George Galloway sneers at Iran protestors

It is said of George Galloway that there is not a tyrant or repressive regime he will not embrace with open arms. Not content in the past to embrace Saddam Hussein (although to be fair so did Donald Rumsfeld!), deny the Tianamen Square killings he now has some unpleasant things to say about the situation in Iran:

In his Daily Record column on June 15 (Titled You can count on the fact election was fair) he says:

There are grounds for being surprised at the result of the Iranian election. Even grounds for being disappointed. But there are absolutely no grounds for the cats' chorus of criticism and allegations now emanating from some quarters after the cookie crumbled the wrong way....

I have been more closely interested than normal in this poll. I present two weekly shows for Iranian-owned Press TV. As such, I know that, uniquely for a developing country, the Iranian broadcast media went to extraordinary lengths to be fair to all four presidential candidates. ...

This massive exercise took place without trouble of any kind - the polling stations were kept open longer than required to facilitate the huge lines of people outside. Indeed, that's one of the reasons I discount the opposition complaints.When a candidate is reduced to protesting that too MANY people were allowed to vote, you know he's in trouble.The counting, too, was awesome. And, by the way, there were observers from all four camps present throughout these stages.

Although the western media largely did the usual thing - not straying far from their five-star hotels, talking to those who would happily talk to them and especially if they spoke English - it's clear they mistook the plusher parts of the capital for the country at large. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad commands the loyalty of the poor, the working class and the rural voters whose development he has championed.

He lives like them, looks like them - he's never worn a suit since becoming president - and there's more of them than the English speaking more liberal elites now on the streets demonstrating.

It will soon fizzle out.

This election almost mirrors the class composition of the recent polls in Venezuela. President Hugo Chavez has exactly the same friends in his country. And the same enemies. I've said many times that Ahmadinejad's comments about the Holocaust are a disgrace. His rhetoric can be ugly and he does not play well in Peoria, the mid-west weather vane here in the US where I am at present.

But he is the president of an important country and we'll just have to accept it.

So presumably in Galloway World the protestors are salon liberals, malcontents and enemies of the Islamic paradise . Or perhaps George is crying in anticipation of the possible fall of another beloved repressive state (Remember his quote “I think the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life” )

Well it seems that things have NOT fizzled out so soon. There is a groundswell for change in Iran and to call that a cat’s chorus is an utter insult.

Sadly I don’t expect that the protests will bring about the sort of changes that many hope for but they deserve our unreserved support.

Galloway on the other hand can go f%&k himself.

Hat tip to Harry's Place