Day: September 22, 2009

French government bulldozes “the Jungle” at Calais

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Last night Blulitespecial tipped me off to the story that the government of France had finally decided to take action against the immigrant slum that had been growing at Calais and that it would be shut down today.  This morning reader BL sent the story that the deed had been done. 

Just a reminder that we discussed Calais last year when a naive reporter was raped when she ventured there to see what an awful life the poor souls were leading, here.

From CNN today:

CALAIS, France (CNN) — French authorities on Tuesday dismantled a makeshift camp dubbed “the Jungle,” which housed illegal migrants fleeing dangerous homelands to seek a more prosperous life in Europe.

French police broke up protests by refugee rights advocates and began clearing the squalid camp. The French government said it was targeting human smuggling and did not say where the migrants would be relocated.

Police arrested 276 migrants, 125 of whom were minors, said Calais prefecture official Catherine Mande.

A statement from the French immigration minister’s office said the “illegal encampments” would be destroyed and then three bulldozers, a dozen trucks and a logging company would return the land to its natural state.

The statement said the goal was to destroy the Jungle and other migrant shanties, “which have become the main launch pad for clandestine immigration into the United Kingdom.”

[…..]

The Jungle — shanties cobbled from cardboard, plastic tarpaulins and scraps of wood — housed as many as 1,000 men from nations such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Somalia.  [One report tells us that the mostly Muslim migrants had built a makeshift mosque in the shanty town.]

Here is a SkyNews story with additional details.

Palestinian “refugees” are getting restless, and so is their staff

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

ISRIA, a Paris-based consulting and information publishing service, reports: 

The United Nations agency tasked with assisting millions of Palestinian refugees may not be able to pay the salaries of its 29,000 staff through the end of this year because of a funding crisis, its top official said today as she urged Member States to donate more generously.

….Most of UNRWA’s running costs go to staff salaries, she said, and without an injection of nearly USD 17 million each month the agency will not be able to guarantee salaries into 2010.

Ms. AbuZayd said she has written in the past week to every country that has ever donated to UNRWA to ask them to contribute “special pledges” given the current situation, and she hopes they will respond urgently.

All the donor countries have fulfilled their pledges, but the agency needs more because of inflation, exchange rates, and other issues. Imagine that! Has an agency anywhere of any sort ever announced it needed less?

Two points to note. One is this:

She said that both staff and refugees were “becoming restless” about the funding problem and contingency plans may have to be taken unless money is provided soon.

What contingency plans would those be? Stepping up terrorist attacks so donor nations would realize they really, really, really need more money? And as for “both staff and refugees,” they are often the same people as most of the staff is drawn from the local population. In Gaza that means most are from Hamas, and we’ve written about how much of the donated money goes to Hamas. With all the, um, obligations Hamas has in other areas, it’s no wonder UNRWA’s humanitarian mission is running short.

The second point is this:

UNRWA… provides education, health care, social services, microfinance, camp improvement and emergency aid to an estimated 4.6 million Palestinian refugees living in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

Refugees living in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Has the world lost sight of how weird that is? How many Jewish refugees are living in Israel? None, because Israel takes in every Jew who wants to come, including the 900,000 who were expelled from Arab countries. But do Arab countries take in Palestinians, who are also Arabs? No! We’ve written about the Iraqi Palestinians, who were not welcomed back into Iraq, and now the U.S. is taking some in. What is wrong with these Arab governments? Oh, maybe it’s because the Jews whom Israel takes in don’t produce suicide bombers. They don’t plot against their host government. The Arab governments created the Palestinian refugee problem, and they don’t want anything to do with the pathology they brought about. So the civilized nations of the earth have to keep ponying up money to keep these “refugees” quiet.

(See our Israel and refugees category for our previous posts on this subject.)

Iranian-American indicted in massive fraud scheme involving Obama campaign, others

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is too juicy! I couldn’t pass up posting on it.  My interest in immigrant-perpetrated fraud and the fact that we resettle thousands of Iranian refugees each year drew my attention to this breaking story this morning.  Hat tip:  Blulitespecial.

From Reuters:

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Hassan Nemazee, a fund-raiser for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other Democrats, has been indicted for defrauding Bank of America, HSBC and Citigroup Inc out of more than $290 million in loan proceeds, U.S. prosecutors said on Monday.

The announcement follows last month’s indictment of Nemazee, head of a private equity firm and an Iranian American Political Action Committee board member, on one count of defrauding Citigroup’s Citibank.

The new indictment adds allegations that he defrauded two other banks, Bank of America and HSBC Bank USA, in a similar fashion by falsifying documents and signatures to purportedly show he had hundreds of millions worth of collateral.

The office of the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan and the FBI said he used the proceeds of his scheme to make donations to election campaigns of federal, state and local candidates, donations to political action committees and charities.

I guess it’s really a stretch for me to be writing about this at RRW because this wikipedia article tells us Hassan Nemazee was actually born in the US.   But, it gives me an opportunity to remind readers that Iran supplies us with thousands and thousands of refugees each year giving influence peddlers like Nemazee lots of potential to grow his Iranian-American political action committee.

From 1983-2005 we resettled 63,979 Iranians—-all to be potentially courted by the Democratic party with the help of Nemazee.  Who knows how many other Iranians come through other immigration programs!

2006: 2,785 

2007:  5,474

2008:  5,257

2009:  4,909 (so far)

Be sure to see some other important articles on Nemazee here, and here.

More links to questionable connections here at Gateway Pundit.

Another refugee murdered in Jacksonville, FL

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I wonder how many murders and other crimes have to be committed against refugees in Jacksonville before the US State Department tells it contractors to stop resettling them there!   Here is the latest, a Sudanese man killed by African Americans. 

This is the whole short story from First Coast News:

JACKSONVILLE, FL — Two people are under arrest in connection with the murder of a man at his Atlantic Boulevard apartment Saturday night.

The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office says 32-year-old Merlin Williams Jr. and 23-year-old Ashley Jerrell are charged with murder and armed robbery.

Police say the suspects told them they tried to rob Isaac Siliman at his home in the Lighthouse Bay apartment complex.

Siliman escaped the strife in the African country Sudan and made it to America, where he was waiting for family members to join him from Africa. He came a bit after the Lost Boys of Sudan, a group of young men who escaped Sudan when their families and homes were torn apart by civil war.

Police say the suspects admitted pepper-spraying and beating him on the head with a hammer, then stealing his car, credit card, and other items.

In July we told you about the brutal murder of a Bhutanese refugee in that same city.  This is what I said at the time.

Honestly, what is up with this?  We know that the State Department’s Office of Population, Refugees and Migration was warned in 2005 about crime against refugees in Jacksonville yet apparently continued to approve resettlements there.   I swear it is all about getting cheap housing!  These contractors don’t want to dig too deeply into their own funds to supplement the taxpayer funding they receive, so the refugees suffer.

Will the State Department pay attention now?