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Israel-Palestinians Watch: Ahmed Manasrah, 13, stars in a snuff movie special, but refuses to die

Israel and Palestinian viral death of the day: Ahmed Manasrah, 13, was shot in East Jerusalem.

Israeli police say Manasreh and his 15-year-old cousin stabbed and seriously wounded two Israelis and then ran away before being shot.

Manasrah’s family denies he attacked Israelis.

Mansrah’s 15-year-old cousin died. The Palestinian presidency said his death was  “execution … in front of the media” and a “heinous crime.”

 

Ahmed Manasrah

 

Israel’s President Netanyahu says:

“An Arab boy fatally wounds a Jewish child and after that the security forces stop him and prevent him from continuing on a stabbing spree and he becomes a martyr supposedly executed unjustly? First of all, he is not dead, he is alive. Secondly, he was not executed; he was attempting to execute others. He tried to kill and murder, but the exact opposite is presented in a distorted and outrageous manner.”

A video by AJPlus, part of the Al Jazeera Media Network appears on the web:

Called Wounded Palestinian Boy Taunted by Onlookers, the video portrays the boys as the victim.

Facebook comments are many:

Screen Shot 2015-10-15 at 13.48.58

 

On Facebook Mohamed Zeyara has a video. He’s a “Humanitarian Activist”:

Israeli Zionists curse a dying Palestinian child as Israeli Police watch.

“Two Palestinian children aging 12 and 13 were shot in cold blood north of Jerusalem today. Medical assistance was not offered, which led to the older child’s death. His name was Ahmad Manasra and his last moments were documented in this video.”

Comments are many:

Screen Shot 2015-10-15 at 13.53.07

 

 

The Times of Israel reports:

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The report:

Israel Police identified the two Palestinian teenagers who stabbed and seriously injured two Israelis in Jerusalem on Monday afternoon as cousins, 13 and 15 years old, from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hanina. The older teen was shot dead by police when fleeing the scene of the terror attack, while his cousin was struck by a car and seriously injured.

The cousins attacked a 13-year-old Israeli boy and a man, 25, gravely injuring them, in the third attack to hit the capital in a single day. The incident took place in the northern neighborhood of Pisgat Zeev, adjacent to a light rail station.

The boy was stabbed multiple times as he rode his bike.

“It was horrifying,” Asi Gabay, a family friend of the younger victim recounted to Channel 2. “The boy ran to me and shouted, ‘Asi, help me! Asi, help me!’

“I had a mop with me and we put it on him as a tourniquet,” Gabay said. “Within a few seconds the kid lost consciousness, was completely white and was lying on the ground.”

The boy was hospitalized in critical condition. Doctors at the Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus said he suffered multiple stab wounds to his upper body, and underwent emergency surgery.

According to police, the 13-year-old attacker stabbed the boy as he was riding his bike. When eyewitnesses began to run toward the scene of the attack, the assailants fled. While escaping, the younger one was hit by a car and seriously injured.

And:

A video posted on social media appeared to show the younger of the two teens writhing in a pool of blood on the tracks of the Jerusalem Light Rail, surrounded by police. The video was filmed by an Israeli passerby who shouted “Die! Die, you son of a whore” repeatedly at the teen before he was administered first aid from Magen David Adom paramedics. Police ordered the man to leave the scene.

The pro-Israel group Stand With Us has its own video. It shows the two Palestinian boys with knives. It shows an attack on a boy coming out of a sweet shop. It shows an armed boy (knife) running at armed police (guns).

 Comments are many:

Screen Shot 2015-10-15 at 14.02.07

 

The |nternational Middle East Media Center has its own view:

The officers did not shoot him, but left him bleeding with head injuries, broken legs and other serious injuries on the ground. The boy was able to raise his head a few times, but the police officers kicked him back down until he bled to death.

The slain Palestinian child has been identified as Hasan Khaled Manasra, 15 years of age, while his cousin Ahmad Saleh Manasra, 13, suffered a serious injury. They are both from Beit Hanina, in Jerusalem.

The Jerusalem Post:

In an apparent bid to refute claims by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that Israel carries out “field executions” against Palestinian youths, officials in Israel released a photograph of a 13-year-old Palestinian assailant from the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Jebl Mukaber who took part in a stabbing attack in the capital earlier this week.

Ahmed Manasrah, who is listed in light-to-moderate condition, was one of two Palestinians who stabbed two Israelis, one of them also a 13-year-old boy, in the Pisgat Ze’ev quarter of the capital on Monday.

Hadassah University Medical Center in Ein Kerem disseminated a picture of Manasrah to the press on Thursday in order to debunk Palestinian claims that Israel “executes” young Palestinians who commit knifing attacks.

The Manasrah case has become the focal point of a propaganda war between Jerusalem and Ramallah, particularly after Abbas’ incendiary remarks in a speech broadcast to Palestinian homes.

 

Screen Shot 2015-10-15 at 14.11.43

 

“We will not give up to the logic of brute force, policies of occupation and aggression practiced by the Israeli government and the herd of settlers who are engaged in terrorism against our people, our holy places, our homes, our trees and the execution of our children in cold blood as they did with the child Ahmed Manasrah and other children from Jerusalem,” Abbas said in an address which aired on Palestine TV.

