Category: Africa

No family Thanksgiving at the White House for Auntie Zeituni

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Associated Press has a story, linked on Drudge, that updates us about President Obama’s Aunt Zeituni Onyango.  She is the Aunt who was living illegally in the US and almost became an election-eve nightmare for candidate Obama.  According to this story, only George Bush saved Onyango and Obama from a major political trainwreck days before the November 2008 election.  

We reported previously, here, here and here, about Auntie’s deportation order and her life in Boston subsidized housing.  Actually we have a bunch more posts on her case, but those three links should give you adequate background.

From time to time Rush Limbaugh will point out how Obama (now rich from his Bill Ayers written book), the defender of the poor and downtrodden, has left his impoverished brother in a tiny hut in Kenya and this story about Obama having nothing to do with Aunt Zeituni further demonstrates the point.   Leftwing leaders talk a good game about helping the poor but don’t do a whole hell of a lot personally.

At this point Aunt Zeituni is not a political liability to Obama because she is not hiding out, she is pursuing remaining legal options.*  Therefore, Obama’s apparent abandonment of her only serves to make Obama look like a chicken and a cheapskate.

How many readers, even those of you who think she was wrong for skirting the law, would object to Obama paying for her housing and food rather than the US and Massachusetts’ taxpayers footing the bill?   And, heck, he should have had her to Thanksgiving dinner!   (Since she says she hasn’t seen Obama since his inauguration we assume she was not among the “extended family” at the White House dinner.)

Here is the AP story:

BOSTON – President Barack Obama’s aunt buried her face in her hands and sobbed as she described her anguish over no longer having contact with him and his family after the revelation she had been living illegally for years in the United States in public housing.

Zeituni Onyango (zay-TUH’-nee awn-YAHN’-goh) told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview that she is troubled that her immigration woes have made her a political liability to her nephew.

Onyango, the half sister of Obama’s late father, said she has exiled herself from the family after attending Obama’s inauguration because she didn’t want to become fodder for his foes. Obama and his family have not reached out to her either, she said.

“Before, we were family. But right now, there is a lot of politics, and me, I am not interested in any politics at all,” said Onyango, whose appeal for asylum from her native Kenya is before an immigration judge in Boston.

There is no way Obama didn’t know her immigration status when they were previously so close.

Onyango said she previously had no trouble visiting Obama when he was a state senator in Illinois or after he became a U.S. senator, though she declined to discuss details of how often she had contact with Obama and his family. Her tiny apartment in a modest subsidized public housing complex for seniors and the disabled is adorned with photographs of her with Obama at the Illinois Statehouse, the president’s official portrait, his family, the inauguration, her children and African wildlife.

George Bush is her number one man!

Onyango reserved special words of kindness for former President George W. Bush for a directive he put in place days before the election requiring federal agents get high-level approval to arrest fugitive immigrants, which directly affected Onyango. The directive made clear that U.S. officials worried about possible election implications of arresting Onyango.

She said she wants to thank Bush in person for the order, which gave her a measure of peace but was lifted weeks later.

“I loved President Bush,” Onyango said while moving toward a framed photo of Bush and his wife standing with Barack and Michelle Obama at the White House on inauguration day. “He is my No. 1 man in my life because he helped me when I really needed that help.”

I’ll betcha George Bush would have invited her to his Thanksgiving dinner if she had been his Auntie.

* She will have a hard time convincing a judge she would be persecuted in Kenya where the Obama’s are rock stars!

Somalis using Obama photo for target practice

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is an AP story that appeared in the Boston Globe BEFORE OBAMA’S ANNOUNCEMENT LAST NIGHT that is really a re-hash of the missing Somali (former refugees) youth story from Minnesota.  You can just imagine what the Jihadists are doing to Obama’s photo this a.m.*   Entitled “Somali camps may pose threat to US,” it begins:

MOGADISHU, Somalia – The recruits gather in scorching desert hideouts in Somalia, use portraits of President Obama for target practice, learn how to make and detonate bombs, and vow allegiance to Osama bin Laden.

Training camps in the lawless nation of Somalia are attracting hundreds of foreigners, including Americans, and Somalis recruited by a local insurgent group linked to Al Qaeda, according to local and US officials. American officials and private analysts say the camps pose a security threat far beyond the borders of Somalia, including to the US homeland.

In interviews, former trainees gave rare details on the camps, which are scattered along desert footpaths, rutted roads, and steamy coastal dens. They say the recruits are told the United States is the enemy of Islam.

