Coordinates | 35°10′″N33°22′″N |
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alt | A mid-twenties African American man wearing a sequined military jacket and dark sunglasses. He is walking while waving his right hand, which is adorned with a white glove. His left hand is bare. |
background | solo_singer |
birth name | Michael Joseph Jackson |
alias | Michael Joe Jackson, MJ, King of Pop |
birth date | August 29, 1958 |
birth place | Gary, Indiana, U.S. |
death date | June 25, 2009 |
death place | Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
instrument | vocals, guitar, drums, percussion, keyboards |
genre | R&B;, pop, rock, soul, dance, funk, disco, new jack swing |
occupation | Singer-songwriter, musician, composer, dancer, choreographer, record producer, actor, businessman, philanthropist |
years active | 1964–2009 |
label | Motown, Epic, Legacy |
associated acts | The Jackson 5 |
relatives | Janet Jackson (sister) |
website | 130pxMichael Jackson's signature }} |
Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman. Often referred to as the King of Pop, or by his initials MJ, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records. His contribution to music, dance, and fashion, along with a much-publicized personal life, made him a global figure in popular culture for over four decades. The seventh child of the Jackson family, he debuted on the professional music scene along with his brothers as a member of The Jackson 5, then the Jacksons in 1964, and began his solo career in 1971.
In the early 1980s, Jackson became a dominant figure in popular music. The music videos for his songs, including those of "Beat It", "Billie Jean", and "Thriller", were credited with transforming the medium into an art form and a promotional tool, and the popularity of these videos helped to bring the relatively new television channel MTV to fame. Videos such as "Black or White" and "Scream" made him a staple on MTV in the 1990s. Through stage performances and music videos, Jackson popularized a number of complicated dance techniques, such as the robot and the moonwalk, to which he gave the name. His distinctive musical sound and vocal style have influenced numerous hip hop, post-disco, contemporary R&B;, pop and rock artists.
Jackson's 1982 album ''Thriller'' is the best-selling album of all time. His other records, including ''Off the Wall'' (1979), ''Bad'' (1987), ''Dangerous'' (1991), and ''HIStory'' (1995), also rank among the world's best-selling. Jackson is one of the few artists to have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice. He was also inducted into the Dance Hall of Fame as the first (and currently only) dancer from the world of pop and rock 'n' roll. Some of his other achievements include multiple Guinness World Records; 13 Grammy Awards (as well as the Grammy Legend Award and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award); 26 American Music Awards (more than any other artist, including the "Artist of the Century"); 13 number-one singles in the United States in his solo career (more than any other male artist in the Hot 100 era); and the estimated sale of over 750 million records worldwide. Jackson won hundreds of awards, which have made him the most-awarded recording artist in the history of popular music.
Jackson had a troubled relationship with his father, Joe. In 1980, Jackson won three awards at the American Music Awards for his solo efforts: Favorite Soul/R&B; Album, Favorite Soul/R&B; Male Artist, and Favorite Soul/R&B; Single for "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough". That year, he also won Billboard Year-End for Top Black Artist and Top Black Album and a Grammy Award for Best Male R&B; Vocal Performance, also for "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough". Jackson again won at the American Music Awards in 1981 for Favorite Soul/R&B; Album and Favorite Soul/R&B; Male Artist. Despite its commercial success, Jackson felt ''Off the Wall'' should have made a much bigger impact, and was determined to exceed expectations with his next release. In 1980, he secured the highest royalty rate in the music industry: 37 percent of wholesale album profit.
In ''Bad'', Jackson's concept of the predatory lover can be seen on the rock song "Dirty Diana". The lead single "I Just Can't Stop Loving You" is a traditional love ballad, while "Man in the Mirror" is an anthemic ballad of confession and resolution. "Smooth Criminal" was an evocation of bloody assault, rape and likely murder. Allmusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine states that ''Dangerous'' presents Jackson as a very paradoxical individual. He comments the album is more diverse than his previous ''Bad'', as it appeals to an urban audience while also attracting the middle class with anthems like "Heal the World". The first half of the record is dedicated to new jack swing, including songs like "Jam" and "Remember the Time". The album is Jackson's first where social ills become a primary theme; "Why You Wanna Trip on Me", for example, protests against world hunger, AIDS, homelessness and drugs. ''Dangerous'' contains sexually charged efforts such as the multifaceted love song, "In the Closet". The title track continues the theme of the predatory lover and compulsive desire. The second half includes introspective, pop-gospel anthems such as "Will You Be There", "Heal the World" and "Keep the Faith"; these songs show Jackson opening up about various personal struggles and worries. In the ballad "Gone Too Soon", Jackson gives tribute to his friend Ryan White and the plight of those with AIDS.
