Refugees International comes to its senses, or not

When I first read this article, by Ken Bacon at the Huffington Post I thought wow! Refugees International was being sensible in saying that there are too many Iraqi refugees for them to be resettled in third countries and that our government needed to work with the Iraqi government to smooth the way home for displaced Iraqis.   

Incidentally, they never tell you that some Iraqis have been displaced in the region since Saddam Hussein’s brutality scared them out of Iraq before we arrived in 2003.

Increasingly, refugees, who generally can’t work legally in their host countries, are running out of resources. The number of Iraqi refugees in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt is simply too large for these countries to absorb. The population is also too large to resettle into third countries. Therefore, the only real, long-term solution to the Iraqi displacement problem is return to Iraq. Finding ways to create conditions for safe return is central to improving stability in Iraq and in the Middle East.

So far so good.   Bacon also said they will be making a trip to the region next month to assess the situation.  

[An aside:  RI has a PR firm that sent me this press statement with a Youtube clip of one of their young workers interviewing an Iraqi refugee in Syria (second clip on the page).   I was shocked at the cultural insensitivity this woman demonstrated with her immodest dress in a conservative Muslim country.  Remember the famous Nancy Pelosi in Syria head covering pic?    Even in third world countries that are not Islamic it is not considered appropriate to put all one’s assets on public display.]

Next month Refugees International will launch its 10th mission [Edit. with cleavage and arms covered?]  to assess the conditions of displaced Iraqis. The focus of this trip will be on ways to create conditions for speedier return, specifically how the US, the UN and the government of Iraq can work more productively together to resolve the security, humanitarian and legal problems that are preventing Iraqis from returning home.

So, I’m reading this and saying, good for you RI!   We have a terrible economic situation developing in the US and already Iraqi refugees in 15 states are saying they have no work and some are wishing to go home to Iraq.  Helping them return to Iraq sounds like a very sensible plan.

Then here comes the comprehensive program published in 2008:

Refugees International has been promoting a comprehensive program for dealing with Iraqi displacement since last summer. Recognizing that it will take some time to create conditions for safe return, the program calls for increased resettlement of vulnerable Iraqis in the U.S., more help for Jordan, Syria and other countries hosting Iraqi refugees, and a stepped-up effort to ensure voluntary return to Iraq.

Follow that link for the comprehensive program and what do you find!   As we reported awhile back, they want to bring 105,500 Iraqis to the United States THIS YEAR!   I had wondered how they came up with that astronomical number, remember we resettled 13,000 this past year and most of those can’t find jobs.  It was only a few days ago when officials in Boise were freaking at the prospect of tent cities of unemployed refugees.

Here is the breakdown:

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that 88,000 Iraqi refugees need immediate protection through resettlement next year. The U.S. generally resettles 50% of all refugees resettled in the world each year, bringing in the U.S. share for 2009 to: 44,000

Palestinian refugees living in desperate conditions on the Iraqi – Syrian border need immediate protection through resettlement: 3,000

The most recently available figures show that the State Department is currently processing 7,000 petitions to bring families averaging three people each to the U.S. to join with Iraqis who have already resettled in the U.S: 21,000

The Refugee Crisis in Iraq calls for admitting refugees who were persecuted due to their affiliations with the U.S. Government and other U.S. based organizations. Many of these refugees have left or are in the process of leaving the country and face an urgent need of assistance and protection as their resources run out. The U.S. should immediately resettle annually: 37,500

Obama picks open-borders advocate for senior position at Homeland Security

Not unexpectedly President Obama has chosen a longtime advocate for bringing more immigrants to the US for a deputy assistant secretary at Homeland Security.  

According to the Colorado Independent:

Esther Olavarria, a Senior Fellow and Director of Immigration Policy at the Center for American Progress, is Obama’s pick for deputy assistant secretary of homeland security for policy.

Olavarria, in particular, signals a major change for DHS.

Not only does she come from the progressive CAP, but she spent almost 10 years as counsel to Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Refugees. Her work there included proposals on comprehensive immigration reform. Olavarria started her career as an immigrants’ advocate when she was a managing attorney of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center; she has also been directing attorney of the American Immigration Lawyers Association Pro Bono Project and staff attorney at the Haitian Refugee Center in Miami.

Left out of this report is that she also previously worked for the UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees).

Regular readers will remember that John Podesta’s Center for American Progress is infamous for recently suggesting we airlift 100,000 Iraqis to the US this year.   Because of her position at CAP’s Olavarria must have been behind that scheme.

Feminists dispute “honor killing”

Update 2/25/09: Phyllis Chesler has a great article at FrontPage Magazine summarizing reactions from Muslims and feminists about the beheading and the controversy over whether it was an honor killing or not. It is so packed with information that I can’t summarize it; read the whole thing.

My post on honor killing has attracted some notice from a feminist blog. Apparently some feminists are debunking the notion that there is any connection whatsoever between the beheading of a Muslim wife who filed for divorce against her husband, and Islam itself with its primitive notions of honor, while other feminists are using this beheading to draw attention to honor killings. I think Phyllis Chesler’s scholarly article, from which I took the chart in my honor killing post, is especially valuable in distinguishing honor killing from the usual domestic abuse. (This is not to minimize the problem of domestic abuse, which the feminists claim we are doing when we draw attention to honor killings.)  

