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.
Prince Andrew sex scandal: Sarah Ferguson, prostitutes and what the sex slave’s lover saw
The Prince Andrew sex scandal continues to entertain.
The Sun leads with the story of Randy Andy and fragrant Virginia Roberts, who claims the prince shagged her when she was 17.
The age of consent in Florida is 18.
But the really grim news is that Sarah Ferguson is back!
Last seen allegedly pimping Prince Andrew out in a New of The World scoop (“FERGIE sells Andy for £500,000”), good old Sarah is her to keep her former husband’s stock high.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 6th, January 2015 | In: Reviews, Royal Family | Comment (1)
Westminster paedophiles: the ridiculous link to Prince Andrew and Virginia Roberts
Westminster peadophiles: a look at news and views on the story of ‘VIP paedos’ in the 1970s and 1980s:
Breitbart: “THE BRITISH PEOPLE MUST NOW TAKE CONTROL OF THE ESTABLISHMENT PAEDOPHILE SCANDAL”
Ben Harris-Quinne, Chairman of the Bow Group and Director of Conservative Grassroots, writes:
As Prince Andrew becomes the latest figure to be named in an establishment paedophile scandal, the British nation has woken up today to face, yet again, the uncomfortable possibility that they are governed by an elite political and media establishment that has, for at least the past 50 years, engaged in, covered up, and ignored institutionalised paedophilia.
Read the rest of this entry »
Ched Evans: The things you should be thinking about
Sheffield United and Wales striker Ched Evans (centre) arrives at Caernafon Crown Court where he will stand trial today accused of raping a woman at a hotel.
Picture date: Wednesday April 11, 2012.
THE Ched Evans case has been an incredibly emotive case, where people have tried to defend the convicted rapist and, horrifyingly, chased after the victim, presumably believing that she’s stitched an honest lad up.
Model, Nicola McLean, defended Evans and his potential move to Oldham Athletic (which has fallen through) on Twitter, saying: “OK let me get this right! After you leave prison are you not allowed to get a job? Or is that rule reserved only if you kick a ball?”
“Mike Tyson 3 years for rape went straight back to boxing and a movie star rolemodel ? and he maintains his innocence.” “Luke McCormick killed two brothers while drink driving and was later appointed captain of Plymouth argyle so is he ok to be a role model?” she added.
In opposition, there’s a petition, signed by over 20,000 and counting, addressed to Oldham Athletic, which reads: “We do believe he [Ched Evans] has the right to work. We believe that it does not have to be in a role where he influences views about sexual violence, and his presence on your pitch will do this.”
It is all incredibly messy, so what’s needed are some cold, non-shrieking facts about this, to help you make your mind up and nix some of the misconceptions about the whole case.
HE’S INNOCENT! SHE WAS ASKING FOR IT!
Factually speaking, Ched Evans is not innocent, regardless of what you think. A court and jury found him guilty of raping a woman. Evans is appealing against the decision, but that doesn’t mean he’s innocent. The outcome of the appeal may be more damaging to him.
The issue of consent is a hugely emotive thing. As far as the law was concerned, the victim in this was not able to give consent. She’d had a lot to drink, which still doesn’t equate to saying ‘yes’. More to the point, the court heard about what happened, which paints a grim picture.
On 30th May 2011, Evans received a text from Clayton McDonald who said he’d “got a bird”. Now, the woman in question, according to the courts, doesn’t remember getting to the hotel. Evans is on record as saying that he got a taxi to the hotel, let himself in to watch his friend have sex with the woman and then “got involved” while his brother and another friend spied on them through a window and tried to film it on their mobiles.
The fact remains that a jury found these actions to be that of a rapist. Ched Evans remains a rapist until the law says otherwise.
HOW CAN CHED HAVE BEEN A RAPIST BUT THE OTHER GUY WASN’T? SHE MUST’VE KNOWN!
Okay, look at this as a scenario, unrelated to this case. A girl gets incredibly drunk and goes back to a hotel, willingly, with a guy, and has sex. She falls asleep and wakes up with a second person having sex with her. With regards to the second man, he did not get consent so he raped her.
In another case, a woman willingly goes back to a hotel with a man to carry on drinking, however, date-rape drugs are used and the man has sex with her, and then invites his friends to do the same. The victim will wake up with no memory of the assault, but again, it doesn’t mean that she wasn’t raped.
Of course, we’re not implying that the examples above are what happened on that night, but rape cases aren’t ever as simple as simply saying “she was asking for it.”
Clayton McDonald, the other man accused, according to a jury was deemed to have been in a situation where he was likely to think he had consent. Legally, he’s not a rapist. Legally, what happened after that with Ched Evans, makes him a convicted rapist.
HE’S PAID BACK TO SOCIETY BY SERVING HIS TIME!
Legally speaking, Ched Evans has not served his time. Evans has been released from prison under license, which means that his sentence isn’t actually finished. Only the custodial element of his punishment has been served. So if you think that Ched Evans should go back to work because ‘he’s served his time’, technically, you’re wrong.
JUST BECAUSE HE’S DONE SOMETHING WRONG, DOESN’T MEAN HE SHOULDN’T WORK AGAIN!
No-one is saying Ched Evans shouldn’t work again. However, whether he should be a footballer again is another matter. While Evans keeps a toe in the public eye, he’s an exceptional case.
If Evans doesn’t play professional football again, he can still live a relatively normal life, like anyone who has a criminal record. However, in this instance, the victim has had to move home five times under new identities because of people ‘outing’ her. For this reason alone, Evans’ continued presence in the limelight is making the victim – the person the law is protecting – suffer further.
On the employment front, shrieking “HE SHOULD BE ABLE TO WORK AGAIN!” isn’t strictly true. Convicted rapists are prevented from doing a number of jobs, such as being a doctor, a teacher or a police officer. As a footballer who is a convicted rapist, would parents be happy to see the children who are mascots on the same pitch as someone the law has decreed a rapist? Football clubs do a lot of work in the community, so would any club that pays a wage to a rapist be able to do that with a clear conscience? Would any club who has fans who have been subject to sexual assaults be able to have a player who is guilty, by law, of exactly that? It is for these reasons that Ched Evans isn’t a normal case and shouldn’t be treated as one. That said, it is a matter of opinion, rather than a matter of law.
WELL! OTHER SPORTS STARS HAVE DONE BAD THINGS! WHY SINGLE CHED EVANS OUT?
Of course, there have been other convicted criminals doing high profile jobs. However, those decisions may have been wrong, which means that the bad decision of yesterday don’t give a green light to do them now. Again, if Evans’ appeal is successful, then there’s a different conversation to be had.
EITHER WAY! I BELIEVE IN REHABILITATING CRIMINALS – DON’T YOU?
Ched Evans has consistently not shown any remorse for what has happened. There’s a website that is hounding the victim, which Evans has failed to condemn. Rehabilitation starts with the criminal realising what they’ve done and/or admitting guilt. Let us assume Ched Evans didn’t think he’d done anything wrong and then realises that, actually, he did. That’s when rehabilitation starts. You don’t just do a course and get to be a professional footballer again.