''HIStory'' creates an atmosphere of paranoia. Its content focuses on the hardships and public struggles Jackson went through just prior to its production. In the new jack swing-funk-rock efforts "Scream" and "Tabloid Junkie", along with the R&B; ballad "You Are Not Alone", Jackson retaliates against the injustice and isolation he feels, and directs much of his anger at the media. In the introspective ballad "Stranger in Moscow", Jackson laments over his "fall from grace", while songs like "Earth Song", "Childhood", "Little Susie" and "Smile" are all operatic pop pieces. In the track "D.S.", Jackson launched a verbal attack against Tom Sneddon. He describes Sneddon as an antisocial, white supremacist who wanted to "get my ass, dead or alive". Of the song, Sneddon said, "I have not—shall we say—done him the honor of listening to it, but I've been told that it ends with the sound of a gunshot". ''Invincible'' found Jackson working heavily with producer Rodney Jerkins. It is a record made up of urban soul like "Cry" and "The Lost Children", ballads such as "Speechless", "Break of Dawn" and "Butterflies" and mixes hip-hop, pop and R&B; in "2000 Watts", "Heartbreaker" and "Invincible".
A distinctive deliberate mispronunciation of "come on", used frequently by Jackson, occasionally spelled "cha'mone" or "shamone", is also a staple in impressions and caricatures of him. The turn of the 1990s saw the release of the introspective album ''Dangerous''. ''The New York Times'' noted that on some tracks, "he gulps for breath, his voice quivers with anxiety or drops to a desperate whisper, hissing through clenched teeth" and he had a "wretched tone". When singing of brotherhood or self-esteem the musician would return to "smooth" vocals. When commenting on ''Invincible'', ''Rolling Stone'' were of the opinion that—at the age of 43—Jackson still performed "exquisitely voiced rhythm tracks and vibrating vocal harmonies". Nelson George summed up Jackson's vocals by stating "The grace, the aggression, the growling, the natural boyishness, the falsetto, the smoothness—that combination of elements mark him as a major vocalist".
In the 19-minute music video for "Bad"—directed by Martin Scorsese—Jackson began using sexual imagery and choreography not previously seen in his work. He occasionally grabbed or touched his chest, torso and crotch. When asked by Oprah in the 1993 interview about why he grabbed his crotch, he replied, "I think it happens subliminally" and he described it as something that was not planned, but rather, as something that was compelled by the music. "Bad" garnered a mixed reception from both fans and critics; ''Time'' magazine described it as "infamous". The video also featured Wesley Snipes; in the future Jackson's videos would often feature famous cameo roles.
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Category:1958 births Category:2009 deaths Category:African American dancers Category:African American male singers Category:African American record producers Category:African American singer-songwriters Category:American beatboxers Category:American businesspeople Category:American child singers Category:American choreographers Category:American dance musicians Category:American dancers Category:American disco musicians Category:American male singers Category:American boogie musicians Category:American pop singers Category:American rhythm and blues singers Category:American rock singers Category:American soul singers Category:American tenors Category:American vegetarians Category:Boy sopranos Category:Brit Award winners Category:Burials at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Glendale) Category:Drug-related deaths in California Category:English-language singers Category:Epic Records artists Category:Expatriates in Bahrain Category:Former Jehovah's Witnesses Category:Grammy Award winners Michael Jackson Category:Manslaughter victims Category:Motown artists Category:Musicians from Indiana Category:People acquitted of sex crimes Category:People from Gary, Indiana Category:People from Santa Barbara County, California Category:Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Category:Songwriters from Indiana Category:Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees Michael Jackson Category:World Music Awards winners Category:People charged with child sexual abuse Category:Grammy Legend Award
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Coordinates | 35°10′″N33°22′″N |
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name | The Chaser |
medium | Print, online, radio, television, stage & Christmas crackers |
nationality | Australian |
active | 1999–present |
genre | Satire |
subject | Politics |
notable work | ''The Chaser'' (1999–2005) ''The Election Chaser'' (2001)''The Chaser Decides'' (2004 & 2007), ''CNNNN'' (2002–2003) ''Cirque du Chaser'' (2005) ''The Chaser's War on Everything'' (2006–2009) ''The Chaser's Age of Terror Variety Hour'' (2008) ''Yes We Canberra'' (2010) |
website | |
current members | Charles Firth Andrew Hansen Dominic Knight Chas Licciardello Julian Morrow Craig Reucassel Chris Taylor |
The Chaser are an Australian satirical comedian group, known for their television programmes on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation channel. The group take their name from their production of satirical newspaper, a publication known to challenge conventions of taste. The group's motto is "Striving for Mediocrity in a World of Excellence".
Charles Firth. Firth decided in 1999 that the founding members should produce a newspaper, in an attempt not to "grow up". Firth was the main person who got the project underway and was at the helm of the newspaper until its collapse in 2005. Firth appeared in The Chaser's television and radio productions until 2004. In 2005, Firth moved to the United States so his wife could finish her PhD. Firth, however, became The Chaser's American correspondent for the 2006 series of ''The Chaser's War on Everything'' and wrote a book titled ''American Hoax''. Firth did some final stunts in America for the 2007 series in late 2006 and early 2007, before returning to Australia and going solo. Firth then began his own satirical newspaper ''The Manic Times'' in 2007, which collapsed soon after and now exists online.
