If you get your news from the headlines, you can be excused for thinking that “Minnesota men” pose a special risk of taking up the terrorist jihad at home and abroad. As the Wall Street Journal reported this past April, for example, “U.S. charges six Minnesota men with trying to join ISIS.”
The “Minnesota men” featured in such headlines are almost invariably drawn from Minnesota’s swelling population of Somali Muslim immigrants. The state—mostly the metropolitan Twin Cities area—is home to 35,000 such immigrants, the largest Somali population in North America.
Starting in the 1990s, the State Department directed thousands of refugees from Somalia’s civil war to Minnesota. As Kelly Riddell pointed out in the Washington Times this past February, in Minnesota these refugees “can take advantage of some of America’s most generous welfare and charity programs.”
Riddell quoted Professor Ahmed Samatar of Macalester College in St. Paul: “Minnesota is exceptional in so many ways but it’s the closest thing in the United States to a true social democratic state.” After a dip in 2008, the inflow of Somalis has continued unabated and augmented by Somalis from other states. If it takes a village, Minnesota has what it takes.
Unfortunately, according to a September report of the House Homeland Security Committee task force on combating terrorist and foreign fighter travel, Minnesota also leads the country in contributing foreign fighters to ISIS. Reviewing the public cases of more than 250 Americans who had traveled to join ISIS, the task force found that 26 percent of them came from Minnesota. When it comes to exports to ISIS, we’re number one.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/27/2015 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
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Top|| File under: Islamic State
#1
“can take advantage of some of America’s most taxpayer-onerous welfare and charity programs.”
#2
People making FDRs internment program looking more rational everyday. Seasoned with big helpings of WTF allowing these miscreants to actually return to the community after doing time in the ME.
#3
"Mohamed, Muhamad, and-- dirka!
We-- I wish to visit Amerka!"
"He finds it oppressive
To be where the rest live.
Fair welcome, three men in a burka!"
Posted by: Richard AUbrey ||
11/27/2015 14:45 Comments ||
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#5
I live in Minnesota. I stay as far away from the Twin Cities as possible. Primarily for it's lack of parking, but also for it's high terrorist and sympathizer density.
Thanks to weak leadership and virtue signalling being the numbers one and two factor in election success here, this will get worse before it gets better.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
11/27/2015 14:54 Comments ||
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#6
I take it MN is NOT KEVIN-COSTNER'S "FIELD OF DREAMS" ANYMORE???
The movie's great community fight scene on the soundness of converting arable farmland into a private baseball park seems "quaint" in the 21st century.
[Inform Napalm] Inform Napalm international volunteer community presents an interesting review article written by Vyacheslav Gusarov, an information security expert of 'Information Resistance' group. We have created the infographics to visualize the data of the article.
The well-known military and political events started in Yugoslavia in the early '90s. And in the summer of 1992 the first Russian 'volunteers' went all by themselves into a new hot spot after the war in Transnistria. By someone's considerations, the local Slavs allegedly had to be defended.
Then the widely known Igor Strelkov-Girkin appeared among the group of 'patriots'.
Somehow, the Russian media (with tears in their eyes) presented this fact as the archetype of the 'Russian patriotism'.
However, you should wonder: how could it be possible in post-Soviet Russia to leave the country with combat equipment, and even take part in the hostilities?
The Russian writer Mikhail Polikarpov assures that several hundreds of 'Russian volunteers' continuously operated in Bosnia in 1992-1995, using the tactics of reconnaissance and sabotage groups. The fighters of 'Rubikon' security company from St. Petersburg formed the basis of that detachment.
#1
This is completely different from, say, Blackwater, et al.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
11/27/2015 8:55 Comments ||
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#2
Being ordered to be a volunteer has a long history in Russia...
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/27/2015 10:15 Comments ||
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#3
I would venture a guess that a poorly reported and poorly understood Moslem insurgency is at work in the Ukraine and that is why the Russians are on it.
To make an omelet or in this case Moslem expansion, you either bust a few heads or scramble a few eggs.
I am growing more and more p.o.ed about how we were so completely mislead about Chechnya by the media.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
11/27/2015 11:47 Comments ||
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#4
The people who run Information Napalm are soldiers in the Ukrainian Army, part of the Maidan movement, and have long been providing their view of Russians, whether their information can be proven or not.
Not saying they're right or they're wrong. They just don't like Russians much, like most of Rantburg's readership.
#5
I think I take a more pragmatic view of Russia. It's kind of like a bear. Keep a gun trained on him to keep him from getting too aggressive. Then leave him alone, stay away from him and you're not likely to have too much trouble. Poking him with a stick is not smart. And if he sees countries like Serbia and Syria as cubs, it's best not to mess with them either.
As for Putin, I recognize that he is a ruthless dictator with murderous instincts. But somehow he doesn't scare me anywhere near as much as Baraq Obama.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
11/27/2015 12:30 Comments ||
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Analysis by the Grauniad.
Even if Turkey is right that a Russian fighter jet strayed into its airspace, the plane was within Ankara’s borders for just 17 seconds before being attacked – and was making no hostile moves against the Turks.
Airspace incursions, granted usually in less politically tense contexts, happen all the time, and generally you’d expect warning shots to be fired and then attempts to force the intruder to leave or to land. That the Turks shot down the jet and did so within 17 seconds – with the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, saying he gave the order to fire himself – suggests very strongly they were waiting for a Russian plane to come into or close enough to Turkish airspace with the aim of delivering a rather pyrotechnic message.
