Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
February 24,
2005
Diane Christian
Bad
Blood: Ritual & Sexual Torture in Iraq
February 23,
2005
Werther
The
Poisoned Well: What the CIA's Nazi Files Can Tell Us About Iraq
W. John Green
A Salvador Option for Iraq? How Negroponte Changes the Ground
Rules
James Petras
A New Face to Bush Foreign Policy?
Conn Hallinan
Cornering the Dragon: the Return of the China Lobby
Joe Pietri
Cannabis: the Goose that Lays Golden Eggs (For Consumers and
Cops)
Louis Proyect
Hunter Thompson and the "New" Journalism
Alexander Cockburn
Hunter
S. Thompson and Gonzo
Website of
the Day
Did You Make the Blacklist? Why Not?
February 22,
2005
Naseer Aruri
The
Politics of the Hariri Assassination: Remapping the Middle East
Richard Manning
The
Economy of Hunger: Starvation is Part of the Economic Plan
William A.
Cook
Righteous
Racism Running Rampant
Paul Craig Roberts
The Agents of Instability
Ken Krayeske
Dr. Thompson is Out
Dave Zirin
How the Owners Destroyed the NHL
Kirkpatrick
Sale
Imperial
Entropy: the Collapse of the American Empire
February 21,
2005
Hunter S. Thompson
"He
Was A Crook"
John Ross
Mexico:
the Pentagon's Proxy Army in Iraq
Ward Churchill
What Did I Really Say? Why Did
I Say It?
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Military Recruiting on Channel One: Geometry 101, Brought to
You by the US Navy
David Swanson
Fighting for a Living Wage, State by State
Dave Lindorff
All the News That's Fit to Fake
Stew Albert
Fear and Loathing: HST
Michael Neumann
Strategies
in Palestine: a Shrinking Pie in the Sky
February 19
/ 20, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Back
to Salem: Paul Shanley and the Return of "Recovered Memory"
Kathleen Christison
Struggling
for Justice in Palestine
Ted Honderich
On Being Persona Non Grata
Gary Leupp
Self-Hating Gays: Welcome to the White House & Welcome to
Commit Suicide
Don Santina
Reparations for the Blues
Jennifer Roesch
John Negroponte: Dirty Warrior
Scott Richard
Lyons
Ward
Churchill and the Identity Police
Chris Clarke
Ward Churchill and Liberal Outrage
George Beres
Censorship in the Land of Wayne Morse: Gagging W. Churchill in
Oregon
Harry Browne
The Belfast Heist: the Plot Unravels
Manuel García,
Jr.
Who Killed Rafik Hariri?
Mark Scaramella
Lessons from the Hidden Afghan War
Michael Donnelly
Whatever Happened to John Edwards?
John Pilger
First, They Attack the Past
Norman Madarasz
Death Wish for Reform in Brazil?
Surendra Devkota
The Monarchy in Nepal
Deborah Rich
How Anti-GMO Ballot Measures May Miss the Mark
Fred Gardner
When Dr. Tod Met Merle Haggard
CounterPunch
News Service
About King Mswati: Political Developments in Swaziland
Richard Oxman
CounterPunching Arthur Miller
Poets' Basement
Albert, Giebel, Tripp, Engel and Orkin
February 18,
2005
Ben Moxham
In
East Timor, the Nightmare Continues
Dave Lindorff
The
Scum Also Rises: the Bloody Career of John Negroponte
Larry Birns
Negroponte: a Resume of Death Squads, Deceptions and Bribery
Gregory Elich
N, Korea's Phantom Nukes and the US's Subversion of Diplomacy
Samuel Logan / John Meyers
The Future of Colombia's Paramilitary Death Squads
Nicole Colson
Shock and Awe on Civil Liberties: From Lynne Stewart to Ward
Churchill
Suzan Mazur
Whose National Security Are We Talking About?
Mickey Z.
"One
Man Has Stopped Killing"
February 17,
2005
Joshua Frank
Hogtying
of the Deaniacs
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
Willing Sychophants: the Conservative Media
Robert Fisk
Under
the Shadow of Death in Lebanon
Christopher
Brauchli
Where
Time Stands Still: Kinsey and Darwin in Cobb County, GA
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Military
Recruitment TV: Why Send Them to College, When Your Kid Can be
Cannon Fodder?
