Category: Africa

Minneapolis High School riot reveals tensions between Somalis and American blacks

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Somalis wait in line to register at refugee camp in Kenya Photo credit: Roberto Schmidt/AFP

Update February 21st:  Somali community organizer says too much police brutality and not enough cultural competence at South High last week, here.

Several readers have sent me stories about the riot involving hundreds of students at Minneapolis South High two days ago. 

There is so much coverage of the story I don’t know where to begin, but maybe with the basics.   I wondered to myself yesterday why our old post, “Why so many Somalis in Minneapolis?” was going through the roof with hits. It is our top post still today right above “Barbarians at the Gate.”

I guess this story is why people are searching for just how the Somalis got to Minneapolis (Little Mogadishu) in the first place.

First here is a bit of the food-fight-riot story as introduced by Daniel Greenfield writing at The Counter Jihad Report (Hat tip: Gary):

Bringing huge numbers of Muslim Somalis into the United States and depositing them in places like Minnesota may rank as the one of the worst policies of the last three years and the growing violence is only the tip of the iceberg.

A sensible rule of thumb on immigration policy should be that if a country is a fundamentally violent and broken place, then importing large numbers of its inhabitants will only spread that violence to the United States.

 [The ‘church’ groups (and some secular ones as well) contracted by the US State Department think otherwise—here are the nine major contractors, called Volags (short for voluntary agency which they no longer are) that resettle refugees in your cities and towns—ed].

Before I get to the riot, I have to correct Greenfield. He suggests this is a policy of the last three years?  Readers, we have been resettling Somali refugees for going on 30 years as this 2008 post of mine demonstrates.  By 1993 we had resettled over 4000 and every year since then those Volags (contractors) resettled many thousands each year.  Today, the resettled numbers top 100,000 (and they have been producing children for decades) so surely the numbers exceed a quarter of a million by now.

The only year we dropped down to bringing only a few hundred (242) was in 2002.  Do you know why?  The whole refugee resettlement program came to a screeching halt after 9/11 (briefly!).  Then it picked right up again the following year.  To date George W. Bush’s State Department brought higher annual numbers of Somalis then any President so far.  In 2004 (12,814), 2005 (10,101) and 2006 (10,330).

In 2008, the numbers took another dip (to 2,523) when the State Department realized that the Somalis (and some other ethnic groups) had been lying about who their family members were for the purpose of reuniting the ‘family’ (chain migration).   The State Department estimated at the time that there could be tens of thousands of “refugees” who lied to get into the US.

Family reunification has only recently been re-opened and we have already brought over 2000 Somalis in FY 2013 (I directed readers to the stats in this post about how Denmark is considering sending Somalis back to the now “safe” Somalia).  At that rate Obama could come close to Bush’s numbers.

So back to the riots

This is not the first time we have seen conflicts involving Somalis in high school.  Update:  Bruce sends us this news clip which ends with comments that there has been a long history of tension between black Americans and the Somali immigrants.

In Minnesota alone we saw many conflicts develop in the St. Cloud school district here .   Here is one of our earliest posts on the “friction.”

Greenfield directs us to this report (via Blazing Cat Fur) on the Minneapolis diversity-is-beautiful melee. (emphasis mine)

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – A number of police cars responded to Minneapolis South High School Thursday after an alleged food fight escalated into a melee involving 200 to 300 students.

Sgt. William Palmer, of the Minneapolis Police Department, said no weapons were involved in the incident. However, four people were taken to the hospital following the melee. Police were pelted by thrown objects as they rushed to break up the brawl.

Twelve people complained that they had been sprayed with mace. Police at the scene said they had to use chemical agent to get the crowd under control as they were being pelted with objects as they tried to break things up.

One student, Abdi Sheikh, said he saw hundreds of students fighting in what appeared to be a racial incident.

“A big riot,” he said. “It was all types of races.”

Another student, Symone Glasker, said that an initial fight happened during the school’s first lunch period. By the time the third lunch period started, all the hype from the initial fight caused tensions to boil over.

She said the fights were over pride.

“I know it’s a pride thing between Muslims and black people,” she said. “They want their pride back for something. I don’t know.”

She also said “boys were hitting girls” and that some people were lying on the floor, with their hands over their heads, in surrender.

The fight, students say, was the result of long-simmering tensions between the 8 percent of students who are Somali  Americans and the 20 percent who are African Americans.

On that last line (above), I’ve laughed before about how the Volags have placed Somalis in black neighborhoods with the notion (I guess!) that the black brothers could relate.  It is not about skin color it’s about African culture vs. American culture and  about Muslims vs. infidels!

Greenfield has a bunch of links to the story, here.

Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs has the story too, here (hat tip: John).

And, be sure to visit the comments at Blazing Cat Fur (some are pretty funny), but here is one which is somewhat close to the truth.  They won’t, of course blame Bush, but in this case they would be partially right.