The fact is, the law found him guilty and he need to take some responsibility for what he’s done and, for some of the things his fans have done. He’s shown zero understanding of the situation and, until he does, then we can start looking at what he can do with his life next. More to the point, rehabilitation doesn’t mean that you get to carry on as normal, like you did before. Evans could be rehabilitated and never play professional football again, because rehabilitation isn’t about getting you back into your old job. Until he’s been rehabilitated, there’s a chance he could re-offend. So, until he’s learned about consent, the weight of his actions and what he’s actually been charged of by a court and a jury, only then can he start thinking about what job he’d like to do.
Saying sorry isn’t enough.
THE LAW IS AN ASS!
The jury found Ched Evans guilty of rape. That’s all we have. Whether or not you agree with the British legal system is a different debate to the one regarding Ched Evans playing professional football again. A jury heard the full details of what happened and the verdict was that Ched Evans raped a woman. If you have reached a different verdict, that is irrelevant. Many people defending him have an axe to grind, when the fact is, they inevitably wouldn’t be happy working with a convicted rapist or if a convicted rapist worked with one of their loved-ones. Concerning the latter, that is what is being debated here.
When he came to pass sentence the judge said: “…. [the complainant] was in no position to form a capacity to consent to sexual intercourse, and you [Evans], when you arrived, must have realised that.”
The court papers say: “That accurately reflected the way in which the verdict should be interpreted. No force had been used on the complainant and no injury had been caused in the course of the rape. But the long-term psychological consequences to her could not be ignored. The judge took the view that they were not lessened by the fact that she had no direct recollection of the events.”
Posted: 5th, January 2015 | In: Reviews, Sports | Comments (2)
University of Virginia men yet to prove innocence over false rape story: the Scottsboro Boys sequel is go
The story about a gang rape on the University of Virginia campus was horrendous. It was a lie designed to prove a point and further an agenda. And it’s not stopped:
Declared “the worst journalism of 2014” by the Columbia Journalism Review, Rolling Stone magazine’s account of a gang rape at a fraternity house nonetheless continues to cloud collegiate life at the University of Virginia.
U.Va. President Teresa Sullivan did not lift the suspension of fraternal organizations after The Washington Post found discrepancies in the story that forced the magazine to back away from the allegations.
Instead, Sullivan said, the university will use the harsh national spotlight it is under as an opportunity to lead efforts to combat sexual assault on campus.
Brendan O’Neill harks:
“Automatic belief of rape accusations was a central principle of the KKK’s war on rape, too. This was one of the things that most shocked Ida B Wells, the early twentieth-century African-American journalist and civil-rights activist. ‘The word of the accuser is held to be true’, she said, which means that ‘the rule of law [is] reversed, and instead of proving the accused to be guilty, the [accused] must prove himself innocent’. Wells and others were startled by the level of belief in the accusers of black men, and by the damning of anyone who dared to question such accusations, which was taken as an attack on the accuser’s ‘virtue’.”
Fetch the rope and tell the Scottsboro Boys to get back in the dock…
Photo: Pickets, representing the National Association of Colored Women, march at the White House, Washington, July 30, 1946, carrying posters protesting lynching. Placards bear names of Missouri, Michigan, Massachusetts, Louisiana and Kentucky delegations. (AP Photo)
Prince Andrew sex scandal: Sky Roberts, the Queen’s Virginia massage and Thailand calling
The story of Prince Andrew and Virginia Roberts, the woman who alleges he shagged her when she was underage, rumbles on.
Today Her Majesty the Queen is the star turn in the dock of public opinion.
Poor old Queeny, getting dragged into her feckless son’s mess. And it would be Randy Andy, wouldn’t it, the Prince Harry prototype, the spare-to-the-heir’s war veteran and shagger. If Pricne Charles were getting an ‘erotic massage’ from a teenager, as the fragrant Roberts alleges, he’d still be checking the oils for ethical sources and apologising to the grass for stealing its essentials. Prince Edward would have kept his vest, Y-fronts and brogues on.
So. It’s Andy.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 5th, January 2015 | In: Reviews, Royal Family | Comments (2)
Man arrested for eating the koran
To Yorkshire in search of an idiot:
Police have arrested a 19-year-old teenager for allegedly videoing himself chewing and burning a Qur’an. According to the Yorkshire Standard, the video shows a man ripping apart an english translation of the holy Islamic text using his teeth before throwing it into a toilet and setting it alight.
The suspect, who has not been named, was arrested by police on suspicion of a racially or religiously aggravated public order offence.
Superintendent Mabs Hussain, Leeds District Police, tells media:
“The arrested man has been released on bail to an alternative location. We are aware of strong feelings expressed by a number of people in response to this video. We would again urge people to allow this investigation to run its course and remind members of the public that we will take robust action against anyone who acts outside of the law.”
One question: did anyone actually see it?
The police were contacted by the Yorkshire Standard for a clarification on whether the man did rip the Koran, put it in a toilet and burn it. The police refused to confirm or go into detail. The video was deemed as an offensive video.
More questions:
Was it his toilet? Was it his bin? Was it his koran? It was his teeth, we presume. If it was all in private, then what has this private idiocy to do with the State?
Is the thinking that if the police don’t stamp out a man’s right to free expression, however stupid it is, others will think it a good idea and burn copies of the koran? Will jihadis use an idiot and his idiocy to further their own bloodthirtsty idiocy?
When did the idiots take over?
Prince Andrew sex scandal: chaste Virginia Roberts’ sex tape and the Bill Clinton beats Benghazi
The story of Prince Andrew and the allegedly underage “sex slave” Virginia Roberts is back in the news.
The front pages are full of lurid allegations against the Duke of York, formerly known as Randy Andy.
The story can be summed up simply. The BBC does a decent job:
Buckingham Palace has denied “any suggestion of impropriety with underage minors” by Prince Andrew, after he was named in US court papers. A woman named him in documents she filed in a Florida court over how prosecutors handled a case against financier Jeffrey Epstein.
The woman is 30-year-old Virginia Roberts. The story is not new.
She claims that between 1999 and 2002 she was forced by Epstein to have sex with the prince when she was a minor.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 4th, January 2015 | In: Key Posts, Reviews, Royal Family | Comments (2)
The Duke lacrosse rape accuser is back in court: blame white males with money
The Duke lacrosse rape accuser returns to court:
“The Associated Press reports that Crystal Mangum, whose accusations of gang rape against Duke University lacrosse players were revealed to be fake, has appealed her conviction in the stabbing death of her boyfriend: Attorney Ann Petersen asks that Mangum get a new trial. Petersen says the jury shouldn’t have been allowed to hear evidence about an attack on another man in February 2010.”
Back when Magnum made her claims, the media embarked on a feeding frenzy.
Travel back to 2006. Syracuse University early on got into the act when it decided not to accept as transfers any students from the Duke lacrosse team—not just the three accused chaps, mind you, but anyone contaminated by having played lacrosse for Duke. “I think it would be inappropriate,” sniffed Syracuse athletic director Daryl Gross. (Where is he now? Llama farming in Peru? Nope. Still athletic director at Syracuse.)
But there are at least two other aspects of the case that deserve comment. One is the role of the media, which pounced on the story with unseemly delight. Oh, how The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and countless other bastions of liberal self-satisfaction loved it! Race. Class. Sex. Victimhood. It was the perfect morality tale. Those white jocks at “the Harvard of the South” just had to be guilty. And what a good time we were all going to have lacerating the malefactors while at the same time preening ourselves on our own superior virtue!
