Category Archives: Farce

kabbalah loony-fest: global aftershocks continue

By bananabrain | Published: March 9, 2011

“Since we decided to do this conference, it seems to me the energy has gone insane all around the world.”

thus karen berg of the kabbalah centre.

it seems that the “energy” has indeed “gone insane” from the “power of peace” conference: the brothers of centre aficionado lisa tchenguiz have just been arrested in connection with an investigation into the collapsed icelandic bank kaupthing.

obviously, the kabbalah centre will be rushing to claim credit for this turn of events, it having about as much to do with their conference as the other effects they claim.

i think someone has tattooed the wrong letter triad on their bum.

Also posted in Crime, Esoterica, Nutters | 2 Comments

More Fun and Games with the Blasphemy Law

By avicenna | Published: January 11, 2011

Just when you thought things in Pakistan could not possible get any more stupid:

Mohammad Shafi, 45, and his son Mohammad Aslam, 20, were arrested in April last year for removing a poster outside their grocery shop advertising an Islamic event in a nearby village which allegedly contained Koranic verses.

Judge Mohammad Ayub, heading an anti-terrorism court in the central Pakistani town of Muzaffargarh, handed down a life sentence to the pair on Monday, his assistant Faisal Karim told AFP by telephone.

The prosecution alleged organisers of the event, which commemorated the anniversary of the Prophet Mohammad’s birth, said the pair had “pulled the poster down, tore it and trampled it under their feet,” Karim said.

“The judge sentenced them to life imprisonment on charges of blasphemy and ordered them to pay a fine of 200,000 rupees ($2,350) each,” he said.

h/t: AG

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On The Uselessness of Islamic Conferences

By Effendi | Published: December 27, 2010

Idol of the Conference Worshippers


Nazim Baksh on the utter uselessness of Islamic conferences. They are, as Nazim says, “a costly experiment aimed at dumbing down knowledge for the masses”, and his essay is an unsentimental deconstruction of the entire phenomenon of the Islamic Conference as glorification of mediocrity.

At the risk of sounding redundant let me say I have an allergic reaction to conferences whether Muslim in character or not. I don’t believe they will or have ever accomplished anything. That’s not to say the vendors at GPU’s bazaar who paid £900 for the privilege of selling a few trinkets and some colorful hijabs didn’t recover their cost and then some. The food vendors too may have turned a handsome profit leaving behind a heap of garbage and some messy restrooms for low paying unionized workers to clean up.

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Also posted in Islamism | 3 Comments

Smile Like You Mean It

By avicenna | Published: November 30, 2010

From an assortment of old news and obvious facts from the latest tranche from Wikileaks:

One of the most damaging allegations was that Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah repeatedly urged America to attack Iran. The Saudi leader was recorded as having “frequently exhorted the US to attack Iran to put an end to its nuclear weapons programme”.

The leak said he told the Americans to “cut off the head of the snake” at a meeting in 2008. The leaks also disclose how leaders in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt referred to Iran as “evil” and a power that “is going to take us to war”.

Give us your captions for the photo below.

Also posted in International Affairs | 2 Comments

Fickle Politics and the Fear of a Hindutva Planet

By Guest | Published: November 20, 2010

This is a guest-post by harith

Consider an hypothetical scenario analogous to the situation with Islamist politics in the UK.

Let us suppose that Hindutva extremism had somehow become acceptable because it encapsulated the doctrine of “defensive Jud’dha”, made palatable by “socially conscious” liberals who saw within it elements of a response to colonialism and US imperialism. They argued that the doctrine of religious warfare was a theocratic norm accepted and acceptable to all Hindus. Furthermore, any attack and criticism of Hindutva terrorism (let’s call it Hindutvaism for the purposes of this illustration) was simply racist and a fundamental attack of ordinary Hindu individuals. These liberals even came up with a neologism for this kind of criticism; they called it ‘Hinduphobia’. What was more, any liberal pushback of Hindutvaism was deemed ‘Hinduphobic’.

