Re: help with late glossary entry

To: Retort
From: The "tradition of working-class Glaswegian eloquence" department

George Galloway is Labour MP for the Kelvin constituency in Glasgow; he is
facing disciplinary action (from the "chief whip") at Westminster next week.
This piece right up there with Pilger's broadside. Is this man really in the
party of Blair?

WE WILL NOT BE SILENCED
George Galloway
Saturday October 20, 2001
The Guardian


>In exile in Switzerland, shortly before the Russian
>revolution, Lenin opined that "there are decades when
>nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades
>happen". We are, it seems, living through such weeks.
>It is hard to remember a time when political
>instability, civil strife and the roar of bombs and
>missiles have so scarred the international landscape. Governments like
>Norway's fall, others like Australia's cut and run for a khaki election.
>General Musharraf, Pakistan's self-appointed military strongman, admits
>he's forcing through a policy rejected by 83% of his compatriots.
>General Sharon's Israeli government, riven between hawks and superhawks,
>now appears to have embarked on a doomsday option, possibly including
>the assassination of Arafat, following the slaying of the world's least
>attractive "tourism" minister.
>The "soft centered" European governments are beginning
>to squirm and the Labour benches in the British
>parliament are turning queasy at the slaughter of the
>world's poorest by the world's richest. Coalition
>comrades, India and Pakistan, are shelling each other
>across the line of control in Kashmir. Aid agencies
>are in "emotional" revolt and, like Mary Robinson, are
>having to be ordered back into their box by Clare
>Short. Muslim streets are burning from Gaza to
>Jakarta. In the House of Commons, former defence
>ministers, Labour rightwingers like Gwyneth Dunwoody
>and MPs with large Muslim electorates have swollen the
>ranks of the usual suspects - those like me, who have
>opposed all the wars of the new imperialism.
>Internationally, the coalition is shakier still. The
>Arab League, echoing Nato leaders, has declared that
>any attack on an Arab country will be regarded as an
>attack against all of them. The Saudis, having denied
>the US use of their bases and declined a visit by Tony
>Blair, are now questioning the basis of the whole
>campaign - even openly doubting the involvement of Bin
>Laden in the crimes of September 11.
>Meanwhile, the phone-in lines to Arab television
>stations are jammed with opponents of the war and blood-chilling threats
>of mayhem in revenge. Bush and Blair may not be "at war with Islam", but
>"Islam" is now at war with them and we will be lucky if that is not soon
>visible on the streets of northern English cities.
>Nowhere is that more evident than in the reaction to
>the "Middle East fit for heroes" the Anglo-Americans
>are promising. The Arabs simply don't believe it.
>Perfidious Albion, after all, has a track record. The Palestinian
>tragedy was authored here in the building in which I write. During the
>Great War, while Lawrence of Arabia rallied the tribal hordes to support
>our jihad on the Turks - with the promise of Arab independence - over in
>Downing Street Mr Sykes and Monsieur Picot were carving up the area into
>British and French colonies. And in 1991, Britain and America offered
>the Arabs a new deal, with Israel forced to implement international
>legality, if they backed the fight against Iraq. Promises made and
>broken with a handshake.
>Seldom can a western war drum have sounded more
>hollow. Seldom can the prattle of ministers - Labour
>ministers, many of whom I can still see sporting their
>CND badges as they shuttled around looking for safe
>seats in the 70s and 80s - about command and control
>centres, air defences and radar capabilities have
>seemed so obscenely stupid. The Afghans have none. The
>airport at Kabul is no more than a collection of
>shacks, whose telephones couldn't even make outgoing
>calls. And the statement, delivered by our defence
>secretary with all the gravitas of Captain Mainwaring,
>that we had achieved "air-superiority" over
>Afghanistan - over a Flintstones-style air force which
>couldn't even leave the ground - will live forever as
>one of those stories you really couldn't make up.
>So what are the "allies" bombing? The four UN
>mine-clearing staff, the shepherds and their families
>in the village of Khorum, the Red Cross compound in
>Kabul, the residents of Kandahar, the trucks full of
>terrified refugees. More of these human and public
>relations disasters will conspire to "bury" the
>government's message. An already restless audience
>here, never mind among the 1.3bn Muslims nursing their
>wrath, will not sit through this unequal fight with
>equanimity. And without a change of policy, the winter
>snows will soon begin to tilt this disaster into an international
>catastrophe.
>Well, what should we do, ask the remaining subalterns
>of the war party's thin red line. As the Irishman
>famously replied: "If I wanted to get to Cork, I
>wouldn't have started from here." The government was
>repeatedly warned of the grisly consequences of its
>tango with Islamic fundamentalism in Afghanistan. I
>accused it on the eve of the fall of Kabul of having
>opened the gates to the barbarians and of the long
>dark night which would follow. Many of us have since
>described the rising tide of radical Islam, buoyed by
>our double standards towards Palestine and Iraq, and
>our buttressing of stooge kings, generals and
>99%-of-the-vote presidents of the Muslim world - now
>laughably lined up behind "operation enduring
>freedom".
>But even for those who have brought us to this
>terrifying cusp in world events, there were
>alternatives. The squeeze could have been kept up on
>the Taliban - three weeks is not a long time to secure extradition on a
>capital offence, especially without providing evidence to the country
>concerned. The judicious waving of carrots to tribal chiefs could well
>have achieved the betrayal of Bin Laden. And if military action was seen
>as unavoidable, the target should have been the Arab legions in the
>mountains, not the poor ragged Afghans they've colonised, who never
>invited them in - we did - and have no way of making them leave. This
>and a Lockerbie-type trial, in a neutral country and including Muslim
>jurists, would have been one way to show how "civilised" we were.
>Instead we've answered savagery with savagery.
>On the home front, there are disturbing signs of the
>Downing Street general staff losing their nerve.
>Careless talk circulates about members of parliament
>being carpeted, media appearances vetted, ultimatums
>issued. This would be the ultimate surrender to
>democracy's enemies. Throughout the second world war,
>Aneurin Bevan subjected the line of the Churchill
>coalition government to excoriating criticism and
>withering examination - as Churchill himself had done
>with Chamberlain. Both would have scorned the idea of
>their actions being licensed by whips, as if we were
>circus dogs whose duty was to perform tricks for the ringmaster. I too
>have now been summoned to see the chief whip. Next week, over tea and
>biscuits at 11 Downing Street, I will have to courteously explain to my
>old friend Hilary Armstrong that I, for one, will not be gagged. This
>bombing has to stop - and the war is too important to be left to
>ministers and generals in conclave.