What is is with George Galloway?

According to what I've read, he had a better-than-average reputation for his constituency work; although I don't know if any of the Glasgow ILXors who have been his constituents would have anything to add to that.

A once 'potential-Labour-leader who threw his considerable talents away becoming a maverick, a admittedly gifted demagogue, + a nasty piece of work. (careful what you say about him too, he rivals Robert Maxwell in his use of the libel laws).

--hahahaha what a fuckin dork

People are trying to portray him as being an apologist for the bombers, but in truth he denounced them in the most violent language I've heard from anyone. All he said was that in order to deal with such groups, you have to stop them being able to find new recruits. Invading Iraq, supporting Israel etc. make it much easier for al-qaeda etc. to find new members. Which seems entirely correct to me.

Ed, he won his seat in parliament because his opponent was a slavish supporter of the war in Iraq, which he consistently opposed. What evidence does anyone have to the contrary, other than a conviction that the muslim community is incapable of rational thought and uniformly anti-semitic? If that's the case, how the fuck did the Jewish Oona King win a majority of 10,000 the last time round?

"Now I know that standards have slipped in the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice. I am here today but last week you already found me guilty. You traduced my name around the world without ever having asked me a single question, without ever having contacted me, without ever written to me or telephoned me, without any attempt to contact me whatsoever. And you call that justice.

"Now I want to deal with the pages that relate to me in this dossier and I want to point out areas where there are - let's be charitable and say errors. Then I want to put this in the context where I believe it ought to be. On the very first page of your document about me you assert that I have had 'many meetings' with Saddam Hussein. This is false.

"I have had two meetings with Saddam Hussein, once in 1994 and once in August of 2002. By no stretch of the English language can that be described as "many meetings" with Saddam Hussein.

"As a matter of fact, I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns. I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second of the two occasions, I met him to try and persuade him to let Dr Hans Blix and the United Nations weapons inspectors back into the country - a rather better use of two meetings with Saddam Hussein than your own Secretary of State for Defence made of his.

"I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when British and Americans governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas. I used to demonstrate outside the Iraqi embassy when British and American officials were going in and doing commerce.

"You will see from the official parliamentary record, Hansard, from the 15th March 1990 onwards, voluminous evidence that I have a rather better record of opposition to Saddam Hussein than you do and than any other member of the British or American governments do.

"Now you say in this document, you quote a source, you have the gall to quote a source, without ever having asked me whether the allegation from the source is true, that I am 'the owner of a company which has made substantial profits from trading in Iraqi oil'.

"Senator, I do not own any companies, beyond a small company whose entire purpose, whose sole purpose, is to receive the income from my journalistic earnings from my employer, Associated Newspapers, in London. I do not own a company that's been trading in Iraqi oil. And you have no business to carry a quotation, utterly unsubstantiated and false, implying otherwise.

"Now you have nothing on me, Senator, except my name on lists of names from Iraq, many of which have been drawn up after the installation of your puppet government in Baghdad. If you had any of the letters against me that you had against Zhirinovsky, and even Pasqua, they would have been up there in your slideshow for the members of your committee today.

"You have my name on lists provided to you by the Duelfer inquiry, provided to him by the convicted bank robber, and fraudster and conman Ahmed Chalabi who many people to their credit in your country now realise played a decisive role in leading your country into the disaster in Iraq.

"There were 270 names on that list originally. That's somehow been filleted down to the names you chose to deal with in this committee. Some of the names on that committee included the former secretary to his Holiness Pope John Paul II, the former head of the African National Congress Presidential office and many others who had one defining characteristic in common: they all stood against the policy of sanctions and war which you vociferously prosecuted and which has led us to this disaster.

"You quote Mr Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Well, you have something on me, I've never met Mr Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Your sub-committee apparently has. But I do know that he's your prisoner, I believe he's in Abu Ghraib prison. I believe he is facing war crimes charges, punishable by death. In these circumstances, knowing what the world knows about how you treat prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison, in Bagram Airbase, in Guantanamo Bay, including I may say, British citizens being held in those places.

"I'm not sure how much credibility anyone would put on anything you manage to get from a prisoner in those circumstances. But you quote 13 words from Dahar Yassein Ramadan whom I have never met. If he said what he said, then he is wrong.

"And if you had any evidence that I had ever engaged in any actual oil transaction, if you had any evidence that anybody ever gave me any money, it would be before the public and before this committee today because I agreed with your Mr Greenblatt [Mark Greenblatt, legal counsel on the committee].

"Your Mr Greenblatt was absolutely correct. What counts is not the names on the paper, what counts is where's the money. Senator? Who paid me hundreds of thousands of dollars of money? The answer to that is nobody. And if you had anybody who ever paid me a penny, you would have produced them today.

