I remain a committed internationalist. For me, nation states are potentially extremely dangerous entities. They have the power to co-erce, brutalise and even lawfully to kill their own citizens. They regulate economic, commercial and societal transactions. They wield such power that contest among internal political leaders for control of that power can erupt into violent civil war. And they control such physical resources that nation states can launch war on each other in order to annex those resources or access their benefits.

Western democracy has, in my view, in general been the happiest form of government in modern society, in controlling the internal use of power through democratic mechanisms and in spreading welfare benefits among its citizens, while allowing the economy to function relatively efficiently.

But there have been three developments to jolt us from the notion that the emergence of western democracy represents a development in an inexorable trend of human progress. The notion of historical “progress” is one in which my generation was brought up implicitly to believe. I for one believed in it consciously and explicitly.

The first and most obvious development is the realisation that, while western democracies have more or less eliminated open violence in their internal political arrangements for control of resources, they are increasingly liable to resort to open warfare to gain control over the benefit of the resources of other nations, particularly as those resources become more scarce and valuable. Anybody who truly believes that it is coincidence that Iraq, Libya and Central Asia are hydrocarbon rich, and the major areas of Western military activity, is wilfully blind. There was nothing new about neo-imperialism and its recent manifestation as liberal interventionism is no more than a rehash of standard imperial propaganda on the spreading of civilised values.

What is new is the destruction of the notion that we Western democracies had got morally better and had moved on from the crude war as resource grab. What is also new is the extraordinary use of modern mass media to propagandise the inhabitants of western democracies into such fear of an alien threat, that the government can withdraw numerous liberties and extend vastly its power for everyday physical coercion – which at the most mundane level dawned on Andrew Mitchell last week. The fact that the public accepted 17,000 members of the armed forces guarding the Olympics from nobody at all, and that the armed forces were mentioned in every single public speech by a British politician or official in the Olympic ceremonies, to wild applause, gives but one example of the extraordinary militarisation of Western societies.

The second development is the galloping increase in the gap between rich and poor, in virtually every developed economy. In the UK the normalisation of the extreme concentration of wealth, and the neutering of the political forces for redistribution, constituted the real achievement of Blairism. The wealth gap between directorial and non-directorial incomes in British society has been growing at approximately ten per cent a year for two decades.

This development has been worsened by an abandonment of regulatory mechanisms that modified capitalism, and particularly the tendency of the financial services sector through oligopoly to take vast rent out of simple commercial transactions for which they should be the mere facilitator, at the same time inventing gambling transactions and other artificial processes of cash multiplication with which to tempt the wealthy and the fundholders within their own industry. The epitome of this transfer of wealth was, after the inevitable bubble disintegration, the payment by the state of huge sums to the financial services industry, using the power of the state to coerce the population through taxes to hand over sums amounting in total to several years income each.

Which leads me to the third adverse development – the concentration of media ownership in the hands of the extremely wealthy, the control by the same interests of the mainstream political parties, and therefore the lack of effective choice before the electorate on issues like the bank bailout, where the media and politicians combine to limit the sphere of public debate that will be carried to present only tiny variations on a single alternative. The same is true, for example, of the war in Afghanistan. Without an effective choice being offered to the electorate between real policy options, the notion of democracy is meaningless. That is where the western democracies now are.

Nation states, therefore, even the best of them, are dangerous entities which employ force against their own and other citizens and can be an active danger to international peace. The regulation of relations between states by international law to reduce conflict is therefore an urgent necessity. Some countries are much more danger than others: Ghana, to take one example, has never invaded anybody while the United Kingdom has at various times invaded or bombed the territory currently occupied by three quarters of the states in the World, while the United States projects deadly physical force overseas by a variety of means on a daily basis. Reining in these rogue states is a major priority.

There exists a body of international law which ad been gaining in respect and conformity in the decades since the Second World War, but both the United States and United Kingdom, and others following the neocon lead, have in recent decades driven a coach and horses right through the fabric of international law, through invasion, extraordinary rendition, torture, detention without trial, indiscriminate bombing of civilian populations, targeted extra-judicial killings by shootings or by drones, murder of journalists in war zones, and so on in a depressing litany.

Fundamental platforms of international law violated by the UK, US and their neo-con allies from the BushBlair period on include: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, The Nuremberg Principles, The Charter of the United Nations, the Geneva Conventions, and the Hague Convention. Recently the UK was proposing in effect to tear up the Vienna Convention too.

