The Moral Necessity of Tyrannicide.

"Marg Bar Diktator." Death to the Dictator. Figuratively speaking, if you prefer, but in the matter of Khamenei, Putin, Xi, Assad, Maduro. . . nothing else will do, I'm afraid. A Real Story Special.

There’s a good bit of unreported news in this edition of the Real Story - which is a day or two late because of an evil cold-flu-I-dunno-what, but not Covid, from which I’m now recovered.

Also, some backstory on my column this week in the National Post & the Ottawa Citizen. Head and subhead: Khomeinist agents are spying on Iranian-Canadians, but Trudeau is doing nothing. Not a single Iranian torturer or kleptocrat has been named under Canada’s Magnitsky law, and the regime’s elites come and go as they please. Do read the column. It’ll save me from repeating myself here.

The backstory comes in the form of an important guest post by the brave young survivor of Tehran’s infamous Evin prison (who was pretty well the subject of the column) about the difficulties Iranian feminists have found in mobilizing support from their sisters in the liberal democracies, especially Canada.

I’ve got some rather shocking inside story on the toxic reach of police-state influence in Canada that should tell you something about the compradors, the compromised and the clueless at the centres of political power in this country.

If all this sounds too dreary, I’ve got a delightful story as well from Canada’s Hongkongers for Ukraine that you haven’t read anywhere, and it brings to mind the words of an old hymn, words that also seem to draw the tribulations of our Iranian comrades back into sharp relief: In prison cell and dungeon vile Our thoughts to them are winging. When friends by shame are undefiled, How can I keep from singing?

Undefiled by shame, our sisters and brothers in Iran are fighting and dying for the ideals Canadians claim to hold dear.

Right then. Here we go.

You may have read about the audacity of the Chinese Communist Party setting up police stations around the world, including at least three in Canada, in an operation exposed by the meticulous researchers over at Safeguard Defenders. Not a peep of a diplomatic response from Ottawa.

“Canada is becoming China’s chew toy,” is the way the former China diplomat and persistently astute analyst Charles Burton puts it, “a gross violation of Canada’s national sovereignty, international law and the norms of diplomacy. China is extending the grip of its Orwellian police state into this country, with seemingly no worry about being confronted by our own national security agencies.”

What I’ll have for you (against my better judgment, no paywall again today, but you free subscribers should really step up) is some news from chums of mine who’ve just started a newletter of their own about another of Beijing’s overseas influence-peddling operations. Its purpose is to “spread the voice of the Chinese Communist Party” all over the world by way of hundreds of Chinese-language libraries, just one of which is the something called the Book Drifting Station of Overseas Chinese Library Vancouver Station.

The organizers of the unveiling event were pleased to receive a congratulatory letter from no less a “friend of China” than Prime Minister Justin Trudeau himself. Full marks to our friends over at Found in Translation for digging into all that.

Also I seem to have found my way onto another enemies list. It’s a fairly short list and I find myself in good company.

There’ s a lot going on in this edition of the Real Story newsletter and as I mentioned, there’s no paywall, but you know very well what you should do:

To begin, your word of the day: Hambestagi. In Farsi, it means Solidarity.

I’m sorry to say the meaning of this word appears to be lost on Prime Minister Trudeau and Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly, who appear to have been finally shamed by recent events into contemplating a copy-and paste of American “Magnitsky law” sanctions targeting “dozens of individuals and entities, including Iran’s so-called morality police.” At last, then. Maybe.

In the matter of democratic insurrections, the Trudeau government persists in trying to make a virtue of its preferences for the status quo and “multilateralism” with truncheon regimes with the same old self-aggrandizing conceits, pretexts, alibis and rationalizations that the Liberal foreign-policy establishment churns out on an endless talking-points conveyor belt in exchange for money, tenure, and cushy Global Affairs sinecures. This is not, as they say, “sustainable.”

Oh look, here’s another one via the CBC clucking his tongue at the idea that regime change is what Iranians want and need, in a story that presents the Conservative Party’s concurrence with the proposition as though it were something novel.