The editorials, the op-eds, the comments, the analyses poured forth non-stop, demonstrating that one of the deepest human passions is the urge to self-righteous pontification. The novelist Allan Gurganus epitomized the tone in an op-ed for the Times in April 2006: “The children of privilege,” he thundered, “feel vividly alive only while victimizing, even torturing.” You don’t say? Even sports writers got into the act. Selena Roberts located Duke University “at the intersection of entitlement and enablement, . . . virtuous on the outside, debauched on the inside.” By August 2006, as District Attorney Michael Nifong’s case was betraying worrisome fissures, the Times published a 6,000-word article arguing—“praying” might be a more apposite term—that, whatever weaknesses there might be in the prosecution’s case, “there is also a body of evidence to support [taking] the matter to a jury.” As the Times columnist David Brooks ruefully noted after the tide had begun to turn, the campaign against the athletes had the lineaments of a “witch hunt.”
Indeed. Richard Brodhead, Duke’s president, got out his broomstick and suspended the accused students, fired the lacrosse coach, cancelled the rest of the team’s season, and pandered to every possible PC interest, but especially to those baying for the heads of the accused. (One commentator estimated that only 3 percent of Brodhead’s statements could be construed as supporting the accused students.)
And then there was the Duke faculty. As Vincent Carroll, writing in the Rocky Mountain News, noted, “the most astonishing fact, hands down, was and remains the squalid behavior of the community of scholars at Duke itself. For months nearly the entire faculty fell into one of two camps: those who demanded the verdict first and the trial later, and those whose silence enabled their vigilante colleagues to set the tone.”
Particularly egregious was the behavior of the “Group of 88,” a congeries of faculty activists and fellow-travelers who signed “What Does a Social Disaster Sound Like?,” a full-page manifesto published in April 2006 in the Duke student newspaper. The statement, which purported to be “listening” to students on campus, mingled anonymous student comments with racialist agitprop. “Regardless of the results of the police investigation,” ran part of the introductory comment, “what is apparent every day now is the anger and fear of many students who know themselves to be objects of racism and sexism.” There followed a mosaic of histrionic proclamations: “We want the absence of terror,” one student is supposed to have said. “But we don’t really know what that means.” “This is not a different experience for us here at Duke University. We go to class with racist classmates, we go to gym with people who are racists . . .”
Sounds like an agenda:
Michael W. Chapman at CNS News:
When Crystal Mangum falsely accused several Duke lacrosse players of rape in 2006, there were 160 major television news stories in the first five days after the players were arrested, but in 2013, when Mangum was convicted of murder and sentenced to 14 years in prison, there were only 3 major television news stories, a difference in coverage of 5,233%.
The knowing knew. Amanda Marcotte knew:
“I’ve been sort of casually listening to CNN
blaring throughout the waiting area and
good f–king god is that channel pure evil.
For awhile, I had to listen to how the
poor dear lacrosse players at Duke are being
persecuted just because they held someone down
and f–ked her against her will — not rape,
of course, because the charges have been
thrown out. Can’t a few white boys
sexually assault a black woman anymore without
people getting all wound up about it? So unfair.”
You can read Marcotte’s bon mots at the Guardian.
English Professor Houston Baker publicly condemned the University’s “moral response to abhorrent sexual assault, verbal racial violence, and drunken white male privilege loosed amongst us.” In a letter to University Provost Peter Lange, he wrote:
The lacrosse team – 15 of whom have faced misdemeanor charges for drunken misbehavior in the past three years – may well feel they can claim innocence and sport their disgraced jerseys on campus, safe under the cover of silent whiteness. But where is the black woman who their violence and raucous witness injured for life? Will she ever sleep well again?
It’s a journalistic travesty that Rolling Stone’s discredited and disgraceful University of Virginia rape story ever made it into print.
What’s more shameful is how so many people actually hoped the gory – and phony – tale of the fraternity gang-rape was true.
It’s as if many activists and politicians wanted a freshman named Jackie to have been brutally assaulted in September 2012 by seven men at the Phi Kappa Psi frat house. It’s as if they hoped she had gone through a three-hour ordeal that ended in her fleeing the house party in a blood-stained dress.
Because as horrific as all that would have been, it would have helped their agenda.
Photo: Crystal Mangum, the alleged victim in the Duke lacrosse rape case, addresses the media during a press conference on the release of Mangum’s forthcoming book “The Last Dance for Grace: The Crystal Mangum Story,” while her publisher and co-author Vincent Clark advises her in Durham, N.C., on Thursday, Oct. 23, 2008. The woman who North Carolina prosecutors determined falsely accused three Duke lacrosse players of raping her at a team party maintains in her new memoir that she was attacked. (AP Photo/Sara D. Davis)
2014 in negatives: Dave Barry, Rod Liddle and Charlie Brooker do the year in review
How was 2014 for you? A few men in media recall the 12 months:
A huge airliner simply vanished, and to this day nobody has any idea what happened to it, despite literally thousands of hours of intensive speculation on CNN.
Millions of Americans suddenly decided to make videos of themselves having ice water poured on their heads. Remember? There were rumors that this had something to do with charity, but for most of us, the connection was never clear. All we knew was that, for a while there, every time we turned on the TV, there was a local newscaster or Gwyneth Paltrow or Kermit the Frog or some random individual soaking wet and shivering. This mysterious phenomenon ended as suddenly as it started, but not before uncounted trillions of American brain cells died of frostbite.
An intruder jumped the White House fence and, inexplicably, managed to run into the White House through the unlocked front door. Most of us had assumed that anybody attempting this would instantly be converted to a bullet-ridden pile of smoking carbon by snipers, lasers, drones, ninjas, etc., but it turned out that, for some mysterious reason, the White House had effectively the same level of anti-penetration security as a Dunkin’ Donuts.
LeBron James deliberately moved to Cleveland.
Of course not everything that happened in 2014 was mysterious. Some developments — ISIS, Ebola, the song “Happy” — were simply bad.
There was even some good news in 2014, mostly in the form of things that did not happen. A number of GM cars — the final total could be as high as four — were not recalled. There were several whole days during which no statements had to be issued by the U.S. Department of Explaining What the Vice President Meant to Say. And for the fifth consecutive year, the Yankees failed to even play in the World Series.
So much for the US. Rod Liddle looks at 2014 in the UK:
A glittering cast list, delicious food and spectacular entertainment — I just wish you could have been there. But tickets were at a premium for The Spectator’s prestigious Utter Arse of the Year awards ceremony held, as ever, in the council chamber at Tower Hamlets. The meal, prepared by the exciting left-wing lesbian cook Jack Monroe, consisted of her famous kale pesto pasta on a bed of shredded back copies of the Guardian. As we munched away, a troop of locally sourced Bangladeshi mime artists enacted the setting up of an east London caliphate and — to the delight of the audience — silently decapitated several infidels sitting near the stage. As the black flag of the Islamic State was raised above our heads, the compère for the evening, Jon Snow, from Channel 4 News, took to the rostrum and the real business began. It has been a fabulous year for arses, he told us, perhaps the best year on record. Arses everywhere you look, he chuckled — and at that moment, through fiendishly clever technology, a giant hologram of the revolutionary comedian Russell Brand appeared beside him, transmitted live from his £76,000 per year flat in nearby Hoxton. The Russell hologram entertained the audience with a stream of indecipherable, pretentious, sub-adolescent balls before (again, praise to the technical team) disappearing in a puff of smoke up his own backside. How we all cheered!
