of Nazi Secret Police rounding up Polish intelligentsia at Palmiry near Warsaw in 1940 for mass execution (German AB-Aktion in occupied Poland).]]

War crimes are serious violations of the laws applicable in armed conflict (Also known as International humanitarian law) giving rise to individual criminal responsibility. Examples of such conduct includes "murder, the ill-treatment or deportation of civilian residents of an occupied territory to slave labor camps", "the murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war", the killing of hostages, "the wanton destruction of cities, towns and villages, and any devastation not justified by military, or civilian necessity".

Similar concepts, such as perfidy, have existed for many centuries as customs between civilized countries, but these customs were first codified as international law in the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. The modern concept of a war crime was further developed under the auspices of the Nuremberg Trials based on the definition in the London Charter that was published on August 8, 1945. (Also see Nuremberg Principles.) Along with war crimes the charter also defined crimes against peace and crimes against humanity, which are often committed during wars and in concert with war crimes.

Article 22 of the Hague IV ("Laws of War: Laws and Customs of War on Land (Hague IV); October 18, 1907") states that "The right of belligerents to adopt means of injuring the enemy is not unlimited" and over the last century many other treaties have introduced positive laws that place constraints on belligerents (see International treaties on the laws of war). Some of the provisions, such as those in the Hague, the Geneva, and Genocide Conventions, are considered to be part of customary international law, and are binding on all. Others are only binding on individuals if the belligerent power to which they belong is a party to the treaty which introduced the constraint.

History

, China, 1938. A ditch full of the bodies of Chinese civilians, killed by Japanese soldiers.]]

Early example

The trial of Peter von Hagenbach by an ad hoc tribunal of the Holy Roman Empire in 1474, was the first “international” war crimes trial, and also of command responsibility. He was convicted and beheaded for crimes that "he as a knight was deemed to have a duty to prevent", although he had argued that he was only "following orders".

Hague Conventions

The Hague Conventions were international treaties negotiated at the First and Second Peace Conferences at The Hague, Netherlands in 1899 and 1907, respectively, and were, along with the First and Second Geneva Conventions (1864 and 1909), among the first formal statements of the laws of war and war crimes in the nascent body of secular international law.

Geneva Conventions

The Geneva Conventions are four related treaties adopted between 1864 and 1949 that represent a legal basis for International Law with regard to conduct of warfare. Not all nations are signatories to the GC, and as such retain different codes and values with regard to wartime conduct. Some signatories have routinely violated the Geneva Conventions in a way which either uses the ambiguities of law or political maneuvering to sidestep the laws' formalities and principles.

Leipzig War Crimes Trial

Several German military commanders of the First World War were tried in 1921 by the German Supreme Court for war crimes.

London Charter / Nuremberg Trials 1945

The modern concept of war crime was further developed under the auspices of the Nuremberg Trials based on the definition in the London Charter that was published on August 8, 1945. (Also see Nuremberg Principles.) Along with war crimes the charter also defined crimes against peace and crimes against humanity, which are often committed during wars and in concert with war crimes.

International Military Tribunal for the Far East 1946

Also known as the Tokyo Trial, the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal or simply as the Tribunal, it was convened on May 3, 1946 to try the leaders of the Empire of Japan for three types of crimes: "Class A" (crimes against peace), "Class B" (war crimes), and "Class C" (crimes against humanity), committed during World War II.

International Criminal Court 2002

On July 1, 2002, the International Criminal Court, a treaty-based court located in The Hague, came into being for the prosecution of war crimes committed on or after that date. Several nations, most notably the United States, China, Russia, and Israel, have criticized the court. The United States still participates as an observer. Article 12 of the Rome Statute provides jurisdiction over the citizens of non-contracting states in the event that they are accused of committing crimes in the territory of one of the state parties.

However the court only has jurisdiction over these crimes where they are "part of a plan or policy or as part of a large-scale commission of such crimes".

Prominent indictees

;Heads of state & government To date, the present and former heads of state and heads of government that have been charged with war crimes include:

Germany Großadmiral Karl Dönitz, Prime Ministers Generals Hideki Tojo and Kuniaki Koiso of the Empire of Japan in the aftermath of World War II.

Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević was brought to trial for alleged war crimes, but died as essentially an innocent man in custody on March 11, 2006 under suspicious circumstances and after mounting a vigorous defense, before the trial could be concluded after more than 4 years of proceedings.

Former Liberian President Charles G. Taylor was also brought to the Hague charged with war crimes; his trial was to begin in April 2007, but was postponed until June 2007 to allow the defense more time to prepare. The prosecution and defense presented evidence until 12 November 2010. Closing arguments are set for early February 2011, with a verdict expected later in the year.

Former Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadžić was arrested in Belgrade on 18 July 2008 and brought before Belgrade’s War Crimes Court a few days after. He was extradited to the Netherlands, and is currently in The Hague, in the custody of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. He refused to enter pleas and one was entered for him. The trial heard witnesses during 2010 and his defense began in March 2010. As of September 2010 it was still ongoing. Judges have suggested that it could possibly continue until 2014.

Omar al-Bashir, current head of state of Sudan. He is currently resisting the indictment.

;Other prominent indictees :

Yoshijiro Umezu, generals in the Imperial Japanese Army

Seishiro Itagaki, War minister of the Empire of Japan

Hermann Göring, Commander in Chief of the Luftwaffe.

Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Adolf Eichmann - high ranking members of the SS.

Ratko Mladić (usually referred to as "General Mladić") has been indicted for genocide during the Bosnian War; he has not been caught and awaits capture for multiple war crimes against Bosnian Muslims.

Wilhelm Keitel - Generalfeldmarschall, head of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht.

Erich Raeder - Großadmiral, Commander in Chief of the Kriegsmarine.

Albert Speer - Minister of Armaments and War Production in Nazi Germany 1942-45.

Definition

(1944)]] War Crimes are those serious violations of the rules of customary and treaty law concerning international humanitarian law that have become accepted as criminal offences for which there is individual responsibility. Colloquial definitions of war crime include violations of established protections of the laws of war, but also include failures to adhere to norms of procedure and rules of battle, such as attacking those displaying a peaceful flag of truce, or using that same flag as a ruse of war to mount an attack. Attacking enemy troops while they are being deployed by way of a parachute is not a war crime. However, Protocol I, Article 42 of the Geneva Conventions explicitly forbids attacking parachutists who eject from damaged airplanes, and surrendering parachutists once landed. War crimes include such acts as mistreatment of prisoners of war or civilians. War crimes are sometimes part of instances of mass murder and genocide though these crimes are more broadly covered underinternational humanitarian law described as crimes against humanity. in Cracow, Poland by German forces on August 17, 1940.]] War crimes are significant in international humanitarian law because it is an area where international tribunals such as the Nuremberg Trials andTokyo trials have been convened. Recent examples are the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which were established by the UN Security Council acting under Chapter VIII of the UN Charter.

Under the Nuremberg Principles, war crimes are different from crimes against peace which is planning, preparing, initiating, or waging a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements, or assurances. Because the definition of a state of "war" may be debated, the term "war crime" itself has seen different usage under different systems of international and military law. It has some degree of application outside of what some may consider to be a state of "war," but in areas where conflicts persist enough to constitute social instability.

The legalities of war have sometimes been accused of containing favoritism toward the winners ("Victor's justice"), as certain controversies have not been ruled as war crimes. Some examplesinclude the Allies' destruction of civilian Axis targets during World War I and World War II (the firebombing of the German city of Dresden is one such example), the use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II; the use of Agent Orange against civilian targets in the Vietnam war; the mass killing of Biharies by Kader Siddique and Mukti Bahini before or after victory of Bangladesh Liberation War in Bangladesh between 1971 and 1972; and the Indonesian occupation of East Timor between 1976 and 1999.

Another example is the Allied re-designation of German POWs (under the protection of the Geneva conventions) into Disarmed Enemy Forces (allegedly unprotected by the Geneva conventions), many of which then were used for forced labor such as clearing minefields. By December 1945 it was estimated by French authorities that 2,000 German prisoners were being killed or maimed each month in mine-clearing accidents.

See also

;Country listings

List of war crimes

German war crimes

Consequences of German Nazism

Allied war crimes during World War II

American war crimes

War crimes of the Wehrmacht

Soviet war crimes

Japanese war crimes

International Military Tribunal for the Far East

United States Senate Committee on the Philippines

1971 Bangladesh atrocities

Armenian Genocide

;Legal issues

Rule of Law in Armed Conflicts Project (RULAC)

Laws of war

Command responsibility

War Crimes Law (Belgium)

Russell Tribunal

The International Criminal Court and the 2003 invasion of Iraq

Special Court for Sierra Leone

;Miscellaneous

Crime against humanity

Crime against peace

Doctors' Trial

NKVD prisoner massacres

Consequences of German Nazism

Human shield

International Criminal Court investigations

Transitional justice

Nazi human experimentation

Nuremberg Principles

Katyn massacre

Srebrenica massacre

Forensic archaeology

Terror bombing

Winter Soldier Investigation

Footnotes

References

External links

War Crimes: Responsibility and the Psychology of Atrocity

Human Rights First; Command’s Responsibility: Detainee Deaths in U.S. Custody in Iraq and Afghanistan

TheRule of Law in Armed Conflicts Project

Documents and Resources on War, War Crimes and Genocide

Iraqi Special Tribunal

Crimes of War Project

Rome Treaty of the International Criminal Court

Special Court for Sierra Leone

UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia

UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda

Ad-Hoc Court for East Timor

CBC Digital Archives -Fleeing Justice: War Criminals in Canada

Category:International criminal law Category:Laws of war

Honorific-prefix	The Right Honourable
Name	Tony Blair
Alt	A photograph of a man with greying hair speaking into a microphone and gesturing with his left hand
Caption	Blair at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland (29 January 2009)
Office	Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Monarch	Elizabeth II
Deputy	John Prescott
Term start	2 May 1997
Term end	27 June 2007
Predecessor	John Major
Successor	Gordon Brown
Office2	Leader of the Opposition
Monarch2	Elizabeth II
Primeminister2	John Major
Term start2	21 July 1994
Term end2	2 May 1997
Predecessor2	Margaret Beckett
Successor2	John Major
Office3	Leader of the Labour Party
Term start3	21 July 1994
Term end3	24 June 2007
Deputy3	John Prescott
Predecessor3	Margaret Beckett
Successor3	Gordon Brown
Office4	Shadow Home Secretary
Leader4	John Smith
Term start4	19 July 1992
Term end4	21 July 1994
Predecessor4	Roy Hattersley
Successor4	Jack Straw
Office5	Shadow Secretary of State for Employment
Leader5	Neil Kinnock
Term start5	13 May 1989
Term end5	19 July 1992
Predecessor5	Michael Meacher
Successor5	Frank Dobson
Office6	Shadow Secretary of State for Energy
Leader6	Neil Kinnock
Term start6	7 June 1988
Term end6	13 May 1989
Predecessor6	John Prescott
Successor6	Frank Dobson
Office7	Shadow Minister of State for Trade
Leader7	Neil Kinnock
Term start7	14 May 1987
Term end7	7 June 1988
Predecessor7	Bryan Gould
Successor7	Robin Cook
Constituency mp8	Sedgefield
Majority8	18,449 (44.5%)
Term start8	9 June 1983
Term end8	27 June 2007
Predecessor8	Constituency Established
Successor8	Phil Wilson
Birth date	May 06, 1953
Birth place	Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
Birthname	Anthony Charles Lynton Blair
Party	Labour
Spouse	Cherie Booth(m. 1980–present)
Relations	William Blair
Children	Euan, Nicky, Kathryn, Leo
Residence	Connaught Square
Alma mater	St John's College, Oxford
Occupation	Envoy
Profession	Lawyer
Networth	£3 million est.
Religion	Roman Catholic
Website	Tony Blair Office

Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007; he resigned from all these positions in June 2007.

Tony Blair was elected Leader of the Labour Party in the leadership election of July 1994, following the sudden death of his predecessor, John Smith. Under his leadership, the party adopted the term "New Labour" and moved away from its traditional left wing position towards the centre ground. Blair subsequently led Labour to a landslide victory in the 1997 general election. At 43 years old, he became the youngest Prime Minister since Lord Liverpool in 1812. In the first years of the New Labour government, Blair's government implemented a number of 1997 manifesto pledges, introducing the minimum wage, Human Rights Act and Freedom of Information Act; and carrying out regional devolution, establishing the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales, and the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Blair's role as Prime Minister was particularly visible in foreign and security policy, including in Northern Ireland, where he was involved in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. From the start of the War on Terror in 2001, Blair strongly supported United States foreign policy, notably by participating in the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and 2003 invasion of Iraq. In his first six years, Blair had British troops ordered into battle five times — more than any other prime minister in British history.

Blair is the Labour Party's longest-serving Prime Minister; the only person to have led the Labour Party to three consecutive general election victories; and the only Labour Prime Minister to serve consecutive terms more than one of which was at least four years long. He was succeeded as Leader of the Labour Party on 24 June 2007 and as Prime Minister on 27 June 2007 by Gordon Brown, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer. On the day he resigned as Prime Minister, he was appointed the official Envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East on behalf of the United Nations, the European Union, the United States, and Russia.

In May 2008, Blair launched his Tony Blair Faith Foundation. This was followed in July 2009 by the launching of the Faith and Globalisation Initiative with Yale University in the USA, Durham University in the UK and National University of Singapore in Asia to deliver a postgraduate programme in partnership with the Foundation.

Background and family life

Blair was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on 6 May 1953, the second son of Leo and Hazel Blair (née Corscadden). Leo Blair, the illegitimate son of two English actors, had been adopted as a baby by Glasgow shipyard worker James Blair and his wife, Mary. Hazel Corscadden was the daughter of George Corscadden, a butcher and Orangeman who moved to Glasgow in 1916 but returned to (and later died in) Ballyshannon in 1923, where his wife, Sarah Margaret (née Lipsett), gave birth to Blair's mother, Hazel, above her family's grocery shop. George Corscadden was from a family of Protestant farmers in County Donegal, Ireland, who descended from Ulster-Scots settlers who took their family name from Garscadden, now part of Glasgow.

Life as a child

Tony Blair has one elder brother, Sir William Blair, a High Court judge, and a younger sister, Sarah. Tony Blair spent the first 19 months of his life at the family home in Paisley Terrace in the Willowbrae area of Edinburgh. During this period, his father worked as a junior tax inspector whilst also studying for a law degree from the University of Edinburgh. The Blairs lived close to the university, in the suburb of Dulwich. The family returned to Britain in the late 1950s, living for a time with Hazel Blair's stepfather, William McClay, and her mother at their home in Stepps, near Glasgow. He spent the remainder of his childhood in Durham, England, where his father lectured at Durham University.

Education

After attending The Chorister School in Durham in north-east England from 1961 to 1966, Blair boarded at Fettes College, a prestigious independent school in Edinburgh in Scotland, during which time he met Charlie Falconer (a pupil at the rival Edinburgh Academy), whom he later appointed Lord Chancellor. He reportedly modelled himself on Mick Jagger. His teachers were unimpressed with him; his biographer, John Rentoul, reported that "All the teachers I spoke to when researching the book said he was a complete pain in the backside, and they were very glad to see the back of him." Blair was arrested at Fettes, having been mistaken for a burglar as he climbed into his dormitory using a ladder after having been out late.

, QC.]] After Fettes, Blair spent a year in London, where he attempted to find fame as a rock music promoter before reading jurisprudence at St John's College, Oxford. As a student, he played guitar and sang in a rock band called Ugly Rumours. During this time, he dated future American Psycho director Mary Harron.

He was influenced by fellow student and Anglican priest Peter Thomson, who awakened within Blair a deep concern for religious faith and left-wing politics. While Blair was at Oxford, his mother Hazel died of cancer, which greatly affected him. After graduating from Oxford in 1976 with a Second Class Honours BA in Jurisprudence, Blair became a member of Lincoln's Inn, enrolled as a pupil barrister, and met his future wife, Cherie Booth (daughter of the actor Tony Booth) at the law chambers founded by Derry Irvine (who was to be Blair's first Lord Chancellor), 11 King's Bench Walk Chambers. He appears in a number of reported cases, for example as in Nethermere (St Neots) Ltd v Gardiner where he represented employers unsuccessfully in an attempt to deny female factory workers holiday pay.

