Friday, March 20, 2009

Jason Kenney spokesthingey Alykhan Velshi is an interesting fellow.

So outrageous was his "pee on the carpet" debut on Channel Four News to explain why Canada is banning British MP and Viva Palestina! leader George Galloway from entering Canada, I thought I'd look him up.

Here he is in 2006 fondly reminiscing about his days at the American Enterprise Institute :
"Ambassador Kirkpatrick, until fairly recently, was a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, where I interned last year, and her office was only a few steps away from my bay on the 11th floor. She later went on to help found the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies."

As the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies later went on to employ Alykhan Velshi, along with Clifford May, Richard Perle, Newt Gingrich, William Kristol, James Woolsey, Charles Krauthammer, Michael Ledeen, Gary Bauer ... you get the idea ... if you signed the PNAC letter, you're in.

Here he is at FDD touting a 2007 article he co-wrote for National Review Online - "The law and terrorist charities" :
"There is, however, a compelling basis for a government ban on any assistance — even self-described humanitarian aid — to terrorists. Because terrorist organizations are not known as models of corporate transparency, there is no way of knowing whether a terrorist entity’s humanitarian arm is funneling money to its militant one."

Gosh, isn't that just what his new boss Jason Kenney thought he was up to two days ago when he stripped federal funds to the Canadian Arab Foundation for providing language training to new immigrants and the Canadian Islamic Congress for providing sensitivity training sessions to the Canadian Air Transportation Security Authority? h/t Stageleft

Do the Cons get all their ideas from ex-American Enterprise Institute interns?
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Update : Mr. Greg got there before me.
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8 comments:

West End Bob said...

Do the Cons get all their ideas from ex-American Enterprise Institute interns?

Probably . . . .

Oemissions said...

Good work, Alison.
Weird people these Cons.

chris said...

I don't understand how Her Majesty's New Government can bar a sitting member of Her Majesty's Oldest Government from entering one of Her Dominions. Shouldn't some conservative heads be exploding by now?

Alison said...

Their heads never actually explode, Chris, caught as they are in a delicate gravitational field between being sucked into the black hole that is Refooooorm versus spinning off into the nether reaches of the Christain Heritage Party.

Anonymous said...

Chris: Well said. Very well said.

Roger Dixon

Paul said...

Wow. This is exactly the kind of individual I do not want shaping Canada's immigration and multiculturalism policy. Harper's wooing of immigrant communities just got a little bit shallower.

By the way, can anyone confirm that Kenney said "We don't need the state to promote diversity. It is a natural part of our civil society." It's in a Calgary Herald op-ed piece yesterday, but I can't find a better source.

http://www.calgaryherald.com/opinion/Kenney+right+person+immigration+minefield/1409011/story.html

Alison said...

Apparently he made the statement when he "visited the Herald editorial board on Thursday", so apart from the fact that all the other CanWest papers will now repeat it - no.

Paul said...

Thanks Alison. Without a better source, I'm hesitant to cite it far and wide as an example of Conservative hoodwinking. Oh well, there are many other examples to choose from.

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