Not so rapey after all: Sexual assault investigation into Julian Assange dropped

 

My original piece on this matter was an attempt to cut through all the disinformation about Assange at the time based on the claims repeated in the mainstream media that Julian Assange was up on a sexual assault charge having been accused by two of his amours. I now have no qualms acknowledging he was fitted up for revealing the homicidal activities of leading governments. Furthermore, it transpires that his accusers had gone to the authorities to demand HIV tests, not to get him charged with rape. It's wrong to attack the women as they too were being fitted up. The horrific news that the Home Secretary has signed off on his extradition to the country that planned his assassination for doing his journalistic job makes me even more angry that some of us were suckered into this for even a minute.

It has been reported that they asked police to track him Assange down, not because he did anything illegal to them but in order for him to provide a blood sample to ensure he did not have HIV/AIDS.
Police are said to have advised the women that Assange could not be forced to undergo such a test without criminal charges being brought against him, before advising them that the matter would be referred to a prosecutor – a referral which many believe occurred solely due to the fact Assange was wanted by the United States for leaking classified information, including those of atrocities committed by the US defence force.
The gist of their criticism was that the efforts to extradite Assange were not because he committed sexual assault, but in order to make it easier for the United States to get their hands on him.

Edit: Sidney Criminal Lawyers 2019: Sexual Assault Investigation into Julian Assange Dropped

* * *

 Read the transcripts of the police interviews here. Thanks to Mark Anthony France for the tip.

George Galloway wins Bradford West: Labour should learn lesson

Whatever you think of George Galloway, the main parties should take heed. This is the public putting a rocket up your bum. It's no use dismissing this arrogantly as the victory of "communalism", "oh it was just the Muslim vote", and all the other whining I've seen and heard since he won his astonishing 36 per cent swing in last night's Bradford West by-election for the Respect party. The voters have noted that the Tories are emboldened in their attacks on every aspect of life for anybody who isn't a top earner while the creepy Lib Dems facilitate their pillage and Labour flails pathetically.

Yes, he has a monstrous ego. Yes, he sues at the drop of a mention of his affiliations or parts of his past. Yes, he wore a cock-hugging leotard, aired his sinister submissive side when he role-played a cat with Rula Lenska on Big Brother and was a beastly bully to the two young contestants on the show. All that is true.

But he defends the Palestinians articulately and with gusto — his performances in the US and against the awful Sky newsreader were impressive. And he is now saying what most of us are saying. While Labour can barely muster the energy to pretend they care about the damage being done to British society, Galloway provides a voice, an analysis and a willingness to fight this corner where no others will.

If Labour doesn't like Galloway then the solution is easy. Start doing your job so Galloway doesn't have to.

UPDATE: In one predominantly white middle-class ward, 900 votes went to Respect while only 40 went to Labour.

Sunday 8th April 2012 — Patrick Coburn in the Independent:

The Economist, after recording that Mr Galloway is "a hate figure for the British establishment", claims he won his seat "mostly by touting his opposition to the war in Afghanistan." (Note the use of the loaded word "touting".) But what should be more relevant to current British politics than the Afghan war where 407 British soldiers have been killed and a small British army of 9,500 is still fighting? It is a conflict in which men and women have died and are dying in vain: their intervention has achieved nothing; the Taliban are not being defeated and this should long have been self-evident.

Eurozone Madness: the other story

He may not have been my favourite Celebrity Big Brother contestant, to put it mildly, but George Galloway writes a stunning piece that nails the argument about the Eurozone crisis, little of which has been aired in the mainstream press.

It appeared in the Morning Star and I have it via Socialist Unity but I'm posting the whole thing here as we need to know these things.

This crisis is a time to demand the impossible
Friday 11 November 2011 by George Galloway
Shakespeare would have had little difficulty in relating the drama unfolding on the European and global stage.

The troupe of players from the political class have their "entrances and exits" until they reach this latest scene - a "second childishness and mere oblivion; Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."

Toothless, wilfully blind, gaudy and impotent sums up the Cannes summit meeting of the richest 20 countries last week and the ongoing response of political leaders to the crisis engulfing the eurozone and the wider global economy.

Behind the talking heads and cliched headlines lies a barely spoken truth - the whole model of managing global capitalism of the last three decades is breaking down as the financial crisis unleashed with the collapse of Lehman Brothers three years ago morphs and mutates from one geographical or economic area to another. There is no end in sight.

