The BBC repeatedly named Nafissatou Diallo, the alleged rape victim of Dominique Strauss Kahn, while the criminal investigation into the alleged rape was still in progress. Yet they have a policy that Anna Ardin, the accuser of Julian Assange, must not be named – or investigated.

Why the contradiction?

Nafissatou Diallo and Anna Ardin had both gone public and given statements to the media in support of their allegations.

From the New York Times, 25 August 2010:

Anna Ardin, 31, has told the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet that the complaints were “not orchestrated by the Pentagon” but prompted by “a man who has a twisted attitude toward women and a problem taking no for an answer.”

There was no legal barrier to my mentioniong Anna Ardin last night; the case is no longer sub judice in the UK and there is no expectation of any legal proceedings here. Those are precisely the grounds on which the BBC mentioned Diallo very often. I did not see Oliver Kamm, Charles Crawford, Harry Cole, Charles Murray or any of the other far right commenters trolling about my “disgrace” last night, make a single protest at the naming of Diallo on scores of occasions by the BBC. Why their sudden new-found concern in the case of Assange?

Why the difference? Why is Ardin protected from scrutiny in the entire British mainstream media when Diallo was not, in precisely the same legal circumstances? Has Ardin been D-noticed in the UK when she is reported widely everywhere else in the world?

Anybody who still believes that the Assange allegations are a genuine criminal proceeding following due process, should think very hard indeed.

Anna Ardin herself went to the media, under her own name, as long as two years ago to publicise her allegations against Assange. From the New York Times, 25 August 2010:

Anna Ardin, 31, has told the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet that the complaints were “not orchestrated by the Pentagon” but prompted by “a man who has a twisted attitude toward women and a problem taking no for an answer.”

The furore that I “revealed” her name on Newsnight is a pathetic spasm of false indignation by establishment supporters.

A google search on “Anna Ardin” reveals 193,000 articles, virtually all relating to her sexual allegation against Julian Assange. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation last week broadcast nationwide a documentary investigating Ms Ardin’s allegations and not only naming her repeatedly, but showing several photographs of her and Assange together; it is a documentary everybody interested should watch. Literally thousands of newspapers and magazines all over the world have named her, including the New York Times and the Times of India, aside from those near 200,000 internet entries. The Twittersphere numbers are astronomical.

Gavin Esler, Joan Smith and I all knew her name – what special rights do we three enjoy that entitle us to know that, but would intend to debar the viewers from knowing that? I am willing to bet that virtually all those tweeting and pretending outrage that I named Ms Ardin, already themselves knew her name. They just somehow think nobody else should be allowed to. There is virtually nobody in Sweden – which is after all where she lives – who does not know her name. It is a cause celebre there.

If what I did was illegal, as is being claimed, then somebody had better come and arrest me. As however there are no legal proceedings on this issue in the UK and no prospect of a prosecution here, I know of no lawful reason I should not have named her. I suspect that the number of Newsnight viewers who heard the name for the first time is very small indeed. It might, of course, give some a tool to research further for themselves the facts of the case. That would be very useful indeed.

As for the interview, I was sorry that Aaronovitch was not there (as I had been told he would be) as I might have been more robust – I felt rather constrained arguing with Joan Smith as I generally like and respect her. Strangely enough, as I did the interview I was much less worried about it than I was on subsequently hearing it, because I did not realise the extent my microphone had been turned down compared to Gavin’s and Joan’s when they were speaking across me – which was most of the time I was speaking. It would be interesting if someone with the patience could tot up how many seconds I had speaking with nobody speaking over me, compared to Joan.

To sum up, I was insufficiently assertive and allowed myself to be shouted down, than which I really should know better. But I did succeed in getting over the fact, with examples, that whistleblowers are routinely fitted up with unrelated charges. And all the manufactured fury at my naming Anna Ardin might well lead people to research her claims and behaviour, which would be a good thing. So I am reasonably relaxed.

UPDATE

I have just found the transcript of the Australian Broadcasting Company’s documentary on the Ardin claims against Assange. This is genuine and painstaking investigative journalism from the flagship and long-established “Four corners” programme and shows a glaring contrast between the British and Australian Broadcasting Company approach. The BBC won’t even allow you to mention Ardin’s name, let alone question her story or her motives. The ABC does a full investigation and comes up with some extremely important facts.

