Things I've yelled at George Galloway within the last hour:

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

"Maybe you don't want a revolution because you can afford a house in Portugal!"

Practice and propaganda. I'm glad I have a loud voice.

Seriously though, dude is an egotistical dick with a lousy anticolonial analysis. He seriously implied that colonialism in Canada is something that hasn't existed in the lifetime of any living indigenous people, and that it's "different" because we have so much "room".

Fuck him.

[Salyut]

Seriously though, dude is an egotistical dick with a lousy anticolonial analysis. He seriously implied that colonialism in Canada is something that hasn't existed in the lifetime of any living indigenous people, and that it's "different" because we have so much "room".

what

I don't understand how he's the darling of the "left" here.

[Sam_b]

Well aren't you the resident voice of reason with razor-sharp politics. Thanks for advancing the class struggle with your astute and timely message that is sure to have made an impact.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Well aren't you the resident voice of reason with razor-sharp politics. Thanks for advancing the class struggle with your astute and timely message that is sure to have made an impact.

Given, I did give a longer schpiel (sp?) about Canada-as-a-settler-state, the ongoing reality of Canadian colonialism, and, further, that we were a ten minute walk from a statue of Cornwallis (who placed a bounty on the scalps of Mi'kmaq "men, women, and children").

That was just way less fun/ny.

[Rusty Shackleford]

who the hell is george galloway?

[Salyut]

who the hell is george galloway?

I believe he's some sort of ex-labor party apparatchikn who did things with the Middle East (something with Saddam I think...). He runs RESPECT - which I know fuck all about.

Honestly without consuflting any sources and being high atm, he seems like just another gibbering liberal;.

[Chimurenga.]

Cool story, bro.

While he was and still is busy delivering much needed aid to families in Gaza, you can't be bothered to leave your mothers basement.

[The Grey Blur]

you realise there are evangelical christian groups that also provide aid to oppressed/destitute people, right?

[bailey_187]

who the hell is george galloway?

A Scottish former Labour MP seen as "left wing". He is quote vocal about the middle east, palestine etc. He was kicked out of the Labour party over his opposition to Iraq war. He then set up the RESPECT party, which joined for a while with the SWP.

He is criticised for being a "champagne socialist" because he enjoys a fairly luxurious lifestyle with his TV show and formally his MP salary and radio show salary, and other stuff like speaking events. He is also criticised for crossing line between taking an anti-imperialist view and becoming an apologist for Iran.

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

The best thing about George Galloway is that he provides a voice to many of our concerns, especially regarding Gaza and Israeli foreign policy in general.

However, as any politician that is willing to operate within the norms of the parliamentary system (with regards to wages, lifestyle etc), he should be opposed on those grounds.

I guess that, with Galloway, he is about as good as parliamentary politicians get as far as their arguments go. Its always good to see him on Question Time tearing whatever shit-faced Tory they have on there a new one, but other than that he's just another overpaid MP.

[FreeFocus]

I've always respected Galloway for his skill in highlighting the plight of Arabs and other oppressed groups and the hypocrisy of the US, Israel, and the West generally. Nonetheless, denying that Canada is a settler state and denying the imperialism that is inherent in that is disappointing and depressing.

[gorillafuck]

Cool story, bro.

While he was and still is busy delivering much needed aid to families in Gaza, you can't be bothered to leave your mothers basement.
That's good but it doesn't mean you can't criticize him politically. Unless you also think Neo-Nazis and fascists are alright since they oppose Israel.

[Magdalen]

Cool story, bro.

While he was and still is busy delivering much needed aid to families in Gaza, you can't be bothered to leave your mothers basement.

As an American, you probably don't have the knowledge of Galloway's political career over the past thirty or so years. Galloway first came to prominence in local politics in Dundee, my home town, in the late 1970s, as a part of a notoriously corrupt Labour administration, and managed to get himself elected as a Labour MP in Glasgow in 1983, being expelled from the party in the aftermath of the Iraq War (he didn't jump, he was pushed!), but managing to remain in Parliament as a member of RESPECT (essentially a Galloway vanity project, backed by a few Muslim community organisations, and initially the SWP), although he was defeated at the last election.

Galloway is fundamentally an opportunist who maintains delusions about 'reclaiming' the Labour Party. He intends to run for the Scottish Parliament next year on a platform of 'real Labour values'. I'm sure I don't need to lecture anyone on what the values of the Labour Party were when it condemned the Bolsheviks, when it used poison gas against the Kurds, when its armed forces beheaded Malayan Communists. Galloway is incredibly politically muddled - with my own ears, I have heard the man compare a pro-independence position on the Scottish national question to the BNP.

