Category: blogging

RRW Monthly Roundup for January 2018

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Readers, I use these sporadic weekly or monthly roundups as an opportunity to write directly to you.
I think you will be interested to know what the top three posts of the month were for January, but I’m writing to tell you that I’m going away later this week and so posting will be lighter until I get back early next week.  I don’t want you to think I’ve quit!
Pushing onward toward July 2018 for RRW’s eleventh anniversary!
Before I get to those top posts, I want you to know that I had a good chuckle this morning about all the trolls this tweet (below) generated yesterday. I guess because I hash-tagged it with a trending tag #SuperBowlSunday it reached beyond my usual fan club.
I got messages about how racist I am (with foul language tossed in), how old I am (do I wear diapers? the ageists asked!) from some high IQ commenters who couldn’t spell or write. It was actually fun to see. Here is the tweet that apparently stirred them up.
I am @RefugeeWatcher….

Screenshot (1263)
Immigrants had been expressing fear of Humvees etc. This is what I linked to:  http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireStory/minneapolis-team-immigrants-informed-super-bowl-52807623

 

Here are the Top Three (actually four because there was a tie for #3) Posts of the month:

That Australia “dumb” deal takes the highest honors!

Australian rejected ‘refugees’ on the way to US this week!

Flight glitch causes some delay as Australia’s rejected ‘refugees’ head to US

Refugee numbers are low for first 3 months of fiscal year; Ohio is top receiving state

Minneapolis woman stabbed by Somali in mid-December is speaking out

 

For new readers……

You can find more information on how to use RRW by clicking here. (That is my mid-December roundup.)
And, you might want to look at my message here about your e-mail notices.  WordPress is telling me it isn’t on their end if you aren’t getting e-mails after subscribing. They tell me it is in your/our e-mail server (I’m not getting my e-mails from Leo Hohmann’s new site.)
Frankly there is more here at RRW then you get in e-mail, so why not just visit every day or so to see what is new.  https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/
Even if you aren’t tweeting yourself, you can see what I’ve tweeted most recently in the right hand side bar.
This post is filed in my ‘blogging’ category, here.

Message about your e-mail notices

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

rrw-logo-1I’m sorry if you signed up and subscribed to RRW and then without explanation you stop receiving those e-mail notices each time I post.  
Know that I can’t control those e-mails and have complained on many occasions to WordPress.  Another reader today alerted me to the problem. She, like most readers who stop getting the e-mails, think that I am (for some reason) not writing.
Additionally, some of you have said that you attempted to re-subscribe and cannot.
I don’t know if this is being done on purpose by WordPress, or your e-mail server has decided they don’t like my work, or simply a case of lousy service from WordPress.
But…..
I can’t emphasize this enough: please please just come to RRW directly and see what I have posted that day or the day before (or the day before that….).  You don’t need to wait for an e-mail!  And, besides there is so much more here at the blog itself than you get in an e-mail. Check out Frequently Asked Questions in the header for example.
Just put this in your favorites and visit every day (or every few days):
 https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/
Or, if you are on twitter, follow me because I put all of my posts there, plus a whole lot more news you can use!  I am @RefugeeWatcher (you will find me also by searching for Ann Corcoran).
Thank you!
Ann
 

Media Research Center Prez: "Shadow-banning most sinister threat to free speech in history"

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It is bad, but I’m not sure it is the worst threat to free speech.  In fact, if you aren’t a Twitter user you might not know what all the fuss is about.
If anyone asked me, I would say the worst threat is the kind of silencing that people like South Dakota’s Taneeza Islam use when they bully venues to shut down speaking events she and her ilk disapprove of by frightening owners/managers in to cancelling events. And, often frighten speakers in to silence.
That kind of intimidation is mean and personal and causes people to fear for their safety.
In America we have a right to speak and we have a right to gather!

bozell
Brent Bozell sent a letter to Twitter’s CEO demanding he address censorship by the social media platform.    https://www.cnsnews.com/blog/craig-bannister/bozell-letter-calls-twitter-ceo-condemn-address-shadow-banning-censorship

That said, let’s talk more about the stunning revelations this week from James O’Keefe who got the dirt on Twitter and shadow-banning—a less personal, but nonetheless serious threat to free speech.
And, it isn’t just about Twitter! Shadow-banning can be used in all sorts of situations where social media is taking the pulse of citizens’ views, as we mentioned when we talked about shadow-banning possibly being used by the Heritage Foundation, here.
Breitbart (Twitter Censorship!) has a good explanation here, but simply put this is how it works:

You post a comment, or tweet something, and you can see on your computer screen that the comment posted and you think your remark is being seen by the world, but no one else sees it but you!  

