Yesterday I received a phone call from a police Inspector asking me to delete my tweet calling for people to assemble to prevent the far right demonstration called for Blackburn today and tweeted out by “Tommy Robinson”, the well known immigrant to Spain with the false name.
She also asked me not to come to Blackburn myself, and said that members of the community had contacted her and said I was an insider coming to Blackburn to make trouble.
I am therefore on a train to Blackburn, a place where a number of people have been telling me to leave for weeks, but I genuinely can’t walk down the street without being warmly greeted by name by random locals.
Although our conversation was perfectly friendly and I have no complaints about the police Inspector, who seemed to accept that her telling me not to come was unlikely to work, I do rather object to the police telling me what to do.
There are a number of interesting questions raised by this. There is a wave of anti-immigrant far right violence spreading across the North of England – Sunderland, Southport, Hartlepool and elsewhere – and recently London saw the largest fascist demonstration for many years.
The horrific murders of the poor little girls in Southport at a dance class have been seized on by the far right to foment anti-immigrant violence. This is such a well-established pattern now across the country that it is impossible to deny.
And yet the police inspector who phoned me did deny it. She told me to be aware that three little girls had died and this was about commemorating them. I replied it was not about that at all; it was about stirring up racial hatred against a community who had no connection at all to the murder.
Blackburn’s newly elected independent MP, Adnan Hussain, has also issued a call to people not to gather to oppose any far right demonstration today. I believe this is mistaken. The wave of fascist violence across the country has gathered momentum precisely because it breeds copycat activity. Fascism has to be confronted and stopped.
That is not just a matter of explaining that poverty and deprivation is not caused by immigration but by an economic system designed to produce massive inequality of wealth. Fascism has also to be nipped in the bud by denying them control of the street. That is what we acheived with the Anti-Nazil League 40 odd years ago.
If you do not confront fascism and defesw it, it will grow.
How does this stand with my strong commitment to free speech?
In On Liberty, the great John Stuart Mill argued that to state that corn merchants are thieves and profiteers who starve the poor was perfectly valid. But to shout the same thing to a howling mod outside a corn merchant’s house was not valid freedom of speech.
It is not just the words, it is their context. This is a crucial insight (and it also carries a pro-freedom of speech weight against the sledgehammer of hate speech legislation which denies the importance of context and seeks to condemn simple forms of speech).
And I have no doubt at all that as for the likes of “Tommy Robinson” to be encouraging anti-immigrant speech in the highly ethnically diverse town of Blackburn, in the context of widespread anti-immigrant violence, this fits perfectly with Mill’s exception to free speech in the case of the mob and the corn merchant.
I hope all goes quietly and my journey is quite unnecessary. There are multiple far right demonstrations today and perhaps this will not be one of those that gets nasty. But I shall be there ready to profess my truth and my opposition to fascism if called for.
Allowing fascists to speak and sitting mute ourselves – or being prevented from speaking by the police – is completely the wrong prescription.
I very much hope I don’t get arrested because I have to dash back to speak at the Free Palestine Film Festival this evening, Genesis Cinema, Mile End Road, London. Yesterday’s opening night was great and I will blog about it when life is less fraught. There may still be tickets for tonight – phone the cinema to check.
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Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.
It is no longer possible to categorise the nihilistic violence of the Israeli state. It appears to have no objective other than violence and an urge for desolation.
In 24 hours Israel has murdered the man with whom it would need to negotiate hostage release in the short term and political settlement in the long term, and a key figure in its most dangerous potential military enemy which has refrained from full on war.
In doing so it has violated the territory, indeed the capitals, of two crucial regional states.
Israel has also taken a policy decision that the mass rape of detainees by soldiers – and somewhat strangely homosexual rape in particular – is acceptable in war and not to be punished.
Ironically Israel has also underlined its genocidal intent in Gaza by proving that it has the technical ability to carry out targeted attacks, and that the flattening of entire cities with 2,000lb bombs and the massacre of tens of thousands of innocents has been a policy choice.
The western media appears paralysed by this. I have seen vitrually no serious comment or analysis. Nor has anybody pointed out the contrast between Israel’s lies about mass rape on October 7 and Israel’s now admitted policy of tolerating rape of detainees.
The political class seems even more paralysed than the media class. Caught in their commitment to zionism – basically bought and paid for – they have nothing to say about these incredible events more sensible than Kamala Harris’s zomnie-loe incantation of “Israel’s right to self-defence”.
The British Foreign Office has failed to produce its promised considered reaction to the ICJ Opinion on the illegality of Israel occupation, let alone responded sensibly to Israel’s crazed paroxysm of destruction this week.
For me it is now axiomatic that there is no two state solution and that apartheid Israel must be completely dismantled as an entity. I believe that more and more people around the entire globe believe that now.
And if we have to dismantle our own political and media classes to get there, so be it.
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Forgive me for pointing out that my ability to provide this coverage is entirely dependent on your kind voluntary subscriptions which keep this blog going. This post is free for anybody to reproduce or republish, including in translation. You are still very welcome to read without subscribing.
Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.
The cause of the tragic Druze deaths in Majdal Shams was the illegal Israeli occupation in Syria, a fact which the residents of the town are clear about. The large majority of the Druze community in the Golan Heights has always refused to accept Israeli citizenship.
That picture is from a demonstration four years ago, but it shows that the Golan Druze know where their allegiance lies, and it is not with their Israeli occupiers.
The deaths are a tragedy, and they would be a tragedy if they were Druze, Palestinian or Jewish kids. The right of occupied peoples to armed resistance against Israel is absolute, but that does not remove the personal tragedy of anybody who loses their children.
But last night the disproportion of the BBC coverage of these deaths, which the BBC blamed on Hezbollah, compared to the coverage of Palestinian deaths in Gaza, was so outrageous as to be beyond parody and almost beyond belief.
It was the lead item on the main news. It was the full treatment. Intrepid British BBC journalist visits the scene, shows the blast area and damaged football pitch, interviews eye witnesses, interviews parents, scenes of funerals. Grief piled upon grief. Bellicose self-righteous statements from Israeli ministers.
It was not just hugely more coverage than given to any of the ten times the number of kids in Gaza who have been killed on average every single day for nearly ten months; we have a direct comparator where Israel recently attacked a Palestinian children’s football game killing scores more people.
The Palestinians did not get a British BBC journalist, coverage of the funerals, interviews with relatives. That incident got about 3% of the BBC airtime.
Furthermore, while reporting the Hezbollah denial, the BBC then said that the United States regime had confirmed it was a Hezbollah missile, as though that settled it.
The notion that the United States is either a neutral or an honest arbiter is utterly ludicrous. But it passes muster in BBC la-la land.
Israel has been bombarding Syria relentlessly from long before October 2023 and has continued unabated – and unreported by western media. Israel’s attacks on civilian areas of Damascus this last few weeks week have been devastating.
It is pretty obvious that any loose missile that dropped on Majdal Shams is likely to have come from Israel, which is slinging huge quantities of munitions into Syria and Lebanon with wild abandon.
Alternatively if Netanyahu wished to pull a false flag to justify escalation, it is also pretty obvious he would choose a minority community within Israel as the victims.
Of course, to paraphrase Noam Chomsky, anybody in the BBC capable of such thoughts would no longer be in the BBC.
Finally, many congratulations to Nicolas Maduro on his re-election in Venezuela.
I have to confess I got this wrong. I thought the huge amount of effort and money poured in by the CIA would be effective, particularly in undermining key officials through bribery. The collaboration of Twitter and Meta with the CIA programme also looked more effective than it evidently was.
A great day for democracy. In a few hours time I shall raise a glass of Lagavulin to Nicolas Maduro and the revolution in Venezuela.
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Forgive me for pointing out that my ability to provide this coverage is entirely dependent on your kind voluntary subscriptions which keep this blog going. This post is free for anybody to reproduce or republish, including in translation. You are still very welcome to read without subscribing.
Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.
I have frequently explained that when I sat in the International Court of Justice and heard Israel’s lawyers tell lie after lie to justify or excuse the Gaza genocide, I could feel I was palpably in the presence of evil.
At least in the Hague you could also feel and indeed observe that most people in the courtroom – including the majority of the judges – were repulsed by the evil.
Yesterday that same evil, and the same lies, was manifested in the US Congress by Netanyahu, to an audience which glorified, reflected and amplified that evil.
Let us not forget that the large majority of citizens of the world, including majorities in many western countries with pro-genocide leadership classes, are indeed repulsed by and reject the genocide.
The United States has now, openly and before the entire world, endorsed its genocidal imperialist project and rejected both the very notion of international law and the institutions which a more idealistic American generation worked so hard to create – the United Nations and the International Court of Justice.
Netanyahu’s slanderous attacks on the institutions of international law were applauded to the rafters by America’s political leaders. The whole world was watching, and took note.
The zionist project per se is evil. To steal another people’s land and subject them to long and progressive genocide is about as evil a deed as can be imagined.
There is no such thing as a moderate or progressive zionist. Apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide are fundamental to the entire zionist project.
I am hopeful that for an entire younger generation around the world, any notion that the United States are the “good guys” has now been destroyed. The reduction of international relations to USA = good guys vs Russia and China = bad guys was never true.
In Europe I am also hopeful that this will lead to a more widespread realisation that NATO is anything but a force for peace and stability, that the destruction of Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan was a series of terrible crimes, and that Ukraine/Russia is massively more complicated than the media would have you believe.
We always have hope, we always have courage, and we always have determination. The fight for truth and freedom never ends.
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Forgive me for pointing out that my ability to provide this coverage is entirely dependent on your kind voluntary subscriptions which keep this blog going. This post is free for anybody to reproduce or republish, including in translation. You are still very welcome to read without subscribing.
Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.
There is an argument to continue the convention of referring to the President of the United States as the most powerful man in the world. The dollar has not quite yet been replaced as the world’s international reserve currency and Bretton Woods still, creaking and cracking, holds.
China is now the manufacturer of the world and its brands are no longer laughable worldwide.The United States has just sustained massive damage to its soft power from it support for Gaza genocide.
But China still plays the long game, relying on trade, investment and loans to increase its economic reach. It does not depend on military force or covert regime change to secure access to economic resource.
The more direct American methods work in the short term. Israel is benefiting from the Arab regimes of the Gulf, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia all being dependent on US military and security service report to protect them from their own populations.
The USA is still prepared to project direct military power and fight wars overseas to maintain its influence. China now has greater military capability than the USA, but sees no advantage in using it.
Chinese leaders look with disdain at the crazed and sustained violence of the NATO states this last quarter century, and sees the West losing, not gaining, global influence. That China is gaining steadily such influence, nobody seeks to deny.
But the USA has succeeded, by defying international law, in physically enabling the ggenocide in Gaza. They will in the next week install a puppet government in Venezuela and quickly move to strip that country’s vast oil wealth into the hands of the US oil giants.
Short term American crudity can succeed a little while longer, as the Chinese watch their trillions of dollar reserves build, and bide their time. So for now I think we can still go along with the cliche that the US President is the most powerful man in the world.
Except obviously he isn’t. The fact that Joe Biden wakes up in the morning and has to be reminded to move his pyjamas is no longer hidden. That Biden’s mental faculties declined past normal operation some time ago has been extremely obvious, yet denied by the media and the political establishment even when it was obvious to everybody.
There is a parallel to F D Roosevelt. The myth is not true that his paralysis was hidden from the American public, though it was minimised in PR output. But what is certainly true is that when he stood for re-election for his fourth term in 1944, his extremely poor health, including heart failure, was hidden and directly lied about. He died after five months in office.
We seem to live in a strange age where politics relies more than ever on the big lie technique, even as social media makes the exposure of such lies inevitable. My interpretation is that the permanent state of cognitive dissonance and bewilderment of a population that does not know what to believe any more, is a state which power likes to see in the population.
As the radical fall in turnout in the UK general election showed, the bewilderment and distrust simply leads populations to disengage.
So now we know that Biden is not running anything much, who is? Certainly not Kamala Harris, who has been completely sidelined as Vice President and given only the poisoned chalice briefs like border control. Her function till now, other than the obivous box-ticking of having her on the ballot, was as a lightning rod for public dissatisfaction.
Being President of the United States is a big job. I have no doubt that Biden has enough faculty to make some broad calls, without absorbing a great deal of detail on policy or information on recent events. His career long support for Israel has determined policy – how much he really understands about what is happening in Gaze is a different question.
Most important is that Kamala Harris is absolutely tainted with the active genocide support of the Administration – the supply of weapons and direct military assistance to Israel are all on her too.
But if Biden is not the man running the USA, then who is? How does the state operate?
Well, according to my sources, the most powerful man in Washington, and effectively de facto President, is Jake Sullivan. His official position is National Security Advisor but I am told his work covers far more than this, including domestic policy questions, and he is the person who does the detailed work which Biden cannot do.
Which makes it interesting how seldom he appears in the news – which he does primarily when visiting foreign leaders.
Sullivan has the classic Atlanticist background, as a Rhodes Scholar to Oxford to supplement his Yale education. He is fanatically pro-NATO and anti-Russian, unquestioningly zionist and was the architect of the destruction of Libya as senior policy adviser to Hillary Clinton.
Given the obvious inadequacy of Biden, the studied disinterest of the media in analysing how his Administration actually functions, tells us a very good deal about self censorship and media ownership.
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Forgive me for pointing out that my ability to provide this coverage is entirely dependent on your kind voluntary subscriptions which keep this blog going. This post is free for anybody to reproduce or republish, including in translation. You are still very welcome to read without subscribing.
Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.
In its reaction to the International Court of Justice’s crystal clear ruling on occupied Palestine, the Labour government has disgracefully attempted to ignore the ruling and to contine the Tory policy of total support for Israel.
The UK statement says that:
The Foreign Secretary was clear on his visit to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories earlier this week that the UK is strongly opposed to the expansion of illegal settlements and rising settler violence.
But of course it is not the expansion of Israel’s illegal settlements that is at issue. It is their existence.
New Labour’s position is that the 800,000 Israeli illegal settlers currently in the West Bank and East Jerusalem should stay in their illegal settlements. That is the opposite of what the International Court of Justice said in its Opinion, which is that Israel must undertake restitution.
270. Restitution includes Israel’s obligation to return the land and other immovable property, as well as all assets seized from any natural or legal person since its occupation started in 1967, and all cultural property and assets taken from Palestinians and Palestinian institutions, including archives and documents. It also requires the evacuation of all settlers from existing settlements and the dismantling of the parts of the wall constructed by Israel that are situated in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, as well as allowing all Palestinians displaced during the occupation to return to their original place of residence
Plainly “It also requires the evacuation of all settlers from existing settlements” is fundamentally different from Lammy/Starmer line that Israel must not further expand the illegal settlements.
This is extremely important. Maximum pressure must be brought on the Labour government to align with the ICJ. The official policy is that the UK does respect and follow ICJ judgments.
MPs need immediately to press ministers on this precise point. Does the UK accept the ICJ ruling that all illegal settlers must be removed from all settlements?
You can help by writing to your MP asking for their view on this specific question, pointing out the UK’s legal obligation to follow the rulings of the ICJ.
Furthermore the Court specifically stated that states may not trade with Israeli interests in the Occupied Territories. The ICJ said at Para 278 that all states are obliged:
…to abstain from entering into economic or trade dealings with Israel concerning the Occupied Palestinian Territory or parts thereof which may entrench its unlawful presence in the territory…and to take steps to prevent trade or investment relations that assist in the maintenance of the illegal situation created by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
Again the Labour government must be pressed to meet its legal obligation to comply with the ICJ ruling. I fully support direct action by activists to destroy products in shops imported from Occupied Palestine, and thus ensure compliance with international law.
The second part of the British government statement is an attempt to maintain the position which was roundly rejected by the International Court of Justice. The zionist states had attempted to argue before the court that the general principles of international law had been superceded in this case by the Oslo Accords.
The British government is striking for the “safety” of this position in the second part of its statement, where it says:
This government is committed to a negotiated two-State solution which can deliver a safe and secure Israel alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state.
The problem is that there can be no equality of negotiation between the occupier and the occupied, particularly when the occupied are subject to the apartheid and systematic despoilation outlined at length in the ICJ judgment.
The British government position is precisely the same as arguing that the general principles of international law were negated by the “negotiated settlement” that set up Vichy France.
The ICJ directly addressed and overruled these objections put forward by the UK and partners to its acting in this case:
38. Some participants have contended that the Court should decline to reply to the questions put to it because an advisory opinion from the Court would interfere with the Israeli-Palestinian negotiation process laid out by the framework established in the 1993 Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements (hereinafter the “Oslo I Accord”) and the 1995 Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (hereinafter the “Oslo II Accord”), and may exacerbate the Israeli-Palestinian disagreement, thereby compromising the outcome of negotiations.
39. In the view of other participants, an advisory opinion from the Court would not interfere with the negotiation process and the Court should not decline to give one on this basis. They have suggested that, on the contrary, an opinion from the Court is all the more necessary in light of the fact that Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have been stalled for many years.
40. In the present circumstances, the question of whether the Court’s opinion would have an adverse effect on a negotiation process is a matter of conjecture. The Court cannot speculate about the effects of its opinion. In response to a similar argument in another case, the Court stated:
“It has . . . been submitted that a reply from the Court in this case might adversely affect disarmament negotiations and would, therefore, be contrary to the interest of the United Nations. The Court is aware that, no matter what might be its conclusions in any opinion it might give, they would have relevance for the continuing debate on the matter in the General Assembly and would present an additional element in the negotiations on the matter. Beyond that, the effect of the opinion is a matter of appreciation. The Court has heard contrary positions advanced and there are no evident criteria by which it can prefer one assessment to another.”
(Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, Advisory Opinion, I.C.J. Reports 1996 (I), p. 237, para. 17.)
In light of the foregoing, the Court cannot regard this factor as a compelling reason to decline to respond to the General Assembly’s request.
41. It has been contended by some participants that the Court should exercise its discretion to decline to answer the questions before it, while others have argued that, even if the Court were to reply to these questions, it should take care that its reply does not interfere with the established framework for negotiations, since it is the Security Council, and not the General Assembly, whichhas primary responsibility for issues relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. According to these participants, an advisory opinion from the Court could negatively affect or interfere with the negotiation framework that the Security Council has established for resolution of the dispute. Other participants who have addressed the question have argued that the Court’s opinion would not be detrimental to the work of the Security Council. In their view, the Security Council does not have
exclusive responsibility under the Charter with respect to the maintenance of international peace and security, since the General Assembly may also address, alongside the Security Council, issues of such concern.
42. This argument is similar to the one examined in section 3 above, in so far as the negotiating framework is concerned, but also concerns the respective competences of the Security Council and the General Assembly in the maintenance of international peace and security. The Court addressed the latter issue in its Wall Advisory Opinion as follows: “Under Article 24 of the Charter the Security Council has ‘primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and ecurity’”
(I.C.J. Reports 2004 (I), p. 148, para. 26).
