Unbelievable Thai Mui Action ~ Tony Jaa

Tony Jaa is the actor starred in “Ong Bak”, The Protector. Fascinating real life fighting action!

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Kenya: issue of homosexuality among Coastal youths

Health minister Charity Ngilu  said she would table the issue of homosexuality among Coastal youths before the Cabinet

Ngilu termed the situation serious, adding that the matter must be handled at the Cabinet level.

Speaking in Mombasa during a leaders meeting, Ngilu said she was shocked by revelations that homosexuality among teenagers was rampant in Coastal towns.

“I did not know that homosexuality and sodomy were rampant among our youths in the Coast. This is a very sad thing. I will table the matter before the Cabinet so that we can find ways of ending this shameful menace,” she said.

“What does the future hold for our children if some of them indulge in homosexuality and sodomy?” she asked.

She said homosexuality was illegal in Kenya.

“We cannot allow sex between man and man. Men should have sexual relationships with women only,” she said.

She urged the provincial administration to crack down on tycoons who, she said, lured youths into homosexuality. Coast General Hospital chief administrator, Dr Khadija Shikelly, said schoolgirls engaged in anal sex to avoid getting pregnant.

“There is need for parents to educate their children on the dangers of this vice,” she said.

National Heritage minister, Suleiman Shakombo, said some girls engaged in the vice to preserve their virginity.

“This is due to some traditions that teach girls that they must be virgins when they get married,” he said.

Elsewhere, Reproductive Health organisation’s deputy director, Dr Josephine Kibaru, has decried the rise in cases of HIV/Aids among youths.

Kibaru said studies by the Health ministry had shown that children aged between 14 and 15 were sexually active. She made the remarks at the Coast Provincial Commissioner’s office during a meeting, which focused on adolescents.

Objections to the Papacy

The Pope’s position as Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church is dogmatic and therefore not open to debate or dispute within the Catholic Church; the First Vatican Council anathematized all who dispute the Pope’s primacy of honor and of jurisdiction (it is lawful to discuss the precise nature of that primacy, provided that such discussion does not violate the terms of the Council’s Dogmatic Constitution). However, the Pope’s authority is not undisputed outside the Catholic Church; these objections differ from denomination to denomination, but can roughly be outlined as (1) objections to the extent of the primacy of the Pope; and (2) objections to the institution of the Papacy itself.
Pope Pius XII, wearing the traditional 1877 Papal Tiara, is carried through St. Peter’s Basilica on a sedia gestatoria circa 1955
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Pope Pius XII, wearing the traditional 1877 Papal Tiara, is carried through St. Peter’s Basilica on a sedia gestatoria circa 1955

Some non-Roman-Catholic Christian communities, such as the Assyrian Church of the East, the Oriental Orthodox Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Old Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion, the Independent Catholic Churches, and even some Lutherans, accept the doctrine of Apostolic Succession, and therefore accept (to varying extents) the papal claims to a primacy of honour. However, these churches generally reject that the Pope is the successor to St. Peter in any unique sense not true of any other bishop, or raise questions about whether St. Peter was ever bishop of Rome at all. The primacy is therefore regarded primarily as a consequence of the Pope’s position as bishop of the original capital city of the Roman Empire, a definition explicitly spelled out in the 28th canon of the Council of Chalcedon. In any event, these churches see no foundation at all to papal claims of universal immediate jurisdiction, nor to claims of Papal Infallibility. Because none of them recognize the First Vatican Council as truly ecumenical, they regard its definitions concerning jurisdiction and Infallibility (and anathematization of those who do not accept them) as invalid. Several of these communities refer to such claims as “Ultramontanism”.

