American newspapers deceive foreign media, and they don’t like it

09/14/2009 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Mark Steyn has a post on The Corner, Don’t Blame Us, Blame the Newspaper We Copied It Out Of, that deserves attention.

The USS Neverdock notices an emerging global trend: newspapers suckered by the Washington Post and the New York Times. Down under, the Sydney Morning Herald has retracted its “original” “report” of the Van Jones resignation:

A week ago, the Herald ran a story which, in its essence, was not true. The paper did not know this. It was the unwitting victim of a distortion created at The Washington Post, which produced the original story.

We’ve commented frequently on reports in the media that leave out the most relevant and interesting facts. Ann has posted on any number of puff pieces on refugees in local newspapers in which the reporters don’t or won’t look below the surface. Those who do real reporting are heroes, and we’ve given them lots of space, most notably Brian Mosely and the Shelbyville (Tennesee) Times-Gazette.

Mark Steyn mentions a second retraction, this one from the Irish Times which was snookered by a New York Times story. And here’s his perceptive bottom line:

Of course, neither the Sydney Morning Herald nor the Irish Times are “unwitting victims” of the Washington Post and New York Times. It’s their choice to copy blindly any slab of hooey appearing in the Post and Times that happens to suit their prejudices without checking it for themselves. As the Neverdock points out, if you can’t do as well as some blogger using Google, maybe you shouldn’t be in the news business.

That’s exactly right. We get most of our information here at Refugee Resettlement Watch from poking around the Internet. Once we got started, of course we began getting information directly from people in the know, so that in some ways we became somewhat more like traditional reporters. (I should say Ann is, since I don’t do much original reporting.)

When you look at all the recent stories that the mainstream media have ignored or minimized, you do have to wonder why these media outlets exist at all. The Van Jones scandal and resignation, the undercover films of ACORN employees encouraging what they thought was a brothel using underaged girls, the huge Washington march on Saturday — these were covered well and thoroughly by websites, bloggers and Fox News — and little else.

US Navy Seals kill an Al-Shabaab bigwig inside of Somalia

09/14/2009 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Seems that Obama is going to take these Al-Shabaab jihadists seriously. If any more Somali youths (former refugees)* get the big idea of joining Al-Shabaab in Africa maybe this will give them pause. From Fox News thanks to Blulitespecial.

Navy Seals from U.S. Special Operations Forces conducted a raid in southern Somalia on Monday that killed Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, one of 4 co-conspirators wanted in the 2002 bombing of an Israel owned hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, two senior U.S. military officials told FOX News.

Ten days ago President Obama signed the Execute Order for Nabhan, who since 2006 was on the FBI’s list of most wanted terrorists. He was also wanted for the attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Kenya in 1998.

Two MH-6 Little Bird helicopters deployed from one of two U.S. Navy vessels near Somalia’s coast strafed a vehicle Nabhan was using to go back and forth between meetings. Intelligence operatives had been monitoring Sabhan prior to the attack. The helicopters passed once, firing on the vehicle, and then circled back around to retrieve the body so they could make a positive identification, according to one official.

[….]

Nabhan’s group Somali, Al- Shabaab, has links to Al Qaeda.

He, he, he! I wonder if Al-Amriki will be next?

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.

We have been following the case of Somali “youths” being recruited to join Al- Shabaab since last November, here.

Milwaukee Muslims teaching Somali Bantu how to behave in America

09/14/2009 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

That’s the gist of this story published on 9/11 at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. (Hat tip: Robert). Local mosque leaders want to be sure that the Somali Bantu know they can’t have underage sex (rape anyone), settle their differences with violence, or beat their children. For the record, I am glad someone is doing this job, but isn’t this all information they should have received from the federally-funded resettlement agency (or agencies) that brought them to Wisconsin in the first place?

When the local Somali Bantu community began arriving in Milwaukee in 2003, people came with little more than the clothes on their backs.

Largely illiterate, few spoke English. And little in their decade in the refugee camps of Kenya, where they’d fled Somalia’s civil war, prepared them for life in the United States.

It’s been a difficult adjustment for many of the Bantu, as families struggled to maintain their religious and cultural identities while navigating the complexities of American society and its laws.

Now, their fellow Muslims are working to ease that transition, offering a series of educational programs aimed at helping the Somali Bantu better assimilate.

“A Muslim must respect the law of the land and always be a good citizen,” Imam Ziad Hamdan, speaking through a translator, told about 300 Bantu gathered this week for an Iftar – the nightly breaking of the fast during Ramadan – sponsored by the Islamic Society of Milwaukee. Those who do so, said Hamdan, “will please Allah and live in peace in this society.”

The initiative, funded in part by the Women’s Fund of Greater Milwaukee and the Islamic Society, has been welcomed by Bantu leaders, who worry that their youth are being influenced by negative aspects of American culture – truancy, teen pregnancy, drug and alcohol abuse – and that their parents are ill-equipped to stop it. [It is always America’s fault!]

