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Zimbabwe: Brutal torture of the parents of international cricketer

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Brutal torture of the parents of international cricketer
PLEASE FORWARD THIS EVERYWHERE
Barney Rogers
Sportsstaronet

 
Evil unleashed
By the time the police arrived Barney Rogers’ parents had been tied up in a car and were about to be taken away to be murdered and ditched, writes Peter Roebuck.
Deep into the night a bunch of gangsters burst through the outer gates of the Rogers’ property, broke down the door of the house and threatened the occupants with brandished guns. Meanwhile these “war vets” were screaming the usual insults. In case anyone remains unaware of the nature of these brutish impostors, they are drug-crazed youths ruthlessly trained and brainwashed to carry out violent acts on behalf of their paymasters in Harare. Their evil has been unleashed in the aftermath of Zanu-Pf’s heavy defeat in the elections. Unable to retain power legitimately, Mugabe has let loose the dogs of war.

Merely threatening a middle-aged couple was not enough for these heroes. Instead they fired seven bullets and set about assaulting them with rifle butts. Both adults suffered smashed cheek bones. Bruce was beaten black and blue and X-Rays revealed that two of his vertebrae had been broken. Mrs. Rogers incurred a broken eye socket and several fractured ribs. Apparently her face was so badly belted that she was barely recognisable. Both are now on retroviral drugs. Nice going, champs.

It might have been worse. Do not assume that these juvenile delinquents intended to spare the lives of their victims. Neighbours heard the commotion, spread the word and tried to save their friends. They managed to track down five reluctant policemen and lent them a truck so that they could go to the scene of the crime. By the time the police arrived Rogers’ parents had been tied up in a car and were about to be taken away to be murdered and ditched. It has become a common practise, except when Thabo Mbeki, any Angolan leader, most ICC officials or some other sycophant is around. This was not a happenstance crime, or rage fuelled by the paltry wages paid to labourers by third world elites of all complexions. This was political repression.
Although deeply traumatised, the Rogers’ are recovering in hospital. Alongside them can be found other beaten up supposed opposition supporters. It happens to black Zimbabweans all the time, but their stories remain untold because their names are not known.
Thankfully the United Nations paid the medical expenses and prevented any further damage being done. Of course the medical records have disappeared, whisked away by the security forces so that no official evidence existed. But photographs and recordings are not so easily removed, let alone witness statements sent around by email.
IPL has been fun. This is serious, and it is happening in our cricketing family.

The victims’ statements

Friday, 09 May 2008 13:13
HORROR IN ZIMBABWE
PLEASE FORWARD THIS EVERYWHERE

STATEMENT BY WILLIAM BRUCE ROGERS AND ANNETTE MARY ROGERS
On the day of the 6th May, 2008 at approximately 1300 hours I was visited by three men at our farm, Chigwell Extension Farm. They told me that I had two minutes to vacate my property otherwise they will send the mob there and the house is not worth sacrificing my life for. Because we would lose our lives. They said they were like hungry lions.

My wife made a report to the Chegutu Police Station about this incident, naming the people involved. At that stage I asked them if they would react to any incident that my occur and they informed my wife that they would speak to the Assistant Inspector. My wife also saw him before making the report and informed him of the visit and he told her to go and make a report at the charge office.

At about 1700 hours on the same day a vehicle – a white Datsun 1800 pickup arrived at the gate with approximately 10-12 people. They demanded that I opened the gate because they wanted to talk to me. I refused and went into the house together with my wife. We locked ourselves into the house. They came to the house and wanted me to go outside to speak to them which I refused to do. They started smashing windows and the front door was smashed open.

One of them pointed a single barrel shotgun inside the house at us – we were by then upstairs. He fired a shot directly at us which went just over my head and close to my wife’s head. He obviously intended to kill us. After he fired the shot he went out and it went quiet for a while and then we heard three shots coming from the workers housing area. They returned with all the workers and fired another shot whilst outside.
I managed to get through to the Assistant Inspector and the Chegutu Police Station to ask for assistance before there were dead bodies in the house. He said that I must phone him back in half and hour. Throughout all of this my wife was on the phone to numerous friends who were at the Chegutu Police Station trying to get assistance from them with absolutely no result whatsoever. My wife and I also made many phone calls to the Member in Charge on his cell phone and he refused to answer.

By this time it was dark and the power went off so we were left completely in darkness and unable to identify our own employees. They then used the workers as a shield so that they could all come inside the house and then were downstairs chanting and singing and making threats. They sent one of the workers upstairs to demand the shotgun from me to take back to them. I refused and this employee stayed upstairs with us. They then grabbed the son of this employee who was downstairs and from what I could gather they threatened to either kill or injure him if he didn’t go back downstairs with the weapon. He went back downstairs without the weapon.

