Month: July 2009

2009 Diversity Visa lottery winners were announced yesterday

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Perhaps, the ultimate lottery for 50,000 plus winners!  Each year in its infinite wisdom, and apparently because we don’t have enough diversity (or enough poverty), the US State Department holds a lottery for would-be immigrants from countries that don’t send tons of immigrants here already.   See my November post for the 2010 Diversity Visa deadline, here.

Just now I was reading this post from Atlas Shrugs earlier this month and it prompted me to look for the final list of countries for this year.  Much to my surprise the list was released yesterday, here.  How is that for good timing!   Check out the list but be prepared to be sick.

Back in May I reported that there was a bill introduced in Congress that would kill this program, assuming it would ever see the light of day in the Democratic Congress.  I don’t know where it stands at this point.

Refugees International utters the “C” word regarding Iraq

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

That is “C” as in Christian Iraqi refugees.   I’ve been critical for some time of Refugees International’s near silence on persecuted Iraqi Christians while vociferously arguing for Iraqi Palestinians and other supposedly persecuted Muslims to get into the US. Incidentally who is persecuting Muslims besides other Muslims and why is everyone so chicken to mention that fact?

So, I was happy to see this blog posting by Jake Kurtzer, a lobbyist for RI, speaking up for Christians for once even if he never mentions why the Christians, who have lived in Iraq for centuries, are persecuted.

While America’s attention has shifted to the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, recent news reports about the targeting of Christian Iraqis have turned a few eyes back towards the violence within Iraq. The targeting of Iraqi Christians portends a return to the attacks on minorities and ethnic strife that led to the massive displacement of civilians from Iraq.

He places resettlement as third in his list of three suggested action items for the Obama Administration.   Keep in mind it was only last November that RI was calling on Obama to resettle 105,500 Iraqis to the US this year!   I guess it’s dawned on them that hauling all these Iraqis here who then can’t find work and run to the newspapers to complain isn’t doing the refugee industry much good.

President Obama can convey this message by urging Al-Maliki to take a few basic steps. First and foremost, the Iraqi government must continue to improve its own response to the displacement crisis. Reports that the Iraqi government plans to close the IDP file at the end of this year indicate a desire on their part to gloss over this humanitarian emergency. This is unacceptable. The Iraqi government, with U.S. support, must continue to improve its legal framework for supporting returnees and must ensure that all returns are voluntary, and conducted with dignity to areas that are safe and suitable for return.

In urging Al-Maliki to take these steps, President Obama should reiterate America’s commitment to meeting the basic needs of Iraq’s displaced, through financial support for humanitarian agencies and through diplomatic engagement with host countries. The announcement of a potential return of an Ambassador to Syria is a welcome and overdue step that RI has been calling for since 2007. This will ensure that the U.S. can engage with the Syrian government on issues relating to the basic needs of Iraqi refugees. Finally, the President can continue to affirm the U.S.’s commitment to resettle those most vulnerable Iraqi’s who will never be able to return home.

So, when Obama pulls our troops out, and if a sectarian blood bath ensues, will it be Obama’s blood bath?

Somali gang violence, ho hum, just one more story in a long line of stories

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We have written on many occasions about growing Somali gang violence in cities whose Somali populations are rapidly expanding.   Here is one more story from Minneapolis, so far the undisputed leader in this example of the beauty and strength diversity brings to communities.   Hat tip:  to all of our readers who sent this story yesterday, thanks for thinking about us, and sorry I didn’t get to it sooner!

We mentioned Amednur Ali here in a recent post about a conviction Minnesota prosecutors did get in another Somali gang murder case.  From AP:

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) – Ahmednur Ali’s family fled the chaos and violence of their West African homeland Somalia in the 1990s, eventually making their way to Minnesota like thousands of their compatriots.

While many of the estimated 32,000 Somalis who settled in the state have struggled to adapt, Ali flourished, blazing a path to Minneapolis’ Augsburg College on a soccer scholarship by age 20. He studied political science and aspired to a political career modeled on President Barack Obama’s.

He was shot and killed last September outside a busy community center where he worked part-time as a youth counselor, and prosecutors said the 16-year-old accused of killing him was part of a gang.

Ali was one of seven Minneapolis-area Somali men killed over a 10-month period, and authorities believe all were killed by fellow Somalis. Police say it’s too simple to tie all the killings to Somali gangs, which have lured hundreds of young community members to their ranks in recent years.

Those in the insular community willing to speak out, however, disagree.

“It was all gang activity, totally, 100 percent,” said Shukri Adan, a former Somali community organizer who estimated in a 2007 report for the city that between 400 and 500 young Somalis were active in gangs. “The police don’t want to say that but everybody else knows that.”

[,,,,]

Last month, prosecutors dropped the murder charge against the teenage boy in Ali’s case after one witness backed out and another apparently fled the state.

I wonder what the gangs call themselves in Columbus, Ohio, Lewiston, ME, Seattle, WA, Nashville, TN, Salt Lake City, UT, etc. etc.

Gangs like the Somali Hot Boyz, the Somali Mafia and Madhibaan with Attitude have grown more active in recent years, said Jeanine Brudenell, the Minneapolis Police Department’s Somali liaison officer.

Minneapolis is not alone!