Ha’aretz makes a point:

Death Becomes Viral: Israelis and Palestinians Embrace a New Hobby – Snuff Films

Asheer Schechter:

This week, for instance, two videos in particular triggered global outrage: One showed a bleeding 13-year-old Palestinian boy named Ahmed Manasrah, who along with a 15-year-old cousin, stabbed a number of people in Jerusalem. In the video, the injured boy is seen writhing and squirming on the ground, his legs bent in an unnatural angle, while bystanders hurl insults at him. The second video, equally horrifying, is a security-cam footage showing a terror attack in Jerusalem’s Malchei Yisrael Street earlier this week: The Palestinian terrorist, a resident of East Jerusalem and employee of Israel’s telecom company Bezeq, is shown ramming his car into bystanders, then proceeding to attack them with an axe (murdering a Jewish orthodox rabbi) before being shot dead.

Pro-Palestinians (and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas) used the video of Manasrah to demonstrate the crimes of Zionism, without mentioning the context of the event (namely, that Manasrah had just stabbed and critically injured two people). Pro-Israelis used the video of the attack to display the barbarism of the Palestinians.
Each used the videos for their own purposes, but in effect they did the same thing – they traded videos of slaughtered people to prove a point.

Such are the facts

Posted: 15th, October 2015 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment


Arsenal season ticket costs JUST twice as much as Stoke’s

arsenal season ticket

 

Arsenal sell British football’s most expensive season ticket. Or as Mirror puts it:

 

Arsenal fans are forced to pay more than any other Premier League club for match-day and season tickets.

The media has been reviewing the BBC Sport’s annual Price of Football study.

Their most expensive season ticket costs £2,013 – almost SEVEN times the cost of the cheapest season ticket at Stoke, which at £294 is the most affordable in the top-flight.

Why compare the most expensive ticket at one club with the cheapest at another?

Stoke City only offers 300 season tickets at £294. Stoke’s top price ticket is £519. The cheapest season ticket to watch Arsenal cost £1014. Which represents the better value for money is for you to decide. If you think it’s Arsenal, you need to put your name on the waiting list. If you think it’s Stokes, pick your seat…

 

 

 

Posted: 15th, October 2015 | In: Arsenal, Reviews, Sports | Comment


Gutterdämmerung: Lemmy, Iggy Pop, Grace Jones and Nina Hagen cannot fail

Gutterdämmerung looks fantastic. Here’s the pitch:

The film is set in a world where God has saved the world from sin by taking from mankind the Devil’s ‘Grail of Sin’…..the Evil Guitar. The Earth has now turned into a puritan world where there is no room for sex, drugs or rock ‘n’ roll.

From up on high in heaven a “punk-angel”, Vicious (portrayed by Iggy Pop), looks upon the world with weary bored eyes. Behind God’s back, Vicious sends the Devil’s guitar back to earth and sin in all its forms returns to mankind.

An evil puritan priest (Henry Rollins) manipulates a naive girl to retrieve the guitar and destroy it. On her quest to find the Devil’s Grail Of Sin, the girl is forced to face the world’s most evil rock and roll bastards. Throughout her journey, she has a rival in the form of a rock chick determined to stop her from destroying the instrument.

Sounds fantastic.

 

iggy

Gutterdämmerung cover 4 Gutterdämmerung cover 3 Gutterdämmerung cover 2 Gutterdämmerung cover

 

More about Bjorn Tagemos’ Gutterdämmerung here.

 

Posted: 15th, October 2015 | In: Film, Key Posts, Music, Reviews | Comment


Dead mouse discovered in Subway cheese sandwich

mouse in Subway

 

Matt Jones says his pal found some extra protein in his Subway lunch. Eating at the Lincoln City, Oregon, his friend opened up his Italian sandwich and saw the dead rodent between the spinach and cheese.

“Thankfully it was discovered before Jay took a bite of a dead mouse,” says Jones said. Jones says he returned his own sandwich to the manager because it also had spinach on it, and got a full refund.

 

 

Posted: 15th, October 2015 | In: Reviews, Strange But True | Comment


Newcastle United balls: Gutierrez sues club for disability discrimination

Jonas Gutierrez is suing Newcastle for £2million. The Sun says the former Newcastle midfielder is upset at the way the club treated him over his battle with testicular cancer. The paper says he’s claiming disability discrimination by the club.

Gutierrez, 32, was forced to pay for his own treatment after being diagnosed with the illness in October 2013. He recovered and helped ensure Newcastle’s Premier League survival in May — but was then released. The Argentine star, who is now playing for Spanish outfit Deportivo La Coruna, said: “The fact Newcastle did not offer me a new contract could have been interpreted as though I was not well.”

It could have been. Just as it could have been interpreted that Arsenal didn’t offer the often crocked About Diaby a new contract because of his health issues.

The Sun loads the dice:

Gutierrez scored in the final-day win over West Ham, which ensured Newcastle stayed up. But he was then dumped while on a coaching course with team-mate Ryan Taylor.