This is gonna get funny, the progressives, will have to tie themselves into knots, trying to figure out who to blame… Likely they’ll resort to the default and blame Bush. (robins111)

This is getting too long.  If you want to learn more about Somalis (we probably have more than 500 posts here at RRW), just search ‘Somali.’   Or, shorten your search by adding another search word—try ‘Somali terror’, ‘Somali meatpacker’ or ‘Somali San Diego’ for example!

Next!  Watch for news that CAIR sticks its nose into the latest Minnesota mess.

Denmark to send Somali asylum seekers back to Mogadishu!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Declare Somalia safe enough!

Wow!  And, it was only last September that Denmark sent a delegation to Minneapolis to see just how we are so “welcoming” here and how they might emulate us.   Things must be going south fast in Copenhagen!

From The Copenhagen Post:

Immigration officials are contending that the security situation in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, has improved to such an extent that Somali asylum seekers can be sent back.

Immigration Service (Udlændingestyrelsen) made its decision on the basis of a joint Danish-Norwegian delegation that visited Mogadishu in October 2012, and reported that the Somali capital was safe to the point that rejected asylum seekers would not face persecution if sent back.

”The joint fact-finding mission to Somalia gave us new information that indicated that the security has been vastly improved,” Jakob Dam Glynstrup, the head of asylum at Udlændingestyrelsen, said in a press release. ”There is also a new government in place and a rising number of Somalis are returning home.”

Udlændingestyrelsen pointed to Norway, which has already changed its protocol in regards to asylum seekers from Somalia.

But the Danish aid organisation Dansk Flygtningehjælp argued that the delegation’s assessment is incorrect and pointed to an evaluation by the UN asylum organisation, UNHCR, which said that security threats in Mogadishu and the rest of Somalia are still very high.

I don’t know why this is such a big deal.  After all, the new President of Somalia is urging the folks to come on home and help rebuild their country.

No wonder the Danes are having second thoughts about that “welcoming” business:

According to Udlændingestyrelsen, the number of Somalis who were granted asylum in Denmark last year shot up to around 900. That is compared to only 18 in 2011 and 35 in 2010.

Readers, we’ve been talking a lot about asylum lately.  These are asylum seekers meaning they got to Denmark on their own steam.   We have one up on the Danes (they must be haters)—we are actually still putting Somalis on planes around the world and bringing them to us!

Holy-moly!  If this map is correct we have already admitted over 2000 Somalis in the first three months of this fiscal year!  If that trend continues, Obama will be on target to approach Bush’s best Somali-welcoming years of 2004, 2005 and 2006, here.

Africans moving to Britain in large numbers, mosques are an attraction

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

…but not directly from Africa.

They are already citizens of other European countries and are moving to Britain for greater upward mobility they say.  Some others say it’s because there are more mosques in the UK.

Here is the story from The Guardian (via Islam vs. Europe a week ago):

A clear majority of British people think current immigration levels are too high, according to many polls. A major fear is that too many newcomers will stretch Britain’s already shrinking welfare state. According to some reports, Downing Street is considering negative advertising, to persuade Bulgarians and Romanians to stay away. It doesn’t help quell these fears when new migrants from poorer parts of the world, such as Somalia, show high rates of unemployment.

But what if we were told that thousands of people from Africa we’ve seen arriving here are not, in fact, fleeing poverty at all? Or that, legally speaking, they’re not even Africans, but rather nationals of such generous welfare utopias as Sweden, Denmark and Holland?

For BBC Radio 4, I’ve been searching for some idea of what the modern “British Dream” could be, through a series of frank interviews with some of the almost 3 million new arrivals to England and Wales since 2001 (the first of three programmes is broadcast at 8pm starting tonight). Time and again, our team uncovered Africans who were not any longer from Africa. They were EU citizens and actually giving up welfare rights in places like Scandinavia to come to the UK.

Indeed, we met so many Nigerians from Germany, or Somalis from Denmark, that we asked Oxford University’s Migration Observatory to crunch the numbers on how many EU migrants are not originally from Europe. They found that 141,000 people, 7% of those who came to the UK under EU rules were born outside the continent. Somalis are one of the biggest such groups, with an estimated 20,000 coming to the UK from the Netherlands alone. Studies show that between one third and a half of the entire Dutch Somali community has moved to the UK.  [I’m wondering if the political climate in the Netherlands has become less “welcoming.”—ed]

[….]

“I think the UK is more open than other European countries,” says Jibril, who is now a London bus driver. He and many other Somalis told me they admired the success of non-white people in Britain – which was conspicuously absent, they felt, on the continent. Jibril mentions the Asian community who came to the UK from Uganda. “They are landlords, they are businessmen, lawyers,” he enthuses. “It’s amazing.”

How should we feel about this admiration of Britain from non-white people across Europe? Some may find it uncomfortable that Jibril and other Somalis I met were partly attracted by the larger number of mosques in Britain.

Hint to America:  Build the mosques and they will come!

