[News] George Galloway - Canada Can't Muzzle Me

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Canada Can't Muzzle Me

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/20951

To ban me from the country for my views on 
Afghanistan is absurd, hypocritical, and in vain

March 23, 2009 By George Galloway
Source: 
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/21/george-galloway-canada>UK 
Guardian

The Canadian immigration minister Jason Kenney 
gazetted in the Sun yesterday morning that I was 
to be excluded from his country because of my 
views on Afghanistan. That's the way the 
rightwing, last-ditch dead-enders of Bushism in Ottawa conduct their business.

Kenney is quite a card. A quick trawl establishes 
he's a gay-baiter, gung-ho armchair warrior, with 
an odd habit of exceeding his immigration brief. 
Three years ago he attacked the pro-western 
Lebanese prime minister, Fuad Siniora, for being 
ungrateful to 
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/canada>Canada 
for its support of Israeli bombardment of his 
country. Most curiously of all, in 2006 he 
addressed a rally of the so-called People's 
Mujahideen of Iran, a Waco-style cult, banned in 
the European Union as a terrorist organisation. 
On one level being banned by such a man is like 
being told to sit up straight by the hunchback of 
Notre Dame or being lectured on due diligence by 
Conrad Black. On another, for a Scotsman to be 
excluded from Canada is like being turned away from the family home.

But what are my views on Afghanistan which the 
Canadian government does not want its people to 
hear? I've never been to Afghanistan, nor have I 
ever met a Taliban, but my first impression into 
the parliamentary vellum on the subject was more 
than two decades ago. At the time the fathers of 
the Taliban were "freedom fighters", paraded at 
US Republican and British Tory conferences. Who 
knows, maybe even the Canadian right extolled 
these god-fearing opponents of communism. I did not, however.

On the eve of their storming of Kabul I told 
Margaret Thatcher that she "had opened the gates 
to the barbarians" and that "a long, dark night 
would now descend upon the people of 
Afghanistan". With the same conviction, I say to 
the Canadian and other Nato governments today 
that your policy is equally a profound mistake. 
 From time to time and with increased regularity 
it is a crime. Like the bombardment of wedding 
parties and even funerals or the presiding over a 
record opium crop, which under our noses finds 
its way coursing through the veins of young 
people from Nova Scotia to Newcastle upon Tyne. 
But it is worse than a crime, as Tallyrand said, it's a blunder.

The Afghans have never succumbed to foreign 
occupation, heaven knows the British empire 
tried, tried and failed again. Not even Alexander 
the Great succeeded, and whoever else he is, 
minister Kenney is no Alexander the Great. Young 
Canadian soldiers are dying in significant 
numbers on Afghanistan's plains. Their families 
are entitled to know how many of us believe this 
adventure to be similarly doomed and that genuine 
support for troops - British, Canadian and other 
- means bringing them home and changing course.

To ban a five-times elected British MP from 
addressing public events or keeping appointments 
with television and radio programmes is a serious 
matter. Kenney's "spokesman" told the Sun, 
"Galloway's not coming in ... end of story." Alas 
for him, it's not. Canada remains a free country 
governed by law and my friends are even now 
seeking a judicial review. And there are other 
ways I can address those Canadians who wish to hear me.

More than half a century ago Paul Robeson, one of 
the greatest men who ever lived, was forbidden to 
enter Canada not by Ottawa but by Washington, 
which had taken away his passport. But he was 
still able to transfix a vast crowd of 
Vancouver's mill hands and miners with a 
17-minute telephone concert, culminating in a 
rendition of the Ballad of Joe Hill. Technology 
has moved on since then. And so from coast to 
coast, minister Kenney notwithstanding, I will be heard - one way or another.

• 
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/georgegalloway>George 
Galloway is Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow 
<mailto:gallowayg at parliament.uk>gallowayg at parliament.uk




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