Three British journalists I know personally – Johanna Ross, Vanessa Beeley and Kit Klarenberg – have each in the last two years been detained at immigration for hours on re-entering their own country, and questioned by police under anti-terrorist legislation.

This is plainly an abuse of the power to detain at port of entry, because in each case they could have been questioned at any time in the UK were there legitimate cause, and the questioning was not focused on their travels.

They were in fact detained and interrogated simply for holding and publishing dissident opinion on foreign policy, and in particular for supporting a more collaborative approach to Russia – with which, lest we forget, the UK is not at war.

These detentions have taken place over the period of a couple of years. All were targeted for journalism and this is plainly a continuing policy of harassment of dissident British journalists.

I have three times in that same period been questioned by police in my own home in Edinburgh for journalism, over three separate matters. I spent four months in jail for publicising essential information to show that a high level conspiracy was behind the false accusations against Scottish Independence leader Alex Salmond.

Julian Assange remains in maximum security jail for publicising the truth about war crimes. Meanwhile a new National Security Bill goes through the Westminster parliament, which will make it illegal for a journalist possess or publish classified information.

This has never been illegal. The responsibility has always lain with the whistleblower or leaker, not the journalist or publisher. It seeks to enshrine in UK law precisely what the US Government is seeking to achieve against Assange using the US 1917 Espionage Act. This is a huge threat to journalism.

It is also worth pointing out that, if Evan Gershkovich was indeed doing nothing more than he has claimed to have been doing in Russia, that action would land him a long jail sentence in either the USA or the UK under the provisions which both governments are attempting to enforce.

On top of that, you have the Online Safety Bill, which under the excuse of protecting against paedophilia, will require social media gatekeepers to remove any kind of content the government deems as illegal.

When you put all this together with the new Public Order Act, which effectively gives the police authority to ban any protest they wish to ban, there is a fundamental change happening.

This is not just a theoretical restriction on liberty. Active enforcement against non-approved speech is already underway, as shown by those detentions and, most strongly of all, by Julian’s continued and appalling incarceration.

To complete the horror, there is no longer a genuine opposition within the political class. Keir Starmer’s Labour Party opposes none of this wave of attacks on civil liberties. The SNP has been sending out identical stock replies from its MPs on Julian Assange, 100% backing the UK government line on his extradition and imprisonment.

I feel this very personally. I know all of these people affected – Julian, Alex, Kit, Vanessa, Johanna, and view them as colleagues whose rights I defend, even though I do not always agree with all of their disparate views.

Two other people I know personally and admire are under attack. The campaign of lies and innuendo against Roger Waters this last few weeks has been astonishing in both its viciousness and its mendacity, recalling the dreadful attacks on Jeremy Corbyn.

More mundane but also part of the same phenomenon, my friend Randy Credico has had his Twitter account cancelled.

To be a dissident in the UK, or indeed the “West”, today is to see, every single day, your friends persecuted and to see the walls close in upon yourself.

A unified political class, controlled by billionaires, is hurtling us towards fascism. That now seems to me undeniable.

————————————————

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I had the chance to catch up over a few drinks with an old friend just retired from the diplomatic service. I guess I too would have been doing that around now, had I not stumbled upon extraordinary rendition and torture and quixotically attempted to stop it.

My friend wished to impress upon me how much less fun the job is now than when we were young. That is certainly true in many ways.

Even before I retired, the job had become much more about form-filling and accounting than it had about actually doing anything useful. Diplomats were becoming ever more confined to their circle of diplomatic premises and luxury hotels, and less and less connected to the country in which they were posted.

My friend’s complaint was somewhat different.

He said that there was now a real sense of diplomatic isolation. Being British Ambassador had always carried enormous prestige within the diplomatic corps. The weight of imperial history multiplied the effect of representing what is still one of the world’s largest economies, bolstered by the prestige of originating the language of international communication.

A few weeks before my friend’s retirement, the Italian Ambassador had hosted a soiree for a visiting minor opera star, who there trilled some Verdi. This is the trivia of diplomatic exchange, fostered by national cultural institutes.

My friend, as British Ambassador, had not been invited to the soprano soiree.

Now I know that sounds ridiculous to anybody outside the peculiar world of diplomacy. But to two former Ambassadors having a natter, the very notion conveyed a world of meaning. The UK is no longer one of the inner circle. Even the Italians snub us.

This is of course, in part, a product of Brexit. Indeed, had the UK still been in the EU, he would automatically have got an invite along with all the other EU Ambassadors.

But that is not the whole explanation, because the Italian invited several non-EU Ambassadors.

The UK’s fall from diplomatic grace matters, not least because Scottish Independence is going to have to be achieved in the teeth of Westminster opposition.

There is only one determinant of Independence and it has nothing to do with legality in domestic legislation of the state you are leaving.

The only thing that makes you an independent state, is recognition by other independent states.

There simply is no other criterion that makes the slightest difference.

And the UK is hated. Lots of countries would like to see it broken up.

