Those anonymous Christian-killers in Iraq

10/27/2008 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Mark Tooley has a story about the Iraqi Christians at FrontPage Magazine today. He takes to task the World Council of Churches for their reluctance to blame Muslims for murder.

At least 14 Christians were targeted for killing in Mosul, about 260 miles north of Baghdad, earlier this month, prompting more than 1,300 Christian families to flee what had previously been a safe haven. The Geneva-based World Council of Churches has declared it is against the killings…but cannot bring itself to identify the killers.

“Of course, al Qaeda elements are behind this campaign against Christians,” said Nineveh provincial governor Mohammed Kashmoula, who relayed the obvious to the Associated Press. But the World Council of Churches (WCC), in a nearly 500-word public statement, seemed to imply the Christians were slaughtered by anonymous forces. “We have heard that people are being killed, houses bombed, thousands are fleeing their homes, and churches and church properties are being destroyed,” fretted the WCC, pronouncing all of this news in the passive voice, unwilling to add a noun to such verbs as “killed,” “bombed,” and “destroyed.”

Oh yes, that good old passive voice. No surprise there. We’ve commented before on the reluctance of the liberal media to portray Muslims in a negative light. Tooley goes on:

For the WCC to express specific concern about persecuted Christians is progress of sorts. But naming radical Islam as a persecutor remains taboo for the politically correct and highly multiculturalist WCC, for whom interfaith dialogue is more important than solidarity with besieged Christians.

He goes on to point out the absurdity of the WCC’s stand — that the U.S. should withdraw from Iraq, and that the U.S. has a special responsibility to protect Iraq’s Christians.

Sarah Palin criticizes honor killings

10/26/2008 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This passed by with scarcely any notice; I just heard Bill Kristol mention it on Fox News so I googled it and found this New York Times blog post from October 21. (Kristol was making the point that Palin has spoken on substantive issues but the media has ignored such things in favor of covering her wardrobe.) The post is titled “Palin Criticizes Obama as Faux Feminist,” so who would think she said anything about honor killings? The mention is buried in this paragraph:

Ms. Palin spoke flanked by female supporters she described as members of the Democratic platform committee and the National Organization for Women. She took a strongly feminist tack throughout, criticizing practices such as honor killings in the Muslim world as well as inequities closer to home and singling out female owners of small businesses, especially one she described as “Irma the Restaurant Owner.”

Not news to the mainstream media, but I’m glad to see she knows about it and brought it up — and not surprised. If by some miracle she and McCain win next week, we can be sure she will bring up all sorts of things that make ordinary politicians and the media uncomfortable.

Iraqi Christians are fleeing in droves, and the U.S. doesn’t care

10/26/2008 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The indispensable Ken Timmerman reports in the Washington Times today:

Assyrian Christians are fleeing Iraq in record numbers, following a spate of recent bombing attacks and targeted killings of Christian families in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

Over the last month, 13 Assyrian Christians have been murdered in targeted killings in Mosul. A week ago, three Assyrian homes were fire-bombed. Al Jazeera reported last Monday that 15,000 Assyrian Christians have been driven out of Mosul in the last two weeks, some 2,500 families in all.

Failure to prevent the mass exodus of Christians from Iraq will lead to an Islamicized Iraq, a tragic legacy for the presidency of George W. Bush. This can only be averted by taking urgent steps aimed at “anchoring” the Assyrian Christian population in their historic homeland.

We reported on the murder of Father Rahho, Archbishop of Mosul, a Chaldean Christian, in March. There has been no good news for Iraqi Christians since then — and there wasn’t really any before then either, but things have gotten worse since then. Here are our posts on Iraqi Christians. Many of the Christians fled to the Kurdish area when things got bad for them in other parts of the country, thinking they would be safer there. They were for a while, but they do not appear to be now.

On Oct. 17, Iraqi security forces arrested six men in connection with the most recent targeted killings of Christians, and found four of them had ties back to the KRG [Kurdish Regional Government] militia, not al Qaeda.