[bricolage]

The other day I found an interesting Galloway moment referenced from wikipedia about the Poll Tax Riots. Considering the SWP would later work with him within RESPECT its interesting to see what he thought of them back then;

Legislator George Galloway of the socialist opposition Labor Party, sitting sadly at the base of Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square, condemned the violence.
"To see sections of the crowd cheering on the rioters. It shows the depth of the hatred of this poll tax, and the extent of the alienation in the country, and that disturbs me," said Galloway, whose party opposes the tax.
He said police actions were "clearly retaliatory and frankly necessary to save their own lives."
"It was a well-organized demonstration, but these lunatics, anarchists and other extremists, principally from the Socialist Workers' Party, were out for a rumble the whole time, and now they've got it, and if they didn't exist, the Tories would need to invent them."
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1320&dat=19900401&id=UaEpAAAAIBAJ&sjid=PeoDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6917,386333

[Prairie Fire]

Galloway,

I saw him a few days ago in my town. About 700 people showed up, and those are just the ones who could get tickets.

I think that in regards to Galloway, the issue isn't wether or not the man is a revolutionary, because it goes without saying that he is not. Showing up during the Q and A period and bombarding him with scathing criticisms of his lack of principles on many issues is an exercise in futility for this reason.

The issue also isn't his numerous shortcomings and limitations, which unfortunately are not as un-common as we would like to think even within the nominally "radical" left.

The issue, to me, was the fact that 700+ people showed up to hear him speak, most of which were not the 'usual suspects' of the activist community, but rather new people who had never been politicized before, and this provided them with something that enticed them enough to come out of the wood-work.

I went in with no illusions. When he talked bullshit about his belief in god ( as a Trotskyist, no less,), idealized Canada's past golden age prior to the rise of Harper, prattled on Naively about parliamentary democracy... All of this was to be expected.

The silver lining was the facts that he brought to the table from his areas of expertise, and recounting his own concrete experiences to highlight contemporary issues.

When he talks about how he was barred from entering Canada last year, by MP Jason Kenney ( Canadian Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism), while George W Bush was allowed in around the same time period, he highlights the crisis of the people not holding political power in Canada in a concrete way.

When, while taking questions from the crowd, he is asked about what conditions would be acceptable for the Israelis that the Palestinians must meet, he smashes this by reminding people about the Oslo accords, and the fact that the Palestinians did meet the Israelis conditions, to no avail. When he talks about Hamas maintaining a ceasfire for months, despite provocation from Israel, he clearly delineates the problem to an assembled audience.

Now, as I said, he is what he is.

Tariq Ali is what he is, but that didn't stop me from going out to see him.

Malalai Joya, Michel Chossodovsky, Tim wise, Ward Churchill, Angela Davis, Michael Moore, Cynthia McKinney, Various American war resisters, etc, etc...

All of them are what they are. They are useful in some capacities,specificially when they speak about their experience on an issue, and not useful in regards to others.

When an American war resister comes to my city, draws a crowd of a few hundred (again, not restricted to the usual suspects), and speaks about his service in Iraq/Afghanistan, about US military policies, about their own threatened status by Canadian immigration authorities threatening to deport them back to the US (and into prison), how politically irresponsible ( let alone divisive, and ultimately accomplishing nothing positive) would it be to rush the stage and call bullshit on the speakers for the literally thousands of issues that they are not talking about?

"Hey, Mr. War resister! I notice you are deathly silent on the oppression of the Tamil minority last summer by the Sri Lankan govenment! You also have made no comment about the 1000 Canadians arrested at the G20 demonstrations this year! Care to comment on these, you colonialist fuck?"

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qyhZ9_eXCHM/SsV9xEXb3OI/AAAAAAAACmk/vQ8KxZc4Zjk/s400/life_of_brian.jpg

Like really, seriously. God forbid a specific event have a specific definite purpose.

(This is also a tactic of reactionaries, ie. local Zionists coming up to me when I was supporting the boycott of Israeli goods, and asking why I wasn't out protesting the Chinese occupation of Tibet, the violence in Darfur, etc)

Most guest lecturers/speakers are single issue speakers anyways. If you are looking for a dynamic new Lenin to take the stage, with answers to all questions, you will be sorely dissapointed.

This is not an issue to any serious political organization, because no serious political organization relies on guest lecturers to bring all of the politics to their city. In the case of my city, two very active students associations, concerning issues of war and occupation in the middle east, joined forces ( an excellent thing that came out of this event) and hosted Galloway at the University together.