It is also interesting that ABC interview Ardin’s own lawyer, as well as Assange’s, and neither shows any concern at the repeated use of Ardin’s name in the interview, of a piece with the fact that it has frequently appeared in the Swedish media.

The documentary is entitled “Sex, Lies and Julian Assange.” This extract starts about twenty minutes in. Click on the title for the full thing. Another interviewee, politician Rick Falkvinge, is obviously extremely conscious of what he may and may not say legally while extradition proceedings are in train, but again appears to have no problem with the interviewer using Anna Ardin’s name.

What is such a big issue for the BBC, and the politically correct media twitterers of London, is apparently not an issue for those in Sweden most closely connected to the case.

ANDREW FOWLER: At the heart of the matter is whether the Swedish judicial authorities will treat him fairly. Certainly, events so far provide a disturbing picture of Swedish justice. Using facts agreed between the defence and prosecution and other verified information, we have pieced together what happened during those crucial three weeks in August.

On August 11th, 2010, Assange arrived in Sweden to attend a conference organised by the Swedish Brotherhood – a branch of the Social Democratic Party. He was offered Anna Ardin’s apartment while she was away, but Ardin returned home a day early on Friday the 13th. She invited Assange to stay the night, and they had sex. She would later tell police Assange had violently pinned her down and ignored her requests to use a condom. Assange denies this.

The following day, Assange addressed the conference with Ardin at his side. Later that afternoon Ardin organised the Swedish equivalent of a top-notch barbeque – a Crayfish Party. She posted a Twitter message. “Julian wants to go to a crayfish party. Anyone have a couple of available seats tonight or tomorrow?”

The crayfish party was held that night in a court yard off her apartment. It went on until the early hours of the morning. Ardin tweeted at 2am: “Sitting outdoors at 02:00 and hardly freezing with the world’s coolest, smartest people! It’s amazing!”

A guest at the party would later tell Swedish Police the event was a very hearty evening. When he offered to put Assange up at his apartment, Ardin replied, “He can stay with me.”

In the past 24 hours, Ardin had worked closely with Assange, had sex with him, organised a crayfish party on his behalf – and, according to one witness, turned down alternate accommodation for him. It is during this same period that police will later investigate whether Assange coerced and sexually molested Anna Ardin.

PER E. SAMUELSON: Well, if you send text messages like that, “I’ve just spent some time with the coolest people in the world”, the night after you then say you were raped – I mean you shouldn’t write such text messages if you had been raped by that person the night before.

ANDREW FOWLER: Your client described Julian Assange as a “cool man”. I think, one of the “coolest men in the world” that she’d had in her bed.

CLAES BORGSTROM: I will argue in court. I have of course arguments concerning exactly what you’re talking about now, but I will not tell any media of how I am going to represent the women in in court. I’m sorry.

ANDREW FOWLER: But can you see how that looks as though…

CLAES BORGSTROM: Yes, of course I can.

ANDREW FOWLER: …it’s a fit up. It looks as though they are in fact setting him up.

CLAES BORGSTROM: I’m quite aware of that.

ANDREW FOWLER: Sunday August 15th – the next day. Assange attended a dinner party at Stockholm’s Glenfiddich restaurant, organised by pirate party founder Rick Falkvinge.

RICK FALKVINGE: I think a lot of people at the… at the table had meatballs. I think Julian might have been one of them. Now, Swedish meatballs that, that’s a little bit like mum’s apple pie in Sweden – as in, you can call my wife ugly, you can kick my dog, but the instant you say something bad about my mother’s meatballs I’m going to take it personal.

ANDREW FOWLER: Also at the dinner was Anna Ardin.

(to Rick Falkvinge) So, just to get this straight: Julian Assange arrived with Anna Ardin and he left with Anna Ardin.

RICK FALKVINGE: Yep.

ANDREW FOWLER: What was their behaviour like towards each other?

RICK FALKVINGE: Well, I was discussing mainly with Julian and the… again I can’t go into too much detail here, but it was at least a very professional dinner. There were two high level organisations, both intent on changing the world behaving professionally.

ANDREW FOWLER: The fact that Anna Ardin accompanied Julian Assange through this dinner and left with him – what does that say to you?

