If you have been wondering why no news from me on recent Saturdays, it is because I’m using the time to try to get through e-mail backlogs and other related duties.
If you subscribe and usually read my posts in your e-mail, please see that yesterday in the story about the SPLC, I’m trying something new with longer posts.
Some of you may have noticed this line:
Read the rest of this entry »
Please click on it to read the rest of the story at my blog itself?
I would really love for you to come to the blog rather than just read stories in your e-mails. Although clicks don’t matter as RRW is not monitized, I want you to see what else is available.
In the right hand side bar I have a summary of Trump refugee admission numbers, most recent posts and top posts and my twitter feed (14.5K followers).
In the left hand side bar I have a link to RRW’s facebook page where an associate adds stories that are not at RRW, but are related in content. The page has 48,000 likes!
And, btw, when you read the post at RRW itself, there are sharing icons at the end of each post. (I don’t send those wordpress subscriber e-mails and have no control over whether they come to you daily or not, and I don’t know if there is a way to put share-buttons on those!)
My snail mail address is there.
There is a drop-down with categories and archivesgoing back nearly 11 years, as well as a blogroll you could use to access other news websites.
And, finally, in the header you will find links to my videos, my little book and a useful Frequently Asked Questions. Unfortunately the fact sheet is way out of date and it would be a daunting task to rewrite it now.
Possibly getting wind of an upcoming lawsuit the Southern Poverty Law Center has apparently blinked and removed their October 2016 “Field Guide,” that included yours truly, from their website.
Muslim reformer Maajid Nawaz ultimately successfully sued the SPLC which was then forced to remove its “guide.”
The Field Guide was meant to let the media know who they were supposed to shun when seeking comment on anything to do with Islam.
If you visit my post on the ‘honor’hereyou will see that the link to the news no longer works.
However, as pointed out by National Reviewwriter Jack Crowe, thepdf versionis still available. Download it now for further reference!
The list of “extremists” besides me, included: Steve Emerson, Brigitte Gabriel, Frank Gaffney, Pamela Geller, John Guandolo, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, David Horowitz, Ryan Mauro, Robert Muise, Maajid Nawas, Daniel Pipes, Walid Shoebat, Robert Spencer, and David Yerushalmi.
As Isaid previously, I don’t really belong in such an august group. My real ‘sin’ is that I was getting under the skin of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, one of the nine major federal refugee contractors***, and a close ally of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
On learning of the honor, I said this:
By the way, it was a study by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society,here in 2013, that directed the SPLC to focus on my work. I wrote about it here.
Inclusion on the list meant that I must have really hit a nerve at HIAS.
Below is what Crowe reported yesterday at National Review (hat tip: Judy):
The Southern Poverty Law Center has removed the “Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists” from their website after attorneys for Maajid Nawaz, a practicing Muslim and prominent Islamic reformer, threatened legal action over his inclusion on the list.
A guide for lazy biased journalists!
The report, which had been active on the SPLC’s website since it was published in December 2016, was intended to serve as a resource for journalists to identify promoters of hateful propaganda; but it included a number of liberal reformers such as Nawaz, a former Islamic extremist who has since dedicated his life to combating the hateful ideology.
“A shocking number of these extremists are seen regularly on television news programs and quoted in the pages of our leading newspapers. There, they routinely espouse a wide range of utter falsehoods, all designed to make Muslims appear as bloodthirsty terrorists or people intent on undermining American constitutional freedoms. More often than not, these claims go uncontested,” the report, which still exists in PDF form, reads.
Nawaz, who founded the anti-extremist think tank Quilliam, said during a Wednesday night appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience, a popular podcast hosted by comedian Joe Rogan, that the report was removed from the SPLC website under legal threat sometime in the last two days.
“We have retained Clare Loch, they are writing to the Southern Poverty Law Center as we speak. I think they’ve got wind of it — the Southern Poverty Law Center — and as of yesterday, or the day before, they’ve removed the entire list that’s been up there for two years,” Nawaz said on the podcast.
Nawaz — informed by his experience as a former member of a global terror organization and a political prisoner in Egypt — routinely criticizes the fundamentalist interpretation of Islam that gives rise to terrorism. As a result of that work, the SPLC and a coalition of partner organizations that helped create the list accused him of “savaging Islam.”
