"I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce." — J. Edgar Hoover
The much-loved Wellington freebie weekly, the Capital Times, published its final edition last week, becoming the latest casualty of a changing media landscape and a flat local economy.
It filled in for the much missed City Voice after its editor moved back to Auckland, and covered a range of local issues that were largely glossed over by the mainstream dailies. Grant Buist's Jitterati cartoons never ceased to entertain, and he hopes to continue the series online.
The Capital Times didn't get more Wellington than this, and it's going to leave big shoes to fill.
Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013)
The Iron Lady was never for turning, but the ageing process was one enemy she could never fight. To her supporters, Thatcher rescued Britain from irrelevance and industrial paralysis, and reforged it as a financial superpower. To her detractors, Thatcher destroyed British industry and the livelihoods of millions. In any case, she remains a polarising figure in Britain and abroad, even in death, and the various rituals celebrating her death illustrate that. Thatcher seemed unstoppable - until she implemented the infamous Poll Tax, which provoked riots all over Britain, and a leadership challenge which she risked losing until she jumped.
The Boston Bombings
A series of explosions struck the famed Boston Marathon just after the finish line was crossed, shaking Americans' sense of security once again in the wake of Aurora and Sandy Hook.
So far, no one has claimed responsibility, but initial analyses by terrorism experts lean toward the theory of a domestic or lone wolf attack, given the amateurish engineering of the bombs, and that the explosions happened on Patriots' Day and almost coincided with the anniversaries of the Waco Siege and the Oklahoma City bombing. That hasn't stopped the usual suspects from jumping to conclusions: Alex Jones thinks it's an FBI false flag plot, Alan Jones blames 'left-wing radical students', and Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer blame the Muslims. Plus ça change, plus ca même chose.
Not surprisingly, the usual anti-PC suspects are kicking up a stink and hoisting themselves on their own petard. I'll leave The Young Turks' Cenk Uygur - a fully-recovered faith-based dogmatist - to do the deconstruction for us.
I've been to Pandaria for the past few weeks, and there's no shortage of stuff to do. Still, certain current events have been too big to ignore.
In wake of the Innocence of Muslims political forgery that was posted on YouTube, a hate speech poster campaign by the American Freedom Defense Initiative -- led by none other than neo-crusader lieutenant Pamela Geller -- goes to show that the neo-crusader movement has learned little or nothing from Anders Breivik, instead reinforcing its state of denial. Jewish American organisations have been among the strongest critics of the posters. Even Fox News saw fit to blur out the word 'savage' when it broadcast the story. (Warning: you may have to resist the temptation to do physical damage to your monitor, just from looking at the poster.)
A court injunction from the NYMTA initially halted its posting in the subways of New York and San Francisco, but a subsequent appeal by Geller and her cohorts allowed it to proceed on the grounds of free speech. Egyptian-American journalist Mona Eltahawy was nabbed by Transit police for spray-painting over one of the posters, in defiance of a Geller loyalist attempting to obstruct her. However, anti-hate activists -- Christians no less -- then came up with the idea of directly counteracting Geller's posters with their own ones.
That is probably the best possible antidote to hate speech - elevating equal and opposite free speech to the same level, instead of outrightly censoring the hate speech. The pedlars of hate speech have traditionally had the backing of big money, governmental authority, or both. But with the advent of crowd-sourcing, that monopoly on power can be challenged.
News of the so-called Batman Shooting at a cinema in Denver has shocked the world over. Spree shootings, especially in America, are nothing new, but somehow this one feels a lot less detached than what came before it. Partisan politics has thankfully been kept out of the issue, but a select few conspiracy nuts, like Alex Jones, have seen fit to invoke the theory that the shootings were a false flag operation by President Obama, in order to weaken the Second Amendment.