The same division is seen among Muslims. Many are shocked that anyone would link this beheading to Islam. Others are speaking out about the problem, as I wrote here.

This particular beheading case shares many characteristics with regular domestic violence — abusive men of many ethnic groups seem to feel their honor threatened when their mate leaves, or threatens to leave. The fact that the husband turned himself in to the police is interesting — he seems to have been remorseful, something that is not characteristic of honor killings, which are sanctioned by the community.

It is that sanctioning by the community — the Islamic community — that has caused some Muslims to speak out. There is no sanction for domestic violence in mainstream American culture (despite the strenuous efforts of some feminists to claim otherwise). There will, unfortunately, always be abusive men, and they need to be stopped both by law and by culture. It appears that in some cases Islamic culture overrules American law, and changing that has to be initiated by Muslims themselves.

Update 2/27/09: See my post, Beheader says headless wife can’t reach paradise for evidence linking the killing to Islam and honor killing.

Vermont man charged with hate crime for something the reporter can’t specify

Maybe I’m dense, but what the heck does this story from Vermont TV station WCAX mean?

A Burlington [man] is charged with a hate crime for using racial epithets to insult people of color. It’s the first case involving interracial hatred in Chittenden County since Vermont’s hate crime law took effect.

The suspect is charged with disorderly conduct as a hate crime for allegedly targeting his African-born neighbors– especially a 9-year-old girl– with death threats and racial insults.

But the suspect claims there was no crime at all because his speech is protected by the First Amendment.

Is he charged for the racial epithets? That’s free speech. Or is he charged for death threats? That may or may not be free speech.

Police records show the Somalis had complained for several years that he targeted them with hateful name-calling but no criminal charges were filed until last fall.

That’s when police say Cannon targeted 9-year-old Nahima Sheck Mohammed and her family with an intensified series of death threats and racial slurs. The prosecutor says it’s a hate crime.

WHAT is a hate crime? The death threats or the racial slurs? Does Vermont’s hate crime law include speech? If so, and if this disgusting low-life guy is being prosecuted for his speech, then he’s right to challenge the law and I hope it goes all the way to the Supreme Court. Even convicted felons (this guy is one) are not deprived of their speech rights.

As for the death threats, the law varies from state to state. Some consider death threats protected speech, others a crime under various statutes.

But the whole idea of hate crime laws is wrong. These laws always specify privileged groups, and those who commit a crime against them can be prosecuted on two counts — the crime itself, and the motive of hate. A very bad thing. I’d rather see an upstanding citizen be the one to challenge such a law, but then upstanding citizens rarely issue death threats.

 

 

Obama sending almost a billion dollars to Hamas via the UN

Not content with the $20 million he ordered sent to Gaza, President Obama is now going for aid in a big way. The New York Times reports:

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration intends to provide some $900 million to help rebuild Gaza after the Israeli incursion that ended last month, administration officials said Monday.

In an early sign of how the administration plans to deal with Hamas, the militant Islamist group that controls Gaza, an official said that the aid would not go to Hamas but that it would be funneled through nongovernmental organizations.

Andy McCarthy at National Review has a comprehensive smackdown of the idea the money won’t go to Hamas, beginning with this excellent paragraph:

Various la-la land conservatives and moderates assured us that Obama, despite a career spent in the Left’s fever swamps, is really a “pragmatist” who would govern from the center.  They pooh-poohed us knuckle-draggers who doggedly pointed to his radical intimates, like Hamas-apologist Rashid Khalidi.  I wonder what they’re thinking today as Obama takes time out from destroying the economy to send $900M from the mint’s busy printing press to Hamas.

Despite disclaimers in the New York Times, yes, the money is going to Hamas, via the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA.

The UNRWA is effectively an arm of Hamas in Gaza (and elsewhere).  In its second term, the Bush State Department was reckless in enabling Palestinian terrorists on its utopian quest for Middle East peace.  As in so much else, Obama is taking that parlous policy and multiplying it by a hundred.

After going through the many ways UNRWA aids Hamas, McCarthy concludes:

The game here is obvious.  UNRWA takes in hundreds of millions (indeed, billions) in aid.  Some is directly funnelled to Hamas in cash or in kind.  But for the most part, UNRWA performs social welfare services quite consciously to free Hamas — the Palestinians’ chosen government — to divert its limited resources to wage a terrorist war (“the resistance”) against Israel.

And here’s the nub of it:

If an organization comprised of American citizens attempted to do this, they could be prosecuted and imprisoned for decades on charges of providing material support to a terrorist organization.  (I would say “would be prosecuted,” but with this administration, who knows?)  Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (an old hand at empowering Palestinian terrorists) are now proposing to give nearly a billion dollars to a Hamas subsidiary — knowing full well that this funding must inevitably result in the murder of innocent people.

McCarthy points out that Congress could stop this expenditure. Fat chance. All we can hope for is that a few principled Republicans will raise the alarm, so at least some citizens will realize how closely the Obama administration is aligning itself with terrorists.

I highly recommend you read McCarthy’s whole post.