A National Embarrassment

Many others have already addressed Jason Kenney's thuggish barring of British MP George Galloway from our shores.

You don't have to agree with everything Galloway says or believes to find this decision moronic. Personally I respect his steadfast support of any and all resistance to oppression, while viewing some of the figures and organizations he's specifically backed reprehensible. But in the balance of power, exploitation and casualties he's consistently been on the side of the oppressed and their chosen representatives. We can abhor those chosen representatives but dictating to victims of colonialist oppression who they are allowed to vote for or how they may defend themselves is never going to produce any kind of positive results.

The biggest objection to Galloway from Canada's Conservative government is probably just how articulate, erudite and convincing he can be. The tradition of soaring rhetoric and passionate eloquence in the British parliamentary system makes him a lethally effective speaker who has delivered withering takedowns of Prime Ministers, Presidents, media blowhards and Senators. If he were to debate the thick witted Jason Kenney or the passionless and vastly over-rated intellect of Stephen Harper, it would be as if they had brought pea-shooters to a gun fight.

They're keeping him out of Canada because they are scared of him.

UPDATE:

Doubtless such dauntless defenders of free speech as Ezra Levant and the various Blogging Tories always ready to come to the rescue of various bigots, homophobes and hatemongers will be rushing to decry this act of censorship of a leftist peace activist by our Conservative government.

Any day now.

UPDATE 2:

A final thought: On Tuesday I joined several hundred people in the streets of Calgary protesting that the government of Canada had chosen to ignore its obligations under Canadian and international law by allowing into the country and then failing to prosecute a former world leader credibly accused of war crimes. Apparently overseeing a gulag regime of secret black site prisons where prisoners were tortured - as confirmed by a leaked and unusually blunt Red Cross report - is just fine, but an elected representative of the British people is barred for failing to support the Canadian mission in Afghanistan.

That's some seriously distorted priorities.