Visa Program Struggles to Track Missing Foreign Students; Abuse whistleblower reportedly ‘booked on diversity course’...more

With U.S. help, Iraqi forces and Shiite militias free besieged town
With U.S. warplanes opening a new front against Islamic State extremists, Iraqi forces and Shiite Muslim militiamen on Sunday broke the militant group’s nearly three-month siege of the northern town of Amerli as beleaguered residents greeted them with cheers..

Iraqi soldiers entered the farming town about 100 miles north of Baghdad a day after launching a ground operation aimed at freeing the 15,000 mainly Shiite Turkmen residents, who had been encircled by the Sunni Arab militants since June.

Residents said the soldiers brought gasoline and doctors to help alleviate what human rights activists described as one of Iraq’s gravest humanitarian crises...

Bp. Nazir-Ali: Refuge for Iraqi Christians could play into Islamic State's hands
Granting asylum in the UK and other western countries to large numbers of Christians and other minorities fleeing Isil militants could help them achieve their plan to 'cleanse' Iraq...


8-31-14

In a rapid and wide-ranging interview, an often incredulous Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter talked to risible Muslim cleric Anjam Choudary, most recently seen yelling it out with Sean Hannity, over why he engages with western media, how he views the role of propaganda on either side, and Choudary’s invocation of 9/11 and 7/7 during sound check. Choudary, who refused to condemn the execution of James Foley, said that Muslims “see [western] journalists as really the propaganda machine of the Obama machine.” “That’s a crazy thing to say given that the only reason you know about the abuses of Abu Ghraib is because of American journalists,” Stelter replied, to Choudary’s objection. During an argument over whether moderate Muslims would reject Choudary’s interpretation of Islam, he accused them of “being paid by the government to say what they say.”

“Oh give me a break,” Steler said. “Now you’re just making up stiff.”

Next Stelter asked why Choudary bothered to go on shows like Hannity at all...

The last Armenians of Myanmar
Reverend John Felix, priest at the Armenian church in Yangon, also known as Rangoon, can't speak Armenian - but then neither can his congregation. Not that there is much of a congregation these days - just seven, myself included, on a recent Sunday morning.

The 150-year-old church enjoys an imposing location, at a street corner in downtown Yangon. It's a beautiful building, a patch of calm in a bustling city. The Armenian Orthodox church of St John the Baptist - standing, suitably, on Merchant Street - is almost all that's left of what was one of the city's main trading communities.

"To judge from church records, there were once a few hundred Armenian families in Burma but the last 'full' Armenian died last year. Across the country, there are no more than 10 or 20 families who are part Armenian - and just a handful still come to the church," says Felix...

Lost in America: Visa Program Struggles to Track Missing Foreign Students
The Department of Homeland Security has lost track of more than 6,000 foreign nationals who entered the United States on student visas, overstayed their welcome, and essentially vanished -- exploiting a security gap that was supposed to be fixed after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.

"My greatest concern is that they could be doing anything," said Peter Edge, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official who oversees investigations into visa violators. "Some of them could be here to do us harm."

Homeland Security officials disclosed the breadth of the student visa problem in response to ABC News questions submitted as part of an investigation into persistent complaints about the nation’s entry program for students.

ABC News found that immigration officials have struggled to keep track of the rapidly increasing numbers of foreign students coming to the U.S. -- now in excess of one million each year. The immigration agency’s own figures show that 58,000 students overstayed their visas in the past year. Of those, 6,000 were referred to agents for follow-up because they were determined to be of heightened concern.

“They just disappear,” said Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. “They get the visas and they disappear.”...

Rotherham abuse whistleblower reportedly ‘booked on diversity course’ after raising concerns
As Twitchy reported yesterday, more than 1,400 children were abused in the British town of Rotherham, with a 153-report noting that “the girl victims were white, and their abusers Pakistani.”
Forbes contributor Roger Scruton blamed political correctness for the lack of action, writing that “police forces lean over backwards to avoid the accusation of racism, while social workers will hesitate to intervene in any case in which they could be accused of discriminating against ethnic minorities. Matters are made worse by the rise of militant Islam, which has added to the old crime of racism the new crime of ‘Islamophobia’. No social worker today will risk being accused of this crime.”...