Joe Satriani - Flying In A Blue Dream

Eric Johnson - Cliffs of Dover

The Who - Eminence front

Arkansas Republican gave adopted girls to rapist because they were ‘possessed by demons’: report

RAW STORY


The story of Arkansas state Rep. Justin Harris (R) — whose family adopted a pair of girls then “re-homed” them to another household where one of the girls was raped — has taken a bizarre turn with allegations that the Harris family gave the girls up because they believed the children could communicate telepathically and were possessed by demons.
The Arkansas Times reported on Wednesday that sources close to the family dispute many of the assertions Harris and his wife Marsha made last Friday at a press conference at the Arkansas state capitol.
The Harrises said they were never made aware that the girls were violent or that they posed a risk to a household with other children. Rep. Harris claimed that the family received no aid from the Department of Human Services (DHS) and that when they attempted to make the agency aware of issues with the girls, they threatened to charge him with child abandonment.
A bevy of witnesses — including, the Times said, “two foster families who cared for the girls prior to the Harris adoption, the girls’ biological mother, a former DHS employee familiar with the proceedings and a former babysitter at the Harrises’ West Fork home” — dispute virtually every word of the Harrises’ account of the adoption and subsequent “re-homing” and rape.
Babysitter Chelsey Goldsborough told the Times that when she cared for the children in the home, she was alarmed at how the family treated the girls, who initially arrived in the home with an older sister. The Times, for the sake of clarity, gave the girls false names.
The eldest, Jeannette, was 6 years old when the girls arrived in the Harris home in the fall of 2012. The middle sister Mary was 4 and Annie, the youngest, about 2 years old.
Jeannette was the first of the girls to be cast out of the Harris home. Rep. Harris says that she posed a threat to the three biological sons the Harrises already had. The oldest girl was sent for treatment at a state hospital while Mary and Annie remained with the family.
Goldsborough told the Times that Mary was mostly confined to her room and monitored by video camera. Marsha Harris told the babysitter that the girls were demonically possessed and that they had to be kept separate because they could communicate telepathically. One of the girls crushed the family’s guinea pig to death, Marsha Harris claimed, and the family were so frightened of the children that they summoned an exorcist from Alabama to perform a casting-out of the girls’ demons.
“The first night I was over there, I just broke down and cried with this little girl because I just felt so bad for her,” said Goldsborough. The Harrises used an elaborate system of locks, video cameras and alarms to separate the girls because they believed they would kill their entire family.
Another source close to the family corroborated this account to the Times, saying that Marsha Harris regularly spoke of the demons she believed were living inside the adopted girls.
“They consider it to be spiritual warfare,” the anonymous source said. “I’m a Christian, and I have these beliefs, but this was completely beyond anything I’ve ever seen or heard about.”
The family locked Mary away without any books, toys or colorful clothes, Goldsborough said, “because a demon told [Mary] not to share…Demons told her to not appreciate [her toys] and all that, so they took away all the toys and her colored clothes.”
The Harrises’ attorney Jennifer Wells insisted there is no truth to the allegations against her clients. “Exorcisms and telepathy are not part of the Harrises’ religious practice,” Wells said. “They followed the techniques in a book called When Love Is Not Enough, a Parent’s Guide to Reactive Attachment Disorder by Nancy Thomas, who is a recognized expert on therapeutic parenting techniques.”
Other foster families who worked with the girls say that the middle girl was never violent and that the Harrises were warned multiple times that their family would not be a good fit for children from such a traumatic background, which included neglect, violent abuse and sexual molestation.
However, the Harrises relied on their friend Cecile Blucker — a DHS official — to push the adoption through in spite of the warnings and serious misgivings on the part of state officials.
The family’s response to the upset the children brought into their home, however, was not to go back to DHS and attempt to get assistance, but instead to rely on their Christian faith until things in the home finally got so bad that they moved the girls into the home of Eric and Stacey Francis. It was there that Mary was raped by Eric, a serial predator who had molested other children and who is now serving a 40-year prison sentence.

Phone Sex And Payoffs: What I Learned About Bill O'Reilly After Writing His Biography

TPM

With allegations of embellishment or outright lies about his work as a journalist falling out of the sky like acid rain, countless talking heads have called into question the character of iconic cable network news anchor Bill O’Reilly.
I don’t need to take their word for it: I am the author of The Man Who Would Not Shut Up: The Rise of Bill O’Reilly.

