Category: Other Immigration

Sleeper terrorists among us?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I wasn’t sure whether to post this article from FrontPage Magazine, because I wasn’t sure the man interviewed, Dave Glaubatz, was quite credible.  I’m not sure why; it’s just a feeling.  Glaubatz is a counterterrorism expert and the author of Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld that’s Conspiring to Islamize America. His son actually infiltrated CAIR as a fake Muslim convert for several months, gaining access to the highest levels. Dave Glaubatz says:

I just returned from DC, MD, PA, WV, VA, and NJ conducting various counter-terrorism (CT) research.  I would like to say that while various realms of our government are doing an outstanding job in protecting our families from future Islamic based terrorist attacks, we have several serious problems.

….I am beginning to see more and more violent material published and distributed to young Muslim children advocating killing Jews and Christians, and how to conduct treason/sedition inside America and to ultimately take our country down as we know it.

CAIR (Muslim Brotherhood) strongly informs its followers to not assist our law enforcement agencies and to not conduct slander and backbiting against Islamic leaders. Within Sharia law there are severe penalties for undermining the efforts of the ‘Islamic Ummah’ (Nation) and their specific target of a worldwide Ummah under Sharia law.

I have been provided hundreds of DVD’s originally videotaped by Islamic terrorist groups while they conducted torture and killings of people (even Muslims) who have helped their enemies (Israel, America, UK, Canada, etc…) to further (in their opinion) oppress the Muslim Ummah.

He provides some of the gory details on those videos, which I am not going to repeat here. Glaubatz says further:

For many years I have tracked the materials coming into America from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan specifically.  Based on my research, these two countries are responsible for distributing jihadi materials, not just to adults, but to Muslim youth right here in America.

The message is clear: “Islam is a religion of Jihad, in peace and in war. Jihad is one of the noblest principles of Islam.” The manual where this message is found is titled, “A Guide for The Young Muslim.” The manual further describes Jihad as being physical fighting against their enemies and oppressors. It is admired to be a “martyr.” This book was found in northern VA, and a CAIR pamphlet was beside it.

There’s more. The reason I decided to post on this is that I am thinking about Iran’s threat to do something big tomorrow, February 11.  I’ve wondered off and on what it could be ever since I heard of it. Then someone sent me this post by Alan Peters on what we should expect on February 11.  Note this:

 Some estimated 40,000 Islamist suicide bombers have been gathered in the USA over the past 15-years, newly trained ones have been entering under a variety of visas in a steady flow during the last few years and are waiting instructins to deploy.

Then he goes into the possibilities of what they might do.

I don’t know any of these people from Adam, and I don’t know what they really know and what is sensationalism. Furthermore, the people Glaubatz is talking about are all Sunnis and Iranians are Shiahs. Are these thousands of stealth suicide bombers going to respond to orders from Iran?  But because these two things I read sort of go together, and because I’m anxious about whether Iran really will do something important tomorrow, I’m posting them for you.  Along with this question: Is it really a good idea to continue to bring in Muslim refugees by the tens of thousands?

Tancredo kerfuffle at the Nashville Tea Party Convention in Nashville

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update February 22nd:  CAIR criticizes Tancredo, here.

Tom Tancredo (I wrote about him here two days ago) spoke at the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville on Thursday night and caused a stir in the mainstream media for remarks he made about how immigrants need to know how to speak English before voting.

I laughed that he did this in Nashville where businesses and leftwing open borders groups had joined forces in a heavily funded ( I researched the funding at one point and it was huge) campaign last year to defeat English-only for Nashville.

He also called Obama a socialist.   Here is a portion of a text of an e-mail from Bay Buchanan a colleague of former US Representative Tom Tancredo at Team America:

The other night, Tom gave the opening remarks at the Tea Party Convention in Nashville. And the controversy was immediate. Not with attendees, let me clarify; they gave Tom three standing ovations.

He was so great! Speaking from his heart, as Tom always does, he spoke of the Founding Fathers and how they were part of a country divided into three groups–the Patriots, the Tories, and those who didn’t care. It is no different today, Tom told the crowd. Today’s Patriots, including the attendees of this convention, are fighting for our Republic, our religion and our civilization.