My conclusion is twofold. Firstly that international law needs to be radically strengthened in order to come back into repute. Secondly that the idea of the nation state as the basic unit of political organisation should be radically attacked; that the period of history is past in which the development of the nation state was a force for the good of its citizens and the world community.

I believe that the nation state should be attacked from top and bottom. From the bottom, as societies internationalise the idea of an ethnic basis to state boundaries becomes anachronistic. Advantage should be taken of this trend to deconstruct states from within, breaking them down into a combination of smaller states and/or of powerful autonomous regional polities. We need to see many more states split up, especially among the westen democracies but also very definitely Russia, China, India and states in their orbit.

From the top, and with particular reference to the UK, I view the European Union as an excellenct prototype of the sort of organisation that can attack the sovereignty of national states from above. Nobody dares to say this should happen – when those few Europhiles brave enough to state their beliefs talk of greater integration, they talk of “pooling sovereignty” to disguise from themselves and their listeners the fact that what they really mean is appropriating and destroying national sovereignty – and a damn good thing too.

In the UK, national schadenfruede at the problems of the Euro is almost universal across the political spectrum, which is why I trailed this as my most unpopular post ever. How foolish, British media and politicians gloat, of those silly Europeans to undertake the biggest single economic step in the history of mankind! How wise we were to stay on the sidelines sneering!

The problem of the Euro, as I observed a decade ago and everyone now agrees, is that a currency union is not really feasible without a fiscal union. The answer to that is a fiscal union. Where the European Union has gone wrong is not that it has gone too far in integration, but that it has not gone nearly far enough.

After a period of disastrous free-for-all, what we now have is a de facto fiscal union in the Eurozone in which the German government in effect dictates policy – in this case austerity policy – to everyone else. Democracy is now even more meaningless to the Greeks and Spaniards than it is to the rest of us.

The cause of this is the fundamental weakness of the European Union – its deference to the nation states it should be eliminating. Executive power within the European Union needs to be removed completely from the nation states in the Council of Ministers, or Council of German Orders as it should be better known now.

The executive body of the European Union should rather be dependent on, and largely drawn from, a majority of the European Parliament. That parliament divides along ideological, not nationalistic lines and does provide a much broader range of representation of opinion than most national parliaments.

The existing European Commission would become simply the Civil Service to this new, democratically elected, European Government. The European Commissioners themselves, devoid of administrative responsibilities which would pass to the new parliamentary ministers, might form some kind a second chamber, of a deliberative and revising nature, to the European Parliament. Rather like the US Senate, this would give a balance of due consideration to the interests of smaller nations; it might also encourage the break-up further of over-large “national” units to ensure more second chamber representation.

The question of subsidiarity and the balance of powers between the new democratic European government and national and regional governing bodies, should be the subject for a book not an article. But I would move virtually every power of a nation state either up or down. Fiscal policy, foreign policy and defence should all be exclusively at the European level.

The problems of the European Union multiplied when it adopted the philosophy of variable geometry, of inner and outer cores, of fast track and slow track members. For the single currency and single market to succeed, unity must be much tighter. If the European Union is serious about maintaining Europe’s position in the World against the mergence of China, India and South America it must conform to the logical force behind its existence. In economic terms that means not just the free movement of goods, but the free movement of capital and labour as well. So to be in the European Union should mean being in the Euro and being in Schengen too. The alternative should be to leave; and be treated as an outsider. The EFTA free ride must finish.

I view the European Union as a wonderful thing. It is a cliche to note that in my parents’ lifetime Europeans were fighting against each other in the grimmest war imaginable, and yet now are embarked together on a great political and economic project. The peace of Europe, and the freedom I have to move around Europe, to work study or settle there, is simply wonderful.

Let us make it even better. Let us get rid of those pesky internal borders and immigration countrols and those huge foreign exchange costs that benefit nobody but the bankers. And let is get rid of our God-awful national governments.

It is not such a bad Hague idea for UK and Canada to share certain Embassies. In future Scotland and Quebec might do the same.

Hague shared hotel rooms with his special adviser to “save money”. Good to see consistency in a politician.

I continue to do all I can to help Julian Assange in his struggle against the mire of false allegations with which governments are attempting to bring down Wikileaks and get him eventually to perpetual solitary confinement in the USA. I was with Julian again in the Embassy last week, and shall be visiting him there again shortly.

