February 27, 2006
That's what I like to see in a country
Fat and Drunk. What a combination.
More Australian adults are overweight or obese and they're drinking more alcohol, a national health survey has revealed.
The latest survey from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) found 62 per cent of men and 45 per cent of women are now considered overweight or obese – a rise of about 10 per cent over the past decade.
The number of Australians drinking alcohol at risky levels also has risen, up two per cent since 2001.
The survey found middle-aged Australians were the worst culprits when it came to drinking dangerous amounts of alcohol, with 18 per cent of men and 13 per cent of women aged 55 to 64 drinking at risky levels.
Gee...they say that last bit like it's a bad thing.
Shucks.
My Wife's Such a Nag
Those wacky Sudanese...
A man caught "in flagrante delicto" with a goat has been forced to marry the animal.
According to the local newspaper, The Juba Post, the goat's owner, a Mr Alifi, caught his neighbour, Mr Tombe, assaulting his goat and reported the man to the local council of elders for adjudication.
"It was around midnight when Tombe came to do his nonsense on my goat, and I was already in bed inside my house," Mr Alifi said.
"Suddenly I heard the goat make a loud noise. Immediately I rushed outside to find Mr Tombe was naked and engaged in a relationship with my goat. " When I asked him what are you doing there, he fell off the back of the goat, so I captured and tied him up. They said I should not take him to the police, but rather let him pay a dowry for my goat because he used it as his wife."
Mr Tombe agreed to pay a dowry of 150,000 Sudanese dinars ($125) for his new spouse.
Here's a good summation of what might happen next...
February 23, 2006
Porn for Women
...well, photoshopped versions that is.
I've become what I've always hated...
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February 21, 2006
Shar-rah-rah-ria!
Sharia Law in Britain by 2050?
That's what that article says.
Scott Burgess at the Daily Ablution also thinks its a possibility.
Still seems like a big call to me, but he seems to have done the figures.
For what it's worth, I think he's seriously underestimating the natural assimilation of immigrant communities into their adopted culture.
Or at least.... I hope he is.
Wrong, WRONG, WRONG!!!!
While sitting in the St. Clair County Jail, William Camplin's eyes filled with tears as he talked about his stepdaughter, whom he molested, got pregnant, then shot eight times.
"Love is the most powerful thing in the world. You don't pick it," he said. "Even if it's wrong, you don't choose it."
Camplin told the judge he loved his stepdaughter like a husband loves a wife or a boyfriend loves a girlfriend.
"It's disgusting," said Camplin's stepdaughter, now 23 and whose identity is being withheld because she is the victim of a sex crime. "He raped me. It had nothing to do with love."
I knew it!
What would do without surveys?
A woman's relationship acts as a barometer for her weight gain according to new research revealing how a woman's body shape changes through life.
Almost two-thirds of 3000 women polled for Weight Watchers said their weight fluctuated depending on their wellbeing - with 84 per cent citing their relationship as the biggest factor.
Stage 1 is "the honeymoon period" during which the average woman drops about 3.9kg to impress her new man.
Then comes "the comfy zone'' where takeaway and nights snuggled up on the couch encourages a weight gain of 5kg.
Hmmmm....
No mention of the break-up induced "I'm going to go eat a bucket of icecream!!!!!" weight gain...
Adventures in Mesopotamia
Michael J Totten is current blogging from Iraq, mainly Iraqi Kurdistan.
Fascinating stuff. Go read.
February 20, 2006
Al Gore's Lovechild
The SMH has just discovered there are sexual perverts on the Internet.
Be kind to Fairfax. They're slow, but they do get there eventually...
Tough luck, ladies
Those poor, poor Emirates girls...
Hot on the heels of reports in the British press that the Manchester-based Muslim Association has called for the banning of a male sex doll called Mustafa Shag as disrespectful to the prophet Mohammed, comes the news that a sports shop in the Emirates has been closed down for selling female sex dolls.
The owner of the unnamed shop had been renting out the dolls, mainly to teenage boys, for a day at a time.
They had not been advertised but the popular sex aids were trading by word of mouth.
According to internet gossip site, Popbitch, one satisfied customer had made the mistake of telling the son of a government minister and the store was raided and subsequently forced to close.
Ladies, there's always Real Doll....
(Note: Probably not work safe. Unless you work at Real Doll)
Bang Bang!
Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame)
My favorite comment in this blog about Cheney shooting Whittington is that the victim is a "big shot lawyer." Thanks to Marc.
I think it's the worst kind of pandering to shoot a lawyer just because your popularity is low. But I'll bet it works.
Heh, heh.
Whistlin' at Dogs
John Howard makes a sensible comment:
JOHN Howard has strongly criticised aspects of Muslim culture, warning they pose an unprecedented challenge for Australia's immigration program.
While he remained confident that the overwhelming majority of Muslims would be successfully integrated, the Prime Minister said there were two unique problems that previous intakes of migrants from Europe and Asia did not have.
"I do think there is this particular complication because there is a fragment which is utterly antagonistic to our kind of society, and that is a difficulty," Mr Howard told The Australian.
"You can't find any equivalent in Italian, or Greek, or Lebanese, or Chinese or Baltic immigration to Australia. There is no equivalent of raving on about jihad, but that is the major problem."
The Prime Minister also expressed concern about Muslim attitudes to women. "I think some of the associated attitudes towards women (are) a problem," he said.
"For all the conservatism towards women and so forth within some of the Mediterranean cultures, it's as nothing compared with some of the more extreme attitudes.
"The second one of those things is a broader problem, but to be fair to them, it's an attitude that is changing with the younger ones."
Sounds fair and balanced to me. There are problems in the Australian Muslim community, and the youth of said community are even aware of them.
Note how the PM repeatedly stresses that it's only a minority in the Muslim community? (And repeats the point here.) Remember that.
But then, as is par for the course in the PC society we inhabit everyone turns on their "outrage" switch and we enter bizarro world where Spock has a beard and nothing is what it seems.
Suddenly some people start pretending the PM is talking about every Muslim in the entire country, merely so they can take out the "RACIST!!!!" placard.
The boys at Fairfax are leading the charge - I notice the term "dogwhistle" is being thrown around....
(For those not in the know, the term "dogwhistle" is beloved of lefties. What it supposedly means is some ultra-super-dooper coded message that centre-right politicans send out that, while not racist in itself, sends a secret message to voters saying, "I hate darkies". In other words, it's a way for a lefty to smear someone as a racist without offering any proof.)
Anyhow, as predicted, some community leaders have risen to the bait, offering some truly inane arguments which you can see in this article.
"Within Australia we have seen Captain Francis De Groot and the New Guard, then the League of Rights and the Australian Nationalists Party and more recently the rise and fall of Pauline Hanson and her One Nation party.
The HELL? Pauline Hanson mainly stood on a platform of agro-socialist economics, neglible immigration and no benefits to Aborigines. On matters such as gender equality, religious freedom and democracy I'd say she'd be far, far to the left of most fundamentalists.
And gee...Francis de Groot is the best example of an Australian fascist you can come up with? The guy whose sole claim to fame is cutting a ribbon on the harbour bridge? Seventy-five years ago?
This is the kind of extremism Howard is talking about, not some red-haired fish and chips owner espousing agrarian socialism or some looney ribbon cutting gimboid.
It's the fact they wish to harm the country's interests and her citizens that alarms people.
Do you think Mr Bakr is about to retire and take up a dancing career like Ms Hanson?
Lebanese Muslims Association spokesman Keysar Trad said Mr Howard was "unfortunately just pandering to the Islamaphobia out there by making these comments".
Oh, goody! Let's wheel out the tired "Islamophobia" strawman again, shall we? It hasn't reared it's ugly heard for at least...oh...three weeks?
Remember, if you don't have much of an argument, just accuse your opponents of "racism"! Works every time.
"I'm extremely disappointed that the PM would again single out the Muslim community still reeling from the spin out of the Cronulla riots," Mr Trad said.
Notice Mr Trad doesn't explain that the Muslim community largely built the conditions for the Cronulla riots... might hurt his "oh, I'm a victim!" meme....
"I'm a bit struck by his comments about jihad. The greatest form of jihad is freedom of conscience - to speak your mind in the face of wrongdoing.
"Another great form of jihad is to be a good citizen.
"To someone like me when the PM criticises something like jihad he is criticising freedom of conscience, freedom of speech and efforts to be a good citizen.
"Jihad is a personal struggle to be the best that I can be."
Fap, fap, fap, fap, fap.....Sweet zombie Jesus mate, I know you like to think that "Oh, Jihad means non-violent struggle!" and the rest of such diplomatic doublespeak...
