Day: September 7, 2009

Rifqa Bary Update

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update September 8th:  Pamela Geller reports that Nidra Poller has written an important Op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about this case, here.   I had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Poller in Nashville last May where she made a presentation at the New English Review conference on radical Islam.

We first told you about Rifqa Bary here.  She is the teenager from Ohio who converted to Christianity and ran away to Florida when she feared she would be the victim of an honor killing by her family or others in the Muslim community in Ohio.    Jerry Gordon writing at New English Review has a lengthy analysis of where the case stands as of the end of last week, here.

What occurred both inside and outside the Orlando Circuit Court room on September 3rd at the Rifqa Bary hearing was nothing short of Jihad against all apostates. Muslim fury was focused on so-called ‘Christian extremists’ who had allegedly swayed a teen-age apostate originally from Sri Lanka to convert to Christianity from Islam. In court, the petit teenager dressed demurely wearing a silver cross and holding a bible. Miss Bary’s case is being presided over by Judge Daniel Dawson. Judge Dawson has foremost in mind two basic issues; securing jurisdiction and the safety of Miss Bary. Dawson’s August 21st hearing decision permitting her to remain in child custody in Florida. This has clearly outraged Muslims who demand her return to her Muslim parents in Ohio and an uncertain fate.

Read on.

Iraqi refugees bringing over the family; importing one’s own labor

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is another of those same old stories about how Iraqi refugees can’t find employment and are suffering in America.  We probably have thirty such stories already.  Just change the names of the refugees and their resettlement city and its the same lament.  And, of course the International Refugee Committee is always in there begging for more taxpayer money. 

You can read the whole thing here yourself.  But, this caught my eye near the end. 

Odeesh, his wife, Manal Harmiz, and their children, ages 11 to 23, live in a second-floor apartment near downtown El Cajon. The furniture — and a computer and flat-screen television — were given to them by Sabah Toma, a cousin who lives in La Mesa.

Toma, who came to San Diego County from Iraq in 1982, has helped bring over 63 relatives.

He owns San Diego Ice Machine, along with five convenience and liquor stores where many of his relatives work.

Toma said he’s trying to find a job for Odeesh, but it’s difficult in a tough economy.

“I have always told him, ‘When it’s your turn,’ ” Toma said. “You’ve got to go one step at a time.”

Holy cow!  Sixty three relatives!   I guess that is one way to be sure you have cheap labor!   

Last year we told you that family reunification had been closed mostly from Africa when the State Department had discovered widespread fraud through DNA testing.  Maybe they should do a little random testing among these Iraqis!

By the way, this article also tells us that the San Diego area of California has the second highest population of Iraqi refugees outside of the Detroit area of Michigan.   Both states are near the top of the unemployment charts.

Sierra Club supports communist Van Jones

~ Ann Corcoran

Note to readers:  If you think I’m getting too far afield from issues involving refugees and immigrants, I assure you I am not.  As I pointed out the other day the mainstream environmental groups have joined the open borders crowd and BIG businesses(cheap labor) and unions (dues paying members) to change America into something I and millions of others disagree with.  See yesterday’s post on David Horowitz here, and my post on the Sierra Club, the Apollo Alliance and open borders here.

Carl Pope, Executive Director of the Sierra Club admitted in a column at their website yesterday that Van Jones (aka Anthony K), the Obama Administration’s former Green Czar, an avowed communist and revolutionary, was a good friend of his and that they, progressives, didn’t  initially take seriously the investigation going on in the blogospere and on Glenn Beck about Jones’ radical past.  

In a column entitled, ‘We All Blew It”, Pope attributes the unearthing of Jones’ radical ties to reactionary racists wanting to bring him down because he is black.  

Forget it Pope, you must think you are back in the 1960’s, race baiting doesn’t cut it anymore.  It’s not about offensive words and the color of someone’s skin, it’s about philosophy and it’s about the FACT that most Americans do not want a Socialist/Communist form of government run by a bunch of rich elitists like you.

Pope says, here.  Hat tip:  Paul.

This was a lynch mob and, when it started forming a month ago, we didn’t take it seriously enough. When I saw the first Glenn Beck piece on Van Jones and the Apollo Alliance as the new vast left-wing conspiracy, I could not take it seriously. Silence enabled Fox to keep pushing. The statements for which Jones apologized — the reference to the right as “assholes” and saying that Bush was talking “like a crack-head” were such ordinary political discourse — think Rahm Emmanuel, think Dick Cheney saying “fuck yourself” to Senator Leahy, think Tom Friedman dubbing Bush “the addict-in-chief” — that I didn’t understand why an apology was necessary; I assumed it would blow over.

You blew it alright because you don’t get it.  You can’t call people racists anymore and have them scurry away.  And, if it weren’t for people like you continually stirring up race as a way to achieve your political ends the country would have long since calmed down on the subject.

Well, that [underestimating the American people!] was a mistake. So was the decision by the White House to treat the initial attacks not as part of an assault on the president but, instead, to allow them to be viewed as being about Van Jones. What we underestimated was the power of the fact that both Jones and the Barack Obama are black. Yes, the hysteria was about politics — I don’t think Fox News really cares about Jones’s ethnicity — but it was enabled by race. Calling Bush a “crack-head” is seen by a large part of America as worse than calling him “addict-in-chief” because crack is not just a drug — it is a drug used largely by black people. It reminds those Americans who are still uncomfortable with Barack Obama that we have a black president.

Read his whole post and then be sure to not miss this unbelievable film of a joint interview with Pope and Van Jones.  Pompous Pope calls it a “video dialogue.”   Pope comes across as an old hippie who never grew up and wishes he were back in the glory days and Jones is hankering to bring on a revolution ’cause golly-gee he was in the womb when Martin Luther King  and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated  and he missed out on all the riotous fun.  Get ready to barf!

One final thought:  The film will give you an idea of how it came to be that, despite the obvious deleterious environmental impact out-of-control immigration has on the environment, the Sierra Club came to be (through their silence) an open borders advocate.