Press TV not pay enough? Missing his old MP salary? Bit handy then that Sheridan got banged up, one ego departs and another takes his place .
So, will the SWP now have to start defending him when he stands with the Iranian regime rather than those oppressed by that reactionary state ? How will they twist themselves to defend his Kylie knickers moments in his Daily Record articles ?
Then of course there are the contortations needed to explain why one minute he finds Solidarity too left for his tastes and of course the question of independence.
Expect a bit of doublethink re writing by his supporters and those perhaps returning to trail in his wake .
In knick of time for M&S Danni in M&S knicks and pyjamas as part of the new advertising campaign will surely help the store. Alongside the past adverts featuring Twiggy and Mylene and my favourite - Noemie Lenoir - the ad campaign of the high street warhorse has begun to get it back on its feet.A good thing too. Their food is ace, their underwear terrific value. But their ads are marvellous. Take a look here and on YouTube.
Coming soon, Galloway advertising M&S ? Press TV not paying enough, might soon need to supplement the loss of an MP's wage ?Still i'm sure his fan club can squirm around and find a good reason for such an inane blatant bit of promotion for a large capitalist corporation that sells Israeli goods (isn't he for a boycott?).
George Galloway, the Leftwing Respect MP, has been accused of making allegations that border on paedophile smears and play to homophobic prejudice. He claims that the boyfriend of gay Iranian asylum seeker Mehdi Kazemi was executed for "committing sex crimes against young men".
The insinuation of such a claim is that Mehdi's boyfriend was a rapist or a child sex abuser. It also stigmatises Mehdi with the shame that he was the partner of someone who committed sexual assaults on male youths. He will suffer with this stigma when he is returned to the UK and could face considerable personal hostility from people who have heard and believe these allegations against his boyfriend.
Mr Galloway made his astonishing allegation on Channel Five's The Wright Stuff. You can watch his interview here.
He has been asked to explain the source of his claim, but has so far failed to do so.
I am not aware of any paedophile-style sex abuse claims against Mehdi's partner. Moreover, no human rights group has mentioned any evidence that Mehdi's boyfriend was a rapist or a child molester.
Although the regime in Tehran frequently defames political, religious, ethnic and sexual dissidents with false claims of kidnapping, rape, alcoholism, sodomy, adultery, drug-taking and hooliganism, even the most extreme ayatollahs have not made allegations that Mehdi Kazemi's boyfriend was involved in sex abuse.
Nevertheless, Galloway has broadcast this very serious, potentially defamatory, allegation to the British public, and has then failed to back it up with evidence.
To some people, Galloway's claims look like propaganda in defence of the totalitarian, homophobic Islamic Republic of Iran. His passionate opposition to a war against Iran, which I share, seems to have clouded his judgement; leading him to downplay the regime's persecution of lesbians and gays, which includes state-sanctioned executions.
In the same interview for The Wright Stuff, Galloway went on to state: "All the [British] papers seem to imply that you get executed in Iran for being gay. That's not true."
His claim that lesbian and gay people are not at risk of execution in Iran is refuted by every reputable human rights organisation, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission and the International Lesbian and Gay Association. None of these esteemed bodies are anti-Iran warmongers, as Galloway has subsequently seemed to imply.
The leftwing US journalist, Doug Ireland, has documented cases of the flogging and execution of men who have sex with men in Iran. These are just the cases we know about. It is likely that some similar executions never get media coverage in Iran and are therefore unknown to the outside world.
The Iranian Queer Rights Organisation also confirms that homosexuality is a capital offence and that gay Iranians are subjected to brutal punishments, including torture and hanging.
The government of Iran admits that it has the death penalty for homosexuality. Gay people are sometimes tortured to make confessions - even false confessions. Iranian law makes no distinction between consensual and non-consensual same-sex relations. Both are punishable by execution.
If Iran doesn't execute queers, why does it need to retain the death penalty for same-sex relations? Why doesn't it repeal a law it supposedly never enforces? Why doesn't it announce a moratorium on hangings for homosexuality?
As with other dissidents, gay men are usually hanged in public by the barbaric slow strangulation method which is deliberately designed to maximise and prolong the suffering of the victim. These gruesome public barbarisms are also designed to terrorise the gay population.
To discredit the gay people it hangs, and to stir up public homophobia in support of its medieval religious-inspired punishments, the regime sometimes frames gay people with false charges of rape and child sex abuse. It wants to create the impression that homosexuals are monsters, in order to deter men from seeking same-sex relations.
This is what happened in the case of 21-year-old Makwan Moloudzadeh, who was executed in Iran last December. He was hanged for alleged sex offences against male teenagers, when he himself was a mere 13 years old. Amnesty International condemned his trial as "grossly flawed" and a "mockery of justice."
Human Rights Watch reports that Moloudzadeh was coerced and tortured into making a confession. According to Amnesty International, his accusers retracted their sex assault allegations and admitted that they had been pressured into making false claims against him.
Even if Moloudzadeh had been guilty as charged, he should never have been hanged because the alleged offence was committed while he was a minor.
