The war drums are beating loudly in the halls of Congress,
while leading Obama officials continue to try to convince the House
to vote as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee did, for military strikes on Syria.
If Congress votes ‘no’, the world will be watching to see if Obama has the audacity
to take unilateral action without even the support of his own government.
Now amidst the sea of propaganda and warmongering,
there’s one politician in the UK that has been a vocal opponent to this new war.
His name is George Galloway and he’s a founding member of the Respect Party in Parliament.
Earlier, I spoke with him about the repercussions a military strike could have on the region
as well as the rest of the world. Check it out…
Sadly, my birthday wish doesn’t look like it’s going to come true.
Let’s talk about the latest on Syria,
there’s talk of using fighter jets and training rebel forces on the ground instead of just arming them.
Why is it that the US is aligning itself with the same terrorist organisation
[that] it claims to be fighting in the war on terror, George?
Indeed, and the relatives of those who were lost on 9/11, who were cruelly murdered in their thousands,
must be asking themselves how their country ended up in bed with Al Qaeda.
And not just in bed, but arming them to the teeth,
acting as their air force and their armourer and their financier.
It is one of the most grotesque about-faces in all history
and the people of the United States overwhelmingly oppose it,
but their political leaders appear to be ready to endorse it.
Behind me is the British Parliament, normally a lapdog, a poodle of American political leaders,
but just the other week, we revolted and stood up and said ‘this far and no further. No war in Syria.'
And that too reflected, overwhelmingly, the popular opinion in the country,
but the United States has not been stopped,
even by the failure of the British to show up in another shooting war.
Yeh, I mean hypocrisy’s running really strong George,
and I was surprised to see the criminal conspirators
from doctoring the Iraq intelligence in the British parliament vote ‘no’,
it made me really happy, a lot of proud moments there from the world leaders.
And as we’ve seen unfold in Iraq post-occupation,
there’s now a complete civil war rife with sectarian violence, it’s a complete disaster.
Is it that the decision makers don’t understand the religion and the region,
or is it that they just don’t care?
I don’t think religion has anything to do with it.
Religions believe in the prophets, peace be upon them,
our leaders believe in the profits, and how to get a bigger piece of them.
It’s about domination, it’s about Israel,
it’s about the projection of American power and the terrifying of potential rivals and competitors,
in this case, principally Russia and China.
I don’t think that they’re acting very terrified at this moment,
and so the United States is in for a contested war in Syria
and that’s why the Congressional Representatives would be wise to heed the lesson of Iraq.
The United States lost thousands of soldiers and tens of thousands of wounded soldiers maimed;
many of them forever and many of them committing suicide
or murdering people when they got home in the decade since.
Many of them, of course, ending up on the streets, homeless and jobless.
And the Congressional Representatives ought to beware
that what will begin with a flurry of Tomahawk missiles-
and how obscene is it that the United States calls its killing weapons after the people that it annihilated
in order to occupy the country in the first place? -
it will start with a flurry of Tomahawk cruise missiles but it will end in a shooting war on the ground,
and with an occupation, and one in a country with twenty-three religious and ethnic groups within it,
and in the most combustible possible piece of territory on the earth.
The Syrian people will fight them back, Syria’s friends will fight them back
and they will fight them back everywhere, not just in Syria.
You know I say it’s like we’re killing Syrians to show the Syrian regime that killing Syrians is wrong,
I just can’t wrap my head around it George, and the stakes are very high as you just outlined.
Well put this one in your mind, Abby:
the next time you see President Obama happy-clapping in a Christian church,
that Al-Qaeda sacked a town called Malula, which I know very well in Syria,
where the people are the last people on earth
still conducting their Christian services in the language of Jesus, in Aramaic.
It is one of the most serene and beautiful and peaceful places on the earth,
filled with Christian churches and monasteries and nunneries,
and the people there were slaughtered over the last four days; literally slaughtered,
with their necks- their throats- cut, their heads sawn off.
The Christian churches are on fire at the hands of Al-Qaeda-
that’s Al-Qaeda- paid for and armed by the United States of America.
It makes me physically ill to hear that, George,
that we’re actually bombing the cradle of civilisation, the birthplace of humanity,
we’re not respecting the birthplace of Christianity
in terms of these leaders who claim that they’re Christian. George, we both...
Yes, they’re never done, they’re never done telling us!
They’re never done telling us how Christian they are! They wear it on their sleeves!
Well you know we’ve both been reporting that a British firm allegedly sold nerve gas to Syria-
let’s wrap our minds around this one-
ten months after the civil war broke out.
Also the digital journals reporting that the Saudi Intelligence gave the rebels chemical weapons.
Why are these insanely contradictory facts not reported in such a serious climate of debate?
Well we can’t even get them in the British so-called mainstream media.
The fact that Carla Del Ponte, the United Nations rapporteur in May of this year,
just a few months ago, the beginning of the summer- this summer-
reported that the Syrian rebels had used the very sarin nerve gas
that they’re telling us now must have been used by the Assad regime.
The Turkish authorities captured a group of Syrian rebels
making their way across the Turkish border bearing loads of this very sarin gas.
They’re trying to pretend that you have to be a state to have your hands of sarin gas,
but less than twenty years ago, a group of Shinto obscurantists living on the lip of Mount Fuji in Tokyo
used this gas in the Tokyo Underground,
killing and maiming a very large number of people in the name of Shinto.
