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Galloway Warns of New Sykes-Picot, Iraq War First Step
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"If
you don’t want another century of slavery, of weakness and
division, then you will have to stand up now," Galloway said
addressing Arabs.
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By
Angy Ghannam, IOL Staff
CAIRO,
December 20 (IslamOnline) – Asking the Arab public opinion to stand
up before another puppet president or corrupt king is installed in
Iraq, whose wealth will be devoured by foreign governments, and asking
the British government to renege on its obvious falsehoods, George
Galloway warned of another Sykes-Picot
against the Arab world.
The
clandestine understanding was concluded between Great Britain and
France in May 1916, with the assent of Russia, for the dismemberment
of the Ottoman Empire.
The
agreement, which took its name from its negotiators Sir Mark Sykes and
Georges Picot, led to the division of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and
Palestine into various French and British-administered areas.
"If
you don’t want another century of slavery, of weakness and division,
then you will have to stand up now because in the building I work in
in London, foreigners who have never set foot in the Arab world, who
know nothing of you, are deciding to make new countries," said
Galloway, senior vice chairman at the Parliamentary Labor Party.
They
"are deciding to break old countries, and are deciding to appoint
new corrupt kings and puppet presidents whose tasks will be to rule
their countries in the interest of Britain and America rather than in
the interest of their own people," he stressed.
To
the standing ovation of Arab and foreign participants in the
International Campaign Against U.S. Aggression on Iraq (ICCA), hosted
by Cairo on December 18-19, Galloway said "we are now at the
eleventh hour, there is not much time for meetings like this, there is
not much time for conferences and declarations."
"Action
speaks louder than words," he said, adding that the aircraft
carriers are already in the Gulf, 60, 000 American soldiers are
already in the Gulf, and thousands of British soldiers are on their
way.
"There
were half a million people on the streets of London on the 28th of
September, and there will be more than half a million on the streets
of London on the 15th of February to demonstrate against war," he
stressed.
"But
as the Iraqi women have often said to me: where are the Arabs, where
are the Arab demonstrations, where are the million demonstrators in
Cairo, in Damascus, in Casablanca?" Galloway lamented.
Addressing
Arab governments, Galloway said that he will not even ask them to send
their armies to defend Iraq just as many of them did in 1991 to defend
Kuwait.
"But
I say to the government of Egypt and all the governments of the Arab
world, at least, at least, organize your people. You organize
demonstrations. You put the millions on the streets of the Arab
capitals to show the British and American governments what the gates
of hell will look like," he said.
"If
you are seriously frightened, angry, opposed to what the British and
American governments are planning to do, then show it. Do for once
what your own people would like you to do, what, if there was any
democracy, your people would demand that you do, and that is to
mobilize the people of your country in defense of the people of
Iraq," Galloway underlined.
"I
speak as someone who works in the building where Sykes and Picot
committed the original sin against the people of the Arab world, and
in the same building in which I work, the same imperialists are
currently sitting down on the same tables and planning the Sykes-Picot
II," he warned.
"The
puppet government the west intends to install in Iraq has made its
first decision even before it is formed, namely, to privatize Iraq’s
oil industry and to hand over the wealth of the Arab to the foreign
companies and governments, and that is what at stake here,"
Galloway cautioned.
"There
are enough puppet presidents and corrupt kings in the Arab world. So
don’t let them install another puppet president or corrupt king in
Baghdad, stand up before it is too late," he asserted.
Addressing
the British foreign secretary, Galloway said that Jack Straw
aggravated the crisis Wednesday, December 18, by saying, before U.N.
chief inspector Hans Blix had even reported to the U.N. Security
Council, that Iraq’s weapons declaration was an "obvious
falsehood".
"Well
Mr. Straw, your government knows a thing or two about 'obvious
falsehoods'. Your government is now in the British public mind
characterized by whole successions of 'obvious falsehoods',"
Galloway charged.
He
referred to the dossier about Iraq’s weapons recently produced by
the British government as "a pop fiction, a weapon of mass
deception."
"In
that dossier, you made allegation after allegation about site after
site every single one of which has turned out to be an 'obvious
falsehood'. Every place you mentioned that has been visited by the
inspectors has been found to be empty of the things you said were in
there."
"Then
there was the 'obvious falsehood' of your second dossier, in which you
alleged, amongst other things, the inherently improbable story that
the son of the Iraqi president personally tortured the Iraqi football
team at half time of a game to make them play better in the second
half….you published this in your dossier but FIFA, the international
football authorities, told you that they have investigated this and
found it to be an 'obvious falsehood'," Galloway averred.
"And
then the most embarrassing of all, and I don’t want to dwell on
private grief, there are the 'obvious falsehoods' which the spin
doctors in 10 Downing Street have been telling for the last 21 days
about the private business practices of the prime minister’s wife,
family and advisors, some of whom turned out to be multiple conmen
much practiced in the art of 'obvious falsehood'.
"So
Mr. Straw, the problem for you is that as far as the rest of the world
is concerned most people believe that the 'obvious falsehoods' are
coming from you and not from Iraq," Galloway said.
In
explaining why Britain is always backing U.S. policies, Galloway said
that when he was a small child at school, he came home and told his
grandfather that the teacher had said that Britain had an empire so
great that on it the sun never set, and his grandfather answered
that’s because God would never trust the British in the dark.
"And
the British state is behaving as it is for the reason that the
scorpion stings, the scorpion stings because it is a scorpion and the
imperialist power behave like an imperialist power because that is
what it is," he underlined.
Galloway,
who was born in 1954, is a left wing opponent of privatization and of
nuclear weapons, and has previously been arrested while protesting
outside naval bases.
However,
his major political interests, and the ones which cause the most
controversy, are international, where he is a self-styled friend of
oppressed countries and opponent of Western imperialism.
He
has fought a long campaign against sanctions on Iraq, and was an
adamant opponent of the 1991 Gulf War and the military action in
Afghanistan.
In
2002, he caused the first ever suspension of Westminster Hall when he
refused to withdraw his allegation that foreign minister Ben Bradshaw,
who had described him as "a mouthpiece to the Iraqi regime over
many years", was "a liar".
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