However, the Court emphasized that “Article 24 refers to a primary, but not necessarily exclusive, competence” (ibid.). The General Assembly has the power,
inter alia, under Article 14 of the Charter to “recommend measures for the peaceful adjustment of any situation”. The Court further stated that “there has been an increasing tendency over time for the General Assembly and the Security Council to deal in parallel with the same matter concerning the maintenance of international peace and security” and that this “accepted practice of the General Assembly, as it has evolved, is consistent with Article 12, paragraph 1, of the Charter”
(Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Advisory Opinion, I.C.J. Reports 2004 (I), pp. 149-150, paras. 27-28). This is indeed the case with respect to certain aspects of the Palestinian question.
43. The Court also recalls that Article 10 of the Charter confers on the General Assembly a competence relating to “any questions or any matters” within the scope of the Charter and that Article 11, paragraph 2, specifically provides it with competence to “discuss any questions relating to the maintenance of international peace and security brought before it by any Member of the United Nations”. This is the case with respect to the questions posed by the General Assembly in the
present proceedings. As the Court has stated previously,
“[w]here, as here, the General Assembly has a legitimate interest in the answer to a question, the fact that that answer may turn, in part, on a decision of the Security Council is not sufficient to justify the Court in declining to give its opinion to the General Assembly”
(Accordance with International Law of the Unilateral Declaration of Independence in Respect of Kosovo, Advisory Opinion, I.C.J. Reports 2010 (II), p. 423, para. 47).
As pointed out in paragraph 40 above, whether the opinion of the Court would have an adverse effect on the negotiation framework is a matter of conjecture on which the Court should not speculate.
Moreover, in view of the fact that the General Assembly has the competence to address matters concerning international peace and security, such as those raised in the questions it has posed, there is no compelling reason for the Court to decline to give the requested opinion
I have given the link to the full Opinion of the ICJ. This is an excellent summary from Law For Palestine. The Opinion is extremely lucid and decisive.
The ball is now back in the court of the UN General Assembly, which requested the Opinion. The General Assembly now should move to suspend Israel’s membership of the United Nations. That is the next project on which I shall be working.
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Forgive me for pointing out that my ability to provide this coverage is entirely dependent on your kind voluntary subscriptions which keep this blog going. This post is free for anybody to reproduce or republish, including in translation. You are still very welcome to read without subscribing.
Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.
Under Sturgeon, Scotland was in thrall of an incredible degree of rampant corruption that included government, civil service, police, prosecutors and judiciary.
Listen to this simply stunning speech in Parliament yesterday by David Davis MP and you will understand precisely why I spent four months in jail, almost all in solitary confinement.
It is time for a public inquiry, led by judges from outside Scotland.
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Forgive me for pointing out that my ability to provide this coverage is entirely dependent on your kind voluntary subscriptions which keep this blog going. This post is free for anybody to reproduce or republish, including in translation. You are still very welcome to read without subscribing.
Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.
An old man in a comic opera uniform was dragged by carthorses in a gilded carriage through the streets of London, then bedecked in diamonds and more gold, all to very little purpose.
That we truly have a uniparty could not be better proven than by a new captain taking over the ship of state, and not moving the tiller one inch, instead merely making minute adjustments to the trim of the sails.
Take the centrepiece Great British Energy company, to be sited in Scotland as a butcher’s apron branded beacon of unionism. GBE will invest in renewable energy with a bugdget of £8.3 billion over 5 years.
£1.6 billion a year. That sounds impressive until you realise that the turnover of the renewable energy sector is already £80 billion a year. And that the UK has to invest £77 billion a year in renewables, insulation and the grid to meet its carbon reduction obligations – of which it is estimated that £26 billion a year needs to come from the public sector.
£77 billion a year. Of which on these plans 2% is to come from the public sector.
This is what remains of Labour’s Green New Deal plans after being gutted by Starmer.
The other big headline announcement is that Thatcherite staple of deregulation. In particular planning controls on housebuilding are to be relaxed in order to stimulate housebuilding by the private sector.
By reinstating compulsory housing development plans for councils to hit housing targets, New Labour boldly rolls the regulatory regime back to… err back to…[checks notes again]… 2023.
Yes, this great measure reinstates the situation in place under Tory governments until last year, when Michael Gove gave more powers to local councils in England and Wales to protect green belts.
The timidity on public investment in both energy and housing is ludicrous. Nothing is being done to build more public housing. Nothing is being done to address the fundamental problem of the housing market, which is rentier landlordism.
What keeps house prices so high is competition to buy between commercial landlords. Mortgage payments are lower than rent payments, but ordinary people lack the capital formation or income as percentage of property price to secure mortgages at the inflated house prices.
So commercial landlords who have the capital for deposit and security own an ever escalating percentage of domestic property.
Landlords can rent at exorbitant prices to renters who have no choice, and landlords can abuse them by neglecting property maintenance.
Public sector homebuilding, rent controls and restrictions on lending for landlordism are the necessary measures that any government which was not a continuity conservative government would take. Starmer has no interest whatsoever in actually pursuing social justice.
The Labour Party has shackled itself to austerity. Rachel Reeves is to boost the power of the Office for Budget Responsibility, which is the institutional enforcement of Thatcherite economics and the total rejection, not just of modern monetary theory, but even of Keynesian demand management.
This is astonishing for what pretends to be a social democratic government.
Not everything is appalling. Ed Milliband’s sipport for onshore wind and for autonomous consumer energy production is to be welcomed. The improvement of workers rights is also welcome, though it should include a real move to a proper living wage and immediate abolition of age wage bands.
Children are to be sacrificed to maintain Kid Starver’s macho Thatcherite credentials, with the maintenance of the two child benefit cap having been elevated to a symbol of “toughness”.
Only 34% of those who voted, voted for this government. Why anybody would bother to do so I have no idea. We still have a conservative and unionist government.
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Forgive me for pointing out that my ability to provide this coverage is entirely dependent on your kind voluntary subscriptions which keep this blog going. This post is free for anybody to reproduce or republish, including in translation. You are still very welcome to read without subscribing.
Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.
With Gaza genocide as the galvanising issue, in seats where Muslims are over 30% of the electorate, Labour’s vote share plunged from 65% in 2019 to 36% at the 2024 general election.
In Blackburn, where I stood, Labour’s vote share dived incredibly, from 65% to 27%. This in a general election where Labour won a huge majority.
The strategy to stand anti-Gaza genocide candidates and show Starmer that Labour cannot, as in the past, take the support of Muslim voters for granted, was therefore a success. Four anti-genocide Independent MPs were elected, taking seats from Labour.
However, if you look beneath this headline, the situation is less celebratory for a Left/Muslim anti-war alliance than it may appear on the surface.
To look into this requires a granular look at my own experience in Blackburn that I hope you will find interesting.
In the early 2000’s, the Stop the War movement was a highly successful example of a broadly Left/Muslim alliance in which I was deeply involved. It went on to oppose not only the war in Iraq and Afghanistan but also the wave of officially inspired Islamophobia and the attacks on civil liberty in the “War on Terror”.
This video is of me addressing a Stop the War conference on Islamophobia in 2007.
Stop the War’s work goes on and is closely linked with the pro-Palestinian movement, of which I have been a member since the 1970’s and which has also been broadly a successful Left/Muslim alliance.
So what is the problem?
Well one pointer is that, of the scores of specifically anti-Gaza genocide candidates, over 20 of whom were standing in constituencies with more than 30% Muslim voters, the only 4 elected were themselves Muslim.
None of the anti-genocide non-Mulsim Left candidates, myself included, were able to be elected on the basis of Muslim support.
This is not a fluke statistic, as I hope to explain.
Firstly, there is a problem for many Left candidates in fitting in with the social conservatism of Muslim communities. In Blackburn I found previous writings of mine, for example on abortion, gay rights and on legalisation of cannabis, being widely circulated and used against me.
Muslim supporters urged me to say my views had changed, but naturally I could not lie in this way.
I was also contacted by panicked supporters the day before the election over a quote from the Koran being widely circulated against me, which states:
“O believers! Do not take disbelievers as allies instead of the believers. Would you like to give Allah solid proof against yourselves?”
Sometimes this kind of attack was quite crude. I was more than once called a “Kaffir”. This example is from comments on the facebook page of popular Muslim media 5Pillars.
Maria Hussain, who joins in, is the sister of the successful candidate now Independent MP Adnan Hussain, and co-ordinated his extremely effective social media campaign.
My second point is that there is a real problem with sectarianism in the UK’s Islamic communities. What I came across in Blackburn, and I believe to be a general problem promoted by British security services, is a specifically Sunni extremist sectarianism. This was used to portray me as an “Assadist”.
By focusing on anti-Assad rebels and the Syrian civil war, this Sunni sectarianism explicitly supports the US/NATO/Saudi position. It was ruthlessly used within British Muslim communities against Workers Party candidates all over the UK, on the alleged basis that the Workers Party is pro-Assad. That assertion is itself based on some alleged comments praising Assad by George Galloway, which I have never seen adequately sourced.
This position was well expressed by Dilly Hussain of 5pillars in a dialogue with Sheikh Asrar Rashid held in Blackburn during the election campaign. This link takes you to a key moment.
The entire dialogue is well worth viewing as a fascinating discussion in which Dilly Hussain puts the prevalent view of the British Sunni community, and Sheikh Rashid responds with thoughtful points with which I very largely agree.
As brief background the Syrian rebel forces – DAESH, ISIS, Al-Nusra and to a large extent the Free Syrian Army – are mostly specifically Sunni, while the Assad regime has been broadly protective of Syria’s substantial Shia, Allaouite, Christian, Jewish and other minorities.
That is extreme shorthand: many Syrian Sunnies support Assad and the original Syrian democracy movement had broad cross-communal support.