As I said, both of these groups were very active, with their on-going work, and their own roster of monthly events. In this capacity, bringing in Galloway (or anyone else)
was to compliment and reinforce the political work that they were allready doing. In this sense, Galloway or any other speaker is an extension of the ongoing political organizing allready taking place, and he is mobilized on that basis.

This is how even a speaker with reformist short-comings can be mobilized effectively for the causes of ongoing definite organizing of the people.

Now, of course, there were some divisive shit-heads acting like provocateurs at the event, who took the mic, grilled Galloway for his silence on 9/11 truth (:rolleyes:), demanded that he should know the names of the celebrities of their movement, and basically tried to hijack the entire event.

Luckilly, they didn't succeed in splitting the crowd, or derailing the event. Only their own tiny entourage that came in with them left when they did, but in a practical sense,that is all that these things do.

Why call bullshit on a guest speaker? To elevate your own revolutionary street cred?
Real life isn't revleft, so there are practical organizing consequences to derailing the political unity in a room for the sake of living out avante-garde "prolier than thou" Che Guevera fantasies.

As I said, if you have done the organizing work properly, then the limitations of your guest speaker should have little effect so long as they are mobilized in the right direction. Usually guest speakers are chosen who are knowledgable about the issue at hand that your organization is trying to build awareness of and organize around.

And again, no serious political organization depends on guest speakers to import politics into their city. If your guest speaker has political and theoretical limitations (as all of them inevitably do,) , then the political work that you should be doing the other 364 days of the year should hopefully mitigate a few off hand comments by some guest lecturer, no?

I dunno. Galloway is what he is, and from what I've seen in Canada, the organizations that have brought him in have been skillfull in utilizing him in useful and practical ways that strengthen definite organizing.



you realise there are evangelical christian groups that also provide aid to oppressed/destitute people, right?


Do they provide aid to Gaza?

Cuba?

The DPRK?

This is "Cows are tables" logic ( "How many legs does a cow have? 4. How many legs does a table have? 4. Therefore, a cow is a table."). You reduce the issue to an abstraction, and compare similar features devoid of context.

Nevermind that to you this purely is an academic question. You've never missed a meal in your life, so it does make a difference to you who the providers of aid are.

To the people recieving aid,they have to be less discriminate.

The only inadvertantly useful thing that I can see coming out of Evangelical Christians is that they occasionally feed people. That is literally the only positive accomplishment that I see them making (even though the aid comes with theological strings attached, and ultimately charity is not a solution for the greater socio-economic inqualities and paradigms of exploitation on the planet earth).

This ties in to all of the criticisms of Galloway here, and the problems that plague too many of the left in general. To you, this is an academic exercise, and statements and ceremonial gestures are more important than substance and accomplishments.

[Prairie Fire]

And he is not just a guest lecturer as you frame him, he is a politician, a former MP, a member of the bourgeois political process. He would still be in the Labour Party if he hadn't been expelled.




And in Canada, those (former) credentials matter only in-so far as they influenced people to attend his lectures.

In Canada, his one and only role that he was playing was that of a guest lecturer.

[Manic Impressive]

Sorry I couldn't resist :laugh:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1NIuCt72bU&NR=1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1NIuCt72bU&NR=1)

You can keep him.........no please keep him

[bricolage]

Do they provide aid to Gaza?
While not evangelical, Christian Aid have provided far more aid to Gaza than Galloway ever has or ever could.

But of course politics has never been about charity.

And he is not just a guest lecturer as you frame him, he is a politician, a former MP, a member of the bourgeois political process. He would still be in the Labour Party if he hadn't been expelled.


Cuba?

The DPRK?Does Galloway?

[bricolage]

And in Canada, those (former) credentials matter only in-so far as they influenced people to attend his lectures.

In Canada, his one and only role that he was playing was that of a guest lecturer.
Jimmy Carter does Palestinian activism now. So if I got him as a guest lecturer in the UK his previous role as US President wouldn't matter?

Note: I deleted and re-posted my original post so this all looks weird now. Apologis.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

The issue, to me, was the fact that 700+ people showed up to hear him speak, most of which were not the 'usual suspects' of the activist community, but rather new people who had never been politicized before, and this provided them with something that enticed them enough to come out of the wood-work.


Which would be very exciting, if the event offered some perspective outside the accepted discourse of liberal parliamentarian and the just-left-of-World-Vision "Over there, there's colonialism! Let's throw some money at this problem!"

To suggest that people are incapable of grasping a more radical perspective than this is condescending, and also, in my personal experience, out of touch with reality.


idealized Canada's past golden age prior to the rise of Harper, prattled on Naively about parliamentary democracy... All of this was to be expected.