Julian Morrow. He became the executive producer of the television series after Andrew Denton left the role in 2004.
Chas Licciardello, who had attended Sydney Grammar School with Firth and Knight, started to work on ''The Chaser'' newspaper in 1999, but did not take any credit for his work. However when the newspaper started to go well, he was happy to put his name to his work. Licciardello refers to himself as a writer and not a performer, which is why he does the ‘edgier’ stunts in the television series. He states that he is not very talented and therefore does “lots of dodgy material”.
Chris Taylor had gone to the University of Sydney but never personally knew the four founding members. He moved to Melbourne under a cadetship with the ABC doing journalism. Taylor approached The Chaser, based in Sydney, and asked if they took contributions and The Chaser accepted them. Taylor spent two years emailing his articles to The Chaser, and then quit his job to do a television series based on the 2001 Australian federal election with The Chaser and became a member of The Chaser. Taylor was the anchor with Reucassel in their television productions ''CNNNN'', ''The Chaser Decides'' and ''The Chaser’s War on Everything'' and worked as the script editor for the television shows.
Andrew Hansen worked with some of The Chaser members at the University of Sydney while studying literature and history, performing in their early revues. Hansen started working with the online Chaser website in 2000 writing columns for his ''shITe'' section, which looked at the worst of the internet. After two years, he was considered for a part in the Chaser’s 2002 television series, for the content on ''shITe''. After ''The Election Chaser'' in 2001, The Chaser decided they needed a performer in the team. Hansen then joined in the group in 2002.
The newspaper, first published in 1999, was The Chaser team's first enterprise. ''The Chaser'' only had a limited fan base, with the average sales numbers per issue well under 30,000. When their newspaper was shown as a lead story in all major Australian news broadcasts, not only was the headline widely spread, the concept and the popularity of the newspaper leapt dramatically.
Founding contributors to the newspaper include Gregor Stronach, Johanna Featherstone, Sholto Macpherson, Matt Taylor, David Stewart, and Arion McNicoll. Later contributors include Kara Greiner, Richard Cooke, Shane Cubis, and Tim Brunero. Cartoonists Fiona Katauskas and Andrew Weldon drew for the newspaper from its early days.
''The Chaser'' and its writers had its first major controversy when their 21 February 2003 edition published Prime Minister John Howard’s private home number on its front page with the headline "Howard ignores the people. So call him at home on (02) 9922 6189". The release of the number comes after Howard’s attitude to half a million protesters recently marching for peace. Howard’s number was blocked by the afternoon after receiving many calls in the morning and federal police had been to The Chaser headquarters. The Chaser have stated they received the phone number via an SMS message in 2002.
The Chaser have released five annuals based on ''The Chaser'' newspaper:
After six years of publication The Chaser decided that, due to an inability to meet production costs and failing audiences, they would cease publication of the newspaper. The paper, which originally circulated fortnightly, was being released more sporadically and their 91st and final paper was released on 6 February 2005. The Chaser still planned to continue their writing online and to continue to write their annuals.
The Chaser has since released six annuals and a "best of" annual which compiled the best of the five preceding annuals:
Current writers online are Richard Cooke, Shane Cubis, Dominic Knight, Chas Licciardello, Julian Morrow, and Craig Reucassel with additional material provided by Scott Dooley, Lisa Pryor, David Stewart, Gregor Stronach, and Chris Taylor.
The Chaser team have gone on to create other television shows for ABC TV, including the Logie Award winning ''CNNNN'' in 2002-3 and ''The Chaser Decides'' in 2004. ''CNNNN'' was a satire of not only the popular American news networks CNN and Fox News, but also incorporated Australian and world current affairs into the programme. ''The Election Chaser'' inspired a similar programme covering the 2004 election, ''The Chaser Decides''. The coverage, as with all the Chaser productions, was satirical, but a different view on the way the election was covered by the local media.
''The Chaser Decides'' returned again in 2007 to cover the 24 November election. It purported to be broadcasting from Australian Electoral Commission's National Tally Room.
In 2004-5, Taylor and Reucassel hosted the Triple J radio drive programme ''Today Today''. In 2005 the rest of the team produced ''Chaser News Alert'' ''(CNA)'', aired on ABC2. Episodes of this series were only a few minutes long. Between July 2006 and January 2007 Taylor and Reucassel returned to Triple J to host ''Bloody Sunday'', filling the ''This Sporting Life'' time slot while Roy & HG were on leave from the station. Chas Licciardello and Knight also did a brief fill in show on Triple M called ''Chas and Dom from 'The Chaser'''.
In March 2005, The Chaser members, with the exception of Firth but with CNNNN collaborator Rebecca De Unamuno, wrote and performed a stage production for the Sydney Big Laugh Comedy Festival. ''Cirque du Chaser'', the name a parody of ''Cirque du Soleil'', was performed to eight sell-out audiences which performed stand up comedy, sketches, live music, and video satire. The Chaser then took the show on a national tour which was also sold out. ''Cirque du Chaser'' gave the team confidence to perform in front of a live audience in their new television show, which would be similar to the stage show. The Chaser filmed a pilot for ABC TV in mid 2005 under the working title ''Hey, Hey it’s the Chaser''.
