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George Let's Start by talking about the
most recent news out of Iraq the US
military just conducted an air strike
against artillery held by ISIS outside
the Kurdish city of bbal do you worry
that this could lead to full-blown US
military involvement again Beyond these
targeted strikes I would think so uh but
of course there are many mysteries in
this story wrapped up in many enigmas uh
the Isis which is so extreme it was
expelled by
Al-Qaeda uh who don't need reminding uh
the United States viewers uh committed
mass murder in New York uh on 911 uh and
yet they have been allowed to take over
almost all of Iraq certainly more than
50% of it including some of the great
cities uh of Iraq and they're within
shooting distance of the capital itself
without these allies who spent a
trillion dollars and thousands of uh the
lives of the soldiers of the
anglo-american invasion Force as well as
of course a million Iraqi lives in order
to bring about democracy in Iraq and yet
they have sat on their hands whilst
Al-Qaeda took over more than half of the
country including uh great dams and uh
other oil fields and other things
including Banks which they've looted and
made off with hundreds of millions of
dollars so it's a mystery why it's taken
so long for President Obama to organize
these air strikes a mystery that makes
many people in the Arab world suspicious
about who Isis really are who they're
really working for but secondly of
course as I think I inferred from your
question it will not work uh targeted
air strikes every now and again against
a military force that's sweeping all
before it and has the tacit support at
least of the country's Sunni Muslim
minority and the active support of the
Sunni Muslim Hinterland in Saudi Arabia
and elsewhere is not going to work and
so the logic ineluctably is that the
United States and Britain will be drawn
back into Iraq in a very very serious
way and that won't work either uh so we
really are in a mess uh and uh as half
an Irishman myself I'm entitled to say
as the apocryphal Irishman said when
asked the way to such and such a place
well I wouldn't have started from here
the man replied it is a tragedy it's a
complete uh mess George you're right
about that and Isis didn't form in a
vacuum how much of what's currently
happening on the ground ground as a
direct result of us and UK foreign
policy in Iraq and
Syria oh all of it Tony Blair and George
Bush are entirely responsible for this
mess Iraq was one country uh
sectarianism and extremism was
mercilessly crushed there were no armed
militias roaming the country and there
were a million more Iraqis than there
are today because a million of them died
almost a million of them died prior to
that in the US UK sanctions regime now
Iraq is atomized it's not one country
it's not even three countries it's maybe
30 countries every one of them
controlled by an armed militia usually
with a fundamentalist extremist
religious stripe and uh they're
murdering each other in very large
numbers and yesterday we just learned
that Isis forces took control of Iraq's
largest Dan
and musul obviously the possibility that
Isis will use this Dam as a weapon to
flood cities is very real is there
realistically a military solution at all
to stop this from
happening well uh if I was forced to
take the keys of this uh runaway vehicle
uh I would I would do this I would try
to involve the neighbors uh all of whom
have an interest in an Al-Qaeda offshoot
not taking over one of the world's major
oil producers a multiethnic
multicultural multi-religious
State uh and I would uh try somehow to
infuse people especially in the army
with the idea that there is any longer
something called Iraq that's worth
fighting for and worth losing your life
for that means bringing in Iran it means
also uh Iran working with Saudi Arabia
the Saudi regime dictatorship is of
course ultimately mortally threatened by
this Isis formation and it means
reaching out to the Iraqi Sunni Muslims
who have felt for a long time more than
a decade that the country is not run
with their interests in mind and that
the government of al-maliki is an
entirely sectarian one not to mention a
very uh rampantly corrupt one
so I'd make political changes I would
reach out to all the communities I would
release political prisoners many of whom
have been held for now 11 going on for
12 years uh for no good reason I would
reli amize the Arab nationalist forces
within Iraq and I'd try to make an
alliance with them I'd say do you really
want to be run by a caliphate uh that
was expelled hel from Al-Qaeda because
it was too extreme because it was too
sectarian I don't think in the end if
you did that you would have that much
difficulty in marginalizing these people
but the fundamental flaw in our policy
is that when these people cross over
into Syria as they do crisscrossing
between the two countries they become
our allies and we're bombing them now in
Iraq but we're giving them bombs when
they're operating in Syria and they have
have torn Syria apart and their vile uh
Creed of sectarian hatred has of course
uh ripped this the fabric of Syrian
Society possibly Beyond
repair right and and this context of
course is missing from all the
mainstream media analysis of the
situation no one's talking about how
Isis was emboldened and strengthened in
this vacuum um crossing over into Syria
of course I'm being called an Isis
apologist and a homos apologist because
I don't support bombing campaigns for
the third time in the country Georg
let's move on to an extremely turbulent
area of the world Gaza of course today
the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas
was broken Israel's resumed strikes in
response to Hamas Rockets what's your
response to those who say hamas's
decision to break the ceasefire shows
they're not willing to
negotiate well the ceasefire had
finished it elapsed after 72 hours it
was not a ceas far but a pause a pause
in the large scale Massacre of
Palestinians trapped in the Gaza
concentration camp the biggest
concentration camp in the world in which
almost 2 million people are trapped
behind the barbwire in an area 25 mil
long and 4.5 mil wide nowhere run uh
nowhere to hide and so the uh context as
you mentioned the word earlier is this
that Israel has has stolen the
Palestinians land wiped their country
off the map scattered their people to
the four corners of the earth besieges
Gaza controlling even the calorie intake
of uh every gazan 80% of whom are rying
on International uh uh food Aid 80% of
whom are unemployed and 80% of the
children in Gaza are malnourished
according to the United Nations they
have have occupied the West Bank covered