Alison Weir
Russia, Israel and Media Omissions
Ahrar Ahmad
A Review of Shahid Alam's "Is There an Islamic Problem?"
Saul Landau
An
Interview with Cuban VP Ricardo Alarcon: "The US Tramples
the Laws It Wrote"
Website of the Day
Petition to Support Ward Churchill
February 16,
2005
Robert Fisk
Lebanon:
a Battlefield for the Wars of Others
Kevin Zeese
Creating a Real Ownership Society: Share the Wealth; Protect
Retirement
Gary Leupp
Meanwhile, in Nepal...
Ron Jacobs
Why the Iranian Opposition Should Not Trust the Bush Administration
Jessica Leight
Oil-Flush Chavez Begins to Strut His Stuff
Greg Moses
Houston, You've Got a Problem: Documenting Voting Irregularities
in Texas
Mark Engler
The Last Porto Alegre
Jack McCarthy
Where's the Outrage About Pat? Buchanan Does a Churchill
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy Dangerously Slanted Toward Israel
Website of the Day
The
World is Melting: a Photo Survey by Gary Braasch
February 15,
2005
CounterPunch
News Service
Dean
a "Safe" Moderate, Says NYT Citing CounterPunch
Robert Fisk
The
Killing of Mr. Lebanon
Uri Avnery
"Sharm-al-Sheikh,
We Have Come Back Again"
Stan Cox
Fighting Big Pharma in Little Digwal
Mickey Z.
Radio
Active North of the Border: an Interview with Chris Cook
Dave Zirin
Bashing Bush: Jose Canseco Comes Clean
Nadia Martinez
Ending
World Poverty? Opening at the World Bank, Apply Now
Lila Rajiva
"Little Eichmanns" and the 'Harijan': the Danger of
Magical Thinking in Politics
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
American Job Sell Out
February 14,
2005
Robert Jensen
Ward
Churchill: Right to Speak Out; Right About 9/11
Brian Cloughley
Kuwait's Freedom, Bush-style
Patrick Cockburn
Outcome
of the Iraqi Elections: Shortages, Corruption, Guerrilla War
Gary Leupp
Post-election Iraq: What Next?
Michael Donnelly
Sacred Nature: Just Another Commodity?
Dave Lindorff
When Bush Came to My Neighborhood
Elaine Cassel
The
Lynne Stewart Verdict
February 12
/ 13, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill's Genes
Saul Landau
Alarcon
Speaks: an Interview with the Vice President of Cuba
Paul Craig
Roberts
Nothing
to Fear But Bush Himself
Patrick Cockburn
Two Years After the Fall of Saddam, the Resistance Controls All
Major Roads into Baghdad
John Feffer
Bush
v. N. Korea: Round Two
Mickey Z.
Right to Remain Silent; Duty to Speak
Kurt Nimmo
Viva la Cucaracha!
Fred Gardner
Waiting for Raich
Dave Zirin
Fighting the New Republic(ans)
John Chuckman
Hiroshima, Mon Amour
Ben Tripp
A Leftist on the Bush Payroll
Carol Norris
"Buddy, Can You Spare a Dwarf?"
Robert Fisk
No Middle East Peace Without Justice
Frank / Chowkwanyun
Muzzled Activist in an Age of Terror: the Case of Sherman Austin
Mike Whitney
Condi's Euro Tour
Deborah Frisch
A Psychologist's Defense of Ward Churchill
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Reading Khomeini in Colorado
Christine TenBarge
What's So Special About Ward?
Ron Jacobs
Curtis Mayfield's Train to Jordan
Dr. Susan Block
Chemistry of Love: a Valentine's Greeting
Poets' Basement
Louise, Smith-Ferri, Ford and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Free Sherman
February 11,
20055
Manuel Garcia,
Jr
The
Eight Percent War
Kurt Nimmo
Ann
Coulter's Racism: Where's Geronimo When You Really Need
Him?
