Day: October 6, 2009

Comment worth noting: Johnny Simpson answers my question

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

In my post last night on the “Iranian Railroad for Queer Refugees” I said I found it annoying that whenever I read about persecuted homosexuals in the Middle East rarely is the source of the persecution linked to Islamic ideology.  Mr. Simpson, the author of the article about Mr. Parsi, reminds me here that one doesn’t always need a shotgun to make one’s point.   I had to laugh, because I do tend to be a shotgun type of person rather than one who might choose a fine stilleto as a weapon.

Read our exchange of comments at the original post.  I appreciate Mr. Simpson’s point but do still maintain that he could work one sentence into his original article to clarify why homosexuals are persecuted (executed even!) in some Muslim countries.   It is unlikely that the audience he reaches with this story are regular readers of Jihad Watch or Atlas Shrugs for instance; and it might serve to illuminate for some why we must guard against radical Islamic thinking entering the US.

Here then is Mr. Simpson’s excellent and informative comment:

Ann, Thank you for your thoughtful response. I do share your concerns. To give you a much clearer idea of the monumental stands I have taken against radical Islam and other extremist ideologies, allow me to provide links to two of the more powerful and popular stories I have written for Digital Journal and Breitbart’s Big Hollywood blogs. I’ll start with one you may appreciate most of all:
From Digital Journal, March 29th, 2008:
RIOTING IN KARACHI, DEATH THREATS AT LIVELEAK, FITNA PULLED
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/252351

A preface on the next one. Andy Breitbart recruited me from Digital Journal in March after I went nuclear over Team Hollywood’s Tea With Ahmadinejad soiree to Iran, especially given all that was going on there. I spent most of March and April ripping AMPAS new ones at Big Hollywood and Digital Journal, and I’m an optioned screenwriter, okay? I could have just shut up and let it ride like everyone else in Hollywood, but I couldn’t keep silent in good conscience. Here is a piece that addresses President Obama’s lame handling of our nation’s worst enemies. Lotsa links to my previous pieces, FYI:
HOLLYWOOD DIPLOMACY ALL AROUND (April 11, 2009)
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jtsimpson/2009/04/11/hollywood-diplomacy-all-around/

You tell me I’m not speaking out as I should. Many times with shotgun blasts as with these two, but in many other cases like my Arsham Parsi/IRQR interview, I focus like a laser on the human stories and tragedies, if you’ll pardon the Bill Clinton paraphrase.

Lastly, I wish to be crystal clear here. You may note from the FITNA piece above, and even since 9/11, that my perceptions of Muslims were not happy ones. Yet as I have been reporting all this time, I have met many fine and sane Muslims, mostly Iranian emigres, who are as sick of the terror, bloodletting and murder by the psycho Islamists as we are. Don’t forget that it is mostly innocent Muslims being mowed down in the streets of Tehran by the basiji, or suffering the worst of terror attacks all over the Middle East.

In WWII, many brave Germans risked their lives to fight the Nazis. They weren’t all SS. Decorated German war hero Field Marshall Erwin Rommel risked and lost his life to try to rid the world of Hitler. We have to be careful not to paint all Muslims with the same bloody brush. If all the one billion-plus Muslims on this earth were megalomaniacs like Osama bin Laden, this world would be a wasteland from top to bottom. They don’t want to see their children blown up by terrorists any more than we do.

Is the Middle Eastern Islamic world f*ed? You bet! Millions, as in Iran and Saudi Arabia, are basically living in the 7th Century. But I can guarantee you most would choose freedom over theocratic slavery and persecution. That said, we have to keep the Islamist killers in our sights and wipe them off the face of the earth if there is ever to be any peace on this planet.

If, for whatever reason, you may think I’m being soft on the subject, read my pieces first. I do not equivocate. I condemn the hateful as surely as I defend the innocent, be it in Iran or right here in the US. The problem with any belief system, religious or political, is extremism. Stalin was an atheist. So was Hitler. When the bodies start piling up, the belief system behind it is irrelevant, be it Atheistic Communism or radical theocratic Islam. The end results are always the same. Don’t make the same mistake they do in seeing all of us as the enemy.