And Charlie Brooker had a bash a 2014 song, with apologies to Ian Dury:
The Daily Mail is wrong: dumb luck gives you cancer
As the Daily Mail tells us, pretty much anything gives you cancer.
But new thinking says two thirds of cancer cases are the result of bad luck rather than poor lifestyle choices or inherited risk factors.
Professor Bert Vogelstein, of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the US, said: “You can add to your risk of getting cancers by smoking or other poor lifestyle factors. However, many . . . are due largely to the bad luck of acquiring a mutation in a cancer driver gene regardless of lifestyle and heredity factors.”
…
Cristian Tomasetti, a co-author of the study, said: “For some cancers, it’s not worth it to stress about every single act in our lives because there’s only so much we can do to prevent it. There’s a component of cancer that’s just unpredictable.”
Oh. And stress gives you cancer. That smoke might just be keeping you safe…
Free Speech: Leveller John Lilburne stamps out the Court of Star-Chamber
Leveller John Lilburne: c.1615-1657:
Whilst he was whipt at the Cart, and stood in the Pillory, he uttered many bold Speeches against the Tyranny of Bishops, &c. and when his Head was in the hole of the Pillory, he scattered sundry Copies of Pamphlets, (said to be seditious) and tossed them among the People, taking them out of his Pocket; whereupon the Court of Star-Chamber (then sitting being informed) immediately ordered Lilburne to be gagged during the residue of the time he was to stand in the Pillory, which was done accordingly; and when he could not speak, he stamped with his Feet, thereby intimating to the Beholders, he would still speak were his Mouth at liberty; and the Court of Star-Chamber that day made also this following Order.
Image via: Library of Congress
Westminster paedophiles: call to create a permanent paedophile hunt
Westminster paedophiles: A regular look at the story of a ‘VIP ring’ of chgild abusers in the 1970s and 1980s.
Writing in the Sunday Times, David Aaronvitch looks at Fiona Woolf, the top lawyer who will not be leading the inquiry into Westminster peados on account of her being connected to and part of The Establishment.
Simon Danczuk, the engaging and ubiquitous Labour MP for Rochdale, indicted Dame Fiona on several counts. She had, he charged, “put herself forward” to chair the government’s unfortunate mega-inquiry into historic child abuse and had subsequently “caused unnecessary distress to victims of child abuse and caused a lengthy and avoidable delay to a very serious inquiry that urgently needs to get started”. Perhaps, he speculated, the establishment had given her the damehood to force her to give up the inquiry and quietly shuffle off
Mr Danczuk’s colleague, John Mann MP, added that the honour would “create a lot of anger among those who have been leading the charge on historic sex abuse”. It was suggested by both men that survivors of abuse would be upset by the award.
Really? Forty years of waiting for justice and they are angry about a respected women getting a gong?
This kind of proxy claim on behalf of victims of abuse is now made all the time, and is almost never quantified or challenged. In the absence of any polling of victims or any proper study of their attitudes, we are left with some support organisations and a few individuals. Their opinions are to be respected, but to credit them with a great collective view goes farther than our knowledge permits.
Just as Westminster is a prejorative term for all the sins of power; victims are a group that only lawyers, police and MPs can speak on behalf of.
Dame Fiona clearly did not believe that her limited acquaintance with Lord Brittan, the former home secretary, excluded her from chairing the inquiry. She dined with him a few times, sponsored his wife on a charity walk and lived close by. But for various reasons this (what would you call it? A “sympathetic association”, perhaps?) connection was regarded as so toxic that a campaign was launched — by Mr Danczuk among others — to get her out. She had “lost the confidence of survivors”. How did anyone know that? They just did.
Read the rest of this entry »
MDPV will turn you into a cross-dressing, goat-killing, human flesh-eating arsonist
The kids are taking cannibal. It’s a drug called MDPV, which is short for Methylenedioxypyrovalerone.
The Sun reports on the drug in the story headlined:
Cannibal killer
New drug gives users urge to eat human flesh
The report is terrifying:
A TERRIFYING drug called “cannibal” that makes users want to bite other people’s flesh is tightening its grip on the British party scene. The chemical — officially known as MDPV — is one of a range of synthetic amphetamines labelled “bath salts”.
It is linked to schizophrenic episodes and serious physical health problems as well as horrific “cannibal attacks”.
How dangeorus is it?
They are known to be even more damaging for users’ mental health than substances such as ecstasy and cocaine.
Read the rest of this entry »
Collins Atlas wipes Israel from the map: IDF wears invisibility cloak
Israel has gone. It was never there. Anyone buying a HarperCollins Middle East Atlas in Jordan, Syria, the Gulf states, Saudia Arabia and Lebanon will find no Israel.
Bishop Declan Lang, chairman of the Bishops’ Conference Department of International Affairs, told The Tablet:
“The publication of this atlas will confirm Israel’s belief that there exists a hostility towards their country from parts of the Arab world. It will not help to build up a spirit of trust leading to peaceful co-existence.”
It could also mean that Islamic State goons see the blank space and think it a fine place to settle. They will march on this barren world and be systematically taken out by an invisible Army.
Publish at will…
Posted: 31st, December 2014 | In: Books, Reviews | Comment (1)
Daily Mail races to spot the first person to die in 2015
2015 will much like 2014 for at least one Daily Mail reader.
The race is on to the first human to have ’til 2015′ etched on a gravestone:
Daily Mail
Spotter: @EstherGreeny
Happy New Year Anorakians: live long and prosper
Happy New Year to all our readers.
And if you’re not reading flashbak.com you’re missing out.
Live long and proper…
Posted: 31st, December 2014 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
Westminster paedophiles: a new pejorative collective noun for all the world’s ills
Westminster paedophiles has been a big story in 2014. As yet, there has been a lot of talk and speculation but no hard evidence that a group of “VIP paedoes’ operated in and around Westminster.
David Aaronovitch expalins why ‘Westminster’ is the buzzword:
Westminster: new pejorative collective noun. Once used to connote the geographical area around the Abbey, then the institution of the Houses of Parliament. Now a distancing word deployed by politicians who are pretending that they are not politicians but tribunes of the people, to collectively damn other politicians who have committed the sin of occasionally being in government.
Hence “Westminster” is out of touch, doesn’t “get it”, is “broken”, rides roughshod over the opinions of ordinary people, may be corrupt and (according to taste) is sometimes even dominated by networks of paedophiles. Anyone not espousing this view is said to be inside the “Westminster bubble”.
There is a Scottish variant of the usage. When the word “Westminster” (or, on Twitter, “WM”) is used by nationalists and independence campaigners, it means all the above but also connotes “England” and “the English”. As in “Westminster doesn’t understand Scotland”, when what the writer means is that the English are horrible to the Scots. The advantage is that it sounds more specific than “down there” and less obviously chauvinistic — chauvinism being a “Westminster” (ie, English) fault.
Westminster is them.
As for the story of Westminster paedos, this is our at-a-glance round-up:
The Guardian: “New Year honour for Fiona Woolf inappropriate, says MP”
Which MP?
