-take and then started wondering what the potential implications of the title, which is a little vague, could be.”
Do we know? We can guess:
It is highly likely then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher saw the documents, and was briefed on the security implications, but the identities of those within them remain secret.
Facts are pretty thin:
Dr Murphy added: “The fact that this file is concerning the Prime Minister and these allegations are being taken to the Prime Minister I think would strike anybody of being potentially of some interest.”
Yes. That much is true.
A Cabinet Office spokesperson says:
“In this case, the file was kept closed and retained as it contained information from the security services and advice from the Law Officers. These classifications are reviewed periodically. We are clear that any files that are pertinent to the historical child sex abuse inquiry will be made available to the panel.”
Mrs Thatcher’s former press secretary, Sir Bernard Ingham, responds:
“I asked him [a Government minster] about it [allegation of depravity] and he denied it, so no, I didn’t do anything else. What was the alternative?”
If it was illegal, we’d answer: go to the police.
Simon Danczuk MP, without whom no story of Westminster paedos is complete, adds:
“I think it is right and proper that the Government now open up this document, let us know what is in there. I think there is a culture within Government departments of not releasing information and that has caused some of the problems we now have in getting to the bottom of who was involved in this paedophile network and who was involved in covering it up.”
That would be the alleged network linekd to alleged deaths at Dolphin Square, goings on at the Elm Guest House and other matters.
The Cheddar Valley Gazette has other news:
A BRISTOL paedophile is being investigated over child abuse in the 1970’s. Douglas Slade, 73, left Britain after being exposed as a sexual predator. But detectives are working on a case which could see Slade extradited to the UK for offences linked to a nationwide paedophile network. Wealthy businessman Slade who lived in Bristol during the 1970s and 1980s, was a founder of the reviled child sex advocacy group Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE).
PIE was frequnted by Charles Napier and Peter Hayman:
He left Britain in 1985 for Angeles City in the Philippines, where he has been accused of molesting boys as young as eight. Before he left, Slade is suspected to have abused numerous underage boys passed between PIE members who tracked down youths for illegal sex…
One man allegedly abused by Slade and other PIE members, who is not part of the current UK investigation, contacted the Daily Mail to describe how he was molested by Slade and then passed between paedophiles from 1979, when he was 14.
The 50-year-old man said he was introduced to Slade by another prominent PIE member, former racing car driver Christopher Skeaping, who was jailed in 2009 for sex attacks on a boy aged 12 in the late 1980s.
The alleged victim says:
“Skeaping rode a huge BMW 1100 and had big American cars. For kids of 13, 14 and 15, those are exciting things. Douglas Slade turned up at his home one day. I was a very quiet child and he just picked up on me and I ended up going to Bristol several times. Apart from the sexual side of it, Slade was actually very nice to me. He made me feel special. He was doing nice things for me and it all seemed quite a good thing. I suppose if that’s what grooming is, I was being groomed… I was affected by what happened to me for some years, but I got over it by being positive and coming to terms with it…”
Stingemore
If you wait long enough, they all die:
A former children’s home manager has been found dead just weeks before he was due to stand trial over alleged historical sex abuse. John Stingemore, 72, was discovered at his home in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, on Wednesday afternoon… Stingemore was due to stand trial next month at Southwark Crown Court charged with a string of indecent assaults on young boys. The charges came following an investigation into alleged abuse at Grafton Close Children’s Home in Hounslow, west London.
One allegation is that boys from Richmond Council-run care homes such as Grafton Close were supplied to Elm Guest House to be abused by VIPs.
Such are the facts…
Biased BBC: one Palestinian wounded in stabbing attack on aggressive Tel Aviv bus
A man has stabbed many peopls on a bus in Tel Aviv. The stabbings are riding high on the news cycle. But what happened?
Ynet news reports:
Over 10 people were wounded Wednesday morning in a terror attack in central Tel Aviv. At roughly 7:15 am a terrorist boarded Dan Line 40 bus on Begin Road in Tel Aviv near the Beit Maariv Bridge and stabbed the bus driver and a number of passengers before fleeing the scene. He was then shot and captured by forces who were present in the area.
17 people were wounded in the attack, four are in serious condition, 3 moderately, 6 lightly and the rest suffered from anxiety. One of the wounded was the bus driver, Herzl Biton, 55, who fought with the terrorist and sustained two wounded to his chest. He is in moderate condition and currently undergoing surgery.
The report ends:
The last terror attack in Tel Aviv was also a stabbing, and took place in November and saw IDF soldier Almog Shiloni murdered after he was gravely wounded struggling with a Palestinian who attempted to grab his weapon at the Haganah Train Station in Tel Aviv.
