Month: May 2009

Phyliss Chesler to speak about radical Islam at NYC demonstration today

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Phyllis Chesler wants you all to come out and join those fighting to defeat radical Islam.

On Sunday, May 3rd, at noon, in Times Square, in New York City, a gathering of eagles and of angels will take place. Come rain or come shine, the Human Rights Coalition Against Radical Islam is holding a rally. Please join us. The coalition is composed of Muslim, ex-Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist, atheist, and human rights leaders who are “calling for the defeat of radical Islam.”

As fundamentalist Islam continues to expand around the world among the most persecuted are the women, says Chesler whose experience in Afghanistan makes hers an important voice in the movement.

Radical Islam’s greatest crimes are Muslim-on-Muslim crimes and include the cruel subordination and persecution of Muslim women, Muslim apostates, and Muslim independent thinkers. Islam is the world’s largest and only practitioner of both gender and religious apartheid. Such apartheid and barbarism is indigenous to Islam. It was not imported by western colonial powers. Now, Islamic gender and religious apartheid have penetrated the West and have grown even harsher, more barbaric in Muslim lands. Children, as young as five years-old are used to blowing themselves and others up. Women are raped, then forced into becoming human bombs to “cleanse” their shame. Both Palestinians and Al-Qaeda are doing this.

Radical Islam is an obvious threat to human rights all over the world.

Chesler feels a special kinship with women in Afghanistan who are standing up to the most stifling and oppressive form of Shariah Law.

Here’s one reason, among many, that I will be speaking on Sunday.

Today in Kabul, when women march for women’s rights and for women’s lives, they risk being beaten, arrested, and murdered—by the mob that stalks them, by the police, by the Taliban. Still, they have marched twice now in the last month.

They could not be here to join us today. Although I lack their bravery, I am here to speak for them.

For those of you who do not know this:

In December of 1961, I escaped from captivity in Afghanistan.

Read her story.

So why is this important to us?  As refugees/asylees and immigrants from Muslim countries pour into the US we must guard against this radical and fundamentalist form of Islam creeping in with them.    I always thought it would be women like Phyliss Chesler (not that men aren’t in this war too), those who have fought so hard for the rights that women have in the West. who aren’t going to let those rights go easily to men who want to see them covered head to toe, want to marry little girls, or murder sisters and daughters for disobeying them.

Somalis trying to escape the “Rainbow Nation” beaten and returned to South Africa

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It’s been awhile (last November actually) since I told you about the black on black violence in South Africa—you know that country that was supposed to be a beacon for freedom once the White government was thrown out. 

So, this morning here is an update.  It seems that Somalis who have been in South Africa for over a decade are being systematically terrorized, not by whites but by their fellow African blacks.  Interesting huh?   Not racism surely?  Must be xenophobia—has to be something hateful.   It couldn’t be a cultural problem. Afterall, it’s only westerners who want to keep their own culture, this couldn’t be happening in Africa, right?

Read the whole article here.   Trying to escape through Botswana from South Africa, Somalis attempting to get home to the safety of Somalia (yes, you heard that right!) were allegedly beaten and returned to dangerous black African- governed South Africa.

Now the Somalis face a new crisis. To date the UNHCR has financed their food and shelter, but the arrangement ends this week. Calle-Norena said the UNHCR does not have the resources “to provide permanent accommodation for them”, although his organisation will conduct a “protection needs analysis” to decide on future action.

Meanwhile, the Somalis remain determined to leave the country. The LRC’s Brickhill describes this as a “sad indictment of South Africa”, but adds that it’s not surprising.

“There’s a war in Somalia, but at least I know that my neighbours won’t turn on me,” one of the women refugees said. “We will be safer there.”

We want to go home and die in peace.

This is a nice country; it’s the [black] people who hate us.

I don’t understand all this hate. I want to go back to Somalia and live and die in peace. The war is still going on, but at least I will be safer there.

IRC closes office in Boston, leaves refugees in the lurch

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update May 4th:   More details about this closure revealed here.

My fury is without bounds this morning as I read this article from the Boston Globe.   The granddaddy of Corporate Humanitarianism, the International Rescue Committee, is abruptly closing its doors in Boston (along with the Globe ?) and other nearby Massachusetts cities because it doesn’t have enough federal money to keep them going.   Arrghhh!   Before you read this, return to my post of only two days ago where I told you about the huge salaries we taxpayers are paying for the CEO and Vice Presidents of this supposedly charitable organization.   This Boston Globe story makes it sound like they are a struggling shoe-string operation!