Dave Lindorff
Guckert
or Gannon? The Perfect Plant; He Fit Right In
Larry Birns
War is Peace; Slavery is Freedom: Democracy According to Elliott
Abrams
Bill Quigley
Twenty Questions: a Social Justice Quiz
Tom Barry
Bush's State of Delusion
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Lynne
Stewart's Conviction Hurts Us All
February 10,
2005
Dave Lindorff
What
Academic Freedom?
Christopher Brauchli
The Love of Slaughter: From Rwanda to Iraq
Patrick Cockburn
In Baghdad, It's Easy to Get Killed
Nicole Colson
Have the Democrats Surrendered on Abortion Rights?
Suzan Mazur
More
on the Assassination of Lumumba from Mr. Garsin of Kinshasha
Michael Donnelly
Salvaging an Opposition
Mike Stark
Driving Ossie Davis: "Give Them a Little Truth, a Little
Hope"
Greg Moses
Taking
Jesus Back from the Hijackers
Website of
the Day
The Missionary Positions
February 9,
2005
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Duck
and Cover Redux: Bunker Busters and City Levellers
Mickey Z.
What Ward Churchill Didn't Say
John Ross
Hecho
en Mexico: the Iraqi Election
Tom Barry
Ambassador of Lies: Elliott Abrams, the Neocon's Neocon
Conn Hallinan
The
Coup in Nepal: Nursing the Pinion
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Vision for Iraq: Cricket is Fine, But Chess is "Absolutely
Forbidden"
Steen Sohn
Danish PM Says It's OK for Israel to Violate UN Resolutions
Tim Wise
Reflections on Empire and Uppity Indians
Website of
the Day
Support Antiwar.com
February 8,
2005
Patrick Cockburn
Shia/Kurd
Coalition to Dominate New Iraqi Govt.: "It's an Electoral
Pact, Not a Party"
Brian Cloughley
Out
of the Mouths of Generals: "It's Fun to Shoot Some People"
Steve Breyman
Against the Selfishness of the "Ownership Society"
Harry Browne
"Don't
Get on that Plane!": Soldiers Seek Asylum in Ireland
Doug Giebel
"We Love Free Speech in America": the People, the President
and Ward Churchill
Nate Collins
The Censorship of Ward Churchill and Dancehall Reggae: It's the
Same Beast
Dave Lindorff
It's Time for a Labor-Oriented Newspaper
David Smith-Ferri
Sanctions and the Health Crisis in Iraq
February 7,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
War on Jobs
Carolyn Baker
The New McCarthyism on Campus: Churchill and the Attack on Higher
Ed
Joshua Frank
Marc Cooper's Hit List: First Mumia; Now Ward Churchill
Mickey Z.
Warning: More Hate Speech from W. Churchill
Patrick Cockburn
The
Kidnapping Gangs of Iraq
Mike Whitney
Tom Friedman: Scribe for New Age Imperialism
Stacie Jonas
Pinochet: Fit to be Tried
Dave Zirin
A Miserable Super Sunday: Clinton, Bush and the FBI
Tariq Ali
Imperial
Delusions
February 5
/ 6, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill and the Mad Dogs
Kurt Nimmo
A Ward Churchill Kind of Day
Joshua Frank
Liberals Trash Ward Churchill
P. Sainath
Mumbai's Man-Made Tsunami
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Triumph; Allawi's Bust
Laura Carlsen
Bush, Rice and Latin America
Dave Lindorff
How the NYT Killed the Bush Bulge Story
Pamela Olson
West Bank Story
Behzad Yaghmaian
The Future of Sudanese Refugees in the West
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
A Threatened UN in King George's Court
Roger Burbach
World Social Forum: a Tale of Two Presidents
Robert Fisk
History by Laptop
David Swanson
James Forman and the Liberal-Labor Syndrome
Justin E.H. Smith
Gay Marriage: a Report from Canada
Cacie Hart
The "State" of the Union: More War and a Ban on Love
Ron Jacobs
Chairman Bob Avakian: a Revolutionary Life
Mickey Z.