Labour’s Simon Danczuk attacks award of damehood to lawyer who quit as chair of child abuse inquiry
Westminster’s self-styled expert on Westminster (see above) is n w an expert on the peerage:
An MP has criticised the “inappropriate” decision to award a damehood to Fiona Woolf, who was forced to resign as chair of the inquiry into child sex abuse. Woolf, a prominent City lawyer and former lord mayor of London, was made a dame in the New Year honours list, just weeks after she stepped down as chair over concerns among victims of child abuse that she was too closely linked to senior politicians.
Woolf, who is already a CBE, received the damehood for services to the legal profession, diversity and the City of London.
Good for her. Should we not cheer a successful and honourable woman in the City? Or is she forever tainted. And if we couold pick Anorak’s buzzword it wouild be “inappropriate”, the clarion call of censorship and cowardice.
Fiona Woolf was the second woman in 800 years to be Lord Mayor of London. It wa only in November 2013 that Cathy Newman, the Channel 4 News presenter, was praising Woolf:
One of her colleagues at her law firm describes her as a real “trailblazer”. So perhaps this Lady Mayor can forge ahead more determinedly than the 684 men who went before her.
Hear ye! But now – after no trial, no proof and no smoking gun – it’s all changed:
However, Simon Danczuk, the Labour MP for Rochdale, who has led the campaign for an investigation of child abuse in Westminster circles, said it was an example of establishment figures looking after their own.
In other news, bear takes toilet paper to woods…
“Fiona Woolf caused unnecessary distress to victims of child abuse and caused a lengthy and avoidable delay to a very serious inquiry that urgently needs to get started. It seems inappropriate that she’s now being invited to Buckingham Palace to pick up one of the highest honours. I can think of many more worthy recipients of this honour, but once again it looks like the establishment is looking after their own.”
Got that? An entire life’s work undone by “delaying” an inquiry into allegations of sexual abuse from the 1970s and 1980s. Mud doesn’t when you chuck it about with abandon; it just stinks up the place.
Woolf was the second senior figure to resign from the inquiry under pressure over her links to politicians, causing severe embarrassment for Theresa May, the home secretary. After she was appointed, it emerged that she was a friend and neighbour of Leon Brittan, a former home secretary.
He is under scrutiny because a dossier containing accusations about Westminster paedophile activity went missing from his department during the 1980s. He denies any failure to act and there is a letter suggesting it should have been passed on to police.
Typical Westminster, eh.
And the Mirror is on it:
Westminster paedophile ring: Jailed Charles Napier will be told to name VIP abusers
What if he can’t tell because there were none he knows if?
Caged child abuser Charles Napier faces a grilling by detectives who believe he could help expose a network of VIP paedophiles with links to Westminster. Officers probing claims that span decades think the former teacher – jailed last week for abusing 23 boys – can name Establishment figures including peers, Government ministers, civil servants and police.
Adding:
Napier, 67, was treasurer of the twisted Paedophile Information Exchange, which campaigned on behalf of paedophiles in the 1970s and 1980s and argued that the age of consent should be lowered to FOUR. Dossiers compiled by campaigning MP Geoffrey Dickens and handed to former Home Secretary Leon Brittan in the 1980s were said to contain damning evidence about the group.
But the police are on it!
The late Labour politician Barbara Castle is said to have named members of the group in a dossier seized by Special Branch in the 1980s amid allegations of a cover-up. The Met Police are now trying to find the missing files and those compiled by Mr Dickens.
Can we incldued Yard to the Westminster slur?
The BBC has more on that enquiry:
Victims ‘should not lead abuse inquiry’ – Butler-Sloss…
Lady Butler-Sloss stood down earlier this year amid claims she faced a conflict of interest because her late brother, Sir Michael Havers, was attorney general at the time of some of the alleged abuse.
Speaking to the Today programme, of which she was guest editor on Wednesday, Lady Butler-Sloss said “there has to be a victim voice on the panel” but the survivors should not be able to chair it themselves or choose who fills the position.
“I worry that the victims, for whom I have the most enormous sympathy [….], for them to be deciding who should become the person chairing it creates real problems,” she said.
“Because if you do not have, in the past, a position of authority, how are you going to be able to run the inquiry?
“You need someone who knows how to run things and if you get someone from an obscure background, with no background of establishment, they’ll find it very difficult and may not be able actually to produce the goods.”
Any regrets?
She said she had no regrets about accepting the role as the first chair of the inquiry and she thought it was her “duty” to do so.
While she believes she could have done the job, she said she is “so glad” she no longer had to.
Lady Butler-Sloss said establishment figures had covered up abuse in the past.
She said: “I do believe the establishment has in the past looked after itself, partly because people did not really recognise the seriousness of child abuse and they did not think it was so important, and it was important to protect members of the establishment.
“So I would want to go in with a knife and cut the whole thing open and expose it, as to what happened, bearing in mind, of course, that the views of those people are not the views of people today and that is a difficulty.”
So. Who wants the job? And best hurry – lots of names from back then are ill, old and dying…
Ebola: Why wasn’t Pauline Cafferkey quarantined?
The Sun says the British nurse fighting Ebola was “tested seven times at Heathrow — then allowed home.”
Pauline Cafferkey, 39, got the all-clear after arriving from Africa then flew on to Glasgow. Her Ebola diagnosis is the first in the UK and has prompted a review of the screening process. Dr Martin Deahl who sat next to Ebola victim Cafferkey on a flight back from Africa has blasted checks at Heathrow as “shambolic”.
W can’t trust the boarder guards, goes the message.
Dr Deahl, a consultant psychiatrist from Shropshire, adds:
“We were told we could go home on public transport then told not to use buses and trains at home or go into crowded places. Pauline got a connecting flight to Glasgow, but would have been free to get on a crowded Tube.”
How did she contract the disease?
He believes the 39-year-old nurse got the disease after attending a church service on Christmas Day without her protective suit.
She was tested with an ear thermometer in the airport arrivals hall, but her reading was normal. After an hour she went back to the screening area complaining of a high temperature — a symptom of the disease.
Officials tested her six more times in half an hour, again using an ear thermometer. Her reading remained normal and she was given the all-clear. She then flew on to Scotland with 70 passengers and four crew on Sunday night, getting a taxi home.
Dr Deahl adds:
Dr Deahl said that medical staff in Sierra Leone always wore hazard suits at work but some did not when they went out into the wider community.
A number of the 30 NHS staff out in Sierra Leone, including himself, worshipped at a local church on Christmas Day.He also said that at Freetown airport in Sierra Leone all the volunteers were ‘kissing and hugging’ as they left the country, including Ms Cafferkey.
Dr Deahl said: ‘I would bet anything that she caught this while out in the community. I went to church myself on Christmas morning and I have no doubt Pauline probably contracted the virus doing something similar.
‘We had a rule known as ABC which stood for Absolute no Body Contact but when you are in the community it is difficult to stick to the rules and easy to become complacent. It is also difficult when children come up to you and hug you.’
Is quarantine the answer?
Last night the authorities moved to reassure the public the risk of infection was negligible and that the UK was prepared for the disease. Professor Jonathan Ball, an expert in molecular virology at Nottingham University, said the case showed airport checks are unable to spot Ebola.
He said this was because symptoms such as a high temperature can take up to three weeks to develop.‘When [screening] was introduced it was more a measure of reassurance rather than something that actually worked,’ he said. ‘Because the incubation period for Ebola is up to 21 days, it’s impossible to detect as you don’t show symptoms.’
What do we know about her?
