Category: Africa

Minnesota Sheriff tells Congress about Somali gangs; Somali Hot Boyz coming to your town?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

So, Somalis are moving into small towns across Minnesota, will the gangs be joining them?

From CNS-News (hat tip: Mars):

(CNSNews.com) – The sheriff of Hennepin County, Minn., told the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security on Wednesday about the threat of Somali gangs in his jurisdiction.

“I have been asked to testify today about the specific emergence of Somali gang-related issues we are having in my county,” Rich Stanek said in his prepared testimony.

Stanek represented the National Sheriffs’ Association at the hearing on “America’s Evolving Gang Threat.” He also serves on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s inter-agency Threat Assessment and Coordination Group and is president of the Major County Sheriffs’ Association.

Stanek said Minnesota is a “designated U.S. Refugee Resettlement Area,” with a Somali population ranging from 80,000 to 125,000 in the state. As a result, Stanek said, while the African population in the U.S. as a whole is about four percent, 18 percent of the Minnesota population is African because of the large Somali presence.

Stanek said he wanted to “state for the record” that most Somalis are “law-abiding citizens” who contribute to the community, but those who have joined gangs are committing crimes across the state.

“Somali gangs are unique in that they are not necessarily based on the narcotics trade as are other traditional gangs,” Stanek said, adding that “turf” is also not a motivating factor in Somali gang criminal activities.

“Gang members will often congregate in certain areas, but commit their criminal acts elsewhere,” Stanek said. “Criminal acts are often done in a wide geographic area that stretches outside of the Twin Cities seven county metro area.

“Their mobility has made them difficult to track,” Stanek said.

Stanek listed five “typical crimes” committed by Somali gang members, including credit card fraud, cell phone and gun store burglaries, and witness intimidation. The fifth type of criminal activity is tied to international terrorism, Stanek said.

Read on to hear about one of the Somali Hot Boyz who went back to Africa after we gave him the good life in America to become a jihadist.  Guess we just didn’t give him enough stuff!

For new readers:  This post from 2011—Why so many Somalis in Minneapolis?—continues to be one of the top posts here at RRW almost every day.  As of today, 7,695 visitors have read the post.

Ann Coulter on immigration: America will be California

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Coulter penned a good column this week on the changing demographics of America thanks to the Democrat’s goal of “browning America” … it is not about color it’s about the welfare mentality of the increasing number of third-worlders being admitted to the US.

Emphasis below is mine.  Be sure to read the whole column.

Coulter (hat tip: Jeannine):

While conservatives have been formulating carefully constructed arguments, liberals have been playing a long-term game to change the demographics of America to get an electorate more to their liking.

They will do incalculable damage to the nation and to individual citizens, but Democrats will have an unbeatable majority. Just like California, the United States is on its way to becoming a Third World, one-party state.

Teddy Kennedy’s 1965 Immigration Act was expressly designed to change the ethnic composition of America to make it more like Nigeria, considered more susceptible to liberal demagogues.

Since 1965, instead of taking immigrants that replicate the country’s existing ethnic mix, we’ve been admitting mostly immigrants from the Third World. At the same time, people from the countries that sent immigrants to this country for its first several centuries have been barred.

Eighty-five percent of immigrants now come from “developing countries.” (How are they ever going to develop if their people are all on the dole over here?)

The “browning of America” is not a natural process. It’s been artificially imposed by Democrats who are confident of their abilities to turn Third World immigrants into government patrons.

It’s worked. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, 57 percent of all immigrant households in the U.S. get cash, Medicaid, housing or food benefits from the government — compared with 39 percent of native households. The highest rates are for immigrants from the Dominican Republic (82 percent), Mexico and Guatemala (tied at 75 percent).

Isn’t the idea to get immigrants with special skills? If you can’t even get a job, by definition, you do not have a special skill. Other than voting Democrat.

There’s a strange asymmetry in how this matter can be discussed. Liberals and ethnic activists boast about how America would be better if it were more Latino, but no one else is allowed to say, “We like the ethnic mix as it is.”