Viewing America from the Outside
Ben Tripp
Republican Heroes: a New Breed of Good Guy
Ben Sonnenberg
France at the End of the Devil's Decade: Renoir's Rules of the
Game
Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Davies, Collins, & Albert
Website of
the Weekend
John Trudell: How to Earn a 17,000 Page FBI File
February 4,
2005
Brian Cloughley
The
Army Symphonist: "Sometimes the Only Way to Change the Behavior
of Someone Like That is to Kill Them"
Bill Christison
Election
Parallels: Vietnam, 1967; Iraq, 2005
Elaine Cassel
Did Zoloft Make Him Do It?
Jacob Levich
Chomsky and the Draft
Kanak Mani Dixit
Return of the Royalists in Nepal
Ron Jacobs
The
Downward Spiral in Iraq
February 3,
2005
Ward Churchill
On
the Injustice of Getting Smeared: a Campaign of Fabrications
and Gross Distortions
Sharon Smith
Resisting
Soldiers Need Our Support
Mickey Z.
Leslie
Gelb Asks Iraq: Who's Your Daddy?
Mike Whitney
President of Alienation: a Desperate State of the Union
Jenna Orkin
9/11 the Sequel: the Toxic State of Lower Manhattan
Saul Landau
Elections Won't Prevent Civil War in Iraq
Yitzhak Laor
Strange is the Silence
Dave Lindorff
The
Assault on Social Security: a New Campaign of Lies
February 2,
2005
David Domke
/ Kevin Coe
Bush's
Brand of Christianity
Noam Chomsky
Iraq
After the Elections
M. Shahid Alam
O'Reilly's
Fatwah on "Un-American" Professors: FoxNews Puts Me
in Its Crosshairs
Richard Oxman
Ringing in 1984 with Ward Churchill and Derrick Jensen
Joshua Frank
The Suckering of Howard Dean
Dave Lindorff
A History Lesson from the NYT
Nina Hartley
Feminists for Porn
Website of the Day
War is a Racket
February 1,
2005
Joshua L. Dratel
The
Torture Memos
Patrick Cockburn
New Doubts About Allawi
Robert Fisk
"The Only Decent Food We Get is at Funerals"
Uri Avnery
The Stalemate
Col. Dan Smith
"W" Stands for Withdrawal
Alison Weir
Making America as "Secure" as Israel
Alan Farago
Heaven and Hell in the Everglades
Ray Hanania
Low Voter Turnout of Iraqi Expatriates: Less Than 10% of Qualified
Voters
Paul Craig
Roberts
American
Police State
Website of the Day
Statisticians Refute Official Rationale for Exit Poll Errors
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
Truth*
Concrete
Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
Paul Craig
Roberts
America
Locked Up: a System of Injustice
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
February 24, 2005
Smearing an Anti-War Politician
The
Galloway Saga
By
OMAR WARAICH
Scots steel tempered wi'
Irish fire,
Is the weapon that I desire.
-Hugh MacDiarmid
Few cut as colourful figure in the British
parliament as George Galloway. In a House of Commons awash with
charmless backbenchers noted for their congenital caution, Galloway
stands salient. The Scottish MP has, throughout his parliamentary
career, had plaudits and odium lavished upon him in equal measure.
A Guardian (London based broadsheet) strapline probably
described him best: "A maverick reviled by party hierarchy
but admired by (his) constituents".
However, despite years of shunning
a life of comfort behind the parapet, courting controversy and
generating headlines, few could have imagined the events of the
last two years that left his political life dangling on the precipice.
I am a Lennonist, if no
longer a Leninist George Galloway, 2003
"You deserve,"
Galloway submits in his recently published memoir, I'm Not
the Only One, "some kind of explanation." Quite.
Seldom is it the case that a wee lad from the deprived Irish
quarter of Dundee, in Scotland, comes to chink glasses with Arafat
and Fidel, be lionized throughout the Arab world, and receives
the equivalent of a knighthood in Pakistan for services to democracy.
Rarer still, perhaps, was a public figure so callously subject
to the tender mercies of the corporate press and their own party's
leadership.
