Author: Michael O. Allen

'BOYS DON'T CRY'

Woman Arrested in Norway for Impersonating Teen

A 33-year-old Czech woman has been arrested for attending a Norwegian school, and then claiming abuse, as a 13-year-old boy. But the strange story in Norway is just the beginning of an even stranger story of child abuse in the Czech Republic.

The bizarre case of a Czech woman posing as a 13-year-old boy in Norway could shed light on a separate — and notorious — child-abuse case in the Czech Republic involving a religious cult and a mother who tortured her sons.Barbora Skrlova, a 33-year-old woman on the run from Czech investigators, was arrested this week in Norway for pretending to be “Adam,” a 13-year-old boy. Czech authorities sought her for questioning in another case, not as a suspect — and it still isn’t clear whether she’s an accomplice or a victim.

Last fall she enrolled in an Oslo school as the bald, effeminate son of a Czech theater manager and dramaturg named Martin Fahrner — who had also moved to Norway, though he had a wife and a real son in the Czech Republic named Adam. Skrlova attended classes for several months before fleeing to a Norwegian children’s home, where “Adam” claimed to be the victim of child abuse. Then, on December 16, “Adam” disappeared from the home.

Norwegian officials searched for the boy and arrested Skrlova on January 5. DNA tests determined that “Adam” was in fact Skrlova, who had left the Czech Republic in the spring of 2007 to avoid questioning by investigators there in a nationally publicized case of child abuse. But it isn’t clear whether she left on her own or under the influence of a religious sect linked to her father.

Curiouser and Curiouser

The child-abuse case is even stranger than Skrlova’s flight to Norway. It turns out that “Adam” was not the first teenager Skrlova had pretended to be.

In the town of Kurim, in the Czech Republic, Skrlova was posing as the 12-year-old stepdaughter of a woman called Klara Mauerova, who is now in custody for child abuse. The Prague Daily Monitor reported that after a neighbor found one of Mauerova’s sons, eight-year-old Ondrej, bound and naked in a closet of Mauerova’s house, Mauerova herself was arrested on charges of abusing Ondrej, his brother, and a girl named “Anicka.” Anicka was a supposed stepdaughter who had been in Mauerova’s custody since March — and turned out to be Sklorva.

Czech papers reported that Sklorva could face charges for passing herself off as an underage girl, but the police mainly want her as a witness. After Mauerova was arrested, Sklrova was taken to a children’s home as “Anicka” and disappeared. She went to Denmark, then wound up in Norway.Czech media also report that a splinter sect of the so-called Grail Movement, a cult founded in Germany in the 1940s, could be behind the Mauerova case — and that the splinter sect is headed by Skrlova’s father, Josef Skrla.

Officials still aren’t sure whether Skrlova is a victim or an accomplice, but the suspicion for now is that members of the sect had coerced her into living as “Adam” in Norway — and that she fled the school hoping to be exposed.

“Not even we have been able to figure out what is up and down in this case,” said Norwegian police attorney Sven T. Roer, according to the Associated Press.

Martin Fahrner was first arrested in Norway on child-abuse charges but was subsequently released. Now he and Skrlova both face charges in Norway of providing false testimony.

msm/reuters/ap

Jim Webb wrote

of Class Struggle in the Wall Street Journal opinion editorial page. Some people think Sen. Barack Obama does not understand poor working people. I am not one of them. Obama came into politics because it has been his life’s work helping working people.

I understand Webb has other assets (and liabilities), but if he’s who it’ll takes to help Sen. Obama reconnect with this important demographic group, then I support him as our vice presidential nominee.

Here’s his article:

ELECTION 2006

Class Struggle: American workers have a chance to be heard by JIM WEBB, Wednesday, November 15, 2006

The most important–and unfortunately the least debated–issue in politics today is our society’s steady drift toward a class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the 19th century. America’s top tier has grown infinitely richer and more removed over the past 25 years. It is not unfair to say that they are literally living in a different country. Few among them send their children to public schools; fewer still send their loved ones to fight our wars. They own most of our stocks, making the stock market an unreliable indicator of the economic health of working people. The top 1% now takes in an astounding 16% of national income, up from 8% in 1980. The tax codes protect them, just as they protect corporate America, through a vast system of loopholes.

Incestuous corporate boards regularly approve compensation packages for chief executives and others that are out of logic’s range. As this newspaper has reported, the average CEO of a sizeable corporation makes more than $10 million a year, while the minimum wage for workers amounts to about $10,000 a year, and has not been raised in nearly a decade. When I graduated from college in the 1960s, the average CEO made 20 times what the average worker made. Today, that CEO makes 400 times as much.

In the age of globalization and outsourcing, and with a vast underground labor pool from illegal immigration, the average American worker is seeing a different life and a troubling future. Trickle-down economics didn’t happen. Despite the vaunted all-time highs of the stock market, wages and salaries are at all-time lows as a percentage of the national wealth. At the same time, medical costs have risen 73% in the last six years alone. Half of that increase comes from wage-earners’ pockets rather than from insurance, and 47 million Americans have no medical insurance at all.

Manufacturing jobs are disappearing. Many earned pension programs have collapsed in the wake of corporate “reorganization.” And workers’ ability to negotiate their futures has been eviscerated by the twin threats of modern corporate America: If they complain too loudly, their jobs might either be outsourced overseas or given to illegal immigrants.

Continue reading “Jim Webb wrote” →

Obama's VP choice

My own candidate for Democratic Party vice-presidential nominee would be Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, D-KS. She is a wildly popular, twice-elected governor of a reliably Republican state, Kansas. She has a reputation as a consensus builder who works across the party lines to get the job done for voters. I had also thought that she may help Sen. Barack Obama assuage hurt feelings over defeating the strongest female candidate to ever run for president.