That would be racist. By now no one even tries to disagree.

As I said, read it all!

The African aid racket revisited

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Editors note:  I’ve got a whole bunch of stuff to post that I’ve missed lately due to internet problems that have been plaguing me ever since that big Eastern storm a couple of weeks ago, so, sorry, if you have sent me story ideas and you haven’t seen them posted.   Please know that I love to get tips from readers who always find such interesting topics and make my work easier.   Here is one:

American Renaissance has a good book review  by Jon Harrison Sims (Shaking hands with the devil) of a book published in 2010 by Linda Polman, a Dutch journalist, about the humanitarian aid racket in mostly Africa and Asia. (Hat tip: Tom)  There is suffering and poverty, but are the NGO’s and government agencies padding their own pockets while fostering corruption worldwide?   Does that sound familiar?

Before I give you a bit of Sims’ review, I was reminded of the novel I read early this summer thanks also to a tip from a reader.  I read Paul Theroux’s “The Lower River,” truly one of the darkest novels I’ve ever read.   In it the main character returns to Africa late in life with a hankering to return to the village where he had, as a young man, been a happy Peace Corps volunteer.  What he finds is a nightmare after decades of corruption mostly by, you guessed it, NGOs.

Then just a reminder, that in 2009 we reported on the racket, here, in “Aid to Africa an unmitigated disaster.”

And, who can forget the wrath brought down on the head of Irish journalist Kevin Myers who said this in July 2008:

The wide-eyed boy-child we saved, 20 years or so ago, is now a priapic, Kalashnikov-bearing hearty, siring children whenever the whim takes him.

Back to the Linda Polman book review, here is Sims (emphasis mine):

What’s wrong with humanitarian aid? The short answer to the question posed by Dutch reporter Linda Polman in the subtitle of her book is “everything.”

[….]

Miss Polman knows what she is talking about when she says foreign aid is a racket. She has tramped through countless refugee camps in Africa, interviewing aid workers, refugees, African government officials, and rebel leaders. What she found is one of the biggest con-games of our time.

That there is genuinely terrible suffering, disease, poverty, and violence across much of Africa and Asia she does not question. That western humanitarian and development aid is the answer, or even part of the answer, she does question. She thinks all it does is perpetuate poverty, fund corruption, and foster dependence. To the question “So we should do nothing then?” she answers that that would be better than what we are doing now.

Miss Polman is not the first reporter or chastened aid worker who has come to that conclusion, yet every year the money spent on humanitarian and development aid increases—she says the idea of donor fatigue is a myth—and what she calls “the crisis caravan” rolls on. Why? The short answer is money.

The biggest players in the aid game are the international non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, which get money from governments and private donors.*** There are tens of thousands of them; no one knows how many. On average, 1,000 of them descend on a humanitarian crisis zone, along with 10 United Nation agencies, and at least twice as many government aid organizations. With their flags and tents, and white Land Cruisers, relief camps are like a traveling circus.

Phantom aid!

Each year governments spend $120 billion on humanitarian and development aid, but an average of 60 percent never leaves the donor countries. It’s called “phantom aid,” and is spent on salaries, conferences, publicity, transportation, and contracts for Western businesses that make or deliver aid supplies. Miss Polman says the Americans are the worst offenders; an estimated 70 to 80 percent is phantom aid.

Read it all, here.

*** Like Church World Service perhaps?  CWS is one of the top nine federal refugee contractors and you may recognize them as the “crop walk” organizers.   I haven’t looked at a Form 990 for CWS in awhile.  Here is 2011.   Some interesting numbers:

Income $78,732,897

Government grants $39,190,629 (almost exactly 50% of their funding comes from you!)

Total salaries $15.2 million  (with pensions and benefits another $5 million)

Top two highest salaried employees with benefits:  $268,000 and $296,000

$1.3 million went to pay rent

$1.7 million went to travel (yippee!)

$2.2 million went to professional fees (whatever that is)

“Expats” going back to Somalia with money to rebuild

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Expats or refugees, which is it?