In the case of Europe, it is a 60-year project of co-operation among the elites at the expense of the mass of people that is coming unstuck.

Through the fraying seams are poking the heads of monsters from the last century which we were told were safely shrouded and buried.

For while toothless when it comes to halting the crisis itself, the business elites and their acolytes across the Establishment political spectrum have their claws out and sharpened, slashing into every gain working people have made since the hungry '30s.

Half of young people in Spain are unemployed. In Britain, it's already a record at one million and set to rise much further, not least as the decades-long expansion of university education goes into reverse.

Every aspect of life in Greece is already being lopped and squeezed. The predictable result, according to the prestigious medical journal the Lancet, is that people are dying, more of them and earlier.

The bailout of Greece is anything but. It is like a payday loan of the type that more and more people in Britain are being forced into.

Witness the proliferation of loan-shark outfits popping up in abandoned shops on run-down high streets across the country. No sooner is the money received at exorbitant interest rates than it is handed straight to corporate creditors and banks.

According to the plan for Greece - the plan, remember - the debt-burden is to rise to twice economic output as the austerity measures sink the country into deeper slump.

In 10 years it's supposed to fall back to 120 per cent. That's the level now in Italy, which has just plunged into the eye of the storm.

No wonder no-one really believes the austerity plan will work, even in its own terms.

But still, like some demented general in the bloodbath of the first world war, they press on, hurling men, women, children and the social fabric over the top to be shredded by murderous machine-gun fire.

Perhaps in years to come they'll concoct an equivalent of the poppy to mark another fallen generation. The hypocrites and hirelings can wear it ever larger - maybe chrysanthemums would suit them.

And with the pain inflicted on the millions by the millionaires, come all the old elitism, scapegoating and chauvinism.

Instead of German soldiers bayoneting Belgian nuns, we have the despicable lie that the common people of southern Europe are feckless scroungers who have brought this all on themselves.

Murdoch may be on the ropes, but Channel 4 stepped in, like a tag-team partner, to beat up on the suffering people of Greece this week.

"Greek for a Week" could have bubbled up straight from the Wapping sewer.

Its premise, never questioned, was that the average Greek is lazy, coddled by generous state provision and expecting handouts from the rest of us. Another devious Johnny-foreigner.

In truth, Greeks are at the top of the league table for working hours in Europe and at the bottom when it comes to pay.

The people protected by the state are the oligarchs, the shipping magnates, media barons and associated bankers. Just like here really.

If anyone you know is tempted by this xenophobic drivel, remind them that welfare dependency and pampered public servants are exactly the insults hurled by the government and its friends here in Britain at disabled people, the unemployed, and the nurses, hospital porters, school caretakers and staff who are set to strike later this month against a pensions robbery greater than anything even contemplated by the unlamented Robert Maxwell of 20 years ago.

There are other similarities too which any opposition worthy of the name would be skewering David Cameron on every day.

The Greek oligarchs - the 1 per cent who lord it over us - are not the wealth creators.

They are sucking up everything they can and investing just 7 per cent of output back into the economy.

The rest is being shipped and splashed out in the property market of London's Chelsea and the financial speculation which inflated this crisis in the first place.

That's exactly what the bankers and captains of industry are doing in this country.

Investment in making real things, in infrastructure and in vital services, has plummeted.

Instead, we have more speculation and indulgence on everything from fine wine and property to currencies and lumps of precious metal - as the Christmas bonus bonanza in the City is about to show.

None of the right or centre-left parties, which have in effect converged in a fictitious consensus, are prepared so far to raise the prospect of using the power of government, which after all the bankers all lauded when it came to bailing them out, to force this investment, and therefore economic growth, to take place.

They are not prepared to impinge on the wealth monopoly of big business to invest in the interests of all.

On the contrary, to preserve the system that is failing, they are prepared to restrict the democratic rights of all in the interests of the 1 per cent.

At the time of writing we no longer have an elected prime minister in Greece.

We have a former central banker who has never been elected to anything.

Soon, it seems, we may have a former European Union commissioner as prime minister of Italy.

The Italian president has just appointed Mario Monti a life senator (like a British lord) so he can qualify for the position.

Nero, Caligula and a earlier phase of Roman history spring to mind.

