Stan Goff: Listen to Galloway and Learn Something

[Boo Boo]

Dear Democratic Elected Officials of the United States (with damn few exceptions),

I am writing this open letter to call your attention to the remarks made day before yesterday, May 17, 2005, to the United States Senate, by British MP George Galloway of the independent Respect Party. I do this because he serves as an example of why your party should be abandoned by the U.S. working class, by U.S. women, by oppressed nationalities in the United States, and by anyone who professes to be a progressive or a leftist.

George Galloway did that for which you have proven incapable; he spoke as an opposition. Since there seems to be a great dark space in the middle of your heads where the notion of opposition should be ­ a void filled by parliamentary molasses and the pusillanimous inabilty to tell simple truths ­ I suggest you all review the recordings of Galloway's confrontation with Republican Senator Norm "Twit" Coleman to see exactly how effortless it is to stand up to these cheap political bullies (watch the video). While you are at it, you can watch your colleague Carl Levin demonstrate exactly what I mean about most of you and your party, as he alternately hurls petulant cream-puff insults at Galloway and kisses Coleman's stunned, clueless ass to give that toothy dipshit some comfort in the wake of Galloway's verbal drubbing.

Galloway didn't have to walk up to the docket and slap the cowboy shit out of Coleman ­ though I admit I still struggle with my own secret urges to do just that with most of the air-brushed, combed-over, Stepford meat-puppets who now people the United States Congress. No, all Galloway had to do was tell the unvarnished truth, and it had exactly the same effect. If Democrats had half the spine that Galloway does if you would stop chasing your creepy little careers through the caviar and chicken-salad circuits of duck-and-cover American political double-speak, then not only would people like me not be calling for all to abandon the Democratic Party and take their fight to the streets like good Bolivians not only that, but you'd have won the last election.

More...

http://counterpunch.org/goff05192005.html

[Sperk]

1. I second that!!! Galloway has shown you the way.

n/t

[chlamor]

2. Here Here

Spineless stragetists and careerists.

[KoKo]

3. It's hard to find an argument with what he says. Galloway did show us

up when he dared to confront them and show them for the filthy liars they are in not fessing up to the "People" how we colluded with Iraq and then dumped Saddam when we didn't need him anymore.

[reprehensor]

4. Stand up and fight.

Or we will be trampled.

[AntiCoup2K4]

5. "Tell the Democratic Leadership Council to eat shit and die."

Now THAT's what I'm sayin' :evilgrin:

[dweller]

6. Listen to Galloway and Learn Something

By STAN GOFF

Dear Democratic Elected Officials of the United States (with damn few exceptions),

I am writing this open letter to call your attention to the remarks made day before yesterday, May 17, 2005, to the United States Senate, by British MP George Galloway of the independent Respect Party. I do this because he serves as an example of why your party should be abandoned by the U.S. working class, by U.S. women, by oppressed nationalities in the United States, and by anyone who professes to be a progressive or a leftist.

George Galloway did that for which you have proven incapable; he spoke as an opposition. Since there seems to be a great dark space in the middle of your heads where the notion of opposition should be ­ a void filled by parliamentary molasses and the pusillanimous inabilty to tell simple truths ­ I suggest you all review the recordings of Galloway's confrontation with Republican Senator Norm "Twit" Coleman to see exactly how effortless it is to stand up to these cheap political bullies (watch the video). While you are at it, you can watch your colleague Carl Levin demonstrate exactly what I mean about most of you and your party, as he alternately hurls petulant cream-puff insults at Galloway and kisses Coleman's stunned, clueless ass to give that toothy dipshit some comfort in the wake of Galloway's verbal drubbing.

Galloway didn't have to walk up to the docket and slap the cowboy shit out of Coleman ­ though I admit I still struggle with my own secret urges to do just that with most of the air-brushed, combed-over, Stepford meat-puppets who now people the United States Congress. No, all Galloway had to do was tell the unvarnished truth, and it had exactly the same effect. If Democrats had half the spine that Galloway does if you would stop chasing your creepy little careers through the caviar and chicken-salad circuits of duck-and-cover American political double-speak, then not only would people like me not be calling for all to abandon the Democratic Party and take their fight to the streets like good Bolivians not only that, but you'd have won the last election.

