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.

 

 

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE JULIAN ASSANGE!

 

  

  

CRINGE PIC: FEBRUARY, 2024 MUNICH SECURITY CONFERENCE. ZELENSKY AND 'FRIEND'.

 

 

"Why doesn’t he hug me? Hold me? We were so close once. How I miss his manly musk, his parfum, his soft hands and gentle kisses. Instead, a handshake, firm and unwelcoming, and a grimace upon his face, his once-eager lips etched in harsh line and shadow. And his eyes do not meet my gaze. I am here! See me! Are we not brothers? Nay, more than. And are we not here in this great German city of Munich to give me more money to fight Russia, to defeat the Bear before he conquers all?

So many here are like him, sad and reluctant, so like my sweet macarons with greetings that are more like farewells... 

They smile and make promises but their words are lost in the wind. I feel a chill and fear that a great northern gale will soon be upon me."

 

RANT: ROUND AND ROUND AND

 

I THINK ALL OF US have seen the video or read accounts of the death of U.S. Air Force senior airman 25-year-old Aaron Bushnell in Washington, D.C. last Sunday. He committed suicide in protest of his country’s involvement in the military actions currently being carried out by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) in Gaza. He live-streamed his “extreme act of protest” in front of the Israeli embassy, stating he would “no longer be complicit in genocide.” Moments later he doused himself with gasoline and set himself afire. He succumbed to his injuries later in hospital.

IN A POST made earlier on social media, Aaron made a short statement:

 

“Many of us would like to ask ourselves what would I do if I was alive during slavery or the Jim Crow south, or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide? And the answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”

 

HIS ACT of self-immolation* was the supreme sacrifice. He gave his life to shock us from our moral lethargy, to make us see the ongoing bombardment of the Gaza Strip by Israel for what it is—a war crime, one the International Court of Justice (ICJ) states “could amount to genocide”. And over the coming months, and perhaps years, the World Court, as the UN institution is also called, will adjudicate on this charge brought forward by South Africa last December. Meanwhile, the genocide of Palestinians continues.

 

👉Over 30,000 have died and 70,000 injured since Israel began its military operation in Gaza on 8 October 2023. Thousands more are dead under the rubble, their remains yet to be recovered.

 

👉More than 80% of the Palestinian population has been internally displaced by Israeli forces with 1.9 million Gazans crowded into the south Gaza city of Rafah alongside the Egyptian border. Nearly 50% of all structures in Gaza have been destroyed by Israeli bombardments, of those nearly 65% are residential buildings.

Israel is making the Palestinians homeless, their urban centers are turned to rubble, all manner of infrastructure is destroyed, their lands made unlivable, and soon they will be stateless if Israel gets its way (and that seems likely), forcing 2.3 million Gazans into the walled refugee zone being constructed on the Egyptian side of the border.

 

👉Ethnic cleansing, deliberate starvation, bombing civilian populations, these are war crimes. How else can we describe them? The violence Israel has unleashed against the Palestinians in response to the 7 October attacks by Hamas on the nearby kibbutzim and Israeli military stations is so disproportionate that calling it genocidal seems appropriate.  

 

👉Israeli claims that a half-dozen UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) staff out of 12,000 in Gaza were involved with Hamas during the 7 October raids into Israel. No evidence of any merit was forthcoming, yet several Western countries, including the U.S., Germany, the EU, and Canada, (among others) took the claim made by Israeli officials at face value and immediately suspended funding for the relief agency before a proper investigation could be launched. This will cause UNRWA to shortly be unable to provide food, medicine, and supplies to the besieged population. It is the largest and most experienced relief organization in Gaza, and plays a critical role in food distribution. Already, over 500,000 Gazans face “catastrophic hunger”. The Gaza Health Ministry reports that six children in northern Gaza have died from dehydration and malnutrition. Several hundred thousand Palestinians remain in the destroyed north with little food or access to potable water.