Haaretz begins:
12 Israelis wounded in stabbing attack on Tel Aviv bus. Four wounded in serious condition; assailant, a 23-year-old male from the West Bank city of Tulkarem who entered Israel illegally, was shot in the leg by police.
The driver was the first victim of the attacker, so he was unable to open the doors of the bus, which was full during the rush hour, according to an eye-witness report. It was one of the passengers who managed to open the doors and let the frightened people out
We hear of other attacks:
Last November, a 25 year-old Israeli woman was stabbed to death at a bus stop in the West Bank, local media reported. The perpetrator was shot and died from his injuries. There were two other victims in that attack, who were taken to hospital.
On November 10, a young Israeli Defense Forces soldier was stabbed by a Palestinian at Haganah train station in Tel Aviv. He was taken to hospital, where he died of his wounds.
In another November incident, a 3-month-old baby girl was killed and eight people were injured, when a car crashed into a light railway station in Jerusalem in a “run-over terror attack”.
And now the BBC:
Israeli police say they have shot a Palestinian man from the West Bank who stabbed at least nine people in an attack on a bus in central Tel Aviv.
And then the attack is couched in a selective spot of fact bringing that no other organ includes:
“The suspect is a 23-year-old Palestinian from Tulkarem,” police spokeswoman Luba Samri said. Tulkarem is a town in the occupied West Bank.
He’s not the foreigner. They are.
And:
Israeli police say there has been a pattern established in recent months where individual Palestinians, without sophisticated weapons, have attacked civilians at random, the BBC’s Kevin Connelly in Jerusalem reports. In November, an Israeli soldier was killed in a knife attack in Tel Aviv, while an Israeli woman was stabbed to death in the West Bank in a separate attack.
So. If they had sophisticated weapons…?
Our correspondent says the latest round of tensions began to increase last year, after the summer conflict in Gaza and disputes over access to religious sites in the old city of Jerusalem. More than 2,100 people were killed in Gaza during the Israel-Gaza conflict, a majority of them thought to be civilians. Sixty-seven Israeli soldiers, and six civilians in Israel, were also killed.
So. It’s not a foriegn luantic on a bus trying to murder as many Israelis as possible. It’s just numbers. And one Palestinian was wounded, being shot in the leg trying to escape. Maybe the BBC should reports: “Palestinian shot in Tel Aviv”?
How does this editorialising of facts help the situaion where ever life lost on all sides is a life too many?
Well, Israel’s enemy should likes the BBC’s report:
Izzat al-Risheq, a senior Hamas official, said the stabbing attack “against Zionists in Tel Aviv is a brave and heroic act.” Hamas Spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri said the event was a “natural response to Israeli terrorism.” And that it was the natural response to the ongoing Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people.
Such are the facts…
Posted: 21st, January 2015 | In: Reviews | Comments (3)
Je suis Page 3: The Sun is no Charlie Hebdo
So. The Sun caved into pressure from the righteous and dropped Page 3. Punters keen on tabloid news with a dash of topless stunna will be forced to read the Daily Star (or watch Sky TV with subtitles whilst surfing the web for bewitching breasts).
Sun readers have been saved from themselves. They will no longer see women’s naked breasts as arousing sex objects. They will go to arthouse cinemas and see naked breasts as part of the plot. They will see a star’s bare bosoms on the telly and understand that the plot demanded it. They will read National Geographic. They will know better.
Glamour mo-dels have been spared the shame of Page 3 and all those tawdry tabloid-readers’ eyeballs and raise their aspirations to, say a French beach, the top shelf or The Guardian.
Eveything wrong has been made right.
The censors won! Long live the censors!
Hurrah for bansturbation!
Artwork by Happy Toast.
Free speech: Saudi Arabia arrests man who filmed public beheading and Ireland’s dream
Saudi Arabia is an ally of the UK, the country whose leaders cry “Je Suis Charlie”.
Is Saudi Arabia a dangerous place? No. So long as you stop thinking, it’s fine. The Foreign Offices advises travellers:
There is a heightened threat from terrorism….
Cases of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in patients from Saudi Arabia continue to be reported to the World Health Organization. For the latest information and advice, see the website of the National Travel Health Network and Centre (NaTHNaC).
