When George Galloway met Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, August 19, 2010 at 12:12 PM - 0 Comments

It’s possible that somewhere on this Earth there is the leader of a despotic, vote-rigging, prisoner-raping regime whose boots George Galloway, the failed politician and cat impersonator will not lick, provided he is hostile to the West, but Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad apparently isn’t it. Continue…

More outreach efforts in Canada by the Islamic Republic of Iran

By Michael Petrou - Wednesday, August 4, 2010 at 1:23 PM - 0 Comments

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad this week hosted a conference in Tehran for ‘elite’ Iranians abroad, selected by Iranian embassies in foreign countries, including Canada.

Iranian pro-democracy activist and blogger Potkin Azarmehr describes the conference as a propaganda event designed to “demoralize the population inside Iran by pretending the government enjoys widespread support outside Iran.” Continue…

This Week: Good news/ Bad news

By macleans.ca - Friday, April 30, 2010 at 9:30 AM - 0 Comments

Eric Gaillard/Reuters

Face of the week
A Thai protester chants anti-government slogans while wielding a photo of King Bhumibol Adulyadej

A week in the life of Randy Quaid
Talk about legal trouble. On Friday, the actor filed a lawsuit alleging his former lawyer, Lloyd Braun, improperly used his access to Quaid to obtain photos and information, which he then posted on an Internet gossip site he owns. On Monday, Quaid and his wife, Evi, were arrested for failure to appear in court on charges stemming from an unpaid $10,000 tab at a California guest ranch. They were placed in pink handcuffs—a colour apparently intended to shame suspects.

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UPDATED: First, they came for that Galloway fellow …

By kadyomalley - Friday, July 24, 2009 at 11:22 AM - 108 Comments

.. and now this:

KEENE, NH (July 24, 2009) – Jason Talley and Pete Eyre of the Motorhome Diaries were denied entry into Canada while attempting to cross the border yesterday. Border officials cited an incident that occurred in Mississippi (in May 2009) where the crew was arrested and detained without cause.

The Motorhome Diaries is the story of two friends – Jason and Pete – who took to the road in the spring of 2009 to search for freedom in the Americas, chronicling their adventures as they travel throughout the continent. Both are united by one goal – the desire to increase individual freedom and decrease the influence of government in their lives.

The original itinerary included visits to Montreal, Windsor, and Toronto to meet with liberty-minded Canadians and share their message of peace and freedom.

During the crew’s attempted border entry, border agents and the K-9 patrol searched their recreational vehicle. They were filming as they neared the checkpoint, but border agents deleted the video and informed them that if they continued to film, record, or take pictures they would be arrested. Various items were confiscated from the vehicle, including computers and literature.

Border agents justified the seizure by claiming they were looking for “pornography or heinous propaganda.” When asked for a definition of “heinous propaganda” or the applicable statute, the crew was told it was available online. However, agents could not produce the statue. [...]

Well, technically, I guess in this case, “they” — the Canada Border Service Agency, in this case — didn’t exactly come for the Motorhome Diarists, since they’re the ones who showed up at the border. But other than that — well, that, and the absence of any outburst of self-backpattery by certain citizenship and immigration ministers for having saved Canadians from the scourge of dangerous speech —  this has an eerily Gallowayesque feel to it and seems — from what ITQ can see, at least — similarly senseless.

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Newsmakers of the week

By Lianne George - Thursday, May 7, 2009 at 1:30 PM - 0 Comments

Barenaked justice

For six months, former Barenaked Ladies frontman Steven Page passed random drug tests, underwent therapy, and generally kept his nose clean—as per the conditions laid out for him by New York Judge Thomas Miller following Page’s arrest last summer for drug possession. At a hearing last Friday, Judge Miller dismissed all charges against Page, as well as those against his girlfriend Christine Benedicto, and her roommate Stephanie Ford. “I talked to Steven 20 minutes ago, and he’s elated,” Page’s loquatious attorney Mark J. Mahoney told the Buffalo News. A drug conviction would not have boded well for the musician’s new solo career, he said—he would have been banned from entering the United States for years. When asked how his client has been occupying himself, Mahoney volunteered, “He’s been writing songs, working on a book, and scouting out the possibility of performing in some kind of Broadway show.”

