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George Galloway was given a triumphant welcome today as he led an aid convoy into the impoverished Gaza Strip after a month-long journey across Europe and North Africa to the Hamas-ruled enclave. Having been made to wait for a day at the southern Rafah border crossing by Egyptian authorities, the staunchly pro-Palestinian Respect MP for Bethnal Green was finally allowed into the blockaded territory, where he was handed flowers and kissed by Palestinian well-wishers. Mr Galloway and his companions fell to their knees and bowed to the ground as they walked in. “I have entered Palestine many times but the...

A humanitarian convoy led by maverick MP George Galloway carrying medical supplies for Gaza has come under attack in Egypt The convoy, carrying aid worth £1 million, was pelted with stones and vandalised after it stopped in El-Arish, a small town around 28 miles from the Rafah border crossing with Gaza. "It's an absolute disgrace,'' convoy organiser Yvonne Ridley told AFP. "The power was cut. Under cover of darkness members of our convoy were attacked with stones. "Vandals also wrote dirty words and anti-Hamas slogans,'' she said. "Several people in the convoy were injured in the attack." (snip) "George Galloway...

THREE Islamist terror suspects who were arrested in northwest England on Friday night planned to leave the country under the cover of a humanitarian convoy to Gaza led by George Galloway, the maverick MP, senior police sources said. The three suspects were among nine men arrested in a joint operation by police and MI5 while they were driving two vans on the M65 near Preston, Lancashire. Six were later released and three men, aged 26, 29 and 36, remained in custody last night. The men had been under surveillance for some time as part of what police described as “an...

Author and McClatchy military columnist Joe Galloway will be at the Fort Lewis PX 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday to sign copies of his new book, "We Are Soldiers Still." (Review here.)It's a followup to his "We Were Soldiers Once ... And Young" with retired Lt. Gen. Hal Moore.If you don't have a Department of Defense sticker or ID, but you want to get a signed copy or meet the author, you can still get on Fort Lewis. Go to the visitor center at the main gate – Exit 120 off of Interstate 5 – and present your driver's license,...

BY the time you read this, I will be in Iran. I've never been there before, never met an Iranian leader - I don't even like the present Iranian leadership - so remember all that, because it might become important. I'm determined to do my bit for the anti-war effort. We need another war like Gordon Brown needs another by-election. But the Sunday papers were again full of Israeli war games and threats as speculation mounts of a massive bombardment of yet another Muslim country. I'm going for the first anniversary of Press TV, on which I present two programmes...

British MP George Galloway to Hamas TV: I Pray for Obama's Safety; Come November, Arab "Puppet Presidents and Corrupt Kings May Discover That the Ground Has Moved Under Their Feet, Allah Willing" "I Pray For the Safety of Barack Obama, And I Pray That He Can Shift the U.S.'s Attitude" George Galloway: "I hope that the new presidency in the United States... I pray for the safety of Barack Obama, and I pray that he can shift the United States' attitude to this question. But as you know, Palestine cannot free itself. It is a small country against a huge...

The latest outrage is a father's video of a U.S. Army barracks at Fort Bragg, N.C., the home of the 82nd Airborne Division. It shows the quarters where his soldier son and other soldier sons were sent to live upon their return from combat. Mold and mildew and peeling paint are bad enough, but what about a big barracks bathroom ankle-deep in raw sewage? Scandals like this latest one and an earlier eruption of public outrage over the miserably maintained quarters where wounded soldiers were warehoused at Walter Reed Army Hospital are an indictment of the core competency of our...

GUTTERSNIPE columnist and speak your weight machine shock jock ("OI Gaunty one at a time please") Jon Gaunt has taken, on national radio, to calling Barack Obama, Barack O'Bomber in the fashion of the hate machine that is the American right. As we approach the anniversary on Thursday of the assasination of Malcolm X (in five years in gun-crazed America President Kennedy and his brother Bobby, Martin Luther King and Malcolm were all gunned down), that's dangerous talk indeed. More immediately dangerous was batrachian squeak Gaunt's promise to "give Galloway a good slapping" (repeated thrice) in the boxing ring for...

WHILE most were asleep, we've walked to the brink of yet another war in the Balkans. Kosovo is a part of Serbia. That's a legal and political fact. It wants to break away and appears to have secured British and American agreement, but not, alas, the agreement of either Serbia, whose land it is, or Russia, which will veto any breakaway in the UN. The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) rules the roost and has said it will make a unilateral declaration of independence soon. The Serbs cannot allow Kosovo, sacred to their orthodox Christian heritage for 1000 years, to go...

Tehran Times Political Desk TEHRAN – British MP George Galloway says there is no indication that the U.S. is willing to enter talks with Iran over its nuclear program. Iran and the U.S. have held three rounds of talks in Baghdad to improve the security situation in Iraq. A fourth round of talks between the arch foes is also imminent. However, the U.S. has said Iran should first stop its uranium enrichment program as a precondition for direct nuclear talks, although, as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has the right to enrich uranium for civilian applications. “There...