RICK FALKVINGE: Well that’s going into speculating on merits of extradition, and I can’t really do that. I think that be… you’re presenting an objective fact, as did I, and if people want to read something into that that’s obviously ripe for doing so, but I can’t spell it out.

ANDREW FOWLER: Four Corners has obtained a photograph, lodged with police investigators, from that evening. Anna Ardin is on the left. Afterwards, Assange would again spend the night at her apartment.

The following day, August the 16th, Assange had sex with Sophia Wilen at her apartment. According to police records, Ardin was aware that he had slept with Sophia. A witness told police he contacted Anna Ardin looking for Assange. She texted back: “He’s not here. He’s planned to have sex with the cashmere girl every evening, but not made it. Maybe he finally found time yesterday?” That same day, the witness asked Ardin, “Is it cool he’s living there? Do you want, like, for me to fix something else?” According to the witness she replied: “He doesn’t, like, sleep at nights so that’s a bit difficult. So he has a bit of difficulty taking care of his hygiene. But it’s ok if he lives with me, it’s no problem.”

Three days later on August 20th, Wilen, accompanied by Ardin went to the Klara police station in central Stockholm to seek advice about whether Assange could be forced to take an STD test. Ardin had gone along primarily to support Wilen. Sometime during Wilen’s questioning the police announced to Ardin and Wilen that Assange was to be arrested and questioned about possible rape and molestation. Wilen became so distraught she refused to give any more testimony and refused to sign what had been taken down.

JENNIFER ROBINSON: The circumstances leading up to the issue of the arrest warrant gave cause for grave concern for Julian about the procedures that were adopted in the investigation. We have to remember that when the announcement was put out that he would be subject to a warrant, one of the complainants was upset by that, and later said that she felt railroaded by the police.

KARIN ROSANDER, SWEDISH PROSECUTOR’S OFFICE: Well what happened is what was that the duty prosecutor got a phone call from the police and the duty prosecutor decided that he should be arrested.

ANDREW FOWLER: And what happened?

KARIN ROSANDER: He was arrested in his absence, but he… they never got in… got in contact with him so, but he was arrested in his absence. It’s a technical… technical thing in Sweden, Swedish law, yeah.

ANDREW FOWLER: The Prosecutor’s Office might not have contacted Assange but within hours they let the whole of Sweden know what was going on – leaking to the Expressen Tabloid the statements of Ardin and Wilen. The newspaper front page read: “Assange hunted for rape in Sweden”.

JENNIFER ROBINSON: Julian wakes up the following morning to read the newspapers to hear that he’s wanted for double rape and he’s absolutely shocked.

THOMAS MATTSSON: Two of our reporters had information about Julian Assange, and we also had a confirmation from the prosecutor which confirmed on record that there was a police investigation against Julian Assange.

ANDREW FOWLER: It was now the case took a strange twist. Within 24 hours, a more senior prosecutor dismissed the rape allegations, leaving only the lesser accusation of molestation. Assange willingly went to the police on August 30th and made a statement.

During the interview he expressed his fears that anything he said would end up in the tabloid newspaper Expressen. The interviewing police officer said: “I’m not going to leak anything.” The interview was leaked.

PER E. SAMUELSON: Why did you leak his name to a tabloid paper? How… how can you drop the case and reopen the case and how can you… how can you not say that he waited for five weeks in Sweden voluntarily to participate in the investigation? Why do you have to arrest him? Why do you have to keep him in handcuffs? Why can’t you conduct this in a proper manner? The rest of the world sees it, but Sweden unfortunately doesn’t.

ANDREW FOWLER: It is perhaps understandable that Assange had doubts he would receive fair treatment from the Swedish authorities. On September 15th, the prosecutor told Assange he was permitted to leave Sweden. Assange, back in England, would later offer to return within a month. The Swedish Authorities said too late – a second warrant had already been issued for his arrest.

ANDREW FOWLER: He says that he left the country and then was prepared to come back at any time. Is that your understanding?

CLAES BORGSTROM: I don’t believe that.

ANDREW FOWLER: He says that he was prepared to come back in October but the prosecutor wanted him back earlier.

CLAES BORGSTROM: I don’t know. I don’t believe he wanted to he was he wanted to come freely back to Sweden. I don’t think so.

ANDREW FOWLER: Can you understand that the Australian people may not understand how somebody can be accused in their absence when they haven’t even been interviewed, then have that rape case dropped, the arrest warrant removed and then have it re-instituted, all in the space of a few days?