What qualification do these "technocrats" have? They are architects of the order that is collapsing, priests of the god that failed.

They are wedded to the austerity economics and, in the eyes of the IMF/European Central Bank/European Union elite, they are as Thatcher used to say, people like us.

Of course they have no democratic mandate at all. And that's another bonus.

They are not electorally responsive to the people, though the parties that they choose their minister from are.

For the very last thing that the 1 percenters want is for the 99 per cent to have a say over the policies that are ruining the lives of most of them.

That's why outgoing social democrat prime minister George Papandreou came under excoriating pressure for mooting the idea of a referendum on the austerity measures.

He buckled. If ever there was an example of dotage as a second childishness, but without everything, it is the leader of Pasok, a shadow of his father Andreas, who founded the party.

Or as Karl Marx and Frederick Engels observed, all historical personages appear twice, first as tragic giants, second as farcical dwarves - first as the father, then as the son.

The suspension of democratic norms we have become accustomed to should ring alarm bells.

It is social resistance, or the fear of it, that created the political logjam in Greece and Italy.

In that situation, the high priests of globalised capitalism have chosen the most undemocratic of a range of options.

They and others will do so again, unless that resistance can alter the calculus.

They can get away with these manoeuvres, if only temporarily, in part due to the paucity and pusillanimity of traditional social democratic/Labour parties, which have spurned the idea of a big, comprehensive alternative to capitalism red in tooth and claw.

How else can we explain how in Spain next weekend, the sons of Franco in the Tory People's Party are likely to win an election against the outgoing social democrats?

I don't believe it's because the people in Spain want more of the failing capitalist policies.

Many may not see an alternative, but how can they if one is not credibly presented and argued for by those they have historically looked to?

I believe that people are crying out for a big idea, a real one, not bunkum like Cameron's "big society."

That's why the sympathy for the Occupy movement, which goes way beyond the numbers taking part so far, is so great.

It is a sign of people grappling for themselves for a truly democratic and progressive alternative.

And the lack of a radical alternative equal to the scale of the crisis infects everything that Labour says and does.

Just one example - BBC's Question Time this week. On issue after issue Labour's Rachel Reeves failed even to make contact with the ball, let alone put it in the net against a panel that while absurdly right-wing in its composition was hardly fleet of foot, viz the flabby Stephen Pollard at right back.

Forget radicalism, she couldn't even come up with basic social democratic arguments about how private health care is parasitic on the NHS, cherry-picking profitable medical procedures while refusing insurance to the kind of former industrial workers who were doubtless in the Newcastle audience.

The apparent certainties of the age ushered in by Reagan and Thatcher are melting into air.

The left, if we want to have any solidity, has no option but to voice the big alternative and bend every effort to organising around it.

We have resources to draw on. And we have traditions.

As I write, news is breaking of a massive battle at the University of Berkeley in California between occupying students and riot police.

It is a resounding echo of the 1960s movements that were the well-spring of so much that is progressive.

A historical event appearing twice - but this time with all the vigour of its infancy.

It's time again to be realistic and to demand what they tell us is impossible.

Happy 60th Birthday China: Madam Miaow on the Jeremy Vine Show, BBC Radio 2

So there I am, sandwiched between Georges Galloway and Monbiot (sounds positively Sheridanesque, Richard Brinsley, not the other guy) sending birthday greetings to the People's Republic of China on Radio 2's Jeremy Vine Show. They wanted it kept short, around a minute, and in the form of a birthday card with achievements, hopes and fears, etc.

You can listen for seven days here. Scroll halfway along, it's an hour in.

For those unable to tune in, here's mine.

Happy Birthday, China

Happy 60^th birthday, People’s Republic of China. Only another twelve years and you’ll have lasted longer than your Big Brother, the Soviet Union.

Well done. You used to be a decrepit old famine-ridden imperial order, the punchbag of every colonial bully, forcing you to take their opium and biting off chunks of you willy-nilly. But now you’re set to become the world’s Number One superpower. Talk about going from a 10 stone weakling to Charles Atlas. See what a good diet can do for you?

But watch out you don’t go down the same road that they did and DON’T forget your socialist beginnings. The creation of 6,000 billionaires in a decade — mostly the children of the state bureaucrats who once ran the public assets now owned by the Little Emperors — is NOT a good sign. I hope you’re keeping tabs on that.