The Indy:
Ms Cafferkey had worked as a nurse for 16 years before starting volunteering with Save the Children to help with the Ebola crisis..
Ms Cafferkey returned to the UK after four weeks via Casablanca and London Heathrow, arriving at Glasgow Airport at around 11.30pm on Sunday and took herself to hospital early yesterday morning after feeling feverish.
She kept an online diary for The Scotsman. It begins:
Pauline Cafferkey is an associate public health nurse at Blantyre Health Centre in South Lanarkshire. She has been a nurse for 16 years and says she was inspired to go into the profession after seeing images of the Ethiopian famine on the television in the 1980s. So she felt compelled to volunteer with Save the Children to help with the Ebola crisis, which has claimed the lives of more than 7,000 people to date. Pauline flew out to Freetown in Sierra Leone in November, along with another four Scottish volunteers, as part of a UK group of 30 NHS medical staff.
A few highlights:
Feel like the work I am doing is a normal part of life. My nice community- nursing job in Blantyre is far removed from this but at the moment this seems a lot more real. The dreams that I do remember always seem to have an Ebola theme, it seems to be all consuming.
The PPE [personal protective equipment] alien-type suit that I have to wear when going into the positive Red Zone is horrendous. It takes about 20 minutes to dress and 15 minutes to take the suit off at the other end. They would certainly be beneficial on a cold winter’s night in Scotland but working in them in 30-degree heat is uncomfortable to say the least. On the up side, I feel very well protected…
The Sierra Leonean’s are normally very tactile people who, prior to Ebola would hug and shake hands as a normal greeting and now have to change their culture. Even for us NHS staff, when we accidentally touch each other we call out “no touch” in a humorous manner.
What’s happening now?
The Mail:
…the authorities have been desperately trying to trace the 70 other people who were on board the same internal flight, and the 133 who were on her plane from Casablanca. Passengers on the plane will now be monitored by NHS officials via phone.
Is fighting Ebola a clinical measure only? The NY Times:
International health groups had largely pulled out of West Africa during the civil wars that devastated Liberia and Sierra Leone during the 1990s. When the Ebola outbreak began, the C.D.C.’s staff in the region consisted of one malaria researcher in Guinea.
Complicating matters, the same ethnic group — the Kissi — inhabited the forested region across all three nations, and extended families moved easily on foot and by dugout canoe across a pinwheel of disregarded national borders. Although roads were unpaved and bumpy, they were passable enough for villagers to ride motorcycles into dense capital cities, carrying the virus on board.
Distrust of government ran so high after decades of civil war and corruption that many West Africans had to be convinced Ebola was real and not a plot to attract foreign aid. They reacted with indignation to outsiders who demanded they stop providing hands-on care to the sick, considered a sacred obligation by many West Africans, whether Muslim, Christian or traditionalist.
Governments attempted to broadcast the message that Ebola was spread through contact with vomit, feces and blood, and that bodies remained highly contagious after death. But communities often continued to wash the bodies of the dead, a step considered essential to a dignified burial and a contented afterlife. The arrival of moon-suited health workers in convoys of white trucks, armed with chlorine sprayers and thermometers, bred resistance and secrecy.
“Old disease in new context will bring you surprises,” Dr. Margaret Chan, the director-general of the W.H.O., said in an interview in December in her office in Geneva…
In Meliandou, a leafy village in the hills of southern Guinea, a year-old boy named Emile had taken ill in late December with fever, vomiting and bloody stool. He died Dec. 28, and a W.H.O. investigation would later conclude he was probably the first Ebola casualty. Members of his family, a nurse, doctor and other health workers soon died also.
“We thought it was a mysterious disease,” said Dr. Kalissa N’fansoumane, the director of the nearby Guéckédou Hospital.
Local health officials accompanied by a Doctors Without Borders logistician investigated the cluster of deaths in January. They concluded that a cholera-like diarrhea had been the cause. Unaware of signs like persistent hiccups, health workers made faulty assumptions, and some paid with their lives.
Remarkably, it would take 12 weeks to diagnose the ravaging virus. Ebola was all but unknown in West Africa — there had been a single nonfatal case in Ivory Coast in 1994 — and its symptoms were similar to those of endemic diseases like malaria, cholera and Lassa fever.
Ebola roared back…
States sue Colorado for legal marijuana: Feds look to North Korea for ideas
Colorado’s legalisation of marijuana has upset two neighbouring states:
The attorneys general of Nebraska and Oklahoma have asked the Supreme Court to declare unconstitutional Colorado’s law legalizing marijuana. The lawsuit states that, “The Constitution and the federal anti-drug laws do not permit the development of a patchwork of state and local pro-drug policies and licensed-distribution schemes throughout the country which conflict with federal laws.”
Federal law is a mess.
Many conservatives have criticized Nebraska and Oklahoma for being “fair-weather federalists” because their claims hinge, in part, on Gonzales v. Raich, a 2005 Supreme Court decision, upholding the broad reach of Congress’s power to regulate commerce.
Conservatives’ ire instead should be directed at the Obama administration’s decision to suspend enforcement of the federal law prohibiting marijuana—a decision so warping the rule of law that the complaining states’ reliance on Raich is justified and necessary. . . .
States cannot be required to enforce federal law. But as the Supreme Court held in Arizona v. United States (2012), when the federal government doesn’t enforce its own laws, states still “may not pursue policies that undermine federal law.” Colorado’s decision to legalize and regulate the sale of marijuana undermines the Controlled Substances Act, giving a major boost to all segments of that business. Indeed, in an interview this month Colorado’s attorney general, John Suthers, acknowledged that his state is “becoming a major exporter of marijuana.”
American has lost the plot:
A 45-year-old man was sentenced Tuesday to nine years in prison, after nearly 400 pounds of marijuana was found in his home. Scott Bradley Cunningham, formerly of Inver Grove Heights, was charged, along with three other people, for possession of the drugs with the intent to distribute.
It”s about the lobby:
Former U.S. Sen. Mike Gravel (D-Alaska) is the new CEO of a marijuana company that produces cannabis-infused products for both recreational and medical use, the company announced Tuesday.
The United States has a broken drugs policy.
Meanwhile… Let’s get bombed in go-ahead North Korea!
Outside of the United States, Uruguay became the first country in the world to fully legalize marijuana in 2013. The Netherlands allows citizens to keep and cultivate some marijuana, and police let coffee shops sell marijuana as long as they don’t sell to minors or break other major rules. Spain also permits marijuana clubs where people can use the drug, although the drug is officially illegal to sell. And according to multiple reports from experts, visitors, and defectors, North Korea either has no law restricting marijuana or the law goes effectively unenforced.
Do the Feds care about marijuana?
Posted: 31st, December 2014 | In: Reviews | Comments (3)
Missing #AirAsia Flight QZ8501: terrorists only attack on sunny days and other theories
CNN aviation analyst Mary Schiavo give dexpert opinion on Air Asia flight QZ8501:
“At this point, given it was extremely bad weather, the chances of this being some sort of terrorist activity are very small because most terrorist activities take place in good weather.”
On Reddit, experts take a different view:
Did anyone else see this story and the first thing that went through your mind was “Again?”
It seems to defy statistical probability that 3 planes from the same region would meet with a bad end. It also defies rationality that someone would disappear this plane and use it in another false flag op 5 or 6 months down the road. But john q public lives in such a strong media force field, if the “official story” says it’s all a coincidence… most people would still believe it.