"Now you refer at length to a company names in these documents as Aredio Petroleum. I say to you under oath here today: I have never heard of this company, I have never met anyone from this company. This company has never paid a penny to me and I'll tell you something else: I can assure you that Aredio Petroleum has never paid a single penny to the Mariam Appeal Campaign. Not a thin dime. I don't know who Aredio Petroleum are, but I daresay if you were to ask them they would confirm that they have never met me or ever paid me a penny.

"Whilst I'm on that subject, who is this senior former regime official that you spoke to yesterday? Don't you think I have a right to know? Don't you think the Committee and the public have a right to know who this senior former regime official you were quoting against me interviewed yesterday actually is?

"Now, one of the most serious of the mistakes you have made in this set of documents is, to be frank, such a schoolboy howler as to make a fool of the efforts that you have made. You assert on page 19, not once but twice, that the documents that you are referring to cover a different period in time from the documents covered by The Daily Telegraph which were a subject of a libel action won by me in the High Court in England late last year.

"You state that The Daily Telegraph article cited documents from 1992 and 1993 whilst you are dealing with documents dating from 2001. Senator, The Daily Telegraph's documents date identically to the documents that you were dealing with in your report here. None of The Daily Telegraph's documents dealt with a period of 1992, 1993. I had never set foot in Iraq until late in 1993 - never in my life. There could possibly be no documents relating to Oil-for-Food matters in 1992, 1993, for the Oil-for-Food scheme did not exist at that time.

"And yet you've allocated a full section of this document to claiming that your documents are from a different era to the Daily Telegraph documents when the opposite is true. Your documents and the Daily Telegraph documents deal with exactly the same period.

"But perhaps you were confusing the Daily Telegraph action with the Christian Science Monitor. The Christian Science Monitor did indeed publish on its front pages a set of allegations against me very similar to the ones that your committee have made. They did indeed rely on documents which started in 1992, 1993. These documents were unmasked by the Christian Science Monitor themselves as forgeries.

"Now, the neo-con websites and newspapers in which you're such a hero, senator, were all absolutely cock-a-hoop at the publication of the Christian Science Monitor documents, they were all absolutely convinced of their authenticity. They were all absolutely convinced that these documents showed me receiving $10 million from the Saddam regime. And they were all lies.

"In the same week as the Daily Telegraph published their documents against me, the Christian Science Monitor published theirs which turned out to be forgeries and the British newspaper, Mail on Sunday, purchased a third set of documents which also upon forensic examination turned out to be forgeries. So there's nothing fanciful about this. Nothing at all fanciful about it.

"The existence of forged documents implicating me in commercial activities with the Iraqi regime is a proven fact. It's a proven fact that these forged documents existed and were being circulated amongst right-wing newspapers in Baghdad and around the world in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Iraqi regime.

"Now, Senator, I gave my heart and soul to oppose the policy that you promoted. I gave my political life's blood to try to stop the mass killing of Iraqis by the sanctions on Iraq which killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to born at that time. I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq. And I told the world that your case for the war was a pack of lies.

“I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.

"Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.

If the world had listened to Kofi Annan, whose dismissal you demanded, if the world had listened to President Chirac who you want to paint as some kind of corrupt traitor, if the world had listened to me and the anti-war movement in Britain, we would not be in the disaster that we are in today. Senator, this is the mother of all smokescreens. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported, from the theft of billions of dollars of Iraq's wealth.

"Have a look at the real Oil-for-Food scandal. Have a look at the 14 months you were in charge of Baghdad, the first 14 months when $8.8 billion of Iraq's wealth went missing on your watch. Have a look at Haliburton and other American corporations that stole not only Iraq's money, but the money of the American taxpayer.

"Have a look at the oil that you didn't even meter, that you were shipping out of the country and selling, the proceeds of which went who knows where? Have a look at the $800 million you gave to American military commanders to hand out around the country without even counting it or weighing it.

"Have a look at the real scandal breaking in the newspapers today, revealed in the earlier testimony in this committee. That the biggest sanctions busters were not me or Russian politicians or French politicians. The real sanctions busters were your own companies with the connivance of your own Government."

i kinda have to like him. sorry.

The collapse of the USSR was also the worst event in the life of many Russians, who've seen their life expectancy plummet under the new capitalism, mainly due to drug use, alcoholism and STDs.

There may be a few people inclined to make a link between the deaths in London and the intervention in Iraq. This is utterly flawed thinking. .......... London was not targeted because British troops are in Iraq or because of Tony Blair’s alliance with the Bush White House. Rather, London was attacked because these extremists want to ignite a “holy war” between themselves and democratic societies.

