All Kinds Together

06/23/2018

By John Thompson

If it isn't one thing, it's another. The self-appointed Iranian Canadian Congress got its way onto Parliament Hill this week and no MP or staffer who attended their briefing seems to have asked that most basic of questions: "Where does your money come from?" We can make an educated guess . . . keep it Rial baby!

The ICI was formed in 2007 and has all sorts of wholesome multi-culti touchy-feely goodness in its mission statement, but two of its main objectives include "Re-establishing relations between Canada and Iran" and "eliminating banking restrictions negatively affecting Iranian Canadians". Helllloooo, Front Group!

One would think that after the Cold War and the Soviet charm offensive, or the facades of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam that Professor Thomas Juneau and Peggy Nash would have known better than to appear at the ICI's event. One can only surmise that they are too good-hearted and naive to recognize a façade for a dictatorial regime when it folds them into its events.

If somebody pumped in some funding maybe the likes of the families of the late Kavous Seyed-Emami, the late Zahra Kazemi, and the imprisoned Saeed Malekpour can have a slick event on Parliament Hill too. We have other Canadian citizens who can talk first-hand about Iran's prisons, like Hamid Ghassesmi-Shall, Marina Nemat, Shabnam Assadollahi, and a few others like that.

It would seem that Madeline Weld and Valerie Price aren't the only ones short of a venue. Their court case with the Ottawa Public Library for chickening out and cancelling their scheduled film event is proceeding. Dames Weld and Price had attempted to show the film "Killing Europe" in November 2017 but this was decried as some sort of hate-event and the OPL showed all the intestinal fortitude of a gutted perch.

Truth to tell, Ms. Weld is a secular humanist and an advocate of the 'Right to Die' - with an ingrained belief in human dignity. It's why she's teamed up with so many unlikely partners (like Jews, Christians and Muslims) in Canadian Citizens for Charter Rights and Freedoms. She and Ms. Price are founding members... but that's just the sort of subversive underground cell these "Islamophobes" form. Ms. Price's sinister side is revealed by her previous history as an interior decorator and being inducted into the Knights of Malta for her work raising awareness of Christian and Yazidi genocide in the Middle East. Worse, one of the children she supported had been a child soldier in Sierra Leone.

A further proof of Ms. Weld's and Ms. Price's insalubrious friendships comes from their advocate in this case, the notorious John Carpay... a free-speech advocate! Say no more! Surely nothing could be more right-wing than his group named 'Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms', especially if it is known to defend the rights of anti-abortion groups and Christian evangelists. A secular humanist like Ms. Weld and a philanthropic fund-raiser like Ms. Price should fit right with Mr. Carpay like a square peg in a round hole . . . or could it be that the mutual commitment to freedom of speech is genuine?

However, these stories are all small potatoes compared to the woes of Liberal MP Omar Alghabra, who tweeted that the Conservatives' recent filibuster was selfishly keeping him from his Eid Mubarak celebrations. The Conservatives had kept the house up late on June 14th, largely because - again - they were trying to get answers out of the Liberals, this time on where Carbon Tax revenues will go.

Mr. Alghabra might have been stuck in the House of Commons, but another Canadian is stuck in the US justice system. Oakville's Abdulrahman El Bahnasawy is awaiting trial next month in New York City for a bomb plot aimed at Times Square. The question the long-time terrorism-beat reporter Stewart Bell raises is this: Is El Bahnasawy too insane to be considered a terrorist? His mother certainly thinks so; and the boundary between mental illness and terrorism has long been a murky one.

Young Abdulrahman seems to have come off the drugs and got high on Jihad but mixing up a load of TAPT "Hell-Brew" is not a recommended course of therapy. His mother might like to bring her boy home and have him resort to medical care . . . the rest of us might be more worried about what can happen if he relapses and takes the family minivan for a drive through a local schoolyard at recess. The usual answer to this dilemma for decades has been to keep the aspiring killer behind bars, and for good reason.

If Canadians, for once, would like to fret about a prisoner . . . Tommy Robinson still languishes in a jail that may have been specially selected to get him killed by militant Jihadist inmates. England's most famous free-speech champion needs your help; let the British High Commission know you are watching!