Prime Minister Maliki has promised to do something for the Christians. He even discussed their plight with Pope Benedict XVI and with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in July. But I haven’t seen anything about measures taken to help them or to protect them. Timmerman’s recommends these steps to help the Christians:

1) Pressure the Iraqi government, and especially the KRG, to uphold their commitment to allow the recruitment and training of 770 Christians into the national police force. For nearly two years, the Kurdish deputy general of the Mosul governerate has blocked this program. Without immediate security, the Assyrian population in northern Iraq will simply flee.

2) Support efforts by Assyrian lay leaders, the Chaldean Patriarch and others to convene a meeting in Washington, D.C., of Iraqi minorities, to forge a consensus on how best to anchor and protect Iraq’s Christian population, whether through an autonomous region in the Nineveh Plain, firm guarantees of minority rights under the federal constitution or some combination of the two.

3) Fulfill the pledge made in July by National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley to Mr. al-Maliki to transfer $100 million in development aid to the Nineveh Plain. Until now, the United States has delayed the transfer over concerns that the KRG will pocket the money, as in the past. Instead of transferring fresh funds to Erbil, the United States should make the money available directly to local town councils through US AID, without Kurdish control.

4) Pressure the Iraqi national government to guarantee representation of minorities in the upcoming parliamentary and regional elections, under Article 50 of the constitution, which was recently suspended.

But instead of these useful steps, look at what is happening:

Christian leaders learned recently that the State Department has been secretly planning to hold a “summit” meeting on Nov. 19 at George Washington University to decide their fate, in tandem with Muslim groups whose motives remain suspect.

WHAT???? I’m so speechless at this I can only quote Ken Timmerman’s reaction:

Have we become so politically correct that we will protect Muslims in Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq but allow one of the world’s first Christian populations to be snuffed out because we are afraid to come to their aid?

I’m afraid the answer to that question is yes. And I don’t think this attitude will change very much no matter who is elected president.

Answering Hugh Fitzgerald (Part II)

10/26/2008 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Note to readers: This is not my usual post. Warning! It will be very long, and rather than just report on a news story, this is my increasingly pessimistic view of where we are as a Nation, so quit now if you don’t want to be dragged down this morning!

Yesterday I wrote Part I of my answer to Hugh Fitzgerald’s question at Jihad Watch, “Who decided we owed this to Somalis?” This is Part II—the malevolent part.

In some ways my answer is similar to describing how we got into the financial mess we are in as a country. It was combination of business, groups and individuals looking out for themselves and their own wallets in an unholy alliance with do-gooders, literally masses of do-gooders, who want to show how open and caring they are for the less fortunate, and how they have moved to a more enlightened place regarding acceptance of differant races and cultures. In the financial world the latter demonstration of goodwill came in the form of these home loans to anyone whether they could afford the loan or not. Those are two legs of the stool.

Then there is the third leg. I can’t even begin to tell you how it might work in the financial markets, but I believe there is a deliberate destabilization of our economy going on. And, a deliberate destabilization of our entire system of government. By whom? And, how does the importation of hundreds of thousands of immigrants from places like Somalia fit into the picture? Well here goes!

If you were in college in the late 1960’s and early ’70’s you were a fortunate (and very wise) student to not have been manipulated into protesting the Vietnam War by propoganda from the likes of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and their supposed splinter group The Weather Underground (I say supposed because every movement to destablize requires a terrorist wing to help the movement look moderate).

Like all students with the do-gooder mindset, I attended rallies against the war—sheep that I was. But, until the last couple of months or so, I thought we all went on to normal American lives turning our do-gooder tendencies to things like working for (LOL) environmental protection, etc.

Now, comes the revelation that some of those Marxists and anarchists of the Vietnam era have spent the last 40 years working to subvert our system of government from within. If you haven’t followed Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers story then just google it, or this post will get way too long.

Ayers has worked within the educational system to continue to subvert the minds of students for decades and to train students to have grievances against our democratic form of government. He is still an anarchist and Marxist. By the way, Judy sent me this youtube clip yesterday. It is an interview with a woman who worked within the educational establishment to train teachers to break the bonds between students and their own parents’ values. [Get your kids out of public schools!]