So The Times, too, was able to identify what motivated the London bombers before anyone had even claimed responsibility and while blood was still fresh on the streets.

x-post

Are you saying "as likely"? Because we know that security has been ramped up a lot more since the Iraq war. From a purely practical point of view, the authorities have considered that the Iraq war made this kind of event significantly more likely. And I'm curious to see commentators failing to admit what we'd condemn security planners for failing to admit.

precisely. galloway's core beliefs are admirable; it's the way he goes about things - crass, opportunistic, self-aggrandising - that's so offensive. and, sadly, his modus operandi only serves to detract from the sense in some of what he's saying, and to make him an easy target for the right-wing press etc.

in short: he's a cock.

That's why Oona King Lost, it wasn't why Galloway won, what about the other, equally anti-war candidates. I have never made the suggestion that the muslim community are anti-semitic, I wouldn't dare try and speak for them.

There is no point dignifying the political aims of murderers by giving them the oxygen of recognition.

Total bollocks Momus, especially that last line. I suggest you visit Johann Hari’s blog and try answering some of his "15 questions to supporters of George Galloway”, I’ve yet to hear a convincing answer to any of them:

http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=624

One can have opposed the war in Iraq and still find Galloway completely reprehensible.

Regarding the attacks as the result of British involvement in the war in Iraq, as GG suggests (and you seem to be suggesting) is naïve.

The first and the second attacks on the WTC; the embassy bombings in Dar-es-Salaam and Nairobi; the Bali bombings all predated the war in Iraq.

Were the Casablanca bombings in any way the fault of the Moroccan government for protecting its Jewish community and enjoying good relations with the US?

Were the attacks on the Riyadh compounds justifiable because non-Moslems have no right to reside in holy Islamic lands?

How far are you prepared to go in blaming Blair and co for psychopaths placing bombs in public transport Momus? I’d like to hear it.

BTW OBL’s response to the mass murder of predominantly Ozzie tourists in Bali : Australia deserved it for supporting independence for Catholic East Timor from Islamic Indonesia!

tariq ali on the cause of the bombings

x-post: oh, for a killfile on ILX.

Bin Laden, like most of the 9/11 hijackers, is a Saudi. He's known with some certainty to be hiding in Pakistan. But Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are US allies, so they invade Afghanistan and Iraq instead. Is that "fair nuff" or just really stupid and cynical?

Unfortunately, despite their "abilities" to do so, no one HAS taken apart a senate committee like that, neither American nor British. It is a shame that it took so long for such a confrontation to occur, and it is also a shame that it most likely won't happen again, and it is (maybe) also a shame that it's speaker has been successfully pegged as "traitor," "ba'athist," etc (truth of these allegations aside, I am talking PR effectiveness here)--he is easy to summarily dismiss. But you cannot dismiss the fact that he did it, and did it well.

Well, Paris suffered in 95' in the GIA bombing campaign (8 dead, 100+ injured) and the Metro was alleged to be a target of Osman Ahmed (Suspected Madrid bomber) last summer. Iraq has likely increased the threat but any city in any Western liberal democracy is at threat.

would it be fantastically simplistic to point out that if there wasn't an occupying force, there wouldn't be a resistance?

Jason Burke – “Al-Qaeda: The true story of radical Islam”

i think everyone here has a point and there seems to actually be more general agreement than momus seems willing to allow. it seems like you're picking fights! i think most people may agree with your thoughts about iraq and so forth, they just happen to think galloway is a jerk whose manner of relaying his opinions is opportunistic and unconstructive. do you disagree with that part of it? because i think that's where the real disagreement may be located.

anyway... i just want to point out that to my recollection the parisian police have happily thwarted several terrorist efforts in the past few years, and suspect numerous "cells" of being active there. so while i would agree that england's involvement in iraq has made them a more likely target for this sort of thing, i don't think france or germany's lack of involvement translates by any means into their not being a target.

this really threw a wrench in this thread. what has it to do with anything? galloway was compared to stalin, it was simply asserted that at some point he was a stalinist--not in a metaphorical sense but in a very real "follow the moscow line" sense. i don't know if this is true or not, but in any event the connection b/t blair and stalin seems like a red herring.

So if we're not with Galloway we're against him. Isn't this the sort of pointless binary politics that both Galloway and Bush pedal and what I am railing against. There are no binary issues because all issues are inter-linked. Life is too complicated to be reduce to soap-box sound bites.

I will get back to you on why Galloway is beyond contempt but I need to consult some people first.

heheh. if only the scottish parliament:

a) had powers to divorce itself from tony's foreign crusades, and
b) had the political will to do the same.