The EU hate the UK because of Brexit. It sends an excellent message from their point of view, that the cost of leaving the EU is dissolution.

The developing world hate the UK because the Tories have absolutely slashed the development aid budget and perverted it to other uses. They hate the UK because of the history of colonial exploitation and slavery which is only now becoming fully acknowledged.

The international institutions hate the UK because of its rogue state decisions: the invasion of Iraq, and the refusal to obey the UN and the International Court of Justice by decolonising the Chagos Islands, being only two.

Even the United States is not the dependable supporter of the UK it once was, with Joe Biden’s political background in Irish American politics a key factor.

My friend despaired that the UK’s reaction to this isolation was a series of increasingly wild moves to try to gain relevance.

The UK was out in front in declaring China a threat and an enemy, which FCO professionals view as neither justified nor of obvious benefit. The UK is indulging in peculiar, and almost entirely unprovoked, military threat towards China with its declared US/UK/Australian alliance and extraordinary reorientation of UK defence strategy to the Pacific.

As if the UK has any ability whatsoever to constrain China’s growing world pre-eminence.

On Ukraine, too, the UK sought to be noticed, by trying to be the most “out there” country in promoting the war, wanting to be the always the first to push the next weapons escalation, with depleted uranium shells, with long range missiles, with battle tanks.

It all amounted to a policy of shouting “Me, me, me” loudest, with zero substance behind it.

My friend had another gin and tonic. He was glad he was retiring. He would have liked to see the soprano.

————————————————

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 the every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.

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Two months ago I wrote an article entitled “Fascist judges” about the concerted move by judges in England to outlaw jury nullification.

Despite the long and established history of juries refusing to convict for laws they view as an abuse of power by the state, climate protestors have been jailed for contempt simply for trying to tell juries why they acted.

Four out of five defendants have now been found guilty of intent to cause criminal damage in the “Shenstone 5” trial over the blockade of an Elbit factory.  Judge Chambers had ruled similarly that the defendants could not put the motive for their actions to the jury.

You may recall that when protesting outside another Elbit factory a few days ago, I had a policeman read out an order accusing me and the small group with me of “criminal intent”.

Chambers told the jury they were legally allowed only to decide the facts, not moral right.

The prosecution had argued, extraordinarily, that the defence of “necessity” could only be made if the defendants could identify the specific part number of a component, which specific weapon it had been put into, and prove which specific Palestinian had been killed by that weapon.

That the plant indubitably made components of weapons which killed Palestinian civilians was not enough.

We now know that Judge Chambers was in receipt of communication from Lawyers for Israel before sentencing, seeking to reinforce the new doctrine that jurors are not allowed to give a verdict according to conscience.

This really is a new doctrine. Every law school teaches the famous cases where juries refused to convict on principle and against the direction of the judge.

It is to me quite extraordinary that outside parties are permitted to contact a judge before sentencing in order to motivate him against a defendant.

I suspect anyone other than “Lawyers for Israel” who did this would be in trouble.

Just three days ago Mike Lynch-White was sentenced to a cruel 27 months for damaging property at a non-violent protest at yet another Israeli weapons factory in England.

There is plainly a state policy of vicious repression in play.

Fairly recent examples of “Jury nullification” or “perverse verdict” include the demolishers of the Colston statue, and the 2001 protestors against Trident who admitted they intended to cause damage. All were acquitted despite being plainly guilty on the facts.

In 2021 a judge directed the jury to convict Extinction Rebellion protestors who damaged Shell HQ, specifically stating they had “no defence in law.” Yet the jury refused to convict.

The most famous example in my lifetime was my friend, and member of this blog’s below the line community, Clive Ponting. The jury would not jail him for telling the truth, that Thatcher sank the old Argentine battleship General Belgrano as it headed away from the Falklands.

The current concerted judicial effort to outlaw jury nullification is of huge concern. It is of no surprise to see the hand of Israel attempting to guide the judiciary, in the interests of defending its weapons industry.

Of massive concern too is the growing number of political prisoners in the UK. Julian Assange is rightly the most famous. But how many prisoners are there currently in British prisons whose “crime” is political?

Adding together environmental activists, anti-lockdown activists, peace activists and others, the list of the UK’s political prisoners is alarmingly long. Is any NGO maintaining a constant count? Is there perhaps a need to found such an NGO?

I do not trust Amnesty when it comes to the UK as the leadership is too Starmer adjacent.

The moves in England to outlaw jury nullification and those in Scotland to abolish juries in sexual assault cases, are part of a major impulse to state authoritarianism shown also in the new UK Public Order Act, the Orwellian-named UK Online Safety Bill, and Scotland’s equally Orwellian-named Hate Crime Act.

This onslaught against civil liberties is caused by the nervousness of the entire political and oligarch classes, who are scared of their own citizens as the wealth gap ever increases.

That political class unanimity is proven by the undisguised support of Keir Starmer and the so-called “Labour Party” for all of these repressive developments.

