Comment worth noting: Swedish Tsarnaev wannabes?

Reader ‘pungentpeppers’ tells us a story from August that we didn’t know about—two Swedish citizens, brothers, of Lebanese descent joined the Jihad in Syria by traveling there using their travel-the-world-free card, a Swedish passport.  Our reader asks if Sweden bears any responsibility for allowing its citizens to go to another country to kill people?  A question that should be asked of the US State Department and Homeland Security too, should it turn out that we also gave citizenship to Somali refugees who then traveled on a US passport to kill scores of innocent shoppers in Kenya.

The story bears an eerie resemblance to the Tsarnaev Boston Bomber family except that these brothers didn’t kill their fellow citizens.   Emphasis is mine.

A pair of Swedish brothers, one of them a suicide bomber and the other a jihadi fighter, entered Syria by way of Lebanon, using their Swedish passports. The younger brother, named Moatassem al-Hassan, age 18, blew himself up this past August in a suicide bombing at a Syrian army checkpoint in the province of Homs. The other, Hassan al-Hassan, 20, was killed in a related military operation against the Syrian army.  Both brothers were fighting for a radical Islamic group named Jund al-Sham with links to al-Qaeda.

Moatassem al-Hassan: Swedish citizen suicide bomber

While still in Sweden just a year ago, Hassan, the elder brother, had started his university studies. And had he stayed in Scandinavia, Moatasem would have started his degree this year. “But they left everything and travelled back to Mankubeen, where their parents have been living for two years now,” said Jihad, a cousin. [This family resemble the Tsarnaevs. One son started college, but didn’t continue, and both mom and dad had left their sons behind when they returned to live in the good old country.]

“And like Tamerlan Tsarnaev who traveled to Chechnya where it is believed he received terrorist training, these brothers traveled to Lebanon to learn the terrorist trade. However, unlike the Tsarnaevs, they never made it back to the West.”

The brothers were members of a large Lebanese Sunni family who are known for violence. Their brother Rabih died in street fighting in Lebanon. Their uncle Saddam, a man with close ties to Al-Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahri, blew himself up in a suicide bombing in Tripoli, Lebanon. Another uncle, Youssef al-Hajj Dib, is serving a life sentence in Germany after he planted two bombs on passenger trains. A catastrophe was averted because those bombs failed to detonate. Perhaps it was a blessing for Sweden that these two Swedish citizens left and did not come back.  For if they had returned to Sweden, they might have emulated their uncle Youssef, the “suitcase bomber”, and tried to blow up a train or two.

Doesn’t the Swedish government bear any responsibility? It allowed its citizens to go to another country and kill their citizens. Is the purpose of citizenship just to give a passport to someone so that they can gain financial benefit and ease of travel? The recipient need show neither responsibility nor commitment to Sweden? What type of perverted “citizenship” is this?

Although they are Swedish citizens, Middle Easterners consider these two “martyrs” to be Lebanese. Their homicidal acts in Syria threatened the stability of Lebanon and pushed that poor country towards the same road of terrible destruction faced by the Syrians. These brothers were handed all of the advantages that life in Sweden offered: money, a chance to study, the opportunity to create a good life. But Islam and Martyrdom, and Jihad in a country that is not your own, were more important than Swedish peace and secularism.

‘Pungentpeppers’ sent us three links, here, here, and here to read the details of the sorry tale.

My solution:  If you can’t sort them out in advance, you don’t let any of them in!

Readers we have written many many posts on the mess Sweden is in.  Go here to learn more.

Also, we have a category that we haven’t used much lately entitled “comments worth noting” for readers who submit a comment that is worth posting more visibly, like this one.

Refugee advocates! Just so you know, you are in bed with Grover Norquist and big business

Update October 23rd:  More news on Norquist at Potomac Tea Party Report today, here.

This is an article about “amnesty” but it reminds me to remind the human rights gang and you “church” people that you are working side-by-side with big business interests looking for cheap labor (it is not about having a humanitarian heart!) and that Grover Norquist is a ring-leader of the cabal.

