This is a guest post by tim
In a predictable development today, George Galloway announced he would be visiting Tehran:
By the time you read this, I will be in Iran. I’ve never been there before, never met an Iranian leader – I don’t even like the present Iranian leadership – so remember all that, because it might become important.
I’m determined to do my bit for the anti-war effort. We need another war like Gordon Brown needs another by-election.
But the Sunday papers were again full of Israeli war games and threats as speculation mounts of a massive bombardment of yet another Muslim country.
I’m going for the first anniversary of Press TV, on which I present two programmes – Comment at 10.30pm on Thursdays and The Real Deal at 10.30pm on Sundays.
For the people of Iran, its difficult to see how placing George Galloway and a group of holocaust deniers near a nuclear installation, makes an attack by Israel any less likely. Like waking up one Bavarian morning in 1941 and finding a poster of Unity Mitford on your neighbour’s roof.
Galloway’s output of Iranian propaganda has increased since the prospect of Press TV money first appeared.
Last Autumn Galloway was using his radio show to claim that Gordon Brown had to to call an early election because an attack on Iran was imminent. We’ve then had George turning into a linguistic scholar to “prove” that Ahmedinajad’s threats to “wipe Israel off the map” were a “mistranslation”. More recently his website has begun to prominently feature coverage of Press TV.
Perhaps most obviously, and sickeningly, Galloway ran a smear campaign against an executed gay man in Iran.
How much Iran are paying Galloway, and through how many companies the money has passed is yet to be declared.
It took the people of Iraq years to find out out that they had been paying Galloway’s hotel bills while he fawned before Uday Hussein.
Hopefully it won’t take too long to find out how much cash from Iran is headed Galloway’s way.
