What happens when multiculturalism and the victim culture collide? The end of sanity, that’s what.

For a year, Sarah has been facing financial ruin, due to a compensation claim for £34,000 brought by Bushra, 19, who has maintained she is due that figure after being turned down for a job at the Wedge salon in London’s King’s Cross.

In the event, the tribunal ruled this week that while Bushra’s claim of direct discrimination failed, her claim for indirect discrimination had succeeded.

Sarah has therefore been ordered to pay £4,000 compensation by way of ‘injury to feelings’.

…Since the judgment, Bushra, who is of Syrian descent and has worn a headscarf since she was 13, has, so far at least, chosen not to comment.

But, speaking last year, she admitted she had attended 25 interviews for hairdressing jobs without success.

But Sarah, she told the tribunal, had upset her the most.

She said: ‘I felt so down and got so depressed. I thought: “If I am not going to defend myself, who is?” Hairdressing has been what I’ve wanted to do ever since I was at high school.

‘This has ruined my ambitions. Wearing a headscarf is essential to my beliefs.’Bushra had a job in a salon in London, where her tasks included cutting hair, highlighting, tinting and perming, before she left to get married in Syria in 2006.

But on her return to Britain, she was unable to find work.

She has given up her ambitions to become a hairdresser and is studying travel and tourism at Hammersmith and West London College while working part-time in a shop.

At the tribunal, Bushra was asked if Sarah had made derogatory remarks about her headscarf.

She replied: ‘She did not. She just asked me if I wore it all the time, or whether I’d take it off.’

…

‘Her CV didn’t stand out because I was looking for someone who lived locally - something I’d specified in the advert so that I could call them in as and when required - and she lived several miles away in Acton,’ says Sarah.

‘One day she rang up to see if I’d got her CV and begged me for an interview. I told her I had concerns about where she lived, but she sounded so desperate that I agreed she could come in for a chat.’

A few days later, Bushra duly arrived at the salon.

‘I have to say I didn’t take to her,’ says Sarah. ‘She waltzed into the salon and hung up her coat as though she already had the job.

‘Naturally, I noticed her headscarf. But I presumed that, as she’s a hairdresser, she’d take if off when she was working. In 16 years, I’ve never known any stylist cover their hair with a headscarf. And this particular headscarf came all the way down to her eyebrows and covered her entire hairline.’

Sarah broached the subject with Bushra, who said she would not be removing the garment.

After ten minutes, with the interview complete, Sarah said she would come back to Bushra about the vacancy.

‘As she left, Bushra turned to me and said that she’d been turned down for jobs before,’ says Sarah. ‘And I admit I thought: “Well, what do you expect?”

‘It was not a religious matter. If she’d come in wearing a baseball cap and saying she wouldn’t take it off for work, then she wouldn’t have got the job either.’

One morning in the second week of June 2007, an innocuous white envelope landed on Sarah’s doormat. It contained a letter saying that she was being sued for £15,000 for indirect and direct discrimination by Bushra Noah.

This, the letter stated, related to compensation for injury to her feelings and lost earnings. Later, that figure was increased to £34,000.

‘I read it and re-read it and stood there dumbfounded,’ says Sarah.
‘I remembered Bushra, and I guessed straight away that the claim related to the headscarf. In my mind I was saying “But I wasn’t discriminating, it’s just a part of the job”, over and over again.

‘I dialled the number at the top of the letter and was told I needed to get a solicitor, but that because I worked, I wasn’t entitled to Legal Aid. I thought: “This is it - my business is over.” I was devastated.’

There are no words.

Two items from two sides of the ocean which display the same naive attitude among leadership toward the war against global Jihad.

Far left wing Barack Obama is criticizing right wing policies for letting Osama bin Laden slip away.

Meanwhile, far left wing policies in Britain which we criticize here often are intentionally letting Osama’s right hand man slip away.

That’s right, Al Qaeda’s #1 in Europe is about to be set loose.  But it’s OK, because Qatada is only allowed to be out among the British people - many of them his desired victims, no doubt - for two hours a day.  He’s also been sternly warned against contacting his pal Osama bin Laden.  Whether he’s also been barred from publishing a blog on my.barackobama.com was not mentioned.

Barack is right.  There’s no use arguing over whose policies will keep this country safer.  Clearly the left’s policies of erring on the side of terrorists’ liberties and backing away from confrontations with state sponsors of terrorism are the best way to safeguard a nation’s security.

While off making nice with Hamas, former Dhimmi-in-chief Jimmy Carter paid respects to dead terrorist Yasser Arafat by laying a wreath at his grave. The man Carter finds fit to mourn was directly tied to the assassination of two U.S. diplomats in the 70’s, and continued to obstruct peace efforts while encouraging terrorist activities against Israel throughout his political career. I have trouble imagining a more shameful and embarrassing former President than Jimmy Carter ever existed.