The Chaser team signed a contract with the ABC to produce 27 half-hour episodes for 2006, which would be based on news reviews, studio monologues and confrontations with politicians, celebrities, and business leaders. The project would be performed in front of a live audience compared with their previous news format television productions and was named ''The Chaser's War on Everything''. The first season of ''The Chaser's War on Everything'' premiered on ABC TV on 17 February 2006 at . The series aired late on Friday evenings where it developed a cult following, getting an average national audience of between 591,000 and 821,000 viewers each episode. The last episode of the 2006 season was broadcast on 8 September 2006.
The first thirteen episodes of the first season were released on DVD on 17 August 2006. The release included commentary by The Chaser and the show's crew and included bonus features and unaired scenes. The second DVD for the first season contained the latter thirteen episodes. It was in the same format of the first DVD and was released on 1 November 2006.
''The Chaser's War on Everything'' returned for a second season on Wednesday, 28 March 2007 at 9pm, moving from their Friday night timeslot. It regularly attracted more than a million viewers per episode.
After 20 June episode of season two, the Chaser team suspended the series for ten weeks, so the usual production run time of twenty-six episodes per year did not conclude before the 2007 Australian Federal Election. The second season returned on 5 September 2007.
The Chaser then announced that ''The Chaser's War On Everything'' was on hold during 2008, with a new (ten episode) series in 2009 which began airing on Wednesday, 27 May 2009. In 2008, the team (without Chris Taylor, but plus writer Dominic Knight) toured Australia with a stage show, ''The Chaser's Age of Terror Variety Hour'', produced in conjunction with Laughing Stock.
On 29 July 2009, the final episode of ''The War'' was broadcast.
The new programme, entitled ''Yes We Canberra!'', was formally announced on 12 July. The ABC said that the series would air weekly during the election campaign, with a further episode after the election. It purports to be an audience warm-up for the ABC's flagship current affairs program ''Lateline'' (which does not actually have a studio audience). After the Election date was announced (21 August), it was revealed that the show will premiere on 28 July. A DVD was released 15 September 2010. The Chaser - Election Collection containing all the election shows was released 2 December 2010.
In April 2007, a 15 year old boy duped YouTube into deleting all clips posted from ''The Chaser's War On Everything'' by claiming to be a representative of the ABC. They were later reinstated.
At the 2007 Logie Awards some of the Chaser team were "manhandled" by Crown Casino security staff on the red carpet before being closely supervised for the rest of the evening.
During Dick Cheney's visit to Australia in 2007, members of The Chaser team were included on the official list of terrorists, anarchists, and protesters deemed to pose a threat to the US Vice-President.
The Chaser team gained notoriety and considerable media attention over "The Eulogy Song", written by Chris Taylor and performed by Andrew Hansen on the 17 October 2007 episode of ''The Chaser's War On Everything''. The song satirised the media's posthumous praise of deceased celebrities, regardless of their behaviour in life, and mentioned among others John Lennon, Peter Brock, Stan Zemanek, Princess Diana, Steve Irwin, Donald Bradman, and Kerry Packer. The song attracted comment from both the media and politicians including Kevin Rudd and John Howard, the latter of whom used reference to the song in remarks during a sketch later aired on the programme.
Morrow and Licciardello were arrested by NSW Police on 6 September 2007 outside the InterContinental Hotel after driving a fake motorcade through the Sydney central business district and breaching an APEC security zone. The Chaser crew entered a secure area by masquerading as the motorcade of the Canadian delegation to APEC. They were arrested by police after Licciardello emerged from the car dressed as Osama bin Laden, near the hotel where U.S. President George W. Bush was staying. They were subsequently detained, taken to Surry Hills Police Station for questioning and charged with "entering a restricted area without special justification" under the APEC Meeting (Police Powers) Act 2007. Licciardello, Morrow and the nine other production members were released on bail to appear in court on 4 October 2007. If found guilty, they were liable to serve a maximum 6 months imprisonment, or a maximum 2 years imprisonment if they also had possession or control of a prohibited item with no special justification. The Chaser team issued a statement on 6 September that they had been given permission by police officers to enter the restricted area. Under section 37(2)(b) of the legislation a person has special justification to be in an area if "the person is required, authorised or permitted to be in the area by the Commissioner or a police officer". Subsequently, the hearing was adjourned until 5 December 2007 at the request of ABC lawyers. The charges were dropped near the end of April 2008.
The day after the APEC stunt, police questioned Craig Reucassel, Chris Taylor and Dominic Knight and a film crew from the Chaser after they were involved in a second stunt in central Sydney. The three were released by police after being briefly questioned for carrying around black cardboard boxes dressed up as limousines.