After about five minutes they told all the singing workers to go upstairs using them as a shield once more. We tried to identify the workers one by one as they came up the stairs, as my wife was standing at the top of the stairs with a can of mace. After about 15 workers came through, she could not identify a person and used the mace and sprayed them. After this they ran back downstairs and out of the house. This incensed the thugs who then proceeded to break down the back door and started a building a fire in the downstairs lounge directly below us. As we have a wooden floor upstairs this posed a great threat and we thought we would be burnt alive which is when I said that we would come out and asked if they would let us leave peacefully which they agreed to do.

We asked the ring-leader to identify himself. We came downstairs and they demanded the shotgun from me which was loaded and off safety and I refused. They then insisted that I give it to them and I tried to start unloading it and they attacked me. They then grabbed my wife around the throat and she started screaming. While they were trying to take the shotgun from me three shots went off outside the house into the ground as it is a semi-automatic shotgun. They then took the shotgun from me and wrestled me to the ground and started beating me with what I assume was sticks, or pipes and kicking me with their boots.

They dragged my wife outside and they were trying to strangle her. At this stage she managed to bite the hand of the man who was grabbing her round the throat. Whereupon he started to beat her. At one time there were at least four men beating and kicking her. They then tied me up with rope and threw me into the back of their pickup. At this stage my wife was still being beaten. When they had finished beating her, one of them grabbed her by her feet and dragged her over to the vehicle.
They then demanded that she stand up and get into the back of the truck which she was unable to do. One of them grabbed her by the hair, pulled her into a standing position and pushed her up against the back of the truck and told her to get in. She did climb in. They searched my wife and found the car-keys in her pocket and demanded she show them what vehicle the keys were for. They couldn’t find the keys to the other truck. They drove my vehicle onto the lawn, parked near the truck where I was tied up. The immobiliser for the vehicle went off. They demanded that my wife show them where the immobiliser switch was situated which she did do. One of them drove off with the vehicle which we never saw again.

They still had all the employees on the lawn around a fire that had been lit by the front door and they were still forced to sing. There were about four or five of them around the vehicle watching the two of us, all the time they were shouting verbal abuse and racist comments and threatening to kill either one or both of us and also stating the manner in which they should kill us. This must have gone on for almost an hour.
They were burning my feet with cigarettes and then we saw vehicle lights shining towards us and then my wife was told to get out of the vehicle and was dragged towards the headlights of the vehicle that had arrived. When she got to the vehicle she saw there were four armed policeman from Kadoma Police Station who asked what had happened. She told them briefly what had happened and demanded that they fetch me immediately from the vehicle as she feared for my life. One of the thugs came and untied me and told me to get out of the vehicle and made me walk towards the headlights of the parked vehicle.

I noticed that they were armed policeman. The incident was described in more detail to them and they accompanied us into the house to get some warm clothing. Once we were in the house we saw that the gun cabinet had been opened and ransacked and that my weapons were missing. I informed the police that the weapons were missing. They then took us out of the house and told us to get in their vehicle as we were going to Chegutu Police Station to make a report.

We got to Chegutu Police Station and they had to call some superior officer to take a statement and he only arrived as we were leaving to go to Harare to get urgent medical attention. No police personal of any authority seemed to show any interest in taking our statement. We were attended to by medical staff at the Avenues Clinic where numerous x-rays and CT scans were taken.

My injuries are two cracked vertebrae in my lower back. Fractured cheekbone, fractured nose there was copious bleeding into my sinuses and extensive lacerations and deep-tissue bruising to my face and back and a bite to my right earlobe. My wife’s injuries are fractured cheekbones, fractures around her orbital socket round her eye, perforated eardrum, cracked ribs and extensive bruising to her face and back and throat.
W.B. ROGERS

The Great Satan: Let's hear it for America.

Credit where it's due

Janet Albrechtsen
The Australian
May 14, 2008

THERE is a certain familiarity to the concomitant series of actions and reactions when disaster strikes in the world. The US stands ready, willing and able to offer assistance. It is often the first country to send in millions of dollars, navy strike groups loaded with food and medical supplies, and transport planes, helicopters and floating hospitals to help those devastated by natural disaster.

Then, just as swift and with equal predictability, those wedded to the Great Satan view of the US begin to carp, drawing on a potent mixture of cynicism and conspiracy theories to criticise the last remaining superpower. When the US keeps doing so much of the heavy lifting to alleviate suffering, you'd figure that the anti-Americans might eventually revise their view of the US. But they never do. And coming under constant attack even when helping others, you'd figure that Americans would eventually draw the curtains on world crises. But they haven't. At least not yet.

So it was last week. The US stood ready to help the cyclone-ravaged Burmese people. It did not matter that Burma's ruling junta was no friend of the Americans. With more than 100,000 people feared dead and many more hundreds of thousands left destitute, US Air Force cargo planes loaded with supplies and personnel started arriving in nearby Thailand to begin humanitarian operations in Burma.

