The Killing of Tony Blair

[VictorCharlie]

"a drink-soaked former Trotskyite popinjay"

I'll give the UK crowd some props. US politicians can't throw around insults with that level of creativity.

[Kirkland Laing]

"a drink-soaked former Trotskyite popinjay"

I'll give the UK crowd some props. US politicians can't throw around insults with that level of creativity.

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

That's got to be the best opening line of any US Senate testimony ever. He deserved the Medal of Honor for that one.

[Gandalf]

I don't understand it. Galloway is not a perfect man, but neither was Hitchens. Hitchens in his desire to be loved by a nation went from being a Trotskyite to a neo con, and in the words of Pilkington, that is 'bullshit'. A very smart man, but if it is consistency we want to attack it is Hitchens and not Galloway. Chris Hedges summed up Hitchens well when he described him as aggrandising and either this or that and no between.

[Kirkland Laing]

Hitchens burnt all his bridges with lefty liberal media for a variety of reasons, drinking, gerneral unpleasantness and so on. He got offered lots of dough to write for the other side and needed to cover his bar tabs some way.

Galloway I'm guessing has been backing the Assad regime recently but that's entirely consistent with old Arab nationalist view (which George and me both subscribe to). Assad may be a butcher but he's a sovereign butcher and the last thing the Arab world needs in western interference in another of their countries, so Arab nationaists reflexively back the guy not backed by America/west.

[Beanz]

So Miles and Kirkland hand in their cards and fold whilst pretending that there never was a poker game in the first place, and that good old George is at least, a consistent Cunt. The fact that he is and always will be inconsistent, a hypocrite and a supporter of butchers, bigots and barbarians is nothing compared to the fact that Hitchens liked a drink and smoked cigarettes. To top it all, the myopic view that a social conscience and the true Internationalist view taken by real Liberals like Hitchens is somehow a turn coat retreat to the Conservative right beggars belief. You turn your back as thousands are murdered and liberty is trodden underfoot and you have the gall to claim that you are standing in solidarity with your oppressed brothers ? It is you who are turning your back, You who think "I am alright Jack" You who both decide to side with a lecherous slug of a man, someone who blames victims of cruel and bloody violence for bringing it on themselves, someone who shakes the hands of Men who sanction the gassing and hanging and torture of those who seek the simple rights that you shit on with your namby pamby spoilt bratish versions of socialism. Socialism as an airy fairy construct where you never have to get your hands dirty, where you take photographs of protests without taking part, all the while amassing wealth for your self and lecturing the world on how your tiny narrow view on reality is the only one worth listening to.

And here was I thinking that George was alone in ascending the summit of embarrassment in such a public way. He may have had cream on his whiskers but you both seem to have something rather more unseemly on yours

[Gandalf]

What the devil are you waffling on about?

Hitchens supported the war in Iraq which was based on lies and after sanctions had already killed countless children. You yourself support the monarchy which is itself is a system of tyranny that built its wealth on abuse, theft, and murder. You do not have the right to get snooty about what is right and wrong and condemn Galloway when you support systems of repression and history built upon bloodshed.

When it comes to the middle east Galloway is typically correct in his analysis. I happen to think Assad is the best of a bad bunch when it comes to Syria. There wouldn't be a civil war on the scale that there is if the Al Qaeda rebels were not flowing from borders beyond including those of Britain. However, in saying that Assad was despicable for killing his own people for the right to protest and Galloway has said as much. Taking sides just because the rebels are an 'alternative' is glib at best. Galloway was right on Iraq too. He is right on Hezbollah. He is right on Palestine. He is faily consistent in his views.

Galloway as mayor would be a genuine sense of change. For the better.