Day: August 16, 2008

News is jumbled (on purpose?) in the Denver Somali cyanide death

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update August 28th:   Guess you have noticed this story is being buried, but according to this report one radio talk show host in Denver hasn’t let it go.

‘Jumbled’ is the word used in a headline at the Denver Post on the updated story Friday in the Somali cyanide death.  Our first report is here.   But, who is doing the jumbling and why?   Sure looks like we have a Somali Jesse Jackson mucking around.  Before I tell you who that is, here is what we know.

* A Canadian Somali with no known connection to Denver is found dead in a hotel room with a jar of cyanide, enough to kill hundreds according to reports.

* The Denver police are falling all over themselves to say that the investigation is on-going but they have no reason to suspect terrorism.  This from a new story by Fox News (Hat tip:  Jerry Gordon).

“We don’t think it’s any act of terrorism,” Sonny Jackson [LOL! not the Jackson I had in mind!], a spokesman for the Denver Police Department, told FOXNews.com. “We have no reason to believe it was. Nobody knows what was in this gentleman’s mind.”

* But…..the Denver Police have no explanation for how or why the feds are involved:

Jackson declined to elaborate on why the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force got involved in the case.

* The Democratic National Convention opens on Tuesday in Denver.   (Here is a thought, how bad would America look in the eyes of the Muslim world if something should happen to BHO and his friends?]

* According to family members Saleman Abdirahman Dirie had psychological problems but was taking his medicine and seemed fine.

Now, here is what jumped out at me from this “jumbled” story.  Why the heck is the head of the Somali Justice Center of St. Paul, MN involved in all this?   Note in these two stories here and here, that Omar Jamal is manipulating the news.  He doesn’t know Diri, a Canadian, but is yakking it up with Diri’s family and being quoted authoritatively that Diri was not involved in terrorism, that he was just a schizo, and the lazy mainstream media reporters eat it up!

An advocacy group for Somali immigrants cautioned against linking Dirie to terrorism. [note: Fox News doesn’t name Jamal, but the other links I provided above do.]

The Somali Justice Advocacy Center in St. Paul, Minn., said Thursday that connecting Dirie’s death to terrorism “is a rush to judgment.”

So why am I calling Omar Jamal the Somali Jesse Jackson?    I’ve only been writing this blog for a year and his name has come up twice already.  First he defended the Somali hallway rapist in this story and more recently was involved in “helping” the police to sort out the Somali gangs in the Minneapolis area here.    He is a busy guy, busy getting in the news (and jumbling it?).

And, for all you lapdog reporters who are quoting him as an authority, did you ever do a little googling?  In 2003 he was arrested on charges he lied to get into the US and was facing prison or deportation. 

The federal government has charged Minnesota Somali activist Omar Jamal with violating immigration rules. The Homeland Security Agency has detained him in the Washington County jail. Jamal also faces criminal charges for the same allegations — that he lied to the government to get into the country. Jamal could face deportation or prison, depending on the outcome of the government’s case against him.

I wonder how he is walking free to be an authority on all things Somali and be the go-to guy for the mainstream media?   Does anyone know?

Update within minutes, thanks to Rebecca!  He was convicted here, but he is still a free man.

Update:  Another reader reports that Jamal is the uncle to a Canadian Somali indicted for giving material support to Al-Queda in 2003 here.

More on Jamal:  LOL!  Authors Brown and Coon writing at Frontpage Magazine in 2003 called him the “Al Sharpton of the Twin Cities’ Somali community” here.  Great minds think alike!

P.S. to our Tennessee readers, note that Omar (Jesse Jackson) Jamal was first in Memphis.

Somali Bantu workshop going on in Louisville, KY

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

According to this article in the Courier-Journal, Louisville has the largest concentration of Somali Bantu in the United States.  This weekend, you the taxpayer, fund a conference to help them get organized as an ethnic community group (just another special interest group?).    The funding comes from Office of Refugee Resettlement grants to the National Somali Bantu Project of Portland State University.  And, is likely part of the federally funded Ethnic Community Based Organizations (ECBOs) program I complained about here. 

About the meeting this weekend:

When thousands of Somali Bantu refugees were formally resettled in the United States earlier this decade, Louisville received several hundred.

The last time Hassan Muya counted, there were 1,600 in the River City. And the number is growing daily, said Muya, president of the Somali Bantu Community of Kentucky.

The new arrivals are part of a secondary migration, and they have made Louisville the largest Somali Bantu community in the nation, said Omar Eno, director of the National Somali Bantu Project at Portland State University in Oregon.

This population surge, coupled with Louisville’s central location in the country, made the city the logical spot for the National Somali Bantu Workshops, the first meeting of Somali Bantu leaders in the United States organized by the project, said Eno.

How are the Bantu different from the ethnic Somalis that have taken over cities like Lewiston, ME?   Here is a Wikipedia article that explains how the Bantu were slaves (they don’t say it, but they were enslaved by Muslims) and looked down upon by ethnic Somalis and they never did get along back in Africa (and probably don’t here either).

Be sure to check the Wikipedia article because it does say which cities in the US became Bantu cities and which became ethnic Somali resettlement cities.

I wrote about Louisville here last September when I pointed to an article in the Wall Street Journal about Louisville attracting refugees to work in industries there.   One city official dismissed statistics that showed that Somalis were a financial burden on the city and called this generation the “throw away generation.”

Here is what I asked about these Ethnic organizations (ECBOs) last winter:

Now, here is what I wonder. Why do we need all these ECBO’s? Doesn’t the establishment of groups called Montagnard Human Rights Organization, Bosnian American Association of New York City, and the Boat People SOS simply continue to separate us in America, to continue to accentuate our differences? Shouldn’t we have workshops and conferences on how refugees should assimilate into America?

I envision sessions called perhaps “American Holiday traditions”, “Important people in American history”, “Following the laws, big and small in America”, “What’s acceptible public behavior in America (how to be polite in the supermarket, rules of the road)”, and so on.

Go back and read the article about this weekend’s conference, its about us understanding their culture so we can serve them better!