The revelations by Alex Salmond on Friday are set to rock the Scottish Government to its core, but the targeted persecution he suffered is not unique within UK politics, sadly it is rife. The exposure of the political dirty tricks to discredit and criminalize a man of integrity have become an acceptable norm and I can only hope that Salmond’s fight to clear his name should make us all pay far more attention to who is feeding us the news, and whose agenda they are promoting, to demand significantly greater scrutiny in future. It is a triumph that the trumped-up charges against Salmond were scrutinized sufficiently in Court to exonerate him and to support his Judicial Review of the unfair processes used to criminalize him. Truth is the best disinfectant so perhaps now those who targeted Salmond will be held accountable and the corruption that allowed them to do be so vindictive will be excised from the system. The Media are still trying to spin this to solidify the demonization of Alex Salmond and his personal battle is not over yet.
There are very important lessons that we should be paying close attention to right now south of the border so that we can route out Political corruption here in the UK. A good place to start would still be in Scotland while they are in the process of purging the cancer that warps our political system by churning out toxic propaganda to disrupt, demonize and destroy progressive political leaders dedicated to serving the needs of ordinary citizens. The Scottish Registered fake Charity, the ‘Institute of Statecraft’ and its so-called ‘Integrity Initiative,’ is already known to have interfered with both foreign and domestic elections by propagating and disseminating fake news on behalf of the far-right agenda. This clandestine organization was supported by UK taxpayer funding to generate defamatorily material targeting Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party well in advance of and throughout the Covert 2019 Rigged Election campaign; this has already been exposed: it needs to be more fully Investigated as it invalidates the shock result.
In a properly functioning democracy such a blatantly obvious and extreme level of incumbent Government corruption sponsored by public funds would bring down that Government, but the UK continues to stray further and further from the path of democracy and at this time can best be described as the authoritarian Fascist state of the Tory Sovereign Dictatorship. Alex Salmond’s testimony was an attempt to drag Scotland back from the brink of becoming a failed state, but it is impossible to consider the dangerous Tory cabal recklessly running the UK into the ground as even close to legitimate governance and we must demand change. Salmond was forced to rely on crowdfunding to raise money for his legal battle; we should take note and utilize this valuable tool in our cases to rescue the progressive left from SLAPP Lawsuits as well as Judicial Review battles while this avenue is still open to us. If Corbyn had fought back aggressively to clear his name as Salmond has we would not be sinking in this Tory quagmire right now.
“Question More” is the mantra at RT, that’s Russian Television to the uninitiated, a TV station that our Tory Sovereign Dictatorship would sorely like to shut down in their attempt to censor alternative voices. Alex Salmond presents regularly on RT and he is far from the only progressive voice to have turned to RT, among them Noam Chomsky, respected Investigative Journalist John Pilger and they have consistently supported Julian Assange. RT is criticized as just a Russian State propaganda station, but the news coverage is often more thoroughly investigated and well balanced than the BBC. It is truly shocking to admit how low our BBC has sunk in its sycophantic promotion of an increasingly radical Tory right-wing. The extreme extent of pro-Tory bias presented by the BBC during their coverage of the Covert 2019 Rigged Election was far too glaringly obvious to be ignored. Salmond’s exposure of corruption in Scottish politics must be a wake-up call to us all: ‘no smoke without fire’ depends on who is creating the smoke!
So while RT remains under attack from the Tories who feel threatened by their content, we should resist being sucked into a stupor of belief in what used to be a credible national news reporting station that has been reduced to a Tory propaganda mouthpiece. RT has not shied away from presenting Russian protests regarding Alexey Navalny, but they do not endorse the faux outrage over his trial. Meanwhile Neocon Governments around the world rant over the Russian authority’s treatment of Navalny as if he is a saint and a national hero, as this suits their concerted political campaign against Putin and the Russian Government. In reality, the entire fiasco involving the Navalny case was seized on by the US in order to sabotage completion of the Nordstream 2 Gas Pipeline as it does not serve American financial interests. No matter how we might feel towards Putin, the Russian authorities do have a right to arrest one of their own citizens in their own country and bring him to trial and we have no right to intervene in their legal processes.