Running a story about the Mohammad cartoons, a Norwegian newspaper was so kind as to protect our delicate sensibilities from the indecent drawings with Cops-style pixelation.

Cover your eyes…there’s dhimmitude on display.

Hat tip: Michelle Malkin

After a bondage fair benefiting the depraved Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence posted an ad depicting da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” as a leather clad orgy replete with sextoys, Bay Area Christians took to the streets in rage. Incensed by the inflammatory anti-Christian rhetoric which has made it’s way into the mainstream of San Fran culture, thousands of religious zealots threw rocks through store windows, tipped over cars and started fires throughout the city, chanting “death to the non-believers”. The national guard, led in the field by the terminator himself, quickly restored order over the city, and the dawn fogs brought a restive calm. City officials plan to meet with leaders of the Christian community to address any perceived grievances to avoid a repeat of last nights deadly antics.

Or not.

I imagine it was a hard choice between this and the 72 dominatrices of Mohammed ad.

Some moron named Ryan Yeomans writing for the Central Connecticut State University newspaper ponders which is the worser evil, Bush or Bin Laden? For some reason, the word dhimmitude kept popping in to my mind while reading this article.

As of late, if you were to bring up the president in a discussion you would find that many Americans disapprove of the decisions he has made. At the same time, Osama bin Laden presents many good arguments against the president and many of his reasons for disapproving of Bush are similar to those of anti-Bush Americans.

No kidding. Alert analysts have been pointing out the convergence between leftist and Islamist ideology for years. That last sentence could also be read “many of the liberals’ reasons for opposing Bush are similar to those of bin Laden.” To a sane person this should raise serious red flags about who it is we’re sharing our voting booths with. But to moonbats, it merely adds to bin Laden’s credibility.

He continues:

Would it be wrong to assume that there is some kind of connection between feelings of the American people and those of Osama bin Laden?

Not if by American people he means the disaffected America-hating slime that passes for the left.

He then goes on to say that he would make this connection (as if he hadn’t already) if only doing so wouldn’t cause Bush to label him an enemy of the state. Finding himself stuck between a rock and a hard place, wondering if flat out expressing his convictions would make him look too much like a terrorist, the author finally questions who has done the most damage to America, Bush or bin Laden.

I can’t really blame him for asking. I’ve asked myself a similar question. Which is worse, Al Qaeda or the Left? One is a group bent on destroying our freedoms and way of life, bringing the whole planet under its rule, and forcing upon us the dogmatic views dictated by its twisted ideology. And the other is a terrorist organization.

The answer to Mr. Yeomans’ question is simple really. “Neither Bush nor bin Laden.” It’s the liberal ideology which has done the most damage and continues to be the greatest threat to America. Great civilizations are destroyed from within, not without. Bin Laden would have no power if not for like-minded fools in this country sharing his goals and exaggerating his successes while stymieing all efforts to oppose him.

Another day. Another democrat feeding propaganda to the enemies of humanity.

Watch the sad video at Memri.

Kucinich has decided we owe the Iraqis reparations for the suffering this war has caused to Iraq’s civilian population. To that I say:

No, Mr. Assboy, the people who intentionally inflicted the civilian catastrophe owe the Iraqis reparations. Along with their foreign supporters. Namely, your friends in Iran and Syria. If I may be so bold, given your oneness of purpose with the insurgency and its state sponsors (the common purpose being American defeat) and as a result your incidental bolstering of their strategic position, the democratic party may very well owe reparations to the people of Iraq as well. The best way to settle this debt is to achieve our objectives in Iraq and give them all a chance at a life worth living. But that’s not something your interested in doing, now is it.

I dare say you owe reparations to the families of KIA and wounded soldiers and marines here in the United States too. I’m not talking about money. A good start to paying the democratic party’s debt would be the resignation and self-exile of any politician who for political gain has circumvented our nation’s foreign policy and met with the leadership of states which are supporting the murder of Americans and Iraqis. Ahem, that’s you also, Mr. Assboy. When the democratic party through self reflection and purging of undesirables gets to a point where it exhibits a oneness of purpose with America’s long term interests. When we achieve our goals in Iraq so these mens’ sacrifices have not been made in vain. And when you recognize those sacrifices in the spirit they were given, then, and only then, may you consider your debt fulfilled. Until that day, assuming you and your colleagues have any conscience whatsoever, may you be tormented by your betrayal. Should you feel no shame at all, then I sincerely hope the almighty has arranged for you a sufficiently disagreeable method of repayment in eternity.