Which begs this question. If, as the government falsely claims, this is purely a case of genuine criminal investigation, with no political overtones, and if Julian Assange really is nothing more than an alleged criminal who has jumped bail, then why am I, and others helping him, not under arrest for aiding and abetting or conspiracy? Plainly the government need to get their narrative straight.

For MI5 and the police, if it makes it any easier, I shall be going on Thursday afternoon, (though I have no doubt you already knew that). You can arrest me then.

Sorry for the break. I was staying in London in one those seriously grotty hotels around Kings Cross station, so that I could get into the British Library quickly and not miss a second of the – far too restricted – hours its reading rooms are open. I was immersed in Burnes related manuscripts through the day and spending the evenings fitting the raw material into the overall picture (mostly by lying in the bath and thinking very hard, but that might be too much information).

I did however emerge after midnight on Thursday to go down to Ronnie Scott’s and contribute to the pop-up reopening of the Establishment Club, which it is hoped will lead to the Club eventually reoccupying its old premises. Obviously the organisers are setting themselves an impossibly high bar in trying to follow in the footsteps of Peter Cook, though the attempt is not too sacreligeous as it has the support of his widow, Lin.

John Fleming’s review linked above gives a fair account of what I said, which focused particularly on the agenda of the mainstream media in not reporting the real news. The Evening Standard evidently has no sense of irony, as they produced (two thirds of the way down page) a totally tendentious account of my appearance, not reporting anything I said, completely misrepresenting audience reaction and claiming I was attempting to do stand-up comedy.

I suppose I should be grateful to the Standard for this unlooked-for proof of the truth of what I said. But somehow I am not.

I was invited to be on the Murnaghan programme on Sky News this morning – which I always find a great deal more intelligent than the Andrew Marr alternative on the BBC. I declined because I did not want to get up and get a 7.30am train from Ramsgate on a Sunday morning. I had a meeting until 11.30pm last night planning a conference on human rights in Balochistan [I still tend to say Baluchistan], and I have a newly crowned tooth that seems not to want to settle down. But I am still worried by my own lack of energy, which is uncharacteristic. Is this old age?

I also have some serious work to do on my Burnes book, and next week I shall be staying in London to be in the British Library reading room for every second of its opening hours. So there may be a bit of a posting hiatus. I have in mind a short post on an important subject on which I suspect that 99% of my readership – including the regular dissident commenters – will strongly disagree with me.

This is a peculiarly introspective post, perhaps because my tooth is hurting, but I seem to have this curmudgeonly spirit which wishes to react to the huge popularity of this blog by posting something genuinely held but unpopular; a genuine view but one I don’t normally trumpet. The base thought seems to be “You wouldn’t like me if you really knew me”.

Similarly when I wrote Murder in Samarkand I was being hailed as a hero by quite a lot of people for my refusal to go along with the whole neo-con disaster of illegal wars, extraordinary rendition and severe attacks on civil liberties, sacrificing my fast track diplomatic career as a result. My reaction to putative hero worship was to publish in Murder in Samarkand not just the political facts, but an exposure of my own worst and most unpleasant behaviour in my private life.

I am in a very poor position to judge, but I believe the result rather by accident turned out artistically compelling, if you don’t want to read the book you can get a good idea of that by clicking on David Tennant in the top right of this blog and listening to him playing me in David Hare’s radio adaptation.

Anyway, that’s enough musing. You won’t like my next post, whenever it comes. Promise.

The BBC believes that Kate Middleton’s tits are a more important story than western diplomats in danger of their lives all over the Middle East. Says it all about today’s BBC, really.

Killing people is not the solution to the World’s problems. Killing diplomats is particularly heinous as they are guests in a country, and are charged with keeping open the lines of peaceful communication between nations. Almost certainly Ambassador Stevens and his staff deplored the making and distribution of hate videos, and absolutely certainly they had nothing to do with it. Nor do the diplomats under seige today in Yemen, Sudan and Egypt.

Oliver Miles, the extremely sensible former British Ambassador to Libya, while deploring attacks on Embassies and their staff, made the obvious point on Sky News yesterday that America’s unflinching support for an expansionist Israel was the root cause of hostile attitudes to the USA acroos the Middle East. His interview was instantly terminated.

Miles’ observation is true, as it is true that direct and killing intervention by the US in Libya and Yemen has caused the situations that are now blowing back – often with US supplied or at least encouraged weaponry. But yet again, none of that justifies the racist attacks on westerners. Just as all Muslims were not responsible for Islamic terrorists, so all westerners are not responsible for the far right purveyors of anti-Muslim hatred.