Galloway's first love was the
Labor Party. It was a tortured affair that drew to an end with
his expulsion in October 2003. Unconscionable though it would
seem today - considering Blair's penchant for waging war (this
government has gone to war more times that Thatcher and Major
combined), fawning big business, and saddling students with the
sort of debt that would make Bob Geldof blush - the party had
been home to the labor movement and most progressive people in
Britain. It was, once upon a time, a space where dissent streamed
with some ease.
At just 13, Galloway signed
up as a full card-carrying member and proceeded to ascend its
ranks with alacrity. Having imagined all the people, sharing
all the world, the precocious politico pinned his colors firmly
to the twin masts of internationalism and socialism, and went
on to serve as the party's youngest-ever organizer and its Scottish
wing's youngest ever chair. Upon entering parliament in 1987,
many observers -from all sides of the house- took note of his
robust debating skills and hastened to tip him as a future Foreign
Secretary.
All visions of Galloway nimbly
gliding into the Foreign Office were to, just as rapidly, vanish
into the ether. Pithy though his rhetoric certainly was
reflected in being voted Debater of the Year in 2001 - its content
irked his colleagues terribly. To their chagrin, his indignant
tones and savage wit were constantly deployed to administer a
lashing to American and British foreign policy; particularly
apropos sanctions on Iraq and Palestine's pathos. (Here one doubts
whether referring to the prime minister as "Bush's Lewinsky"
would curry much favor with the political establishment).
Loyalty to Blair's leadership
of the Labor Party never really existed for Galloway, but there
was no question of infidelity when it came to the Middle East.
Recording the incident in his book, Galloway tells readers of
a pledge he made in the late 1970s that, "elicited strong
disapproval from my listeners". "What ever the consequences
for my own political future," he averred, "I intend
to devote the rest of my life to the Palestinian and Arab cause."
From the moment that the first missiles landed in Baghdad, in
March 2003, he would chafe under those words to the edge of his
undoing.
"Stop Mad Cowboy Disease!"
Antiwar placard, February 15th 2003
As the attack on Iraq
in 2003 gathered pace, the ranks of the British antiwar movement
swelled to incredible figures. The government's flimsy pretexts
for going to war and intelligence reports (in particular the
"sexed-up" dossier that had been plagiarized off the
internet) had aroused great suspicion amongst huge swathes of
the British population. In scenes not witnessed for decades,
first 400,000 (Sep. 28 2002) then 1.5 million (Feb. 15 2003)
took to the streets to protest under the slogans of "Don't
Attack Iraq" and "Freedom for Palestine". And
Galloway's campaigning and oratory had not only swept him to
unprecedented popularity, but also confirmed him as a leader
of the antiwar movement.
On February 15 2003, following
former the Algerian President, Ahmed Ben Bella's thundering "Vive
la France!" Galloway took to the stage and drew a storm
of applause. Opening with a rousing "Don't attack Chirac!"
he spoke of preferring to "eat cheese and read Jean-Paul
Sartre on the banks of the Seine," than, "take pretzels
in Crawford Texas with the born-again, Bible-belting, fundamentalist
American President."
How galling must it have been
for Blair to witness one of his own party's MPs march at the
head of Britain's largest demonstration and address it as the
star speaker.
*
* *
"Never underestimate the
British establishment's ruthless determination to destroy its
enemies."
Roy Hattersley, former
deputy leader of the Labour Party
Just days before Saddam Hussein's
confected tumble in Firdous Square, Rupert Murdoch's right-wing
rag, The Sun poured invective all over Galloway. Many
an actor for social or radical change (usually termed "subversives")
in Britain has, in a time-honored tradition, had their mug pasted
on to its front page with an aptly hysterical headline.
On 1st April 2003, "TRAITOR!"
howled the Sun beside a large shot of Galloway probably
addressing an antiwar rally in the midst of a tumult of
rage. Murdoch's hirelings, reacting to comments made by Galloway
in an appearance on Abu Dhabi TV, taxed him with "treachery",
and condemned his "vile attack" on British and American
forces for having claimed that they were "attacking Iraq
like wolvesattacking civilians". (The wolves line excited
much commotion in Britain; sections of the press accused Galloway
of branding the soldiers "our lads"- wolves.