Marriage and children

Tony Blair married Cherie Booth, a Roman Catholic and future Queen's Counsel, on 29 March 1980. They have four children: Euan, Nicholas, Kathryn, and Leo. Leo was the first legitimate child born to a serving Prime Minister in over 150 years—since Francis Russell was born to Lord John Russell on 11 July 1849. Blair was criticised when it was discovered that one child had received private tuition from staff at Westminster School. All four children have Irish passports, by virtue of Blair's mother Hazel.

Personal health

Blair suffered from chest pains on Sunday 19 October 2003 and underwent a cardioversion at Hammersmith Hospital.

Religious faith

In an interview with Michael Parkinson broadcast on ITV1 on 4 March 2006, Blair referred to the role of his Christian faith in his decision to go to war in Iraq, stating that he had prayed about the issue, and saying that God would judge him for his decision:

A longer exploration of his faith can be found in an interview with Third Way Magazine. There he says that "I was brought up as [a Christian], but I was not in any real sense a practising one until I went to Oxford. There was an Australian priest at the same college as me who got me interested again. In a sense, it was a rediscovery of religion as something living, that was about the world around me rather than some sort of special one-to-one relationship with a remote Being on high. Suddenly I began to see its social relevance. I began to make sense of the world".

At one point Alastair Campbell, Blair's director of strategy and communications, intervened in an interview, preventing the Prime Minister from answering a question about his Christianity, explaining, "We don't do God".

Cherie Blair's friend and "spiritual guru" Carole Caplin is credited with introducing her and her husband to various New Age symbols and beliefs, including "magic pendants" known as "BioElectric Shields". The most controversial of the Blairs' New Age practices occurred when on holiday in Mexico. The couple, wearing only bathing costumes, took part in a rebirthing procedure, which involved smearing mud and fruit over each others' bodies while sitting in a steam bath.

Later on, Blair questioned the Pope's attitude towards homosexuality, arguing that religious leaders must start "rethinking" the issue. He was later rebuked by Vincent Nichols, the new archbishop of Westminster, who said that Catholic thinking was 'rather different' from the kind promoted by the former prime minister.

On 22 December 2007, it was disclosed that Blair, who in 1996, had been reprimanded by Cardinal Basil Hume for receiving Holy Communion at Mass despite not being a Catholic, in contravention of canon law, had converted to the Catholic faith, and that it was "a private matter". He had informed Pope Benedict XVI on 23 June 2007 that he wanted to become a Catholic. The Pope and his advisors criticised some of Blair's political actions, but followed up with a reportedly unprecedented red-carpet welcome, which included Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, who would be responsible for Blair's Catholic instruction.

On 14 January 2009, Blair, upon a visit to the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., described, in the guest book, his home as being 'Jerusalem'. This was followed shortly after, on the occasion of his addressing of the National Prayer Breakfast, by his discussion of the issue of religion in the world and the Middle East peace process in his address and how he spends so much of his time in the Holy Land and in the Holy City. He reported his Palestinian guide as bemoaning the fate of his nation looking to heaven and saying “Moses, Jesus, Mohammed: why did they all have to come here?" For Blair the Holy City is "a good place to reflect on religion: a source of so much inspiration; an excuse for so much evil."

Early political career

Blair joined the Labour Party shortly after graduating from Oxford in 1975. During the early 1980s, he was involved in Labour politics in Hackney South and Shoreditch, where he aligned himself with the "soft left" of the party. He unsuccessfully attempted to secure selection as a candidate for Hackney London Borough Council. Through his father-in-law, Tony Booth, he contacted Labour MP Tom Pendry to ask for help in pursuing a Parliamentary career. Pendry gave him a tour of the House of Commons and advised him to stand for selection as a candidate in a forthcoming by-election in the safe Conservative seat of Beaconsfield, where Pendry knew a senior member of the local party. Blair was chosen as the candidate; at the Beaconsfield by-election, he won only 10% of the vote and lost his deposit, but he impressed Labour Party leader Michael Foot and acquired a profile within the party. In contrast to his later centrism, Blair made it clear in a letter he wrote to Foot in July 1982, that he had "come to Socialism through Marxism" and considered himself on the left. The letter was eventually published in June 2006.

In 1983, Blair found the newly created constituency of Sedgefield, a notionally safe Labour seat near where he had grown up in Durham. The branch had not made a nomination, and Blair visited them. Several sitting MPs displaced by boundary changes were interested in securing selection to fight the seat. With the crucial support of John Burton, Blair won their endorsement; at the last minute, he was added to the short list and won the selection over Les Huckfield. Burton later became Blair's agent and one of his most trusted and longest-standing allies.

Blair's election literature in the 1983 UK general election endorsed left-wing policies that Labour advocated in the early 1980s. He called for Britain to leave the EEC, though he had told his selection conference that he personally favoured continuing membership. He also supported unilateral nuclear disarmament as a member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Blair was helped on the campaign trail by soap opera actress Pat Phoenix, his father-in-law's girlfriend. Blair was elected as MP for Sedgefield despite the party's landslide defeat in the general election.

In his maiden speech in the House of Commons on 6 July 1983, Blair stated, "I am a socialist not through reading a textbook that has caught my intellectual fancy, nor through unthinking tradition, but because I believe that, at its best, socialism corresponds most closely to an existence that is both rational and moral. It stands for cooperation, not confrontation; for fellowship, not fear. It stands for equality." The Labour Party is declared in its constitution to be a democratic socialist party rather than a social democratic party; Blair himself organised this declaration of Labour to be a socialist party when he dealt with the change to the party's Clause IV in their constitution.

Once elected, Blair's ascent was rapid, and he received his first front-bench appointment in 1984 as assistant Treasury spokesman. In May 1985, he appeared on BBC's Question Time, arguing that the Conservative Government's Public Order White Paper was a threat to civil liberties. Blair demanded an inquiry into the Bank of England's decision to rescue the collapsed Johnson Matthey Bank in October 1985 and embarrassed the government by finding a EEC report critical of British economic policy that had been countersigned by a member of the Conservative government. By this time, Blair was aligned with the reforming tendencies in the party (headed by leader Neil Kinnock) and was promoted after the 1987 election to the shadow Trade and Industry team as spokesman on the City of London. In 1987, he stood for election to the Shadow Cabinet, receiving 77 votes.

Blair became Shadow Home Secretary under John Smith. John Smith died suddenly in 1994 of a heart attack. Blair beat John Prescott and Margaret Beckett in the subsequent leadership election and became Leader of the Opposition. As is customary for the holder of that office, Blair was appointed a Privy Councillor.

Leader of the Labour Party

Blair announced at the end of his speech at the 1994 Labour Party conference that he intended to replace Clause IV of the party's constitution with a new statement of aims and values. This involved the deletion of the party's stated commitment to "the common ownership of the means of production and exchange", which was widely interpreted as referring to wholesale nationalisation. At a special conference in April 1995, the clause was replaced by a statement that the party is 'democratic socialist'.

At the 1996 Labour Party conference, Blair stated that his three top priorities on coming to office were "education, education, and education".

Aided by the unpopularity of John Major's Conservative government (itself deeply divided over the European Union), "New Labour" won a landslide victory in the 1997 general election, ending 18 years of Conservative Party government, with the heaviest Conservative defeat since 1832.

During Smith's leadership of the Labour Party, there were discussions with Paddy Ashdown, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, about forming a coalition government if the next general election resulted in a hung parliament. After Blair became leader, these talks continued - despite virtually every opinion poll since late 1992 having shown Labour with enough support to form a majority. However, the scale of the Labour victory meant that there was ultimately never any need for a coalition.

Prime minister

Blair became the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on 2 May 1997, serving concurrently as First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service and Leader of the Labour Party. The 43-year old Blair became the youngest person to become Prime Minister since Lord Liverpool in 1812, at the age of 42. With victories in 1997, 2001, and 2005, Blair was the Labour Party's longest-serving prime minister, the only person to lead the party to three consecutive general election victories.

Northern Ireland

in 1998.]] His contribution towards assisting the Northern Ireland Peace Process by helping to negotiate the Good Friday Agreement (after 30 years of conflict) was widely recognised. Following the Omagh Bombing on 15 August 1998, by members of the Real IRA opposed to the peace process, which killed 29 people and wounded hundreds, Blair visited the County Tyrone town and met with victims at Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast.

War on Terror

From the start of the War on Terror in 2001, Blair strongly supported United States foreign policy, notably by participating in the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and 2003 invasion of Iraq. The invasion of Iraq was particularly controversial, as it attracted widespread public opposition and 139 of Blair's MPs opposed it.As a result, he faced criticism over the policy itself and the circumstances in which it was decided upon. Alastair Campbell described Blair's statment that the intelligence on WMDs was "beyond doubt" as his "assessment of the assessment that was given to him." In 2009, Blair stated that he would have supported removing Saddam Hussein from power even in the face of proof that he had no such weapons. Playwright Harold Pinter and former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad accused Blair of war crimes.Testifying before the Iraq Inquiry on 29 January 2010, Blair said Saddam was a "monster and I believe he threatened not just the region but the world." Blair said that British and American attitude towards Saddam Hussein had "changed dramatically" after the 11 September attacks. Blair denied that he would have supported the invasion of Iraq even if he had thought Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction. He said he believed the world was safer as a result of the invasion. He also said that there was "no real difference between wanting regime change and wanting Iraq to disarm: regime change was US policy because Iraq was in breach of its UN obligations."

Relationship with Parliament

One of his first acts as Prime Minister was to replace the then twice-weekly 15-minute sessions of Prime Minister's Questions held on Tuesdays and Thursdays with a single 30-minute session on Wednesdays. In addition to PMQs, Blair held monthly press conferences at which he fielded questions from journalists and – from 2002 – broke precedent by agreeing to give evidence twice yearly before the most senior Commons select committee, The Liaison Committee.Blair was sometimes perceived as paying insufficient attention both to the views of his own Cabinet colleagues and to those of the House of Commons. His style was sometimes criticised as not that of a prime minister and head of government, which he was, but of a president and head of state—which he was not.Blair was accused of excessive reliance on spin. He is the first British Prime Minister to have been formally questioned by police, though not under caution, while still in office.

Events prior to resignation

As the casualties of the Iraq War mounted, Blair was accused of misleading Parliament, and his popularity dropped dramatically. The Labour party's overall majority in the 2005 general election was reduced to 66. As a combined result of the Blair-Brown pact, Iraq war and low approval ratings, pressure built up within the Labour party for Blair to resign.On 7 September 2006, Blair publicly stated he would step down as party leader by the time of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) conference held 10–13 September 2007, having promised to serve a full term during the previous general election campaign. On 10 May 2007, during a speech at the Trimdon Labour Club, Blair announced his intention to resign as both Labour Party leader and Prime Minister. At a special party conference in Manchester on 24 June 2007, he formally handed over the leadership of the Labour Party to Gordon Brown, who had been Chancellor of the Exchequer.The resulting Sedgefield by-election was won by Labour's candidate, Phil Wilson. Blair decided not to issue a list of Resignation Honours, making him the first Prime Minister of the modern era not to do so.

Policies

In 2001, Tony Blair said, "We are a left of centre party, pursuing economic prosperity and social justice as partners and not as opposites". Blair has rarely applied such labels to himself, but he promised before the 1997 election that New Labour would govern "from the radical centre", and according to one lifelong Labour Party member, has always described himself as a social democrat. However, Labour Party backbenchers and other left wing critics typically place Blair to the right of centre. A YouGov opinion poll in 2005 also found that a small majority of British voters, including many New Labour supporters, place Blair on the right of the political spectrum. The Financial Times on the other hand has argued that Blair is not conservative, but instead a populist. The new Clause IV of the Labour Party's constitution defines the party as "Democratic Socialist".

Critics and admirers tend to agree that Blair's electoral success was based on his ability to occupy the centre ground and appeal to voters across the political spectrum, to the extent that he has been fundamentally at odds with traditional Labour Party values. Some left wing critics have argued that Blair has overseen the final stage of a long term shift of the Labour Party to the right, and that very little now remains of a Labour Left. There is also evidence that Blair's long term dominance of the centre has forced his Conservative opponents to shift a long distance to the left, in order to challenge his hegemony there.

Blair has raised taxes (but did not increase income tax for high-earners); introduced a minimum wage and some new employment rights (while keeping Margaret Thatcher's anti-trade union legislation); introduced significant constitutional reforms; promoted new rights for gay people in the Civil Partnership Act 2004; and signed treaties integrating Britain more closely with the EU. He introduced substantial market-based reforms in the education and health sectors; introduced student tuition fees; sought to reduce certain categories of welfare payments, and introduced tough anti-terrorism and identity card legislation. Under Blair's government the amount of new legislation increased which attracted criticism. Blair increased police powers by adding to the number of arrestable offences, compulsory DNA recording and the use of dispersal orders.

Environmental record

Tony Blair has criticised other governments for not doing enough to solve global climate change. In a 1997 visit to the United States, he made a comment on "great industrialised nations" that fail to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Again in 2003, Blair went before the United States Congress and said that climate change "cannot be ignored", insisting "we need to go beyond even Kyoto." His record at home tends to say something different. Tony Blair and his party have promised a 20% reduction in carbon dioxide but during his term the emissions rose. The Labour Party also claimed that by 2010 10% of the energy would come from renewable resources but in fact only 3% currently does.

In 2000 Blair "flagged up" 100 million euros for green policies and urged environmentalists and businesses to work together.

Foreign policy

Relationship with the United States

shake hands after their press conference in the East Room of the White House on 12 November 2004.]] Along with enjoying a close relationship with Bill Clinton, Blair formed a strong political alliance with George W. Bush, particularly in the area of foreign policy. At one point, Nelson Mandela described Blair as "the U.S. foreign minister". Blair has also often openly been referred to as "Bush's poodle". Kendall Myers, a senior analyst at the State Department, reportedly said that he felt "a little ashamed" of Bush's treatment of the Prime Minister and that his attempts to influence U.S. policy were typically ignored: "It was a done deal from the beginning, it was a one-sided relationship that was entered into with open eyes... There was nothing, no payback, no sense of reciprocity".

For his part, Bush lauded Blair and the UK. In his post-11 September speech, for example, he stated that "America has no truer friend than Great Britain".

The alliance between Bush and Blair seriously damaged Blair's standing in the eyes of many British people. Blair argued it is in Britain's interest to "protect and strengthen the bond" with the United States regardless of who is in the White House. However, a perception of one-sided compromising personal and political closeness led to serious discussion of the term "Poodle-ism" in the UK media, to describe the "Special Relationship" of the UK government and Prime Minister with the US White House and President. A revealing conversation between Bush and Blair, with the former addressing the latter as "Yo, Blair" was recorded when they did not know a microphone was live at the G8 conference in Russia in 2006.

Middle East policy and links with Israel

According to comments in the book, Blair, written by Anthony Seldon, Blair had a deep feeling for Israel, born in part from his faith. Blair has been a long time member of the Pro-Israel lobby group Labour Friends of Israel.

In 1994, Blair met Michael Levy, later Lord Levy, a pop music mogul and fundraiser. Blair and Levy became close friends and tennis partners. Levy ran the Labour Leader's Office Fund to finance Blair's campaign before the 1997 General Election and raised £12m towards Labour’s landslide victory, Levy was rewarded with a peerage, and in 2002, Blair appointed Levy as his personal envoy to the Middle East. Levy praised Blair for his 'solid and committed support of the State of Israel'. Tam Dalyell, while Father of the House of Commons, suggested in 2003 that Blair's foreign policy decisions were unduly influenced by a cabal of Jewish advisers, including Levy and Peter Mandelson.

Blair, on coming to office, had been 'cool towards the right-wing Netanyahu government'. After the election in 1999 of Ehud Barak, with whom Blair forged a close relationship, he became much more sympathetic to Israel.