There is more and lots of links at The Guardian, here.

Man dressed as Somali woman Target employee might be a police officer

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is a weird story and I expect there will be some explanation forthcoming, but it didn’t stop CAIR and Somali mouthpiece, Omar Jamal, from demanding more sensitivity training at the St. Paul PD.

Police Chief:  Diversity is one of the greatest strengths of the city of St. Paul!

Here is the story from TwinCities.com (hat tip: Megan):

A man seen in a photograph dressed as a female Muslim Target employee is a St. Paul police officer who worked off-duty at a St. Paul store, police and Target Corp. said Monday, Feb. 4.

Mukhtar Ibrahim directed a Tweet to the official St. Paul police Twitter account at 7:55 p.m. Sunday: “Can u pls verify if this man mocking Somali women employees at Target is one of your officers?” Ibrahim, who used to live in St. Paul, is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist.

Ibrahim received a reply from the St. Paul police Twitter account at 8:35 a.m. Monday: “SPPD wants to thx u for bring this to our att. We take this seriously&are investigating.”

Police Chief Thomas Smith said in a statement Monday, “After an image was brought to my attention this morning, I ordered an immediate investigation to determine all of the facts surrounding it. The St. Paul police department has worked hard to establish a strong and respectful relationship with our Muslim communities, and I will not allow these types of images to erode that relationship. Diversity is one of the greatest strengths of the city of St. Paul, and we expect each one of our officers to respect and take pride in serving each of our diverse communities.”

CAIR: “more diversity training” needed!  It sure sounds like they have that police chief well-trained!

Lori Saroya, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Minnesota chapter, said her organization has good relationships with the St. Paul and Minneapolis police departments, but if the photo does show a St. Paul police officer, she thinks that individual needs more diversity training to “help eliminate anti-Muslim stereotypes and prejudice.”

Omar Jamal:  “additional sensitivity training” needed!

Omar Jamal, first secretary of the Somali Mission to the United Nations, wrote in an email Monday, “This is a clear indication that police should have additional sensitivity training about the community, culture and religion.”

Wouldn’t you think Jamal, the ‘Somali Jesse Jackson,’ has enough to keep him busy at the UN?  See our dozens of posts on Jamal here.

For new readers:  This 2011 post, “Why so many Somalis in Minneapolis?”, is almost daily one of our top most-read posts.  I see today it is number one.

Samantha Power, White House Iraqi refugee czar, Soros protege’ leaving Obama Administration

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Power, also the architect of Obama’s excellent adventure in Libya, was supposed to have led an intergovernmental reform of the Refugee Resettlement Program which never happened unless you consider throwing more money to the contractors a reform!  By the way, she once served as a director of the wealthiest refugee resettlement contractor (funded largely by US taxpayers)—the International Rescue Committee (George Rupp, their head honcho makes a cool $447,432 in salary and benefits which beats Obama’s $400,000 salary!)

Human Rights First cheered her role as Iraqi refugee czar at the White House here in 2009.  But, by 2011 Power was quoted (by Joe Klein) as saying she wanted more exciting work then the “rinkey-dink do-gooder stuff”  of helping beleaguered Christians in Iraq.  So she moved on to working with Obama’s female hawks to oust Gaddafi from Libya (we see how that is working out!).  Well, heck, the move produced a whole new wave of refugees in need of resettlement services from the federal contractors!

Power’s name came up as a possible second-term pick for either UN Ambassador if Susan Rice moved up to the Secretary of State position we all know went to John Kerry.   There had even been talk that Power, a Soros protege’, might be in line to fill her nemesis’ shoes at State.  Remember Power called Hillary a “monster” during the 2008 Presidential primary campaign.

We have a lot of posts on Power, you can check them out here.

The percentage of white men surrounding the President just went up!

Here is Bloomberg on Power’s leave-taking (for now anyway):

Samantha Power, one of President Barack Obama’s top advisers on national security and a longtime aide, is leaving the administration, at least temporarily, to focus on family matters, a White House spokesman said.

Power, director for multilateral affairs and human rights at the National Security Council, has served as an aide to Obama since his 2008 presidential campaign and is a Pulitzer Prize- winning author for her book on genocide. She has two young children, one three years old and the other eight months.

Power probably will return to the administration, though no decisions have been made on what her future role might be, according to the spokesman, Tommy Vietor.

“Samantha has been a powerful voice in this administration and a longtime friend and adviser to the president,” Vietor said. “We will miss her at the NSC, and we look forward to continuing the president’s work promoting human rights and dignity.”

Power, 42, who successfully advocated for the 2011 intervention in Libya on humanitarian grounds, has played a central role in discussions over how far the U.S. should go to protect civilians from repressive regimes.   [Her ‘responsibility to protect’ doctrine is a thinly disguised excuse to send the US to war—ed]

[….]

Her departure comes as Obama has been criticized for not appointing a sufficient number of women to high-profile posts as he forms his second-term team.