Shamefully the SNP MPs have been sending out stock replies on Assange that fully support the UK government line.

Convictions based on “intent” to do something you have not actually done, are generally dubious. The Shenstone defendants have been told by Judge Chambers they will get prison sentences. Expect these to be vicious.

Doubtless there will be victory celebrations at Lawyers for Israel.

————————————————

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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 the every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.

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When I started this blog I never envisaged I would be forced to write a defence of the use of juries in Scotland. We live in troubling times indeed.

A jury is an essential protection against the power of the state. It is a randomly selected group of citizens who decide on the facts of an accusation – crucially removing that power from officers of the state.

It is therefore a much needed safeguard against a state official just banging up people the state wishes to bang up, without just cause. It has been viewed that way for centuries.

The current proposition from the Scottish government is that, because conviction rates in rape trials in Scotland are lower than in England – approximately 52% to 75% – that juries should be abolished in rape and sexual assault cases and replaced by specially trained judges.

This proposition fails at the first hurdle of logic.

Juries decide rape trials in both England and in Scotland. So elementary logic tells you that the cause of difference is not juries (unless you believe there is a fundamental difference in attitudes to rape in English and Scottish society, which seems to me highly improbable).

I spoke with a Scottish KC who has been a prosecutor in sexual offence crimes. Their take was rather different. They think the reason for higher conviction rates in England was that Scottish prosecutors are more willing to run marginal cases.

In England the Crown Prosecution Service and its staff are measured against a set of achievement metrics on conviction rates, and as a result will not take a case forward unless it is close to a slam dunk.

In Scotland prosecutors are more willing to give accusers a chance to put their accusations before a jury.

You could achieve a higher conviction rate by the prosecutors bringing fewer cases, only those where the evidence is overwhelming. That is not an outcome anybody wants.

Look at this turned on its head. Is a 51% chance of convincing the jury not about the point at which a case ought to be allowed to proceed? Why is that wrong?

If an alleged victim has a 50% chance of being believed by the jury, they will get into court in Scotland. In England they need a 75% chance of being believed.

That is simply a different way of looking at the same statistic.

If the English prosecutors brought before a jury more of the very large majority of rape allegations which go unprosecuted, the conviction rate in England would fall, although there would be some of those extra prosecutions which were indeed successful.

If you bring 100 prosecutions at a 70% conviction rate you have convicted 70 rapists.

If you bring 200 prosecutions at a 50% conviction rate you have convicted 100 rapists, that is 30 more rapists in jail.

But on the conviction rate measure you are less successful, even though you jailed more rapists.

That paradox explains why conviction rates are a stupid measure to use in this conversation.

They are only of concern as a financial measurement. To convict 100 rapists at a 50% conviction rate costs twice as much as to convict just 70 rapists at a 70% conviction rate. Your cost per convicted rapist has increased by 45%.

That is why the CPS in England works to this metric. They put cost effectiveness above justice.

The notion that 52% conviction rates for rape are inadequate, needs to be challenged on another ground too. It is entirely in line with conviction rates for crimes of a similar severity.

Attempted murder 47%
Grievious Bodily Harm 48%
Manslaughter 48%

These are reasonable comparators to rape. Rape Crisis Scotland compare the 52% conviction rate for rape to an alleged overall 90% criminal conviction rate, but that includes the great bulk of summary cases for minor crimes, including not having a TV licence.

For comparable crimes, the conviction rate for rape is in fact not out of line at all.

(Incidentally the conviction rates for serious crimes above are from England. I can’t find any for Scotland. Conviction rates are not centrally collated by government and have to be compiled by academic researchers poring over thousands of cases).

The problem is not juries getting it wrong at trial. The difficulty is getting more cases to trial. Performance here is abysmal.

The urgent need is for much better resourcing in terms of equipment, dedicated personnel and training in Police Scotland, in the NHS, social services and in the Crown Office and in all other associated agencies dealing with those making allegations of rape or sexual assault.

That is expensive and requires thought and co-ordinated, serious action. It is much cheaper to pretend to be doing something, by simply getting rid of juries and instructing judges to increase convictions.

The Scottish Government has made no disguise at all of the fact that the purpose of abolishing juries is to increase the conviction rate. That means a defendant is going to be standing before a judge who has in effect been instructed to convict.

A plainer breach of human rights I find impossible to imagine.

It is also plain that the Scottish Government intends to make sure the judges obey the order to convict.

As Lord Uist has pointed out, for the first time in Scottish history the Criminal Justice Bill makes provision for judges, in the new “special courts”, to be removed from office without evidence of wrongdoing. Uist believes this to be contrary to the ECHR, an interference with judicial independence.

He also points out that the bill provides for the Scottish Government to monitor the performance of the “special courts” and to monitor “outcomes”.

Uist does not specifically add, but I will, that “outcomes” can only mean conviction rates. What other “outcomes” of a court might the Scottish Government be monitoring? It has been made clear higher conviction rates are the purpose, and the judges will be measured on them.