Galloway who confesses to moments of "verbal infelicity"
- had in fact referred to the soldiers as "lions led by
donkeys", and later retracted the "wolves" remark
on the basis that it had been "an insult to a noble beast").
The Sun's leading article even lamented the demise of "the
hangman's rope" that in years gone used to reward "treachery
like that".
The Murdoch tabloid's political
editor, Trevor Kavanagh's piece that day was entitled "Enemy
of State". Kavanagh accused Galloway of urging "the
Arab world to rise up and kill British troops in Iraq".
The "incitement" would become a charge levelled at
the Scots MP by his party, weeks later. The Guardian's comment
editor and columnist, Seumas Milne, however, dismissed the accusation.
"Examination of the TV transcript," Milne concluded,
"shows Galloway in fact ruled out Arab military resistance,
but floated an oil embargo instead".
Having worked its readers into
a patriotic frenzy, The Sun called on them to tell Galloway what
they "thought of his treachery", and (incorrectly)
printed his e-mail and phone details at the foot of the page.
The episode, later revealed to have been planted by Armed Forces
Minister Adam Ingram, had reduced the lives of Galloway and his
adroit staff to what he described as "a misery". They
were deluged with death threats on the phone and through the
mails. But in the scale of things that were to come, it was just
a harbinger.
After the fall of Baghdad,
a young reporter from the Daily Telegraph scoured the streets
of the Iraqi capital for a story. And amidst the thoroughly charred
and fleeced Iraqi Foreign Ministry, David Blair "happened
upon" a box labelled "Britain" that bristled with
apparently damning documents.
On April 22, 2003, Galloway's
name was emblazoned once again under a right-wing paper's bright
legend. This time it was the Daily Telegraph , then owned by
the media tycoon Conrad Black, who subsequently fell into well-merited
misfortune. The paper devoted several pages to the story and
photographs of three documents, which upon its Baghdad correspondent's
gleaning, purported to establish Galloway in receipt of a breathtaking
"375,000 pounds a year", via an intermediary, from
Saddam Hussein's regime in the form of "oil contracts"
and "special and exception (sic) commercial opportunities".
Blair, the reporter, was himself flummoxed by his find: "Why
the contents of the room with the box files survived is a mystery."
A paper's editorials tend to
be a great deal more revealing. Here, candor has been known to
outstrip cant. On the day of their much-vaunted scoop, the entire
leader column was devoted to the exclusive. Galloway was disparaged
as "Saddam's little helper". The documents were described
as setting a grave setback to the antiwar movement. Antiwar campaigners,
the piece gushed, "have been imputing the basest of motives
to their adversaries. The whole campaign, they argued was really
about money and oil." Now the Daily Telegraph was able to
cast aspersions on the "most active and visible peace campaigner"
with tales of a cloak-and-dagger deal that involved both.
Galloway instantly bearded
the allegations, condemned the documents as forgeries, and instructed
his lawyers to sue. As the news hit every TV bulletin, eyebrows
arched through much of the country and abroad. Yet some veterans
of the political scene felt a different sense of unease; to them
it smacked of an earlier set-up. That very night, being interviewed
by BBC's Newsnight, Tariq Ali told viewers that he had seen it
before, over a decade ago with the Arthur Scargill-Daily Mirror
affair.
The 1984-85 Miners' strike
had convulsed Britain in an unprecedented way and had rocked
Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government. In the spring of
1990, years after the strike's defeat, a saturnalia of scandal
erupted on the pages of the Daily Mirror. Leaders of the National
Union of Mineworkers were savaged with charges of receiving and
pocketing huge sums of money from the Soviet Union and Gaddafi's
Libya. NUM President Arthur Scargill and his cohort were later
cleared of any wrong-doing in what emerged to be a sinister plot
to take down the miners' leader involving MI5 - a branch of the
intelligence services. In fact all large social movements that
took root in Britain were in recent years exposed for having
been targeted by spies. Tariq Ali's Vietnam Solidarity Campaign,
Peter Hain (erstwhile anti-apartheid campaigner, now a tanned
and bouffanted Blairite minister), and the Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament had too been plagued by espionage.
