Iran Shuts Down Canadian Showing of 'Iranium' – Mystery Threats

This is still breaking so we anticipate updates later tonight or tomorrow morning.

A showing of the documentary on Iran’s nuclear and world domination ambitions, “Iranium,” was planned to be shown tonight at 7 pm at the Free Thinking Film Society in Ottawa, Canada at the “Library and Archives” building (roughly equivalent to the U.S. National Archives). Following the showing, Iran expert and ex-CIA officer Clare Lopez – also the main editor of the Team B II book “Shariah – the Threat to America” – was scheduled to speak.

Then on Monday, January 17, the organizers were told the event was to be canceled because there had been “complaints,” only to find there was one major complainant: the Embassy of Iran. And yesterday reportedly it required only a phone call from the office of the Canadian Minister of National Heritage James Moore to get the National Archives Theater to agree, in spite of Iran’s threats, to show the film and allow Clare Lopez to speak and moderate a discussion afterwards.

Happy ending? Not yet. Not by a long shot.

At 4:45 pm today, the Library and Archives Building was completely shut down, with all events canceled (and no prior notice), and and by 5:30 pm 3 police cars, 2 firetrucks and an ambulance all rushed to the scene. So no showing of “Iranium,” no speech by Lopez, and in fact, what appears to be a serious response to a serious threat.

According to Ottawa’s National Post, “After receiving threats and two suspicious letters Tuesday, the National Archives of Canada cancelled the screening of a controversial documentary that critiques Iran’s nuclear weapons program, a move that has organizers questioning the national library’s autonomy.”

According to archives spokeswoman Pauline Portelance, “Once we started to receive threats from the public and threats of public protest, we deemed the risk associated with the event was a little too high.”

There were no actual protesters – merely threats of public protest. By the scheduled start time of 7 pm according to the Post “the letters were cleared and considered ‘not suspicious at all.’ ” But by then the entire event had been canceled.

“I’m outraged that in the capital of Canada the Iranians have been able to shut down a movie,” said the group’s president Fred Litwin. “Bad enough in Tehran, but in Ottawa?” Litwin is planning on rebooking the film at another venue and bringing Lopez back to Ottawa again as a speaker.

In the meantime, current plans are for Canadian blogger Vlad Tepes to videotape Lopez this evening, giving the speech she would have given before the Embassy of Iran and unnamed “threateners of intent to protest” frightened the National Archives into closing down the building.

We’ll post it as soon as it’s up.

And here’s something you can do RIGHT NOW to provide the Embassy of Iran and their supporters a very deserved lesson in the law of unintended consequences. Go to the Iranium film’s wonderful website, view the film preview and register to see the entire film free online on its official launch date of February 8, 2011.

Or even better: Buy a copy of the film, or arrange a screening of the film at half-price.

And then drop by and help support the The Free Thinking Film Society – founded in 2007 to “celebrate the efforts of risk-taking documentarians whose work espouses the values of limited, democratic government, free market economies, equality of opportunity rather than equality of result, and the dignity of the individual, all underscored by a healthy and patriotic respect for Western culture and traditions.”

Because every time Iran uses threats and intimidation to censor “Iranium” over the next year – for every hundred people who are cannot see it because it’s banned, fight back by bringing another thousand to the Iranium website.