Mr. Galloway goes to Washington (& Boston, NY, Seattle, SF, Chi, LA, more)

[paineinthearse]

http://www.mrgallowaygoestowashington.com/



FOR EVENT INFORMATION:

[e-mail]
[phone]

FOR MEDIA INQUIRIES AND BOOKINGS:
[e-mail]
[phone]


Boston, MA
Tuesday September 13, 7:00 pm
Faneuil Hall

New York, NY
Wednesday, September 14, 7:00 pm
Debate with Chrstopher Hitchens
Baruch College Performing Arts Center

Madison, WI
Sunday, September 18, 7:00 pm
Wisconsin Union Theatre, University of Wisconsin

Chicago, IL
Monday, September 19, 7:00 pm
Thorne Auditorium at Northwestern Law School

Seattle, WA
Tuesday, September 20, 7:00 pm
Kane Hall, University of Washington

San Francisco, CA
Wednesday, September 21, 7:00 pm
Mission High School

Los Angeles, CA
Thursday, September 22, 7:00 pm
Immanuel Presbyterian Church

Washington, D.C .
Saturday, September 24, 7:00 pm
George Washington University

[Mnemosyne]

1. I'm hoping he comes to the rally the 24th!

He is amazing and fearless. If not I'm heading to GWU!

[rocktivity]

2. But is he going to speak at the DC rally?

Please, somebody, sign him up!!!

:headbang:
rocknation

[katinmn]

3. I wrote and asked him to come to the Twin Cities

He simply must come to Norm Coleman's turf.

[paineinthearse]

4. The schedule looks pretty tight

But good luck.

[jonnyblitz]

5. i would like to go to that debate with hitchens in NYC...

hehe..damn that is gonna be a busy month with the Cindy Bring Them HOme Now tour and the rally in DC on the 24th...

[paineinthearse]

16. Hitchens: War to Be Proud Of

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=5995&R=C68B2A43B

War to Be Proud Of
From the September 5 / September 12, 2005 issue: The case for overthrowing Saddam was unimpeachable. Why, then, is the administration tongue-tied?
by Christopher Hitchens
09/05/2005, Volume 010, Issue 47

LET ME BEGIN WITH A simple sentence that, even as I write it, appears less than Swiftian in the modesty of its proposal: "Prison conditions at Abu Ghraib have improved markedly and dramatically since the arrival of Coalition troops in Baghdad."

I could undertake to defend that statement against any member of Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International, and I know in advance that none of them could challenge it, let alone negate it. Before March 2003, Abu Ghraib was an abattoir, a torture chamber, and a concentration camp. Now, and not without reason, it is an international byword for Yankee imperialism and sadism. Yet the improvement is still, unarguably, the difference between night and day. How is it possible that the advocates of a post-Saddam Iraq have been placed on the defensive in this manner? And where should one begin?

I once tried to calculate how long the post-Cold War liberal Utopia had actually lasted. Whether you chose to date its inception from the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, or the death of Nicolae Ceausescu in late December of the same year, or the release of Nelson Mandela from prison, or the referendum defeat suffered by Augusto Pinochet (or indeed from the publication of Francis Fukuyama's book about the "end of history" and the unarguable triumph of market liberal pluralism), it was an epoch that in retrospect was over before it began. By the middle of 1990, Saddam Hussein had abolished Kuwait and Slobodan Milosevic was attempting to erase the identity and the existence of Bosnia. It turned out that we had not by any means escaped the reach of atavistic, aggressive, expansionist, and totalitarian ideology. Proving the same point in another way, and within approximately the same period, the theocratic dictator of Iran had publicly claimed the right to offer money in his own name for the suborning of the murder of a novelist living in London, and the génocidaire faction in Rwanda had decided that it could probably get away with putting its long-fantasized plan of mass murder into operation.

One is not mentioning these apparently discrepant crimes and nightmares as a random or unsorted list. Khomeini, for example, was attempting to compensate for the humiliation of the peace agreement he had been compelled to sign with Saddam Hussein. And Saddam Hussein needed to make up the loss, of prestige and income, that he had himself suffered in the very same war. Milosevic (anticipating Putin, as it now seems to me, and perhaps Beijing also) was riding a mutation of socialist nationalism into national socialism. It was to be noticed in all cases that the aggressors, whether they were killing Muslims, or exalting Islam, or just killing their neighbors, shared a deep and abiding hatred of the United States.

more...