Outside these cosseted spaces you will find yourself in the real world. If you keep decent company you will encounter people like Maryam Shafipour, whose necessarily abbreviated story I tell in my column. It’s a too typical but rarely told story, yet there is nothing ordinary about Shafipour, just as there is nothing ordinary about the revolutionary tumults underway in Iran at the moment, or about the courage of Iranian women in that historic struggle.

About Maryam Shafipour, briefly: A political prisoner in Tehran’s infamous Evin Prison for two years, including 67 days in solitary confinement, owing to her outspoken student activism in the cause of women’s rights, minority rights, free speech, and justice for the persecuted. Released in 2015 following a concerted mobilization by international human rights organizations, Shafipour made her way to Canada.

When you get your head around Shafipour’s experience in Iran it should become obvious to you just how preposterous it is that Trudeau and Joly are “standing with” Iran’s revolutionary women and “calling on” the regime to investigate the killing of Mahsa Amini and to perhaps refrain from being quite so beastly in the slaughter of Iranians who have taken to the streets (more than 70 dead so far).

What has been painfully obvious for years now is the Khomeinist regime is incorrigibly tyrannical, decrepit, corrupt and foul. The regime must fall. Marg Bar Dictator.

What follows is Shafipour’s disturbing assessment of the absence of genuine solidarity from the world’s liberal democracies, and the dire implications of that absence - perhaps until now, we shall see - in what purports to be Canada’s “progressive” society:

A new type of colonialism & racism in ‘progressive’ western circles.

- by Maryam Shafipour

As a defender of human rights, I was suppressed in my own country, and I have been also rejected and isolated in the free world because I speak about the basic rights for the people of my country. In academia, in human rights and progressive institutions, I was silenced by the stigma of “Islamophobia” because I speak out against brutal laws and a toxic patriarchal culture.

I have tried to contact several western women and human rights activists and institutions in Canada and bring the Iranian movement to their attention. Most of them refuse to respond or say only “Power to Iranian women!” No action, no statement, no march, no meaningful support.

It’s cowardly. Iranian women activists always supported western women’s initiatives like the Women’s March in the United States. But so many western women, instead of supporting the rights of underprivileged women in underdeveloped societies, they normalize their suppression and the deprivation of their basic rights for their western audience’s cultural relativism. They theorize a normalization that helps western governments justify their failure to perform “positive duties.”

Leading women’s rights activists in the west think that if the voices of strong women from the Middle East who rise up against patriarchy and Sharia law and come to the streets, their own agenda on equity will be undermined in the west. This is not fair.

I agree and sympathize with leading feminists in many ways, but they have no right to base their success in developed countries on the blood of thousands of women in poor countries. An Iranian woman, a Middle Eastern woman, has the right to decide about her body, just as women in Western countries have such a right. It is not our “culture” that causes women in the Middle East to be killed, imprisoned, and flogged.

We are also human and we want to have equal rights with other women and men according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was created to protect every human being from the harm of any culture or religion, and from the harm of other human beings. Western feminists always like to sympathize and pity women in harm’s way from a condescending position. When a strong Middle Eastern woman rises up, they completely ignore her. It’s a new type of colonialism and racism.

First, I must say that I love Canada. Canada gave me back my life after ten years of continuous suffering and oppression and being deprived of all my rights in my own country. When I insist that Canada apply Magnitsky sanctions against human rights violators in Iran, and list the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization in Canadian law, my goal is not only human rights in Iran.

I am also concerned about the safety and security of Canadians in their own country.

I understand that when I talk about how dangerous the IRGC is, it may sound dumb and unbelievable to Canadians. Maybe just like when someone talks about the time of terror under the Nazi regime, for those who do not have the experience of living in that time, understanding the brutality of the Gestapo is not digestible.

I will give a clearer example.