The reaction to the sketch from media commentators was mostly negative. Then-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd stated that The Chaser team "should hang their heads in shame". He went on to say that "I didn't see that but it's been described to me...I actually don't mind The Chaser taking the mickey out of me or any other politician, at any time and any place....But having a go at kids with a terminal illness is really beyond the pale, absolutely beyond the pale." That morning, the Chaser team along with the ABC managing director, Mark Scott, apologised for airing the skit, with Scott stating that "We have unreservedly apologised for airing that skit,...It's very clear today from the reaction that it's caused considerable offence and distress, particularly to parents of children that are seriously ill....I've spoken to Julian Morrow from The Chaser and my understanding is that certainly wasn't the intention of the script, but that's the consequences of it." The ABC will now change their procedures for reviewing episode content which gets broadcast. Scott continued, "We're going to look at those processes ... I mean we all know that The Chaser push the edges and it's a tightrope that we walk, and I suppose there are many, many skits that they've put to air that have offended someone along the way - that's part of the nature of the satirical and black comedy that they do." The skit has also been cut from any further television airings. The ABC announced on Friday that The Chaser's War on Everything will be suspended for 2 weeks. This was relayed via a message by The Chaser on their website, who stated that whilst they disagree with the decision to suspend the show, they apologise for making the skit, acknowledging that it went too far.
ABC's Managing Director announced on 2009-06-10 that the ABC's Head of Comedy, Amanda Duthie, had been removed from her position after a review of the process which led to the skit being broadcast. He was quoted as saying, "The segment should not have been broadcast. We recognise that it caused unnecessary and unreasonable hurt and offence to our viewers and the broader community and we have apologised for this," adding, "This was an error of judgement." Ms Duthie will continue to be responsible for Arts and Entertainment programs.
In 24 June 2009 episode, the Chaser team acknowledged they had made a mistake by broadcasting the skit. Later on in the show, they recreated the skit, but instead of targeting sick kids, they make fun of Kevin Rudd's anger-management issues.
Category:Article Feedback Pilot Category:Pranksters Category:Satire Category:Performing groups established in 1999
fr:The Chaser ko:체이서 zh:追趕者This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
Coordinates | 35°10′″N33°22′″N |
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name | Benjamin Lee |
background | solo_singer |
birth name | Benjamin Michael Lee |
birth date | September 11, 1978 |
origin | Sydney, Australia |
instrument | Vocals, guitar |
genre | Indie pop |
label | Ten Fingers/InertiaModular RecordingsNew West Records |
associated acts | Noise AddictThe BensGerling |
website | }} |
Benjamin Michael "Ben" Lee (born 11 September 1978 in Sydney) is an ARIA Award winning musician and actor. Lee began his career as a musician at the age of 14 with the Sydney band Noise Addict, but focused on his solo career when the band broke up in 1995. He appeared as the protagonist in the Australian film ''The Rage in Placid Lake'' (2003). Lee has released seven solo studio albums.
Lee's fourth album, ''hey you. yes you.'', was released in 2002. The first single from the album, "Something Borrowed, Something Blue", reached number 67 on the ARIA Charts and number 22 on the 2002's Triple J Hottest 100. The second single, "Running with Scissors", peaked at number 82 on the ARIA charts.
In late 2004, Lee left Steve Pavlovic's Modular Recordings and started up his own record label, Ten Fingers. The first release on the label was the single, "Gamble Everything for Love", followed by the album, ''Awake Is the New Sleep'' in February 2005, which went double platinum in Australia. A defining release in his career, the album showcased a much brighter, positive side of Lee's personality, in contrast to his previous darker musings. ''Awake Is the New Sleep'' received several nominations for the 2005 Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) awards, and Lee won Best Male Artist, Best Independent Release, and Single Of The Year for "Catch My Disease", which Lee wrote with Mcgowan Southworth. "Catch My Disease" also went to #2 on the 2005 Triple J Hottest 100. In addition, the song was featured on the soundtracks to the 2005 films ''Just Friends'' and ''Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo'', as well as the soundtracks to the television series, ''Grey's Anatomy'', ''Hidden Palms'' and ''Scrubs''. In 2006 it was used in a television commercial for Dell Computers. On 26 March 2006 Lee performed "We're All in This Together" from ''Awake Is the New Sleep'' at the closing ceremony of the 2006 Commonwealth Games. The single for "We're All in This Together" was released on the 8 April 2006. The CD includes cover versions of the song by Pony Up, Holidays on Ice and Gelbison. "We're All in This Together" is being used in commercials for Kohl's (2008), Coca Cola (Remixed Australian Summer Series Ads in 2007), the South Australian Government (2006), the Salvation Army Red Shield Appeal (2007) and Telus Mobility's "My Faves" (2007).