The British Embassy receives regular requests for help from pilgrims performing Hajj or Umrah, particularly in relation to disputes and dissatisfaction with tour operators. The Saudi Ministry of Health has advised certain groups of people to postpone undertaking the Hajj and Umrah pilgrimages in 2014 in light of the MERS virus cases. It has also provided advice for those that are undertaking the pilgrimage to minimise the risk of contracting and spreading the virus. See Pilgrimage and the National Travel Health Network and Centre’s Advice for pilgrims: Hajj and Umrah.
Take out comprehensive travel and medical insurance before you travel.
The big threats are from foreign agents of terror, MERS and a lack of travel insurance. And:
You should respect local traditions, customs, laws and religions at all times and be aware of your actions to ensure that they do not offend…
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Anti-Semitism is justified: views on the war on Jews and its causes
Thoughts on anti-semitism. One thing a Jew cannot do is fail. The other thing a Jew can always do is be held responsible for what their co-religionists do.
Rev. Bruce Shipman echoes the BBC’s man on the scene in an open published in the New York Times:
To the Editor:
Deborah E. Lipstadt makes far too little of the relationship between Israel’s policies in the West Bank and Gaza and growing anti-Semitism in Europe and beyond.
The trend to which she alludes parallels the carnage in Gaza over the last five years, not to mention the perpetually stalled peace talks and the continuing occupation of the West Bank.
As hope for a two-state solution fades and Palestinian casualties continue to mount, the best antidote to anti-Semitism would be for Israel’s patrons abroad to press the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for final-status resolution to the Palestinian question.
(Rev.) BRUCE M. SHIPMAN
Groton, Conn., Aug. 21, 2014
Bruce Shipman is Episcopal chaplain at Yale.
Jews will spot the codes in his letter. Jews must pay for whatever another Jew does.
Anti-Semitism is justified.
His words and his tone are not untypical of the ‘knowing’, they who can empathise and set about teaching the Jew how to see suffering.
The BBC:
Mrs May said the attack on the supermarket in France was “a chilling reminder of anti-Semitism, not just in France but the recent anti-Semitic prejudice that we sadly have seen in this country.
“I know that many Jewish people in this country are feeling vulnerable and fearful and you’re saying that you’re anxious for your families, for your children and yourselves.
“I never thought I would see the day when members of the Jewish community in the United Kingdom would say they were fearful of remaining here in the United Kingdom”…
“Without its Jews, Britain would not be Britain, just as without its Muslims, Britain would not be Britain – without its Sikhs, Hindus, Christians and people of other faiths, Britain would not be Britain.”
She said she was “deeply distressed” by the YouGov survey showing a large proportion of Britons holding antisemitic views.
The poll:
Antisemitic views have been shown to be rampant among British people according to the results of a new polls.
One in four Britons were shown to believe that Jews ‘chase money more than other people’, according to a poll by YouGov.
Meanwhile the new survey showed that 17 per cent of respondent believe that Jewish people think themselves better than others.
A similar proportion felt that Jewish people have too much power in the media.
A separate poll also revealed that more than half of all British Jews feel that antisemitism has begun to echo the widespread anti-Jewish hatred of the 1930s, according to the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA).
France has the largest Jewish community remaining in Europe, but Norman Lebrecht, a French Jew whose family has been in France at least since 1727 (when the first records exist), decided last week that he is leaving. Nor is he alone…
French Jews are leaving for two main reasons: because they don’t feel welcome, and because they don’t feel safe. They don’t feel welcome because a rising tide of anti-Semitism has poisoned the atmosphere in France over the past couple of decades. It’s not so much the old anti-Semitism of the pre-War variety as a new anti-Semitism brought on by a wave of Muslim immigration, though the two have reinforced one another.
And they don’t feel safe because of attacks on Jews. As the Chief Rabbi of France,Haim Korsia, notes, it’s not just last week’s attacks on a Kosher deli and on the Charlie Hebdo news weekly: “Jews have been killed and there were the shootings in Toulouse and in Brussels. In general, Jews feel vulnerable in our society. The Jews who were murdered were targeted specifically because they were Jewish.”
… European nations are facing population deficits, and they’ve replaced those missing Jews with Muslim immigrants who — unlike the Jews — are for the most part far less educated, don’t really consider themselves part of European society, and have no particularly strong desire to integrate into it, which bodes poorly. As Eugene Volokh — himself an immigrant to the United States — observes, in a democracy, when you let in immigrants, you are letting in your future rulers.
An exodus of French Jews is already underway and accelerating rapidly. In 2012, there were just over 1,900 immigrants to Israel from France. The following year nearly 3,400 French Jews emigrated; in 2014 approximately 7,000 left. For the first time ever, France heads the list of countries of origin for immigrants to Israel, and the ministry of immigration absorption expects another 10,000 French Jews to arrive in 2015.
