Tuning In Becomes a Turn Off

Well, it is official. Andy Dehnart had his own protest against Turn the T.V. off week by logging on and blogging about what he watched.

Well from his protest, Andy learned a few things about, well, protesting. It's work and there is a little irony in his statements that we all can relate to:

"...I think that I need to be slightly more critical of my viewing habits at certain moments. The external pressure of having to blog everything I watched forced me to stay away from the TV at certain moments, and clearly those were moments of boredom and laziness -- such extreme laziness that I didn't even want to watch TV because it would create work for me, which would defeat the purpose. I think the real problem with TV for me is that it's just there, ready to be turned on any time, whether or not I'm really interested in whatever is on. It was a good experience being aware of that whenever I reached for the remote, as it was for me to consider the value of what I was watching."

One could say reality became a little blurred for him.

Southern Exposures

It seems the Japanese government is having temporary personnel problems.

Police on Tuesday arrested a 44-year-old career official of the Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ministry on loan to the municipal office of Kiryu in Gunma Prefecture. It seems, Minoru Kikuchi exposed his genitals to a 27-year-old conductor.

When police questioned him about the incident, Kiuchi stated, "I just wanted to fix my appearance."

Hmmm.

Did he mean what he said?

Great. William F. Buckley in his latest opinion, likens Constitutional doctrine to a wish list of Catholicism. Hasn't he heard, there is a separation of Church and State. Buckley thinks otherwise when he states:

"...A commitment to First Amendment rights requires the protection of religious freedom, and the Catholic Church, while not condemning the man or woman who has homosexual inclinations, does condemn the practice of homosexual sex. This inevitably gives rise to a level of prejudice that the Catholics have to come to terms with. If all Catholic homosexuals are expected to be celibate, then the Church is in effect imposing on the entire Catholic homosexual community standards of behavior reasonably demanded only of priests who take voluntary vows."

First, people want to know what the difference is between a practicing gay Catholic and a non-practicing gay Catholic. Hint. One practices their homsexuality and the other doesn't. This leads to the question; does the Catholic Church deny a gay person the ability of becoming a priest? The answer is no, if that gay person no longer engages in homosexual relationships.

The same applies to a heterosexual person. How many readers think the Church would tell a heterosexual male that it is ok to engage in sexual relationships with a women.

Buckley then closes with about the most assinine comment one can make.

"...The priest, by the rules of the Church, is a male, and has to be required to observe civil standards of appropriate behavior. There are not many instances of Catholic priests abusing girls, but a good many, as we have seen, of Catholic priests abusing boys. This is not to be translated into the suggestion that homosexuals have a greater propensity than heterosexuals to violate their vows to celibacy. It means merely that the Church has to take stronger measures to guard against rule-breaking. But such measures must not call for any prejudice against ordaining homosexuals."

What the hell, now the Catholic Church is to blame because priests by its own rules, are males and that most of the sexual abuses are commited by homsexual priests. Hysterically, Buckley states on one hand, the Church must take stronger measures against rule-breaking, but on the other hand, the Church must not call for ANY prejudice against homosexuals.

Since Buckley thinks that there must equal justice for all homosexuals, should members of NAMBLA have keys to the gates of the Vatican. Or has he forgotten, that the biggest perps involved are members of NAMBLA.

It seems Buckley may think Rev. Shanley was just an aberration in homosexual thinking.

Buckley has it wrong, Biblical Doctrine requires one to be prejudicial in sexual matters. And Constitutional Doctrine requires a separation of Church and State.

On Constitutional Doctrine, the ACLU has that one in the bag when it comes to protecting the First Amendment rights of NAMBLA. Maybe Buckley would like to also jump on that band-wagon. After all there is the equal protection clause.

Loud Mouths' Bigots-Blog-of-Fame

Loud Mouths will soon be launching its "Loud Mouths Bigots-Blog-of-Fame." All that is required is that you are bigoted.

It doesn't matter if you're a White Supremacist, Black Panther type, Zionist extremist, Muslim extremist, religious zealot, gay bashers, a gay who bashes. We aren't choooozy, because our blog-of-fame is not bigoted.

So for you bloggers out there who have an inclination to be bigoted, here is your chance.