Ben Lee released his sixth album, ''Ripe'', on 18 September 2007 with Benji Madden and Mandy Moore making appearances. Mandy Moore sung a light-hearted, 50's style duet with Lee called "Birds and Bees". "Mandy was very sweet and did her best Olivia Newton-John for me. I'm really psyched about this recording," Lee says. Madden helped out with some backing vocals, along with US band Rooney and Sara Watkins from the band Nickel Creek. Benmont Tench, keyboardist from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers also contributed. The song "American Television" from the album was used in a VH1 advertisement for ''Flavor of Love 3'' and the song "Ripe" appeared in an episode of ''One Tree Hill'' (Season 5 Episode 2).
In 2007, Ben Lee did a cover of Crosby, Stills & Nash's "Our House" for Landmarks on The DL.
On 6 February 2009, Lee released his seventh studio album, ''The Rebirth of Venus'', which received mixed reviews.
Lee dated Claire Danes for several years; their relationship ended in 2003. Lee married actress Ione Skye on December 28, 2008, in a Hindu wedding ceremony in India. Their first child together, Goldie Priya Lee, was born on September 24, 2009.
Lee was nominated as PETA's World's Sexiest Vegetarian in 2008. However, as Lee himself admits, he eats fish, and therefore is not a vegetarian.
Category:1978 births Category:Alumni of the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design Category:ARIA Award winners Category:Australian musicians Category:Australian male singers Category:Australian child singers Category:Australian pop singers Category:Australian film actors Category:Australian singer-songwriters Category:Australian Jews Category:Australian vegetarians Category:Jewish musicians Category:Living people Category:New West Records artists Category:People from Sydney Category:Live Music Archive artists
bg:Бен Лий de:Ben Lee fr:Ben LeeThis text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
Coordinates | 35°10′″N33°22′″N |
---|---|
name | Jools Holland |
background | solo_singer |
birth name | Julian Miles Holland |
birth date | January 24, 1958 |
birth place | Blackheath, London, England |
instrument | Piano, keyboard, guitar |
genre | Boogie-woogie, jazz, blues, R&B; |
occupation | Musician, composer, television presenter, bandleader |
years active | 1974–present |
associated acts | Squeeze Rhythm & Blues Orchestra |
website | Official site }} |
Julian Miles "Jools" Holland OBE, DL (born 24 January 1958) is an English pianist, bandleader, singer, composer, and television presenter. He was a founder of the band Squeeze (1974-1980 & 1985-1990) and his work has involved him with many artists including Sting, Eric Clapton, George Harrison, The Who, David Gilmour, Magazine and Bono.
Holland is a published author and appears on television shows besides his own and contributes to radio shows. In 2004, he collaborated with Tom Jones on an album of traditional R&B; music. He currently hosts ''Later... with Jools Holland'', a music-based show aired on BBC2, on which his annual show the Hootenanny, is based.
Holland played as a session musician before finding fame, and his first studio session was with Wayne County & the Electric Chairs in 1976 on their track "F*ck Off."
Holland was a founding member of the British pop band Squeeze, formed in March 1974, in which he played keyboards until 1981 and helped the band to achieve millions of record sales, before pursuing his solo career.
Holland began issuing solo records in 1978, his first EP being ''Boogie Woogie '78''. He continued his solo career through the early 1980s, releasing an album and several singles between 1981 and 1984. He branched out into TV, co-presenting the Newcastle-based TV music show ''The Tube'' with Paula Yates. Holland achieved notoriety by inadvertently using the phrase "groovy fuckers" in a live, early evening TV trailer for the show, causing it to be suspended for six weeks. He referred to this in his sitcom "The Groovy Fellers" with Rowland Rivron.
thumb|right|Holland at the Tsunami Relief concert in Cardiff's Millennium Stadium, 22 January 2005In 1983 Holland played an extended piano solo on The The's re-recording of "Uncertain Smile" for the album ''Soul Mining''. In 1985, Squeeze (which had continued in Holland's absence through to 1982) unexpectedly regrouped including Jools Holland as their keyboard player. Holland remained in the band until 1990, at which point, he again departed Squeeze on amicable terms to resume his solo career as a musician and a TV host.
In 1987, Holland formed The ''Jools Holland Big Band'' which consisted of himself and Gilson Lavis from Squeeze. This gradually became his 18-piece Rhythm & Blues Orchestra.
Between 1988 and 1990 he performed and co-hosted along with David Sanborn during the two seasons of the music performance program Sunday Night on NBC late-night television. Since 1992 he has presented the eclectic music program ''Later... with Jools Holland'', plus an annual New Year's Eve "Hootenanny".
In 1996 Holland signed a record deal with Warner Bros. Records and his records are now marketed through Rhino Records.
Holland has a touring band, The Rhythm And Blues Orchestra, which often includes singers Sam Brown and Ruby Turner. In January 2005 Holland and his band performed with Eric Clapton as the headline act of the Tsunami Relief Cardiff. He also headlined the Skegness SO Festival in July 2010.
Holland was an interviewer for The Beatles Anthology TV project, and appeared in the 1997 film ''Spiceworld'' as a musical director.
