Tarek Fatah's Blog, page 17
September 23, 2015
Let’s welcome Syria’s refugees, carefully … Let’s keep Islamists out
“Let us make sure that before Islamist organizations and mosques poison their minds, they are introduced to Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Sir John A. Macdonald, Pierre Trudeau, Tommy Douglas, and to Voltaire and Rousseau. Let us help them understand the futility of armed jihad and sharia as public law.”
Syrian ‘refugee’ carrying a child falls after tripping on a Hungarian TV camerawoman, right, while trying to escape from a collection point in Roszke village, Hungary, September 8, 2015. (REUTERS/Marko Djurica)
September 30, 2015
Tarek Fatah
The Toronto Sun
The video showing a Hungarian camerawoman tripping a Syrian refugee as he ran across an open field on the Hungary-Serbia border sent a wave of revulsion across the world.
Her television network fired her.
On the other hand, her victim was offered a job by the football club Real Madrid in Spain.
This was poetic justice unfolding in real life.
However, what appeared to be a happy ending, has now taken a new twist.
No sooner did his name and picture flash across social media then a Kurdish-based political party in Syria identified him as a member of the jihadi group Al-Nusra.
The Syrian Democratic Union Party (PYD) is one of Syria’s major opposition parties and is banned by the government of dictator Basher al-Assad.
It said on its website the refugee had fought alongside the Nusra Front before leaving Syria with his family, earlier this year.
I reached out to him for comment through his new employer Real Madrid, but the club’s public relations office told me:
“We receive all kind of opinions concerning these matters, and we acknowledge them, but we cannot nor should (we) take a stance on any of them.”
I was not able to reach him directly for comment.
But to be clear, no country has laid any charges against him in relation to the allegations he belonged to a terrorist group, and I have no knowledge if they are true.
That said, this does illustrate the concerns of those advocating for thorough background security checks of all future Syrian refugees coming to Canada.
Many in Canada have invoked the 1956 Hungarian refugee crisis, the 1968 Czech refugee crisis and the 1978 Vietnamese Boat People crisis as shining examples of how Canada reached out to those fleeing dictatorial regimes.
But this is different. In those crises we knew the people we welcomed to Canada hated our enemies and were committed to the West’s values of democracy, freedom and individual liberty.
They embraced our values while retaining their own faith and cultures.
This may also be true of the Kurds, Iranians, Yazidis, Darfuris and Baloch who wish to flee the tyranny of Islamism and embrace Canada and the West, and of the vast majority of Muslim refugees.
But it cannot be said of any radical Islamists who seek refuge in the West.
Take Britain. Despite the fact many were born in the UK, 40% of British Muslims surveyed by the Telegraph newspaper said they backed introducing sharia in parts of Britain, while 20% felt sympathy with the motives of the London July 7 bombers.
We will now rightfully open our doors to 10,000 Syrian refugees.
But let us not repeat the mistakes made by other countries and allow our refugees to be manipulated by Islamists already in our midst.
Let us make sure that before Islamist organizations and mosques poison their minds, they are introduced to Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Sir John A. Macdonald, Pierre Trudeau, Tommy Douglas, and to Voltaire and Rousseau.
Let us help them understand the futility of armed jihad and sharia as public law.
Let us heed the warning by Hans-Georg Maassen, president of Germany’s domestic intelligence services, who said Tuesday: “There is a big worry that Islamists in Germany, on the pretext of offering humanitarian help, could try to take advantage of the migrants’ situation to convert and recruit those seeking asylum.”
September 22, 2015
On October 19, let Justin Trudeau know what you think of his admiration of “China because of their basic dictatorship”
TORONTO – Liberal leader Justin Trudeau has been caught on camera confiding an apparent admiration for China’s dictatorial tendencies during a “ladies-night” themed fundraiser held in Toronto.
During the event, which itself was widely criticized for sexist and patronizing undertones, an audience member asked Mr. Trudeau which nation’s “administration he most admired.”
