George Galloway | On Neoliberalism, Foreign Policy, and more

I believe in the strength of the things I believe in and I refuse to accept your thesis that is to say everything that could have been done wrong has been done wrong well I do not agree with the premise but that is my job I do not accept that the United States He has retired from public life, he is very involved in Europe, in Eastern Europe, Central Europe, on the front lines in Ukraine, his bombings and his coordination in many other parts of the world, if that is the United States as an isolationist power. I'd hate to see them take the lead, and I also don't accept Phil's apparent thesis at the end: that we're somehow alien to Europe because we don't speak the same language.

Very smart operator. One of the smartest. The world today is 10 times smarter than the American president or the British prime minister. I think he acts in Russia's interests and it was not in Russia's interests to pursue the scribbling issue if the hidden point and your question is: do I support it? No, I don't know, if I had been Russian I wouldn't have voted for him, but I support many of the

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policy

positions he has taken, especially in Syria, where he has been instrumental in defeating Isis, Al Qaeda and the alphabet. soup of Islamist extremism in the Middle East, which I think is a necessary but not sufficient condition for stability, progress of peace in that area, George, do you think Putin has felt emboldened by the fact that the United States does not has completely retired from public life, but you already know that, but Obama clearly didn't? "I want to get involved in

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military conflicts.

I mean, I have the feeling that Putin thought that our great now no one is going to oppose me in fully engaging with Ukraine on Russia's front line," Victoria Nuland, former ambassador, told us. now at the State Department. the billions of dollars he spent subverting power in Ukraine, John McCain and all the other neocon hawks gained every time they got off the streets and the coup that took place on the Maidan, which is now 18 months ago, is the cause of the confrontation. between US and Russia I don't see Putin doing anything wrong anywhere else. He frustrated Western

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in Syria.

That's true, but he wasn't bad. I don't see where this charge sheet against Putin is drawn up from now on. Russia is capitalist. country with an elected Russia is a normal capitalist country ruled by a kleptocracy is ruled by a kleptocracy but not as kleptocratic as the Yeltsin era which of course was curated by right-wing people in Britain as some kind of golden age the reason Putin is popular in Russia because he is now taking some of the kleptocrats' wealth back to himself. I don't think it's for himself. I don't see where they are, they know respected journalists.

I don't know why they would do it. such a statement recorded without the slightest evidence to support it he is saying that he is not corrupt I am not saying that he is not taking money for himself where is the evidence? Give me your evidence that it is giving Russia some of its perceived national dignity that it lost under Yeltsin, well you can laugh if you want, but that's how the Russians see it now. My point is that because of the protests in the streets, protests in all the streets of Bronwen, there are protests in London, but that does not mean that the majority of Russians do not support Putin.

What I want to say is that I don't know why it was necessary to have a confrontation with Putin. He's not my man, he's your man. I'm leftist, he's not. If he could choose the government of Russia, he would not be it. Putin is a man who thinks like you, he believes in capitalism, free markets, nation states, I don't know why you needed to fight him, that's my point, China is a different kettle of fish, it has a different ideal ideology, but Russia does not and the elephant in the room is the swamp of the Syrian war.

Some of you know me for my position against the Iraq war. I am here to tell you that the involvement of Western countries in the Syrian war is the worst thing we have ever done, which is to say, worse. that Libya, worse than Iraq, our belligerent

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policy of arms, financing, propaganda for Isis Al Qaeda and the alphabet soup of Islamist fanaticism in Syria is the worst thing we have ever done and, even though the war is almost over, it is quite possible that we are about to Double down to double our bets on the catastrophic conflict in Syria.

Can a belligerent foreign policy bring peace and stability in the world? It's not very likely. I mean, we all could have laughed at your claim that the Iraq war was legal. You are the last man. standing saying it was legal I didn't say it was a gun standing seeing it was I'm not, even if it was it wouldn't be since that's not that's not the point, the United States could United States massacred millions of people to throughout his life, millions of people throughout his life, of many of the people here in Vietnam and caused the massacre of millions

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in Cambodia, yet you parade the United States with some kind of legitimate and benign force Well, that's not what it seems.