In a Tass Article entitled, “Diplomat slams foreign diplomats flooding Navalny trial,” a Tass correspondent reported earlier that about 20 foreign diplomats, including from the United States, Bulgaria, Poland, Latvia, Austria, and Switzerland, had been seen at the Moscow City Court hearing on possible replacement of Navalny’s suspended sentence under the Yves Rocher case with an actual prison term.” Without access to the charges leveled against him or any of the evidence for or against in his case, foreign supporters of Alexey Navalny’s political ambitions are demanding there should be no trial, it must be halted immediately to secure his unconditional release. But think about this rationally; would our UK Government or the Americans accept any similar external intervention or pressure in their Judicial system? I think not! Tass said “The presence of foreign diplomats at the court trial of Russian opposition blogger Alexey Navalny is not a general practice in diplomacy and can rather be interpreted as a political move.”
Reporting from Moscow on February 2 Tass noted that, “Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Tuesday. ‘It is not a normal practice. A normal practice is when foreign diplomats are present in court when case of their nationals or international terrorists, or people who committed crimes in third countries, are tried,’ she wrote on her Facebook account. ‘But when diplomats, the more so, collectively, are present when cases of not their citizens are tried it is rather a political move. She also recalled that Russian diplomats are not always allowed to attend court trials of Russian nationals in Western countries. Tass noted her commenting that ‘In many cases, the US side refuses to allow Russian diplomats to attend court trials of Russian nationals,’ she added. ‘So, instead of inventing any non-existing diplomatic norms and practices, it is better to admit: it is Western money, Western diplomats (ask Washington what Japan is doing at court), a Western political project,’ she stressed.”
The same level of scrutiny and criticism of our UK Legal system by overseas observers, diplomats, and even Amnesty International is simply not tolerated; take the Julian Assange extradition hearings as a case in point. On the Amnesty International Website, Stefan Simanowitz asks, “Why are Amnesty International monitors not able to observe the Assange hearing?” In late September of 2020, he wrote, “The street outside the Old Bailey criminal court in London, where Julian Assange’s extradition hearing has been taking place, was transformed into a carnival. Inside the Old Bailey, the courtroom has turned into a circus. There have been multiple technical difficulties, a COVID-19 scare which temporarily halted proceedings, and numerous procedural irregularities including the decision by the presiding judge to withdraw permission for Amnesty International’s fair trial observer to have access to the courtroom.” The situation of access had not improved a great deal for the hearing in early 2021.
Although the extradition was blocked due to a perceived risk of suicide the outrageous US political persecution of Julian Assange was upheld as valid which does not bode well for the safety of Journalists around the globe and our access to free speech. Meanwhile due to a number of credible complaints regarding Neocon darling Navalny’s history of vile hate speech Amnesty International no longer feel it can categorize him as a ‘Prisoner of Conscience.’ in reality Navalny is a ruthlessly ambitious bigoted nationalist: not a particularly nice guy, although you certainly couldn’t learn that from our biased Media: Craig Murray was a lot more criticalin evaluating his integrity. Medical experts who have analyzed early testresults on Navalny say they reveal symptoms of acute pancreatitis, diabetes,liver failure, severe dehydration, muscular rigidity, a slew of bacterialinfections, even a possible heart attack associated with his kidney problems:”not recognizable symptoms of a nerve agent attack! No one was kitted up forhazmat.
Was the Navalny case another opportunistic false flag event weaponized to target Russia? But I digress… In reporting last years Assange trial Simanowitz described “Arriving at the court each morning was an assault to the senses with the noise of samba bands, sound systems and chanting crowds and the sight of banners, balloons, and billboards at every turn. The first day of the hearing, which started on Monday 7 September, drew more than two hundred people to gather outside the court. People in fancy dress mingled with camera crews, journalists, and a pack of hungry photographers who would disappear regularly to give chase to any white security van heading towards the court, pressing their long lenses against the darkened windows. One of the vans had come from Belmarsh high-security prison, Julian Assange’s home for the last 16 months. The Wikileaks founder was in court for the resumption of proceedings that will ultimately decide on the Trump administration’s request for his extradition to the US.”
Reporting on the charges Amnesty say, “The American prosecutors claim he conspired with whistleblowers (army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning) to obtain classified information. They want him to stand trial on espionage charges in the US where he would face a prison sentence of up to 175 years. Assange’s lawyers began with a request that the alleged evidence in a new indictment handed down in June be excluded from consideration given that it came so late. The Judge denied this. In the afternoon session, the lawyers requested an adjournment until next year to give his lawyers time to respond to the US prosecutor’s new indictment. They said they had been given insufficient time to examine the new allegations, especially since they had only ‘limited access’ to the imprisoned Assange. Indeed, this most recent hearing was the first time in more than six months that Julian Assange had been able to meet with his lawyers. The judge rejected this request.”
