Compare Frank Brit vs. Spineless Dems

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E

Mon, 23 May 2005 18:32:18 -0000

Compare Frank Brit vs. Spineless Dems

 

 

 

 

Compare Frank Brit vs. Spineless Dems

 

[Dems, take note. Part 1 here is a lesson in success. Part 2 is

thoroughly rubbing that lesson in. Hint: Goff announces tactfully,

Spineless Dems give cornpone Nazi Republicans any goddamn thing they

want. Aloha. Lloyd Kinder]

 

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Part 1 Galloway v the US Senate

www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1616578,00.html

May 18, 2005

 

Galloway v the US Senate:

transcript of statement By Times Online

George Galloway, Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, delivered this

statement to US Senators today who have accused him of corruption

 

George Galloway after arriving in the Senate committee room to give

evidence (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

 

" Senator, I am not now, nor have I ever been, an oil trader. and

neither has anyone on my behalf. I have never seen a barrel of oil,

owned one, bought one, sold one - and neither has anyone on my behalf.

 

" Now I know that standards have slipped in the last few years in

Washington, but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any

idea of justice. I am here today but last week you already found me

guilty. You traduced my name around the world without ever having

asked me a single question, without ever having contacted me, without

ever [having] written to me or telephoned me, without any attempt to

contact me whatsoever. And you call that justice.

 

" Now I want to deal with the pages that relate to me in this dossier

and I want to point out areas where there are - let's be charitable

and say errors. Then I want to put this in the context where I

believe it ought to be. On the very first page of your document about

me you assert that I have had 'many meetings' with Saddam Hussein.

This is false.

 

" I have had two meetings with Saddam Hussein, once in 1994 and once

in August of 2002. By no stretch of the English language can that be

described as " many meetings " with Saddam Hussein.

 

" As a matter of fact, I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same

number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald

Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to

target those guns. I met him to try and bring about an end to

sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second of the two occasions,

I met him to try and persuade him to let Dr Hans Blix and the United

Nations weapons inspectors back into the country - a rather better

use of two meetings with Saddam Hussein than your own Secretary of

State for Defence made of his.

 

" I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when British and Americans

governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas. I used to

demonstrate outside the Iraqi embassy when British and American

officials were going in and doing commerce.

 

" You will see from the official parliamentary record, Hansard, from

the 15th March 1990 onwards, voluminous evidence that I have a rather

better record of opposition to Saddam Hussein than you do and than

any other member of the British or American governments do.

 

" Now you say in this document, you quote a source, you have the gall

to quote a source, without ever having asked me whether the

allegation from the source is true, that I am 'the owner of a company

which has made substantial profits from trading in Iraqi oil'.

 

" Senator, I do not own any companies, beyond a small company whose

entire purpose, whose sole purpose, is to receive the income from my

journalistic earnings from my employer, Associated Newspapers, in

London. I do not own a company that's been trading in Iraqi oil. And

you have no business to carry a quotation, utterly unsubstantiated

and false, implying otherwise.

 

" Now you have nothing on me, Senator, except my name on lists of

names from Iraq, many of which have been drawn up after the

installation of your puppet government in Baghdad. If you had any of

the letters against me that you had against Zhirinovsky, and even

Pasqua, they would have been up there in your slideshow for the

members of your committee today.

 

" You have my name on lists provided to you by the Duelfer inquiry,

provided to him by the convicted bank robber, and fraudster and

conman Ahmed Chalabi who many people to their credit in your country

now realise played a decisive role in leading your country into the

disaster in Iraq.

 

" There were 270 names on that list originally. That's somehow been

filleted down to the names you chose to deal with in this committee.

Some of the names on that committee included the former secretary to

his Holiness Pope John Paul II, the former head of the African

National Congress Presidential office and many others who had one

defining characteristic in common: they all stood against the policy

of sanctions and war which you vociferously prosecuted and which has

led us to this disaster.

