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Galloway 10 x Hitchens 0

by Open-Publishing - Sunday 18 September 2005
5 comments

Edito Wars and conflicts International USA

Well, the long-awaited “Grapple in the Big Apple,” as the Guardian dubbed it, has taken place. Here is the link

Hitchens, that "drink-soaked, former Trotskyist popinjay," as MP George Galloway of the Respect Coalition party in Great Britain so memorably put it, apparently was on another planet.

The event took place on September 14 in the Mason Hall at the Baruch College performing arts center in the Gramercy Park area of Manhattan. Baruch College is one of ten senior colleges of the City University of New York, the largest urban public university in the United States.

Galloway, the MP who was expelled from the Labor Party for calling on British troops to refuse illegal orders (such as to have prisoners stacked atop each other whilst compelling them to perform obscene acts) is on a nationwide tour to promote his book Mr Galloway Goes to Washington: The Brit Who Set Congress Straight about Iraq.

Hitchens was given the first word and the last word by moderator Amy Goodman, let it be remembered, wherupon he continually painted a rosy picture of the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq and the good work the soldiers are doing there, how swimmingly it is all turning out, and the highway they built in Afghanistan mostly, I might add, for themselves, and to ferry their supplies. I doubt very highly Afghans would be allowed on this highway.

The motion set forward was “The war in Iraq was necessary and just.” The debate—if one could call it that, given the disparity between the opponents (on one corner, a seasoned and ferocious mastiff, and on the other corner, a "drink-soaked, former Trotskyist popinjay") would have been terminated by yours truly the minute Hitchens opened his mouth and mentioned Galloway’s—long since belied and disproven—profiting from the UN Oil for Food Program. In a debate, you are to come with your facts to buttress your point of view—not your opinions or, worse, your lies or your misrepresentations.

George Galloway is a very wealthy man on account of the libel suits he has won against the Daily Mirror and the Christian Science Monitor for their publishing of forged documents slandering his good name.

"I am delighted to be called a popinjay in the proper sense of that word, which means a target for archery or shot," said Mr Hitchens, a cheerleader for the war who is now seen by many of his old comrades as a traitor. But for a writer, he is “remarkably cavalier,” to borrow a phrase from Galloway, “about any notion of” etimology.

The archaic English term popinjay (Portuguese: papagaio; German: Papagei) comes from babagha, the Arabic word for parrot, quite à propos for Mr. Hitchens who has morphed from an erstwhile principled socialist to an individual who parrots ceaselessly the neo-con’s rubbish. Or, as Galloway so eloquently put it, Htchens “had now done something unique in natural history: he is responsible for the first ever metamorphosis of a butterfly back into a slug. The one thing a slug does is leave a trail of slime behind it.”

After Hitchens had the temerity to call for a moment of silence on his time for the 160 Iraqis killed on the morning of that day on account of a suicide bomber, which prompted an audience member to yell that he won’t join in silence with someone who has condoned the war in the first place, Galloway went into full swing, reminding the audience that at that very moment, the US soldiers were doing to Tal Afar what they did to Fallujah last fall, where the use of napalm and white phosphorus by US forces has been documented—but this came shortly after a tremendous, eulogistic whilst elegiac synopsis of Hitchens’ erstwhile very principled role against the French colonial war in Algeria, the Vietnam war, and even Gulf War I back in ’91. It was a Ciceronian start, to commence drawing and quartering your opponent by paradoxically showering him with encomia! Classic to the letter! "You did write like an angel," Galloway bellowed, "and now you are working for the devil! Damn you and damn all your words!" Even the pro-war Labor MP who lost to Galloway, Oona King, who knows firsthand what it is to go up against that forensic pitbull, was forced to concede in The Guardian, “By choosing to defend not only the Bush administration’s handling of disaster management in Iraq, but in Louisiana too, Hitchens lost the plot completely. Galloway got well-deserved applause when he slated Hitchens for being ‘a mouthpiece for those miserable, malevolent incompetents who couldn’t even pick up the bodies of their own citizens in New Orleans.’”

Tal Afar, you will recall, was where US soldiers in Iraq opened fire on a car when it failed to stop as requested, as the official chronicle of the event reads. Despite warning shots it continued to drive towards their dusk patrol in Tal Afar on January 18 of this year. Inside the car were an Iraqi family of seven. The mother and father were killed instantly, but their five children in the backseat survived, one with a non-life threatening wound. As the children got out of the car one of them was screaming, her hands covered in blood... The soldiers didn’t count on a photojournalist being there to record the scene for posterity. Chris Hondro’s pictures from the Getty News service will forever haunt us. This is what Hitchens was defending.

A Catholic nun writing for the National Catholic Reporter suggested to the paper’s readers how hard it might be to hear anything inside a car full of kids, the reason perhaps for the couple in the car’s not heeding warning shots or calls to halt.

