BBC Censors Judy Garland Song

[Guest scottishguy]

The latest is that she wanted a Museum and Library built to commemorate herself  - and this may well be going ahead!!

 

Was there no end to this wretched woman's vanity/delusions of grandeur??

[Guest scottishguy]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZzXqUH-hNk

[Guest fountainhall]

Like him or loathe him (oops! echoes of Thatcher), George Galloway MP is always good for a quote or a rousing rant. Like the woman he is trashing in that vdo, he has come in for more than a fair share of criticism. He’s always been pro-Palestine and anti-Zionist, pro Castro, was pro the Soviet Union and called its disintegration “the biggest catastrophe of my life”. Although a critic of Saddam Hussein, he opposed the Gulf War and turned up in Baghdad afterwards and seemed to praise him, appearing with Saddam and allegedly saluting his courage (although he claims it was the Iraqi people’s courage he was saluting). He called Blair’s government “Tony Blair’s lie machine” and was expelled from the Labour party, Later, on another issue, he was suspended from the House of Commons for 18 days.

Bush was another of his targets, Having called him a “wolf”, he backed down in June 2003 and apologized. But it was not Bush to whom he apologized. “No wolf would commit the crimes against humanity that George Bush committed against the people of Iraq.”

There have been allegations against him of syphoning off cash from the War on Want charity, so-far unproved, I believe.

Generally he has been a supporter of LGBT rights, including reducing the age of consent for gays and permitting gays to adopt children. But he is also a sort-of apologist of the regime in Iran and angered the LGBT movement when several gays were executed by saying they were condemned for being rapists, not homosexuals – a highly dubious and self-serving statement!

But he is one of British politics more colourful characters in a House filled with more than its fair share of fawing acolytes.

[Guest scottishguy]

Sure he is not everybody's cup of tea - but I believe his comments about Thatcher's funeral  represent the feelings of a sizeable section of UK society.

 

But you have missed out what, in my opinion was his finest hour - ripping the US Senate Cttee to shreds when he voluntarily appeared before them to denounce (what are now widely accepted as being) forged documents allegedly implicating him in selling Iraqui oil:

 

[Guest fountainhall]

I just watched the longer version of Galloway's testimony and you really have to admire the man. Having been libelled, he flew over to the US and voluntarily - without any subpoena - testified before the Senate Committee. No hiding behind a fifth amendment plea. Nothing, I suspect, illustrates better the cut and thrust of often unscripted British political debate in the House of Commons with the feeble, stick-to-your-notes boredom so often served up in the US Congress. 
 
Galloway spoke mostly without notes, was clear, concise, direct and looked the senators in the eye with barely one 'um' or 'er'. He literally trashed the Chairman of the Committee, Republican Norm Coleman.

I loved some of this statements -
 

On the very first page of your document about me, you assert that I have had many meetings with Saddam Hussein. This is false. I have had two meetings with Saddam Hussein: Once in 1994 and once in August of 2002. By no stretch of the English language can that be described as many meetings with Saddam Hussein.

As a matter of fact, I've met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps, the better to target those guns.

 

Now, senator, I gave my heart and soul to oppose the policy that you promoted. I gave my political life's blood to try to stop the mass killing of Iraqis by the sanctions on Iraq, which killed a million Iraqis, most of them children. Most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis, With the misfortune to be born at that time. I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq.

And I told the world that your case for the war was a pack of lies. I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims, did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to Al Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11, 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.

Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong. And 100,000 people have paid with their lives, 1,600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.

If the world had listened to Kofi Annan, whose dismissal you demanded, if the world had listened to President Chirac, who you want to paint as some kind of corrupt traitor, if the world had listened to me and the anti-war movement in Britain, we would not be in the disaster that we're in today.

 

You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported, from the theft of billions of dollars of Iraq's wealth. Have a look at the real oil-for-food scandal. Have a look at the 14 months you were in charge of Baghdad, the first 14 months, when $8.8 billion of Iraq's wealth went missing on your watch. Have a look at Halliburton and the other American corporations that stole Iraq's money, but the money of the American taxpayer. Have a look at the oil that you didn't even meter that you were shipping out of the country and selling, the proceeds of which went who knows where. Have a look at the $800 million you gave to American military commanders to hand out around the country without even counting it or weighing it. Have a look at the real scandal, breaking in the newspapers today. Revealed in the (INAUDIBLE) testimony in this committee, that the biggest sanctions busters were not me or Russian politicians or French politicians; the real sanctions busters were your own companies with the connivance of your own government.

 
Only Senator Carl Levin came out with much credit, as he continually failed to get the direct answer he kept on seeking.

[Guest scottishguy]

I'm glad you enjoyed the clip Founty and followed up the longer version - George Galloway is a polarising politician but no-one can deny that as well as having chutzpah in spades, he also has the intelligence and arguments to back up whatever he says.

 

No wonder the New Labour party expelled him. 

 

Personally I disagree with a few of his positions, but I do admire him nevertheless.

[Bob]

I too watched the longer clip and have to agree with Scotty's comments.  Amazing how Galloway can think on his feet and rapidly string together coherent sentences.

 

And, even though he's right about so many things, he's as guilty as the side he opposes in exaggerating and using unfair hyperbole about many things.  He's right that the sanctions program in Iraq mainly harmed the average person and no doubt led to many deaths; however, regardless of what he claims (that those who supported the "food for arms" program were also responsible for many deaths), he's a bit daft to not recognize that the goal of the supporters of that program was to help the less fortunate weather the sanctions (notwithstanding that some higher-ups mixed in a whole lot of corruption in the process).

 

But you gotta admire the guy for standing his ground.  Nobody has to question where he's coming from.