Month: August 2008

You gotta laugh! Translator’s fortunes have improved

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Wow! Just goes to show what is possible with a little publicity!  Just two days ago the Baltimore Sun published a story about the deplorable living conditions of an Iraq War translator.   We, actually Chris Coen, told you how Lutheran Social Services was falling down on the job.   Well, check out this update on Ahmed’s story. 

Today is moving day for Saad Ahmed, a wounded Iraqi interpreter who lost both legs to a roadside bomb last year while working for the U.S. military.

Ahmed is moving to a high-end apartment in North Bethesda that is wheelchair-accessible, with a spacious bathroom and an elevator to the lobby. 

“I saw it. It was nice, beautiful, like a hotel,” he said after being shown the apartment by Lutheran Social Services of the National Capital Area, the nonprofit agency that is coordinating his resettlement.

The change of address is one of several positive developments for him this week. A donor has contributed a motorized wheelchair to improve his mobility.

And the nonprofit agency says he will see a doctor within a week and already has referrals to medical specialists. 

The article goes on to tell about other good things coming Ahmed’s way —many thanks to private charity.   Americans are famous for their private charity and its only when people start expecting government (and these non-profit government contractors) to be the charity that we lose sight of the real meaning of the word.

Endnote:  Be sure to click on the comment by Chris Coen, Friends of Refugees, at the Baltimore Sun article.

Tyson’s Union head: we are all just a bunch of bigots

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Today the Shelbyville Times-Gazette published a follow-up story to its unexpectedly incendiary article of last Friday about Tyson’s Food doing away with the Labor Day holiday and exchanging it for a Muslim religious day that would benefit a minority of its workers.

The action has truly caused a firestorm of criticism aimed at Tyson’s, but it sure looks like the Union shares much of the blame.    Union President Applebaum, said critics are motivated by bigotry.   Here we go again!  This is the tactic being used worldwide when anyone dares question why we are bending over backwards and giving in to demands by Muslims for us to change to accomodate their religious beliefs.   Next thing you know he will say we are all “Islamophobes” (the slur causing Europeans to cower in fear).

Tyson Foods says that Labor Day is still a holiday, but not for the union employees at the Shelbyville poultry processing facility, who will be taking off the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr instead.

Meanwhile, the union that negotiated the controversial contract at the Shelbyville plant has removed the original press release announcing the holiday change from its web site, and the union president has described the backlash to the decision as “bigotry.”

The union refused to answer a series of questions posed by the T-G, but instead released a statement from Stuart Appelbaum, the national president of the RWDSU [ Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union ].

I have to say again, this all sounds fishy, how did a minority of workers convince hundreds of others that a Muslim religious day was more important than Labor Day, not to mention the Muslim prayer room.  Did someone put the squeeze on someone? 

And again, in case you didn’t hear you were bigots the first time:

“There’s no question that there is a lot of bigotry against Muslims and that this agreement has clearly touched a raw nerve among those who are prejudiced against them,” Appelbaum said in the prepared statement. “However, the RWDSU has always understood that unions are only strong when they work to protect the dignity of workers of all faiths.

It is really important that we stand firm and don’t acquiesce.  Applebaum threatens that more unions will follow their lead (if they succeed in shutting people up).  This is part of the quiet Jihad, the demographic conquest that Vijay Kumar told us about last week:

The Islamists are clever. They begin by first exporting their surplus population to free and open societies. Then those immigrants begin to demand ideological tolerance and conformity to their views….

Hang in there, what’s a few names hurled at you.  When they call you a racist, bigot, xenophobe, nativist, hate monger and more, wear the label proudly.  Those words are the only power they have over you—now.

Tyson’s Labor Day decision, what questions should we really be asking

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update later in the day:  Brian Mosely has the latest from Shelbyville today here.   And, here is my response to the bigotry charge.

Who would have thought the Shelbyville Times-Gazette article last Friday would open the hornets nest it has.  Even the New York Times got in on the story. (Hat tip: Blulitespecial)   Here is the part I found most interesting at the Times:

Mr. Hadley said both management and union were surprised when nearly all the Somali workers — Tyson puts their number at 250, the union at nearly 400 — did not work on Id al-Fitr last year. They were not paid, but the plant almost had to close that day, said Mr. Hadley, adding that management was “elated” by the proposal to make Id al-Fitr a holiday.

Why are the numbers changing?  First we heard 700 from the union, now 400.   I would think that counting the Somali employees wouldn’t be that complicated.  So it makes one wonder if they are purposefully being deceptive.   And why was management so surprised that so many Somalis skipped work on the holiday when anyone who has studied the issues involving Islam in America knows that Somalis are devout Muslims.

But, that isn’t what I wanted to talk about this morning.   As I read through all the articles and comments mostly taking aim at Tyson’s and suggesting boycotts, I see virtually nothing about the source of all of this—-the US State Department’s Refugee Resettlement Program.    I don’t expect the general public to inquire, but where are the investigative journalists?

Does no one want to know how over 80,000 Somalis got here in the first place?

Did you know they are eligible to bring family members once resettled?

Did you know that “church” groups are paid (by you the taxpayer) to resettle these Muslim refugees (and hundreds of thousands more)?

Did you know that the taxpayer pays their airfare?  How many ever repay those “loans”?

Did you know the Somalis are entering the US with HIV and TB?

Did you know that they originally received subsidized apartments, health care, food stamps, employment case workers, and other welfare?