As Baruch College’s Lara Moon pointed out, "Galloway frequently went for the gut reaction, a tactic which failed only once during the evening, but spectacularly so, when he declared, ’The airplanes on 9/11 emerged out a swamp of hatred for us [Britain and America] created by Western policy. We need to drain the swamp. We need to stop supporting Sharon’s Israel so we can all be safer.’ The audience, for once, was silent, but Hitchens pounced. ’You picked the wrong city to say that in,’ he commented dryly, ’Arguably, the wrong month, as well.’"

I disagree with Moon, however, because he drove home the point, and eloquently so, that the planes that slammed into the twin towers four years ago did not come out of "a clear blue sky," i.e., in vacuo, and that US support for dictatorial regimes in the Middle East can only spawn terrorism, which actually garnered Galloway much applause.

When Hitchens cited the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon as a positive outcome of Bush’s interventionism, Galloway retorted that were there elections in Lebanon tomorrow, the head of Hezbollah would certainly be elected, but for the fact that he is a Muslim, and the Lebanese constitution bars any but Christians, who make up only 20% of Lebanese population, from assuming office. And where did that constitution come from, Galloway asked. It was imposed on Lebanon when the US Marines landed in Beirut in 1958!

Maybe George could sue Hitchens, this time, and pauperize him so he doesn’t have the wherewithal to lie so shamelessly like he did during the so-called debate.

I repeat, and listen up!, folks: Galloway sued and won at least three lawsuits against the Daily Mirror and The Christian Science Monitor for tarnishing his name with allegations that he praised dictators and had gained from the UN Oil for Food Program.

The media and black ops against George Galloway have been so ruthless as to dissolve his marriage by dint of repeated phone calls to his wife, alleging he had extra-marital affairs, which prompted his wife to file for divorce I, myself, would not have had the fortitude to endure that. Yet Galloway did.

It is Hitchens who should be careful for being "on the tele," as he condescendingly reminded the audience heckling him, and mindful of his wallet. More than likely, he may be compelled to put all his money where his mouth is. At the end of the debate, the two contenders went away to sign books, and Hitchens pompously warned the audience that "now, if you want to talk to me, you need a receipt. This is America." He’s going to have to sell a heck of a lot of his books if he intends to pay his legal bills.

Flávio Américo dos Reis,
Translator and Writer.

See also the Madison, Wisconsin’s Capital Times article by its editor, John Nichols, available here: http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/...

Forum posts

  • "George Galloway is a very wealthy man on account of the libel suits he has won against the Daily Mirror and the Christian Science Monitor for their publishing of forged documents slandering his good name."

    The newspapers that Galloway sued for defamation were Hollinger Corporation’s Daily Telegraph (not the MGN’s Daily Mirror), and the CSM. Furthermore, Galloway has always claimed that the damages he received barely covered his legal fees.

    At the time of the libels, the Telegraph, owned by Hollinger Corporation which itself was spawned by a WWII British intelligence penetration of North America (Argus Corporation) has always been a spy-infested rag. Someone once quipped that the Telegraph is "MI6’s inhouse magazine"! Quite plausible when you witness the newspaper’s quite absurd (and now admitted) lies about Mohammad Al Fayed, father to the late Dodi Al Fayed, lover to the late Princess of Wales, both murdered in Paris in 1997 by MI6.

    The recently deposed CEO of Hollinger was the rabid Zionist "Lord" Conrad Black, a man currently facing a criminal trial for embezzling some $200m of Hollinger shareholder capital. Of note is that Hollinger also had on its board the arch-neoconservative Richard "Prince of Darkness" Perle.

    "Hitchens was given the first word and the last word by moderator Amy Goodman, let it be remembered".

    It’s worth noting that Amy Goodman is funded by the Trilateralist-CFR-CIA cutout - the Ford Foundation. Goodman has been dubbed an Official Left Gatekeeper - tasked with keeping dissent within permitted bounds. Probably sensible to ignore her:
    http://www.leftgatekeepers.com/articles/AmyGoodmanLeftgatekeeperByTheWebfairy.htm
    http://www.leftgatekeepers.com/chart.htm

    "[Galloway]drove home the point, and eloquently so, that the planes that slammed into the twin towers four years ago did not come out of "a clear blue sky""

    The author of this article is out of date. Galloway no longer endorses the "blow-back" theory. He believes that the perpetrators of the 911 atrocities were likely government insiders - "rogue elements within the Anglo-American military intelligence establishment", acting with or without the minimal involvement of Arab patsies. That is what intelligence experts dub the "false-flag operation".

    • Please forgive my error. The confusion stems from the word "Daily" in the names of both newspapers, and I have asked the editor to correct this.

      As for the blowback theory and Galloway’s subscription to it, he did mention that "the four airplanes that crashed into the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers did not appear out of a clear blue sky." Your call as to what he meant. I stand by my belief he meant that (1) the event did not occur ’in vacuo,’ and (2) that he meant that those events had had antecedents in US foreign policy. That was the entire thrust of his rebuttal. You can click on the link and listen to the debate yourself.