They say you’re the biggest polluter in the world but you’re still less per capita than the US and other G8 economies. And we invented the Industrial Revolution, after all, belching out carbon emissions for 160 years with no let-up in sight.

So quit smoking or at least change to filter tips. Show the world you have the will, the ingenuity and the means to triumph where we’ve failed, and shame us all into catching up.

A last word — it’ s no good sticking your fingers in your ears and going “La, la, la, la, la, can’t hear you,” whenever anyone tells something you don’t want to hear. It’s not big and it’s not clever.

With 4,000 years of civilisation behind you and a good dose of enlightenment philosophers like Marx to pep you up, we expect you to be the ideal synthesis of all that’s best in World thought.

Don’t let us down. And I hope you’ll be kinder to us than we were to you.

Many happy returns.

Love,

Anna

x 

Happy 60th Birthday China: Madam Miaow on the Jeremy Vine Show, BBC Radio 2

So there I am, sandwiched between Georges Galloway and Monbiot (sounds positively Sheridanesque, Richard Brinsley, not the other guy) sending birthday greetings to the People's Republic of China on Radio 2's Jeremy Vine Show. They wanted it kept short, around a minute, and in the form of a birthday card with achievements, hopes and fears, etc.

You can listen for seven days here. Scroll halfway along, it's an hour in.

For those unable to tune in, here's mine.

Happy Birthday, China

Happy 60^th birthday, People’s Republic of China. Only another twelve years and you’ll have lasted longer than your Big Brother, the Soviet Union.

Well done. You used to be a decrepit old famine-ridden imperial order, the punchbag of every colonial bully, forcing you to take their opium and biting off chunks of you willy-nilly. But now you’re set to become the world’s Number One superpower. Talk about going from a 10 stone weakling to Charles Atlas. See what a good diet can do for you?

But watch out you don’t go down the same road that they did and DON’T forget your socialist beginnings. The creation of 6,000 billionaires in a decade — mostly the children of the state bureaucrats who once ran the public assets now owned by the Little Emperors — is NOT a good sign. I hope you’re keeping tabs on that.

They say you’re the biggest polluter in the world but you’re still less per capita than the US and other G8 economies. And we invented the Industrial Revolution, after all, belching out carbon emissions for 160 years with no let-up in sight.

So quit smoking or at least change to filter tips. Show the world you have the will, the ingenuity and the means to triumph where we’ve failed, and shame us all into catching up.

A last word — it’ s no good sticking your fingers in your ears and going “La, la, la, la, la, can’t hear you,” whenever anyone tells something you don’t want to hear. It’s not big and it’s not clever.

With 4,000 years of civilisation behind you and a good dose of enlightenment philosophers like Marx to pep you up, we expect you to be the ideal synthesis of all that’s best in World thought.

Don’t let us down. And I hope you’ll be kinder to us than we were to you.

Many happy returns.

Love,

Anna

x 

Viva Palestina aid convoy in Gaza

Guernica. Twinned with Gaza

I'm not normally a fan of George Galloway but he's done an amazing job getting aid to the Palestinians in Gaza while the world remains mute.

The Viva Palestina convoy of 110 vehicles carrying a million quid in aid, has borne arrest, threat, assault and humiliation, not to mention a near complete press blackout. They've finally achieved their goal and entered Gaza, a splinter of land crushed between the state of Israel and the eastern Mediterranean Sea and inhabited by 400,000 desperate human beings.

The cargo represents a fraction of the resources needed to get the Gazans anywhere near what we think of as normality. But it presents a powerful example that world leaders might follow, and let's the beleaguered population know we're thinking about them.

Well done, Viva Palestina.

Viva Palestina aid convoy in Gaza

Guernica. Twinned with Gaza

I'm not normally a fan of George Galloway but he's done an amazing job getting aid to the Palestinians in Gaza while the world remains mute.

The Viva Palestina convoy of 110 vehicles carrying a million quid in aid, has borne arrest, threat, assault and humiliation, not to mention a near complete press blackout. They've finally achieved their goal and entered Gaza, a splinter of land crushed between the state of Israel and the eastern Mediterranean Sea and inhabited by 400,000 desperate human beings.

The cargo represents a fraction of the resources needed to get the Gazans anywhere near what we think of as normality. But it presents a powerful example that world leaders might follow, and let's the beleaguered population know we're thinking about them.