A US Navy strike group in the Gulf of Thailand sent helicopters ashore, ready to arrive in Burma within hours. Alas, Burma's military leaders left their people to die for 10 days before finally accepting help from the evil empire. Even if the Yanks are allowed to boost their assistance to Burma, they can expect a groundswell of criticism.

Back in 2004, the Americans - along with the Australians - arrived within hours to help the hundreds of thousands of people left devastated by the Boxing Day tsunami in Asia. A US carrier group steamed towards Indonesia's Aceh province. A second US Marine Corps strike force made its way to Sri Lanka with water, food and medical supplies.

The Pentagon spent millions of dollars sending C-130 transport planes from Dubai to Indonesia with tents, blankets, food and water. A navy chief in charge of co-ordination efforts said the US would deliver "as much help as soon as we can, as long as we're needed".

The resentment that comes from needing the military and economic might of the US translated into the most absurd criticism. Jan Egeland, the former UN boss of humanitarian affairs, cavilled about the stinginess of certain Western nations. His eye was on the US. Former British minister Claire Short was equally miffed, describing the initiative by the US and other countries as "yet another attempt to undermine the UN", which was, according to her, the "only body that has the moral authority" to help.

I love moral authority as much as the next guy, but the UN's moral authority is a mighty hard sell given that the UN club includes the most odious regimes in the world, such as Burma. And notice how the UN's moral authority did not quickly translate into helicopters laden with food and water?

When the UN finally does anything of use, it's propelled in large part by US dollars, with the US contributing more than any other country. Those other giants, China and Russia, are not filling the coffers of the UN's moral authority.

Then came the even more toxic comparisons between Iraq and US humanitarian assistance in Asia. In the anti-American mind, opposition to one US policy means blasting everything the Americans do. Of course, Egypt's Al Akhbar newspaper said the US was helping tsunami victims to "consolidate its hegemony" and had nothing to do with humanitarian and moral principles. But similarly rank reasoning was common. London's The Guardian newspaper columnist George Monbiot was not alone in sneering at US marines who, just a few weeks before saving lives in Sri Lanka, were "murdering civilians, smashing the homes and evicting the entire population of the Iraqi city of Fallujah".

The need to paint Americans as a greedy, selfish, war-mongering superpower cannot be disturbed by facts. It matters not that, in the year before the tsunami, the US provided $2.4 billion in humanitarian relief: 40per cent of all the relief aid given to the world in 2003. Never mind that development and emergency relief rose from $10 billion during the last year of Bill Clinton's administration to $24 billion under George W. Bush in 2003. Or that, according to a German study, Americans contribute to charities nearly seven times as much a head as Germans do. Or that, adjusted for population, American philanthropy is more than two-thirds more than British giving.

There is a teenaged immaturity about the rest of the world's relationship with the US. Whenever a serious crisis erupts somewhere, our dependence on the US becomes obvious, and many hate the US because of it.

That the hatred is irrational is beside the point.

We can denounce the Yanks for being Muslim-hating flouters of international law while demanding the US rescue Bosnian Muslims from Serbia without UN authority. We can be disgusted by crass American materialism and ridiculous stockpiling of worldly goods yet also be the first to demand material help from the US when disaster strikes.

The really unfortunate part about this adolescent love-hate relationship with the US is that, unlike most teenagers, many never seem to grow out of it. Within each new generation is a vicious strain of irrational anti-Americanism. But unlike a parent, the US could just get sick of it all and walk away.

The US has had isolationist periods in the past and it must be enormously tempted sometimes to have another one soon. The consequences of that possibility deserve some serious thought. If the neighbours worry about

Russian bullying over oil and gas, just imagine a Russia unfettered by a US military presence in Europe. How long would South Korea, Israel or Taiwan last if the US decided it wanted to spend on itself the money it presently devotes to military spending in the Middle East and Asia?

None of this is to say the US does not deserve loud and frequent criticism. No country has as many or as strident critics - internally and externally - as the US. The US actually promotes such debate. But just occasionally we should moderate that criticism when circumstances demand a dose of fairness.

Indeed, why not break into a standing ovation every now and again? As more US C-130s and helicopters stand waiting on Burma's doorstep, desperate to help a shattered populace and stymied only by an appalling anti-US regime, this is one of those times.

Let's hear it for America.

janeta@bigpond.net.au

Labor Socialist start campaign of payback against aspirational Australians

Tue, 13th May 2008

Budget fails Australian families

The Hon Malcolm Turnbull MP
Shadow Treasurer

This is a high taxing, high spending old fashioned Labor Budget.

The Rudd Government’s first Budget is not an inflation fighting budget.

It is not a Budget that lifts a finger to help Australians battling with rising costs of living – petrol, groceries, private health insurance and home interest rates.

The only bright light in which we can all take comfort is the strength of the Australian economy and the cuts in personal taxation all courtesy of the previous Coalition Government.