This explains the root and branch opposition of Scottish lawyers.

Anybody can surely see how deeply troubling these proposals are, how fundamentally opposed to any basic principle of justice.

The SNP has always had an authoritarian streak. Its leadership appears to have become utterly power-crazed in its self-righteous mission of social engineering.

————————————————

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 the every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.

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The torrential rain was shed from the policeman’s flat hat via its curved plastic peak, forming a curtain of water that flowed down in front of him, obscuring his face.

His name was Martin. A female colleague stood in solidarity beside him. Two other female policemen were filming with a large video camera from three metres away. Thirty yards down the road were large groups of burly policemen in fluorescent jackets, and beyond them the Tactical Support Group sat behind the dark windows of their mesh covered minibuses, fingering their shields and batons.

Facing Martin were the protestors. There were six of us, average age about 70. We were all absolutely sodden through, but still clutched umbrellas and tried to find angles from which to reduce the wind driven assault of cold water. As the rain was extremely noisy, and probably we don’t hear quite as well as we used to, we kept shuffling towards Martin and leaning forward to try to catch his words, before they were blown away or drowned.

Martin was reading the riot act. Or, to be precise, he was reading an order made under the Public Order Act 1986. With no sense that he understood the absurdity of his words, he intoned:

“I reasonably believe that this assembly has been organised with criminal intent. I reasonably believe that this assembly may result in violence to persons and to property. I reasonably believe that this assembly may cause disruption to the life of the community”.

Some of my top teeth are no longer natural and I get dizzy after climbing a flight of stairs or getting out the bath. I was cold and wet and longing for a nice hot cup of tea. I felt perhaps proud, but rather puzzled, to be taken for a serious criminal danger to the city of Leicester.

Behind Martin stood the paramilitary security guards of the Israeli weapons factory. They did not look really nice. I wondered if Martin was facing in the right direction.

I sneaked this photo of one of them from the taxi as I was leaving. Not entirely what you expect to find down a wooded lane outside Leicester.

Overhead a red police drone buzzed. What it could see, that the scores of police eyes on us could not see, remains a mystery. It was possibly on the lookout for subversive messages on the top of umbrellas.

I found the police operator round the corner who, to be fair, was probably sheltering from the downpour under a tree rather than deliberately hiding behind the hedge.

The factory makes, among other things, components for the kind of drones that kill women and children in Gaza on a regular basis.

I would like you to meet Liane. One of the Palestinian children killed this week in Gaza by weaponry of the Elbit weapons company we were picketing. Whether her death involved any components made in this precise Leicester Elbit factory I do not know. It is probable.

Look into Liane’s eyes, then tell me you do not wish you had been with me, standing in the rain.

When Martin had finished speaking I replied, rather to his, and everybody else’s, surprise. He had started moving away but returned to listen.

I said that I was not an organiser of the protest, just a supporter. But the Order he had read out did not apply. We were just six people – that is not enough people to constitute an “assembly” under Part 2 of the 1986 Public Order Act.

I then went to the police camera team and said the same thing to them. As they were filming for evidence purposes to show the Order had been made, I asked them to maintain the tape for evidence that the police had been told we were not an assembly in terms of the act.

They were really not very happy about this. You could see the cogs whirring as they wondered whether they could arrest me. I presume all these police had arrived after an operational briefing that they were dealing with violent Middle Eastern terrorists, and they were having a brief bout of cognitive dissonance.

There are of course people who resolve cognitive dissonance by an immediate resort to violence, and rather a higher proportion of such people than you might expect, find their way into the police force, so I then wandered off with some friendly remarks about the weather.

I reported yesterday on the incredibly heavy handed policing of this protest. The Chief Constable of Leicestershire, Robert Nixon, has instructed the protest must be “stamped out”, according to one police officer I spoke with.

About sixty protestors have been arrested, and some 50 released on bail on condition they leave the county of Leicestershire completely.

Some have even been arrested hundreds of miles away, for the new crime of planning to attend a demonstration.

Palestine Action co-founders Huda and Richard were released last night, having being arrested Tuesday on the motorway following police surveillance #ShutElbitDown pic.twitter.com/9iClbSfSt6

— Palestine Action (@Pal_action) May 4, 2023

Earlier that day I had witnessed the police harass a mother in hijab. Two male officers, not accompanied by a female officer, arriving to quiz her on why three children present at the protest were not at school.

Truancy is not in general a police matter, and if an intervention was deemed necessary it should have been carried out by a qualified local authority officer. The cultural insensitivity on display was remarkable, and it underlined the fact that every single police officer I saw over two days was white.

This picture, from a few days earlier at the same protest, illustrates it well. Leicester is a very multi-cultural city, but these are the county police.

Each time I arrived at the protest, I went walking around to count the number of police and see what they were doing. Generally I chatted with whoever was in charge, and made plain I thought they were far more heavy handed than was compatible with the right to protest.