Other possibilities come to mind. Someone is testing their remote pilot override capabilities. Maybe at longer distances, or on an Airbus to see if they can takeover non-US built aircraft. There are always more possibilities though. Maybe there was someone special on board?This is just the beginning of the story though. More information (and dis-information?) will come out with the passage of time. If this really was an accident, I’d expect them to locate some wreckage soon, as well as the black box flight data recorder.
Read the rest of this entry »
A Kurdish homeland will free Israel and rid the Middle East of violent racism and misogyny
A Kurdish family walks down a mountain road near Shiranish carrying their few belongings to a refugee resettlement camp near Zakho in the allied security zone, May 9, 1991. Thousands of Iraqi Kurds were displaced from their homes in northern Iraq following failed rebellion against Saddam Hussein. (AP Photo/Heribert Proepper)
Kurds are edging closer to getting their own State. Redrawing national boundaries is not a quick business. But the Kurds are making headway:
Kurdish forces in northern Iraq are claiming their biggest victory yet against Islamic State (IS) militants.
They say they have broken the IS siege of Mount Sinjar, where thousands of Yazidis and other displaced Iraqis have been trapped since August.
IS controls a swathe of Iraq and Syria, where it has declared a caliphate.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon’s top officer says US air strikes have killed several high-ranking military leaders of IS in Iraq.
Hurrah!
Iraqi Kurdish fighters flashed victory signs as they swept across the northern side of Sinjar mountain on Saturday, two days after breaking through to free hundreds of Yazidis trapped there for months by Islamic State fighters.
A Reuters correspondent, who arrived on the mountain late Saturday, witnessed Kurdish and Yazidi fighters celebrating their gains after launching their offensive on Wednesday with heavy U.S. air support.
The Iraqi Kurdish flag fluttered, with its yellow sun, and celebratory gunfire rang out. Little children cheered “Barzani’s party”, in reference to the Kurdish region’s president, Massoud Barzani.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 28th, December 2014 | In: Reviews | Comments (2)
The Times uses Nigel Farage to troll the censorious twitter mob of police narks and fools
The Times stands accused of trolling Twitter by voting Ukip leader Nigel Farage it’s Briton of the Year:
The year 2014 may turn out to be Ukip’s high point. As the general election approaches, surging support for the Scottish nationalists could elbow Mr Farage from the limelight. After the election he may decide to spend more time with his cigarettes and pints. For the moment, however, no one did more to shape British politics in 2014. For good and ill he is therefore The Times Briton of the Year.
The twitter hunt goes into full cry. One tweeter, a James Rhodes, grandstands his outrage by cancelling his subscription to the Times:
He reproduces his letter for everyone to marvel at:
Matthew Parris writes about this timid, illiberal, censorious outrage in the Times:
…as we head for a new year, the social media and the news media are blurring together, and in an election campaign the blurring will worsen as politicians clamber over each other to show their umbilical link to public feeling. We’ll be in a chamber of echoes where instant reaction and unthinking response amplify each other into a kind of pitiless roar.
If we in “traditional” politics and “traditional” print and broadcast journalism are not to be swept onward by the virtual mob, we need to review our relationship with the new media. We should stop thinking of social media as an extension of our own work, a reliable generator of good stories, a professional tool. Facebook, the Twittersphere and the world of blogging are not informal journalism. They are the 18th-century mob in 21st-century clothes…
For millennia we’ve been able to duck the possibility of putting the masses in the driving seat because there was no practical way we could. The limits of communications technology made a breakwater against waves of mob sentiment. But think what a difference Twitter (for instance) now makes. Within hours we can know not only the news but what everyone is thinking about the news. Within hours the mob can work itself into rage, certainty or fear, egged on by the news that everyone else thinks so too. Virtual referendums on matters large or small are instant.
We needn’t wait five years to tell our politicians what to do: we can tell them before lunch. If we’d had the social media in the 20th century we’d have brought back hanging: one grisly murder would have sufficed…
As a proud member of the liberal metropolitan elite, I don’t believe in democracy unlimited. Democracy needs restraints, baffles and pauses for thought. The news needs authority. It’s time for those who prioritise news, and time for those who shape policy, to step back, take a cold look at what the virtual mob might mean for public affairs, and ask ourselves whether we want to be part of the epidemic, or part of the vaccine.
And if that were not enough, the police are inviting the Twitter mob to become their narks. And this censorious, reactionary, fearful, narrow-minded mob are happy to play along:
We need a free media. Without it we get only the mob…
Beer helps you understand cancer
Beer drinkers, some good news.
Oh, dear. Can we get a second opinion?
Well, so says the Daily Mail.
But at least with beer you can best understand the risks:
“New research has shown that a chemical compound in beer may be able to improve cognitive function. The beverage once thought to obliterate brain cells when consumed in abundance may actually have the opposite effect and boost brain power.”
The Welsh are rarely mistaken:
Jackie’s story: the rape and the rape apology that weren’t
Ashe Schow looks at the camp0us sexual assault that got everyone talking:
The story did not turn out to be as advertised. Jackie, who told Rolling Stone she had a date the night she was allegedly gang raped, made up the story about the man who supposedly took her to the frat party — even creating fake cellphone numbers and sending her friends pictures of an old high school classmate, according to three friends who said they rushed to her aid the night of the alleged attack. That night, her friends recalled, Jackie said she had been forced to perform oral sex on a group of five men. By the time the story made it into Rolling Stone, she claimed she had been gang-raped by seven men.
Activists quickly tried to shift the narrative, claiming that the accuracy of Jackie’s story didn’t matter and that sexual assault really was as big a problem as they insisted. Anyone who disagreed was called a “rape apologist.”
Then came another blow: The Bureau of Justice Statistics released a report showing that one in 41 women were raped or sexually assaulted while attending college, not one in five. Everyone agrees that one is too many, but some also believe that one false accusation is too many as well. Others do not, claiming that false accusations are rare (based on decades old studies or anecdotes that don’t take into account what is now being considered sexual assault). The implication being that the falsely accused don’t matter.
So, what does this mean for 2015? Next year the focus probably will continue to be on due process rights for the accused, especially given the growing number of lawsuits against universities by accused students that could move forward or be settled. And with more people realizing just how damaging the responses have been to the mythical statistic that 20 percent of women will be raped during their college years, policies may change.
Truth is the first victim of an agenda…
“The Rolling Stone account of a horrific fraternity gang rape at the University of Virginia, which many advocates saw as a possible ‘tipping point’—a shocking wake-up call demonstrating that even the most brutal sexual assaults on our college campuses are tacitly tolerated—has unraveled to the point where only a true believer would object to calling it a rape hoax. . . . It also looks like Jackie made up both ‘Haven’ and the sexual assault he supposedly engineered in an attempt to get the romantic attention of Ryan Duffin, one of the friends she called for help that night. Tellingly, her lawyer has not commented on these revelations…
So. It was a man’s fault…
Posted: 27th, December 2014 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
Westminster Paedophiles: Charles Napier, Peter Righton and how a convicted child abuser got work with the British Council
Did you know that a paedophile whosexually abused young boys has links to the Tory Party? The Times begins its news of Charles Napier, a 67-year-old pervert:
The half-brother of a Conservative MP has been jailed for 13 years for carrying out hundreds of sexual assaults on young boys at a school where he taught.
