L.I. Slaveowners House of Horrors Revealed!

The depths of the depravity of the wealthy Long Island couple who were arrested earlier this year when it was discovered that the pair were keeping slaves in their posh Central Islip home were revealed in a recent court appearance. From Fox News:

CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. — A servant who worked for a millionaire couple charged with modern-day slavery testified Monday in excruciating detail about the punishment she says she endured for minor transgressions such as sleeping late.

Samirah, an immigrant from Indonesia, said she was forced to walk naked from the servants’ room to the kitchen and to eat 100 chili peppers, followed by six spoons of chili powder mixed with salt water. She said she vomited after eating the peppers and was told to eat the vomit.

The testimony came at the trial of Varsha Mahender Sabhnani and her husband, Mahender Murlidhar Sabhnani, who run a worldwide perfume business out of their home on the north shore of Long Island.

Prosecutors say the couple severely abused Samirah and another Indonesian woman, Enung, who were brought to the United States to work as housekeepers, then held against their will and repeatedly beaten and starved.

Samirah testified that the alleged abuse she suffered was for such misdeeds as sleeping late and eating from the trash “because I wasn’t given food.”

“I said, `Mrs., just send me home to Indonesia,”‘ Samirah said.

Defense attorneys contend the housekeepers engaged in witchcraft and may have abused themselves as part of an Indonesian self-mutilation ritual — an assertion Samirah denied.

Samirah previously introduced the subject of black magic into the trial when she claimed that Varsha Sabhnani had concocted a spell that led to the death of one of Samirah’s sons in Indonesia.

On Monday, Samirah stood up, looking agitated and waving her hands, as she demonstrated how she was stabbed. She also got down on her knees in front of jurors to show how she scrubbed floors three times every day.

In exchange for the work, the prosecution says $100 a month was sent to a relative in Indonesia. Samirah said she never received any money of her own.

The case broke last May when concerned employees at a Dunkin’ Donuts called police after Samirah, 51, wandered into their store, muttering and looking injured.

Before the day was over, she was being treated in a hospital and authorities had a warrant to search the Sabhnani home, where they found Enung hiding in a basement closet.

If convicted, the couple could face 40 years in prison.

Though the religion of the couple has never been officially confirmed, the case is similar to reported incidents of involuntary servitude and abuse of domestics in Muslim societies.

Islam and slavery
are inextricable linked, and this case has all the hallmarks of modern Islamism. The defense claims of witchcraft being practiced by the victims (as if that would excuse the barbarity) is also a feature in modern Islamist slave cases, and persecution of maids and domestics for “sorcery” have become common in places like Saudi Arabia. From the State Departments 2002 report on International Religious Freedom:

Magic is widely believed in and sometimes practiced, often in the form of fortune-telling and swindles; however, under Shari’a, the practice of magic is regarded as the worst form of polytheism, an offense for which no repentance is accepted and which is punishable by death. There are an unknown number of detainees held in prison on the charge of “sorcery,” including the practice of “black magic” or “witchcraft.” In a few cases, self-proclaimed “miracle workers” have been executed for sorcery involving physical harm or apostasy.

That this degenerate couple, who have so far flaunted justice by being granted house arrest in lieu of incarceration while waiting for trial (yet another reason I hate New York) thinks that by invoking the specter of Witchcraft they’ll garner sympathy for themselves is indicative of how dhimmified they believe Americans are, and in New York they may be right.

I wouldn’t be surprised if some N.Y. liberals claim it’s racist to judge these two by our standards, since in their culture abusing women and then accusing them of Witchcraft is acceptable. That’s what multiculturalism is after all. I’m glad Herman Slater isn’t alive to see this.

The evil cretin face only 40 years for their crimes, they’re getting off light if they get the maximum.

I say they should be hung.

Witness Who Spotted Girl Thought to Be Madeleine in Morocco Receiving Death Threats

Her tip to private investigators led to the discovery of a mysterious American child assumed to have been kidnapped, and has given hope to the McCann family that little Madeleine is still alive. For her compassion she is now targeted for death by Moroccan organized crime:

A woman who claims to have seen Madeleine McCann being bundled into a taxi in Morocco, says she has received anonymous Mafia death threats.

Naoual Malhi, 24, says men claiming to work for the country’s crime barons have warned her to keep her mouth shut about what she saw – and ditch plans to probe the sighting herself.

The mum-of-one, whose daughter Ines is Madeleine’s age, has told how one growled: “Let this lie if you know what’s good for you, your daughter and the rest of your family, otherwise you’re a dead woman next time you’re in Morocco.”