We first reported on Grover Norquist in 2007 when he was pushing for the importation of Iraqi refugees and we wondered how that would benefit the US taxpayer.
AP photo

For new readers, type ‘Grover Norquist’ into our search function.  We have been following his activities for years.  Here is one post I wrote at Potomac Tea Party Report in 2011 about Rep. Frank Wolf linking Norquist to the Islamic infiltration of the US Government.  As Wolf admonished his fellow Members, “you can never say again that you didn’t know!”

From Policymic:

“People are an asset, they’re not a liability” were the words with which Grover Norquist chose to commence his Immigration Reform Coming Out Party at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing back in April.

Known as the man who launched his political career by founding Americans for Tax Reform and led the right on its anti-tax agenda through the fiscal cliff and sequestration, Norquist is now proposing that conservatives “[get] past this sense [of being] anti-immigrant.”

Norquist’s sentiment is echoed by many Republicans, in particular the very donors who raised the most funds for last year’s presidential election. Charlie Spies, the founder of Restore Our Future, the most prominent super PAC behind Romney’s 2012 presidential bid, also happens to the leader of a new super PAC, Republicans for Immigration Reform. Another such group, Partnership for a New American Economy, has seen a great influx of conservative businessmen including independent and GOP members. It is backed by the likes of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an independent, the head of Marriott International hotel company Bill Marriott Jr., and the CEO of Overstock.com Jonathan Johnson, both of whom are Republicans. With a majority of members evidently boasting ties to Wall Street and large businesses, this growing network is putting its money and influence behind what other GOPers dub “amnesty.”

Why do you think CEOs like Marriott want amnesty and refugee resettlement?  Can you say chamber maids, baggage handlers and kitchen help?   Or, why are the meatpackers pushing amnesty?  Think of it, with refugees they don’t even have to feel guilty about paying low wages because the refugees lives are being subsidized by the taxpayer via food stamps, Section 8 housing, health care etc.

Compared to the many Republican politicians and media figures who pulled a fast one when they saw the demographic tides changing, Norquist’s and Republican business leaders’ immigration activism seems unexpectedly genuine. As early as 2010, Norquist demonstrated his pro-immigration stance while toeing the line on traditional GOP values.

And, why is it “unexpectedly genuine”—they genuinely want to increase their bottom line as the reporter makes clear at the end of the article.

However, it is no coincidence that Norquist and well-off GOP businessmen share two central tenets in their political agenda — one, preventing tax increases, and two, giving immigrants a path to citizenship.

[….]

As such, it should come as no surprise that business-minded Republicans, usually strong advocates of low taxes, are now the spokespeople for creating a path to citizenship. For big business owners, what is not to like about an increased supply of labor, driving competition in the job market up and wages down?

So we shuffle poor people around the world in the name of humanitarianism disrupting their cultures (and ours!) so they can make beds for the wealthy (or cut meat) and the church do-gooders (the resettlement contractors who are also, by the way, pushing amnesty) can convince themselves that they are good people.

If one wants to be a “good” Christian or Jew, then support some poor individual or family on your own dime, either here or abroad.

RRW has best month since our debut in 2007!

Gradually, ever so gradually, people are beginning to ‘wake-up’ to refugee resettlement (other legal immigration) and what it means for taxpayers and for the health and social structure of communities and countries.  September 30th isn’t over yet, but this is already the top month since July 2007 for the number of visitors reading our blog!   That also makes September 2013 the month with the highest daily average of viewers.

On September first, we set a goal to add 30 new subscribers in the month.  We have far exceeded that goal by adding 75 (before today is even over!).  We will keep expectations low and aim for 31 more in October.

Of course the largest number of our readers come from the US, but here are the next nine countries in descending order:  Australia, Canada, U.K., Sweden, Germany, Thailand, South Africa, India, and the Netherlands.

New e-mail address is on the right-hand side-bar.  If you happen to have my personal e-mail address, please feel free to continue to use it!

And, for those of you who prefer not to subscribe, know that I post everything at twitter and posts automatically go to our facebook page.

I am AnnC@RefugeeWatcher.

Facebook page is here.  My apologies in advance for being terrible about chatting on facebook.

Also, apologies for any advertisements on our posts.  They are automatically generated by wordpress, our work here is completely a charitable enterprise—call it a labor of love!

Addendum:  Oops, I should have mentioned our fact sheet, a hot read lately too!  It is linked above under the header.