 

👉Since its founding in 1948, Israel has received 158-billion-dollars from the United States in economic and military aid. In its recent MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) with the United States, dated 2019 through to 2028, Israel will receive over three billion dollars annually plus an additional five billion in missile stocks replenishment. Since the outbreak of hostilities last October, $14.1 billion in further aid has been pledged to shore up Israel’s stockpile of weapons, though this tranche of monies is waiting for congressional approval.

TO BE CLEAR, without U.S. support, Israel could not maintain its siege of Gaza nor undertake military operations in northern Israel against Hezbollah. Israel depends on the U.S. to maintain its military dominance in the region.  Joe Biden could stop the bloodshed and establish a ceasefire with a phone call.

Canada, it should be noted, has not cancelled its own unspecified military exports to Israel, post-October 7, though PM Trudeau says they are military equipment of the “non-lethal” variety. So...that’s okay. I guess?

 

👉The National Council of Muslim Canadians has sent a memo to all sitting MPs stating they will not be welcome in their mosques “until they call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, demand restoration of funding for the UN's aid agency, and condemn what they call Israel's "war crimes." So, there will be no campaigning or speechifying for Canadian federal politicians (including PM Trudeau) in Muslim places of worship until they collectively grow a pair, say "no!" to genocide, and act how 21^st Century parliamentarians should act. 😂[Don’t hold your breath. Ed.]

 

👉The Muslim holy month of Ramadan starts soon (March 10 to April 9). Israeli cabinet minister and former defense minister Benny Gantz said earlier this month that if the Israeli hostages were not freed by the start of Ramadan, Rafah will be invaded in full force. Where will the Palestinians go when the bombs start falling, again?

 

Aaron Bushnell died an American patriot. He sacrificed the long years of life that could have been. No longer able to condone America's role in providing military aid to a country that was patently committing genocide upon a subject people, he could not look away, and what he saw broke his heart. He saw the carnage his country's bombs and missiles inflicted daily upon the Palestinians. He saw also how those same bombs and missiles wounded the soul of his nation and the spirit of his people. And so, he chose a different road, a harder one, a road that few of us would dare journey on. In doing so he has made our journeying that much easier.

 

Cheers, Jake. ___________________________________________

 

Incidentally, I wasn't going to put in this in because airman Bushnell's sacrifice is  so terrible and ennobling that I didn't want to detract from it, but it's part and parcel of the scene Aaron live-streamed  last Sunday. As he was burning and yelling (his last words before he began to scream in pain were "Free Palestine!"), two guards from the consulate rushed to the scene. In the video, one appears to be trying to put out the flames with a fire extinguisher while another guard (or Washington police officer) points a gun at Aaron as he is engulfed in flames. The first guard is reported to have said "I don't need guns, I need fire extinguishers!" I assume the second guard was in shock and just didn't know what else to do. But the irony on display as we witness a guard point a gun at a dying, burning man who is seen by the guard only as a security threat, is utterly breathtaking.

 

* In December, last year, a woman with a Palestinian flag set herself on fire in front of the Israeli consulate in Atlanta, Georgia.  The consul general responded with what I thought was a rather churlish comment:

 

"We are saddened to learn of the self-immolation at the entrance to the office building," the consul general of Israel to the southeastern U.S., Anat Sultan-Dadon, told ABC News. "It is tragic to see the hate and incitement toward Israel expressed in such a horrific way. The sanctity of life is our highest value."

 

She assumes the protestor (who suffered third-degree burns but lived) was full of hate towards Israel. I don’t know about that. If you were full of hate, you’d be more likely to throw Molotov cocktails at the consulate doors rather than douse yourself with gasoline and lighting a match. I guess if Sultan-Dadon showed an ounce of compassion for the protestor, she might be forced to reevaluate her own feelings about the people of Gaza and what her government is doing to them. 

[Jake can't discuss the "sanctity of life" comment made by Sultan-Dadon because he's maxed out his irony quotient for this post. Ed.]

 

 

SAIGON, VIETNAM, 1963

 

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE JULIAN ASSANGE!

 

QUOTES: JULIAN ASSANGE

 

"KNOWLEDGE HAS ALWAYS FLOWED UPWARDS TO BISHOPS AND KINGS, NOT DOWN TO SERFS AND SLAVES."

--JULIAN ASSANGE