Simanowitz documents being denied access to the hearing as an observer for Amnesty International. “Reacting to the decision, Kristinn Hrafnsson the editor-in-chief of Wikileaks told me that: ‘the decision is an insult to the UK courts and to Julian Assange and to justice. For the court to deny the request to adjourn is denying Assange his rights.’ Amnesty International had requested access to the court for a trial monitor to observe the hearings, but the court denied us a designated seat in court. Our monitor initially did get permission to access the technology to monitor remotely, but the morning the hearing started he received an email informing us that the Judge had revoked Amnesty International’s remote access. We applied again for access to the proceedings on Tuesday 8 September, setting out the importance of monitoring and Amnesty International’s vast experience of observing trials in even some of the most repressive countries.”
Simanowitz documented the official response to their request saying that “The judge wrote back expressing her ‘regret’ at her decision and saying: ‘I fully recognize that justice should be administered in public,’ Despite her regret and her recognition that scrutiny is a vital component of open justice, the judge did not change her mind. If Amnesty International and other observers wanted to attend the hearing, they would have to queue for one of the four seats available in a public gallery. We submitted a third application to gain direct access to the overflow room at the court where some media view the live stream, but this has also been denied.” So where was the global outrage over this arrogant refusal to submit to scrutiny? There was none! The UK demand immediate unconditional release for Alexey Navalny, no trial necessary, but do not dare to pry into corrupt Courts over here!
Amnesty International claim that “The refusal of the judge to not to give any ‘special provision’ to expert fair trial, monitors is very disturbing. Through its refusal, the court has failed to recognize a key component of open justice: namely how international trial observers monitor a hearing for its compliance with domestic and international law. They are there to evaluate the fairness of a trial by providing an impartial record of what went on in the courtroom and to advance fair trial standards by putting all parties on notice that they are under scrutiny. Amnesty International has monitored trials from Guantanamo Bay to Bahrain, Ecuador to Turkey. For our observer to be denied access profoundly undermines open justice.”
Simanowitz described other impediments to monitoring the trial saying “In the court, the overflow room has experienced ongoing technical problems with sound and video quality. More than a week after the proceedings began, these basic technical difficulties have not been properly ironed out and large sections of witness evidence are inaudible. These technological difficulties were not restricted to the overflow room. In court, some witnesses trying to ‘call into’ the courtroom last week, were not able to get in. These basic technical difficulties have hampered the ability of those in the courtroom to follow the proceedings.” There is simply no excuse for such easily corrected technical glitches not to be fixed promptly given the critical importance of the venue.
Amnesty International said at the time, “We are still hopeful that a way can be found for our legal expert to monitor the hearing because the decision, in this case, is of huge importance. It goes to the heart of the fundamental tenets of media freedom that underpin the rights to freedom of expression and the public’s right to access information. The US government’s unrelenting pursuit of Julian Assange for having published disclosed documents is nothing short of a full-scale assault on the right to freedom of expression. The potential chilling effect on journalists and others who expose official wrongdoing by publishing information disclosed to them by credible sources could have a profound impact on the public’s right to know what their government is up to. If Julian Assange is silenced, others will also be gagged either directly or by the fear of persecution and prosecution which will hang over a global media community already under assault in the US and in many other countries worldwide.”
Amnesty International claim that “The US Justice Department is not only charging a publisher who has a non-disclosure obligation but a publisher who is not a US citizen and not in America. The US government is behaving as if they have jurisdiction all over the world to pursue any person who receives and publishes information of government wrongdoing. If the UK extradites Assange, he would face prosecution in the USA on espionage charges that could send him to prison for the rest of his life, possibly in a facility reserved for the highest security detainees and subjected to the strictest of daily regimes, including prolonged solitary confinement. All for doing something news editors do the world over, publishing information provided by sources that is in the interest of the wider public.” The US has regressed from thuggish global policeman to global mafia and the UK is facilitating this vile injustice.
