Toronto Newspaper Columnists Weigh In on the Niqab Controversy

The Toronto Sun's Farzana Hassan writes that allowing a chick to obscure her face during the citizenship ceremony,

...will establish an odious symbol of Islamism and its misogyny at a quintessentially Canadian event.

Don't say that to NatPo opiner Andrew Coyne, though. He thinks the controversy is "ridiculous" and says that those who object to the niqab do so because, silly them, they associate it with "terrorism":

People who wish to ban the niqab often see the issue as being of a piece with the issue of terrorism, and see the unwillingness of others to ban the niqab as being born of a more general blindness to the threat of Islamist terrorism. 

Actually, Andrew, I associate the niqab with sharia, and how Islamic law, a set of draconian strictures that are antithetical and inimical to Western precepts, locks chicks into a second class status. So whenever I see someone wearing the covering (and often those who do are also wearing one of those head-to-toe body shrouds), I don't think, "There goes a potential terrorist, or someone with terrorist connections." I think, "There goes someone who would not look out of place in, say, Riyadh or Kabul, places where women are compelled to wear clothing which speaks to their lowly status in society; societies which view them as being what they look like when they wear these garments, i.e. they are a blank, a nullity, a non-entity, a void."

But, hey, that's just me.

Liberal leader Justin Trudeau and the NDP's Tom Mulcair, for two, think chicks should be allowed to wear their sharia masks while reciting the oath of citizenship--if they want to, that is (as if these women really have a choice).

And Prime Minister Stephen Harper? While he continues to oppose niqab-wearing when taking the oath, his government bears responsibility for opening our doors to all these niqab-wearers, no questions asked, in the first place.

Which makes his objections largely symbolic and very much after the fact.

Update: Cairo University Bans Teachers From Wearing Face Veil

Guess Who Didn't Stick Around to Hear Bibi's UN Speech

It's these two (and shame on them for skipping it).



Update: You can't really blame 'em for the snub. They were only following their Bibi-loathing, Islam-loving boss's orders.        

Update: Claudia Rosett decodes the semiotics of the snub--it signals to the UN that it's "open season on Israel."

Thanks again, B. Hussein!             

Entertainment

Londonistan "Progressive" Jews Bursting With Joy Over Successful Efforts to Rescue Syrians

"Tikkun olam" strikes again (this time in Londonistan) as Jews scramble to "rescue" their enemies:

A London council has agreed to resettle Syrian refugees after a campaign led by a local rabbi. 

Rebecca Qassim Birk, rabbi at Finchley Progressive Synagogue, headed a Citizens UK effort to get Barnet Council to take in the refugees. 

Council leader Richard Cornelius announced that the local authority would accept 50 Syrians at a meeting at the synagogue on Sunday, attended by 200 people.  

He told the gathering: "Rabbi, the answer is yes," acknowledging that the campaign had pricked his conscience.   

The local Citizens UK group, made up of Rwandan, Syrian, Jewish and Catholic communities in Barnet, said it had organised homes and places at schools and GP surgeries for the refugees.

Rabbi Birk said: "We know it's not easy for a council to say yes, that's why we needed local people to show their support, find homes and offer a warm welcome." 

Norwich Liberal Jewish Community is planning a service in its Succah this Shabbat to call for the city council to follow Barnet's lead.  

Meanwhile, more than £445,000 has been raised by World Jewish Relief's appeal to help Syrian refugees since the beginning of September. 

Paul Anticoni, chief executive of the charity, said: "The Jewish community has risen as one to show that it can be counted upon to make a life-changing difference."...

Just what Londonistan needs: more Muslims.

Dear Jews: You can "rescue" 'em all you want. They're still going to hate you and your little Jewish state, too.

Al Gore "Leaps" Before He Looks

Swiping a page from anti-capitalism harpy, Naomi Klein, the thick, wet climate change alarmist "leaps" onto her wealth redistribution bandwagon.

More Evidence That Russia Is a Strong Horse and America Under Obama Is a Lame Pony

Andrew Stuttaford collects some salient quotations:

Osama bin Laden: “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse.”  

Lord Palmerston: “Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests.”  

Now: BEIRUT – The Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) has asked Russia to support it in its fight against ISIS as well as the Al-Qaeda affiliated Nusra Front. YPG chief Sipan Hemo told Sputnik Türkiye—which is owned by Moscow—that his fighting force requested arms from Russia as well as general military coordination, according to a translation of the interview prepared by Turkey’s Anadolu news agency…

Update: Melanie Phillips writes:

Any lingering doubt about the lethal weakness of America and the West has been brutally shot down in the skies above Syria.

Russia’s President Putin sent in his warplanes ostensibly to bomb ISIS but actually, it seems, to bomb more moderate opponents of Syria’s President Assad, including CIA-trained rebels.

Putin thus well and truly rubbed President Obama’s nose in American impotence. The Russian leader is now making the immensely dangerous running in Syria. Blindsided America is reduced to scrabbling frantically in his slipstream.

Putin is ruthless and focused. Allying with Assad and the Iranian regime that pulls his strings, the Russian leader can pose – however preposterously – as the potential savior of the world from the Islamist specter that terrifies the West.

By contrast, America and Britain are wildly flailing around. Obama and Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron say both ISIS and Assad must be defeated. But although they are taking ineffectual military action against ISIS, they won’t attack Assad. 

Instead, Obama has been reduced to pleading with Putin to restrain Assad’s worst excesses...

A truly pathetic and embarrassing sight. (The Obama pony is not only weak, it's been gelded.)

Update: The Khomeinists know who the strong horse is:



It's Superputin! (God help us all.)

