[Editor's Note: Posted on Leo's behalf by mole333...this welcoming address came shortly before Leo Igwe was attacked by the same religious fanatics who are abusing children in the name of religion]

BEING A WELCOME ADDRESS BY LEO IGWE TO THE PUBLIC SYMPOSIUM ORGANIZED BY THE NIGERIAN HUMANIST MOVEMENT AND STEPPING STONES NIGERIA ON JULY 29 2009 AT THE CONFERENCE HALL OF THE CULTURAL CENTRE COMPLEX IN CALABAR

Your Excellency,the Executive Governor of Cross River State, Senator Liyel Imoke,

Your Excellency,

The Wife of the Governor Mrs. Obioma Liyel Imoke, Representatives of Commissioners. Representatives of other governmental and non-governmental organizations. Members of the Press.

Fellow Humanists.

Ladies and Gentlemen.

Good Morning, it is my pleasure to welcome you all to this important symposium on witchcraft and child rights taking place here at the Cultural Centre Complex, in Calabar.
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Awhile back I highlighted the attack on Culture Kitchen blogger Leo Igwe by a mob of Christian fanatics who didn't like his trying to stop their child abuse against so-called "witch children." More on the background to this below. But first let me post an eye witness account of the attack that Leo Igwe sent me a few days ago. It comes from National Network Online in Nigeria:

Wednesday, July 29, 2009, was the last Wednesday of that momentous month called JULY. That Wednesday was the climax in the dreadful drama that swept some states of the northern part of Nigeria like a fatal thunderstorm. It was that Wednesday that the Nigerian security operatives deployed their uttermost violence against the Mohammed Yusuf led Boko Haram, the Islamic group operating in the north. The Nigeria Police exhibited its bestiality and executed the 39-year-old Yusuf, leader of the Islamic sect. Alhaji Buji Fai, a politician and an ex-commissioner for Religious Affairs in Borno State who the police claimed, is a backer of Boko Haram was also, summarily executed. That Wednesday wasn't too good. The Wednesday was in the week of that maximum madness.
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This is amazing. The UK has declared quite a number of US extremists, including Eric Gliebe of the Skinheads, the Phelps from hate-filled Westboro Baptist Church and Michael Savage threats to their national security and for that matter not fit to enter the country. And not only have they've banned them but have equated them with Middle Eastern extremists as well.

Home Office name hate promoters excluded from the UK :: Home Office:

It follows the Home Secretary’s introduction of new measures against such individuals last year, including creating a presumption in favour of exclusion in respect of all those who have engaged in spreading hate.

Eric Gliebe
Has made web-radio broadcasts in which he vilifies certain ethnic groups and encourages the download and distribution of provocative racist leaflets and posters. Considered to be engaging in unacceptable behaviour by justifying terrorist violence, provoking others to commit serious crime and fostering racial hatred.

Stephen Donald Black
Set up Stormfront, a racist website. Considered to be engaging in unacceptable behaviour by promoting serious criminal activity and fostering hatred, which might lead to inter-community violence in the United Kingdom.

Mike Guzovsky
Leader of a violent group and actively involved with military training camps. Considered to be engaging in unacceptable behaviour by seeking to foment, justify or glorify terrorist violence in furtherance of particular beliefs and to provoke others to terrorist acts.

Fred Waldron Phelps Snr and Shirley Phelps-Roper
Pastor and leading spokesperson of Westboro Baptist Church. Considered to be engaging in unacceptable behaviour by fostering hatred which might lead to inter-community violence in the United Kingdom.

Michael Alan Weiner (also known as Michael Savage)
Controversial daily radio host. Considered to be engaging in unacceptable behaviour by seeking to provoke others to serious criminal acts and fostering hatred which might lead to inter-community violence.

Now compare this to the fact that the United States banned the most important novelist of Latin America from entering the country due to his work in Cuba and relationship with Fidel Castro.

Nevermind that Gabriel Garcia Marquez has written novels and articles against domestic terrorists everywhere, the most famous being Notas de un secuestro. The fact that the Nobel Laureate and author of One Hundred Years of Solitude was considered a threat to our national security while Lou Dobbs, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin and Michael Savage have carte blanche to broadcast their hatred and desires of violence against women, people of color, gays and immigrants tells you how bigotry has become a markatable product in this country and a tool of political power.
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They (as in their blogger Kyle) knocked it out of the park with The Religious Right's New Demand: Stop Calling Us the Religious Right :

If the phrase "Religious Right" has negative connotations, it probably stems primarily from the fact that the people who have traditionally represented the Religious Right have caused it to, you know, have negative connotations.

When people like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson go on television and blame the 9/11 attacks on "pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, [and] all of them who have tried to secularize America," that is the sort of thing that tends to create negative impressions about the Religious Right.

And even if they were called "socially conservative evangelicals," this type of rhetoric would still create negative impressions about the term "socially conservative evangelicals" ... and then "socially conservative evangelicals" would be telling everyone to stop calling them "socially conservative evangelicals."

You see, it is not the term that it is problem - it is the Religious Right's agenda and rhetoric.
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The relationship between Muslim Fundamentalists and Mickey Mouse gets stranger and stranger. From Guysen International News:

A sheik from Saudi Arabia, a former diplomat posted in Washington, has put out a fatwa on Mickey Mouse, calling him the new enemy of Islam. "Mickey Mouse is a soldier of Satan, and everything he touches becomes impure," said Sheik Muhammad al-Munajid. (Guysen.International.News)

"According to sharia law, the mouse is a repugnant and corrupting animal," he said during a show broadcast by Al-Majd television.

Interestingly, there is some similarity between the views of Muslim Fundmentalists and Baptist Fundmentalists regarding Disney. Baptists were raging against Disney's corrupting influence (I kid you not) some 11 years before this Saudi sheik jumped on the bandwagon. From Religious Tolerance.org:
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This comes from the National Jewish Democratic Council:

"Kissing the Jewish vote goodbye," that was the headline in The Guardian this week about the McCain campaign that noted, "candidates like Palin are the Jews' worst nightmare."

The Politico noted in an article entitled, "Jewish voters may be wary of Palin," that, "John McCain may have helped Obama with his Jewish problem by choosing Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate."

In McCain’s first critical presidential decision, his judgment appears to be lacking with the selection of his Vice Presidential running mate. In Governor Sarah Palin, McCain selected a running mate with zero foreign policy experience and a brewing scandal which is being investigated by the Alaska state legislature.

The Palin selection seems bizarre, as the McCain campaign has spent the better part of the past year loudly exclaiming that it was reaching out to Jewish voters and made much to do about considering two Jewish legislators – Senator Joe Lieberman and Representative Eric Cantor – as vice presidential possibilities.
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