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!
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.
Tysons’ pork processing plant in Columbus Junction, Iowa still bringing in the refugees—Burmese this time.
This is probably going to be inside baseball for some readers here. But, when we first began writing Refugee Resettlement Watch in 2007, there were TEN major federal refugee contractors instead of the NINE today. The tenth contractor was the State of Iowa.
Here then is a long story about workplace legal wrangling (wade through the first 25 paragraphs or so) and this is what the upshot of the mess in the office created for the resettlement program. I had wondered how they fell out of favor with the US State Department.
From the Des Moines Register(emphasis mine):
Colbert and Phillips contend that problems in the Refugee Bureau outlined in the court records are a window for the public to better understand the downfall of the agency — specifically its decision in 2010 to stop its resettlement service.
Phillips said that the agency, under Wilken, failed to apply for grants and key subsidies for the resettlement program.
Resettlement was for decades the lynchpin of the bureau, which dates back to former Gov. Robert Ray’s legacy work with Tai Dam refugees. The agency has since helped hundreds of refugee families escape war-torn or politically rife countries.
Today the agency — which is federally funded — focuses on social services instead of refugee resettlement.
“People are afraid that in two years, refugee services will completely cease to exist,” said Phillips, who now works in the human resources department at the Mitchellville Correctional Facility.
Lorentzen McCoy, the DHS spokeswoman, noted that the resettlement decision was made when the U.S. Department of State determined that the Iowa agency did not meet the criteria to continue with the placement program.
Colbert, who was hired in 2007 around the same time that Wilken was promoted to the bureau’s director, said federal officials had alerted Iowa of concerns it had with the resettlement program.
She contends that Wilken, who was the bureau’s deputy director for roughly 20 years prior to his promotion, didn’t act to save the program and even told her he would be satisfied if that part of the program would be terminated because other federal program money would keep the bureau going.
Records provided by the state show the bureau’s current budget of $1.9 million is about $200,000 lower than it was in 2010, when the resettlement program ended.
“I can tell you that when I got there they were in trouble. It was pages and pages of stuff that was wrong,” Colbert said of the Department of State’s assessment.
But, if you think you are off the hook in Iowa, you aren’t, there are at least two agencies resettling refugees in the state—Lutheran Services and Catholic Charities.
In fact, if we are going to have resettlement in the first place, I would get all the churches out of it and get the states back in control. Not that I have a lot of faith in government, I just think there is a little more accountability with a government agency overseen by elected officials (and presumably watching the purse strings). You can’t get at the inner workings of a “church” through normal sunshine legal provisions in the same way government is required to be transparent.
The photo is from this storyabout the impact of Burmese refugees on Columbus Junction (400 refugees to a town of 2000), but since its a pork plant at least they aren’t members of the Religion of Peace.
Crew on the USS San Antonio help African migrants aboard the ship after their dinghy encountered rough waters in their attempt to get to Europe. Photo: US Navy
Reader Charles, from Malta, has alerted us to more news on the latest African migrant boat incident we told you about last night. Turns out the migrants are not Somalis but come from various African nations and when brought ashore in Malta became violent demanding they be taken to Italy.
I don’t know who made the Somali ID mistake, but I wouldn’t put it past the illegal aliens to initially claim Somali ethnicity knowing the West is bending over backwards to accommodate Somali “refugees.”
Below are the two reports from Charles (emphasis is mine).
A group of 129 migrants arrived at Marsamxett on board a patrol boat – some 24 hours after their rubber dinghy was spotting in rough seas 70 miles south of Malta yesterday.
One was referred to hospital.
The migrants – mainly men – appeared in good health as they disembarked from the deck of the patrol boat. Some were covered by blankets.
Most of them – 70, are from Gambia, 36 from Senegal, two from Nigeria, three from Sierra Leone, one from Guinea, six from Guinea-Bissau, 10 from Mali, and one from Burkina Faso.
Clearly economic migrants! Not “refugees” or “asylum seekers” escaping persecution!
To read more of the story, one must subscribe.
Then also from the Times of Maltayesterday, rescued Africans got violent when they were placed in detention:
A group of some 130 newly-arrived migrants caused a disturbance at Safi Detention Camp – protesting that they wanted to be sent to Italy.
Informed sources said the disturbance started when members of the group objected to being held at Safi Detention Centre.
They insisted that they wanted to be sent to Italy.
Items were thrown at Detention officers and reinforcements of the Police Rapid Intervention Unit and the AFM were called in.
Photo is from an AFP story that has the nationalities of the aliens listed as well.
For new readers, I’ll bet we have over a hundred posts on Malta over the last 6 plus years. We follow the island nation’s troubles with illegal immigration because the US State Department (egged-on by the Jesuits of Malta) has contributed to it by turning some Somalis (mostly young men!) who arrived there illegally into “refugees” and sent them to America thus creating a magnet for more illegals to attempt the journey. Click here for our Malta archive.
Addendum: Here is a story I don’t have time to post. It is about the pile-up of mostly economic migrants in Libya all hoping to get aboard one of these vessels to Europe. I wonder what Samantha Power, Hillary and Susan Rice think now about their excellent adventure in Libya—so much for the responsibility to protect!