Netanyahu At the UN

One word for his speech: awesome!

Just Call Him "Lonesome" Obama

I caught the last 40 minutes of Elia Kazan's A Face In the Crowd on TV this morning (you can watch it for free online here). It occurred to me when the movie was over that, in our time, we are living through our own face in the crowd moment, with Barack Hussein Obama starring as this era's folksy demagogue, Lonesome Rhodes (the role played with scenery-chewing gusto by Andy Griffith).

The same thought occurred last year to Victor Davis Hanson last year. Back then he wrote:

Elia Kazan’s classic A Face in the Crowd ^[2] is a good primer on Barack Obama’s rise and fall. Lonesome Rhodes arises out of nowhere in the 1957 film, romancing the nation as a phony populist ^[3] who serially spins yarns in the most folksy ways — confident that he should never be held to account. Kazan’s point (in the film Rhodes is a patsy for conservative business interests) is that the “folks” are fickle and prefer to be charmed rather than informed and told the truth. Rhodes’s new first name, Lonesome, resonates in the film in a way that Barack does now ^[4]. Finally, an open mic captures Rhodes’s true disdain for the people he champions, and his career crashes. 

So what is collapsing the presidency of the once mellifluous Obama? It is not the IRS, AP, VA, or NSA scandals. Nor did the nation especially fault him for Benghazi or the complete collapse of U.S. foreign policy, from failed reset to a Middle East afire. In each case, he either blamed Bush or denied there was a smidgeon of wrongdoing on his part. 

Certainly, the stampede at the border, as disastrous as it was, did not ipso facto sink Obama’s ratings. Ditto the embarrassing Bergdahl deal, in which we traded a likely deserter for five Islamist kingpins. Was it the ISIS ascendance that is leading to genocide and a nascent caliphate? Not in and of itself.

We could go on, but you get the picture that it was all of the above that finally became too much, as Americans turned Obama off because they were all lied out. In all of these scandals a charismatic Barack wheeled out the teleprompter, smiled, dropped his g’s, soared with “make no mistake about it” and “let me perfectly clear,” and then, like Lonesome Rhodes, told the “folks” ^[5] things that could not be true or at least were the exact opposite of what he himself had earlier asserted...

And that was before Vladimir Putin stormed into Syria on the pretext of getting rid of ISIS, thereby snookering "Lonesome" Obama and his cracker barrel gang--again.

VDH concludes: "Lonesome did not end up well, and neither will the presidency of Barack Obama."

Alas, the hopey-dopey Lonesome is intent on taking the country down with him.

"Why Do So Many Americans Think They Have Cherokee Blood?"

Delusion? A desire to seem more exotic than your everyday, run-of-the-mill paleface American? Victim group envy?

Yes, yes and yes!

As Putin Bombs, Kerry Bribes

Foggy Bottom has just unveiled its latest misbegotten scheme:

The U.S. State Dept. has posted a $5 million reward to any American who can turn over “information that will disrupt the trade of oil and trafficking of antiquities that benefit the terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.” 

The press release on the notice from the State Dept.’s Rewards for Justice added:

Today’s announcement marks the first time the U.S. Secretary of State has authorized a Rewards for Justice offer for information that could be used to disrupt sale or trade in oil or antiquities by, or on behalf of, a terrorist organization.

That should work like a charm, wouldn't you say?

Update: Thanks, John Kerry (you pompous putz) for afflicting us with your "deconfliction" mishegas.

The EU's "Compassionate"/Suicidal Syrian Refugee Policy Vis-a-Vis Canada, Jews and "None Is Too Many"

Here's the EU policy--in a nutshell:

If back home in Syria you're being brutalized or butchered by Islamic militias or dictator Hafez al-Assad's forces, tough luck. But if you can shell out a small fortune to human traffickers, make your way across large stretches of land or sea while crossing several international borders, and finagle your way into a Eurozone country by scaling razor-wire fences in Eastern Europe or storming sandy beaches in Greece, then we welcome you. Oh, and you don't even have to be from Syria -- it's okay if you just pretend to be.

And, whaddya know?, same goes for Canada, too (because multiculturalism's a going concern and because no one wants to reprise "None is too many").

But let's examine that "None is too many" trope for a moment. Does it really apply here? When the deathless line erupted from the mouth of a senior Canadian immigration official, a big time Jew-hater, all those years ago, there was no Israel for Jews to go to, and six million Jews had been murdered in what amounted to a pan-European genocide project. And, oh yeah, the Jews posed no threat whatsoever to any lands that allowed them entry.

In our time, there are dozens of Arab and Muslim countries which could open their doors to their Muslim brothers (more than a few of whom are likely to be hot for violent jihad), but which would prefer instead that they flood into Dar al Harb, those portions of the world not yet conquered for Allah.

And were you to ask the leaders of these 57 Muslim nations (who have joined together in an alliance known as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation--yes, cooperation!) how many countries should be left out of Dar al Islam, Allah's domain, you know that, were they being truthful, their response would echo that Canadian Jew-hater's infamous line. And the line would most certainly be uttered again were you to ask, "How many Jewish states should there be?"

That being so, how stupid are we for helping make their Islam uber alles dreams come true?

Update: Why I Walked Out on the Bonds Speech at My Shul (hat tip: KS).

Drama Queen Abbas Throws a Hissy Fit At the UN But Fails to Leave the Scene of His Crimes

The kleptocrat emoted to the max in front of an international audience yesterday, but the histrionics were only for show, and it's clear he's going nowhere fast.



You know what would turn the drama queen's frown upside
down? The demise of a Jewish Israel.