Terrorism expert calls Uighurs terrorists, and they’re coming soon

Andy McCarthy led the 1995 prosecution of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven others for their bombing of the World Trade Center and other planned attacks, and assisted in other prosecutions of terrorists. He is now the head of the Center for Law and Counterrorism at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He knows what he’s talking about when it comes to terrorism. So when he says someone is a terrorist, I take him seriously.  Here’s how he begins his post at National Review’s Corner, The Uighurs Are Coming, the Uighurs Are Coming! :

 Despite being steeped in jihadist ideology, trained in explosives and assassination tactics, and anxious enough to get that way that they high-tailed it from China to Afghanistan to become more lethal terrorists, the Uighur Muslim detainees will be released by the Obama administration into the United States, according to this Los Angeles Times report. After all, the president has promised to close Guantanamo Bay this year, and that promise can’t be fulfilled unless we release the jihadists since many of them can’t be tried.

McCarthy references this report on the Uighurs from Thomas Jocelyn, which leaves no doubt that they are terrorists. He points out that “federal statutory law … makes aliens excludable from the U.S. if they have received terrorist training or been affiliated with a terrorist organization.”

The LA Times’s story reports that four former Uighur prisoners are in Albania and one has moved from there to Sweden. They have been living their peacefully. Maybe those countries easily accommodate people who act like this:

Not long after being granted access to TV [because they are considered nonthreatening prisoners at Gitmo, though they took part in a riot], some of the Uighurs were watching a soccer game. When a woman with bare arms was shown on the screen, one of the group grabbed the television and threw it to the ground, according to the officials.

Yup, just the kind of people we want. And did the officials take away their TV privileges or otherwise punish them? Hah!

Since then, officials at Guantanamo have bolted down the TVs and shown pre-taped programs, editing out any images they thought Uighurs might find offensive.

I suppose the government could assign each Uighur an aide who would remove everything offensive before the Uighur could see it. Would you like one of these guys to move in next door? Let’s hear from some of our apologists for multiculturalism.

See our previous posts on the Uighurs here.

Addendum: Right after I posted the above, I came across this article by Jed Babbin. It begins:

White House lawyers are refusing to accept the findings of an inter-agency committee that the Uighur Chinese Muslims held at Guantanamo Bay are too dangerous to release inside the U.S., according to Pentagon sources familiar with the action.

It continues:

….Reviewing the Uighurs detention, the inter-agency panel found that they weren’t the ignorant, innocent goatherds the White House believed them to be.  The committee determined they were too dangerous to release because they were members of the ETIM terrorist group, the “East Turkistan Islamic Movement,” and because their presence at the al-Queda training camp was no accident.  There is now no ETIM terrorist cell in the United States:  there will be one if these Uighurs are released into the United States.

According to Defense Department sources, the White House legal office has told the inter-agency review group to re-do their findings to come up with the opposite answer.

  But what does reality matter when it comes to what Obama wants?

Iraqi government is compiling stats on displaced Iraqis

This should be interesting. From Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty:

BAGHDAD — Iraqi Displacement and Migration Minister Abdul-Samad Rahman Sultan says Baghdad is working closely with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to build a reliable database about Iraqi communities abroad, RFE/RL’s Radio Free Iraq (RFI) reports.

The work is to prepare for the national census in October.

The data will also include a breakdown of qualifications and educational levels.

Sultan said the goal is to encourage well-educated Iraqis to return home.

Sultan added that reliable statistics about Iraqis living in Europe are particularly lacking.

The longstanding estimate is that 2 million Iraqis have left the country. They are not counting internally displaced people, but that number has been estimated at 2.5 million. I generally hold to the rule that reality is never as bad as estimates and media reports in any area (such as environmental problems), but occasionally wartime figures turn out worse than estimated. If I had to bet, I’d place my money on the not-as-bad scenario. There are always reasons to inflate numbers and few incentives to deflate them. This is not to question, of course, the pathetic circumstances of most of the Iraqi refugees, only the estimate of their numbers.