Right off the bat, how does this sound? Well, I'm calm and I will tell you that we were both very clear in our comments when we said at the beginning that we do not consider the United States of America to be some kind of caricature. example of perfect goodness, we were both very clear that neither country is in that position and that, although there are both, there are on both sides things that America has done that anyone would be proud of and things that you would not be proud of now . It's not enough for you to pretend that our vision of America is some kind of cartoon where everything is rosy and beautiful, no one thinks that no one thinks about something so fundamental and obviously stupid. total catastrophe, everything that could have been done wrong, has been done wrong since the false artificial sykes-picot division of the Arab countries, the double treatment as usual at the end of the First World War, the reinforcement of tyranny throughout the intervening period, even in one case of supporting Islamist fanaticism in one country but opposing it in another country and supporting it again in a third country opposing it in a fourth our policy is a total catastrophe and Libya is a very good example of While Gaddafi was probably the worst, most crazed of all the Arab leaders, Phil's former boss thought he could do business with him and did so quite successfully.

Didn't you buy into tyranny by supporting Saddam Hussein? I'll go to Saddam Hussein if you want, if Saddam Hussein hadn't been overthrown, there would be no Isis and there would be no Al-Qaeda cascading around the world before Iraq. The fact that there would be no Isis in Iraq. There would be no Isis in Syria. Now Isis controls a third of every country, but don't leave it out. hook up with Libya his old body yes, your ex boss was Gaddafi's best friend. I have never met Gaddafi or any member of his appalling family unlike Mr Blair. I don't blame Phil for that, he was just a hired employee, but my point is that it wasn't going to happen Gaddafi was a disaster Gaddafi was a disaster it takes a real genius to make Libya 10 50 100 times worse after Gaddafi than under Gaddafi the exceptionalization of Donald Trump that you just heard is absurd Donald Trump has been president of the United States for less than two years.

The chaos in the world began less than two years ago? It's completely ridiculous that the singer, his idol, Barack, would destroy Libya and turn it into a slave market and a jihad market for at least seven different heavily armed Islamist groups it wasn't Trump who did that it was Obama who did that you you have a goal to pray and eat

george

w bush is somehow better than donald trump

george

w bush and your other hero tony blair killed a million people in Iraq and the rising spawned ISIS spread around the world you see how happy you feel with the rules-based society we had before Donald Trump, 23 months ago, 22 months ago, where was the rules-based order in the invasion and occupation of Iraq? and a totally illegal act whose consequences will still be felt a hundred years from now.

Where were the rules based on the destruction of Yugoslavia? no international law no unilateral use of Western power by the United Nations Security Council by the people you are trying to persuade us were better than Donald Trump Vietnam was razed bombed to the Stone Age drowned in chemical weapons by Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson were part of this rules-based complacency that you talk about and in aid of your argument you draw attention to the fact that the populist SAR came to power the populist SAR came to power precisely because of the failure of its international order precisely for the failure of their orthodoxy it is because the neoliberal policy totally failed in Italy that the government in Italy has the same in Hungary the same goes for the increase, although it has stopped now, you may have noticed that Melones is wrong, who am I with? agree on all the details, he is now the most popular politician in France, don't worry, he has gone for psychiatric treatment, the rise of Trump, the rise of carbon. of the right and the population in Italy is due to the failure of this order to which you so smugly wish to return us.

I don't think it was a foreign policy issue, to be honest, the reason this population has been so successful is because of domestic discontent separate foreign yes can, average voter at the door who votes for Donald Trump is not talking about Syria they are talking about manufactured jobs but you are very wrong in fact really the reason for the rise of the populists in Italy That is why because the country has been inundated by millions of refugees from the wars started by your heroes, first of all, let Mark define himself, yes, first, everything I've talked about, but he's already waiting as long as I am.