Pretty Boy Trudeau responded:
“There is a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say we need to go green, we need to start, you know, investing in solar. There is a flexibility that I know Stephen Harper must dream about: having a dictatorship where you can do whatever you wanted, that I find quite interesting.”
On October 19, send this silly politician a clear message that he is unfit to be Prime Minister of Canada. Help defeat his imbecile candidates.
September 20, 2015
Remember the Boy on the Beach? Now see the Boys of Balochistan killed by the Men of the Pakistan Military
We have all been moved by the sight of the Boy on the Beach in Turkey, and rightfully so. However, for every Alan Kurdi there are many more Boys in Balochistan for whom no one speaks in the world media, that is until now.
Here is India’s ZEE TV with a report on the Children of Balochistan, at the mercy of the occupying Pakistan Army and abandoned by the rest of the world, perhaps because the pictures of their dead bodies are not so picturesque or they may be children of lesser Gods.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1rswi889us3kiea/Children%20of%20Balochistan.mp4?raw=1
Saudi engineer brutally beating up an Indian worker – Here is that Video. Severe Beating, View with Caution
This is the video that has gone viral. It shows a Saudi engineer brutally beating up an Indian worker engaged in the Grand Mosque expansion work in Mecca. The video, which was initially shared on Facebook, has been viewed by thousands of social media users across the globe.
The shocking video shows a Saudi engineer beating up an Indian worker, who repeatedly tries to apologise. In the nearly two-minute video, the construction worker is seen pleading for mercy, while the Saudi engineer continues to kick and flog him. The engineer also spits on him after repeatedly slapping him.
The incident has raked up a major debate in Saudi Arabia, where a lawyer has asked the government to take legal action against the engineer. Lawyer Abdulaziz Al-Mushaiti has approached the Saudi government to arrest the engineer, Saudi Gazette reported.
September 17, 2015
Pakistani-Canadian Cabbies chant threatening Islamic War Cry “Allah O Akbar” outside Toronto Airport
Pakistani-Canadian cabbies (taxi drivers) chant Islamic war cry “Allah O Akbar” outside Toronto International Airport, claiming their feelings were hurt when a Security Guard insulted Prophet Muhammad while stopping them picking up illegal fares from taxi stands meant for licensed cabbie alone.
September 16, 2015
Islamist militants desecrate British World War Two graves in Libya
This video footage is dated, but is a reminder to all civilized people, not to believe those who say “ISIS is not our problem”.
The video, shot by the Islamist militia themselves, shows more than 30 armed men kicking down the gravestones of British servicemen while comrades use sledgehammers to break the cenotaph. “Break the cross of the dogs!” one man can be heard shouting as another soldier perches on a ladder to smash the cenotaph cross with a mallet.
The cemetery, near the eastern city of Benghazi, hold the remains of more than 100 British and Commonwealth servicemen who fought for Montgomery’s Eighth Army in the second world war.
Here is how the Guardian reported the incident in March 2012.
September 13, 2015
Baloch Canadians in Toronto protest against Pakistan Military men who’ve moved to Canada – A TaG TV Report
On Sunday, September 6, the war in Balochistan, symbolically speaking, came to Mississauga when a handful of Baloch Canadians set up a protest outside an event organized by hundreds of former Pakistani military officers who have moved to this country.
Delusional as it may sound, they were celebrating their make-believe victory over India in the 1965 war and spreading propaganda and anti-India hatred to the next generation.
As the Baloch chanted slogans against the Pakistan army, they were taunted as “Indian agents” and “traitors to Pakistan” by the former Pakistani army officers arriving in luxury cars.
I heard one man decked out in a tuxedo and driving with a Florida licence plate, boast: “This (military) operation in Balochistan should continue, we will shoot every one who would come in our way.”
Another guest, upset that I was with the Baloch Canadians, wrote to me:
“We enjoyed the amazing victory dinner and soon hope Pakistanis will slaughter remaining Baluch terrorists in Pakistan.”