But brave Naoual is pressing ahead with plans to defy the threats and return to her homeland to look for the girl she saw.

She is also getting the calls – which come from withheld numbers – taped so she can hand them over to police helping in the hunt for the missing four-year-old.

Naoual, who lives near Marbella, Spain, said: “I’m not frightened by the mafia.

“It’s obvious I’m on to something otherwise they wouldn’t be calling.

“They’ve warned me I’m going to be killed next time I step on Moroccan soil unless I shut my mouth about Madeleine.

“But I know the girl I saw getting into that taxi was her and I’m not going to stop until I find her.

If she is really getting death threats it seems that her charges must be credible. If not Madeleine, than there is something the Moroccan underworld wants to keep hidden from the world. Let’s hope someone shines some light there soon.

Mike Huckabee: Communist

At least according to the exhaustive research of Zionist Anti-Communist who has dug deep into the Huckster’s past to come up with some compelling(ish) evidence of Maccabees’s Red roots. He relies mostly on on this recent article by Don Feder on Huckabee’s Misguided Compassion which shows a very different image of Huckabee than that of compassionate social con:

During his years in Little Rock, Huckabee raised the state’s sales tax by 37%, the gas tax by 16% and the cigarette tax by 103% (all fall particularly hard on the poor). State spending went up a staggering 65.3% — three times the inflation rate. The state’s workforce grew by 20% and Arkansas’ general obligation debt increased $1 billion.

Conservatives most familiar with the man are the most skeptical of his conservative credentials. At its July convention, the Arkansas Republican Assembly, which represents the state party’s right-wing, took a presidential preference straw poll. Thompson swept the field with 86%.

Betsy Hagan, Arkansas director of Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, says that outside of a few key social issues, Huckabee governed as a liberal. “Just like Bill Clinton, he will charm you, but don’t be surprised if he takes a completely different turn in office,” Hagan cautions.

Huckabee is a sucker for social spending. In April 2006, he raised the state’s minimum wage from $5.15 to $6.25 an hour, levying yet another tax on businesses and consumers — one that destroys entry-level jobs.

Huckabee is particularly proud of his ArKids First program, which greatly expanded government-paid health insurance for children. Compassionate? Sure — except it’s one more small step on the road to socialized medicine — which hasn’t worked that well for the Brits and Canadians who’ve died waiting for operations, due to the inevitable shortage of medical services in a state-run system.

Huckabee supports a mandatory cap on the release of greenhouse gases. “It goes to the moral issue,” the governor intones. “We have a responsibility to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions….” This, even though he’s unsure that C0-2 emissions actually have anything to do with global warming. “But whether there is or there isn’t (a human factor in climate change) , it doesn’t release us from the responsibility to be good stewards of the environment…It’s a spiritual issue. The earth belongs to God. I have no right to destroy it.”

Good stewards also have a responsibility to consider the consequences of junk science. In the 1960s, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (the era’s An Inconvenient Truth) convinced governments to ban DDT as toxic to humans. In the Third World, mosquitoes multiplied. So did malaria and typhus. Since 1972, 100 million have died of these preventable diseases, mostly in Africa, due to political stewardship.

Does God want us to destroy the U.S. economy? Does He want us to sit in darkened homes, warmed only by thoughts of the imaginary benefits conferred on the penguins and polar bears? Huckabee is an acolyte of the Church of Gore because it feels good — it makes him feel morally superior to all of those energy-profligate conservatives who — by not embracing this pious fraud — desecrate the Gospel of Eco-Doom.

I don’t know if “God” wants to destroy the economy, but I know a lot of communists do. Z.A.C. also makes hay of the Huckster’s membership in the Southern Baptist Convention where he rubs elbows with American hating Commies like Bill Moyers.

The S.B.C. is a socially liberal group that seemingly hates gays, just like actual communists. Maybe there’s something to Z.A.C.’s analysis. On the other hand they are on my Blacklist for hating Halloween and The Day of the Dead, the two greatest Holidays of all time. They’ll have to do more digging to get back in our good orange and black graces.

via Hot Air, The Man comes down hard on Mike Huckleberry:

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Kyle Smith and the Lost Art of Criticism

Critics of all stripes spend far too much time fawning over what they think should be fawned over (or what they think will make them look smart), and too little time caring about the arts. Not so with Kyle Smith, who makes no attempt to sugar coat his feelings about the current crop anti-war movies being peddled by Hollywood’s increasingly boring elite:

Normally Hollywood stars are like goldfish – content to be stared at as they swim through their little castles and contemplate their treasure chests. Ooh, looky! Fresh new gravel!