All decent people must despair at the prospect of yet another cycle of violence. Powerful interests both in the West and in the Middle East are not amongst those decent people.

Of all the signals the West could send out to try to end the horrors wrought by the promoters of the “Clash of civilisations”, the most powerful would be to arraign Bush and Blair for war crimes. This is not a deluded hope of idealists; it is an essential step if the world is ever to heal.

It is plain that Home Office officials had a very good, immediate understanding of the causes of the Hillsborough Disaster. Having spent twelve hours reading through the documents released, and drawing on my experience as a senior civil servant, for me the key document is the briefing for the Home Secretary’s statement to the House of Commons two days after the disaster.

On pages 16 and 17 of this PDF, are some of the the “supplementaries” which civil servants prepare (indexed answers replying to possible follow-up questions which MPs may ask in debate). Here a civil servant has prepared for the Home Secretary answers on whether the Hillsborough Ground complied with the “Guide on Safety at Sports Grounds”. His answers include these:

3. Does the ground comply with the guide?

(A) Entry turnstiles – appears unlikely
(B) Rate of Entry with Route – Not when gate opened, well overloaded
(C) Stewards/Police – Not clear yet whether numbers and dispersal adequate
(D) Entry to Terrace from Route – Need to see plans – Appears there were no control barriers
(E) Radial/Lateral Gangways – Need to see plans – Film indicated that these were not defined or kept clear
(F) Crash Barriers – Engineer’s statement that they were tested and complied for strength
(G) Pitch Perimeter Fence – From film it appears that emergency gates are rather narrow and limited in number

So just two days after the disaster, and one day after Thatcher’s and Hurd’s visit to the site, there was a full understanding of the actual causes of the disaster. There is no mention of hooliganism or crowd violence or alcohol in the Civil Servant’s briefing. But – exactly as the Murdoch media’s campaign of demonisation of the Liverpool fans was getting into full swing – Douglas Hurd has put his pen through all the above list of causes and written “Matters for the Inquiry”. Not to be told to Parliament.

So the government knew the truth, but decided to suppress it while the media vilifaction flew, pending the “Taylor Inquiry” which is unanimously now accepted to have been badly skewed.

Yet Hurd’s meeting with Taylor on 26 April 1989 lifts the lid on how “independent” these “judge-led” inquiries really are, with Hurd telling Taylor not just what the government would like him to say but precisely when it would be helpful to the government for him to say it.

If you read that minute through, you will see that Hurd shows no interest at all in the question of what happened at Hillsborough. This is only mentioned by Taylor, three quarters of the way through the meeting, which is overwhelmingly about Hurd steering Taylor to support the government’s position on compulsory membership cards for football clubs.

Justice for the victims of Hillsborough was plainly nowhere on Hurd’s list of priorities.

Anyone who lived through the Thatcher years will never forget her demonisation of “The enemy within”. My belief is that you cannot understand the government cover-up of Hillsborough without putting it in the context of Thatcher’s successful drive to remodel society on neo-conservative lines by economic deregulation and making the country fit for banker capitalists to become incredibly rich.

There is to me a psychological connection between the terrible, bitter and eminently avoidable confrontation with the miners, the poll tax, and the attitude to Hillsborough of Thatcher, Hurd and Murdoch. Football terraces were nothing if not a display of community solidarity between working people. Furthermore the police were used in paramilitary fashion by Thatcher against the miners and poll tax rioters: of course they would be supported as in the right at Hillsborough.

None of which helps the bereaved, and in many ways yesterday’s assertion that almost half the victims had some potential to be saved given a better police and emergency response must be just awful for them. I cannot fully imagine how they feel, though of course I am pleased that the shadow of official blame has been lifted.

But I also hope strongly that the undoubted evidence of co-ordinated cover-up and massive doctoring of documents helps people come to an understanding that government cannot be trusted. The lies about ticketless Liverpool fans leaping turnstiles reminded me of the lie about Jean Charles De Menezes leaping a turnstile – a lie also propounded by the Police and Murdoch.

Government conspiracies do indeed happen. They happen more often than you think.

It is a terrible thing if any US diplomats have been killed in Libya, as now appears likely. My condolences to the families of all affected. They add to the thousands of deaths in Libya, and one can only hope that finally some of the proponents of “liberal intervention” will realise that bombing people into democracy is not a viable policy.