The key point however is that the positions put forward by Dilly Hussain – supporting the overthrow of Gaddafi by NATO and supporting the alliance by Syrian rebel groups with the USA against Assad – are identical to those which were being advanced against me in Blackburn by the Adnan Hussain camp, where I was consistently and quite wrongly described as pro-Assad.
The first time I ever met Adnan Hussain, at a pro-Gaza demonstration in Blackburn in April, he included in his speech support for British policy in the Ukraine against Russia. I was bewildered by this. It was only during the election campaign that I understood where it came from.
This pro-NATO aspect of Sunni sectarianism, on the basis of the Syrian civil war, is hard to a liberal mind intellectually to reconcile with what is the genuine and heartfelt opposition of these same Sunni sectarians to western policy in Palestine. It was a real problem for the Left/Muslim alliance in this general election.
Thirdly, the place of religion in politics is itself a problem for a Left/Muslim alliance.
In Blackburn, campaigning through the religious Establishment was the central plank of Adnan Hussain’s campaign, planned and organised from the outset.
Ulama means scholars of the Islamic religion, a specific and highly trained group. Imams are clerics. The Ulama and Imams together may be taken as forming the religious establishment.
Adnan Hussain very frequently claimed that he had the endorsement of the Scholars and Imams of Blackburn, and indeed that this was the very basis on which he was standing for election. He reinforced this by social media output, often filmed or photographed within mosques or madrassas, continually reinforcing the notion his campaign had the backing of the religious Establishment. Even at his few “political” meetings he always took care to have Imams and scholars behind him.
In this meeting publicised by his campaign and within a religious building, Adnan Hussain states:
With the duas [prayers] of (name of senior cleric present), with the duas of the scholars, I am taking this stance Inshallah [Allah willing], with your support I hope that we are successful Inshallah.
I am showing you here a small fraction of this kind of social media output by the Adnan Hussain campaign, featuring religious establishment endorsement:
There is much more of this. I confess I am uncomfortable with this religious basis of campaigning. On top of which it is very definitely illegal.
Using spiritual influence in an election campaign is against the law and grounds for disqualification. It was used against Luftur Rahman in his disqualification as Mayor of Tower Hamlets in 2015.
It is however a law which is extremely difficult to enforce. Neither the Returning Officer nor the Electoral Commission have any power to intervene against the use of spiritual influence. And while it is an offence, the Electoral Commission advise the police can only act where undue spiritual pressure is brought to bear on a named individual.
The wider electoral law against spiritual influence can, the Electoral Commission say, only be activated by an electoral petition brought against the result by a defeated candidate, to be heard by an electoral court.
For the avoidance of doubt, I am not going to do this.
For one thing there is a £5,000 fee to bring the petition, plus you need to have lawyers to take it through the process who are likely to cost many times that.
But rather more importantly, I am not sure it would be right to bring a petition. The voters of Blackburn decided they prefer Adnan Hussain to me. Who am I to query their motives?
While I stated that I am not comfortable with the use of religion as a campaign platform, that is not to say that I agree that it should be illegal to do so. I am in two minds on the subject. I have always felt the disqualification of Rahman was unfair.
The law against spiritual influence in elections was introduced in the 19th century specifically to stop the Catholic church hierarchy in Ireland from instructing people to vote for Irish nationalists.
While I do favour the separation of the state from religion, and worry about the ability of religious hierarchies to exercise control over their followers which in some instances may be unhealthy, I am not certain that I agree the state should be able to dictate to people the criteria by which they should vote.
In short, if Muslims wish to vote for somebody because they are Muslim, or even because their religious hierarchy tells them to do so, is it not their right to vote as they wish?
There is however one aspect of this whole experience which does concern me. Blackburn remains an extremely segregated town, to a degree it is hard to believe if you have not experienced it. There are whole wards which are well over 95% Muslim or over 95% non-Muslim. There are state schools which are 98% Muslim or 98% non-Muslim.
I held 5 public meetings during my election campaign, and attendance at every one was roughly 50% Muslim and non-Muslim.
Contrast that to attendance at Adnan Hussain’s meetings. He held two public meetings I know of, and this the second is identical in composition to the first, ie frighteningly ethnically homogenous.
It is of course natural that a campaign which is heavily based on religion will not attract those not of that religion. Hussain’s campaign tried to state that they had significant support in non-Muslim areas, highlighting in particular his personal friendship with a popular mixed martial arts fighter, but I can tell you for certain this is empty.
At the count you can see the ballot boxes from different polling stations counted, and I have no doubt whatsoever that Hussain’s total of 10,518 votes contained an absolute maximun of 500 non-Muslim votes, and probably a great deal less than that.
In a community as tragically divided as Blackburn, the effects of an MP being elected by only one section, across a divide that to some individuals is sadly bitter, can only be unhelpful.
I realise this is probably more information than you wanted to know about Blackburn and its politics. But I believe that those insights can be more widely applied to the electoral fate of the Left/Muslim alliance on Gaza.
I also think an account of what happened was owing to the readers of this blog, who after all financed my campaign through crowdfunding. For which I am as ever extremely grateful.
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Forgive me for pointing out that my ability to provide this coverage is entirely dependent on your kind voluntary subscriptions which keep this blog going. This post is free for anybody to reproduce or republish, including in translation. You are still very welcome to read without subscribing.
Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.
Six months ago I said to a well known public figure that the US intelligence agencies had destroyed Trump’s first Presidency and that, in a second chance, he would have to uproot their entire leadership or simply let them continue to run the country and concentrate on making money for himself.
My contact replied that they had recently been told by Tucker Carlson that Trump was very aware of the danger that the intelligence services would have him assassinated. Trump was therefore likely to go for the second option. The last sentence was the musing of my contact, not of Tucker Carlson.
I am not suggesting that the intelligence services were behind the assassination attempt this weekend. I have no idea. I am however wondering what thoughts are currently flitting through Trump’s head about his near death experience.
I was incidentally trying to calculate what fraction of a degree the rifle was mis-aimed by, to miss his brain by one inch at a range of 120 yards. My maths were not up to it, but it is a margin of the tiniest tremor of the hand on the trigger.
I think it is almost certain that Trump has wondered whether the security lapse were not, at the least, caused in part by a lack of zeal and enthusiasm on the part of those state actors co-ordinating his security.
That is no criticism of Trump’s immediate bodyguards, who acted admirably. It is also fair to note that Trump’s own defiance was courageous. He could not have known if other shooters were around, nor how seriously he had himself been hit already.
That personal bearing has almost certainly increased his election chances. Even more so is the fact that, by some strange political alchemy with little relationship to logic, it appears to be accepted wisdom that this incident makes it much more difficult for Democrats to make Joe Biden stand down.
In his address from the White House, Biden did not mistake Trump for Frank Sinatra or forget why he was there. It is thus touted as restoring his position. It was however a typical Biden performance, snide and partisan, particularly in restating his 6 January narrative as though that were a serious threat to democracy and not a stupid, isolated riot.
That democracy in the United States is meaningless is plain from the choice offered to the electorate between two incredibly flawed individuals. It is a scenario you could not make up.
If you were to put Donald Trump and Joe Biden into an entirely random yoga class in Oklahoma, neither Trump nor Biden would be the person in that yoga class best suited to be President of the United States.
There is however one sense in which democracy in the United States is more alive than in the United Kingdom. Here the Establishment got the operative they wanted in Keir Starmer elected, but had no argument with the Tories other than over competence.
In the United States the Establishment is worried that Trump’s isolationist tendencies and lack of enthusiasm for starting wars, may damage the never-ending gravy train of the military industrial complex.
In particular Trump sees both China and Russia as potential trading partners with whom money can be made to mutual benefit. He does not see them primarily as a military threat.
Trump is in short not on board for the whole propaganda narrative that requires designated enemies to fuel massive defence spending, and justify the continuous series of invasions of other countries.
This is not ideological opposition to war on Trump’s part. It is simply that, like China, he realises that trade, finance, investment and soft power are ultimately much more lucrative than the classic western imperialist model of armed conquest.
Trump’s problem is that the powerful vested interests who make money from the western imperialist model include the intelligence services. That is why they ruthlessly undermined his first Presidency.
We saw the utter empty nonsense that was the “Russiagate” hoax, on which I have written extensively, but the simple fact remains there has never been any evidence whatsoever of Russian involvement in leaking the DNC, Clinton or Podesta emails.
We saw the hounding from office of Trump’s National Security Officer General Michael Flynn for conversations with the Russian Ambassador which, when finally released in full, turned out to be entirely proper. We saw the jailing of Roger Stone for lying to the FBI, which the mainstream media disgracefully failed to reveal was for claiming to have links with Wikileaks that he did not in fact have.
We had the famously putrid Guardian front page claiming Manafort/Assange meetings that never happened.
Then to cap it all we had the CIA co-ordinated monstering as fake of the Hunter Biden laptop revelations two weeks before the 2020 election.
That this laptop – which all concerned knew was genuine – was proclaimed false was perhaps the most significant example of fake news in the history of the world. That lying narrative was coordinated between security services, and mainstream media all over the western world and undoubtedly affected the election result.
Even more significantly, both Facebook and Twitter cooperated to suppress Hunter Biden laptop stories and to boost the narrative that the laptop was fake. There was therefore the perfect alliance – security services, state and corporate media, alternative media corporate gatekeepers – working together to promote a lie and ensure Biden’s election.
It says something about the world in which we live that the most important and successful fake news in history was set up precisely by those who claim to be the arbiters of fake news.
Which brings me back to the start of this article. What does Donald Trump do about it if he gets back in to power?
I think Trump is quite right to fear that were he to negotiate a reasonable settlement of the Ukraine war, rather than continue the multi trillion dollar bonanza of weapons, death and high energy prices it now is, then he might be assassinated by his own security services.