Two of my Somali gang posts that stand out the most in my mind are these from Seattle, here and here.    Go back to the first of these two links.  Just now when I did it struck me that this quote from a Somali community organizer was so stunning that it bears repeating here.

While in Chicago, Mohamed said she was fortunate through Equal Voice to make valuable contacts with community organizers who have experience in facing some of the issues plaguing Seattle, particularly the city’s resurgence of gang violence. “We’re back in the ‘90s,” Mohamed exclaimed, except now it’s “East African gangs trying to get street cred.” She lamented, for example, the recent death of a 16-year-old Somali youth she had known since he was eight. He took an African-American friend to attend a Somali wedding. Afterwards, while driving down the highway, he was followed and shot by fellow Somalis, apparently enraged at him for “betraying his people” by bringing an African-American guest. [Ed: In the phrase “betraying his people” she likely isn’t referring to Somalis but to Muslims. He must have brought an infidel to an Islamic wedding. Unbelievably shocking revelation, did any of you, in your wildest dreams, know this was going on in America?]

Mohamed said that there are now “stabbings left and right,” territorial disputes over drug distribution turf among Asian, Latino, African American, and East African gangs, all being fueled by new Somali arrivals from Minnesota and Ohio. [It’s all Ohio and Minnesota’s fault, not Somalia’s fault?] It is very tough for parents to admit to the accusations, she said, that “your kid sells drugs, your kid does drugs.”

For more Somali gang stories use our search function or scroll through our ‘crimes’ category.

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.

And now for something completely different

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’m briefly hijacking the blog to mark the 40th anniversary of the moon landing with a few links.  The first is my husband’s entertaining story of how the POWs in Vietnam, of which he was one, heard about what they thought was the moon landing, and declared the moon an American territory to the dismay of their captors.  Our friend Stuart Koehl did a post on the article at the Weekly Standard Blog.

Then there’s an interview with Charles Murray and his wife Catherine Bly Cox at the Space Review. Twenty years ago the Murrays wrote a book, Apollo: The Race to the Moon, that is “widely held to be the best Apollo history ever written.” The interview gives a view of the space program you won’t get anywhere else because the Murrays got to know the people involved in the Apollo program so well — not just the bigwigs, but the young guys who actually made it work.

Here’s the slim connection to our main concern: The ability to put a man on the moon was a product of our civilization, and no other. The Russians were able to get a man in space, as are other countries now (building on our and the Russians’ achievement). But the Russian communist system did not allow for the kind of innovation, or quality control, that ours did. Do we still have that civilization? Maybe. Will we have it in 10 years, in 25 years? Not if we keep going the way we’re going now. All cultures are not equal, and we need to regain our pride in our own culture and civilization and teach it to newcomers. Well, first we have to get rid of an awful lot of junk it’s accumulated.

Janet Levy: When it comes to Islam it is one-way free speech

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update July 21st:   Steve Emerson tell us what happened at the conference here.

 

Writing today at American Thinker, our friend Janet Levy points out the increasingly frightening attempts to thwart the speech of those warning against the spread of Shariah law while giving free rein to all those who wish to destabilize America.  She begins with the conference we mentioned here on Friday—the Chicago ‘Fall of Capitalism and Rise of Islam’ conference that went ahead with apparently no problems over the weekend.

On July 19th, a conference entitled “The Fall of Capitalism and the Rise of Islam” took place as scheduled at the Hilton Hotel in Oak Lawn, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. There, in the heartland of a post 9/11America, Hizb-ut Tahrir, an international organization outlawed as a terrorist group in several European and Middle East countries, sponsored sessions focusing on strategies to end free enterprise and replace it with Shari’ah law.

Gagging those of us who speak against Shariah law.

It is remarkable enough that a conference of this nature by a group that advocates the overthrow of the U.S. government actually took place in an American city. Perhaps even more disturbing is the growing number of cancellations of events and conferences that feature the opposite point of view with material and speakers that seek to educate the public about the threat of radical Islam. Increasingly, our country’s prized right to freedom of speech seems to operate in only one direction, providing plenty of opportunities for our enemies to speak openly against us, yet, placing a gag over any discussion about the radical Islam threat.

Levy then goes on to list many cases, some we are personally familiar with, in which attempts were made (directly by Muslims or their lackies) to silence our point of view.  She mentions the New English Review conference which I attended, the CPAC snub of Geert Wilders (a speech Judy and I attended), Grover Norquist’s role in blocking conservatives discussion of Shariah law, and the Muslim/Somali mess in Nashville (here is just one of many posts on Nashville) which we have covered extensively.  Read the article where she lists many more cases of attempts to silence critics of Islam.

Levy wraps up her list with this:

It is unconscionable in 2009 that an acceptable forum in America today is a conference entitled, “The Fall of Capitalism and the Rise of Islam,” with a goal of strategizing the demise of the bedrock of our democracy – the free enterprise system – and the replacement of our constitution with a theo-political-legal system that subjugates women, murders homosexuals, confers non-person status on non-Muslims, permits slavery and kills apostates. At the same time, attempts to discuss Islamic doctrine and educate the American public about this very threat are increasingly verboten. In many recent instances, accurate speech is being deemed inflammatory due to fear of retaliation by those who want to silence critics of Islam who engage in legitimate discussion of a serious threat to our nation.