The reason Galloway was able to break from your mirror party in UK ­ Blair's sell-out Labor Party ­ and still get elected, is that Galloway fights for his convictions and the real needs of his constituents, and doesn't run for cover every time the bully-boys of the capitalist extablishment attempt to take him down.

Here's a hint...snip

dp

[hobbit709]

7. I Plan

on sending this to every Democrat politician and the DNC every time they ask me for money and tell them why. Maybe if enough people did this, they might finally accumulate enough calcium carbonate to walk erect again.

[dweller]

8. mods, just realized this is a dupe

unfortunately, i didn't see the other thread.

dp

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

9. You're not understanding two things.

1) Galloway doesn't run for election in the United States. He can say whatever the hell he wants with complete impunity.

2) The British political system practically encourages people to speak their minds. Our does not, even in the smallest sense. It has nothing to do with courage. That's just the way it works here and it will until we get a proportional representation system like the Brits that encourages more than two parties and does not have a winner take all attitude.

[aneerkoinos]

10. PR

UK and US systems are the same, first pass the post in single rep districts. In Scottish and Euroelections there some proportionality.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

11. really? They elected Tony Blair the same way we elect our Presidents?

That's funny, I don't seem to think that's the case at all...

[aneerkoinos]

16. No

They didn't elect TB at all, they thought they were electing Brown as Blair would step down ASAP.

But here goes:
UK (and rest of the world) is parliamentary system, where Governement (executive branch) must enjoy the confidence of Parliament.

US is electorial dictatorship, where Governement aka President and his staff (executive branch) do not need confidence of Congress.

Neither UK nor US have proportional representation, like most of the world does.

[Jack Rabbit]

12. There is no proportional representation in Britain, either

Nor is it true that the British system "encourages people to speak their minds" more than ours does. Many Labour MPs have government jobs and could lose them if they displease Mr. Blair. That is how he keeps backbench rebels in line. Galloway is an example of one who would not be silenced. He was expelled from the Labour Party for his efforts.

In fact, party discipline is more strict in a parliamentary government than in our system, where political parties are actually quite weak. A strong party system does not encourage individual paraliamentary dissent.

If I could work my will, I would replace our presidential government with a parliamentary system. However, my reasons have more to do with a fear of presidential power and party programs meaning what they say.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

13. Okay, but you're missing an important point

In our system, Galloway's political career would be OVER. In England, he just got elected again.

There is no hope for third parties in our government, which means you either play nice with your party or you're finished.

Further, for whatever reason, the expected decorum of our politics doesn't allow for a Galloway to really gain traction EXCEPT in the rare cases when Congressmen are in districts where even if they murdered a small family they would still be re-elected. Why do you think Conyers, Kucinich, and Boxer are really so bold? It's because they have NOTHING to fear! I guarantee you more Democrats would make bold statements if there wasn't that fear involved. Why do there seem to be more Republicans that are able to be bold? Because they won the 1990 redistricting battles by taking back state legislatures. They have built themselves more safe seats.

[Jack Rabbit]

14. Galloway's survival is the exception, not the rule

Galloway could have sat down and shut up, like many Labour backbenchers did. I am thankful that he did not.

However, Galloway was already a well-known political rebel in Britain. The man survived because he is audacious both in his attacks on Tony Blair and in his penchant for self-promotion. There simply isn't room for too many George Galloways at one time. If all the Labour backbench rebels were as outspoken as Galloway, they would drown out each other's voices.

Consequently, not all of them could do what Galloway did. Galloway didn't need Labour, so he could keep talking until he was expelled. He then found a constituency where he could win on the issue of his opposition to Blair's war policies and do it in a way that it was in not only Blair's face but the faces of Bush and the neocons as well.

I agree that more Democrats should be speaking out as Galloway did. We are not living under politics as usual. At least I don't like to think that fabricating reasons to go to war in order to transfer a foreign country's natural wealth to US transnational corporations is usual business. That was a war crime on its face; Mr. Bush and his aides should be treated with all the deference and respect due liars and thieves.

[aneerkoinos]

15. In your system

You get your occasional Jesse Ventura. Same thing (by form, not content of political views).

And Galloway is not in governement, he's MP of the opposition. And BTW here in Europe the Government does not mean ruling party or parties, just the executive colloqium of ministers which has the confidence of the majority of Parliament.