That would mean more than 22,000 Jews fleeing France for Israel in the space of just four years, nearly 4.5 percent of the country’s Jewish population. The departure of 100,000 French Jews might once have been inconceivable. No longer. In a survey last spring of France’s Jewish community, the largest in Europe, three out of four respondents said they were considering emigrating.
These are staggering numbers — all the more so in a “Jewish community that has been in place for centuries and feels itself deeply attached to being French,” as Daniel Jonah Goldhagen has written. But what is driving so many Jews to leave “is not Israel’s pull…. It is France’s push.”
Over the past 15 years, that “push” — violent eruptions of French antisemitism — has grown relentless.
Many of your fears about becoming a victim of terrorism are invented. So long as you are not Jewish.
Whenever Martin Niemöller’s warning is quoted, it is always used in the past tense. But as the Paris attacks proved, they are still coming for the Jews. In reality, they have never stopped coming for the Jews…
The reaction from outside the Jewish community follows the same pattern. Like Simon Jenkins and Polly Toynbee, we try to hide behind a veil of self-centered proportionality. Or, we cry “look over there!” Yes the Jewish community is under threat, but what about the “revenge” attacks being launched against the Muslim community? Or we deploy the “some of my best friends are Jewish” argument. Yes some Jews are being targeted. But look at what’s happening to the Palestinians. Should we really be surprised? Yes, obviously we must condemn the “terrorists”. But don’t we have an obligation to try to understand them as well?
And what lies at the heart of this response? If we’re honest, if we’re really honest, it’s that those of us who are not part of the Jewish community have subconsciously – and shamefully – come to the view that being a target of terrorism is merely one of the occupational hazards of being a Jew…
We need to say: “They came for the Jews. And I spoke out. Because I am not a Jew”.
A lot of progressives seem to think they are immune from anti-Semitism, or even being tolerant of anti-Semitism, because they have neither racist nor Christian antipathy to Jews, the two most recently prominent forms. They, in other words, do not consciously hate, or even dislike, Jews. But when the Left has decided that colonialism, fundamentalist religion and ethnic nationalism are the great evils of the modern world, and then so many “progressives” focus on Israel as the exemplar of these evils, despite many, many other more worthy choices, one wonders if they fully understand what anti-Semitism is really all about.
Matti Friedman wonders why Israel is always at the top of the news cycle. Why Hamas, a group that pledge to kill every Jew, is not framed as an enemy to things we should hold dear.
For centuries, stateless Jews played the role of a lightning rod for ill will among the majority population. They were a symbol of things that were wrong. Did you want to make the point that greed was bad? Jews were greedy. Cowardice? Jews were cowardly. Were you a Communist? Jews were capitalists. Were you a capitalist? In that case, Jews were Communists. Moral failure was the essential trait of the Jew. It was their role in Christian tradition—the only reason European society knew or cared about them in the first place.
Like many Jews who grew up late in the 20th century in friendly Western cities, I dismissed such ideas as the feverish memories of my grandparents. One thing I have learned—and I’m not alone this summer—is that I was foolish to have done so. Today, people in the West tend to believe the ills of the age are racism, colonialism, and militarism. The world’s only Jewish country has done less harm than most countries on earth, and more good—and yet when people went looking for a country that would symbolize the sins of our new post-colonial, post-militaristic, post-ethnic dream-world, the country they chose was this one.
When the people responsible for explaining the world to the world, journalists, cover the Jews’ war as more worthy of attention than any other, when they portray the Jews of Israel as the party obviously in the wrong, when they omit all possible justifications for the Jews’ actions and obscure the true face of their enemies, what they are saying to their readers—whether they intend to or not—is that Jews are the worst people on earth. The Jews are a symbol of the evils that civilized people are taught from an early age to abhor. International press coverage has become a morality play starring a familiar villain.
Some readers might remember that Britain participated in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the fallout from which has now killed more than three times the number of people ever killed in the Israel-Arab conflict; yet in Britain, protesters furiously condemn Jewish militarism. White people in London and Paris whose parents not long ago had themselves fanned by dark people in the sitting rooms of Rangoon or Algiers condemn Jewish “colonialism.” Americans who live in places called “Manhattan” or “Seattle” condemn Jews for displacing the native people of Palestine. Russian reporters condemn Israel’s brutal military tactics. Belgian reporters condemn Israel’s treatment of Africans. When Israel opened a transportation service for Palestinian workers in the occupied West Bank a few years ago, American news consumers could read about Israel “segregating buses.” And there are a lot of people in Europe, and not just in Germany, who enjoy hearing the Jews accused of genocide.