And, since Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy is the brains behind the refugee program we are now operating under (since 1980), I hope to God we don’t find out that the IRC is dropping the lifeline for refugees they resettled in Kennedy-land in hopes of putting political pressure on Congress to give more of your money for refugee resettlement—-a bailout for the Top Ten Corporate Humanitarian organizations.  Maybe Senator Ted, the hypocrit, Kennedy should take some soon-to-be-homeless Iraqis to that big house in Hyannisport, even persuade his neighbors to do the same!

To set the stage, here is how the Boston Globe story begins:

In their cramped apartment at the base of the Tobin Bridge, Jamal Al Samara, Iqbal Abid, and their three children don’t mind the rumbling of the traffic above or the occasional bang of a car crash. The Iraqi refugees learned to live with booms and other din at the home they abandoned in Baghdad.

What’s more distressing for the family – who moved to Chelsea eight months ago without a penny, with little English, and deep anxiety about living in such a different culture – is that in a month they will lose the one lifeline they’ve had since arriving in the United States.

The International Rescue Committee’s office in Boston, which over the last 30 years has helped settle more than 25,000 refugees, has told state officials it will close on June 1 – creating a vacuum in services for some of the region’s most vulnerable residents, and leaving hundreds of refugees like the Al Samara family to figure out where to turn for help with housing, medical care, food, jobs, and much more.

“This is terrible for us,” said Abid, who works 25 hours a week on the salad line at a Panera Bread in Boston, a job arranged by the International Rescue Committee. “Now, there will be no one to help us. We are afraid. We are here just a few months. We need more help.”

IRC says its not getting enough federal money!  I told you two days ago that in 2007 they received almost half of their funds from the federal government (you!) and in that year it was $108 million.

Officials at the New York-based organization said they had to close the Boston office, as well as satellite offices in Worcester and Lowell, because of insufficient aid from the federal government, rising local expenses, and a dwindling donor base. They’re in the process of firing what’s left of their 32-member staff statewide, cutting links to scores of volunteers, and transitioning their clients to other organizations.

No where have I seen any of these federal contractors say that maybe with the economic downturn we should slow the flow of refugees to the US.

“This is sad, and it was a very difficult decision,” said Jenny Mincin, regional director of the International Rescue Committee, which has 23 other offices in the United States and operates in 42 countries. “But the cost of housing in Boston, the difficulty of finding the refugees employment rapidly, and the economic downturn made this necessary.”

Read this next section of the article, it’s the tipping point for my anger this morning.

When the Rescue Committee opened its Boston office in 1979 in response to a flood of Southeast Asians fleeing Cambodia and Vietnam, the State Department provided $565 per refugee to resettlement organizations. The federal government now provides $900 per refugee, but with rent and other expenses significantly higher, that amount buys significantly less today in Boston. In exchange for the payment, the resettlement groups are expected to do everything from meet the refugees at the airport to rent and furnish their apartments, buy them food, set them up with public assistance, show them how to navigate the city, find them medical care, and enroll them in job training and English programs, among many other tasks.

In short, the groups say, the government aid no longer covers their costs; they now rely on private donations and volunteers to make up the difference.

As for that $900 payment, this is misleading.   It doesn’t all go to the refugee, the IRC gets to keep half of that State Department payment for their overhead.  The refugee is lucky to get $450.  But, what they don’t tell you here is that the IRC gets most of its federal funds from grants through the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in the Dept. of Health and Human Services, and through various programs it, like its sister groups, doles out (after taking its cut) in some mysterious fashion that is not consistent from organization to organization in the Top Ten.

And then, this CRAP about now having to rely on private donations and volunteers—THEY WERE ALWAYS SUPPOSED TO DEPEND ON PRIVATE DONATIONS AND VOLUNTEERS, IT IS A HIGHLY TOUTED PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP.  It was never meant to be a completely government-funded program and if it was (or is) then let’s put the whole thing back into government control so we citizens can have at least some accountablility about where our tax dollars are spent.

In fact we have argued from day one of  writing this blog that there is not enough private donor and volunteer development being done in these groups.  It’s just easier to set up little bureaucracies funded by taxpayers rather than to get local citizens, churches and other groups to sponsor families.   In Waterbury, CT we even saw one resettlement office actively discourage church volunteers from helping the Burmese that the resettlement office had neglected.

