Day: April 16, 2009

Is RRW a suspicious web site? Ask Janet Napolitano.

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Talk radio and conservative blogs — and even the mainstream media — have been abuzz with reports and commentary on a paper from the Department of Homeland Security, “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.” You can see the whole thing here.   

I’m not going to do a thorough commentary on the thing; many others have covered it, including Power Line. I want to point out how the government is targeting people like me and Ann, who have done nothing but exercise our free speech by writing this blog.  A disclaimer at the beginning says that the government has no specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists are planning acts of violence. (Unlike leftwing ones such as radical animal-rights and environmentalist groups, which actually have carried out such acts.) But that’s okay, it’s the possibility that counts. Here’s one:   

Rightwing extremists were concerned during the 1990s with the perception that illegal immigrants were taking away American jobs through their willingness to work at significantly lower wages.  

A pretty good perception, seeing that it’s backed up by academic studies like this one from the Center for Immigration Studies. (That’s just one of many.) Here’s their disclaimer; are you convinced that anti-immigration groups are not being monitored?    

Debates over appropriate immigration levels and enforcement policy generally fall within the realm of protected political speech under the First Amendment, but in some cases, anti-immigration or strident pro-enforcement fervor has been directed against specific groups and has the potential to turn violent.
 
This isn’t too serious a threat, though: 
 
DHS/I&A assesses that rightwing extremist groups’ frustration over a perceived lack of government action on illegal immigration has the potential to incite individuals or small groups toward violence. If such violence were to occur, it likely would be isolated, small-scale, and directed at specific immigration-related targets.  
  
Another potential threat comes from Americans who “perceive recent gun control legislation as a threat to their right to bear arms.” They’re stockpiling guns and ammunition. No, really? Why would anybody feel threatened by gun control legislation? Check us off on that, Janet; we perceive that threat too.   

  

Then there are the New World Order paranoids. DHS is a little behind the curve on what the perceived threat is. Many of us are deeply concerned about the apparent willingness of the Obama administration to cede parts of our sovereignty to world bodies, and the eagerness of some judges to apply foreign laws and legal decisions to domestic cases. Pretty extremist stuff, to want American judges to follow the American Constitution rather than Zimbabwe’s, huh?    

Okay, I’ve gotten off the main topic. Just wanted to make sure Ann and I got on the list, if they’re making a list. When I was on the radical left a long time ago, the FBI had a file on me; I got it through a Freedom of Information Act request in the 1980s. Will I get a new file now?     

Tea Party time!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update April 20th:   Excellent commentary on the Tea Parties here.

Update April 19th:  Watch  David Axelrod and James Carville make fools of themselves on CNN today.  Axelrod called the Tea Parties unhealthy (yes, for Obama !).

Judy and I, along with other like minded friends, went to the Hagerstown MD Tea Party yesterday, and despite the pouring rain, the turnout was much higher than we expected.   We had lots of fun and I was particularly impressed with the many creative signs on display.   Here is Judy’s.

The other thing I thought was so encouraging is that I bet the majority of the folks there have never protested before in their lives.

Are pirates funding our missing Somalis?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The links between the Somali pirates and Al-Shabaab have been ignored in the media. The pirates are usually depicted as free-lancers, guys who just want to get rich. But Robert Spencer in a Human Events piece tells us:

…let’s not lose sight of who Phillips’ captors were. His Somali pirate captors are Islamic jihadists, dedicated to the same goals as Osama bin Laden and other jihadists around the world.

In August 2008, when the pirates became especially active off the Horn of Africa, Andrew Mwangura, head of the East African Seafarers’ Assistance Programme, declared that Al-Shabaab, a group of jihadists in Somalia, use piracy to fund their jihad: “According to our information, the money they make from piracy and ransoms goes to support al-Shabaab activities onshore.”

Spencer points out that in paying ransoms, European governments (and shipping companies as well–Ed.) are funding the jihad. He continues:

But now it must be followed up properly, for al-Shabaab has numerous links to jihadist activity elsewhere. Al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen (“Jihadist Youth”) is linked to al-Qaeda and advocates the strict application of Islamic law. It came to the fore in that troubled nation after the 2006 toppling by Ethiopian troops of the Islamic Courts Union government that ruled briefly in Mogadishu. And Mwangura notes that currently “the entire Somali coastline is now under control of the Islamists.” Al-Shabaab now controls more of Somalia than the Islamic Courts Union did even at the height of its power, and its reach extends beyond Somalia. Some of the Somali immigrants who have mysteriously disappeared from the Minneapolis area have been recruited for jihad by al-Shabaab, which has also attracted jihad fighters from around the world to join its efforts to take control in Somalia.

Ann has been following the story of the missing Minneapolis Somalis closely. 

Robert packs a lot of information into his column, and here are further important considerations:

Counterterror analyst Olivier Guitta, exploring Al-Shabaab’s connections with al-Qaeda, explained that the group “intends to take control of the Gulf of Aden and the southern entrance of the Red Sea.” This creates an acute problem for Barack Obama. If al-Shabaab does gain control of Somalia, it will not only continue to threaten shipping but will almost certainly expand its jihadist reach beyond Somalia to destabilize the Horn of Africa and work with other jihadist elements in the area, just as it has attracted foreign jihadists to its own cause. What’s more, the Somali jihad could come to the U.S. itself. In January, Newsweek reported about al-Shabaab 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-Shabaab’s al-Qaeda ties make it quite likely that such a thought has occurred to the group’s leadership as well.

