Articles with the Tag George Galloway

Is the SWP used to attack Galloway?

socialism
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That’s what Splintered Sunrise thinks, because since the split in Respect the SWP side of the story has gotten a much more sympathetic airing in the media than the Galloway side:

George Galloway, on the other hand, is quite a different kettle of fish. I have my own serious reservations about George, but there’s no gainsaying the fact that the media are out to get George, and for reasons that have nothing to do with my reservations. Indeed, they’re after him for his good points. Let’s be honest, George, whether we like it or not, is just about the most recognisable face of the antiwar movement. He’s one of the most articulate critics of New Labour. He has that extremely important connection with the working-class Asian population in the East End. Lord help us, he’s a serious asset to our side as well as being an incorrigible loose cannon.

All this should be fairly obvious. If the SWP side in the split is getting puff jobs in the media, not to mention acquiring the critical support of Harry’s Place and the Alliance for Workers Liberty, that’s not an accident. These guys have a clear sense of priorities. There are of course other factors – Private Eye’s repeated snarky references to the Asian element of Respect gel with the sort of casual racism one expects from the Eye – but in the end it comes down to priorities. Using the SWP as a cat’s paw against Galloway is using a sprat to catch a whale.

The point here is not who was at fault in the acrinomious split of Respect last year, but whether the SWP is letting itself used to attack a former ally who they might now have issues with, but who is still far preferable to the people trying to bring him down, still nominally socialist. This split has not been easy to either of the parties involved, so I can understand the temptation to lash out, but it’s a good rule of thumb for any socialist not to give your real opponents ammunition to bring down fellow leftists. Not that the SWP is the only one to have given in to this temptation, as a casual perusal of Socialist Unity shows. there are plenty of people on the left who hate the SWP as well and they have not always been discreet. Of course, that doesn’t mean you should never speak ill of fellow lefties, genuine political differences or real cases of abuse should not be hidden, but the sort of gloating you sometimes find about the SWP’s (or other organisations) troubles isn’t helpful.

Those allegations against Galloway

Antiwar, Manufacturing Consent
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So an US Senate committee has accused of having received “allocations” of oil under the “oil-for-food” programme:

The US report concludes: “The evidence obtained by the sub-committee, including Hussein-era documents from the ministry of oil and testimony from senior Hussein officials, shows that Iraq granted George Galloway allocations for millions of barrels of oil under the oil-for-food programme.

“Moreover, some evidence indicates that Galloway appeared to use a charity for children’s leukaemia to
conceal payments associated with at least one such allocation.”

As the blogger known as Sonic said as well, you’d think this much oil would leave some trace:

[…] If Galloway was allocated “millions of barrels of oil under the oil-for-food programme” there seems
to me there would be clear evidence of it (transaction records, invoices etc) and if there was were is it?

But it all seems to be a
mishash of earlier accusations, including accusations Galloway already won a libel suit over:

A spokesman for the Telegraph said: “The committee appears to be confusing our documents with a set of alleged receipts that emerged in Baghdad some days after our story appeared. These purported to record direct payments to Mr Galloway in the early 1990s. They were offered to the Daily Telegraph but, as they were clearly crude forgeries, we declined to publish them.”

The committee, which of course had not contacted Galloway before making the accusations, has now deigned to receive him, to which Galloway has responded with his usual charm:

The committee said it would be “pleased” for Mr Galloway to appear at a hearing in Washington on 17 May.

The MP accepted, declaring he would take “them on in their own lions’ den”.

He told the BBC: “I’ll be Daniel and I’ll be triumphant”.

In all, this whole farce smells like a slightly ill timed “october surprise”. Oona King must be pretty miffed this kerfuffle didn’t erupt a week earlier, eh?

Satellite age McCarthyism

Antiwar, War on Iraq
Published on

This article says what I think about the socalled “evidence” coming out of Iraq that anti-war Labout MP George Galloway was in pay of Saddam Hussein, that France and Russia provided intelligence to Iraq during the war or that Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden were in league: it’s bullshit.

April 29, 2003—After the United States and Britain were shown to be providing bogus and plagiarized “intelligence” documents to the UN Security Council that supposedly “proved” Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction program, the world’s media is now being fed a steady stream of captured Iraqi “intelligence” documents from the rubble of Iraq’s Mukhabarat intelligence headquarters.

Welcome to the new digital and satellite age McCarthyism. Phony documents are “dropped” into the hands of a right-wing London newspaper owned by Conrad Black. They are amplified by Black’s other holdings, including the Jerusalem Post and Chicago Sun-Times. The story is then picked up by the worldwide television outlets of News Corporation, Time Warner, Disney, and General Electric and echoed on the right-wing radio talk shows of Clear Channel and Viacom. Political careers are damaged or destroyed. There is no right of rebuttal for the accused. They are guilty as charged by a whipped up public that gets its information from the Orwellian telescreens of the corporate media.