Two journalists who had been
intimately involved, on opposite sides, in the Scargill affair
urged us to consider the "uncanny" similarities that
protruded in the two press campaigns. Roy Greenslade had been
the editor of the Daily Mirror when it broke the stories
of Scargill and "Moscow Gold". The erstwhile tabloid
bruiser turned media pundit, in May 2002, recanted at length
in the pages of the Guardian for his complicity in stitching
up Scargill. Seumas Milne had been the Guardian's labour
correspondent during the strike and eviscerated the case against
Scargill with pitiless and devastating detail in his book, The
Enemy Within (republished by Verso last year).
The unlikely couple went beyond
the obvious point of two fiery left-wing leaders of social movements
being tarred with rumours of soliciting funds from pariah Arab
regimes, and pointed to how the original stories subsequently
"triggered" an entire "slew of official investigations".
Galloway was being investigated for a "misuse of funds"
raised by his anti-sanctions Mariam Appeal campaign, Scargill
had suffered the same fate in respect to the NUM. There were
even "walk-on roles" for their drivers.
It even hit you in the detail.
The document featured in the Telegraph's story carries an odd
logo in its top-right corner. It purports to be the letterhead
of the Iraqi Intelligence Service. Yet the acronym above those
words does not correspond, and instead reads IRIS. Whether an
'IRIS' existed in Iraq remains yet to be seen, but during the
miners' strike, the Industrial Research and Information Service
(IRIS) had been an "a semi-clandestine anti-communist trade
union organization" that had been bankrolled to undermine
industrial action.
"Damn your principles,
stick to your party"
Benjamin Disraeli
After the Telegraph story broke,
the days were punctuated with more tribulation for "Gorgeous
George" (a soubriquet shackled to him by the press for his
debonair appearance).
On May 6, 2003, Galloway was
suspended by the Labour Party and an investigation was launched
to look into whether he had "brought the party into disrepute"
with the ferocity of his attacks on Bush and Blair and had "incited
disaffection" by beseeching British troops to "disobey
illegal orders" in the notorious Abu Dhabi TV interview.
Speaking in his defence, the
rebel MP defended the comments on the basis of precedent set
at Nuremburg and brushed aside the charge. "They can charge
me with incitement to disaffection! I've already stated, many
a time, that when my life ends I want the words to be chiselled
on my gravestone: 'He spent his life inciting them to disaffection;
disaffection with war, disaffection with the capitalist system,
disaffection with injustice!'"
Though a choric howl had let
up inside the Labour Party at the treatment meted out to Galloway,
he was summarily expelled after five months of suspension. Despite
having the full support of his constituency Labor Party (who
had not been consulted on the matter by officials) and having
summoned an A-list of Labor figures (former leader Michael Foot,
longest-serving Labour MP Tony Benn, National Executive member
Mark Seddon, and trade-union leader Tony Woodley) to defend him,
he was shorn of his party membership and cast into the political
wilderness.
If there is one word up on
which his detractors and admirers can settle upon in describing
him, it is that George Galloway is indomitable. A couple of weeks
after being thrown out of the Labor Party at the behest of its
disciplinary "Star Chamber", the four-time elected
MP joined ranks with other forces in the British antiwar movement
to erect a new project for the left the antiwar, anti-privatization,
Aretha-esque party, RESPECT.
"There's nothing easier
to fall for than a forgery, and nothing easier than to find an
expert to give that same forgery a vibrant testimonial as the
genuine article. The hallways of history echo with the furious
assertions of authenticity from people with so much staked on
their claim that retraction is the remotest of options, at least
until the awful truth soaks in: They've been had."
-Alexander Cockburn
In truly suspect fashion, on
April 25, 2003 just three days after the Telegraph
scoop hit the Christian Science Monitor carried
on its front page, in some 90 countries, "revelations"
of Galloway being paid $10 million dollars over eleven years.
As the doyenne of independent media, Amy Goodman records in The
Exception to the Rulers, the "information was obtained
from an 'Iraqi general'. On June 20, 2003, "The Christian
Science Monitor reports their documents were forged."
Galloway won up to 90,000 pounds in damages from the CSM.