Nanny diaries

Two Toronto-area caregivers are alleging that Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla, 35, and her family hired them illegally and mistreated them, seizing their passports, and forcing them to shine shoes, wash cars, and clean a cousin’s apartment and Dhalla’s brother Neil’s chiropractic clinics. According to Magdalene Gordo, 31, and Richelyn Tongson, 37, who spoke to the Toronto Star, Dhalla hired them to care for her mother Tavinder Dhalla in early 2008. But instead of doing caregiving work, they say they spent 12 to 16 hours a day, five days a week, doing manual labour for $250 a week. “Her mother had me out shovelling snow at midnight,” Gordo said. “She wanted a slave, not a caregiver.” They also claim their passports were taken from them and that their work permits, as per Canada’s Live-In Caregiver Program, were not in order. Dhalla, who is the Liberal critic for youth and multiculturalism, denies the allegations and says she is “shocked and appalled.” “Anyone who has ever worked in our home has been treated with a lot of love, with a lot of care and compassion,” she told the Star, “and money has never, ever been withheld from anyone.”

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Q&A: Jason Kenney on George Galloway and free speech

By Kenneth Whyte - Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 1:28 PM - 39 Comments

Q: Why is a self-described free speech hawk banning George Galloway from Canada?
A: He’s not. I reject the premise of your question. Mr. Galloway received a preliminary notice of determination by the Canadian Border Services Agency that he might be inadmissible to Canada, I gather based in large part on his public admission that he provided funds to Hamas, a banned illegal terrorist organization, which would seem–on the face of it–to constitute grounds for inadmissibility under Section 34(1)f of the Immigration Refugee Protection Act. He was invited to provide submissions to the CBSA to inform their consideration of his potential application to enter Canada. He never provided them with any such submissions and he never presented himself to a point of entry where he would have had, at that point, a final decision on his admissibility, and had he been determined to be inadmissible by an officer at a port of entry he would have been able to apply for an inadmissibility hearing. So there’s a whole process that we have under our law to make determinations independently of politicians about admissibility. I simply said publicly that I would not use my extraordinary ministerial power to effectively overrule a decision of a CBSA officer on his admissibility. Why? Because I didn’t see any compelling reason. And by the way, this had nothing to do with freedom of speech, he exercised his speech in Canada, volubly, as he does everywhere. That was never the issue. The issue was not about what he might do or say in Canada, it’s what he did in making financial contributions to an organization that uses money to buy explosives and strap them to teenagers and send them into school buses and discos.

Q: Do you agree with the prime minister’s decision not to seek elimination of free speech prohibitions under the Human Rights Act?
A: Well, the prime minister is a well-known advocate of freedom of speech, he led by example as president of a national citizen’s coalition in that respect, and I have no reason to believe that’s changed. It’s a matter of record that our party convention adopted essentially unanimously a motion on this matter, and that the Canadian Human Rights Commission commissioned a report of their operations in this respect, which I believe actually recommended elimination of Section 13. My understanding is the prime minister has said the government doesn’t have any intention to act on that at this point, but obviously our government takes note of those facts.

Q: But when the party is 98 per cent in favour of it doesn’t the government feel an obligation to act? Don’t you?
A: My job is to act in my areas, like immigration and citizenship and multiculturalism.

Q: But you’re an influential party member, and you speak out on a variety of issues.
A: I was at the convention, I voted for the resolution–I think along with everyone in our caucus–and I understand the prime minister has said that at this time we don’t have any decision to make, any legislative changes. Obviously it’s a subject of ongoing interest and debate.

Q: So you’re going to press him, then, to change his mind on this?
A: The prime minister presses ministers, not the other way around.

Q: So you don’t plan to push the issue at all?
A: My views on this are on the public record.

Q: But you don’t plan to do anything about it.
A: I bought Ezra’s book.

Q: Well okay!
A (Kenney Aide): He got it for free.
A: No, I went and bought one too, just to support him!

For the full interview with Jason Kenney—on citizenship, terrorism and what we owe newcomers—buy the latest issue of Maclean’s, on newsstands now.

Tamil protesters, yes. George Galloway? Keep out.

By Andrew Potter - Tuesday, April 21, 2009 at 3:55 PM - 61 Comments

Canadians have free-speech bipolar disorder. On one side of our brains, we consider the right to freedom of assembly, conscience, and expression to be part of the constitutional heritage inherited from the British. On the other side, we recoil from the sort of free speech absolutism of the United States that—in an infamous case—holds that white racists burning a cross on the lawn of a black family is a protected form of speech.

This national hemming and hawing about free speech finds direct expression in the Charter of Rights, which takes away in its first clause—“only to such reasonable limits”—the very freedoms it goes on to grant in the second. It also manifests itself in the behaviour of free speech tribunes like Ezra Levant, whose current crusade against Canada’s censorious human-rights tribunals is undermined by his long-standing penchant for filing suit against anyone who says something he finds even slightly defamatory.

