Somalian Fraud?

Quick resumé of the facts.

An independent reporter, perhaps just an angry man with a phone and another guy with a phone filming him, get to Somalian day care centres or at least one of them, sees no children, lots of closed doors and men telling them to stop filming. This is, in many right wing media, and by the federal government, treated as proof positive that the day care centre doesn't exist, it's empty rooms and some angry men keeping watch. Meanwhile, left wing media are pointing to security cameras showing parents leaving off their children.

For me, neither of these is sufficient evidence of either thesis. Here is a little discussion.

On the fraud theory, the security cameras showing parents leaving children can have been arranged. Parents come, leave off children, five minutes later take the children out by a back door, which isn't shown.

On the non-fraud theory, some leftwing person whom the Somalis respect can have warned them of the right wing "maniac" coming and they can have believed that he was a real threat, hid the children from him, as they would, and as any American would, against a killer like Breivik or someone trying to catch children's faces and make proposals to a sex trafficker. The clip from the "this is a fraud video" wasn't so long that children behind closed doors definitely would have ended up making some noice. Or if he was really out to get them, they could have made a noise, he could have recognised that there were children there, but decided to not show that part, or perhaps it happened (providentially in his view) after the men had actually succeeded in persuading him to stop filming.

I think really getting to the bottom of this needs some law enforcement, if it's desired, and that law enforcement not ICE. As it is, we have two pieces of circumstantial evidence, pointing in opposite direction, neither of it really conclusive.

However, let's suppose what was going on was what a man on the right and unfavourable to immigrants would have labelled "fraud" ... must we conclude the Somalis are some kind of monsters just deluding everyone and sponging off the system? I think there is a distinct possibility of this fraud, if technically such, being understandable.

I try to google "day care in somalia" ... all I get on page one is the Minnesota story. By contrast "day care in kenya" gives "Olivia's Nest - International Daycare & Preschool" for Nairobi. "Mama Bear", "Babies and Beyond" ... "day care in dubai" gives "Marinelys Babysitting Center & Home Care Services- Dubai" and a few more. I'll try to get back to Somalia now ... wait, "ZAIRA Daycare Center" exists.

And here is another thing:

"I was chained every day like an animal" — Parents send children from Finland to disciplinary camps in Somalia, Kenya
https://yle.fi/a/74-20206484

Yle journalist Wali Hashi gained access to disciplinary institutions by posing as a father looking for a place for his son. He then obtained video footage of how the young people are treated.

Pretty gruesomely. I think I might just have given Democrats in Minnesota a reason on their part to look into it more carefully ... Wali Hashi is not a Finnish name, so he's presumably ethnically African, even if hred by a Finnish news-outlet.

But let's return to my hypothesis. It's not quite the scenario that Yle uncovered. Day care as such is not a very Somalian concept. To a Somalian, American women are being sponsored to be bad mothers, who leave their offspring at daycare instead of staying at home with their children. Then the immigration process asks Somalian women to do similar stuff, like leave children at day care while learning English and looking for jobs, and Somalis aren't very eager. They set up schemes where women elude this and actually do stay at home. And, cherry on the cake, are being payed for being good mothers.

The problem from a patriotic pov is, even so, why should Somali women who stay at home with their children be paid when so many American women do it for free? Or why should Somali women be hampered in learning English and become the reason why their families get stuck in a very ghettoised situation, interacting very little with Americans, and if at all, beyond authority figures they can't avoid, then at least one who took the trouble to learn the Somali language.

I'm far from demonising immigrants from certain places, this kind of thing is precisely what European authorities are up against when dealing with them. And in some cases, I don't blame them. The immigrants, that is.

So, on this hypothesis, a Somali mother who just can't avoid going to the English lesson or doing groceries (assignment for an English lesson) is giving her children up at the day care, but then, as soon as possible, picking them up again.

But obviously, I can't get the Finnish news story quite out of my mind either. It could be darker.

Or, as said, the Somalis thought they had a good reason to hide their children from Nick and Brooke Shirley. That poses another question: do we want people in sensitive situations, as immigrants are, to become paranoid resonance chambers for outing right wingers of our own? I don't.

My own attitude when getting started in Paris was, I don't dislike immigrants as such, but I definitely don't dislike right wingers either, being one myself. Not MAGA, more like Austro-Fascist. Some immigrants who have realised that some of the things I write are right wing, perhaps having been misled about actual content, have started taking "measures" to discourage me. My attitude to extra-European immigrants (not meaning Latin America) is not quite as friendly as it used to be, due to this.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St. Polycarp
26.I.2026

(23.II) Smyrnae natalis sancti Polycarpi, qui, beati Joannis Apostoli discipulus, et ab eo ejusdem civitatis Episcopus ordinatus, totius Asiae Princeps fuit. Postea, sub Marco Antonino et Lucio Aurelio Commodo, sedente Proconsule et universo populo in theatro adversus eum personante, igni traditus est; et, cum ab igne minime laederetur, martyrii coronam, gladio confossus, accepit. Cum illo etiam alii duodecim, qui ex Philadelphia venerant, in eadem Smyrnensi urbe, martyrio consummati sunt. Ipsius tamen Polycarpi festum septimo Kalendas Februarii celebratur.
(26.I) Sancti Polycarpi, Episcopi Smyrnensis et Martyris, qui martyrii coronam septimo Kalendas Martii consecutus est.