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Also posted in Identity Politics, The Regressive Left | 69 Comments

ovadia yosef now officially candidate for tinfoil hat

By bananabrain | Published: October 25, 2010

the 90 year-old rabbi ovadia yosef is a controversial political and religious figure, to say the least. as emeritus sephardi chief rabbi of israel, the leading sephardi voice in the haredi world and de facto leader of the ultra-religious “shas” party (the only officially zionist haredi party) which forms part of the current israeli coalition government, he is a figure of considerable influence around the world and a key political player in israeli politics, as well as being the perennial winner of the “snazziest traditional get-up, complete with turban and sunglasses” award.

chief effendi

a falafel for the effendi!

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Also posted in Hate Speech, Interfaith, Israel/Palestine, Jewish Extremism, Nutters, Obscurantism | 3 Comments

Making it Easier for Guardian Readers to Look Good

By Effendi | Published: June 5, 2010

So funny and so true, it hurts.

ISRAEL’S attack on a Palestinian aid ship will make it easier for Guardian readers to sound as if they know what they are talking about, it was claimed last night.

Experts warned Tel Aviv that every time it launches a seemingly unprovoked or disproportionate attack it allows at least 10,000 cretins to say something at a dinner party that everyone then agrees with.

Dr Martin Bishop, of the Institute for Studies, said: “Benjamin Netanyahu has to realise that his aggressive stance towards Hamas and Hezbollah is playing into the hands of some of the worst people in the world.

“I simply cannot sit through another dinner party with some speccie fucker spouting off about Israel while all the single, attractive women around the table stare at him like he was Martin Luther King.

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Posted in Farce | 2 Comments

religious idiots round up: vengeful volcanoes

By bananabrain | Published: May 12, 2010

of course, nobody should be surprised that when a natural disaster occurs, the usual suspects jump on the bandwagon to explain why it proves their wacky theologies and that G!D Is Having a good old Smite at people of whom they disapprove or, alternatively, that it’s all part of the dastardly plans of the illuminati or reptilian space overlords.

a reptilian overlord yesterday

anyway, we’ve had boobquake, gayquake and immorality-inspired flooding so, predictably, our new icelandic friend eyjafjallajökull has been pressed into surface for this purpose, proving variously that:

1. we should never have turned on that large hadron collider

2. iceland is being too tolerant of neo-paganism and europe of gay rights

3. G!D Disapproves of “obamacare”

4. people are having a go at the pope

5. aliens (or satan) are doing space paintings with ufos

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Also posted in Anti Muslim bigotry, Antisemitism, Blogosphere, Environmental, Esoterica, International Affairs, Israel/Palestine, Media, Misc, Obscurantism | Leave a comment

religious idiots round-up

By bananabrain | Published: April 21, 2010
 
immodest dress
a woman causing an earthquake yesterday by blatantly showing her elbows and knees

well, i expect most of us have probably heard by now that, according to the not-at-all-bonkers iranian regime, that immodestly dressed women cause earthquakes. i expect the haitians are buying their chadors as we speak. in the interests of balance, i thought it might be instructive to see which other religious figures are saying and doing stupidly daft things this week:

1. mobile phones damage your neshama

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Also posted in Esoterica, Interfaith, Jewish Extremism, Obscurantism | 18 Comments

would it kill me to go along with dawkins and hitchens for once?

By bananabrain | Published: April 12, 2010

as you have probably heard, the hierarchy of the catholic church is coping with plenty of more-than-usually-unpleasant scandal involving the usual suspects: priests, paedophiles, children, cover-ups, pay-offs, not-quite-apologies, denials, denouncings and defrockings which have, for the first time i can remember, started to take on a somewhat apocalyptic tone, that’s apocalyptic in terms of the catholic church if not the rest of us. even the commentariat at the times smell blood:

“A pope with no moral authority simply cannot function as a pope. Yes, he has ecclesiastical power. But ecclesiastical power without moral authority merely exposes the hollowness of an unaccountable, self-perpetuating clerisy. Does he think we don’t know? Does he understand that any parent of any child will be unable to imagine themselves in the same moral universe as this man?”

and some of them are even sort-of-default-catholics for whom this is the final straw:

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Also posted in Activism, Freedom of Expression, Identity Politics, Interfaith, Lawfare, Obscurantism | 9 Comments

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