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Live from New York… George Galloway (again)

By Mitchel Raphael - Friday, April 3, 2009 at 6:09 PM - 1 Comment

British MP George Galloway spoke live via the Internet from New York  to an Ottawa audience, wrapping up his virtual Canadian speaking tour. He was not permitted into Canada because of his “material support” of Hamas, which is on Canada’s list of terrorist organizations.

Monira Kayhan (left), a member of the Canadian Lebanese Forum for Dialogue, and Dianna Ralph, coordinator of Independent Jewish Voices.

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Strombo v. Galloway

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at 11:16 AM - 3 Comments

The full extent of last night’s virtual meeting of the Georges is now online.

Strombo v. Galloway

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, March 30, 2009 at 9:14 PM - 35 Comments

The Georges talk tonight—via satellite—on the Hour. Quick preview below. Continue…

George Galloway: an odd champion of free speech

By Michael Petrou - Friday, March 27, 2009 at 1:41 PM - 26 Comments

George Galloway cancelled our interview because he didn’t like my question.

This was during the 2005 British general election. Galloway was campaigning for the Respect Party, which he launched after being kicked out of the Labour Party for, among other things, describing it as “Tony Blair’s lie machine.” I had spent the day in the hardscrabble East London riding Galloway hoped to win away from Labour’s lightweight incumbent Oona King and chatted informally with Galloway a couple of times. He promised me an interview later, after a community meeting where he and King were scheduled to speak.

Galloway wiped the floor with King that night. He is a rhetorical master and was in his element. “If you make war against Muslims abroad, he bellowed to cheers, “you’re going to end up making war against Muslims at home!”

When the speeches were finished, Galloway was mobbed by supporters and a few journalists, including an American woman who had a difficult time asking him anything without cooing. Sick of the softballs she was lobbing at him, I asked Galloway how he felt about the jailing of “your friend Tariq Aziz.” Aziz was Iraq’s deputy prime minister under Saddam Hussein and has since been convicted of crimes against humanity. Galloway had indeed described Aziz as his friend, but apparently he didn’t like my tone and growled “I don’t’ want to talk to that guy,” when one of his handlers brought me around for the interview. When another reporter, Johann Hari of The Independent, tried to pose a question, Galloway loudly denounced him as a drug addict.

This is the man who is now bizarrely being hailed as a martyr to free speech, ever since Canada denied him entry to this country because he delivered aid and money to Hamas, which Canada considers a terrorist organization.

To be clear, I think the case against allowing Galloway to come to Canada is paper-thin. Even if the decision follows the letter of the law, it is ridiculous to suggest that he poses any sort of security threat. He should be permitted to come to Canada and speak wherever he wants. Unfortunately, in a country where we’ve grown used cabinet ministers’ incoherent mumblings or refusal to deviate from prepared talking points, Galloway, with his flash and eloquent brogue, would make a positive impression.

But it’s worth remembering the man behind the charm. He reacts to unpleasant questions from journalists with belligerence and insults. He praised Saddam Hussein. And he once described the disappearance of the Soviet Union – one of the most murderous regimes in history – as “the biggest disaster of my life.” I’m confident that Canadians would tire of Galloway once they got to know him. 

UPDATED: GallowayWatch: We're through the looking glass here, people.

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, March 24, 2009 at 1:24 PM - 113 Comments

UPDATED AGAIN – Scroll down for the latest.

Okay, let me see if I’ve got this straight. Thanks to a somewhat curiously headlined story in this morning’s Globe, we learn that the initial deeming of George Galloway as inadmissible to Canada may not have been not quite as final as earlier reports may have led us to believe.

It was, it turns out, a “preliminary assessment” to which Galloway was invited to “submit a rebuttal” before a final decision was made – a rather crucial distinction that was oddly absent from the initial announcement of the “ban”, which was – even more oddly – delivered not by CBSA or even by its responsible minister, Peter Van Loan, but by a spokesperson for Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney.

Continue…

GallowayWatch: Okay, it's not just us. This whole CIC/CBSA thing really is confusing.

By kadyomalley - Monday, March 23, 2009 at 10:16 AM - 81 Comments

According to Barbara Jackman, who is heading up the Galloway border ban legal team, the decision to bar him from entering the country does seem to have been preemptive.

In an emailed response to a query from ITQ, she notes that Galloway “did not need to apply for a visa to visit Canada”, although she suggests that he could have informed the Canadian High Commission of his upcoming visit “as a matter of courtesy”.