Ah, George Monbiot, a man who wrote after 9/11 "If Al Qaeda did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it".

Way to go with drumming up the moderate sensible support, Mr Galloway.

a bit, yeah, given the level of state violence in iraq before the invasion, and given that the resistance (i used the word, shd have done scare-quotes) is as concerned with murdering iraqis on sectarian grounds as it is with resisting occupation.

In short, his basic position - from the statement he uttered prompting this thread - is that the leaders of the US and UK are engaged in actions which wil result in increasing numbers of innocent civilians dying in Iraq and the industrialsied west, and that people who value human life should perhaps do something more positive that redouble their efforts to continue doing the thing which has helped create the situation and won't make it any better.

Galloway is personally a wanker, but there's nowt to dispute in what he said on Thursday really, aside from his iconoclastic desire to be the one who said it first.

There is truth in the position that our foreign policy since 9/11 has increased the risk of being targetted. So what follows from that truth?

That we should have done nothing about the Taliban? That we should have continued the embargo of Iraq indefinitely? That we should have done nothing to help the catholic population of East Timor, and then cross our fingers that the Bali bombing wouldn't have occurred?

What about the prominent posistion of jews and catholics and hindus and atheists and lesbians and musicians, to say nothing of moslems of all stripes, in our society?

These things make us a target. Does it then follow that we should take steps to obviating these irritants? That we should mourn the immigration that created such a multicultural society?

There is now, as there were during the second world war, a substantial number of people monomaniacally concerned with demonstrating the great evil of our elected leaders, to the point where they are utterly unable to know real fascism when when they see it.

Jamaar Islamir (sp?) have long hated Australia, there's a lot more to the Islamic cause that just the middle east and the current war. Jus' sayin.

this is the essential dichotomy of Gorgeous George. Unfortunately he happens to be the loudest voice saying a lot of things that need saying. However he is one for reducing what need saying to Tabloid headlines in a base reductionist way, and, like most politicians, lack the humility to recognise that he cannot have all the answers

would it be fantastically simplistic to point out that if there wasn't an occupying force, there wouldn't be a resistance?

-- grimly fiendish

This is an important point, and well put!

It doesn't make you a support of Baathism to say that the behaviour of the coalition is creating a well of hatred; as a friend has said elsewhere, we're creating a veneer of genuine grievances that provide support to the opportunists; they want to say 'kill the infidel' but that's a tougher sell than 'kill the bastards who murdered your family'. Until we stop killing their families, we're providing the easiest tools to the theocratic psycho nihilists to recruit.

The question of what we do now sidesteps responsibility. A group of people knew all of the above, and still did it anyway. They were supposed to keep us out of harms way, and they've placed us in it. And now they say that whatever the rights and wrongs, we're in there now and we can't just leave. That's a moot point, and an entirely separate one from the issue of the insane stupidity of the actions of the leaders of this 'coalition' and the point that the more they urge me to move on and ignore their incompetance, the more I'm determiend to hold onto that.

But it is equally obvious that the war is a huge factor in increased Muslim disaffection. Every journalistic investigation into how British Muslims actually feel makes this unmistakeably clear. It will have been the turning point or last straw for many Muslims; for some it will have made the difference between sullen alienation and the feeling that some gesture needs to be made. Even if it hasn't increased the likelihood of the arguably "inevitable" attack, it is likely to increase the probable frequency and ferocity of such attacks. It has increased the likelihood that ordinary people will be maimed or injured.

xpost

ok, so let's allow that afghanistan and iraq have made the islamists measurably more driven and vicious. now what? full withdrawal from both would, by that logic, leave us with pre-invasion islamist attitudes and activies. which is only world trade center I, uss cole, khobar towers, and 9/11 itself. great!

How terribly reassuring.

People should note that the act of killing others and oneself in the process isn't rational so degree level political sophistication misses the point entirely. The British Army entered Northern Ireland in 1969 to protect the Catholic population but that didn't matter - it was an occupying force upholding a state of affairs that led to daily iniquities and humiliations that lead to people snapping. Most people who joined the IRA in the 70s didn't do it after careful consideration of the politcial situation; they did it because they'd been beaten up by the police, or the army or being searched for the 50th time that year, or their parents house was trashed by the army. They did it in rage, not reason.

You're on very dodgy ground indeed here. By detaching terrorism from any motive and any rationale, you come close to some weird conception of Muslim "original sin". Is it a racial or cultural proclivity, then? Why aren't disaffected black youths planting bombs?

And you do know that the French journalists you cite as proof that there might be French casualties were released by their captors, don't you?

what is the 'rationale' then, momus? given the current state of iraq, surely an attack on iran would make about as much sense.

