Month: September 2009

Boo Hoo! Now Nashville doesn’t have enough interpreters

~ 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.

6th American Jihadist believed to have died in Somalia

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update:  More from the Minneapolis Star Tribune today.

Here is a report from Minnesota Public Radio that a sixth “youth” from Minnesota has been killed in Somalia.  The previous 5 reported deaths have been Somali former refugees from the Minneapolis area.  This Jihadist is white.

St. Paul, Minn. — A sixth Minnesota man is feared dead in Somalia after joining an Islamic extremist group there. But Troy Kastigar stood out from his fellow recruits, because the Minneapolis man was not Somali.

Kastigar, 28, was a Muslim convert who apparently had no personal ties to the lawless east African country.

Troy Kastigar’s family received reports of his death within the past week, according to friends of the family. The circumstances of his reported death aren’t clear, and the information could not be confirmed by the FBI. 

Kastigar’s involvement in Somalia is a puzzle in itself. He told his mother that he was going to Kenya when he left the Twin Cities last November.

Somali community members believe Kastigar was part of the last wave of Minnesota men who joined the violent militia al-Shabaab in Somalia. While some of the 20 or so men say they left to defend their homeland in a bloody civil war, Katigar’s motivations are less clear.

Robert Spencer, writing at Jihad Watch yesterday made this important point about Kastigar’s motivations:

We have heard a lot about Somalis returning from Minnesota to Somalia to wage jihad. But this is the first account of an American convert to Islam going there to wage jihad. This is clear evidence that it is the Islamic jihad ideology, not nationalism or tribal loyalty, that is the motivating factor involved in these cases.

This is an extremely important point and one we have made here previously.  Zakaria Maruf, one of the other Minnesota Jihadists to die in Somalia this year, debunked the notion of nationalism as the driving force for joining the Jihad in Africa and told MPR this:

In the interview, Maruf (one of those who left to fight) implies that his participation in the fighting was motivated by religion, not patriotism. Maruf said he and his friends heard the call of Allah, and they accepted it.

Zakaria Maruf was the 4th American recruited to fight in Somalia to be killed and he died the same weekend as the New York Times said he was the recruiter, but he wasn’t.  See that story here.

I noticed when I attended the Senate Homeland Security hearings on this issue—terrorist recruitment in the US—that the Senators seemed relieved if witnesses told them this was all about patriotism and nationalism, that Somalis were going to Africa to defend Somalia against Ethiopian invaders.  The other explanation, that they were following the call of Allah seems too much to digest for our erstwhile leaders in Washington.

For new readers, we have followed this story since last November, here.

We were there — among hundreds of thousands in Washington

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I got home a short time ago from the 912 March in Washington. Ann and I went, along with my daughter, on a bus from Hagerstown. Eight buses went from the Hagerstown area, and that’s a little sample of what was happening from all over the country.

You’ll hear widely varying estimates of the number of people there. I’ve been on a lot of demonstrations in Washington (because I used to be a leftist), starting with a civil rights march in 1958 and continuing with other civil rights demonstrations, and then peace marches (until I came to my senses in 1967).  I could hardly believe how large today’s march was. The original meeting place, Freedom Plaza at 14th and Pennsylvania, filled up so fast that the march to the Capitol had to start much earlier than planned to make room. Pennsylvania Avenue was packed, and it took hours to get all the people into the Capitol area. No, that’s wrong, because not everybody fit into those huge grounds in front of the Capitol and there were always people on the Mall and on the sidewalks blocks away.

I was at the famous 1963 civil rights march, where Martin Luther King gave his “I have a dream” speech. That was estimated to be 200,000 to 300,000 people. In my opinion this one was bigger. I don’t think there were a million people, as some have claimed, but there were at least 350,000 and possibly many more. That is huge.

It was also the politest demonstration I’ve ever been to. Nobody was angry. I mean, they were angry at the government, but nobody seemed to have the kind of chip-on-the-shoulder anger that so many leftists have. It was good-humored. Also — and this was astounding — there was no trash on the ground. None. Unlike the Obama inauguration, unlike Woodstock, unlike even an ordinary crowd standing around, this event was as clean at the end as at the start.

Maybe that’s because there were no journalists strewing trash, or almost none. There was a Fox truck and a CNN truck and that’s all the TV we saw. When Ann and I went to a counterdemonstration to an ANSWER peace march in 2007, the streets were lined with trucks from every media outlet we’d ever heard of, and some we hadn’t. We were interviewed by Australian and German reporters. And that was a march of about 5,000 on ANSWER’s side and about 15,000 on ours. I know some people were interviewed today because I read some reports, but there was nothing like the coverage that peace marches routinely get.