Well done, Viva Palestina.

Tommy Sheridan on Celebrity Big Brother: the Madness of George II

Oh. My. God. He actually did it. Tommy Sheridan leaps in where angels fear to tread and gets a new bail address.

After MP George Galloway’s performance in the 2006 Celebrity Big Brother season 6, where he took the awesome combat skills he’d wielded to such great effect in the US Senate on the issue of the Iraq war and used them on his sweet young co-contestants, you’d think politicians would give reality shows a wide berth. Shooting minnows with a bazooka is not something the British public considers endearing. Yet. What profit a man that he gain a radio show but lose the respect of the multitudes ?

Is Tommy, a former Scottish Socialist Party MSP and now Solidarity leader, like all politicians — so in love with himself he assumes that to see him is to love him? Well, he’s managed to get me calling him the more familiar “Tommy” instead of “Sheridan”, so there’s a start.

Last night Tommy risked all during a crucial period when he is under investigation for perjury, and entered the CBB house along with ten other “celebrities” (can socialists please unpack that term?). He got the worst reception of all with the crowd booing his entrance. Even the hardened Davina McCall called it, “Harsh”. Considering so few of the Big Brother audience even knows who he is, arousing so raucous a response took some doing.

Davina went on: “He thinks the Big Brother House will be more regimented than prison.” Ooh, there’s a swipe. Ratting on his claim to a “great friendship with George Galloway” probably did him few favours with this particular audience, either.

You have to admire his chutzpah for playing his hand like this with so much at stake. He is probably more desperate than any of the other contestants, and that's in a line-up that includes Ulrika Johnson. Tommy wants a wider audience as a Man of the People. Great. That’s the entire CBB audience who will now be finding out what it is, exactly, the perjury charge is about.

Mind you, he could come out of it better the way Robert Kilroy Silk did from I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here, when he waded through crap and creepy-crawlies for our amusement and never complained. Do we think Tommy will likewise make us proud of him? What helped Kilroy, of course, was the addition of Timmy Mallet, the evil shrimp with the serial killer laugh, against whom even a steaming pile of poo would look good. But I’m not so sure there’s a villain in the CBB house who’ll make him shine.

Rapper Coolio’s temper and sexism (he doesn’t want any “ugly chicks” in the house) might afford Tommy the opportunity to show he has the Right Stuff. But remember how Galloway sucked up to Dennis Rodman in 2006? Will fear of conflict with an alpha male and the urge to male-bond override Tommy’s anti-sexist credentials? (Fnaargh! I just read what I wrote there!) It’ll be down to what’s expedient, what's principled, and won’t that give us lots of fun working out which is which?

Will he acquit himself? They’re all on their best behaviour now but will the dreaded finger-wagging creep into his interactions as conditioned by years on the left? He does have 20 years with Militant, remember.

The game will be to see who reverses expectations. Terry Christian has already impressed me with his observation that our political masters don’t want us participating in politics, and his story about the Lancashire publican during World War II who responded to the US officer’s demand that he instate a colour bar with a sign saying, “Black troops only”, was quite moving. Can Tommy do it? Can he repress the urge to blurt “And another thing, comrades ...”.

George Galloway gives his chum tips for success in The Daily Record: “Don't get involved in any arguments. Although history has absolved me re sleazy Michael Barrymore and sneaky Preston, at the time, I paid the ultimate price - eviction after 22 days.” George, you are delusional, mate. Did you not learn anything?

Poor George suffered mightily and cried all the way to a massive radio show. And now Tommy can count on the support of Galloway’s 800,000 listeners, plus The Daily Record, Tommy being their pin-up, a bit like Lucy Pinder in the Star.

It would be great to see him representing socialism at its best but I have a horrible feeling in my gut that has nothing to do with seasonal over-indulgence.

Madam Miaow says ... If he don’t act shit, you must acquit.

Also blogging on Tommy in CBB, AVPS and Splinty.

Let’s revisit some highlights.
Bewildered by a small puppy
Kitty love




Delicious

Tommy Sheridan on Celebrity Big Brother: the Madness of George II

Oh. My. God. He actually did it. Tommy Sheridan leaps in where angels fear to tread and gets a new bail address.