When ‘Rapier Napier’ was scheduled to stand trial for his crimes against children, the Times made the link to Tories still more overt:
Half-brother of MP on sex abuse charge
That was the headline. The story began:
The half-brother of a senior Conservative backbencher was charged yesterday with a child sex offence as part of a Scotland Yard investigation into historical abuse allegations. Charles Napier, 67, who is related to the Tory MP John Whittingdale…
Mr Napier lives with Mr Whittingdale’s mother in Sherborne, Dorset, where he is known for directing amateur dramatics productions.
That story mentioned Napier 5 times and Mr Whittingdale four times.
The Indy also leads with the political angle:
Tory MP’s half-brother Charles Napier sentenced to 13 years over ‘prolific’ child sex abuse
What of Napier’s life a teacher at a Dorset prep school? That might have been the story’s main thrust in less conspiracy-hunting times.
In 1996, the Times reported on Napier and Peter Righton:
Bit harsh on the innocent MP, no, to share not only top billing but the story’s substance with a predatory paedophile?
In 1992, the Sun wrote of Righton:
In 1998, Nick Davies talked of a network of child rapists in schools:
Often the links between abusers lie beneath the surface of less horrific conspiracies. Take, for example, the case of Greystone Heath, an approved school for boys in Warrington, which for years enjoyed an unsullied reputation until police finally discovered that it had become a hot spot for paedophiles.
It appears to have started in 1965 when a 21-year-old student teacher named Keith Laverack went to work there. Over the ensuing four years, he raped at least 16 boys, three of whom he shared with his colleague, Brian Percival, the clerk and storeman at the home. Once these two men had established sexual rights over the boys at Greystone, other abusers joined the staff: Alan Langshaw, who raped at least 24 boys; Dennis Grain who raped at least 18; Roy Shuttleworth who raped at least 10; Jack Bennett who indecently assaulted two; and Steve Norris who assaulted an unknown number.
The Greystone abusers then fanned out. Keith Laverack went to childrens’ homes in Cambridgeshire; Alan Langshaw became Principal of St Vincent’s Catholic boys’ home in Formby; Grain and Shuttleworth were both promoted to other homes in the Warrington area; Steve Norris went to North Wales. At their new homes, all of them continued to rape boys who were in their care and wherever they went, they crossed the paths of other paedophiles.
In Cambridgeshire, Keith Laverack worked with numerous colleagues, four of whom are now also suspected of abusing children. Dennis Grain worked in Doncaster for the same group of private schools as Terence Hoskins who went on to become headteacher of St Aiden’s Community Home in Widnes, where he liked to thrash naked boys with a cane, which he then pushed into their backsides, while his housemaster, Colin Dick, indecently assaulted those who caught his eye. Dennis Grain had previously attacked boys in Danesford childrens’ home in Congleton, opening the door to three others, John Clarke, Joseph Smith and Brian Hudson, who set about the boys with relish. Dennis Grain, in the meantime, went off to work at Eton, where he became a housemaster. The web is almost endless.
A ring of paedophiles? How did Napier find work as a teacher with the British Council after his conviction for abusing underage boys? Were the British exporting paedos, as the Catholic Church once relocated wayward priests to remote areas? Did the Swedes know the man in theor country was a paedophile? Did they know and not mind?
One other interesting fact in the Times report is this:
Napier, who is a former treasurer of the Paedophile Information Exchange, told one victim: “Don’t be a baby.” Another later attempted suicide.
Leading light of the 1970s groups that lobbied for legal sex with children four-years-old and above- and why four years old: is it the conversation the child rapists like? – is a child abuser. What are the odds?
The Indy adds:
He became a senior figure in PIE after leaving the school and had links with Peter Righton, a former social worker and notorious paedophile, whose home was raided in 1992. The raid revealed hardcore child abuse images and years of correspondence between paedophiles around the world. The inquiry led to a flat where Napier boasted he had access to young boys while he worked for the British Council in Cairo.
A former child protection worker, Peter McKelvie, passed details of the Righton files to Mr Watson, which led to his statement in parliament. The files included claims that a high-level group of paedophiles were involved in the abuse of children at the Elm Guest House, a well-known meeting place for gay men, in south-west London.
So. We should thank Watson for exposing Napier?
Napier, of Sherborne, Dorset, had been convicted twice before for abuse against boys but on the first occasion was given a probation order. In the second case he was jailed for nine months in 1995. He also admitted yesterday two other separate allegations of indecent assault against two 13-year-old boys after he left the school.
Not quite. Napier was a known paedophile.
In 1994, Napier appealed his convction:
On 14th August 1995 at Kingston-upon-Thames Crown Court, the applicant was convicted on two counts of indecent assault upon a male person, and was sentenced to 9 months’ imprisonment concurrent on each.
His application for leave to appeal against that conviction has been referred to the Full Court by the learned Single Judge.The principal ground of proposed appeal centres around a television programme which was made on the subject of paedophiles in general, and a man called Righton in particular, sometime before the trial of the applicant. It is necessary to set out the dates in some detail. At some stage, we are not told exactly when, but it is in all probability in 1994, the police raided the house of Righton, and they discovered a whole lot of photographs of naked boys, together with letters written by the applicant, which indicated that he too shared Righton’s proclivities and therefore he came under suspicion. At about the same time a documentary was being made by the BBC on the subject of Righton and child abuse, called “Children at Risk”.
The complainant in the applicant’s case, whom we shall refer to as D, made a statement under the Criminal Justice Act implicating the applicant in March 1994. The film was shown on relatively prime time at 8.00 p.m. on 1st June 1994, but it was not until 10th January 1995 that the applicant was arrested and, as already stated, his trial took place in August.
Napier said this made his trial prejudiced. He lost.
Leading social worker Righton was only arrested once:
Mail on Sunday, 27 January 2007
By Eileen Fairweather
When the Archbishop of Canterbury supported the Catholic Church in the gay adoption row last week, many were surprised.
Dr Rowan Williams, usually considered a moderniser, was criticised by liberals for asking Tony Blair to exempt Catholic adoption agencies from Government regulations – being introduced in April – which will force all agencies to offer children for adoption to gays.
The Guardian newspaper, in a comment piece, even suggested that the church’s moral authority was ‘fatally compromised’.
Now it has emerged that Dr Williams may have been influenced by his close involvement with a remarkable couple who rescued a boy brutalised by a notorious social services paedophile ring.
Horrified by the inference that the Archbishop is homophobic, the couple have spoken for the first time of their friend’s ‘immeasurable’ help as they struggled to save a child driven to despair by abuse while in the care of the London borough of Islington.
And they described how Dr Williams even devoted an entire week’s prayers for Liam, the terribly damaged boy they went on to foster.
Liam Lucas was just one of the children abused by predatory paedophiles who took advantage of far-Left Islington Council’s childcare policies in the Eighties and Nineties, when it pro-actively recruited gay social workers.
Paedophiles exploited its well-intentioned commitment to equal opportunities and soon most of Islington’s 12 children’s homes had child molesters on the staff who cynically pretended to be ordinary homosexuals. Numerous children and other staff made allegations of abuse, but were branded homophobes and ignored.
And this from the Standard in 1994, blaming the lilberal culture:
All terrible stuff. But still nothing to pinpoint a peadophile ring in Westminster, let alone one hidden by Government…
Read the rest of this entry »
