Ed Morrissey writing atHot Air reports on how the COVID-19 hysteria could spell the end of the European Union as countries rediscover the need for BORDERS!
Trip down memory lane!
He also reminds us how the beginning of the end came when Hillary/Obama and various EU governments joined forces to bring down Gaddafi in Libya in 2011 which opened the flood gates for African migrants by the hundreds of thousands to descend on the continent.
European Leaders Lament: Coronavirus Might Just Kill The EU Too
If the European Union now finds itself in “mortal danger,” it’s only because it’s faced its first truly mortal threat. The Washington Post reports that European leaders have begun to warn that unilateral actions by its members — most recently Hungary but also core members France and Germany— will undo their decades-long experiment in continental unity.The raising of borders and the imposition of trade barriers in the coronavirus pandemic has all but sidelined Brussels in the crisis, and there’s little indication that EU members are interested in anything but their own domestic political standing.
[….]
In other words, Europe has rediscovered why borders matter and why government works best on the principle of subsidiarity. The borders lesson got taught the hard way, as I wrote two-plus weeks ago, after Europe and the US precipitated a massive refugee crisis by decapitating the Qaddafi regime in Libya. The flood of refugees from there and Syria created cultural dislocation throughout the Schengen Zone, provoking the Brexit push in the UK and setting the stage for their current disunity.
Remember this! We wrote about Hillary’s role extensively at the time and over the years since as the invasion of Europe progressed. See here.
It should come as no shock that Germans expect the German government to prioritize Germans in an existential crisis rather than a super-national quasi-governing body. Nor should it shock anyone that the same is true for the French, the Italians, and so on. That doesn’t mean that they can’t work cooperatively to approach common interests and problems, but that in a crisis, they’re responsible to their own citizens first and foremost.
Police have posted a video of the man they believe is responsible for the killing. You can see it all in the Baltimore Sun article.
He fled Syria for Baltimore, finding friends and a job in his new home. Someone gunned him down as he delivered pizza.
Khaled Heeba fled the most dangerous place on earth in 2016, escaping Syria’s civil war with his parents to come to the United States for a better life. He settled in Baltimore.
He went to work delivering pizzas full time to help support himself and his parents, his co-workers and a family friend said.
Heeba’s American journey ended less than two weeks ago when someone gunned him down in broad daylight in Harlem Park — less than five minutes from the pizza shop where he’d worked since he got to Baltimore. The 31-year-old man was found in the 1300 block of W. Franklin St. around 1:15 p.m. Feb. 7 suffering from gunshot wounds to the chest. He died after being transported to a nearby hospital, police said.
Mainer Cynthia Anderson recently published a book about how 6,000 plus Somali refugees are busy resuscitating a supposedly dying Maine city.
No surprise that the Star Tribune, in the heart of Little Mogadishu, MN, reviewed Anderson’s book. One quote in the review stands out and it makes my blood boil!
“I also think journalists, including me, sometimes don’t push for answers lest they appear insensitive or out of fear they’ll provide ammunition to haters.”
Just think about that, she is admitting she might have pulled some punches so as not to give us (haters! and Islamophobes!), critics of the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program, any ammunition. WHAT THE H***!
If so-called journalists were HONEST, for one thing there would be no need for me to write this blog and secondly if they were HONEST then maybe government programs like this one might be reevaluated, reformed or trashed.
Review: ‘Home Now: How 6,000 Refugees Transformed an American Town,’ by Cynthia Anderson
“Home Now” by Cynthia Anderson; Public Affairs (318 pages, $28)
“A moving chronicle of who belongs in America.” Guess you can see the bias right there at Amazon.
At a campaign rally in Portland, Maine, President Donald Trump linked worsening crime in Maine to the influx of Somali refugees there. He blamed their large community in Minnesota for straining the state’s social safety net and bringing potential recruits for Islamic terrorist groups.
“You see it happening,” Trump said. “You read about it.”
The above is a reminder to all those wimpy Republican governorswho are ‘welcoming’ more Somalis, Iraqis, and Syrians to your states that the President wants to rein-in the program. Duh!
Long before Trump turned refugee resettlement into a national flash point, Cynthia Anderson was immersing herself in Lewiston, Maine, a small white town that came to host one of the largest populations of Somali-Americans in the country, for her timely, richly detailed book “Home Now.”
Anderson grew up in a village 45 miles away and recalled the area’s gradual decline leading up to 2001, when the first Somali refugees arrived in nearby Portland.