I first heard of the shootings on Twitter, before major news outlets had coverage. One of the confirmed victims was cadet sports reporter Jessica Ghawi, aka Jessica Redfield, whose last ever tweet was about waiting for The Dark Knight Rises to open. Just a month earlier, she had blogged about surviving the Toronto Eaton Centre mall shooting.
The alleged shooter has been identified as James Eagan Holmes, a post-grad neuroscience student at the University of Colorado-Denver. Far from being a gang member from a broken home in the 'projects' - the stereotypical image of a gun criminal in America - Holmes' background was the opposite. He hails from a stable upper-middle class church-going family, with academic achievement and sporting prowess to his name, no criminal record, no history of mental illness, no ties to extremist groups, nor any inklings on popular Internet sites. Yet his motives remain a mystery. He was described as 'shy and intelligent' by those who know him, but unlike Jared Loughner and the Columbine High shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, it remains unclear as to whether Holmes had a history of bullying or being bullied. In any case, Holmes' shooting spree is made all the more scarier by the fact that no one saw it coming because he doesn't overtly look like an 'other'.
Holmes purchased and stockpiled large amounts of semi-automatic firearms, ammunition and tear gas in the lead-up to the shootings, and supposedly rigged his apartment with explosives. In the state of Colorado, with one of the most lax firearms regulations of any American state, no permits are required to purchase firearms, but Federal background checks are still required - which he passed. Holmes also made his purchases from different outlets each time, as well as over the Internet, which circumvented laws on repeat purchases. Still, we license and register cars and drivers, so surely it wouldn't be much to ask for the same with firearms - were it not for the power of the National Rifle Association. Holmes also dyed his hair red and claimed he was the Joker during the shootings, which at best implies some kind of Walter Mitty fantasy gone horribly wrong.
It brings to mind Brenda Ann Spencer, who, as a teenager in San Diego in 1979, fired a semi-auto rifle - given to her by her father on Christmas the previous year - killing two people and injuring 9 others. When asked why she pulled the trigger, Spencer said, "I don't like Mondays; this livens up the day." Spencer later claimed she was under the influence of drugs during the incident and endured sexual abuse at home, but that was not backed up by official evidence or members of the judiciary.
It also raises the question of the Second Amendment's relevance in the 21st century. It's nothing to do with the legit pastimes of hunting in the wilds or hobbyist gun collectors, as the National Rifle Association and its loyalists would have you believe. The Second Amendment was written in mind with a repeat of the British invading again, when rifles and cannons were the most powerful weapons available. Since then, jet fighters and aircraft carriers have made America the world's most powerful military nation - and the world's last remaining superpower - which effectively makes the Second Amendment a museum piece. And there's a disconnect between "deterring tyrannical government", and the plummeting voter turnout in US presidential elections.
After the Dunblane massacre, Prince Philip asked if cricket bats would be banned because they could be swung hard enough to kill people. The keywords here are, "when used as directed". You can indeed kill someone with a cricket bat if you swing it hard enough, but cricket bats weren't designed for that purpose. They were designed to help gentlemen in the British Commonwealth to socially bond and represent the pride of a nation. Whereas firearms, to state the obvious, are explicitly designed to kill people.
The NRA argues that guns don't kill, only people do. They're right to a large degree, but it's a lot easier to kill someone with a gun than with fists or knives. They also argue that criminals will hold fire if they know the citizenry carry pistols in their pockets. But what if the crims, instead of waving the white flag, swap their pistols for assault rifles? It would be little more than mutually assured destruction, downscaled to a domestic context.
"Arms race" by Mike Moreu
And they argue that Columbine High and Anders Breivik would never have happened in gun-friendly states like Texas. Oh yes, it has happened - it's called the Wackos from Waco. And the controversy over George Zimmerman's shooting of Trayvon Martin - armed with nothing more than a bag of Skittles and a cup of iced tea - has tested the "Stand Your Ground" laws to the limit.
As with cars and sex, fascination with them is perfectly normal, but obsession with them is not.