      Respectfully,

      Flávio Américo dos Reis

      P.S.: I am not aware of Amy Goodman´s relationship with the Trilateral Commission. That´s very funny. Is she also a member of the Bitbergers (am I spelling their name correctly?)?

  • From this report you’d believe that Mr. Galloway has been set upon by those destined to destroy him. However, let us not forget that Mr. Galloway has yet to provide the promissed financial disclosure of his so-called charity "Mariam Appeal for Iraqis suffering under UN sanction"? Over $1 million unaccounted for, which he lied to our congress about. In fact, those records have mysteriously been shipped to Jordan.

    Another political opportunist pandering to the public with bad sophistry and poor judgement, should be given no quarter. Here or, abroad. Paint this slug with tar and feathers and send him packing.

    • You forget what he said at his testimony before the senate. He said that none other than Lord Goldsmith himself, the only jurist in the world to have justified (after much hemming and hawing) the invasion of Iraq, investigated "every penny in, and every penny out" of the Mariam appeal, and found no impropriety. So, as Galloway put it, ¨he did better than that,¨ if you have any notion of accounting.

      You can see Galloway’s testimony on C-Span here: javascript:playClip(’rtsp://video.c-span.org/archive/iraq/iraq_051705_galloway.rm’), which in fact was better than the BBC’s coverage, since you got to see Senator Coleman’s facial expressions and that of Senator Carl Levin’s. Coleman appeared unprepared, with the very same documents that were proved forgeries in Galloway’s libel suits against both the Daily Telegraph and the Christian Science Monitor. Both were glad the testimony was over...because they were caught with their pants down. Remarkable. They ´misunderestimated´ the level of discourse in Great Britain, and thought they could get away with their business-as-usual, contrived bonhomie. Were they ever so sorely mistaken.

      I urge you to revisit that broadcast.

      Respectfully,

      Flávio Américo dos Reis

  • After watching the debate, I was stuck by the very different form (refreshing) and the class conflict (Oxford vs Trades Union Council) the debate took. I have had a problem with Hitchens historical revisionism over the last few years as he moves further to the right the grayer he gets. I understood his initial response to 9/11 and invading Afghanistan as a response to ’fascism’ (his term not mine) in fighting a mindset of Muslim fundamentalism that threatened the West. Afghanistan had fallen into a mess of warlordism and drug lords after the retreat of the Soviet forces and withdrawal of the CIA and their proxies, creating a vacuum. The West was to blame for this situation and the Taliban seized power as a result. 9/11 occurred and the West needed to respond to an area of chaos. The West has managed to muck that up to with the return of warlordism and drug lords... So much for the West.

    The problem I have with Hitchens latest stand is his refusal to look at intent on the part of the Bush administration. Cheney and his gang had been planning the takeover of Iraq ever since the failure of George I. An easy target, so they thought. To hear Hitchens going on about democracy and aiding the Kurds, the more I wonder what bubble he has been living in since the invasion. The West does not want a democracy in Iraq. Why would they want another Iran? The Turks, Syrians and Iraqis do not want a Kurdish homeland in a federalist Iraq. Why would they, it would set the clock back 80 years when Balfour created Iraq for British Petroleum. The Turks and Syrian certainly do not want a thriving Kurdish homeland as they have enough problems with controlling minorities. America wants to put a puppet government in place, get out of Saudi and have their own oil fields to draw from. Why else would we be building 14 permanent bases in Iraq?

    As for Galloway, he is an old style socialist dreamt up in the 30’s and liberated in the 40’s after the downfall of Churchill. He is the result of the labor movement that educated the working classes in Britain after the war. He is a good debater, something that Americans never see unless they watch CSPAN for coverage of Parliament in Britain and Canada. We are used to empty statements on our Congress floor without any debate. Our loss. As a good debater he knew which subjects to step around and which to attack. He did not address his meetings in Damascus nor did he properly defend his simplistic view that he saw the war in Iraq as a war of liberation from a foreign army. It is not. It is a civil war caused by imperialist map makers in the 20’s and stupidly rekindled by the Bush administration. He seemed to blame any death on Bush and Blair. Simple to say the least. It is an idealistic view that many old Socialists seem to fall into, blame the boss for all that is wrong rather than looking at the situation and understanding that all parties are to blame for the conflict. Only the poor and powerless suffer.

    Once again the West has stepped into a situation that we were not ready to confront and a new vacuum has been created that local factions are fighting to establish control of by what ever means they have. The Bush administration is to blame for creating the current situation and should be taken to task by the world community for aggression and human suffering. But the blame needs to be shared amongst all parties involved and those not involved. The UN, Germany and France, Iran and Saudi, the Bathists and the Muslim fundamentalists all have a hand in this along with America and Britain. All parties need to sit down and establish a plan now before the suffering gets worse. But here seems to be no will to stop the suffering by the world community at this point. The conflict is not as simple as these two debaters would have us believe.