But those that won this election, Obama and his Democratic cronies in Washington, will bring about the destruction of our Republic if they have their way. And then there are those who don’t want to get involved in the battle.

We can’t worry about those who don’t care, Tom said, we must focus on winning this fight. We can do it, but only if we give it everything we have, and not give up until we have won. The stakes are too high for us to do less. But it can be done, and the great spontaneous uprising that has been spawned by Obama and his left wing policies proves we can win!

Tom called for the US to change the law on who can and can not vote. He said in this past election, people who couldn’t even spell “vote” or say it in English voted in our election and they voted for Obama, a “committed socialist ideologue.” He called for “Civics Literacy” tests for all citizens who want to vote.

It was this paragraph that got most of the press’ attention. The media still can’t abide any reference to Obama as a Socialist and they were laying in wait to characterize the Tea Party as racist and extremist. But there is no denying the fact that President Obama is a “committed socialist ideologue!“

And no matter how radical the Left attempts to portray Tom, the Tea Party or Americans who went to the town hall meetings and rallies and voted to throw out the Democrats in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts, they can’t change the fact that the revolution has begun. And Tom and Team America is going to do everything we can to keep it rolling, and we will not stop until American Patriots have taken the reins of power from the establishment politicians in both parties.

And I know we can count on you to be right by our sides in this battle for the heart and soul of our nation. Tom has been asked by a number of Tea Party leaders to speak to their state conventions and he has agreed to go wherever he can help build this movement.

We will let you know as soon as Tom’s speech is up on YouTube, so you can see it for yourself.

I’ll post the link to his speech when I find that it is posted at YouTube, and we can all see what the fuss is about.   From what I know about Tea Partiers, his speech hit the mark.   Immigration is a big issue for conservative grassroots who got their first taste of power in the summer of 2007 when the Kennedy/McCain amnesty bill went down to defeat because of a citizens’ revolt against it.

Brown victory in Massachusetts sends open borders advocates back to square one

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This AP article is already two weeks old, but thanks to FAIR (Federation for Immigration Reform) for bringing it to my attention.  I had been wondering where Massachusetts new Senator stood on Immigration and now I guess we know!

BOSTON—For months, immigrant advocacy groups like the Chelsea Collaborative and Berkshire Immigrant Center have been gearing up to push lawmakers on state and federal immigration reforms.

They’ve held statewide forums, marched in Washington, D.C., and organized rallies with hopes of seeing the major immigration overhaul promised by Gov. Deval Patrick and President Barack Obama.

But after the historic election victory of Republican Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate, those illusions may be evaporating. Political observers say Brown, who ran on a platform opposing some of those reforms, has emboldened conservative voters, and they will likely table reforms in the near future.

“Much of the angry and frustration of voters, particularly those on the right, are clearly aligned with forces that oppose immigration reform,” said Paul Watanabe, a political science professor at University of Massachusetts-Boston. “They are vocal opponents of anything other than enforcement.”

Watanabe said it’s now doubtful that Patrick and state lawmakers will spend political capital pushing any controversial proposals in an election year shortly after Brown’s victory.

Patrick has said he is planning to seek re-election this fall, but is struggling with sagging poll numbers.

During his campaign, Brown said he opposed granting driver’s licenses and in-state tuition rates to illegal immigrants — ideas Patrick vowed to support in November after receiving recommendations from an advisory panel. As a state senator, Brown also introduced legislation that would have required proof of citizenship or right to work in the U.S. for wage enforcement cases.

“His record is concerning,” said Eva Millona, executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrants & Refugee Advocacy Coalition, a group that represents 130 immigrant groups.

So, who are these lobbyists at the Massachusetts Immigrants & Refugee Advocacy Coalition (MIRA), I wanted to know.   I checked their website here. Then, as usual, I went to their most recent Form 990, here.  Note that they are operating on about $1.5 million in donations, from whom, I can’t tell.  But, I noticed the name of the head honcho —Ali Noorani.   Where had I seen that name before?  Here, I had written about Noorani, a Pakistani Muslim, now head of the National Immigration Forum here (and note here in this old Discover the Networks summary about the Forum, their is Soros funding involved).   I sure hope MIRA isn’t taking foreign funding, that wouldn’t look so hot.