Harrisonburg, VA welcoming Iraqi refugees

Of course we have already heard that Iraqis, unhappy in Virginia, have recently returned to the Middle East.   Undaunted by the facts, however, puff pieces continue to be written in what I can only conclude is a continued campaign to tell the public that everything is peachy with refugee resettlement in this miserable economy.

A couple of things in this ho-hum news story prompted me to write about it, especially this first line .

The U.S. State Department decides where to place refugees.

I don’t believe the State Department is putting push-pins in a map and deciding that your city is the next “welcoming” city.   The volags, the non-profit federal contractors seem to be the driving force.  It is they, unelected and unaccountable to the taxpayer, deciding where refugees will go, or at least that is how it has been in our experience.  Once a community is targeted by a volag (see Top Ten here), the only way any community can say “no” is if citizens make a lot of noise (elected officials will run and hide).   Or, if the resettlement agency (one of the hundreds of subcontractors to the Top Ten) screws up in some way, and THEN the State Department steps in (see Waterbury, CT agency closed here).

“They’re looking for existing resources in [the] community. They’re looking for the ethnic community in place, also affordability of housing, and availability of employment,” says Sokolyuk [Director of a refugee agency that is unnamed in this article].

All those factors have come together to make Harrisonburg an appealing places to send Iraqi refugees in particular.

In the last three months of 2008, 32 Iraqi refugees came to Harrisonburg. Already this year, that number has nearly doubled.

What makes Harrisonburg a good place to relocate Iraqi refugees when Fredericksburg (maybe 70 miles away) was not?

Then this:

The resettlement office has to offer assistance to refugees for about a month. Funds are limited.

“I mean, how much can you do within 30 days? That’s all they require from us,” says Sokolyuk.

He says it used to be easier for refugees to get a job in that time frame. Now, it’s closer to three to four months.

Assistance for only one month???    That is absolutely not true.  Yes, they get a stipend toward their first month’s rent from the State Department, but the resettlement agency is responsible for them for 6-8 months depending on what programs that agency has signed up for with the Office of Refugee Resettlement in the Dept. of Health and Human Services.*  The variety in the programs remains a mystery to me.  Even after the agency is no longer responsible, refugees are eligible for many government welfare programs including food stamps.

* By the way, there is little continuity from program to program, so one family of refugees in a community, resettled by one agency, can be getting a whole lot more or less than another family resettled by another agency which causes much confusion, anger and resentment within refugee communities.

Europe’s rightward lurch: lesson for America

This morning I see there was a thought-provoking essay by author Bruce Bawer (While Europe Slept) posted at the the Infidel Blogger’s Alliance yesterday.  Bawer maintains that Europe is heading to the political right while America goes left.   However, it seems that it may be too late to save some European countries already strained to the breaking point by unchecked Muslim immigration and a socialist welfare system that cannot survive the onslaught.

These are the concluding paragraphs:

Who will win the war for the soul of Western Europe? The Islamofascists and their multiculturalist appeasers, many of whom seem to believe that their job is not to defend democracy but to help make the transition to Shariah as smooth as possible? The nativist cryptofascists? Or Pim Fortuyn’s freedom-loving heirs? Interestingly, while Western Europeans have been heading in one direction, Americans have chosen to go the other way, replacing a president more loathed by the European elite than any in history with a man whom the same elite has celebrated to an unprecedented degree, often depicting his election as a mystical act of atonement for all of America’s past sins, real or imagined.

The final question, then, is whether the Western European left’s condescension toward America, and the American left’s habit of holding Western Europe up as a socialist paradise, can survive the combination of Europe’s right turn and the elevation of Barack Obama. Stir in the international financial crisis, which will almost certainly cause a socioeconomic upheaval of untold dimensions in both hemispheres, and it seems reasonable to expect that the old pattern may be broken for good. Meaning that American professors will have a far less stressful time of it at European cocktail parties—at least until Shariah comes along and forbids cocktails entirely.

