ACTIONS NOT WORDS screams the all caps headline on page O3 of today's Globe and Mail. It's the only story in the entire paper with an all caps headline, so it must be very important.
The gist of the piece is that Canada must do more to bring freedom and democracy to Iran, where a "freedom movement" erupted into widespread street demos in December. The caption under the picture informs us that "Iranian protesters chant slogans at a rally in Tehran, on Dec. 30."
That was my first chuckle. Those may well be Iranians chanting slogans, but they're carrying placards bearing the likeness of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Some doofus photo editor used a picture of a pro-government rally to illustrate an anti-government screed!
The authors of the piece should set off some alarms if you were expecting an honest opinion piece on the state of freedom and democracy in Iran. Nazanin Afshin-Jam Mackay, we are told, "is a long-time Iran human rights activist." She is also the wife of former Defence Minister Peter "Pinocchio" Mackay. If you follow her "activism" you'll be well aware it consists mostly of pining for the good old days of Iran's liberal democracy that prevailed from 1953 right up until the Ayatollahs came along and wrecked everything in 1979.
Her co-author is Shuvaloy Majumdar, whose last headline in a Canadian paper came after Trump announced the US embassy move to Jerusalem in December. Majumdar thought that a jolly good idea and argued that Canada should follow the American example, just to, you know, promote peace and human rights in the Middle East.
Majumdar turned up in Harper's inner circle after spending a few years in Afghanistan, spreading freedom and democratic goodness on behalf of the "International Republican Institute," one of the numerous US government "Non Government Organizations" charged with meddling in the politics of other countries. He was the mastermind behind Baird's decision to sever diplomatic relations with Tehran in 2012, a self-defeating exercise in idiocy unmatched in recent diplomatic history.
But it got Baird and Big Steve a pat on the back from Israel's PM Netanyahu, another long-time activist for human-rights in Iran. Funny how so many "human-rights activists" who are tireless advocates for the oppressed in Iran never have a word to say about the human rights of people who live under Israeli occupation. By all accounts, Jews in Iran enjoy far greater freedom and human rights than Palestinians in the West Bank.
Given the authorship, the opinions expressed are pretty much what you'd expect. Us good, them bad. We must therefore help freedom flourish in Iran the way it's flourishing in Iraq and Libya and Afghanistan and all the other beneficiaries of our meddling, and never forget that those Ayatollahs have rendered their country an isolated pariah state.
In fact, more countries have embassies in Iran than in Israel, so we should perhaps take more care in who we label a pariah state.
In fact, more countries have embassies in Iran than in Israel, so we should perhaps take more care in who we label a pariah state.
Ironically, the Mackay - Majumber rant shares page O3 with another opinion piece about the December demonstrations, this one penned by U of T luminaries Farhaan Ladhani, Peter Loewen, and Janice Gross Stein. They actually did some research to measure support for the protests by the Iranian public.
Their conclusion? "We found that support for the protests is thin. Only 27 per cent of respondents agreed that they supported them... "
Hmm... looks like the National Endowment for Democracy and the International Republican Institute and the Open Society folks have lots more work ahead of them before Iran is ripe for the plucking.
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