I found that Ali Noorani has incorporated three non-profits in Massachusetts (site won’t let me link it, you can check it out yourself).  There is no incorporation for MIRA though but its address is the same as one of the three others Noorani incorporated with the Mass. Secretary of States Office.   I think I’ll have to do a little more exploration into this puzzling turn of events tomorrow (if the blizzard doesn’t shut me down!).

And, here we have Noorani and Grover Norquist  sharing the podium at the ‘Storming the Hill’ conference  in Washington last June where business leaders pushed for Amnesty.  I wrote about that meeting, here, in July.

Then, I had to laugh, the AP article says Gov. Deval Patrick (concerned for his deteriorating poll numbers) has backed off of his earlier immigration reform proposals.  But, check this out at the blog 24 Ahead, it wasn’t too long ago that Patrick had 131 DEMANDS for immigration reform.

Omar Hammami, Alabama boy turned Shabab leader in Somalia

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Jihadist Next Door is the title the New York Times magazine gives to a long article by Andrea Elliott about a seemingly normal young man from Alabama named Omar Hammami who gradually became a radical Muslim. He went to Somalia, became a leader, and now puts out propaganda videos to recruit others to his cause under the name Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki. Ann has posted on him many times.

Unlike the Somalis from Minnesota who answered the call to jihad, Omar Hammami was thoroughly American. His father came to the U.S. from Syria in 1972 and his mother is a native Alabaman, a Christian who raised her children as Christians, though the father continued to practice Islam. Omar was gifted, popular, and funny, a natural leader with an energetic, magnetic personality and a beautiful girlfriend.

During the summer before his sophomore year he visited his father’s family in Damascus, and the trip made a lasting impression. Gradually over the next couple of years he became a Muslim, and even persuaded some other students to explore Islam; at least one converted. He got permission to pray in school; he swore at a longtime teacher he liked because she was Jewish; he tried to choke a student who interrupted him as he was reciting the Koran. He even defended Osama bin Laden in class — before 9/11 but after the 1998 bombings of U.S. Embassies in Africa, for which bin Laden claimed responsibility.

In college he attended mosque, and he became president of “the fledgling Muslim Student Association.” If the writer had looked into the MSA, at Discover the Networks for instance, she would have learned that it was established by the Muslim Brotherhood and “was named in a May 1991 Muslim Brotherhood memorandum as one of the Brotherhood’s likeminded ‘organizations of our friends’ who shared the common goal of destroying America and turning it into a Muslim nation.”  Not a casual group of Muslim students, in other words. A few years later he had become a full-fledged jihadist.

In the three years since Hammami made his way to Somalia, his ascent into the Shabab’s leadership has put him in a class of his own, according to United States law-enforcement and intelligence officials. While other American terror suspects have drawn greater publicity, Hammami exercises a more powerful role, commanding guerrilla forces in the field, organizing attacks and plotting strategy with Qaeda operatives, the officials said. He has also emerged as something of a jihadist icon, starring in a recruitment campaign that has helped draw hundreds of foreign fighters to Somalia. “To have an American citizen that has risen to this kind of a rank in a terrorist organization ­— we have not seen that before,” a senior American law-enforcement official said earlier this month.

The article is excruciatingly long, as NYT Magazine articles tend to be, but if you stick with it, you get a pretty good account of Omar’s radicalization at a personal level. The emphasis is on his personal journey, the path that led him deeper and deeper into radical Islam, with some suggestions about what motivated him psychologically. On the other hand, you come up almost empty if you’re looking for the pressures to radicalize that face Muslims in America today, and the reasons the number of homegrown terrorists is increasing.  

America is now at a watershed. In the last year, at least two dozen men in the United States have been charged with terrorism-related offenses. They include Najibullah Zazi, the Afghan immigrant driver in Denver who authorities say was conspiring to carry out a domestic attack; David Coleman Headley, a Pakistani-American from Chicago who is suspected of helping plan the 2008 attacks in Mumbai; and the five young men from Virginia who, authorities say, sought training in Pakistan to fight American soldiers in Afghanistan.

These cases have sent intelligence analysts scurrying for answers. The American suspects come from different backgrounds and socioeconomic strata, but they share much in common with Europe’s militants: they tend to be highly motivated, even gifted people who were reared in the West with one foot in the Muslim world. Others may see them as rigid or zealous, but they envision themselves as deeply principled, possessing what Robert Pape, a professor at the University of Chicago, calls “an altruism gone wildly wrong.” While their religious piety varies, they are most often bonded by a politically driven anger that has deepened as America’s war against terrorism endures its ninth year.