Please read it all.

“Culturist” — a useful word for Geert Wilders, and for us

Ann posted the other day on the term “culturist,” a word coined and defined by John Press in a publication called Global Politician.  I browsed around its website and came across another article by Press which adds more detail to his concept, called Culturist Geert.  He begins:

Geert Wilders, a Dutch parliamentarian, was refused entry into the UK. The Muslim community threatened to riot if his film FITNA screened in parliament. Ironically, the Muslims objected to the film’s portrayal of them as intolerant! And since freedom of speech is so central to a functioning democracy, this censorship threatens the continuance of western civilization. In appreciation of Wilder’s efforts, I would like to offer him the intellectual gifts of ‘culturism’ and ‘culturist.‘ Using them will ease and hasten his victory over multiculturalism.

We’ve posted on Geert Wilders here, here, here and here.  

Press’s point is that our side has no term to counter the idea of multiculturalism, which has such resonance in the west that it is considered heresy, or perhaps treason, to oppose it. And without a positive term, we sound entirely negative — we are against multiculturalism, but what are we for? Press’s answer: We’re for culturism.

Because multiculturalism is already a household word, citizens of Britain would instantly know what he means by culturism and culturist when he used them. Multiculturalism holds western nations have no core traditional cultures to prefer, promote and protect. Intuitively understanding the opposite of multiculturalism, the Brits would say “Yes,” we do have a core traditional culture and a right to protect it.” They would recognize that all nations are culturist and that our schools and our laws should reflect and protect our traditional cultures. And they would be able to communicate this sentiment as easily as multiculturalists now do theirs.

Culturists take diversity seriously, and wish to protect and preserve their culture.  Using the word “culturist” makes it clear that race is not involved, just culture. Here is what he suggests for Geert Wilders:

Then, once the distracting charges of racism were diminished he can focus on the positive culturist agenda. He can explain that western schools should teach western virtues and history. He can convey that western nations should only recognize western legal systems. Culturism’s taking diversity seriously will give him a basis upon which to argue that freedom of speech is a western value that needs protection. Culturist logic will give him a rational basis upon which to discuss border regulations. He can affirm his language. Rather than just be against multiculturalism, Wilder’s using the word culturism will teach people about the positive western agenda and history he promotes.

I don’t give the project much of a chance, since nobody else is using the word. But it’s a good idea, and we can start using it right here. Maybe other people will pick it up.  If you want more on culturism, here is John Press’s blog, Culturism.

Earth Day plus one: more ‘climate change’ refugees on the move

And, surprise, surprise, they want to move to neighborhoods in the First World.  Our friends at Blue Ridge Forum sent this to us yesterday, but am just getting to it this morning and don’t have time to do it justice.   But, I want you to see this excellent (and humorous) article at American Thinker by Brian Sussman entitled, “Sinking Islands or Stinking Islands?”

Sussman begins:

The headline on Monday read, “Climate refugees in Pacific flee rising seas“. Boy did the editors get this one wrong. A more accurate caption would have been, “Jesse Jackson-like shake-down gets tribe taken off tropical trash heap”.

A focus of the story was the tiny South Pacific island nation of Tuvalu. Apparently New Zealand responded to the phony cries of a few goo-goo activists, and is now convinced that unless the Tuvaluans are allowed to immigrate, they’ll soon be blubbing with the fish. Of course, the calculable cause of this sinkage is a steadily rising sea fed by anthropogenic global warming.

Rubbish. Literally.

He concludes that the ‘crisis’ of a rising sea level is a myth perpetuated for political reasons by Al Gore and his friends around the world.  Read the whole article!

So, while Mr. Gore conveniently lifted certain facts from the record when creating his film, he will no doubt champion the recent evacuations as prophetic vindication. Tuvalu is being decamped while New Zealand is being played like a cheap ukulele.

