TIP OF THE HAT TO GEORGE GALLOWAY

 

LAST WEEK in Britain saw the election of veteran politician George Galloway to the House of Commons, after an absence of several years. The newly minted Workers Party MP returned to join the 350-member lower house of Parliament on the 2 March by-election as the representative for the borough of Rochdale, a town in Greater Manchester, England.  This is welcome news. George has been a staunch supporter of worker’s rights and a fighter for the rights of oppressed and downtrodden people in the British Isles and in other countries. His principled stance against the Iraq war in 2003 got him bounced from Tony Blair’s Labour Party. For years, he has spoken out against the murderous lawfare regime perpetrated by the British and American governments against Wikileaks’ publisher Julian Assange.

MOST RECENTLY on his MOATS (“Mother of All Talk Shows”) podcast and in other venues, he advocated for Palestinian rights and condemned, in the strongest terms, Israel’s current rampage in Gaza, calling it a war crime and genocide. [It should be remembered that the International Court of Justice in The Hague is currently adjudicating South Africa’s charge that Israel, in its wholly disproportionate response to the 7 October attacks by Hamas fighters last year, is acting with “genocidal intent” and may be found culpable in the war crime of genocide. Stay tuned. Ed.]

During the recent by-election, Galloway’s Workers Party* had as major planks in his campaign support for the Palestinians and demands for Britain to call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. These principled positions  resonated with voters in Rochdale who provided George with a “thumping” majority vote count.

HE is an iconoclast whose gift for oratory makes his a formidable voice in challenging the status quo. His time in office as a ‘stinging gadfly’ may well energize others opposed to the policies of the mainstream parties to take up the gauntlet in the coming general elections as either Workers Party candidates or else Independents. George calls the Conservative and Labour parties, who hold the majority of seats in the House of Commons, “two cheeks of the same backside.” Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who will probably be PM later this year, offers a platform that is basically interchangeable with the ruling Tories. Starmer is as good a neo-con globalist and effete elite as any of 'em.  

At 69, Galloway has made a five-year commitment to represent his constituency in addition to building up his Workers Party as a viable alternative to the mainstream political parties whose policies and politics have moved far from their remit of serving the people of Britain.

  

A FINAL POINT that underscores how worried the ruling class is about Galloway’s by-election victory can be seen in PM Rishi Sunak’s⁺ hastily arranged statement outside of 10 Downing Street (the prime minister’s official residence and a place where important announcements like general election calls or national emergencies are made) during which he predicted that Galloway’s win would stir up public sentiment and cause outbreaks of pro-Palestinian demonstrations and marches. Imagine! People protesting their government’s policies in a democracy! Who do the riffraff think they are? However, some commentators worry Sunak is signalling there will be a tightening of restrictions around the right to protest and increased use of new censorship laws. But for now it's enough the out-of-touch PM comes across as a complete twat to many watching his late night, 2 March performance.

A SECOND BIT of good news for a change in these increasingly troubled and FUBAR times is the resignation¹ from the U.S. State Department of Acting Secretary of State Victoria “Cookie” Nuland. This penultimate neo-con has served under several Presidents and has a resumé as bloody as any “chicken hawk” warmonger in Washington. She oversaw the Ukraine ‘file’ since 2014, and was responsible for advising and promoting the arming of Ukraine to use that country and its people as a ‘battering ram’ against Russia.

2014 Maiden Square, Kiev.

SHE, more than any other political apparatchik in Washington has been responsible for the debacle in Ukraine, with the goal—regime change in Russia—nearly in her grasp. Earlier, she served in the Bush administration as “principal deputy foreign policy adviser” to Vice President Dick Cheney and played an influential role during the Iraq war. She served as U.S. Ambassador to NATO, where she mobilized European support to send NATO troops into Afghanistan, among her other accomplishments. A busy bee has been she. Incidentally, she's married to the arch neo-con Robert Kagan who is sometimes referred to as the “godfather” of neoconservatism in America.  Their pillow talk must be terrifying! Just sayin'. Don’t let the screen door hit you on the way out, Vicki!

 

Cheers, Jake. ______________________________________

 

* Galloway founded the party in 2019, disenchanted as he was with the direction the British Labour Party, his political home for many years, was taking. He is currently the sole member of the Workers Party in Parliament.

 

+ Or as George describes him: “Little Rishi Sunak, the diminutive, diminished, and degraded politician at the fag end of his career." And when asked to comment on Sunak’s labeling his by-election win in Rochdale “beyond alarming”, George said he could care less what the PM had to say, that he “despised” the Prime Minister, and anyone who was unhappy with his victory in the traditional Labour riding will just have to “suck it up”. Not bad for an opening salvo! Good luck to George!

 

 1. Just why she is going is food for speculation. Her replacement as #2 at the State Department is Kurt Campbell, who's area of expertise is the Indo-Pacific region, which suggests the U.S. is getting ready to dump Ukraine and concentrate on the Big Enchilada, as far as they're concerned, namely China. Ukraine is becoming yesterday's news, so move over Ms. Nuland.

 

 

 

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