And this is the point about anti-enlightenment fundamentalism - fanatics like these are at their most dangerous not when they're spouting their medievalist nonsense but when they're telling the truth. The BNP's wild nonsense about Jewish conspiracies is easily swatted aside, it's when they start talking about the white working class being ignored is when they start to pose a threat. Ditto fundamentalism - the truth of the injustices of Palestine and Iraq is far more dangerous than the fantasies of their theocratic bullshit.

The big solution to this problem is to make vehicles which don't run on oil, and humans which don't run on religion.

we're a long way off that mate. and to religious people, and people who define themselves as religious, its this kind of thing that can be problematic, setting up non-religousity as superior to religion, the subtext that their religion makes them lesser, inferior, and you're above that somehow. thats another 'clash of civilizations' being set up there, isnt it, another dichotomy. aetheism vs islam? maybe, thats exactly how its being sold to people on the other side of that divide.

im not religious in the slightest btw

Dissafected black youths may well be planting bombs. Think Richard Reid.

I don't have any weird conception of "Muslim original sin". Nonetheless, Islamist terrorism is religious before it's political. It's about an extreme milleniallism, which is of course linked to the political situation but plays on a lot of other things as well. It's a mentality that has a lot more psychologically in common with cult mentalities (Heaven's Gate etc) than it does with IRA-type political militancy, which is why I think reducing it all to politics presents a skewed picture.

And you do know that the French journalists you cite as proof that there might be French casualties were released by their captors, don't you?

Yeah. It's well known that very large ransoms were paid for the release of the three French hostages. Their release had nothing to do with the government's support or lack of support for the war. Ditto for the released Italian hostage, despite the presence of Italian troops in Iraq.

Re-building secular politics will take a hell of a lot of time, but won't happen if left-secular parties with an agenda to tackle the profiteering in the reconstruction are told that such issues are beyond change and debate; by saying that secular politics can't tackle injustice, you leave the door for alternatives that aren't so accomodating with the rule of law.

The West certainly should sort out its relations with the Middle East in an equitable and humanitarian way and Muslims certainly have legitimate grievances, but even in the unlikely situation where these problems are addressed, I'm not at all sure what effect it would have on extreme Islamist terrorism. (After all, why did far-left European terrorism die out in the early eighties? Was it because any of their grievances were being addressed? Actually, the opposite is true, because there was an across-the-board lurch to the right across Europe in the 80s.)

both of these views are myopic. Of course the rise of Al-Qaeda occurred independently of and prior to the Iraq invasion but that doesn't mean that that invasion hasn't hugely inflated their stock and, quite obviously to any rational being, made Britain more likely to suffer attack. we were a target before; we are more of a target now. al qaeda's greatest talent has been to co-opt small, local, often territorial grievances into their cause, because they offer method, structure and, crucially, publicity. The m/o is to turn locally motivated political radicals into, sometimes unwitting, fighters for a global caliphate under sharia law. the war in iraq, our lack of action on palestine, our mute ambivalence towards helpful dictatorships in pakistan, uzbekistan etc are all aiding and abetting this cause. the fight against specific terrorists in london, new york or anywhere else is only going to be won after we address the situation globally.

If you look at the profiles of Marx and the Marxists, they hardly fit the picture of the oppressed proletariat either. They're mostly introspective, privileged, educated young men, often living in relative cultural isolation in foreign countries...

1. the house of saud revoked his citizenship years ago and hate him plenty since he's called for their overthrow and
2. he's yemeni anyway.

there is a bit of a contradiction here -- the west's action, its inaction, and its ambivalence in widely different circumstances are all providing justification for terrorists.

I think I'm with Momus and Scott on this one TBH. I think Galloway is outnumbered by the US and UK governments and media and so it is very easy for them to tar and feather him, accuse him of sympathising and indeed collaborating with terrorists (as opposed to just blowing the shit out of them), even blaming him for the London bombings.

In the same way that anti-war protestors in America are deemed anti-American, the British parliament and press appear to have extracted everything about his character, his history, his politics and actions, then spun them into some kind of monstrous semi-truth. He opposes the conflict in Iraq, therefore he is a Stalinist, a fascist, an Iraqi sympathiser, a terrorist, a Cunt. I haven't actually read any real reasons on this thread for why I should actively dislike him. His election campaign may have been slightly conniving but no more so than any of the major parties.

I think it's safe to say that had the US been less obsessed with gung-ho kick ass shite and been more attuned to the need to keep 'the international community' onside and acted with greater sensitivity all round, the invasion of Iraq migth have been had a different aftermath. It's a big maybe, and sadly, we'll never know. We can say for sure that the invasion has been the most appallingly handled exercise in community relations since, well, ever. It's been so badly done that it's like the script is being written by extremist terrorists, who through cunning plans are lulling the US into doing exactly what's necessary to really make a great big fuck up of it.