But when major news floats above their heads, up on the surface where the real world begins, Hollywood can’t restrain itself. Loooook . . . delicious little flakes of Importance. Surely I can nibble safely on this stuff? Mmm, tasty. Can I have another bite? And another? And another?

Goldfish don’t know when to stop eating, and neither do Hollywood stars. This fall Reese Witherspoon, Jake Gyllenhaal, Tom Cruise, Robert Redford, Susan Sarandon, Tommy Lee Jones and Charlize Theron are going belly up at the box office after gobbling up too much reality about the Iraq War. “Rendition” and “In the Valley of Elah” are already dead in the water, while surveys show that “Lions for Lambs,” which opens Friday, is arousing about the same level of interest as you’d expect from “Charles in Charge: The Imax Experience.” Meryl Streep stars in two of these movies, in an act of uncontrolled cinematic gorging unseen since “Super Size Me.”

Not that you’d notice, because you’re going to see “Bee Movie” and “American Gangster” instead. The sages say this is because the Iraq Pack movies are downers, or because the public prefers entertaining to provocative, or because they’re sick of yammering about Iraq. Conservatives point out that Americans don’t like going to anti-American movies any more than new mothers with baby pictures like being told their kids are ugly.

All true. But here’s what’s even more true: these movies are awful.

It gets better, he refers to Lions for Lambs as the “My Dinner with Andre of war movies” and compares Rendition to a “sixth grade film stip from an Iranian school.” A wickedly devastating critique of not just some apparently dreadful movies, but of the shallow uninspired Hollywood culture that made them possible. Read the whole thing.

What’s the NYT Really Worried About?

The Gray Lady’s twilight years is becoming more and more a symbol for the obsolescence of Mainstream Media dinosaurs in the face of the changing information landscape. From Editor and Publisher:

NEW YORK Quietly, without promoting the move, The New York Times began this week publishing on its Web site readers’ comments at the end of certain articles. This is a move The Washington Post and USA Today, and many other newspapers, began long ago.

However, most papers do not “moderate” comments unless a reader flags them. The Times, however, has created a new “comment desk,” with the hiring of four part-time staffers, “to screen all reader submissions before posting them, an investment unheard of in today’s depressed newspaper business environment,” Public Editor Clark Hoyt reveals today. “The Times has always allowed reader comments on the many blogs it publishes, with those responses screened by the newsroom staff.”

Martin Nisenholtz, senior vice president for digital operations of The New York Times Company, informs Hoyt, “A pure free-for-all doesn’t, in my opinion, equal good. It can equal bad.”

But Hoyt adds that the experience so far with moderated blogs “suggests what the paper is letting itself in for.” He then details some of the unsavory blog postings that have gotten past editors, quoting from racist comments on Mexicans in California and backing a hit on Rudy Giuliani.

“As The New York Times transforms itself into a multimedia news and information platform — the printed newspaper plus a robust nytimes.com offering breaking news, blogs, interactive graphics, video and more — it is struggling with a vexing problem,.” he observes. “How does the august Times, which has long stood for dignified authority, come to terms with the fractious, democratic culture of the Internet, where readers expect to participate but sometimes do so in coarse, bullying and misinformed ways?

“The answer so far is cautiously, carefully and with uneven success.”

Kate Phillips, editor of The Caucus blog, tells Hoyt she struggles sometimes with the “intolerance” and “vitriol” she sees in some comments — so much so that on rare occasions “I almost wish we could go back to the days when we never heard their voices.” She sometimes jumps in to warn readers about remaining civil.

Today the paper has a comments section on its top story on the new turmoil in Pakistan, with 101 of them appearing quickly. “Wow! This has all the emarks of the Shah of Iran. A US backed oppressive regime,” writes “Mike, Minn.”

Despite attempting to make it sound like a problem of a bi-partisan nature, even this piece can’t white wash the real concern among elitists in the Newspaper industry about a) having to address the masses as equals and b) giving the left yet another venue to expose it’s resurgent anti-semitism, childish political stances and its general uncivilized character.

The Times can hire a hundred comment editors and it won’t matter, within a year some lefty will have let an anti-semitic rant slip through and the conservative feeding frenzy will be the last nail in the NYT coffin. The sad part is that they’ll never see it coming.
h/t Hot Air.