European Union to take 10,000 Iraqi refugees

11/28/2008 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The European Union says it is ready to accept up to 10,000 Iraqi refugees, many of whom are living in extreme hardship in Jordan and Syria.

The agreement came at an EU meeting in Brussels on Thursday, where interior ministers received a new report on conditions at refugee camps.

Germany said it would take in about 2,500 of the refugees.

Priority will be given to those with medical needs, torture victims, single mothers and religious minorities.

Don’t hold your breath that this means Europe will rescue the Christians.

Excellent review and a must-read book

11/28/2008 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Janet Levy writing at American Thinker today reviews Robert Chandler’s book, “Shadow World: Resurgent Russia, The Global New Left, and Radical Islam.” Levy concludes:

The United States is at a critical juncture in its history faced with threats from international Marxists, an internal socialist movement and global jihadists. Once any of these elements achieves significant positions of power within the United States, they will proceed with their plans to destroy Western civilization. Our freedom, sovereignty and way of life could be extinguished by any of these forces that are acting against our democratic republic. Robert Chandler’s warnings in Shadow World must be heeded if we are to survive.

Read the review, get the book, and get to work!

Find your place, your role, in saving America. Let me make a recommendation. Don’t spend a lot of time being anxious and running around like a chicken with your head cut off. Read this book, but don’t spend all your time wallowing in books like this. If you care about our way of life, our freedom and our great country then examine your talents and find a place to apply them.

Are you good with people in your community, then be a community organizer for the right side. Find like-minded people and figure out ways to spread the word. Create new groups. Join existing community groups and speak up.

Can you write? Then send letters to editors, government officials, etc. Better still, start your own blog and find some area that needs to be exposed—don’t just yak, do research and figure out ways to make your work public, bypassing the mainstream media. Comment at other people’s blogs.

Join some of the mushrooming number of conservative organizing groups on the internet. Join a religious conservative group. Join a gun club! Help build coalitions of groups. By the way, building coalitions is a bedrock strategy of the Alinsky school of community organizing.

I think conservative talk radio is great, but it can have the effect of making you think our views are being heard. Encourage talk radio hosts to give more instructions on action that needs to be taken. I don’t think conservative listeners always know what to do with the information they have been given.

Anyway, you get the gist! Find your place, go to work and don’t get too anxious about the big picture (keep it in the back of your mind), but don’t let it consume you.

Update and review of the Greeley/Swift controversy

11/28/2008 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I have to warn you, this article I’m posting is a long and superficial piece about the controversy in Greeley, CO a few months back, the one we created an entire category to follow (here). If you have been a regular reader of RRW and followed the recent news about Somalis getting into the US by lying about family members or that Somali young men are believed to be headed to terrorist training camps, this is the kind of story that will make you want to barf it is so one-sided.

The problem in Greeley, in a nutshell, is that Somalis flooded the town for jobs at the local JBS Swift meatpacking plant, then demanded special prayer breaks for Ramaden which Swift first gave them then took back when other ethnic workers at the plant protested. Somalis walked off the job and were told to return to work by a certain time, those that did not were fired. Swift stuck to its guns and many of the nomadic Somalis moved on to other meatpacking towns.

A few nuggets from yesterday’s article in Denver’s Westworld News follow. Setting the scene for the clash of cultures:

Hispanics have been in Greeley for years, attracted by the many factory and agricultural jobs. But their numbers have swelled in recent decades, and they now make up at least 30 percent of the city’s population of 89,000, according to the U.S. Census.

Interestingly the clash of cultures came not from white Americans, but from the Hispanics primarily. Other ethnic groups employed at Swift protested too.

How did the Somalis come to be in Greeley?

In December 2006, federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials descended on the Swift plant, arresting and deporting hundreds of illegal workers as their families sobbed outside. The raid was part of a national crackdown that shook the meatpacking industry and left Swift desperate for a new source of cheap labor.