I think you're both getting it. a very fair chance, true, no, I could attack him for longer, but I wasn't accusing you of worshiping heroes you didn't worship, so maybe I can try to take a step back from your powerful rhetoric and first say the whole fact of That we can talk about violations of the rules-based order like what happened in Iraq is because you called it a mistake, no, it's a violation, it's a million people dead, for God's sake, well, there was a murderer who died because of the sanctions beforehand, according to people who criticized him before Saddam Hussein killed many people.

I was against the war in Iraq and I am still against the war in Iraq. Nothing has happened in the last 15 years to change my mind on this, but I think it's the same thing. fact that there was an order that we can recognize as a violation of the order now what makes me a little uncomfortable because of your rhetorical flourish is that you put all these different things that are quite different on the same level, you know what happened in Nom will happen in Iraq and will be put on the same level as intervening to stop the genocide in Kosovo.

It seems strange to me, they are not, you know, not all types of use of violence. I think using violence is always bad, but sometimes it's the least bad option, I think. The Second World War was justified taking into account what Hitler defended. I believe that intervening in Kosovo was justified to stop a genocide and where many innocent people were in Libya. Well, I wasn't particularly beum war. I think, in hindsight, what we can see. it's genocide and genocide in Libya and Qasim, okay, I'm not sure exactly if everything is genocide, so it basically normalizes the idea of ​​genocide for me, don't you stop talking about genocide once about my family that was actually wiped out? that coastal fight that happened at the Nia cleanup and the people was a general little spectacle, well yeah, thank you, so you have a microphone on, you don't need to shout, that's fine, so I think it's important not to throw words like genocide over green, it is also important not to put each and every foreign policy decision that you disagree with on the same level.

The fact that there is a rule-based daughter means that we can see the violations of that order and that is what is being destroyed and see. I hated George Bush, he was my least favorite American president until Donald Trump was elected. I was absolutely disgusted. I wrote an entire book against Bush's foreign policy in 2004, but at the same time I think he was a fundamentally different figure from Donald Trump because he basically believed in the existence of a rules-based order and was pushing to change it. Donald Trump wants to ruin everything and take us to an Ag stage of Anarchy where the only thing that matters is the law of the jungle and where the strong decide what happens and the weak have to do what they are told to do and I don't want to live in that world and I think if you can't see the difference between those two situations. and you just normalize Trump and put him on some kind of continuum of betrayal that goes back centuries, like you did before and everything is genocide and every military campaign is equally bad, then it's impossible to have a serious discussion about what we're trying to do. .

What to do in this world I think that all kinds of mistakes have been made in recent decades I am a social democrat I am not a neoliberal I think that many of these populist parties are coming to power because of a failure of internal politics I think that some of the leaders like Jeremy Corbyn are there because foreign policy failuresThere would be no Corbin if there hadn't been a war in Iraq, that's clear to me, but I think it's important to try. and hold on to what matters in these things because if you don't, you end up in some sort of nihilistic place where everything is equally bad and where the solution is where you simply have nothing constructive to say about anything, because everyone is a criminal. of war, they are all equally evil, they all are, it is some kind of genocide or that completely undermines any criticism we have about what is happening right now, which I think is really worrying and terrifying and needs to stop, we can't hope for.

To think that Europe can somehow isolate itself from the world in that sense people are moving capital are always moving the global economy is deeply integrated now, so the notion that we can somehow retreat and think we can live our own little life behind a fortress Europe again and it is not true it is not true politically it is not true diplomatically it is not true in the sense that there are people who want to do harm from time to time the world is so deeply entangled that I think the idea that we can be isolationists it's a fallacy something we've lost and I never quite understand George where you end up with your point of view you take your whole point of view doesn't this position lead to a kind of isolation as a kind of silent ISM and I'm not saying that?

