Thursday, August 11, 2005

Forget curious, Mr Galloway could be something else.

The T word was mentioned in an editorial in The Timesonline, over in the UK.

Rod Liddell says at the end of his column:

As you might imagine, most of the attention has focused on Galloway’s description of the suicide bombers, the people killing our troops, as “martyrs” — something that he has since denied. Liam Fox described Galloway as “sad, twisted and irrelevant”. But you wonder how far Galloway’s patent loathing of the British state now extends to all of its subjects as well. He can’t actually wish British soldiers — or crusaders, as he has helpfully called them — to be killed, can he? Or does he see himself heroically holed up in a cave in a pair of flip-flops wearing a green bandanna and clutching a metaphoric Kalashnikov? If that’s the case, George, go to it.

Even for someone who agreed with you about the war in Iraq and the deception perpetrated by our government to prepare us all for it — the latest stuff feels suspiciously close to treason. It is hard to know whether we should laugh at Galloway or hang him.


Now I've just had a look through dictionary.com, and it's pretty basic what treason actually is.



Main Entry: trea·son
Pronunciation: 'trEz-&noun
Function:noun
Etymology: Anglo-French treison crime of violence against a person to whom allegiance is owed, literally, betrayal, from Old French traïson, from traïr to betray, from Latin tradere to hand over, surrender
: the offense of attempting to overthrow the government of one's country or of assisting its enemies in war; specifically : the act of levying war against the United States or adhering to or giving aid and comfort to its enemies by one who owes it allegiance —trea·son·ous /-&s/ adjective


Can we take a closer look there? Did you catch that bit? That's the one:
the offense of attempting to overthrow the government of one's country or of assisting its enemies in war


Okay, I'm not a pom. I'm not a lot of things. I'm also not completely stupid. To become a Member of Parliament in the UK, as over here in Oz, or over in the States, or in most countries, you need to swear allegiance to your ruling body.

The Oath of Allegiance, according to the Explore Parliament website can either be sworn on your religious document of choice (New Testament, Old Testament or Koran) or made as an affirmation if you are not of a religious bent. Either way, you are pledging to uphold your country's rule of law and to live by it.

Last time I looked, the War on Terror has not been undeclared. It is going to be a long and bloody time before that happens.

If George Galloway has pledged allegiance to the United Kingdom, if his job is to look after the rights and requirements of his constituents over in Bethnal and Green, then what is he doing gallivanting around the Middle East declaring openly that:
It's not the Muslims who are the terrorists. The biggest terrorists are Bush, and Blair, and Berlusconi, and Aznar, but it is definitely not a clash of civilizations. George Bush doesn't have any civilization, he doesn't represent any civilization. We believe in the Prophets, peace be upon them.


Those are pretty strong words for a representative of the government of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth the 2nd. Those words are also directly contradicting said government.

Now, I am NOT a lawyer, but I do wonder what the people in his constituency - those who voted against him as well as for him - think of all this. I have yet to see anything about that.

1 Comments:

At 2:24 PM, Blogger Nilk said...

Maybe not, Keith, but perhaps in the court of public opinion, where it might carry a bit more weight, something nice could happen.

As we know, it doesn't take too much to effect change. More an accumulation of a lot of little things.

If a columnist is using the word treason, then you won't get me to believe that we are the only ones out there also thinking it. I think it's timely considering our discussion of it last week over at Anubis(RIP grrrrr).

And Cherie Blair? The minute I found out she had taken investment advice from Peter Foster she went from impressive to dipstick in one small step. For an intelligent woman she's got the brains of a fruitbat.

 

Post a Comment

<< Home