Month: February 2010

Violence against refugees reported in Chicago, ignored by State Department

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Friends of Refugees (FOR) has a post this week about their experiences in Chicago some years ago involving so-called Sudanese “Lost Boys” who became targets for gang violence.  When FOR complained to the agency that had resettled the refugees and to the State Department, FOR’s complaints were dismissed yet ….

A month after the State Department monitors dismissed our concerns, the Latin Kings gang attacked a group of ‘Lost Boys’ while they played basketball at a park in the neighborhood. The gang beat the young men with fists, metal rods, and coke bottles and stabbed three of the refugees.

I realized then that the State Department and the Illinois refugee coordinator had absolutely no interest in accurately documenting the abuses that the refugees were experiencing.

I’ve only posted this small segment of FOR’s post because I want you to go to their new website and read the whole story.  Be sure to check out the State Department monitoring reports, here, that are being loaded on the site.

Note, we have reported on this Chicago refugee contractor on several occasions.  Here is one post where you can learn more about them.  The State Department is obviously still sending the refugees.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali calls on Americans to defend rights of Muslim women

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

My favorite human rights activist, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, spoke at the University of Wisconsin in Madison this week.  The university’s newspaper, the Daily Cardinal, reported:

Former Muslim and feminist speaker Ayaan Hirsi Ali gave a controversial lecture at the Memorial Union Tuesday night as part of the Distinguished Lecture Series.

Over a thousand people endured hour-long lines and airport levels of security to attend the highly-anticipated event in which she delivered a message critical of Muslim society and called for increased freedom for Muslim women all over the world.

….She cited cases in the Arab world and in the U.S. where violence against women was justified through the Qur’an and Islamic teachings in illustrating her argument.

In countries under Islamic rule, Ali said, “It is law to disclude women from rights and freedoms enjoyed by men. Marriage and divorce, testimony in court, dress, inheritance. In these issues, Islam scripture is implicit that women are inferior to men.”

She issued a call to action for all Americans to fight against what she views as a human rights violation, stating the issue is more significant than most people realize.

“We must use intelligence and reason to confront what I see as one of the world’s greatest inequalities: the treatment of Muslim women. This inequality is not only a moral tragedy, but is a threat to global peace.”

This is controversial? If a feminist speaker came to Madison to declare it a disgrace that American women’s pay averages less than men’s, she would be acclaimed. If a Muslim woman raised in Somalia points out that women are men’s property in Islam, that’s controversial. Well, there was controversy, so I guess the word is apt.

Her speech met resistance from many in the audience. Shouts of “Allahu Akbar” were heard, which means “God is great” in Arabic.

Rashid Dar, president of the campus Muslim Student Association, says Ali is not giving an accurate picture of Islam or of Muslims, and fears possible ramifications of her speech.

“She’s trying to make it seem like Muslims ignore human rights violations. Well, we don’t. She oversimplifies and that’s at the root of the problem, that’s what can become dangerous for us in America,” Dar said.

Hirsi Ali said she thanked the University for providing a forum for free speech, but Dar said he questioned the motivations of bringing such an inflammatory speaker to campus.

“Would an anti-Semitic speaker have been brought to this campus? No,” He said. “But we accept Islamophobic speakers because we’re afraid, and she fits the bill for someone who can confirm our fears.”

 Robert Spencer reports on the speech at Jihad Watch and adds some information about the disruptive Rashid Dar:

His name was familiar, so I hunted down my account of my own address at the same university in October 2008. And lo and behold, I found that a young man whom I described as an “arrogant and self-righteous lout” who tried to shout me down was none other than…Rashid Dar.

This thug-in-training really ought to be disciplined by the university for his continual disruptions of talks by people who tell the truth about Islamic supremacism. But he won’t be, of course, because his world view meshes with that of the university administration, and Hirsi Ali’s does not.

Truth is not a defense nowadays. Hurt feelings trump the truth, or faked hurt feelings, which are just as good. That is, the hurt feelings of Muslims and other groups who claim and receive victim status. Perhaps Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s feelings are hurt by the harassment she gets when she speaks.   And if any of the death threats she receives were carried out, more than her feelings would be hurt. Does any of that count to the college administrators who allow the thuggish behavior?

Previous RRW posts on Hirsi Ali are here.

Minneapolis to beef up port security, see Somali threat

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I had this story to post days ago (just didn’t get around to it) when I wrote about the Maine Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence picking four cities to embarrass and set their citizens’ minds right on the issue of immigrant overload in their communities, and am wondering why they aren’t going to tackle Minneapolis with the largest Somali population in the US.   Too tough a nut to crack I’m guessing. 

Minneapolis town fathers, concerned about the security of their rather unimportant port, are nonetheless spending millions of  federal dollars to beef it up.

From the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

Minneapolis has never had the port of its dreams. Its river shipping last year slipped below 700,000 tons, a far cry from the predicted 3 million tons annually that sold Congress on building the St. Anthony lock and dam.