I don’t believe in “politically driven” anger.  There’s anger, and then there are reasons to latch onto to justify the anger. Or there is energy and ambition, and there is a cause that can make use of the energy and fulfill the ambition.The political cause is a rationalization, in other words. Here’s my take, for what it’s worth, and very briefly:

It was not family influence that made a jihadist of Omar Hammami. His Muslim father was of the generation that came here for economic opportunity. Already from an educated family in Syria, he came to Alabama to go to college, and assimilated well enough that he married a Christian woman, agreed that she didn’t have to convert, and seemed to have no problem that she was raising the children in a Christian church. He seems bewildered and upset about his son. Here as in Europe, it is the next generation that is producing jihadists. What is different?

One difference is that now there is an open jihad. That’s exciting to young men who are looking for excitement and a way to use their energy and talents. It has had some successes, so joining it seems like a possible career with a future. Or if one’s future is cut short, there is glory aplenty.

Leading up to the jihad are two developments that work together to give young Muslim men a motive to join it. One is that American mosques are filled with propaganda from Saudi Arabia, pushing them into a more radical form of Islam. The curriculum of Islamic schools is filled with such propaganda — anti-American, anti-Jewish, anti-Christian in the most vicious way. Omar Hammami did not become interested in politics and jihad until after he went to college, where there were both a mosque and the Muslim Students Association to help him along the way. (Not that every mosque is radical, but the number that are is huge.) There was also a Muslim convert who taught him Salafism. Salafi is a movement back to the fundamentals of Islam. (Giving you a good idea of the reporter’s orientation, the article quotes a Princeton professor: “They remind me a lot of Scalia in their approach to texts.”) Originally Salafi was not related to violence, and in fact prescribed staying away from worldly concerns. In the U.S. especially it is often associated with jihadism. Omar’s mentor did not promote violence, but Omar gradually decided that Salafism was consonant with violent jihad. He encountered many other influences which the reporter doesn’t investigate. It’s clear that anyone who becomes interested in jihad will find countless web sites, YouTube videos, and organizations that will help him along. This reporter wanted to concentrate on Omar’s personal story, which is fine, but I’d like to see the New York Times give some emphasis to this side of jihad recruitment.

The other development is that there is very little in a young person’s education nowadays to give him much meaning. All teenagers are searching for meaning in their lives — all people are, in fact, but especially young people. Yet children in the public schools are taught throughout their schooling that our country isn’t much good, we are oppressors and are destroying the environment and making a world that won’t be any good in the future. Boys are discouraged from acting like boys and encouraged to squelch their natural impulses to fight and to develop their physical skills (unless they are athletes). What is there to get excited about? Not joining the armed forces and defending your country. Unless there is motivation from your family, why should you? And if you do, you’ve got to put up with a bunch of girls and pretend they’re just as good physically as you are. Not the kind of thing to attract idealistic boys if there’s an alternative being waved in front of your face.

This second point is something the reporter could have dealt with in her context of Omar’s story. She sort of hints at it, but I think it is something she can’t recognize. The culture in which she swims thoroughly approves of the radicalization of school curricula and the feminization of America’s institutions including the military. The dark side of these things is not something she would easily recognize. I wonder if any of the intelligence analysts searching for the roots of homegrown jihadism recognize it.

Jihad Watch has a post on the article, with more excerpts and less commentary than this one, if you want to get more of the content without having to wade through the whole article.

US Conference of Catholic Bishops lobbying for Obamacare and Amnesty

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops(USCCB) is one of the largest of the Top Ten (now nine) federal refugee resettlement government contractors.   Most people are shocked when they first learn that US taxpayers give tens of million of dollars to the ‘religious’ organization each year to bring impoverished immigrants to their towns.  We have addressed the USCCB, its funding and its progressive politics on many occasions at RRW, see here,  here, here, here, and here just for starters.

Yesterday, Cliff Kincaid, writing at Accuracy in Media, has another hard charging article about the role of the Bishops in pushing Obamacare and Amnesty.