For Trump to really run the United States would require an unprecedented cleanout of the Clintonite leadership throughout the security establishment, going much deeper than a normal change of administration. I think Trump always did understand that but found it impractical to “drain the swamp”.
With the ailing Biden, it is obvious to everybody he is not actually in charge of anything. I predict that, if we get a Trump administration, Trump will not actually be in charge either but will settle for an easy life while allowing the Establishment to continue to run the country.
When Peter Cook founded the Establishment Club, nobody scoffed at him and said “what a silly conspiracy theorist, there is no such thing as the Establishment”. I prefer to use that word rather than Deep State. But it is the same thing.
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Forgive me for pointing out that my ability to provide this coverage is entirely dependent on your kind voluntary subscriptions which keep this blog going. This post is free for anybody to reproduce or republish, including in translation. You are still very welcome to read without subscribing.
Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.
What exactly has changed as a result of that election, other than a different team of snouts in the trough?
Starmer’s first act as Prime Minister of the UK was to attend a NATO warmonger fest and promise unlimited resources to keep the terrible and unwinnable war in the Ukraine going. In addition he is pledging to increase UK “Defence” spending to 2.5% of GDP, or over £18 billion a year extra – a massive bonanza for the arms industry.
Let us be absolutely plain that this is not “defence”. There is no country which has any plan or even vague intention to invade the UK. In modern history, only Germany, France and the Netherlands ever had such plans (the Netherlands actually succeeded but nobody noticed as the victors write the history).
Russia and China in particular have no intention whatsoever of attacking the UK. Let me write that again because, while it should be a basic fact of international relations, it is one that our entire geopolitical system depends upon denying. In fact I am not sure I have ever seen it stated plainly anywhere else.
Russia and China have no intention whatsoever of attacking the UK.
Our “defence” expenditure is not for defence. It is for power projection overseas. It is spent on aircraft carriers and worldwide nuclear submarines, not on anti-missile defences around British cities.
Our “defence” expenditure is geared to attacking other countries. And attack other countries we do. Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen to name but a few. We are currently attacking Russia by proxy.
That picture is not Gaza but Sirte in Libya, once Africa’s most prosperous country, after receiving the benefit of NATO “defence” expenditure.
Ask yourself this simple question – when did a Russian missile last land on British soil? The answer is never. Yet Starmer has just announced we are explicitly sending Ukraine missiles capable of striking inside Russia.
Aircraft carriers have no purpose whatsoever except power projection. There is no defensive use of an aircraft carrier. You don’t park them just off the UK to intercept incoming attacks. Aircraft carriers have the sole purpose of taking aircraft to attack countries far away from us. They are agents of imperial power projection.
Starmer’s second call after NATO was to meet Joe Biden to do homage. Which is fitting in this context as our aircraft carriers are incredibly expensive platforms for American aircraft. If Biden had any idea who Starmer was at the time, he will certainly have forgotten by now.
All of this money dedicated to destroying human beings is a firm pledge by Labour. There is however no firm pledge of anything for the NHS beyond further “reform”, which means piecemeal privatisation. There is no firm pledge for anything that does not kill people. It is of course a question of priorities.
For one quarter of the cost of the pledged increase in defence spending, Labour could both lift the two child benefit cap, thus taking over 300,000 children out of child poverty, plus give junior doctors the 30% pay increase they deserve.
Instead we have the unchanging priorities of the British Establishment, enforced by a Labour team who are more heartless and self-serving even than the Tories. Amazingly Labour are more in thrall to the private healthcare lobby, more in thrall to the armaments lobby and more in thrall to the Israel lobby.
Since the advent of universal suffrage, no government has ever been elected with the votes of a smaller percentage of eligible voters. 34% of those voting delivered a massive landslide under the ludicrous UK electoral system, and with a low turnout only 20% of eligible voters backed Starmer.
Picture 70 adults inside a big superstore. On average only 14 of them voted Labour. You can be walking down several aisles and to the checkout and never pass anyone who voted for this government. That is the foundation of popular “support” on which this Starmer regime rests. As the gap between rich and poor grows at unprecedented speed, it is not public support Starmer has to worry about, but something much more fundamental that that.
The Establishment is hacking away at the foundations of public consent to be governed.
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Forgive me for pointing out that my ability to provide this coverage is entirely dependent on your kind voluntary subscriptions which keep this blog going. This post is free for anybody to reproduce or republish, including in translation. You are still very welcome to read without subscribing.
Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.
I left Scotland during this election campaign simply because I thought I could do more good campaigning explicitly for Gaza in a seat where Starmer could be punished for his genocidal zionism.
Scottish independence and the freedom of my own country remains the cause closest to my heart. But although Scotland suffers the drain on its resources of every kind that it has suffered every day of the pestilent Union, Scotland’s little children are not currently being blown into pieces. I am therefore justified in my prioritisation of Palestine at the moment.
I formed an alliance for Palestine with my old friend George Galloway. We have had very different positions on Scottish Independence in recent years, though he used to be for it. George told me, and indeed the media, he has given up campaigning against it.
I was happy to support the Workers Party in England because I supported more of their manifesto than that of any other party there, and particularly the re-nationalisation of all natural monopolies.
It was the intention that more of the Independent pro-Palestinian candidates across the country would stand as Workers Party, though with the election being called so quickly structures and alliances for the Left had to be cobbled together.
I did not actually join the party and I did not use the party’s leaflets or its red white and blue branding (except in small imprints of the party logo). I very definitely refused to wear a red white and blue rosette! My campaign concentrated very heavily on Gaza.
It has to be said that the political situation in Scotland is a toxic mess I was glad to be out of for this election. The SNP absolutely deserved the kicking they got.
Support for Independence remains defiantly around 50% as it has done this last eight years, despite the SNP having squandered every single chance to take it forward. The key moment was when Brexit occurred against the will of a very large majority of the Scottish people, expressed in a referendum. That was the moment to declare Independence, against the hated Johnson government.
It is not that Sturgeon bottled it. It is that she had no interest in Independence. She was far more interested in building an extreme cult of personality, featuring hoardings, conferences and vehicles plastered with giant images of herself, and forming a Praetorian Guard of ultra loyal supporters fuelled by a highly charged culture wars agenda.
That included the effort to jail Alex Salmond based on false accusations, which were orchestrated from ****’s office and **** HQ. Were I to fill in the blanks they would send me back to jail.
By accident or design, those most strongly opposed to Nicola’s side of the culture wars agenda also happened to be the most radical supporters of Independence, who were driven from the party en masse, which enabled Sturgeon to continue the conversion of the SNP into a de facto devolutionist party.
Scots are not stupid people, and given the choice between two parties, Labour and SNP, neither of which appeared willing to do anything in practice about Independence, they voted in this election for the one less obsessed with weirdo culture wars, and with a leadership less under criminal investigation.
The SNP were also not helped by the fact that those who left for Alba included nearly all the actual footsoldiers. In the constituency, where I live, all of the ward captains who organise the leaflets and posters in their wards left for Alba. It turned out that the SNP’s remaining culture wars enthusiasts were less big on canvassing in the rain.
However Alba itself got nowhere. The ostensibly pro-Independence space is too crowded by the SNP while the media and electoral system militate against new parties. In my view Alba is also over-obsessed, from the other side, with culture wars issues that ordinary people are much too sensible to spend much time thinking about.
One thing that saddens me about the SNP rout is that the party’s talent lay heavily at Westminster, which is where the accident of timing sent many great activists after the 2014 referendum. The SNP benches at Holyrood make me groan, being a result of Sturgeon’s outrageous selection procedures.
Nobody is more sympathetic than me to mental illness (I am bipolar myself), but a situation where a candidate wins over another who got ten times the votes, because the mentally ill get preference, strikes many people as not entirely sound.
So it is a huge mess. I am not sad I missed this election in Scotland, because nothing I could do would have helped. My hope is that this huge defeat will wake the cult up to what Sturgeon did to the party and her monumental failure.
That can lead to a reconciliation to reunite the Independence movement in an SNP which becomes again a broad church, and again focused on gaining Independence, not only at elections.
The Scottish parliamentary elections are two years away. We have that period to capture the 30-40% of Scottish Labour voters who support Independence. I have no doubt disillusion with a Starmer government, elected on 34% of the UK vote (and just 1 in 5 of eligible voters) will set in very, very quickly.
Scottish Independence is still coming within my lifetime. I shall be home soon.
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Forgive me for pointing out that my ability to provide this coverage is entirely dependent on your kind voluntary subscriptions which keep this blog going. This post is free for anybody to reproduce or republish, including in translation. You are still very welcome to read without subscribing.
Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.
Millions fewer people turned out to make Keir Starmer Prime Minister than turned out to attempt the same for Jeremy Corbyn. That is the most important fact of this election, and the one the mainstream media works hardest to hide.
I don’t think any Prime Minister has ever come to power with less popular enthusiasm than Keir Starmer.
Here in Blackburn we had an astonishing result. I was working on projections which had the Labour vote falling from 29,000 to 15,000 which seemed amazing enough. Although on the doorstep the Labour vovte seemed extremely soft, I didn’t imagine it could fall from 29,000 to 10,000 in one election.
This is even more extraordinary because the sitting MP, Kate Hollern, was standing again and during the entire campaign I never heard a bad word against her.
The Labour vote collapsed for two reasons. Firstly because of Starmer’s ardent zionism and the genocide in Gaza. Secondly because Blackburn is a town with a strong socialist tradition, which held entirely firm for Corbyn when the red wall collapsed in 2019.
It is fair to say that Gaza caused the Labour vote to collapse in the Muslim areas and that Labour’s extreme switch to the Thatcherite right caused the Labour vote to collapse in the (there is no good way to say this) white areas. But it is important to realise that there is community crossover on both issues.
