Rant in G Minor
‘You don’t give a damn! You don’t even know about the Palestinian families! You don’t even know that they exist! Tell me the name of one member of the seven members of the same family slaughtered on the beach in Gaza by an Israeli warship. You don’t even know their name. But you know the name of every Israeli solder who has been taken prisoner in this conflict. Because you believe, whether you know it or not, that Israeli blood is more valuable than the blood of Lebanese or Palestinians. That’s the truth, and the discerning of your viewers already know it.’
That was George Galloway raining fire down on a hapless Sky News interviewer this week. (Watch the full spectacle here) It’s about time someone went on the telly and got all shouty crackers about what’s going on in the Middle East. Just a shame it had to be him, really.
The thing is, he has the uncanny ability to be both spectacularly right and mortifyingly wrong, often in the same breath. He can make a rousing, stirring call to the humanity in all of us with speeches like the one above while calling the deaths of Israeli soldiers ‘a bloody good hiding’. He calls for a just settlement of the Israel/Palestine/Lebanon bloodbath but insists that Hezbollah - while it’s firing rockets into civilian areas - isn’t a terrorist organisation. He’ll speak truth to the buffet of turds that is the Murdoch empire and whore himself on ‘Big Brother’. God knows it’s hard to find a consistent position on the Middle East, but George will say something that makes you punch the air in righteous delight one minute and have you with your head in your hands the next. It’s like he’s buying a round while drinking *your* pint.
Still, for all the ‘Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability’ fellatio, the ‘there are one and a half billion Muslims in the world, and all of them know who I am’ ego-bloat, and the dark clouds hanging over the state of his Mariam Appeal’s accounts, we’re pretty sure he’s never given the order to have somebody killed. Not even his most frothing critics can accuse him of that. Let’s face it, he’s a lower order of bastard. And as we said, he’s brought a rare glimpse of outrage to the proceedings.
‘I think, as any parent would, of my own sons, or daughter. I know I would go mad with grief should it happen to them,’ is probably the nearest Tony Blair’s ever got to it, speaking after the Omagh bombing in 1998. We’ve seen precious little display of hypothetical bereavement-induced insanity since.
Tony doesn’t want to die either. His bodyguards, bomb-proof car, bullet-proof windows and not using public transport are the giveaway. Writing himself a blank cheque back in 2003, he said that he was prepared to ‘meet my maker’ and atone for ‘those who have died or have been horribly maimed as a result of my decisions’. Just, you know, not for a while.
On the matter of other people meeting their maker he’s a bit more laid back, of course. Sooner or later, Tony doesn’t mind. ‘When people stand up and fight, people will come after you,’ he said last week when asked if he thought The War Against Terror was putting Britain at risk. At least he had the honesty to say ‘you’ and not ‘us’. We bet he was the kid at school who held the coats when fights started. What he meant was ‘when I tell people to stand up and fight, people will come after you’. As leader of the Scottish National Party, Alex Salmond, once said of the Prime Minister: ‘He gambles with other people’s chips, and other people count the cost of what he’s done.’
Unlike Sky News, Blair’s very equal-opportunities when it comes to death: he doesn’t want to know *any* of the names. And it’s been forgotten amongst the footage of Lebanon being pounded to dust that, in sitting on his hands, Blair’s been content for Israeli civilians to meet their maker as well. ‘We grieve for the innocent Israelis and innocent Lebanese civilians that are dead,’ he said to Parliament back in July. But what does that really mean coming from someone like Blair? He *grieves* for the innocent Israelis and innocent Lebanese civilians? What, really? Can you picture him clutching his hankie over pictures of the dead in Haifa or Qana? Or Basra or even King’s Cross for that matter?
It gets overlooked, generally by cosy newspaper columnists and political correspondents who’ve got the mortgage to pay, that being a leader of the country means accommodating an acceptable level of death. Notice we said acceptable rather than necessary. None of the deaths we’ve seen in the last few weeks have been necessary; but by his thin, sweaty cowardice Blair, in not calling for a ceasefire and then sloping off on holiday, has demonstrated that he has a personal yardstick of acceptable deaths. He’s a reverse Galloway, condemning Hezbollah while giving Israel free reign. He does that camp indignation of his very well when accused of giving Israel ‘the green light’, doesn’t he? But who he thinks he’s kidding isn’t clear. If only those 1,000 dead Lebanese civilians had thought to join Labour’s 1,000 Club, donating £1,000 to the party every year, they might have received a little more attention.
Blair’s not unique in this - remember Thatcher sinking the Belgrano during the Falklands conflict - it’s a disgusting, dehumanising feature of what it is to be a political leader. It’s just that Blair embraced it unsettlingly easily, with the emotional detachment of a sociopath and a personal bodycount at least 70 times larger than Thatcher’s. Or maybe it’s the Christian in him telling him that all these people are being bombed, shrapnelled and otherwise blown to A Better Place. ‘How do you sleep at night, knowing that you’ve been responsible for the deaths of 100,000 Iraqis?’ the New Statesman this week reports a guest at Number 10 asking Blair. ‘I think you’ll find it’s closer to 50,000,’ was his reply. What an unmitigated shit he must be. Imagine it being your job to have to interview the bastard. We’d have to drink for at least a week beforehand.
