Month: January 2009

Thailand’s “dump-at-sea” policy on illegal aliens drawing reporters like sharks

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It has been fascinating over recent weeks to watch a story grow into an international crisis.   That is what has happened with the Rohingya boat men story.  For new readers, reports surfaced at the end of December that hundreds of Rohingya Muslim men were being detained by the Thai military as they arrived on beaches in Thailand seeking by some accounts a better life, and by other accounts have a darker mission—joining the Muslim insurgency in the South of Thailand.

The explosion in the story came as a result of the apparently now true allegation that the Thai military is hauling them back to the sea in boats without paddles resulting in hundreds perishing at sea.

To get you up to speed, check out this Christian Science Monitor article a couple of days ago (thanks to all who sent it).  A little background from the CSM:

Thailand has long been a magnet for millions of economic migrants as well as refugees escaping persecution in Burma, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Human traffickers often play a role in transporting both groups, exposing those on the run to egregious abuses. Thailand has a mixed record on hosting refugees.

Most Rohingya, who are denied legal rights in Burma, begin their journey in Bangladesh, where more than 200,000 live in unofficial camps. A further 28,000 are registered with the UNHCR. From there, men pay smugglers for passage across the Indian Ocean to Thailand, usually as a transit stop to reach Malaysia, a Muslim country with a sizable Rohingya population. Some Bangladeshis also travel there.

Now, CNN has sent a team of reporters to the region, so get ready for stories far and wide.   CNN has obtained photos of the ‘dump-at-sea’ that they must have received from someone inside the Thai military.  I’m not defending the Thai military when I say this, but if the photos are legit,  it was really stupid of them to photograph the hauling out to sea event.

This (below) is from CNN and it has a bit of new information for those of us following the story on a regular basis.  CNN says the Thai military is protecting the local Thai villagers (you know, kind of like what our military should be doing on the Mexican border).

The Rohingya, a persecuted minority in Myanmar, have been fleeing their country in rickety boats for years, in search of a better life.

In Thailand, many instead have found deprivation and the possibility of desertion far off shore, according to the CNN investigation.

The source who provided CNN with photos of refugees in a boat being towed out to sea stressed that the Thai army had given the refugees food and water, but he also confirmed that the boats had been pulled for more than two days into international waters before they were set adrift.

His account directly contradicts briefings by senior Thai army sources who denied any such operation was undertaken.

A source in the Thai military, after extensive questioning, did confirm to CNN that the Thai army was operating a dump-at-sea policy. But the source defended it, insisting that each boatload of refugees was always given sufficient supplies of food and water.

That source claimed local villagers had become afraid of the hundreds of Rohingya arriving each month, and that they were accusing the refugees of stealing their property and threatening them.

Beware, as the world economy continues to tank, there will be more of this—economic migrants flowing across borders—and more demand that the US and western countries take them in.

That is what this media drumbeat is working up to.

For more on the Rohingya, see our extensive archive here.

All refugee families should be individually sponsored

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

That is the way it used to be and should be again.   Most citizens believe that when refugees arrive in their town or city that the refugee family will have a sponsor.  It could be a church or other civic group, or even a family with adequate resources, but that isn’t the case.

Here is an article about a fundraising event in Lancaster, PA that confirms that refugee families who do not have sponsors simply have less.   If government contractors, like Church World Service, worked harder I’m convinced they could get families sponsored.  And, if they can’t, don’t bring anymore refugees to that town till sponsors are found.

This year, donations have been down, and we are thankful for any help we receive for arriving refugee families,” she (director Church World Service Lancaster office) said.

With the nearly $907 that Church World Service received, the refugee agency was able to supply essentials for families coming to the county without official church sponsors.

She said CWS has resettled 21 families since Oct. 1 from Burma, Bhutan and Iraq, and only five had church sponsors.

So if they are struggling in Lancaster, why is that city one of the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s “Preferred Communities?”

We support the mission of the International Free Press Society

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is what Baron Bodissey over at Gates of Vienna said last Friday about the launch of the International Free Press Society.

The mission of the IFPS, like its Danish predecessor, is to champion the right of free expression, especially for those who hold controversial or unpopular opinions. Free speech is under assault all across the Western world, but due to the unprecedented attack on Geert Wilders, our initial focus will be on his case in the Netherlands.

Go here to GOV and check out the impressive list of supporters of IFPS’s mission to preserve free speech and here to see IFPS’s Policy Statement which begins:

In recent years – and in particular since 9/11 – freedom of speech has been shrinking throughout the world. This is true not only in countries where this most basic freedom has been tenuous at best, but increasingly where it was first conceived and long enshrined: Europe, the United States and other countries where Western ideas of liberty have taken root.

It is time to confront and reverse the forces, both internal and external, that are now arrayed against free speech, time to organize not just locally and nationally, but also globally in recognition of the common danger imperiling all free societies. The sole purpose of The International Free Press Society (IFPS) is to defend freedom of expression wherever and by whomever it is threatened.

More on the Wilders Witchhunt here.

Alinskyism (Day 21)

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is so good!  So juicy! So funny!

The New York Post reported on Friday that President Barack Hussein Obama had taken on Rush Limbaugh in a meeting with GOP leaders and told them to distance themselves from Rush.

WASHINGTON — President Obama warned Republicans on Capitol Hill today that they need to quit listening to radio king Rush Limbaugh if they want to get along with Democrats and the new administration.

“You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done,” he told top GOP leaders, whom he had invited to the White House to discuss his nearly $1 trillion stimulus package.

Now that the far left, represented by the Obama Administration, no longer has George Bush to isolate and ridicule they have shifted their focus to Limbaugh, “the last man standing!”

