Palast's palimpsest. posted by Richard Seymour

Greg Palast is, without a doubt, a brilliant investigative journalist. The skill with which he has exposed corporate malfeasance, Florida vote-rigging and New Labour's sucking up to the rich has been a joy to read. Witty and informative, hated by the Right, he's a guy to take seriously. Or so I had thought.

Here, Palast goes off on one about Galloway, citing from the usual catalogue of charges and slanders from the liberal warmongers and miniscule sectarian grouplets. Like I say, Palast is - whatever else he is not - an investigative journalist. So, judge for yourself why he gets it so profoundly wrong on the following three accounts.

1. The title. He invites readers into his screed with the following words: 'GALLOWAY: DEADLY ANTI-ABORTION THREATS FROM REPUBLICAN'S FAVORITE "LEFTIST"'. Note that not a single word of Galloway's is adduced to support the thesis that he has issued "deadly anti-abortion threats" of any kind. This is for the perfectly excellent pragmatic reason that Galloway has issued no such threats. There is also the intriguing suggestion that Galloway is a 'favourite' among Republicans - which would possibly explain why they singled him out in 'investigations' as part of an unsuccessful effort to discredit the antiwar movement.

2. The claim that Galloway endorsed the death threats against Salman Rushdie at the Edinburgh Fringe some weeks back. Here is how The Guardian reported his remarks:

Mr Galloway, MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, said TV executives had to be "very sensitive about people's religion" and if broadcasters did not show sufficient sensitivity they "had to deal with the consequences".
He said: "You have to be aware if you do [offend people's beliefs] you will get blowback. You should do it very carefully, especially if you are a public service broadcaster."

Palast reassembles those remarks on the basis of what Salman Rushdie apparently said (to whom is unclear) to expostulate that this was an endorsement of the fatwah issued by Ayatollah Khomeini. However, I think you may have noticed, even if Mr Palast has not, that there is a considerable difference between urging sensitivity and advocating killing for God.

3. The charge that Galloway has a 'record' of opposing a woman's right to choose in parliament:

Add this endorsement of killing for God to Galloway's notorious opposition in Parliament to a woman's right to choose abortion, and you get yourself a British Pat Robertson.

The first thing to make clear is that Galloway has not voted in parliament on a woman's right to choose. An investigative journalist might have been able to find this out straightforwardly enough, by checking his voting record. (Incidentally, would a 'British Pat Robertson' vote in favour of extending gay rights or denounce the bigoted Keep the Clause campaign ran by Scottish tycoon and union-buster Brian Souter? Or break with Cardinal Winning, someone he had been friends with, over the latter's bigoted outbursts against gays?) Galloway has, however, explained that "I am not opposed to a woman's right to choose". Again, it might well have occurred to you that saying "I am not opposed to a woman's right to choose" is not quite the same thing as uttering "deadly anti-abortion threats".

Now, elsewhere, Palast makes an astonishing series of charges about the Mariam Appeal, which was investigated by the Charities Commission, who according to Palast "excoriated [Galloway] for failing to record where [an alleged missing million] came from and where it went". Here are the full findings of the Charities Commission, which Palast insists he has read: Mariam Appeal findings. I urge you to find a single reference to an alleged missing million dollars, for I cannot. I am struggling even to find a word of excoriation. Palast is certain that "nearly a million dollars can't be accounted for", and cites the findings of the Charities Commission as his source - yet the source does not say what he claims it does. The director of the Charities Commision did say that:

The commission's thorough inquiry found no evidence to suggest that the large amounts of money given to the Mariam Appeal were not properly used.

So, from one million dollars misused - some paid to Galloway's wife, according to Palast as part of 'emergency payments' - we find with a simple scan of his source, zilch misused. Palast could be relying on the forged documents adduced by the Senate sub-committee. But I can find no mention of a missing $1 million from the Mariam Appeal there. He might be relying on other forged documents, but the sum mentioned there is $10 million - and, as I say, those documents were forged. Or what the Senate subcommittee called the "seemingly forged documents" that landed the Telegraph in such trouble, but the sum mentioned there was $375,000 a year. Or he may have some new ones of his own, who knows? There seems to be a real market for forged documents about George Galloway. The total funds raised by the Mariam Appeal amount to £1 million. Could it be this figure which is confusing Palast? And where Palast claims that Galloway diverted most of $1 million that allegedly cannot be accounted for to 'emergencies' such as a payment for his wife, the Charities Commission was precisely able to account for this payment and indicate that it was a salary payment made to all executives of the Appeal, and further "accepts that none of the Executive Committee acted in bad faith and that the services provided were of value to the Appeal".

Greg Palast is a brilliant investigative journalist. Yet he cannot in this case bring himself to read his own sources, check his own claims, back up his own assertions. It is a remarkable slither into a journalistic swamp. The Beautiful Soul leftism manifest there is largely a result of weakness, not strength. Ideologically, what it represents is capitulation to the Right. As another blogger once explained, these creatures will:

endlessly plead before an imaginary tribunal, packed with neo-cons/ assorted members of the Right. This tribunal tirelessly, and with the immense ideological and economic resources at its disposal, accuses the Left of predictable crimes and complicities. It's principle aim is to exonerate itself before this tribunal by placing before it endless examples of Left-wing venality. Secondly, it seeks to occupy and re-tread a terrain of argument mapped out for it in advance by the Right. It scuttles obediently back and forth before the points of this circumscribed territory, reiterating that this is indeed the correct and proper terrain.