it paved it with hundreds of illegal
settlements built military roads
crisscrossing the territory an aparte
wall checkpoints by the hundred and they
have illegally annexed uh East Jerusalem
and are in the process of ethnically
cleansing the Arab Muslim and Christian
uh population from Jerusalem so if
you're not going to have resistance to
that you're not going to have resistance
to anything
the word Hamas is just a shorthand for
the Palestinian resistants who actually
are members of all kinds of political
and Military organizations but uh if you
invade some's country if you occupy it
if you fundamentally alter its character
and if after 67 years there is no
conceivable political or peaceful or
diplomatic way out the people will rise
up and that's what the Palestinians are
doing in the second World War The Heroes
of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw the
Warsaw Ghetto the people decided that
they would not die one by one 10 by 10
on their knees waiting for their captors
to murder them uh but would rise up and
if necessary die on their feet and they
wrote their name in The Stars they are
amongst the greatest heroes of the
second world war they broke out from
their barbwire and they confronted uh
the fascists who were uh killing them
one by one 10 by 10 and that's frankly
all that the Palestinians are trying to
do what's amazing about that George is
the tunnels that existed back then as
well um and you can look back at the
days of slavery here the tunnels here so
it's amazing to just keep calling these
Terror tunnels Terror tunnels we're
going to go and destroy all these and
and and of course journalist Chris
Hedges has cited this argument as well
where he cites the article of
self-defense under article 51 of the UN
Charter um of a you know a helpless
civilian population has the right to
protect itself to to resist against
weapons of industrial Warfare um what is
what is the solution here George two
State solution one state solution
mhm well I I frankly I supported the oso
agreement When It Was Written almost 20
years ago but 20 years later not only is
not 1 centimeter of Palestine free of
Israeli occupation or Siege or
annexation uh the West Bank demographic
and topographic alterations made by the
illegal settlements and so on that I
mentioned make any possibility of a
two-state solution uh oos and frankly uh
to talk about a two-state solution now
is to fly in the face of reality it's a
tiny place it's smaller than one park in
South Africa a part out South Africa
became one single Democratic State uh
from one end to the other in which black
people and white people lived as equal
citizens under the law with one man one
woman one vote and that's the best
solution for the Israel Palestine
conflict too uh some people say that's
never going to happen well the so-called
two-state solution is never going to
happen either and that's not a solution
so why should people fight for it right
I mean we should let the chips fall
where they may uh of course things
aren't AR perfect still in South Africa
but ending the aparte state is the first
step George let's talk about sayida wari
the former senior foreign office
minister in the UK who publicly resigned
over the government policy on Gaza she
says it's morally indefensible where
after four weeks of a conflict more than
a quarter of the gazen population
displaced nearly 2,000 people killed 400
innocent children we still cannot find
the words to say we condemn this and we
feel this action has been
disproportionate of course the US it's
the same thing George why is Israel
given so much impunity from the West
time and
again well in the US Senate as you will
know they voted 97 to0 z uh to defend
Israel's war to condemn the Palestinian
resistance and to condemn the United
Nations for having voted uh to
investigate allegations of war crimes
and crimes against humanity that's a
stark an example of uh the strangle hold
which the Israel Lobby has over American
politics now I I very purposely say
Israel Lobby not Jewish Lobby because of
course the vast majority of the Israel
Lobby in the United States are fanatic
Christians not Jews many of them maybe
most of them don't even like Jews and
many Jews are on our side religious Jews
secular Progressive Jews are Marching
with us so this is not a dichotomy uh
about religion it's a dichotomy about
Justice and Injustice and uh the United
States government and its uh Congress
has nailed its colors on the side of
Injustice and I'm here to tell you that
that's just not in the United States own
National interest most people in the
world regard Israel as a rogue terrorist
state they regard the crimes of Israel
as being beyond the pale and they know
that every crime is paid for and
politically BST butress by the United
States of America which provides the
money the weapons the political and
diplomatic and even media support that's
making billions of people in the world
hate the United States even more than
they perhaps already did that cannot be
a US national interest so all I ask from
the United States government is that you
somehow find the backbone to stand up
for your own country's interest rather
than burning all of your remaining
political capital in defense of the
indefensible absolutely and we just
heard that not only the financial
support the surveillance support to
track and Target Palestinians as well
unbelievable George Let's wrap this up
with an update on your documentary
called the killing of Tony Blair what's
the craziest thing you've uncovered
while filming and when should we expect
the documentary to be
released uh the documentary will be
premiered it's World premiere at the
South by Southwest International Film
Festival in Austin Texas uh quite close
to Crawford Texas where Tony Blair and
George W bush I'm not making this up got
down on their knees and prayed for the
success of their uh Adventure that they
were about to launch imagine uh it's
British premiere will be a week later at
the Edinburgh Film Festival so March it
will be out with all guns blazing uh we
have discovered secrets about the
financial treasure treasure chest the F
phenomenal fantastic $100 million Bounty
100 million dollar that Tony Blair has
amassed in the last seven years we have
talked to people who are his victims by
the end of our film by the time the
titles come up and your name will be in
those titles by the time those titles
come up nobody will employ Tony Blair
he'll be sacked as the so-called peace
Envoy in the Middle East and I hope
he'll be on his way to the he and to
jail it's about time thank you so much
George Galloway member of the respect
party in Parliament always appreciate
your amazing insight
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