To be able to be critical and use any query other than that, the implication that the best response if we actually take all of your opinions is to not respond at all is to let the world be as it is where it is and for us to stay within our limits Let's stay silent and get on with our lives now. I'm not asking you what it is that the opposition doesn't attribute to you, but if so, that doesn't seem realistic in this world. let's live well of course this session is not about me or my views if you wish I will of course say that in reality nothing could be further from the truth.

I am not a pacifist, far from it, I think we have to defend ourselves. We ourselves believe that the choice of a new generation of nuclear weapons and submarines as a platform is a very bad choice in terms of defense. I think we should defend our borders, we should defend our European borders, we should defend our British borders, we should organise. ourselves so that our states and the group of states in our state are a much more successful enterprise than they currently are. We have interests in other places. If someone threatens our interests, we have the right to defend them, but that is not what we have been doing when going to the other side of the world to invade another country and overthrow their government on a tower of lies you are not defending your interests you are endangering your interests. interests since everyone from the former head of MI5 to most of the country's sentient beings have already concluded that we actually damaged our own interests by invading and occupying Iraq and it's not over yet by a long shot, So you asked me what I would do.

I would not do what you have already done, what you and the people you supported have already done and I said it at the time of the last conversation I had with mr. Blair was the fall of Baghdad two weeks before the war the fall of Baghdad will not be the beginning of the end simply the end of the beginning number two there is no al-qaeda in Iraq but if you and Bush invade and occupy there there will be hundreds of thousands of Qaeda members and not only in Iraq but in our own countries and I was right.

I mean, at least have the grace to admit that I was right and he was wrong. It is not like this. I am passionately denouncing rule-based norms. international order I am passionately denouncing the fact that there is no rules-based international order, you just called anarchy, a rules-based international order with some mistakes, some violations, but how many violations does it take to invalidate your thesis in the first place? ? We have in the world what you call a rules-based international system that is not only achieved, not only by mistakes, but it kills millions of people and makes the entire world completely unstable.

How many times does that have to happen before your thesis becomes invalid for most people? It has long ceased to be credible to call it an international order based on rules and I refuse to accept your thesis that's all I don't have a thesis I'm just asking you what you think well do you think there is a everything I see based on international rules and my case is that It is very clear that there has not been and that, therefore, try to look at Trump with exceptional eyes, which is the liberal mantra and the nonsense that has been in just 23 months, so if we have the world was in total chaos before of his arrival, if we had not had the United Nations and NATO created after World War II, do you think the world would have been a better place?

Not because I believe in a United Nations with real authority, but because As long as you have veto powers, it is not possible to guarantee international order. I support the United Nations. It is Tony Blair and George W. Bush who left the United Nations and caused the cataclysm that, I think, is being underestimated here with the Iraq war, not since In the First World War we made a decision that would change both the world and the decision to invade Iraq. George, are you a narcissist? Do you think not in your politics, but I think that charisma and leadership qualities are very important? belief is your belief in what you believe.

I am very aware of my flaws and weaknesses, etc., but I believe in the strength of the things I believe in and I believe that those things are more powerful than adversaries as ideas. so now I am very confident, as I mentioned before, I went to a public school and left very early, I never went to university, but now I speak every year at Oxford Union and Cambridge Union and I am a speaker when she started at Eton and all these fancy schools. very very expensive schools what is the main difference that I see in the children in these schools and these universities and the children that I grew up with their confidence these children their parents are getting what they are paying for these children they believe that they are the answer they have at least the right to address political figures of a certain prestige and stature, etc., as equals.

I have seen lads in the Oxford Union address the Foreign Secretary as if they were peers and yet one is a 19 year old Oxford student and the other is the Foreign Secretary and I see nothing wrong with that and I know why are their parents paying for that because if your son or by projection your politician your leader does not have trust and why should you have trust in them, I mean, it seems to me There is a necessary tension, of course, between that trust and democracy . The danger that the echo is the only voice that is heard.