Asking whether the war was right misses the point. The motivation might have been right, but any advances due to the righteousness have been undone by the manne of its conduct, and indeed, claims to righteousness are undermined by the manner of its prosecution.

Sadly, this all leads us to today. As people rightly say, we can't just withdraw. Or can we? There's an argument that I've some sympathy with that whatever gains are made by our presence there are lost many times over and that if we're genuinely interested in democracy developing in Iraq, we have to let it develop. If democracy is the US's bitch, wither democracy.

Does that mean you think we shouldn’t have taken control - along with the French - of the Ottoman Empire after WWI (after it had sided against us)?

Do you think it's really the expression of a genuine grievance when muslims whine about being victims of imperialism for having had their EMPIRE dismantled?

An empire under which a million armenians were massacred for seeking equal rights and thereby invalidating the contract of servitude by which jihad allows defeated infidels' lives to be spared.

Which had subjugated countless non-muslims groups for its 600 year history, until the British, having took over, forceably ended the practise (as well as the arab slave trade in black africans)

Do you not think these emergent liberal attitudes in the West and the lack of same in the Arab world might not have more to do with their economic stagnation than some imaginary oppression under the very short-lived period of British colonialism, administered by generally sympathetic Arabists?

bro, there's huge differences between turks and arabs!

Also, hey look over there, it's Niall Ferguson! He's here to tell us that colonialism was the best thing that ever happened to the world, and it's about time those ungrateful darkies stopped blaming the West, and those whining white liberals stopped feeling so guilty! Woot!

I absolutely agree the logic of this, but if so let the pro-war lobby - including the government - have the courage of their convictions and say so. For Blair and the right-wing press this is the truth that dare not speak its name: that they knew they were almost certainly increasing the risk of terrorist attack on the UK, but they thought that was a price worth paying. Stop insulting our intelligence by hyprocritically claiming that only "naive" people believe there is a possible and even likely connection between the war and what happened last Thursday.

The terrible dilemna here is that Iraq was never a real issue in the war on terror. It was creatively grafted on as an imagined two-fer. Saddam's Ba'athist Iraq was always a regional military and political problem and then an international problem involving the U.N. as a result of his invasion of Kuwait. You can come down on either side of the Gulf War I or sanctions debate and still have the intellectual honesty to realize that terrorism was not really the problem w/Iraq.

Now that we've dug ourselves into this hole, the prosepct of making concessions to homicidal maniacs even more crazy than our own military establishments, and not necessarily even Iraqi natives is not one that any modern politician knows how to do. Nixon couldn't get the U.S. out of Vietnam except through deceit and stealth and extended carnage. The first politician to cave will go down not only to electoral defeat but to ignominy and they all know it. To leave Iraq, which has plenty of tribal, sectarian, and regional divisions to overcome, to the murderous hands of foreign jihadis would not only be seen as cowardly by the insurgents but as faithless, fickle and shameful by those Iraqis who did welcome the fall of the Ba'athists.

The authority the terrorists use to demand that we leave Saudi, or Iraq, or Afghanistan, or 'Palestine' has very little to nothing to do with the wishes of the local population, but with their own unforgiving interpretation of the Koran and their notions of history. I will grant that theirs is not an illegitimate political position, however distasteful they may seem to me in the particulars, but it's a piss-poor justification for exploding bombs in commuter trains or flying airplanes into office buildings. I cannot criticize the cynical, vengeful treatment of the prisoners at Guantanamo only to turn and justify the kind of hideous violence the Taleban and their Al-Qaeda friends inflicted not only on their avowed political enemies but on any socially recalcitrant Afghans.

We need to show the carrot as well as the stick, and when we use the stick we need to use it wisely. If your going to sink so low as to kill people, the least you can do is be effective about it and Rumsfeld et al., by putting Afghanistan on the back burner, trying to occupy Iraq on the cheap, and failing to plan sufficiently ahead for either have as the evil Fouché put it (though it's commonly attributed to Talleyrand), "committed worse than a crime, (they've) committed a blunder."

Neither Rumsfeld's blunders nor Al-Qaeda's malice should prevent the U.S. nor Britain from doing the only honorable thing left, which is to try to set up as decent and stable a government as possible in Iraq, to help that nation and regime to develop, and then to pull our troops out.

i still think a little more internationalization is a good idea (most productively outside europe and probably outside the UN — neither would get involved)

It'd doubtless another thread, but this seems like nonsense.

