13 May 2005 Blog Home : May 2005 : Permalink
I come not to praise George Galloway but - unlike almost the entire media - not to bury him either. There will be many who snort contemptuously when I say that Galloway is now more sinned against than sinning because he has become so unpopular with both the media and political elites that they regard him as outside the normal rules of the game.
Indeed, to defend him places the defender beyond the pale too. But the victim of what has all the hallmarks of a media feeding frenzy deserves a fair hearing, not only for his personal benefit, but for those he now represents - and in order to confront journalists with their own misguided agendas.
As usual I like to start a fisking with a point of agreement. I agree here, Jeremy Paxman is a buffoon, and there is plenty of misguided agenda going on. Likewise I think a fair hearing would be a good thing. The problem is that a fair hearing does not mean uncritically accepting the excuses of the accused it means subjecting them to some scrutiny.In quick succession since his election victory last week in Bethnal Green and Bow, Galloway has been subjected to a television mauling by Jeremy Paxman, a radio sandbagging by the MP he defeated and a raft of newspaper headlines about a set of reheated allegations which he has not only strenuously denied but which ended with him winning a major libel action.
In spite of Galloway's court victory and the accumulated evidence in his favour, the BBC saw fit to lead its news bulletins yesterday with the story of supposedly "new" accusations that he received money from Saddam Hussein's Iraq through its oil-for-food programme. Yet the only difference between the claims made against Galloway by the Daily Telegraph in April 2003 and a US Senate subcommittee this week was that they were based on (already published) documents allegedly retrieved from Iraq's oil ministry rather than its foreign ministry - and not, as wrongly claimed, that they covered different periods.
What part of "this is based on different sources" is unclear to you Roy?The staff report by the Senate Permanent Sub-Committee of Investigations emphasised that its findings were based on documents that had no relation to the “seemingly forged documents” used in the Daily Telegraph piece, noting that the panel was relying on Iraqi Oil Ministry documents from 2001.
To continueIn all other essentials, the allegations made by the Senate committee are the same as those originally outlined in the Telegraph articles that resulted in Galloway being awarded £150,000 in libel damages and £1.2m in costs, though an appeal against the high court ruling in his favour is still outstanding.
During the case Galloway successfully rebutted every point in the Telegraph story that led its journalists to conclude that he had profited from Saddam's government. So it's hardly any wonder that Galloway has found himself repeating his former denials.
Well successfully rebutted is not how I read the reports on the libel judgement, nor, apparently how the Torygraph's lawyers read the whole thing since they seem keen to appeal. What seems clear is that the Torygraph report was based solely on a couple of documents that were of uncertain provenance and that some other documents were proven to be fakes. The senate report however is explicit in detailing the trail because it has both witness statements and additional documents that were not the ones the Telegraph based its original piece on. The Torygraph today explains this in detail:The investigation also detailed how the scheme worked. It quotes one Iraqi official as explaining that Mr Galloway's alleged oil allocations were funnelled through a Jordanian businessman, Fawaz Zureikat.
The report says contracts were conducted through two companies, Aredio Petroleum-France and Middle East Advanced Semiconductor Inc.
Each oil voucher was made out in the name of a company, but contained the name of the intended beneficiary within brackets. Among the beneficiaries were Mr Zureikat, Mr Galloway and "Mariam's Appeal".
One document, created by Iraqi oil ministry officials after the fall of Saddam, lists every oil contract in Phase IX of the oil-for-food programme during Saddam's rule.
The report states: "The entry for Contract M/9/23 indicates that the contract was executed with 'Mr Fawaz Zuraiqat/George Galloway/Aredio Petroleum - French.' This SOMO [State Oil Marketing Organization] document shows that the allocation for Contract M/9/23 was not just for Mariam's Appeal, but also for George Galloway.''
Earlier reports from the US Senate and elsewhere have shown that recipients of Saddam's oil allocations were able to turn the contracts into cash without seeing a barrel of oil.
The allegation that Galloway benefitted from UNSCAM is the same, the evidence used to bolster the claim is different. It does however indicate that the original Torygraph documents may not be quite as fake as claimed. Back to Roy:In so doing he has argued that the Senate committee is a creature of President Bush and therefore part of a US Republican conspiracy, implying that they may wish to help their Iraq war ally, Tony Blair. When you are under as much public pressure as Galloway is just now, it's easy to imagine you are the victim of a plot, but there is certainly no media conspiracy against him. In a sense it's worse than that. He has become so much of a pariah that a plot is unnecessary.
No point in letting the facts get in the way here is there? The Senate committee is bi-partisan, that means it has a boatload of Democrats (you know the other party) on it including its cochair Senator Carl Levin - this is basic stuff, Roy, even the BBC manages to get this right.Galloway has achieved the dubious honour of being the media's new leftwing whipping boy, following in a line that includes Arthur Scargill, Tony Benn and Ken Livingstone. Like them, he has dared to confront not only the old establishment but also its Labour alternative (or, in his eyes, the new establishment), having been expelled from the party on the basis of what might be charitably described as rather dubious reasoning.