Does Obama care about these connections? Does anyone with any power in the federal government care? Or is Obama so dedicated to downplaying the war on terror that he will refuse to connect the dots? What will he do when we are finally attacked again? Probably blame “right-wing extremist groups” and apologize to Muslims for their coming under suspicion.

Somali youths have been missing since 2007!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We’ve been following the story of the Somali missing youths who have reportedly returned to Somalia for terrorist training with Al-Shabaab (an Al-Qaeda affiliate) since the story broke in November, but this is the first time I have seen any mention that Somali youths (former refugees) have been gone since 2007!

Although I could care less about all this touchy-feely yakking about whether these guys missed their McDonald’s and Starbucks, this interview with three Somali young women was revealing and I commend Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) for getting the story.

I guess this MPR timeline needs to be updated! 

After some of the men left for Somalia in 2007, they kept in touch by cell phone. Every couple of weeks, Mohamed said she and other friends would get a call from one of the missing men.

“The conversations were never about serious political things,” Mohamed recalled.

The young men asked for news and sounded homesick.

“I remember one of guys complaining about the food situation over there,” Mohamed said. “He told me that he’d do anything to get a fast-food restaurant, like a McDonald’s.”

Or a Frappacino.

“One guy was caffeine-addicted,” said Mohamed, “and when he came there, he just had headaches all the time and he wanted to get a Starbucks.”

Somalia was a shock to their systems. Some complained of malaria.

They were calling friends back home and no one said anything to authorities.*

In 2006, Somalia was invaded by neighboring Ethiopia, triggering a patriotic response from Somalis worldwide. Mohamed thinks her friends saw themselves as “freedom fighters” but became disillusioned with their mission.

“I remember one of them kind of saying that he hated the weather, and he hated the place … and he wanted to come back home and he didn’t know how his parents would take it because he didn’t tell them anything. He just ran off,” Mohamed said.

[…..]

That was in February of 2008. Shortly after that, the U.S. State Department designated Al-Shabaab, the hard-line Islamic militia the men were believed to have joined, as a terrorist group.

The three women say that’s about the time the phone calls ended.

Let’s see, do we cover for our terrorist kids or inform US authorities?  Obviously the answer was cover for their kids because we didn’t learn about any of this until late fall 2008!

“If their kids are being labeled as terrorists, it kind of makes the parents step back and say, ‘Should we have told? Or should we have just kept our mouths shut?’ And ‘What would have been better for our kids?'” Qaxiya said.

[….]

Mohamed said she hasn’t heard from any of the men since last May. A Facebook message she sent to one man who has reportedly returned from Somalia went unanswered.

Well, so much for us taking comfort that the FBI has been on top of this case, they and Homeland Security apparently didn’t even know we had Somali-American men leaving for terrorist training as early as 2007.   Some have even been trained and returned to the US before the FBI began investigating in the fall of 2008.  FBI, where are they?

* I have another post planned, watch for it later today, on the issue of Somalis not telling authorities.   Update:  Here is the promised post only two days late!

For new readers, the US State Department has admitted over 80,000 Somali refugees to the US in the last 25 years and then last year had to suspend family reunification because widespread immigration fraud was revealed through DNA testing.

“Lutheran Church” taking the rap for bringing Somalis to Minneapolis

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This NPR story is just mostly a rehash of a couple of on-going stories involving Somali refugees  numbering surely over 200,000* in the US by now.    It tells us once again that Muslim money transfer businesses have been raided by the FBI and that is linked to the missing Somali youths stories we have followed since November.    However, one line in this report demonstrates the woefully inadequate information the public has about refugee resettlement.

Federal agents served warrants on a handful of money transfer businesses around Minneapolis and eastern Missouri last week. People close to the investigation said the searches were related to the disappearance of about two dozen young Somali-American men and teenagers from the Twin Cities in the past two years.

The Somali community in Minneapolis is the largest in America. Some 70,000 Somalis have settled in Minnesota after they were sponsored by the Lutheran Church in the 1990s. To send cash to their impoverished relatives back home, Somalis typically use money transfer businesses. The FBI fanned out last week to a number of those operations, trying to follow a money trail that might give them an idea of who is behind the disappearance of the young men.

The implication here is that the Lutheran Church is entirely responsible for sponsoring Somali refugees and resettling them in Minneapolis.  In fact the United Nations and the US State Department (and now Homeland Security plays a role)  make the decisions about which refugees come to the US.   Then ten FEDERAL CONTRACTORS  (volags in refugee lingo) including Lutheran Immigration and Social Services divvy up the refugees and spread them out in the US—to your towns and cities.

These ten CONTRACTORS (funded by the State Department and the Office of Refugee Resettlement in the Dept. of  Health and Human Services) compete for refugees by the head and seem to only have any accountablility to the US State Department  if they screw up in some way.  If one should screw up, another competing agency is ready to step in and take over the territory.

It has been our view all along that each refugee family should be sponsored by a church or civic group, for example, which is what this article implies, but it is not done that way.

* No one seems to know exactly how many Somalis live in the US now, but it has to be over 200,000 because the US State Department admitted 80,000 that we know of, others have come illegally and of course they have families with 5-6 kids or more.