Asiaaaaaaah

Sunrise on the Ganga, Varanasi, India

Schoolchildren, Srimangal, Bangladesh

Puja, Varanasi, India

Musician, Banglamphoo, Bangkok, Thailand

Breakfast, Yangshuo, China

Lunch, train to Shanghai, China

4000 Days

" It is not easy for a people conditioned by fear under the iron rule of the principle that might is right to free themselves from the enervating miasma of fear. Yet even under the most crushing state machinery courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilized man "

9th October 2006
4000 days in detention
FREE AUNG SAN SUU KYI
FREE BURMA

www.burmacampaign.org.uk

Time to Go

So the Labour Party Conference has been happening in Manchester, with much fuss about it being Blair's last one. I joined the Stop the War demonstration there at the weekend. The sun shone for the whole day (a rarity in Manchester) and I'm sure the city has hardly seen anything like it. I'm not sure how many of us there were - the police always make a point of underestimating the figure, while the organisers overestimate. So you're looking at somewhere between 20,000 and 50,000 people. I'm not really a descriptive writer but it was just fantastic - all the unions, communists, CND, all the religious groups - a great show of solidary with every innocent civilian on the receiving end of the US-UK "War on Terror". Among many others, Bianca Jagger spoke (top lady), so did Tommy Sheridan, George Galloway (great speech, so simple, so clear; "Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are two cheeks of the same arse") and Tony Benn, though I missed him speak. Police everywhere filming everything. Superintendent John O’Hare of Greater Manchester Police thanked us all though; "On behalf of GMP I would like to extend my thanks to the organisers and those who took part in today’s protest, for co-operating with us and behaving peacefully and lawfully."

"Time to Go" was protest, I think mainly against the continuing imperialist occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, of the British "shoulder to shoulder" foreign policy it shares with the USA, and of Tony Blair's reluctance to leave office. Some say Blair's popularity is lower than that of Mrs Thatcher at the end of her term in office. If this is true it really is astonishing. It is easy to remember the euphoria which followed the Labour victory in the 1997 elections and the political honeymoon Tony Blair enjoyed . It was unusually lengthy for a prime minister. Who would have thought it ten years ago?

Let's hope that whichever party elected into office next year turns out to have some balls. To split with the USA - who bomb whoever it likes, however it likes, whenever it likes - once and for all.

Comrade! Give us a smile!

'nuff said

George Galloway