At least one of these former Pakistan military officers works for Toronto police and attended the event in uniform.
I asked him if he was representing the police, but he said he could not speak to the media.
This begs the question: How did Canada become a safe haven for Pakistan’s military officers despite numerous reports that the country’s army is engaged in war crimes in Balochistan, and that elements within the army back the Taliban and jihadi groups fighting us?
September 11, 2015
Jailhouse Rock in Ottawa Prison – Jihadi facing Terror Charges tries to Convert other Inmates to Islam
September 10, 2015
Jihadi Terror suspect beaten inside Canadian Prison
A jailhouse video released in [a Canadian] court shows the beating of Carlos Larmond, one of the Ottawa twins facing terrorism-related charges, after Larmond allegedly tried to convert another inmate to Islam.
The video, released to the media on Thursday, shows two men attacking Larmond on March 3 in a common area of the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre located on Innes Road, with other inmates surrounding the group.
One of the accused, 24-year-old Terrence Wilson, has since been sentenced on Thursday to 60 days in jail for assault causing bodily harm related to the jailhouse attack. The other accused inmate, who was 29 years old at the time, is scheduled to appear in court for sentencing at a later date.
Paolo Giancaterino, the lawyer representing Wilson who submitted the video as evidence, said Larmond had tried to convert his client to Islam on several occasions. The efforts turned from friendly to aggressive, though, and Larmond eventually told Wilson “he was going to kill him in his cell,” Giancaterino said.
Carlos Larmond suffered a broken left hand, a black eye and multiple scrapes and bruises in the beating, according to police.
He did not file a victim impact statement during Wilson’s trial, Giancaterino said.
Larmond and his twin brother, Ashton Larmond, were arrested by RCMP in early January. Carlos Larmond is facing one count of participating in the activity of a terrorist group and one count of attempting to leave Canada to participate in terrorist activity abroad.
The twins have since been transferred out of the Ottawa jail.
September 5, 2015
Shocked by the Boy on the Beach? Wait till you see this Extra-Judicial Killing of a Baloch by Pakistan Army
This video,leaked by a conscientious Pakistani soldier and released by the Baloch Liberation Voice, is clear evidence of the War Crimes being committed by the Pakistan Army in Occupied Balochistan.
http://tarekfatah.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/In-Balochistan-Pakistan-Army-carries-out-Extra-Judicial-Assasination-of-a-Baloch-POW.mp4
September 4, 2015
Who is to Blame for the Drowning of Alan Kurdi, the Boy on the Beach?
“The fact is all these refugees fleeing war zones in the Arab World could very easily be accommodated in Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Instead, while Turkey wants to dump them in the sea and hope bleeding-heart, guilt-ridden liberal Europeans embrace them and pay for their resettlement, the Saudis have an even simpler solution: Shut down the border and seal it so not a single Alan Kurdi dare walk across from Iraq or the new “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria” into its territory. Period.”
September 3, 2015
Tarek Fatah
The Toronto Sun
A single photograph of a three-year old boy named Alan Kurdi, lying dead on a Turkish beach, has rocked the conscience of the world.
The picture will remain seared in our collective memory forever, just as the image of a nine-year-old girl running naked on a road after being severely burned on her back in a napalm bomb attack shook us up on June 8, 1972. That was Phan Thi Kim Phuc, who later settled down in Canada.
Despite what was initially reported by Canadian media, Alan Kurdi was never headed to Canada.
His aunt in Vancouver, Tima Kurdi, tried to sponsor Alan’s uncle and family under what is known as a “G5 privately sponsored application for asylum.” Citizenship Minister Chris Alexander personally took up her application after receiving it from Fin Donnelly, the MP for Port Moody-Coquitlam.
However, because the UN in its wisdom wouldn’t register the Kurdi family as refugees, and because the Turkish government wouldn’t grant them exit visas (as they didn’t have passports), the application for asylum in Canada couldn’t proceed any further.