Comparing the Treasurer’s rhetoric this year to the Budget papers, we have to ask whether Mr Swan knew what was in the Budget? It is one thing to manage expectations, but it is quite another to have the Budget contradict almost everything the Treasurer has been saying all year.

What was Mr Swan thinking when he said the Budget would slash spending to put downwards pressure on inflation?

Spending has gone up by $3 billion in this current financial year and by $14.9 billion over the forward estimates (see attached table).

Over the forward estimates, Labor has cut $15.2 billion off Coalition spending programmes, but it has more than matched that with $30.1 billion of new Labor spending programmes.

Why didn’t someone tell Mr Swan that inflation is caused by rising prices? After years of Coalition tax cutting budgets, Mr Swan is introducing new taxes to raise the cost of alcohol, motor cars, health insurance and energy all of which contribute to inflationary pressures.

All up Labor’s high tax policies are adding $19.5 billion in increased revenue over the forward estimates.

Preliminary economic modelling estimates that Mr Swan’s new taxes and charges could add up to 0.4 percentage points to the CPI. We call on the Treasury to provide a detailed estimate of the inflationary impact of these tax hikes.

Mr Swan has been running around saying it would be an heroic effort to achieve a surplus of 1.5 per cent of GDP.

The Budget reveals the surplus this year will be $16.8 billion, 1.5% of GDP and would have been 1.7% of GDP without Mr Swan’s decisions.

Next year 2008-09, the surplus is estimated to be 1.8% of GDP. Mr Swan has been awash with money but apparently completely unaware.

The Rudd Government is always talking about the threat of climate change and the need for an Emissions Trading Scheme, however the Budget Papers make no provision whatsoever for the revenues from the Emissions Trading Scheme due to commence in 2010 – well within the period of the forward estimates.

How can the Rudd Government seriously propose to put $20 billion of Australians’ savings into an infrastructure fund without any indication of what kind of economic return the fund will be expected to deliver?

Australian taxpayers are entitled to question whether this will just be a Labor slush fund to subsidise the inefficient water, transport and energy infrastructure of State Governments? Mr Swan has written himself a blank cheque with the savings of a nation.

And when it comes to the massive, and worsening challenge of water scarcity, the best the Labor Government can do is spend a net additional $1 billion over seven years over and above the commitments made by the Coalition in the National Plan for Water Security.

The Budget Papers discuss Australia’s capacity to weather the international financial crisis. But can our economy survive Mr Swan?

Far from being a new excursion into economic conservatism, Mr Swan’s first budget is an economic con.

Decoding Labor’s 2008-09 Budget Policy Decisions

	2007-08 $ million	2008-09 $ million	2009-10 $ million	2010-11 $ million	2011-12 $ million	4 year total from 2008-09 $ million	5 year total $ million
Labor’s Revenue Decisions	238.6	2,352.3	4,097.5	6,369.7	6,646.2	19,465.7	19,704.3
Labor’s Expense Decisions	3,119.5	1,324.2	4,204.4	4,532.9	4,843.3	14,904.8	18,024.3
Net Revenue less Expenses	-2,880.9	1,028.1	-106.9	1,836.8	1,802.9	4 560.9	1 680.0
Labor’s dropped spending	-998.2	-4,170.9	-3,529.9	-3,813.7	-3,710.4	-15,224.9	-16,223.1
Labor’s added spending	4,117.7	5,495.1	7,734.3	8,346.6	8,553.7	30,129.7	34,247.4

Source:
Revenue policy decisions: Budget Statement 5, page 10
Expense measures: Budget Paper 2, page 76
Savings measures: Budget Paper 2, page 337

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Tue, 13th May 2008 2008 Budget Key Points Read more…

Tue, 13th May 2008 Budget fails Australian families This is a high taxing, high spending old fashioned Labor Budget. The Rudd Government’s first Budget is not an inflation fighting budget. Read more…

Barack Obama & the mythology about Pastor Wright.

Obama's Mythology About Pastor Wright

Cutting Edge Contributor
Ronald Kessler    April 21st 2008

In his speech on race, Barack Obama tried to explain away his longtime minister's denunciations of America by saying that for blacks of his generation, memories of "humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away."
But an examination by Newsmax of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.'s background reveals that Obama's characterization of his upbringing is mythology.

Described by Obama as his sounding board and mentor for more than two decades, Wright was born in Philadelphia in 1941. He lived in a racially mixed section called Germantown, which consisted of homes on broad tree-lined streets in northwest Philadelphia. The owners then were middle-class families.

For 62 years, Wright's father, the Rev. Jeremiah Alvesta Wright, was pastor at Grace Baptist Church of Germantown.

He was one of the first blacks to receive a degree from the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.

Wright's mother, Mary Elizabeth Henderson Wright, was a schoolteacher. She was the first black to teach an academic subject at Roosevelt Junior High, the first to teach at Germantown High, and the first to teach at the Philadelphia High School for Girls. She became vice principal of Girls High in 1968.

