As you know I'm quite a fan of Johann Hari and here's an article from him about Galloway & King in Bethnal Green.
Here's a rather good bit:
"I asked Galloway how many Muslims had been murdered by his friend Aziz. The correct answer: even more than have been slaughtered by Ariel Sharon, or by Israel in 38 years of occupying Gaza and the West Bank. Galloway said, "Why don't you go and take some more drugs, you druggie?"
This is part of a pattern. Galloway consistently sides with unelected, unrepresentative Muslim leaders at the expense of the majority of Muslim people. When he talks about "siding with Muslims", I am always tempted to ask: which Muslims? Female Muslims, chafing under their veils and reeling from the fists of too many of their men? Democratic Muslims, braving suicide-bombers to vote all over Iraq? Gay Muslims, living in terror and locked in mock-heterosexual marriage? Muslim trade unionists in Iraq, dismissed by Galloway as "quislings"? Tariq Aziz, or his victims?"
3 comments:
George Galloway has responded: (to Johann. Not me obviously.)
"In the footsteps of Labour pioneers
Sir: Johann Hari, in his splenetic diatribe of 22 April, scalpels a phrase out of my interview with Al Jazeera, distorting what I said. I said Tariq Aziz should either face a fair trial or be released, but should not be held indefinitely incommunicado. Hari renders that as an unqualified call for Aziz's release.
Hari compares me with the racist Enoch Powell: "Rivers of blood, he [Galloway] implies, are only months away." I have spent my life opposing racism. Powell spent much of his inciting it. We on the left rallied to the communities under attack, and do so today.
He accuses me of adapting my life-long principles for political gain. If I had done that, I'd still be in Blair's party, probably fighting a shoo-in seat.
The main casualties of Hari's rant are the people of east London, particularly its immigrant communities. He has all Muslim women forced to wear a veil, and domestic violence earmarked as a specifically Muslim problem.
This is the language of inflaming racial tension. But it's not working. Something great is happening across east London. Working people, bitterly betrayed by this government, are not turning on one another. They are coming together around a progressive alternative. Respect is following in the footsteps of the pioneers who gave birth to the real labour movement on these streets a century ago.
GEORGE GALLOWAY
RESPECT COALITION, LONDON E3"
http://comment.independent.co.uk/letters/story.jsp?story=633322
Those nice people at Harry's Place have put up the Newsnight clip that shows the brief encounter between Salam Pax and George Galloway.
http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2005/05/04/when_salam_met_george.php
More Galloway here.
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