Theatre Of The Absurd: Are These Liberal MPs "Terrorist" Supporters?

I can't decide whether to laugh or spit. The baying of the hounds begins.

The CBC has revealed nothing particularly new here: "Five Liberal members of Parliament say they did nothing wrong when they accepted an invitation from an Iranian opposition group on Canada's terrorist list." I say the same - they did nothing wrong. As was quite proper, MPs Raymonde Folco, Carolyn Bennet, Rob Oliphant, Andrew Telegdi and Tom Wappel filed with the federal ethics commissioner the details their 2008 and 2009 visits to France at the invitation of Mojahedin e Khalq, also known as the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran. That is the big "news."

In June this year, I myself happily accepted an invitation to attend the same annual gathering of the National Council of the Resistance in Iran, the umbrella group that includes the People's Mojahedin -which is in fact a decidedly non-terrorist group, no matter what Canada's ridiculous, broken and unenforceable "anti-terrorist" laws have to say about the subject. I made the trip under my own steam, as if that should matter. I reported about it here.

In Paris I was proud to be in the company of the MPs Oliphant, Folco, Yasmin Ratansi and Pablo Rodriguez, human rights activist David Matas, former MP and current Burnaby - New Westminster Conservative candidate Paul Forseth, and former Alberta MP David Kilgour (who served as the emcee for the 2009 Paris gathering, attended by about 90,000 Iranians from around the world). Kilgour is as principled and committed a democrat as you will meet in a day's walk.

It can't be repeated often enough: The NCRI/PMOI is not a terrorist group. It doesn't matter what you or I think of their politics. The NCRI/PMOI has been given a clean bill of health by several European investigations and court decisions. The only reason the "terrorist" slander is legally applied to the PMOI in Canada is because the Americans do it. The only reason the Americans do it is to because Bill Clinton wanted to make kissy-face with the Iranian mullahs back in the day, and the mullahs wanted the Mojahedin listed by the Yanks. No wonder: The Mojahedin are Tehran's Worst Nightmare.

The result, whatever one thinks of the PMOI's politics or its past, is that the constitutional rights of all Canadians to freely associate with a major Iranian democratic front is arbitrarily circumscribed, usurped and trampled upon. It is all the rage these days to pronounce oneself a champion of free speech, but the inextricably-related freedom of association? Not so much.

Even as these Liberal MPs are being unfairly tarnished with the "terrorist" brush, we have the clerical-fascist Iranian regime's most effective propaganda agent, George Galloway, who is also the most eager fundraiser in the "west" for the unambiguously terrorist organization Hamas, applying bikini wax to his ugly face for another round of speaking engagements in Canada. What should you expect? Expect more lies.

That is what it has come to. The NCRI/PMOI is effectively criminalized in Canada, and brave Canadian parliamentarians who take the time to stand in solidarity with the Iranian resistance are publicly traduced, while agents of the Iranian police state - a regime that jails and murders trade unionists, womens rights' activists, and even hip-hop enthusiasts, if you don't mind - are allowed to operate openly in Canada and to come and go as they damn well please.

I'm getting tired of pointing this out: Here we have the red-fascist demagogue George Galloway doing what he does best, opening a new propaganda campaign for Islamist fascism aimed at the west’s liberal intelligentsia. Here we have one of Galloway’s most slavish admirers in the Canadian establishment media, doing Galloway’s propaganda for him. The clear evidence against Galloway hasn’t made a jot of difference. He’ll be warmly embraced. As he is here. Do you really need more?

A good primer on the legal issues involved in the Galloway fiasco is presented here, courtesy of the Osgoode Hall Law School: "George Galloway Was Never 'Barred' From Canada For His Politics": "The definition of 'terrorism' provided in s. 83.01 of the Criminal Code provides that the offence requires a mental element." It is not sufficient that the accused knowingly participated in or contributed to a terrorist group. It must also be shown that the accused "intended to aid or facilitate its terrorist activity.”

Thus, plausible deniability is offered as a legal defence to every nutcase who might want to send a huge bag of cash to Al Qaida: 'Gee, I thought they would just use the money to produce public-service announcements about Islamophobia.' Thus, even a greasy little blackshirt and Hamas bagman like Galloway can slip in and out of Canada, untroubled by the law. A "mental element" indeed.

To make matters even more absurd, Canada's anti-terrorism laws make no distinction between clearly anti-democratic acts of terror aimed at civilians and legitimate acts of revolutionary violence (or even self-defence) aimed against police-states. There is a difference.

Fix the law.

In Paris with the NCRI/Mojahedin: Obscure American celebrity John Bolton with Canadian Liberal MP Rob Oliphant: