New Media

Canada’s bulky new citizenship guide has come under some controversy for its fairly explicit declaration of Canadian values (and condemnation of “barbaric cultural practices”). Still, perhaps the document didn’t go quite far enough in detailing the sort of behavior that will not be looked kindly on by our fellow citizens — not least, our border services personnel.

He also had nearly $1 million in gold coins on him, though he had declared only $10,000, to avoid paying tax on the funds. That’s according to his lawyer. So, assuming he has no ties to militant extremists, our newest potential citizen is only a confessed tax evader. How nice for us.

Read the full article in the Vancouver Sun’s Community of Interest

Letters to the President is a documentary showing the harsh and repressive life that Iranians endure under the repression of Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs. Since Iranians understand that corrupt and incompetent local officials have nothing to offer, the populist Ahmadinejad receives hundreds of thousands of letters from desperate people begging for scraps from a benevolent dictator. They have about as much hope of getting a positive response as from writing a letter to Santa Claus, but in the absence of real democracy or economic opportunity, the tradition persists.

After catching a screening at the Vancouver International Film Festival, the director stuck around to ask questions. “Given what some of the brave young people in the film are saying about Ahmadinejad’s regime, are you hopeful about the future for Iran?” I asked.

Director Peter Lom shook his head, noting that many young people had been co-opted by the hardline government, such as those who joined the Basji (the paramilitary volunteer militia accused of killing and torturing 2009 election protesters). And it’s not just in Iran — here in Canada, Lom said his Iranian assistant director had been threatened in Farsi by the moderator of a publicity event for the film.

Still, as Lom says, the brutality of the Iranian regime has shown all but the most brainwashed dead-enders that “the Emperor has no clothes”. Anti-colonialism and anti-Americanism plays well around the world, but Ahmadinejad and the theocracy can no longer distract the Che Guevara T-shirt crowd from the fact that they are no longer revolutionary. The regime and it’s supporters are counter-revolutionary. And the democratic revolution won’t be stopped forever.

Marg bar dictator.

Idealized dramatization of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s upcoming speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on Sept. 23, 2009:

DAY INT. UNITED NATIONS ASSEMBLY

AHMADINEJAD
I’d just like to begin by denouncing the Great Satan known as the United States for it’s diabolical meddling…

BAN KI MOON
Mr. Ahmadinejad?

AHMADINEJAD
Who dares interrupt the glorious revolutionary leader of the great Islamic Republic of Iran?

BAN KI MOON
I’m just the Secretary General of this organization, Mr. Ahmadinejad. But as Secretary, I must, ah, regretfully inform you that you don’t have an appointment to speak here today. I’m afraid the agenda for today’s gathering just doesn’t have time set aside.

AHMADINEJAD
You can’t be serious!?

BAN KI MOON
The rest of the assembly felt that since they’d pretty much heard what you had to say in your previous, ah, rants, they wanted to “skip” the speech. It was pretty much unanimous. Much regret, but as Secretary, I do have to set an agenda while juggling priorities. My apologies. Your speech just didn’t make the cut.

AHMADINEJAD
What new conspiracy is this?

BAN KI MOON
I’m terribly, terribly sorry, Mr. Ahmadi… Ahmedo… Golly, do you mind if I just call you Allan? Look, Mr. Chavez dearly wanted to hear you speak, but I understand he had to be fitted for a new beret to encompass his bloated cranium. And as you can see, you’re just not on the agenda. Terribly, terribly sorry.

AHMADINEJAD
This is unprecedented! Here is proof that the Zionist entity’s satanic agents have infiltrated the highest levels of…

BAN KI MOON
Allan! That’s quite enough. I must insist that you step down and let the Peruvian ambassador begin his dissertation on the global consequences of depressed prices on Llama pelts.

AHMADINEJAD
You cannot stop the voice of God’s revolution, vile Jewish swine. If we were in Iran right now, I’d have you thrown in prison, sodomized, and executed for being a godless Zionist homosexual.

BAN KI MOON
My goodness, that’s wrong on so many levels. Allan, for the last time, I have to insist that you step down. Mr. Gonzalez is waiting, with some very fine Llama pelts.

AHMADINEJAD
A thousand curses on your pork-flavored head, I shall go on! Once more, the downtrodden nations of the Earth condemn the United States for it’s…

BAN KI MOON
I. Said. Shut. Up. And. Sit. Down. Allan.

AHMADINEJAD looks down the barrel of an M1911 pistol. BAN KI MOON cocks the weapon.

BAN KI MOON
I would remind the representative from Iran that in addition to being a Secretary, I am also a General. When I give an order, I expect that it will be followed. Is that understood?

AHMADINEJAD
Yes.

BAN KI MOON
What was that? I didn’t hear you?!

AHMADINEJAD
Yes, sir!

BAN KI MOON
Damn right. Sit your ass down, Allan.

AHMADINEJAD slinks into his seat. The ASSEMBLY is intimidated into absolute silence. BAN KI MOON goes to his podium and withdraws from a hidden compartment a king-sized bottle of fine aged soju. Breaking the bottle open with his teeth with a sickening crunch, the Secretary-General proceeds to take a swig from the jagged edge. He keeps his pistol out in the open.

BAN KI MOON
Mr. Gonzalez, you have the floor.

Two seemingly unrelated yet dramatic developments occurred this week. South Korea launched a rocket into space. Meanwhile, the Israelis and Palestinians announced the possible re-start of peace talks.

The satellite the Koreans were trying to put into orbit sadly fell back to Earth, burning in the atmosphere. The plucky Koreans are surely undeterred. You can depend on them to ultimately succeed.

As for the peace talks I mentioned, they will probably go nowhere fast, just like most recent efforts. But even if they do make progress, it really doesn’t matter. Real peace, not just fragile cease-fires pretending to be peace, will require a different kind of thrust than mere diplomacy.

Let us imagine that the latest announcement of a new beginning for peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians leads to something really genuine. Further suppose that talks gather momentum, somehow breaking the perennial deadlock of settlements, borders and the status of Jerusalem. Finally, let us visualize, on the eve of the signing of this historic treaty, the leaders of all of the Arab states and Iran are swept up by this peace fever and line up at the UN to sign a 1000-year peace treaty with Israel.

It would not matter.

Treaties may get both sides to not shoot at each other (which for the most part, has already been achieved, even between Israel and the Arab states with which it is still formally at war). But a lasting peace in the Middle East will not come so long as terrorists (think Hamas and Hezbollah) or revolutionaries (a la the innumerable Islamist political opposition groups) threaten to overthrow the Arab regimes. The horrendous social and economic conditions of the Arab make it likely that any peace agreement that might be reached in the short term would be overturned by radicals aching to tear up those treaties the deposed regime made with the “Zionist entity”.

This is not to let Israel and its backers off the hook. Peace in the region is still a far greater guarantor to Israel’s security than it’s current military superiority. But to truly achieve something more than a decades-long ceasefire, radicalism among its neighbors must be squelched.

Anti-Semitism plays a part, but is certainly not the most important reason why increasing numbers of Arabs are turning to radical Islam. Syria, Egypt, Saudia Arabia, Iran and others just have too many young people, not enough jobs to go around, and no ability to change their situation so long as the thuggish regimes of the Middle East continue to hold sway. To drain the swamp of radicalism, these states themselves will have to open up their sclerotic political and economic systems, provide some measure of freedom and prosperity to their people and thus engender the kind of stability that can lead to true peace in the Middle East.

This brings us back to Korea. From a xenophobic and technologically backward hermit kingdom at the turn of the twentieth century, this place went on to be in turn an enslaved Japanese colony, a splintered yet liberated American protectorate, and finally a devastated war-torn mass of ruined villages and refugees the North Koreans left in their wake in the South. In 1950, this tiny country was broken, worse off even than the Arab Middle East of the time.

Sixty years later, South Korea is the 15th largest economy in the world, with an entrenched democratic political system and, despite the temporary setback of this week, an active space program. No one worries that South Korea, or a radical group within that country, will suddenly provoke war with it’s neighbor (which is particularly nice, since now we only have to worry about the North Koreans setting off a war along the most heavily fortified border on the planet). And Korea is merely one of the more dramatic examples of what a nation bereft of natural resources but willing to invest in its human capital can achieve within two generations.

But back in the Middle East, all of the Arab states, comprising a far larger population and geographic area than South Korea, have a combined GDP less than the country of Spain (at one time a Muslim outpost in Europe). Space program? The closest thing to an Arab astronaut we might see in the next while could only be a Hamas suicide bomber strapped to an augmented Ashoura rocket.