With no legal options, the family did what tens of thousands of refugees in Turkey have done — they took a risky boat ride from Bodrum in a flotilla of dinghies headed for the Greek island of Kos. The boat capsized about 30 minutes after it set off. Alan, his brother Ghalib, 5, their mother Rehan, and many others drowned.
It’s a tragedy that should have brought out the best in all of us.
Unfortunately, the New Democrats and Liberals tried to use it to attack Chris Alexander and the Conservatives and depict them as heartless and cruel, in the most unethical and immoral manner.
To understand the calamity unfolding in the Mediterranean, illustrated by the photograph of Kurdi, we need to step back a century, but even a year is helpful.
In essence, it’s the story of a Kurdish family that fled an Arab country after an Islamist attack and took refuge across the border in Turkey, a country known for its hostility towards its own Kurdish population.
In the words of the boy’s aunt in Vancouver, the treatment of her family in Turkey was “horrible.”
Instead of targeting the most visible and apparent villains in this drama — the Assad regime in Syria, the Turks, ISIS, Saudi Arabia and Qatar — the Liberals and the NDP sharpened their knives and went after Alexander, the very man who has been quietly helping people escape tyranny and settle down in Canada.
We cannot lose sight of the Syrian Revolution that began as protests in the early spring of 2011 as part of the Arab Spring. Instead of paying heed to his people, President Bashar al-Assad unleashed his military forces in violent crackdowns that forced 3.2 million people to flee the country and internally displaced 6.5 million others. Alan was just the latest victim.
Hadi Elis, spokesman for the Kurdish Community Centre of Toronto, told me he was shocked how Trudeau and an NDP MP from B.C. used Alan’s tragic death to attack Alexander.
“Minister Alexander has been one of the strongest allies of the Kurdish community and stood by the Syrian Kurds in their darkest hour in Kobani from where the boy and his family fled in the face of attacks on them by Islamist ISIS and their Turkish allies,” Elis wrote in an e-mail.
“It is despicable for Liberal and NDP politicians to use the dead boy as a political tool to score partisan political points. Shame on them. They want Canada to stop attacking ISIS, and then shed crocodile tears when a victim of ISIS drowns on a Turkish beach,” he continued.
“If there is anyone who is guilty of this crime, it is Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UN, all those who have refused to embrace hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing war, not Minister Chris Alexander who needs no lectures on compassion by politicians who are catering to the Islamists inside Canada.”
Neither the NDP nor the Liberals dare say a single word against Turkey, Saudi Arabia or even Pakistan for fear of losing the imagined Muslim vote in Canada’s large riding-rich cities. Instead, by depicting the Conservatives and Alexander as anti-refugee and anti-Muslim, they hope to harvest a supposed rich crop of pro-Islamist voters.
It’s possible they might even succeed in this venture given the way many mainstream media outlets have formed a lynch mob targeting the Conservatives with disdain and shameless partisanship.
Canadian voters, on the other hand, must recognize the stories they’re reading or watching also reflect an illiteracy and ignorance among Canada’s chattering heads on matters of the Middle East and South Asia — ignorance they cover up by ensuring no one with a background in the area is given the opportunity to challenge what wrongly passes for objective and balanced discourse.
The fact is all these refugees fleeing war zones in the Arab World could very easily be accommodated in Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
Instead, while Turkey wants to dump them in the sea and hope bleeding-heart, guilt-ridden liberal Europeans embrace them and pay for their resettlement, the Saudis have an even simpler solution: Shut down the border and seal it so not a single Alan Kurdi dare walk across from Iraq or the new “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria” into its territory. Period.
Strictly from a management perspective and common sense, Saudi Arabia has the land, the resources and lies in the vicinity of the crisis. The refugees and the Saudis speak the same language and settlement and integration could happen sooner and at a fraction of the cost.
But it’s far easier to call for the head of Chris Alexander than to be honest and admit the villain in the drama is Saudi Arabia and criticising the Saudis might upset the Islamist vote bank both the Liberals and the NDP covet.
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