Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Dopes Roped: Galloway's Detractors De-toothed



http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/
0,,3-1618042,00.html


Funny how it works: British MP George Galloway gets roasted for his imaginary collusion with Saddam Hussein while David Chalmers Jr. of Houston-based Bayoil, documented to have plotted with anti-Western Russian politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky to fix oil prices and pay kickbacks to Saddam Hussein, is scarcely mentioned in the corporate media. But then Chalmers, unlike Galloway, is not associated with RESPECT, a socialist British political party steadfastly opposed to Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Even though it was established some time ago that the evidence allegedly linking Galloway to Saddam Hussein is a poorly crafted fake (see Galloway papers deemed forgeries), and Galloway successfully sued the Daily Telegraph for publishing a defamatory story connecting him to corruption in the so-called Oil for Food program, the “liberal” Los Angeles Times leads off a story posted on its web site this morning claiming Galloway is “linked to illegal payments,” even though this is not established and is, in fact, a preposterous accusation minus any grounding in reality.

For right-wingers, even apparently on the editorial staff of the Los Angeles Times, it stands to reason that anybody who takes a reasoned and principled stand against the slaughter in Iraq is a Saddam stooge and supporter of terrorists and various bogeymen, more than a few (like al-Zarqawi) issuing from a crude propaganda mill in the basement of the White House or Pentagon. For instance, according to Marxist turncoat and former Maoist David Horowitz, I harbor “raging sympathies for the enemy,” i.e., Horowitz believes I am a traitor (Michael Savage would have me locked up for ten or more years), and his Israeli hack, prof (of Zionist economics) Steven Plaut, tells the world I am the “spokesman for the Uruknet site and one of its regular writers” (they on occasion re-post my blog entries), and according to Plaut Uruknet is a “web site of exiled pro-Saddam Iraqi Ba’athist,” an entirely absurd accusation with absolutely no basis in reality. In short, if you are opposed to Bush’s foreign policy, and your blog entries find their way to sites where people don’t use colorful adjectives to demonize Saddam Hussein, as required by the right-wingers and the corporate media, you are not only a fellow traveler, you are a closet Ba’athist.



http://images.scotsman.com/
2003/10/24/2410geob.jpg


Bushzarro world is Manichean to its putrid core.

Anyway, enough about me, more about George Galloway, who really gave the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations an earful the other day. “Galloway described the committee chairman, Minnesota Republican Norm Coleman, as a ‘pro-war, neocon hawk and the lickspittle of George W. Bush’ who, he said, sought revenge against anyone who did not support the invasion of Iraq,” as the Los Angeles Times put it. Coleman has made it a hobby to kick around United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan because of the “UN’s utter failure to detect or stop Saddam’s abuses” in the UN’s Oil-for-Food program, mostly because, like a good Bush Republican, Coleman hates the United Nations, mostly because it refused to sign off on Bush’s illegal and immoral invasion. It should be noted that if Paul Wellstone’s plane had not gone down so mysteriously, Norm Coleman wouldn’t be a Bush “lickspittle” and simply another failed Minnesotan politician. It should also be noted that Wellstone was a vociferous opponent to Bush’s mass murder campaign in the Muslim world.

It was all show in Washington and even the National Review had to admit Galloway was victorious, mostly because of the “stupidity of his enemies” in the United States. It was a rare performance, especially Galloway’s under breath muttered characterization of Christopher Hitchens—who believes mass murdering 100,000 plus Iraqis will “prevent future assaults on civilization” —as a “booze-addled Trotskyite.” Hitchens is a Johnny-come-lately Bushcon who changed his mind (or lost it) on nine eleven. “The vile replica currently on offer is a double,” former friend Tariq Ali declared upon Hitchens’ conversion, a feat not uncommon for former hardcore commies such as David Horowitz (Hitchens admits he is “recovering ex-Trotskyite,” as Horowitz was a Maoist—obviously, it is relatively easy to go from commie to unabashed Strausscon with nary a bleat).

Finally, it is simply astounding how the Strausscons, Bushites, and Republicans suffer from amnesia when it comes down to supporting Saddam Hussein. Reagan, Dubya’s old man, and a gaggle of Iran-Contra criminals had no problem selling Hussein weapons of mass destruction back in the day, so long as he was using them against the Iranians (while the Israelis were selling the Iranians weapons to kill Iraqis—retired Gen. Aharon Yariv, former head of Israeli military intelligence, told a conference at Tel Aviv University in late 1986 that “it would be good if the Iran-Iraq war ended in a tie, but it would be even better if it continued,” and continue it did, with the loss of around 1.5 million lives).

It is, as well, an indictment of the corporate media since they refuse to provide Americans with a full-featured political context when rolling out accusations against people like George Galloway, a man besieged for years simply because he has consistently opposed Bush’s invasion and occupation. But then there is a reason the corporate media is called the Bush Ministry of Disinformation. Deviations from the Bush path leading to forever war and mass murder are, as Newsweek has learned, severely penalized.

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