However, Limbaugh shot back via Byron York at The Corner:

There are two things going on here. One prong of the Great Unifier’s plan is to isolate elected Republicans from their voters and supporters by making the argument about me and not about his plan. He is hoping that these Republicans will also publicly denounce me and thus marginalize me.

And, by the way, this is what that little lamb chop dinner at faux conservative George Will’s house was all about—Obama isolating the real enemy—Rush Limbaugh and his millions of non-elitist  listeners.  So much for how smart those inside the beltway pundits are, they didn’t even get it!

Judy sent me York’s Corner post last night and I’m still laughing!   So, back to Rush’s conversation with Byron York, here is what Limbaugh wraps up with:

One more thing, Byron. Your publication and website have documented Obama’s ties to the teachings of Saul Alinksy while he was community organizing in Chicago. Here is Rule 13 of Alinksy’s Rules for Radicals:

“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”

The jig is up!  Limbaugh has got Obama’s number!

Now, here are some more things to remember from Alinsky’s Rule 13 from “Rules for Radicals:”

*  In conflict tactics there are certain rules that the organizer should always regard as universalities.  One is that the opposition must be singled out as the target and “frozen.”

* Obviously there is no point to tactics unless one has a target upon which to center the attacks.   [Alinsky makes it very clear here, that for instance you can’t attack something broad like ‘conservatives’, one must focus the attacks on a person.]

*  Let nothing get you off your target.

* It should be borne in mind that the target is always trying to shift responsibility to get out of being the target.  [Good luck with that when you’ve taken on Limbaugh, he will relish being the target!]

* With this focus comes a polarization.  As we have indicated before, all issues must be polarized if action is to follow.   [He then discusses how the person, the target, must be the personification of evil.  One cannot effectively defeat the other side if people believe that person has some good qualities.]

It goes on, I encourage you to read Alinsky yourself.

But, one last important point from Alinsky’s tactics chapter and I discussed it (here also) the other day when I wrote about “ridicule” (Rule #5).    Alinsky says:

It should be remembered that you can threaten the enemy and get away with it.  You can insult and annoy him, but the one thing that is unforgivable and that is certain to get him to react is to laugh at him.  This causes irrational anger.

This is going to be so much fun!  Obama has picked on the wrong guy!  Limbaugh can take whatever comes at him with a laugh and throw it (ridicule!) back tenfold.

Tune in to Limbaugh Monday, I bet it will be a great show.

All my Alinskyisms can be found in our category ‘community destabilization’ here.

Newsweek again! A little better job on the Somali missing men story

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday I told you what a rotten job of reporting Newsweek did on its Somalis in Lewiston, ME story, they have done a little better job on the Somali missing men story.   But, since we have been on this from the beginning, there isn’t a whole lot to report here.  Newsweek appears to have interviewed all the usual actors (including our buddy Omar Jamal, smoking a hookah no doubt), except maybe one I’ll discuss below.

In “Recruited for Jihah?” I was interested to see that Newsweek was willing to sound a few alarm bells.

Since al-Shabab is on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations, traveling to Somalia to train or fight with the group is illegal. But security officials involved in the investigation have a bigger concern—that a jihadist group able to enlist U.S. nationals to fight abroad might also be able to persuade Somali-Americans to act as sleeper agents here in the United States. Al-Shabab has no history of targeting the U.S.

Not so far, but they sure did threaten to disrupt the Obama inauguration this past week.  But, of course, that makes NO SENSE because everyone knows that terrorism will now come to an end because we have a nice President.

As if to underscore the danger, early last week the FBI and Department of Homeland Security warned in a bulletin for the first time that al-Shabab might try to carry out an attack in America—timed to disrupt the presidential inauguration. A government official, who asked for anonymity discussing sensitive intelligence, tells NEWSWEEK the information came from an informant who notified security officials that people affiliated with al-Shabab might already be here. The tip-off proved to be a false alarm. Still, security officials view the bulletin and the disappearances in Minnesota as a warning that Somalia’s brew of lawlessness and radicalism might rebound on the United States. “You have to ask yourself, how long is it before one of these guys comes back here and blows himself up?” says a senior U.S. counterterrorism official, who also wouldn’t be quoted on the record discussing intel.

Here is the only information in this article that I found new and interesting.   It seems that one of the Minneapolis mosques under scrutiny (NOW under scrutiny) had a speaker in November who was a Somali fighter and he revved up the ‘worshipers.’

NEWSWEEK found a small number among those who have worshiped at Abubakar and a recently closed sub-branch known as Imam Shafii Mosque who believed the tone was sometimes extreme. Yusuf Shaba, who writes articles for the Warsan Times, a Somali-English newspaper in Minneapolis, says he and his teenage sons attended a lecture at Imam Shafii Mosque in November by a visiting speaker who had fought in Somalia. His presentation turned into a rant. “He talked about the need for jihad,” Shaba says. “He got very emotional.” Shaba has since kept his children away.

The Imam, who has been blocked from leaving the country because of the missing men issue, denies anyone ever spoke at the mosque about jihad in Somalia.

Imam Abdirahman tells NEWSWEEK that he recalls seeing some of the missing young men at the mosque. But none talked about returning to Somalia. “The youths did not consult their imam, just as they did not consult their elders,” he says. He denies that any fighters from Somalia (or other countries) lectured at the mosque….

I hope we are now keeping a better watch over mosques throughout America.   There is no way that Yusaf Shaba, who reported the Somali fighter speaker, would reveal that if it weren’t true because in doing so he has put himself in danger.   I suspect he knows that, but do the dhimmi Newsweek reporters?