There is a tension between these two things. But both are necessary. Democratic moderation and sounding board, but confidence and charisma are also. necessary, otherwise you have mediocrity and I think Britain has been ruled by mediocrity for quite some time, so to go back to the leaders we were talking about before, the narcissistic leader is the leader who is most likely to lead you to danger of taking you to war because they don't listen to other voices because of that self-confidence because of that kind of not thinking about other people maybe without a doubt, I think that although George W.

Bush went completely unnoticed and a moron with no charisma what heard about him was that he was the guy everyone wanted to have around their barbecue, that was the thermos type, well I don't know how low your standards would be for a certain Charles W. Bush at his barbecue, so I guess not It is neither one thing nor the other. That's why that's what we're talking about here in this discussion, you could be a narcissistic mess like Blair or you could be a narcissistic hero like Chacho and if it weren't for him we'd be holding this meeting in German and then it's neither. two.

Neither one thing nor the other for me depends to a certain extent, but no father, it is about checks and balances, and in a democracy you should have them and you should have them daily through proper investigation, investigation and independent impartial media that have. The complete absence of Tony Blair led us to a cliff because Parliament became a rubber stamp and the media became an echo chamber and therefore narcissism had disastrous consequences if these checks and balances had been available, narcissism would have been controlled. The language as they understand it is to say that most politicians join forces to do things or are hypocrites and nothing against being criticized, mr.

Blair, particularly on Iraq, I'm not against fighting the Iraq war at all, I shared the same opinion, but I think he casually suggests that all politicians or most politicians are liars and hypocrites, it's a terribly dangerous thing to say and I don't believe it. in a way, it would be true, well, it would be dangerous if it weren't true. I have the vast majority of people in the country who already know that it is true because everyone is fine. The MPs were funded by the Daily Telegraph's ingenious acquisition of a CD for there are hundreds of hundreds, more than five hundred of six hundred and fifty, plundering the public purse with claims of fraudulent expenditure, it's a fact, you'd think it's a truth uncomfortable to mention again, there are people sitting in the British Cabinet moving their residences from their constituencies to London and vice versa to avoid taxes they should be in prison instead of continuing to sit during the hours of the House of Commons, which is where the most of them are still sitting, it was the period we have been discussing tonight when it was discovered that politicians were believing in lies, simply believing in silly lies and MPs followed them to hundreds of lobbies, that is what is discredited , the British political system, can be traced back to the Iraq war, forward through the expenses scandal and one institution after another, our banks police the environment.

It has been discovered that the entire Parliament is absolutely necessary and that is the reason why there is no credibility in the political system, not because I say so, the public has already noticed that there are all kinds of people desperately trying to achieve things and failing because they are not very good at it and that is much more important in all the professions I have been in, there are many more blunders than conspiracies. I went from a politics where every journalist thought something fantastic was happening in politics, regardless of whether everything was achieved. to sew it up and they were carrying out this evil plan with brilliant efficiency and then I go to journalism and I discover that all the journalists think that the politicians have this maligned plan that they are carrying out with brilliant authority and they all think that everyone else is really good at something disastrous the truth is that the newsroom is full of incompetence and politics has followed incompetence, we are all doing the best we can and that is a clearer description of the quality of George Galloway's government than the politicians are trying to do the best they can.

Don't really believe it, it may have once been true, but it is no longer true, and the current Parliament, what Shirley described as democracy, has brought us to this past where we are in the current Parliament, the political class of parliamentarians has taken us to the precipice towards economic ruin. our society is atomized, more divided than when Charles Dickens wrote Oliver Twist, that's official, we are in wars all over the world and we threaten others, people are trying to kill us and sometimes, like with the bullets last week , we are in a very, very deep situation. problems because of the political class that we have the idea that the very words assisted death assisted suicide chilled me to the bone for a number of reasons first, the Lord has set his cannon against automatism as Shakespeare opined in Hamlet and that is the reason which is why the major religions are against this idea, but I am not going to insist on that.