Like the Danes before them, the Swedes are coming to understand just how opposed to freedom fanatical Islamists are.

Swedish artist Lars Vilks was invited by an art school to participate in an exhibit with the theme, of all things, of dogs. Vilks, something of a provocateur (his website has a cartoon of a Jew?s head on a pig?s body), submitted cartoons including one with Mohammed?s head on a dog?s body (it?s connected to the contemporary Swedish craze for ?roundabout dogs,? but that?s another story). Before the exhibit opened, his drawings were removed by the organizers, citing possible security threats. Another gallery followed suit, claiming similar worries.

This provoked much discussion in the Swedish media. Although several other newspapers had already published the cartoons, it was only when Nerikes Allehanda, a regional paper in Orebro, published one of them on August 18 that the fur began to fly. Like the Jyllands-Posten cartoons of Mohammed published in September 2005, the cartoon was used to accompany and illustrate an article discussing self-censorship, threats, and freedom of religion.

It looks like things have already reached the point where thuggish violence is rewarded by preempted censorship. Unfortunately, the perpetual outrage mongers seem to have vastly increased their efficiency:

Sweden?s own Muslims have merely demonstrated peacefully outside the paper?s office, but, like the Jyllands-Posten affair, foreign intervention has now raised the stakes. With the Danish cartoons it took four months before several Muslim governments, at the behest of an Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) meeting in Mecca, launched protests, boycotts, and threats, resulting in dozens of murders, especially of Christians. This time they took only nine days.

The Swedish response? Dhimmitude, of course:

A Swedish foreign ministry spokeswoman said the government had “expressed regret that the publication of the cartoons had hurt the feelings of Muslims”.

“We can’t apologise for the cartoons because we did not publish them,” spokeswoman Sofia Karlberg told the BBC News website.

The only reason they can’t apologize is because they aren’t the perpetrators, rather than because they believe in principles of freedom. It’s no wonder Islamists believe the West is weak, we can’t even defend our own principles.

Drama over Casualty plot as BBC bans terror script

The BBC has abandoned plans to screen a fictional terrorist attack by Muslim suicide bombers in the primetime drama Casualty after internal clashes over whether the highly sensitive subject matter would cause offence.

BBC drama executives were keen to push the storyline and may even have started filming, a source close to the production told The Observer. But they were overruled by the corporation’s editorial guidelines department, which ordered that the episode be changed so that the Muslim characters were replaced by animal rights extremists.

. . .A source close to next month’s new series of Casualty, the long-running BBC1 hospital drama, said that it was to start with a two-part special in which a young Muslim runs into a bus station and blows himself up. Another Muslim is wearing a suicide vest but fails to detonate it; instead he is injured and the vest has to be carefully removed. The source said that senior figures in the drama department supported the idea but were blocked by editorial guideline staff, who oversee the corporation’s editorial and ethical standards. The drama staff were overruled because of concerns that the story would perpetuate stereotypes of young Muslims in Britain.

In the substitute story, a double episode to be shown over a weekend, a bomb explodes on a bus after being planted by animal rights militants, leaving the Holby City Hospital’s Emergency Department to deal with the bloody aftermath.

Much in the same way that the left has perverted the definition of discrimination to suit its agenda, the word “stereotype” is often grossly applied. Negative stereotypes have in some cases been used in the past to serve nefarious agenda, such as promoting racial hatreds. In overcoming this wrong, society began to discourage the use of these negative stereotypes. But somewhere in the process and unjustified connection was drawn between a simple negative portrayal and a stereotype. To say that all Muslims are suicide bombers would be to engage in stereotyping. To simply portray one or two Muslim characters in a show as suicide bombers is nothing more than realistic story-telling.

All manner of important social occurrences are used in story telling. That’s what makes books, movies and (sometimes) television so powerful. The use of suicide bombing by radical Muslim jihadists is something that people all over the world are dealing with. It is the kind of significant social event that demand attention by story tellers. To single this particular action out as somehow off-limits for use in plot lines betrays a dangerous willingness on the part of self-flagellating Westerners to compromise their principles in the face of violent threats.

Nice.

The Sheehan Salute, a.k.a. The Hawaiian Good Luck Sign

Other great moments in middle finger history:

Soldiers signaling duress.

Hat Tip: Atlas Shrugs

UPDATE: Check out the last video from the Atlas Shrugs page. Oh the irony, momma moonbat/communist tool giving a defeat rally in front of a Vietnamese restaurant - whose owners likely fled here to avoid the aftermath of our withdrawal from S.E. Asia.

Didn’t she retire or something?