After MP George Galloway’s performance in the 2006 Celebrity Big Brother season 6, where he took the awesome combat skills he’d wielded to such great effect in the US Senate on the issue of the Iraq war and used them on his sweet young co-contestants, you’d think politicians would give reality shows a wide berth. Shooting minnows with a bazooka is not something the British public considers endearing. Yet. What profit a man that he gain a radio show but lose the respect of the multitudes ?

Is Tommy, a former Scottish Socialist Party MSP and now Solidarity leader, like all politicians — so in love with himself he assumes that to see him is to love him? Well, he’s managed to get me calling him the more familiar “Tommy” instead of “Sheridan”, so there’s a start.

Last night Tommy risked all during a crucial period when he is under investigation for perjury, and entered the CBB house along with ten other “celebrities” (can socialists please unpack that term?). He got the worst reception of all with the crowd booing his entrance. Even the hardened Davina McCall called it, “Harsh”. Considering so few of the Big Brother audience even knows who he is, arousing so raucous a response took some doing.

Davina went on: “He thinks the Big Brother House will be more regimented than prison.” Ooh, there’s a swipe. Ratting on his claim to a “great friendship with George Galloway” probably did him few favours with this particular audience, either.

You have to admire his chutzpah for playing his hand like this with so much at stake. He is probably more desperate than any of the other contestants, and that's in a line-up that includes Ulrika Johnson. Tommy wants a wider audience as a Man of the People. Great. That’s the entire CBB audience who will now be finding out what it is, exactly, the perjury charge is about.

Mind you, he could come out of it better the way Robert Kilroy Silk did from I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here, when he waded through crap and creepy-crawlies for our amusement and never complained. Do we think Tommy will likewise make us proud of him? What helped Kilroy, of course, was the addition of Timmy Mallet, the evil shrimp with the serial killer laugh, against whom even a steaming pile of poo would look good. But I’m not so sure there’s a villain in the CBB house who’ll make him shine.

Rapper Coolio’s temper and sexism (he doesn’t want any “ugly chicks” in the house) might afford Tommy the opportunity to show he has the Right Stuff. But remember how Galloway sucked up to Dennis Rodman in 2006? Will fear of conflict with an alpha male and the urge to male-bond override Tommy’s anti-sexist credentials? (Fnaargh! I just read what I wrote there!) It’ll be down to what’s expedient, what's principled, and won’t that give us lots of fun working out which is which?

Will he acquit himself? They’re all on their best behaviour now but will the dreaded finger-wagging creep into his interactions as conditioned by years on the left? He does have 20 years with Militant, remember.

The game will be to see who reverses expectations. Terry Christian has already impressed me with his observation that our political masters don’t want us participating in politics, and his story about the Lancashire publican during World War II who responded to the US officer’s demand that he instate a colour bar with a sign saying, “Black troops only”, was quite moving. Can Tommy do it? Can he repress the urge to blurt “And another thing, comrades ...”.

George Galloway gives his chum tips for success in The Daily Record: “Don't get involved in any arguments. Although history has absolved me re sleazy Michael Barrymore and sneaky Preston, at the time, I paid the ultimate price - eviction after 22 days.” George, you are delusional, mate. Did you not learn anything?

Poor George suffered mightily and cried all the way to a massive radio show. And now Tommy can count on the support of Galloway’s 800,000 listeners, plus The Daily Record, Tommy being their pin-up, a bit like Lucy Pinder in the Star.

It would be great to see him representing socialism at its best but I have a horrible feeling in my gut that has nothing to do with seasonal over-indulgence.

Madam Miaow says ... If he don’t act shit, you must acquit.

Also blogging on Tommy in CBB, AVPS and Splinty.

Let’s revisit some highlights.
Bewildered by a small puppy
Kitty love




Delicious

How to Get Rich: Tony Blair calls in his debts

The wages of sin is money in the bank if you're a former Prime Minister.

I'm so incandescent I could light up north London after hearing the news that Blair has been given a $1 million per year job at JPMorgan, a US bank worth $1.5 trillion that has profited directly from the Iraq war. This blood money is on top of property deals, lecture circuits and book advances. Let's face it, it has never been in Blair's interest to jaw-jaw instead of war-war. Every cold destructive step he's taken has brought him and his greedy freeloading wife closer to the ranks of the super-rich whose lifestyles they so obviously covet.

I've been saying Blair's bought and paid for for ages. He's lied, toadied and brown-nosed his way to a fortune by way of war after war, and there are plenty of Daddy Warbucks out there grateful for overflowing coffers thanks to Tony.