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born liberal feminist who fled her home country amid civil war and now works at the Hoover Institution, was also branded an “anti-Muslim extremist” by the SPLC.
Go herefor more of the National Review report and to follow links.
Below is a screenshot of the SPLC case against me:
*** I post the contractor list almost every day because I want new readers to know exactly who is responsible for driving the US Refugee Admissions Program (in addition to the UN!). The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society has taken the lead in political and legal activism against President Trump’s so-called Muslim ban. I have a huge archive about them, see here.
The number in parenthesis is the percentage of the nine VOLAGs’ income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees, line them up with (low paying) jobs in food production and cleaning hotel rooms, and get them signed up for their services (welfare)! From most recent accounting, here.
I’ve written many times over the years about how the world (not just Mexicans and Central Americans) is arriving at our southern border to seek asylum (if caught). I’ve mentioned Somalis and Iraqis on other occasions and now it is Syrians according to a report in the Washington Times(hat tip: Joanne).
You might want to visit a post I wrote in 2011 in which I suggest the illegals know how to use the system and ask for asylum because they were taught the system. I believe there exists a cabal of immigration lawyers working closely with our usual gang of NGOs facilitating the process. Washington Times:
The Treasury Department slapped sanctions Wednesday on a Syrian man and his criminal syndicate, blaming them for smuggling “hundreds” of illegal immigrants from Syria and Lebanon into Mexico and then helping them to jump the border into the U.S.
I’m not one of those wishing to oust Attorney General Sessions. This is the kind of work I want him to do. How we handle immigration is more significant for America’s future then if he was embroiled in the Russian meddling non-issue.
Nasif Barakat and his syndicate, which authorities labeled the Barakat Transnational Criminal Organization, charged about $20,000 to complete the smuggling. The money paid for bribes and for fake documents, including false European passports, to help illegal immigrants hide their identities. The fees also covered transportation from Syria through other Middle Eastern countries to South and Central America, the journey north through Mexico, and final help sneaking into the U.S.
[….]
“The day I was sworn in as attorney general, President Trump sent me an Executive Order to dismantle transnational criminal organizations,” said Attorney General Jeff Sessions. “Many of these organizations use human smugglers to bring people across our borders with little regard to their safety or our national sovereignty.”
[….]
The Treasury Department said his network would recruit customers from Syria and Lebanon, send them through either Turkey or the United Arab Emirates, where they would catch flights to Brazil, then make their way north through Venezuela, Colombia and Panama, then up through Central America and Mexico.
That turns out to be a common route for people being smuggled from terrorist-connected countries.
When I saw this Washington Post Op-edpenned by British National David Miliband whose organization, one of nine federal refugee contractors*** (the International Rescue Committee) depends on just short of a half a billion! (see below) from the US Treasury each year, I thought it was kind of dumb to bite the hand that feeds them (and offers him, Miliband, a comfortable annual income of nearly $700,000). Perhaps I am wrong, maybe David Miliband is giving most of his nearly $700,000 annual salary as charitable gifts to the refugees he sends to your towns. Does anyone know?
But, this is what the arrogant and entitled Far Left does because they have come to expect those millions as their just rewards for their ‘humanitarian’ zeal. Of course I can’t resist an opportunity to write about “Moneybags” Miliband either.
From the WaPo(which has never to my knowledge ever looked in to the cushy deals and ginormous taxpayer-funded salaries the resettlement contractors have been receiving over the years). There is nothing more annoying than a British Leftist lecturing us, and Trump, about retreating from our US principles and practices!
David Miliband is president and chief executive of the International Rescue Committee.
At a time of widespread need, the United States is in headlong retreat from the principles and practices that for so long has made it a global beacon. It is no exaggeration to say that if current trends continue, the U.S. government will have no refugee resettlement program at the end of this administration.
In other policy domains, scholars have asked whether the Trump administration is malevolent or incompetent. In the case of refugees the answer is clear: There is animus towards this program and that is being translated into action in a highly organized and efficient manner. It is the worst of all worlds.
[….]