This incident has been diabolically concocted by global warming zealots, who are recruiting convenient poster children, so that when they convene in Copenhagen for the big climate change powwow this December, they’ll be able to stick another sharp pin in their global warming voodoo doll.

Here is an archive of all the posts we have written about “climate change” refugees.  I wish I had time to say more, because this is a subject near and dear to my heart since my undergraduate and postgraduate degrees are in environmental studies and  I worked as an environmental lobbyist.  I KNOW these zealots!

Later I’ll make a new category here at RRW for “climate change” refugees because I have a sneaking feeling we will be hearing more about this hot topic.

Comment worth noting: Iraqi refugee speaks out in Utah

Our ‘comments worth noting’ posts are to bring to your attention comments we receive to mostly older posts that readers would be unlikely to see.   This comment came to us yesterday from Vav who identifies himself/herself as an Iraqi refugee resettled in Utah.  We have written many posts on Utah’s struggling Iraqi population most recently reporting that some Iraqis are packing up to return to the Middle East.   Here is what Vav had to say at this post.  He/she is blaming the volags (see top ten contractors here) hired by the State Department to resettle them for their difficult situation.

I am an Iraqi refugee here in Utah. Many of the problems we face are because of the incompetency of the Catholic Community Services (CCS), International Rescue Committee (IRC) and Asian Association. These three NGOs are consuming funds provided by tax payers and deliver very poor services in return to their Iraqi refugee clients in the aspects of integration and employment. Actually, I am shocked how did they hired this unqualified staff here in Utah, the case workers are almost with zero experience and so unmotivated to assist and help. Iraq is not safe for us to go back to, and most of us have been through too much to come here, we really like to become good citizens of USA/Utah. We do not ask for special treatment, and we do not want to add more burdens on the tax payer’s shoulders. We only ask the community, to assist us on putting more pressure on NGOs funded by the federal government to resettle us here.

State Department, what is going on?   Our poor economy can’t be entirely to blame for the continuous stream of unhappy and angry Iraqis we are hearing from, or hearing about.

Coincidentally, just this a.m. I came across this article from a Vermont publication about a very happy Iraqi Christian couple.  He was an interpreter for American forces and the couple hopes one day to take all of their American education back to Iraq to help their country.  One thing noticibly missing from this article is any mention of help from a volag, a government contractor.   They seem to have been completely taken under the wings of Americans—at a University and at a church and in a small town—and express their deep gratitude for all the help they received.

I don’t know what the answer is to these widely divergent stories from Iraqi refugees.  I do think Americans are generally privately charitable, but when charity becomes a government program and funded by the federal (and state) government, with little oversight to boot, it becomes not much better that the Motor Vehicle Administration at providing services.  And, frankly any incentive for private charity is removed—afterall, the government is taking care of it, right?

End note:  Lest you think that maybe it has to do with the state—that Vermont is more ‘welcoming’ than say Utah—it doesn’t.  Just last month we told you about the angry Iraqis in Burlington, VT, let down by their resettlement agencies.

Jamal may get some ‘justice’ of his own thanks to Minnesota Rep

Yesterday we told you that Omar Jamal, probably the one and only member of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center, was heading to New York to seek “justice” for the Somali pirate, the only living one, who faces charges in the now infamous Maersk Alabama hijacking.   But it seems his highly publicized involvement is bringing down the wrath of Minnesota State House Minority leader, Rep Marty Seifert.  

This is so juicy!   Thanks to ever-watchful friends in Tennessee for sending it.   From the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Twin Cities activist Omar Jamal said Tuesday he has helped ensure that a suspected pirate is treated justly while in federal custody in New York.

But if a Minnesota legislative leader has his way, it will be the last pirate Jamal helps.

Jamal, executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in St. Paul, said that he spoke Monday with the parents of suspected pirate Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse and that he has been consulting with Muse’s attorneys. He said he intended to be in court Tuesday, but Muse’s public defender said his presence wouldn’t be necessary.