And on May 11, 2003, "The
Mail on Sunday," Goodman continues, "was
reported to have gotten documents from the same source that were
forgeries."
As the awful truth sank in,
the media storm markedly subsided. But certain journalists refused
to slake of their readiness to attack Galloway. Charles Moore,
the Daily Telegraph editor, was insouciant and insisted
that his paper's (against whom Galloway's lawyers had filed a
libel writ) documents were indeed authentic. And a particularly
vulgar pro-war, Times columnist, Julie Burchill, who flaunts
her loathing of Palestinians, Muslims and Catholics accused Galloway
of untoward behaviour in his personal life. But it turned out
Burchill had him mixed up with another MP and was forced to offer
this grovelling confession: "I owe George Galloway an apology.
In my column last week, by confusing him with someone else, I
wrongly accused himI regret these errors and am really sorry
for any embarrassment or offence caused." Galloway settled
out of court with the Times and bought his party a battle-bus
from the winnings. The idea of a "sponsored by Julie Burchill"
sign at the back of it was also discussed.
"I get knocked down,
But I get up again,
You're never gonna keep me down"
- Chumbawumba, Tubthumpthing
At last, in mid-November, 2004,
Galloway's libel action against the Daily Telegraph came
to court. But as the Independent on Sunday's diarist,
Christopher Silvester explained, the newspaper altered its line
of defence:
"When is a scoop not a
scoop? When the newspaper which published it is no longer prepared
to claim that it is true, perhaps That 'scoop' is now the subject
of a libel claim, but in its legal defence, which I have read,
the Telegraph does not seek to prove its bold assertion
that ex-Labour MP and anti-war campaigner George Galloway was
in the pay of Saddam Hussein. Instead, it relies entirely on
a technical defence of qualified privilege, arguing that the
paper published certain compromising Iraqi documents in good
faith, regardless of whether their contents were true."
The editor's "insistence"
had wavered and the paper had not furnished any other evidence.
Instead its nervous team of expensive lawyers defended their
client's position by arguing that the paper had been "entitled
to report the allegations in the public interest".
The judge, Justice Eady, was
not convinced in the slightest. In his verdict issued in Court
13 (lucky for some) at the Royal Courts of Justice, Eady concluded
that the "allegations were seriously defamatory of Mr. GallowayNone
of the allegations was protected by the defence of fair comment.
I am, therefore, obliged to compensate Mr. Galloway in respect
of the publications and the aggravating features of the Defendants'
subsequent conduct, and to make an award for the purposes of
restoring his reputation."
Galloway burst out of the court
in a glow of triumph. He had been awarded 150,000 pounds in damages
and 600,000 pounds in legal costs. Surrounded by a sea of reporters
and supporters he railed against his tormentors and, later that
night, vowed to punish New Labor in the upcoming general elections
by standing in East London against Oona King who had supported
the war against the wishes of the majority of her constituents.
The East end of London used
to have a strong radical tradition. It was where another Scotsman,
Keir Hardie had founded the Labour Party. It was where Sylvia
Pankhurst had established a political base and ran for parliament,
and it was where living Labour legend Tony Benn's father had
been an MP. Today, Bethnal Green and Bow is one of London's poorest
constituencies with one of the largest Muslim populations. With
the war and the government's public service cuts, it is no longer
a safe Labour seat. Oona King the Labour incumbent
is a high-profile candidate with a voting record that would please
Blair. The Liberal Democrats, who have been making steady gains
in the wake of people being turned off Labour, are also standing.
With Galloway in with the chance of a narrow victory, the contest
is already being dubbed "The mother of all election battles."
If he loses, as David Smith
conceded in The Observer, "The Commons will be poorer
without his oratory" but will, no doubt, "go on bashing
Bush, Blair, Sharon and American imperialism to kingdom come."
Whether those words he wishes
to be etched on his epitaph will be echoed in his obituaries,
many years from now, who knows? He will certainly have left an
indelible mark on the British political scene, the left, and
the Arab world. It is said that the Greeks never scribbled obituaries;
they merely posed a single question. Did he have passion?
Omar Waraich is an undergraduate at SOAS, University
of London. He can be reached at omar.w@soas.ac.uk
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