In 2006 Blair was criticised for his failure to immediately call for a ceasefire in the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict. The Observer newspaper claimed that at a cabinet meeting before Blair left for a summit with Bush on 28 July 2006, a significant number of ministers pressured Blair to publicly criticise Israel over the scale of deaths and destruction in Lebanon. Blair was criticised for his solid stance alongside U.S. President George W. Bush on Middle East policy.

In March 2010 the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments revealed that 14 months after resigning as Prime Minister, Blair had served as a paid business consultant to an oil firm with interests in Iraq. The news raised concerns that he had profited financially from contacts he made during the Iraq war.

Relationship with media

Rupert Murdoch

Tony Blair was reported to have been supported by Rupert Murdoch the founder of the News Corporation organisation. In 1995, while leader of the Opposition, Blair disclosed in the Commons register of interests that he was a guest of Murdoch when he flew to meet him in Hayman Island.

Contacts with UK media proprietors

A Cabinet Office freedom of information response, released the day after Blair handed over power to Gordon Brown, documents Blair having various official phone calls and meetings with Rupert Murdoch of News Corporation and Richard Desmond of Northern and Shell Media.

The response includes contacts "clearly of an official nature" in the specified period, but excludes contacts "not clearly of an official nature." No details were given of the subjects discussed. In the period between September 2002 and April 2005, Blair and Murdoch are documented speaking 6 times; three times in the 9 days before the Iraq war, including the eve of the 20 March US and UK invasion, and on 29 January, 25 April and 3 October 2004. Between January 2003 and February 2004, Blair had three meetings with Richard Desmond; on 29 January and 3 September 2003 and 23 February 2004.

The information was disclosed after a three and a half year battle by the Liberal Democrats' Lord Avebury.

After taking office in 1997, Blair gave particular prominence to his press secretary, who became known as the Prime Minister's Official Spokesman (the two roles have since been separated). Blair's first PMOS was Alastair Campbell, who served in that role from May 1997 to 8 June 2001, after which he served as the Prime Minister's Director of Communications and Strategy until his resignation on 29 August 2003 in the aftermath of the Hutton Inquiry.

Relationship with Labour Party

Blair's apparent refusal to set a date for his departure was criticised by the British press and Members of Parliament. It has been reported that a number of cabinet ministers believed that Blair's timely departure from office would be required to be able to win a fourth election.

Blair forged friendships with several conservative European leaders, including Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, Angela Merkel of Germany and more recently Nicolas Sarkozy of France.

Gordon Brown

After the death of John Smith in 1994, Blair and his close colleague Gordon Brown (they shared an office at the House of Commons) were both seen as possible candidates for the party leadership. They agreed not to stand against each other, it is said, as part of a supposed Blair-Brown pact. Brown, who considered himself the senior of the two, understood that Blair would give way to him: opinion polls soon indicated, however, that Blair appeared to enjoy greater support among voters. Their relationship in power became so turbulent that (it was reported) the deputy prime minister, John Prescott, often had to act as "marriage guidance counsellor".

During the 2010 election campaign Blair publicly endorsed Gordon Brown's leadership, praising the way he had handled the financial crisis.

Post-Prime Ministerial career

Diplomacy

On 27 June 2007, Blair officially resigned as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom after ten years in office, and he was officially confirmed as Middle East envoy for the United Nations, European Union, United States, and Russia. Blair originally indicated that he would retain his parliamentary seat after his resignation as Prime Minister came into effect; however, on being confirmed for the Middle East role he resigned from the Commons by taking up an office of profit. In May 2008, Tony Blair announced a new plan for peace and for Palestinian rights, based heavily on the ideas of the Peace Valley plan.

During the first nine days of the 2008–2009 Israel-Gaza conflict, Blair was allegedly spotted at the opening of the Armani store at Knightsbridge. Aides said he had been in phone contact with other world leaders since the fighting began.

Private sector

In January 2008, it was confirmed that Blair would be joining investment bank JPMorgan Chase in a "senior advisory capacity" and that he would advise Zurich Financial Services on climate change. Some sources have claimed that his role at JP Morgan will pay more than $1m a year.

Blair also gives lectures and earns up to US$250,000 for a 90-minute speech. Yale University announced on 7 March 2008 that Blair will teach a course on issues of faith and globalisation at the Yale Schools of Management and Divinity as a Howland distinguished fellow during the 2008–09 academic year.

Blair's links with, and receipt of an undisclosed sum from, UI Energy Corporation, a Korean company with oil interests in northern Iraq, have also been subject to media comment in the UK.

He may have a personal fortune of anything up to £60 million – the vast bulk of it earned over the three years since his retirement as Prime Minister and owns nine properties in places as diverse as London, the Bahamas and New York.

Tony Blair Associates

Blair has established Tony Blair Associates. This firm will "allow him to provide, in partnership with others, strategic advice on a commercial and pro bono [free] basis, on political and economic trends and governmental reform."

European Council president speculation

In 2009, there there was speculation in the media that Blair was open to the idea of becoming the first President of the European Council, a post created in the Treaty of Lisbon that would come into force in 2009, if successfully ratified. Gordon Brown added his support, but noted that it was premature to discuss candidates before the treaty was approved. A spokesman for Blair did not rule out him accepting the post, but said that he was concentrating on his current role in the Middle East. Blair was later invited to speak on European issues at a rally of President Sarkozy 's party, the Union for a Popular Movement, on 12 January 2008, which fuelled speculation further.

There was opposition to Blair's candidacy for the job. In the UK, the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats both said they would oppose Blair. In Germany, the leader of the Free Democrats, Guido Westerwelle, said that he preferred a candidate from a smaller European country. The Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Jean-Claude Juncker emerged as a rival to Blair's candidacy and had the backing for many of the smaller European member states. In November 2009, the Belgian PM Herman Van Rompuy was named President of the European Council.

Charity

On 14 November 2007, Blair launched the Tony Blair Sports Foundation, which aims to "increase childhood participation in sports activities, especially in the North East of England, where a larger proportion of children are socially excluded, and to promote overall health and prevent childhood obesity." On 30 May 2008, Blair launched the Tony Blair Faith Foundation as a vehicle for encouraging different faiths to join together in promoting respect and understanding, as well as working to tackle poverty. Reflecting Blair's own faith but not dedicated to any particular religion, the Foundation aims to "show how faith is a powerful force for good in the modern world". "The Foundation will use its profile and resources to encourage people of faith to work together more closely to tackle global poverty and conflict," says its mission statement.

In February 2009, he applied to set up a charity called the Tony Blair Africa Governance Initiative, the application was approved in November 2009.

Memoirs

In March 2010, it was reported that Blair's memoirs, titled The Journey, would be published in September 2010. In July 2010 it was announced the memoirs would be retitled A Journey. It was announced on 16 August 2010 that Blair would give the £4.6 million advance and all royalties from his memoirs to a sports centre for badly injured soldiers. The book was published on 1 September and within hours of its launch had become the fastest-selling autobiography of all time. On 3 September Blair gave his first live interview since publication on The Late Late Show in Ireland, with protesters lying in wait there for him. On 4 September Blair was confronted by 200 anti-war and hardline Irish nationalist demonstrators before the first book signing of his memoirs at Eason's bookstore on O'Connell Street in Dublin, with angry activists chanting "war criminal" and that he had "blood on his hands", and clashing with Irish Police (Garda Síochána) as they tried to break through a security cordon outside the Eason's store. Blair was pelted with eggs and shoes, and encountered an attempted citizen's arrest for war crimes. Social networking media have been used to protest Blair's policies and legacy of unjustified and criminal war on Iraq

Portrayals and cameo appearances

Appearances

Blair made an animated cameo appearance as himself in The Simpsons episode, "The Regina Monologues" (2003) He has also appeared himself at the end of the first episode of The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard, a British TV series about an unknown housewife becoming Prime Minister. On 14 March 2007, Blair appeared as a celebrity judge on Masterchef goes Large after contestants had to prepare a three course meal in the Downing Street kitchens for Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern. On 16 March 2007, in a comedy sketch with Catherine Tate, who appeared in the guise of her character Lauren Cooper from The Catherine Tate Show. The sketch was made for the BBC Red Nose Day fundraising programme of 2007. During the sketch, Blair used Lauren's catchphrase "Am I bovvered?".

Portrayals

Michael Sheen has portrayed Blair three times, in the films The Deal (2003), The Queen (2006), and The Special Relationship (2009). Blair was portrayed by Robert Lindsay in the TV programme A Very Social Secretary; he reprised the role in The Trial of Tony Blair. He was also portrayed by James Larkin in The Government Inspector (2005), and by Ioan Gruffudd in W. (2008).

Blair in fiction and satire

When Blair resigned as Prime Minister, Robert Harris, a former Fleet Street political editor, dropped his other work to write The Ghost. The CIA-influenced British prime minister in the book is said to be a thinly disguised version of Blair. In November 2007 it was announced that Roman Polanski was to direct the film version of the novel, and would be writing the script with Harris. The film was released in February 2010 in the US.

Titles and honours

Styles from 1983 election

Mr Anthony Charles Lynton Blair MP (1983–1994)

The Rt Hon Anthony Charles Lynton Blair MP (1994–2007)

The Rt Hon Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (2007–present)

Honours

by President George W. Bush.]]

Privy Councillor (1994)

Congressional Gold Medal (2003)

Honorary Doctor of Law (LL.D.) from Queen's University Belfast (2008)

Presidential Medal of Freedom (2009)

Dan David Prize (2009)

Liberty Medal (2010)

In May 2007, before his resignation, it was reported that Blair would be offered a knighthood in the Order of the Thistle, owing to his Scottish connections (rather than the Order of the Garter, which is usually offered to former Prime Ministers). No such move has been made since, and Blair has reportedly indicated that he does not want the traditional knighthood or peerage bestowed on former prime ministers.

On 22 May 2008, Blair received an honorary law doctorate from Queen's University Belfast, alongside former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, for distinction in public service and roles in the Northern Ireland peace process.

On 13 January 2009, Blair was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush. Bush stated that Blair was given the award "in recognition of exemplary achievement and to convey the utmost esteem of the American people" and cited Blair's support for the War on Terror and his role in achieving peace in Northern Ireland as two reasons for justifying his being presented with the award.

On 16 February 2009, Blair was awarded the Dan David Prize by Tel Aviv University for "exceptional leadership and steadfast determination in helping to engineer agreements and forge lasting solutions to areas in conflict". He was awarded the prize in May 2009.

On 13 September 2010, Blair was awarded the Liberty Medal at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The award was presented by former President Bill Clinton. The award is awarded annually to men and women of courage and conviction who strive to secure the blessings of liberty to people around the globe.

Works

Blair, Tony (2002). The Courage of Our Convictions Fabian Society, ISBN 0-7163-0603-4

Blair, Tony (2000). Superpower: Not Superstate? (Federal Trust European Essays) Federal Trust for Education & Research, ISBN 1-903403-25-1

Blair, Tony (1998). The Third Way: New Politics for the New Century Fabian Society, ISBN 0-7163-0588-7

Blair, Tony (1998). Leading the Way: New Vision for Local Government Institute for Public Policy Research, ISBN 1-86030-075-8

Blair, Tony (1997). New Britain: My Vision of a Young Country Basic Books, ISBN 0-8133-3338-5

Blair, Tony (1995). Let Us Face the Future Fabian Society, ISBN 0-7163-0571-2

Blair, Tony (1994). What Price Safe Society? Fabian Society, ISBN 0-7163-0562-3

Blair, Tony (1994). Socialism Fabian Society, ISBN 0-7163-0565-8

See also

Blair Ministry

Blairism

'Cash for Honours' scandal

Criticism of Tony Blair

Cultural depictions of Tony Blair

Impeach Blair campaign

Labour Party leadership election, 2007

Politics of the United Kingdom

Tony Blair Faith Foundation‎

Electoral history of Tony Blair

Notes

Further reading

Miscellany

Blair, T. (2004) "Blair, The Right Hon. A. C. L." from Who's Who, 156th ed., London: A & C Black

Halsbury's Laws of England (2004), reference to impeachment in volume on Constitutional Law and Human Rights, paragraph 416

The Queen (2006 film)

External links

Tony Blair's post-Downing Street official website

Tony Blair Faith Foundation

News coverage from The Guardian

A Day in the Life an on-line documentary by Tony Blair on life as Prime Minister, at number-10.gov.uk

at www.pm.gov.uk

The Blair Years—Timeline at BBC News

Special Report – The Blair years 1997–2007 at BBC News

Official video showing Tony Blair celebrating 100 years of the Scout movement at Downing St

Hansard – Prime Ministers Question Time, 27 June 2007 – Official transcript of Tony Blair's final appearance in the Commons containing a mix of day to day business, tributes, quips and light hearted put downs.

|- |- |- |- |- |- |- |- |- |- |- |- |- |- |- |- ! colspan="3" style="background:#cfc;" | Order of precedence in Northern Ireland

Category:1953 births Category:Living people Category:People from Edinburgh Category:Alumni of St John's College, Oxford Category:Alumni of the Inns of Court School of Law Category:Commission for Africa members Category:Congressional Gold Medal recipients Category:Converts to Roman Catholicism from Anglicanism Category:Karlspreis recipients Category:Labour Party (UK) MPs Category:Leaders of the Labour Party (UK) Category:Leaders of the Opposition (United Kingdom) Category:Members of Lincoln's Inn Category:Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom Category:Members of the United Kingdom Parliament for English constituencies Category:Middle East peace efforts Category:Old Fettesians Category:People of the Year Awards winners Category:Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients Category:Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom Category:Sedgefield (borough) Category:Trimdon Category:UK MPs 1983–1987 Category:UK MPs 1987–1992 Category:UK MPs 1992–1997 Category:UK MPs 1997–2001 Category:UK MPs 2001–2005 Category:UK MPs 2005–2010 Category:Yale University faculty Category:Witnesses of the Iraq Inquiry Category:Members of the Fabian Society

Name	Mark Regevמרק רגב
Birth place	Melbourne, Australia
Nationality	Israeli

Mark Regev (formerly Freiberg) () is an Israeli diplomat and media spokesman. He is currently the spokesman for the Prime Minister of Israel and an advisor on foreign press and public affairs, a position he has held since his appointment by the former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2007.

Early life

Regev was born Mark Freiberg in Melbourne, Australia in 1960 to Martin and Freda Freiberg. He graduated from Mount Scopus Memorial College, received his Bachelor's degree in Political Science and History at Melbourne University, and a Master's degree in Political Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as well as a Master of Science in Management from Boston University. He is married and has three children.

Regev received prominence in international media when he presented the Israeli position in numerous interviews to English-language TV and radio channels during the 2008-2009 Gaza war.

See also

References

External links

Regev answers questions about Israeli policy

Transcript of a radio interview with Regev

Another transcript of a radio interview with Regev

Image of Mark Regev

Mark Regev answering Channel 4 Questions

Mark Regev vs Paxman

Mark Regev on BBC Newsnight

Mark Regev denies war crimes Channel 4 News

Mark Regev on CNN

Category:1960 births Category:Living people Category:Australian Jews Category:Australian immigrants to Israel Category:Israeli Jews Category:Israeli civil servants Category:Israeli diplomats Category:University of Melbourne alumni Category:Hebrew University of Jerusalem alumni Category:Boston University alumni

Name	Henry Kissinger
Caption	Henry Kissinger in 1976.
Order	56th United States Secretary of State
Term start	September 22, 1973
Term end	January 20, 1977
Deputy	Kenneth RushRobert S. IngersollCharles W. Robinson
President	Richard NixonGerald Ford
Predecessor	William P. Rogers
Successor	Cyrus Vance
Order2	8th US National Security Advisor
Term start2	January 20, 1969
Term end2	November 3, 1975
President2	Richard NixonGerald Ford
Predecessor2	Walt Rostow
Successor2	Brent Scowcroft
Birth date	Heinz Alfred Kissinger
Birth place	Fürth, Bavaria, Germany
Party	Republican
Spouse	Ann Fleischer (1949-1964)Nancy Maginnes (1974-present)
Alma mater	City College of New YorkHarvard University
Profession	DiplomatAcademician
Religion	Jewish
Signature	Henry A Kissinger Signature.svg
Branch	US Army
Rank	Sergeant
Unit	970th Counter Intelligence Corps

Henry Alfred Kissinger (; born May 27, 1923) is a German-born American political scientist, diplomat, and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. After his term, his opinion was still sought by many following presidents.

