[Marxism] Nailing Cooper and Palast

[Louis Proyect]

Counterpunch, October 5, 2005
Cooper and Palast: Liberal Hatchetmen
Doing the Right Wing's Dirty Work

By ALAN MAASS

It was no surprise when Christopher Hitchens and his fellow neo-cons 
slandered British antiwar leader George Galloway during his North American 
speaking tour in September. But some of the ugliest attacks on Galloway 
came from liberals--namely, journalist Greg Palast and LA Weekly 
commentator Marc Cooper.

These hatchet jobs, directed at the best-known antiwar figure in Britain, 
were obviously designed to discourage people from turning out to hear 
Galloway speak.

But they were also about something more--trying to impose political 
conformity on the antiwar movement by attempting to marginalize a figure 
from the left, in particular, on the question of how the U.S. occupation 
has been opposed in Iraq.

For his part, Palast began his potty-mouthed outbursts with discredited 
allegations about Galloway's relationship to the former Iraqi regime of 
Saddam Hussein, as well as the Miriam Appeal, an organization that Galloway 
co-founded to oppose the United Nations sanctions against Iraq responsible 
for the deaths of more than half a million children under the age of five.

Palast didn't bother with facts. On the contrary, he claimed at one point 
that the British Charity Commission's investigation of the Miriam Appeal 
"excoriated" Galloway for missing funds. The opposite is the case. "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," the 
commission's director of operations, Simon Gillespie, told reporters last year.

Both Palast and Cooper also distorted Galloway's record to claim that he 
has made "deadly anti-abortion threats" (Galloway's actual position is that 
he is "personally opposed" to abortion, but agrees that women have the 
right to choose for themselves) and is an anti-gay bigot (strangely, this 
"bigot" voted in favor of gay rights in Britain's parliament).

Palast, anyway, seems to have lost interest once his smears were launched 
into cyberspace. After Galloway responded to his charges with a public 
statement--posted on the CounterPunch and ZNet Web sites, and 
elsewhere--the once outraged journalist was silent. Visitors to Palast's 
Web site won't find one word about Galloway's reply to the charges against 
him. They will, however, discover that (note the order) "Palast and Cindy 
Sheehan" were scheduled to speak at the Operation Ceasefire concert during 
the September 24 protests in Washington.

full: http://www.counterpunch.com/