Moscow may have been foolish to let its planes stray so close to the border – doubly so if its rules of engagement allowed pilots to dip into Turkish airspace when it was operationally useful (as is likely). But Turkey’s response went way beyond the usual practice.
Yet no one wants this conflict to escalate, and both Ankara and Moscow are working to that end. Presumably Erdogan feels satisfied the point has been made, and presumably Moscow, while no doubt harboring its grudges, is aware it has a great deal of lost diplomatic ground to make up and wants to be able to strike a deal with the west over Syria and Ukraine.
Nato is aware that Turkey is an ally, but is not piling in to increase the tension; Russia knows that while it may have a certain moral authority in this incident, but if it turns to military pressure then Nato must back its maverick ally.
There are striking similarities between Erdogan’s Turkey and Putin’s Russia, not least their ability and propensity to move conflicts into the covert arena. While Russia’s intervention in Syria may have cynical intent, the Turks are acting in support of their national interests in Syria with equal ruthlessness.
Ankara is often guilty of neglecting attacks on Isis and hitting the Kurds (who are in so many ways the most effective force against the jihadists) instead, smuggling weapons in the guise of humanitarian convoys (something we saw the Russians doing in Ukraine), and being willing to support groups which are often jihadist in their own terms. Turkish military intelligence organisation (MIT) is every bit as cynically opportunist as the Russian military spy agency (GRU), and Erdogan every bit as erratic, brutal and ambitious as Putin.
While the overt clashes may be headed off by the usual machinery of diplomacy, both countries – with large, extensive, secretive and brutal intelligence apparatuses and a history of working with both gangsters and terrorists – may well instead simply transfer these tensions to the covert arena.
In Syria itself, the Russians are likely to put greater emphasis on attacking those groups under Ankara’s patronage. A strike on a Turkish aid convoy may be the first manifestation of this. Meanwhile, the Turks will presumably arm and encourage those groups most able to give the Russians a bloody nose.
In this way, what wasn’t really a proxy war before is likely to become one.
Meanwhile, Moscow may put greater emphasis on countering Turkey’s efforts to establish regional influence (Azerbaijan is an obvious place of contention) and could support problematic non-state actors inside Turkey, from Kurds to criminals (at least, those criminals not already tied to the Turkish state).
This is a conflict that Ankara triggered and while it is being managed it is not going to go away. Nor is it just going to become another chapter in the histories of Russo-Ottoman rivalry. Expect to see this play out in snide, deniable, but nonetheless bitter actions for months to come.
#3
The biggest difference between Russia and Turkey is that Russia has spent the last thirty years dealing with Moslem extremists in various parts of the former Soviet Union and harbors no illusions about what they are.
The Turks on the other hand are rapidly becoming Moslem extremists and suppliers of men, weapons, and money to ISIS.
I hate it when some one tries to sort of suggest a moral equivalency between two sides of a conflict. In this case, there is none.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
11/27/2015 11:43 Comments ||
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#4
This article ignores what had been going on beforehand. Turkey had been warning Russia for some time about sending bombers too close to the border.
Whenever war occurs in a neighboring country, neutrals get concerned (with good reason) that their citizens will be bombed by accident. It is standard procedure to have CAPs flying along the border to make bombers don't stray into neutral airspace. Russia had penetrated Turkish airspace before, so Turkey was waiting for them.
In addition, Turkey, NATO and Obama had all been trying to get Russia to coordinate its airstrike with the coalition or divide Syrian airspace into sectors for air control. Russia had ignored these requests.
This could have been avoided with a little coordination by Russia.
Al
Posted by: frozen al ||
11/27/2015 11:48 Comments ||
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#5
Let me rephrase my comments by redacting "extremists" from my previous post. There is nothing extreme (in their eyes) about their behavior and it should not be in ours. That is the way they are, much as the scorpion and the frog.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
11/27/2015 11:48 Comments ||
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#6
Al,
The fallacy in your post is that Turkey is NOT neutral in this conflict. They are active participants and up to their eyeballs in support of the groups the Russians are bombing.
Nothing coincidental or poorly coordinated about it. If Russia had given Turkey flight plan info, the Turks would have used it for firing solutions to pot a Russian plane or three.
Erdogan tried to deliver a message shooting down the Sukhoi, but he really doesn't understand Putin. OR the consequences of poking the bear.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
11/27/2015 11:52 Comments ||
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#7
Turkey = ISIS.
All you have to do is follow the oil tanker trucks. It's kinda funny how the MSM don't ask about it.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
11/27/2015 12:34 Comments ||
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#8
Even the Assad rump state buys oil from ISIS, because the price is so much lower. That argument was part of the support for the claim that Assad supported ISIS in the early, so as to have a bugabear to present to those trying to overthrow him.
#9
He bent Hussein's ears in the Garden
(He'd flown on a carpet to bargain):
"Please tell Rootenputin
To stop all that shootin'...
And am I too late for a pardon?"
A Syrian rebel commander who boasted of killing a Russian pilot after Turkey downed Russian jet on Tuesday appeared to be Turkish ultranationalist and a son of former mayor in one of Turkish provinces. He also turned out to be the member of The Grey Wolves ultranationalist group, members of which have carried out scores of political murders since 1970s.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
