Bulgaria’s Shipka Pass where Russians and Bulgarian volunteers held off the Ottoman Empire in 1877-78
This is so interesting, I wish I had time to really get into the history of Bulgaria and how it threw off Ottoman (Muslim) rule in the Russo-Turkish war for the liberation of Bulgaria in 1877-78.
Are the Turks once again moving in on their Christian neighbors and using Syrian refugees as the invading army?
I think so!
Here is the news story (yesterday) from Novinite (Sofia) that prompts my inquiry (emphasis and links added are mine):
About 200 people have blockaded Sunday the Shipka Pass in the Stara Planina Range in central Bulgaria in protest against opening a new refugee shelter in the town of Kazanlak.
The rally comes on the heels of news that the Bulgarian government plans to transform the unused building the police school into a refugee camp.
Last evening, an initiative committee was formed in the town with the participation of heads of large local enterprises, representatives of business, politicians from the municipality, NGOs and youth organizations to support the declaration of the local government, opposing the opening of the shelter.
The committee has decided to start a petition for a local referendum on the preservation of the school building as is and against making it a refugee camp. The second decision was to stage protest rallies and blockades of the Shipka Pass Sunday and Monday until the end of the emergency sitting of the central government.
Locals say they have nothing against the refugees and understand their plight, but stress the shelter will be detrimental to the beautiful nearby town park and will threaten national security as Arsenal Kazanlak, one of the largest military plants and weapons producers in Bulgaria, is located in the town.
[….]
Bulgaria is the gateway to the European Union for refugees fleeing Syria via Turkey, many crossing the border illegally to seek asylum.
Readers, it is up to Turkey to stop Syrians at their border (just like it’s up to Mexico to stop Central Americans from crossing into Mexico!). Turkey is obviously permitting the Syrians to move across Turkey and into Bulgaria. President Erdogan (Obama’s pal) is capable of stopping the flow into Bulgaria if he chose to!
We have been writing about Bulgaria and Syrians (click here) in recent weeks. I think the BBC needs to update its migration map—add in the Turkey to Bulgaria leg!
There is really nothing new, except maybe the number, in this piece about how the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is begging the West to get the Middle Easterners out of the Middle East.
Syrian refugees: Here we come! Photograph: Hadi Mizban/AP
Note that they mention Western countries which “have the means,” can afford an influx of poverty, but no mention of the RICH Islamic countries, most notably Saudi Arabia which has the money and the land to accommodate a couple hundred thousand or so of their fellow Muslims.
See first Daniel Pipes’ brilliant idea of keeping Muslims in their own cultural zones, here!
The U.N. refugee agency on Friday appealed to European and other states to grant asylum to more Syrians as increasing numbers flee their country in perilous journeys across the Mediterranean.
Naturally there is crisis-mongering about how people are dying trying to get across the Mediterranean from Libya, but not one word to suggest that the West clamp down on the now lawless Libya which allows the boats to launch from its shores. How about stationing some warships along the coast of Africa and sending some of the boat people back, or load them up and take them to the EMPTY UN state-of-the-art refugee camp Al-Azraq! The flow will quickly subside!
The U.N. agency has proposed that Western countries admit up to 30,000 Syrian refugees on resettlement, humanitarian admission, or other admission programmes by the end of 2014.
So far this year, 16 Western countries have pledged to resettle 10,240 Syrian refugees, including 500 announced by France this week, the UNHCR says. Germany accounts for 5,000.
“UNHCR is calling on countries that have the means to do so, in Europe or beyond, to offer solidarity through not only financing and other contributions, but through measures that would mean third-country resettlement and family reunifications,” Fleming said.
This civil war will end sooner or later, so why is it imperative to permanently move the ‘migrants’ to a third country, unless of course this is really about UN-facilitated Al Hijra!
US readers should make it clear to your elected officials in Washington that we can’t afford more imported poverty!
This is a very handy graphic published by the BBC (we like maps at RRW!). For new readers we have written extensively on the invasion of Europe by Middle Easterners and Africans for years, but this year has seen the greatest increase in the numbers trying to get to Italy as the number one destination. From there they hope to move on through Europe. For a chuckle, see yesterday’s poston cannibalism on the way to the land of free meals.
I see there is no major migration route to the Vatican in Rome, maybe we should spread a rumor that the Pope is “welcoming” the stranger!
Isn’t it great how the US and certain European countries destabilized Libya and made it the go-to place for illegal migrants wanting to get to Europe!
Scene Of Cannibalism For The Raft Of The Medusa by Theodore Gericault
They were only at sea for three days but, what the heck, rather than starve (hardly possible in three days is it?), one of the aliens took a chunk from a dead man. That is perhaps the most dramatic moment of this fascinating tale from a Somali migrant desperate to cross the Mediterranean and find a new life in the land of milk and honey—Italy!
The story is here at Vice.com and below are some excerpts. You decide if the storyteller is for real (but maybe first revisit, Greenfield on the Hyena Cure!) (Emphasis is mine)
On Tahrib!
Hassan Ali is a 23-year-old Somali who survived gun battles and poverty in his youth in his native country before deciding in 2009 to embark on Tahrib, the perilous journey from Africa to the Italian island of Lampedusa.Thousands of Somalis make this trip every year, and this month it made headlines after a boat caught fire and capsized on October 3, killing over 300 would-be immigrants. Eight days later, a different vessel capsized in an accident that claimed at least 34 lives. Here, Hassan speaks about his troubled life before the trip and the horrors he experienced en route to Europe.
The cannibalism didn’t start until our second boat journey, from Libya to Lampedusa. We had already been traveling for ten days; people were dying and there was no food. I actually saw one guy cutting a piece of flesh from another man’s body.
