Talk Elections

Since he's just won the most incredible by-election victory in the UK for decades.

FF! Well... mostly.

Which dictator is he cosying up to at the moment? I lose track.

An apologist for dictators...nuff said.

FF.

I'm still having trouble absorbing the news of this by-election. 15,000 vote swing. Jesus...

HP, clearly.

Galloway won the by-election? Incredible. They just can't get rid of him.

I thought he was done after he came in third in Poplar & Limehouse and didn't show up to the count.

Truly vile person. How anyone can vote FF for scum like that is beyond me.

HP (normal)

Bashar, maybe? He seems like the latest hero for the "anti-imperialist/anti-colonialist" idiots.

Does a good cat impression, which is always a plus in a politician.

Horrible, horrible person (H, HP).

EDIT: Somewhere's elected him again? Oh Jesus.

In my case it was out of ignorance concerning some of his statements on the USSR, Israel, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Cuba, Hezbollah, and Western leaders who were in support of the Iraq War. My initial stance was won over by qualities of his I consider FF’esque (e.g. being socialist, environmentalist, anti-imperialist, pro-Palestinian, anti-WMD, and pro-choice) and because I lack sufficient knowledge to know what to make of the old Oil-for-Food controversy. Having read a little more about George now, however, I am somewhat more inclined to assume a neutral position and wait to see what else folks have to say about him.

would have voted for him in this latest contest, say whatever you may like about the more cinematic stuff.

From what I've seen, I'm not a fan.

He's a truly vile creature.

The total swing away from the coalition in the by-election was greater than the swing away from Labour. Tory tactical voting, perhaps?

again the left-liberal airheads can't understand the concept that in these situations, it's not about George Galloway.


my main man Richard Seymour summed it up well.
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2012/03/galloway-wins.html

Harriet Harman, who is far from the worst in Labour's leadership, showed the paucity of Labour's analysis when she insisted that 1) this result in Bradford a purely regional phenomenon, with no wider ramifications, and 2) this has nothing to do with Labour's failure to oppose, since "We've had a completely different argument from the Tories, arguing that they are cutting too far, too fast."  The latter, of course, is not "a completely different argument".  It is an argument which accepts the principle of austerity; which is to say, it is an argument which accepts that working class people have to put up with a generation being lost to joblessness, with tuition fees, privatization, service cuts, benefit cuts, and the evisceration of local infrastructure. The real problem is that Labour has no sense of how to oppose the coalition, because it has preemptively conceded most of the territory.  This is because Labour's leadership knows that if the party wins a general election, they have no intention whatever of adopting a fundamentally different course or of significantly reversing anything the Tories now implement.

The above post is pretty amusing.

Yes! That's exactly why Labour lost the other 5 by-elections this parliament as well. They just can't oppose. They are the Conservatives.

Oh, wait.

Labour's spin on this sounds poor, yes, but it's true.

getting tired of your act bro.  you sit there and say nothing for months on end with a smirk on your face.

Galloway is back? LOL!!!

Neutral? The guy is an open anti-semite who supports slaughtering innocent people as long as it's done as a stand against liberal democracy. I don't see how his views on the environment matters at all in that context. He is one of few Western politicians who openly supports anti-semitic conspiracy theories, military dictatorship and murder of political opponents.

That might be why he won and thus that the election result is not about Galloway really. It doesn't make Galloway not a Horrible Person.

It occurs to me that I can't post my full and genuine opinion of the Honourable Member for Bradford West here or anywhere else on the internet. Of course it probably wouldn't be noticed, but I'm not going to take that risk. And neither should anyone else.


This isn't an act, it's just the way I am. In this particular case there's really nothing worth saying; people who refuse to see Galloway for what he actually is and his electoral appeal for what it actually is are not going to be convinced by any degree of argument because it is their choice to be so blind.

The hilarious part is that he's more or less given up the far-left part of his act this days, but his remaining friends out there (generally they have trust funds) don't seem to have noticed.

suit yourself, but your perception here, if you are applying it to me (which is always unclear due to the way you write), is incorrect.  I would be perfectly glad to discuss with and learn from you on this topic.  I of course have a very limited knowledge of the various factors at play here and concede that, and thus only have my 'go-to' sources of interpretation which have helped me before.  to strike up discussion I offer that up and take the risk.  you seem to prefer to say to your interlocutors, "you're wrong, I have the knowledge to prove it, and will not offer it, because you are so wrong to be beyond any rehabilitation, and moreover, you're a class enemy of the people your purport to care about and represent".  which is a sh**tty way to act, and I feel a pang of sorrow for you if that is the way you 'actually are', as you claim.

It is not as though I approve of such conduct, if it is true. I am merely responding based on the very limited supply of information I possess. Please bear in mind that I had never even heard of this guy until the thread started, still know little about him, and waded into the thread with less than ten minutes' worth of hasty review of basic summations of his political positions and career - at no point during which I came across sentiments similar to those you are posting. The point of switching to a neutral position was to see what folks had to say about him - not to claim in any authoritative tone that the good and bad are roughly even with him.