Keep up the good work and we will be reading. (Sarcasm off)

Manufacturing News

Dan Kennedy talks about the Globe manufacturing dissidents in a photo op that was in relation to a story on the razing and expansion of a synagogue.

Kennedy describes how resident Kathy Bell was contacted by Globe reporter Jonathan Bloom.

It seems Bloom called her, conducted an interview, and inquired about a photo.

In response to Bloom's query on photos, Bell stated "...I said, ‘Sure, and could we get a bunch of people in both Brighton and Brookline who are concerned about this?."

This incident reminds me of a situation when I was taking photos of a group that was protesting in front of a adult theater in Rochester, Michigan. Not much fanfare was made, and the protesters were somewhat emotionless in their protest.

The photos I took conveyed their lack of passion. When the editor saw the photos and how the protesters looked, he asked, "couldn't you get them to look more enthusiastic."

Needless to say, the adult theater remained open.

Nervous Iraqis may back down over UN weapons inspections

Iraq is preparing to back down on its refusal to allow United Nations weapons inspectors to return to the country in the hope that this will avert a US attack.

Israel admits vandalism, looting by its soldiers

Israeli troops engaged in widespread and unnecessary destruction of Palestinian property during the military offensive in the West Bank, an Israeli army spokesman said yesterday, adding that nearly a dozen soldiers had been indicted for looting and vandalism.

Killer shark drags fisherman from mate's arms

A young scallop diver died yesterday after a white pointer shark apparently tried to drag him from a mate's arms as he was being pulled into a boat off the South Australian coast.

Sharon and Hussein: Sitting on an U.N. Olive Branch

While Sharon stalls on a U.N. Investigations in Jenin, Hussein stalls with U.N. Investigations on weapons of mass destruction.

The Phantom of the Opera

Michael Isikoff writes about the phantom link between Atta and an Iraqi agent that was to have occured in April of 2001. The basis of the article is the U.S. governments' statements that FBI records showed Atta to be in Virgina at that time, casing a U.S. naval facility. The FBI, however, did not have records on when he was actually casing the naval base.

This should raise red flags with readers.

In an article written by Alfonso Chardy for the Miami Herald On-Line, it was found that the INS was sloppy in maintaining its records when their records indicated that Atta had first entered the U.S. on January 10th, 2001; twice on the same day.

Federal investigators believed they had solved how hijacker Mohamed Atta could have arrived in Miami from abroad twice on the same January day.

The answer: imprecise record keeping by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The article stated further that Atta had come to the U.S. on January 10, 2001 from Madrid and there were no indications he left the U.S. until July, 7 2001. This lends credibility to the first article describing the phantom link.

Adding to the credibility, in an article in La Vanguardia published on February 1, 2002, Atta was seen in Madrid on July 8th, 2001 with Diana Cazadora. The Swiss government confirmed Mohamad Atta travelled on the morning of July 8th, 2001 from Miami (SR 117) arriving in Switzerland at the Zürich-Kloten airport. He spent several hours there and continued his journey in the afternoon of the same day on a flight to Madrid (SR 656).

In May 2001, Atta went to INS Miami headquarters.

However, in Prague, the Czech government confirmed that Atta made contact on April 8th, 2002 with an Iraqi diplomat who was expelled two weeks later for spying.

This is where the contradiction in stories begins.

Prior to the alleged April 8th, 2001 contact between Atta and the Iraqi agent, Czech government officials confirmed that Atta was in Prague the previous year. According to a source in the Czech government, Atta obtained a visa at the Czech consulate in Bonn and took a bus to the Czech Republic and then entered the U.S. on June 2nd, 2000.

This establishes a history of Atta developing contacts in Prague. Now moving foward to the contradictions between the Czech government and the FBI's statements.

According to various articles, Czech intelligence officers saw Atta and al-Ani embrace at Ruzyne Airport, then go to the headquarters of Radio Free Europe. This was said to have occurred in early April, just weeks before al-Ani's 4/22/2001 expulsion from Czechoslovakia.

