Category: Africa

San Diego: Four Somalis convicted of aiding terror group in Africa

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is the latest on a story we reported, here, in January.

From  AP at ABC News:

 A federal jury in San Diego on Friday convicted four Somali immigrants — including an imam from a local mosque — of conspiring to funnel money to a terrorist group in their native country.

After a three-week trial and three days of deliberations, the jury convicted the four men of conspiring to raise and send money to Somalia’s al-Shabaab. The men coordinated fundraising efforts and sent nearly $9,000 to al-Shabaab between 2007 and 2008, prosecutors said.

The U.S. Department of State designated al-Shabaab a terrorist group in 2008, saying it was responsible for targeted civilian assassinations and bombings in Somalia. Federal prosecutors have since cracked down on the group’s U.S. support with the arrests of some two dozen people.

Those convicted Friday include 40-year-old Mohamed Mohamed Mohamud, who prosecutors said used his connections as a popular imam at a mosque in San Diego’s City Heights neighborhood to raise money for the group.   [Photo is from this 2010 story on the case.—ed]

Photo by Amita Sharma
Masjid Al-Ansar, a mosque located in City Heights, is where Mohamed Mohamed Mohamud, has led prayer services during the past 10 years.

A money transfer business, Shidaal Express, was used in the transfer of funds to Al-shabaab.  In 2009, I wrote about the feds busting a business by that same name for fraud also in San Diego, wonder if it’s the same one?

The other defendants were two San Diego taxi drivers, 36-year-old Basaaly Saeed Moalin and 56-year-old Issa Doreh, and 37-year-old Ahmed Nasir Taalil Mohamud of Anaheim, whose financial transfer business Shidaal Express was used to route the money, prosecutors said.

The AP actually mentions how the Somalis got here—that’s something new and novel—through the Refugee Resettlement Program of the US State Department, but I can assure you the number of Somalis in the US now far exceeds the 87,000 AP says are here.   Here are my stats for the last 30 years and these don’t take into account the numbers of Somalis who got into the US through other programs or illegally across the border.  LOL! nor does it take into consideration the high birthrate in the Somali “community.”

Most of the 87,000 Somalis living in the United States have arrived through U.S.-sponsored refugee resettlement programs. The largest two U.S. Somali communities, and the sites of most of the arrests in the crackdown, are in San Diego and Minnesota.

What a coincidence:  San Diego was also on the Somali underground railroad out of the US for those Somali youths we raised who returned to the Horn of Africa to learn the Jihad trade, here, in 2009.

The latest Malta mess; maybe just send them home to Somalia!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

After all, they are dancing in Mogadishu again (we learned that from reader ‘riveratlantic’)!  The Netherlands and Denmark are planning to refuse more Somali ‘asylum seekers’ and the new President of Somalia told Somalis in America to come on home last month!

It came to a head over a broken toilet!

A group of Somali illegal alien/asylum seekers on the tiny island of Malta stormed to the police station to say that they had been evicted from a ‘center’ where they were being housed until their asylum claims could be processed.

Before I get to the toilet destruction news, remember that we have helped exacerbate Malta’s African illegal alien problem because we (beginning with the Bush State Department) have been transforming the economic migrants flowing across the Mediterranean from Libya into legitimate refugees and bringing them to the US.

Just last month we learned that an attache’ and another employee of the Italian Embassy in Kenya were helping facilitate the flow of Somalis  to Malta (for a handsome sum).

Here is the story from the Times of Malta (emphasis mine):

It started with a broken toilet, led to a mass exodus to the Ħamrun police station and ended with a handshake.

A group of 32 Somali men marched to the Ħamrun police station yesterday morning, claiming they had been evicted from Marsa open centre by management for no reason and flashing their centre residence cards in indignation.

But according to centre director Ahmed Bughri, the men were never kicked out and had simply been told that if they did not abide by open centre rules, they could “go live somewhere else”.

Some of the alleged toilet-wreckers that stormed to the police station. Look closely, some of these young men could soon be on a flight to your US city!

The incident came on the back of rising tensions between a Somali contingent and open centre management, stemming from damage done to some of the centre’s newly refurbished toilets and kitchens.

According to Dr Bughri, a small group of residents were systematically dirtying and damaging bathrooms and kitchens at the centre, to the detriment of their own colleagues.

Open centre staff on Monday found that one of the new toilets had been completely broken and knocked onto its side. Dr Bughri fined each of the residents who had a key to the toilet €10, to make up for repairs.

This did not go down well with many of those affected, who say they already live from hand to mouth on the monthly €130 allowance given to them.  [I think this is about $170 in US Dollars—-ed]

And matters reached a head yesterday, following an argument between Dr Bughri and one of the fined Somalis.

“I cannot have residents damaging or dirtying facilities and then not doing anything about it,” Dr Bughri said. “We’ve worked hard to improve this open centre and we won’t let it slide back into its previous state.”

He denied evicting the residents and said they had misunderstood his warning to either abide by the rules or leave.

Airlift to Mogadishu anyone?

Click here to see our extensive archive on Malta and how we (US State Department/Catholic Charities) unilaterally changed the definition of a refugee.