We have advocated from day one that every refugee family must have a local sponsor (not some other poor struggling refugee family member) for a minimum of a year.  Not enough sponsors, then the number of refugees brought to the US is limited accordingly.

Closing offices sets a bad example.

That’s what another representative of a Top Ten Corporate Humanitarian organization says.  However, we have reported that even Catholic Charities has been dropping the ball in its care of refugees.

Marjean Perhot, director of refugee and immigration services at Catholic Charities, worried that the Rescue Committee’s closure will set a bad example for other organizations that might decide that “when it gets too expensive to settle refugees, it’s time to stop.”

Back to the apparently Muslim Iraqi family we opened with.  Did anyone line them up with support from a local mosque or church?  It doesn’t sound like it.

But they’re running low on cash and are worried about covering the $850 monthly rent for their three-bedroom apartment, and repaying the $5,500 they owe the federal government for their plane tickets to Boston, among other concerns.

“We’re very lucky for all the help we have received,” Abid said. “But I don’t know what we’re going to do when we need more help.”

What are they and thousands going to do as the federal funding runs out?   I don’t see any move by the IRC to shutter its New York City corporate headquarters, or cut its big CEO salary (over $400,000 salary and benefits), or lay off some of its vice presidents.  It strikes me as no differant than the big so-called greedy corporations paying out big salaries at the top and laying off the little guy.   The differance is that groups like the IRC can hide behind their do-gooder cover—-what is that expression—-doing well by doing good.

Note to Refugee Industry lobbyists—Refugees International, Human Rights First and Center for American Progress— who are all advocating that we bring tens of thousands, indeed 100,000 Iraqis to the US THIS YEAR, are you aware of what is happening in American towns and cities to the Iraqis already here.

Maybe its time to heed the warning from the ‘wise beyond his years’ Iraqi boy in Tucson who said:

It is better to have 10 Iraqi refugees who are satisfied with their lives than having 100 angry ones with no life at all.

Andrew McCarthy says “NO” to AG Holder, mentions Uighers

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Today Andrew McCarthy who spent more than two decades at the Department of Justice and became an expert on terrorism, told Attorney General Eric Holder that he will not help them with Obama’s planned strategy to release Guantanamo Bay prisoners by year’s end.   Writing at National Review Online today, McCarthy says:

I did something today that I’ve never done before. The Department of Justice, which I proudly served for a quarter century as an assistant U.S. attorney and a deputy U.S. marshal, asked me for help, and I declined. Actually, what I declined to do was attend a meeting. My hope is that the dissent I am registering — to the administration’s disastrous policies of releasing trained terrorists and threatening prosecution against government lawyers — will help the department and the Obama administration, even if they don’t want to hear it.

At the start of his term, President Obama directed Attorney General Eric Holder to head up the President’s Detention Policy Task Force to study detention, trial, and other issues relating to alien enemy combatants — though that venerable law-of-war term has been purged in favor of “individuals captured or apprehended in connection with armed conflicts and counterterrorism operations.” The attorney general has assigned lawyers in the department’s Counterterrorism Division to organize the effort. Those lawyers invited me, among other former and current prosecutors experienced in terrorism and national-security matters, to attend a roundtable session next week, to sort through the vexing legal challenges of modern international terrorism.

Read on.

McCarthy makes two important points.  He asks, if he is on the Task Force and makes legal recommendations that are not favorable to the Administration, might he then be in legal jeopardy just as those Bush Administration lawyers may now be over their recommendations on interrogation tactics following 9/11.   

Is it the Delphi Technique?

And, then he points out that Obama has already declared that the Gitmo Detainees will be moved or freed later this year anyway, so why be on a Task Force and be nothing more than a rubber stamp for Obama and Holder.   This is a tried and true strategy of ‘Progressives’,  I know because I have seen it first hand, up close and personal.  The powers that be have already made their decision, but to give it the patina of a bipartisan and comprehensive strategy, they get a variety of people to sit on a task force then lead the task force to a predetermined conclusion.  Everyone walks away thinking they had a hand in the decision.  The strategy was probably developed within the framework of the Dephi Techinque, more details on it here.  Remember Obama has already used the strategy in a couple of meetings.  Good for you, Mr. McCarthy for getting it, and saying, “no!”

Below are excerpts from McCarthy’s letter to Holder today.