Even if that turns out to be the case, however, it doesn’t really explain the apparent involvement of the Canada Border Services Agency:

What is unusual about the ‘refusal’ is that [name deleted], the Immigration Program Manager at the High Commission in London did not just say “we” consider you inadmissible but said that the preliminary assessment of the Canadian Border Services Agency was that he is inadmissible. I have never seen an overseas refusal rely on the Canadian Border Services. It is the Canada Immigration who make decisions on applications for admission to Canada, not that it appears there even was an application for admission.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m really looking forward to reading the full injunction request, which his lawyers will presumably release within the next day or so. At the very least, that should least answer the question of which department, agency or minister is ultimately responsible for the initial finding of inadmissibility.

GallowayWatch: Calling all constitutional lawyers, armchair or otherwise …

By kadyomalley - Sunday, March 22, 2009 at 11:25 PM - 28 Comments

Hot off the CP newswire:

Organizers are to announce Monday they will file an emergency injunction in Ontario federal court on Tuesday seeking to overturn Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s entry ban on the outspoken politician

I confess; I’m really not sure exactly how this is going to work, since neither Citizenship and Immigration nor Jason Kenney are responsible for the “entry ban” on George Galloway.

The Sun (UK), which first broke the story, attributes the decision to declare Galloway “inadmissible” to “border security chiefs”, and in an email to the National Post, a spokesperson for Kenney’s office explicitly states that the decision was made by the Canada Border Services Agency:

He was deemed legally inadmissible to Canada under s.34(1) of our  Immigration Act (which can be found here). The decision was made by CBSA officials based on s.34(1) of the Act and was  based on a number of factors, not only those mentioned in the Sun piece. It  was an operational decision; not one taken at the political level.

Since CBSA is under Public Safety, not Citizenship and Immigration, I’m not sure which decision will be the subject of the emergency injunction request — CBSA’s “deeming” of Galloway as inadmissible, or the minister’s refusal to issue a special permit, especially since as far as I know, Galloway hasn’t even asked for one, although who knows — maybe the preemptive denial by Kenney’s office is sufficient to mount an appeal.

Hopefully, someone with more of a grasp of the legal procedures involved will be kind enough to clear this up for a very confused ITQ, but in the meantime, if you’re similarly puzzled,  feel free to try to figure it out in the comments.

ALMOST INSTANT UPDATE: The Ottawa Citizen has an interview with William Ayers, who was stopped at the border earlier this year, and who is also challenging the ban in court:

On Jan. 18, immigration officials at Toronto’s Island Airport refused to admit [William Ayers] when he arrived from Chicago for a speech at the University of Toronto. Ayers said the officials told him their records indicated that he had a 40-year-old felony conviction, which he denies.

He said he asked the officials if they really thought he was a threat to Canada.

“They laughed and said, ‘of course not.’ So I said, why am I not being allowed in? And they said, ‘it’s not our decision.’”

Ayers said he was well-treated before officials put him on a plane back to Chicago.

“I said to them at one point, ‘I’m an American — come on, where are the chains?’ And they said, ‘we don’t do that in Canada.’” …

Ayers said he’s visited Canada “maybe 25 times” over the years.

For a while, he made an annual pilgrimage to the Stratford Festival. Invariably, he’s scrutinized by immigration officials.

In 2005, though, he was turned away when he tried to enter the country to give a lecture at the University of Calgary. He was given no reason.

Ayers has appeared at conferences in Toronto, Windsor, Montreal and Vancouver, and has spoken at the University of Ottawa half a dozen times.

He serves on dissertation committees at the University of Toronto and the University of Ottawa.

“I’ll have to do that by phone if I can’t get in,” he said. He currently has four lawyers working on his case. “I’d very much like to get it cleared up if it’s a misunderstanding.”

(Thanks to Commenter Sisyphus for the link!)

Now, Ayers’ case is a little bit different from that of Galloway – if his record does indeed show a felony conviction, that would be enough to put him on the banlist, although it seems odd that it would only have come up twice, and not every time he tried to enter the country.  But the reaction that he claims that he got from the officers on duty, who told him that it “wasn’t [their] decision”, is curious enough to merit a little digging on exactly what the process CBSA uses to determine potential threats — and how often this is done preemptively — before the individual so targeted shows up with his prospective Canadian itinerary in hand, which seems to have been what happened to Galloway.

It sounds like an ideal job for the Public Safety committee, come to think of it. After all, they’re already looking into border security issues. How about it, guys?

UPDATE: Follow-up post here. Curiouser and curiouser.

"Canada can't muzzle me"

By Paul Wells - Saturday, March 21, 2009 at 5:55 PM - 43 Comments

George Galloway takes to the infandous internets to fustigate his Ottawa tormentors.

Sunday update: Lorne Gunter doesn’t want Galloway kept out.

InfandousWatch: Freedom of speech includes the freedom to use long words

By Paul Wells - Friday, March 20, 2009 at 4:54 PM - 39 Comments

Jason Kenney’s comms director sets the world afire with his vocabulary.