Climate refugee “crisis” alive and well

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Longtime readers know that a few years ago I posted some stories (see our ‘climate refugee‘ category) about the on-going conflict within the UN “community” about changing the definition of refugees to incorporate those people the “sustainability” movement claims will be flowing by the millions as the sea levels rise!

The whole thing is so silly and just a clear ploy for the first world to pay big bucks to the third world, or to open ones’ borders to the teaming (economic migrant) masses.   But, I see the pressure is still on to broaden the definition of refugee to include anyone running from the weather.

By the way, this is the definition of a refugee as set by the UN Refugee Convention in 1951:

The 1951 Refugee Convention establishing UNHCR spells out that a refugee is someone who “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.”

The “humanitarian” refugee advocates objected at the time I was writing some posts on the subject (and probably still do!) to watering down the definition to include weather migrants.

But, here is a pitch by a  blog called “Sense and Sustainability” promoting the idea (again) of changing the definition of “refugee.”

Somali refugees displaced from their homes by floods cross a swollen river in Kenya. But, are identified as “climate refugees!”
Brendan Bannon/AFP/Getty Images

Human displacement due to climate change will be the “defining issue of our times!”  Really!

According to the UNHCR 2012 publication “The State of the World’s Refugees,” human displacement as a result of climate change will be “a defining issue of our times.” Environmentally induced migration and displacement could reach unprecedented dimensions, with predictions ranging from 25 million to one billion by 2050.

Despite global concern for those displaced by climate change, “climate refugee” remains merely a descriptive term under the UNHCR’s international refugee regime. The 1951 Convention does not account for people fleeing natural disasters, and thus confers no legal obligation of asylum on States. Even defining the term “climate refugee” poses problems, as this type of displacement can be attributed to many factors, including scarcity of land resources, political pressures, and natural hazards. While climate change may exacerbate these problems – causing more frequent extreme weather events or gradually reducing agricultural productivity – it is virtually impossible to separate climate causes from other drivers of migration. Accordingly, no established methodology exists for calculating the actual number of people displaced by climate change.

Whatever quibbles statisticians may have over the numbers, one thing is clear –millions of people remain displaced and unaccounted for as they do not fit neatly into the UNHCR’s definition of refugee. Is it a matter of renaming this category of people to fit within the international refugee regime? Or, in a warmer world, must the definition and understanding of the concepts of ‘refugee’ and ‘protection’ adapt?

There is a nice example here about Vietnam attempting to solve its own flooding problems (no proof that global warming makes the Mekong Delta wet!) without resorting to caterwauling that their citizens should be sent to the first world (although we are still taking “political” refugees from Vietnam, a practice that should have ended decades ago).

Sense and Sustainability goes on:

We must continue to seek durable solutions for this group, one of the world’s most marginalized refugee populations. We see in this population the human face of climate change, and we must accommodate this emerging breed of refugee within international frameworks. In the name of climate change, we have adapted our infrastructure, our lifestyles, and our understanding of sustainability.  Why not our definition of refugee?

About the photo:  It was used to illustrate this 2006 article about the coming weather migrant hordes with absolutely no proof that “climate change” made this river rise!  Let’s just put some Africans together in a photo with water and it will prove to the gullible public that global warming is real!

The “Rainbow Nation” is being crushed by refugees, asylum seekers, economic migrants, and assorted illegal aliens

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Michelle meets Mandela in the “Rainbow Nation” in June 2011. AP Photo/ Debbie Yazbek

I haven’t mentioned the troubles in South Africa for a while.  Yeh, believe it or not, they have more problems in Michelle Obama’s favorite country than an Olympic “bladerunner” star murdering his gorgeous girlfriend.

Their borders are flooded with “asylum seekers” who have heard about their Commie Constitution and Bill of Rights (and believe the promises to be true).

I reported in a post last spring that:  The African National Congress (the party of Mandela) says everyone gets:  a job, food, housing, fairness, peace and security.

Michelle brought her mom, Mrs. Robinson, and the girls to South Africa in 2011 to admire what Nelson Mandela had brought to the formerly apartheid nation (now the supposed model to the world)—fairness and socialism for all, here.

So, guess what!  The ANC is, a year later, looking for a way to stop the flow of migrants who want what has been promised and is considering refugee camps as a possible way to control the border-crossers.    This is the story I came across today, but there is this story I missed from December that comes before today’s news about camps.

Sound familiar?

From Business Day Live (Johannesburg) (emphasis mine):

THE African National Congress (ANC) has once again signalled that it wants to see the country’s immigration policy comprehensively reviewed, citing concerns over the abuse of the asylum-seeking system and competition for jobs between foreigners and local unemployed.

Since 1994 South Africa has adopted one of the most liberal immigration policies in the world. This, together with corruption, and poor border and immigration management, has meant that South Africa has the highest number of asylum seekers in the world and an unknown number of illegal immigrants.

But immigration policy has become ambiguous in recent years, with mixed signals coming from the department and ministry of home affairs over its future direction.

Government officials said this week that, in its national conference resolution on peace and stability adopted last week, the ANC stated that undocumented immigrants posed an economic and security threat. The party further believed that the inward flow of low-skilled labour needed to be balanced with the negative effect on employment.