But that’s not stopping the city from making plans to spend several million dollars on beefing up riverfront security over the next five years, with federal help. Friday the City Council endorsed spending nearly $1.4 million of that sum.

Although federal port funds are paying the tab, city emergency chief Rocco Forte said the benefits will go beyond preventing terrorist attacks on shipping.

From where might this threat come?  The Somali community, where else!

Although Minneapolis lacks enough shipping to crack the most recent list of the nation’s top 150 ports compiled by the American Association of Port Authorities, Forte sees a threat.

“We have to consider ourselves a prime target,” he said Friday. The director of emergency preparedness said the city’s biggest vulnerability comes from youths who have gone overseas and been trained in explosives, as a few Somalis have*.

Sounds a bit hateful, wouldn’t you say Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence?

Heads of major intelligence agencies in US also should get their minds right!

The Washington Times (and every other news outlet in the US) reported this week that intelligence agency heads warned Congress that a terrorist attack (likely from within) is expected in the US in the next 3-6 months.   Of course, what these articles never say is that the most likely attackers will be Muslims in the immigrant community!

The five senior leaders of the U.S. intelligence community told a Senate panel Tuesday they are “certain” that terrorists will attempt another attack on the United States in the next three to six months.

The warning came during the annual threat briefing to Congress in response to questions from Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat and chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, who asked, “What is the likelihood of another terrorist-attempted attack on the U.S. homeland in the next three to six months? High or low?”

“An attempted attack, the priority is certain, I would say,” Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair, a retired admiral, said in response.

Four other intelligence agency leaders who appeared at the hearing with Mr. Blair said they agreed with the assessment.

If the worst should happen, we, at RRW, will be ready and willing to report to confused media about how all the Muslim immigrants from terrorist-supporting countries came to be in the United States in the first place.

* We have chronicled the story of the ‘Somali missing youths’ extensively since the story first broke in November 2008.  Use our search function for those words—Somali missing youths—for probably 50 posts on the topic.

Refugee Council USA: Waahhh! Still not enough money for refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

No surprise here that the Refugee INDUSTRY represented by a consortium of groups calling themselves the Refugee Council USA (for lobbying purposes) is wailing that it still doesn’t have enough money for all the refugees (and offices and staffs and big salaries) needed for the record number of refugees being resettled in the US this year in the midst of the great recession—this in spite of the fact they had their funds doubled last week.

“RCUSA is pleased to see additional funding for the Office of Refugee Resettlement,” said Robert Carey, Chair of Refugee Council USA. “The current economic crisis, which affects millions of Americans, has had an especially damaging impact on vulnerable refugees offered safety by the United States Government. This additional funding will help provide valuable assistance to refugees as they begin a new life in the United States after fleeing persecution and work to become productive members of our communities. While the request is below the level we believe is needed to properly support refugees in the U.S., this proposed increase for a program that has suffered from chronic underfunding is certainly a step in the right direction. Refugee Council USA is urging the Administration to ensure that the funding made available to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) is sufficient to meet the needs of resettled refugees,” stated Carey.

Carey is also VP at the International Rescue Committee whose President Charles Rupp (former President of Columbia Univ.) makes in excess of $400,000 in salary and benefits and is among the richest of the Top Ten (now nine) federal contractors.  The IRC is also tight with Samantha Power at the White House who is in charge of a task force to “reform” the refugee program—the same task force that gave out more money for the refugee agencies last week in advance of any reforms.

And, they say, we want a whole bunch more of American taxpayer dollars to go overseas where coincidentally the IRC also gets loads of funding for it to muck around in other countries’ affairs (see here where Clinton took aid to Africa and gave it to the IRC disappointing local agencies that had been counting on the help).

Somali pirates say they will share their booty with Haiti

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Who would have ever thought this link would be made—Somalia and Haiti in the same article.  Get out of the way, US, we will aid Haiti say Somali pirates.  From AOL news:

(Feb. 1) — Hordes of private-sector aid groups fighting to alleviate the disaster in Haiti may soon be joined by some motley new allies: pirates.

Somali pirates have vowed to redistribute some of the millions of dollars they have stolen in the past few years to those suffering from the earthquake in Haiti, reports Agencia Matriz del Sur, a Spanish-language Web site that says it seeks to counter the media influence of wealthy countries. Somali pirates often divide their booty and distribute it to family and local citizens — a tactic also used by American gangs to develop community goodwill.

With language worthy of Errol Flynn’s schmaltziest “Robin Hood” moments, an unnamed spokesman for the pirates accused the United States and Europe of having “no moral authority” to distribute aid, telling Agencia Matriz del Sur that “they have been the ones pirating mankind for many years.”

According to this author, they have the worldwide connections to pull it off!

The Somali pirates’ announcement suggests that they are keen to keep that image alive in popular culture. Their charity claims may have little value beyond the literary, however. According to pirate leaders, “connections in various parts of the world” will ensure that they are capable of delivering aid without detection or, conveniently, accountability.

Whew!  I guess we can just stand down now.