OVO

Worshippers quit church after council noise ban ‘takes away their ability to praise God’:

Members of a congregation in north London have abandoned their church – because of a council noise ban. The Immanuel International Christian Centre was ordered to keep its amplified music and sermons quieter after a neighbour complained. But the church’s pastor Dunni Odetoyinbo claimed Waltham Forest council had only told them to keep quiet so as not to offend the Muslim community. The church also argued the council had ‘taken away its ability to praise God’, and that congregation numbers had dwindled from 100 to 30 because of the restrictions. Baha Uddin, who lives near the church, had complained he was unable to use his garden at weekends and his one-year-old daughter was regularly disturbed by the noise from services. He said: ‘It’s been a nightmare. I’ve not been able to use my garden or living room on a Sunday because of the church services. The amplified music, drums and the loud sermons made having a conversation impossible. The noise made me depressed.’ But other neighbours say the noise is not a problem. The church lodged an appeal, and appeared at Waltham Forest magistrates’ court on Tuesday. In court Mrs Odetoyinbo, 55, claimed a council officer had asked her ‘to keep the noise down so as not to offend the Muslim community’. But magistrates rejected the appeal, and ordered the church to pay £2,250 costs.It can now only play music for 20 minutes on a Sunday between 11.30am and 11.50pm. A council spokesman said: ‘All attempts at mediation have failed and we regrettably were forced to issue the church with a noise abatement notice.’

Article continues at link.  Previously at OVO, The Bells Bells Bells Bells Bells Bells Bells.  When you’ve got an invisible monster that lives in the sky on your side, giving you special dispensations that are unquestionable and eternal, you might get it in your head that anything you do in the service of that invisible monster that lives in the sky is justified – nay, compulsory.  That’s the sort of thinking that causes US Presidents to declare war [1] [2] [3] [4] and Saudi Arabian architects to hijack airplanes [1] [2] [3].  Perhaps compared to these evils, annoying a neighbor is a small thing.  Perhaps it is an unfair comparison all around.  But I will say that being a pest to your neighbor is not excused by superstition.  And every time a place of religion drags the State into their affairs, both the freedom to worship and the ability to have a secular / pluralistic government suffer.

On October 10, 2009, a Cyclone of Slack will slam into Portland bringing true SubGenius mutation back to Stumptown for the first time in a decade! Cast aside your false profiteers and your hipster biscuits, and bask in the Yetisyn glow of true Dobbsian mutation! Experience the gene-twisting joy of a SubGenius Devival in all of its mutated glory!

Ash Street Saloon
225 SW Ash St.
Portland, OR
Doors open at 8, show starts at 9
$10

Wikipedia: “Radetzky March, Op. 228 is a march composed by Johann Strauss Sr. in 1848. It was dedicated to the Austrian Field Marshal Joseph Radetzky von Radetz, and became quite a popular march among soldiers.”

Oh, but for some of us this song means something else entirely [4:30].

The Guardian, Iraq nets handsome profit by dumping dollar for euro (16 February 2003):

A bizarre political statement by Saddam Hussein has earned Iraq a windfall of hundreds of million of euros. In October 2000 Iraq insisted on dumping the US dollar – ‘the currency of the enemy’ – for the more multilateral euro. The changeover was announced on almost exactly the same day that the euro reached its lowest ebb, buying just $0.82, and the G7 Finance Ministers were forced to bail out the currency. On Friday the euro had reached $1.08, up 30 per cent from that time. Almost all of Iraq’s oil exports under the United Nations oil-for-food programme have been paid in euros since 2001. Around 26 billion euros (£17.4bn) has been paid for 3.3 billion barrels of oil into an escrow account in New York. [...] The marked appreciation of the euro, higher interest rates, and the ability to pay mainly European suppliers in euros is believed to have made hundreds of millions for the Iraqi oil-for-food programme.

The US went to war with Iraq in March 2003. “Since currently worldwide oil sales are denominated in U.S. dollars, changes in the value of the dollar against other world currencies affect OPEC’s decisions on how much oil to produce. For example, when the dollar falls relative to the other currencies, OPEC-member states receive smaller revenues in other currencies for their oil, causing substantial cuts in their purchasing power. After the introduction of the euro, pre-invasion Iraq decided it wanted to be paid for its oil in euros instead of US dollars causing OPEC to consider changing its oil exchange currency to euros, although after Iraq’s invasion, the interim government reversed this policy, and the subsequent Iraq governments stuck to the US dollar. Member states Iran and Venezuela have undergone similar shifts from the dollar to the Euro” (Wikipedia).

The Independent, The demise of the dollar (6 October 2009):

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.  Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars.

Will the US go to war with Iran soon? Maybe not, maybe these talks never happened.  Still… William Clark wrote: “Although completely unreported by the U.S. media and government, the answer to the Iraq enigma is simple yet shocking – it is in large part an oil currency war.”

Previously in OVO on the topic of currency wars… Klint Finley contributed “The New Currency Wars” [revision] to OVO 18 MONEY (April 2008). This essay is reprinted in Digital Gold Currency Magazine (January 2009).

Jack Donovan, Androphilia [2006]:

Sodomy has been decriminalized in the United States, and America lagged behind most of Europe in this significant achievement.  It seems that if gay advocates today were truly concerned about real oppression, they’d be concentrating their efforts on political asylum programs for homos in Muslim countries, where accused homosexuals are still routinely executed or forced, foolishly, to submit to testosterone injections.