Multiculturalism
free press
science
jews allowed to go about their business
ditto atheists, buddhists, artists, moslems
ditto women

Islamists have expressed time and time again their fundamental opposition to all of the above.

Of course supporting the war against baathists and fascists in Iraq has increased the chance of our being a target. Why would I deny that?

But that partial list is at least as much the cause.

Isn't the rule of the Taliban a test case? Haven't we seen exactly the kind of country the islamists would like to us to live under? This isn't theoreticals. We've seen a country where all of those things were prohibited, and it had NOTHING to do with grievances in the middle east, etc.

None of those things come under the heading of ligitimate greivances with the west and are not by and large held by the vast majority of muslims in the world. Things like with continuing situation in palestine and the treatment of muslims in western countries are the sort of issues that concern the vast majority of muslims.

Lee you are confusing 'Islamists' and muslims again and it really isn't helpful. There are also shades of grey in Islamism, compare and contrast, for example, the Taliban with the AK party, currently in power in Turkey and also 'Islamist'.

i think with each time jews read a free press in a multicultural area of a western city with women the number of potential terrorists doesnt increase exponentially. or, at all

But moderate moslems didn't plant the bombs (I'd be willing to bet. Who's betting against?). Moderate Moslems are causing mayhem in Iraq. Moderate moslems weren't in charge of Afghanistan. I could go on?

the ottoman empire and the caliphates were vastly different in scope, size, and politics. and as ed pointed out, there are plenty of examples of political tolerance in the ottoman empire (and i would say there are too in the various caliphates, as well). and i don't think this excuses what problems did occur, but it's not like western-style imperialism was any more "nice."

george galloway, hero to muslim supremacists

I don't find this remark remotely infamous

He was very big in the Scottish Labour Party in the late 70s, and was occasionally spoken of as a possible future leader; but when Labour started to move towards the centre he was left behind

Future leader? First I've heard. He wasn't "big" in the Scottish Labour Party so much as well known - for being a dickhead. Infamous you might say.

On its walls were posters from the Respect Party, an extremist pro-Islamic party founded by MP George Galloway, that showed Israeli soldiers pointing rifles at Palestinian children.

So, all we can glean from that article is that Respect has printed posters which show Israeli soldiers pointing rifles at Palestinian children. Is it the people who made those posters who should be chastised, then, rather than the soldiers depicted therein?

GG was elected the youngest Chairman of the Scottish Labour Party in 1981.

-- N_RQ (bl0cke...), July 11th, 2005. (later)

Hah, my immediate reaction was that Momus was comparing *himself* to Marx and Engels.

English people and Pakistanis dont blow themselves up because they are so distraught about Palestine. That's crap. Go into a politicised Mosque, read the pamphlets, watch Arabic Television. The incitement to hatred is intense. That's why Pakistanis and British people go out to kill Infidels, and it has fuck all to do with Iraq or Palestine.

Iraq, Palestine, Saudi Arabia's complicity, these are all excuses used by power-mad clerics who get their kicks from sending young men and women to their death killing People of the Book (both Books).
Used as excuses and strong rhetoric tools, aided by the likes of Ken Livingston and George Galloway who both exaggerate and romanticise the jihad in Palestine.

welcome to the jungle!

Whether you personally like the link or not—and it's a disturbing one for the politically apathetic, because it implicates us all in decisions our government has made over the years, and makes us all footsoldiers in distant wars—it is something that comes up time and again in reports of the formative thinking in the minds of the people who commit these extreme acts.

The New York Times yesterday published an article entitled Anger Burns On Fringe of Britain's Muslims. It begins:

"At Beeston's Cross Flats Park, in the center of this now embattled town, Sanjay Dutt and his friends grappled Friday with why their friend Kakey, better known to the world as Shehzad Tanweer, had decided to become a suicide bomber.

"He was sick of it all, all the injustice and the way the world is going about it," Mr. Dutt, 22, said. "Why, for example, don't they ever take a moment of silence for all the Iraqi kids who die?"

"It's a double standard, that's why," answered a friend, who called himself Shahroukh, also 22, wearing a baseball cap and basketball jersey, sitting nearby. "I don't approve of what he did, but I understand it. You get driven to something like this, it doesn't just happen."

Later:

That anger stems not merely from unhappiness with the situation of Muslims in Britain, but also solidarity with what they see as the aggressive and unjust treatment of Muslims abroad, and not least from Britain's part in the war in Iraq."

Also an Al'Q supporting Sunni kid in the UK is not going to cry for Shia dead in Iraq, but will for the dead of Fallujah.

if the full-on civil war comes (which dear god i hope it does not), it will make the lebanese civil war look as simple and bloodless as a chess match

"Britain's involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan contributed to the terrorist attacks in London, a respected independent thinktank on foreign affairs, the Chatham House organisation, says today."