Calling health care a “right” to be guaranteed by the federal government, America’s Catholic Bishops are trying to save ObamaCare at a time when the legislation has been pronounced in limbo, dying or dead by most of the media.
The evidence of intensive Catholic Bishop lobbying activity suggests that liberal Congressional leaders are going to give the legislation a temporary respite so that liberal Catholics can be persuaded to pressure Congress to pass both national health care legislation and “comprehensive immigration reform” in the form of H.R. 4321, the “Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America’s Security and Prosperity” Act.

As AIM has documented, lobbying by the Catholic Bishops and their representatives, who worked closely with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, guaranteed passage of the health care bill in the House.

In a January 13 conference call and briefing, Kevin Appleby, a representative of the U.S. Catholic Bishops, explained in frank language why the Bishops are so desperate to pass the health care and immigration bills. He said that the Bishops want a federal health plan to absorb the costs being borne by the nation’s 600 Catholic hospitals to cover illegal aliens.

I continue to be amazed at refugee resettlement agencies that are lobbying for the legalization of immigrants who came here illegally because the millions of new legal immigrants that would be created overnight would be in direct competition with the tens of thousands of legal refugees desperately looking for work.  The only explanation, as I said yesterday in my report on a posting at New Zeal, is that it is all about politics and Democratic Leftwing voter rolls, not about the well-being of the immigrants themselves. 

Kincaid goes on:

In addition, the Bishops openly state in their letter that they want “undocumented persons”–illegal aliens–to be able to purchase insurance in the new health care exchange established by the federal government.

Gabino Zavala, an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles for the San Gabriel region, has written an article noting that the religious left, which he describes as “religious leaders and faith-based organizations,” have been pushing for a national health care system “for decades.” He adds, “Catholic bishops have been leading advocates for universal health care as a fundamental human right, not simply a luxury for the privileged few.”

The religious left, led by the Catholic Bishops, may represent the only way that liberals in Congress can ultimately succeed in passing ObamaCare. But that assumes that conservative Catholics will not resist the push to use church resources to give amnesty and federal benefits to illegal aliens as a way to take Catholic hospitals off the hook for many of their health care costs.

Left-wing Huffington Post blogger John Gehring notes with pride and pleasure that the Catholic bishops have “signaled they will play a leading role in pushing for comprehensive immigration reform this year by using the power of their pulpits and bipartisan political influence on Capitol Hill” and that the recent briefing was designed “to outline plans for persuading the public and wavering members of Congress that fixing a broken immigration system is a moral and practical priority.”

Look for postcards in your churches soon!  I wonder how much federal taxpayer money is going into a lobbying campaign to work against the taxpayers?

The Huffington Post’s Gehring said that Bishop John C. Wester of Salt Lake City and Bishop Howard Hubbard of Albany, New York, who are respective chairmen of the U.S. bishops’ committees on migration and international policy, have announced that over a million postcards “touting the need for immigration reform have been ordered by dioceses and parishes across the country” and that the cards will be sent to congressional offices.

The campaign is being run by the Justice for Immigrants campaign, an official project of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The pre-written postcards say, “I am a concerned constituent and agree with the U.S. Catholic bishops that the U.S. immigration system is broken and is in need of repair. I ask that this year you support immigration reform legislation that keeps immigrant families together, adopts smart and humane enforcement policies, and ensures that immigrants without legal status register with the government and begin a path toward citizenship. Our families and communities cannot wait!”

Please read the rest of Kincaid’s article.  There is more, although I took a lot above because it was so packed with information I could hardly figure out where to cut it!

The Catholic Church has every right to whip up its members on issues before Congress, but their needs to be a federal audit to try to discover if they are using tax dollars to influence Congress!  It has been our view at RRW, that churches resettling refugees should be funded by their own members and not the general public because frankly it is difficult to keep the pots of money separate.  We also know refugees have been neglected by their resettlement agencies so this lobbying activity makes us suspicious about whether there exists an appropriate firewall between funding sources.

Just a reminder it was only a few weeks ago that we learned that the Epicopal Church was balancing its books with refugee resettlement funding.

LOL!  Coincidentally I just saw this blogger, an Angry Catholic, disavowing the connections between the Bishops and Progressives and Far Left political activities, here.  In light of what we know now, that is a stretch.