'They tortured me for being a witch'

11 May 2005

An eight-year-old girl today told an Old Bailey jury how she was repeatedly tortured after she was accused of being a witch.

Clutching a doll, the child told the hushed courtroom how she was struck in the face by the woman she called her aunt.

The court has heard how the girl was forced into a laundry bag and threatened with drowning, and that she had chilli peppers rubbed into her eyes, was stabbed with a knife, punched and beaten.
"My head was swollen like a big stone," the girl told police on the video.

http://www.thisislondon.com/news/articles/18539216?source=Evening%20Standard

and apparently there's been an unexplained explosion of witch hunting in Angola. Particularly of little girls.

Frightening.

where there were many motives for ruining other families, for personal gain, behind the rampant accusations and resulting witch trials.

"The Crucible" was written to reflect Mcarthyism paranoia. Its exactly the same now, Brown skin funny name your nicked.

In Britain hundreds have been arrested on anti terrorism legislation. 12 have been tried, 4 have been convicted.

I fear, is just the beginning.

Look at the Frist/Cheney language now being used... refering to democrats as "those of the 'other religion'"... in place of the old "those on the other side of the aisle". They are trying to wage the wedge of all wedges - mix that with the whole Patriot act, the current culture on the right that calls all things not adoring of bush as supporting terrorists... and we have a potential ugly situation brewing.

is becoming, or is, a term of abuse.

This has never been the thinking in Britain it was just a political persuasion.

However during objections to the anti terrorism bill i heard it being bandied around parliament like a term of abuse, as if anyone who opposed these bills must have something wrong with them or must be somehow unconcerned with the safety of Britain, even subversive.

Its worrying. I think there is an authoritarian demand for acquiesence from the public at the moment. If it isn't recieved you are viewed suspiciously, and as unpatriotic

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that says all things not adoring of Bush is somehow supporting terrorists"

Bigger picture now. Not talking about girl. "Witchhunts in general" like the Mcarthyy witch hunts of communists. Get it?

Sometimes, those things go hand-in-hand. Superstitious people look for supernatural explainations for an epidemic, especially one like this, where there's no obvious cause and it's a particularly deadly strain.

:crazy:

http://images.GlobalFreePress.com

peace

"I got better ..."

Just discharging mass fears onto the feminine again. Girls are a safe scapegoat for a patriarchal culture's fears. Hatred and devaluation of femaleness expressed within traditions, education, business, social norms of family behavior, etc. become internalized in individuals' belief system. Those deep seated beliefs will find expression in individual behaviors when those individuals have polarized good and bad, identifiying evil, weakness, etc. with the feminine.

This is why women's rights are so important.

who are blamed. They are powerless to fight back. In every country, including the USA, there is an undercurrent of hatred and fear of women.

The rightwing has always included feminists as being among the most hated and reviled of enemies, and this will only get worse and worse as these corrupt, hateful, vile creatures gather more and more power to themselves.

I am growing more and more fearful of the direction this country is going. Never, ever, would I have believed, as a young mother in the sixties, that we would go backward so far and so fast. This is not my country anymore, not the one I grew up in, anyway.

What do you call it when the country you were born in is guilty of treason toward it's citizens?

I couldn't agree more. We're locked in a struggle between good and evil.
When I was a kid I learned that evil will almost always cloak itself in religion and nationalism. History is replete with examples. The Republican right is going down the very same path - characterless sociopaths are on a rampage while hiding behind religion and the flag. We've got to stop them.

in invisible sky people that can control them by
sending them to heaven or hell.