George Galloway vs. Christopher Hitchens

Galloway is the worst kind of scum, lauded by the worst kind of people. a figurehead for those who considers themselves vaguely left of centre and strongly anti-war but have no real idea why. he saluted saddam, he's more recently been caught saluting Assad, he thought the Soviet Union was a great idea and he considers the kind of people who blew up hundreds of Shia labourers in Baghdad yesterday to be freedom fighters. In his campaign to oust Oona King he allied himself to a collection of anti-semitic, gay-hating, fundamentalist ideologues and he'll befriend anyone stupid enough to give him a platform or a dime, regardless of their political beliefs. Those that exclaim 'go george' would do well to go to Syria and see how much they like living there.

oops, xpost

At the end of the day, no matter how stupid and selfish the reasons, no matter how short-sighted the planning, no matter how shambolic the reality, Blair and Bush are not and have never deliberately targetted innocent civilians. They've killed thousands of them, certainly, and should be held to account for it. But, without wanting to sound like a callous pentagon bastard, they were not the targets and they died by accident.

There's a world of difference between that and driving a van into square full of unemployed people, telling them that anyone who runs towards you can have a job, then blowing them all up.

Ditto deliberately slaughtering 52 random passers-by who just happened to be going to work in a country whose government you disagreed with.

And until the Israeli army starts blowing up Palestinian buses in the rush hour in a bid to kill as many innocent people as possible, that particular arguement won't hold either.

Which is why I cannot abide Galloway and his hideous mates.

I hate when an army and airforce suddenly flies out of control.

Rather than just shooting or bulldozing the home of any man, woman or child who happens to live in the Palestinian territiories? Sorry, is that too much moral equivalence for you?

But they knew that approximate volume of 'accidents' would happen, so big fucking difference.

They pushed for a military occupation that they knew would result in the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians. They think it is a fair trade-off for building a US client state in the middle of an otherwise hostile region. You seem to think that there is a huge moral difference between deliberately blowing up civilians to achieve your aims, and causing them to perish on a mass scale in order to achieve your aims. I hate to be all moral-equivalencey about it again, but.

Except they don't. I'm not condoning what Sharon et al get up to, but the Israeli army has not shot every single man woman and child in Palestine, nor has it buldozed every house.

The destruction of homes of suicide bombers' families is completely unacceptable. I don't think anyone would disagree with that. But they haven't demolished " the home of any man, woman or child who happens to live in the Palestinian territiories", have they?

When the government builds a new road, it's safe to assume that someone will die on it at some stage. That doesn't mean the Department for Transport is the same as a kid dropping bricks off an overpass.

Look, I was against the war from the off. I always said it was a bad idea, I always said it would only make Britain more of a target.

Now that we're there, however, I feel the least we can do is try and sort out the mess we've created rather than just legging it and leaving the place on the brink of civil war.

And I still think there's a world of difference between concocting a plan to kill as many people as possible because they're a different religion to you and killing as few people as possible while removing a brutal dictator who happily slaughtered thousands of his own people.

i wonder if the mics were lopsidedly placed a little, the audience seems decidedly pro-hitchens, which is really surprising considering the event & location etc.

http://kpftx.org/

there's a lot of boring warmup bullshit, i think the third one is where it actually starts.

thanks

i liked amy goodman a lot but i have to say the rest of the pacifica (if they were pacifica) commentators were terrible, mucho outrage at the bbc's rough handling of GG on his seat win (w/o ANY knowledge of the nastiness of the campaign, or his ill-suitedness to the constituency, or anything other than his run as an antiwar candidate), + fixation on hitchens' not answering questions directly, and not even the important ones like "when to pull out" but the lame ones like "oooh you make a lot of $$$ now don't you you big neocon"

Ha ha, Christopher Hitchens is still a socialist! Pleased to meet you, my name is Jan van der Roffle...

This isn't a thread for talking about this, so I won't get too embroiled. Here is an excerpt Amnesty International's 2005 report.