While there was concern that “vote-splitting” of the pro-Palestinian vote would let Labour back in. But in the end Labour just collapsed too far and in fact the mechanism was more complicated than that.
Very little of Adnan Hussein’s vote came from the “white” of areas. I personally witnessed the counting one ward in the south of the constituency where he only got 2 votes, but I got 120 in a ward normally entirely Labour. In fact my ability to take “white” socialist or protest votes from Labout allowed Adnan Hussein in.
I have published my doubts about some of the figures behind Adnan. I sincerely hope he will now prove me wrong and become a formidable opponent to Starmer, particularly over Palestine.
Allow me to say I thought we did brilliantly to get over 7,000 votes. Only 5 weeks ago we had only Naila, myself and one local man who wished to be anonymous. We had no office, no money except what you readers crowdfunded, no party members and no contacts.
From that standing start we wrote, designed, printed and delivered 170,000 leaflets – held five great public meetings and spoke to thousands of voters. We had 80 volunteers working really hard by the end. 30 came from Blackburn and others from 13 different countries!!
Our opponents had well established networks of supporters and activists. At times our campaign was enormously stressful, at times enormously fun. I must confess I found some of the personal and religious bigotry thrown at me hard to cope with at times.
Well, that is over. The voter turnout in Blackburn was a horribly low 53%. In an election where only 3 million people could bother to watch a Sunak/Starmer TV “debate” that was a race for the right wing ground, the foundations of Starmer’s apparently huge mandate are very shaky indeed.
Watch this space.
I am exhausted today – obviously more developed thoughts will follow.
Yesterday was unforgettable. We have campaigned with open hearts and honed minds, against the slough of corruption which is politics under modern capitalism.
I cannot tell you how happy I am at Julian’s release. It is 4.00am and I haven’t been to bed yet. I have spoken to John Shipton but everyone else is on a plane en route to Australia.
The guilty plea is of course coerced in the extreme and nobody should take it seriously. It gives a chance to claim hollow victory to the odious Biden regime, at the cost of a terrible precedent in law classifying journalism in espionage. But the precedent is only in a court of first instance so is not binding.
I should be plain I have always advised Julian and Stella to take a plea deal if offered and get out if jail. I have no doubt this was a life or death choice. I also believe we will be grateful for the still greater contributions Julian’s immense intellect and capacity for radical thought will make to human development in the future.
The Justice Department were further motivated to offer a deal by the fact that they appeared to have painted themselves into a very difficult corner at the next UK extradition hearing in a fortnight, over Julian’s ability as a foreign national acting outside the US to claim constitutional protections, and could have lost the extradition case altogether.
There is so much more to say but if I don’t get some sleep I will not be alive to say it. I am crying with happiness.
Meantime my election campaign in Blackburn continues. We are very seriously out of money. If you can channel your elation into a donation that would be very helpful.
Paypal address for one-off donations: craigmurray1710@btinternet.com
Alternatively by bank transfer or standing order:
Account name
MURRAY CJ
Account number 3 2 1 5 0 9 6 2
Sort code 6 0 – 4 0 – 0 5
IBAN GB98NWBK60400532150962
BIC NWBKGB2L
Bank address Natwest, PO Box 414, 38 Strand, London, WC2H 5JB
When I stood in Blackburn against foreign secretary Jack Straw in 2005 as an anti-Iraq war candidate, Jack Straw’s campaign manager was Ibrahim Master. He is now the campaign manager of “Independent” candidate, vote-splitter Adnan Hussain.
This is him on the right campaigning with Adnan.
When I attended a meeting with Adnan until 2.30am three nights ago to try to resolve the vote split that could let Labour back in, Ibrahim Master was in the meeting as Adnan’s second, and did much of the talking.
Jack Straw was the Foreign Secretary personally responsible for the war in Iraq and the death of a million Iraqis, with the blatant lies about Iraqi WMD which he personally told as Foreign Secretary.
Yet in 2005 Master openly campaigned for Straw on the basis that the war in Iraq was not important in Blackburn.
Master drew great criticism for this pro-Straw stance from the wider Muslim community outside Blackburn, but the Muslim community here was under such tight control they voted overwhelmingly for Straw.
Now consider this.
When my candidacy for Blackburn was announced in March, Jack Straw issued an attack on me on 3 April, stating that I had “no cause” to stand in Blackburn.
Then lo and behold, two months later after the election was called Jack Straw’s old fixer turns up with an “Independent Candidate” to split the pro-Palestine vote.
Now you can believe that the man who thought that at least 1 million dead Iraqis was not important enought to oppose Straw and Labour, has had a conversion and is desperately concerned for the children of Gaza.
Other explanations are available.
We are still fighting very hard here. We need help. Come and join us as a volunteer here in Blackburn. Floor space is available.
Contact craigmurrayforblackburn@gmail.com.
We are also now completely out of funds! Please donate.
With a very heavy heart I have agreed to the toss of a coin to decide whether I or local independent candidate Adnan Singh should stand in BLackburn.
I feel I am letting down all those who helped and crowdfunded me, and all our local supporters. The amazing support is swelling every day.
But the last minute decision by Blackburn’s independent group of councillors to run a candidate against me, gives the real danger that Genocide Labour will win. As I was unable to agree in a late night meeting with their young candidate yesterday who should step down, I find myself obliged to agree to a coin toss in the wider interest of the Palestine movement.
This wide ranging interview took place in Lahore in May this year while on a tour from Lahore to Chittral.
I also met with the PTI leadership and with Imran’s legal team.
I also got to umpire some cricket matches, including at the wonderful Lahore Gymkhana, venue of Pakistan’s first ever Test Match, and at Langlands, Chittral in the Hindu Kush which may be the world’s highest cricket pitch.
This was a fabulous meeting to a packed hall. There were moments in both Chris and Richard’s speeches where you could have heard a pin drop and breath was held.
I have been told that many people in Blackburn know nothing of me, so I have made ten short videos giving ten facts about Craig Murray. I am posting one a day to be followed by ten equally short videos giving key policies for the future.
This is what we are currently putting through doors.
In 50 years of political campaigning I have never before known a leaflet which in itself changes people’s attitudes towards you immediately. This one really does, on the most positive way possible.
Do come and help me campaign. It is enjoyable to be on the dies of good and seeking to defy the two big pro-Genocide parties. Floor space is available if you need it.
In December 1980 I stood alongside George Galloway in Caird Square as the flag of Palestine was hoisted above Dundee City Chambers to mark the twinning of Dundee with Nablus in the West Bank. I was 22 years old.
George had led the campaign for the twinning, against much opposition. In those days I worked alongside George to support the striking miners, in support of striking workers at Timex and NCR as Thacherism ripped through the city, in the Anti-Nazi League and in other causes.
George and I never had the same politics. But we cooperated.
And now we are together working to do everything within our power to halt the sickening genocide of the Palestinian People in Gaza and indeed in the West Bank. Because that is the absolute priority at this moment.
Both major parties support arms sales to Israel, military cooperation with Israel, intelligence links to Israel and trade with Israel. We have to give people something else to vote for.
But I am happy to say I also firmly support the need to give an alternative to the Thatcherite economic policy offered by both Labour and Tory.
I heard Rachel Reeves launch Labour’s economic policy yesterday and the emphasis on fiscal rigidity, on tax cuts, on allowing untramelled capital formation, bore no trace of social democratic, let alone socialist thinking.
The return to the homely analogies of state finances with family finances absolutely mirrored Thatcher and either wilfully embraced a fallacy or showed extraordinary ignorance.
Fundamental reform is needed as late stage capitalism hurtles towards unsustainable wealth inequality and widespread lack of opportunity in a helot society. I am very pleased to align myself with the Workers Party on nationalisation of Rail, Water, Energy and all natural monopolies – which has always been my position. That is just a start.
Finally the Tory stance of Starmer, banging on about “Border security” and endorsing huge amounts of money pumped to the military industrial complex, sickens me in supposedly coming from a left wing party.
Starmer leads a Genocide Party and is as Tory as they come.
There isn’t a cigarette paper on domestic policy between Labour and Tory. But I am unapologetic in admitting that I would not be in Blackburn fighting this election were it not for Gaza.
Will a politician who is prepared to be complicit in thousands of children being slaughtered in Gaza, genuinely care about the education of your child as a poor person in the UK?
George and I still hold different views on many things, but the notion that you have to cancel anybody with whom you disagree on anything is a foolish one and can only lead to a general decline in intellectual rigour.
Here are George and I debating Scottish Independence. I hope it is an example of how two people can hold fundamentally opposed positions on an issue, and debate them openly without softening of the differences, yet with mutual respect.
Now we have to win this election in Blackburn and send a message against genocide, and provide me with a platform in the House of Commons where I can take forward my views as expressed for two decades on this blog.
This is the moment when I need help. Come here now and join the campaign on the streets of Blackburn. Come now from wherever you are. Give a few days or weeks to working against the genocide.
Accommodation here is strangely expensive; if you have a sleeping bag we can find floor space.
If you can help in any way pleae email craigmurrayforblackburn@gmail.com. Otherwise donations to the election fund are very essential!
It is difficult to imagine a more depraved, brutal and cowardly act than bombing refugee families in their tents, but I think we now all understand there is no moral depth which the terrorist entity that is Israel will not plumb.
I think you know I have been regularly crying hot tears over the slaughter of innocents and the complicity of the western states. I hope that you will understand it is not from indifference to the unspeakable suffering, that I respond with a disquisition on grammar.
There was an extraordinary unanimity across the entire mainstream media in giving the same misrepresentation of the recent ICJ Order to Israel to stop operations in Gaza.
