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George Galloway
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
No news item here...I just wondered what people here think of him.
If anyone is unaware of what he has been up to since he left Big Brother last year: hes been running a very popular 3 times a week phone in on talksport radio station.
Heres a couple of highlights from youtube that are definately worth a watch:
Lambasting a Sky News when they interviewed him during the Labanon crisis last year:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=249JaIaubVw
The Paxman interview after his election as MP for Bethnal Green and Bow:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tD5tunBGmDQ
Vs. The US senate (long but probably his best performance):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wj0m0dSUPR8
If anyone is unaware of what he has been up to since he left Big Brother last year: hes been running a very popular 3 times a week phone in on talksport radio station.
Heres a couple of highlights from youtube that are definately worth a watch:
Lambasting a Sky News when they interviewed him during the Labanon crisis last year:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=249JaIaubVw
The Paxman interview after his election as MP for Bethnal Green and Bow:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tD5tunBGmDQ
Vs. The US senate (long but probably his best performance):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wj0m0dSUPR8
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Comments
I'd rather have him as my MP than most of the other 600 ToryNewLabour yes-men clones. They just want taking out and shooting.
I don't think his moral standards are any better than most, he's just good at highlighting how bad other people's are.....Talksport ay? I used to love the late night show with James Whale, classic...
How so?
Did he really say that? :no:
I was once pretty much accused of being Islamophobic by a RESPECT party member because I refused to stand as a RESPECT student exec because I believe them to be homophobic. I told the person that because RESPECT were getting a lot of funding from a far right Islamic party which condones beating women and killing homosexuals and that Adam Yosef guy in the DehliExpress' article which came across as homophobic and xenophobic I didn't want to be involved anymore and that they should stop phoning me all the time.
She basically came up with "well you can't say all Muslims are like that, its racist" or something... But I'm not racist, I just don't like where they get their funding.
No self-respecting person, especially not a "politician" goes on Big Brother.
However, I might add that the RESPECT guys in my uni are sound.
His comments to Saddam were a bit dubious, too, but I think they've been overstated by the right-wing nutters who have him marked as some sort of communist threat.
namaste, I'd say ethnic communities in this country were being victimised by the Government. I think he did well in making sure that that egotistical hypocritical shit in Bethnal Green got voted out, and for that I'd applaud him if nothing else.
I do however think that his respect party is well off the boil and well out of line. Accepting funding from any far right party is unforgivable.
If any major political party, such as New Labour or the Conservatives, started accepting funding from a neo-nazi group then there would be chaos.
I myself would not vote for any party that receives money from people that condones the subjegation of women or homophobic behaviour and I don't think that many people would.
I don't have the same faith.
Enough people voted UKIP, and this was a few days after the leader of UKIP said that women only belonged in the kitchen.
People don't care about the subjugation of women. Look at any rape thread on here- people trying to justify the status quo, as its only women.
The second is him in a leotard:
I saw him on Prime Minister's question time a couple of weeks ago, I'd forgot he still had a political career to be honest.
Of course racism happens in the UK, but RESPECT does appear to pander to ethnic minorities, it also tries to play the green card and the anti-war card too. Basically it's a few Muslim groups, the SWP and anybody else they think they can get in by advertising anti-war and climate change meetings in university.
There's a lot about RESPECT's ideas that I do agree with, but I would in no way trust Galloway to execture those ideas.
That said he is a brilliant orator and extremely charismatic when he wants to be.
Having said that he has a special talent for putting people in his place, from Jeremy Paxman to the US Senate, as the OP's links show.
Paxman: "Don't try to threaten me Mr. Galloway..."
So up himself!
But I watched him against the senate and don't think he was that good, to every question he just turned it round and said 'I campaigned all my life to save the lives of Iraqis' or somesuch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssdbfYqGszc
Personally, I don't like him, but we're damned if democracy doesn't have properly scrutiny and he's doing pretty well at providing an alternative view, which can only be good.
In its positive a Parliamentarian from the British system devestated Americans used to the more civilised world of washington debate. They simply didn't have the ability to shut him up or the rhetoric to joust with him.
Against that the US senate hearings were all rhetoric and cunning use of words. If you look at it its not neccessarily a very good way to discover the truth or to hold a proper debate.
Oh please. He's worse than all of them.
A pathetic excuse for a man. And when the original poster of this thread used the word "performance" to describe his display in the Senate, I'd agree 100%. All he does is perform. He is fiction.
That video only shows those words spoken without any context. If you watch the preceding two minutes or so its clear that hes talking about the Iraqi people, not Saddam Hussein (i.e. he supports the Iraqi people's strength, courage...)
I don't think many people "like" Galloway as a "person" as such. His whole position and style really precludes this: he is constantly under attack, he is extremely angry at what is going on and the blase attitude of journalists and politicians, and he is constantly slandered and libelled. Thus he is very confontational and defensive and can't really afford to take the casual "oh lets all be mates and have a good chin wag about it" attitude that other politicians do. Thus he comes off much less sympathetically and causes much more "offence" to many observers than those "spineless supine" politicians who just follow the party line and take the media relations courses.
I don't think people should vote for politicians on their personalities or appearances but on their policies, opinions, and integrity. I think Galloway has a very strong case in all of these, despite large-scale efforts to slur him.
