Results tagged “georgegalloway”

Photographer (and former Torontoist contributor) James Helmer sends along this shot from Metropolitan United Church last night, where George Galloway—whose ban from Canada was upheld earlier yesterday—spoke via video feed from New York. You can watch the entire speech now on rabbletv, a speech that, if you believe the Canadian federal government, would have caused untold damage had Galloway's body actually crossed the border and delivered it. Yeah. Well, congratulations, Jason Kenney et. al: by denying someone the right to enter this country to speak, you've now given them and their words and ideas a larger platform—and a larger audience—than ever.

Incendiary British anti-war MP George Galloway was scheduled to speak at a Toronto Coalition to Stop the War event tonight. On March 20, though, he received a letter from Robert J. Orr, Immigration Officer for Canada in London, England, informing him that the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) had made a "preliminary determination" that he was inadmissible to Canada on grounds of national security, raising national furor over what his Toronto lawyer, Barbara Jackman, termed an abrogation of the right to freedom of speech. Meanwhile, Alykhan Velshi, senior aide to Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, took the liberty of calling Galloway an "infandous street-corner Cromwell who actually brags about giving 'financial support' to Hamas," a man who "I'm sure ...has a large Rolodex of friends in regimes elsewhere in the world willing to roll out the red carpet for him."

According to the Guardian, British Member of Parliament George Galloway has been declared "inadmissible" into Canada as a matter of our country's security. Galloway is fervently and famously anti-war-in-Afghanistan and was slated to speak at an event organized by the Toronto Coalition to Stop the War next next Monday. The spokesperson for Jason Kenney, our country's immigration minister, actually said this: "We're going to uphold the law, not give special treatment to this infamous street-corner Cromwell who actually brags about giving 'financial support' to Hamas, a terrorist organisation banned in Canada....I'm sure Galloway has a large Rolodex of friends in regimes elsewhere in the world willing to roll out the red carpet for him. Canada, however, won't be one of them." Galloway quickly issued a statement saying that "this idiotic ban shames Canada," and that the "decision...is a very sad day for the Canada we have known and loved—a bastion of the freedoms that supporters of the occupation of Afghanistan claim to be defending....All right thinking Canadians, whether they agree with me over the wisdom of sending troops to Afghanistan or not, will oppose this outrageous decision." They should, and they're starting to. [Thanks to Dave Meslin for the tip.]