Is it right that a British Labour Prime Minister should profit from his tenure in this way? He is set to become the richest PM in recent history.

The one thing that would get me cheering MP George Galloway to the rafters is if he did something useful like drag that grinning monster into court for war crimes.

To get Blair a $1 million per year job, it's cost the UK £10 billlion to date, over a thousand dead and injured British soldiers, and over a million dead Iraqis. Is it any wonder so many young people don't feel this is a world fit to live in?

STOP PRESS: JPMorgan has won the bid to run the new Trade Bank of Iraq, the consortium of 13 banks from 13 countries set up by the US in July which will have access to Iraqi oil and trade. Which countries benefit? Think of the governments that sent forces to aid the Allied war and that'll give you a clue.

How to Get Rich: Tony Blair calls in his debts

The wages of sin is money in the bank if you're a former Prime Minister.

I'm so incandescent I could light up north London after hearing the news that Blair has been given a $1 million per year job at JPMorgan, a US bank worth $1.5 trillion that has profited directly from the Iraq war. This blood money is on top of property deals, lecture circuits and book advances. Let's face it, it has never been in Blair's interest to jaw-jaw instead of war-war. Every cold destructive step he's taken has brought him and his greedy freeloading wife closer to the ranks of the super-rich whose lifestyles they so obviously covet.

I've been saying Blair's bought and paid for for ages. He's lied, toadied and brown-nosed his way to a fortune by way of war after war, and there are plenty of Daddy Warbucks out there grateful for overflowing coffers thanks to Tony.

Is it right that a British Labour Prime Minister should profit from his tenure in this way? He is set to become the richest PM in recent history.

The one thing that would get me cheering MP George Galloway to the rafters is if he did something useful like drag that grinning monster into court for war crimes.

To get Blair a $1 million per year job, it's cost the UK £10 billlion to date, over a thousand dead and injured British soldiers, and over a million dead Iraqis. Is it any wonder so many young people don't feel this is a world fit to live in?

STOP PRESS: JPMorgan has won the bid to run the new Trade Bank of Iraq, the consortium of 13 banks from 13 countries set up by the US in July which will have access to Iraqi oil and trade. Which countries benefit? Think of the governments that sent forces to aid the Allied war and that'll give you a clue.

Chewing off your own foot

Well, we were waiting for the San Andreas Fault to give and here it comes.

Ructions within the British far left over the Galloway "Respect" bodge-up are so catastrophic that the Socialist Workers Party is now chewing off its own foot and expelling three players in the inner circle.

Two of them, Nick Wrack and Rob Hoveman (the SWP National Secretary's Mini-Me) have been proactive in this mess from the start when they facilitated the destruction of the Socialist Alliance, the first time the left had worked together in an era, so few will be shedding any tears. The fact that Hoveman, who was extremely personally close to the Cardinal Richelieu leadership, has been purged illustrates just how deeply damaging their policies have been.

The axis running the SWP have screwed over everyone around them in ever-decreasing circles until there’s only them left. Well done, comrades. I hope you feel great standing in the rubble. Admire your handiwork - it’s all yours.

"All Change" for the comrades

I looked from the SWP to George Galloway, and from GG to the SWP, and from the SWP to GG again; but already it was impossible to tell who'd look better in a bacon sandwich.

The real Gorgeous George told the story of the Communist Party member who left a gathering of comrades to go to the loo and returned two minutes later to find that, unbeknownst to him, the party line had changed. We don't know what happened to him but his mates are thriving in the British "Left".

After several years of defending the indefensible, it's all change for the comrades. A recent SWP National Council saw the poor dears turning on a dime at whiplash speeds in response to an ugly bust-up with Galloway, who'd been presented as their Saviour Who Can Do No Wrong. How did it go from GG saying of the SWP's moustache-twirling Cardinal Richelieu and kingmaker, "He made me an MP," to him being unable to even mention the Respect National Secretary by name?

The ancient maxim, politics is showbiz for ugly people, has rarely seemed more apposite. The lure of having their mugs on the telly and their pearls of wisdom quoted in the press proved intoxicating to the Party leadership. Principles were ditched, successful groups wrecked, allies purged just so they could take the "Don't You Know Who I Am" road to oblivion. They even sold their prized printing press. If those whom the gods aim to destroy they first make mad, then the deities did a good job here. Four years into the millennium, one such leader is said to have chastised the organiser of an anti-war conference who hadn't invited them with, "I am the leader of the biggest, most significant social movement this century". The fact that it was a conference for academics and this person wasn't one cut no ice.