Strong evidence for Moloudzadeh's innocence is the fact that hundreds of villagers turned out for his funeral; which would not have happened if the official Iranian account that he was a child sex abuser was true.
In a second interview on The Wright Stuff, Galloway launched into a scurrilous attack on Medhi's friends and supporters, and the defenders of lesbian, gay and bisexual human rights in Iran, including myself:
"This (Mehdi Kazemi's case) is a useful story for the war propaganda machine, the khaki machine now taking on a tinge of pink....what I will not accept is people being used, as Tatchell is, as the pink end of the war machine. That's what Peter Tatchell has become by attacking Iran in the way that he does."
At the antiwar protest in London on March 15, which I supported and attended, Galloway repeated these claims in his keynote speech. He said the "khaki war machine now has its pink contingent". He went on to imply that people who support gay rights in Iran are "useful idiots" and said their aim is to "bamboozle the public to go along with mass murder in Iran".
It is untrue and deeply offensive to suggest that those of us who oppose homophobic persecution in Iran are backing the bombing and invasion of Iran. We are not.
I am on record in my writings and speeches as opposing an attack on Iran. When, for example, I exposed Tehran's racist and neocolonial persecution of its Ahwazi Arab ethnic minority, I stated categorically:
"I am part of a new campaign group, Hands Off the People of Iran (HOPI). HOPI opposes both a US war on Iran and the tyranny of the Iranian regime. My motto is: Neither Washington nor Tehran!
A war against Iran would be another disastrous neo-imperial adventure, which would strengthen the Tehran dictatorship. President Ahmadinejad would play the patriot and manipulate nationalism to rally the population behind him. He would use a US military attack as an excuse to further crack down on dissent in the name of safeguarding national security.
The overthrow of the theocratic police state by the Iranian people - not by US military intervention - is the best way to resolve the nuclear crisis and prevent a needless, unjustified war. With no dictatorship in Tehran, President Bush and the neo cons would lose the rationale for a military strike against Iran."
Galloway's insinuation that I am banging the war drum and siding with imperialism is both laughable and dishonourable.
For nearly 40 years I have supported the Iranian people's struggle against dictatorship, first against the western-backed Shah and, since 1979, against the clerical tyranny of the ayatollahs. I have been totally consistent. I am not suddenly focusing on Iran's human rights abuses and doing the dirty work of the Washington neocons, as Galloway seems to suggest.
Undeterred by criticisms that his outbursts collude with homophobia and with a viciously anti-gay regime in Tehran, Mr Galloway boasts: "I have an unblemished record of support for lesbian and gay equality."
Well, not quite. The Public Whip website (which monitors MPs votes) notes that Galloway did not vote on 8 out of 10 of the major parliamentary votes on gay law reform in recent years. His repeat absence is a strange way to express support for gay rights. Most other MPs turned up to vote. Why not George?
Galloway is, of course, a Respect MP. A commitment to gay rights was entirely absent from Respect's 2005 general election manifesto. Some insiders claim gay equality was originally included but was removed to appease Muslim fundamentalist voters (this apparent assumption by Respect that all Muslims are homophobic fundamentalists is just plain wrong - they are not).
The policy section of the Respect website has included a one-line opposition to discrimination based on sexual orientation but it is hidden away under "other policies". Not exactly upfront.
One of Respect's major funders is Dr Mohammed Naseem. He is a one-time member of their executive and was a Respect parliamentary candidate. He is also a leading member of the Islamic Party of Britain (IPB) which appears to advocate the death penalty for consenting adult homosexuality in certain circumstances.
The IPB is viciously homophobic in other respects too, as it's website explains, and as my OutRage! colleague, Brett Lock, has revealed. Naseem is a strange bedfellow for a supposedly pro-gay rights MP.
George Galloway was magnificent before the US Senate, exposing the Iraq debacle. Sadly, he now sometimes seems to be exonerating a cruel, unjust regime in Tehran that is responsible for some of the worst state-sanctioned homophobia in the world. This regime is also responsible for the equally heinous persecution of trade unionists, women's rights campaigners, student leaders, human rights advocates, investigative journalists and activists who defend Iran's subjugated minority nationalities, such as the Kurds, Arabs and Baluchis.
Misguided, untruthful attacks on Iranian gay people, the queer rights movement and the pink community do not strengthen the antiwar movement and the struggle against US imperialism. On the contrary, they play straight into the hands of the tyrants in Tehran and their mirror opposites in Washington. They betray all Iranians who are yearning and striving for democracy, human rights, social justice and the self-rule of Iran's oppressed minority nations.
So come on Respect Renewal, hold Galloway to account. Surely deep down you must be feeling uneasy . Its not good enough to just dismiss his critics as trouble making and obsessed, or to repeat the mantra that he is anti imperialist. New Respect seems to have inherited the same tactic as the SWP in the old Respect, attack critics and defend the indefensible.
Be honest and open, like you said you would be. If not it looks like you are no better than the SWP were in their cheerleading and now hypocritcal criticism of Galloway.