’nuff said. I hope this all answers your questions and concerns. A bit winded perhaps, but you made some very thoughtful points, and I tried to respond in kind. I believe we are mostly in agreement. If radical Islamist extremists move here and kick up sh*t in the West, send ‘em back I say. And isn’t it the extremism of the Left I rant about in my FITNA piece right where you are?

Best, Johnny Simpson.

P.S. Pajamas Media CEO and founder Roger Simon requested a PJTV interview with me and Arsham Parsi by email last night after reading the IRQR post you linked here. We can knock ‘em down one at a time too, you know

Australian media calls it the “stay the bloody hell away” campaign

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We have reported on many previous occasions (see our category on Australia, here) about the problems that country is having with asylum seekers attempting to reach the shores of Australia with the help of human traffickers.  Now comes word, that the Rudd government considered friendly to refugees, or more so than the Howard government was, has a media campaign to discourage potential asylum seekers from Sri Lanka.

From Australia’s 9News:

The Rudd government has employed advertising agency Saatchi and Saatchi to help scare off potential asylum seekers to Australia.

The taxpayer-funded campaign will be shown in Sri Lanka, where street theatre and local actors will help spread the message that coming to Australia illegally is dangerous, according to news.com.au.

Civil war in northern Sri Lanka has created a massive refugee problem, with more than 250,000 displaced persons in that region alone.

Saatchi & Saatchi’s Ronald Peiris said the campaign would use “street drama” to take its message directly to the people.

Actors will play people smugglers, and warn locals their efforts to escape from Sri Lanka will end in disappointment.

All I can say is it’s a novel approach.

Thousands of Burmese Muslims arriving in camps in Thailand looking to be resettled in the West

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Most of the Burmese (Myanmarese) refugees who have come to the US in the last few years are Christian, but it appears that Muslims now are getting the word and filling the camps in Thailand looking to register with the UN in order to be resettled.  The camp in this story, Mae La Camp, houses 10,000 Muslims including Rohingya.  They want to go to the US, Canada, or Australia.

From The National*:

Mae La Camp, Thailand // Spread along a series of hillocks under a huge rocky outcrop, the Mae La refugee camp presents a peaceful panorama of closely-packed thatched roofs amid the dense jungle.

But Mae La’s mellow aspect belies both the trauma suffered by its Myanmarese inhabitants and its changing ethnic composition as growing numbers of Myanmar’s Muslims, fed up with their position at the bottom of the pile in the poverty-stricken country, seek a new life in Thailand – and preferably further afield.

Mae La is the biggest of the nine camps for Myanmarese refugees on the Thai border and, since a sweeping UN resettlement programme was launched in 2005, has become the departure lounge for thousands of Myanmarese heading for new lives in countries such as the United States, Australia and Canada.

Amid the camp’s humble dwellings built by the refugees from tree trunks and bamboo poles, Mae La’s main mosque stands out. The big two-storey structure has painted concrete walls and a corrugate iron roof, and Muslims in white robes, some of whom physically resemble Bangladeshis or Indians, walk down a wooden staircase from the upstairs prayer hall following lunchtime prayers.

“The number of Muslims arriving in Mae La is increasing,” said Kamal, president of the mosque, a thin 43-year-old in a white T-shirt and dark blue longyi, the sarong-like garment worn by Myanmarese men.

“Before Muslims were just coming here from Karen state. Now they also hail from Rakhine, Mon and Yangon. Many of the young Muslims do not want to go back. Here in the camp they discover more about the world and see a better future for themselves and their children outside the country.”

* Note that this report is in The National from Abu Dhabi, but none of these Muslim refugees will be going to any Muslim country.  Couldn’t the wealthy United Arab Emirates take some of their fellow Muslims?  Or, how about Saudi Arabia?  Not a chance, it never happens!  Afraid of offending the little tyrant countries, not one of the humanitarians at the UN ever says a word.

By the way, we took over 16,000 Burmese this past fiscal year.  That number was only eclipsed by the number of Iraqis we resettled, here.

For more information on Rohingya, visit our category Rohingya Reports where we have chronicled that groups campaign to be resettled in western countries.  So far, Rohingya have gone to Australia, Ireland, Canada and the UK, others likely as well.