A proponent of Realpolitik, Kissinger played a dominant role in United States foreign policy between 1969 and 1977. During this period, he pioneered the policy of détente with the Soviet Union, orchestrated the opening of relations with the People's Republic of China, and negotiated the Paris Peace Accords, ending American involvement in the Vietnam War. His role in the bombing of Cambodia and other American interventions abroad during this period remains controversial.

Kissinger is still a controversial figure today. He remains a regular participant in meetings of the annual invitation-only Bilderberg Group. He was honored as the first recipient of the Ewald von Kleist Award of the Munich Conference on Security Policy and currently serves as the chairman of Kissinger Associates, an international consulting firm.

Early and personal life

Early life

Kissinger was born Heinz Alfred Kissinger (pronounced "Haints Alfʁed Kissiŋer") in Fürth, Bavaria, Weimar Republic to a family of German Jews. His father, Louis Kissinger (1887–1982) was a schoolteacher. His mother, Paula Stern Kissinger (1901–1998), was a homemaker. Kissinger has a younger brother, Walter Kissinger. The surname Kissinger was adopted in 1817 by his great-great-grandfather Meyer Löb, after the city of Bad Kissingen. In 1938, fleeing Nazi persecution, his family moved to New York.

Kissinger spent his high school years in the Washington Heights section of upper Manhattan as part of the German Jewish immigrant community there. Although Kissinger assimilated quickly into American culture, he never lost his pronounced Frankish accent, due to childhood shyness that made him hesitant to speak. Following his first year at George Washington High School, he began attending school at night and worked in a shave brush factory during the day.

Family life

Kissinger first married Ann Fleischer, with whom he had two children, Elizabeth and David. They divorced in 1964. Ten years later, he married Nancy Maginnes. They now live in Kent, Connecticut and New York City. David was an executive with NBC Universal before being tapped as the head of Conaco, Conan O'Brien's production company.

Army experience

Kissinger underwent basic training at Camp Croft in Spartanburg, South Carolina, where he was naturalized upon arrival. The Army sent him to study engineering at Lafayette College, Pennsylvania, but the program was canceled, and Kissinger was reassigned to the 84th Infantry Division. There, he made the acquaintance of Fritz Kraemer, a fellow emigrant from Germany who despite the age difference, noted Kissinger's fluency in German and his intellect, arranged for him to be assigned to the military intelligence section of the division. Kissinger saw combat with the division, and volunteered for hazardous intelligence duties during the Battle of the Bulge.

During the American advance into Germany, Kissinger was assigned to de-Nazify the city of Krefeld, owing to a lack of German speakers on the division's intelligence staff. Kissinger relied on his knowledge of German society to remove the obvious Nazis and restore a working civilian administration, a task he accomplished in 8 days. Kissinger was then reassigned to the Counter Intelligence Corps, with the rank of Sergeant. He was given charge of a team in Hanover assigned to tracking down Gestapo officers and other saboteurs, for which he was awarded the Bronze Star. In June 1945, Kissinger was made commandant of a CIC detachment in the Bergstraße district of Hesse, with responsibility for de-Nazification of the district. Although he possessed absolute authority and powers of arrest, Kissinger took care to avoid abuses against the local population by his command.

In 1946, Kissinger was reassigned to teach at the European Command Intelligence School at Camp King, continuing to serve in this role as a civilian employee following his separation from the Army.

Academic career

Henry Kissinger received his B.A. degree summa cum laude at Harvard College in 1950, where he studied under William Yandell Elliott. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at Harvard University in 1952 and 1954, respectively. In 1952, while still at Harvard, he served as a consultant to the Director of the Psychological Strategy Board. His doctoral dissertation was titled "Peace, Legitimacy, and the Equilibrium (A Study of the Statesmanship of Castlereagh and Metternich)."

Kissinger remained at Harvard as a member of the faculty in the Department of Government and at the Center for International Affairs. He became Associate Director of the latter in 1957. In 1955, he was a consultant to the National Security Council's Operations Coordinating Board. From 1956 to 1958 he worked for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund as director of its Special Studies Project.

A proponent of Realpolitik, Kissinger played a dominant role in United States foreign policy between 1969 and 1977. In that period, he extended the policy of détente. This policy led to a significant relaxation in U.S.-Soviet tensions and played a crucial role in 1971 talks with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai. The talks concluded with a rapprochement between the United States and the People's Republic of China, and the formation of a new strategic anti-Soviet Sino-American alignment. He was awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize for helping to establish a ceasefire and US withdrawal from Vietnam. The ceasefire, however, was not durable. In a 1967 peace initiative, he would mediate between Washington and Hanoi.

Nixon had been elected in 1968 on the promise of achieving "peace with honor" and ending the Vietnam War. In office, and assisted by Kissinger, Nixon implemented a policy of Vietnamization that aimed to gradually withdraw US troops while expanding the combat role of the enabling South Vietnamese Army so that it would be capable of independently defending its regime against the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam, a Communist guerrilla organization, and North Vietnamese army (Vietnam People's Army or PAVN). Kissinger played a key role in a secret bombing campaign in Cambodia to disrupt PAVN and Viet Cong units launching raids into South Vietnam from within Cambodia's borders and resupplying their forces by using the Ho Chi Minh trail and other routes, as well as the 1970 Cambodian Incursion and subsequent widespread bombing of Cambodia. The bombing campaign contributed to the chaos of the Cambodian Civil War, which saw the forces of dictator Lon Nol unable to retain foreign support to combat the growing Khmer Rouge insurgency that would overthrow him in 1975. Documents uncovered from the Soviet archives after 1991 reveal that the North Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1970 was launched at the explicit request of the Khmer Rouge and negotiated by Pol Pot's then second in command, Nuon Chea. The American bombing of Cambodia killed an estimated 40,000 combatants and civilians. Pol Pot biographer David Chandler argues that the bombing "had the effect the Americans wanted – it broke the Communist encirclement of Phnom Penh," while Christopher Hitchens asserts that the bombing may have increased recruitment for the Khmer Rouge.

Along with North Vietnamese Politburo Member Le Duc Tho, Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on December 10, 1973, for their work in negotiating the ceasefires contained in the Paris Peace Accords on "Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam," signed the January previous. Tho rejected the award, telling Kissinger that peace had not been really restored in South Vietnam. Kissinger wrote to the Nobel Committee that he accepted the award "with humility." The conflict continued until an invasion of the South by the North Vietnamese Army resulted in a North Vietnamese victory in 1975 and the subsequent progression of the Pathet Lao in Laos towards figurehead status.

1971 Liberation War of Bangladesh

Under Kissinger's guidance, the United States government supported Pakistan in the Liberation War of Bangladesh in 1971. Kissinger was particularly concerned about the expansion of Soviet influence in South Asia as a result of a treaty of friendship recently signed by India and the USSR, and sought to demonstrate to the People's Republic of China (Pakistan's ally and an enemy of both India and the USSR) the value of a tacit alliance with the United States.

In recent years, Kissinger has come under fire for private comments he made to Nixon during the Bangladesh-Pakistan War in which he described then-Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi as a "bitch" and a "witch". He also said "The Indians are bastards," shortly before the war. Kissinger has since expressed his regret over the comments.

Israeli Policy and Soviet Jewry

According to notes taken by H.R. Haldeman, Nixon "ordered his aides to exclude all Jewish-Americans from policy-making on Israel," including Kissinger. One note quotes Nixon as saying “get K. [Kissinger] out of the play — Haig handle it."

In addition, Kissinger felt unease about what he viewed as growing demands on the part of Israeli leaders for US support, and in a telephone conversation with Daniel Patrick Moynihan he referred to the Israeli government leadership as "a sick bunch". In a conversation with Robert McNamara he said about Israeli leaders: "We have vetoed 8 resolutions for the past years, given them $ 4 billion in aid, voted for resolutions composed entirely of our own statements and deleted things we objected to previously and we still are treated as if we have done nothing for them".

1973 Yom Kippur War

In 1973, Kissinger negotiated the end to the Yom Kippur War, which had begun on October 6, 1973 when Egypt and Syria attacked Israel. Kissinger has published lengthy and dramatic telephone transcripts from this period in the 2002 book Crisis. One week later, under Nixon's direction, and against Kissinger's initial opposition, the US military conducted the largest military airlift in history to aid Israel on October 12, 1973. US action contributed to the 1973 oil crisis in the United States and its Western European allies, which ended in March 1974.

(left) meets with Richard Nixon (middle) and Henry Kissinger (right), about a week after the end of fighting in the Yom Kippur War]] Israel regained the territory it lost in the early fighting and gained new territories from Syria and Egypt, including land in Syria east of the previously captured Golan Heights, and additionally on the western bank of the Suez Canal, although they did lose some territory on the eastern side of the Suez Canal that had been in Israeli hands since the end of the Six Day War. Kissinger pressured the Israelis to cede some of the newly captured land back to its Arab neighbours, contributing to the first phases of Israeli-Egyptian non-aggression. The move saw a warming in US–Egyptian relations, bitter since the 1950s, as the country moved away from its former independent stance and into a close partnership with the United States. The peace was finalized in 1978 when U.S. President Jimmy Carter mediated the Camp David Accords, during which Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula in exchange for an Egyptian agreement to recognize the state of Israel.

Latin American policy

The United States continued to recognize and maintain relationships with non-left-wing governments, democratic and authoritarian alike. John F. Kennedy's Alliance for Progress was ended in 1973. In 1974, negotiations about new settlement over Panama Canal started. They eventually led to the Torrijos-Carter Treaties and handing the Canal over to Panamanian control.

Kissinger initially supported the normalization of United States-Cuba relations, broken since 1961 (all U.S.–Cuban trade was blocked in February 1962, a few weeks after the exclusion of Cuba from the Organization of American States because of US pressure). However, he quickly changed his mind and followed Kennedy's policy. After the involvement of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces in the liberation struggles in Angola and Mozambique, Kissinger said that unless Cuba withdrew its forces relations would not be normalized. Cuba refused.

Intervention in Chile

Chilean Socialist Party presidential candidate Salvador Allende was elected by a plurality in 1970, causing serious concern in Washington, D.C. due to his openly socialist and pro-Cuban politics. The Nixon administration authorized the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to encourage a military coup that would prevent Allende's inauguration, but the plan was not successful. The extent of Kissinger's involvement in or support of these plans is a subject of controversy.

United States-Chile relations remained frosty during Salvador Allende's tenure, following the complete nationalization of the partially U.S.-owned copper mines and the Chilean subsidiary of the U.S.-based ITT Corporation, as well as other Chilean businesses. The U.S. claimed that the Chilean government had greatly undervalued fair compensation for the nationalization by subtracting what it deemed "excess profits". Therefore, the U.S. considered (but never actually implemented) economic sanctions against Chile. The CIA also provided funding for the mass anti-government strikes in 1972 and 1973.

The CIA, as recounted in the Church Committee report, was involved in various plots designed to remove Allende and then let the Chileans vote in a new election where he would not be a candidate: It tried to buy off the Chilean Congress to prevent his appointment, attempted to have him exiled, worked to sway public opinion against him to prevent his election, tried to foil his political aspirations during the Lyndon B. Johnson administration, and financed protests designed to bring the country to a stand-still and make him resign. Convinced that a conventional military uprising was still not possible in Chile, the CIA, acting with the approval of the 40 Committee—the body charged with overseeing covert actions abroad—devised what in effect was a constitutional coup. The most expeditious way to prevent Allende from assuming office was somehow to convince the Chilean congress to confirm Alessandri as the winner of the election. Once elected by the congress, Alessandri—a party to the plot through intermediaries—was prepared to resign his presidency within a matter of days so that new elections could be held. The CIA also learned of a number of plots to establish a military dictatorship. Although it pointedly refused to materially assist any of them, and actually worked to prevent several of the more unlikely plots for fear they would fail and strengthen Allende; it also encouraged several of the plots and did nothing to prevent them. It assured the plotters that such an event would be welcomed in Washington and that the US would not cut off aid over potential human rights violations.

On September 11, 1973, Allende committed suicide during a military coup launched by Army Commander-in-Chief Augusto Pinochet, who became President. A document released by the CIA in 2000 titled "CIA Activities in Chile" revealed that the CIA actively supported the military junta after the overthrow of Allende and that it made many of Pinochet's officers into paid contacts of the CIA or US military, even though many were known to be involved in notorious human rights abuses, until Democratic challenger Jimmy Carter defeated President Gerald Ford in 1976.

On September 16, 1973, five days after Pinochet had assumed power, the following exchange about the coup took place between Kissinger and President Nixon:

: Nixon: Nothing new of any importance or is there? : Kissinger: Nothing of very great consequence. The Chilean thing is getting consolidated and of course the newspapers are bleeding because a pro-Communist government has been overthrown. : Nixon: Isn't that something. Isn't that something. : Kissinger: I mean instead of celebrating – in the Eisenhower period we would be heroes. : Nixon: Well we didn't – as you know – our hand doesn't show on this one though. : Kissinger: We didn't do it. I mean we helped them. [garbled] created the conditions as great as possible. : Nixon: That is right. And that is the way it is going to be played.

In 1976, Kissinger canceled a letter that was to be sent to Chile warning them against carrying out any political assassinations. Orlando Letelier was then assassinated in Washington, D.C. with a car bomb on September 21, 1976, the day the letter was to be sent. In an Aug. 30, 1976 memo, Shlaudeman discussed the possibility that the U.S. ambassador in Uruguay might be endangered by delivering a warning against assassination. The U.S. ambassador to Chile said that Pinochet might take as an insult any inference that he was connected with assassination plots.

Intervention in Argentina

Kissinger took a similar line as he had toward Chile when the Argentine military, led by Jorge Videla, toppled the democratic government of Isabel Perón in 1976 with a process named as "National Reorganization Process" by the military, with which they consolidated power, launching brutal reprisals and "disappearances" against political opponents. During a meeting with Argentine foreign minister César Augusto Guzzetti, Kissinger assured him that the United States was an ally, but urged him to "get back to normal procedures" quickly before the U.S. Congress reconvened and had a chance to consider sanctions.

Africa

In 1974 a leftist military coup overthrew the Caetano government in Portugal in the Carnation Revolution. The National Salvation Junta, the new government, quickly granted Portugal's colonies independence. Cuban troops in Angola supported the left-wing Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in its fight against right-wing UNITA and FNLA rebels during the Angolan Civil War (1975–2002). Kissinger supported FNLA, led by Holden Roberto, and UNITA, led by Jonas Savimbi, the Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO) insurgencies, as well as the CIA-supported invasion of Angola by South African troops. The FNLA was defeated and UNITA was forced to take its fight into the bush. Only under Reagan's presidency would U.S. support for UNITA return.

In September 1976 Kissinger was actively involved in negotiations regarding the Rhodesian Bush War. Kissinger, along with South Africa's Prime Minister John Vorster, pressured Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith to hasten the transition to black majority rule in Rhodesia. With FRELIMO in control of Mozambique and even South Africa withdrawing its support, Rhodesia's isolation was nearly complete. According to Smith's autobiography, Kissinger told Smith of Mrs. Kissinger's admiration for him, but Smith stated that he thought Kissinger was asking him to sign Rhodesia's "death certificate". Kissinger, bringing the weight of the United States, and corralling other relevant parties to put pressure on Rhodesia, hastened the end of minority-rule.

East Timor

The Portuguese decolonization process brought US attention to the former Portuguese colony of East Timor, which lies within the Indonesian archipelago and declared its independence in 1975. Indonesian president Suharto was a strong US ally in Southeast Asia and began to mobilize the Indonesian army, preparing to annex the nascent state, which had become increasingly dominated by the popular leftist FRETILIN party. In December 1975, Suharto discussed the invasion plans during a meeting with Kissinger and President Ford in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta. Both Ford and Kissinger made clear that US relations with Indonesia would remain strong and that it would not object to the proposed annexation. US arms sales to Indonesia continued, and Suharto went ahead with the annexation plan.