This being a blog 'n' all, I should expect myself to comment at length on said article's content, analytically taking it apart and examining its every nuance. But sometimes, a piece of writing is such patent gibberish it seems to speak for itself and defy intelligent comment. Please someone, read this and tell me why any self-respecting lefty should take it, or its author, in the least bit seriously.
What could we start? Perhaps with the very idea that a bloke could die and then wake again; let alone that an entire religious faith could be built on such an absurdity; let alone that this myth should then determine your political views.
Moving on, how is it that shaking hands with Saddam is morally OK, but having a flutter on a sporting fixture is somehow damnable?! And how is gambling morally acceptable on some days but not on others just because one religious faith decides that particular day is something special regardless of whether the rest of us adhere to their superstition or not?
Then GG caps it all with a total failure to address any of the valid arguments that the sort of embryo research currently before Parliament might actually reduce suffering and save lives (you don't have to agree with it, George, but you could try actually engaging with the argument rather than ignoring it).
Anyway, for those of you with a strong stomach or a tolerant sense of humour ...
Don't Put A Bet On Des's Conscience Mar 24 2008 George Galloway
HAPPY Easter, Christ is risen. Not that you'd know it in this Godless country presided over by a son of the manse.
Apparently oblivious to the soldiers gambling on Golgotha at the foot of the cross as Jesus died and Our Lady wept, bookies were allowed to open on Good Friday for the first time in our history.
Gambling has now been unleashed with full state approval. Indeed when the state become a croupier in the National Lottery, only me, Pastor Ian Paisley and a few others opposed it.
And the proposals in the Embryo Research Bill before the House imminently blasphemes against the very idea of God.
The Bill contains the literally monstrous idea to allow boffins to insert human DNA into animal eggs creating hybrid human-animal embryos. This Frankenstinian proposal allegedly has some Christian ministers parading their double standard consciences, pretending they are agonising between their principles and their ministerial Montegos.
One such is Des Browne, whom you may not know is a Scottish MP and part-time Defence Secretary.
Des's conscience has allowed him to make illegal war in Iraq in defiance of his Pope, not to mention the UN, international law, the views of his Kilmarnock constituents and the millions of anti-war marchers, but he might draw the line at making a pig's ear in a laboratory.
Well, might is the operative word.
Given it's Easter under New Labour - so the bookies must be open - I'd stick a few quid on the outcome of a wrestling match between Des's conscience and his limousine.
My money is on the conscience getting a .202 round to the head.
Mehdi Kazmi and what Galloway has to say on the subject
I am sure some will think I am happy to have a go at George Galloway and use anything against him.Honestly, my feelings were of anger and upset at seeing this video clip, sent to me by Mod. I really wish the left could be united in supporting a teenager facing execution if he is returned to Iran. I would rather see Galloway lending his support to the campaign than make what some might see as cheap political shots.
In my posts I have called on other blogs to publicise and support the campaign and the demo on the 22nd. I was , genuinely, pleased to see Andy as a RR member plug it on Socialist Unity, especially as it would get a much bigger audience than this blog and that's all for the good.
That is why I was angered to see Galloway on TV downplaying the reality for LGBT people in Iran. We have our own Govt saying LGBT people will be safe if they are 'discreet'. They are going to send Medhi back to certain death. The left should be united against this. This teenager is now caught in the left's bloody stupid inability to criticise a war on Iran AND criticise the Iranian state who execute people for being gay. George says people are not executed for being lesbian or gay, OK, George, split hairs. Someone can be Lesbian or gay and just pretend not to be. But the reality is if someone has gay sex then they can be executed. So as George says, people are not executed for being gay. So would that be OK if it applied to religion ? Pretend to be someone you're not.
So its 'only' if someone has sex they are executed, well that's OK then.
Its not OK to execute people for having gay sex, which can be anything from a one night stand to a long term relationship. And why is being lesbian or gay so defined by sex . Its about relationships as well.
I'm not going to shut up about it because people like George see criticism as part of the propaganda against Iran. The reality is Iran is a reactionary, repressive brutal state. It oppresses Lesbian and Gay people, women who step out of line, trade unionists and socialists. Shutting up shows us as apologists and abandons the people we should support. Its unprincipled, disgusting and also tactically stupid.
We also mustn't forget that its the British Government that will be sending him back to his death, so the argument about propaganda is not clear cut. They are not being consistent .We should be though.
We need to grasp the complexities, say we are against war and that we support those in struggle against the Iranian state to overthrow it. What the fuck is so difficult about that. Its honest and its principled and it doesn't betray those suffering, often paying with their lives, in Iran.
As I said at the start I would much rather see Galloway on a platform supporting Mehdi , strengthening rather than weakening the case for not just him but others who also face deportation and risk of execution because of their sexuality.
You know this is about a young man who will end up executed because he is gay . Shouldn't we be on his side and not apologising for the Iranian regime .
update The second Wright Stuff programme where Galloway again says Lesbian and Gays arent executed and can freely meet for trysts !Not much worse than Tonbridge Wells apparently. Hmmm...