You don’t need to be a history professor, or a psychiatrist, to understand what’s going on. Having rehabilitated themselves against considerable odds in a minute corner of the earth, the descendants of powerless people who were pushed out of Europe and the Islamic Middle East have become what their grandparents were—the pool into which the world spits. The Jews of Israel are the screen onto which it has become socially acceptable to project the things you hate about yourself and your own country. The tool through which this psychological projection is executed is the international press.
The first head of the hydra-like monster of medieval anti-Semitic conspiracy theories was the implied parallel between Israeli treatment of Palestinians and Nazis’ treatment of the Jews. This is a de facto cousin of Holocaust denial, as it diminishes and trivialises what really happened then…
Since 9/11 and Iraq, a millenarian cauldron of old-fashioned anti-Semitic conspiracy theories claims that secretive Jews (the wicked “neo-cons”) are controlling Bush, Blair and the media, and even arranged 9/11. Anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism have become interchangeable…
Until 9/11, Anglo-Jewry had become accustomed to prejudiced coverage of Israel. But if you were not a Zionist, as many Jews are not, you did not need to worry. Since 9/11, and particularly post-Iraq, we have witnessed a sea change. It is as if, in the mythical scale of 9/11, al-Qaeda had unlocked a forgotten cultural capsule of anti-Semitic myths, sealed and forgotten since the Nazis, the Black Hundreds and the medieval blood libels. Just words? But words matter in a violent world. This weird and scary nonsense is an international phenomenon, not a British one. Despite it, Britain retains the easygoing tolerance and pragmatism, the sources of her greatness. It is still better to be a Jew in England than anywhere else
And that’s true…
Posted: 20th, January 2015 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Daily Mail Health Tuesday: street lights give you cancer and doctors cannot be trusted
It’s Health Tuesday in the Daily Mail. What news ways to fall ill and die are there this week?
Page 5: “Do your knees hurt as you climb up the stairs? It could be the first sign of arthritis”
Or not.
Pages 34-35: ” How Docors Keep Young. They will do anything to steer clear of other doctors! And you can learn from them by avoiding medicines and ops you don’t really need.”
These are the “secrets” doctors don’t want you to know.
There follows a litancy of causes for worry:
Death by Trial: “Trials of a new treatment that have produced a positive result are more likely to be published than reports about trials of the same drug that didn’t have a positive result.”
Death by screening: “Laboratory, screening or radiological investigations often produce what are called false positive results, suggesting that disease is present when it is not. This can lead to unnecessary follow-up tests and treatments, which could be risky and harmful.”
Death by scanning: “CT scanning raises the risk of cancer because of radiation.”
Death by medicine: “Any medical intervention – a test, operation or drug – will have harmful side-effects for some people, even when carried out by the best doctor in the country.”
Page 36: Street lighting give you cancer: “Women loving in the area withy the brightest outdoor light at night ‘may be at the incresed risk of breast cancer”
Oh, and “female night-shift workers have a higher risk of breast canecr.
So, yeah, that crappy job is kiling you. Maybe.
Page 45: “The patients told they are depressed or anxious when a simple virus is to blame”
The doctor is making you depressed and anxious.
Page 47: “How safe are your valuables in hospital?”
Your, er, crown jewels?
“There no worse time to fall victim to theft – but as our investigation shows it’s heartbreakingly all too common”
Hospitals are full of bad (yet youthful) doctors and thieves!
Page 48: “Why I fear GPs are losing the skills they need to care for patients,” writes ‘The Mail’s GP”
Page 50: “The hygiene products that prey on female fears”
Page 51: “Mum was right! Going out in the rain CAN give you a cold”
Be afraid!
Page 3 is dead: Intolerance and prudes kill The Sun
Rumours are that The Sun newspapers will not logner feature topless stunnas on its Page 3. Birds and babes will remain on the page but wearing scanties. No nipples.
A pressure group No More Page 3, has “demanded” the paper owned by News UK ) “stop conditioning your readers to view women as sex objects”.
But what about the women who wanted to be topless in the paper?
They needed saving from themselves, clearly. Good job that right-on, intelligent women who prefer their tabloid news without nipples were there to demand silly girls stopped appealing to bestial men.
It’s all gone. Maybe.
You can read the history of Page 3 here.