Later roles

in the White House family quarters, 1981]]

Shortly after Kissinger left office in 1977, he was offered an endowed chair at Columbia University. There was significant student opposition to the appointment, which eventually became a subject of significant media commentary Columbia cancelled the appointment as a result.

Kissinger was then appointed to Georgetown University's Center for Strategic and International Studies. Kissinger published a dialogue with the Japanese philosopher, Daisaku Ikeda, On Peace, Life and Philosophy. He taught at Georgetown's Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service for several years in the late 1970s. In 1982, Kissinger founded a consulting firm, Kissinger Associates, and is a partner in affiliate Kissinger McLarty Associates with Mack McLarty, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton. He also serves on board of directors of Hollinger International, a Chicago-based newspaper group, and as of March 1999, he also serves on board of directors of Gulfstream Aerospace.

In 1978, Kissinger was named chairman of the North American Soccer League board of directors. From 1995 to 2001, he served on the board of directors for Freeport-McMoRan, a multinational copper and gold producer with significant mining and milling operations in Papua, Indonesia. In February 2000, then-president of Indonesia Abdurrahman Wahid appointed Kissinger as a political advisor. He also serves as an honorary advisor to the United States-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce.

's 'India Economic Summit', November, 2008, New Delhi]]

Role in U.S. foreign policy

Kissinger left office when a Democrat, former Governor of Georgia and "Washington outsider" Jimmy Carter, defeated Republican Gerald Ford in the 1976 presidential elections. Kissinger continued to participate in policy groups, such as the Trilateral Commission, and to maintain political consulting, speaking, and writing engagements.

In 2002, President George W. Bush appointed Kissinger to chair a committee to investigate the September 11 attacks. Kissinger stepped down as chairman on December 13, 2002 rather than reveal his client list, when queried about potential conflicts of interest.

The Balkans

In several articles of his and interviews that he gave during the Yugoslav wars, he criticized the United States' policies in the Balkans, among other things for the recognition of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a sovereign state, which he described as a foolish act. Most importantly he dismissed the notion of Serbs, and Croats for that part, being aggressors or separatist, saying that "they can't be separating from something that has never existed".

In addition, he repeatedly warned the West of implicating itself in a conflict that has its roots at least hundreds of years back in time, and said that the West would do better if it allowed the Serbs and Croats to join their respective countries.

Iraq

's funeral in January 2007.]] In 2006, it was reported in the book by Bob Woodward that Kissinger was meeting regularly with President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to offer advice on the Iraq War. Kissinger confirmed in recorded interviews with Woodward that the advice was the same as he had given in an August 12, 2005 column in The Washington Post: "Victory over the insurgency is the only meaningful exit strategy."

In a November 19, 2006 interview at BBC Sunday AM, Kissinger said, when asked whether there is any hope left for a clear military victory in Iraq, "If you mean by 'military victory' an Iraqi Government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible... I think we have to redefine the course. But I don't believe that the alternative is between military victory as it had been defined previously, or total withdrawal."

In an April 3, 2008 interview by Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institution, Kissinger re-iterated that even though he supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq he thought that the Bush administration rested too much of the case for war on Saddam's supposed weapons of mass destruction. Robinson noted that Kissinger had criticized the administration for invading with too few troops, for disbanding the Iraqi Army, and for mishandling relations with certain allies.

Southwest Asia

After apologizing for his use of the word 'bitch' in reference to Mrs. Indira Gandhi, Kissinger met India's main Opposition Leader Lal Krishna Advani in early October 2007 and lobbied for the support of his Bharatiya Janata Party for the Indo-US civilian nuclear agreement.

Kissinger was present at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Summer Olympics. He was also in the Chinese capital to attend the inauguration of the new US Embassy complex.

Kissinger said in April 2008 that "India has parallel objectives to the United States" and he called it an ally of the U.S.

Public perception

Kissinger, like the rest of the Nixon administration, was unpopular with the anti-war political left, especially after his central role in the U.S. bombing of neutral Cambodia was revealed. Kissinger was also opposed by more ideological elements of the Republican foreign policy establishment for his policy of détente and accommodation with the Soviets.

However, few doubted his intellect and diplomatic skill, and he became one of the better-liked members of the Nixon administration, though many Americans came to view Kissinger's talents as increasingly cynical and self-serving. Kissinger was not connected with the Watergate scandal, which spared him from the controversy that would eventually ruin the reputations of Nixon and many of his closest aides.

At the height of Kissinger's prominence, he was known by the public and in Washington for his wit. In one instance, at the Washington Press Club annual congressional dinner, "Kissinger mocked his reputation as a secret swinger." He was quoted as saying "Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac."

Since he left office, numerous efforts have been made to charge Kissinger personally for the perceived injustices of American foreign policy during his tenure in office. These charges have at times inconvenienced his travels.

In film and television

Kissinger has shied away from mainstream media and cable talk shows. Recently, he granted a rare interview to the producers of a documentary examining the underpinnings of the 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt entitled "." In the film, a candid Kissinger reveals how close he felt the world was to nuclear war during the 1973 Yom Kippur War launched by Egypt and Syria against Israeli forces in the territories Israel occupied from them as a result of the Six-Day War.

Awards, honors and associations

.]]In 1973, Kissinger and Le Duc Tho were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the Paris Peace Accords of 1973, "intended to bring about a cease-fire in the Vietnam war and a withdrawal of the American forces," while serving as the United States Secretary of State. Unlike Tho, who refused it because Vietnam was still at war, Kissinger accepted it.

On January 13, 1977, Kissinger was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Gerald Ford.

In 1995, he was appointed an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

In 1998, Kissinger became an honorary citizen of Fürth, Germany, his hometown. He has been a life-long supporter of the Spielvereinigung Greuther Fürth football club and is now an honorary member. He served as Chancellor of the College of William and Mary from February 10, 2001 to the summer of 2005.

In April 2006, Kissinger received the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service from the Woodrow Wilson Center of the Smithsonian Institution.

In June 2007, Kissinger received the Hopkins-Nanjing Award for his contributions to reestablishing Sino–American relations. This award was presented by the presidents of Nanjing University, Chen Jun and of Johns Hopkins University, William Brody, during the 20th anniversary celebration of the Johns Hopkins University—Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies also known as the Hopkins-Nanjing Center.

In September 2007, Kissinger was honored as Grand Marshal of the German-American Steuben Parade in New York City. He was celebrated by tens of thousands of spectators on Fifth Avenue. Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl was supposed to be a co-Grand Marshal but had to cancel due to health problems. Kohl was represented by Klaus Scharioth, German Ambassador in Washington, who led the Steuben Parade with Kissinger.

Kissinger is known to be a member of the following groups:

Bohemian Club Council on Foreign Relations Aspen Institute Bilderberg Group

Bibliography

Memoirs

1979. The White House Years. ISBN 0-316-49661-8

1982. Years of Upheaval. ISBN 0-316-28591-9

1999. Years of Renewal. ISBN 0-684-85571-2

Public policy

1957. Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy. ISBN 0-865-31745-3 (1984 edition)

1961. The Necessity for Choice: Prospects of American Foreign Policy. ISBN 0-06-012410-5

1965. The Troubled Partnership: A Re-Appraisal of the Atlantic Alliance. ISBN 0-07-034895-2

1969. American Foreign Policy: Three essays. ISBN 0-297-17933-0

1973. A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812-22. ISBN 0-395-17229-2

1981. For the Record: Selected Statements 1977-1980. ISBN 0-316-49663-4

1985 Observations: Selected Speeches and Essays 1982-1984. ISBN 0-316-49664-2

1994. Diplomacy. ISBN 067165991X

1999. Kissinger Transcripts: The Top Secret Talks With Beijing and Moscow (Henry Kissinger, William Burr). ISBN 1-56584-480-7

2001. Does America Need a Foreign Policy?: Toward a Diplomacy for the 21st Century. ISBN 0684855674

2002. Vietnam: A Personal History of America's Involvement in and Extrication from the Vietnam War. ISBN 0-7432-1916-3

2003. Crisis: The Anatomy of Two Major Foreign Policy Crises: Based on the Record of Henry Kissinger's Hitherto Secret Telephone Conversations. ISBN 0-7432-4910-0

Footnotes

Further reading

Biographies

1973. Graubard, Stephen Richards, Kissinger: Portrait of a Mind. ISBN 0-393-05481-0

1974. Kalb, Marvin L. and Kalb, Bernard, Kissenger, ISBN 0-316-48221-8

1974. Schlafly, Phyllis, Kissinger on the Couch. Arlington House Publishers. ISBN 0-87000-216-3

1983. Hersh, Seymour, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House, Summit Books. ISBN 0671506889. (Awards: National Book Critics Circle, General Non-Fiction Award. Best Book of the Year: New York Times Book Review; Newsweek; San Francisco Chronicle)

1992. Isaacson, Walter. Kissinger: A Biography. New York. Simon & Schuster (updated, 2005). ISBN 0-671-66323-2

2004. Hanhimäki, Jussi. The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy. ISBN 0-19-517221-3

2007. Kurz, Evi. Die Kissinger-Saga. ISBN 978-3-940405-70-8

2009. Kurz, Evi. The Kissinger-Saga - Walter and Henry Kissinger. Two Brothers from Fuerth, Germany. London. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 978-0-297-85675-7.

Other

Avner, Yehuda, The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership, 2010. ISBN 9781592642786

Benedetti, Amedeo, Lezioni di politica di Henry Kissinger. Linguaggio, pensiero ed aforismi del più abile politico di fine Novecento, Genova, Erga, 2005, ISBN 88-8163-391-4

Berman, Larry, No peace, no honor. Nixon, Kissinger, and Betrayal in Vietnam, New York, NY u.a.: Free Press, 2001. ISBN 0-684-84968-2.

Dallek, Robert, Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power. HarperCollins, 2007. ISBN 0060722304

Hanhimäki, Jussi M., 'Dr. Kissinger' or 'Mr. Henry'? Kissingerology, Thirty Years and Counting', in: Diplomatic History, Vol. 27, Issue 5, pp. 637–76.

Hitchens, Christopher, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, 2002. ISBN 1-85984-631-9

Klitzing, Holger, The Nemesis of Stability. Henry A. Kissinger's Ambivalent Relationship with Germany. Trier: WVT 2007, ISBN 3884769421

Morris, Roger, Uncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy. Harper and Row, ISBN 0-06-013097-0

Schmidt, Helmut, On Men and Power: A Political Memoir.1990. ISBN 0-224-02715-8

Schulzinger, Robert D. Henry Kissinger. Doctor of Diplomacy. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989. ISBN 0-231-06952-9

Shawcross, William, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia (Revised edition October 2002) ISBN 0-8154-1224-X

Thornton, Richard C., The Nixon-Kissinger Years: Reshaping of America's Foreign Policy. 1989. ISBN 0-88702-051-8

Tucker, Nancy Bernkopf, Taiwan Expendable? Nixon and Kissinger Go to China, 2005. ISBN 9780231135658

External links

Annotated Bibliography for Henry Kissinger from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues

Official Website of Henry A. Kissinger

"Charlie Rose" A conversation with Henry Kissinger, December 16, 2008

Henry Kissinger speaks at the Asia Society, NYC, February, 2007

Kissinger's political donations

NPR: Kissinger Speech at National Press Club. Towards the end [55:55], he responds to Hitchens.

The Kissinger Saga. Henry and Walter: Two Brothers from Fuerth/Germany. Documentary, 90 min. (unabridged version), first time aired: Bayerischer Rundfunk (Bavarian Broadcasting Network), January 21, 2007. Summary

Producer of 'The Kissinger-Saga, Walter and Henry Kissinger - Two Brothers from Fuerth/Germany'

СССР TV: "In the wake of Kissinger's visit (1976)" (in Russian)

Linkage and Arms Control. Interview conducted on November 26, 1986 for the War and Peace in the Nuclear Age series.

Henry Kissinger interviewed by Mike Wallace on The Mike Wallace Interview July 13, 1958

Uncommon Knowledge: Henry Kissinger

Interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria

Kissinger talks about Vladimir Putin

"Kissinger Speaks Out On Foreign Policy"

Category:1923 births Category:American anti-communists Category:American diplomats Category:American foreign policy writers Category:American Jews Category:American memoirists Category:American Nobel laureates Category:American people of the Vietnam War Category:Chancellors of the College of William & Mary Category:City College of New York alumni Category:Cold War diplomats Category:Consequentialists Category:Geopoliticians Category:Georgetown University faculty Category:American people of German-Jewish descent Category:German Jews who emigrated to the United States to escape Nazism Category:German Nobel laureates Category:Harvard University alumni Category:Harvard University faculty Category:Honorary Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire Category:International relations scholars Category:Jewish American politicians Category:Karlspreis recipients Category:Living people Category:Naturalized citizens of the United States Category:Businesspeople from New York Category:Nixon administration personnel Category:Nobel Peace Prize laureates Category:Operation Condor Category:People from Fürth Category:People from Washington Heights, Manhattan Category:Political realists Category:Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients Category:Recipients of the Bronze Star Medal Category:United States Army soldiers Category:United States National Security Advisors Category:United States Secretaries of State Category:Jewish American military personnel Category:People from Belmont, Massachusetts Category:Time Persons of the Year

Name	George Galloway
Caption	Galloway at a Stop The War protest in London, 24 February 2007
Birth date	August 16, 1954
Birth place	Dundee, Scotland
Residence	London, England, UK
Office	Vice President of the Stop The War Coalition
Term start	21 September 2001
President	Tony Benn
Predecessor	Office created
Constituency mp1	Bethnal Green and Bow
Majority1	823 (1.9%)
Term start1	5 May 2005
Term end1	12 April 2010
Predecessor1	Oona King
Successor1	Rushanara Ali
Term start2	1 May 1997
Term end2	5 May 2005
Predecessor2	Constituency created
Successor2	Constituency abolished
Constituency mp2	Glasgow Kelvin
Majority2	7,260 (27.1%)
Term start3	11 June 1987
Term end3	1 May 1997
Predecessor3	Roy Jenkins
Successor3	Constituency abolished
Constituency mp3	Glasgow Hillhead
Majority3	4,826 (12.3%)
Party	Respect (2004–present)Labour (1967–2003)
Nationality	Scottish
Citizenship	British
Website	www.georgegalloway.com

George Galloway (born 16 August 1954) is a British politician, author, and broadcaster who was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1987 to 2010. He was formerly an MP for the Labour Party, first for Glasgow Hillhead, and later for Glasgow Kelvin, before his expulsion from the party in October 2003, the same year that he came to public attention for his opposition to the American and British invasion of Iraq. He subsequently became a founding member of the left wing Respect Party, and through them represented Bethnal Green and Bow in the 2005 parliament. In the 2010 election, Galloway unsuccessfully contested the parliamentary seat of Poplar and Limehouse.

Galloway is also known for his vigorous campaigns in favour of the Palestinians in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He attempted to both overturn economic sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s and early 2000s, and to avert the 2003 invasion. He is also known for a visit to Iraq where he met Saddam Hussein and delivered a speech, which has proven contentious, although Galloway actively opposed the regime until the United States-led Gulf War in 1991 and has always stated that he was addressing the Iraqi people in the speech.

Early and personal life

Galloway was born in the Lochee area of Dundee, Scotland, to a Scottish trade unionist father and Irish republican mother. He grew up in Charleston and attended Charleston Primary and then Harris Academy, a non-denominational school.

From 1979 to 1999, he was married to Elaine Fyffe, with whom he has a daughter, Lucy. In 2000, he married Amineh Abu-Zayyad. Zayyad filed for divorce in 2005. He married Rima Husseini, a Lebanese woman and former researcher, who in May 2007 gave birth to a son, Zein.

Galloway was raised as a Roman Catholic. He turned away from the church as a young man, but returned in his mid-20s. By his own account he decided to never drink alcohol at the age of 18, disapproves of it, and describes it as having a "very deleterious effect on people".