As Breitbart  says, the very best, most skillful, shadow-banning is when you are never the wiser about the fact that you are speaking to an audience of one!
Here is CNS News on Brent Bozell’s comments on O’Keefe’s latest :

Twitter’s practice of “shadow banning” conservative posts, exposed Thursday in a new James O’Keefe undercover video, constitutes “the most sinister threat to free speech in history,” Media Research President Brent Bozell warns in a statement reacting to the news.

The Project Veritas video, featuring current and former Twitter employees describing the social media giant’s shadow banning censorship tactics, prompted the previously-skeptical Bozell to issue a warning to all Americans:

“I have been a critic of some of James O’Keefe’s work in the past, so I have the credentials to say the following: What O’Keefe has produced is not just extraordinary but it demands national attention.

“If social media is the communications vehicle of the future — and it is — then this represents the most sinister threat to free speech in history. That is no exaggeration.

“The radical left is out to censor the voices of all with whom they disagree. O’Keefe has proven it. Every American needs to watch this — if, of course, Twitter will allow it.”

I’ve been shadow-banned by Twitter on a couple of occasions (maybe more times than I know before I caught on!), so now I am wise to them!
Without getting too deep in to the weeds and techie details, here is what I have found and what I do.
After each tweet that I consider important, I check the feed for my tweets and the analytics which is where each tweet is recorded and statistics are gathered. If it is missing there, I quickly go to the tweet on my screen (before it is lost in hundreds of new incoming tweets) and get a screenshot.
Then I do this as I did yesterday when I tweeted about the President’s supposed comments on certain countries.
I bring attention to the fact that Twitter shadow-banned me and I put a screenshot of the original tweet into a new tweet.  Like this…
 

Screenshot (1244)
By putting a photo of the tweet that ‘disappeared’ in another tweet, I alert my followers to dirty tricks by Twitter! And, likely end up with more interest than if Twitter had published it in the first place! So far, they haven’t shadow-banned my second attempt to get the message out.

 
If you are on Twitter, follow me (@RefugeeWatcher).  I tweet a lot of information that I have no time to write about in a post here at RRW.  And, you can see what I’m tweeting in the right hand side bar when you visit my blog directly.
This post is filed in my “free speech” category and in “blogging.”

2017 RRW year in review

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Happy New Year to all of my faithful readers (and new ones too)!

RRW celebrated its 10th anniversary this past summer and I can say, without a doubt, that this has been the most monumental year for the refugee industry for the decade I’ve been observing it.  And, of course, that is because Donald J. Trump resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Trump in oval office 2
We will be watching in the year ahead!

The Trump Administration has been busy making changes to the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program with a very definite America First! orientation and we expect that to continue in the year that began 8 hours ago.

There is much the President can do administratively to begin the process of reforming how we deal with the UN and how refugees are admitted to the US. But….
Just as President Trump is undoing many policies Obama put in place with his phone and his pen, a new President in 3 (or 7) years can undo Trump’s administrative changes, so I will continue to argue that in order to bring about real change in what is an extremely flawed system of admitting third worlders (they aren’t all legitimate refugees) permanently to the US, Congress will have to make changes in the law!
Will they have the guts in 2018 to tackle the USRAP? My guess is no (remember the Republican leadership is driven by the Chamber and its ilk and wants the compliant low wage workers for its donor corporations) unless you continue to demand that they do (and the President pushes it!).
At this point in time, I plan to continue your education about how the Refugee Program impacts your communities and your wallets because, frankly, it is now or never for abolishing (or if you prefer to say reforming) the system.

Top Posts!