Imagine if the Canadian government refused to put ISIS on the terrorist list, and the high-ranking officials of this group could freely travel to and from Canada and invest in the Canadian real estate market. Would Canadians feel safe? Imagine that one of the leaders of ISIS buys a house in your neighborhood, someone who kills people and rapes women in Iraq, then comes to Canada for a vacation or to live with his family. Isn’t that scary? Of course it is.

The IRGC is a far more dangerous group than ISIS, because it operates under the guise of an official government military force, and uses the public treasury and the wealth of the Iranian nation. It is a large network of terrorism, money laundering and drug trafficking from the Middle East to Africa, North and South America. But ISIS and similar groups are concentrated only in limited areas and do not have access to huge resources. Canada’s borders are open for the corrupt officials of this terrorist group, the IRGC, and they can transfer contaminated wealth and sabotage power. It’s not just about blood money. It’s about the manipulation of power.

Many Canadian citizens worry about the effect Magnitsky sanctions might have. Many Iranian government and military officials travel to Canada with their families to live here. They bring wealth stolen from Iran and invest in the Canadian market while they are killing Iranian people and stealing their money. And with that bloody money in Canada, they build a paradise for themselves and their families.

And there it is. Just two days before the bludgeoning of Mahsa Amini and the tectonic upheavals her killing set off in Iran I wrote about the obscenity of Canada’s welcome mat for these butchers in my column: Ottawa's lush welcome mat for rich Iranians linked to its brutal regime.

The day before Amini was killed this newsletter delved deeper into the background of Canada’s open door to Swindlers, Kleptocrats and Torture-State Bigshots, with a focus on the unreported story of former IRGC brigadier Reza Razm Hosseini, a protege of the IRGC Quds Force commander and warlord Qassam Soleimani, wandering the streets of Vancouver.

Come to think of it that’s the sort of thing that makes it a good idea to subscribe to this newsletter if you don’t already. You’ll read stuff you won’t find elsewhere. And make it a paid sub, if you haven’t already.

Before we leave the subject of Iran, this is one of the best overviews I’ve read anywhere, by Mariam Memarsadeghi, founder of the Cyrus Forum & a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. Absolutely magisterial: The Gender Apartheid State of Iran: Why does Joe Biden seek to align America with a violent ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ regime that beats women to death for exposing their hair?

For more unreported news, here’s an uplifting story about what hambestagi means to the exiles of another police state that routinely sloshes dodgy money and princelings around Canada - the formerly semi-free statelet of Hong Kong. It’s now a full possession of the Chinese Communist Party following the suppression of one of the most stirring democratic uprisings, anywhere in the world, in living memory.

As in the case with Iran, Canada has imposed no Magnitsky sanctions on any institution or individual in Hong Kong for the barbaric crushing of Hongkongers’ hopes for retaining their modicum of liberties and advancing the cause of democracy. This is the sort of moral slovenliness dirty money can buy even in an advanced liberal democracy like Canada.

Anyway, the uplifting part.

In Canada, Hongkongers know full well what’s at stake in Ukraine, and earlier this week a superdrone arrived in Kyiv following a lightning-fast fundraising effort undertaken by Canadian Friends of Hong Kong (CFHK) and their network. They managed to raise €8000 (nearly $11,000 Cdn) for an advanced type of drone, an Autel Evo 2 with night-vision capacity, and it’s got its very own name: “Hongkongers for Ukraine.”

Among the drones donated to the Ukrainian resistance, the “Hongkongers for Ukraine” drone is the one on the big box on the left.

The Ukrainian military has been pleading for volunteer support in building its “army of drones,” and Adopt A Drone for Ukraine has stepped up to assist Ukraine in acquiring “eyes in the sky” to “spot targets and direct artillery fire.”

The Adopt A Drone crew is working closely with Lift99, a group of tech startups based mainly in Talinn, Estonia. Great bunch of people. Volunteers from six countries. So far, the supplies they’ve managed to get to the Ukrainian front lines include dozens of drones, mostly of the small, commercial variety (€2000 a pop), along with “more than 100 vehicles, mostly high end SUVs.”