There are also reports that Atta met repeatedly with another Iraqi intelligence agent, Habib Faris Abdullah al-Mamouri, in Rome, Hamburg, and Prague. The Rome meeting was said to be shortly before al-Mamouri's July, 2001, disappearance. This fact shows the incompetence of the INS to monitor Atta's movements and contradicts the statements that Atta had not left the U.S. between January 10, 2001 and July 7, 2001.

Atta also reportedly met with the Iraqi ambassador to Turkey and the former Iraqi deputy intelligence director, Farouk al-Hijazi, in Prague sometime in early April 2001.

These facts should lead readers to question why is the U.S. government denying the Atta/Iraqi connection. To many, this is no phantom link.

US Supreme Court Justice to Visit Israel

Justice Stephen Breyer of the US Supreme Court is coming to Israel this week to give the first Daniel Jacobson Annual Lecture at the Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Evidence of Jenin war crimes but no massacre — Amnesty expert

"...A military expert for the rights group Amnesty International said Sunday he had found no evidence of a massacre at the Jenin refugee camp but had seen signs of war crimes by the Israeli occupation army."

How the war crimes issue plays out will be dependent upon how the press covers the situation.

The Fugitive

It seems Kissinger is playing "cat and mouse" with the European Courts. Christopher Hitchens outlines a day and a life of what the ex-Secretary of State's life is like.

In most of the cases that deal with the courts, Kissinger is being summonsed as a witness to certain crimes. However, with the growing lawsuits being filed against Kissinger, he has been treading carefully across the world.

According to Hitchens, "..I was informed via the former Spanish ambassador to the United States that Kissinger had approached the embassy asking whether he would be safe if he visited Spain. These days he does not travel without legal advice."

Kissinger must now wonder, what has the world come to.

Shut Up Already

Andrew Sullivan starts in on about the THE MORALITY OF NON-CELIBACY:

"...I think of the choices, for good or ill, that I have made in my life. I was completely celibate until my early twenties. It was a struggle but my faith told me it was what I had to do. But what that meant was not that sex disappeared from my life. In fact, what happened was the opposite. Sex for me became more and more abstract in my head, more fetishized in a way, more elevated, more obsessive in ways that have taken years to try and undo. At the same time, I began to exhibit all the familiar personal tics of the sexually shut down. I had swings of depression, I became neurotic and fixated on maintaining order in my life and others', I was increasingly moody, cranky, awkward and at times miserable beyond words. I looked ahead into the decades that lay before me and was terrified by what might happen to my very soul."

He then adds in the end that:

"..Reading more and more of what has been going on in my own church for years, I'm beginning to believe that celibacy - especially how it has been enforced - is indeed a major source of the sheer sexual disorder that now cripples the insititution most of us still love. This issue must be addressed. The current sexual fixation must be changed. Or we will have treated the symptoms of this horror without even tackling the disease."

The only fixation on sex is his. And his abilities to control his homosexuality is where it got him today. He is one to talk about the evils of celibacy.

Haider wants to unite Europe's far-right, but without Le Pen

Got to love this one. The far right Euro-pols are running for cover. Why? Le Pen is coming.

Talk about the "kettle calling the pot black."

The Euro-rightwing parties are playing "hide and go seek" with each other while in the Middle East, Sharon and Yasser continue to do their PowWow with Powell.

Le Pen is mightier than the sword

In an AFP news story it seems that according to an on-line poll conducted by the Sunday Times, more than 50 percent of the respondents who took the survey felt that "the British political establishment needs the same kind of kick as Le Pen delivered in France".

The poll of 2,307 adults was carried out ahead of local elections in Britain on Thursday in which the far-right British National Party is expected to make gains.

Meanwhile, a total 66 percent of respondents said mainstream politicians do not do enough to address voter concerns about immigration and 67 percent said they would like to see tougher government policies adopted for asylum seekers.

It seems the European Union is taking a toll on the status quo in European politics.

Le Pen to get up to 26pc: poll

Extreme right-winger Jean-Marie Le Pen could get up to 26 percent of the vote in the second round of France's presidential elections, according to an opinion poll published Monday in the daily le Figaro.

Lebanese-Frenchman on Mossad spy charge

A Lebanese man who also carries French nationality has been arrested and faces prosecution on charges of collaborating with Israel's Mossad intelligence service, judicial sources said Friday.