He received an OBE in 2003 in the Queen's Birthday Honours list, for services to the British music industry as a television presenter and musician. In September 2006 Holland was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant for Kent. He is also known for his charity work: in June 2006 he performed in Southend for HIV/AIDS charity Mildmay, and in early 2007 he performed at Wells and Rochester Cathedrals to raise money for maintaining cathedral buildings. He is also patron of the Drake Music Project and has raised many thousands of pounds for the charity.
Jools Holland was appointed an Honorary Fellow of Canterbury Christ Church University at a ceremony held at Canterbury Cathedral on 30 January 2009.
On 29 August 2005 Holland married Christabel McEwen, his girlfriend of 15 years (between 1983 and 1995 she had been married to Edward Lambton, 7th Earl of Durham, but they divorced). The wedding, at St James's Church, Cooling near Rochester, was attended by many celebrities, including Ringo Starr, Robbie Coltrane, Stephen Fry, Lenny Henry, Noel Gallagher, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders.
Holland is also a patron for The Milton Rooms, a new Arts centre in Malton, North Yorkshire, along with Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton and Kathy Burke.
Category:1958 births Category:Living people Category:Boogie-woogie pianists Category:English rock pianists Category:English television presenters Category:Officers of the Order of the British Empire Category:Bandleaders Category:Squeeze (band) members Category:I.R.S. Records artists Category:People from Blackheath, London Category:BBC Radio 2 presenters Category:Deputy Lieutenants of Kent Category:British people of Irish descent Category:English people of Irish descent
cy:Jools Holland de:Jools Holland es:Jools Holland fr:Jools Holland nl:Jools Holland pl:Jools Holland pt:Jools Holland fi:Jools HollandThis text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
Coordinates | 35°10′″N33°22′″N |
---|---|
name | George Galloway |
birth date | August 16, 1954 |
birth place | Dundee, Scotland, United Kingdom |
residence | London, England, United Kingdom |
office | Vice President of theStop The War Coalition |
term start | 21 September 2001 |
president | Tony Benn |
predecessor | Office created |
office2 | Member of Parliament for Bethnal Green and Bow |
majority2 | 823 (1.9%) |
term start2 | 5 May 2005 |
term end2 | 6 May 2010 |
predecessor2 | Oona King |
successor2 | Rushanara Ali |
office3 | Member of Parliament for Glasgow Kelvin |
term start3 | 1 May 1997 |
term end3 | 5 May 2005 |
predecessor3 | Constituency created |
successor3 | Constituency abolished |
majority3 | 7,260 (27.1%) |
Office4 | Member of Parliament for Glasgow Hillhead |
term start4 | 11 June 1987 |
term end4 | 1 May 1997 |
predecessor4 | Roy Jenkins |
successor4 | Constituency abolished |
majority4 | 4,826 (12.3%) |
party | Respect (2004–present)Labour (1967–2003) |
nationality | Scottish |
citizenship | British |
religion | Roman Catholic |
website | www.georgegalloway.com |
footnotes | }} |
Galloway is also known for his vigorous campaigns in favour of the Palestinians in the Israeli–Palestinian 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 ended in English with the statement "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability." Galloway opposed Saddam's regime until the United States-led Gulf War in 1991 and has always stated that he was addressing the Iraqi people in the speech. Galloway is known in the US for his testimony in the Senate in 2005, where he turned a defence of allegations against him into an attack against US foreign policy.
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".
Galloway is a lifelong supporter of Celtic Football Club.
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.
In 1981, Galloway wrote an article in ''Scottish Marxist'' supporting Communist Party affiliation with the Labour Party. In response, Denis Healey, deputy leader of the Labour Party, tried and failed to remove Galloway from the list of Prospective Parliamentary Candidates. Galloway successfully argued that this was his own personal viewpoint, not that of the Labour Party. Healey lost his motion by 13 votes to 5. He once quipped that, in order to overcome a £1.5 million deficit which had arisen in the city budget, he, Ernie Ross and leading councillors should be placed in the stocks in the city square: "we would allow people to throw buckets of water over us at 20p a time."
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.
In the 1987 election, Galloway won Glasgow Hillhead constituency for the Labour Party from Roy Jenkins of the Social Democratic Party (who had briefly led that party earlier in the decade) with a majority of 3,251. Although known for his left-wing views, Galloway was never a member of Labour's leftist groupings of MPs, the Tribune Group or the Campaign Group.
He went on to win re-selection over Trish Godman (wife of fellow MP Norman Godman) in June 1989, but failed to get a majority of the electoral college on the first ballot. This was the worst result for any sitting Labour MP who was reselected; 13 of the 26 members of the Constituency Party's Executive Committee resigned that August, indicating their dissatisfaction with the result.
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 the eventual winners, 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."
Although facing a challenge for the Labour nomination for the seat of Glasgow Kelvin in 1997, Galloway successfully defeated Shiona Waldron. He was unchallenged for the nomination in 2001.
In the 1997 and 2001 elections Galloway was the Labour candidate for the seat of Glasgow Kelvin, winning with majorities of over 16,000 and 12,000 respectively. During the 2001 Parliament, he voted against the Whip 27 times. During the 2001-02 session he was the 9th most rebellious Labour MP.