Other non-Catholic Christian denominations do not accept the doctrine of Apostolic Succession, or do not understand it in hierarchical terms, and therefore do not accept the claim that the Pope is heir either to Petrine primacy of honor or to Petrine primacy of jurisdiction, or they reject both claims of honor or jurisdiction, as well as claims of Papal Infallibility, as unscriptural. The Papacy’s complex relationship with the Roman and Byzantine Empires, and other secular states, and the Papacy’s territorial claims in Italy, are another focal point of these objections; as is the monarchical character of the office of Pope. In Western Christianity these objections — and the vehement rhetoric they have at times been cast in — both contributed to and are products of the Protestant Reformation. These denominations vary from simply not accepting the Pope’s authority as legitimate and valid, to believing that the Pope is the Antichrist or the False Prophet spoken in the Book of Revelation [citation needed]. These denominations tend to be more heterogeneous amongst themselves than the aforementioned hierarchical churches, and their views regarding the Papacy and its institutional legitimacy (or lack thereof) vary considerably.

Some objectors to the Papacy use empirical arguments, pointing to the corrupt characters of some of the holders of that office. For instance, some argue that claimed successors to St. Peter, like Callixtus III and Alexander VI from the Borgia family, were so corrupt as to be unfit to wield power to bind and loose on Earth or in Heaven. An omniscient and omnibenevolent God, some argue, would not have given those people the powers claimed for them by the Roman Catholic Church. Defenders of the papacy argue that the Bible shows God as willingly giving privileges even to corrupt men (citing examples like some of the kings of Israel, the apostle Judas Iscariot, and even St. Peter after he denied Jesus). They also argue that not even the worst of the corrupt Popes used the office to try to rip the doctrine of the Church from its apostolic roots, and that their failure to achieve that goal is evidence that the office is divinely protected.

Some objectors to the papacy habitually refer to the Catholic Church and its members by the pejorative term papist to point up what they believe to be an inappropriate focus of attention on the office and an improper attribution of certain divine favors ex officio.

Africa : sexual growth among KAMBA of Kenya

Lindblom (1920:p419)[1]: “The boys and girls play “father, mother and children” together. They build small huts of grass and imitate grown-ups, an imitation which is sometimes so carefully done that not even the sexual part of marriage is omitted. As is well known, such things cease to be a mystery to children of primitive people at a very early age”. Ndeti (1973:p109)[2] adds that the “period before puberty is characterized by very little sex education and sexual differentiation. Perhaps there is no need for this because sex roles are defined fairly early in life”. Girls are instructed at menarche by the mother or, in most cases, the grandmother. At this time, they may be ritually deflowered by a stick, while boys receive additional genital surgery beyond the circumcision they had at a younger age (Nida, 1962)[3]. Muthiani (1973:p55)[4] notes that “[s]ex education was the responsibility of the parents and, [in the case of girls,] the mothers. Girls had to be brought up to know not only what kind of people they should refrain from on the basis of sexual relations, but also when and where not to have sexual contact. With their little biological knowledge, they managed to train their girls to the best of their limited ability; thereby training them for avoidance (breaking of sexual mores). As a result, cases of incest and premarital births or even pregnancies were very, very rare”. The same could be true for boys. A girl was not desirable in marriage until she has conceived (Eloit, 1:p125)[5]. During the second of puberty rites (age 15 or so), boys perform symbolic sexual acts on girls with special sticks (Mbiti, [1990:p121]). Marriage does not take place after circumcision or menarche (Kyewalyanga, 1977:p42). Clitoridectomy is practiced at ages unassociated with puberty, sometimes at age 4 or 5 (Middleton and Kershaw, 1965:p80)[6]. A man is not punished if he fornicates with a girl past puberty, even if part of the bride price has been paid, provided no pregnancy results; if she is prepubertal, he pays a goat. If he commits “unnatural” behaviour with a boy, a rare thing among the Kamba, he pays a goat and a bull (Penwill, 1951:p73, 74, 76)[7].