[Vladimir]

17. Galloway is the first left-winger elected against a sitting Labour

MP since 1935. In 99.99% of the cases his career would indeed be over - it just so happened that this time Blair picked a fight with a gutsy bastard backed up by a disenfranchised and angry mob of humanists itching for a chance to give Blair a slap in the face.

[Jack Rabbit]

18. A brief history of British two- and three-party politics since 1900

Britain is often regarded as the forerunner of our own two-party system. However, from the turn of the twentieth century to the the advent of World War II and again since 1983, with the founding of the Social Democratic Party (now the Liberal Democratic Party), Britain has at times been more of a three-party system.

The two parties in the nineteenth century were the Liberals (whose most familiar figure to us Yanks would be Gladstone) and the Conservatives (with whom we Yanks associate with Disraeli). There were always other parties representing narrower social or nationalist interests. The British Labour Party won its first seats in Parliament in 1900; that year, it drew 42.000 votes in the general election and won two seats. In the next general election, in 1906, Labour had its coming-of-age party, winning over a quarter million votes and 29 seats. During the next several years, the Liberal Party split apart into "coalition" and "national" Liberals; the Liberal government of David Lloyd George formed in 1918 would be the last Liberal government to date.

Meanwhile, Labour steadily gained strength until 1922, when it became Britain's second party in a general election that saw the Tories win 344 seats, 142 for Labour, 62 for the coalition Liberals and 53 for the National Liberals. After the 1923 elections, Labour, led by Ramsay MacDonald, formed its first government in spite of having less seats than the Tories (191 to 258). H. H. Asquith's Liberals, again reunited, were able to win 158 seats and combined with Labour in a coalition. The Labour-Liberal coalitions could last only ten months, but MacDonald's Labour was returned to power in 1929, again in coalition with the Liberals. Labour split in a financial crisis in the general election of 1931; Prime Minister MacDonald and others formed a national coalition with the Conservatives and Liberals with MacDonald as Prime Minister. However, most of Labour's rank and file members did not follow MacDonald, who was expelled from the party.

Labour, led by Clement Atlee, won its first clear majority in Commons in the general election of 1945 with the promise of full employment, national health insurance and other welfare-state programs. Although Labour's programs were enacted and largely regarded as successful, the party's fortunes fell. Labour barely held on to power in the general elections of 1950 and lost power in 1951, when the Tories under Churchill won more seats and formed a coalition with the Liberals. It was not until 1964 that Labour would return to power under Harold Wilson. With the exception of Edward Heath's Conservative government from 1970 to 1974, Labour held power from 1964 until 1979.

From 1955, when the Tories won a clear majority under Sir Anthony Eden, the Liberals barely hung on in Commons, holding in this period anywhere from six to a 14 seats. In was after general elections in February 1974 that the Liberals held the balance of power; when Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe rejected Prime Minister Heath's courting, Wilson was again called on to be Prime Minister in a very unstable minority government. Elections held in October gave Labour a three-seat majority.

In 1979, Margaret Thatcher led the Conservatives to the first of a string of electoral victories that would keep the Tories in power for eighteen years. In the early days of the Thatcher government, the Labour Party moved considerably to the left until they were on the fringes of the mainstream. The Labour Party's program in 1983 was called by Sir Gerald Kaufman "the longest suicide note in history." In 1981, several alarmed members of Labour formed the Social Democratic Party, which went into alliance with the dwindling Liberals for the general election of 1983 and won 23 seats and about a quarter of the vote. Labour's leftward slouch was punished severely by the voters; the party won 209 seats, down from 269 in 1979. After the 1987 election, the SDP-Liberal alliance formally merged into the Liberal Democratic Party. Since 1983, the Alliance/Liberal Democrats have held anywhere from 20 to the party's current 62 seats in Commons, raising again the possibility that a third party will hold the balance of power in a hung parliament.

[Dirk39]

19. I suffer from full frontal lobotomy

'cause I'm German: who volunteers to explain to me, what "cornpone" means? Please!

Dirk

[Jack Rabbit]

20. Cornpone

Properly, it is corn bread made without milk or eggs.

You don't deserve anyone's support, not even as a tactical matter any longer, because you end up doing ritual verbal combat then give the "cornpone Nazis" of the Republican Party any goddamn thing they want.

The way it is used in that sentence, it means provincial and unsophisticated, even to the point of being clumsy. Like Bush.

[Dirk39]

21. Thanx Jack!