She was an early endorser of Obama who campaigned for him in several states. She is term-limited and cannot run for a third term.

Gerald Pomper, of the Board of Governors Professor of Political Science (Emeritus) at Rutgers University, thinks he has a better candidate. Writing for Larry Sabato’s Crystall Ball ’08, Pomper advanced U.S. Sen. Jim Webb, D-Virginia, and argues persuasively that he would make a better choice on the ticket.

Webb is a former Republican who served as secretary of the Navy under Reagan, a decorated Vietnam veteran, and he is very vocal about his opposition to the current Iraq war, although he has a son serving there. Webb, in fact, matches McCain in war heroism and his younger and has better sense than McCain seems to have.

Webb also would bring specific political advantages to the Democratic ticket. His rural roots, vigorous language and championing of working class values would compensate for Obama’s evident weaknesses among these voters. Webb provides a populist platform on corporate regulation, trade, taxation and health care that would further extend the party’s appeal to its lower-income base. Born in Missouri, educated in Nebraska, California and the Naval Academy in Maryland, he encapsulates a national electoral appeal. Finally, to the limited extent that state residence matters, he would help to switch Virginia into the Democratic column for the first election since 1964.

Webb’s disadvantages include that he was a novelist who wrote some indecorous things about women. He can be blunt to the point of arrogance and once confronted George W. Bush in the White House about the war. Also, although he ran a highly contested U.S. senate race not too long ago, he might still need vetting.

Noonan: 'Damsel of Distress'

I am sorry to say this but I hate Peggy Noonan. She helped propagate evil policies under the elder Bush. She continues to play a corrosive role in American public life with her column on the Opinion-Editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. But, in today’s paper, she rightly excoriates Hillary Rodham Clinton for her absurd argument that Sen. Barack Obama could not get white votes in the general election against Sen. John McCain.

The Democratic Party can’t celebrate the triumph of Barack Obama because the Democratic Party is busy having a breakdown. You could call it a breakdown over the issues of race and gender, but its real source is simply Hillary Clinton. Whose entire campaign at this point is about exploiting race and gender.

* * *

In case you didn’t get what was behind that exchange, Mrs. Clinton spent this week making it clear. In a jaw-dropping interview in USA Today on Thursday, she said, “I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on.” As evidence she cited an Associated Press report that, she said, “found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

White Americans? Hard-working white Americans? “Even Richard Nixon didn’t say white,” an Obama supporter said, “even with the Southern strategy.”

If John McCain said, “I got the white vote, baby!” his candidacy would be over. And rising in highest indignation against him would be the old Democratic Party.

Or, as Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post said in a post title The Card Clinton Is Playing:

Continue reading “Noonan: 'Damsel of Distress'” →

Their true colors

(Mark Lennihan/Associated Press) The New York Post’s Wednesday morning headline.

I do not want to waste any more breath on that beautiful dream (before the winks and nods to racist tactics, the say-anything-do-anything strategy to win) that was the Hillary Rodham Clinton campaign for the Democratic Party nomination for president of the United States.

By all rational measures, she is now finished, “toast,” in the inimitable word of the New York Post. Just try telling that to her, or that hidebound husband of hers, Bill Clinton.

“I’m staying in this race until there is a nominee,” HRC proclaimed on Wednesday.

Some wonder why she does not put the good of the party before her own ambition. Why would she want to damage the almost certain nominee, Sen. Barack Obama, and swing the race to Sen. John McCain by persisting? Some see keeping Obama from the presidency is keeping the way clear so she could run again in 2012.
Continue reading “Their true colors” →

Victory in the Carolinas


Transcript
Senator Obama’s Remarks in N.C., May 6, 2008

The following is the transcript of Barack Obama’s speech in North Carolina, as provided by CQ Transcriptions, Inc.

You know, there are those who were saying that North Carolina would be a game-changer in this election. But today what North Carolina decided is that the only game that needs changing is the one in Washington, D.C.

(APPLAUSE)

I want to start by congratulating Senator Clinton on what appears to be her victory in the great state of Indiana. I want to thank all the people — I want to thank all the wonderful people of Indiana who worked so hard on our behalf.

(APPLAUSE)

The people in Indiana could not be finer. They worked tirelessly, and I will always be grateful to them.

I want to thank, of course, the people of North Carolina.

(APPLAUSE)

I want to thank them for giving us a victory in a big state…

(APPLAUSE)

… in a swing state, in a state where we will compete to win if I am the Democratic nominee for president of the United States.

(APPLAUSE)

You know, when this campaign began, Washington didn’t give us too much of a chance. But because you came out in the bitter cold, and knocked on doors, and enlisted your friends and neighbors in this cause, because you stood up to the cynics and the doubters and the naysayers, when we were up and when we were down, because you still believe that this is our moment and our time to change America, tonight we stand less than 200 delegates away from securing the Democratic nomination for president of the United States.

(APPLAUSE)

More importantly, because of you, we’ve seen that it’s possible to overcome the politics of division and the politics of distraction, that it’s possible to overcome the same, old negative attacks that are always about scoring points and never about solving our problems.

Continue reading “Victory in the Carolinas” →

Toast*

Not too long ago, my opponent made a prediction. He said I would probably win Pennsylvania, he would win North Carolina, and Indiana would be the tiebreaker.

Well, tonight we’ve come from behind, we’ve broken the tie, and, thanks to you, it’s full speed onto the White House.

–Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, after getting shellacked in North Carolina but winning the Indiana primary in a squeaker.

I think most people know to verify every word that comes out of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s mouth but, what is she smoking? Onto the White House? Not as the Democratic Party nominee, she doesn’t. Maybe she is planning a third party bid, which I won’t put past her.