...Galloway's front organization, a "charity" known as the Mariam Appeal that campaigned against the sanctions on Iraq, had in fact received direct Iraqi subventions from the proceeds of the U.N.-sponsored "Oil for Food" program. Bank records established that Galloway's former wife had been paid at least $150,000 in this way. A completely separate U.N. inquiry chaired by former Treasury Secretary Paul Volcker identified another "Oil for Food" payment to the same lady, this time in the sum of $120,000.Snip...This raises two quite serious questions. The first is the extent to which the Iraqi Baath Party was able to purchase direct...

LONDON - The British Parliament's lower house on Monday suspended a lawmaker accused of concealing his financial dealings with Saddam Hussein's government. George Galloway, known for his fierce opposition to Britain's role in the invasion of Iraq, was suspended for 18 days, following an investigation which found that a charity he set up was partly funded by the Iraqi dictator. The decision, which came without a vote, followed a recommendation from a parliamentary disciplinary panel that investigated the charity. Galloway accused his opponents of hypocrisy. "Being lectured by the current House of Commons on the question of the funding of...

Maverick MP In Commons Bust-Up Updated: 21:16, Monday July 23, 2007 George Galloway has been kicked out of the Commons chamber and suspended for 18 days after a series of fiery exchanges. Galloway attacks watchdogThe Respect MP was "named" and ordered out after repeatedly clashing with Speaker Michael Martin. Mr Galloway angrily denounced the Commons watchdog over the motion to suspend him from the House for 18 days about his financial links to Saddam Hussein's regime. He accused the Standards and Privileges Committee of hypocrisy and of acting "unjustly" as he was repeatedly admonished by Mr Martin for attacking the...

July 19, 2007 LONDON: British MP George Galloway personally thanked Saddam Hussein for his regime's financial backing in a campaign against sanctions on Iraq, and even asked him to raise the payments, it emerged yesterday. Mr Galloway also offered to help set up with Saddam an Iraqi satellite television channel, broadcasting in English, months before the beginning of the Iraq war. An account of their meeting, published for the first time in a House of Commons report into Mr Galloway's failure to declare his financial backers, contradicts the MP's insistence that he was unaware of receiving money from the former...

George Galloway faces new funds investigation By Tim Shipman in Washington, DC, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 1:28am BST 22/07/2007 George Galloway faces renewed investigation by US authorities over the channelling of hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of payments from Saddam Hussein's regime to his Iraq charity. George Galloway denies he solicited oil allocations Three different bodies of prosecutors and the US justice department are preparing to examine the report by Sir Philip Mawer, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, and the House of Commons committee responsible for MPs' standards, published last week. Sir Philip found that, by turning a "blind...

George Galloway faces new funds investigation By Tim Shipman in Washington, DC, Sunday Telegraph  Last Updated: 11:57pm BST 21/07/2007  George Galloway faces renewed investigation by US authorities over the channelling of hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of payments from Saddam Hussein's regime to his Iraq charity.   George Galloway denies he solicited oil allocations   Three different bodies of prosecutors and the US justice department are preparing to examine the report by Sir Philip Mawer, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, and the House of Commons committee responsible for MPs' standards, published last week.Sir Philip found that, by turning a...

July 17th, 2007 - Washington, D.C. - The United Kingdom House of Commons Committee on Standards and Privileges has released a report today concerning MP George Galloway and his misconduct related to the Oil-for-Food Program. The Parliament report was highly critical of Galloway's activities related to the Program, ruling against Galloway on every charge. Finally, the Committee recommends that he be suspended from the House of Commons for eighteen working days – which is reportedly "one of the most severe [penalties] given to an MP" – and requests that he apologize for his misconduct. In arriving at its conclusions, the...

MP George Galloway is set to be suspended from Parliament over his links to a charity bankrolled by illicit deals involving Saddam Hussein's regime. He will be barred from the Commons for one month by Parliament's standards watchdog for failing properly to declare his connections with the Mariam Appeal, it was reported. Mr Galloway, who became an MP for his own Respect party after being expelled from Labour, may also be asked to apologise for his behaviour by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Sir Philip Mawer. Last month a damning report by the Charity Commission concluded that the Mariam Appeal,...

GEORGE GALLOWAY, the MP who campaigned against the Iraq war, is to be suspended from parliament over his links to the United Nations oil-for-food programme in Iraq. The parliamentary standards watchdog will rule this week that Galloway failed properly to declare his links to a charitable appeal partially funded from money made by selling Iraqi oil under Saddam Hussein, according to a source close to the inquiry. The one-month suspension for Galloway, often referred to as

Galloway criticised over appeal The Charity Commission has criticised George Galloway and other Mariam Appeal trustees for failing to make sufficient inquiries into the source of donations. It found the appeal had received significant donations connected with improper transactions made under the Iraqi oil-for-food programme. It said they had not been sufficiently vigilant but that all the charity's money was spent on humanitarian aid. Respect MP Mr Galloway said the allegations were "palpably false". The Mariam Appeal was set up by Mr Galloway in 1998 to provide medicine and medical help to Iraqis suffering under Saddam Hussein's regime and under...