How does it happen that both media and political class unite in pumping out the same misinterpretation of a document, when that interpretation is not only wrong but impossible?
We are told that the ICJ did not unambiguously order Israel to stop its operations in Rafah, but left “wiggle room” for Israel to conduct operations in a surgical manner without endangering civilians.
The propaganda line goes that Israel was only ordered to halt its offensive insofar as it may cause conditions that could enganger the Palestinian group as a whole.
But what the court said is this:
Israel must immediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah Governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.
The zionist spin is that the final clause qualifies the first clause and thus the offensive need only be stopped if it “inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
The argument then runs that an offensive in Rafah allegedly designed not to do this may go ahead. [I explain the zionist spin, leaving aside for the moment that it is plain to the entire world that Israel is anyway inflicting exactly those conditions of life on the Palestinians].
But that is a grammatically impossible interpretation.
I do accept that the second comma means that the final clause does also apply to the first statement and not just the “any other action” clause, although that is arguably ambiguous.
But even accepting that, if we remove the middle clause and apply the final clause only to the “offensive”, we still get this:
Israel must immediately halt its military offensive… which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.
The order to stop the offensive is peremptory. There is no way to parse the entire sentence which does not give a direct order to “immediately halt its military offensive.”
Let me give a precise analogy.
“Stop playing football in the house, you may break the Ming vase”
CANNOT mean
“Carry on playing football, you might not break the Ming vase.”
I might take time to note the position of the British Labour Party, which is claiming it supports the International Court of Justice, but on the basis of the deliberate misinterpretation of its rulings. Keir Starmer has still at time of writing not condemned last night’s massacre in Rafah.
This is a turning point in history. The mask has been pulled away from the West and the pretence of support for international law has almost entirely been abandoned. It is fascinating to witness the determined efforts of the media and politicians to keep events in Gaza out of the election campaign.
As both major parties support continued arms sales and military support to Israel, and in the words of Keir Starmer support Israel “unequivocally”, it is unsurprising they wish the genocide happening now to be ignored in the campaign.
We have to make sure that does not happen.
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Forgive me for pointing out that my ability to provide this coverage is entirely dependent on your kind voluntary subscriptions which keep this blog going. This post is free for anybody to reproduce or republish, including in translation. You are still very welcome to read without subscribing.
Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.
This is it. The election is called and I am standing in Blackburn to offer voters there a viable alternative to the Keir Starmer Genocide Party.
I cannot do it without your financial support and practical campaigning help.
Keir Starmer has calculated that no matter how far he abandons working people and moves the Labour Party to the right, those voters who are themselves getting the short straw in the vastly unequal distribution of wealth in society, or who simply wish to see a fairer world, have nowhere else to go.
In doing so he has completely sold out the party to the Israeli lobby, to the extent Starmer has actively supported the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza. Labour still support UK arms sales to Israel. He stated three times Israel has the right to cut off water and electricity and supported the UK stopping funding to UNRWA. Labour actively oppose sanctions against Israel. Labour support the provision of British military and intelligence support to the Israeli military.
Labour do this because they receive millions in funding from the Zionist lobby.
Not one Labour MP has resigned from Labour Friends of Israel over the Gaza genocide. Not one: I have cried bitter tears every single day for eight months over the children slaughtered in Gaza.
I have also done everything one man can to stop it. I was in the courtroom at the International Court of Justice for the South Africa vs Israel genocide hearing. My articles on the use of the Genocide Convention were read by key members of South Africa’s cabinet before they took the decision to go ahead.
A decade ago I had advised the Palestinian Authority to accede to the Rome Convention on the International Criminal Court. That is what has enabled the prosecution of Netanyahu.
I travelled to Geneva and spoke at the United Nations there. I have spoken at pro-Palestinian demonstrations in eight different countries since the genocide started, and have done hundreds of interviews with media worldwide.
In October I was detained at Glasgow Airport under the Terrorism Act and subject to police investigation because of my support for Palestine.
My voice is one of experience and authority on the issue and needs to be heard in the House of Commons.
But not only on Gaza. Labour has abandoned the key policies which are needed to return us to a more just society, including the abolition of tuition fees and the renationalisation of the privatised utilities. Starmer lied and lied to get elected leader, and is a complete creature of the Establishment.
The Labour Party majority in Blackburn is massive. The Tories are an irrelevance in Blackburn with under a quarter of the vote even when winning the last election. Labour have 66%. The only way to stop this genocidal juggernaut in Blackburn is my campaign.
Across England the Workers Party, Independents and Green Party candidates offer alternatives depending on location. (The Celtic nations have wider choice and a better starting position).
I particularly want to see George Galloway, Jeremy Corbyn, Andrew Feinstein and myself in parliament as the core of a principled and hopefully large group of real intellect and capability.
I intend to stand in parliament and fight for the interests of the people of Blackburn, against a state and political class which does not care and is increasingly oppressive.
This blog is the repository of millions of words of my views. I am an open book. Those are the things I intend now to say in Parliament. I am standing at the invitation of Blackburn people, and under the flag of their alliance with the Workers Party.
I am going to need both financial and practical assistance from readers of this blog. I need as many people as possible to come to Blackburn to do leafleting, door knocking and organisation according to their talents and preference. We should be ready to receive you there shortly.
Those who cannot do this will find there is still much to do spreading the word on social media.
We are going to speak truth to power. We are going to have great fun mixing with wonderful people. And we are going to win.
In the normal run of things, if a very senior judge instructs you go give an assurance to their Court, it would probably not be wise to avoid giving the assurance, to devote a huge amount of text to trying to obscure the fact you have not given the assurance, and then to lecture the judge on why they were wrong to ask for the assurance in the first place.
Most lawyers would probably advise against that course of conduct. But this did not deter the fearless James Lewis KC, back to lead for the United States prosecution against Julian Assange, eyes twinkling and his neat nautical facial hair having grown rather wilder, as though he had decided to assume a piratical air to match his reckless conduct of the case.
This day of the Assange hearing felt rather different from all the other days these past 14 years. For one thing, when I arrived early in the morning, I was neither freezing nor drenched. Instead the sun was out and the sky untroubled by any thought of rain.
The many supporters gathered outside thr Court appeared more colourful and cheerful than of late, and I was happily struck by the very large amount of Free Assange graffiti I passed on my mile long walk to the court, sprayed all over central London.
I was very confident we would win and this would be a good day, so confident that I mounted the podium and broadcast it to a slightly startled Strand.
You will recall that in the last High Court judgment, the court had requested assurances from the US government against the use of the death penalty, and that Julian would not be barred by his nationality from claiming the freedom of speech protections of the First Amendment in a New York court.
The Americans had provided what seemed to me – and more importantly to Julian’s legal team – sufficient assurance against the death penalty.
On the right to plead the First Amendment, plainly no sufficient assurance had been given. The US government had simply assured that Julian’s defence in the US would be entitled to seek to make a First Amendment defence.
It is important to understand that the HIgh Court has not asked for an assurance that the First Amendment argument would ultimately prevail against other factors, eg so-called national security. They had merely asked that the line of defence not be barred on nationality alone. The US assurances had sought to avoid the question completely by ignoring it and seeking to conflate the other arguments that might prevail against the First Amendment.
This was so blatant, I did not see how the court could rule that the US assurances were sufficient, and still retain any intellectual self-respect. My observation of judges Johnson and Sharp at the last hearing was that they very much possessed intellectual self-respect. So my optimism of winning the right to a new appeal was very high.
To match the bright new morning, the case had been moved to a new, much bigger and brighter courtroom. The audiovisual syatem for the press in nearby rooms broadly worked. Efficient new crowd management systems were in place. I was even given a laminated card entitling me to my place in the main courtroom, as opposed to an ad hoc scrap of paper. I had been spared from standing in the queue by Jamie, Jim and the wonderful volunteers.
In the queue with folk who have been here since 4 am to hold places for journalist friends of Julian. @CraigMurrayOrg your place is saved. pic.twitter.com/vuQ7SxMinQ
What is more, Edward Fitzgerald was sporting a different horsehair wig, possibly a century or so younger than the previous model. For those who poo-poo the effectiveness of this blog, I can report that he told me that my comments on his wig in my last report caused him to dig out his spare. This blog gets results!
Once we had all settled in to this resplendent fake medieval courtroom, with is extraordinary lantern roof architecture flooding light in from above, Fitzgerald rose and launched into the case with a notable lack of preliminaries. He appeared a bit puzzled at what he was meant to be arguing against. It was like punching fog.
Fitzgerald accepted that the assurance on the death pemalty was sufficient. But the assurance that Assange could rely on the First Amendment was inadequate. It merely said he could “seek to” rely on it.
Furthermore the “assurance” did not even commit the prosecutor not to argue that Assange should be denied First Amendment protection on behalf of nationality. The original statement before the court from US Prosecutor Kromberg that the prosecution may do that, still stood.
Even if the prosecution were to commit – which they had not – that they would not argue the point, there could be no guarantee that the US court itself would not debar Assange from First Amendment protection on account of his foreign citizenship, following a number of precedent cases including at the Supreme Court.
The High Court had made plain that this was a real concern of discrimination by nationality contrary to the Extradition Act, and its concern had not been address by the United States. “There is a real risk of discrimination and that risk survives the equivocal and downright inadequate assurance”.
Mark Summers KC then stood to complete the defence argument.
This transformational day had its greatest effect on Summers. Gone was the anger at events, the simmering impatience at the failure of the judges to grasp the arguments. Instead, he was so softly and sweetly spoken nobody could hear him. As he rose, the sun inched across the sky just enough that a clear shaft of sunlight pierced the lantern window and illuminated Summers. It seemed an effect too bold for Hollywoood, possibly something out of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I am pretty sure I heard angels singing.