Refugees — those who fear persecution in their native countries and have been screened by the Department of Homeland Security for resettlement in America — are both cheap and legal. After the raid, some Somalis say, Swift sent recruiters to African restaurants in Denver, offering them cash to work in Greeley. The word spread quickly among Somali refugees from Denver to Kansas City to California, as friends and relatives talked up the job openings and the larger paychecks to be earned at the Swift plant.

Now we know from recent news that many of the Somalis are not here legally and could never have been screened by Homeland Security because they lied about who they are. Kind of hard to screen someone who isn’t who they say they are.

So, when Swift refused to hire back the Somalis who walked off the job did they stay in Greeley or move on? And, how is Greeley today?

Suddenly, Greeley had a different problem: Scores of Somalis, out of work and worried about making their rent. Within weeks, the fired workers began leaving town for jobs at packing plants in Fort Morgan, Nebraska and Minnesota. They emptied out the Greeley Islamic Center mosque, left vacant apartments, even shut down the only African restaurant in town, creating a massive rupture in the community.

I guess just as local citizens were being told to adjust to their new neighbors, poof, they were gone. Most of them that is!

Remaining are the “community organizers” who had intrigued me while the controversy was on-going. Graen Isse was the guy who had showed up in town just before all this started and then busied himself by talking to the likes of Arabic news outfits, blaming the problem on the Hispanics. He told the Arab publication he had worked in America since he was 16, but from this puff-piece it would appear he had a typical American high school experience. And, with an education like his, what was he doing looking for meatpacking work (even as a translator)?

Graen Isse, a local Somali leader, understands these conflicting impulses well. In his fourteen years in America, he’s bounced between three states. Now he’s trying to figure out how to help Greeley’s Somali community survive, even if he’s not sure how long he’ll stick around himself.

Slim and amiable, the 27-year-old Isse is constantly in motion — knee tapping, cell phone wire hanging from his ear, eyes scanning the room. [who is he talking to and what is he looking for?]

[Supposedly separated from his parents as a child by the everpresent violence in Africa, miraculously one day his parents were found.]

One day, Isse’s older brother appeared and announced that their parents had escaped to neighboring Kenya. As his family was reunited, another of Isse’s brothers, who had been injured in the war, made it to California as a refugee. He told the government about his family back home, clearing the way for Isse and several members of his family to apply for refugee status and move to San Diego.

So Isse grew up as an American teenager, running track and playing high school football. After he graduated from high school in Minneapolis, where his mother had moved, his globetrotting continued. He took college classes in California, then completed his degree in Kenya before ending up back in San Diego. There he worked for a transportation tracking company, drove a taxi, even took some law school classes.

Isse moved to Greeley last summer because a friend from California, Aziz Dhies, was working as a nurse there and suggested that Isse might like the town as well. Isse was hired as a translator at Swift and had only been on the job for about a week when the Ramadan controversy began. He was thrust into the midst of the problem as he negotiated on behalf of hundreds of people whom he had only just met. He, too, was fired because he went home to eat and rest on the day the dispute was resolved instead of returning immediately to work. But he quickly found a new job, working part-time as a translator at the Weld County courts. And he and Dhies dedicated themselves to community organizing, forming the East Africa Community, which aims to be “the middleman between the leaders and our community,” Isse says.

I believe that Isse is a professional community organizer brought in to agitate the Swift workers, but I guess the big question is, who sent him?

Taking a break and giving thanks

11/27/2008 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Wishing all of our readers a Happy Thanksgiving. Take it easy, enjoy the day and give thanks that you live in America. Tomorrow is time enough to get back to all of our cheerful news about missing Somali youths, and unhappy Iraqis and all those other joys that diversity worship has brought us.

Holy Cow! Now 40 young Somalis are missing in Minnesota!