 

" You quote Mr Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Well, you have something on me,

I've never met Mr Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Your sub-committee

apparently has. But I do know that he's your prisoner, I believe he's

in Abu Ghraib prison. I believe he is facing war crimes charges,

punishable by death. In these circumstances, knowing what the world

knows about how you treat prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison, in Bagram

Airbase, in Guantanamo Bay, including I may say, British citizens

being held in those places.

 

" The existence of forged documents implicating me in commercial

activities with the Iraqi regime is a proven fact. It's a proven fact

that these forged documents existed and were being circulated amongst

right-wing newspapers in Baghdad and around the world in the

immediate aftermath of the fall of the Iraqi regime.

 

" Now, Senator, I gave my heart and soul to oppose the policy that you

promoted. I gave my political life's blood to try to stop the mass

killing of Iraqis by the sanctions on Iraq which killed one million

Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even

knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other

than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to born at that time.

I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you

did commit in invading Iraq. And I told the world that your case for

the war was a pack of lies.

 

" I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have

weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your

claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world,

contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity

on 9/11 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the

Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their

country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of

the end, but merely the end of the beginning.

 

" Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right

and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their

lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack

of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a

pack of lies.

 

If the world had listened to Kofi Annan, whose dismissal you

demanded, if the world had listened to President Chirac who you want

to paint as some kind of corrupt traitor, if the world had listened

to me and the anti-war movement in Britain, we would not be in the

disaster that we are in today. Senator, this is the mother of all

smokescreens. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that

you supported, from the theft of billions of dollars of Iraq's wealth.

 

" Have a look at the real Oil-for-Food scandal. Have a look at the 14

months you were in charge of Baghdad, the first 14 months when $8.8

billion of Iraq's wealth went missing on your watch. Have a look at

Haliburton and other American corporations that stole not only Iraq's

money, but the money of the American taxpayer.

 

" Have a look at the oil that you didn't even meter, that you were

shipping out of the country and selling, the proceeds of which went

who knows where? Have a look at the $800 million you gave to American

military commanders to hand out around the country without even

counting it or weighing it.

 

" Have a look at the real scandal breaking in the newspapers today,

revealed in the earlier testimony in this committee. That the biggest

sanctions busters were not me or Russian politicians or French

politicians. The real sanctions busters were your own companies with

the connivance of your own Government. "

 

www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1622520,00.html

He achieved that recognition in an extraordinary 15-minute

performance in front of a US Senate sub-committee last Tuesday to

challenge its allegation that he had accepted oil money from Saddam

Hussein.

 

From the moment he arrived in Washington, he turned on his accusers,

describing himself as " the leader of the British anti-war movement " .

 

He even turned to his advantage his meetings with Saddam. " As a

matter of fact, I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of

times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is that Donald

Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps to target

those guns, " he said.

 

" You have nothing on me, senator, except my name on lists of names

from Iraq, many of which have been drawn up after the installation of

your puppet government in Baghdad. "

 

..---

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Part 2: An Open Letter to Democrats: Listen to Galloway and Learn

Something, by Stan Goff

Sat, 21 May 2005 20:09:25 -0500 " Charles Shaw

\(Newtopia\) " charles - Stan Goff.American Hero!

One of the only straight shooters we have left. -C

 

####

 

HEY DUMMYCRAPS, LISTEN AND LEARN SOMETHING By STAN GOFF

 

Dear Democratic Elected Officials of the United States (with damn few

exceptions),

 

I am writing this open letter to call your attention to the remarks

made day before yesterday, May 17, 2005, to the United States Senate,

by British MP George Galloway of the independent Respect Party. I do

this because he serves as an example of why your party should be

abandoned by the U.S. working class, by U.S. women, by oppressed

nationalities in the United States, and by anyone who professes to be

a progressive or a leftist.

 

George Galloway did that for which you have proven incapable; he

spoke as an opposition. Since there seems to be a great dark space in

the middle of your heads where the notion of opposition should be - a

void filled by parliamentary molasses and the pusillanimous inability

to tell simple truths - I suggest you all review the recordings of

Galloway's confrontation with Republican Senator Norm " Twit " Coleman

to see exactly how effortless it is to stand up to these cheap

political bullies (watch the video). While you are at it, you can

watch your colleague Carl Levin demonstrate exactly what I mean about

most of you and your party, as he alternately hurls petulant cream-

puff insults at Galloway and kisses Coleman's stunned, clueless ass

to give that toothy dipshit some comfort in the wake of Galloway's

verbal drubbing.