Rather than attend the more racially mixed Germantown High School at 40 East High St., Wright traveled a few miles to the elite Central High School at 1700 West Olney Ave., graduating in 1959. Opened in 1838, Central High has a distinguished past and admits only highly qualified applicants who are privileged to attend from all over the city.

It is comparable to the Bronx High School of Science and Boston Latin School, both public schools known for academic excellence.

When Wright attended Central High, the student body was 90 percent white, according to students who attended around the same time. At least three-quarters of the students were Jewish. Former students of the period say racial tension did not exist.

Bill Cosby, who attended the school until transferring to Germantown High, has referred to Central as a "wonderful" school. In contrast to Wright, Cosby has denounced blacks who take refuge in self-pitying victimhood and seek to blame whites for problems in the black community.

"Central High was a marvelous academic environment," says Tod Mammuth, who graduated in 1965 and is now a Philadelphia-area lawyer. "You had to have high academic credentials to be accepted and a high IQ score. Many later said it was more rigorous than college. We had no racial friction."

In college, "I was so far advanced from the normal kids, it was almost unbelievable," says H. Yale Gutnick, who graduated from Central High in 1960 and is a Pittsburgh lawyer. "In my freshman year, I didn't have to do anything.

I had already read most of what we had to read in English class, and I was equally advanced in the other academic areas."

The 211th class yearbook described Wright as a respected member of the class.

"Always ready with a kind word, Jerry is one of the most congenial members of the 211," the yearbook said. "His record in Central is a model for lower class [younger] members to emulate."

Saying Wright can be compared to the school handbook's description of "an educated man," the description said Wright was "the epitome of what Central endeavors to imbue in its students."

Next to a photo of Wright wearing black-rimmed glasses, the yearbook listed seven extra-curricular activities, including junior varsity football, band, school orchestra, and swing band.

In contrast to Wright's comfortable upbringing, Morton A. Klein, who also attended Central High around the same time, lived in a poor, virtually all-black section called West Oak Lane.

"Four times a year, we would go to get big boxes of used clothing that was our wardrobe for the year. I never resented it. I was thrilled with my clothes," says Klein, who was an economist in the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations and is now president of the Zionist Organization of America.

"We never went out to eat," says Klein. "We had no car. We did not go to summer camp or take vacations. I had dozens of black friends. We played in the street every day. I remember my childhood as wonderful, and it certainly did not breed hatred of America. I loved America."

In contrast, the man Obama describes as being like an uncle has blamed America and whites for starting the AIDS virus to kill off blacks, training professional killers, importing drugs, and creating a racist society to oppress blacks.

"The government gives them drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law, and then wants to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, not 'God Bless America' — God damn America," Wright has said.
In a similar vein, Michelle Obama has said she is proud of America for the first time. Last week, Obama said Americans in small towns are "bitter" and cling in frustration to "guns, or religion, or antipathy to people who aren't like them..."

In his speech on race, Obama sought to evoke sympathy for Wright. He described a "lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family..."

Obama said this was "the reality in which Rev. Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted....Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Rev. Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years."

In retirement, Wright will continue a life of privilege that dates back to Central High. As a retirement gift, Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ is building him a million-dollar home abutting Odyssey Country Club and Golf Course in the nearly all-white Chicago suburb of Tinley Park. The home sits on land the pastor purchased in 2004 for $345,000. In December 2006, Wright sold the land to his church, which took out a $1.6 million mortgage on the property. In April 2007, the church applied for a building permit for the brick and stone structure.

Wright's new home has 10,340 square feet of space, about four times the size of a typical suburban house. It includes four bedrooms, an elevator, an exercise room, and a four-car garage.

Rather than being a victim of oppression of blacks, as Obama has claimed, Wright is a symbol of the American dream.

Rather than meriting sympathy, he exemplifies what my friend Fox News contributor Juan Williams describes as blackleaders who orchestrate support for themselves by manipulating blacks into seeing themselves as victims, creating a black "culture of failure."

Obama's attempt to excuse Wright's hate-America rhetoric by deceptively describing his personal history and his failure to condemn him as a bigot speak volumes about the candidate's own character and fitness to lead the country.

New York Times bestselling author Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of www.Newsmax.com , from which this story was adapted.

IAnd from WorldNetDaily

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ELECTION 2008

'Red flag' over Obama blogger – webworker flies commie banner

Campaign journalist's work appears in 'revolutionary Marxist' journal

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Posted: April 26, 2008
1:20 pm Eastern

© 2008 WorldNetDaily

 

In the same week the Obama campaign quietly removed from its official website a page managed by a fundraiser tied to the Islamic terrorist group Hamas, its official blogger has come under attack as a "hardcore Marxist" for hanging a Communist Party flag in his Harvard campus apartment and publishing in a self-professed 'revolutionary Marxist' journal.