Released Gitmo Prisoners have returned to Jihad:

There are differences in these various proposals. But their proponents, and adherents to both the military and civilian justice approaches, have all agreed on at least one thing: Foreign terrorists trained to execute mass-murder attacks cannot simply be released while the war ensues and Americans are still being targeted. We have already released too many jihadists who, as night follows day, have resumed plotting to kill Americans. Indeed, according to recent reports, a released Guantanamo detainee is now leading Taliban combat operations in Afghanistan, where President Obama has just sent additional American forces.

The decision has already been made.  I say let Obama now take ownership.

The Obama campaign smeared Guantanamo Bay as a human rights blight. Consistent with that hyperbolic rhetoric, the President began his administration by promising to close the detention camp within a year. The President did this even though he and you (a) agree Gitmo is a top-flight prison facility, (b) acknowledge that our nation is still at war, and (c) concede that many Gitmo detainees are extremely dangerous terrorists who cannot be tried under civilian court rules. Patently, the commitment to close Guantanamo Bay within a year was made without a plan for what to do with these detainees who cannot be tried. Consequently, the Detention Policy Task Force is not an effort to arrive at the best policy. It is an effort to justify a bad policy that has already been adopted: to wit, the Obama administration policy to release trained terrorists outright if that’s what it takes to close Gitmo by January.

The Uighers are coming to your neighborhood.  What do you think the chances are that they will settle down to life in an American suburb:  mowing the grass, washing the car, walking the dog?  Oh, silly me, leave the dog out.

Obviously, I am powerless to stop the administration from releasing top al Qaeda operatives who planned mass-murder attacks against American cities—like Binyam Mohammed (the accomplice of “Dirty Bomber” Jose Padilla) whom the administration recently transferred to Britain, where he is now at liberty and living on public assistance. I am similarly powerless to stop the administration from admitting into the United States such alien jihadists as the 17 remaining Uighur detainees. According to National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair, the Uighurs will apparently live freely, on American taxpayer assistance, despite the facts that they are affiliated with a terrorist organization and have received terrorist paramilitary training. Under federal immigration law (the 2005 REAL ID Act), those facts render them excludable from the United States. The Uighurs’ impending release is thus a remarkable development given the Obama administration’s propensity to deride its predecessor’s purported insensitivity to the rule of law.

If released here, the Chinese Muslims will be given the same rights and privileges as refugees and asylees.    One of the Top Ten volags will get the contract to resettle them, and I bet there will even be competition among the NGO’s for the honor of getting these famous terrorists as “clients.”    They will get a federally subsidized apartment, a case worker to help them find a job, food stamps, health screening, and English lessons among other things.

But beware, don’t let them get a look at any women with bare arms, Michelle included.

All of our posts on the Gitmo guys are here.

Food Stamp Scam update: More Mohameds rip off taxpayers

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Your tax dollars:

These food stamp scams by Muslim immigrants always get my attention.  I first learned about them because we had one where we live, and that Mohamed (Mohammad) recently was sent to the big house.  These Michigan  Mohameds will soon be joining him.  From the Ann Arbor News.

Four men who owned and operated an Ypsilanti Township convenience store are accused of fraudulently obtaining more than $432,800 by redeeming food stamp and WIC benefits for cash, phone cards, carpets, knives, and other non-food and ineligible items, authorities said today.

The men, all relatives who ran the Abbas Phone Card and Grocery store, were arraigned today on charges of committing food stamp and WIC fraud.

Named in the indictment are:

• Aidarus Abbas Mohamed, 54, a store owner and the applicant for federal food stamp and WIC benefits.

• Mohamed Mohamed-Abas Sheikh, 46, the owner’s brother and manager of the store.

• Ahmed Mohamed Abas, 23, Sheikh’s son and a store employee.

• Abdurahman Mohamed Abas, 20, also Sheikh’s son and a store employee.

American taxpayers funding jihadist activity abroad?

Now this part is stunning and it’s the first of these stories where we have confirmation of the practice we all thought was happening—the money (the taxpayers’ money) is being sent out of the country!

The indictment charges the men sent some of the money they fraudulently obtained to unknown recipients in the Horn of Africa, Europe, the Persian Gulf and West Africa, through their operation of an unlicensed money remitting business.

You know this isn’t a coincidence—all these Muslim immigrants just happening to be in the convenience store business.  There are probably worldwide workshops, training sessions, on how to get into the US and open stores with access to the federal food stamp program.

Hint to readers, if you have any suspicion of such activity in your neighborhood, go to your local police and suggest they investigate.   It takes time, maybe as long as two years, but eventually these ‘Mohameds’ get nailed.

I’ve written more than 20 posts on this pet project of mine, see them all here.