11/26/2008 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Note to new readers: This post, originally written in November 2008, has now become my archive for all the posts we have done on this topic . The number of missing men is now generally to believed to be about 20. If you would like to learn about the missing youths, begin reading at the bottom of this post and work your way to the most recent update below.

*I’ve got more updates since July 19th, 2009, just haven’t gotten them linked in here—sorry!

Update July 19th: Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) says US should consider retrieving the Somalis who left the country to join the Jihad, here.

Update July 16th: Counterterrorism blog: this is about the international jihad, here. Youtube clip of American Al-Shabaab telling Obama his charisma won’t work on them, here.

Update July 15th: Indictments unsealed in this case, here.

Update July 14th: We hear from Zakaria Maruf’s sister, here. What do you know, the same thing is happening in Kenya too!

Update July 13th: 4th Somali-American (Zakaria Maruf) dead in Somalia, the NYT called him the recruiter, here. See also Judy’s post today about the cultural problems Somalis face in the US, here.

Update July 12th: New York Times publishes front page story on missing Somali youths, here. It is all about Allah, here.

Another Somali-American missing boy is found dead in Somalia, here. Shot in the head.

Update July 11th: Al-Shabaab leader mocks Obama, here.

Update July 10th: More on Somalis standing up to CAIR and the Imams, here.

Update July 9th: We do it for Allah, here.

Update July 4th: Another anti-CAIR demonstration scheduled today in Minneapolis, here.

Update July 2nd: Fox News is reporting that indictments are imminent, here.

Update June 24th: MN Somali leader confirms criticism of CAIR directly to RRW, here.

Update June 21st: Somali community activists defend CAIR, here.

Update June 12th: Unbelievable! Somalis tell CAIR to butt out! See also this excellent overview of the whole story of the missing Somali youths.

Update June 9th: More on the death of that Somali youth at AP, here.

Update June 7th: One Somali youth found dead in Somalia, believed to have been killed by al Shabaab, here. Omar Jamal says US must bring the body back to Minnesota, here.

Update April 16th: Somali youths have been missing from Minneapolis since 2007!

Update April 10th: CAIR tries to hamstring questioning of students in Minnesota, here.

Update April 8th: Canadian missing Somali arrested in Somalia, here.

Update April 6th: Some missing youths hold press conference in Somalia, here.

Update April 5th: Does an American play a significant role in recruiting the missing Somali youths, here?

Update April 2nd: Somali terror recruitment film found by FBI here.

Update March 31st: MPR reports that relatives of the missing youths are working their contacts in Somalia, here.

Update March 30th: NPR reported that four missing men have returned, but have disappeared from sight again, here.

Update March 27th: Canadian youths missing too, here.

Update March 23rd: Jamal says missing youth spotted at the mall, here.

Update March 20th: Fox News is reporting that the missing youths have been found, here.

Update March 19th: Osama Bin Laden encourages Al-Shabaab to fight on and capture Somalia, here. This links our “youths” to international jihad.

Update March 12th: My view from the Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing yesterday on terrorist recruitment here.

Update March 11th: Grand Jury hears testimony in case of missing Somalis, here. Senate Homeland Security Committee holds a hearing.

Update March 8th: Jamal: He could have blown himself up here just as well.

Update March 7th: Recruitment methods explored at Minnesota Public Radio here.

Update March 6th: Senate panel to hold hearing March 11th on missing youths.

Update Feb. 28th: AP tells us more about how the missing Somali men were part of a terror scare on inauguration weekend, here.

Update Feb. 27th: Minneapolis mosque holds open house to assure community they are good guys.

Update Feb. 24th: More on FBI director Mueller’s speech about the Somali youths, excellent reporting at the Washington Times .

Update Feb. 23th: You gotta laugh! The New York Times finally gets to this story 3 months after it began.

Update Feb. 17th: Jerusalem Post reporting today that 500 could be missing!

Update Feb. 16th: UK fears its missing Somali youths are returning, here.