[autorank]

6. Galloway: The Good Will Tour

Oh, paine, your are a :evilgrin: fellow! Can't wait for him to show up at the march.

[paineinthearse]

7. Ask CSPAN to cover any/all of these events

"Submit a public event that you think C-SPAN should cover - [e-mail] "

I would be most interested in seeing the Hitchens debate, but any of the others would also be fine.

[paineinthearse]

8. Was this posted previously?

Have been away a few days, perhaps its being posted explains so few responses???

:shrug:

[paineinthearse]

9. CSPAN coverage is expected!

Just got this reply from Ina Howard.......

Hello (),

Thanks for sending the email, we're expecting some CSPAN coverage though don't know where exactly yet.

All the best,


Ina Howard
Director of Communications
The New Press
38 Greene Street, 4th Floor
New York, NY 10012
(212) xxx-xxxx office


http://www.thenewpress.com

[Nothing Without Hope]

10. Oh, I am looking forward to that! I hope there are some good fireworks

that show the neocons in their true rotten selves, not their propaganda images.

I'm wondering what he will be doing during his visit in Boston. I'll look forward to more information on that.

Oh, he will DEMOLISH that pompous neocon mouthpiece Hitchens. How I despise that man!

Recommended. I think the reason this thread hasn't taken off is the intense concern about the hurricane. If it doesn't make the Greatest, I suggest you wait a day or two and repost.

[paineinthearse]

11. I'll look forward to more information on that.

Faneuil Hall details are in the Massachusetts forum.

[omega minimo]

12. Great Scot!!!!!!!!

Tame fer anutherr laisson en daimocrrussee an th ainglush lenguage.

:loveya:

[paineinthearse]

13. .

:rofl:

[omega minimo]

14. 'ats off t' ye, paineinthearse

:patriot:

[paineinthearse]

15. Please

Accolades belong to Galloway, how soon we seem to forget.

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

George Galloway
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

George Galloway featured on BBC NewsnightGeorge Galloway (born 16 August 1954) is a British politician noted for his outspoken rhetorical style and left-wing views. He is currently the Respect Member of Parliament (MP) for Bethnal Green and Bow, and was previously MP for the Glasgow constituencies of Hillhead (1987-1997) and Kelvin (1997-2005), elected as a Labour Party candidate. He was expelled from the Labour Party in October 2003 over controversial statements he made concerning the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which came after he made several visits to that country and twice met Saddam Hussein. In January 2004 he formed a socialist political party, RESPECT The Unity Coalition, made up of other opponents of UK participation in the Iraq war including the Socialist Workers Party. He was returned to Parliament as its candidate in the 2005 general election.

<snip>

In May 2005 a US Senate committee report <23> accused Galloway along with former French minister Charles Pasqua of receiving the right to buy oil under the UN's oil-for-food scheme. The report was issued by the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Senator Norm Coleman, a Republican from Minnesota. The report cited further documents from the Iraqi oil ministry and interviews with Iraqi officials. No comment was made on whether the documents have been investigated for evidence of forgery.

Coleman's committee said Pasqua had received allocations worth 11 million barrels from 1999 to 2000, and Galloway received allocations worth 20 million barrels from 2000 to 2003. The allegations against Pasqua and Galloway, both outspoken opponents of U.N. sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s, have been made before, including in an October report by U.S. arms inspector Charles Duelfer as well as in the various purported documents described earlier in this section. But Coleman's report provided several new details. It also included information from interviews with former high-ranking officials now in U.S. custody, including former Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz and former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan. Among the claims is that there is new evidence to suggest that the Mariam Appeal, a children's leukaemia charity founded by Galloway, was in fact used to conceal oil payments. The report cites Ramadan as saying in an interview that Galloway was allocated oil "because of his opinions about Iraq."