It is undeniably craven to release a player or any staff member over the phone.

The Sun cites the Equality Act 2010.

The Act makes it unlawful to discriminate against workers because of mental or physical disability, and considers diagnosis of cancer as a disability.

Should they have kept him on? Was he good enough to play for one of the Premier League’s worst teams?

 

Posted: 14th, October 2015 | In: Reviews, Sports | Comment


Swearing raven takes selfies and acts

izzi raven
Come to Knaresborough Castle in North Yorkshire, where if ruins bored are not enough you can look out for Izzie, a thieving raven.
“It started to be a problem when people were taking photos of her,” said Igraine Hustwitt Skelton, Her Majesty’s Keeper of Castle Ravens in Knaresborough. “She would fly towards them and sit on their shoulders but then she started taking things. Now she’s taken to nicking cameras and mobile phones and using her beak to take selfies… There was one woman on a bench eating fish and chips and taking photos. Izzie took a bottle out of a bin and pretended she’d got her foot stuck in it and was injured in the middle of the bowling green. The lady went to help free her but she flew off and took her camera in her powerful beak.

“She flew onto the museum roof and managed to take a picture of herself…

She’ll ask people taking her photo ‘What you f*cking looking at?! She’s also flown to the police station nearby and said ‘Ello, Ello, Ello’ When the constable came out to take a look, she swore at him.”
Now sit back and wait for the tourists to flock in.

Posted: 14th, October 2015 | In: Reviews, Strange But True | Comment


Police hunt Southampton cemetery pooer

Butts Road “For a man to go to the toilet where people are buried is disgusting,” says Millie Ings, from Hedge End. She had spotted a man taking a dump in a hedgerow at a Hampshire cemetery.  “I was absolutely disgusted to think that someone could actually do something like that. He might have problems but there is no excuse for what he has done, especially when there is a toilet two minutes’ away.”
Her mother, Sarah Ings, 39, adds: “It’s vile. I don’t know what they can do but something should be done – if somebody drops litter they can be fined and this is just disgusting, there needs to be a form of punishment for it.”
What about taking the shitters photo and slapping it up online?
What if the man had picked up the turd, wrapped it in a thin plastic bag and tossed it into a bin, or a tree as is often preferred?
Police are investigating. If you saw St Mary Extra Cemetery,  Southampton, call the authorities. It’s the cemetery in Butts Road.

Posted: 14th, October 2015 | In: Reviews | Comment


Local News: A car door is left open in Bath

Local News Watch: The door is open in the Bath Chronicle:

 

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A car has been causing quite a stir in Bath city centre. The vehicle, a silver Honda, had been left parked in Kingsmead Square, early on Sunday evening but unfortunately the owner had failed to shut the driver’s door… The car was parked in Kingsmead Square next to The Stable between 6pm and 7.30pm and at one point attracted the attention of a parking warden.

Next week in door news: the Frome Street Light Mystery.

 

Posted: 14th, October 2015 | In: Reviews | Comment


New York: Jennifer Connell sues 12-year-old nephew over birthday hug that broke her wrist in 2011

Jennifer Connel

 

To New York, where Jennifer Connell says when her nephew “acted unreasonably” when he leapt into her arms when she arrived at his 8th birthday party in 2011. She’s suing him.

The Westport News says Connell is seeking $127,000 in damages from the boy, whose mother died last year.

The boy had gotten his first two-wheeler for his birthday, and was joyfully riding the bright-red bike around and around the home, according to testimony.

But when he spotted Connell, he dropped the new bicycle on the ground, exclaiming, “Auntie Jen, Auntie Jen.” “All of a sudden he was there in the air, I had to catch him and we tumbled onto the ground,” Connell testified of her encounter with the 50-pound boy. “I remember him shouting, ‘Auntie Jen I love you,’ and there he was flying at me.”

Although hurt, Connell said, she didn’t complain to the boy at the time.

“It was his birthday party and I didn’t want to upset him,” she told the jury.

Connell says life has been “very difficult” since the injury because of “how crowded it is in Manhattan”. She apparently said:

“I was at a party recently, and it was difficult to hold my hors d’oeuvre plate.”

This has to be a spoof, right?

Update: The New York Daily News says the case was thrown out.

Posted: 13th, October 2015 | In: Reviews, Strange But True | Comment


Lunatics shoot 7-year-old Christian Hickey in Salford

Christian hickey

 

Seven-year-old Christian Hickey opened his front door to see who had rang the bell. After a “short” exchange a man fired three shots. One hit Christian. Two his hit Jayne Hickey, his 29-year-old mother.

The boy’s father, also named Christian, chased the gunman down the street.

The Times:

Detectives said the shooting is potentially linked to the murder of Paul Massey, 55, a security boss, in Salford in July and a feud between rival gangs in other parts of the city, where there have been at least five shootings. A second feud, unconnected to last night’s attack, has broken out in another area of the city, Little Hulton, with at least six shootings linked to it. Last night’s attack coincided with a broadcast on BBC’s Crimewatch programme appealing for information into Massey’s death and offering a £50,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of those responsible.