KARIN ROSANDER: Yeah I can very well understand the confusion and, and, I… that is very difficult to understand, well, exactly how it works.

ANDREW FOWLER: Well you call it confusing, it’s… it may be slightly more than that.

KARIN ROSANDER: Well that’s the way it works here in Sweden so, well… but I can understand the confusion, definitely

.

Newsnight tonight, BBC2, live.

A first class documentary from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation which exposes the risibility of the sexual allegations about Assange. The truth the UK media will not tell. For just the key points, start viewing at 20 minutes in.

Today’s Guardian editorial quotes directly from my speech at the Ecuadorean Embassy, in a sneering way:

their remarks concerned western Europe’s “neocon juntas”

The Guardian editorial makes the direct claim that I, and the other speakers, omitted all mention of the sexual allegations against Julian Assange in Sweden. That is a direct lie by the Guardian. In fact over half my speech – 23 sentences to be precise – were dedicated to the allegations against Assange and putting them in the context of the irrefutable evidence of the serial use of such allegations against various whistleblowers, including myself, in order to damage their reputation and brand them as criminals unconnected to whistleblowing.

Despite quoting my speech in its editorial, and mentioning it three times in its liveblog of the rally, the Guardian at no stage made any attempt to indicate the gist of what I actually said. Even the New York Times, without giving any of my explanation, at least got the point when it reported that:

a former British diplomat, Craig Murray, asserted that Mr. Assange had been “fitted up with criminal offenses” as a pretext

Of course the Guardian did not overlook what the NYT picked up. You could not overlook all 23 sentences of it. But simply the Guardian wished to run an editorial arguing that the Swedish allegations had been completely ignored. The facts did not suit Rusbridger’s comment. So Rusbridger’s comment remained free and lies were sacred.

The Guardian’s shrill and vitriolic campaign against Assange is extraordinary in its ferocity, persistence and pointless repetition.. The sad truth is that its origins lie in the frustration of the Guardian’s hopes to make a great deal of cash from involvement in Assange’s putative memoirs. That such a once great paper should fall sway to such a mean-minded little neo-con lickspittle as Rusbridger and his Blair supporting coterie is a great tragedy.

This is what, contrary to Rusbridger’s lies, I actually said:

Anybody with time and patience might like to keep posting links to it under the Guardian editorial once they open comments on it tomorrow morning.

I spent today inside the Ecuadorian Embassy with Julian Assange, who I am happy to say is both physically and mentally on very good form. I was sitting in the room behind him in a very comfortable leather armchair whilst he made his balcony speech, and I must say I thought the text of it was excellent.

I spoke immediately before Julian, from outside the Embassy. This was my own effort, which I hope provided some valuable context to the persecution of Assange.

I could not help but be struck by the ridiculously excessive police presence – hundreds and hundreds of policemen everywhere. I don’t think that the concept of freedom of information can be killed off by the extreme intimidation of a single man, but by Heavens, Hague and Cameron are going to try.

UPDATE

100,000 HITS IN 100 MINUTES CRASHED THE SITE. WE DON’T KNOW YET IF GENUINE INTEREST OR DENIAL OF SERVICE ATTACK. OUR BRILLIANT WEBHOSTS HAVE QUADRUPLED THE RESOURCE, BUT IF YOU CAN HELP TAKE THE STRAIN BY REPOSTING I WOULD BE VERY GRATEFUL.

I returned to the UK today to be astonished by private confirmation from within the FCO that the UK government has indeed decided – after immense pressure from the Obama administration – to enter the Ecuadorean Embassy and seize Julian Assange.

This will be, beyond any argument, a blatant breach of the Vienna Convention of 1961, to which the UK is one of the original parties and which encodes the centuries – arguably millennia – of practice which have enabled diplomatic relations to function. The Vienna Convention is the most subscribed single international treaty in the world.

The provisions of the Vienna Convention on the status of diplomatic premises are expressed in deliberately absolute terms. There is no modification or qualification elsewhere in the treaty.

Article 22

1.The premises of the mission shall be inviolable. The agents of the receiving State may not enter
them, except with the consent of the head of the mission.
2.The receiving State is under a special duty to take all appropriate steps to protect the premises
of the mission against any intrusion or damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the
mission or impairment of its dignity.
3.The premises of the mission, their furnishings and other property thereon and the means of
transport of the mission shall be immune from search, requisition, attachment or execution.

