How one family’s loss led to a Syrian family’s home in Cape Breton

Before he died, a Baddeck man decided he wanted his house to become home to a Syrian refugee family

By Wendy Martin, CBC News Posted: Feb 18, 2018

Bill Fraser of Baddeck, N.S., passed away last month, but his empty house will now become a home for a Syrian family of six. (Submitted by Lorna Fraser)

 

Shortly before he entered a care facility a few months ago, Bill Fraser of Baddeck, N.S., was thinking of what might happen to his empty house.

“He said to me, ‘Lorna, what do you think of this family of Syrian refugees? Could that be a nice use of my home?'” recalled his sister, Lorna Fraser.

Bill Fraser thought he would eventually recover from ill health and return to Baddeck. But he died last month.

Now, his sister has arranged to lease his house and has donated most of its furnishings to a Syrian family of six who will arrive in the Cape Breton village later this spring.

 

The Esmaeels will soon arrive in Baddeck, N.S., from Jordan. (Submitted by Syria to Baddeck Committee)

 

“Out of sadness comes good things, sometimes,” said Jennifer MacDonald, a member of the Syria to Baddeck steering committee.

She said the committee had been looking for months for a suitable house, but there was little available in the community of 800.

Fraser’s house is ideal, she said, adding that it has three bedrooms and is within walking distance of the school and grocery store.

“It’s also avoided us having to do any sort of major furniture drive,” said MacDonald, “because the house is essentially move-in ready.”

 

Big relief to have living arrangements

The Syria to Baddeck committee began raising money in November 2015 to bring a family to the island. To date, the group has raised close to $40,000.

MacDonald said there have been a number of delays, due largely to a backlog in the private sponsorship refugee program.

 

Lorna Fraser says her brother Bill Fraser, pictured here, would be pleased that the Syrian family will be moving into his former home. (Submitted by Lorna Fraser)

 

• Frustration in Cape Breton village as backlog delays arrival of Syrian refugees

• Families who came to Cape Breton as refugees adapting to new home

The committee now expects the family, which includes four children between the ages of four and 14, to arrive in March or April.

MacDonald said it’s a big relief to know their living arrangements are in place.

A man ‘supportive of community’

Lorna Fraser said she believes her brother would be pleased with the outcome.

“He was very much supportive of community, and what community could do for you, and would really want to be helping this family.”

Article from:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/baddeck-home-syrian-family-bill-fraser-1.4539430

ISIS-Finding Ground Zero

Published on Jan 6, 2016

The video is a dispatch report by ANA Press crew from Aleppo, it consists of a documented trip from central Aleppo to the northern outskirts to where Syrian rebel groups are stationed in opposition to ISIS.

This video is hereby translated under full responsibility of ANA PRESS

For more information please feel free to send your inquiries to: info@anapress.net

How do you explain the Paris terror attacks to a child?

How this little boy and his dad helped Paris “finally let go of their tears”

Published on Nov 18, 2015

How do you explain the Paris terror attacks to a child? This father found the most beautiful way!

The dad has been praised for how he responded to his young son’s comments – and it’s even allowing some French people to ‘let go of their tears’

Since Friday, France and the rest of the world have been trying to make sense of devastating terror attacks that rocked Paris , leaving 129 people dead.

We have seen footage of people laying flowers at the site of the massacres, or silently weeping during yesterday’s two-minute silence.

But one heartwarming video circulating on social media shows the ‘humanity in the face of inhumanity’ we have come to recognize in response to the devastation – and is even helping French people come to terms with their grief.

In an interview with Le Petit Journal in front of floral tributes left for the dead, a young boy is asked if he understands what has happened.

He responds: “Yes, because they are very, very, very bad. Baddies are not very nice. We need to be really careful because we will have to move home.”

The massacre of Douma by Assad regime on Aug 16-2015 part III

Before he left the country, Dr Mohamad F, a former coroner at the University Hospital in Aleppo, tried to flee and was arrested on charges of being ‘a terrorist threat’.

He spoke to De Bild before the most recent attack about what was happening in Syria:

“I have suffered, but it’s nothing compared to the pain other prisoners have gone through. I have seen policemen rape women and children in front of other detainees,” he said.

The area of Douma is often the target of government action and has been targeted by air strikes for nearly two years.

Sunday’s attack is said to be one of the bloodiest attacks in the last four years.

Recently, UN’s new humanitarian chief Stephen O’Brien went to Syria and, according to state media, expressed a willingness to work with the government to alleviate humanitarian suffering.

Mr O’Brien has said since the attacks: ‘I am absolutely horrified by the total disregard for civilian life by all parties in this conflict. Attacks on civilians are unlawful, unacceptable and must stop.’