But part of the responsibility for these deaths lies with the US and Israeli far right activists who made a film insulting Islam, with precisely the intention of provoking a spiral of violence. There are many interest groups longing to promote a perpetual climate of war and fear; some of them, like these filmmakers, are easier to identify than others.

Be it attacks on US diplomats in Libya or drone strikes on villagers in Yemen, it is all part of the same hateful cycle of violence – from which fortunes have been made in the arms, mercenary and security industries, and which climate of hatred has given cover and unflinching western support for resource grabs by Israeli illegal settlers.

So many people have poisoned what should be a beautiful world. The deaths of US diplomats in Libya get noticed. The evryday deaths of so many others in this manufactured conflict do not.

Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm has been deported from Cambodia to Sweden to serve a one year jail sentence for breach of copyright. On arrival he was charged with a further offence; I have received several messages that this new charge relates to his work in hosting Wikileaks, but I have no confirmation at the moment and Svartholm is being held incommunicado. Can anyone confirm or contradict this?

Svartholm had been assured by Swedish authorities that, if he returned back to serve his jail sentence, he would not face further charges; that was broken the moment he arrived back in Sweden. That may well be a pointer for how seriously we can take assurances that the patently false “sexual assault” charges fabricated against Julian Assange are the real motive for the Swedish authorities’ pursuit of him.

EU Commission sources tell me that Sweden paid Cambodia around 50 million euros for Svartholm’s deportation to Sweden (there is no extradition agreement). The money is in government to government aid and targeted on development of democratic institutions and global warming. The Cambodian government is scarcely a democracy, and the idea that the money will, once paid over, in fact be usefully spent in those areas is extremely fanciful. From my own very substantial experience of development aid, 50 million Euros is a very large sum to dedicate to those areas in terms of the overall Swedish development aid budget, and absolutely unprecedented between Sweden and Cambodia. My EU Commission source is adamant that this “aid” payment and Svartholm’s extradition were agreed at the same meeting between Swedish and Cambodian officials a week ago.

The Svartholm case and the dodgy “aid” payment has been very little covered by the mainstream media, because it reveals the extraordinary lengths to which the Swedish authorities are prepared to go, to please the US in bringing down those involved with Wikileaks, and to dissociate themeselves from Sweden’s brief period as the home of internet freedom.

I went with Nadira to see Anna Karenina last night. Sadly Tom Stoppard’s stab at boiling down this great and complex novel to a standard length feature film was brilliant but doomed; it just can’t be done. Enormous emotional depth and complexity was reduced at times to soap opera; while the virtues of Tom Stoppard’s script – and there were many – were consistently undercut by the appalling ego of the Director. Joe Wright seemed to think that directorial tricks were more important than the story, yet his grossly mannered trompe d’oeil had no relevance other than to look smart and detract from Tolstoy.

Yes there were occasions, like the horse race, when you were marvelling at the technical cleverness of setting it up in a theatre; but actually it is a pivotal point in the story when you are meant to be thinking of something more important than Joe Wright’s cleverness. It is pretty plain that Mr Wright has never imagined that anything could be more important.

The absence of naturalism made life very difficult for the actors to inhabit real characters, but I found Jude Law a revelation as Karenin, conveying a sense of helpless emotional autism that made him more sympathetic than I had found the character in the book. By contrast Keira Knightley was hopelessly miscast as Anna. She acted with all the command of emotional subtlety of Bob the Builder. Her degree of unhappiness, morphine addiction or suicidal distraction at any one time was signaled to us by how much frizzy hair was standing on end.

Anyway, save your money. The nachos were better value than the film.

I came home in time to watch the final four sets of Andy Murray winning the US Open. I cannot pretend I was not deeply engaged, indeed on occasions jumping up and running round the kitchen in excitement. The tennis was simply superb. The levels of fitness involved in playing a five hour game at that level are unimaginable. Murray and Djokovic are both players of artistry and guile.

Of course I was super delighted at the success not just of a Scot, but a member of my own Clan. I eventually got to bed thinking how much more I had enjoyed my evening with Andy Murray than with Keira Knightley. Now that’s not a sentence you hear every day…

I am slightly updating and reposting this from 2012 because the mainstream media have ensured very few people know the detail of the “case” against Julian Assange in Sweden. The UN Working Group ruled that Assange ought never to have been arrested in the UK in the first place because there is no case, and no genuine investigation. Read this and you will know why.

