'Gorgeous' George Galloway to be fed to the lions?

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Greg Palast on Galloway

Postby eric144 » Tue Oct 25, 2005 10:56 pm

Honorable Mr. Galloway, you met with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad in 1994 and said, "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength your indefatigability. And I want you to know that we are with you until victory, until victory, until Jerusalem." <br><br>After this effusive praise for Saddam, the two of you shared some Quality Street chocolates and some funny stories about Winston Churchill.<br><br>In 1990, Saddam executed a troublesome reporter, Farzad Bazoft, of the Observer newspaper of London. You complained about it at the time. Some time later, Saddam finished off about 100,000 Shi'ites and Kurds. <br><br>My questions are, "Are Quality Street chocolates your favorite brand? And did you forget the name of the reporter that Saddam executed? And how is it that you found the courage to challenge a bunch of US Senators but became such a pussy cat when confronted with a man whose killing spree easily exceeds theirs?" <br><br>And when you were challenged on your arse-licking praise of the dictator, why did you prevaricate and obfuscate by saying the worshipful words were for the Iraqi people, not Saddam. In fact, your words were very specific: "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." <br><br>I have to say, Mr. Galloway, you are a charitable man with a big heart. But the charity is for whom? You founded something called the Mariam Appeal, which raised cash on your solemn promise that, "The balance after Mariam?s hospital bills have been paid will be sent as medicine and medical supplies to the children she had to leave behind." But little of the money seems to have gone there, isn't that correct, Mr. Galloway? It seems that nearly a million dollars can't be accounted for. And the diversion of most of the money was, you said, for "emergency" purposes. Was one of those emergencies the payments to your wife? <br><br>And the source of nearly half a million dollars of that money, Honorable Sir, came from a trader in the corrupt Oil-for-Food program. The payment was equal to the profits earned by this oil trader who was blessed with discount oil from Saddam. Is that correct? <br><br>So if we add it up, Mr. Galloway, while you were railing about medicines denied Iraqis by Messrs. Bush and Blair, you were taking money skimmed from the program earmarked to pay for those medicines. And other moneys donated for medicine for Iraqis you and your group also skimmed off for "legitimate expenses" of yours, is that correct? <br><br> George Bush took money from unnamed Persian Gulf sources, as you apparently have. Should I question him, or simply ask him if his purposes were "legitimate" or an "emergency"?<br><br>And might I have a copy of the financial records of your "charity"? You promised to make them public but the records now seemed to have disappeared into Jordan. Would you mind retrieving those? <br><br>And why did you tell the US Senate the British Charity Commission "recovered all money in and all money out ... they found no impropriety"? I have read their findings. In fact, the Commission excoriated you for failing to record where your million came from and where it went. And they recovered none of it. <br><br>I remember when Paul Wolfowitz told the US Congress the war in Iraq would not cost taxpayers one penny. Wolfowitz avoids prosecution for perjury because he did not testify under oath. Did you lie in your testimony because, as a foreign legislator, Mr. Galloway, you are immune from prosecution for perjury? <br><br>And when you said, "The Arabs must have a mentality that says, I want to be like Hizbollah." Sir, you mean the Hizbollah that took hostages in Lebanon and guns from Reagan, or the Hizbollah who joined Argentine military Fascists on a killing spree?<br><br>And why have you ducked, for two months, my request to answer questions?<br><br>Friends and comrades, this is not about George Galloway. He's just another self-promoting fart. Six months from now, even his smell will be gone. <br><br>This is not about George, but about us. What's Left? Are we about standing for the defenseless -- or the cruel and senseless? <br> <br>A couple of months after the invasion of Iraq, I was in Los Angeles and some drunk accosted me, saying, "George Bush was right about everything he said about Iraq!" -- weapons of mass destruction, the al-Qaeda connection and more. It was Christopher Hitchens, "debating" me, and furious. His confusing our President's assertions with reality was a verbal pie he threw in the air and caught on his face. <br><br> He was flustered not because I disagreed with him -- he enjoys that, being the look-at-me bad boy -- but because I agreed with him: Saddam was a monster and Iraqis, overwhelmingly, wanted him gone. <br><br> But I could not, like Hitchens, shill for Mr. Bush's war of "liberation." I could see where it would end. When a snake devours a rat, it doesn't liberate the captive mice. The mice are "saved" -- for lunch.<br><br> But it is not good enough for the Left to oppose Mr. Bush's re-colonization of Iraq. We needed to have actively supported Iraqis fighting to remove their Mesopotamian Stalin. And now, we'd better come up with something a little less nutty than a recent suggestion by one otherwise thoughtful writer that we, "unconditionally support the insurgency" of berserker killers and fundamentalist madmen. If that's the Left's program for Iraq, count me out.<br> <br>We can't define ourselves as the "anti-Bush," blindly supporting those he opposes, and thereby letting the nitwit Napoleon in the White House pick our enemies for us. Nor can our revulsion for Bush's horrors throw us into the arms of swamp-things like George Galloway. <br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=51&ItemID=8732">www.zmag.org/content/show...temID=8732</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <p></p><i></i>
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michael:

Postby glubglubglub » Tue Oct 25, 2005 11:03 pm

the yellow dots, unfortunately for this discussion, are only printed by color laser printers ( there's no yellow toner anywhere in a b&w model, after all ). If there's a similar scheme for b&w machines it's still a secret for the time being. <p></p><i></i>
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But eric, that's only true...

Postby banned » Tue Oct 25, 2005 11:04 pm

....if whoever's rebutting it is a lousy debater.<br><br>I may have been born argumentative, at least reports from people who knew me at age 2-3 would so indicate <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :b --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/tongue.gif ALT=":b"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> . But when someone says "A" my first reaction is not "Oh. OK." It's "Really? How do you know A? Why not B? Or Z?" In other words, assertions aren't evidence.<br><br>I have noticed over the last few years--maybe it's always been true and I was just less crabby and critical--that in a wide variety of situations, 'the authorities' talk utter rot and the reaction of the people on the receiving end *IS* "Oh. OK." I don't care if it's said by a conniving boss, a lying newscaster, a cheating salesclerk, a rude waiter. They say something that is utter shite and the other person acts like a hypnotized zombie. "Oh. OK."<br><br>I don't.<br><br>Hence, I spend most of my time in arguments with these 'lying liars' in Franken's phrase.<br><br>Example:<br><br>I asked at the cafe where I've been getting the same lunch for a dozen years why the bill was different. The guy read it off to me, ending with "75 cents for the extra olives." I said "Olives are free. Always have been." "Well, it's a gray area." I said "No, they're free, I've been getting them since this place opened. And if you want to charge me, I can find somewhere else to eat." He took off the 75 cent charge. The friend with me was embarassed; I said "It's not the 75 cents PER SE it's that they frickin DO NOT CHARGE FOR OLIVES."<br><br>Now, if Murkans do not want to make a fuss over something like this, any clue why they didn't get riled about Bush v. Gore, 9/11, the Iraq invasion, etc.?<br><br>To question the official story, you have to risk embarassment, if it's olives in a cafe, and possible death if it's exposing treason. My issue is, if you're not in the habit of refusing to pay 75 cents you don't have to pay, if you don't PRACTICE the questioning, and the persistence (if necessary I'd have asked for the shift manager next), and what to do when they come back at you with stuff like "IT IS/IS NOT OUR POLICY" or "You'll have to come back when the manager is in" or "If you don't keep your voice down I'll call security", you're not going to question the big stuff. Any more than someone who has never played chopsticks is going to play Chopin because they've decided they want to be a big time concert pianist.<br><br>Resistance is a skill that needs to be developed, like anything else. Do it enough and it becomes second nature. Don't do it, and pay 75 cents for the frickin' olives like a g. d. sucker. <p></p><i></i>
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Palast

Postby maggrwaggr » Tue Oct 25, 2005 11:10 pm

sure has a hair up his ass about Galloway.<br><br>I honestly can't figure it out.<br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: But eric, that's only true...

Postby eric144 » Tue Oct 25, 2005 11:15 pm

"I have noticed over the last few years--maybe it's always been true and I was just less crabby and critical--that in a wide variety of situations, 'the authorities' talk utter rot and the reaction of the people on the receiving end *IS* "Oh. OK." I don't care if it's said by a conniving boss, a lying newscaster, a cheating salesclerk, a rude waiter. They say something that is utter shite and the other person acts like a hypnotized zombie. "Oh. OK."<br><br>I don't.<br><br>Hence, I spend most of my time in arguments with these 'lying liars' in Franken's phrase."<br><br>Me too.<br><br>I think it's (animal) submission rather than stupidity that causes the zombie state. The critical faculties close down in the face of a percieved overwhelming threat which it often is. If they close down often enough, the brain stops working. Things aren't very different here, Blair's ambition is to bring heaven (America) to Airstrip One (Britain). Dumbing down is a big priority.<br> <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=eric144>eric144</A> at: 10/25/05 9:20 pm<br></i>
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Re: Palast

Postby eric144 » Tue Oct 25, 2005 11:35 pm

Palast works in Britain. He initially supported Galloway without doing his homework and maybe felt stupid. <p></p><i></i>
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So Scowcroft doesn't know his own Dick?