Labour Party organiser

Galloway joined the Labour Party at 13 years old and, within five years, was secretary of the Dundee West constituency party. His enthusiasm led him to become vice-chairman of the Labour Party in the city of Dundee and a member of the Scottish Executive Committee in 1975. On 5 May 1977, he contested his first election campaign in the Scottish district elections, but failed to hold the safe Labour seat at Gillburn, Dundee. He was beaten by the Independent candidate Bunty Turley, who was a trade unionist running on the campaign slogan "enough is enough" after allegations were made about Galloway's personal and financial behaviour. Galloway became the secretary organiser of Dundee Labour Party—the youngest ever Scottish chairman—in March 1981 at 26 years old.

His support for the Palestinian cause began in 1974 when he met a Palestinian activist in Dundee; he supported the actions of Dundee City council which flew the Palestinian flag inside the City Chambers. He was involved in the twinning of Dundee with Nablus in 1980, although he did not take part in the visit of Lord Provost Gowans, Ernie Ross MP and three city councillors to Nablus and Kuwait in April 1981.

Parliamentary career and public profile

War On Want

From November 1983 to 1987, Galloway was General Secretary of War On Want, a British charity that campaigns against poverty worldwide. In this post he was much travelled, writing eye-witness accounts of the famine in Eritrea in 1985 which were published in The Sunday Times and The Spectator.

The Daily Mirror accused him of living luxuriously at the charity's expense. An independent auditor cleared him of misuse of funds, though he did repay £1,720 in contested expenses. He later reportedly won £155,000 from the Mirror in an unrelated libel lawsuit.

More than two years after Galloway stepped down to serve as a Labour MP, the UK government investigated War on Want. It found accounting irregularities from 1985 to 1989, but little evidence that money was used for non-charitable purposes. Galloway had been General Secretary for the first three of those years. The commission said responsibility lay largely with auditors, and did not single out individuals for blame. The statement put Galloway on the front pages of the tabloid press and in February 1988 the Executive Committee of his Constituency Labour Party passed a vote of no confidence in him.

In 1990, a classified advertisement appeared in the Labour left weekly Tribune headed "Lost: MP who answers to the name of George", "balding and has been nicknamed gorgeous", claiming that the lost MP had been seen in Romania but had not been to a constituency meeting for a year. A telephone number was given which turned out to be for the Groucho Club in London, from which Galloway had recently been excluded (he has since been readmitted). Galloway threatened legal action and pointed out that he had been to five constituency meetings. He eventually settled for an out-of-court payment by Tribune.

The leadership election of the Labour Party in 1992 saw Galloway voting for fellow Scot John Smith for Leader and Margaret Beckett as Deputy Leader. In 1994, after Smith's death, Galloway declined to cast a vote in the leadership election (one of only three MPs to do so). In a debate with the leader of the Scottish National Party Alex Salmond, Galloway responded to one of Salmond's jibes against the Labour Party by declaring "I don't give a fuck what Tony Blair thinks." He called the Labour government "Tony Blair's lie machine." His most controversial statement from the interview may have been "Iraq is fighting for all the Arabs. Where are the Arab armies?". The Observer reported in 2003 that the Director of Public Prosecutions was considering a request to pursue Galloway under the Incitement to Disaffection Act, 1934, though no prosecution occurred.

On 18 April, The Sun published an interview with Tony Blair who said: "His comments were disgraceful and wrong. The National Executive will deal with it." The General Secretary of the Labour Party, citing Galloway's outspoken opinion of Blair and Bush in their pursuit of the Iraq war, suspended him from holding office in the party on 6 May 2003, pending a hearing on charges that he had violated the party's constitution by "bringing the Labour Party into disrepute through behaviour that is prejudicial or grossly detrimental to the Party". The National Constitutional Committee held a hearing on 22 October 2003, to consider the charges, taking evidence from Galloway himself, from other party witnesses, viewing media interviews, and hearing character testimony from Tony Benn, among others. The following day, the committee found the charge of bringing the party into disrepute proved, and so expelled Galloway from the Labour Party. Galloway called the Committee's hearing "a show trial" and "a kangaroo court".

2005 election

In January 2004, Galloway announced he would be working with members of the Socialist Alliance in England and Wales, and others, under the name Respect - The Unity Coalition, generally referred to simply as Respect. This was despite Galloway having a track record of antipathy toward Trotskyists, and the largest component of Respect being the Socialist Workers Party, which broadly identifies itself as part of the Trotskyist political tradition.

Some former members of the Socialist Alliance, including the Workers Liberty and Workers Power groups, objected to forming a coalition with Galloway, citing his political record, and his refusal to accept an average worker's wage, with Galloway claiming "I couldn’t live on three workers’ wages."

He stood as the Respect candidate in London in the 2004 European Parliament elections, but failed to win a seat after receiving 91,175 of the 115,000 votes he needed.

After his expulsion, he had initially fuelled speculation that he might call a snap by-election before then, by resigning his parliamentary seat, saying:

Galloway later announced that he would not force a by-election and intended not to contest the next general election in Glasgow. Galloway's Glasgow Kelvin seat was split between three neighbouring constituencies for the May 2005 general election. One of these, the redrawn Glasgow Central constituency, might have been his best chance to win, but had his long-time friend Mohammad Sarwar, the first Muslim Labour MP and a strong opponent of the Iraq War in place; Galloway did not wish to challenge him. After the European election results became known, Galloway announced that he would stand in Bethnal Green and Bow, the area where Respect had its strongest election results and where the sitting Labour MP, Oona King, supported the Iraq War. On 2 December, despite speculation that he might stand in Newham, he confirmed that he would be the candidate for Bethnal Green and Bow.

The ensuing electoral campaign in the seat proved to be a difficult one with heated rhetoric. The BBC reported that Galloway had himself been threatened with death by extreme Islamists from the banned organisation al-Ghurabaa. All the major candidates united in condemning the threats and violence.

On 5 May, Galloway won the seat by 823 votes and made a fiery acceptance speech, saying that Tony Blair had the blood of 100,000 people on his hands and denouncing the returning officer over alleged discrepancies in the electoral process. When challenged in a subsequent televised interview by Jeremy Paxman as to whether he was happy to have removed one of the few black women in Parliament, Galloway replied "I don't believe that people get elected because of the colour of their skin. I believe people get elected because of their record and because of their policies."

Oona King later told the Today programme that she found Paxman's line of question inappropriate. "He shouldn't be barred from running against me because I'm a black woman ... I was not defined, or did not wish to be defined, by either my ethnicity or religious background."

Constitutional Affairs minister David Lammy later criticised Galloway for the "manner in which he won that seat, whipping up racial tensions, dividing some of the poorest people in this country, I think was obscene." Lammy further called him a "carpetbagger."

"It's good to be back", Galloway said on being sworn in as MP for Bethnal Green after the May election. He pledged to represent "the people that New Labour has abandoned" and to "speak for those who have nobody else to speak for them."

Parliamentary participation statistics

After he was suspended and later expelled from the Labour Party, Galloway's participation in Parliamentary activity fell to minimal levels. After speaking in a debate on Iraq on 25 March 2003, Galloway did not intervene in any way in Parliamentary debates or ask any oral questions for the remainder of the Parliament and his participation in House of Commons Divisions was among the lowest of any MP.

Following the 2005 election, his participation rate remained low, at the end of the year he had participated in only 15% of Divisions in the House of Commons since the general election, placing him 634th of 645 MPs - of the eleven MPs below him in the rankings, one is the former Prime Minister Tony Blair, five are Sinn Féin members who have an abstentionist policy toward taking their seats, three are the speaker and deputy speakers and therefore ineligible to vote, and two have died since the election. Galloway claims a record of unusual activity at a "grass roots" level. His own estimate is that he has made 1,100 public speeches between September 2001 and May 2005.

In November 2005, Galloway's commitment to Parliamentary activity was again called into question when he failed to attend the Report Stage of the Prevention of Terrorism Bill in the House of Commons, despite Respect having urged its members to put pressure on MPs to attend. It was later confirmed that Galloway had been carrying out a speaking engagement in Cork, Ireland on the night (Galloway's spokesman asserted the performance was "uncancellable").

Although that stage of the bill failed by two votes, it initially appeared that the government won by a majority of only one, in which Galloway's attendance would have tied the vote. However, even in the case of a tie the vote would not have resulted in defeat for the government, because the vote was on an amendment (tightening the standard on what constitutes incitement to terrorism) and the amendment would not have passed. It would have taken three more "aye" votes to pass the amendment. All the same, Respect later put out a statement stating that it regretted the vote had been missed. The statement further claimed that Galloway had cleared his diary for all the subsequent votes on the bill. Galloway did attend a subsequent debate on the Bill, and voted against the final reading of the bill, which passed.

Questioned about this in a Guardian interview, Galloway responded: "I am in the Commons every day, apart from when I was banned. What I don't do is vote in the Commons and the reason for that is really quite banal. Almost every vote there is a yes or no vote, for either the prime minister's motion or the opposition leader's amendment. I almost never wish to vote for either, and there is no provision for abstention."

Galloway voted in support of the government's original draft of the religious hatred bill in 2006, which many people had feared would restrict artistic freedom and free speech.

As of September 2009, he still had one of the lowest voting participation records in parliament at 8.4% as a total of 93 votes out of a possible 1113 divisions.

Suspension from the House of Commons

On 17 July 2007, following a four-year inquiry, the House of Commons Select Committee on Standards and Privileges published its sixth report. The committee concluded that there was "no evidence" that Galloway gained any personal benefit from either the former Iraqi regime, or from the Oil-for-Food Programme. It did not examine the bank account of Galloway's former wife or their joint account.

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However, it found that Galloway's use of parliamentary resources to support his work on the Mariam Appeal "went beyond what was reasonable" and recommended he be suspended from the House.

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In response, Galloway stated

At a press conference following publication of the report, Galloway stated "To be deprived of the company for 18 days of the honourable ladies and gentleman behind me [in parliament] will be painful ... but I'm intending to struggle on regardless... What really upset them [the committee] is that I always defend myself... I am not a punchbag. If you aim low blows at me, I'll fight back".

The 2010 general election

On 10 August 2007, Galloway confirmed he would stand in newly created constituency of Poplar and Limehouse where the Labour Party has a notional majority of 3,942. The Labour candidate was the current Poplar and Canning Town MP Jim Fitzpatrick. Galloway said he had planned to stand down from Parliament at the next election, but was prompted to stay on and fight to win the neighbouring east London constituency after he felt he was unfairly suspended from Parliament for 18 days.

In the election Galloway was defeated, coming third after the Labour and Conservative candidates. He received 8,460 votes.

Political views

Galloway advocates greater spending on welfare benefits, and some nationalisation of large industries. Galloway is opposed to abortion, although he supports Respect's pro-choice stance. He opposes Scottish independence but supports the right of the people to vote on the matter via a referendum. He also supports the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. In the 2007 Scottish Parliament election, George Galloway supported Solidarity, despite not supporting all their policies, such as Scottish independence. Galloway has attracted most attention for his comments on foreign policy, taking a special interest in Libya, Pakistan, Iraq, and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. According to the report "Preventing terrorism, where next for Britain?" from the both private and public funded counter-extremism think tank Quilliam, Galloway is "Islamist backed". Inayat Bunglawala, chair of Muslims4Uk and a former MCB spokesperson, said: "This is just like something straight out of a Stasi manual. The advice from Quilliam is frankly appalling and incredibly self-serving."

Iraq and Saddam Hussein

Galloway opposed the 1991 Gulf War and was critical of the effect the subsequent sanctions had on the people of Iraq. He visited Iraq twice and met senior government officials. His involvement caused some critics to deride him as the "member for Baghdad North". In 1994, Galloway faced some of his strongest criticism on his return from a Middle-Eastern visit during which he had met Saddam Hussein "to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war". At the meeting, he reported the support given to Saddam by the people of the Gaza Strip and ended his speech with the phrase "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability," although Galloway maintains that he was misinterpreted. Galloway's most recent public statement on the matter was in a January 2007 edition of the BBC's Hardtalk in which he states that he was saluting the "Iraqi people". Galloway's speech was translated for Hussein. Anasal-Tikriti, a friend of Galloways and a Respect candidate, spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain said: "I understand Arabic and it [Galloway's salutation] was taken completely out of context. When he said "you" he meant the Iraqi people, he was saluting their indefatigability, their resolve against sanctions. Even the interpreter got it right and, in Arabic, says salutes the stand of the Iraqi people'."

In 1999, Galloway was criticised for spending Christmas in Iraq with Tariq Aziz, then Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister. In the 17 May 2005, hearing of the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Galloway stated that he had had many meetings with Aziz, and characterised their relationship as friendly. After the fall of Saddam, he continued to praise Aziz, calling him "an eminent diplomatic and intellectual person". In 2006 a video surfaced showing Galloway enthusiastically greeting Uday Hussein, Saddam's eldest son, with the title of "Excellency" at Uday's palace in 1999. "The two men also made unflattering comments about the United States and joked about losing weight, going bald and how difficult it is to give up smoking cigars," according to The Scotsman.

In a House of Commons debate on 6 March 2002, Foreign Office Minister Ben Bradshaw said of Galloway that he was "not just an apologist, but a mouthpiece, for the Iraqi regime over many years." Galloway called the Minister a liar and refused to withdraw: "[Bradshaw's] imputation that I am a mouthpiece for a dictator is a clear imputation of dishonour" he said, and the sitting was suspended due to the dispute. Bradshaw later withdrew his allegation, and Galloway apologised for using unparliamentary language. In August 2002, Galloway returned to Iraq and met Saddam Hussein for a second time. According to Galloway, the intention of the trip was to persuade Saddam to re-admit Hans Blix, and the United Nations weapons inspectors into the country. s petition, sitting on the edge of the StWC stage at the 2005 Make Poverty History rally.]]

Giving evidence in his libel case against the Daily Telegraph newspaper in 2004, Galloway testified that he regarded Saddam as a "bestial dictator" and would have welcomed his removal from power, but not by means of a military attack on Iraq. Galloway also pointed that he was a prominent critic of Saddam Hussein's regime in the 1980s, as well as of the role of Margaret Thatcher's government in supporting arms sales to Iraq during the Iran/Iraq war. Labour MP Tam Dalyell said during the controversy over whether Galloway should be expelled from the Labour Party that "in the mid-1980s there was only one MP that I can recollect making speeches about human rights in Iraq and this was George Galloway." When the issue of Galloway's meetings with Saddam Hussein is raised, including before the U.S. Senate, Galloway has argued that he had met Saddam "exactly the same number of times as U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns." He continued "I met him to try to bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war".

During a 9 March 2005 interview at the University of Dhaka campus Galloway called for a global alliance between Muslims and progressives: "Not only do I think it’s possible but I think it is vitally necessary and I think it is happening already. It is possible because the progressive movement around the world and the Muslims have the same enemies. Their enemies are the Zionist occupation, American occupation, British occupation of poor countries mainly Muslim countries."

Israel and Palestine

At a 22 July 2006 demonstration (and later in a Socialist Worker op-ed), Galloway stated "Hezbollah has never been a terrorist organisation!" The National Union of Students of the United Kingdom passed a motion condemning Galloway for this statement.

In an interview with the American radio host Alex Jones, Galloway blamed Israel for creating "conditions in the Arab countries and in some European countries to stampede Jewish people ... into the Zionist state". Jones then alleged that the "Zionists" funded Hitler, to which Galloway replied that Zionists used the Jewish people "to create this little settler state on the Mediterranean," whose purpose was "to act as an advance guard for their own interests in the Arab world..."

In a series of speeches broadcast on Arab television, Galloway described Jerusalem and Baghdad as being "raped" by "foreigners," referring to Israel's illegal annexation of East Jerusalem, and the war in Iraq.

Galloway was introduced as “a former member of the British Houses of Parliament” during a live interview with Qatari Al-Jazeera television, to which he responded: “I am still a member of parliament and was re-elected five times. On the last occasion I was re-elected despite all the efforts made by the British government, the Zionist movement and the newspapers and news media which are controlled by Zionism.”

Galloway expressed support for the Syrian presence in Lebanon five months before it ended, telling the Daily Star of Lebanon "Syrian troops in Lebanon maintain stability and protect the country from Israel". In the same article he expressed his opposition to UN resolution 1559 which urged the Lebanese Government to establish control over all its territory.