(The rest of you can read the Daily Star…)
Posted: 19th, January 2015 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
Free speech: Clifford Chance lawyer pitches to open office in Islamic State
Freedom of speech not buts… That’s the mantra. But Aysh Chaudhry, a lawyer at London law firm Clifford Chance looks at the 17 people murdered by jihadis in Paris and blames the “kuffar”.
“Brothers and sisters, we would not be here had it not been for the fact that the kuffar had gone to our lands and killed our people and raped and pillaged our resources. This, brothers and sisters, is what we need to understand. We need to move away from this apologetic tone and have confidence in Islam because we are enslaved otherwise.”
You can have that expert opinion for free. Cartoonists, Ahmed the copper and the Jews (always the Jews). You’ve been warned.
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When the Paris Mosque saved Jews from the Nazis with Muslim IDs
It was during World War 2 when French Jews were being rounded up for murder by Nazis that Si Kaddour Benghabrit, the rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris until 1954, acted.
Benghabrit, an Algerian-born religious and political leader, was audacious and cool. The Jews were hidden in the mosque’s cavern-like cellars. Above them, Benghabrit gave Nazi officers and their wives tours of the mosque.
A North African Jew named Albert Assouline, who had escaped from a German prison camp, wrote about life in the mosque:
“No fewer than 1,732 resistance fighters found refuge in its underground caverns. These included Muslim escapees but also Christians and Jews. The latter were by far the most numerous.”
He had a story to tell:
According to Assouline, he and an Algerian named Yassa Rabah escaped together from the camp and stealthily traversed the countryside across the French-German border, heading for Paris. Once in Paris they made their way to the mosque, where, evidently thanks to Rabah’s connections to the Algerian community, the two found refuge. Eventually Assouline continued his journey and joined up with Free French forces to continue the fight against the German occupation … the most fantastic part of the story was his claim that the mosque provided sanctuary and sustenance to Jews hiding from the Vichy and German troops as well as to other fighters in the anti-Fascist resistance.
In a 1983 article for Almanach due Combattant, a French veterans’ magazine, Assouline wrote [that] the senior imam of the mosque, Si Mohammed Benzouaou took “considerable risk” by hiding Jews and providing many (including many children) with certificates of Muslim identity, with which they could avoid deportation and certain death. Assouline recalled one “hot alert” when German soldiers smelled the odor of cigarettes and, convinced that Muslims were forbidden to smoke, searched the mosque looking for hidden Jews. According to Assouline, the Jews were able to escape via sewer tunnels that connected the mosque to nearby buildings.
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Posted: 19th, January 2015 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (2)
Free speech and mental Perdition: The self-censoring mind of a fanatic
Howard Jacobson writes in the Independent on ignorance, self censorship and the vanity of knowing your view and no other is right:
This is the terrifying paradox of zealotry: no one hates humanity more than those who believe they know what’s best for it…
Another way of putting this is to say that the fanatic is someone who has only ever read one book. It is right, therefore, to ask not only what the appeal of the story he goes on reading is, but where he heard it, who read it to him first, and where and why it goes on being told. Religions, like cultures, understand themselves through narrative. How we came into the world, what we were created for, what are our triumphs and our losses. These narratives enjoy a fearful pertinacity. They have the capacity to console but also to inflame. There are still people fighting over territory declared holy by their national stories a millennium ago.
So it was heartening to see the French – offenders and offendees, or at least some of them – putting aside their individual stories for an hour. But the anti-immigration demonstrations in Germany were reminders that masses on the move are frightening as well as stirring. A group that has only ever read one book is a fanatic group.
For all the day-long defiance of terror, fear continues to stalk the conversation. Fear for Muslims, for example, and fear of them. May I make a plea, in the name of varied reading – because it’s better to read even two books than one – for the right to hold both positions. I don’t want to see anti-Muslim demonstrations on the streets. I no more want to see Muslims homogenised and traduced than Jews. But must that mean I cannot ask where the single story beloved of the fanatic is engendered, and if it should turn out that the most moderate Muslim unthinkingly propounds a narrative that fuels the fanatic mind – an anti-Western, anti-Semitic, victim-driven narrative – can I not plead with him to shade it a little, to remember that the best stories liberate us from our pains and grievances into understanding other people’s.
In 1987, Bernard Levin wrote in The Times of the play Perdition:
In 1987 a debate occurred in public sphere on a play written Jim Allen, someone who had previously been associated with Gerry Healy’s organisation the Socialist Labour League, a forerunner to the WRP. The play was called Perdition and was in the genre of faction, a fictional play with historical facts brought in. The historical facts in this case was that of the Zionist leaders in Hungary during the Holocaust and of Zionism in general during the 1930s and 1940s. The play was loosely based on the Kasztner trial that occurred in Israel in the 1950s.