Now to the Three Top (most read) Posts of 2017:
This top story just goes to show how much readers want to hear from people who are living with the problems created by a refugee program that ignores the views of citizens who must live with it. Tens of thousands of people read these blog posts:

Comment worth noting from St. Cloud, MN

Aberdeen update: Efforts abound in South Dakota to keep citizens in the dark about refugees

Repost: US Cases of refugees arrested or convicted on terror charges, and other heinous crimes

There were three most important ways readers came to RRW, first through search engines as readers were looking for ‘Refugee Resettlement Watch’ or ‘Ann Corcoran,‘ followed by facebook and then twitter—all three combining to send the most readers my way.

Top countries!

And, here (below in descending order) are the Top Ten Countries from which readers arrived at RRW in 2017.
I had some fun looking over the countries that sent readers to RRW for all time (WordPress only supplied that information a few years ago) and am delighted to report that of 195 countries in the world, only one was not represented.  That country was Western Sahara (Africa).  All other countries, including small Pacific island countries, had residents who visited RRW.
For 2017 (excluding the US):

Canada

UK

Australia

Germany

South Africa

Turkey

India

Malaysia

Netherlands

France

For new readers! 

Visit my mid-December round-up here to learn more about the rules of the road at RRW.
This post, and others like it, is filed in my ‘blogging’ category, here.  If you missed it, you might like to see the top ten posts of the last decade which I reported here last week.

Again, Happy New Year!

RRW Monthly Roundup for October 2017

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I haven’t done a monthly (or weekly) roundup for awhile and that is mostly because I always have so many more interesting things I want to write about in the time I give to my ‘hobby.’

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Thanks again to the SPLC for the lovely artwork and the award last year. Is their new honorees list out yet? I may have missed it!  https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2016/10/27/a-great-honor-splc-names-me-one-of-15-anti-muslim-extremists-in-america/

But, I figured it was about time to post a roundup because it gives me the opportunity to talk to new readers and remind old readers of how they can find information at RRW to get the most out of this educational website.

And, it gives me a place to apologize for my slowness in posting comments, for my inability to respond to all of your e-mails, and to thank you for sending notes, books and information to my snail mail post office box.

Accept my apologies if you have tried to reach me and have been unable to. 

LOL! Again! RRW is a one-woman blog not an organization with staff and interns!

Writing this roundup also gives me a chance to thank various media outlets/reporters who want to interview me, and apologize for my lack of enthusiasm to do it!  Sorry!

Here then are the Top Three Posts for the month of October for readers all over America and the world!

(Top posts of the last few days are in the right hand side bar, but these are the top three for the whole month!)

Comment worth noting from St. Cloud, MN

Pay attention! Your town could become St. Cloud too!

Greenfield: France is at war. That’s why there are soldiers in the streets.

 

I have readers from over 100 countries, but here are the Top Ten Countries excluding the USA from which visitors arrived here during the month of October 2017:

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For new and old readers:

If you are getting my posts daily via e-mail, know that wordpress sends those out automatically when you have subscribed.  I can’t control that.  But, I think you are missing a lot when you depend on only those e-mails for refugee news.

When you visit RRW directly by clicking here, you get more bang for your (free) buck including some links in the header like Frequently Asked Questions.

By the way, if you are new to how blogs work, the most recent post I wrote is the first thing you see when you open the blog, you can scroll down to previous posts literally back to the beginning if you have a whole lot of time!

In the left hand column at the very top is a search window.  Type a couple of key words in there and find loads of information in some of my 8,798 previous posts extending back to 2007.

You can see how to try to reach me.  And, you can see my facebook page feed in the left hand column. Categories, archives and a blog roll are also in that column (but apologies for a very out-of-date blog roll!).

In the right hand column you can see data on refugee admissions for FY17 (that has just ended) and my mission statement.  Scrolling down you will see recent posts, top posts for the last few days and my twitter feed (@RefugeeWatcher).  I put a lot more on twitter than I post at RRW, so there is more news to use right there!

Thank you for continuing to follow RRW!

This post and all previous weekly and monthly roundups are archived in my ‘blogging’ category, here.