Month: July 2008

Humanitarian groups mucking around with terrorists?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Thanks to Richard for sending me this snippet from NRO: The Corner this morning (the short piece is lead-in to this longer article in the Wall Street Journal entitled:  ‘FARC’s Human Rights Friends.’ )   Laugh till you cry. 

As we learn more about the Colombian military’s daring hostage rescue last week, one detail stands out: In tricking FARC rebels into putting the hostages aboard a helicopter, undercover special forces simply told the comandantes that the aircraft was being loaned to them by a fictitious nongovernmental organization sympathetic to their cause called the International Humanitarian Mission.

It may have taken years for army intelligence to infiltrate the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, and it may have been tough to convincingly impersonate rebels. But what seems to have been a walk in the park was getting the FARC to believe that an NGO was providing resources to help it in the dirty work of ferrying captives to a new location.

So what does all this have to do with us?   Maybe, just maybe, you should look with a jaundiced eye at all these NGO’s running around the world “saving” people “because they care.”

Bosnians with AK-47’s: We aren’t in gangs! Just doing a little target practice!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The city that “welcomes” refugees has a few problems it seems.   The Police in Ft. Wayne, IN say they believe Bosnian refugees are forming gangs and selling guns.  Bosnians deny it.  Hat tip to an observant friend.

“You can’t categorize us.”

Haris Latic was mad.

The image of a Bosnian man holding an AK-47 for an April 22 News-Sentinel story about police allegations of a gun-running gang of Bosnian refugees was blurred, but Latic recognized it. It was Adis Latic, his brother.

Adis Latic said the AK-47 was a friend’s and the picture was from a day of recreational target practice at a Huntington gun range. The Latics say they’re law-abiding U.S. citizens, not gang-bangers. “In every race there are bad kids and good kids, but you can’t categorize us as a community,” Adis Latic said.

The Latics acknowledge they can’t vouch for every Bosnian refugee brought to Fort Wayne by Catholic Charities, 669 officially. The now-defunct Balkan Stylz group, which police labeled a gang, was a club for Bosnians who liked to drive muscle cars, said Adis Latic, 23. 

Read on!

To soften the story and appear to make excuses, the reporter for the Ft. Wayne News-Sentinel launches into a lengthy defense of the Bosnians by basically saying they have seen war, so guns and violence are their heritage.  Guess we need to just respect their culture and show our understanding, huh?

By the way, we (primarily under the Clinton Administration) have brought over 100,000 Bosnians to the US.  It is the largest group of refugees from any Muslim country we have resettled so far.

You can learn all about the many problems the city of Fort Wayne is having with its huge refugee population here.

Father kills daughter in Georgia–was it an honor killing?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Very latest update:   Judy’s post today on this story.

Latest update:  The murder suspect appears in court here.  Also, see this website called News By Us and its analysis of the coverage of this case in the Chicago Tribune.

Update:  Hot off the press at Jihad Watch!  It was an Islamic honor killing!  One commenter at Jihad Watch is calling honor killings, “daughter-slaughter.”

A Pakistani immigrant strangled his daughter in a fit of rage because she wanted to leave her arranged marriage according to this brief report today in the Atlanta Journal Constitution.   Hat tip:  Robert 

A Clayton County man faces murder charges in the strangling death of his 25-year-old daughter early Sunday over her desire to end an arranged marriage.

Chaudhry Rashad, 54, apparently got mad during an argument in which the victim, Sandela Kanwal, told him she wanted out of the marriage, Clayton police officer Timothy Owens said.

Authorities were called to their Utah Drive home in Jonesboro just after 3 a.m. Sunday. Kanwal lived with her father when she was not with her husband, who is in Chicago, Owens said. She hadn’t seen the husband in three months, he said.

Both Rashad and Kanwal are of Pakistani descent.

You can bet there is more to this story, but I doubt we will ever hear it.

We have written previously on the subject of forced marriage and honor killings practiced by some adherents to Islam in our women’s issues category.

A blog that covers the abuses of women in the Muslim culture, Women against Shariah, has written 15 posts on forced marriage here, and 31 on honor killings here.

Class to teach immigrants not to beat their wives or kick their dogs

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is one of those days when interesting news is coming from all directions.   One of my favorite (not) volags, US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) has partnered with an immigration lawyer to teach refugees, men in this case, how to behave in America.   The article from Schenectady, NY started out o.k.  Afterall, we have been advocating for refugees to assimilate.

CAPITAL REGION — Artan Serjanej understands how difficult it can be for new immigrants to navigate the thicket of unfamiliar laws they encounter when they move to America.