[…..]

The harder line on immigration was reinforced in the organisational report to the ANC conference last week.

[…..]

“During the last five years there were developments that pointed to the need for a more comprehensive approach to the question of management of foreign nationals entering South Africa,” Mr Mantashe’s report reads.

These included the high number of cases of crime involving foreign nationals and the number of undocumented foreign nationals who have jobs in the leisure, hospitality and agricultural sectors in the face of high unemployment among locals.

Now, here is the story this week about fears that the ANC will establish refugee camps:

REFUGEES and asylum seekers receive substantially less protection from the government than they used to when the asylum system was first established in the 1990s. This is claimed by Lawyers for Human Rights and the African Centre for Migration and Society, in a new report published last week.

The report, which monitors trends over the past two years, says South Africa has experienced a de facto policy shift in its approach to asylum seekers and refugees, although immigration policy has not been officially reviewed.

However, a policy review is imminent, raising fears among human rights groups that the country will tighten immigration at the expense of rights.

Would someone tell Obama (both Obamas) and Grover Norquist (the bullfrog slayer) that a country cannot survive OPEN BORDERS and full rights to stuff—welfare, jobs, housing, food and fairness—as is plainly demonstrated by the RAINBOW NATION!

Sheesh!  The next thing you know they will be wanting a border fence!

For our whole archive on South Africa, go here.

San Diego Somalis thinking about going “home” to Somalia!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Obama meets with Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud at the White House in January.

A few weeks ago we reported that the new Somali President (Hassan Sheikh Mohamud) had come to the US, stopped in with Obama and later Hillary Clinton before going on to Minneapolis where he exhorted his fellow Somalis of the “diaspora” to come on back to Africa.

Now, here is a story that Somalis in the City Heights section of San Diego, where there is (incidentally) a Somali terror-funding trial going on, are contemplating a return.  And, not only that, but they have been back and forth already.

So this is my fundamental question, if Somalis are traveling safely back and forth to Mogadishu, why are we still bringing in Somalis by the thousands to the US?

Here are the stats for this fiscal year (2013) that began on October 1, 2012.  In those four months, we have brought in 2,260 “refugees” from Somalia at a time when the country is considered safe enough for American Somalis to fly back and forth.  By the way, in all of Fiscal Year 2011 (when Al-shabaab was at its height) we brought 3,161 Somalis (all year!), so if we continue the pace of the previous 4 months of this fiscal year (when Somalia is safer) we will bring over 6,000!  Does that make any sense?

We will pay “church” contractors to resettle them, feed and house them, and educate the kids through college (disrupt communities!).

Wouldn’t it be cheaper to leave them in Africa and help them get Somalia functioning?

Also, remember that countries like Denmark are contemplating refusing Somali asylum seekers because they say Somalia is no longer a complete hell hole, here.

Here is the story from KPBS in San Diego:

The United States officially recognized the Somali government last month for the first time since 1991, alerting Somali refugees in City Heights and throughout the world their homeland is making a comeback.

Somalia has been called “the world’s most failed state,” enduring deadly famines and more than two decades of civil war with al Shabaab militants linked to al Qaeda.

The nation is rebuilding under a newly elected president, who recently urged refugees at a speech in Minnesota, home to the nation’s largest population of Somali refugees, to return to Somalia to help.

But will Somalis who have spent more than 20 years away – some even beginning life outside of their family’s homeland – make the move to Africa?

“The conversation, it’s already among the community,” said Mohamed Ahmed, a 23-year-old Somali living in City Heights. “People have already been back. People are planning to go back. And some people are a bit skeptical about going back and they’re not really comfortable about the situation back home.”

Ahmed left Somalia with his family when he was two months old and came to the U.S. at age of 4. He’s about to graduate from San Diego State University, alongside other East Africans who arrived in America in the 1990s.

He says the timing for a revived Somali state couldn’t be better. Many members of the Somali diaspora are poised to graduate from American and European universities, if they haven’t already.

Ahmed said Somalis who grew up in Europe are returning to work in their native country – at a rate of about 1,000 per month, according to some reports. Flights in and out of Mogadishu have multiplied. Rent has climbed. Last year, young Somali professionals hosted a TEDxMogadishu talk.

Nah!  Not so fast!  Few will go “home.”

Abdi Mohamoud, executive director of Horn of Africa, a San Diego nonprofit that provides support for local East African refugees, said Ahmed’s drive is common among children of refugees.

“With the tragedy of having so many refugees flee from Somalia, the advantage has become that many of those refugees went to other developed countries and many of them were able to get very high-quality educations,” Mohamoud said. “They’re very eager to try to improve the devastation that their parents have fled.”

But Mohamoud said he’s not convinced many young Somalis will actually make the move to Africa.

Mohamoud went on to say that he predicted 95% would stay in the US.

Remittances!  Another word for the “redistribution” of wealth!

The KPBS report also notes this extra cost to the US economy—the same one we reported here regarding El Salvador!

And Somalia’s economy has a long way to go. Currently, remittances from Somali families in City Heights and throughout the world account for about half the nation’s gross domestic product.