Sam Graham-Felsen, a journalist-on-leave from The Nation, joined Obama for America in March 2007 where he works for the New Media department as the official blogger, daily presenting the campaign's public face. Now he's under fire for his reputed Marxist sympathies from bloggers at Common Ills on the left and Little Green Footballs on the right.

Graham-Felsen, according to a 2003 article in the Harvard Crimson, adorned one corner of his shared student apartment with "a Communist Party flag ... bought on their trip to Russia the summer after sophomore year."

The revelation echoes an earlier public relations problem in February when a Houston Fox TV affiliate captured images of a volunteer in an Obama campaign office working in front of a flag featuring the image of Che Guevara, the South American revolutionary who became Fidel Castro's executioner after the communist takeover in Cuba.

At that time, the Obama campaign issued a statement calling the flag "inappropriate" and noting that the office where it was displayed was funded by "volunteers" and was not the official campaign headquarters.

Graham-Felsen, however, is not a volunteer, but a staff member according to information published on the Huffington Post taken from the Obama for America campaign 2007 second quarter report.

In 2003, Graham-Felsen participated in a labor march in France that Associated Press reported ended in violent riots – a characterization he disputed in The Nation. His coverage of the 2003 French protests against a new employment law again appeared in 2006 in Socialist Viewpoint, a journal that proudly proclaims its Marxist point of view:

The Socialist Workers Organization was formed to advance the revolutionary Marxist political program in the United States. Our members are long time active participants in the socialist and labor movements. We agree with Karl Marx that society is divided into social classes whose interests are irreconcilable. ...

Socialism, the ownership and democratic control of the means of production by the working class, and the removal of profit from the system of production, is the aim of Socialist Viewpoint, which reflects the political views of the Socialist Workers Organization. Socialism is the prerequisite for the next stage in human development that will end class oppression and exploitation for all time.

Common Ills also took Graham-Felsen to task for a 2003 Harvard Crimson article he wrote praising Noam Chomsky's "amazing ability to reason" and "the power to make the left make sense," while bemoaning his unwillingness to curb his radical rhetoric to increase his effectiveness.

"Unfortunately, Chomsky continues to squander this potential by making decisions that destroy his credibility in the eyes of most Americans," Graham-Felsen wrote.

"In perhaps his most infamous move, on the day after the Sept. 11 attacks, Chomsky stated: 'The terrorist attacks were major atrocities. In scale they may not reach the level of many others, for example, Clinton's bombing of the Sudan with no credible pretext, destroying half its pharmaceutical supplies and killing unknown numbers of people.' As a result of his poor timing and unwillingness to moderate his tone, his message was lost to anyone not already on the extreme left. He sounded callous and dogmatic; instead of provoking change, he provoked disgust."

Graham-Felsen's writings, wrote the Common Ills blooger, have destroyed his own credibility:

"And exactly what is a Democratic candidate doing with a staffer who acts as the campaign's public face when the staffer is featured in a Marxist publications? All of the above is public information. I could add a great deal of private information but we'll stick with the public information and wonder exactly how Sam made it onto Obama's staff and, considering all the above, why anyone should trust a word Sam says?

"His problem with Chomsky wasn't Chomsky's beliefs, he just felt they could be watered down to trick people. If Sam believes, as the magazine he published in does, that 'Socialism is the prerequisite for the next stage in human development that will end class oppression and exploitation for all time,' would he tell people straight or water it down with a lot of hope and change buzz words?"

Little Green Footballs blogger Charles Johnson was less politick, calling Graham-Felsen "a hardcore Marxist."

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Previous stories:

Obama aide says he didn't mean to blaspheme Jesus

Obama adviser gets laughs from presenting 'gay' Jesus

Obama camp 'flattered' by Hamas compliment

Obama was 'quite religious in Islam'

Racists again endorse Obama on candidate's website

Obama-church newsletter: Israel making 'ethnic bomb'

Obama 'money man' tied to 'house n-ggers' pastor

2nd Obama-linked pastor under fire for racist talk

Obama's pastor 'crucified' just like Jesus by Romans

Obama: 'Outrageously wrong' to reprint Hamas manifesto

Obama church published Hamas terror manifesto

Obama website yanks 'Black Panthers' plug

Racists endorse Obama on candidate's website

Obama's church sponsoring 'African-centered' school

Obama pastor's theology: Destroy 'the white enemy'

Obama's preacher sanitizes website

Obama: I never heard my pastor's trash talk

Obama's minister said America made AIDS to wipe out blacks

Obama pastor: Not God bless, but God d--- America!

Lawmaker affirms terrorists want Obama White House

Obama says America is a 'bully'

Che Guevara flag featured in Obama campaign office

Obama aide wants talks with terrorists

Islamic Sociopaths Inc: "please don't shoot me, please don't shoot me" Pela Atroshi

Honour killing's Aussie link

Sian Powell
News.com.au
April 26, 2008

MORTALLY wounded and bleeding profusely, Pela Atroshi covered her head with her hands, pleading "please don't shoot me, please don't shoot me". As her sister and her mother screamed, her uncle Rezkar Atroshi raised his gun and killed her. The family's honour had been cleansed.