You are probably now asking, O.K., so what about the Somalis? I came across this a week or so ago. It is a job description for a job with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The person needs to be bilingual in Somali or Amharic (Ethiopian language). It looks all the world to me like this person will be involved in union politics and the gathering of grievances.

The Representatives will handle questions about membership/dues, employment benefits, collective bargaining agreements, problems at work, and union political & social activities.

Sounds like a community organizer job. Have you noticed that in places like Greeley, CO and Grand Island, NE where conflicts have arisen with meatpacking plants that Somali community organizers have swooped in to talk to the press. Who is paying these organizers?

So what is the big deal about the SEIU? Do you know who Wade Rathke is? He is a former SDS member, friend of Ayers, founder of ACORN and now sits on the National Executive Board of SEIU. See Discover the Networks here. See Obama’s connection to SEIU here in American Thinker.

Obama has been hanging around with Marxists his entire adult life beginning with Communist Frank Marshall Davis in Hawaii, through his Columbia years and to his neighborhood in Chicago. His philosophy has been shaped by the likes of Reverand Wright. They all, to a man (or woman), ascribe to the grievance view of America—that America does minorities dirty and is a downright mean country.

Oh and I need to mention in here that the Congressional Black Caucus was involved in encouraging refugee resettlement from Africa—looking for more voters I suppose.

The Somalis are part of their growing grievance army. Mr. Fitzgerald, I don’t know “who” (specifically) they are but they are growing the numbers of dissatisfied people in this country through importation of immigrants in an effort to eventually change our form of government. And, they specifically are encouraging those refugees who won’t assimilate, who won’t buy the American dream of working hard and getting ahead. A dream that Ayers’ educational reforms continue to subvert.

Yesterday, there was a small article in the Washington Times entitled, “Joe scared for America after meeting Obama.” Clear-headed (unclouded by a college education) Joe gets it, but my reason for mentioning this is that I want you to go to a link a commenter recommended. It is an interview with a former Soviet KGB defector and he tells how he was trained to destabilize a country. It is chilling. The gist of what he said is that Communists use the do-gooders to advance the destabilization and the do-gooders would be dispensed with later. The defector had worked in India to destablize that country and the reason the liberal do-gooders must be wiped out was that once they figured out they had been duped they would be very dangerous to Communism.

I know this is getting long. Enter the Islamists. I’ve speculated previously why adherants to political (fundamental) Islam would align with Marxists. It didn’t make any sense to me to see International ANSWER, a Communist organization, being sponsored by groups like the Muslim America Society. Aren’t those Muslims angered by the atheists that make up most Communist groups? When Al-Queda fought the Soviets in Afghanistan, wasn’t that hatred for atheism the real driving force?

To Obama and his circle of friends, beware. The Islamists are smarter than you. The real goal of Obama’s Muslim friends is the establishment of Shariah law in America, they are just using you to destablize our form of government. They will throw you, Communists and Socialists (and do-gooders!), away once you have served your purpose.

You, whoever you are, are naively welcoming the armies of Islam to America—the Somalis and other fundamental Muslims as part of your grievance brigades against capitalism—because you are figuring they are just like you. They aren’t. They are driven by something more powerful then a desire for a specific economic system of government. They are driven by a religious belief that Communists don’t understand.

So, Mr. Fitzgerald, I don’t know who specifically invited the Somalis here, but I know why.

Fitzgerald asked: “Who decided we owed this to Somalis?” Part I

10/25/2008 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update: Part II is here.

Fitzgerald is Hugh Fitzgerald a writer at Jihad Watch who wrote a provacative blog post a few days ago in which he asked that question. Although the post was informative in many ways, he never answered the question. He couldn’t, because none of us in the general public knows the answer at this point.

Those Somalis were allowed into this country as “refugees.” But why are Muslims who leave a Muslim country, where they are not persecuted for being non-Muslims but instead can do the persecuting, and who bring their supremacist Total Belief-System with them and show in a hundred ways that they believe their faith Superior and they Superior as well, owed a living in Lewiston, owed special favors in Nebraska and Colorado, owed exemption from the hack-license rules in Minneapolis? They clearly believe that it is we, the Infidels who gave them misplaced rescue and succor of every kind, who must change our ways, who must yield to them.

Who decided that we owed this to Somalis?