The other thing not widely understood is there is NO JURY in a rape trial in Sweden and it is a SECRET TRIAL. All of the evidence, all of the witnesses, are heard in secret. No public, no jury, no media. The only public part is the charging and the verdict. There is a judge and two advisers directly appointed by political parties. So you never would get to understand how plainly the case is a stitch-up. Unless you read this.

There are so many inconsistencies in Anna Ardin’s accusation of sexual assault against Julian Assange. But the key question which leaps out at me – and which strangely I have not seen asked anywhere else – is this:

Why did Anna Ardin not warn Sofia Wilen?

On 16 August, Julian Assange had sex with Sofia Wilen. Sofia had become known in the Swedish group around Assange for the shocking pink cashmere sweater she had worn in the front row of Assange’s press conference. Anna Ardin knew Assange was planning to have sex with Sofia Wilen. On 17 August, Ardin texted a friend who was looking for Assange:

“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?”

Yet Ardin later testified that just three days earlier, on 13 August, she had been sexually assaulted by Assange; an assault so serious she was willing to try (with great success) to ruin Julian Assange’s entire life. She was also to state that this assault involved enforced unprotected sex and she was concerned about HIV.

If Ardin really believed that on 13 August Assange had forced unprotected sex on her and this could have transmitted HIV, why did she make no attempt to warn Sofia Wilen that Wilen was in danger of her life? And why was Ardin discussing with Assange his desire for sex with Wilen, and texting about it to friends, with no evident disapproval or discouragement?

Ardin had Wilen’s contact details and indeed had organised her registration for the press conference. She could have warned her. But she didn’t.

Let us fit that into a very brief survey of the whole Ardin/Assange relationship. .

11 August: Assange arrives in Stockholm for a press conference organised by a branch of the Social Democratic Party.
Anna Ardin has offered her one bed flat for him to stay in as she will be away.

13 August: Ardin comes back early. She has dinner with Assange and they have consensual sex, on the first day of meeting. Ardin subsequently alleges this turned into assault by surreptitious mutilation of the condom.

14 August: Anna volunteers to act as Julian’s press secretary. She sits next to him on the dais at his press conference. Assange meets Sofia Wilen there.

Anna tweets at 14.00:

‘Julian wants to go to a crayfish party, anyone have a couple of available seats tonight or tomorrow? #fb’

This attempt to find a crayfish party fails, so Ardin organises one herself for him, in a garden outside her flat. Anna and Julian seem good together. One guest hears Anna rib Assange that she thought “you had dumped me” when he got up from bed early that morning. Another offers to Anna that Julian can leave her flat and come stay with them. She replies:
“He can stay with me.”

15 August Still at the crayfish party with Julian, Anna tweets:

‘Sitting outdoors at 02:00 and hardly freezing with the world’s coolest smartest people, it’s amazing! #fb’

Julian and Anna, according to both their police testimonies, sleep again in the same single bed, and continue to do so for the next few days. Assange tells police they continue to have sex; Anna tells police they do not. That evening, Anna and Julian go together to, and leave together from, a dinner with the leadership of the Pirate Party. They again sleep in the same bed.

16 August: Julian goes to have sex with Sofia Wilen: Ardin does not warn her of potential sexual assault.
Another friend offers Anna to take over housing Julian. Anna again refuses.

20 August: After Sofia Wilen contacts her to say she is worried about STD’s including HIV after unprotected sex with Julian, Anna takes her to see Anna’s friend, fellow Social Democrat member, former colleague on the same ballot in a council election, and campaigning feminist police officer, Irmeli Krans. Ardin tells Wilen the police can compel Assange to take an HIV test. Ardin sits in throughout Wilen’s unrecorded – in breach of procedure – police interview. Krans prepares a statement accusing Assange of rape. Wilen refuses to sign it.

21 August Having heard Wilen’s interview and Krans’ statement from it, Ardin makes her own police statement alleging Assange has surreptiously had unprotected sex with her eight days previously.

Some days later: Ardin produces a broken condom to the police as evidence; but a forensic examination finds no traces of Assange’s – or anyone else’s – DNA on it, and indeed it is apparently unused.

No witness has come forward to say that Ardin complained of sexual assault by Assange before Wilen’s Ardin-arranged interview with Krans – and Wilen came forward not to complain of an assault, but enquire about STDs. Wilen refused to sign the statement alleging rape, which was drawn up by Ardin’s friend Krans in Ardin’s presence.

