The Lies Of George Galloway (And The News Media's Habit Of Trafficking In Them).

Read pretty well any newspaper in this country and you would be hard pressed to believe anything but the following completely upside-down version of the ongoing national George Galloway pantomime:

Canada banned the "colourful" Galloway from Canada last year, but Galloway took the goverment to court and won, and that's why he's now on his triumphant "Free Palestine, Free Afghanistan, Free Speech" tour across our country.

Galloway and his pro-fascist supporters (the swastika-emblazoned handbill on the right is from the Canadian section of Syria's fascist party, from one of Galloway's previous, un-noticed Canadian engagements) will tell you that they are "anti-war" and "progressive," too. But those lies I've already dispensed with, so here's some more civic hygiene for you.

Canada's newspapers often refer to Galloway as simply a "former British MP," and sometimes as a former British MP who was expelled from the Labour Party for his "opposition to the war in Iraq." In fact, Galloway was expelled from the Labour Party in 2003 when he was found guilty on party charges that he "incited Arabs to fight British troops, he incited British troops to defy orders. . . he threatened to stand against Labour [and] he backed an 'anti-war' candidate" against the Labour government. This isn't "opposition to the war." It's supporting the war from the other side.

After Galloway cobbled together his own "Respect Party" from a disgraced and rotten British far-left groupuscule in coalition with Britain's Islamist far-right, he took his seat in the House of Commons as a Respect MP by defeating the progressive Labour MP Oona King (whose downfall was by no means unrelated to the fact she was born of a Black father and a Jewish mother) in the constituency of Bethnall Green and Bow. Galloway was later suspended from the House of Commons for 18 days after Parliamentary anti-sleaze watchdogs found him guilty of not disclosing his links with Saddam Hussein's regime and "strong circumstantial evidence" that he'd connived with Iraq's Baathist dictatorship to rip off the UN's Iraqi oil-for-food program.

That's your "maverick" former British MP for you. But it's the big lie about Justice Mosley's September 27 Federal Court of Canada ruling on the Galloway case that you should know about. Very few journalists are liars, I should first note, but most are too overworked to get the story right, some are just lazy, and a few are simply content to keep repeating rubbish rather than have you know they've been screwing up this story all along. Here's how the lie circulates.

CTV News: Galloway "was denied entry into the country over his alleged [?] financial support of the Palestinian group Hamas." Here's the Calgary Herald: "The antiwar activist, who was barred from Canada . . . was refused entry by the Canada Border Services Agency in 2009 because he reportedly [?] donated money to the Hamas-led Palestinian government, but the decision was recently overturned." Here's a Montreal Gazette report that has Galloway "thanking federal Immigration Minister Jason Kenney for the 'ridiculous ban' Canada imposed on him last year, based on Galloway's alleged [?] support for terrorism," which goes on to tell us that the ruling was "quashed by a Federal Court judge." It goes on and on like this. It's all rubbish.

Galloway was not barred, banned or refused entry into Canada, and the courts did not overturn or quash any such non-exist government ban, bar, refusal or ruling. Here is what Judge Mosley actually wrote (read the whole thing yourself if you like):

"The respondents [i.e. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney et. al.] submit that whether they approve of Mr. Galloway’s political beliefs or not is legally irrelevant because his admissibility was legitimately evaluated on the basis of his own actions and in accordance with the relevant legislation. They say there is no evidence of bad faith, bias or a breach of fairness in the performance of their public duties. Moreover, they submit, no legally reviewable decision to exclude Mr. Galloway was in fact made.

"I agree with the respondents that as a matter of law this application must be dismissed. As a result of the respondents’ actions, Mr. Galloway may have been found to be inadmissible to Canada had he actually presented himself for examination to an officer at an airport or a border crossing. That did not happen. A preliminary assessment prepared by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), at the request of the respondents’ political staff, concluded that Mr. Galloway was inadmissible. The steps taken by the respondents’ departments to implement that assessment were never completed. Mr. Galloway made the decision not to attempt to enter Canada because he might be detained. Thus, the respondents’ intentions and actions did not result in a reviewable decision to exclude him."

As Galloway's kaffiyeh-clad secretarial pool persists in pointing out, the judge also wrote: "It is clear that the efforts to keep Mr. Galloway out of the country had more to do with antipathy to his political views than with any real concern that he had engaged in terrorism or was a member of a terrorist organization."

