Things to do as a new immigrant!

If you haven't heard of Mahar Arar, he is an Arab that Western Governments claimed was up to his neck in "no - no" activities......, while he kept claiming that he was innocent and as pure as the driven snow!

Here is a quick summary of his case as told by Wikipedia:

Maher Arar (born 1970) is a telecommunications engineer with dual Syrian and Canadian citizenship who resides in Canada.

He is famous for the outcry resulting from his deportation by the United States government to Syria.

Arar has claimed he was tortured while in Syria.

His experience has been put forward as an example of the United States government policy of "extraordinary rendition."

Arar was detained during a layover at John F. Kennedy International Airport in September 2002 on his way home to Canada from a family vacation in Tunis.

He was held in solitary confinement in the United States for nearly two weeks, questioned, and denied meaningful access to a lawyer.

The US government suspected him of being a member of Al Qaeda and deported him, not to Canada, his current home, but to his native Syria, even though its government is known to use torture.

He was detained in Syria for almost a year, during which time he was tortured, according to the findings of the Arar Commission, until his release to Canada.

The government of Canada ordered a commission of inquiry which concluded that he was tortured.

The commission of inquiry publicly cleared Arar of any links to terrorism. The government of Canada later settled out of court with Arar and awarded him a C$10.5 million settlement.

The Syrian government reports it knows of no links of Arar to terrorism.

Despite the Canadian court ruling, the United States government has not exonerated Arar and, on the contrary, has made public statements to state their belief that Arar is affiliated with members of organizations they describe as terrorist.

As of February 2009, Arar and his family remain on a watchlist. His US lawyers at the Center for Constitutional Rights are currently pursuing his case, Arar v. Ashcroft, which seeks compensatory damages on Arar’s behalf and also a declaration that the actions of the US government were illegal and violated his constitutional, civil, and international human rights.

O.K., that brings us up-to-date on his past troubles, but we haven't heard the end of this by a long shot bunky!

(Ezra Levant is a Canadian blogger who I feature on my BlogsCanada.ca site on the "Politics" page. I have an enormous amount of respect for Ezra because of his no holds bared attempt to write the truth about the Middle East situation, and the people involved in some of the shenanigan's that go on there! His latest post might open a few eyes folks!)

Maher Arar is a liar!

By Ezra Levant on November 2, 2009

I see that Maher Arar, the huckster who lied his way into $10.5 million of our tax dollars, has had less luck with the U.S. legal system than he had with ours. A U.S. appeals court threw out his nuisance claim against the U.S. government.

Now, that's not quite fair of me, is it?

I mean, it's not fair to Canada's legal system because, had Arar actually gone to trial here, his case would have been thrown out, too.

Arar's testimony would have been torn to shreds; he would have wilted under cross-examination. He would have been proved the liar that he is.

So, let me retract and apologize: Arar did not have good luck with our legal system.

He had good luck with a politicized inquiry that bore his name -- the Arar Inquiry -- but in which he never testified.

Of course he didn't: he doesn't want to answer questions.

Arar the hustler -- and his lawyers-of-fortune -- will have to find a new target to shake down.

Of course, they won't go after the Syrian government -- the Syrians know too much about him, and what really happened.

He's already squeezed what he can out of Canada.

Who will keep Arar in the style to which he's become accustomed?

My advice to Arar is to stop with the lawsuits, and focus on the real money: taking huge speaking fees from every university and other left-wing bureaucracy in Canada to tell his fictional account of woe.

I bet the UN would give him a gig, and probably some global warming NGO, too.

Just remember not to have a Q&A session afterwards.

Here's a repeat of my blog entry on the subject from January:

Maher Arar was declared by the breathless mainstream media to be a saint whose lamb-like innocence was never tainted by association with terrorists.

Word comes from another media darling -- Omar Khadr -- that Arar in fact was at an Al Qaida safe house in Afghanistan on various occasions, contrary to Arar's denials of ever being in that country.

All of which vindicates one of the most important cover stories the Western Standard ever ran, entitled "What really happened to Maher Arar?" ("Western Standard" and "The Shotgun" are two more BlogsCanada.ca features!)

You really must read it -- you'll learn things that just haven't been reported elsewhere, ranging from that fact that Arar's purported injuries from "torture" were never examined by an independent doctor; that when he was picked up by Canadian diplomats in Syria, he showed no signs of torture whatsoever -- only signs of not having bathed.

Those are just two little tid-bits.

Really: read the whole thing.

It's a great story, written by Kevin Steel.

Here was my publisher's note, introducing the story:

The real cost of the $10.5-million payout to Maher Arar isn't the money, it's the demoralization of Canada's police and security services, and the wild encouragement given to any accused terrorist to wage legal and political war against Canada.

A quick visit to Arar's vanity website shows a half-dozen smiling faces of his lawyers, no doubt eager to make the money and publicity of a dozen more such claims.

How ironic that our western legal system, with its checks and balances designed to protect our liberal freedoms, has become the favourite instrument of liberal attackers of the West.

The Western Standard itself has been a victim of that abuse: In 2006, after we published a story about the Danish cartoons of Mohammed, a radical Calgary imam used Alberta's human rights law to attack us.

One year and thousands of dollars in legal fees later, we're still fending off that contortion of our justice system, while the Saudi-trained imam's case is funded by Canadian taxpayers.

His concept of "human rights" is alien to our Canadian values, but that doesn't stop him from using a legal shield as a sword against his enemies, because unlike the federal government, we won't cave in to political pressure.

Of course, Canada's media was gaga for Arar; the CBC should get a cut of the payout.

Hyper-skeptical when reporting the spin from government or corporate press secretaries, the mainstream media became stenographers for Arar's PR machine.

Not just stenographers--cheerleaders, actually. For in Arar they saw a weapon to demonize the police, the military and the war on terror.

They painted Arar as an unalloyed victim of racial profiling and police excess, conveniently ignoring facts about his visits with other terrorist suspects, his unusual international travel, and even his purchase of a gun--something that would normally condemn a man in the eyes of the press.

Of course they didn't question his tale of torture. And, as Kevin Steel's outstanding story on page 34 demonstrates, neither did the multimillion-dollar Arar Commission.

You'd think it might have come up.

What will happen now?

The Arars will retire on whatever part of their fortune is left after his lawyers take their cut; Arar's wife, Monia Mazigh, has turned her crusade into a permanent political campaign, even running for office as an NDP candidate.

Arar will no doubt do the speaking circuit, telling tales of his suffering--not so much at the hands of his co-religionists in Syria as at the hands of Canada, the country that welcomed his family and secured his freedom.

Just don't expect there to be a question-and-answer session after Arar's speeches--he didn't take the stand in the commission, and he's not likely to risk answering some of the prickly questions that we write about here.

Regrettably, the most important facts about Arar likely will remain confidential for security reasons.

How frustrating it must be to be an RCMP officer or diplomat, knowing the secret dossier on Arar, but unable to disclose it, either for reasons of security or a political gag order.

We don't know those details either--but we know there is enough on the public record to conclude that there is more to Maher Arar than the media darling the mainstream press have manufactured.

There it is in a nutshell kids, and the one thing that stikes me is how when our fathers and fore-fathers came to this country they quickly learned how to work hard, keep their nose to the grindstone and their mouth shut.

Then get on with their dream of a better life.

Today, as an immigrant, the first thing you have to do is learn how to work the system, not yourself!

Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know......!) and is available as an E-Book H E R E! and H E R E! And as a paperback H E R E ! and H E R E !