Giving women false hope

ONE of the characteristics of the internet age is the lack of thought that is evident in people’s reaction to events.

Somehow everyone feels the need to react quickly. This may well be due to the fact that we have grown used to instantaneous gratification.

So many things that once took a long time to obtain or see, are now available at the click of a mouse. It creates a false sense of expectation and also a sense that life can always be lived at that pace.

Thus it is not surprising to see the reactions to the article by actress Angelina Jolie in the The New York Times, announcing that she had undergone a double mastectomy so that she could reduce the chance that she would die of breast cancer.
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Is this where Fox News got its slogan?

FOX News is now the most widely watched television channel in the US. One cannot call it a news channel because most of what it dispenses is right-ring propaganda.

It is doubtful whether it would spread to the extent it has in any other country. But in the US, lots of people are poorly educated and unable to tell fact from fiction.

Hence there seems to be a logical reason for Fox’s financial success.clean_and_balanced

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Christie will be there in 2016

CHRIS Christie’s appearance on the Late Show on Monday night (February 4) is a clear indication that he is going to be among the Republican contenders for the presidential nomination in 2016.

Christie was the butt of numerous jokes on the show during the 2012 campaign, some of them pretty vicious ones, and all directed at his weight.

He showed that he could take it very well and even came armed with two doughnuts in his pockets, which he pulled out and ate at the right moments, putting the laugh back on his host, David Letterman.
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Zero Dark Thirty is a work of fiction

FOR Americans, September 11, 2001, is a date that tends to awake their sense of patriotism. There are few in that country who can regard this day with even a shred of objectivity and realise that the attack was the result of the US of A’s actions in the Middle East.

Thus, the reaction to the third-rate Zero Dark Thirty, a film about the killing of Osama bin Laden, is not surprising.

To briefly summarise the plot, it shows the activities of a CIA officer, who is credited with being the one to analyse information and come to the conclusion that Bin Laden was hiding in Abottabad in Pakistan. Seal teams then went in without informing the Pakistan government and killed the man in cold blood.
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The fraud of frauds gets a chance to vent

ON JANUARY 17, US time, world sport’s worst serial cheat, Lance Armstrong, will make a confession of sorts to the world’s best known chat show host, Oprah Winfrey. Not surprisingly, both are Americans.

Armstrong was indicted by the US Anti-Doping Administration and the level of proof that the agency gathered would have put anyone behind bars. It was a dream case, one where the evidence was so startling that even a serial liar and cheat like Armstrong kept silent.

Armstrong won seven consecutive Tour de France titles from 1999 onwards, with every possible chemical helping him to the podium.
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The fox can never guard the coop

THE solution to eradicating mass shootings is to introduce more guns into the population, only this time in the hands of guards at schools.

That’s if you choose to believe the US National Rifle Association, the biggest and most powerful lobby group for the weapons industry in the US of A.

This brilliant idea comes from the mouth of Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s vice-president, just a week after 20 children were killed in Connecticut, along with eight adults.
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Where guns matter more than kids’ lives

In the US of A, they value their guns more than their children. That’s why you get situations like that in Connecticut where 20 children were shot dead by a nutjob. Another eight adults also died, among them the shooter.

But nobody will dare question the interpretation of the second amendment of the constitution that Americans claim gives them the right to bear arms.

The gun lobby is the third-most powerful lobby in the country, after the Zionist lobby and Big Pharma. In the end it all translates down to money, pure and simple – there’s too much money in firearms sales for the industry to ever contemplate any restrictions on the sale of guns.
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Cheating is universal (not that this excuses Armstrong)

WHEN the Australia dollar shoots past the greenback, it enables people to buy goods that they previously avoided due to the cost.

On the internet, for the most part, the outlets keep to this rate, or at least stay close to it.

But on the ground, this does not always work out. In other words, exchange houses will not give you what you are supposed to get.
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US voters go one way; Australians are different

GIVEN the fact that the Democrats were returned to power in the recent US elections, there is a tendency for people in Australia to see a similar trend emerging in the elections due Down Under in 2013.

One should be extremely careful when drawing such conclusions.

Those who incline towards the view that the leader of the Coalition, Tony Abbott, will suffer a fate similar to that which befell Mitt Romney, should take into the fact that voting is compulsory in Australia.

That fact tends to change things a great deal.
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For Lance Armstrong, cheating is in the blood

CHEATING runs in the blood (no pun intended). This is true in the case of the American Lance Armstrong, now known to be the king of cheats, and one who used drugs of every kind to win seven consecutive Tour de France titles from 1999.

In 1993, Armstrong participated in the Thrift Drug Triple Crown of cycling: the Thrift Drug Classic in Pittsburgh, the K-Mart West Virginia Classic and the CoreStates USPRO national championship in Philadephia.

There was a bonus of $US1 million which was available to anyone who won all three events.
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