Africa : Kenya Boran People Party 1

East Africa: Darwin’s Nightmare becomes tanzanian nightmare

The documentary, directed by Hubert Sauper, focuses on the area surrounding Lake Victoria in the African country of Tanzania. The lake has been over-run by the Nile Perch, a large fresh-water fish that was accidentally introduced 50 years ago. This has created a huge supply of fish for export to Europe, which has made a few businessmen quite wealthy and provided jobs for many of the people who live around the like. But the species has decimated the eco-system, including the smaller fish that used to provide much of the food for Tanzania’s population. And because Europeans can pay much more for the Nile Perch than ordinary Tanzanians, few of the people living around the lake and in the wider countryside can afford to eat what was once a staple of their lifestyle. Economists talk about globalization bringing down the price of commodities, but the opposite is often true in the Third World.

Sauper does a nice job of giving the feel of the lake towns, interviewing everyone from the owner of the fish factory to the pilots who fly the food back to Europe to the homeless boys who eke out an existence on the street. He spends much more time with the marginalized Africans than with the ecologists and economists who are often trotted out in these kinds of movies. This helps us understand how the problem has impacted the native townsfolk, though it makes it harder for us to understand the full scale of the problem. We see the particular rather than the general. But given how often economists and politicians talk about Africa and globalization in general terms, I welcome a movie that shows us how those abstractions are impacting specific people.

Darwin’s Nightmare is shot in ugly-looking digital video, but the format certainly makes it easier to get the range of interviews Sauper does. A pair of scenes that focus on a group of boys is both touching and harrowing, as is a long sequence that shows how resourceful Africans use the cast-offs from the fish factories. Sauper also spends a great deal of time shooting the apparently empty planes that fly into the local airport. At first, it seems as if he’s emphasizing that Europe doesn’t provide anything to Africa in return for the food. But he finally gets around to the presumption that illegal arms shipments are actually flying in. That’s an even more provocative argument–that Europe takes Africa’s food and offers only warfare in return–and the film would’ve been helped if that argument had been made earlier on. Still, this is a compelling examination on the impact of globalization and a heart-felt look at an area of the world we rarely see.

Privacy Board Knows Number of Americans Targetted by NSA

Privacy Board Knows Number of Americans Targetted by NSA but Won’t Share the 411

Lisa Graves, the Deputy Director of the Center for National Security Studies, had two simple questions for the White House Privacy and Civil Liberties Board: Did they know how many Americans had been eavesdropped on by the warrantless wiretapping program and if so, how many?

Alan Raul, the panel’s vice chairman, acknowledged in a roundabout way that the members had gotten such data, but said that the data were too sensitive to release. Graves then asked if the Board had pushed to have that data made public, as are the Justice Department is required to do with raw numbers of typical spy wiretaps.

Raul declined to say if the board had suggested that.

“It is important for us to retain confidentiality on what recommendations we have and haven’t made,” Raul said.

Graves tried to push the issue of whether the board was going to be public or private, but chairwoman Carol Dinkins politely cut her off and ended the question and answer session.

Another member, Lanny Davis, jumped in to explain why the nation’s most prominent privacy board won’t be transparent about whether it is urging more transparency.

“Congress put us in the office of the president, we didn’t,” Davis said. “Had Congress wanted us to be an indendepent agency, it would have made us independent.”

Graves may have found a way to quickly get at the big questions hanging over this board meeting — How can this board provide oversight over some of the most complicated and divisive issues in the country, while nestled in the White House?

How can it balance its missions of providing advice to the Administration and acting as a watchdog?

Graves’s question was a good one, and Raul strained to justify how providing the sheer number of people spied on one way is fine but letting the world know how many were spied on another puts the country at risk.

It also got the room to the question that everyone in the room really wants the answer to, though, fairly much any question at this point is going to end up in the same spot.

Not that any reporter here would know, since only audience members, and not the press, are allowed to ask questions.

spray-on contraceptive to be available in North America in the future

While I agree with sex educator Cory Silverberg’s prediction that spray-on contraceptive membranes for men and women probably won’t become available in North America for quite some time, if ever, I would love to get all sci-fi with the concept. Flavors, colors, textures, zebra print — you could do all kinds of things with less reduction of sensation than today’s condoms provide.

Every so often I wonder why we haven’t yet figured out how to make condoms effective yet indetectable.