I would not like to be in George Galloway's shoes right now. By looking at his facial expression, you can see that he's feeling up against it. George crops up on this blog every so often, and gets little sympathy. In fact, he gets none from me, as I think him to be an apologist for dictators in the Middle East and elsewhere. Anyone who doubts this must account for his flattery of Sadaam Hussein, his denial that the Tiananmen Square Massacre happened and his fulsome adulation of both President Assad of Syria and the regime in Iran. Please see my 2012 post on this issue. However, his most recent effort at distorting facts has been his support for President Putin over the Salisbury poisoning. He has vehemently defended Russia on this issue for months, on his talkRADIO programme, on YouTube and even to Piers Morgan and Susannah Reid on Good Morning Britain, back in March:
"I have no idea who did the poisoning, but Russia must be near the bottom of the list," he told hosts Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid. He said that Iran had previously produced the chemical, he added that it had been used in Uzbekistan, before pointing the finger at British biological warfare base Porton Down which is a few miles from Salisbury."
I sometimes wonder who George blames for the assassination of JFK. It must be the CIA, FBI or Harold Wilson. However, he will have to employ his creativity to the maximum to defend the Russian suspects for the Salisbury poisoning: Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Beshirov (real names: Alexander Mishkin and Anatoly Chepiga, both colonels in Russia's military intelligence service: The GRU). All commentators agree that their interview for RT borders on Monty Pythonesque farce. Their preposterous "explanation" for their visit deserves nothing but ridicule. As the BBC says:
"They said they only stayed an hour in Salisbury on Saturday 3 March because of the snowy weather conditions, but returned on Sunday 4 March to visit the sights. The two men admitted they may have passed Mr Skripal's house by chance "but we don't know where it is located," Mr Petrov said".
For once, I agree with Teresa May:
"The lies and blatant fabrications in this interview given to a Russian state-sponsored TV station are an insult to the public's intelligence,"
There has been much discussion today about what the Russian security services hope to achieve by attacks such as the Salisbury and Litvinienko poisonings. The Jeremy Vine programme on Radio 2 offered two explanations. The first, obvious, explanation is that these attacks warn Russians living in the west that the FSB and GRU have a long reach. Secondly, and less obvious, is that by their denials of even the most blatant attacks and the bizarre counter-accusations by the Russian government and their acolytes abroad, it causes widespread confusion about the facts among the general public in the west and Russia itself.
Among these acolytes abroad, of course, is our friend, George Galloway. As I said above, he will be severely taxed to come up with a way to whitewash the Russian "tourists" and their government. Using Photoshop, he could place Tony Blair and George Bush in Salisbury at the time of the attacks. He could blame MI5, MI6, the CIA or the Boy Scouts for the poisonings or, as the dedicated supporter of the Palestinian cause that he is, he could, failing all other options, blame the Israelis. He has an arduous task ahead of him !
Joking apart, while we argue about who is responsible for the Salisbury poison attack, we should remember the victims: Sergei and Yulia Skripal, Dawn Sturgess, Charlie Rowley and a police officer, DS Nick Bailey. Four of these people became severely ill, and Dawn Sturgess lost her life. For them and their relatives, justice must seem to be far away, as are Petrov and Beshirov. George Galloway is going to be very busy.