Allen was quoted in Time Out, (January 21-28, 1987) declaring the play:
…the most lethal attack on Zionism ever written, because it touches on the heart of the most abiding myth of modern history, the Holocaust. Because it says quite plainly that privileged Jewish leaders collaborated in the extermination of their own kind in order to bring about a Zionist state, Israel…
Levin responded:
…free speech is for swine and liars as well as upright and honest men. I have insisted that any legally permissable view, however repugnant, is less dangerous promulgated than banned, and I would defend its promulgation even if the opposite were true. I have glorified in the central paradox of democracy, which is that it tolerates, and must continue to tolerate, the activities of those who wish to destroy it.
In all the beliefs I have lived, and I am minded to die in them; how then can I defend the suppression of this play? I cannot, which is not to say that if it had never been written it now should be. But it exists, and ‘He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still.’ With a heavy heart, I yet must say it: Let them have their play.
Free speech. No buts…
It is a shame he is no longer with us.
Daily Mail readers offer: a cut-priced cancer maker and juicer
Everything we know about fruit juice we learned in the Daily Mail.
Today’s Mail offers readers a “half-price Nutribiullet”.
But the Mail has told me that the Nutribullet is a loaded gun that will blow your insides out..
Previously in the Mail:
Half-price juice for everyone! (But not at dinner time.)
Daily Mail makes its raders fat!
Daily Mail gives readers cut-price heart attacks!
Daily Mail gives reades half-price cancer!
Posted: 18th, January 2015 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
The Islamophobia generating honour brigades: turning Muslims into a race
Demonstrators holding a banner which reads, ‘unity against Islamophobia’, to protest against the conference on the Islamization of France and Europe, in Paris, Saturday, Dec. 18, 2010.(AP Photo/Michel Euler)
There has been lots of talk of Islamophobia. But how real is it? Are the mob about to race riot? Is every outrage by Islamist nuters – and many crimes in France involve jihadis hunting Jews – followed by a bout of anti-Muslim violence? The Press would have us think so.
The prime minister of France, Manuel Valls has an opinion:
“It is very important to make clear to people that Islam has nothing to do with ISIS,” Valls told me. “There is a prejudice in society about this, but on the other hand, I refuse to use this term ‘Islamophobia,’ because those who use this word are trying to invalidate any criticism at all of Islamist ideology. The charge of ‘Islamophobia’ is used to silence people. ”
Valls was not denying the existence of anti-Muslim sentiment, which is strong across much of France. In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack, miscreants have shot at Muslim community buildings, and various repulsive threats against individual Muslims have been cataloged. President Francois Hollande, who said Thursday that Muslims are the “first victims of fanaticism, fundamentalism, intolerance,” might be overstating the primacy of anti-Muslim prejudice in the current hierarchy of French bigotries—after all, Hollande just found it necessary to deploy his army to defend Jewish schools from Muslim terrorists, not Muslim schools from Jewish terrorists—but anti-Muslim bigotry is a salient and seemingly permanent feature of life in France. Or to contextualize it differently: Anti-Muslim feeling appears to be more widespread than anti-Jewish feeling across much of France, but anti-Jewish feeling has been expressed recently (and not-so-recently) with far more lethality, and mainly by Muslims.
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Posted: 17th, January 2015 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
The Most Bananas Intro To A Newspaper Column: Tom Utley of the Daily Mail Sees The Bride Of Stephen Fry
Michael Deacon tweets:
Tom Utley of the Mail surges into an early lead in this year’s Most Bananas Intro to a Newspaper Column contest
This is just fantastic:
Spotter: @MichaelPDeacon
Tom Utley of the Mail surges into an early lead in this year’s Most Bananas Intro to a Newspaper Column contest
Free Speech: Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, Liam Stacey and Charlie Hebdo are all victims of thought censors
What percentage of terrorists attack in Europe are perpetuated by Islamists?
So here are some statistics for those interested. Let’s start with Europe. Want to guess what percent of the terrorist attacks there were committed by Muslims over the past five years? Wrong. That is, unless you said less than 2 percent.
As Europol, the European Union’s law-enforcement agency, noted in its report released last year, the vast majority of terror attacks in Europe were perpetrated by separatist groups. For example, in 2013, there were 152 terror attacks in Europe. Only two of them were “religiously motivated,” while 84 were predicated upon ethno-nationalist or separatist beliefs.
But what of the fear of Islamists?