But House Minority Leader Marty Seifert, R-Marshall, responding to “tons of e-mails” from people he said were outraged by Jamal’s actions, said he will seek to block nonprofit status and state grants to any organization that helps foreign citizens accused of piracy or terrorism.

Rep. Seifert says he is introducing legislation to disallow Jamal from getting tax payer funding for his non-profit group.

“Not one dime of taxpayer money if you jet off to New York to support a pirate.”

Funny thing is, I just went to Guidestar and although the Somali Justice Advocacy Center is listed, care of Omar Jamal, there is not one bit of information on file—no IRS determination letter, no financial reports, no Form 990′s.  So who does fund Omar Jamal?   How about a full-blown investigation of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center!

Rep. Seifert, while you are at it, could you find out how Jamal got out of his conviction for immigration fraud!

Refugees International Report from Iraq: no mention of Christians

To further make the point I made yesterday in my post about Refugees International’s pro-Muslim (really if you read it carefully, it is pro-Sunni Muslim) bias, here is a recent RI report from Iraq that discusses “vulnerable” groups, but never uses the “C” word.

The last segment entitled “Focus on the Most Vulnerable” gobbles up nearly an entire paragraph on the much smaller number of Iraqi Palestinians that have been displaced then the Christians who are running for their lives from Muslim persecution.  Here is the whole section, if you didn’t know the circumstances you would never know who the other “vulnerable” might be.

As efforts continue to stabilize and rebuild Iraq, special attention needs to be given to the most vulnerable, and durable solutions need to be found. The stateless Palestinians of Iraq remain one of the most vulnerable groups, and are the subjects of discrimination and attacks by many factions. The hundreds who sought shelter in the camps of Al-Tanf and Al-Waleed at the Syrian border with Iraq must be resettled immediately and the criteria applied should be the same as for Iraqis. According to the UN, there are 10,000 to 12,000 left in Iraq. For this population, resettlement to a third country is likely to be the only durable solution.

The U.S. and the international community must also turn their attention to Iraqis who will not be able to return home, whether they are refugees or internally displaced. They may be too vulnerable to return, or have reasons to fear for their safety. Either way, there are currently no plans to address their needs and plan for their future. The U.S. must engage Syria, Jordan and other host countries on finding durable solutions for these particularly vulnerable groups. As for the 39% of internally displaced Iraqis who don’t plan to return home, they will need assistance to either integrate in their new communities or resettle elsewhere. The political implications for the future of Iraq must be carefully considered, while respecting the will of the displaced.

As for resettling the Palestinians, these Iraqi Palestinians have blasted Arab governments for not helping, here, where they called their co-religionists hypocrites.   I have never seen RI or any other NGO put pressure on Arab governments to take in their Muslim kin and I believe it is either their pro-Muslim/anti-West (US is always bad) bias or that RI is flat-out chicken to take on a Muslim government.    The pressure is always on the West to take-in this group of Palestinians who are persecuted by other Muslims because they were friends of Saddam.

Meanwhile in the US, a Chaldean (Christian) group is helping resettled Christian Iraqis weather the economic down-turn by establishing an ‘Adopt-a-Family’ (note how nice it is to see Iraqi women not covered from head to toe) program where private citizens help Iraqi Christians pay their bills thus placing less demand on the American taxpayer to do so.  I wonder if the Chaldean group can apply for the Emergency Housing money from the State Department.  I’m betting they can’t.

Hurry, get your free government money before it runs out

Your tax dollars:

The State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration announced today the availability of additional tax payer funding for refugees who need help paying rent.   Five million dollars of Federal Emergency Housing Assistance can be applied for between today and May 21st, but hurry, the taxpayer funding will be going fast.

See today’s announcement here.

Oh, and you have to be an approved federal contractor—-one of the top ten or presumably one of hundreds of their subcontractors.