I think he's certainly got a reasonably strong case in terms of policy, but I do find much of his personal opinion to be little more than populist claptrap.
His attitudes to pay certainly illustrate a lot about the man, and he's always clamouring for bigger and bigger MP paypackets. He was very dismissive when someone suggested that he try and live on the average UK wage, which is a very comfortable £24,000.
I'd be interested to see the video too - because the transcript I found was :-
"Your Excellency, Mr President: I greet you, in the name of the many thousands of people in Britain who stood against the tide and opposed the war and aggression against Iraq and continue to oppose the war by economic means, which is aimed to strangle the life out of the great people of Iraq."
"I greet you, too, in the name of the Palestinian people, amongst whom I've just spent two weeks in the occupied Palestinian territories. I can honestly tell you that there was not a single person to whom I told I was coming to Iraq and hoping to meet with yourself who did not wish me to convey their heartfelt, fraternal greetings and support."
"And this was true, especially at the base in the refugee camps of Jabaliyah and Beach Camp in Gaza, in the Balatah refugee camp in Nablus and on the streets of the towns and villages in the occupied lands."
"I thought the president would appreciate knowing that even today, three years after the war, I still met families who were calling their newborn sons Saddam; and that two weeks ago, when I was trapped inside the Orient House, which is the Palestinian headquarters in al-Quds [Jerusalem], with 5,000 armed mustwatinin [settlers] outside demonstrating, pledging to tear down the Palestinian flag from the flagpole, the hundreds of shabab [youths] inside the compound were chanting that they wish to be with a DSh K [machine gun] in Baghdad to avenge the eyes of Abu Jihad [late Palestinian leader Khalil al-Wazir who was killed in Tunisia]. And the Youth Club in Silwan, which is the one of the most resistant of all the villages around Jerusalem, asked me to ask the president's permission if they could enrol him as an honourary member of their club and to present him with this flag from holy Jerusalem."
"I wish to say, sir, that I believe that we are turning the tide in Europe, that the scale of the humanitarian disaster which has been imposed upon the Iraqi people is now becoming more and more widely known and accepted."
"Fifty-five British members of parliament opposed the war, but 125 are demanding the lifting of the embargo."
"And this does not include the invisible section of the Conservative Party who must also be moving in that direction. And Sir Edward Heath is being a very persuasive advocate inside the Conservative Party."
"It is my belief that we must convey the very clear picture that 1994 has to be the year of the ending of the embargo against Iraq. Otherwise, famine and all the awful consequences, including acts of despair by Iraqis, will be the result. And this is the message we must convey to civilized opinion in Europe."
"Sir: I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability. And I want you to know that we are with you, hatta al-nasr, hatta al-nasr, hatta al-Quds [until victory, until victory, until Jerusalem]."
Later in an interview, Galloway tried to insist that his words were addressed not to the mass murderer in whose presence he stood, but as a salutation to the Iraqi people. Galloway then, under pressure, admitted that the words which began with "Sir", were addressed to the "indefatigable" and "strong" Saddam.
As far as I'm aware the full content of the video does not exist publicly, as I've never seen it or been able to find it.
Where did you find this transcript? And in axactly which inteview did he "admit" that those whords were in reference to Saddam? I've heard him say in countless interviews that the words were addressed to the Iraqi people: that the (willfull) misunderstanding is in the interpretation of the word "your," i.e. in "Sir: I salute yourcourage" refers to your as in the Iraqi people's) courage.
He was clearly treating Saddam with more respect than he deserved, but he was trying to achieve something and prevent the deaths of millions more Iraqis. It would have been pretty counterproductive to turn up and say "Sir, you are a tyrant, a monster and and bastard and everyone wants you dead," even though that has clearly been Galloway's position since the early 1980s. In fact Galloway was one of only a tiny number (2-4) MPs who consistently denounced Saddam and his human rights abuses in Iraq from the start, which is unsuprising since the British government was supporting him and facilitating the sales of weapons to him by British companies.
No - he said "Your Excellency, Mr President: I greet you, in the name of the many thousands of people in Britain who stood against the tide and opposed the war and aggression against Iraq and continue to oppose the war by economic means, which is aimed to strangle the life out of the great people of Iraq."
So how did you know that the his speech was in the 'context' that you describe?
I found it in a few places on the net. Have a search for "I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability. And I want you to know that we are with you".
This is a man that is of dubious honesty anyway. Of course he would say after the fact, when his bizarre accolade of Saddam proved even to himself that his toadying of the dictator was sickening, that he 'meant' something else.
Another statement : "Your Excellency, I thought the president would appreciate to know that even today, three years after the war, I still meet families who are calling their newborn sons Saddam."
Hardly the words of someone who who didn't want to give Saddam a darn good rimming!
There's a fascinating study to be done on how people who claim they oppossed Saddam in the early 80's before he'd committed the worst of his atrocities and when the UK was ambivalent about him, turned to being his supporters after his mass murders and action was being taken to depose him.
A more cynical person than I might suggest that, unlike Ann Clwyd, that perhaps despite Galloway's claims concern for the plight of ordinary Iraqi's isn't really his prime motivation.