Rezkar had already shot Pela twice in the back in the upstairs room. Helped downstairs by her mother and her younger sister, the 19-year-old Kurdish Swede was confronted by four resolute men - her father and his three brothers. The men pulled the women apart. Her youngest uncle then finished the job, shooting Pela in the head. The bullet went through one of her fingers and into her brain.

The decision to kill her was made by a council of male relatives, led by Pela's grandfather, Abdulmajid Atroshi - a Kurd who lived in Australia.

One of his sons, Shivan Atroshi, helped pull the women away from Pela so his younger brother could get a clean shot. Shivan, too, lived in Australia.

It is the first time an officially confirmed honour killing with a connection to Australia has ever publicly come to light, but it is likely there have been other Australian-connected honour crimes that have been kept hidden within the tight-lipped Australian Kurdish community.

Pela Atroshi's murder in Dohuk, in Iraqi Kurdistan, was officially deemed an honour killing by both Iraqi and Swedish authorities.

The Swedish detective inspector who investigated the murder, Kickis Aahre Algamo, said she had since heard of another honour crime with a connection to Australia - this time the attempted killing of an Australian Kurd that went awry when the girl escaped.

She told The Weekend Australian that from 2000 the Swedish authorities were in communication with Australian authorities and the Swedish embassy in Canberra about the 1999 murder of Pela Atroshi.

Breen Atroshi, Pela's younger sister, Inspector Algamo said, was still prepared to testify in any prosecution of her Australian grandfather or uncle. But it is unclear whether Pela's grandfather and uncle still live in Australia.

An Interpol investigation in 2000 found that Shivan Atroshi was not at the time living in Australia, although he may have since returned. One person in Sydney's Kurdish community said he believed the Atroshi grandfather - once a freedom fighter - had hidden in Kurdistan, but had sporadically returned to Australia in recent years. Abdulmajid Atroshi had travelled to Stockholm with his son Shivan in 1999 to finally decide on Pela's fate.

She had made the mistake of leaving home for a time, frustrated by her family's adherence to restrictive Kurdish traditions.

"Pela's uncle, the oldest son of Abdulmajid, said if any of the unmarried girls is away from home for one night, she has to be killed," Inspector Algamo said on the phone from Stockholm.

Pela was an intelligent and good-looking girl. When she emigrated with her family to Sweden in 1995, she took to Swedish ways - eventually leaving the family home in January 1999. But after a time she missed her parents and six younger brothers and sisters and returned, agreeing to an arranged marriage in Kurdistan. It was a front - the men in her family had decided to kill her in their home town of Dohuk, northern Iraq, where honour killings were considered minor crimes, and where the Atroshi clan commanded immense respect.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Yakin Erturk, in a report last year to the Human Rights Council, said she had been told that a "family council of male relatives living in Sweden and Australia decided that Pela had to die to cleanse the family honour".

The men of the family - Pela's father, Agid, and her three uncles, Australian Shivan, and Swedish Rezkar and Dakhaz - arranged for Pela to go to Kurdistan in June 1999 so they could kill her. Her grandfather remained in Sweden, saying, according to the testimony of Pela's younger sister Breen, "I will not set foot in Kurdistan until Pela is dead".

In October 1999, in Iraq, Agid and Rezkar were convicted of her murder, and sentenced to one-year suspended jail terms. The court referred to a medical report that said "her hymen was broken" and to the "defendants' honourable motivation".

A higher court later ordered that the sentences be served, but by that time, the two Swedes, Rezkar and Dakhaz, had returned to Stockholm, where they were arrested. Inspector Algamo and a fellow officer had travelled to Turkey to bring a key witness, Pela's sister Breen, back to Sweden. Breen was the first to raise the alarm, ringing the Swedish police from Dohuk to report her sister's murder.

Breen was brought by a delegation of Kurds to the Swedish embassy in Ankara, Turkey. "I got a couple of minutes alone with her, and she said, 'I want to go home and I want to testify for my sister Pela'," said Inspector Algamo, who is now compiling a report on honour crimes.

"We rushed her away to a waiting embassy car and drove as fast as possible to the airport."

In Sweden, Breen testified in the trials of her uncles - who had been arrested in January 2000 and who were liable to prosecution because Pela's murder was planned in Stockholm. Breen condemned her elders in court. She now lives in hiding.

On January 12, 2001, the Stockholm City Court convicted both men of murder and sentenced them to life imprisonment. Their sentences were confirmed on appeal. Pela's father Agid remained in Kurdistan. He is still wanted for murder in Sweden.

"When we counted all the ones involved in the planning (of Pela's murder) there were 11," Inspector Algamo said. "But some of them were Australian citizens and some of them were Iraqi citizens - we could only prosecute three of them."