Expected, maybe, but no more acceptable for it!
To have someone come to a settler state, to speak about a settler state, and to explicitly spout the same bullshit lines we'd expect from the National Post ("It was so long ago," "There's lots of room," etc.) is incredibly damaging. To have "new people . . . come out of the woodwork" only to have this shit spouted at them is, well, I mean, we could have grabbed any asshole off the street, and saved ourselves the toff's airfare.


When he talks about how he was barred from entering Canada last year, by MP Jason Kenney ( Canadian Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism), while George W Bush was allowed in around the same time period, he highlights the crisis of the people not holding political power in Canada in a concrete way.

That, or the petty games played among the political class. I mean, seriously, when I saw him speak, the room had a significant crowd of immigrants, refugees, and people of colour. To have had any of those people speak to their experience of the Canadian Immigration system - as neighbours, as potential comrades and friends, and not as distant liberal celebrity jack-asses - would have been infinitely more valuable.

(To note, I'm not talking from my armchair, as it were - Halifax has a chapter of No One Is Illegal that has created many opportunities for the sort of interactions to which I'm referring)


When an American war resister comes to my city, draws a crowd of a few hundred (again, not restricted to the usual suspects), and speaks about his service in Iraq/Afghanistan, about US military policies, about their own threatened status by Canadian immigration authorities threatening to deport them back to the US (and into prison), how politically irresponsible ( let alone divisive, and ultimately accomplishing nothing positive) would it be to rush the stage and call bullshit on the speakers for the literally thousands of issues that they are not talking about?

"Hey, Mr. War resister! I notice you are deathly silent on the oppression of the Tamil minority last summer by the Sri Lankan govenment! You also have made no comment about the 1000 Canadians arrested at the G20 demonstrations this year! Care to comment on these, you colonialist fuck?"

I agree! Wholeheartedly!
The primary difference being that Galloway was explicitly discussing settler states, and also talking with a mouth full of shit about how great Canada was before Harper. It would be silly to pick arguments about subjects outside the scope of discussion - but irresponsible and stupid to not call bullshit when the subject itself is approached in a blatantly dishonest way!


In this capacity, bringing in Galloway (or anyone else) was to compliment and reinforce the political work that they were [already] doing. In this sense, Galloway or any other speaker is an extension of the ongoing political organizing [already] taking place, and he is mobilized on that basis.

Which would be very useful, if he didn't explicitly spout a politics that is antithetical to almost every radical politics articulated in this country. If he were going to speak exclusively about Palestine, about Afghanistan, and about the relationship of Canada to those issues, it would be fantastic. Unfortunately, the big-mouthed egotistical fucknut decided to go off on the topic of Canada more broadly, clearly without having done any serious research vis- our countries ongoing colonial project, history of foreign interventions, etc.


Why call bullshit on a guest speaker? To elevate your own revolutionary street cred?
Real life isn't revleft, so there are practical organizing consequences to derailing the political unity in a room for the sake of living out avante-garde "prolier than thou" Che Guevera fantasies.

In a room full of proles, its the boring "political"-types who refuse to call bullshit in the name of their own "political" project and of "unity" (unity with whom?) that bore people. I mean, seriously, grow a spine.



Nevermind that to you this purely is an academic question. You've never missed a meal in your life, so it does make a difference to you who the providers of aid are.

Actually, I've done my time in soup kitchen lines, with welfare workers, and living off of condiment sandwiches, so, uh - fuck you. You don't know me. It's this sort of, "Oh, all political people are middleclass students like me!" assumption that ensures your political organizations and events will rely on windbag celebrities to bring out people who aren't middleclass students. Further, when people come to these events and are offered only more of the same liberal tripe, they'll leave, and won't come back.




To the people recieving aid,they have to be less discriminate.

This is just a rephrasing of beggars can't be choosers which, again, illustrates the sort of perspective you're coming from.


This ties in to all of the criticisms of Galloway here, and the problems that plague too many of the left in general. To you, this is an academic exercise, and statements and ceremonial gestures are more important than substance and accomplishments.

Quite the contrary - because this is not simply an academic exercise for me, I give a shit about the implications. I want to see concrete organizing in the context of a radical emancipatory project, and not a "substance and accomplishment" of "BIGGER SPEAKERS, HIGHER ATTENDANCE, MORE CHARITY," which is the best that was offered at his Halifax event.

"Donate to the Canadian boat to Gaza !" Donate what? I live on part-time minimum wage, and I already coughed up $5 to get in! How about proposing real projects that could counter the order that sustains the colonial project, here and there?! Donate! Donate! Donate! Are substance and accomplishments all of that order? Will I be a better revolutionary if I get my act together and find a better-paying job?