It is therefore plain that one of two things happened:

Either

Ardin was sexually assaulted with unprotected sex, but failed to warn Wilen when she knew Assange was going to see her in hope of sex.

Ardin also continued to host Assange, help him, appear in public and private with him, act as his press secretary, and sleep in the same bed with him, refusing repeated offers to accommodate him elsewhere, all after he assaulted her.

Or

Ardin wanted sex with Assange – from whatever motive.. She “unexpectedly” returned home early after offering him the use of her one bed flat while she was away. By her own admission, she had consensual sex with him, within hours of meeting him.

She discussed with Assange his desire for sex with Wilen, and appears at least not to have been discouraging. Hearing of Wilen’s concern about HIV after unprotected sex, she took Wilen to her campaigning feminist friend, policewoman Irmeli Krans, in order to twist Wilen’s story into a sexual assault – very easy given Sweden’s astonishing “second-wave feminism” rape laws. Wilen refused to sign.

At the police station on 20 August, Wilen texted a friend at 14.25 “did not want to put any charges against JA but the police wanted to get a grip on him.”

At 17.26 she texted that she was “shocked when they arrested JA because I only wanted him to take a test”.

The next evening at 22.22 she texted “it was the police who fabricated the charges”.

Ardin then made up her own story of sexual assault. As so many friends knew she was having sex with Assange, she could not claim non-consensual sex. So she manufactured her story to fit in with Wilen’s concerns by alleging the affair of the torn condom. But the torn condom she produced has no trace of Assange on it. It is impossible to wear a condom and not leave a DNA trace.

Conclusion

I have no difficulty in saying that I firmly believe Ardin to be a liar. For her story to be true involves acceptance of behaviour which is, in the literal sense, incredible.

Ardin’s story is of course incredibly weak, but that does not matter. Firstly, you were never supposed to see all this detail. Rape trials in Sweden are held entirely in secret. There is no jury, and the government appointed judge is flanked by assessors appointed directly by political parties. If Assange goes to Sweden, he will disappear into jail, the trial will be secret, and the next thing you will hear is that he is guilty and a rapist.

Secondly, of course, it does not matter the evidence is so weak, as just to cry rape is to tarnish a man’s reputation forever. Anna Ardin has already succeeded in ruining much of the work and life of Assange. The details of the story being pathetic is unimportant.

By crying rape, politically correct opinion falls in behind the line that it is wrong even to look at the evidence. If you are not allowed to know who the accuser is, how can you find out that she worked with CIA-funded anti-Castro groups in Havana and Miami?

Finally, to those useful idiots who claim that the way to test these matters is in court, I would say of course, you are right, we should trust the state always, fit-ups never happen, and we should absolutely condemn the disgraceful behaviour of those who campaigned for the Birmingham Six.

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My post on the shootings in France has brought tens of thousands of people to this site – but not to read my dull contribution. People are coming to read the comments from other readers.

Today’s development of the bomb squad descending on the al-Hilli house does not in itself worry me enormously. You may recall the massive terror scare that was ramped up when some Muslim students in Manchester were found to own a bag of sugar.

In fact we have the opposite phenomenon today, with the spook-fed “security correspondents” on TV lining up to tell us it is probably just everyday household stuff. This deviation from the standard Islamophobic “Muslims = bombs” narrative is so startling it makes me wonder why the “move along, nothing to see here” line is being taken so quickly.

My own security services sources insist that al-Hilli was not a person of current interest to the UK intelligence agencies and was not involved in anything clandestine. I have no reason to disbelieve them. On the other hand, the limited and confusing information in the media is almost entirely from official sources. I find it very strange indeed how little attention has been paid to the murdered French cyclist, and how easily it is presumed he was just a passerby. Surely it is as likely he was the intended victim and the al-Hillis the accidental witnesses?

Please do read the comments on my first entry on the subject to see the debate unfettered by the censorship in the mainstream media. This is perhaps my favourite comment:

From Janesmith101

All comments regarding Sylvain, Al-Hilli and a possible nuclear link are being removed from sites I’ve posted on in The Guardian, Independent and Huffpo UK.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/sep/09/alps-killer-motive-baffles-police

Here was my comment, I added as a point of fact it was completely speculative and an unproven theory in a later comment, also removed.