Despite the success of this bipartisan program, it is being slowly and silently strangled. Bureaucratic means are being used to subvert an agreed interagency decision. There have been no hearings in Congress, no accounting for the result.
Here is one of many deceptions Miliband regularly peddles. He says the 45,000 CEILING, the CAP, is a target! It is not! The President only needs to stay under the ceiling he himself set. If he wants to exceed the ceiling he would have to consult with Congress.
It is not too late to arrest the decline. Congress should be calling on the administration to expedite refugee interviews to hit the 45,000 target. Homeland Security should speed up the process for vetting refugees, which already takes far too long. And there is no excuse for the shortfall in issuance of special admissions for brave Afghans and Iraqis who have put their lives on the line for the United States.
More here.
I agree with Miliband that Congress should look in to the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program for other reasons, but frankly they are all a bunch of do-nothings on both sides of the aisle.
Below is a screenshot of the most recent Form 990 for the IRC. Government grants is your money!
(For salaries of officers, scroll past page 9. They are on a ‘continuation sheet’ that follows page 12. Eleven officers are in the 6-digit salary range!) The IRC would have a hard time surviving without the infusion of federal dollars at this incredible level each year!
*** I post the contractor list almost every day because I want new readers to know exactly who is responsible for driving the US Refugee Admissions Program (in addition to the UN!). The IRC is the financially largest of the contractors. However if you add up the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and all the individual Catholic Charities that receive federal funding the Catholics might be getting the most boodle.
The number in parenthesis is the percentage of the nine VOLAGs’ income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees, line them up with (low paying) jobs in food production and cleaning hotel rooms, and get them signed up for their services (welfare)! From most recent accounting, here.
The newest batch of 50 will join the 233 already here. An Australian official who was originally involved with making the “dumb” deal with Barack Obama predicts the US will take all 1,250 and maybe more!
For new readers who have never heard of this incredibly stupid arrangement, see my entire archive of previous posts by clicking here.
The Trump Administration has selected 50 more for you to welcome to your towns and cities. Where are they being located? It is a secret!
Former Australian Border Force commissioner Roman Quaedvlieg says he is confident the Trump administration will accept its upper limit of 1250 refugees under a deal with the federal government, and said the US might take even more people.
The government yesterday seized on reports a further 50 refugees in Manus Island and Nauru had been cleared for resettlement in the US to argue the government’s border protection policies were working.
Mr Quaedvlieg was removed from his job in March after an official investigation but previously worked on the deal originally sealed with the Obama administration.
It was the subject of a tense phone call between Malcolm Turnbull and US President Donald Trump.
“The US deal to settle refugees from Manus and Nauru was struck throughout the course of 2016 and was achieved through both formal and informal diplomatic channels,” Mr Quaedvlieg told The Australian.
“Many of us called in friendships and favours in relationships that we cultivated through the Five Eyes alliance.
(Click here to learn about Five Eyeswhich I had never heard of!)
“We were fortunate that President Trump honoured the deal that was struck with the Obama administration.”
Under the deal, the US agreed to accept as many as 1250 people as long as they passed “extreme vetting” procedures.
Mr Quaedvlieg, a former senior police officer, said he would not rule out the US accepting more than 1250 refugees.
[….]
Sky News reported 50 refugees had been cleared for resettlement in the US and would move to their new home within a fortnight. This would be in addition to the 233 people who had already moved to the US under the deal.
How ironic is this! The new New Zealand Prime Minister made a big show a few months back of offering to take some of the mostly Muslim men that Australia won’t take to its mainland, but not so fast!
Government papers obtained by the news outlet this month show Australia asked the New Zealand government to keep its offer on the table as a contingency plan in case the US deal fell through.
Interestingly, the government documents suggested there were concerns about detainees passing New Zealand’s own strict screening and security laws.
There is no sense directing you to the whole article (it is behind a pay wall), but take my word for it.
Donald Trump should have stuck with his original instincts and nixed the dumb deal in the first months of his presidency. It is not only dumb, but could set a dangerous precedent. This process is way outside of the norm for international refugee movement. And, if just one of these men (who have been incarcerated for at least 4 years) goes wrong, commits violence of some sort, it will be on the President! Contactthe White House! and tell the President what you think about this “dumb” deal!