The point being, that for real, sustainable peace between Israel and its avowed enemies to take hold, extreme transformations must take place in the Arab world and Iran. Economic development alone is no guarantor of peace, since certain Arab states and Iran may simply continue to buy more weapons or fund terrorist groups. The transformation will be more about their young people getting trained to produce and sell the products and ideas that the rest of the world wants, rather than spending long hours considering the evil of Western influence and the extent to which Jews are biologically related to pigs and monkeys. It will be about political leaders focusing on building themselves up, not on the evils of foreign devils. These societies surely won’t change in order to make peace with Israel, but rather because this kind of development is what their people want. Peace could simply be a by-product.

With great resolve from the concerned nations of the Middle East to meet their internal challenges and defeat radicalism, “peace in the Middle East” can mean far more than just ink on paper .

I am firmly in solidarity with Iranians and others around the world protesting the regime’s failure to provide democracy and basic human rights. Heck, if you live in a democracy, there is no other moral position to take. Human rights and the longing for genuine freedom are universal. I am pleased to see that the protests in Vancouver and other cities around the world are still very much alive.

But for some months now, reports of protests inside and outside Iran have consistently shown two types of messages amongst demonstrators. The first type is familiar and inspiring, but the second gives me the chills. I see Iranian protesters potentially falling into the trap that Canadian Tamil protesters recently found themselves in, of believing that the worthiness of their cause permits the use of bloody rhetoric.

From a CTV News story today, here’s what I’m talking about in terms of the two types of messages with very distinct implications:

* “We are here to show our solidarity with the people of Iran and to urge the Iranian government to respect human rights” – Tom van den Brand, a spokesman for Amnesty International in Amsterdam.

* “Death to the Islamic regime!” – group of anonymous protesters.

Some of my friends will probably say I’m just being squishy, or that unity of the protest movement is too important to quibble about semantics. But I feel the words you choose to protest with are not a minor, inconsequential thing. When a state still holds a monopoly on violence and all you have is your voice, your message defines you. How the democratic revolution finally comes to Iran will depend in part on the words the movement chooses to engage its supporters.

For decades, we’ve heard “Death to America”, “Death to Israel”, “Death to…” whatever, from mass gatherings of furious Iranians. (I can’t recall a mob chanting “Death to Canada”. When that happens, I suppose that means we’ve hit the big leagues). It’s not just in Iran, but the Islamic Republic is practically synonymous with massive rallies incorporating these frightening modern versions of the Two Minutes Hate.

I’ve attended and observed plenty of protests in Canada. Typical slogans at protests include “This is what democracy sounds like!”, “Justice for the (INSERT-NAME-OF-PERSECUTED-GROUP)”, “Freedom for the (INSERT-NAME-OF-PERSECUTED-GROUP)!”, or “Hell no, we won’t go!”. Chanting “death” to anything is pretty much beyond the pale, because we recognize the obvious danger that such words are incitement to violence. That’s not only illegal, but it’s also a practice, if it were to become mainstream, that could lead to violent acts. The proof of this ranges from violent hate crimes by racist thugs to acts of genocide, like in Rwanda. And let’s face it: there are no problems in Canada that would require demonstrators to commit acts of violence against fellow citizens or the state to get what they want. We’re lucky that way.

So here’s a problem. I’m not convinced that the Iranian regime will fall to a democratic movement without bloodshed, as has happened most recently in parts of Eastern Europe. The ruling thugs have shown a clear willingness to deploy axe-and-gun-wielding militias against their own people. And they have to be mindful that during and after the last big Iranian revolution, tens of thousands of the ruling classes were tortured or killed. With that kind of precedent, even if the regime’s leaders and apparatchiks were of a mind to allow a transition to democracy, simple survival instinct will have them maintain the status quo at any cost.

So if there is going to be a democratic revolution in Iran, people may have to die. When the protesters’ chant, “Death to the Islamic regime”, they know that a “regime” doesn’t really die – the people who run the regime do. Such chants may be very pragmatic preparation to steel Iranians’ minds for coming violence.

I understand that decades of chanting “death” to anything is ingrained in the culture of political protest in Iran or other countries in a way that we just don’t get here. But these words don’t just offend “decadent” Western sensibilities: I suspect that they have already sapped a significant amount of goodwill towards the Iranian protesters.

It’s not enough for the protesters to want democracy. The words they use to motivate their own democratic revolutionaries will help determine the kind of society that comes after the regime is swept away. There needs to be a culture of basic respect for human life, to the obvious minimum standard that you don’t shout “death” to anything. Let the Iranian regime issue the death threats. This movement needs to be better than that.

Iranians chanting “Death to the Dictator”

Iranian rally shouting “Death to America”