Perhaps then, it’s this sort of activity – and not just ‘benefit culture’ – that is bringing migrants to our shores? Just maybe…

Article from: http://metro.co.uk/2015/08/17/an-official-massacre-in-syria-shows-yet-another-reason-why-people-flee-to-the-uk-5346819/

Angelina Jolie Makes Plea for Syrian Refugees at UN Again

 

#whatdoesittake #ChildrenofSyria #syrianlivesmatter #Syriacrisis #YarmoukCamp #Syria #SpeakUp4SyrianChildren #childrenofsyria #NoLostGeneration #SaveTheRestOfSyrianChildren #Aleppo_Genocide #save_aleppo #TortureReport #syrianchildren #Yarmouk #Assad #AssadCrimes #AssadWarCrimes #SaveYarmouk #TortureReport #humanity #childrights #withsyria #stopshelling #HumanRights #Syrian #SyriaCivilWar #howmanymore #warcrimes #warcriminals

World & UN Inaction Give Assad a Licence to Kill

One UN envoy after another, not to protect or save Syrian children, but save Assad genocidal regime!

UN envoy for Syria:
1) Ban Ki-moon
2) Kofi Annan
3) Lakhdar Brahimi
4) Stefan de Mistura

Assad: All you need to get away with genocide in 21st century is to say I’m fighting jihadists & killing terrorists.
World powers & media do the rest.

Role of the UN Security Council:
The Security Council has primary responsibility, under the United Nations Charter, for the maintenance of international peace and security.

The UN and the modern Western left: indistinguishable voices for the powerful, shilling for genocide

13-02-2015: It is, of course, no surprise that Stefan de Mistura, the UN’s envoy for Syria – or, to be clear, for the Assad regime – has insisted that the Assad regime is the solution to resolving the Assad regime’s war on Syria. After four years of the UN’s uncritical support for Assad’s ongoing genocide, it would be amazing only if he hadn’t.

The wealthy and powerful, after all, always stand by one another. International governments and the supranational bodies like the UN which represent their interests have no problem with totalitarianism, genocide and dictatorship so long as they don’t affect the West; they’re on the giving rather than the receiving end of tyranny, after all. Stefan de Mistura and Ban Ki-moon are honoured guests whichever presidential palace they visit and will always be treated deferentially. The oppressed, the powerless, the disenfranchised have never figured in their calculations; they are ‘collateral damage.’

The contemporary Western left of the Guardian and Counterpunch, which represent the interests of affluent bien-pensant liberals and beneficiaries of the status quo, similarly stand by their fellow members of the establishment and elite globally, reserving their solidarity for other prosperous beneficiaries of the status quo internationally, except in those isolated cases when the oppressed occasionally provide a useful backdrop for radically chic pseudo-anti-imperialist posturing. Even in those cases the oppressed themselves are of little interest except as useful ciphers for impassioned anti-imperialist speeches and editorials about opposing inhumanity and the need for greater compassion –the same approach used by Western and all other governments when the dictators they’ve previously propped up are no longer useful, albeit with occasionally different rhetoric.

In Syria, we’ve seen Robert Fisk complaining that the sound of the regime’s “anti-terrorist” bombardment disturbed his morning latte and delightfully fresh chocolate croissants at his favourite chi-chi riverside café in a pleasant affluent suburb of Damascus, even as the bodies of dozens of Assad’s victims, tortured then shot dead, were fished out downstream. We’ve seen his fellow patrician spokesperson for other well-heeled pseudo-leftist admirers of totalitarianism, Patrick Cockburn, inveigh against the ghastly Syrian proletariat, a.k.a. “extremists and terrorists.” We’ve seen George Galloway, another supporter of some Palestinians’ freedom and human rights (depending on their location and the oppressors’ identity) and fellow shill-for-hire to any brutal totalitarian regime with a generous expense account, rail against the “cannibals and savages” of the Syrian opposition, language indistinguishable from any ultra-Zionist railing against Palestinians.

We’ve seen well-heeled American pseudo-radicals including former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and six-times Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney rush in 2013 to stand alongside their fellow affluent beneficiaries of the status quo in Damascus, cheering on the regime’s Nakba and holding a ‘peace conference’ to defend Assad (from Obama’s occasionally mildly disapproving speeches presumably) at the military base used to bomb South Damascus and large parts of the surrounding areas, and to fire chemical missiles that killed around 1600 people in East Ghouta a few weeks earlier.