But how to deal with inconvenient contradictions? Taking Animal Farm as their model, the Popular Front became "The United Front of a special type". The Socialist Alliance, which formed the spine of the SWP's other project, the Stop The War Coalition, was airbrushed out of history in best Stalinist fashion. Bourgeois businessmen and those driven by their faith became the revolutionaries' best buddies whilst old left allies were written off as "the Left Ghetto."

And George Galloway was hailed as Supreme Being.

All credit to GG for standing up in the US Senate and denouncing the war in Iraq. But anyone who dared point out that this anti-abortion, Armani-suited, villa-owning, Mercedes-driving chum of Middle-East despots might not be everyone's idea of the heir to Marx, was flamed by hacks using as dishonest a set of tactics as the worst Stalinoids.

Give Galloway his due, though, he always said "I'm not as left as people think," and yet the hacks were happy to perpetuate that myth. Now he's Emmanuel Goldstein and the comrades are enjoying their three-minute hate - only someone lost the stopwatch.

At a time when capitalism is entering its most decrepit, most vicious phase and we are about to witness if Rosa Luxembourg was correct to warn that we will see "... either the triumph of imperialism and the destruction of all culture, and, as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration, a vast cemetery; ...", the "comrades" have fiddled away while opportunities burned. And what music they make.

"All Change" for the comrades

I looked from the SWP to George Galloway, and from GG to the SWP, and from the SWP to GG again; but already it was impossible to tell who'd look better in a bacon sandwich.

The real Gorgeous George told the story of the Communist Party member who left a gathering of comrades to go to the loo and returned two minutes later to find that, unbeknownst to him, the party line had changed. We don't know what happened to him but his mates are thriving in the British "Left".

After several years of defending the indefensible, it's all change for the comrades. A recent SWP National Council saw the poor dears turning on a dime at whiplash speeds in response to an ugly bust-up with Galloway, who'd been presented as their Saviour Who Can Do No Wrong. How did it go from GG saying of the SWP's moustache-twirling Cardinal Richelieu and kingmaker, "He made me an MP," to him being unable to even mention the Respect National Secretary by name?

The ancient maxim, politics is showbiz for ugly people, has rarely seemed more apposite. The lure of having their mugs on the telly and their pearls of wisdom quoted in the press proved intoxicating to the Party leadership. Principles were ditched, successful groups wrecked, allies purged just so they could take the "Don't You Know Who I Am" road to oblivion. They even sold their prized printing press. If those whom the gods aim to destroy they first make mad, then the deities did a good job here. Four years into the millennium, one such leader is said to have chastised the organiser of an anti-war conference who hadn't invited them with, "I am the leader of the biggest, most significant social movement this century". The fact that it was a conference for academics and this person wasn't one cut no ice.

But how to deal with inconvenient contradictions? Taking Animal Farm as their model, the Popular Front became "The United Front of a special type". The Socialist Alliance, which formed the spine of the SWP's other project, the Stop The War Coalition, was airbrushed out of history in best Stalinist fashion. Bourgeois businessmen and those driven by their faith became the revolutionaries' best buddies whilst old left allies were written off as "the Left Ghetto."

And George Galloway was hailed as Supreme Being.

All credit to GG for standing up in the US Senate and denouncing the war in Iraq. But anyone who dared point out that this anti-abortion, Armani-suited, villa-owning, Mercedes-driving chum of Middle-East despots might not be everyone's idea of the heir to Marx, was flamed by hacks using as dishonest a set of tactics as the worst Stalinoids.

Give Galloway his due, though, he always said "I'm not as left as people think," and yet the hacks were happy to perpetuate that myth. Now he's Emmanuel Goldstein and the comrades are enjoying their three-minute hate - only someone lost the stopwatch.

At a time when capitalism is entering its most decrepit, most vicious phase and we are about to witness if Rosa Luxembourg was correct to warn that we will see "... either the triumph of imperialism and the destruction of all culture, and, as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration, a vast cemetery; ...", the "comrades" have fiddled away while opportunities burned. And what music they make.