You’d have to be brave to cash in – or vengeful.

 

Posted: 13th, October 2015 | In: Reviews | Comment


Transfer Balls: Spurs chase Moses as Gent suffer shock loss

Keen to hook up with Son

       Danny keen to hook up with Son

 

Transfer Balls: a look at football reporting in the news. The Mail and Mirror say Spurs are chasing Moses Daddy-Ajala Simon. Compare and contrast the newspapers’ reports.

Daily Mail:

 

transfer spurs

 

Tottenham are following Gent winger Moses Simon. Club scouts have been following Gent’s centre forward Laurent Depoitre, who started and scored for Belgium against Andorra. A Nigeria international, Simon scored seven goals last season as Gent finished second in the Belgian Pro League and set up Depoitre for the winning goal in the Belgian Super Cup.

Tottenham and Liverpool wanted to sign Simon when he was a teenager but he opted to train with Ajax instead. Now they are back on his trail after a string of impressive performances. Depoitre scored Belgium’s fourth goal on Saturday night as they sealed their place at next summer’s European Championships with a 4-1 victory over Andorra

Darren Lewis, Daily Mirror:

Tottenham are tracking Gent winger Moses Simon. Spurs are already monitoring the progress of the club’s Belgium forward Laurent Depoitre, who started and scored against Andorra on Saturday. And now they are watching Simon, 20, a Nigeria wideman who scored seven times last season to help Gent win the Belgian Pro League.

‘The North Londoners have been keen on Simon since he was a teenager, but he chose to train with Dutch club Ajax instead. Depoitre, 26, hit the fourth goal in the 4-1 win for Belgium over Andorra that sealed their place at the Euro 2016 Finals’ – Darren Lewis, Mirror Football.

This is last season’s Belgian league table:

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Gent won. But the two papers appear to agree pretty much for for word on everything else.

Posted: 13th, October 2015 | In: Reviews, Sports, Spurs | Comment


Dildos for guns: University students protest guns on campus by carrying big rubber penises

Magazine not included

Magazine not included

 

Students at the University of Texas at Austin upset at new rules to allow more guns on campus are “strapping gigantic swinging dildos to our backpacks”.

It’s for the kids, people

The big rubbery knobs are in violation of the campus’ obscenity policy. B ut Jessica Jin, creator of Campus (DILDO) Carry says:

“You’re carrying a gun to class? Yeah well I’m carrying a HUGE DILDO. Just about as effective at protecting us from sociopathic shooters, but much safer for recreational play.”

You have the right to bare all…

 

Posted: 13th, October 2015 | In: Reviews | Comment


Drinking black coffee means you’re likely to be a sadist, Mr Coffee Nerves

coffee comic 6

 

 Appetite reports on a study from the University of Innsbruck, Austria. It says people who prefer black coffee and other bitter foods are more likely to exhibit personality traits like “Machiavellianism, psychopathy, narcissism, and everyday sadism.”

In other words: interesting people drink black coffee.

And that’s what everyone who took the survey believes. The researchers didn’t actually offer them food to try. They merely asked what food people preferred. The macho will says they love chillies that make your openings burn and coffee as blacker than the stain on Simon Cowell’s pillowcase.

More from Mr Coffee Nerves here.

 

coffee comic

coffee comic 1 coffee comic 2
Spotter: Refinery 29

Posted: 13th, October 2015 | In: Reviews | Comment


Lou Reed was a charmless ‘racist wife-beater’

Lou reed racist

 

Lou Reed wasn’t everyone’s best pal. A new biography by Howard Sounes labels Reed a racist, a sexist and a wife-beater. Reed was a man “with so little personal charm he would be regularly discharged from private gatherings.

“I loved his music, but you have to go where the story goes. The obituaries were a bit too kind, he was really a very unpleasant man. A monster really; I think truly the word monster is applicable.”

Monster?

1974/05/18 - Charlton FC

1974/05/18 – Charlton FC

Posted: 13th, October 2015 | In: Books, Celebrities, Key Posts, Reviews | Comment


Sam Allardyce invested in Microsoft software but still didn’t get the England job

sam allardyce for England

 

New Sunderland manager Sam Allardyce wanted to be the England manager. He still wants the job. In the Sun, Allardyce shares with readers why he failed to get the nod in 2005.

“I wanted to do a real knock-your-socks-off interview for the FA, so I put together a PowerPoint presentation which looked at every single detail. There was nothing missing. Nobody but nobody was going to beat it.

“But then Brian Barwick, the chief executive, told me there were no PowerPoint facilities at the interview venue, so I had to print off hard copies for the panel. So much for the progressive FA.”

Next time, Big Same will wow them with Ascii.

Posted: 12th, October 2015 | In: Reviews, Sports | Comment


Leon Brittain: Watson simply joined the conspiracists

Westminster VIP Peadophiles: a round-up of news. The spotlight is on Tom Watson MP, who during Prime Minister’s Questions in October 2012, called on police to investigate the “clear intelligence” that “a powerful paedophile network linked to parliament and Number 10”.

Objective? Impartial?