While it was an “unauthorized biography,” he did give me 29 interviews. As a Long Island boy, the dean of Fox News screaming had grown up reading my columns in Newsday, so he seemed thrilled to have the personal attention of his local TV critic for the 30-minute-a-week sessions over a two-year period, undisturbed by the cyclone fence and storm windows ads, the other staples of Newsday’s contribution to western civilization.
Among the laurels he handed out to himself in singing the praises of his 25-year apprenticeship as a TV newsman—rising from local TV beat reporter in the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton market in 1970 to the top Fox News in 1996—is that nobody could tell him what to say or write.
Generally speaking, the word was O’Reilly liked the book, especially the parts where I praised him. The one part he didn’t like was the part about his phone sex problem.
In the book, I recounted certain allegations of sexual harassment (offensive phone calls to a female coworker in 2004), and he was understandably embarrassed by her lawsuit. It was the kind of story he would have covered on his show with glee if he weren’t a principal part of the story. The news went viral on the Internet that day.
It turned out O’Reilly was hypersensitive about the subject. In his opinion, sex problems did not have a place in exhaustively researched biographies. I disagreed. Omitting it would be like not mentioning Monica in a definitive biography of Bill Clinton or omitting Watergate from a book about Nixon.
To his credit, O’Reilly had second thoughts. “Look, Marv,” he told me in a phone call back when he was still talking to me, “I realize as a journalist you have to deal with the subject.” He even gave me advice on how it should be handled. “Three sentences,” he said, orally writing them for me. “Sentence one: O’Reilly had a problem. Sentence two: O’Reilly dealt with the problem. Sentence three: It’s history.”
The irony: It didn’t seem to matter to O’Reilly that my account based on solid reporting was not only fair and balanced, but also concluded he was being blackmailed. All that cut no ice with him, from all reports.
He was so eager to flush the incident down the memory hole that he paid the plaintiff off. Keith Olbermann reported that O’ Reilly paid ten million dollars to make it disappear. “And he didn’t even get a kiss,” Olbermann said on MSNBC’s “Countdown,” which covered O’Reilly like the morning dew in those days.
Another thing I never shared with my readers: the aftermath of my relationship with the modern-day Wizard of Ooze. Not only did O’Reilly turn on me, but he put the Big Freeze on the book despite its critical success. He had been in the habit of dropping into our interviews that a mention on “The Factor” would guarantee instant bestseller-dom.
In the event, a newly-aggrieved O’Reilly vowed not a word would be said about the book, despite the chance to let his viewers know all about the 25 years before he became such an unimpeachable source of information and enlightenment.
He kept his word. I will give him credit for that.
As if that wasn’t enough of a helping hand to his old admired local TV critic, not only was the book officially killed elsewhere in the Murdoch world, as Liz Smith told me about why she couldn’t mention the book in her column, but he spread the word to his friends on right-wing talk radio that Kitman was persona non grata on the guest list.
Up until this moment, integrity is what O’Reilly is purportedly all about—at least according to him. “If you couldn’t play by those rules as a newsman,” he argued, “then you should be doing Entertainment Tonight.” How could he live with himself?
As one of his bosses at Fox News later told me, “Bill has two sets of principles. One for himself, one for others.” I had committed the cardinal sin of practicing what O’Reilly preached.
Marvin Kitman was the TV/ media critic at Newsday from 1969 to 2005. He is the author of nine books about American icons, including O’Reilly and George Washington. (“The Making of the Prefident 1789” and “George Washington’s Expense Account”). He writes a non-blog at marvinkitman.com.

Rouhani calls talks with powers a source of ‘national honor’

TEHRAN – President Hassan Rouhani has described Iran’s nuclear negotiations with world powers a source of “national honor” and likened the Iranian nuclear negotiators to soldiers who defended Iran when Iraqi forces invaded the country during the Saddam regime in the 1980s.

 

“Our negotiations with world powers are a national honor. Yesterday, our brave commanders stood against the enemy in the battlefield and defended the country; and today, the commanders of diplomacy defend the country’s interests at the negotiations table, which is also a form of jihad,” Rouhani told a ceremony held to commemorate Martyrs’ Day in Tehran on Monday.

 

The president said the victory of the Islamic Revolution also resulted from “altruism”.

 

Iran and the U.S. are scheduled to resume nuclear talks in Lausanne, Switzerland, March 15.

 

Iran and the 5+1 group (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany) have set a July 1 deadline to reach a final agreement.

Zarif to U.S. senators: You are ignorant of international law

TEHRAN – The Iranian foreign minister on Monday reacted to an open letter to Iran’s leaders by 47 U.S. Republican senators who had warned Tehran that any nuclear deal that the Islamic Republic signs with President Barack Obama’s administration won’t last after Obama leaves office.

 

Mohammad Javad Zarif said the letter lacks “legal validity” and shows that the signatories of the letter are “ignorant of international law”

 

“In our view this letter has no legal validity and is just a propaganda scheme,” Zarif noted.