She reported on Lewiston’s transformation for more than a decade, moving from seeing Somali newcomers as passive victims traumatized by war to people with complex, resilient trajectories.
Anderson also writes about Fatuma Hussein, a community leader and advocate for Somali women who admires Maine’s civility and is optimistic about relations between natives and newcomers. She speaks out in opposition to Trump’s election, yet she is also forthright about the challenges of merging different cultures in Lewiston.
The town is not prepared to absorb the arrivals so quickly; the mayor draws headlines for saying Lewiston is “maxed out.”
Anderson deftly sums up the tension by noting that the new refugees were not ungrateful but nor were they just grateful.
[….]
Though the book paints a mostly rosy picture of how refugees can revitalize a community, Anderson is honest [?—how honest?—ed] about her qualms.
During debates over a state bill aimed at the Somali-American community to ban female genital mutilation (FGM), she admits to being conflicted. Anderson is initially opposed, and doesn’t want to see the Somali community hurt, but nor does she want harm to come to any Somali girls.
[What woman could possibly be conflicted about the brutal practice of slicing off a portion of a girl’s genitals?—ed]
Anderson also acknowledges that the refugee vetting process warrants examination, noting that records can be inadequate in war-torn countries.
She considers it fair to question how long refugees take to become self-sufficient, finding answers inconsistent and hard to find. [No kidding—this program is run in secrecy! The refugee contractors and the government don’t want anyone to find out how poorly the refugees are doing!—ed]
“I also think journalists, including me, sometimes don’t push for answers lest they appear insensitive or out of fear they’ll provide ammunition to haters,” she admits. “But not asking and not knowing provides fertile ground for rumors to flourish. It’s also patronizing; Lewiston’s newcomers can withstand the scrutiny.” [Note that she deftly suggests that those of us with concerns are trafficking in rumors!—ed]
Anderson raises these questions through her portrait of Jared Bristol, driven after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to become an activist against Islamic extremism. Bristol advocates for the FGM bill during a hearing that’s one of the only times Anderson sees Muslims and anti-Islamists in the same place.
Such activists, Anderson writes, “are wrong if they believe I absorbed nothing they and other anti-Islamists said or that my thinking didn’t shift, however incrementally.” [So what good is absorbing if she then pulls punches?—ed]
Scrutiny comes anew when a man dies of a fatal head injury after being attacked by several teens of African descent.
Nevertheless, and moving right along, the expert concludes:
….that Mainers feel that integrating refugees is worth the effort, even as it has taken time and money.
That is not what I’m hearing!!!
See my extensive, and I mean extensive archive on Lewiston here at RRW (there is more at ‘Frauds and Crooks.’)!
Gee, I wonder if Ms. Anderson used any of the material I’ve compiled over the years? Did she get the story about the Somali teen who burned down four apartment buildings in 2013 for example? Or the one about the ISIS fighter whose wife lived in Lewiston? Or the Somali health care scammers? And, as far back as 2009 Somali ‘youths’ were roaming the streets and attacking people.
Longtime readers know that a pet project of mine for several years was following the food stamp fraud busts going on around the country. See my complete file on the subject here.
I’m relieved to see that some organization of stature has taken the issue of food stamp “trafficking” seriously.
Report: Millions in Food Stamp Dollars Flowed to Terrorists
See the whole report: http://g-a-i.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/2018_GAI_SNAP_FRAUD_TERROR.pdf
Millions of taxpayers dollars trafficked through food stamp fraud went to terrorists who funded their activities at home and abroad, according to an explosive report from the Government Accountability Institute (GAI).
The report from GAI, where Breitbart NewsSenior-Editor-at-Large Peter Schweizer serves as president, highlighted several instances where money obtained through Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits fraud went to fund acts of terrorism, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombings and the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing.
“Hawalas” used to launder money
The U.S. Treasury Department and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) identified that many terrorists would get away with funding their illicit activities by using businesses known as “hawalas” to launder money.
A “hawala”— which is an Arabic term defined in English as transfer (or trust)— is a method of transferring money through informal agents from international networks, and many Muslim immigrants settled in western countries use the “hawala” method to transfer funds to family members.
GAI, citing a U.S. Treasury report, found that more than $7 billion flows into Pakistan alone through hawalas every year.
[….]
Investigators say it is very difficult to track the money moved around through hawalas, even though the federal government has known about the use of hawalas and their alleged role in financing terrorism for years.