Postby banned » Tue Oct 25, 2005 11:37 pm

eric,<br><br>No wonder you and I can have good discussions <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START ;) --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/wink.gif ALT=";)"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> .<br><br>As far as being animal submission, I don't know that I agree. Sure, in a situation that is actually dangerous, it's not only common for the other animals to yield to the alpha, it's usually wise unless they want to get their asses handed to them. In fact we've had a cat around here, owned by a neurotic middle aged biddy (NB: I am a middle aged biddy and there are those who would say I was neurotic <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :b --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/tongue.gif ALT=":b"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> ), that refuses to 'get' the pecking order so the neighborhood alpha tom has to beat him up constantly, to the point where I SWEAR Alpha Tom looks bored while he's doing it, like "Why can't this bozo catch on, I could be over at the car-yard stalking pigeons or screwing the ladycats."<br><br>I've seen people who are not 'one down'--smart people, rich people, people in authority positions themselves--who STILL do the "Oh. OK." bit.<br><br>I think part of it has been our evolving into a specialized society, where people only know about a few things and so defer to others in everything else. My dad could be a prick, but he could do just about anything, and if somebody told him his car needed a veeblefetzer or "That IS melon green, sir, it just looks different on the wall" or "It's not our fault the 'pitted cherries' weren't all pitted, tough tits about your tooth", he questioned it. If it was something he didn't personally know about he got a second opinion from a friend or acquaintance who did and then made up his own mind. Ironically, the only time he didn't do this, it literally killed him--his doctor put him on the wrong meds and he didn't look it up or ask me to, and he died of a drug reaction.<br><br>There are two mentalities, one is "OK, this guy is a clerk in a paint store, he does know paint, but *I* know that's not the color I ordered" and "OK, this guy is a clerk in a paint store so HE MUST know what he's talking about."<br><br>This distinction holds good whether it's olives (I didn't say "He works here he must know") or whether to invade Iraq ("I'm not a general or a geopolitician but I'm well read and intelligent and it sounds like a really bad idea.")<br><br>Of course you can go too far the other way, I also know someone who died because they misdiagnosed their own burst appy.<br><br>Which leads to another point: why, instead of saying "I don't know but I'll find out", do they stop after 'know'? Especially now when the Internet puts so much information at our disposal. If we want to learn to rewire the kitchen instead of pay the electrician an insane fee, we CAN. <br><br>Was this our shitty educational system, that knocked out of people the desire to KNOW HOW and KNOW WHY? Who just sat passively being spoonfed information, regurgitated it for tests then forgot it?<br><br>When I was 20 a professor called me a 'born autodidact.' At the time I'd never heard the word and thought it meant something like 'autistic' yet the prof said it approvingly, so I looked it up and was flattered. <br><br>Our educational system should AIM to make people autodidacts, lifelong learners, who ENJOY learning new things and gaining new skills. Instead it turns out spuds who can't think, write, or make change.<br><br>Bah.<br><br>I'm having a bad night, thank heaven "My Name Is Earl" is on later and I can have some blue collar laughs. <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START 8) --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/glasses.gif ALT="8)"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: So Scowcroft doesn't know his own Dick?