My friend Ivy Li at Canadian Friends of Hong Kong tells me: “Ukrainians and Hongkongers share a common struggle to defend democracy and freedom from tyranny. Our drone story can illustrate the power of citizens across nationalities when joining forces to fight for freedom and democracy. 

“We hope our drone can help build a relationship with Ukrainians for Hongkongers and Taiwan. Pro-democracy Hongkongers unfortunately have been forced out of their own city, but Taiwanese still have the chance to defend their independence and freedom. We really hope that, if and when needed in future, Ukrainians’ drone projects could be adopted to support Taiwan and UKR veterans might lend Taiwan their expertise.”

That’s what you call forward planning.

The enemies list thing:

Not quite the honour of being blacklisted, sanctioned and barred from entry to Russia that I earned earlier this year, along with Major General Steve Boivin, commander of Canadian Special Operations Forces Command, Halyna Vynnyk, head of the League of Ukrainian Canadian Women, David Vigneault, director of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Globe and Mail’s Mark MacKinnon, my National Post colleague John Ivison and quite a few others. But what the heck.

This time around, although in less glamorous circumstances, I’m again in good company: Ian Young (formerly of South China Morning Post, now at Canadian Press), housing activist Justin Fung, urban planning and affordability brainiac Stephen Punwasi, the Toronto Star’s Jeremy Nuttall, the Vancouver Sun’s Doug Todd and the money-laundering exposé author and Global News investigative reporter Sam Cooper (read Wilful Blindness for a sense of just how far Vancouver has fallen).

The main target of the Vancouver OneCity slate’s chat room is the irrepressable Rohana Rezel, whose offences against property-industry decorum include his tireless shaming of seedy house-flippers (hello, Liberal MP Taleeb Noormohamed) AirBnB racketeers, empty-homes tax dodgers and the rest of that crowd of multimillionaire money-grubbers who have reduced Vancouver to a gated community of the rich and infamous.

Daphne Bramham is onto them in today’s Vancouver Sun: In the often dystopian, nether world of Twitter inhabited by trolls, pols and journos, a hate-storm has migrated to the real world and threatens to engulf a party with the now-seemingly ironic name of OneCity. “A city where everyone belongs” is the party’s motto. Yet, several of its volunteers and supporters plotted to use QAnon tactics against a Vancouver housing activist. . .

Taking a page from the alt-right playbook that cast former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as a child trafficker, local left-wing minor leaguers have set out to smear Rohana Rezel as a pedophile.

Now, about democracy’s enemies, right here in Canada, operating in plain sight and endorsed by the Prime Minister’s Office and quite a few provincial and local politicians:

Headline: Canadian politicians spent Saturday congratulating a new effort to “spread the voice of the CCP,” being of course the Chinese Communist Party. Subhead: PM Justin Trudeau sent a letter of congratulations to the event, as well as China's Top Diplomat in Vancouver. You really need to read the whole thing. It’s a story that warrants front-page, above-the-fold treatment right across the country. So far as I can determine, after several days online, the only place you’ll read about is in the just-launched Found In Translation substack newsletter, a project I cannot praise enough.

Headlines from some of Found In Translation’s recent stories:

This Toronto mayor hopeful says he’s running to ‘tell China’s stories well’ - which is just what Beijing has asked.

As far north as Yukon, China’s diplomats are mobilizing overseas Chinese against Taiwan in Canada.

Former Liberal candidate jettisoned after racism allegations among those urging Chinese to vote for Ken Sim based on race.

Remember CSIS warning Vancouver's Mayor about foreign meddling? Now a Chinese Canadian leader claims Stewart spreading conspiracy theories to divide the Chinese community.

You remember that silly old question, if a tree falls in the forest and nobody’s there to hear it, does it make a sound? Well, wake up. It makes a sound, and it’s deafening, even if the toxic reach of police-state influence in Canada so rarely gets noticed in the mainstream press.

Which is another reason why you should subscribe to The Real Story, for all the news I couldn’t fit in print.

Marg Bar Diktator.