Turkey: Army chiefs protest against headscarf

Army chiefs protest against headscarf.

ANKARA: Turkish army chiefs boycotted an official ceremony at the presidential palace because the President’s wife wore an Islamic headscarf, it was reported yesterday.

Turkey’s first lady, Hayrunnisa Gul, has worn the hijab, which covers the head and neck, since adolescence.

In the past, generals have attended the banquet to celebrate the founding of the Turkish republic, but this year the President extended the invitation to wives, meaning that women wearing the veil would be present.

One step forward, two steps back…

Australia: 11th Commandment discovered: don’t climb on penises

Orange UK.

The star of an erectile dysfunction awareness commercial in Australia has been kicked out of her church until the ad comes off air.

Libby Ashby told Melbourne-based radio station 3AW she had been “disfellowshipped” from her local congregation after appearing in the ad.

In the cheesy ad, she uses her screen husband’s penis for a leg up to reach a biscuit from a high shelf while a voiceover says: “Take the right step towards erection problems.”

I have a vision of Julie Andrews in a nun’s habit, singing:

“Climb every donger
Mount every dick
Wriggle up each willy
Till you’ve done the trick!”

France: 11 hurt ‘fleeing from devil’ — including a baby

Yahoo! News UK.

Eleven people have been injured jumping out of a second-floor flat window after apparently thinking they had seen the devil. …Officers said some of the injured were children including a four-month-old baby, who is in a serious condition in a children’s hospital in the French capital.

How many more babies have to die for the sake of adults’ cherished delusions?

Update: the baby has died.

Australia: Students’ mouths taped shut in Anglican school

SMH.

AN elite Sydney private school has disciplined a teacher for taping closed the mouths of two talkative boys.

The North Sydney boys’ school Shore confirmed that a teacher had taped the mouths of two secondary students to stop them talking in class.

‘Suffer the little children to come unto me’ — as long as they keep their mouths shut. Christian values, anyone?

Australia: Christian sect member guilty of intimidation

SMH.

A member of the controversial sect, the Exclusive Brethren, has been found guilty of intimidating several members of a Channel Seven television crew.

Turnabout is fair play, but still…

US: Don’t vote for Navajo women — they can get cross!

smh.com.au.

LOS ANGELES: The Navajo nation, the largest Native American reservation in the US, is poised to elect its first woman president in an election tainted by allegations of dirty tricks…
Mrs Lovejoy, a 46-year-old mother of three,… has fought allegations that she had been seen drunk, an explosive topic in Navajo and a charge she called ”vicious”.
She also had to contend with an ancient Navajo story about a female figure given a position of leadership who abused it by becoming angry and controlling.

Ah, folklore! Is there anything it doesn’t know?

Finland: Cheesed-off Lutherans vote with their feet

YLE Uutiset | yle.fi.

The membership of the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church continues to hemorrhage at the rate of hundreds per hour, following perceived homophobic statements by Christian Democratic Chair Päivi Räsänen on YLE’s Ajankohtainen Kakkonen discussion programme last Tuesday. In the midst of recriminations and acrimony, and with defections now numbering more than 22,000, the Evangelical Lutheran Church has not collapsed, but it is concerned about the exodus.

Nearly 30,000 now. You can watch the numbers grow at

http://eroakirkosta.fi/static/ek-tilastot/ylea2.html

Update 9/4/11: approaching 60,000 but levelling off.

US: Tree-sus!

WGHP.

MIDWAY, N.C. (WGHP) – A Davidson County man says he found Jesus Christ in a tree branch.

…

Johnson put polyurethane of the branch to preserve the image and believes the discovery was a sign that he needs to return to attending church on Sunday more regularly.

You. Put. Polyurethane. On. Jesus. Boy, are you in trouble!

Seriously, do you know how long it takes to grow a tree? Isn’t it time Jesus mastered email?

And why is he doing the Macarena?

Afghanistan: an unwinnable war

SMH.

THE former foreign minister, Alexander Downer, says the original aim for invading Afghanistan has been achieved and a political settlement with the Taliban is the best way to effect a speedy withdrawal of Australian and international troops.

…Mr Downer says maintaining the status quo will achieve only incremental improvements in security and governance and outright military victory is ”impossible”.

