This month a new airline will emerge with a curious mission: to be the Halal friendly skies. Rayani Air will be Malaysia;s first “Islamic airline.” That alone is not too surprising. After all, we had Hooters Airline for people with a different transportation need. (Frankly, I would just be delighted if a religious airline declared that God intended passengers to have legroom). No, the surprising thing is the impetus for the airline: conservative Muslims believe that the two Malaysia Airlines recent disasters were punishments from God for not adhering to Islamic values. That’s right. God killed a couple hundred people (including devout Muslim passengers) because the airline was not sufficiently pious.
Category: Bizarre
There is a controversy in the New York fire department where FDNY candidate Wendy Tapia will be allowed to graduate despite failed the physical test to become a firefighter six times. Adding to the controversy, Lt. Elizabeth Osgood, who objected to Tapia’s special treatment, was allegedly barred from promotion for months. Tania’s treatment has raised objections that the FDNY is trying to avoid a gender discrimination lawsuit after it was sued successfully for $98 million for racial discrimination.
We have been discussing the continued rollback of civil liberties by our Asian ally, Thailand, including absurd prosecutions such as the recent arrest of a mechanic who merely “liked” a photo viewed disrespectful of the King’s dog. He appears however to be in the disgruntled one percent according to the military junta. The authoritarian government just released the type of poll that only a junta would find plausible: 99 percent of Thais are happy with the junta’s governance since it took power last year. Well, if you can’t believe a junta, who can you believe?
Continue reading “Thai Junta Proclaims 99 Percent Support From Public . . . In Its Own Poll”
There is a truly bizarre case out of London where a former Ernst & Young manager was sentenced in what is viewed as largely voyeur case in the country’s history. Some 3,500 people were filmed by George Thomas, 38, who installed cameras in bedrooms and bathrooms in his own home, shower rooms and lavatories at his work place and bathrooms in a large number of coffee shops in central London.
Continue reading “Former Ernst & Young Executive Arrested In Largest Voyeur Case in English History”
We have been discussing the criminalization of Christmas celebrations by the Sultan of Brunei. Now, as if to show that Muslim extremists have no monopoly on crazy, Benzi Gopshtain (also reported as “Gopstein”), who heads the far-right Lehava organisation, has called for the same prohibition in Israel. Indeed, the statement of Gopstein and those of the Muslim clerics in Brunei seems almost indistinguishable.
It often seems like some countries like Saudi Arabia are the first to respond to any slight or barrier to Islam in other countries, but routinely deny such accommodations for other religions in their own country. The latest such hypocrisy was shown by the Sultan and Muslim clerics in Brunei after the country criminalized celebrating Christmas. Brunei’s Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah previously was denounced for introducing the medieval Sharia law system to his kingdom. He has now ordered that anyone found illegally celebrating Christmas could face a five year jail sentence. While Bolkiah cuts the same comical figure of Burgermeister Meisterburger, he is not a bit comical for those who reject Islamic extremism.
Saudi Arabia’s medieval legal system is back in the news with another attack on free speech and free thought. A Saudi reformist writer, Zuhair Kutbi, has been jailed for four years and banned from writing for his calls to reform the Kingdom. Kubti had called fellow intellectuals “cowards” in failing to stand up for reforms. Rather than engage Kubti in debate over its alleged racist and repressive elements, the response of the Kingdom was to jail him and ban him from writing for 15 years.
Police say that it was not hard to track down Paul Terry, 27, who allegedly forced his way into an Oklahoma man’s apartment and robbed him at knifepoint. The victim described one of the two attackers as having horns and the words “F**k Cops” on his forehead. That tends to stick in the mind of most witnesses at the scene . . . and most officers on the beat.
Continue reading “OK, Take Your Time, Can You Identify That Man Who Robbed You?”
There is a bizarre story out of the New York Times where the newspaper printed an astonishing statement by President Obama that was immediately picked up by journalists and then removed by the newspapers under a claim that it was trimmed for space. The newspaper said that President Obama defended his criticized laid-back response to the Paris and San Bernardino massacred to not watching enough cable television. It was the most newsworthy part of the fairly generic article and yet it quickly disappeared as social media lit up with criticism of the President.
There is going “Full Monty” and now going full postal. Wisconsin mailman David A. Goodman, 52, was arrested after stripping naked to deliver mail to a law firm. He insisted that he did so to cheer up a secretary at the firm. However this was one package delivery that the firm declined and Goodman is now looking at lewd and lascivious behavior. The good news is that such a citation carries a $681 fine. If Goodman is looking for a more open recipient to such deliveries that may want to apply to be the postman for Mark Mertz in Massachusetts.
Continue reading “Junk Mail: “Mailman Dave” Arrested After Delivering Mail To Law Firm Naked”
Tamsir Drammeh, a New York cabbie, has been hit with a $350 fine after he refused to allow a mother to sit in the front seat after she and her family piled into his cab at Penn Station. Drammeh reportedly said that the husband could sit in the front seat but that having a woman in the sit would violate Islamic values.
A poll by the Democratic Public Policy Polling outfit found that 30 percent of Republicans support the bombing of Agrabah. The only problem is that agrabah is the fictional home of Aladdin. Of course, few would sympathize with Jafar, Grand Vizier to the Sultan of Agrabah (particularly after his horrible conduct in the Cave of Wonders), there are other rather cute cartoon characters in Agrabah who should not be vaporized in the war on terror. Yet, the bombing of Agrabah seems almost tame when candidates are calling for the killing of the families of terrorists or pledging that, if they are allowed to go back in time, they would strangle the baby Hitler.
Continue reading “Magic Carpet Bombing? Poll Shows Surprising Number of People Want To Bomb Agrabah”
Rabbi Mendel Epstein, 70, of Brooklyn was convicted this week in a bizarre series of crimes where he and others kidnapped and beat Orthodox Jewish men who refused to grant their wives religious divorces or “gets.” He was to 10 years in prison, a relatively light sentence given multiple kidnapping and beatings ordered by Epstein. The attackers were paid by women to force “gets” out of their husbands. That makes this a religious-based form of organized crime.
A former police officer who may have tazed a man as many as 28 times has been acquitted by a federal jury to the surprise of many who have followed the case of former Oglala Sioux Tribe police officer Rebecca Sotherland. Sutherland, 33, is shown below tazing Jefferson Eagle Bull, 32, who had reportedly drunk of gallon of vodka and passed out in Manderson, South Dakota. Manderson is on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in southern South Dakota. Sotherland faced three criminal charges including “deprivation of constitutional rights, assault with a dangerous weapon and obstruction of a federal investigation by filing a false report.
Continue reading “Officer in South Dakota Acquitted After Tazing Man On The Ground 28 Times”
The University of Maryland has launched a campaign educating students and faculty about how to refer to people and asking them to “think before you speak” to avoid insulting others. One of the lexicon lessons has caused a controversy. The campaign by UMD’s Multicultural Involvement and Community Advocacy office tells people not to use terms like “illegal alien” but rather “undocumented citizens.”