The Guardian: “Tom Watson faces rising pressure over Leon Brittan claims”

Not from Leon, though. He’s dead.

Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, is facing mounting political pressure over his pursuit of allegations of child sexual abuse against the former Conservative home secretary Leon Brittan. Bob Neill, the Conservative chairman of the justice committee, has demanded the publication of a letter Watson wrote to the director of public prosecutions, Alison Saunders, in which the Labour MP called for the accusations to be reinvestigated.

What would that prove or disprove?

Neill has also called for Saunders’ subsequent correspondence with the police to be made public to gauge how much influence Watson’s interventions had in Scotland Yard’s decision to reopen the historical rape allegation. Watson claims Lord Brittan would have been interviewed by police even without his intervention.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted: 12th, October 2015 | In: Politicians, Reviews | Comment


Man arrested after getting trapped trying to remove finger chocolate from car’s petrol tank

finger stuck

 

To Philadelphia, where emergency responders from the Upper Darby Wash and – get this – Lube Station are helping Christopher Bolger, 25, remove his finger from his car’s petrol tank. He says he thought he’d accidentally put chocolate in and was trying to clear it out.

After much cutting, Bolger was taken to Penn Presbyterian Hospital for treatment and to have the pipe removed.

While there, however, authorities discovered that Bolger was wanted for failure to appear on a bench warrant for a protection from abuse order, Upper Darby police Superintendent Michael Chitwood said, and he was taken into custody after he was released from the hospital. “It’s dumb all the way around on his part,” Chitwood said. “Stupid is as stupid does.”

Chocolate in the gas tank?

 

Posted: 12th, October 2015 | In: Reviews | Comment


Nadiya Hussain: making a meal of the GBBO bitter chocolate mosque

nads

 

Great British Bake Off winner Nadiya Hussain has been turned into a mould for all Britishers to pour their prejudices into.

Remona Aly, The Guardian: “Nadiya Hussain has won so much more than the Great British Bake Off”

A modelling contract? A glass cake stand? A peerage?

Nadiya has managed to defuse the negative, politicised and stereotypical discourse surrounding Muslims in one beat of a whisk. Such is her resonance that even David Cameron – whose Tory party conference speech lists pet hates that can be construed as Muslim-related, including another dig at madrasas and his declaration that “this passive tolerance has turned us into a less integrated country” – backed her to win.

The elite who turn everything into a moral education for the masses. Cameron was mad for Brain Belo to win Big Brother. Show him a darker complexion on The Chase and Dave bangs the drum. “Go-gogo, Ali from Bury,” he yells. “Make Britain proud!”

While Nadiya is the most popular GBBO baker to date, with the charming anaesthetist Tamal Ray a close second, their combined appeal meant that this year’s finale was bound to break previous records… In addition to GBBO’s winning set-up of the brilliantly witty Mel and Sue, poker-faced Paul Hollywood and traditionalist Mary Berry…  its inclusivity factor has been reflected in the competitors, with Nadiya having the extra edge of being a non-stereotypical British winner – as an Asian Muslim woman in a hijab, she both represents and transcends all her identities.

 

Poor old Ian. The white bloke is the only person on camera not included in Remona’s tribute to inclusiveness.

White bloke Simon Kelner (Independent), says Nadiya Hussain “serves up the perfect rebuttal to Theresa May’s xenophobic rhetoric.”

No. She did not push the cake in May’s mush.

Julia Hartley-Brewer, Telegraph:

Nadiya does not represent Muslims, or British Muslims, or Asian women or even just women. She is simply an individual who represents no one but herself, in exactly the same way that if her fellow contestant Ian Cumming, a white middle-class man, had won the show, it wouldn’t have said anything meaningful about white middle-class men either.

Gaby Hinsliff, also Guardian:

How dare the BBC portray this cheery mix of ethnicities and sexualities and backgrounds inexplicably not at one another’s throats, and thus make it look as if multiculturalism might not be so bad after all? There was admittedly something a bit contrived about Hussain’s final showstopper, the wedding cake she’d apparently always wanted (they’re not traditional in Bangladesh, where she and her husband married). Even the dimmest viewer couldn’t miss the symbolism of an old-fashioned iced lemon drizzle accompanied by a red, white and blue sari.

Er…

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown:

Muslims who are burning with anger or, at the least, disillusioned with life in Britain should learn from Nadiya. I know I have.

 

Ally Ross, the Sun:

MILLIONS of nut-cakes tuned in to the Bake Off final last night not entirely sure who’d win — but utterly convinced they knew who wouldn’t. We had a Muslim mum of three, Nadiya, looking quietly determined. A gay Asian NHS worker, Tamal, looking stupidly relaxed. And a bloke called Ian, looking utterly screwed.

Turn up without a box tick to your name, some viewers reckon, and you can bake an exact replica of the Taj Mahal using shortbread fingers and meringue nests and it still won’t be enough to win this most PC of BBC shows.

The Bake Off monster has got so big, the show is no longer just a cake-making contest.