Now 43, Serjanej fled the Eastern European country of Albania as a young man, arriving in the United States in 1990. He earned his GED, attended law school and is now an immigration attorney at Tulley Rinckey PLLC in Albany.

Serjanej is leading a series of workshops to help male immigrants understand laws regarding domestic violence, child abuse and animal abuse. He has already held two workshops, one for male Congolese refugees living in the Capital Region and another for Arabic-speaking Iraqi male refugees, and more are scheduled for later this summer.

Then it reveals that really much of this series of classes is geared toward teaching refugees their rights in our legal system.   The participants here will give you some idea of the direction this is going:

The new program, called Legal Rights and Responsibilities in the United States, began two months ago. The workshops have been organized with help from local community groups, such as the Capital Region chapter of the New York Civil Liberties Union and Equinox Inc. Last month, Melanie Trimble, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, and Serjanej conducted basic civil liberties training with the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants staff.

This is so good I couldn’t help copying a large section of the article so that you can get the full impact of what is being said here.

“I’m trying to change their idea of what it means to be a man,” he said. “These people are coming from a very patriarchal [read: Islamic] society. The man of the house is the man of the house.”

Serjanej said he understands these attitudes and why the men have them.

“Albania is a very patriarchal [Islamic] society,” he said. “When I was growing up, once in a while my dad would get physically violent with me. We didn’t have a Department of Social Services. Women had no way to complain [about abuse], and it was socially unacceptable for them to do so.”

He said one of the things he tells the men who attend his workshops is that even if their wives do not complain to the police, other people might.

“Even if the wife is silent, outsiders can call the police,” he said.

“I tell them that if you get upset, you cannot use your hands,” Serjanej continued. “I tell them that you can only talk and that you should talk in a quiet voice. A real man doesn’t have to get physical. I try to convey that they can use their mouth and voice and be respected in this country by all.

“I don’t want people to end up in trouble for something they think is acceptable,” he added. “The idea is to protect them so they don’t have any criminal records. They really need to understand how to live a clean life.”

Notice that Mr. Serjanej is not saying he is trying to protect women and pets and keep them safe from abuse, he is protecting the men from having a criminal record.    It is all about the men!

In the workshops, Serjanej talks about the age of consent and rape laws and how it’s illegal to kick or otherwise abuse dogs and cats.

Assimilating into a new culture is very stressful, Serjanej said.

“Refugees get culture shock,” he said. “They have certain expectations, and when they reach this country, things are not as great as they thought they would be.”

Not so great you say?   You know what my answer is to that!

365 suspected Iraqi terrorists applied to the US as refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Buried deep in the Washington Post article today about a post 9/11 dragnet that has revealed a shocking number of terrorists caught on the battlefield in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia have already been in the US, is this little gem of information.   Homeland Security has turned down 365 suspected terrorists who have applied to come to the United States as refugees, and we have been led to believe they have all been our good little helpers in Iraq.    Matthew Lee (AP reporter), you missed this story!

Investigators are working on ever more sophisticated ways to evaluate the data. Analysts at the Army’s National Ground Intelligence Center in Charlottesville, for instance, use software to scrutinize intelligence reports from sources such as electronic surveillance and informants. They then link the information to a person’s biographic and biometric data, and look for relationships that might detect terrorists and plots.

For example, a roadside bomb may explode and a patrol may fingerprint bystanders because insurgents have been known to remain at the scene to observe the results of their work. Prints also can be lifted off tiny fragments of exploded bombs, said military officials and contractors involved in the work.

Analysts are not just trying to identify the prints on the bomb. They want to find out who the bomb-carrier associates with. Who he calls. Who calls him. That could lead to the higher-level operatives who planned and financed attacks.

Already, fingerprints lifted off a bomb fragment have been linked to people trying to enter the United States, they said.

In a separate data-sharing program, 365 Iraqis who have applied to the Department of Homeland Security for refugee status have been denied because their fingerprints turned up in the Defense Department‘s database of known or suspected terrorists, Richardson said.

There was something to laugh (or cry) about in this deadly serious story.     Demonstrating our absolutely abysmal level of understanding of Islam, a high level FBI official said this about many of those terrorists who had already been in the US:

Many of those with U.S. arrest records had come to the United States to study, said former Criminal Justice Information Services head Michael Kirkpatrick, who led the FBI effort to use biometrics in counterterrorism after Sept. 11. “It suggests there was some familiarity with Western culture, the United States specifically, and for whatever reason they did not agree with that culture,” he said. “Either they became disaffected or put up with it, and then they went overseas.”

For whatever reason, oh my God!