TV News LIES

Lawyers for nearly 150 people who claim they were sexually abused by Roman Catholic priests in the San Diego Diocese released thousands of pages of previously sealed church documents on Sunday with details of complaints against the priests that include medical records and correspondence between priests and their superiors.

A judge ruled on Friday that roughly 10,000 pages of internal records could be made public after a years-long legal battle between those who claimed abuse and the diocese. The records are from the personnel files of 48 priests who were either credibly accused or convicted of sexual abuse or named in a civil suit.

Facebook, however, does what Chairman Mao, Joseph Stalin, or Adolf Hitler could not have dreamt of - it has a half billion people willingly doing a form of spy work on all their friends, family, neighbors, etc.—while enthusiastically revealing information on themselves.  The huge database on these half a billion members (and non-members who are written about) is too much power for any private entity—but what if it is part of, or is accessed by, the military-industrial-national security-police state complex?

Rabbi Ovadia  Yosef,  spiritual mentor of the religious  fundamentalist  party, Shas,  which represents Middle Eastern Jews, reportedly said during  a Sabbath homily earlier  this week that “the sole  purpose of non-Jews is to  serve Jews.”

“Non-Jews were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world-only to serve the People of Israel,” Yosef said in his weekly Saturday night sermon which was devoted to laws regarding actions non-Jews are permitted to perform on the Sabbath.

Yosef further  elucidated his  ideas about the servitude of gentiles to Jews, asking “why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will  plow, they will reap; and  we will sit like an effendi and eat.”

Crystal Cathedral, the megachurch birthplace of the televangelist show “Hour of Power,” filed for bankruptcy Monday in Southern California after struggling to emerge from debt that exceeds $43 million.

In addition to a $36 million mortgage, the Orange County-based church owes $7.5 million to several hundred vendors for services ranging from advertising to the use of live animals in Easter and Christmas services. The church had been negotiating a repayment plan with vendors, but several filed lawsuits seeking quicker payment, which prompted a coalition formed by creditors to fall apart.

An increasingly popular bumper sticker reads, "Guns Don't Kill People -- RELIGION Kills People!" In light of recent events I would add religion kills young people: gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender young people.

Perhaps not directly, though. And religion is certainly not the only source of anti-gay sentiment in the culture. But it's hard to deny that religious voices denouncing LGBT people contribute to the atmosphere in which violence against LGBT people and bullying of LGBT youth can flourish.

General Hugh Shelton, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during parts of the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, has a new memoir out that contains this significant-seeming story: Back in the late 1990s, Shelton says a member of Clinton's cabinet asked him to allow Saddam Hussein to shoot down an American plane over Iraq as a pretext for starting a war. The way Shelton tells the story, this was a serious request.

Remember, the context here is the Clinton Administration's years of trying to overthrow Saddam -- including in a little-remembered 1996 CIA coup attempt. In December 1998 (most likely after the request was made to Shelton), Clinton bombed Iraq for four days in Operation Desert Fox, which Clinton said was a response to Saddam's lack of cooperation with U.N. weapons inspectors.