It’s full-scale ideological warfare and another chance to argue about political-correctness in the BBC. To have the stomach for that, you also need to give an unhealthy toss about Flora’s cocoa carousel or Alvin’s plum tart…

 

 

BBC execs no doubt did a multi-cultural jig of politically-correct joy — long before she sealed it with a patriotic red, white and blue wedding cake. Tearful, victorious Nadiya was the best contestant. She deserved to win.

I’m simply glad it’s over. Now we can enjoy the less PC delights of the new Apprentice line-up. That includes: Ah. A Kosovan refugee, a Nigerian businesswoman and a former intern for a Liberal Democrat MEP.

 

Amanda Platell writes in Mail:

Poor Flora wasn’t PC enough for Beeb

When this series of The Great British Bake Off began, the BBC was proud it was the most inclusive, multi-cultural line-up ever.

Did you notice?

Now we’re down to the final three, it’s certainly a PC triumph. We are left with Muslim mum Nadiya Hussain, gay doctor Tamal Ray, and New Man Ian Cumming. Poor Flora Shedden never stood a chance. She was far too middle class — and was booted off this week after her chocolate carousel was deemed sub-standard. Perhaps if she’d made a chocolate mosque, she’d have stood a better chance.

The judges are Paul Hollywood (white; non-Jewish male), Mary Berry (white; non-Hindu female), Sue Perkins (white; gay; non-Satanist) and Mel Giedroyc (white; non-Buddhist; not a former refugee reading Gender Studies at Sussex University). We could go through the crew, whose names appear at the show’s end. Or look harder at Platell (white; immigrant). Or we could wonder if a chocolate mosque answered the brief to create a “stunning and delicious 3D centrepiece made from chocolate and biscuit”. No word was made of the need to create a place of worship from chocolate. No contestant did.

That’s not to say that something controversial, like a chocolate version of the Human Centipede, a dole queue or Jeremy Clarkson’s fist would not have given the middle-of-the-road show an edge. A chocolate mosque sounds a little dull.

A few days later, Platell adds:

…while I’m thrilled for Nadiya, I do also fear for her now she and her family have been catapulted into the seductive, cynical world of celebrity.

Stewart Lee has also seen how the winner of the twee TV show is being packaged as moral lesson for us all. He writes:

It was on 3 October that the Daily Mail content provider Amanda Platell introduced the notion of a chocolate mosque into the collective subconscious. But still, more than a week later, Platell’s enormous chocolate mosque continues to loom over my imagination like an enormous chocolate mosque, an image so absurd that it becomes a viable metaphor for its own self.

In case the news-blip passed you by, Platell made minor chocolate ripples by suggesting in print that a middle-class woman called Flora Shedden, and her chocolate carousel, were booted off the BBC’s Bake Off cake contest in favour of Muslim mum Nadiya Hussain, gay doctor Tamal Ray and “new man” Ian Cumming, because she wasn’t “politically correct” enough. Perhaps, wrote Platell, “if she’d made a chocolate mosque she’d have stood a better chance”.

…An obvious subtext to Platell’s story is that the other contestants were favoured, irrespective of the quality of their cake work, because they fulfilled some kind of politically correct quota, such as “Muslim mum” and “gay doctor”. But the idea that this could be a deciding factor is undermined by the presence of the third victor, Ian Cumming, for whom the best denigrating epithet that the increasingly desperate Platell can find is “new man”, a phrase last used pejoratively by a woman wearing legwarmers in the early 1980s.

And here’s food for more opinion writers: will Nadiya make a cake for gay weddings? A source tells the Sun:

 “Since the final aired she has had a flood of requests from brides-to-be. A few she has already accepted and there is enough demand for her to consider making wedding cakes professionally. It’s something she could work on in her evenings. She is still a full-time mum, after all.”

 

 

First one to order a gay wedding cake wins.

Posted: 12th, October 2015 | In: Reviews, TV & Radio | Comment


Israel: who bombed Israa Jaabis at the Maale Adumim checkpoint?

The Times

The Times

 

Israel: a round-up of news on trouble in Israel in the papers. Every death tops the news cycle. The Western media feasts of the names of the dead and injured. We don’t get to know the names of all the dead when bombs kill scores of civilians in Turkey. But every death in Israel is the story of an individual. Today we look at reporting on Israa Jaabis and the ‘car bomb’.

The Times: “Woman bomber strikes in new wave of violence”

 

Why is a woman bomber different to being a simple bomber?

A car bombing by a Palestinian woman and a deadly Israeli airstrike in Gaza brought a serious escalation to weeks of unrest in the Holy Land.

The Holy Land? Where are they in the FIFA rankings?

Police stopped Israa Jaabis, 31, the would-be bomber, as she drove on a highway between Jerusalem and Maale Adumim, an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank. She shouted “Allah Akbar” (God is the greatest) before detonating her bomb.

Then what?

One police officer was slightly injured. Jaabis suffered burns to 40 per cent of her body and was taken to a Jerusalem hospital. Shin Bet, the internal security agency, said Jaabis had tried to ignite a gas cylinder and was carrying leaflets in support of Palestinians killed in clashes with Israeli forces.

A bomber with leaflets? A novel way of delivering them? We learn that she is 31-year-old and a resident of east Jerusalem.