Swedish deputy chief prosecutor Agnetha Hilding Qvarnstrom explained that while there had been contact with the Australian authorities regarding the Atroshi case it had not culminated in an official extradition request.

Since the murder was planned in Sweden and committed in Iraq, it also seems unlikely Australia could take any action.

In Australia, Muhammad Kamal, a lecturer in philosophy at Melbourne University, remembers Pela's grandfather, Abdulmajid Atroshi - the patriarch.

In the early 1990s, Dr Kamal had been broadcasting a Kurdish program on SBS radio, and Atroshi was behind a campaign to have the program taken off air because he believed it was preaching immorality.

"He was a practising Muslim and a tribal man," Dr Kamal said, adding that religious leaders in Kurdistan never condemned honour crimes because they believed it was an essential bulwark against immorality. "I haven't heard any statement from clergy in the region to say honour killing is wrong," he said.

In recent years, with the diaspora from tribal regions, there are honour killings connected to a number of nations in Europe - and now to Australia. Inspector Algamo has also been told that in 2004 or 2005 an Australian girl connected to the Atroshi clan was in the same position as Pela.

"I was told by my informers that the Australian girl was taken to Kurdistan in the summer on vacation," Inspector Algamo said. "She had a forbidden love or something, they were also planning to kill her." The girl discovered the plans and fled, assisted by an American soldier who helped to smuggle her out of the country.

She said the Australian Kurdish community staged two demonstrations in front of the Swedish embassy in Canberra insisting on the Atroshi men's innocence.

Unni Wikan, a Norwegian academic who has written a recent book on honour crimes titled In Honour of Fadime, has looked carefully at the Atroshi case. She said the horrors persisted. "In Sweden there is a development now called balcony suicide," she said, adding the deaths were really camouflaged honour killings.

Inspector Algamo said her research into honour crimes had been difficult. "So many murders, so many girls who fall from the balcony, so many false suicides," she said.

"There is huge pressure on girls to take their own lives. They don't have the right to their own bodies, because their bodies are owned by the clan."

The New York Times,their latest pin up girl and why she is smiling.

The  New York Times carries a review of a film called 'Hot House' that goes  inside Israeli prisons and examines the lives of Palestinian  prisoners. We're not recommending the film or the review ..But we do  want to share our feelings with you about the beaming female face that adorns the article. You can see it here.

          
 
                                  "That female is our child's murderer"
                               "With so many voices demanding that"
                                 Israel release its terrorist prisoners,
                                       small wonder she's smiling" 

The film is produced by HBO. So it's presumably HBO's publicity department that was responsible for creating and distributing a glamour-style photograph of a smiling, contented-looking young woman in her twenties to promote the movie.

That female is our child's murderer. She was sentenced to sixteen life sentences or 320 years which she is serving in an Israeli jail.
Fifteen people were killed and more than a hundred maimed and injured by the actions of this attractive person and her associates.

The background is here. 
Neither the New York Times nor HBO are likely to give even a moment's attention to the victims of the barbarians who destroyed the Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem and the lives of so many victims.

So we would be grateful if you would pass along this link to some pictures of our daughter whose name was Malki.

She was unable to reach her twenties - Hamas  saw to that.

Though she was only fifteen years old when her life was stolen from her and from us, we think Malki was a beautiful young woman, living a beautiful life. We ask your help so that other people - far fewer than the number who will see the New York Times, of course - can know about her. Please ask your friends to look at the pictures - some of the very few we have - of our murdered daughter.
   
See them here  : Scenes from a beautiful life 

And remind them of what the woman in the Israeli prison - the woman smiling so happily in the New York Times - said last year.

'I'm not sorry for what I did. We'll become free from the occupation and then I will be free from prison.'

With so many voices demanding that Israel release its terrorist prisoners, small wonder she's smiling.

With greetings from  Jerusalem ,
Frimet and Arnold Roth
On behalf of Keren Malk

                              The Sbarro victims of the "Religion of Peace"

                     

Fitna ... Geert Wilders

How long before the Islamic Zoo erupts, and when it does, wont it just prove Geert Wilders right once again?

Index 20 2 2008

Ignorance: 

"The chief weapon in the quiver of all Islamist expansionist movements, is the absolute necessity to keep victims largely unaware of the actual theology plotting their demise. To complete this deception, a large body of ‘moderates’ continue to spew such ridiculous claims as “Islam means Peace” thereby keeping non-Muslims from actually reading the Qur’an, the Sira, the Hadith, or actually looking into the past 1400 years of history. Islamists also deny or dismiss the concept of ‘abrogation’, which is the universal intra-Islamic method of replacing slightly more tolerable aspects of the religion in favor of more violent demands for Muslims to slay and subdue infidels"

                                 

      Knowledge IS Power, grab yourself some POWER please read,

                               

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