Postby eric144 » Tue Oct 25, 2005 11:48 pm

"Sure, in a situation that is actually dangerous, it's not only common for the other animals to yield to the alpha, it's usually wise unless they want to get their asses handed to them."<br><br>i think that's abstracted into almost any control situation, particularly work. Stanley Milgram did some seminal (and very scary) psychology experiments on control. The education system is a sheep factory, no question. The reason I fight back is because I have major control issues from childhood to be honest.<br><br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.cba.uri.edu/Faculty/dellabitta/mr415s98/EthicEtcLinks/Milgram.htm">www.cba.uri.edu/Faculty/d...ilgram.htm</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br><br>"Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, conducted a study focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience. He examined justifications for acts of genocide offered by those accused at the World War II, Nuremberg War Criminal trials. Their defense often was based on "obedience" - - that they were just following orders of their superiors. <br>In the experiment, so-called "teachers" (who were actually the unknowing subjects of the experiment) were recruited by Milgram. They were asked administer an electric shock of increasing intensity to a "learner" for each mistake he made during the experiment. The fictitious story given to these "teachers" was that the experiment was exploring effects of punishment (for incorrect responses) on learning behavior. The "teacher" was not aware that the "learner" in the study was actually an actor - - merely indicating discomfort as the "teacher" increased the electric shocks. <br><br>When the "teacher" asked whether increased shocks should be given he/she was verbally encouraged to continue. Sixty percent of the "teachers" obeyed orders to punish the learner to the very end of the 450-volt scale! No subject stopped before reaching 300 volts! <br><br>At times, the worried "teachers" questioned the experimenter, asking who was responsible for any harmful effects resulting from shocking the learner at such a high level. Upon receiving the answer that the experimenter assumed full responsibility, teachers seemed to accept the response and continue shocking, even though some were obviously extremely uncomfortable in doing so. T<br><br>he study raised many questions about how the subjects could bring themselves to administer such heavy shocks. More important to our interests are the ethical issues raised by such an experiment itself. What right does a researcher have to expose subjects to such stress? What activities should be and not be allowed in marketing research? Does the search for knowledge always justify such "costs" to subjects? Who should decide such issues? <br><br><br><br> <br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.new-life.net/milgram.htm">www.new-life.net/milgram.htm</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Milgram's study, yes...and Philip Zimbardo's

Postby banned » Wed Oct 26, 2005 1:13 am

There was also the Stanford study dividing students into "guards" and "prisoners"....had to break off the study because the guards got too abusive. Google it if you aren't familiar, very scary stuff.<br><br>I probably have control issues too. Bossy kraut granny who gave me enemas <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :( --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/frown.gif ALT=":("><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <br><br>However now I'm damn glad she turned me into an 'oppositional personality.' <br><br>Better than than a fucking sheep. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Milgram's study, yes...and Philip Zimbardo's

Postby AnnaLivia » Wed Oct 26, 2005 4:20 am

Howard Zinn wrote about that Milgram study in "Declarations of Independence, Cross Examining American Ideology"<br><br>(GREAT, IMPORTANT BOOK, imo)<br><br>he says Milgram himself did not take away the conclusions others ascribe to him.<br><br>he said the study showed that human nature was really very unwilling to administer the shocks, and only did so at the insistence of the authority present.<br><br>obedience is the biggest sin. (and that quote comes from globalhappiness plan)<br><br>edit to include; my friend in australia wrote this in email tonight:<br><br>Press coverage of cheney’s exposure by Fitz here today, but being smothered in the Murdoch press by the Galloway thing – he was interviewed on radio this morning, and he hammered the senate hard – basically said it was trying to shut him down from talking about iraq and the bushies and blairs, and made a hint about the “suicide” of the british weapons guy.<br><br>Galloway didn’t specifically mention Kelly, but said something about if he didn’t make it to a public hearing, he wouldn’t be the first Englishman to be shut down over iraq.<br> <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=annalivia@rigorousintuition>AnnaLivia</A> at: 10/26/05 2:22 am<br></i>
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'Gorgeous' George's little secret:

Postby emad » Wed Oct 26, 2005 11:34 am

Ms Carole Caplin, Cherry Bush's 'Lifestyle Guru', seen here with conman Peter Foster who helped the Blairs get ££££££££s discounts off apartment purchases in Bristol some years ago:<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://pub.tv2.no/multimedia/na/archive/00195/Carole_Caplin_Tony__195193c.jpg">pub.tv2.no/multimedia/na/...95193c.jpg</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>Gorgeous George:<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.scotsindependent.org/2004/041210/George%20Galloway.jpg">www.scotsindependent.org/...lloway.jpg</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>The connection: they are father and daughter. <p></p><i></i>
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The connection: they are father and daughter.

Postby eric144 » Wed Oct 26, 2005 2:55 pm

Where did you learn that ? <p></p><i></i>
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Where?

Postby emad » Thu Oct 27, 2005 11:34 am

Former UK Metropolitan Police Special Branch commander, now retired. <br><br>He also says that Galloway was investigated over financial links to Aldrich Ames back in 1998. <br><br>The investigation also showed he was also being paid backhanders by former Goldman-Sachs banker Victor Hwang and had North Korean contacts linked to phramaceutical industry contractors in Iran.<br><br>Looks like the UK spooks and cops have strung out Galloway for a long long time, maybe using him as bait to catch other, bigger fish.<br><br>The name Marc Rich (oil trader who got a Clinton pardon for massive tax evasion scams) has also cropped up in connection with Galloway.<br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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