So any group, any gang, any mob of gangsters can get their hands on sarin gas,
and I’m absolutely convinced that the Russian President Putin is correct-
I don’t believe [that] he’d be continuing to insist upon it if he had any doubt about it-
that this weaponry either was an accidental discharge from the rebel’s stockpile
or was a deliberate provocation to bring in the Western powers into this war,
which of course as soon as President Obama drew a red line on this issue, he was openly inviting.
So that’s one point but the other point is this:
behind me in the British Parliament, in the 1920s,
Winston Churchill said this, upon dropping chemical weapons on Iraqi Kurds, he said, and I quote:
‘I don’t understand what all the fuss is about, dropping gas on rebel tribesmen in the north of Iraq.’
We have been dropping chemical weapons on people of the so-called Third World for the best part of a century.
The United States dropped an ocean of chemical weapons on the people of Vietnam
and their children are still being born today deformed as a result of it.
The United States used chemical weapons against the Iraqi Resistance in Fallujah, just a decade ago.
And Israel used chemical weapons against the Palestinian people in Gaza just three years ago.
The hypocrisy is monumental, it’s of Everestian proportions.
But the media simply will not report this.
It’s astounding, I mean the toxic legacy in Fallujah
is even astronomically more than Hiroshima, shockingly enough.
And as you said on the Floor of Parliament, you said:
‘would Assad be insane enough to launch a chemical weapons attack
on the exact same day that UN Weapons Inspectors arrived in Damascus,
and if he is that insane, what’s going to happen when we do launch Tomahawk cruise missiles over the region?
George, I wanted to move onto Israel, you mentioned Israel before;
right now they are lobbying super hard on the Hill.
AIPAC is going out on a full-on lobbying campaign for Syria strikes.
How much of this war is about Israel?
Well it’s a full-court press by the Israel lobby in Britain and in the United States.
They failed in Britain, they appear to be succeeding in the United States,
and at least it unmasks a pretty monumental conspiracy.
John Kerry told the world that the Arab regimes in the Persian Gulf are going to pay for this war.
Israel is lobbying hard for the war and getting ready for it.
So we have the most grotesque coalition ever assembled in history:
Al Qaeda, the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states.
Who could have made such a scenario up?
But be careful what you wish for,
because I’m certain that Israel will be in this war big time and very quickly,
because I’m certain that Syria and its friends will immediately turn the war- take the war- to Israel,
in the first hours after the United States’ bombardment of Syria begins.
Israel, presumably, will retaliate and will enter the war.
We’ll then have an Arab-Israeli war fought on top of the oil fields
and in the midst of one of the worst depressions that the developed world has ever seen.
So look out for the oil price rocketing, perhaps quadrupling as it did in 1973/4.
Look out for the Straits of Hormuz being blocked and no oil moving out of the Gulf to the world
Look out for the Suez Canal being blocked and attacked.
Look out for war throughout the world.
There’s going to be murder and mayhem throughout the world.
That’s what happy-clappy, Mr Christian Barack Obama,
who just the other day was hailing the memory of Martin Luther King,
is about the visit on the world.
Well it’s a disgrace and as Upton Sinclair said;
when fascism comes to America it’s going to be wrapped in an American flag and on a Bible.
George, I wanted to talk about your documentary.
You’ve just started a Kickstarter for ‘The Killing of Tony Blair’.
What does the movie- and you’re kind of a big deal,
I’m sure you could have got a lot of corporate sponsors to make this film;
why go the grassroots route?
Well we wanted a democratic funding of the film.
I could have gone to a few rich people and raised a lot of money
but I decided to go to thousands of not rich people and raise a little money from each of them.
And we reached our Kickstarter £50,000- that’s about $70,000-
Kickstarter fund limit; we reached it in less than one week.
So we have just under thirty days to go
to raise the money that we need to make the equivalent of Fahrenheit 9/11.
We intend- our goal is ambitious-
we intend to put Tony Blair, the Middle East Peace Envoy- that’s going well, isn’t it Tony?-
in prison, for crimes against humanity, for war crimes.
He murdered the Labour Party, he helped murder a million people in Iraq,
he has caused uncountable deaths in Afghanistan and in Lebanon and in Palestine and in Syria,
where he’s egging Obama on for a new war.
He sold his soul to the devil and sold his services
to some of the most devilish corporations and dictatorships in the world.
Quite a lot of meat for a documentary.
Michael Moore watch out, I’m coming to take your laurels!
So Tony Blair has made a killing, killing a massive amount of people
and he, like many of his criminal cohorts here in the US,
sit free while people who stand up to the system rot in prison.
Seems like it’s completely upside down.
We have about a minute left George,
but you are an anomaly, you’ve been working within the system for years,
you founded the Respect Party in Parliament.
How is it that you’ve not been pushed out of office yet?
Well I’ve been elected six times to Parliament; I know I’m older than I look.
I was a very young man when I entered Parliament.
It was a Parliament worth being a Member of then, I’m not sure if it is today,
but I have stood firm with my principle
and I share with Mr Churchill the distinction of being the only two men in British history
to be elected six times in two countries in four different constituencies.
That’s where the similarity between me and Winston Churchill ends.
Well clearly people want to hear what you have to [say], they want you to stand up for the voiceless.
Thank you so much, George Galloway, Respect Party, thank you so much.
Happy Birthday Abby!