Last year Canadian journalist/blogger Terry Glavin explained why George Galloway, who used to be a member of Parliament, is a scab.
Part of this [Iranian] government strategy to control what people say and what people think is something called Press TV. It’s a part of a government broadcasting, government propaganda agency and it’s an English-language version. And who works for Press TV? George Galloway. Everybody says, oh, he’s a lovely, strange, colorful British MP. He’s a scab. He’s in every way a scab. His employer, and his work for that employer, is a direct function of the theft of hundreds of jobs, of the firing of hundreds of journalists, and of the jailing, by the way, of dozens and dozens and dozens of trade unionists, and the execution of trade unionists…
If Galloway and his colleagues at Press TV (including “antiwar activists” Yvonne Ridley and Lauren Booth) had a shred of conscience, the following news would sicken them. They don’t and it won’t.
Potkin Azarmehr reports:
Zoya Osanloo is the daughter-in-law of Mansour Osanloo, Iran’s Bus Drivers Union Leader. She is not a political activist and is not in any way connected with Mansour Osanloo’s union activities. She is simply married to Osanloo’s son and works as an engineer. Last Wednesday, on her way to work, she was accosted by three plain clothes Iranian intelligence agents at a Metro station. She was blindfolded and handcuffed and taken to a secret detention centre. Mansour Osanloo, who is serving a five year sentence because of his union activities is due to be released at the end of this year. Zoya was punched in the face and her head was smashed into a wall several times during her interrogation ordeal. They kept telling Zoya that she should persuade Mansour Osanloo to leave the country once he is released. According to Osanloo’s wife, Parvaneh, who talked about her daughter-in-law’s ordeal with Fereshteh Ghazi from Roozonline, Zoya suffered broken teeth and nose bleed and is still in a shock.
And horrifically, Zoya, who was two months pregnant, lost her unborn baby.
According to reports from Iran, Osanloo himself has been brutalized during his imprisonment. Clearly Osanloo is the kind of man the bullies in charge of the Islamic Republic fear most– a man with moral authority. Having themselves no semblance of such authority, they can only resort to the “authority” of imprisonment, beating, rape and murder.
Anyone who continues to work for, and receive money from, a propaganda arm of the regime responsible for this sort of thing is complicit in savagery. Nothing they say about abuses by any other government can have credibility with decent people. And those who know what is happening in Iran yet still consider Galloway or his political party worthy of support are little better.