But as federal investigators became more familiar with the welfare fraud mechanisms used to fund terrorist activities after the September 11 attacks, investigators have cracked down on a number of instances where terrorists have used the benefit fraud for such purposes.
By the way, even if your tax dollars don’t make it into the hands of terrorists, the billions of US dollars sent out of the country via remittances to ‘home’ countries have a huge impact on the US as it is money that is not available to our economy.
…..there must be an error in this report, but I am posting it just to see if we can get the truth shaken loose.
When I first started writing this blog in 2007 there were ten federal resettlement contractors that monopolized all refugee placement in the US, but the number dropped to nine and has remained there ever since. The nine are listed below.***
Earlier we learned that Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM) was as much as 99.5% funded by you (taxpayers!) for their charitable good works for refugees. So it would be no surprise to learn that they would be one of the federal resettlement contractors dropped by the US State Department as the Trump administration slows the flow of paying clients to the US.
By the way, when the present Refugee Admissions Program was set up, it was supposed to be a public-private partnership, but over the years the private funds dwindled as they became more dependent on public money (aka taxpayer dollars).
The headline for the story which is mostly about Episcopal Church business is this:
Executive Council passes budget, grants diocesan waivers, praises work of Episcopal Migration Ministries
The Rev. Charles Robertson predicts EMM will be cut off from refugee contracts. “We are prepared for the worst.”
Members of Executive Council also received briefings from church officers and staff members during the week, including a bleak assessment of the future of the church’s refugee resettlement work from the Rev. Charles Robertson, the presiding bishop’s canon for ministry beyond the Episcopal Church.
Episcopal Migration Ministries, one of nine agencies with federal contracts to resettle refugees in the United States, expects to learn in the coming weeks if its contract will be renewed, at a time when the Trump administration has dramatically reduced the number of refugees being resettled. The odds are not in Episcopal Migration Ministries’ favor, Robertson told Executive Council’s Ministry Beyond the Episcopal Church Committee.
Could seven be given the boot?
“If we were going to bet on it, we’d bet we’re not going to make the cut,” Robertson said. He predicted only two of the nine would receive contracts. Though unlikely, he said it is still possible Episcopal Migration Ministries will be one of the two.
I’m thinking that the reporter got that wrong and meant to say that ‘seven of the nine would receive contracts.’ If it is true that seven would be cut, that would be earth-shaking news.
Later that afternoon, Robertson gave a sobering outlook on Episcopal Migration Ministries’ future to the committee on Ministry Beyond the Episcopal Church.
“We are prepared for the worst,” Robertson said – the worst being the end of Episcopal Migration Ministries’ contract to continue the resettlement work it has done for the federal government since the 1980s.
EMM’s interactive partners map. Go here to see if one of their offices is near you: https://episcopalmigrationministries.org/our-partners/
The U.S. Department of State announced Sept. 17 that it would lower the ceiling to just 30,000 refugees for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, down from a ceiling of 85,000 just two years ago. And that 30,000 is just the upper limit, Robertson stressed. The actual number of refugees to be welcomed into the United States likely will be much lower.
Episcopal Migration Ministries once oversaw 31 resettlement affiliates in 26 dioceses, but that number has dwindled to 14 affiliates in 12 dioceses. With even fewer refugees to resettle, the federal government isn’t expected to keep all nine of its contracted agencies, Robertson said, and Episcopal Migration Ministries, though well equipped to do that work, is one of the smaller of the nine.
Even in the worst-case scenario, however, Episcopal Migration Ministries will remain an important part of the Episcopal Church’s outreach efforts. If the resettlement work ends, the agency may find other ways to support refugees and, possibly, other immigrants, Robertson said. He estimated it would take about a year to fully realize that new vision for the agency.
I wonder what the loss of millions of federal dollars will do to the church. I once had a reader, knowledgeable about the budget of the Episcopal Church, tell me that some of the refugee dollars went to other programs, however we were never able to confirm that.
By the way, there likely won’t be any tears shed by the remaining contractors since the nine have been competitors as they ‘bid for bodies!’
***Below are the nine federal refugee resettlement contractors.
I realize I haven’t posted this list for twelve whole days!
The present US Refugee Admissions Program will never be reformed if the system of paying the contractors by the head stays in place and the contractors are permitted to act as Leftwing political agitation groups, community organizers and lobbyists paid on our dime!
And, to add insult to injury they pretend it is all about ‘humanitarianism.’
The number in parenthesis is the percentage of their income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees into your towns and cities and get them signed up for their services (aka welfare)! And, get them registered to vote eventually!