Relative peace in Mogadishu is bringing back Somalis to rebuild their war torn country and it makes me laugh—we call them “expatriates” in this Voice of America story while the UN High Commissioner for Refugees is planning today in Geneva to bring more Somali “refugees” to the West.

As I said in a previous post on Somalia and the arrival of peace there—we should have a repatriation project to encourage those well-educated and well-fed former Somali refugees to return to their homeland and fix it!

Here is Voice of America (Hammers replace bullets as Mogadishu rebuilds):

MOGADISHU — The emergence of peace in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, has shaped the city for the better, giving it a new face. Residents are returning to and restoring their bullet-ridden homes and businesses after years of living in makeshift camps scattered in and out of the city.

The sound of hammers has replaced the sound of machine guns in the streets of Mogadishu. Construction is going on everywhere for new homes, hotels and shopping malls.  Businesses are thriving, government institutions are being renovated and building owners are reclaiming their property from squatters.

Hassan Sankay Ali, a sawmill owner in a district known as Kilometer Five, said there has been high demand for building materials, and due to that demand prices have risen.

People are coming out to buy building materials, Ali said. Most of the people coming to buy are either building new houses or renovating existing homes.

[….]

The economic boom is fueled by expatriates flocking back and investing millions of dollars. This provides jobs for thousands of young militiamen eager to get out of the killing business.

Mohamud Hareed Dagey came from London six months ago and opened a new restaurant near Lido Beach, and he also plans to build a hotel. He said more Somalis living abroad must return home to build the economy.

Yes indeed!

Rep. Keith Ellison pushing bill to free hawala businesses to send money to Somalia

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We have written on previous occasions (here is the most recent post) about how banking laws to protect against American money going to terrorists in Somalia have dried up the hawala businesses in places like Minnesota.   Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison is trying to change the laws so money (remittances) can continue to flow at the rate of $100 million a year to Somalia to help prop up the country.

Here is a lengthy and informative article on the latest news on money transfers from the Daily Planet:

For Aden Hassan, sending $100 a month to his uncle and cousins in Somalia felt like the least he could do. In January, as they were facing a drought-induced famine, most banks were closing accounts with Money Service Businesses, leaving him no way to help them.

Hassan said he felt guilty eating when he knew his family could be left without food or shelter without his support.

But now that a congressional subcommittee is developing a bill that will lower the financial and legal risks and costs banks encounter when holding accounts with MSBs, Hassan may soon find it easier to send money to his relatives.

“Right now the burden is on the banks to comply when really the burden should be on the wiring services,” said Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn.

Ellison said the bill would give banks more incentive to do business with MSBs.

Along with commercial banks, MSBs are audited frequently by government agencies, Ellison said. The Bank Secrecy Act puts more pressure on banks to be responsible for keeping records of transactions, when the responsibility should weigh on MSBs, Ellison said.

So, let’s see!—the poor fellow, Aden Hassan, who only wants to send $100 to an uncle every month happens to run a Money Service Business (aka hawala):

Both banks and MSBs have a responsibility to be audited by government agencies, said Hassan, a manager at Cedar-Riverside’s Kaah Express — one of more than 300 MSBs in Minnesota. However, Hassan said banks are more pressured to retrieve records of transactions.

$100 million a year!  And, not all hawalas are legitimate! 

Abdullahi Adan, a University of Minnesota graduate who sends money to his family in Somalia, said it’s necessary for Somalia to receive remittances in order for its economy to survive.

“The entire country relies on it,” Adan said.

The U.S. Treasury Department estimates remittances from American Somalis total $100 million per year.

“If you take this money out, there is no way that this community could supplement the money in remittances in the form of foreign aid,” Ellison said.

Somalia got about $9.3 million in foreign aid in 2011, according to Global Humanitarian Assistance.

“In reality the money transfer industry in Somalia is the only financial sector that really exists there,” said Adan.

[…..]

Adan acknowledged that the way some use hawalas may not be completely legitimate. [LOL! This is the second to the last line in the story—ed]