Local MP George Galloway makes rash comment on BBC News 24!

The only thing that the world at large has been made aware of about the contribution to politics made by George Galloway is his widely reported stand on Iraq.


The second thing, internationally, is that he has almost without exception been described as being not only biased in favour of Muslims but as being excessively biased in favour of Muslims.

How valid is that perception as based and tested on the evidence of Galloway’s conduct and comments?

AADHIKAR Media Foundation
Aadhikaronline The 1st Edition at 0530 Hrs GMT London Wednesday 24 January 2007
Breaking news at 0530 GMT Wednesday 24 January 2007East London [Bethnal Green and Bow] Member of British Parliament, George Galloway, says on BBC News 24 'Muslims hate' his 'Respect' 'party'! Galloway said this in the last sentence of the programme 'Hardtalk' as broadcast at 0455 GMT today, Wednesday 24 January 2007.


Interviewed by Stephen Sackur, one of the BBC's 'former' Washington correspondents, who by that description, is a 'journalist' with no record of independent practice free from the White House Pentagon Neo Con line on the world that is battered by that axis..

Galloway was asked in the last part of the interview to explain some of the rash comments and statements that he had made in the recent past.

Galloway’s answer contained a detailed list of justifications from his standpoint.

He denied that he ever made the most quoted remark about Saddam Hussein. He claimed that it was a comment he had made about the 'Iraqi people'. Then he was asked about his 'RESPECT' 'party' which was said to be full of 'Muslim' 'extremists'. Galloway included the words extremists and Muslim in the first part of his reply but failed to do so in the final part as broadcast.

He made a negative reference to Muslims and Blair in the same last sentence as broadcast! Without further clarification, that remark is bound to be treated as a remark that shows that Galloway is hostile to Muslims generally. A view that will be examined in the forthcoming commentaries to be published by AADHIKARonline in the near future

I am no supporter of Mr. Galloway but i do feel it would help if you could actually report what he said, his exact words please not your interpretation of them. And if you could also put them in the proper context that would also help, i.e. precede his words with the question that triggered the response.

We can then make up our own minds as to his meaning and it would no doubt help your case to make things as clear as possible.

Thanks

i agree with a previous comment can we please have the question that preceeded the comment and the commment in full as it was said and not your own interpreation, once we have these we can make our own minds up.

The HARDTalk site doesn't link to it yet, but if you have a suitably geeky media player (mplayer does it for me), you might be able to point it at this URL to find out what George actually said, in glorious 208x128 resolution blobbyvision!

rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/news/olmedia/n5ctrl/progs/07/hardtalk/galloway24jan.rm?start="00:00.0"

Works for me, your mileage may vary.

As for the allegations above, Steven Sackur asks him if it's true that Respect is a haven for muslim extremists, and he retorts that the opposite is true; that muslim extremists hate us because his party tells young muslims not to join or support terrorism, but to work with non muslims to fight against Tony Blair and make Blair pay politically for his crimes. He does use the phrase 'That's why the muslims hate us. That's also why Tony Blair hates us', but it's clear from context that he's referring to muslim extremists who support terrorist acts. I'm not a huge fan of Galloway, or a muslim for that matter, but I don't see much wrong with those remarks myself.

If your media player-fu is good, and you don't want to sit through yet another George Galloway Iraq spiel (mostly good stuff, but I've heard it before a hundred times), you might want to fast forward to this particular exchange by using:
rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/news/olmedia/n5ctrl/progs/07/hardtalk/galloway24jan.rm?start="20:35.0"

Hope this helps.

I dont care if its for or against, its still party political bollocks that may be fine for one of radio 4's discussion programmes but NOT what is supposed to be a grassroots news service. The UK's increasingly crap trot/stalinist left have their own sites.....

Is it the moderators day off?