A vision of the future

August 30, 2010 at 3:15 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Undocumented Imam’s Refusal to Perform Interracial Gay Handicapped Wedding Leads to Charges of Racism

NEW YORK – Charges of racism, sexism, and religious discrimination filled the air this afternoon outside the just-completed Cordoba House, the gleaming new $100 million 15 story mosque and Islamic cultural center near the ruins of New York’s World Trade Center, following a tense 5-hour standoff prompted by the mosque’s refusal to host a wedding between a lesbian African-American woman and her blind white transgendered partner.

Over 200 NYPD officers and multicultural crisis counselors were bused to the site to quell the simmering 17-way tensions between Muslim, Black, LGBT, immigrant, disabled, and lawsuit community activists. The scene was punctuated by outbursts of pushing and shoving, including a brief confused intramural scuffle among members of Reverend Louis Farrakan’s Nation of Islam, but the only serious injuries reported was a hernia suffered by a legal aide distributing plaintiff’s briefs. The incident resulted in one arrest, a 7-year old girl who was seen operating a lemonade stand without a permit.

According to witnesses, the standoff began at 11 AM EDT when Eleanor Davis, 38, and her partner Mary Markowicz, 43, entered Cordoba House and requested the use of the mosque for a wedding ceremony. They were escorted from the building, but quickly returned with a 9th District Court of Appeals injunction ordering the mosque’s Imam to perform the ceremony, citing the US Supreme Court’s Kelo and Proposition 8 decisions. They were barred at the door by security guards who countered with their own injunction citing First Amendment religious protections.

Following the incident, Davis, who is African-American, called a press conference on the sidewalk in front of the Cordoba House to complain of racial and gender discrimination. She was eventually shoved from the podium by Abdul Mohammed-Haq, the Mosque’s controversial Yemeni Imam who is currently battling a federal deportation case against the ICE, who countered with complaints of profiling discrimination by Davis and Markowicz. Within minutes the streets in front of the center were filled with chanting protesters from the Gay, Muslim, Black and handicapped communities. A disaster was narrowly averted when the Reverend Al Sharpton’s limousine rammed a parked EMS ambulance before it could careen through the crowd.

Amid the growing crisis, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered a SWAT team of negotiators from the city’s Multicultural Affairs Office parachuted to the scene. A brief truce was reached when negotiators pointed out to the Imam Markowicz’s status as a pre-op transexual, obviating his religious objections to performing a same-sex marriage. But tensions erupted again after Markowicz – who is legally blind – tried to enter the mosque with a seeing-eye guide dog.

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THE NEWS

Odd news from around the world

Ghost train hunter is killed when a REAL train comes down the tracks: “A man who was waiting with several friends for a legendary North Carolina ‘ghost train’ was killed when a real train came down the tracks. Christopher Kaiser, 29, of Charlotte was waiting with around a dozen friends on a railway bridge when the three engines and one wagon rounded the bend. The terrified amateur ghost watchers had to run 150ft for their lives. All but two made it, according to CNN. Christopher Kaiser, 29, of Charlotte, was struck and killed at about 2.45am on Friday, said Campbell. A woman who witnesses say Kaiser pushed to safety fell about 30 to 40 feet from the trestle and was injured. She was being treated at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte. The engineer of the train, which was traveling at its customary 35 to 40 mph, hit the horn and ‘stopped as fast as he could,’ Campbell said.”

Myth of the ‘New Man’ is exposed: “Men are doing no more housework than 30 years ago – despite the myth of the ‘New Man’. Meanwhile, working women spend less time on drudgery as their income increases – but still do the lion’s share. On average the number of hours wives spend on chores has fallen from 19.5 a week to 14.5. But the decline is due largely to labour-saving microwaves and dishwashers, as well as the ability to hire cleaners. A University of Michigan study shows that husbands do an average of seven hours a week of housework. Each £6,000 increase in a wife’s earnings is predicted to bring about a reduction in her weekly housework time of an average 49 minutes.”

Nifty getaway vehicle. A bus: “An alleged bank robber has been caught while waiting for a bus. The 24-year-old man from Westlake in Brisbane, is alleged to have robbed the Heritage bank in Kingaroy on Saturday morning escaping with cash. Police caught up with him yesterday at a bus stop, waiting for a ride out of Kingaroy. “The buses only go once a day on the weekends. We think he may have missed a couple,” said an officer. As police approached he tried to flee, but after a short struggle he was arrested. He was charged with robbery, enter a premises with intent and three counts of obstruct police.”

Oxford English Dictionary ‘will not be printed again’: “The next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, the world’s most definitive work on the language, will never be printed because of the impact of the internet on book sales. Sales of the third edition of the vast tome have fallen due to the increasing popularity of online alternatives, according to its publisher. A team of 80 lexicographers has been working on the third edition of the OED – known as OED3 – for the past 21 years. The dictionary’s owner, Oxford University Press (OUP), said the impact of the internet means OED3 will probably appear only in electronic form. The most recent OED has existed online for more than a decade, where it receives two million hits a month from subscribers who pay an annual fee of £240.”

Fatal mushroom hunt in Italy: “Eighteen people have died while mushroom picking in Italy in little more than a week. The victims have died after falling into rocky crevasses and gorges or from similar physical mishaps, rather than from inadvertently eating poisonous fungi. Authorities said an early and bountiful mushroom harvest in the Alpine valleys of northern Italy had attracted more people than usual to scour the woods and forests in search of succulent funghi to bring to the dinner table. Many of them were unfit and ill-equipped, venturing into remote areas without proper footwear or rainproof clothing, and without checking weather forecasts. Collecting wild mushrooms as autumn approaches is an extremely popular pastime in Italy.” In the most recent case, a 65 year old woman died after falling 40 metres down a steep rocky slope in a forest near the town of Sondrio, in a mountainous region close to the Swiss border.”

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