A lot of people rightly say that it’s easy to criticise our leaders but much harder to come up with solutions. We’d humbly suggest a Battle Royale featuring the leaders of all the countries currently fucking each other up. Maroon the grisly bastards on an island, give them each a crossbow and let them sort it out man to man. See how cavalier they can be with their own lives. Israel’s Olmert versus Hezbollah’s Nasrallah. A Blair and Bush tag team up against Syria’s Assad and Iran’s Ahmadinejad. George Galloway to take on Rupert Murdoch. Right in the fucking eye.
It’s a small carnage even the pacifists among us could embrace.
(First published in this week’s The Friday Thing.)
Posted on August 11th, 2006 at 3:57 pm
If you can find a scintilla of truth in anything this ranting demagogoue has to say I look forward to contacting you soon -I’ve got some dud jewelry I want to sell you.
Well, she didn’t know the names of those Palestinians, did she?
Only too right about marooning these leaders on an island. It seems only too easy for them to send their lesser subjects into an abyss, while they lounge around on a beach somewhere in the Carribean.
If you can find a scintilla of truth in anything this ranting demagogoue has to say…
Who? Tony or George?
Justin sez God knows it’s hard to find a consistent position on the Middle East
I thought God already knew, that’s the fucking problem.
Anyway Nasrallah is winning the stragetic war game that is being played at the moment, this is why Israel is going a step further, see link below.
Israel are looking for these weapons from the US to try and shore-up their defeat.
http://www.missilesandfirecontrol.com/our_products/firesupport/MLRS-M270/product-MLRS-M270.html
niconoclast
You must be a lone Israeli cyber warrior (see link: http://giyus.org/) on this blog. You obviously are not clever enough (no disrespect to Justin) to post an intelligent post here in a small but quality content blog.
Go back to Little Green Footballs and wank away.
“Maroon the grisly bastards on an island, give them each a crossbow and let them sort it out man to man.”
Good idea but it doesn’t go far enough.
How about including their cheerleaders as well? You know, the self righteous armchair generals who are quite prepared to stand up on the blogs and talkboards in support of the terrorist regime and its offspring that blew up British squaddies in the King David hotel amongst other terrorist activities against British soldiers - including assasination plots against British politicians.
Tratiors the lot them - including those like Blair and Bush (whose Grandfather Prescott bankrolled the Nazis in Germany). We might have won the war in 1945 but we seem to have lost the peace to this ideology in the long run.
We could televise the event - put it the BBC just before match of the day.
Now that would be a public service.
All I can say is here - bloody - here!
Right on the button - on all counts as usual; but especially on that ghastly creep of an apology for a man Blair.
Having ‘known’ Gorgeous George since his Glasgow Labour days (and before that Dundee), you kind of get to know that ‘consistency’ is not a strong point. Justin your just about right. He has given the New labour about the best blooody nose, and the Hitchens stuff was superb. But there’s a reason he doesn’t do this in Glasgow or closer to home - too many people know him for what he is. An arsehole.
He’s got a btter mouth than a soul, a bigger heart than a brain. He’s what we call sleekit.
Gus @ http://www.1820.org.uk
‘How do you sleep at night, knowing that you’ve been responsible for the deaths of 100,000 Iraqis?’ the New Statesman this week reports a guest at Number 10 asking Blair. ‘I think you’ll find it’s closer to 50,000,’ was his reply.
Umm…er…ah…Jesus. No coherent response possible at this time.
Actually, it’s probably unfair to judge such comments too harshly. If there’s a person in the world today in a deeper state of cognitive dissonance than Tone, I’d be amazed. Those Iraqis died because they didn’t get the whole rights and responsibilities thing (in the Shock and Awe context, that is). The rise in Islamic fundamentalism has nothing to do with any foreign affairs stuff - it’s about our way of life. Ho-hum. Nice place Cliff has here.
If you care to do some research into the so called rant then you find that george has got bigger brain than tonys. Tony is the kid holding the coat in the schoolyard fight and he is also the one that is the teachers pet(the snitch, the grasser,the ass kisser who has a shrine at no10 covered in the stars and stripes.) Tony doesnt care about 100,000 iraqi lives, he cares about a share in the spoils of an unjust war and the occupation of arab lands. if the bastard had a heart in his sorry shell then it must be made of stone.
If you call Hezbollah a terrorist organisation, then surely Israel is also in that league as well. The G8 reminds me of the Mafia clans getting together to sort out territories. They are all gangsters! Have you seen how thick the doors are on Bush’s car? These guys have more armour than the troops they send into battle. The Palestine question has to be next on their agenda and it must be a fair settlement or the carnage will continue and it may well end up on our doorstep.
Are there any examples of a popular resistance group anywhere and at any time that would not be labelled ‘terrorist’ under todays broad and changing definitions? Some of the things done by the French, Norwegian, and Polish resistance (setting off bombs, killing suspected collaborators, forcing ethnic Germans who had lived in these countries for generations out of their homes after the war was over) would definately fit the catagory… and does anyone seriously think that if the French resistance had long range rockets in ‘43, they wouldn’t have been sending them into Berlin?