US and Somali officials say Somalia’s Al Shabab jihadist, or holy war, movement is growing, and uses foreign trainers with battlefield experience from other conflicts.

The threat posed by the training camps was underscored in federal court documents unsealed Nov. 23 in Minneapolis, home to a large ethnic Somali community. An indictment against several Somali-Americans who allegedly fought in Somalia said trainees at one camp included dozens of ethnic Somalis from Somalia, other African countries, Europe, and the United States.

[….]

“The message is simple,’’ Dahir Muhiyadiin, 18, said three months after finishing his training at a camp run by Somalia’s main insurgent group. “We are taught how the Western infidels want to eradicate pure Muslims, about how the US government does nothing as Israel harasses our Muslim Palestinians.’’

*Remember too how the American Al-Shabaab laughed at Obama here.

Saudi war with Yemen continues, Somalis involved somehow

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update December 6th:  Jerry Gordon at New English Review has an update on this story today.  All I can say is I hope the US government just lets these Muslims fight it out among themselves!

This is a story that sure isn’t appearing in any widespread way in the media, but we told you about it here recently.   Saudi Arabia, a hardline Sunni country, is trying to make sure that  none of those riff-raff—Shia Muslims from Yemen—get into Saudi territory.  This is one more news account, but I was interested to see that Somalis (Muslims too) were taken as prisoners.  What is up with that?  Are they refugees caught in the crossfire or are they fighting with the Yeminis? 

Saudi Arabia says it has captured a strategic mountain area near its border with Yemen from Yemeni Shia rebels.

Saudi forces detained about 150 Ethiopians and Somalis as prisoners of war as they cleared the area, Saudi Arabia’s deputy defence minister said.

The Houthi rebels denied that the area, which is known as Jabal al-Dood or Jabal Mudood, had been taken.

They also said they had no connection with the Somalis and Ethiopians who had been taken prisoner.

My point in raising the issue is to further demonstrate the lie that Muslim charity toward refugees is the historical underpinning of the refugee program as the UNHCR told us here.   I won’t be holding my breath waiting for the UNHCR to step in and demand the Saudis not mistreat the poor persecuted Somalis and Ethiopians they have captured.  Readers let me know if you see that news story!

Oh, and one more thing, I guess this means that Saudi Arabia has not bought into the United Nations and Far Leftwing concept of a borderless world.

LA Times: (at least) two views from Little Mogadishu

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Another take on this article is here, by Brenda Walker at VDARE.

The Los Angeles Times has an analysis of what might have prompted Somali former refugees to trade their lives in Minneapolis (aka Little Mogadishu) for life in the real war-torn hell-hole, Mogadishu.  I don’t really buy the ‘youths trying to find themselves’ angle or the ‘poverty made them do it’ excuse.   As a matter of fact, other refugees from other nations also live in poverty and they don’t take up arms and dash off to terrorist training camps.  The article doesn’t say much about the patriotism angle we often hear, and barely touches on what I believe is the real reason—they responded to the call of Allah.

In any case, please read this article, it’s more than the usual boilerplate story we have seen on this topic because it gives us some new information, even if for some it may get your blood pressure up! 

Here is how it begins, little Moghadishu—a neighborhood Mark Twain would not recognize!

Reporting from Minneapolis – Barely a block from the Mississippi River sits a neighborhood Mark Twain could not have imagined.

Men with henna-streaked beards and women in full-body hijabs streamed Tuesday past the Maashaa Allah Restaurant, the Alle Aamin Coffee Shop, the Kaah Express Money Wiring stall, the storefront Al-Qaaniteen Mosque and other similar structures.

“When I came here as a refugee in 1995, there were just a few hundred Somalis, and we were very alone,” said Adar Kahin, 48, who was a famous singer back home and now volunteers at a local community center.

“Now everyone is here,” she said cheerfully. “It’s like being back in Mogadishu. That’s what we call it, Little Mogadishu.”

Then here we go with the FBI promoting the ‘poverty made them do it’ excuse.

For the FBI, Little Mogadishu has become the center of an intense investigation into a recruiting network that sent young men to fight in Somalia for a radical Islamist group known as Shabab, or “the Youth.”

Investigators say the poverty, grim gang wars and overpacked public housing towers produced one of the largest militant operations in the United States since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Trying to find their identities, some ‘youths’ applaud the Jihadists who called America the land of the devil and others don’t.