Not even the Chinese government tried to enter the US Embassy to arrest the Chinese dissident Chen Guangchen. Even during the decades of the Cold War, defectors or dissidents were never seized from each other’s embassies. Murder in Samarkand relates in detail my attempts in the British Embassy to help Uzbek dissidents. This terrible breach of international law will result in British Embassies being subject to raids and harassment worldwide.

The government’s calculation is that, unlike Ecuador, Britain is a strong enough power to deter such intrusions. This is yet another symptom of the “might is right” principle in international relations, in the era of the neo-conservative abandonment of the idea of the rule of international law.

The British Government bases its argument on domestic British legislation. But the domestic legislation of a country cannot counter its obligations in international law, unless it chooses to withdraw from them. If the government does not wish to follow the obligations imposed on it by the Vienna Convention, it has the right to resile from it – which would leave British diplomats with no protection worldwide.

I hope to have more information soon on the threats used by the US administration. William Hague had been supporting the move against the concerted advice of his own officials; Ken Clarke has been opposing the move against the advice of his. I gather the decision to act has been taken in Number 10.

There appears to have been no input of any kind from the Liberal Democrats. That opens a wider question – there appears to be no “liberal” impact now in any question of coalition policy. It is amazing how government salaries and privileges and ministerial limousines are worth far more than any belief to these people. I cannot now conceive how I was a member of that party for over thirty years, deluded into a genuine belief that they had principles.

The London Olympics are already achieving the number one aim of the politicians who brought them here, which is making our politicians feel very important indeed.

The media is quite frenetic in its efforts to make us all believe we should be terrifically proud of the fact we are hosting the Olympics, as though there were something unique in this achievement. If we can’t competently do something that Greece, Spain and China have done in recent years, that would be remarkable. Of course the Games will be on the whole well delivered, sufficient for the media and politicians to declare it an ecstatic success. Some of the sporting moments will be sublime, as ever.

But did it have to be in London? We won’t know the total cost of the Games for months, but it will cost the taxpayer at least £9 billion and I suspect a lot more. I also suspect the GDP figures will, in the event, show that the massive net fall in visitor numbers has hurt the already shrinking economy further.

But to take the most optimistic figure, holding the Olympics in London has cost every person in the country an average of £150 per head in extra taxes. That is £600 for a family of four. Actually it is in the end going to be well over £2,000, as of course the money has been borrowed on the never never, and taxpayers are going to be paying it off their whole lives, along with the sum ten times higher they are already paying direct into the pockets of the bankers through their taxes.

The very rich, of course, don’t pay much tax, so they are not worried.

But to take just the figure of £600 extra taxes for a family of four, the lowest possible amount, and not including the interest. Is having the Olympics here really worth paying out £600 for? If Tony Blair had approached the head of the family and said “We are going to have the Olympics in London, but it’s going to cost you £600, would the answer have been from most ordinary people: “Yes, great idea, this is that important to us”?

People are not disconcerted because they don’t see that they have to pay. There is no special Olympics tax, and they pay their taxes in a variety of ways, and individuals are not the sole source of taxation. But this is nonetheless real money taken from the people in pursuit of the hubris of politicians.

I love sport. I hate the corruption of the International Olympic Committee, Fifa and the rest; I hate the vicious corporatism and militarisation of our capital and absurd elitism of the transport lanes; the sport itself I love. But with the economy contracting, and the NHS being farmed out for profit, is it really worth £600 for a family – and many families are really struggling in a heartbreaking way – is it worth the money to have the Olympics here rather than in Paris?

Of course it isn’t. I think many of us will feel an extra pleasure watching the Opening ceremony because it is British. Patriotic pride will surge. It is not wrong to enjoy the spectacle tonight on TV. The corporate well connected and ruling classes will enjoy it in the stadium.

But after you have watched it on TV, ask yourself this question. How much more did you enjoy it than enjoy watching the Beijing ceremony, and was that margin of extra enjoyment something that everybody in the room would have paid out £150 for?

Because they just did.