Matt McAllester, The Hunted [2009]:

Nuri was riding in a taxi on a February afternoon when the cab was stopped by the commando unit of the Iraqi police at a checkpoint. To be stopped at a checkpoint was no big deal to Nuri, or any Iraqi. The police put up surprise roadblocks all over the city to catch insurgents and criminals. An officer asked for Nuri’s identification, then told him to step out of the car. The officer asked for Nuri’s cell phone, and Nuri handed it over. Then the officer threw Nuri against the car and handcuffed him.“What have I done?” Nuri asked. The officer didn’t answer. He sniggered, put a hood over Nuri’s head, and shoved him into a police vehicle. In the car, Nuri heard the officer talking on his radio, telling someone that he had found Nuri and would put him in with “the others.” [...] Nuri was told that $10,000 would buy his freedom. When he said he barely had any money, he was placed in a cell overnight. The following morning, his interrogators came back and asked if he was sure he didn’t have the money. Nuri said yes, he was sure. The men then handcuffed him, tied a rope around his ankles, threaded the rope through a hook in the ceiling, hoisted him upside down, and stripped him to his underwear. He passed out. When he woke up, he was still suspended in the air. In the evening, the men let Nuri down, and asked him again for the money. The questioning continued the following day. Nuri’s captors asked for the names and contacts of other gay men, but Nuri refused to divulge any. They called him a tanta—a queen. They told him things would get much worse for him if he didn’t tell them all they wanted to hear. “Killing gays is halal,” one of the men said, meaning it was permissible under Islamic law. “We’ll get points in heaven for it.”

Over the next three weeks, nine men, working in teams of three, took turns torturing Nuri. For three days, toward the end of his captivity, the men put a bag over his head and raped him. On the first day, he estimated that fifteen men assaulted him. The second day, six men. The third day, three. At one point, Nuri’s captors took him to the top floor of the ministry building, where, through a small window, he could see the bodies of the five men with whom he had shared a cell. They appeared to have been executed. “It’ll be your turn next,” the men told him. One of the torturers later got Nuri alone, and told him he would let him out for $5,000. Nuri, with the man’s help, arranged for a friend in London to wire the money to a friend in Iraq, who passed it to the officer. Late one night, 25 days after Nuri had been detained, the man came to Nuri’s cell, led him out of the building, and told him to get into the trunk of his car. He was dropped by the side of a road on the outskirts of the city. [...]

In New York, Scott Long began to receive disturbing reports. Long is the director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights Program at Human Rights Watch, an international nonprofit group with headquarters in the Empire State Building. Since February, Long had been hearing from foreign rights groups about a wave of anti-gay violence in Iraq, but so far the accounts were unsubstantiated. On April 1, one of Long’s colleagues, Rasha Moumneh, was the first person from the organization to be put in touch with a gay Iraqi. It was Nuri. He related what had happened to him and said that he had heard rumors of similar attacks on other gay men. He said the situation was dire. HRW typically investigates human-rights abuses and publishes reports intended to spotlight problems, but the group rarely intervenes directly in a situation. In this case, however, Long decided that if Nuri were left in Iraq, he, and probably many more men like him, could be killed. Long and Moumneh formulated a plan. They would build an underground railroad of sorts, reaching out to gay men in Iraq through the Internet and their existing contacts in Iraq, then advising and supporting gay Iraqis until they could ferry them to a safe city somewhere in Iraq, then to a haven elsewhere in the region, and eventually perhaps to the West.

My friend Jack has said that my quoting the above from his book Androphilia makes it ‘sound political, which it isn’t.’  Fair enough.  I will merely raise it up as an example of a man saying in a book what should be done in 2006 and three years later just that being done in the real world.  Did the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights Program at Human Rights Watch read Androphilia?  I doubt it.  No matter the reason, I am glad this is being done.  And as for those who will get points in heaven for killing gays?  I have no kind words for them or their apologists.

Modemac:

After nearly four years and $140,000 in legal costs, the SubGenius child custody case of Reverend Magdalen has been dismissed.

Reverend Magdalen:

GOOD NEWS, EVERYONE!! I don’t have the official documents yet, but my lawyer informs me that the Appellate Division has dismissed the case against me! This means the jurisdiction of my case will move from Orleans County, NY to here in Georgia where I live, so I can never again be forced to leave my home & rent an apartment in New York to fight the case! It also upholds the current joint custody agreement that lets my son reside with me! I’ll be sure to post scans of the papers when I get them, and of course there’s probably some kind of legal loopholes that might come up, but this is GREAT news! Thank you so much everyone, I could never have gotten here without you!! I do still owe about $50,000+ in legal bills, and the payments are getting really tough to make with my husband laid off, so if anyone has a bit to spare, I promise to send massive Slack waves of thanks for your donation!

Previous information on this case at OVO here: [4][3][2][1]. It might seem a waste of Rev. Magdalen’s money and the tax-funded court system to spend so much only to have things return to the way they were in the first place, with Rev. Magdalen having custody of her son.  But one concrete change did occur in all this.  Rev. Magdalen is forbidden from having SubGenius material in her home.  SubGenius material such as books I helped write.  If you have my writing in your home, if you have SubGenius material in your home, if you have children, this case should matter to you.  You may be next to spend $140,000 for the privilege of being left alone, minus some of your stuff.

To donate directly to Rev. Magdelen, use paypal to send any amount to magdalen@subgenius.com.  To send funds to her lawyer write or call Christopher S. Mattingly 42 Delaware Ave Ste 120, Buffalo, NY 4202-3924 USA (telephone: +1-716-849-1333 ext 351).