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".
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.
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."
"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."
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.
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.
}} However, it found that Galloway's use of parliamentary resources to support his work on the Mariam Appeal "went beyond what was reasonable."
}}
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.
In the election Galloway was defeated, coming third after the Labour and Conservative candidates. He received 8,460 votes.
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.
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."
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 United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559, which urged the Lebanese Government to establish control over all its territory.
In an interview with the Hizbullah run Al-Manar TV, which aired on July 26, 2011 (as translated by MEMRI), Galloway accused Israel of being responsible for the assassination of Rafiq Al-Hariri, stating that "Israel was the only country with any interest and any benefit to gain from the assassination of the martyr Rafiq Al-Hariri. They are the ones who had the capability to do so, they are the ones who had the motive for doing so, and they are the ones who had the criminal record for doing so. How many hundreds of people has Israel killed in Lebanon? Assassination squads of people landing on the beach, and people planting bombs of one kind or another…" He further stated that "When this inquiry [the Special Tribunal for Lebanon] refused to lead in that direction, I knew it was a fake inquiry" and that "this process and all these individuals are completely discredited."
Several months earlier in a speech given in Edmonton, Alberta in November 2010, Galloway stated that
“I believe, and I don’t know anybody who is objective in this matter who does not believe, that Hezbollah are absolutely innocent of this crime, and it is time that the tribunal looked to the people who benefited from this crime…..in Israel."
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.
On 3 February 2006, Galloway was refused entry to Egypt at Cairo Airport and was detained "on grounds of national security", where he had been invited to 'give evidence' at a 'mock trial' of Bush and Blair. After being detained overnight, he said Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak "apologised on behalf of the Egyptian people", and he was allowed to enter the country. After initial derogatory comments from Galloway and a spokesman from his Respect party regarding Mubarak's pro-Western stance and ties to Bush and Blair, Galloway later commented: "It was a most gracious apology which I accept wholeheartedly. I consider the matter now closed."
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.
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).
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.
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."
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. On 8 April 2009, Galloway joined Vietnam War veteran Ron Kovic to launch Viva Palestina US.
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.
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 damages of £150,000 plus, after a failed appeal in 2006, legal costs of about £2 million.
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 (where the defendant seeks to prove the truth of the defamatory reports): "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 trial judge did not accept this defence saying the suggestion such as Galloway was guilty of "treason", "in Saddam's pay", and being "Saddam's little helper" caused him to conclude "the newspaper was not neutral but both embraced the allegations with relish and fervour and went on to embellish them". Additionally Galloway had not been given a fair or reasonable opportunity to make inquiries or meaningful comment upon the documents before they were published.
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 ''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.
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."
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.
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.
The Trotskyist Workers' Liberty also condemns Galloway, largely on the basis of his support and work for the current Iranian regime. In "No vote for Galloway - an open letter to the left", he is quoted from his Press TV interview with President Ahmadinejad as stating that he requires "police protection in London from the Iranian opposition because of my support for your election campaign. I mention this so you know where I’m coming from."
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, 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. On 30 March 2009, the Federal Court of Canada upheld the decision of the Canada Border Services Agency. 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." Subsequently, Galloway canceled his Canadian tour and instead, delivered his speech over video link from New York to his Canadian audiences.
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 criticise 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.
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'' |
Podcast | }} |
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 .
Galloway has not, however, received ubiquitously positive reaction to his use of rhetoric. On Friday 6th May, 2005, in an interview with Jeremy Paxman during the BBC election coverage, he was accused of being a demagogue; a term originally used by Labour Member of Parliament Nick Raynsford. The term was also used by Hugo Rifkind in The Times, in a satirical dissection of Respect's 2005 manifesto.
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Category:Anti-poverty advocates Category:Anti-Zionism in the United Kingdom Category:Big Brother UK contestants Category:British anti–Iraq War activists Category:British anti-war activists Category:British radio personalities Category:British columnists Category:British political writers Category:Labour Party (UK) politicians Category:Labour Party (UK) MPs Category:Members of the United Kingdom Parliament for English constituencies Category:Members of the United Kingdom Parliament for Scottish constituencies Category:People from Dundee Category:People from Glasgow Category:Personae non gratae Category:Respect Party politicians Category:Scottish Christian socialists Category:Scottish columnists Category:Scottish political writers Category:Scottish people of Irish descent 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:United Nations Oil-for-Food scandal Category:1954 births Category:Living people Category:Deported people Category:People educated at Harris Academy
ar:جورج غالاوي cy:George Galloway de:George Galloway eo:George Galloway fa:جورج گالوی fr:George Galloway he:ג'ורג' גאלאוויי la:Georgius Galloway no:George Galloway nn:George Galloway pl:George Galloway ru:Гэллоуэй, Джордж fi:George Galloway sv:George Galloway tl:George Galloway uk:Джордж ҐалловейThis text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
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