On Monday 30 July at 11am on Radio 4 there will be a BBC radio programme entitled “Torture in the 21st Century”, presented by John Sweeney. I was interviewed extensively for it, though I don’t know how much of my interview will feature. I shall be in Ghana then and iPlayer does not work abroad, so if anybody has the technical ability to make a sound file and send it to me, I should be grateful.

Britain has still not admitted, let alone sought to redress, its complicity in post 9/11 torture networks, and indeed its continued receipt on a regular basis of intelligence from torture from the security services of, for example, Bahrain. The worrying thing about the disingenuous vapourings of John Sawers, head of MI6, is that he still maintains that torture gets you the truth. It does not. It gets you whatever the Bahraini, Uzbek, US, or whatever government wishes to hear, which is a very different thing.

The Gibson Inquiry into complicity in torture was unceremoniously halted, a total fail like every other stated aim of the coalition government. It has presented an interim report to ministers who have spent two weeks considering the “security risk” of publishing it. This is nonsense as the interim report is purely procedural. It contains recommendations for how a resumed inquiry (ha ha) should conduct its business. Gibson’s interim report contains no reference to any evidence on any cases of torture or on the policy of complicity in torture.

In fact ministers are really stalling publication because they are hoping simply to let the entire notion of an inquiry die away.

This is the response I got from the Gibson Inquiry secretariat on the fate of my own evidence in relation to the interim report:

There was no specific reference to evidence from individual witnesses as we were in the pre-evidence gathering phase prior to being wound up and your evidence was provided to the police in relation to their investigation into the Libyan cases. The Panel has seen your evidence and will ensure that this is included in the handover materials that are to be stored and provided to the next Inquiry as and when it is established.

I am convinced there is no chance I will ever get to testify either in court or to a judicial inquiry. The powers that be in this country have great finesse. They don’t have to do anything too messy to inconvenient witnesses, they just freeze them out.

I am currently reading David Brown’s Palmerston; A Biography.

In 1846 Palmerston had threatened the government of Spain with military intervention if it defaulted on its bond interest payments. Palmerston faced a Chartist candidate, George Harney, at the general election in his Tiverton constituency. At the hustings debate, Harney said Palmerston’s threat to Spain was unjustifiable:

“These Spanish bondholders are English capitalists, who lent some millions of money to the government of Spain, not, as has been represented, because they were anxious to help the people of that country to obtain “Liberal institutions”, but because they were promised a higher rate of interest than they could get at home. That money had been derived from the labour of the English people.”

Harney argued that Palmerston’s foreign policy was simply to deploy the resources of the state to defend the interests of the rich.

The Tiverton crowd greeted this assertion with “immense cheering” and Harney had a clear majority at the show of hands at the hustings, which was attended by most of the adult population of Tiverton. He withdrew from the actual ballot, however, in protest at the extremely limited franchise – only about 600 people in the constituency had the vote.

George Harney, forgotten hero. We could do with him today.

Just when you thought our rulers could not get worse. Obama, taking time out from targeting teenagers for aerial assassination by drone, has surpassed the Bush regime by clamping new and extreme limitations on the right of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay to meet the attorneys who are defending them in court. Sometimes you have to pinch yourself to believe this stuff is true as you type it.

At least one attorney has been told he will have no access to his client unless he signs a “voluntary agreement” which accepts that any meetings with his client are entirely at the discretion of the US authorities and not a right.

In another “technical” adjustment, the Obama administration has altered flight rules to allow unpiloted drones to fly over the United States, in places where previously only piloted planes were allowed. There has been no official reason given for the change in regulations, but it opens the way for unlimited aerial surveillance of US citizens, and the eventual sci-fi scenario of citizens being zapped from the air without warning if Obama does not approve of them, just as has happened to hundreds of people in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere. That may found far fetched – but so does anti-aircraft batteries on the roofs of London apartment blocks and 17,000 army personnel patrolling the streets of London. Civil liberties have disappeared so fast in the past decade there is no telling where it will end.

Completely unthreatening small child found on aeroplane! More security hysteria! Are tanks needed at Manchester airport? Anti-aircraft batteries for roof of Old Trafford. Etc.

Zounds, the perpetual security hysteria is boring.

The invoice for “Free Tickets” from KLM/Air France Flying Blue

Taxes and surcharges Adult

Total including taxes and surcharges : £ 2,394.16

I fly around the world a great deal and had never tried to use any of the “airmile” type benefits I had accrued. As I kept receiving tempting brochures and internet offers, I decided to use my 420,000 Flying Blue miles on taking the family to Martinique for a holiday.

