George Galloway

George Galloway addresses the first meeting of the Respect Foundation on Egypt: One year on from the fall of Mubarak.

 Part One


Part Two


Other speakers at the meeting will be published over the coming week.

For readers of a certain age, Bandung in Indonesia recalls a time of tremendous hope and progress. It was there in 1955 that the Non Aligned Movement of countries in what we now call the Global South was in effect born.

A great conference of newly independent nations was held the West Java city. Attending were Nehru from India, Nasser from Egypt, Zhou Enlai from China (who narrowly survived an assassination attempt on his way to the gathering) and many others - all hosted by President Sukarno of Indonesia, who had led the vast country's independence struggle against Dutch colonialism.

It was Sukharno who was more determined than most to ensure that these countries banded together to have a major voice on the world stage. The process was formalised at a further conference in Tito's Belgrade.

Quite naturally, the newly independent states had varying outlooks and policies, internal and external. But they shared a vision of economic development freed from the worst excesses of Western-dominated capitalism and of an implacable opposition to colonial or imperialist interference.

In this edition of the Real Deal, George Galloway talks about the next Viva Palestina convoy from the Indonesian capital, Jakarta.

George Barda of the Occupy London Movement talks about the enshrined freedom in the British Constitution which, as he says, is being violated.

This episode also includes an interview with Patricia DeGennaro, from the World Policy Institute. She believes the drumbeats for war with Iran is getting louder and louder, but yet both sides should push for more diplomacy.

This week's EU Summit in Brussels and the British Prime Minister David Cameron's fight with German Chancellor Angela Merkel over the Euro, Barack Obama's State of the Union address and the US Presidential elections, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard attacked at a restaurant and much more are all reviewed in this episode.

George Galloway, founder of the worldwide Viva Palestina movement, arrived today in Jakarta, Indonesia.

This is the start of a two week speaking tour of the Far East in support of the Right of Return of all Palestinians whose families were driven from the country by the Catastrophe of 1948 and subsequently.

Galloway will address public events in Jakarta and Bandung - birthplace of the Non Aligned Movement (NAM). He is scheduled to meet parliamentarians ministers and opposition leaders, including Mrs Megawati Sukarnoputri, the daughter of NAM founder member President Sukarno.

 Galloway moves on to a similar programme in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on February 3rd.

 Galloway was received on arrival by leading figures from the governing coalition party PKS and met later with representatives of Mrs Megawati Sukarnoputri's foundation.

Public meeting

On the first anniversary of the fall of the Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak....
WHERE NOW FOR EGYPT AND THE MIDDLE EAST?

Speakers include:
Dr Kamal El-Helbawy, Chair of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism
George Galloway, Founder of Viva Palestina
Kate Hudson, General Secretary of CND
Andrew Murray, Founder and former Chair of the Stop the War Coalition
The meeting will be chaired by Seumas Milne, Guardian columnist

Sunday 12th February, 3.30pm, Khalili Lecture Theatre
School of Oriental and African Studies, Russell Square, London, WC1

Organised by The Respect Foundation

It is 12 months since the heroic shabab of Tunisia overthrew EU-favourite Ben Ali and set in motion the Arab masses across the region.

Now we see clearly the response of the ailing Western powers which were thrown off kilter as their system of client states creaked, cracked and began to fall apart. It is war - actual and threatened.

The drumbeats for war with Iran are getting louder, and the escalating provocations by Western capitals are developing a logic of their own. It admits of no alternative and points in only one direction – towards military conflict. Or to put it more accurately, towards open military conflict. The head of Britain's MI6 has already called for covert military operations in Iran - which are, of course, an act of war - and they have been taking place. So are the drone overflights, which are also legally an act of aggression.

Are there great difficulties facing any such venture? There most certainly are - huge ones, which would make it a disaster of world historic proportions. But it is a false, if comforting, logic which says that on account of such catastrophic consequences war with Iran is unthinkable. Many will recall that "unthinkable" was the then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw's response to the proposition a few years ago. We now know, thanks to some first class journalism at the Guardian, that that is no longer the position of the mandarins of the British state. It is, in fact, to sign up our country to a war in advance.

So, the Yanks are going home. Apart from the thousands of their servicemen and women whose life-blood they are leaving in the sands of Iraq. And the tens of thousands too maimed or otherwise damaged to make it back to home and hearth. And minus the trillions of dollars in treasure they have expended on destroying an Arab country (which may have lost a million souls and seen three millions off into exile), fanning the flames of fanaticism, making Iran more powerful, and unleashing a wave of sectarianism throughout the Muslim world.

Nice work, but hardly "Mission Accomplished" as the melancholy valediction delivered by President Obama at Fort Bragg this week made clear to the discerning. The more he talked about what he once called the "dumb war" the more obvious it was that his was the task of holding the dipped banner of defeat. And the crew of thick-necked servicemen straight out of central casting roaring their approval at his description of their success could not quite drown out the sound of the Last Post. This is the death knell of American empire, the end of the brief uni-polar world in the ashes of whose hubris the lone bugler now stands playing the retreat. Like Ozymandius, history, which hasnt ended after all, will invite us to gaze upon its ruined works and tremble. But instead we will rejoice, rejoice. For the Project for the New American Century it will be never glad confident morning again.

Shakespeare would have had little difficulty in scripting the drama unfolding on the European and global stage.

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

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

The deluge of killing in Libya having subsided (but only for now), storm clouds are now gathering over the ancient Arab capital of Damascus.

Syria is on the verge of all-out civil war and we're on the verge of being dragged into it by our leaders. Like the Libyan rebels before them the Syrian opposition has moved decisively to demand from the "international community" our old friend the "No Fly Zone".

This was the trail which led us ineluctably into the war with Iraq and then with Libya and may qualify for an Orwell Prize for "Doublespeak" one day. It means anything but "no-flying" of course, indeed quite the opposite. It means lots of flying, and bombing, by us of the people down below.

"It reads like a Hollywood film script" said the FBI Director Robert Mueller at the podium on the breakfast news unveiling what might be an Oscar-Winner at least in the "Wag the Dog" category.

Iran it seems, at least in the script, planned to blow up the Saudi Ambassador to Washington in a restaurant frequented by American senators and scores of other diners. And it contracted, through an Iranian-American citizen ( who appears to have been convicted long before his presumably forthcoming trial) guided by a named "member of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard", a Mexican Drug Cartel to do the job for a price of $1.5 million. Only the hired assassin was in fact an FBI operative, turned by them from his drug-dealing past into a sting operator. Thus the $100,000 down payment the Iranian-American allegedly paid into the agent's bank account goes to the US Treasury to reduce President Obama's deficit. Which may, of course, be where it came from in the first place.

Surveying the media on the 10th anniversary of the war on Afghanistan yesterday left little doubt - the war is lost, was ill-conceived and all that is left is to limit the damage.

How different it all seemed a decade ago - the Taliban were routed, women's rights were coming to Afghanistan along with democracy and Kabul was to be redeveloped as the jewel in the crown of a country now rescued from decades of neglect and war.

Some of us said at the time that it was bunkum. We said it again five years ago when British forces were deployed in Helmand - to Helmand, of course, because the much-routed Taliban had regrouped across the Pakistan border and were now firing an insurgency across the south and east.