Our Ali wanted to be an astronaut, but that wasn’t (understandably) possible in his home town in Somalia where squabbling clans were bringing AK-47s to mosques and shooting at ten-year-olds racing home. So, our young and desperate adventurer, upon reaching the age of 19, found enough friends and relatives to front him $800 to go on Tahrib (described as attempting to get to Europe, but one definition I saw was that it translated to ‘smuggling’—being smuggled or doing the smuggling wasn’t clear).
Mom thought he was crazy! That is what all Moms say!
I first heard about Tahrib on the radio when I was 19. There were people in Europe talking about their new lives and how they’d traveled there from Somalia by boat. It sounded like a good idea. After a while I told my parents I planned to leave. They were shocked. “Are you mad?” my mother said. “You’re a young boy, what has gotten into you?” I told them how I thought Tahrib was my only way forward, that I could only find a better life in Europe. They thought I was joking. When I called them from the first boat months later, they were terrified.
First boat was bad, but no cannibalism yet!
Our first trip was from Beled Hawo to Bosaso, a port city on the northern shore of Somalia. It wasn’t the worst journey, but we had hardly any food and the people who drove us there were being very cruel, shouting at us and hitting people occasionally. I was only a kid [editors note: Somalis are “kids” for a long time, I noticed that when they were leaving Minneapolis to join al-Shabaab, kids, just kids!] —I missed my hometown already and everyone seemed so sad even though they were heading off for this exciting new life.
Captured by Libyan armed men who extracted $300 from Mom and Dad for Ali’s release and then on to the merry Tahrib again!
All I wanted was to be back in Beled Hawo with my parents. I didn’t care if I ever made it to Europe. Even if, miraculously, we survived the journey, how would the Europeans treat us? Would I get a visa? Would I be thrown in jail? I was terrified.
The trip across the Mediterranean was the worst part—people were dropping dead and others needed a little protein with their bread and biscuits.
It took another ten days to find a boat from Libya to Lampedusa. Then the real horror began. There was only bread and biscuits on board and the heat was unbearable. People were dropping dead and the captain did nothing. People started eating each other: it was like something from a scary movie right in front of my eyes. That leg of the journey took three days. It felt like years.
Ali, the would-be astronaut, knows who to blame for all of this horror—politicians who don’t help Somalia! Of course that is the moral of the story after all! Ali continues:
Everyone knows that politicians in Europe and Africa are doing nowhere near enough to address the dangers of Tahrib. Otherwise all those people would not have died near Lampedusa this month. No one is addressing the real issues—the violence, the poverty—that led me away from Somalia.[Here is an idea—-how about if Somalis get their own house in order!—ed]
Postscript! Italy let me rebuild my life—-back in Somalia! WTH!
People tell me Lampedusa is beautiful. I have no idea. I can barely remember any of the landscape I saw: everything was so terrifying. But, Alhamdulillah [praise to God], I made it there alive and, amazingly, got an Italian visa after three months of being held at a camp. Some people I traveled with waited years and others never got one. I love Italy, though. I lived there for three years and made a small living working in various jobs. I may never be an astronaut but Italy let me rebuild a life that was destroyed. I’m back in Somalia now—not in Beled Hawo but another city. I hope I get to visit Italy again some day.
We’ve been patiently waiting to learn if any of America’s contributions to al-Shabaab (aka al-Shabab) have been identified as among those responsible for the Kenyan mall massacre nearly a month ago.
One of the Westgate Somali killers caught on surveillance camera looking for his next victim.
Here is the latest report on the Norwegian citizen/Somali refugee believed to have been involved. From the BBC(hat tip: Ed). Emphasis is mine:
The man being investigated by Norwegian police over the attack on Kenya’s Westgate shopping centre is Hassan Abdi Dhuhulow, BBC Newsnight has learned.
The 23-year-old Norwegian citizen of Somali origin is suspected of helping to plan and carry out the attack.
BBC Newsnight has spoken to a relative of his in Norway who said he left the town of Larvik for Somalia in 2009.
At least 67 people died in the attack in Nairobi, which the al-Qaeda linked group al-Shabab says it carried out.
Last week Norway’s intelligence agency, the PST, said it had sent officers to Kenya to verify reports that a Norwegian citizen had been involved in the assault on the shopping centre, which began on Saturday 21 September and lasted four days.
He grew up in Norway!
Dhuhulow was born in Somalia, but he and his family moved to Norway as refugees in 1999.
There is a lot of mumbo-jumbo in the story along the lines of disenfranchised youths (dumb and naive), but nothing in the text about the Islamic Jihad imperative that is really driving crime of this horrific nature worldwide. However, watch the BBC film and note that a neighbor says he was talking about the Koran all the time.
And, I’ve been wondering what the heck is taking so long to ID any bodies that might have been the attackers. The BBC tells us this:
Forensic investigators are still combing through the rubble of Westgate – no bodies have yet been identified and it is not known whether the attackers are alive or dead.
Boxes of body parts sent to Kenyan morgue!
In a related story just this morning, foreign forensic teams have arrived at a Nairobi mortuary to attempt to identify the remains of what some believe are the killers.
NAIROBI, Kenya – Officials in Kenya say two boxes of charred body parts have been delivered to the city morgue from Westgate Mall and that four AK-47 assault rifles were found alongside the remains. Gunmen stormed the mall on Sept. 21, killing more than 60 people.
A city morgue official told The Associated Press that the two boxes arrived Thursday, and that a team of foreigners padlocked the boxes Friday.
Amazingly, several of these reports are now referring to only 4 men having pulled off this slaughter. Surely these four were not the brains of the operation.
Just wondering if they let Anders Breivik in on this latest news?