The US is the world's prime hegemon, a military-political-ideological prime mover. For this reason, whoever is killing whoever else, it won't be too much of a leap to pin the blame on the US if the US is involved in any way, or has an interest in the outcome of a dispute. The Guardian article says "Britain's ability to carry out counter-terrorism measures has also been hampered because the US is always in the driving seat in deciding policy." Whoever is involved, and isn't the US, is necessarily out of control.

And the battle of the Boyne has contributed to IRA attacks. Yes the Iraq war has a bearing on what these people did but it is not the route cause, it is not what started them on the road to terrorism and it's naive to think otherwise.

capital stuff, george. the iraqis are doing for "all the people of the world" now.

When at Thy call my weary feet I turn
The gates of paradise are opened wide
At Goodison I know a man can learn
Rapture more rich than Anfield can provide.

In Coulter's skill and Geldard's subtle speed
I see displayed in all its matchless bounty
The power of which the heavens decreed
The fall of Sunderland and Derby County.

The hands of Sagar, Dixie's priceless head
Made smooth the path to Wembley till that day
When Bolton came. Now hopes are fled
And all is sunk in bottomless dismay.

And so I watch with heart and temper* cool
God's lesser breed of men at Liverpool.

(Or temple, as some have it.)

Now on with regular programming.

Er....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2010/jul/08/george-galloway-dusty-springfield

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-19323783

Galloway - Assange is only guilty of "bad sexual etiquette".

Types of bad sexual etiquette
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bad sexual etiquette can be categorized in different ways: for example, by reference to the situation in which it occurs, by the identity or characteristics of the victim, and/or by the identity or characteristics of the perpetrator. These categories are referred to as types of bad sexual etiquette.

Contents

1 Groth typology
2 Date bad sexual etiquette
3 Gang bad sexual etiquette
4 Spousal bad sexual etiquette
5 bad sexual etiquette of children
6 Statutory bad sexual etiquette
7 Prison bad sexual etiquette
8 War bad sexual etiquette
9 bad sexual etiquette by deception
10 Corrective bad sexual etiquette
11 See also
12 References

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/feb/21/george-galloway-debate-israeli-oxford

anti-semitic Stalinist does something anti-semitic, film at 11

that makes it ok then

glad thats settled

nah, i'm just saying Galloway is a reprehensible human being, what else is there to add?

doesnt stop us all moaning about the daily mail

I suppose the american ilxors wont see it in here but maybe its best theyre unaware of george

George Galloway ‏@georgegalloway
@thomasmessenger an Israeli citizen could not by definition be my constituent.

o_0

i think he means he doesn't understand how electoral law works there, as well as being an anti-semite obviously

Was brian cox playing him for laughs on bbc4 last night

https://i.ibb.co/Wz4y0Xs/Screenshot-2023-04-12-at-09-47-33.png

George has uncovered a possible US regime change operation against Netanyahu

He should be all 'Simpsons characters betting on a monkey fight' about this, yeah?

George Galloway voted Tory in the last Scottish parliament elections and he should never be allowed to forget it.

The #Russian people are one, indivisible and unbeatable. The sooner western leaders accept that the better it will be for all of us. @MoatsTV https://t.co/r5jNgcGrKv

— George Galloway (@georgegalloway) June 26, 2023

George has discovered that the Russian people are one, indivisible and unbeatable., via his source Kim Dotcom

good to see the big man back saluting strength, courage and indefatigability once more

2/1 to win in Rochdale

me laughing my face off if he wins does not mean a personal endorsement

Labour is focusing resources elsewhere, after its candidate, the Lancashire county councillor Azhar Ali, was repeatedly abused by Deeplish locals. A video doing the rounds online shows him in a takeaway being called “Keir Starmer’s bum chum” while diners shout “free Palestine”.

The Labour candidate made some remarks about 7/10 being a Netanyahu inside job, it's surprising he hasn't been suspended. Grifter George has got the Nick Griffin endorsement. It's as ugly as it gets really, but still hope Labour lose.

the Green candidate has suspended his campaign after some islamophobic tweets resurfaced (but it's too late to take him off the ballot), plus Simon Danczuk is running for Reform UK so Rochdale voters who want to vote for a terrible candidate are spoiled for choice. There's a reverend running as independent focussing on environmental stuff who seems ok? (haven't done any detailed research, so don't hold me to that if he turns out to be an axe murderer or something)

This by-election is giving huge "microcosm of the state of politics in England" vibes

The Rochdale election was stolen. JD Vance is sane