TV News LIES

The crudely made anti-Muslim video that has sparked violent outrage in Egypt and Libya this week was posted prominently Monday on the Web site of a Coptic Christian group headed by a Morris Sadek, an Egyptian American activist and lawyer who lives in Northern Virginia.

The site features a grainy photo of two actors in white turbans, the title “English Muhammad Movie Trailer” and a link to the video on YouTube. Next comes an ad for “International Judge Muhammad Day” on Sept. 11, questioning whether the prophet Muhammad was a “pedophile” and a “deceiver,” and a photograph of Sadek shaking hands with rightist Florida pastor Terry Jones.

An anti-terrorism law was struck down Wednesday by a federal judge who said she saw legitimate fears in claims by journalists, scholars and political activists that they could face indefinite detention for exercising First Amendment rights.

U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan ruled that the law, passed as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2012, was unconstitutional. She said the government has softened its position toward those who filed suit challenging the law, but she said the “shifting view” could not erase the threat of indefinite military detention. She urged Congress to make the law more specific or consider whether it is needed at all.

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Before I got started I wanted to define just one word: Fascism. I spent hours wandering in the vastness of the Google and by the time I called it quits I had thousands of words mined from scholars, historians, and politicians. I then boiled them all down to these 109 words:

Benito Mussolini said, “Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power.”

Leon Trotsky, “The historic function of fascism is to smash the working class, destroy its organizations, and stifle political liberties when the capitalists find themselves unable to govern and dominate with the help of democratic machinery.”

The count of breathtakingly insane religions, cults, and allied wackos on the scene on any given day is limited only by your ability to use higher numbers.  Members always profess goodness and light, then commit dark and damaging acts.  The claims are high-minded, the deeds are low down.

Religion is an ancient subject and it gets older all the time.  Very old.

Sample just one nutball, a so-called pastor, by name of Terry Jones -- yes, the same one who burned Korans last year, instigating days of intensive rioting in Afghanistan.  This year, he's out to best his record, and has succeeded:  He backed a film providing insults aplenty for Muslims, who say it defames Islam and its holiest figure, Mohammad.

Once again, rioting and death follow this pastor's so-called good works.

Japan is planning a move to shutter all nuclear plants by the 2030s, Japanese media reported Thursday, a major policy shift for a resource-poor nation that once depended on atomic power for a third of its energy.

The nuclear phaseout, reported by both the Kyodo News agency and broadcaster NHK based on a draft of the policy, comes amid fierce political debate about this country’s 50 operable reactors, which are both prone to disaster and vital to the economy.

A lie wrapped in an apology is still a lie. It is a big lie, a particularly offensive lie, coming as it does from the German company Chemie Grünenthal responsible for inflicting its notorious drug thalidomide on hundreds of thousands of women in 52 countries.

Some 90,000 babies are calculated to have died in spontaneous abortion, but at least 10,000 mothers are known to have given birth to malformed babies between 1958 and 1961; the most damaged survive today as limbless trunks, others whose legs and arms were reduced to digital “flipper” extrusions from the shoulder, and thousands have severe internal injuries as well.

There’s one news outlet that has been very unsympathetic to the striking teachers and staff in Chicago, to say the least. Fox News has been blasting the Chicago Teachers Union since the strike began; host Greta Van Sustern proudly proclaimed that “CHILDREN LOSE!” on her blog as teachers began their actions.

But in its spree of teacher-bashing, there’s one very serious conflict of interest that Fox News has failed to disclose.

In a run-down theater on a seedy stretch of Hollywood Boulevard this summer, an independent movie made its debut. The acting was amateurish, the dialogue clunky and the costumes no better than those sold for Halloween. Even with a pretty young woman beckoning pedestrians inside, fewer than 10 people attended.

But three months later, the movie — "Innocence of Muslims" — would be blamed the world over for inciting mobs in Egypt and Libya. The movie was filmed and first released in Southern California, but much else about its origins remains a mystery.