Socialist Worker Online <24> (also reproduced in the weekly printed publication) reported what they say is evidence that the key Iraqi oil ministry documents regarding oil allocations, in which Galloway's name appears six times (contracts M/08/35, M/09/23 <25>, M/10/38, M/11/04 <26>, M/12/14, M/13/48 <27>) have been tampered with. They specifically refer to contract M/09/23 and allege that George Galloway's name appears to have been added in a different font and at a different angle to the rest of the text on that line. In these documents (relating to oil allocations 8-13), Galloway is among just a few people whose nationality is never identified, whilst Zuraykat is the only one whose nationality is identified in one instance but not in others. <7>


Galloway response
On May 17, 2005, the committee held a hearing concerning specific allegations (of which Galloway was one part) relating to improprieties surrounding the Oil-for-Food programme. Attending Galloway's oral testimony and inquiring of him were two of the thirteen committee members: the chair (Coleman) and the ranking Democrat (Carl Levin). <8>. Upon Galloway's arrival in the US, he told Reuters, "I have no expectation of justice from a group of Christian fundamentalist and Zionist activists under the chairmanship of a neo-con George Bush." Galloway described Coleman as a "pro-war, neo-con hawk and the lickspittle of George W. Bush," who, he said, sought revenge against anyone who did not support the invasion of Iraq.

In his testimony, Galloway made the following statements in response to the allegations against him <28>:

Senator, I am not now, nor have I ever been, an oil trader. and neither has anyone on my behalf. I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one - and neither has anyone on my behalf. Now I know that standards have slipped in the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice. I am here today but last week you already found me guilty. You traduced my name around the world without ever having asked me a single question, without ever having contacted me, without ever written to me or telephoned me, without any attempt to contact me whatsoever. And you call that justice.

He questioned the reliability of evidence given by former Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, stating that the circumstances of his captivity by American forces calls into question the authenticity of the remarks. Galloway also pointed out an error in the report, where documents by The Daily Telegraph were said to have covered an earlier period from those held by the Senate. In fact the report's documents referred to the same period as those used by the Daily Telegraph, though Galloway pointed out that the presumed forgeries pertaining to the Christian Science Monitor report did refer to an earlier period.

The American Spectator called into question assertions of Galloway relating to his associate, the Jordanian businessman Fawaz Zureikat, who was also implicated in the report. <29> In response to a question from Coleman regarding his knowledge of Zureikat's dealings in Iraq, Galloway stated that, "Not only did I know that, but I told everyone about it. I emblazoned it in our literature, on our website, precisely so that people like you could not later credibly question my bona fides in that regard. So I did better than that. I never asked him if he was trading in oil. I knew he was a big trader with Iraq, and I told everybody about it." The Spectator claims that in fact a look into archived versions of the website (which is no longer available) reveals that no such mention exists.

Gooding's report says of the July 2001 snapshot "...at this point in time, there is absolutely no mention of Mr. Zureikat or any other donors to the organization at all." Zureikat does make an appearance on the Mariam Appeal site, however. He was named as a contact within the National Mobilization Committee on Defense of Iraq (NMCDI) for the "Rebuilding Baghdad Library" book drive. There is no mention made of his business relationship with Iraq. (This page was not there on April 1, 2001, but was there on a subsequent snapshot taken the next day. So we know when Zureikat's name was added to Mariam Appeal's site.)

The article suggests that this implies Zureikat to be a benificiary of funds from the Mariam Appeal rather than a donor and claims that at no time does the list of "Founder members and supporters" include Zureikat, whom Galloway stated in his testimony was made chairman of the foundation sometime in late 2000 or early 2001. There appears to be no mention of whether funds donated to Mariam Appeal were used on behalf of NMDCI or if it simply "works with the Mariam Appeal," as the website stated.

Galloway also took the occasion of his Senate testimony to denounce the invasion of Iraq as having been based on "a pack of lies". The U.S. media, in reporting his appearance, emphasized his blunt remarks on the war. The British media, however, gave generally more positive coverage; TV presenter Anne Robinson said Galloway "quite frankly put the pride back in British politics" when introducing him for a prime time talk show. <30> <31>

more.......

[omega minimo]

18. Tis not a slight to Gorrgeous Georrge to note yourr mainy

valued contrributions herre.

You're TOP!

[PuraVidaDreamin]

17. My mom got our tickets last night Yea!

Just the thought of listening to Mr. Galloway
in historic Faniul Hall gives me such pleasure.

[Javaman]

19. He should go to LA before chimp*