Australia: Saint Mary McKillop fails to cure nearly all leukemia victims

SMH.

It was her complete recovery, without scientific explanation, combined with the prayers of Catholic sisters through MacKillop that prompted the Vatican to accept Mrs Hopson’s cure was a ”miracle” – the reason for MacKillop’s beatification in 1995. Mrs Hopson gave birth to six healthy children and for many years has lived in the Blue Mountains.

While Mrs Hopson has kept her identity secret for decades, she is understood to have an arrangement with a commercial television network for her story.

I just knew there would be money involved somewhere.

For the record, my mother died of cancer in Sydney in 1969. No miracles occurred, though I am quite sure she prayed for them. Maybe Saint Mary was off-duty then…

Vatican: Pope may have €8bn tax bill

The Independent

Eight billion euros worth of tax breaks pocketed by the Catholic Church in Italy could be in breach of European law and may have to be repaid, it has emerged…

The European Commission has said that tax relief on 100,000 Italian properties enjoyed by the Holy See since 2005 was under the spotlight, after announcing an “in-depth” investigation.

Well, it worked for Al Capone.

Australia: Anglican Church battered by global financial crisis

SMH.

The Anglican Church in Sydney is in diabolical trouble. Already battered by the global financial crisis, the diocese is planning further savage spending cuts.

The archbishop, Peter Jensen, told the annual synod on Monday: “The financial issues are grave.”

…

The archbishop has also “asked a parallel group of mature Christians to pray for the work of the commission and at every point their work has been bathed in the intercessory prayer of these saints”.

Well, they’ve certainly taken a bath..

The moral: Greed may be a deadly sin, but it’s OK to try and exploit it to make money. Unless it goes wrong. Which all helps to explain why Sydney wants to cut and run…

Afghanistan: Taliban murder governor and 19 others

SMH

KUNDUZ, Afghanistan: An outspoken governor who repeatedly warned of the expansion of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in his region has been killed along with 19 others when a bomb ripped through the mosque.

I’m sorry for the guy, but seeing the Taliban as a threat — isn’t that a no-brainer?

Israel: Jewish allegiance required for new citizens

SMH.

JERUSALEM: Caving in to pressure from far right members of his coalition, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has backed a new law requiring prospective citizens of Israel to swear an oath of allegiance to a ”Jewish, democratic” state.

The amended citizenship law, likely to be ratified by parliament on Sunday, is targeted at non-Jews, particularly Palestinians marrying Israeli citizens.

Pick your brand of nonsense
Any one will do.
All we really care is that
You’re irrational too.

Pakistan: Taliban kill worker and torch petrol tankers

SMH.

The Taliban have claimed responsibility for the latest arson attack on NATO tankers in Pakistan, saying it is revenge for a scaled-up United States drone strike campaign in the north-west.

But on the very same day:

Taliban representatives and the government of the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, have begun secret, high-level talks over a negotiated end to the war, Afghan and Arab sources say.

And we should trust them because…?

London: Saudi prince kills servant in UK hotel

SMH.

A gay Saudi prince beat and strangled his male servant to death in a frenzied sexual assault at their luxury London hotel suite, a British court heard yesterday.

Saud Bin Abdulaziz Bin Nasir al Saud, 34, who is a grandson of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, killed Bandar Abdullah Abdulaziz on February 15 after abusing him for weeks, the court heard.

God’s delegates on Earth act just like their role model.

India: Wisdom of Solomon? Court splits ‘holy’ site

SMH.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has appealed for calm after a court ruled that Muslims and Hindus should share a hotly disputed site that has been the focus of deadly violence in the past.

Hundreds of thousands of police and paramilitary forces have been deployed across the country to prevent a repeat of violence in 1992 when Hindu zealots tore down a 16th century mosque in Ayodhya at a site they also claim as holy.

Around 2,000 people, most of them Muslims, died in the violence that followed.

And God can’t just make another site holy because…?

Australia: Former Anglican teacher charged with assault

SMH.

A FORMER teacher at Knox Grammar will stand trial on charges of indecently assaulting seven primary students during the 1970s and ’80s.

Anyone applying for a teaching job at a Christian faith school must demonstrate that they possess ‘Christian values’.

Well, he did.