Did you know that Tyson’s Food (and other meatpackers) have run into problems in other US cities?

Do you want to know if Tyson’s gets a tax break for hiring refugees?

I’m told that Tyson’s and other meatpackers used to pay decent wages (higher than today) but began lowering wages first when they found a supply of illegal workers and have kept them lower now that they have a ready supply of refugees, is it true?

Are politicians in Washington on both sides of the aisle encouraging refugee resettlement to fuel big businesses need for cheap labor (while they get to wear a sanctimonius do-gooder white hat)?

And following on that question, is the State Department the employment service for big business?

How many of the Somalis in the US right now are asylees?  In other words, how many slipped into the US illegally and then sought asylum?

Does anyone ever consult the community in advance when a large group of third world refugees are brought into a city or town?   Does the local government have any recourse?

Did you know that the Somalis have practiced female genital mutilation and polygamy in the United States, how widespread is it?

Did you know there is a conflict going on in many black sections of cities over the Somalis who act arrogantly toward American born blacks?

I only have 20 or 30 more questions, but I will quit, I’ve made my point.   So where are all the investigative journalists?  Guess its up to us bloggers to investigate and report the real story.

Maybe Somali polygamy perpetuates possible gene connection to autism

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I  wrote a post a little over a week ago about how Somali refugee children in America are showing extremely high and unexplained rates of autism for those born in the US.   Minnesota schools are seeing these children enter the sytsem and are attempting to cope with the alarming influx.

In our earlier post we cited an article that had a couple of possible suggestions.  One was the usual complaint about immunizations and the other was the possibility that the relative lack (compared to Africa) of sunshine in Minnesota (and Sweden where the problem is also appearing) might explain the high rate.

However, this article in a blog called “A War of Illusions” leads to another possible cause for the high rate of autism in Somalis in America.  But, first here is what the post says about the situation in Minnesota where a conference will soon take place to address the crisis.

About a quarter of all autism children who attend autism classrooms for students functioning too low to be mainstreamed in regular schoolrooms are Somali. Special education specialists said that indicates that the degree of autism Somali children are developing is on the severe end of the autism spectrum.

“I’m not seeing Aspergers syndrome and the full spectrum of autism in Somali children. It is the more classic forms of autism in general; it is the more severe forms of autism that we’re seeing in our Somali babies that are born here,” said Anne Harrington, early childhood special education coordinator for the Minneapolis district and a specialist on the topic.

“If they’re having more children, many of the siblings also have autism. We have a number of [Somali] families who have two children on the autism spectrum and sometimes more. I’ve been working to get somebody to look at this and pay attention because it feels like this is too specific [to Somalis]. It’s got to be preventable,” Harrington said.

The article also tells us there is a lot of shame in the Somali community associated with families who have autistic children which makes me think that the tough life in Africa may have eliminated some of these children at a young age thus making it appear that somehow their move to the US is responsible for a jump in the numbers.

The blogger then leads us to new research that may show that autism is genetic. 

Many cases of autism are caused by genetic defects that disrupt the brain’s ability to learn, according to groundbreaking research that promises to lead to new therapies.

To do the research scientists needed to find large families in which cousins married cousins—they found them in Muslim countries in the Middle East.

Research into autism genetics has been hampered by the difficulty of finding autistic and non-autistic siblings in the same family to study. To get around this, the new study investigated 88 families from the Middle East, Turkey and Pakistan, where the average number of children is much larger than in Europe and America. The scientists also concentrated on families in which the mother and father were cousins, which is a risk factor for autism.

In five families, they found large segments of the genome were missing. Non-autistic members still had one working copy of these regions, but those with autism lacked working copies altogether.

I suggest genetic researchers check these Minnesota Somali families many of whom may be linked by a few polygamous fathers—an Islamic cultural practice creeping into America with the refugees—and a surefire way to spread a defective gene.   Or if political correctness hinders that line of questioning, at least check the cousins marrying cousins angle.

Iraqi Palestinians going to Iceland, among other non-Muslim countries

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update:  Going to Sweden too.

We have written on several occasions about the Palestinians favored by Saddam Hussein who attempted to get out of ‘Dodge’ (Iraq) when the people Saddam had persecuted came to power there.  However, Jordan and Syria, the countries that have taken the largest number of Iraq’s displaced people refused entry to the Palestinians, once again demonstrating that Muslim countries do not help resettle Palestinians.   According to Reuters some are packing up for Iceland.

AL WALEED, Iraq, Aug. 4 (UNHCR) – More than two dozen vulnerable Palestinian refugees stranded for the last two years in a makeshift camp in the desert on the Iraq-Syria border are set to leave the camp in the coming weeks for Iceland.

“The group includes some of the most vulnerable women and children with urgent cases, for whom resettlement is the only option” says Daniel Endres, UNHCR’s Representative in Iraq.

Iceland takes 25 to 30 refugees for resettlement every year and in recent years has focused on resettling single women and single mothers with their children.

In addition to Iceland, Palestinians are going to Chile and Brazil, demonstrating again that suffering Palestinians are more important to Islamic countries as a political club with which to beat Israel.  So much for Muslims helping Muslims.

UNHCR has repeatedly called for international support for the Palestinians but with few results. Few Palestinians in the border camps have been accepted for resettlement or offered shelter in third countries; only some 300 Palestinians left to non-traditional resettlement country such as Brazil and Chile.