I’ve just heard a few reports that lead me to believe some reporters accidentally went to Mars instead of the Capitol. One said there were Confederate flags in evidence, and Ku Klux Klan type signs. We spent a lot of time walking around looking at people and their signs, and we commented that there were no confederate flags. And I don’t even know what is meant by Ku Klux Klan type signs. Maybe the one that said “I’m not a racist — I hate Pelosi and Reid too.”

That was typical of the signs — original, and often funny. There were no mass-produced signs, and not more than a few of any one type. Here are some we saw:

      Spread my work ethic, not my paycheck.

     Chicago gangsters go home.

     Give me liberty, not debt.

     Thank God for Glenn Beck.

     Right wing extremist: Jefferson, Adams, Madison, me.

     Capitalism delivers what socialism can only promise.

     Read the bills or get off the Hill.

     Constitution: read, learn, live it.

Lots of signs about czars — 44 czars; Czar wars; Czars czuk; You’ll be czarry; and more.

Lots of signs about ACORN — ACORN: bringing brothels to your community; Congress investigate ACORN; shut ACORN down–cancer on our republic; and more.

I kept calling my husband at home to see what the media were saying. He didn’t go because he doesn’t walk well. He’s a bit crippled from his 5-1/2 years as a guest of the North Vietnamese government during the Vietnam war. But he also didn’t go because he was so moved by the idea of all these Americans coming together to oppose socialism and big government that he was afraid he would cry. He was thrilled to hear the reports from Fox during the afternoon.

Now I’m going to look for more reports. I hope some of them are true.

Addendum, 9/14:  After looking at aerial photos I have to update my estimate. I think there were a million people there, maybe more.  It is harder to estimate this than the usual demonstrations on the Mall. The Mall is a plain rectangle and you can just photograph from above and count, or count a small area and multiply. The west side of the Capitol has a lot of trees and you can’t see what’s under them unless you’re on the ground. The area is far from rectangular and is not continuous. And the crowd was spread far and wide beyond the west lawn.

Note from Ann:  On Judy’s point about how clean the Tea Party demonstrators left Washington, see Gateway Pundit’s photo essay on clean conservatives vs. filthy liberals here.

Comment worth noting: Muslim countries need to take care of their own refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Below is a comment from a reader in Denmark with further clarification on the issue of Iraqi asylum seekers being deported to Iraq, an issue we posted on here two days ago.

From Universalgeni:

I live in Denmark and have followed the cases about these Iraqis very closely. The fact of the matter is that the Iraqis in issue here have had their applications for official refugee status reviewed over and over and over again by the authorities. And none of them are in any danger what so ever. No one is persecuting them and they were and still will be perfectly safe in Iraq.

That’s basically the case: they want to immigrate and are trying to use fraud, lies and false refugee applications to get into our country.

The leftish Danish press continue to name these illegal immigrants refugees or asylum seekers. And claim that the occasional bomb explosions in Iraq should be grounds for asylum.

But the Danish laws says no. And I agree. We can’t continue to let so many foreigners in. Here’s a choker: 20 percent of what we pay in tax is used to cover expenses directly connected to immigration. One in every five Danish tax krone’s is spent on primarily immigrant muslims. People can’t afford children of their own because we have to pay for theirs via taxes. Most of the muslim immigrants are impossible to get off public welfare payments and into the labor market.

It’s enough. The muslim world should start handling the refugee situation themselves. They should go to other muslim countries. Not Europe. Period!

We have made this same point repeatedly, Muslim countries must begin to take care of Muslim refugees and asylum seekers.

Robert Spencer on 9/11: “free people still live”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Writing at Jihad Watch in the early hours of the morning, Spencer addresses the truth.

The global jihad is not over. There have now been over 14,000 deadly attacks carried out since that fateful September 11 in 2001 by believers in Muhammad’s dictum that “Islam must dominate, and not be dominated.”

Yet as a society we are farther away than ever from recognizing how exactly to combat this foe. The “war on terror,” as restricted and misleading a concept as that was, is over. Yet the global jihad, and the stealth jihad in the West, is advancing on virtually all fronts. The President of the United States doesn’t appear to be overly fond of freedom of speech, even as the Organization of the Islamic Conference continues to war against that freedom. There is still no honest discussion in the mainstream media about what exactly we are facing. Self-censorship and fear abound in government, law enforcement, media, and elsewhere.

There is only one irreducible truth that gives cause for hope on this day, and that is that free people still live.

And tomorrow, on 9/12,  Judy and I look with great excitement and anticipation to being surrounded by thousands of our fellow freedom-loving Americans in Washington, DC.