Excerpts from George Galloway Interview

On Guantamo Bay

Well, it’s an utterly illegal process which is being followed. People are being taken, in some cases from third countries. One of the British citizens, for example, was taken from the Gambia. Others have been taken from Pakistan. Others still from, from Afghanistan. They’re taken by force, drugs forcibly injected into them, hooded, chained, and taken to a cage in the tropics where by all accounts they’re being kept in conditions that you wouldn’t keep a dog in in your country or mine. And if you did, you’d be, you’d be had up for cruelty by the authorities. …So I’m afraid Guantanamo is a blot on the landscape and the fact that the United States occupies it in Cuba without Cuba’s agreement is just the icing on the cake.

On the Patriot Act(s)

Well I’m afraid I’m an advocate of the great Dr. Johnson, the English man of letters who said that patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel. He didn’t mean, of course, the patriotism which is a noble, genuine love for what’s best about your country and its beauty and its achievements and so on, but those who wrap themselves in flags and blow the tinny trumpet of patriotism as a means of fooling the people. As a means of getting them to fall in behind the colours and march off to ignoble wars; wars of conquest, wars of aggression, wars for exploitation.

And that’s what I think this Patriot Act is all about. It’s about fooling the American people into believing that if you just arm the state with enough fly swats you’ll be able to whack away all the beasts that are coming your way. But the truth is, these mosquitoes are coming out of a swamp; a very real swamp of grievance, of bitterness and hatred at our injustice and at the policies that we are following. And unless we drain that swamp by reversing the policies of injustice that have germinated this threat then it doesn’t matter how many Patriot Acts you pass, it doesn’t matter how many fly swats you hand out, how many mosquito nets you wrap yourself in, you’re not going to be able to stop them hurting us again.