Had the contemporary Western left been around during the French revolution, they’d have been cheering for the Bourbons and their beneficiaries, obsessing over the ghastliness of the ‘Reign of Terror’ by the horrid terrorist sans-culottes, while – as always – brushing the regime’s own terrors under the carpet and reassuring everyone of the ‘stability’ provided by generations of the Bourbons’ rule. This is the New Western Left – solidarity with the powerful, universal brotherhood with the elite, liberté, égalité, fraternité only for fellow beneficiaries of the status quo.

Article from: https://www.facebook.com/RadioFreeSyria/posts/788338047918071:0

 

 

9400 Syrian Children are being detained in Assad Regime Jail System

3 Million refugees, half of them are children
13 Million people internally displaced
2 Million properties destroyed which cost 9.3 Billion
Over 250,000 people killed include 20,000+ were children
Over 1.1 Million injuried and thousand were maimed

Over 11,000 Syrian were tortured to death
Over 150,000 Syrians are still in regime’s custody
—— Approximately 9,400 Syrian child prisoners, including 1,500 are forcibly-disappeared children being detained in Assad regime’s Syrian jail system.
—— Approximately 4,600 woman prisoners, including 1,150 are forcibly disappeared women being detained in Assad regime’s Syrian jail system.
_____________________________________________________________________

27-01-2015 was Holocaust Memorial Day, marking 70 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.

This is a day on which the world leaders and media are queueing up to make pious speeches and write tearful editorials about their righteous horror at Hitler’s genocide.

While the same world leaders and media are tacitly and overtly supporting Assad, the blood-drenched dictator, ongoing genocide, their pious hypocritical speeches and their lies of ‘Never Again’ are simply offensive.

A Big Thank you to Kilian from Za’atari Taekwondo Academy

Published on Oct 24, 2014

Syrian refugee children say thank you to Mr. Kilian who is leaving Za’atari Refugee Camp. He has supported us from the beginning, and if it wasn’t for him, Za’atari Taekwondo Academy would not have been able to exist today.

Why no one cares about Syria: Barry Andrews at TEDxUCD

Published on Jun 27, 2014

Barry Andrews is CEO of GOAL, an international humanitarian agency, whose TEDxUCD 2014 talk is entitled ‘Why No One Cares About Syria’

Every generation has its humanitarian catastrophe and ours, according to Barry, is Syria.

In this TEDxUCD talk Barry asks the question as to why we have an inability to separate the political from the humanitarian in order to address the morally indefensible death of people in conflict zones.

Giving examples of Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur, Barry in his TEDxUCD talk notes that the international community may not recognise the catastrophe at the time it is happening. In Syria 160,000 people have been killed, 3 million refugees have left the country and 6 million people are internally displaced.

In this TEDxUCD talk Barry asks with evidence like this, why is this humanitarian catastrophe not being addressed?

Barry Andrews has been the CEO of GOAL since January 2013.
A former Minister with the Irish Government, Barry was educated at Blackrock College, Dublin and at University College Dublin (UCD), where he received a Master’s Degree in Modern History.

He began his career as a history teacher, and spent seven years teaching in secondary schools in Dublin. He was called to the Bar in 1997, and practiced as a barrister for five years.

Barry became a public representative in June 1999 when he was elected to Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council for the Blackrock Ward. He was subsequently elected to the Irish parliament, Dáil Éireann, in 2002 and served as a member of Parliament until 2011.

He was appointed Minister of State for Children and Youth Affairs in 2008. In that capacity, he drove a reform agenda in Child Protection services. One of his lasting achievements was the establishment in 2010 of free pre-school education for all children.

Barry is particularly interested in the plight of mothers and children in the developing world.

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)

SYRIA Patriarch Francis Describes the Bad Situation in Besieged Homs

Father Frans Van Der Lugt, 75, Jesuit priest and psychotherapist. He was born in Holland but lived in Syria since the 1960s. Despite the siege, Father Frans refused to leave his beloved Homs, choosing to remain there in solidarity with other residents. In Jan 2014 he spoke out against the siege imposed by the Assad regime and appealed for humanitarian access to ease the suffering of the people. On 7 April 2014, Father Frans was assassinated by a gunman who entered his monastery.

Father Fran: “I don’t see Muslims or Christians, I see, above all, human beings,” he said, who “hunger to lead a normal life.” How can I leave? This is impossible.

Published on Jan 29, 2014

Patriarch Francis talks on behalf of Christians and Muslims about the bad situation and the deteriorating life in the neighborhoods of besieged Homs by the militia of Bashar Al-Assad. People in the old city of Homs suffer from sever hunger and deterioration of medical treatment. They appeal to the international community to break the siege imposed on the besieged neighborhood.