Outside the Brian Coyle Community Center, five young men who emigrated from Somalia as toddlers huddled in black hoodies under a cold, clammy fog that turned the day dull gray. They shared smokes and spoke of those who had joined the jihad, or holy war.

“Some of them felt America is the land of the devil,” said Said Ali, who is 20, rail-thin and jobless. “They were losing their culture, their language and their religion. They’ve got family there. They feel at home.”

If he had the money, he said, he would go to Somalia too.

“My friend went,” he said. “He’s running a hotel. He carries an AK-47. He’s living life good.”

Ali Mohamed, also 20 and unemployed, jumped in. “These guys are blowing up women and kids,” he said. “That ain’t right.”

The difficult search for identity is an old story in this area.

This is new information: the radical cleric who is thought to have influenced Major Nidal Hasan is fingered in this article by none other than our old buddy Omar Jamal.  I wouldn’t put it past Jamal to shift the attention away from the mosque in Minnesota to an Imam in Yemen.

Some members of the group that went to Somalia were said to be followers of Anwar al Awlaki, an American-born firebrand imam who preaches on the Internet in flawless English about the need to fight for Islam.

Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the accused killer of 13 people at Ft. Hood in Texas this month, had exchanged e-mails with Awlaki, who is based in Yemen.

Omar Jamal, director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center here, said Awlaki’s fierce sermons helped inspire several of the youths who later joined Shabab in Somalia. Awlaki has praised the militia, which U.S. officials say is allied with Al Qaeda.

“They exchanged messages on his blog,” Jamal said. “They prayed for him. They watched his videos. They fell under his spell of influence.”

Finally at the end, a hint about the real reason these youths joined the Jihad—the mosque and the call of Allah.

“All these guys who left, we looked up to,” Bosir said. “When we came here to play basketball, they would go to the mosque. And somehow, they got brainwashed. And now they’re dead.”

Just a reminder to readers, we learned from Zakaria Maruf, one of the  missing (maybe now dead) youths, that they heard the call of Allah.

If only we citizens and people in authority in places like the FBI, would start to focus on the real reason (religion) and not try to analyze this in terms of our view of the world, we might actually avert Islamic radicalization and inevitable terrorist attacks.  These Somalis don’t care about patriotism or material things, two main driving forces in American society, they care about creating an Islamic caliphate across the globe!

For new readers :

The US State Department has admitted over 80,000 Somali refugees to the US in the last 25 years and then last year had to suspend family reunification because widespread immigration fraud was revealed through DNA testing.  That specific program has not yet been reopened, but will be soon.  Nevertheless, thousands of Somalis continue to be resettled as I write this.

Who fingered Zakaria Maruf?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

That is a question I asked last summer, here, when Andrea Elliot in a lengthy New York Times story on the missing Somali youth case reported that Maruf was thought to be THE recruiter.  Funny thing is, Maruf, is believed to have been killed in Somalia within the same two or three day period that the NYT went to press with the story. 

So, either someone was trying to throw off the investigation and gave erroneous information to the NYT and then “killed” Maruf off either in fact  (sacrificed for the good of Allah) or in fiction;  or suspicions arose about Maruf talking (bragging?) and he was ‘offed’  by Al Shabaab to shut him up.   In either case, I found it interesting that Maruf is still listed among the living in the Press Release yesterday from the FBI.

If someone else (other than Maruf himself) told the NYT he was the recruiter, I would be grilling that person real hard.

See what his sister told RRW in a comment in July, here.

Now, visit Andrea Elliot’s New York Times piece on yesterday’s announcement—not a mention of Zakaria Maruf, a man who played a large role in her July story. What is up with that?

A final thought, then I have to get to work on some boring posts.  I find it interesting that none of the reports on the Somali terror case ever mention how the Somalis got here in the first place.  A reader unfamiliar with the refugee resettlement program would think they just arrived here one day.   That is why I put this little explanation at the end of many of these Somali posts.

Hope springs eternal that one day a mainstream media reporter will actually inform readers about how we, the US State Department through many Administrations, selected these Somalis and brought them here.

For new readers :

The US State Department has admitted over 80,000 Somali refugees to the US in the last 25 years and then last year had to suspend family reunification because widespread immigration fraud was revealed through DNA testing.  That specific program has not yet been reopened, but will be soon.  Nevertheless, thousands of Somalis continue to be resettled as I write this.