Simanowitz reported that “Outside the court, I bumped into Eric Levy, aged 92. His interest in Assange’s case is personal. He was in Baghdad during the American ‘shock and awe’ bombardment in 2003 having traveled to Iraq as part of the Human Shield Movement aiming to stop the war, and failing that, to protect the Iraqi population. ‘I’m here today for the same reason I was in Iraq. Because I believe in justice and I believe in peace,’ he tells me. ‘Julian Assange is not really wanted for espionage. He is wanted for making America look like war criminals.’ Indeed, it is ironic that no one responsible for possible war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan has been prosecuted, let alone punished. And yet the publisher who exposed their crimes is the one in the dock facing a lifetime in jail.” I was pleasantly shocked when Peter Hitchens wrote an article in support of Julian Assange despite admitting to not liking him, but we should expect integrity from credible Journalists and Political Commentators: they need to grow a spine!
Instead they sop-up the garbage churned out by Integrity Initiative or endorse the fake news from discredited idiot Elliot Higgins at ‘Bellingcat.’ Craig was quick to call out fake sleuth, con-artist Higgins early on in his ‘espionage career in Murray’s Blog Post entitled, “Bellingcat’s attempts to gild the Chepiga lily are now becoming ludicrous. The photo they published today is a very obvious fake,” where he noted the glaringly obvious poor photo-shop that Higgins was claiming as evidence. He wrote, “Many people have noticed that the photo of Chepiga on this wall appears to be hanging in completely different lighting conditions from the others. That is indeed a good point.” He also documented the other major error made by this investigative retard when he put the replacement photo in a less than credible position. As Murray queried, “So why is Chepiga in a row of much earlier Heroes of the Soviet Union? Next in sequence in fact to Grigory Dobrunov who got his award in 1956!!!! The pictures are definitely otherwise all in date order.”
Since those early scams you might have expected Higgins to perfect the art of creating photoshop ‘evidence;’ or used some of the copious Government money chucked his way to pay an expert forger. I also expected him to perfect his ludicrous plotlines to make them at least sound superficially believable, but no. His last piece of fantasy fiction rivaled a slightly kinky version of Hans Christian Anderson with a return to a suppressed underwear fetish! This time the magic, oh so deadly, Novichok managed to find its way into Alexey Navalny’s smalls, Ouch! Who put it there, how was it applied and when did this dastardly deed take place? Bellingcat is not yet ready to share the raunchy intimate details of our public hero’s privates. There must have been a highly sophisticated time-release dosing mechanism to conveniently incapacitate Putin’s target enemy mid-flight and not a second before: do not apply logic! The Pilot wasn’t in on the plot as he hastily landed the plane in order to get Navalny to Hospital where they worked to save his life.
The Tories have learned from past successes that believability is superfluous when tossing hateful jingoistic nationalist red meat to the tabloid beasts. The more shocking the revelation the more readable by the gullible masses so any future exposure of the truth will pose no threat while key Media players have agreed to ignore all expert evidence to let their lies stand. The made-for-TV Skripal drama embellished the fake news from Government to hide their complicity in a false flag fraud: the public bought it ‘hook-line-and-sinker, despite glaring inconsistencies that grossly defied logic. The Duma false flag has been comprehensively debunked by credible experts who examined evidence on the ground, but Bellingcat’s lies still prevail because our corrupt Tory Government needs this fake news to be accepted as true by the public; that is disgusting and it really has to change. Will the Alex Salmond case serves as a shock awakening to the fact that we are being far too trusting and as RT promotes we should: “Question more!”
You would have thought that when the neocons went looking for a useful idiot they might have managed to score one with a tad more credibility than Elliot Higgins of the fake news factory ‘Bellingcat;’ Belling ‘dead’ cat as I would more appropriately name his disinformation outlet. He was just featured on Politics Live trying hard to sound intelligent and failing miserably despite being wholeheartedly endorsed by Joe Coburn and her guests. So why give ‘bellylaugh’ Bellingcat a platform right now? We should be worried that perhaps the Tories are helping to buff hack Higgins’s credentials in advance of another dead-cat operation. But, why does the Tory Sovereign Dictatorship need to pull such a stunt right now when it appears all is going reasonably well for them due to the popularity of their vaccine roll-out program? It could mean that they are about to make highly unpopular decisions to inflict more pain on our destitute population; a serious incident supported by propaganda to prevent public protests would be of use. Get The Tories Out! DO NOT MOVE ON!