I received a message from Palestine Action to the effect that friendly chats with the police are not really how they roll. I respect their position and its cause, but my own view is that if you treat the police officers personally as the enemy, it makes it hard to complain when they do the same to you.

On this final visit I noted, in addition to the ordinary and tactical support group minibuses; the drone squad, at least four marked police cars, the same number of unmarked cars with uniformed officers inside, and five cars parked up with occupants in civilian clothes sitting there for hours ostensibly doing nothing at all.

I called an Uber to leave. I then said my farewells, and my phone beeped saying the Uber had arrived, indicating the pick up point. I walked to the car and opened the back door – and there behind the dark windows were some burly policemen in plain clothes and a directional microphone.

The bearded driver was furious. He yelled at me “Why did you open that door?”

I replied “Well, if you will go around in disguise, people will mistake you for an Uber”.

The car doors were pulled shut again in anger and the car drove off. Three different groups of policemen approached, all yelling out “Why did you open that door?” “What were you doing with that car?”

Laughing, I replied “I am sorry, I thought it was my Uber”. Fortunately that very second my Uber pulled up next to me. I got in and left, giggling away.

The action at Elbit is continuous. I shall definitely be back at some stage. Please do get yourselves there. I regard it as a moral duty. We were just a few gentle souls in the rain, but I am proud to have been there.

————————————————

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 the every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.

Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.

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Subscriptions are still preferred to donations as I can’t run the blog without some certainty of future income, but I understand why some people prefer not to commit to that.

Update: Back protesting again today. I learn that 46 protestors who have been arrested have been released on the bail condition that they leave Leicestershire. Yes, the entire county.

People arrested for doing absolutely nothing but exercise the democratic right to protest, are thus prevented from exercising that right further, without a long period in jail on remand.

What is happening here is sickening.

Original post:

Monday was day eight of the protest at the Elbit Israeli weapons factory in Leicester. After seven days and over 60 arrests, fewer than 20 protestors remained.

The protestors are confined to a designated area by an order under the Public Order Act 1986. One demonstrator, who left the protest on Monday to go home, was detained by police for leaving the designated area.

Three protestors approached the police to inquire – politely – why their friend was being detained. They then returned to the cordon. 30 police then surrounded the cordon from the front and, through the woods, from the rear. They then entered and, with force, arrested the three for having left the cordon.

They also arrested two others who had never left the cordon at all, including one nervous young lady who had done absolutely nothing but stand quietly inside the designated area and had been telling fellow demonstrators how scared she was.

All the arrested people that day were BAME. White people were left alone.

As is common with demonstrations, numerous motorists had been honking their horn in support in passing. The police (and I have never heard of this before) were stopping the vehicles that sounded their horn, demanding to see driving licenses and vehicle insurance, taking down the drivers’ details and warning them they were liable to be charged with an offence.

I heard the details from eyewitnesses when I arrived on Tuesday evening to show support, and try to understand just what was happening. By Tuesday evening, the demonstration consisted of just nine people – three of whom were small children and three of whom were female.

Nevertheless there were three minibuses full of police watching them, and two burly private security guards facing them from behind the razor wire of the Elbit weapons factory, each with a large Alsatian dog on a leash. The police drone that had been overhead for a week had left shortly before we arrived.

The Elbit weapons factory is a large, non-descript modern grey building in a sprawling industrial estate outside Leicester. It has high fences and razor wire, but no identification. There is no sign with a company name. It is just labelled “Unit 13”.

In a reminder that suppression of protest was not invented in 2022, the police are operating largely through a draconian order made under the Tory “Public Order Act 1986”.

This legislation was Thatcher’s reaction to the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, to trades union picketing and to travellers.

The order – drawn up under the act by the police without any judicial authority – limits the assembly to a small “designated area” on the footpath opposite the Elbit factory, and specifically excludes the woodland beyond the footpath. It further prohibits the erection of structures for accommodation on the footpath, highway or any public path.

So protestors are not permitted to be anywhere but on the footpath, and on the footpath they are not permitted to erect tents.

The police have used this provision quite deliberately to thwart the protestors from setting up any kind of camp. The police have systematically confiscated, smashed and torn any tents, camping equipment and sleeping bags. They have even stopped protestors sheltering under a tarpaulin during Tuesday’s heavy thunderstorms.

But the right of protestors to camp out has been a traditional and regularly observed feature of western democracy, and UK democracy in particular, for centuries. Brian Haw was even permitted by the courts to stay encamped in Parliament Square for years.

I myself took part in the protest camp on the Torness nuclear power site in 1978. I addressed the Occupy! camp in front of St Paul’s Cathedral in 2011. The Faslane Peace Camp is ongoing.

The level of suppression of protest here in Leicester is not consistent with British traditions of democracy. It is policing which is aggressive and hostile in a way I am simply not used to – I have had numerous friendly conversations with policemen on demonstrations in the past.

In short, this is overtly political policing which sees peaceful protestors as “the enemy”.