Blair and Bush

At the national conference of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, on 30 June 2003, Galloway apologised for describing George W. Bush as a "wolf", saying that to do so defamed wolves:

On 20 November 2004, George Galloway gave an interview on Abu Dhabi TV in which he said:

On 20 June 2005, he appeared on Al Jazeera English to lambast these two leaders and others.

In an interview with Piers Morgan for GQ Magazine in May 2006, Galloway was asked whether a suicide bomb attack on Tony Blair with "no other casualties" would be morally justifiable "as revenge for the war on Iraq?". He answered "Yes it would be morally justified. I am not calling for it, but if it happened it would be of a wholly different moral order to the events of 7/7. It would be entirely logical and explicable, and morally equivalent to ordering the deaths of thousands of innocent people in Iraq as Blair did." He further stated that if he knew about such a plan that he would inform the relevant authorities, saying: "I would [tell the police], because such an operation would be counterproductive because it would just generate a new wave of anti-Muslim, anti-Arab sentiment whipped up by the press. It would lead to new draconian anti-terror laws, and would probably strengthen the resolve of the British and American services in Iraq rather than weaken it. So yes, I would inform the authorities." Some news analysts, notably Christopher Hitchens, took this to be a call for an attack while appearing not to.

The July 2005 London bombings

In the House of Commons, on the day of the 7 July 2005 London bombings that killed 52 people and injured hundreds, and following a visit to the Royal London Hospital in his constituency where many of the victims had been taken, Galloway condemned the attacks strongly, but argued that they could not be separated from the hatred and bitterness felt among Muslims because of injustices in Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan, including injustices, he said, suffered as a result of British foreign policy: }}

Winding up the debate for the government in the last moments allotted, Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram described Galloway's remarks as "disgraceful" and accused Galloway of "dipping his poisonous tongue in a pool of blood." No time remained for Galloway to intervene and he ran afoul of the Deputy Speaker when trying to make a point of order about Ingram's attack. He later went on to describe Ingram as a "thug" who had committed a "foul-mouthed, deliberately timed, last-10-seconds smear." The men had previously clashed over claims in Galloway's autobiography (see below).

Pakistan coup of 1999

At the time of the 1999 Musharraf coup in Pakistan, he wrote, "In poor third world countries like Pakistan, politics is too important to be left to petty squabbling politicians. Pakistan is always on the brink of breaking apart into its widely disparate components. Only the armed forces can really be counted on to hold such a country together... Democracy is a means, not an end in itself and it has a bad name on the streets of Karachi and Lahore." Nonetheless, on his TalkSport talk radio show, Galloway has been outspoken in criticising the former Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf.

Record on LGBT issues

In 1994, Galloway voted in support of the equalisation of the age of consent for homosexuality (which was then 21 years) with that for heterosexuality at 16 years. He also voted against a reduction of the homosexual age of consent to 18. He voted in favour of permitting unmarried and gay couples to adopt children. Critics have claimed that his involvement in the leadership of Respect - which made no explicit mention of gay rights in its 2005 election manifesto and accepted donations from Islamic Party members - raise questions about commitment to those issues, as does his rather poor voting record in parliamentary divisions, 80% of which he missed, during the 2001-5 parliament while still a Glasgow MP. However, Respect's 2005 conference, in which Galloway took part, resolved that explicit defence of equal rights and calls for the end to all discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people would be made in all of its manifestos and principal election materials.

Galloway's assertion on The Wright Stuff chat show (13 March 2008) that the executed boyfriend of homosexual Iranian asylum seeker Mehdi Kazemi was executed for sex crimes rather than for being homosexual received criticism from Peter Tatchell, among others. Galloway also stated on The Wright Stuff that the case of gay rights in Iran was being used by supporters of war with Iran.

2009 Iranian elections

Galloway has encouraged Western governments to accept the election of the conservative President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, contradicting the position of the exiled Iranian left.

Humanitarian work

Mariam Appeal

In 1998 Galloway founded the Mariam Appeal, intended "to campaign against sanctions on Iraq which are having disastrous effects on the ordinary people of Iraq". The campaign was named after Mariam Hamza, a child flown by the fund from Iraq to Britain to receive treatment for leukaemia. The intention was to raise awareness of the suffering and death of hundreds of thousands of other Iraqi children due to poor health conditions and lack of suitable medicines and facilities, and to campaign for the lifting of the Iraq sanctions that many maintained were responsible for that situation.

The fund received scrutiny during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, after a complaint that Galloway used some of the donation money to pay his travel expenses. Galloway said that the expenses were incurred in his capacity as the Appeal's chairman. Although the Mariam Appeal was never a registered charity and never intended to be such, it was investigated by the Charity Commission. The report of this year-long inquiry, published in June 2004, found that the Mariam Appeal was doing charitable work (and so ought to have registered with them), but did not substantiate allegations that any funds had been misused.

A further Charity Commission Report published on 7 June 2007 found that the Appeal had received funds from Fawaz Zureikat that originated from the Oil For Food programme, and concluded that: "Although Mr Galloway, Mr Halford and Mr Al-Mukhtar have confirmed that they were unaware of the source of Mr Zureikat’s donations, the Commission has concluded that the charity trustees should have made further enquiries when accepting such large single and cumulative donations to satisfy themselves as to their origin and legitimacy. The Commission’s conclusion is that the charity trustees did not properly discharge their duty of care as trustees to the Appeal in respect of these donations." They added: "The Commission is also concerned, having considered the totality of the evidence before it, that Mr Galloway may also have known of the connection between the Appeal and the Programme". Galloway responded: "I've always disputed the Commission's retrospective view that a campaign to win a change in national and international policy—a political campaign—was, in fact, a charity."

Viva Palestina aid convoy

In response to the 2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict, in January 2009 Galloway instigated the Viva Palestina aid convoy to the Gaza Strip. On 14 February 2009, after raising over £1 million-worth of humanitarian aid in four weeks, Galloway and hundreds of volunteers launched the convoy comprising approximately 120 vehicles intended for use in the Strip, including a fire engine donated by the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), 12 ambulances, a boat and trucks full of medicines, tools, clothes, blankets and gifts for children. The 5,000-mile route passed through Belgium, France, Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.

On 20 February, Galloway condemned Lancashire Police after they arrested nine of the volunteers under the Terrorism Act a day before the convoy's launch. Galloway said: "The arrests were clearly deliberately timed for the eve of the departure of the convoy. Photographs of the high-profile snatch on the M65 were immediately fed to the press to maximise the newsworthiness of the smear that was being perpetrated on the convoy." Viva Palestina reported an 80% drop in donations following the broadcast of the arrests and the police allegations on the BBC.

The convoy arrived in Gaza on 9 March, accompanied by approximately 180 extra trucks of aid donated by Libya's Gaddafi Foundation. All the British aid was delivered with the exception of the fire engine and boat which were blocked by the Egyptian government. The boat is to be delivered later in a flotilla of craft which Viva Palestina! intends to take into Gaza harbour. On 10 March 2009, Galloway announced at a press conference in Gaza City attended by several senior Hamas officials: "We are giving you now 100 vehicles and all of their contents, and we make no apology for what I am about to say. We are giving them to the elected government of Palestine," adding he would personally donate three cars and 25,000 pounds to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya.

The Charity Commission opened a statutory inquiry into Viva Palestinia! on 23 March 2009, citing concerns over the finances, use of funds for non-charitable purposes, and the lack of "substantive response" to their repeated requests. George Galloway admitted that the appeal had not responded to the requests, but argued that a substantive response was anyway due to be passed to the Charity Commission only hours after they launched the inquiry. He argued that the Charity Commission's actions were suspicious, hinting that they might be politically motivated.

A third Viva Palestina convoy began at the end of 2009. On 8 January 2010, Galloway and his colleague Ron McKay were deported from Egypt immediately upon entry from Gaza. They had been attempting to help take about 200 aid trucks into the Gaza Strip. They were driven by the police to the airport and put on a plane to London. The previous day an Egyptian soldier had been killed during a clash at the border with Hamas loyalists. Several Palestinians were also injured.

Corruption allegations and other controversies

Oil for Food

Daily Telegraph libel case

On 22 April 2003, the Daily Telegraph published an article describing documents found by its reporter David Blair in the ruins of the Iraqi Foreign Ministry. The documents purport to be records of meetings between Galloway and Iraqi intelligence agents, and state that he had received £375,000 per year from the proceeds of the Oil for Food programme. Galloway completely denied the story, and pointed to the nature of the discovery within an unguarded, bombed-out building as being questionable. He instigated legal action against the newspaper, which was heard in the High Court from 14 November 2004.

On 2 December, Justice David Eady ruled that the story had been "seriously defamatory", and that the Telegraph was "obliged to compensate Mr Galloway ... and to make an award for the purposes of restoring his reputation". Galloway was awarded £150,000 damages plus costs estimated to total £1.2 million. The court did not grant leave to appeal; in order to appeal in the absence of leave, the defendants would have to petition the House of Lords.

The libel case was regarded by both sides as an important test of the Reynolds qualified-privilege defence. The Daily Telegraph did not attempt to claim justification (a defence in which the defendant bears the onus of proving that the defamatory reports are true): "It has never been the Telegraph's case to suggest that the allegations contained in these documents are true". Instead, the paper sought to argue that it acted responsibly because the allegations it reported were of sufficient public interest to outweigh the damage caused to Galloway's reputation. However, the court ruled that, "It was the defendants' primary case that their coverage was no more than 'neutral reportage' ... but the nature, content and tone of their coverage cannot be so described."

The issue of whether the documents were genuine was likewise not at issue at the trial. However, it later transpired that the expert hired by Galloway's lawyers, a forensic expert named Oliver Thorne, said "In my opinion the evidence found fully supports that the vast majority of the submitted documents are authentic." He added "It should be noted that I am unable to comment on the veracity of the information within the disputed Telegraph documents, whether or not they are authentic."

The Telegraph lost their appeal on 25 January 2006, the same day as Galloway's Big Brother eviction, and on 15 February 2006, the newspaper announced it would not be seeking leave to appeal.

Others

The Christian Science Monitor also published a story on 25 April 2003, stating that they had documentary evidence that he had received "more than ten million dollars" from the Iraqi regime. However, on 20 June 2003, the Monitor reported that their own investigation had concluded the documents were sophisticated forgeries, and apologised. Galloway rejected the newspaper's apology, asserted that the affair was a conspiracy against him, and continued a libel claim against the paper.

The Christian Science Monitor settled the claim, paying him an undisclosed sum in damages, on 19 March 2004. It emerged that these documents had first been offered to the Daily Telegraph, but they had rejected them. The documents' origin remains obscure.

In January 2004, a further set of allegations were made in al-Mada, a newspaper in Iraq. The newspaper claimed to have found documents in the Iraqi national oil corporation showing that Galloway received (through an intermediary) some of the profits arising from the sale of 19.5 million barrels (3,100,000 m³) of oil. Galloway acknowledged that money had been paid into the Mariam Appeal by Iraqi businessmen who had profited from the UN-run programme, but denied benefiting personally, and maintained that, in any case, there was nothing illicit about this:

The report of the Iraq Survey Group published in October 2004 claimed that Galloway was one of the recipients of a fund used by Iraq to buy influence among foreign politicians. Galloway denied receiving any money from Saddam Hussein's regime. The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards had begun an investigation into George Galloway but suspended it when Galloway launched legal action. On 14 December, it was announced that this investigation would resume.

U.S. Senate

Allegations

In May 2005, a U.S. Senate committee report accused Galloway along with former French minister Charles Pasqua of receiving the right to buy oil under the UN's oil-for-food scheme. The report was issued by the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Senator Norm Coleman, a Republican from Minnesota. The report cited further documents from the Iraqi oil ministry and interviews with Iraqi officials.

Coleman's committee said Pasqua had received allocations worth from 1999 to 2000, and Galloway received allocations worth from 2000 to 2003. The allegations against Pasqua and Galloway, both outspoken opponents of U.N. sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s, have been made before, including in an October report by U.S. arms inspector Charles Duelfer as well as in the various purported documents described earlier in this section. But Coleman's report provided several new details. It also included information from interrogations of former high-ranking officials in U.S. custody, including former Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz and former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan. Among the claims is that there is new evidence to suggest that the Mariam Appeal, a children's leukaemia charity founded by Galloway, was in fact used to conceal oil payments. The report cites Ramadan as saying under interrogation that Galloway was allocated oil "because of his opinions about Iraq."

Socialist Worker reported what they say is evidence that the key Iraqi oil ministry documents regarding oil allocations, in which Galloway's name appears six times (contracts M/08/35, M/09/23, M/10/38, M/11/04, M/12/14, M/13/48) have been tampered with. They published a copy of contract M/09/23 and allege that George Galloway's name appears to have been added in a different font and at a different angle to the rest of the text on that line. In these documents (relating to oil allocations 8-13), Galloway is among just a few people whose nationality is never identified, whilst Zureikat is the only one whose nationality is identified in one instance but not in others. Galloway combatively countered the charges by accusing Coleman and other pro-war politicians of covering up the "theft of billions of dollars of Iraq's wealth... on your watch" that had occurred under a post-invasion Coalition Provisional Authority, committed by "Halliburton and other American corporations... with the connivance of your own government."

Galloway's response

On 17 May 2005, the committee held a hearing concerning specific allegations (of which Galloway was one part) relating to improprieties surrounding the Oil-for-Food programme. Attending Galloway's oral testimony and enquiring of him were two of the thirteen committee members: the chair (Coleman) and the ranking Democrat (Carl Levin).

Upon Galloway's arrival in the US, he told Reuters, "I have no expectation of justice from a group of Christian fundamentalist and Zionist activists under the chairmanship of a neo-con George Bush". Galloway described Coleman as a "pro-war, neo-con hawk and the lickspittle of George W. Bush", who, he said, sought revenge against anyone who did not support the invasion of Iraq.

In his testimony, Galloway made the following statements in response to the allegations against him:

He questioned the reliability of evidence given by former Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, stating that the circumstances of his captivity by American forces call into question the authenticity of the remarks. Galloway also pointed out an error in the report, where documents by The Daily Telegraph were said to have covered an earlier period from those held by the Senate. In fact the report's documents referred to the same period as those used by The Daily Telegraph, though Galloway pointed out that the presumed forgeries pertaining to the Christian Science Monitor report did refer to an earlier period.

Galloway also denounced the invasion of Iraq as having been based on "a pack of lies" in his Senate testimony. The U.S. media, in reporting his appearance, emphasised his blunt remarks on the war. The British media gave generally more positive coverage; TV presenter Anne Robinson said Galloway "quite frankly put the pride back in British politics" when introducing him for a prime time talk show.

Alleged false or misleading testimony

A report by the then-majority Republican Party staff of the United States Senate Committee on Investigations published in October 2005 asserted that Galloway had given false "or misleading" testimony under oath when appearing before them. The report exhibits bank statements it claims show that £85,000 of proceeds from the Oil-for-Food Programme had been paid to Galloway's then-wife Amineh Abu-Zayyad. Galloway reiterated his denial of the charges and challenged the U.S. Senate committee to charge him with perjury. He claimed Coleman's motive was revenge over the embarrassment of his appearance before the committee in May.

Controversies at university debating societies

On 2 November 2006, The Times reported that Galloway was in a fracas at the Oxford Union. He was there to discuss his book. () In his speech to the Union, Galloway claimed "that democracy in Cuba is more “free” than in the UK", and when questioned on this, he mentioned "that Oxford students are too privileged to understand what he was talking about". Three former state school students who met him afterwards and disputed this description, allege that Galloway said: "I don’t represent anyone’s views. I represent me. I don’t give a fuck what anyone else thinks."

Sectarian attack at airport

On 10 June 2007, Galloway claimed that he was the victim of a sectarian attack at Glasgow Airport. He believes that his attackers were on the way home from attending an Orange Order parade in London and that they attacked him because he is a Celtic fan. However, no arrest was made in connection with this.