But I think we're past the stage anyone believes that, since the most common use seems to be angry young men detonating themselves in the middle of busy streets
.... regardless, aren't you the same guy who complained about the use of the word Crusade? Do you know what that word means? Heck, do you know what irony means?
Mr Trad also said Mr Howard had been wrong to criticise Islamic attitudes towards women, saying Mohammed had had given women equal rights long before they became acceptable in 20th century western society.
Ahahahaahahaahahaha........
Oh, mercy.
I guess that's why men and women are allowed to pray together in mosques everywhere in the Muslim world, is it?
Oh, they're not?
Ok, so there's that.....oh, and women have to cover themselves in bits of cloth because...well, fuck knows, but I think it's because their hair has evil cosmic rays coming out of it.
Ok, two things.
Oh and women in Saudi Arabia aren't allowed to vote....or drive....or be out in public with a male who isn't a relative....
And a Muslim man can marry a non-Muslim, but a Muslim woman can't...
....and the Qu'ran says a woman is worth half a man, men are a degree above women, males get to inherit twice as much as females, Allah made men in charge of women and much more misogyny!
But yeah. Equal Rights. Woo. Totally invented by Islam.
Totally!
UPDATE: www.news.com.au's poll on "Whether immigrants should be made to adopt Australian values and behaviour once they arrive here" stands at 80% yes.
Even the usually notoriously leftist Fairfax poll reports 65% in favour of "The PM's comments needed to be made".
Gosh darn, I hate it when the public doesn't follow the script....Maybe they're all islamophobic?
My main advice to the Australian Islamic community? Dump your community leaders. They're shit, don't know what they're talking about and they only embarrass you all further.
Luckily, you're already moving in that direction, so, God speed!
More from House of Wheels (who noticed the same Abu Bakr point I did).
UPDATE II: I'm glad we aren't at the stage that they're at in Britain.
Four out of 10 British Muslims want sharia law introduced into parts of the country, a survey reveals today.
Oh, that sounds delightful.
God Bless 'Im!
For some unknown reason (well...not really), most of the anger over the mo'toons seems to be directed at Jews.
Look at this lovely lass-
Oh, you!
It's a feint, really, though... the poor dear - she's just craving for some spunky Mossad agent to tear off those naughty coverings and give her a good bout of rough sex.
Here's a candidate:
And heck, if he can be convinced to go bareback, perhaps she might end up with children who aren't total moronic half-wits?
(via Tim Blair and House of Wheels)
UPDATE: Once again, Indymedia is on the case and discovers that Tony Blair planned the London bombings with.....you guessed it.... JUDEN.
February 18, 2006
Not as understanding as first thought
Guess you shouldn't have withdrawn your entry, Mr Leunig?
Karma is a bitch!
(Love the name of the protest group, by the way - "Islamic Thinkers"... now there's an oxymoron for you...)
(via Tim Blair)
My name is Dick. Prepare to Die!
Go hunting with Dick Cheney.
February 17, 2006
The HELL? (Part Eleventy-Billion)
Too much time on this guy's hands.
Better Red and Dead
Daily Ablution's Scott Burgess ("He reads the Guardian so you don't have to!") highlights one of the most egregious bits of leftist nonsense to come out of the Grauniad for some time.
Taking a break from promoting Islamist fascists in its pages, the paper now turns its sights on the benefits of Communism and how it has been defamed by nasty right-wingers.
These. People. Need. Help.
Apology accepted, Halle Berry
There's a good gel.
(from here)
February 16, 2006
Yet Another Blog
An old mate from uni, now living in Melbourne, has his own blog.
Check it out.
Not bad for someone who is permanently blind.
(I mean vision impaired, not alcohol-sodden....but he's also the latter).
February 13, 2006
Well, that's one way to keep thin...
What an unfortunate name for a diet pill...
Doom and Gloom
Via Tim Blair, we learn about the happiest and saddest places in Australia.
Most seem to be Labor electorates, but whether that's due to their party being out of power and voters feeling disenfranchised, or just the fact that lefties are sad sacks of shit, is not clear.
No news on where my electorate, Canberra, lies, but it's a laugh a second down here.
Trust me.
Old People are useless
My blogging might be construed as somewhat anti-Muslim lately, so here's some news which is definitely good. It seems the Muslim youth are waking up to the fact they have nutty old dudes running their community into the ground.