It happens that early on Tuesday morning, before I travelled down to Leicester, the Israeli military killed five children and three women in bombing attacks on the helpless people of Gaza. The odds are, of course, that on any given day I came, they would have killed innocents.

Elbit Systems is Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer.

The nine surviving protestors were friendly and cheerful. I was accompanied by my friend Haward Soper, who took these photographs. Haward and I left the designated area and wandered all over the place, but the police did not bother us, we being old, white and middle class.

I asked whether the protest would still be going on come Wednesday morning. I was told yes, but there are less people in the mornings.

That is less than nine. They were, however, hoping for a big turnout this weekend.

When I was young, Palestine and apartheid South Africa were the two international injustices we most campaigned over. South African apartheid ended, but Israeli apartheid has worsened. I am still campaigning for Palestinians after 50 years.

I am most concerned that our radical energies have been successfully diverted into the sterile ground of the identity politics of the Western middle classes.

Palestinian is one of the most abused identities in the world. Focus on that.

Most of those arrested have been charged with public order offences. The Leicester Mercury is reporting about half are charged under the 2022 Public Order Act. They are going to need support through the court system.

I do urge you to make time to get here to Leicester. See the Palestine Action website for details.

Not only will you be standing against apartheid, against the slow genocide of the Palestinian people, you will be affirming your own right to stand up for what you believe.

A right the police are making very plain they intend to negate.

————————————————

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Though convicted of nothing, and merely in “administrative detention” entitled to the presumption of innocence, for five years Julian Assange’s voice has been effectively silenced.

The dreadful place of harsh incarceration that is Belmarsh prison, where terrorists are kept, has not allowed his voice to be heard by the world. Journalists are not permitted to visit him – even NGOs have been prevented from visiting on the false basis they are journalists, and may communicate his thoughts to the outside world.

I don’t know how, but somehow Julian has managed to send out some thoughts in the pretext of an appeal to King Charles over prison conditions. The text is clearly heavily sarcastic, and the subject limited. But at least it serves to remind the world of Julian’s terrible fate.

I know the dreadful, pointless inhumanity of which he speaks, the stupid rules, the isolation, the utter waste of money and human potential with no useful outcome. Two people died in Saughton jail the very week I left. Close your eyes and you can perhaps hear the beautiful tenor voice of Julian’s friend who committed suicide.

To His Majesty King Charles III,

On the coronation of my liege, I thought it only fitting to extend a heartfelt invitation to you to commemorate this momentous occasion by visiting your very own kingdom within a kingdom: His Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh.

You will no doubt recall the wise words of a renowned playwright: “The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath.”

Ah, but what would that bard know of mercy faced with the reckoning at the dawn of your historic reign? After all, one can truly know the measure of a society by how it treats its prisoners, and your kingdom has surely excelled in that regard.

Your Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh is located at the prestigious address of One Western Way, London, just a short foxhunt from the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich. How delightful it must be to have such an esteemed establishment bear your name.

It is here that 687 of your loyal subjects are held, supporting the United Kingdom’s record as the nation with the largest prison population in Western Europe. As your noble government has recently declared, your kingdom is currently undergoing “the biggest expansion of prison places in over a century”, with its ambitious projections showing an increase of the prison population from 82,000 to 106,000 within the next four years. Quite the legacy, indeed.

As a political prisoner, held at Your Majesty’s pleasure on behalf of an embarrassed foreign sovereign, I am honoured to reside within the walls of this world-class institution. Truly, your kingdom knows no bounds.

During your visit, you will have the opportunity to feast upon the culinary delights prepared for your loyal subjects on a generous budget of two pounds per day. Savour the blended tuna heads and the ubiquitous reconstituted forms that are purportedly made from chicken. And worry not, for unlike lesser institutions such as Alcatraz or San Quentin, there is no communal dining in a mess hall. At Belmarsh, prisoners dine alone in their cells, ensuring the utmost intimacy with their meal.

Beyond the gustatory pleasures, I can assure you that Belmarsh provides ample educational opportunities for your subjects. As Proverbs 22:6 has it: “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” Observe the shuffling queues at the medicine hatch, where inmates gather their prescriptions, not for daily use, but for the horizon-expanding experience of a “big day out”—all at once.

You will also have the opportunity to pay your respects to my late friend Manoel Santos, a gay man facing deportation to Bolsonaro’s Brazil, who took his own life just eight yards from my cell using a crude rope fashioned from his bedsheets. His exquisite tenor voice now silenced forever.

Venture further into the depths of Belmarsh and you will find the most isolated place within its walls: Healthcare, or “Hellcare” as its inhabitants lovingly call it. Here, you will marvel at sensible rules designed for everyone’s safety, such as the prohibition of chess, whilst permitting the far less dangerous game of checkers.

Deep within Hellcare lies the most gloriously uplifting place in all of Belmarsh, nay, the whole of the United Kingdom: the sublimely named Belmarsh End of Life Suite. Listen closely, and you may hear the prisoners’ cries of “Brother, I’m going to die in here”, a testament to the quality of both life and death within your prison.