Increasing numbers of Palestinians were killed and homes destroyed by the Israeli army in the Palestinian Occupied Territories. Some 700 Palestinians died, including about 150 children. Most were killed unlawfully, in reckless shootings, shellings or air strikes on refugee camps and other densely populated areas throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israeli forces continued to carry out extrajudicial executions of members and leaders of Hamas and other Palestinian groups, in which bystanders were frequently killed or injured. Some 109 Israelis, most of them civilians and including eight children, were killed by Palestinian armed groups in suicide bombings, shootings and mortar attacks inside Israel and in the Occupied Territories.

Routine destruction of Palestinian homes, land and property in the West Bank and Gaza Strip was stepped up in the biggest wave of house demolitions in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the intifada (uprising). In May the Israeli army destroyed some 300 homes and damaged about 270 others in a refugee camp in Rafah, leaving close to 4,000 Palestinians homeless. In the West Bank, Israel continued to build a 600-kilometre fence/wall encircling and cutting off Palestinian towns and villages, despite the ruling by the International Court of Justice. The fence/wall and hundreds of Israeli army checkpoints and blockades throughout the Occupied Territories continued to hinder or prevent Palestinians' access to their land, their workplaces and to education, health and other crucial services.

When the government builds a new road, it's safe to assume that someone will die on it at some stage. That doesn't mean the Department for Transport is the same as a kid dropping bricks off an overpass.

This just isn't a valid analogy. The purpose of roads is for people to get about the country. The purpose of the US and UK governments' actions in Iraq were (claimed to be) to make the world a better and safer place, spread democracy, increase respect for human rights. Now, I think what you're saying is that crimes committed by intelligent, powerful people are never as bad as those perpetrated by the thug on the street, regardless of the destruction they cause. I can't agree with you there.

I find it rather depressing today too, Alba.

this should be an incredibly easy question to answer given the slaughter of the last week but for Galloway it's not.

Again, I was anti-war because I thought that it was ill-conceived and would be ill-executed, but i'm sure as hell not going to start wishing, as many on the supposed left seem to be, for an even more almighty conflagration in order to take a post-hoc (im)moral high ground.

Yes, the state that's emerging is going to be flawed and compromised, but i don't see how anyone rational can withhold their support when Zarqawi et al are leading the alternatives.

In what way are they "leading the alternatives"? Because they're killing more people?

if you bother to go through my comments up thread, you'll see that all i've called for is support for the flegeling iraqi state. nowhere have i indicated any support for bush, whom i loathe, and i've also stated my opposition to going to war in the first place.

the fact that you dismiss my points with that accusation, besides demonstrating your own wilful stupidity, is emblematic of the way a section of the STW movement has disgraced the name and ideals of socialism.

wtf dada, barbarian is laying out a very calm and very newspaper-y line on iraq. say what you like abt it but "pompous ass" i don't think so

now if there are linkages going the other way (ie islamists saying "those ANSWER ppl do the work of allah, bless them") i've never seen THAT either.

if the US could concievably settle for an unrepresentative govt filled with placemen, there'd be plenty of sunnis in it! massive effort in the constitutional negotiations has been expended to keep the sunnis talking and to assuage the shiite contempt for them

xpost it's called a conversation, dada. ppl talk abt things that are germane and interesting, you see

You call raliroading thru an unfair constitution which has not been agreed by all parties a massive effort?

It's great to see the return of the old "If you have deviant political opinion X then you should just go to country Y" meme! It's like the Cold War all over again.

WEEKLY SIGNALS with MIKE KASPAR and NATHAN CALLAHAN
KUCI 88.9 FM • Irvine, California • Tuesdays 8 – 9 am
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TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 – An interview with GEORGE GALLOWAY, British MP and author of "Mr. Galloway Goes to Washington."

No word as to whether it will be live or not.

man, "Team America: World Police" should have included this one...