Palestinians disputed the official account, saying that an electrical fire in the car was mistaken for an explosion.

The LA Times:

 

…an Israeli police officer suffered light burns when a Palestinian woman allegedly detonated a bomb at a checkpoint near Maaleh Adumim, east of Jerusalem. Officials said the policeman had flagged down a suspicious car for inspection when the driver detonated a bomb.

Sappers checking the vehicle for further explosives found a gas canister, and police officials speculated that the car was intended to explode in Jerusalem. The driver, later identified as a 31-year-old resident of east Jerusalem, was seriously injured in the blast and taken to a Jerusalem hospital. Palestinian media disputed the Israeli version, saying the woman was alarmed by an electric short in the car.

The BBC:

Early on Sunday, Israeli police believe they foiled an attack after stopping a woman driver near another West Bank settlement, Maale Adumim. As she walked toward police officers, there was an explosion in the vehicle.

Daily Mail:

Meanwhile, on a West Bank road leading to Jerusalem, police pulled over a car driven by a Palestinian woman who they said shouted ‘God is great’, and detonated an explosive when approached by officers.

Both the woman and the officer were injured in the explosion.

‘We foiled a car bomb attack,’ said police commander Rafi Cohen. ‘We have no doubt the woman terrorist who drove the vehicle intended to reach Jerusalem.’ Cohen added that there were more explosives still inside the vehicle. Although he gave no more detaisl, Army Radio reported that gas canisters were found inside.

The Guardian:

The wave of violence also saw an Israeli police officer wounded on Sunday in a car explosion at an Israeli checkpoint when a Palestinian woman allegedly detonated explosives in her car near the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim in the occupied West Bank.

Israeli police said officers noticed a “suspicious vehicle” being driven toward Jerusalem in a public transport-only lane approaching a checkpoint.

The injured police officer, Moshe Chen, said he gestured for her to stop the car and she then yelled “Allahu Akbar”, a phrase in Arabic meaning “God is great” and sometimes used by Islamic protesters, and detonated a bomb in her car.

The Huff Post has little more on the alleged bomber:

The security agency says handwritten letters were found on her person that praised Palestinian “martyrs.” It says the woman is a resident of east Jerusalem but lives part of the time in the West Bank.

The Jerusalem Post:  “Police officer injured in attack near Ma’aleh Adumim: I told bystanders not to shoot terrorist”

We hear from Moshe Chen, the police officer at the centre of the story.

“You always hear of terrorist attacks and suddenly I was in one, boom, that’s how it is,” the lightly wounded police offer told reporters as he lay in a hospital bed in Sha’are Tzedek Medical Center.

The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) said the woman attempted to ignite a gas tank in her car with flammable materials and then tried to exit the vehicle. Other than the gas tank, there was no explosive device in her vehicle.

Why was the woman suspicious?

Chen said he first noted her vehicle as he drove toward the A-Zaim junction outside the Ma’aleh Adumim settlement and thought it seemed suspicious. A woman sat in the driver’s seat, but there were no other passengers in the car, even though she was driving in the commuter lane, which is designated for buses or groups of three or more people, he said.

Chen said he continued to drive but her car moved closer and closer to his vehicle, as if to catch up with it, in a way that made him nervous.

“I felt that something was wrong,” Chen said.

He stopped. He approached her car. He says:

“As luck would have it, I was wearing a flak jacket. I told her that she had violated a traffic regulation, but she seemed not to understand what was happening. She spoke in Arabic and then she said, ‘Allahu Akbar’ and I saw that some smoke was coming out of the car,” Chen said.

Initially, he said he thought something had possibly caught fire in the car and contemplated getting a fire extinguisher to put it out, when there was an explosion.

“It was then that I understood she was a terrorist. People tried to offer help. I asked them to stay away because there was a terrorist. Some of them had weapons and I told them not to shoot at the woman. She was wounded and did not pose a danger. I called for more police and security forces to come to the scene.”

 

Chen’s call for backup is played:

“I am on the road in the direction of the A-Zaim junction from the Adumim junction. A woman drove alone in the public transportation lane. I saw her acting suspiciously, she yelled ‘Allahu akbar’ [‘God is great’]. It seems as if she has set off a device. I am lightly wounded, the terrorist is on the ground, the car is burnt, it was going to burn, someone there put out the fire with a fire extinguisher. I don’t know if I am lightly wounded, I am in shock, I have suffered some burns. The device went off, she detonated the device.”

The injuries:

The terrorist was seriously injured in the attack and was evacuated to hospital in Jerusalem with burns to her entire body, Magen David Adom said. The police officer suffered burns to his upper body and was evacuated to hospital with light injuries and in stable condition.

In the hospital, Chen told reporters,“I could have died, but I am here, healthy and whole. I am very emotional… I lived through the first intifada and the second intifada and now this one. I hope it ends soon.”

We also hear the Palestinian version of events:

Adnan Damiri, spokesman for the Palestinian Authority security forces, however, accused the Israel Police of “fabricating” the story about the car. He said an official investigation conducted by the PA showed that the woman’s car had been intercepted by an Israeli police vehicle.