 

Zarif said it is surprising that while nuclear talks have not reached a result yet pressure groups in the U.S. have become so “worried” that they have resorted to any “unconventional way” to kill it

 

The letter proved that “like” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu these senators “are opposed to any deal”.

 

Expressing surprise on how it is possible that the legislators of a country write a letter against their own president and government to the leaders of another country, Zarif said, “The letter by the senators show that not only they are alien to international law but even not familiar with the details of the their own constitution about the authority of the president” in implementing foreign agreements.

 

Organized by freshman Senator Tom Cotton and signed by the chamber’s entire party leadership as well as potential 2016 presidential contenders Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, the letter is meant not just to discourage Iran from signing a deal but also to pressure the White House into giving Congress some authority over the process.

 

“It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system … Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement,” the senators wrote. “The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.”

 

Arms-control advocates and supporters of the negotiations argue that the next president and the next Congress will have a hard time changing or canceling any Iran deal -- -- which is reportedly near done -- especially if it is working reasonably well.

 

Zarif, who is a professor of international law, also said, “These senators must know that the U.S. is not equal to the entire world and that international relations is formulated based on international law and international commitments of governments and not based on the United States’ domestic laws.”

 

The chief Iranian diplomat added that the senators who have signed the letter may not be fully aware that according to international law governments must “live up to commitments” with other countries and cannot renege on their commitments according to their domestic regulations.

 

According to CNN, Democrats, including the White House, also slammed the letter, calling it a purposeful attempt to undermine the delicate negotiations as they reach their first, pivotal deadline later this month.

 

Republican Sens. Jeff Flake, Lisa Murkowski, Lamar Alexander, Dan Coats, Thad Cochran, Susan Collins and Bob Corker didn't sign the letter. 

 

Thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews protest in NYC over Netanyahu's speech

More than 3,000 followers of the Satmar Rebbe demonstrate outside Israeli Consulate in Manhattan over Israeli prime minister's claims that he serves as emissary of the Jewish people. 

Some 3,000 followers of the Satmar Rebbe in Williamsburg took it to the streets of Manhattan Tuesday evening to protest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over his speech to Congress and his claim that he’s an emissary on behalf of world Jewry to warn of a nuclear Iran.
The protest, held outside the Israeli Consulate on 2nd avenue and 42nd street in Midtown Manhattan, was organized by the Central Rabbinical Congress of the USA and Canada and attended by the Satmar Rebbe, Rabbi Zalman Teitelbaum.
Signs at the protest included statements such as “Bibi – don’t drag American Jewry into your provocative politics”, “”Bibi Netanyahu does not speak for us”, and “we are ably represented, we don’t need a Bibi-sitter.”
“When Netanyahu professes to speak on our behalf, we have to speak out and say this is not the case,” Rabbi David Neiderman told the thousands assembled. “Benjamin Netanyahu, stop speaking on our behalf and directing us what to do.”
“We in America and Jews all over the world are loyal citizens in the respective countries we reside in, and no other foreign government can claim to represent us or speak on our behalf,” he proclaimed.
Rabbi Neiderman went on to thank President Obama – whose name mentioning drew thunderous cheers – together with the Republican congressional leadership. “We are well represented and don’t need Netanyahu and his government’s representation,” he stated.
The speakers preceding Rabbi Neiderman were harsher in their attacks against the Israeli leader. They called him “Haman” and Amalek” and accused him of igniting antisemitism by his ‘reckless’ actions. One Rabbi went a step further to claim that he’s sacrificing the well-being of world Jewry for his political survival. The Satmar Shita against Zionism and the formation of a state in the land of Israel was only mentioned as a secondary reason to protest.
Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro, a spokesperson for ‘Natruna’ and the “True Torah Jews” website, told JP that the protest was only aimed to contradict what Netanyahu said that he’s speaking in the name of all Jewish people. “Besides this being a lie, it’s a very dangerous thing for him to say,” Rabbi Shapiro asserted. “He wants to get into some brouhaha with the president, he’s a foreign minister, he can do whatever he wants. But why bring in the Jewish people into this? So, we are here contradicting what he said about us, and if somebody has a problem with what Netanyahu said he shouldn’t blame the Jewish people.”
“We are here to disassociate ourselves from the dangerous statements he’s making – statement that puts Jews in danger,” he added.
Rabbi Shapiro also lambasted those who compare Satmar – who is against Zionism – to Neturei Karta, who associate themselves with Iran and the Palestinians. “We don’t believe that Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people. And when a leader of a foreign country comes to America to trash the president and says he’s our representative, the question is not why us but where is everybody else?” he explained.