Perly Raegate
I was watching the news the other day and who do I see commenting on recent New Conservative Party of Canada policy initiatives but Mahar Arar. You know Mahar Arar. He's that guy everybody thought was a Terrorist because he got deported to Syria to be tortured in a Syrian prison. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on whether or not you were pointing the finger or having the finger pointed at you - he turned out to be just some Arab guy with a beard who knew a guy who knew a guy and so on and so forth down the line to a Training Camp somewhere in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is bad, by the way, because the Americans bombed it after 9/11, which they never would have done if the Terrorists responsible for flying American planes out of American airports in to American buildings hadn't been mostly from Saudi Arabia. It's a winding road to the Bad Countries sometimes, just as it's a winding road to the Bad Guys. And sometimes you end up in the ditch with your underpants on your head and sometimes you don't. But it's important to make decisions about good and bad and stick to your guns. Heck - stick to your guns? Start firing them. You just never know.
And to be fair, in the Mahar Arar case there was plenty of speculative innuendo backed up by quiet hysteria passing back and forth between herd instinct bureacracies to make the vague but dogged assumption that he was a Terrorist. And let's face it - being deported to Syria to be tortured hasn't done his career any harm, so I don't know why he's suing the government now. I mean, when was the last time you saw a once suspected Terrorist leap into a Policy Analyst gig - on national television, no less. If anything, the government should be suing him - $500 million for making it look bad after it made him look good.
So, lest we go soft on this whole "alleged terrorist/possible crimes against humanity tempest in a teapot/needle in a haystack slippery slope to a live minefield", contrast Mahar Arar's star treatment with an incident that happened at the Liberal Leadership convention. And no - I don't mean the incident where some French Poindexter nobody had ever heard of until it turned out he had French citizenship, had once belonged to the Parti Quebecois and owned a dog named Kyoto - came up the middle to knock out the two front runners - an essentially American professor at Harvard and an essentially socialist former New Democratic Party leader and one-time Premier of Ontario. Who could have guessed - WHO? - that the guy in the middle would sneak up to part those two stellar, baggageless front runners to win the day. Surely THAT has never happened before. The quiet guy coming up the middle to knock out the "Excuse me Ma'am, But You're Blocking my Ego's View of Myself" front runners? Never. I can't think of a single time such a thing has happened at a political convention.
No. Not THAT incident. I mean the incident (and when I say incident, I mean "Arab Anti-Semitic Smear Campaign") that happened to Arlene Perly Rae at the Liberal Leadership convention a couple of weekends ago. Apparently, at some point during the convention, a guy from an Arab association of one kind or another sidled up to Ms. Perly Rae to say something to the effect of, "Don't vote for Bob Rae. His wife is Jewish. She's so Jewish she's even a Vice President of the Canadian Jewish Council." To which Ms. Perly Rae replied, "I'm Bob Rae's wife." Then, instead of recovering his composure to casually quip, "Er... that's funny.... you don't LOOK married..." or somesuch, the Arab Anti-Semite Smear Campaigner just slithered off into the convention to join all the other Arab Anti-Semite Campaigners in passing around a flyer that said pretty much the same thing.
To complicate matters, a group, possibly an army, of New Conservative Party of Canada Government Operatives had meanwhile infiltrated the Liberal Leadership convention to carry out an "Anybody but Bob Rae" Smear Campaign of their own. They bragged later that they were successful because Rae, who could have wiped the floor with Stephen Harper in a National Election, had lost to some French Poindexter nobody had ever heard of until these same New Conservative Party of Canada Government Operatives turned National Patriots found out that he had French citizenship, etc etc. The fact that he also had a Mom who spoke for him - in French - and made him seem a little bit like a survivor of the Bates Hotel was just icing on the cake. For everybody, really. Because now we get to freshenup/deracistify a debate in Canada about dual citizenship that started when the New Conservative Party of Canada Government decided to rescue scads of Lebanese-Canadians stranded in Lebanon when Israel responded to Hezbollah's kidnapping/capture of two Israeli soldiers by bombing Lebanon's infrastructure and killing thousands of civilians.
Instead of sending Israel the bill, unfortunately, the New Conservative Government of Canada sent it to us. Canadian taxpayers. Which, to be fair, I suppose includes at least a handful of the rescued Lebanese Canadians.
Thankfully, no one is suggesting that the New Conservative Party Operatives didn't want Bob Rae to win because he's Jewish. At least, I assume not. Since they'd hardly have bragged so loudly about their successful Smear Campaign to see him defeated - would they? No. No they would not. If anybody is going to take credit for smearing Bob Rae, it's going to be their boss, Stephen Harper. Afterall, he was first up to call the whole lot of Liberal Leadership contenders "Anti-Israel". And he stood by his smear, too. No apologizer is Stephen Harper. Not on your life. CJC Vice President wife or not. Stephen Harper does NOT play favourites when he smears a group of people.
On another bright note, the Arab Anti-Semite Smear Campaigner seems to be sufficiently ashamed that he isn't coming forth to say, "Yah. It was me. I did it." All we get are denials. So. There's that, at least. Denials. No bragging. Just denials.
Meanwhile, in the middle of this morass of Hijinks and Anti-Semitism there was a flyer in circulation telling delegates not to vote for Bob Rae because of his views on Israel. Now, Stephen Harper called Bob Rae "Anti-Israel" so we know for sure that it wasn't him circulating the flyer. In fact, the finger pretty much points to the Canadian Arab Federation. It would appear that, even while New Conservative Party operatives were carrying on an "Anybody But Rae" Smear Campaign because they feared that if he won he would wipe the floor with Stephen Harper, IRONICALLY, the CAF was carrying on its OWN smear campaign, from WITHIN the LIberal Party, because it feared that if Bob Rae won he would... ... ... be... less... Anti-Israel... than... Stephen Harper had led them to believe he was...
Anyway, if there is anything good at all to come out of any of this, at least we know that Mahar Arar is the new go-to guy on the New Conservative Government of Canada policies regarding Terrorists, that the New Conservative Party of Canada sends Operatives to get up to hijinx at Liberal Leadership conventions and that even Anti-Semites are ashamed enough of their blatant Anti-Semitism to NOT own up to Perly Raegate.