Can fear be linked to the arrest of Dieudonné M’bala M’bala? He was pinched for posting on Facebook “I feel like Charlie Coulibaly” — a portmanteau of Charlie Hebdo and Amedy Coulibaly, the racist who murdered four Jews in a Paris kosher store.
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Robert Crumb on Charlie Hebdo: God according to Mohamid Bakshi
Robert Crumb has repsonded to the Mohammed Charlie Hebdo cover story. And Crumb knows all there is to know about religion. He wrote the Bible:
Crumb drew:
Aline [Mr. Crumb’s wife is the cartoonist Aline Kominsky-Crumb] saw something on the internet…All the big newspapers and magazines in America had all agreed, mutually agreed, not to print those offensive cartoons that were in that Charlie Hebdo magazine. They all agreed that they were not going to print those, because they were too insulting to the Prophet. Charlie Hebdo, it didn’t have a big circulation. A lot of French people said, “Yes, it was tasteless, but I defend their right to freedom of speech.” Yeah, it was tasteless, that’s what they say. And perhaps it was. I’m not going to make a career out of baiting some fucking religious fanatics, you know, by insulting their prophet. I wouldn’t do that. That seems crazy. But then, after they got killed, I just had to draw that cartoon, you know, showing the Prophet. The cartoon I drew shows me, myself, holding up a cartoon that I’ve just drawn. A crude drawing of an ass that’s labeled “The Hairy Ass of Muhammed.” [Laughs.]
Crumb explains:
Libération called me and said, “Crumb, can you do a cartoon for us? About what you think about this, you know, you are a major cartoonist, and you live in France.” So I thought about it. I spent a lot of time thinking about it. I’m doing the dishes, or whatever, I was thinking, “What should I do for that cartoon … ” I had a lot of ideas. Other people come up with these, you know, clever cartoons that comment on it, like … This one guy did a cartoon showing a bloody dead body laying there, and a radical Muslim standing over him with a Kalashnikov, saying, “He drew first!” Stuff like that. That’s good, that’s clever, you know, I like that. But, me? I gotta like, you know, when I do something, it has to be more personal. I said, first: “I don’t have the courage to make an insulting cartoon of Muhammed.”
Then I thought, “OK, I’m the Cowardly Cartoonist … As a Cowardly Cartoonist, I can’t make some glib comment like that, you know? I have to, like, make fun of myself. So instead of drawing the face of Muhammed [laughs], I drew the ass of Muhammed. [Laughs.] But then I had myself saying, in small lettering, “Actually, this is the ass of my friend of Mohamid Bakshi, who’s a film director in Los Angeles, California.” So if they come at me, I’m gonna say, “No, look, it’s not Muhammed the Prophet, it’s this guy, Mohamid Bakshi.” So, you know.
[…] So, then Aline [Crumb’s wife] had this idea for another cartoon, which we also sent to Libération, a collaboration, that’s showing her looking at the drawing saying, “Oh, my God, they’re going to come after us! This is terrible … I want to live to see my grandchildren!” And then she has me saying, “Well, it’s not that bad. And, besides, they’ve killed enough cartoonists, maybe they’ve gotten it out of their system.”
Read it all here.
Pope Francis V Jesus Hebdo: The ‘other cheek’ is a clenched fist
Pope Francis has a few words on free speech and the murder of journalists, police and Jews in Paris:
“If my good friend Dr. Gasparri says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch. It’s normal. You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others.” …
“There are so many people who speak badly about religions or other religions, who make fun of them, who make a game out of the religions of others. They are provocateurs. And what happens to them is what would happen to Dr. Gasparri if he says a curse word against my mother. There is a limit.”
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Free Speech: The Sun finds a ‘dark-skinned’ capitalist sellling Charlie Hebdo magazines in Gloucestershire
The Sun is cheering for free speech. It is cheering for Ila Aghera, the “defiant” shopkeeper selling copies of Charlie Hebdo magazine to the many French speaskers and peopls who can say “Jew Suis Charlie” in her area. The Sun loves her:
A VILLAGE shopkeeper is defiantly selling the “survivors’ issue” of Charlie Hebdo despite fears she could be targeted by extremists. Ila Aghera, 54, made her brave stand as all three million copies of the satirical magazine sold out in France.
Does she charge more for carriage?
It was published as al-Qaeda chiefs behind last week’s massacre in Paris vowed further atrocities. And a London cafe owner refused to take down his Je Suis Charlie sign despite a death threat from a “raving” Islamist fanatic.
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Posted: 15th, January 2015 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