Support for the Soviet Union

Galloway once stated "I am on the anti-imperialist left... If you are asking did I support the Soviet Union, yes I did. Yes, I did support the Soviet Union, and I think the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life. If there was a Soviet Union today, we would not be having this conversation about plunging into a new war in the Middle East, and the US would not be rampaging around the globe."

Forbidden to enter Canada

On 20 March 2009, Galloway was advised by the Canada Border Services Agency he was deemed inadmissible to Canada on "security grounds" due to his involvement in the Viva Palestina aid convoy to the Gaza Strip following the 2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict. The Gaza Strip is governed by Hamas, which is on Canada's list of terrorist organisations. This resulted from a personal donation of £25,000 made by Galloway ten days earlier. The Canadians ruled (and maintained on appeal) that this constituted explicit support for Hamas, although Galloway argued it was not the case as the money was intended to be used for aid purposes.

Galloway was on a lecture tour of North America, and was due to speak on war prevention and Gaza for a United Church congregation in Toronto, as well as for events in Mississauga, Ottawa and Montreal. Galloway was also described as an "infandous street-corner Cromwell" by Alykhan Velshi, a former lobbyist for the American Enterprise Institute who was then working as communications director for Jason Kenney, Canada's Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism. Galloway described the ban as "idiotic" and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney was accused by Jack Layton, leader of Canada's New Democratic Party (NDP), of being a "minister of censorship." Toronto Coalition to Stop the War, the group who invited Galloway to Canada, sought an emergency injunction to allow for his entry into Canada for the first speech in Toronto citing their rights to freedom of association and freedom of expression. Justice Luc Martineau cited non-citizens "do not have an unqualified right to enter in Canada. The admission of a foreign national to this country is a privilege determined by statute, regulation or otherwise, and not as a matter of right." The judge also noted "a proper factual record and the benefit of full legal argument...are lacking at the present time."

Galloway was allowed entry into Canada in October 2010, after a judge concluded that the original ban had been undertaken for political reasons. He continued to criticize Jason Kenney, saying that the minister had "damaged Canada's reputation" and had used "anti-terrorism" as a means of suppressing political debate. Galloway has also threatened to sue the Canadian government for the banning incident.

Forbidden to enter Egypt

On 8 January 2010, Galloway and his colleague Ron McKay were deported from Egypt immediately upon entry from Gaza. He had been attempting to help take 200 aid trucks into the blockaded Gaza Strip. They were driven by the police to the airport and put on a plane to London. The previous day an Egyptian soldier had been killed during clashes at the border with Hamas loyalists. Several Palestinians were also injured.

Publishing / media activities

Autobiography

His autobiography, I'm Not The Only One, was published on 28 April 2004. The book's title is a quotation from the song "Imagine" by John Lennon. Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram applied for an interim interdict to prevent the book's publication. Ingram asserted that Galloway's text, which stated that Ingram "played the flute in a sectarian, anti-Catholic, Protestant-supremacist Orange Order band", was in bad faith and defamatory, although Ingram's lawyers conceded that for a year as a teenager he had been a member of a junior Orange Lodge in Barlanark, Glasgow, and had attended three parades. The Judge, Lord Kingarth, decided to refuse an interim interdict, that the balance of the arguments favoured Galloway's publisher, and that the phrase "sectarian, anti-Catholic, Protestant-supremacist" was fair comment on that organisation. Although Ingram was not and never had been a flute-player, the defending advocate observed that "playing the flute carries no obvious defamatory imputation ... it is not to the discredit of anyone that he plays the flute." The judge ruled that Ingram should pay the full court costs of the hearing.

Fidel Castro Handbook

Galloway also published the Fidel Castro Handbook, a biography of the former Cuban President in 2006 (MQ Publications. ISBN 1-84072-688-1).

Friction Books

In 2005 Galloway established Friction Books, an imprint for fiction and non-fiction, with longstanding associate Ron McKay. Friction claimed its purpose was to publish "books that burn, books that cause controversy and get people talking". it has released at least two books: Paco Ignacio Taibo II novel An Easy Thing and Topple the Mighty by Leon Kuhn and Colin Gile.

Celebrity Big Brother

In January 2006 Galloway appeared on the fourth series of the reality show for three weeks.

Big Brother's Big Mouth

Galloway acted as the guest presenter for the E4 companion programme to the 2007 edition of Big Brother, Big Brother's Big Mouth, from 5 June to 8 June 2007.

talkSPORT

Show name	The Mother of All Talk Shows
Italic title	no
Format	Political discussion
Runtime	Friday 22:00-01:00Saturday 22:00-01:00
Country	UK
Language	English
Home station	talkSPORT
Syndicates	Talk 107
Presenter	George Galloway
Rec location	Central London
Opentheme	The theme from Top Cat

On 11 March 2006, Galloway started broadcasting on Britain's biggest commercial radio station, the UTV-owned talkSPORT, and two weeks later started a simultaneous broadcast on Talk 107, TalkSPORT's Edinburgh-based sister station.

Billed as "The Mother Of All Talk Shows", Galloway began every broadcast by playing the theme from the Top Cat cartoon series. UTV said that Galloway was pulling in record call numbers and the highest ever ratings for its weekend slots, even pulling in more than the station's Football First programme.

On 3 January 2009, after Galloway was manhandled by riot police in London at the demonstration in protest over the Israeli offensive in the Gaza strip, the director of programming replaced Galloway with Ian Collins, saying that this would allow for more balanced reporting of the situation.

Galloway halted presenting the show on March 27, 2010, due to campaign commitments in the 2010 UK General Election. During this time, he was replaced by Mike Graham.

In August 2010, Galloway returned to the radio station with a new show bearing a similar format to his original, but this time titled The Week with George Galloway, described by the station as a "No-holds barred review of the past seven days around the world". The show is broadcast during the 10pm-1am slot on Friday nights .

The Real Deal

On 21 May 2007, Galloway began presenting a programme titled The Real Deal on Raj TV, a satellite channel, broadcasting on Sky 171, primarily aimed at the British Asian community. Following a break, the show was resurrected on 10 February 2008 on Press TV, a Tehran-based news channel controlled by the government of Iran.

Comment

Galloway also hosts a 45-minute weekly current affairs show that invites the viewers to engage in lively debate on international political issues. The show is also filmed and broadcast from the London-bureau of Iranian state-controlled news channel Press TV. In 2009, the british telecommunications regulator Ofcom criticised Galloway "for breaking impartiality rules" regarding his coverage of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and accused him of promoting "Iranian propaganda".

Mazher Mahmood

In March 2006 Galloway claimed in a statement that Mazher Mahmood, an undercover reporter for the News of the World who uses a disguise as a sheikh to frame celebrities, targeted him in an alleged sting operation. Galloway claims that Mahmood and an accomplice tried but failed to implicate him in illegal party funding, and to agree with anti-Semitic statements. Galloway wrote to the Metropolitan police commissioner and the Speaker of the House of Commons about the incident. He also released photographs of Mahmood and revealed other aspects of his activities. The News of the World lost a High Court action to prevent publication of photographs of Mahmood.

Asian Voice

Galloway has been involved in several publishing companies. He owned Asian Voice, which published a newspaper called East from 1996. It later transpired that the Pakistan Government was funding Galloway's company Asian Voice with several hundred-thousand-pounds. "Documents show that the Pakistan government agreed an initial budget for the weekly newspaper of £547,000. According to a memorandum dated 2 January 1996, the Pakistan government proposed to "covertly sponsor" the publication, with money allocated to "the Secret Fund of the High Commissioner for Pakistan in the UK as a special grant for the project". The Commons Committee cleared Galloway of any wrongdoing in this matter.

Daily Record column

As of 25 June 2007, Galloway has contributed a weekly column in the Daily Record giving his views on politics and popular culture. He used this column to reveal he is considering running for a seat in the Scottish Parliament in the May 2011 election.

The Guardian

Galloway is also a regular contributor to The Guardian, writing for both the newspaper and Comment Is Free, its sister political opinion forum at guardian.co.uk.

TV and film appearances

INN World Report (US) (2009) (TV)

Question Time (numerous appearances) - Panellist answering questions

As a policeman, in Ugly Rumours "War", 25 February 2007

Our Story Our Voice (2007)

The Friday Night Project (2007)

Offside (BBC Scotland football talk show) (2006-12-04)

30 Greatest Political Comedies (2006) (TV)

The Wright Stuff - Panellist

The Late Late Show (1 programmes, 2006)

Richard & Judy (2 programmes, 2006)

Tubridy Tonight (2006)

Celebrity Big Brother (23 episodes, 2006)

Have I Got News For You - Panellist (2003)

As an orator

According to the Boston Globe, Galloway is "known, even in the highly articulate world of British politics, for his memorable turns of phrase", whereas The Times finds that he has "the gift of the Glasgow gab, a love of the stage and an inexhaustible fund of self-belief." The Guardian finds him "renowned for his colourful rhetoric and combative debating style" and the Spectator once awarded him Debater of the Year.).

See also

Oil-for-Food Program Hearings

References

External links

Video

George Galloway interviews David Strahan author of “The Last Oil Shock – A Survival Gide to the Imminent Extinction of Petroleum Man”

Galloway speaks at Manchester Town Hall, UK, 29 February 2004 about launch of Respect. Video, Chris Edwards

Galloway speaks in Manchester, UK, 22 November 2003 on future of anti-war movement. Video, Chris Edwards

Galloway speaks in Manchester, UK, 8 November 2003 about next steps for the anti-war movement. Video, Chris Edwards

George Galloway speaks in Manchester, UK, 9 May 2003 about media witch hunt. Video, Chris Edwards

The Fruitceller - Huge Video archive for the Anti-War Movement

Galloway talking about war with Iran

Galloway speaks at Manchester University, UK, 26 November 2006 about British politics after Blair. Video, Chris Edwards

Galloway speaks in Manchester, UK, 21 February 2006 about local elections. Video, Chris Edwards

Galloways speaks in Manchester, UK, 6 October 2004 about European Social Forum. Video, Chris Edwards

INN World Report Interviews Galloway US, 16 February 2009

Documentary featuring George Galloway about the 2010 election in Poplar and Limehouse by Catch21

General

GeorgeGalloway.com Official website.

RESPECT RENEWAL Official party website

RESPECT - The Unity Coalition The previous Official party website.

Official George Galloway MySpace page

CouchTripper Unofficial forum, high quality downloads & large archive of Galloway on radio and TV, where other sites come to stock up.

George Galloway's talkSPORT page

Galloway downloads on SpideredNews.com. George Galloway media downloads (including talkSPORT shows).

Guardian Unlimited Politics - Ask Aristotle: George Galloway MP

TheyWorkForYou.com - George Galloway MP

The Public Whip - George Galloway MP voting record

George Galloway interviewed by eyebrow magazine September 2007

mp3s of Galloway speaking at London International Peace Conference, 10 December 2005

Galloway's participation at the International Peace Conference December 2005

IMDB Profile

Christopher Hitchens' attack leaflet of selected Galloway statements, including quotes admiring unelected dictators.

George Galloway Is Gruesome, Not Gorgeous by Christopher Hitchens, Slate.com, 13 September 2005.

: (Prequel to Galloway vs Hitchens debate held at CUNY)

Articles and news reports

George Galloway's interview with The Third Estate

Galloway, George Respect at the Crossroads

Channel 4 News - ''Galloway:"I'm no punchbag" - July 2007

FactCheck - ''"That's a fact." With all due respect, George... - April 2005

Al-Jiran. Iraqi author Fadhil Rashad: George Galloway, You Will Be Tried Just Like Your Friend and Benefactor Saddam Hussein. 30 November 2005.

The Independent George Galloway vs. Christopher Hitchens, 16 September 2005.

Zirin, Dave. Mr. Galloway Goes to Washington. Znet 13 September 2005

Sunday Herald George Galloway - personal interview 7 August 2005.

BBC. George Galloway interview on "What's the problem?". 10 June 2005.

McKay, Ron. Galloway Beats New Labour and the Ghost Voters. Sunday Herald. 8 May 2005.

Greenslade, Roy. No need for balance. The Guardian. 13 May 2005.

BBC. Galloway Wins Saddam Libel Case. 2 December 2004.

Abu Dhabi TV. ">British MP Galloway: US and British Governments Will Burn in "Hell-Fires". 20 November 2004.

The Scotsman. Galloway Iraq appeal cleared of impropriety over funds. 29 June 2004.

The Guardian. Special Report: George Galloway Expulsion from the Labour Party. 25 April 2004.

Al Jazeera. So what do I believe in? transcript of speech. 30 October 2003.

Watson, Richard. Why the MP went begging to Pakistan. The Daily Telegraph, 26 April 2003.

The Scotsman. Indefatigably yours. Personal interview, 19 May 2003.

New Worker. End the blockade on Iraq 1998 interview

Alliance for Workers Liberty. ">Would You Vote For This Man?: "Respect" and George Galloway. Solidarity 3/70. 31 March 2005.

Tatchell, Peter. Galloway's Iranian propaganda? The Guardian, 26 March 2008.

US Congressional testimony & related

mp3s of Galloway's speeches made during his tour of US, 13-24 December 2005

Unspinning the US’s web of lies against Galloway, Socialist Worker, 5 November 2005

mp3 of George Galloway vs. Christopher Hitchens, 14 September 2005

Galloway lied over Iraqi oil payments, says Congress report, Rupert Cornwell, The Independent, 25 October 2005

Christopher Hitchens' documentation of the Oil for Food issue, September 2005

Unmitigated Galloway, Christopher Hitchens, Weekly Standard, 30 May 2005

"Galloway and the mother of all invective", The Guardian newspaper, 18 May 2005

Link to full video recording of hearing in this BBC News report:Galloway takes on US oil accusers, BBC, 17 May 2005

UK's Galloway blisters US policy on Iraq on MSNBC Crooks & Liars: audio and video

Two Fox News reports: one short and sceptical; the other is a longer recording of Galloway's testimony, Fox News, 18 May 2005

Transcript of Galloway's comments, CNN

Full Text of Galloway's statements, Times online

Galloway's statements including senators questions

US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, 12 May 2005, "Report on oil allocations granted to Charles Pasqua & George Galloway"

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Name	Christopher Hitchens
Color	green
Caption	Hitchens in 2007
Birthname	Christopher Eric Hitchens
Birthdate	April 13, 1949
Birthplace	Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, UK
Occupation	Writer and pundit
Alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford
Nationality	American/British
Religion	None
Genre	Polemicism, journalism, essays, biography, literary criticism
Spouse	Carol Blue (1989–present)
Children	Alexander, Sophia, Antonia
Relatives	Peter Hitchens (brother)
Influences	George Orwell, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, Joseph Heller, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Salman Rushdie, Vladimir Nabokov, Richard Llewellyn, Aldous Huxley, PG Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh, Paul Mark Scott, James Fenton, James Joyce, Albert Camus, Oscar Wilde, Conor Cruise O'Brien, Martin Amis, Kingsley Amis, Ian McEwan, Leon Trotsky, Colm Tóibín, Bertrand Russell, Wilfred Owen, Isaiah Berlin He is a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits and in 2005 he was voted the world's fifth top public intellectual in a Prospect/Foreign Policy poll.
Name	Hitchens, Christopher Eric
Short description	Author, journalist and literary critic
Date of birth	13 April 1949
Place of birth	Portsmouth, England, UK}}

Category:1949 births Category:Living people Category:Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford Category:American atheists Category:American biographers Category:American essayists Category:American journalists Category:American Marxists Category:American media critics Category:American people of Polish descent Category:American people of English descent Category:American political pundits Category:American political writers Category:American humanists Category:Anti-Vietnam War activists Category:Atheism activists Category:British republicans Category:Cancer patients Category:English atheists Category:English biographers Category:English essayists Category:English humanists Category:English journalists Category:English immigrants to the United States Category:English Marxists Category:English people of Polish descent Category:English political writers Category:English socialists Category:Genital integrity activists Category:Marxist journalists Category:Naturalized citizens of the United States Category:Old Leysians Category:People from Portsmouth Category:Slate magazine people Category:Socialist Workers Party (Britain) members Category:The Nation (U.S. periodical) people Category:University Challenge contestants