But fear not, for there is beauty to be found within these walls. Feast your eyes upon the picturesque crows nesting in the razor wire and the hundreds of hungry rats that call Belmarsh home. And if you come in the spring, you may even catch a glimpse of the ducklings laid by wayward mallards within the prison grounds. But don’t delay, for the ravenous rats ensure their lives are fleeting.

I implore you, King Charles, to visit His Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh, for it is an honour befitting a king. As you embark upon your reign, may you always remember the words of the King James Bible: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy” (Matthew 5:7). And may mercy be the guiding light of your kingdom, both within and without the walls of Belmarsh.

Your most devoted subject,

Julian Assange
A9379AY

I think my own statement when I was released from jail is worth another look here in the similar things I said about prison conditions. I also stated:
“I shall never really feel free until my friend and colleague Julian Assange is also free”.
That remains absolutely the case.

————————————————

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 the every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.

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Joe Biden will very probably be re-elected. No incumbent President has ever lost a primary (though it should be remembered the current primary system is younger than me). Only one sitting President has ever not been selected by their party to stand again, and that was knocking on two hundred years ago.

Both Biden’s main primary challenger, Robert F Kennedy Jr, and his likely Republican opponent, Donald Trump, are less than enthusiastic about promoting massive war in Europe and risking nuclear obliteration. (I hope everyone in the UK enjoyed the nationwide new alert test the other day and spent a few moments contemplating whether they would die instantly or slowly in agony).

The military industrial complex simply cannot permit a non-hawkish President. The sums of money at stake are enormous.

Trump, for all his many faults, was the only President in recent memory not to have started any wars. I know he continued some, but his entire Presidency needs to be seen as a dialectic between Trump and the intelligence service/military power base, in which to his credit Trump was never captured as completely as Obama. (Clinton and the Bush family did not need to be captured, they were always true believers).

Thirteen months ago, I wrote this:

The Biden laptop was leaked on 14 October 2020, three weeks before voting day in the Presidential election. Its suppression by the mainstream media, Twitter and Facebook, at the behest of the security services, is the biggest illegitimate interference in an election in modern western history.

The evidence has piled up since. It is truly astounding that incalculable volumes of media coverage have been given to largely groundless accusations of Russian interference in US Presidential elections, when this actual, entirely proven interference in a US Presidential Election, which arguably was key to Biden’s election, has in itself been largely suppressed.

The letter released by 51 former US intelligence officials, telling what we now know to be the outright lie that the Hunter Biden laptop was “Russian disinformation”, was initiated by the Biden campaign, according to sworn testimony from former Acting CIA Director Mike Morell – who was willingly a part of it with the declared aim of wanting Biden to win.

If you are not fully up to speed with this, this Wall Street Journal podcast is excellent.

It should be recalled that, apart from all the sex and drugs, the laptop contained emails showing plainly Hunter Biden leveraging his father’s influence to obtain lucrative business deals with, inter alia, Ukraine and China.

Three weeks before a close election, the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop could undoubtedly have swayed it, if it had not been massively and falsely derided as a Russian hoax by almost the entire mainstream media, and censored to death by Twitter and Facebook.

Since Elon Musk released Twitter files, we have known for certain that the FBI orchestrated the suppression of the story on social media. This Twitter thread is five months old but remains a must read.

It is, I think, the epitome of the corruption of modern mainstream media that, if you go to the CNN website you can still find a “fact check” item from CNN which states that Donald Trump was promoting Russian disinformation by referring to the Hunter Biden laptop.

Google searches differ depending on the person making them. But try this. Google for the exposure of the Hunter Biden laptop “Russian hoax” as itself misinformation. How many stories come up for you from the “liberal” media, from the BBC, New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, NBC, Guaridan etc?

I get nothing on from them on the front page of my google search except the old CNN misinformation. That says a great deal both about the legacy media – and about Google.

So we have conclusive evidence from the Hunter Biden laptop story that the security services, corporate media and corporate internet gatekeepers were in cahoots to ensure the election of Joe Biden. What we see now is the same forces working to ensure that he is re-elected.

Now read this from Robert F Kennedy’s campaign website:

In the long term, a nation’s strength does not come from its armies. America spends as much on weaponry as the next nine nations combined, yet the country has grown weaker, not stronger, over the last 30 years. Even as its military technology has reigned supreme, America has been hollowing out from the inside. We cannot be a strong or secure nation when our infrastructure, industry, society, and economy are infirm.

A high priority of a Kennedy administration will be to make America strong again. When a body is sick, it withdraws its energy from the extremities in order to nourish the vital organs. It is time to end the imperial project and attend to all that has been neglected: the crumbling cities, the antiquated railways, the failing water systems, the decaying infrastructure, the ailing economy. Annual defense-related spending is close to one trillion dollars. We maintain 800 military bases around the world. The peace dividend that was supposed to come after the Berlin Wall fell was never redeemed. Now we have another chance.