Well you see here is the problem, just as with Messrs Scargill, Benn and Livingstone, Galloway appears to be deliberately courting controversy and public exposure. The point is that once you enter the realm of public exposure like this you open yourself up to additional investigation, this is not a leftwing exlcusive it happens to any public figure for example see Posh & Becks, Prince Charles and other royals etc.Along the way he has also outraged the media by refusing to accept its attacks on him, having survived any number of scrapes with newspapers anxious to find him guilty of wrongdoing. He has regularly sued for libel and, worse still in the eyes of journalists, has always won, sometimes handsomely. I must declare an interest here: I have also lost to him in a libel action; but, unlike many who have suffered similarly, I bear him no grudge.
Well, its good that you declare this interest otherwise the uncharitable might suggest that this defense of Galloway is in some way a quid pro quo for something in that libel case (IIRC todo with the Vannunu story).Galloway raises the hackles both of the collective media and of individual journalists. How else can one explain the extraordinary way in which Jeremy Paxman greeted Galloway's election victory for his Respect party over Labour's sitting MP, Oona King, in east London? "Mr Galloway," demanded Paxman, "are you proud of having got rid of one of the very few black women in parliament?" Galloway rightly replied, "What a preposterous question," and soon walked out of the interview.
Firstly I don't see why this question is so bad. It is, of course, just reeking of BBC smarm but it is in fact quite a good question for someone who spends a lot of time worrying about the downtrodden. Of course Roy doesn't quite get around to detailing the rest of that interview.Earlier that week he had also cut short an ITV interview after accusing the presenters of being liars for claiming he was a supporter of Saddam. Another pre-election interview, with the Sky News political editor Adam Boulton, was going well until Galloway was suddenly asked about the suggestion that he and his wife were planning to divorce. This time Galloway held on to his temper by countering that it was a strange question for Boulton to ask, given his own previous marital difficulties. It was a typically robust reply from Galloway - and certainly not unjustified in the circumstances - but it was also a reminder of why journalists bridle at dealing with him. Unlike so many politicians, who only affect to clash with interviewers in public, Galloway refuses to knuckle down and play the game. He takes no prisoners.
Or to put it another way he refuses to answer certain questions and huffs and puffs and diverts the subject any way he can when they are asked. Witness all his evasion about UNSCAM where he very clearly states "that he has never seen a barrel of oil" and "is not a millionaire" but fails to actually answer the actual underlying question which is whether he was bribed by Hussen via the UNSCAM process.The divorce story, a tabloid-style kiss-and-tell interview with Galloway's wife, was published by the Sunday Times four days before the election. It was seen by Galloway as an example of collusion between the paper and his New Labour opponents, a conclusion reinforced when the article was reproduced in English and Bengali and flyposted around the East End. "It has clearly been raised by the Sunday Times," he said, "to damage me in the election," a move he believed showed Labour's desperation at the possibility of King losing her seat.
See previous comment about Posh'n'Becks. In earlier years Galloway made a lot noise about being married to a PalestinianNaturally, when she did lose, King was devastated, as were many other unseated MPs. But, unlike them, she was given a lengthy slot on BBC Radio 4's Today programme this week to air her grievances in what was a strikingly tame interview - no balancing material was offered - allowing her to vent her spleen about the nature of a "dirty" campaign and insinuating that Galloway's Respect party had been responsible for her suffering anti-semitic slurs.
I didn't listen to the interview - tricky seeing as I live in France - but there is in fact considerable evidence that Respect (or its fellow travellers) did indeed make anti-semitic slurs and did indeed harass voters in ways that are indeed hallmarks of a "dirty" campaign.A Respect spokesman described the claims as ludicrous and a smear. But I saw it differently. The nature of the King interview, in which she was not challenged with anything like that programme's normal robustness, was further evidence of the way Galloway is now regarded within the media. He is simply not being given a fair crack of the whip.
Rather a weak ending I think. It sounds a bit like the young child screwing up his face and crying "its not fair..." Given that, as the Torygraph, notes Galloway plays rather lose with the truth on occasion when he does get interviewed, it only seems fair to sometimes fail to ask him to comment:The committee rejected Mr Galloway's accusation that his attempts to contact it before publication of the report had been rebuffed, despite him writing "repeatedly".
A spokesman said he did not attempt to make contact by any method "including but not limited to telephone, fax, e-mail, letter, Morse code or carrier pigeon".
Mr Galloway later retracted his claims, telling Sky News: "Well, let's accept that I did not ask them to appear in front of them."
(Final link courtesy of Tim W and this Grauniad piece also stars in the Daily Ablution