Flying Blue had been bombarding my inbox with a promo. I was stupid enough to invest an hour into trying to book this online. This is the bill I was presented with at the end for these “free” flights.

The taxes I can understand as they are passed on by the airline, but the “Carrier Imposed Surcharge” of 372.28 per person is simply an airfare. I phoned up Flying Blue to query this and was told it was a “fuel surcharge”.

It was stupid of me to believe I was actually going to be able to get what all that promotional material seemed to offer. On the face of it this is just a simple tale of Craig being gullible. But I can’t help feeling that the pointlessness of all those brochures and emails, of the rigmarole of your membership card and points accumulation and statements, all to attempt to sell you something you didn’t particularly want, by deceit, says something about the lack of values of straightforwardness in modern society. Or something.

Anyway Flying Blue is a confidence trick, and if this saves someone else the time and disappointment of bothering with it, that would be a good thing.

I am very sorry that President John Atta Mills of Ghana has died today. He was a good and straightforward man whose Christian faith was absolutely central to the way he conducted himself. He completed the task of making Ghana a meaningful democracy, by taking the NDC completely away from the politics of fear and intimidation. While I thought his Presidency a little too conservative and non-dynamic, there are much worse faults. His country should be grateful for his period of calm and consolidation. I think calm is how he will be remembered; there are much worse qualities.

Ghana has been lucky in having John Kuffour and John Atta Mills as Presidents in its democratic era, and is further lucky to have John Mahama, whom I know well for fifteen years and greatly respect, to step in now as President. It has been my peculiar chance in life to get to know nearly all the senior Ghanaian and a great many of the senior British politicians personally. There can be no doubt that the Ghanaians are a great deal more impressive.

In a few months the Presidential election will be between John Mahama and Nana Akuffo Addo. Either one of them is worth six of David Cameron.

I sincerely hope that President Mills finds his place in the heaven he believed in so completely.

This is a trailer for an extremely important documentary by Michael Andersen. The complicity of NATO and EU governments with the Karimov regime is one of the clearest glimpses of the evil motives that lurk behind the reasonable image that western politicians strive to portray. The complicity of the mainstream media in ignoring these facts is terrifying.

As NATO intensifies its logistical transit through Uzbekistan, as Britain increases training for the Uzbek military and secret services and looks to further arms sales, please bring this documentary to the attention of everyone you can, in any way that you can.

The appearance in the trailer of Pierre Morel, EU Special Representative for Central Asia, is noteworthy. He really is one of the nastiest men in Europe, with not even the slightest pretence of any concern for human rights except as a bureaucratic box to be ticked. What is the real interest of this arch European powercrat? You will hardly be surprised to hear it is Central Asia’s oil and gas.

One of the most important diplomatic developments in the last year – not mentioned anywhere in the lamestream media – has been the westward shift of the Government of Azerbaijan. Under hereditary President Aliev, son of Putin’s ex boss and mentor in the KGB, they had seemed the closest of Russia’s allies. But I noted a few months ago that remarkably on Syria they were voting with the U.S. and against Russia at the UN Security Council. Now they have agreed that an EU hydrocarbon pipeline can pass through their waters in the Caspian – thus negating Putin’s blocking move when he effectively annexed part of Georgia.

Germany now sees the eventual transit of Turkmenistan’s and Uzbekistan’s gas through Ukraine and Poland and into the Nordstream project, while bypassing Russia, as a tantalisingly close prospect. The furious courting of Central Asian dictators is therefore viewed as an unbounded success, and mangled corpses and tortured women an irrelevancy – along with the probable extinction of the sturgeon and other inconveniences. No wonder Morel looks self-satisfied.

I do hope the Central Asians who suffer grinding poverty and terrible repression will one day understand all this, and once they have their freedom will not forgive.

Following the humiliating result of the Oval Test, I have been given a secret look at the England selectors’ preliminary thoughts for the second test line-up. This is the probable team.

A. Strauss
J. Smuts
J. Trott
P. W. Botha
K. Pietersen
L. Voortrekker
M. Prior
N. Robben-Island
B. Afrikaaner
R. Apartheid
E Terre Blanche

12th man: N Mandela
Coach: Andy Flower

Andy Flower has commented that he would love to give jobs in the England team to more English people, but unfortunately they are all scroungers caught in a benefit culture (c. I. Duncan-Smith).