If I were only to post in threads discussing subjects I am intimately familiar with I'd have very little to do on this forum. From time to time I am liable to make missteps, be wrong, or get confused.

I'm no expert on Galloway, but this is very well-known. His political career in modern times basically consists of hating Jews so as to get the Muslim vote.

"In an interview with the American radio host Alex Jones, Galloway blamed Israel for creating "conditions in the Arab countries and in some European countries to stampede Jewish people ... into the Zionist state". Jones then alleged that the "Zionists" funded Hitler, to which Galloway replied that Zionists used the Jewish people "to create this little settler state on the Mediterranean," whose purpose was "to act as an advance guard for their own interests in the Arab world...""

“I am still a member of parliament and was re-elected five times. On the last occasion I was re-elected despite all the efforts made by the British government, the Zionist movement and the newspapers and news media which are controlled by Zionism.”

"Scott Long, writing in The Guardian, criticised Galloway's claim that "homosexuals aren't executed in Iran, just rapists", pointing out that current law in the country stipulates that "Penetrative sex acts between men can bring death on the first conviction""

"Galloway claimed "that democracy in Cuba is more “free” than in the UK""

He's also said that he thinks it would be morally justified to kill Tony Blair: "Galloway was asked whether a suicide bomb attack on Tony Blair with "no other casualties" would be morally justifiable "as revenge for the war on Iraq?". He answered "Yes it would be morally justified. I am not calling for it, but if it happened it would be of a wholly different moral order to the events of 7/7. It would be entirely logical and explicable, and morally equivalent to ordering the deaths of thousands of innocent people in Iraq as Blair did.""

(although he did think it would be a bad idea to kill Blair because of the backlash against Muslims that would follow. So, kudos, I guess)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Galloway (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Galloway)

My issue is not that you were uninformed about Galloway, but this took me like 2 minutes to find out. I had a hard time believing you found out about his environmental positions and managed to miss what he's best known for.

Note, he "criticized" it. He didn't try to pretend it was untrue.

I'm not following. He is clearly disagreeing with the statement. Are you agreeing with Galloway that homosexuals aren't executed in Iran?

A HP who has acheived a great thing.

It happens. I look for ties to parties and ideologies before skimming through information on their political activities. Personal conduct and controversies are usually the last things I look at (if at all) because I expect accusations of uncertain veracity that might take me quite awhile to dig into and reach reasonably well-informed conclusions about. The information you provided is quite useful though - I appreciate it quite a bit - and in the future I probably should be less intellectually lazy when reading up on the blokes in these sorts of threads or at the least wait until a dozen or so people have posted to make sure that I didn't miss anything important before weighing in. xP

There are somewhat conflicting reports on whether or not exceptions to the general principle sometimes occur, and there definitely are a few cases of homosexuals executed where the rape charges were quite dubious. In addition, there are a few cases of people executed on trumped up espionage charges with a charge of sodomy thrown in for good measure.

But as to the general policy... it's just a dumb old fact. Not that the reality is fine, but then Galloway didn't claim that.

---

Anyways, back on topic. I hope we can all agree that this is true - certainly anyone defending Israel's policy of assassinating Hamas leaders would have to. Though they don't bother to make sure to get only their man, of course. Wait, what? Certainly what Blair did is morally equivalent to 7/7*, and assassinating him, while still not morally acceptable, would not be equivalent?  (This is Blair before he left office, obviously.)

*if it is accepted, for the sake of Galloway's argument, that orders known to cause the "deaths of thousands of innocent people" are the exact same as direct orders to kill thousands of innocent people. Which is not something I'd want to accept, but then the whole sentence doesn't really make sense unless you assume that Galloway doesn't really do so either.

I'm not an expert on Iranian law here, but the statement from the other guy seems to clearly be that Iranian law allows for execution even without rape? Not that it is a material point though.

And I see what you mean regarding Blair - it seems a bit inconsistent.

Exactly - "allows". It's the theoretical maximum sentence.

One of the more bizarre factoids is that Iran considers transgendered people to be ill - and offers them the cure of a sex change operation. Based on a fatwa of Khomeini's from shortly before he died.

It has been interesting to see the rise of the Green Party and now, RESPECT Party to parliament. I'm hoping the UKIP gets a few seats as well :)

Respect's already had seats in parliament. UKIP are as successful as the Referendum Party.

Seats or seat? Has RESPECT ever won any seats with anyone besides Galloway?

Yeah, I know Galloway was once a Labor MP, but has RESPECT ever gotten beyond him?

No, it may as well call itself "The George Galloway Party".

FF

Attention-seeking whore... full stop.

Salma Yaqoob did come fairly close to victory at each of the last two elections.

HP, big time.

UKIP have no chance of winning a seat at the next election.

I would say he's probably the worst left wing politician right now in Great Britain. I have zero respect for him and unlike Dennis Skinner, he strikes me as completely disingenuous.

George, seething at the PM making fun of him at PMQs today.

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