Summers said he had the difficult task of countering the US arguments before they had made them, and asked the court for permission to speak again later, which Judge Dame Victoria Sharp – who had obviously also heard the angels singing – agreed immediately.
Summers enumerated the US arguments from their written submission. He went through these as:
1) Assange will be on US soil during trial and thus the First Amendment will apply
But this Summers said was inconsistent with Kromberg’s sworn statement and with previous case law
2) Assange might be found to have been on US soil when offences were committed and so the First Amendment would apply
Except, said Summers, Assange clearly was not on US soil at the time
3) Nationality is a narrower concept than citizenship so no relevant discrimination is taking place
Summers said this was plainly wrong as shown by many examples including the Refugee Convention
4) Nationality was only one of the factors which might lead the first amenment not to apply
Summers pointed out that if nationality was a factor, that was discrimination. The existence of other factors was irrelevant.
5) The united States was saying that the 14th Amendment – which grants citizenship to all persons born in the United States – was somehow relevant.
Summers looked perplexed and dismissed this argument with a wave of his hand.
It was now time for James Lewis KC to re-enter the fray on behalf of the United States. His number 2, Clare Dobbin, who had replaced him so inadequately in the last hearing, was nowhere to be seen. I fear she may not just have been relegated back to the substitutes’ bench, she may have been transfer-listed.
Lewis said that the burden was on the Appellant (Julian) to prove there was a serious possibility of, or reasonable grounds to fear, prejudice on the basis of his Australian nationality.
Section 81b of the Extradition Act provided that the court could bar extradition where
if extradited he might be prejudiced at his trial or punished, detained or restricted in his personal liberty by reason of his race, religion, nationality, gender, sexual orientation or political opinions.
It is an anti-discrimination clause, which means you need to show unfair treatment against that of the comparator, in this case a US citizen.
Lewis than appeared to take a real swing at the absent Dobbin. He stated that he wished to draw attention to a Court of Appeal judgment which “for some reason” had not been highlighted at the previous hearing.
In a Court of Appeal case, the Foreign Secretary had won against a claim that it was unfair discrimination on his part to treat UK citizens differently from non-citizen UK residents, when making representations on their behalf over incarceration in Guantanamo Bay. This case showed it was legitimate to treat citizens and non-citizens differently.
The ruling states “a person who is not a British citizen is not entitled to protection”. British citizenship was simply a fact of law, and nothing to do with the person’s characteristics. “That is the correct prism through which to look at this case”.
You will perhaps permit me to point out that I predicted, before the US assurances were given, precisely and correctly what the US arguments would be, including this one that it is legitimate to treat citizens differently from other nationals in terms of consular protection (which entirely routine legal concept is the only thing the Guantanamo Bay case quoted by Lewis effectively says).
Lewis continued that Assange would not face discrimination because of his Australian nationality; he would rather be treated differently as a non-US citizen. At issue was the “simple legal fact” of his non-US citizenship.
Lewis said the claim of discrimination only works here on fair trial issues and the assurance addresses fair trial issues. Assange is guaranteed a fair trial.
While the court has suggested that the First Amendment should apply because it provides Assange the kind of Article X ECHR protection to which Assange would be entitled, it must be noted that Article X only covers “reasonable and responsible” journalism. This is not what Assange did.
One factor that may define “reasonable and responsible” might be where the journalism took place. Assange had chosen to publish outside the relevant jurisdiction of the source of the material. That was not responsible. There were many other factors, not just nationality, which would decide whether the First Amendment applies. That includes national security of the United States. Assange was guaranteed a fair trial on all these points:
“He will be able to rely on the First Amendment but that does not mean he will succeed. As a plain matter of law, Assange is a foreigner in a foreign country carrying out acts that affect US national security”.
There were also 18 charges, covering different categories of offence. Some of the charges, such as hacking and conspiracy to steal documents, could never get First Amendment protection. That had been clearly shown in the Chelsea Manning judgment. Assange’s conduct was not protected by the First Amendment.
Mark Summers was then given his promised right to reply for the defence. He said that the notion that there was legitimate discrimination based on the characteristic of nationality was not applicable here. This was about a trial process.
None of the cases quoted by the prosecution relates to the trial process. Section 81b forbids discrimination by nationality in the trial process. That in other situations citizenship had legal effect was not relevant.
As regards the distinction being made between nationality and citizenship, it was worth noting that prosecutor Kromberg states that Assange may be excluded from First Amendment protection on the basis of nationality, and not of citizenship.
The argument that nationality is only one factor which might exclude the First Amendment fails. Lewis had stated that Assange may be excluded from the first amendment because he is “a foreigner carrying out acts on foreign soil”. That is discrimination by nationality. If he were a US national he would not be excluded. The other factors become irrelevant.
The ability to rely on and argue from the First Amendment is not the same thing as to say this argument must ultimately succeed.
The finding against Chelsea Manning was not relevant. Manning was in a different position. He was a government employee, a whistleblower and not a journalist. The position in relation to the First Amendment was entirely different.
The argument that the First Amendment would automatically apply if Assange were on US soil is simply wrong. Several precedent cases showed this.
Summers then handed over to Edward Fitzgerald again. At this point. James Lewis rose to object. He said he had not objected to Mark Summers replying, although this was not the originally agreed procedure. But to have two people replying seemed excessive.
Judge Sharp responded with great seriousness. “Given what is at stake here”, she said, she would hear anything anybody wanted to say. If he wished, Lewis could respond again after Fitzgerald.
That “given what is at stake here” was very striking. It was the first real acknowledgement of the major issues at stake in this case, and perhaps also of the devastating consequences for Julian personally, from the judiciary in over a decade of proceedings. It did feel like something had changed.
Edward Fitzgerald then got going. The most important point, he said, was the deafening silence from Kromberg. He could have given the assurance that the prosecution would not seek to argue that Julian should be debarred from First Amendment protection by his nationality. But he had not done so.
It was perfectly normal practice for diplomatic assurances to include commitments for the prosecution to pursue or not pursue a certain course of action. In this very case they had assured the prosecution would not seek to pursue charges which might bring the death penalty. Yet Kromberg had not given any assurance he would not pursue the barring of the First Amendment, which he had on the contrary given an affidavit saying he might indeed pursue.
The assurance given was no assurance at all. Lewis had said that Assange would be able to rely on the First Amendment; but that was not what the “assurance” said. It said rather that he could seek to rely on the First Amendment, which was not the same thing at all.
Extradition could not be granted because there were too many issues of prosecutorial behaviour unresolved as well as issues of law.
The arguments were now at a close after just ninety minutes. Judge Sharp rose and said she and Judge Johnson would return in ten minutes to explain what would happen next.
In the end it took twenty minutes. When she returned, Judge Sharp had on her most solemn face. She started off by saying that everybody should listen to their decision in silence, and if anybody thought they could not do that, they should leave the court now.
I have to confess, I worried. If they now ruled against Julian, extradition could be immediate. He could literally be whisked straight to a military airfield. Was Judge Sharp expecting protest?
Very quickly the fears were allayed. Sharp stated simply that the right to appeal had been granted on grounds 4 and 5 of the applications – ie Freedom of Speech and Discrimination by Nationality. She also stated explicitly that the right to appeal applied to every count of the indictment, thus rejecting Lewis’s argument that some of the charges could not attract a freedom of speech defence.
The parties were given until 24 May to submit a joint memorandum on procedure and timetabling for the appeal hearing.
It is very important to understand that all of the other issues have fallen away and cannot be reintroduced. We are now down to the one narrow point on freedom of speech and discrimination by nationality. But I do not see how the United States escapes from this corner.
At the substantive appeal hearing the issue, the arguments and the case law will all be exactly the same as at this preliminary hearing. The only difference will be the burden of proof. Here the defence only had to show there was an arguable case of discrimination. At the substantive hearing they will have to prove it is a winning argument.
But given the performances here and the fact the judges took only several minutes – when everyone was expecting at least several days – to reject the US prosecution arguments, I do not see how the USA can now win this.
We do not know when the substantive hearing will be. My bet would be October, though the legal team thought July possible. Of course Julian remains in a terrible maximum security prison. But freedom comes closer.
A cynic may see all this as a further kick into the long grass and spinning out of the process until beyond the US Presidential election, as Biden would be very ill-advised to bring Julian in chains to Washington for the campaign. But my feel for it was not that. I do believe this was a genuine win, and we are on the way to victory and freedom before Christmas.
It is unlikely, though not impossible, that the judges who granted the appeal will hear the appeal, so I fear that is the last we shall see of Dame Vivtoria Sharp. Frankly the hideous Tory Lord Chief Justice Burnett has retired, so I expect the appeal will be heard by Lady Chief Justice SUe Carr, who has no previous invovlement with the case.
It is a notable fact that so far female judges have shown themselves much less biddable by security service interests than male judges in this long saga. It appears that the judiciary have again found a way towards barring the extradition that does not involve any judgment on the public interest of revealing war crimes or any discussion of the issues in material revealed by Wikileaks most embarrassing to the United States.
If the United States loses this case, as at present they stand to do, then Biden is in a lose-lose situation. He will get no credit for promoting freedom of speech and media freedom by dropping the case. On the other side, the hawks will characterise him as a loser who could not win an important national security case, even in his closest ally. The political logic for Biden in taking the off ramp appears compelling. But can Biden’s interests prevail over the will of the CIA?
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Forgive me for pointing out that my ability to provide this coverage is entirely dependent on your kind voluntary subscriptions which keep this blog going. This post is free for anybody to reproduce or republish, including in translation. You are still very welcome to read without subscribing.
Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.
(@HussainShafiei) 