“They just don’t want to do this kind of hard physical work”, said Flower, “English people are too obese and can’t get up for an 11am start. They don’t have the skills and they don’t have the work ethic. They can only play cricket if it’s on their Playstation. That’s why the England team finds it more viable to employ South Africans. We are much more hard working and effective.”

Blair’s latest attempt at rehabilitation is a discussion tomorrow at Westminster Central Hall with the Archbishop of Canterbury on the place of religion in society. A vexed question, but given that Blair believes God OK’d the invasion of Iraq and the resulting million deaths, not one that can usefully be discussed by this charlatan.

You can protest at Westminster Central Hall from 4pm tomorrow. Should be a lovely day for it. Bring own rotten tomatoes.

Those coming from Central Asia, Bahrain, Qatar or Saudi Arabia to the Olympics, interested to see what life in a democracy feels like, will find it seems exactly like life at home in their dictatorship. 17,000 soldiers will be glowering over the venues, checking identity documents, stopping and searching. The mlitary will occupy residential buildings, be buzzing overhead, rolling down the streets and patrolling the river. There will be missiles on land, sea and air, though nobody knows what the threat is that this is supposed to counter.

What will make our dictatorship resident visitors feel especially at home is the contempt for the ordinary citizen. Not only will they have the military all over them and be subject to frequent stopping and questioning, they will be expected continually to get out of the way of their betters. Special VIP lanes on the road will allow officials to sweep by, while normal citizens will simply have to sit in gridlock and stew. Who cares? The military will stick missiles on your roof if they wish. What they are going to shoot down, and which bit of London it will land on, is not to be questioned.

Here in Ramsgate we are losing our regular train service to London completely for the duration. All the HS1 trains are being commandeered to run a shuttle service between Ebbsfleet and Stratford. 22 trains a day from Ramsgate are simply cancelled. Slow trains are available, but a journey normally 70 minutes will become – at the fastest possible – 2 hours and 35 minutes. A large number of commuters will simply be unable to get to work anything like on time, and have to spend door to door over seven hours a day in travelling as well as their working day. Nobody was consulted. Quite a few don’t yet know – there has been no determined effort to tell people. Leaflets are available in the ticket office if you ask for one.

But the leaflets might as well just say, “You are fucked, and we don’t care”.

The extra 3,500 military personnel it was today announced will be used at the games cover a shortfall in Group Four personnel. Group Four were providing 4,000 paid staff and 6,000 unpaid volunteers. It is the unpaid volunteer numbers which are short by 3,500.

Most people are not stupid. They may volunteer happily for sport or for charity, but to work for nothing to make tens of millions of pounds of profit for Group Four as it exploits them, plainly does not have universal appeal. Those 2,500 who have volunteered to work for nothing for G4S are the idiots in this story. How gullible can you be?

Bob Russell, MP for Colchester, today in parliament made the excellent point to Teresa May that Group Four (or G4S as they now call themselves) should not be employed because of their role in aiding and abetting Israel’s illegal activities in the West Bank and human rights abuse there. With breathtaking chutzpah Teresa May replied that it was this kind of valuable international experience that made Group Four the right company to provide security for the games.

Which brings me back to my point at the start. Those visiting from oppressive regimes will feel absolutely at home. That is the one and only thing you can trust Teresa May to ensure with grim efficiency.

Cameron’s favourite dictatorship, Bahrain, has jailed human rights activist Nabeel Rajab for three months for tweeting that pro-regime demonstrators were being paid. Total silence from western governments. Meanwhile two pro-democracy demonstrators have been shot dead in Saudi Arabia. More total silence from western governments. At the same time, those governments want us to believe that the massive arms shipments being sent by Saudi Arabia to promote a Syrian civil war are in support of democracy. Even the mianstream media appear to have worked out there is a problem with this narrative.

You expect the Tories to be stupid. It is their nature, as John Stuart Mill pointed out. But the disruption by New Labour of radical reform of the House of Lords is about career advantage and a total absence of genuine political belief. Which is precisely what Blair brought to New Labour. Tomorrow he makes his Labour Party comeback speech at Highbury – to a closed £120 a ticket dinner. Says it all, really.