 

Galloway didn't have to walk up to the docket and slap the cowboy

shit out of Coleman - though I admit I still struggle with my own

secret urges to do just that with most of the air-brushed, combed-

over, Stepford meat-puppets who now people the United States

Congress. No, all Galloway had to do was tell the unvarnished truth,

and it had exactly the same effect. If Democrats had half the spine

that Galloway does if you would stop chasing your creepy little

careers through the caviar and chicken-salad circuits of duck-and-

cover American political double-speak, then not only would people

like me not be calling for all to abandon the Democratic Party and

take their fight to the streets like good Bolivians not only that,

but you'd have won the last election.

 

The reason Galloway was able to break from your mirror party in UK ---

Blair's sell-out Labor Party --- and still get elected, is that

Galloway fights for his convictions and the real needs of his

constituents, and doesn't run for cover every time the bully-boys of

the capitalist establishment attempt to take him down.

 

Here's a hint.

 

People follow those who speak plainly and fight. Aside from Maxine

Waters, Barbara Lee, and Cynthia McKinney (not surprisingly Black

women who know where it goes if you let rich white men get away with

giving you a bunch of shit) and a precious few others, the Democratic

Party is not only just another party controlled by big capitalists;

it is not even a good *capitalist* opposition party (much less a real

opposition).

 

You don't deserve anyone's support, not even as a tactical matter any

longer, because you end up doing ritual verbal combat then give

the " cornpone Nazis " of the Republican Party any goddamn thing they

want. That's why Galloway rhetorically spanking that soap-opera-

looking shitbird was the most satisfying thing many of us have seen

in months.

 

You freakin bed wetting Democrats don't deserve anyone's support, not

even as a tactical matter any longer, because you end up doing ritual

verbal combat then give the " cornpone Nazis " of the Republican Party

any goddamn thing they want.

 

Tell the Democratic Leadership Council to eat shit and die. Stop

working, stop obeying, block the streets and highways, shut down the

capital, and watch them choke on their own sewage.

 

That's exactly why some of us are saying go Bolivian on their asses.

Tell the Democratic Leadership Council to eat shit and die. Stop

working, stop obeying, block the streets and highways, shut down the

capital, and watch them choke on their own sewage. If Americans

weren't so bewildered by television, so addled and soft from junk

food and cars and electronic appliances, and so addicted to their own

cultural superficiality, they might begin organizing general strikes:

women's strikes, workers strikes (without union bureaucrats to calm

them down), Black people strikes, Brown people strikes, info-tech

strikes, eco-strikes, all working our way up to One Big Strike.

 

It's a ways off, but it's coming. Of course, there won't be any

Democrats there. They'll be wringing their hands about their defunct

careers, and conducting focus groups to see how they can shift

further to the right in the next election.

 

And the reason this doesn't happen is that people still hang their

thin hopes on you, on electing Democrats who stab them in the back

the first chance they get. But Galloway's appearance before the U.S.

Senate moved us an inch closer to the Big Strike, and an inch further

away from your worthless asses.

 

Because Galloway didn't, as some are saying, expose the Republicans.

 

Someone with a full frontal lobotomy could expose a Republican

politician.

 

He exposed the spinelessness of the Democrats.

 

Yours very truly,

 

Stan Goff

 

(My thanks to James Howard Kunstler for the term " cornpone Nazi. "

I've known quite a few... even been related to some of them.)

 

Stan Goff is the author of " Hideous Dream: A Soldier's Memoir of the

US Invasion of Haiti " (Soft Skull Press, 2000), " Full Spectrum

Disorder " (Soft Skull Press, 2003) and " Sex & War " which will be

released approximately December, 2005. He is retired from the United

States Army. His blog is at www.stangoff.com.

 

" If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to

favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops

without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and

lightning. I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of

incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to

incur my own abhorrence. " -Frederick Douglas