I’ve been thinking about that question for a couple of days and I have some guesses. I think it is a combination of factors, some naive and some malevolent, some inbetween. The naive part is easy. There are lots of people who feel that we are a wealthy country and we can and should help the world’s downtrodden—that it is our moral duty. It makes those people feel good about themselves. They feel good because they are helping with all the best intentions and they feel good because they can demonstrate to everyone around them that they are not racist. To be a racist is to be the scum of the earth and they need desperately to be the opposite and to demonstrate what good people they are visibly and often.

It is not just about race either, especially after 9/11 there seems to be a patholgical need to bend over backwards to show how open one is to Islam and Muslims among us.

And, so those naive and well-intentioned do-gooders are shills for the malevolent forces. I like to call them the “white hats” who, mostly unknowingly, provide political cover. Do-gooders are entrenched in the US State Department, in Congress, in the mainstream media, in State refugee agencies and of course in the religious and secular groups who do the resettling (and are paid for their work). They view disparate cultures as basically the same—the people looking only for a better life—so they have no ability to discriminate one from the other. Nor do they care if certain cultures will assimilate to American society.

The fundamental flaw in their thinking is that they don’t understand the imperative of Islam which calls Somalis to do what they need to do to gain power in Infidel lands. Maybe that is why the do-gooders, looking to feel better about themselves, don’t get it. For Islamists it is not about themselves at all, it is only about the Ummah.

Between the naive and the malevolent is the plain-old financial advantage angle for the federal contractors (volags) who resettle refugees. This program, on-going since Senator Ted Kennedy and Jimmy Carter joined forces in 1980 to make refugee resettlement a government entrenched entitlement program, needs warm bodies to resettle. And, they need a consistent flow of warm bodies. They like to see steady numbers because those volags can then know whether they will have funding to keep their bureaucracies going or not. They have the requisite large flows from chaotic countries like Somalia.

The other financial driving force is that some big industries (notably meatpacking!) need the cheap labor, especially now that the the federal government is cracking down on the illegal immigrant labor. Frankly, the ‘white hats’ in some volags and in the State Department are working with big business in a kind of symbiotic relationship and actually jointly determining where to send refugees based on businesses needs. We’ve written about this on many occasions, so if you want examples let me know. It is too much to rehash here.

The do-gooders feel good and get paid for resettling refugees, while businesses get what one New York Times reader called “slave labor”:

When the Somalians were having trouble at a Tyson meat processing plant in Kansas I daily read the comments written to the local newspaper blog. One Somalian man told his story that his family was plucked from their refugee camp and told they were going to the US. He didn’t say that it was against their will, but he said they were unsure of what was happening and did as they were told. He did say that only his immediate family was pulled to go to the US and it was heartbreaking to leave his extended family behind. Once in the US he said they were “assigned” to Tyson. Also, he said, Catholic Social Services was “assigned” by the government to find them housing and get them settled. He said Catholic Social Services found them a house and gave them the key. But no one taught them how to use anything in the house. His wife had never seen a stove or oven before. He said that a translator from Tyson went with him to get a drivers license, but no one had taught him how to drive. He worked for Tyson and Tyson had moved his family to 4 different locations in 2 different states. This man felt that he had no freedom in the US. He was not allowed to find other employment outside of Tyson. He was not allowed to relocate unless told to do so by Tyson. He said he was at the will of Tyson. He was angry with the US government for making him a slave and said that this process began back in the Clinton administration when Hillary Clinton developed a relationship with Tyson.

I’m writing this to ask others about the truth of his claims. Are the Somalians modern-day slaves to the US meat processing industry?

— ~Judy, American Expat, Zurich, Switzerland

I’ve checked with our Kansas readers and no one knows where Judy (not our Judy!) would have read all of this in one place, but we have definitely heard some of what Judy says in other places. I bring it to you now because I too have speculated whether the refugee resettlement program can be a kind of slave labor.

But, I haven’t even gotten to the malevolent part of my answer to Mr. Fitzgerald! I’m going to write that in Part II, hopefully tomorrow. It involves Bill Ayers, SDS, Obama, the election, unions, Marxism, Islam and more!