“When the woman stopped the car, the airbag in front of the driver’s seat suddenly went off,” Damiri claimed. “The policeman saw this as an excuse to open fire at the woman when she tried to get out of the car. That’s why the Israel Police fabricated the story, which is a lie and misleading.”

The airbag?

The Palestinian News Network:

Screen Shot 2015-10-12 at 08.38.25

 

A 20 year old woman was critically injured, and an IOF police officer was lightly injured following an explosion in a car near the settlement of Maale Adumin, in the occupied West Bank at 7.15 am this morning (Sunday).

IOF? She’s 20?

The incident was initially reported as an attempted suicide bombing but Micky Rosenfeld, the Israeli Police’s official spokesman, said the explosion had happened after the woman had left the car.

No. He didn’t.

The Israeli Occupation officer is not thought to be lightly hurt.

He did?

Moshe-chen-

 

Conflicting accounts of the incident have emerged, with pro-Jewish websites claiming it was an attempted suicide bombing and others claiming the woman threw an explosive device.

Pro-Jewish? Or pro-Israeli? We’ve not seen any report that the device was tossed.

Posted: 12th, October 2015 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment


Police issue warning over aggressive door-to-door meat salesman

meat seller

 

Thing you do not expect to be sold by a stranger on your doorstep No. 34b: meat.

In Dripping Springs, Texas, police have alerted locals to the presence of an aggressive door-to-door meat salesman.

In a Facebook post Hays County Sheriff’s Office warns residents to take care when opening the door to a man with a suitcase full of body parts and blood:

 

meat sales

 

 

Call 911 if you  see anything suspicious.

Posted: 11th, October 2015 | In: Reviews | Comment


Woman accidentally glues eye shut with nail fixer; medic won’t treat her unless she pays

eye 1

 

To Florida,where Katherine Gaydos has some dust in her eye. A neighbour with a leaf blower has jetted something sharp into her peeper. She asks a pal to run inside her home and fetch some Visine. The friend does so. They hand Katherine the bottle. She leans back and squirts the salve in. But it’s not Visine. It’s the stuff you sue to stick on false fingernails. It’s glue. Strong stuff.

“It’s stuck to my eyelids and my eyeball and it really hurts,” says Katherine. She calls 911. A doctors gives her a treatment.

Eight days later, the eyelid is still tightly shut. The doctor will only continue to treat her if she can pay.

“He was talking about doing surgery to try and save my eye, but now I don’t know what to do. I don’t have a job, no insurance or any money.”

 

eye glue

 

Local news get wind of the story. The doctor not says he’ll do a deal. Says the patient:

 “It was the same office, but a different doctor. He put Lidocaine above and below my eye and just pulled on it until it finally opened. He said I should get my sight back, and not have permanent damage.”

She has not been asked for payment.

 


YouTube link.

 

Posted: 11th, October 2015 | In: Reviews, Strange But True | Comment


Everton balls: Tim Howard in kiss ‘n’ abort tabloid stinger

tim howardIn “Prem ace made me abort our baby”, the Sun looks at Everton goalkeepers Tim Howard, a divorced father of two and committed Christian, Howard has, reportedly, “got a girlfriend pregnant then urged her to have an abortion”

The story you can read in full on the Sun’s website. But here are some highlights.

The revelations shatter 36-year-old Howard’s image as a family man.

He’s divorced. He has been single since 2010. He met the girlfriend in 2014.

The 32-year-old woman says:

 “He’s a hypocrite and I feel he manipulated me. I feel totally betrayed, a complete fool. I believe he stayed with me to make sure I had an abortion. In the end I made the decision on my own to have the abortion.”

Is she a hypocrite, then?

“I’m so sad I sacrificed a child I wanted to keep. It makes me so mad that he was a faithful Christian and he could behave like this.”

We later learn that she’s a… Catholic. Does that make you mad?

Her next line might be the non-sequitur of the year. She says:

“One of the first things he asked was if I had a phone charger. He didn’t seem like a typical footballer.”

Footballers always carry their own phone chargers, typically.

Tim Howard has Tourette’s. No sniggering now:

When she eventually told him [she was pregnant] over the phone, she was stunned by his response. She said: “His reaction was, ‘F**k that’.”

She then really nails him.

He said he would let me decide but it was clear to me what he wanted. Although we were in the early stages, I believed he was a good Christian and would support me.”

He left it up to her. The cad. The swine.

In messages, she told of her reservations about an abortion saying: “You are blessed with two children. I am killing ours. Eughhhh!!!”

He then told her:

“My logic/reason is . . . it’s clearly not a situation to bring a child into. In terms of us only knowing each other a short period. I’m leaving England in 2 years you know.”

The sensible pig. He then added:

“It happened bc WE were f**n stupid. It’s simple.”

He tells the Press:

“This is a private matter and it is unfortunate that, for whatever reason, the person concerned has chosen to take her version of events public. I have no interest in discussing it further.”

It is private. After all, we don’t get to know her name.

Posted: 11th, October 2015 | In: Reviews, Sports | Comment