“This is helpful for our community,” said Abdiwahab Aden, president of the local Bantu-American Friendship Association, who estimates there are about 600 Bantu, in about 130 families, in the Milwaukee area.

The Milwaukee Muslim Women’s Coalition began developing the program this spring after two young Bantu men, ages 25 and 23, were convicted of sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl they met at a library.

By the way, I follow the news pretty closely and never heard about this rape conviction and just now tried to find a story on it and couldn’t. Does anyone have a link?

Update September 15th: Thanks to Brenda Walker, here is the link to the rape case story. Although it’s an old story it is worth a separate post, here.

Boo Hoo! Now Nashville doesn’t have enough interpreters

09/14/2009 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is a story from the Tennessean on Saturday that laments the lack of foreign language translators for hospitals, courts and so forth.

Children interpreting for parents at medical appointments and school meetings and witnesses unable to testify are signs of a shortage of translators in Nashville and statewide, according to translators at a state convention.

There are almost 50 certified Spanish interpreters for the state judicial system, according to the Tennessee Association of Professional Interpreters and Translators, which is holding its state conference at Belmont University.

[….]

The state’s changing demographics — stemming from refugee resettlement and the arrival of more Latinos and other immigrants — has highlighted the need for professional translators.

Of course this organization is whining and looking for more money to hire more certified language interpreters using your tax dollars.

What bothers me so much about this is that Nashville community organizers, businesses and open borders advocates last year defeated an initiative in that city to make English the offical language of the city which I believe would have encouraged everyone to step up the process of learning English. Here is a list of all those involved in killing English Only in Nashville.

Medical interpreters

The medical field needs intepreters they say citing kids interpreting for parents, which frankly I see no problem with. Generations of immigrants had to get by with just that— no taxpayer funded interpreters.

The medical field also needs interpreters — children often serve as translators for their families.

[….]

You have 7-year-old children translating for their mothers at an OB-GYN visit,” said Belma Ismailovich of Health Assist Tennessee, a nonprofit that helps people overcome health-care barriers. “They shouldn’t do that.”

They shouldn’t do that because this group wants more taxpayer funds available for translators.

Translation and interpreting can be expensive, and many health-care providers are reluctant to spend the money, Ismailovich said.

But under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, hospitals and doctors are supposed to provide translators for patients.

“Doctors want a competent translator,” Ismailovich said. “Managed-care providers also want translators.

“But nobody wants to pay for it. Title VI says it’s the law, but there is no funding for it.”

In the 1980s, the state recognized that it was becoming home to many resettled refugees and would be culturally diverse. In 1986, it formed Tennessee Foreign Language Institute, which helps with training, translating and interpreting for state government, businesses and residents.

The need will not slow as Somali, Vietnamese and other languages move
in, said Hope Collins, director of the institute’s interpretation and translation services.

The coalition to kill English as the official language of Nashville was funded by a hospital business among others!

So why do I think this is so incredible—a story lamenting that there aren’t enough interpreters in Nashville? The Nashville English language initiative was defeated, as I mentioned above, by a joint effort of businesses, open borders advocates, and community organizers headed by the likes of Alinsky/Chicago style organizer Avi Poster and Tom Negri (Loews Vanderbilt Hotel) among others.

Last spring I did a little research and noted that many interlocking “community organizations” had been created in Nashville involving those two and others. This is a typical George Soros strategy—creating lots of groups and coalitions to make it appear that the opposition was massive. You can see two of the groups here and here.

The latter, Nashville For All of Us, gathered enormous funding from individuals, businesses and law firms to defeat the English Only initiative. And, in light of this story, here is the funniest part of all. One of two top funders was a huge hospital business—HCA! HCA gave $50,000 to stop English Only! Now, it’s the hospitals whining (Boo Hoo!) they don’t have interpreters!

The link to the funders* of Nashville For All of Us has disappeared, but back in May I wrote down the donors over $10,000 and here they are below. I can’t read my writing on a couple of names so I might have the spelling slightly wrong. Readers, if you find a link for the original list, let me know!

Bass, Berry Sims: $10,000

Steve Turner: $50,000

Caterpillar Finance of Nashville: $25,000

Vanderbilt University: $10,000

Gaylord Enter.: $10,000

Cal Turner: $10,000

Andrew Byrd: $10,000

HCA (Hospital Corporation of America!): $50,000

Tom Cigaron: $10,000

Ben Richter: $25,000

Ingram Industries: $10,000

Waller Landerson PAC: $10,000

William Freeman: $10,000

In addition to these large contributions to this political campaign to stop English Only in Nashville, the list went on and on with smaller donors.

So, what was in it for these large donors—surely something more than helping Nashville’s image as a world class welcoming city? And besides, if they have that much money kicking around for a lobbying initiative maybe they could now fund a few interpreters!

*Incidentally, I could find no record of Nashville For All of Us becoming a 501(c)3, so I presume none of the donors were able to write off these donations that were obviously for lobbying purposes.