As President, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will start the process of unwinding empire. We will bring the troops home. We will stop racking up unpayable debt to fight one war after another. The military will return to its proper role of defending our country. We will end the proxy wars, bombing campaigns, covert operations, coups, paramilitaries, and everything else that has become so normal most people don’t know it’s happening. But it is happening, a constant drain on our strength. It’s time to come home and restore this country.

In Ukraine, the most important priority is to end the suffering of the Ukrainian people, victims of a brutal Russian invasion, and also victims of American geopolitical machinations going back at least to 2014. We must first get clear: Is our mission to help the brave Ukrainians defend their sovereignty? Or is it to use Ukraine as a pawn to weaken Russia? Robert F. Kennedy will choose the first. He will find a diplomatic solution that brings peace to Ukraine and brings our resources back where they belong. We will offer to withdraw our troops and nuclear-capable missiles from Russia’s borders. Russia will withdraw its troops from Ukraine and guarantee its freedom and independence. UN peacekeepers will guarantee peace to the Russian-speaking eastern regions. We will put an end to this war. We will put an end to the suffering of the Ukranian people. That will be the start of a broader program of demilitarization of all countries.

This is astonishing stuff to be put before the American people from the scion of one of the great American political dynasties.

(I am aware of his chequered past, his support for Hillary over Bernie, and his Covid vaccine scepticism, though the latter appears to be more based on his long term commitment to tackling the profiteering and corrupt influence of big Pharma than an actual anti-vaccine stance).

I did not predict that the USA would become a gerontocracy. Biden shows signs of the mental decay that is a natural part of the human condition. He will not have to face Kennedy in any Primary debates – the NDC could be relied on to stitch up that potentially huge hurdle for him – but the risk of Biden detariorating further mentally in a way that is impossible to hide must exist for anyone of his age. So the Kennedy challenge is not without a slim hope.

A slim hope for a declared opponent of the military industrial complex is one hope too many, therefore the twin agencies of social media suppression and corporate media ridicule have already swung in to action against Kennedy.

The challenge must be choked at birth. The range of acceptable opinion to the US Establishment is now extremely narrow.

Trump remains an enigma. He is a mixture of far right prejudice and serious outbursts of commonsense. I do not doubt that he does have interests beyond the personal advancement of Donald J Trump, but only in an incidental way.

In Ukraine we are either going to see death and destruction on a scale well beyond the terrible horrors already inflicted, or there is ultimately going to be a deal involving the ceding of some territory to Russia (Crimea+, as my FCO sources tell me it is currently called in Beijing based diplomacy).

Trump says this. It is the kind of thing that makes the US military-industrial-security service complex hate him, as they are seeing super profits, massive resources and political influence stretching ahead for at least another five years. They don’t care at all how many Eastern Europeans die.

Trump is a much greater threat to Biden, and the full weight of the state is therefore being thrown into stopping him through lawfare. Some of this is very dubious, and subject to the perfectly true response that Bill Clinton was never prosecuted for remarkably identical behaviours.

Watching the agencies of the state find a way to stop Trump is going to be fascinating.

Russiagate was a hoax. There is however a real interference with what the public are allowed to know which makes the notion of “democracy” in the USA meaningless, and that is the interference of the security state of the USA itself.

Those interests got Biden into power, and will do everything and literally anything to help him stay there.

The British security state is of course complicit. A final thought.

It is fast approaching a year since Julian Assange submitted his High Court appeal against extradition, and still the High Court has not even decided if it will hear the appeal or not. We had initially hoped the actual hearing might be before last Christmas.

The Assange prosecution is not popular in the USA, where even the mainstream media have come out against charging a journalist with espionage.  In addition everybody can now see the parallel with Evan Gershkovich and potential impact of Assange’s treatment on Gershkovich.

Assange’s arrival in Washington would be a free speech cause celebre with the potential to alienate some liberal support from Biden in a close election. The US security services therefore still very much want Julian imprisoned for life – but they do not want him extradited until after Biden is safely re-elected.

The British government therefore need to keep Julian in maximum security in Belmarsh for another two years, to keep the Biden campaign and its security service backers happy.

This can only be done by introducing lengthy and unnecessary delays into the judicial process. We see that happening, or rather we see it “inexplicably” not happening, before our very eyes.

The senior British judiciary do what the security services tell them to do. Discreetly suggested, in the club.

————————————————

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 the every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.

Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.

Choose subscription amount from dropdown box:

Paypal address for one-off donations: [email protected]

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
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BIC NWBKGB2L
Bank address Natwest, PO Box 414, 38 Strand, London, WC2H 5JB

Bitcoin: bc1q3sdm60rshynxtvfnkhhqjn83vk3e3nyw78cjx9
Ethereum/ERC-20: 0x764a6054783e86C321Cb8208442477d24834861a

Subscriptions are still preferred to donations as I can’t run the blog without some certainty of future income, but I understand why some people prefer not to commit to that.