But the judge had already declared the government's "intentions" did not result in a reviewable decision (i.e. a "ban") and the judge also agreed with the government's lawyers that the government's antipathy [eminently justifed, by any anti-fascist standard] was "irrelevant" to the matter at hand. Further, the judge noted that his own opinion about the government's antipathy was "not intended in any way to convey approval of Mr. Galloway’s political views or disapproval of the respondents’ opinions."

Galloway lost. His lawyers' application was "dismissed." And yet Galloway and his fan base have consistently and successfully misrepresented the court decision as a victory and a legal disapproval of the government's "antipathy" to Galloway's politics, when Judge Mosley himself made plain that his decision should not be construed that way at all, and besides, the government's antipathy was "irrelevant." But the news media has taken up the lie, as though facts only complicate a story and the job of a journalist is merely to serve as a stenographer for every jackbooted windbag that convenes a press conference. Well sorry, but this isn't good enough. Again, to be clear: There was no ban, bar, or refusal that Galloway suffered, and no court decision overruled or quashed any such thing. Galloway lost.

There will still be useful idiots who fancy themselves to be of the "Left" who will dismiss an accounting of these facts as merely some mean "smear" of the so-called anti-war movement. They will content themselves with their own narcissistic delusion that it's just an "anti-war" movement they support, blissfully ignoring the fact that whatever you want to call the thing it has already smeared itself sufficiently with its own lies and with the fascist filth that George Galloway exists in order to keep in circulation. They may as well enjoy it while they can, too, because one day - or as my Iranian comrades say, Inshallah - there will be a reckoning.

Galloway's job as a propagandist for the Khomeinist propaganda agency Press TV makes him what trade unionists call a "scab." His work for that employer is a direct function of the Iranian regime's theft of hundreds of honest Iranian journalists' jobs, their firing, the shuttering of their newspapers, their jailing, their persecution, and their torture. Just one of Press TV's recent crimes was to serve as the official recorder of the forced confession tortured out of Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari who spent 118 days in a Tehran jail for the offence of covering last year's massive Iranian protests over the dictatorship's fraudulent presidential election. You can set aside all of Galloway's propaganda services to Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iraqi Baathists, the Taliban and the Syrian Baathists - his bosses' boy services to Press TV alone condemn him as a scab and a dirty little blackshirt.

Back in the day, the Left used to know how to deal with scabs and fascists. But supporting Galloway is defending free speech, you insist? No. It's actively aiding and abetting in the Khomeinist suppression of free speech, freedom of association, freedom of assembly, and every other fundamental human right that Galloway's spoiled rich-kid fan club demands for itself and only itself. The "anti-war" movement is all about reactionary rich-kid politics, masquerading in a troops-out and "anti-imperialist" lexicon, that would deny all these same rights and freedoms to the people of Iran, Palestine, Lebanon and Afghanistan.

Only this week, Britain's Ofcom regulatory agency handed down this ruling against Galloway's Khomeinist Press TV: "The broadcaster failed to engage or debate with any point of view that was contrary to the view presented by George Galloway. Rather, Ofcom is of the view that George Galloway, in particular, used the alternative opinions made by the viewers, which were contrary to his own, only as vehicles to punctuate what could be classed as a form of ongoing political polemic, delivered by the presenter directly to camera and unchallenged."

That's Galloway's notion of "free speech" for you. He is a true and loyal servant and mouthpiece for the Iranian police state. He is a demagogue and a hypocrite, and it's long past time for Canadians to grow some spine, stand up to him, and stand up to the campus-bully "anti-war" trash who serve as his butlers, security guards, coachmen, apologists and publicity agents.

ADDENDUM: Congratulations to environmentalist David Suzuki, the Green Party of Canada and NDP MLA Spencer Chandra Herbert for exposing the "Stopwar" fiction that they are endorsers of Galloway's completely creepy Vancouver venue-arrangers. Jonathon Narvey deserves credit for committing an act of real journalism in bringing this to light, and for documenting the way Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan has chosen the coward's course by persisting in the fraud that this is all about "free speech."

This is not about free speech. It never was.

Marg Bar Diktator.