Keeping an eye on the Arabs

This Khashoggi drama sure raises a few interesting questions.

Since when does Erdogan, or Trump for that matter, give a shit about the welfare of journos?

Since about the time Khashoggi walked into that Saudi embassy, as far as I can tell.

The Khashoggi name is quite prominent in Saudi circles. My understanding is they're a clan accustomed to being close to power, and found themselves out of the ruling circle only with the ascent of MBS. That explains why they've developed a sudden interest in a free press.

America's interest in human rights is equally recent. Dave Lindorff has a story on view at Counterpunch today contrasting the US reaction to the Khashoggi murder to their reaction to the murder of Furkan Dogan by the IDF.


While I was flat on my back and hoping for the best the other day, it occurred to me that the profession of eye-doctor seems to be particularly prestigious in the Arab world. I remember reading, just as the German refugee crisis was building up a good head of steam, an interview with the daughter of Albert Speer, who had happily acquiesced to putting up a couple of Syrian refugees in her Berlin home.

They were ophthalmologists. And they were also great house guests, according to Frau Speer, the message being "hey, open your hearts and your homes, fellow Squareheads! Nothing to fear from these Syrians we've been bombing to ratshit!"

And isn't the evil Assad an ophthalmologist too?... do you see a pattern here? Maybe everybody in Syria aims for an eye-doctor career. The top grads get to bunk with Frau Speer or come to Canada to do eye surgery on the likes of me.

The guys who don't make the grade get to gouge out eyeballs in Syria's secret torture prisons, like the one Canada sent Maher Arar to for the kind of proper interrogation we can't do ourselves.



For obvious reasons.

Blame the conniving incompetents of Canadian officialdom for making Omar Khadr newest member of Muslim Millionaires Club

Don't blame Khadr. He was a fifteen year old kid who thought he was fighting infidel invaders. Which he was, from a Muslim perspective.

When in 1913 fifteen year old kids from Halifax or Toronto lied about their age, joined the army, and went on to kill people, we celebrated them, and we celebrate them to this day.

One of the many pie-in-the-sky feel-good initiatives that various Canadian governments have championed over the past couple of decades has been the cause of "child soldiers." Obviously that was only intended to apply to the primitives on the Dark Continent, otherwise the opinion makers and the political do-gooders wouldn't have lost their zeal so quickly when a Canadian kid got caught on the wrong side of their good intentions.

Anyway, the financial settlement wasn't a reward for what he did or did not do as a 15 year old. It was compensation for our government's conniving in his illegal torture and detention in the years that followed, an ordeal that contravened both Canadian and international law.

As for those outraged over the settlement who compare the outcome of this case to the paltry compensation given our dead and maimed veterans, they're missing the point. They put on those CF uniforms to protect our values, foremost among which is the rule of law. This is what happens when our government tramples those values.

We should be grateful that our government can still be held accountable.

The fact that Khadr now joins the ranks of Arar, Almaki, El-Maati, and Nureddin in the Muslim Millionaires Club isn't Khadr's fault.

You'd hope the boffins in Ottawa are smart enough to detect a pattern here and make an effort to mend their ways.

Harper's cynical manipulation of the Maher Arar file

That's a file open since at least 2002. In fact, CSIS obviously had a file on Mr. Arar well before that.


Mr. Arar was the Canadian dispatched to Syria for "questioning" by the US. Yup, that was back in the day when Assad was still a "good guy" and an ally of the Nations of Virtue. "Questioning" protocols have a little more elasticity in Syria than they do in the Nations of Virtue. "Question" a probable terrorist like Mr. Arar here in North America and all the bleeding heart soft-on-terror types will accuse you of torture.


So to keep our hands clean, we connived with the CIA to have Assad's thugs do the "questioning."


Mind you, that was while he was still a good guy.


There's nothing new in the Arar file, but at least thirteen years after the fact and ten years into the Harper regime, we suddenly get the news that the RCMP is charging a Syrian military officer in the torture of Maher Arar.


Could the timing of this announcement have anything to do with the fact that Harper is in the midst of a too-close-to-call election campaign?


What does the Harper gang get out of this?


A chance to silence Paul Martin, who's been a little too vocal in his support of Justin Trudeau. Martin was PM when the Arar fiasco originally unfolded.


A chance to change the focus from the faltering economy to the evil Assad.


A chance to pose yet again as the tough-on-terror, tough-on-crime strongman.


Are we expected to believe that the timing of these charges is a coincidence?

Obviously!


Otherwise, there would have to have been some pressure from the Harper gang to impact the fortuitous timing of this announcement from the RCMP, and that would be hugely inappropriate.

Maybe even illegal?!


You don't think anybody in the PMO would stoop that low, do you?

Fahmy wonders why Canada won't "bring him home"

Mohamed Fahmy, the Canadian-Egyptian journalist ensconced in a Cairo prison for over a year, for allegedly aiding and abetting the Muslim Brotherhood, wondered aloud today about why Canada has not done more to bring him home.

The Muslim Brotherhood, as you may recall, won the last free election held in Egypt. Many would argue that they won the only free election ever held in Egypt.

When the reactionary blowback from al-Sisi's forces shuffled the democratically elected Morsi off to prison, nobody applauded longer and harder than the Government of Canada.

At last the people of Egypt had an opportunity to pursue true democracy by overthrowing a democratically elected leader. In hindsight it looks like a trial run for the Ukraine coup.

The Nations of Virtue are all about democracy till the people in some foreign land elect someone who does not have the stamp of approval from the Nations of Virtue, and suddenly deposing a democratically elected government becomes a virtuous blow for democracy!

Ya, I know; I can't follow the logic either...

Fahmy, the think-tank here at Falling Downs has nothing but the best hopes for you, and we hereby extend an invite to our famous Canada Day celebration on July 1. Hope you can make it.

(Just hot-dogs, burgers, and lots of beer, but if you can make it we'll bust the budget and throw on some steaks!)

However, we are driven by duty to explain why Canada isn't doing more for you.

The Harper gang doesn't like Arabs, unless they're buying stuff, especially Arabs who don't dance to the tune of the great democratic Emirs of the Gulf statelets and the King of Saudi Arabia.

Let's not pussy-foot around; Fahmy, in official Ottawa circles, you stink.

And if you think your 400 plus days of confinement was a tough row to hoe, think about your fellow Canadians Maher Arar and Omar Khadr.

Their respective ordeals make your 400 days a cake-walk in comparison!

So buck up, stop whining, and we hope to see you July 1st!