Come on, wee Georgie is great fun. I wish I was as quick on my verbal feet as him. He really gave it to the useless bint from Sky. These presenters would not be so bloody cocky if they were just called on it a bit more often. Of course, the video has been shown nowhere in the MSM, only on internet.
Anyway, I spoke to Cherry and they can’t come home because they have arranged to be re- rebirthed on Monday.
The mass media controlled by murdoch is owned and run by jews, which means that when israel commit atrocities it goes unnoticed and unreported. What I want to know is where Tim Marshall has dissapeared to for the last 10 days or so after reporting on massacre in Qana. He certainly was handed the anchorman job on that day and was so disgusted with what he reported that he took to task every israeli spokesman he interviewed. Even the most anti-islamic reporters had a change of heart when the truth is staring them in the face. Murdoch must have been absolutely seething when he saw his own media reporting thess attrocities and his jewish freinds getting a well deserved blasting in the media for a change. But these are the perils that the reporters face, tell the truth and get dropped. Where is Tim Marshall?
The mass media controlled by murdoch is owned and run by jews, which means that when israel commit atrocities it goes unnoticed and unreported.
You are entirely right, of course, ‘the truthseeker’, all that footage of destroyed buildings, reports of bombed bridges and stranded refugees in Lebanon we’ve seen over the last month must have been a mass hallucination. Silly me.
The Jews own and run all the mass media? Including al-Jazeera, the Catholic Herald and the Bunty? Thanks for letting me know. I’ll certainly regard the scrapes of Dennis the Menace in a different light from now on, the world-dominating scamp.
But aren’t the Jews too busy starting all the wars? Mel Gibson said so. Where do they find the time to make bagels and produce nebbish comedians if they’re busily producing Songs of Praise, The Muslim News and The Watchtower and waging a global war of domination?
Go away and lower the tone somewhere else, eh?
Justin, before you take your apron off and tuck into your bagel, please note that this minimalist reporting of these atrocities does not mean that Sky not biased, yes they do show these pictures of refugees and bombed buildings, but do they report on the truth of the matter which is the Israelis from day one attacked a sovereign nation on the lame excuse of the capture of 2 israelis soldiers(not kidnap)who were actually in occupied Lebanese land which according to the UN should be handed back.
My point is that the Murdoch empire will not report the whole truth, if this country was shown the history of this conflict then Sky would report on the 1000s of Lebanese prisoners that are held illegally.
Have Sky once shown the history of this conflict, their archive room must have conveniently burn down because as George said 4 weeks is as far as they can remember. The most pathetic and lame excuse in the history of all wars, to kill thousands of people and displace a million for 2 terrorist soldiers.
I hope you are enjoying your bagel while you remember another recent war crime where a family of seven were blown up while having a picnic on a palestinian beach, did you see the six year old girl histerically and beating her murdered fathers body, how did they explain that one, they were planning a suicide mission.
Sorry Justin the truth is out there if you chose to open your eyes, just make sure your not tuned to Sky 501 all the time. Why dont you ask Tony and George what they planned for Al Jazeera, the fact is you tell the truth and your with the so called enemy.
By the way where your mate Tim Marshall, have they found him yet?
… will say something that makes you punch the air in righteous delight one minute and have you with your head in your hands the next. It’s like he’s buying a round while drinking *your* pint.
Precisely how I feel about you, Justin. On the other hand, you do, at least, make me laugh out loud (in a good way)with almost every article that you write, so I regard you as being a million miles better than Galloway…
Rochenko: yup, but she didn’t demonstrate that she knew the names of the Israelis either.
DK
Funny, isn’t it, how rabid and totally intolerant extremists - on the left and right – always call themselves and their rants things like The Truth, and Reason and Common Sense?
It would be nice if Georgeous George - and indeed everyone – put as much effort into promoting peace as they do into supporting hatred.
Blair’s been totally sidelined in all this anyway. Bush gave him the brush-off in that accidentally on-mic chat of theirs, and it’s the US and the French who’ve been leading the UN show since. Guess French fries are back on the Whitehouse menu.
you are as stupid as ‘hannah’. and your stupid comments as thick as it can gets.
Who’s ‘hannah’ and who’s stupid? Why is she stupid? Why are the comments thick?
Come on, enlighten us, please.
Gus Abraham calls George ’sleekit’ Burns wrote an ode to a mouse starting off:”Wee, sleekit, cow’rin’, tim’rous beastie”
No. I don’t think so.
What came across to me watching his ‘performance’ was his beard and finger in the air. Now just who is he trying to emulate? Anything to do with his parliamentary constituency?
@DK
Sure, but then if she hasn’t picked up on their names by now, she’s incompetent as well as morally compromised.
This interview should go down in history as the most honest and most powerful statements in the history of the middle east crises, hats off to you George, I wish the all the politcal leaders from the west as well as arab leaders who have the authority to make changes would learn something from you. At last someone has the balls to speak the truth.