Mustapha Kara-Ali, a member of the Prime Minister's Muslim Community Reference Group, said the integration of young Islamic people into the wider Australian society was being thwarted by immigrant leaders opposed to change.
"They want to run community affairs on their terms. and their terms are different to the terms of the young people who have a natural tendency to be with the big community," he told The Australian yesterday.
"No new blood is flowing into community organisations, because they don't trust the Australian-born second generation in leading the community."
Mr Kara-Ali warned that a lack of youth involvement and representation within the Muslim community would only create more violent "young thugs" such as those who were involved in the revenge attacks following the Cronulla riots last year.
Young Muslims were experiencing a "crisis of identity", he said.
I'll say.
Another young Muslim spokesman, Kuranda Seyit, agreed with Mr Kara-Ali that it was time for generational change in the Islamic community.
"We would have hoped that by this stage we would have had more developed youth programs and resources to deal with youth problems," said Mr Seyit, executive director of the Forum on Australia's Islamic Relations.
Immigrant leaders were too out of touch with young people to deal with the rising number of young Lebanese Muslims who were turning to the "convenience of crime" for the sake of "camaraderie and belonging", Mr Seyit said.
"There's a lot of information that shows there's an increase in criminal activity among some of these young Lebanese people who are now resorting to serious crime, including car rebirthing, prostitution, gun smuggling and drugs," he said.
"When Muslims are engaging in criminal activity, then they have no one else to blame if people have negative attitudes towards them."
Good God, more Muslims like these people, less like the ones in the news.
Update: Typo ("definately" rather than "definitely") fixed. Thanks Jan!
Another Hallmark Holiday
...and these people aren't happy.
Nearly two dozen black-veiled Muslim women stormed gift and stationery shops Friday in Kashmir, India, burning Valentine's Day cards and posters to protest a holiday they say imposes Western values on Muslim youth.
No one was hurt in the half-dozen or so incidents, and police cordoned off the area to prevent the women from marching through Srinagar's main shopping district to continue their ransacking.
I bet they couldn't get a date.
The Ultimate Odd Couple
From Stephen Dawson via Tim Blair we get the ultimate strip... offensive to roughly 4-5 billion people!
The J-Zo and M-Ho show!
As for the other cartoon furore, EvilPundit brings you up to date, including the all important info that the cartoons appeared in an Egyptian newspaper in during Ramadan last year and no one gave a shit.
Hypocrisy, you say?
I guess "denial" isn't just a river in Egypt after all.
UPDATE: Still confused? If you like conspiracy theories, then it's time to clock out, Columbo, because Indymedia just cracked the case!
The Jews.
As usual.
February 10, 2006
Which ship crew am I?
 | You scored as Nebuchadnezzar (The Matrix). You can change the world around you. You have a strong will and a high technical aptitude. Is it possible you are the one? Now if only Agent Smith would quit beating up your friends.
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February 08, 2006
No need to think, God does it for me...
I always love talking to religious fundamentalists.
Even funner is discussing religion. In a way, it's like teaching a pig Plato...it wastes your time, and you annoy the pig.
So, if you are in to that sort of stuff, you can't go further than this thread at Tim Blair, where one young devout Muslim girl is arguing:
1) Women are more respected in Saudi Arabia than Australia
2) Religious freedom will be more secure under Sharia law than liberal democracy. (!!!!)
3) Mohammed may have married (and consumated said marriage with) a nine year old, but that was ok, because "she agreed".
Gee... I feel I'm back on talk.origins. ....
UPDATE: She's still going at it in this thread and this thread...
More gems:
1) Paedophilia is ok if you declare yourself a prophet
2) Saudia Arabia is not "fanatical".
3) You can't place blame on Osama Bin Laden or any other Islamic terrorist
4) No one converted to Islam through force....ever (!!!!)
5) Muslims have always let all other religions worship in peace. (!!!!!!!!!)
6) The central tenent is being a slave to God....and that's good. (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
February 07, 2006
Respekt!
Damian Penny and Oliver Kamm successfully skewer the idea that Free Speech has to include "respect" for someone's religious beliefs.
Meanwhile, one of the Danish Imams who pretty much got the "outrage" ball rolling by adding three fabricated pictures has been caught with his pants pretty much down by bloggers, who've discovered the source of the "disrespectful depiction of the Prophet".