UPDATED: And the award for quickest opposition response to the Galloway ban goes to …

By kadyomalley - Friday, March 20, 2009 at 12:36 PM - 58 Comments

… the NDP:

HARPER GOVERNMENT CONTINUES TO LIMIT FREE SPEECH

Minister of Censorship Jason Kenney denies entry to British MP Galloway

OTTAWA – Canadians interested in hearing international experts deliver anti-war messages will now have to leave the country to do so. British MP George Galloway, who was schedule to talk on resisting the war in Afghanistan, was banned by Harper’s government from entering Canada.

“Harper’s Conservatives are wrong to bar MP George Galloway,” said New Democrat Immigration Critic Olivia Chow.  “The Minister of Immigration is becoming the ‘Minister of Censorship’. This bunker mentality indicates a government afraid of hearing contradictory points of view.”

Minister Kenny’s reasons for denying George Galloway entry are an affront to freedom of speech and show the Harper government is frightened of an open debate on an unpopular war. A spokesperson for the Minister said Galloway is “inadmissible” to Canada due to his opposition to the deployment of NATO troops in Afghanistan.

“By the Minister’s own twisted logic anyone who opposed the war in Afghanistan should be barred entry to Canada,” continued Chow.  “Would the Minister do the same to veteran British Conservative MP Sir Peter Tapsell, who called the war ‘unwinnable’ and once said it was ‘widely understood’ that the Taliban were ‘not international terrorists’?” (London Times, July 2, 2008)

“Canadians are able to make their own judgement on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and freedom of speech is critical in a democratic country,” said Chow.

Stephen Harper’s Conservative government has a history of banning people from Canada who do not support his views on war. In October 2007 US Peacemakers Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CodePink and retired Colonel Ann Wright were barred from speaking at a Toronto peace conference.

-30-

UPDATE: An ever so slightly more cautious, but still critical response to the news from Liberal Leader Michael Ignatief via Canadian Press here – and thanks to Commenter BCinTO for the link:

In Winnipeg, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff suggested that, on the face of it, the decision does not appear justified. But he cautioned that security officials might know something he doesn’t.

“I have never in a long life of listening to George Galloway heard a single sentence out of his mouth that I believed,” said Ignatieff. “But that’s not the issue.

“We let into Canada all kinds of people who say ridiculous and absurd things and Galloway has said his share of ridiculous and absurd things. The issue … is whether the security services know something about George Galloway that I don’t.

“If he’s being barred on free-speech grounds, that’s an outrage. He can come to Canada and talk rubbish all day long, as far as I’m concerned. If there’s a security threat, that’s another matter. I’ve heard no evidence yet that he presents a security threat.”

UPDATED: Canada Border Services Agency: Keeping our streets safe from … George Galloway? Really?

By kadyomalley - Friday, March 20, 2009 at 7:26 AM - 51 Comments

From today’s Sun (UK):

ANTI-WAR MP George Galloway is to be banned from Canada.

Border security chiefs have declared the Respect MP “inadmissable” because of his views on Afghanistan and the presence of Canadian troops there.

Mr Galloway is due to make a speech in Toronto on March 30, following a US lecture tour, but will be turned away if he tries to enter Canada.

The Canadian High Commission in London was last night contacting the MP’s office to inform him of the decision.

Canadian rules say he will be allowed in only if he has a special permit from immigration minister Jason Kenney.

But Mr Kenney’s spokesman said: “George Galloway is not getting a permit — end of story.

He defends the very terrorists trying to kill Canadian forces in Afghanistan.”

UPDATE: More from the Daily Mail, which reports that Galloway is prepared to fight the ban:

Mr Galloway was due to give a speech in Toronto on March 30 but has been deemed ‘inadmissible’ to Canada under section 34(1) of the country’s immigration act.

Mr Kenney’s spokesman Alykhan Velshi said the act was designed to protect Canadians from people who fund, support or engage in terrorism.

The minister has the right to issue special exemption permits but will not do so in Mr Galloway’s case.

Mr Velshi said: ‘We’re going to uphold the law, not give special treatment to this infandous street-corner Cromwell who actually brags about giving ‘financial support’ to Hamas, a terrorist organisation banned in Canada.

‘I’m sure Galloway has a large Rolodex of friends in regimes elsewhere in the world willing to roll out the red carpet for him. Canada, however, won’t be one of them.’

“Regime”? Somehow, that doesn’t seem like a very friendly way to describe the government currently in power in the country to our immediate south, which doesn’t seem to have a problem allowing Galloway to cross the border.