Update Feb. 15th: CAIR crying about ‘religious profiling’ as FBI steps up questioning of Somalis.

Update Feb. 12th: More indepth coverage of the press conference from Dinah Lord. My post here.

Update Feb. 11th: Mystery deepens about whether jihadists captured in Somaliland are our missing boys.

Update Feb. 10th: Press conference held and mosque denies role in missing youths case.

Update Feb. 9th: Another missing youth story with lots of inflamed commentary here.

Update Feb. 5th: Somali press conference called and cancelled in Minneapolis.

Update Feb. 3rd: NPR says missing men are victims, here.

Update Jan. 31st: Somali writer blames FBI for not spotting this terror recruitment sooner.

Update Jan. 28th: FBI looking for missing Somali refugees in Atlanta, here.

Update Jan. 27th: Arrest of Somali man trying to get into Canada may be linked to the missing men and the plot against the inauguration.

Update Jan. 26th: Well what do you know! American “terrorists” arrested in Somaliland today. Could they be some of our missing Somali youths?

Update Jan. 25th: Newsweek joins the crowd today. Boy these news magazines are slow! It is almost exactly two months after we first reported the story.

Update Jan. 18th, 2009: Los Angeles Times fills in more details.

Update Dec. 30th: Washington Times puts story on front page here.

Update Dec. 29th: The FBI is paying attention to Somalis in U.S.

Update Dec. 26th: Scrutinize mosques in the US in wake of missing Somalis investigation.

Update Dec. 23rd: Financial Times of London is reporting this story now. Hat tip: Jerry Gordon.

Update Dec. 21st: UPI reported that the FBI might be taking a harder look at the local mosque, here.

Wall Street Journal reports that Somali youths are missing from other US cities, here.

Update Dec. 12th: CNN gets on the Somali missing men story bandwagon here.

Indepth reporting by Patrick Poole here at Frontpage magazine.

Update Dec. 8th: More on missing men in US and Denmark

Update Dec. 4th: Somali men missing all over the world tonight. And, missing Somali American man who became suicide bomber buried in Minnesota.

Update Dec. 1st: Minneapolis mosque leaders not allowed to leave country, here.

Update Nov. 29th: News Busters says this is not West Side Story.

Update Nov. 28th: Somali Jihadists say they are coming to get us! At Jihad Watch today.

Update Nov. 27th: AP story has gone everywhere, on FOX News here.

Update a couple hours later: The story is movin’ on up nationally—to ABC now.

Thanks again to the Baron at Gates of Vienna, who just sent news that 40 (four-0) Somali young men have disappeared from the Twin Cities recently. Two days ago we reported the number at about 20. From 5 Eyewitness News today:

Forty young Somali men from the Twin Cities are missing and federal investigators believe they may be back in Somalia training as terrorists.

“We have active Al Qaeda cells recruiting these people,” said Omar Jamal with the Somali Justice Advocacy Center.

Unless he has had some sort of conversion, I wouldn’t trust this Omar Jamal as far as I could throw him! He has proven in the past to be a master news manipulator (see my post linked above). Don’t ask me what his game would be in directing the blame to Al Qaeda? AQ just seems a logical target, so what might he be steering authorities away from? Be sure to watch Jamal in action on the KSTP-TV film clip.

The big question for us is, are the 40 missing men coming back to share their new found knowledge here in the US.

CIA Director Michael Hayden acknowledges a growing tie between Al Qaeda and Somali terrorist groups. Federal investigators believe these missing men are training for terrorist attacks overseas, but can’t be sure they won’t return the the Twin Cities someday to carry out an attack.

Or, here is another thought, maybe, just maybe they haven’t left the US. What if they are still here and our spinmeister supreme is leading authorities astray? Kind of convienent that the Twin Cities “recruiter” can’t talk (having already been blown to bits).

See yesterday’s post with suggestions for the Homeland Security to check a few other US cities.