Imam Ahmad Abu Laban,... this is NOT a picture of Muhammad!
This is Jacques Barrot, a pig squealing contestant at the French Pig-Squealing Championships in Trie-sur-Baise’s annual festival.
(More on the festival with the original news item here)
Ouch to Abu Laban....
Shit! Another dirty Kaffir depiction of the Prophet! Set Outrage to Maximum!
Maybe they should try the Anonymous Muslim Man Complaint Box
February 06, 2006
Well, at least he didn't print the other Mohammed ones...
Bill Leak, one fatwa coming your way....
February 05, 2006
In case you aren't sick of it already...
....here is more Mohammed pictures than you can shake a stick at!
Including real ones from history (mostly done by Muslims) and a collection of ones where people seem to mainly taking the piss.
Ok....I'm done.
UPDATE: Ok, here's a Bollywood clip.....and NOW I'm done. :)
"Please Censor Yourselves or We May Explode in Anger"
Sheikh Fehmi El-Imam, the general secretary of the Board of Imams of Victoria, warned reprinting the cartoons here could "disturb people who can do things that we don't want them to do".
"In some parts of the world there is rioting against the Danish and the Dutch, we don't want that in Australia," the sheikh said today.
"Unfortunately, New Zealand has (published the cartoons) ... I'm trying to avoid, to put far away, any possibility of disturbing the peace in Australia."
Hey Sheikh....
FUCK YOU
The only people responsible for the riots are the ones doing the rioting.
Capice?
Damian Penny has related thoughts: If you can't be brave, at least be honest.
Any newspaper which will not run the Mohammed cartoons, out of a newfound sensitivity to readers' religious beliefs, is being cowardly and hypocritical. And commentators who place all the blame on the cartoonists, not the thugs and lunatics threatening them with execution, have no idea what freedom of expression really means.
A Thought
From the Times' Matthew Parris, via Samizdata:
Many faiths and ideologies achieve and maintain their predominance partly through fear. They, of course, call it "respect".But whatever you call it, it intimidates. The reverence, the awe — even the dread — that their gods, their KGB or their priesthoods demand and inspire among the laity are vital to the authority they wield.
Against reverence and awe the best argument is sometimes not logic, but mockery. Structures of oppression that may not be susceptible to rational debate may in the end yield to derision.
Toon in to Sanity FM
Imagine you are a member of a religious minority living in Europe, and, after a series of violent events linked to some of your co-religionists, sections of the wider population has come to question your commitment to liberal, post-enlightenment Western society.
A newspaper prints a few images of your main prophet-figure, some (but not all) of which could be construed as insulting.
Do you
A) Laugh it off - after all, a few pictures never really hurt anyone and Freedom of Speech is an important part of a liberal society.
B) Draw some pictures of your own mocking religious figures, and see if you can get them published.
C) Write a few pointed letters to the editor of the newspaper, noting how angry you are over the thing, but apart from that, do nothing.
If you've been paying attention to the news lately, you will of course know that the correct answer is:
D) Threaten to kill everyone who ever says anything critical about your religion.
More on this story at Instapundit, Tim Blair, the Daily Ablution, and Ace of Spades.
By the way, one of the toons (-which can be viewed here. Ironically, most of them are pretty tame, and I'm pretty sure most of these angry people haven't even seen them-) has turned out to be remarkably prescient:
Fancy that....
Additional: It seems the word "respect" is being thrown around, as in, "Non-Muslims should respect Islam".
Rubbish. Islam is entitled to no more respect than any other religion - as far as I can see, we should be free to poke fun, criticise and satirise it at our leisure.
Like everyone else, adherents of Islam are judged on their behaviour. No one gets a pass. This massive overreaction is, as far as I can see, one of the most spectactular own goals of all time.
There are two schools of thought in Western society - one says that Islam is incompatible with modern Western society - the other says it isn't.
After today....how many people will still believe the latter?
Not when the sole Arab newspaper who printed the cartoons (under the title "Muslims...be reasonable"...) has now been arrested, that's for sure.
This is probably a taste of things to come.
Good work, arseholes.
I'm out of it for a little while, and everyone gets delusions of grandeur.
Finished the move. All set up in the new place...
....and boy, have things got interesting in my absence.
I'm preparing a post on the Mohammed Cartoons so, gentlemen - start your fatwas!