I don't know how religious the audience is. I guess not much, so I'll continue with other arguments on this path you're being invited on. paving will lead to a kind of fascism that will be almost a science fiction nightmare for the human race. I'll tell you what will happen. All people will begin to think and will be implicitly or explicitly encouraged to think that they are past their expiration date no one could be less past their expiration date the new doctor his wisdom his experience his communication skills all the training and education that has had what do you mean beyond its expiration date no one has sold before? -to date, everyone's grandmother and grandfather have something to teach us until the end, but the elderly will feel encouraged to think that they have become a burden on a capitalist society that can no longer profit from them and that only You can see a long bill next to the bill. because your medical care for your staff here will never benefit from them again, although much was done in the past, no doubt they will calculate that when a man turns eighty, we will have another eight years that will cost us money, let's tryimbue him and others with the idea that he should get rid of this mortal coil and then there is the unscrupulous relative that we have all known and blessed, I hope I don't have them, but who knows, as they look at the house you are occupying while they look at the vacation home that it would be nice to whip and go on a cruise around the world, it's not time for you to think about assisted suicide, assisted dying, you can laugh, but there are many, in many cases, that end up in the criminal courts of people who even killed their relatives and encourage others collaborate with others to kill their relatives to inherit what is theirs but that one day after their death it could be theirs the state that I have talked about capitalist society let me talk about the state that is falling apart and that can't pay their bills and within which the NHS is almost the biggest bill of all, that would be a powerful argument wouldn't this whole bed blocking all these chronically ill people who are never going to get better unless some new drug or some new medical practice emerges, in which case they might get an extension, but that only further costs us the idea that the state will not be inherently, if not explicitly, interested in an idea that medically cleans the wards of the chronically ill , medically clean granny farms and, for AP Homes and the rest, how do you think it's possible to square those things or is it a sense of mission that it can't be done?

You cannot have equality for all and the promotion of individual interests. Well, for example, I voted. in favor of homosexual marriage there are millions of people in Great Britain against homosexual marriage they have interests and are seeking expression in the right wing of the conservative party and perhaps the conservative party will break up in part over these types of issues there is nothing. It is bad that people have the right to be against gay marriage and that they have the right for politicians to speak against gay marriage. I am for and speak for him and, by the way, as a party to ethnic grievances, not a single person.

Not a single voter or member has complained about my vote for gay marriage, so these types of caricatures of people are extremely harmful and that's why I get so angry at them and each of us is different. Sean, I hate alcohol. I hate gambling. I am white with blue eyes and was raised as an Irish Catholic immigrant. Now what is my identity when I see drunk people walking around the Hall Street football stadium or maybe even here? Why does it seem like I'm drinking a lot during the day here? I hate it, I hate seeing people drinking alcohol.

I can't stand seeing gambling adverts everywhere on buses, on TV etc, presented by Tony Blair, by the way, and Gordon Brown, by the way, the inventor of the Super Casino, so you get my point , everyone I don't have the same culture as David. Culture isn't about color or where you come from, it's about your beliefs, that's your culture and I have a lot more in common with someone who believes like me in China than I do in Britain. I reject the idea that there is a British culture there are many British cultures you asked Mary Ann about Trump and his foreign policy let's review it Trump has unilaterally withdrawn from the nuclear deal with Iran signed by Salomon binding by his predecessor and the permanent 5+1 and the Islamic Republic of Iran and I am impeccably using the words of the IAEA impeccably observed by Iran Trump has unilaterally withdrawn from it began a series of increasingly deepening and punitive economic sanctions against Iran and yesterday a major terrorist atrocity sponsored by Saudi Arabia which means US sponsored terrorists in hours in Iran who killed 26 people now not just soldiers but old soldiers paraplegic soldiers members of the public in the crowd and journalists covering the event we are headed again to a potentially cataclysmic conflict in the Middle East, what could happen?

Iran will certainly respond extremely violently against Saudi Arabia at any moment, it certainly won't take long to eliminate that, it will get a response and therefore the spiral towards war will twist for more debates, conversations and interviews. Subscribe to the Institute's incendiary ideas on your IAI TV today.