Sylvain Mollier, the ‘passing’ cyclist, was in fact a nuclear metallurgist who worked for a french nuclear company called Cezus (a subsidiary of Areva). Cezus fabricates and processes zirconium into metal and nuclear grade zircoaloy for nuclear fuel assemblies – it also has other applications in aerospace such as components and ceramics for missiles and satellites. Mr Al-Hilli was also a skilled aerospace engineer, on what looks to be his first camping holiday.

What is the probability that two highly skilled engineers managed be at the same remote place, at the same time, yet still managed to end up dead as a result of what looks to be a military style assasination?

As someone else pointed out in The Independent comments, the deceased were found by a ‘retired’ RAF officer who, we assume, will recieve perpetual anonymity as a witness. If the police are looking for a motive, try an intercepted rendevous by a security service fixated on denying a hostile power illicit nuclear technology.

http://wrmea.org/component/content/article/162-1995-june/7823-israel-bombs-iraqs-osirak-nuclear-research-facility.html

The Huffington Post UK reports that this wasn’t the family’s first trip to the camp site. An earlier report had asked other camp site visitors whether they had seen the family before and they had replied they hadn’t. If this isn’t wasn’t the first visit by Al-Hilli, it might slightly increase the odds that he knew or had met Mollier before, this being the last in a series of rendevous of a transactional nature. Mollier lived and worked locally.

Again, I’m not sure of the truth of these reports, there is some very sloppy journalism, as there is always seems to be. I’ve read for example Mollier’s company Cevus descirbed as a steel firm something which it is patently not, but perhaps it may have been a detail lost in translation.

An interesting comment summing up some of the strange coincidences, at least, surrounding these murders. My other favourite comment calls me a “macchiavellian shill”.

I have only one thought of my own I want to add at the minute. Al-Hilli was a Shia muslim and had been on pilgrimage to Qoms in Iran. What if it is indeed true that he was in possession of no especial nuclear or defence secrets to pass on to the Iranians, but the Israelis thought that he was? The Israeli programme of assassination of scientists involved in Iran’s nuclear programme is a definite fact. It makes as much sense as anything else at the moment, as a possibility.

I am not saying that is what happened. But the directions in which the mainstream media is being so strenuously pointed by official sources, like the massacre of an entire family over an inheritance, are certainly no more inherently probable. Certainly as we are now told all the shots were from one gun, for the assassin to get each victim in the head with none of them being able to escape, indicates real proficiency with the weapon and a very high level of training.

According to the ebuzzing (formerly wikio) rankings, this is the third most influential political blog in the UK – and the fifth most influential blog of any kind. It beats, hands down, the heavily funded ConservativeHome and Labourlist propaganda operations.

Of the two political blogs ahead of it, Guido Fawkes has permanent paid staff, whereas Liberal Conspiracy is a collective of 32 high profile ultra politically correct guardianistas; many of whom are paid by mainstream media.

Yet this blog has total funding of precisely nil and is only me, an ageing and disillusioned man sickened by the growing gap between rich and poor, the domination of mainstream political parties by corporate interests, and the continual promotion of aggressive war.

This blog does everything wrong. There are frequent gaps between posts, sometimes of weeks on end, because I get too depressed at instances of the callous disregard of the powerful for ordinary people.

I do not tweet, except that the start of each blog entry automatically gets tweeted, which someone set up for me.

This is an SNP supporting blog based in Ramsgate, Kent, written by a manic depressive sacked diplomat of eclectic views, whose guiding lights are the deeply unfashionable John Stuart Mill and William Hazlitt, whose favourite book was written by Michael Foot, and who is still metaphorically on his knees begging forgiveness for advising people to put Nick Clegg into government.

This blog, like all the other top blogs, could make substantial money from advertising, but is the only one not to carry advertising because it does not desire money.

It is webhosted for free, and kept running by a team of techies and moderators who do it for free also, not because they support a party or policy line or everything I say, but because they like the blog. It has the most free, well nigh anarchic moderation policy of any major blog. You can say what you like, including being very critical of me. Racism is pretty well the only red line. Opposing voices are very welcome.

I don’t do political correctness.

Even more heretically, this blog succeeds despite the fact the ebuzzing rankings show the majority of its posts are about international relations. Not only is it interested in foreigners, it tends to concentrate on Africa, Central Asia and other places the mainstream media scarcely believe exist. This blog succeeds so well because the mainstream media leaves unmet an active desire for information by very large numbers of people who are not as stupid as they think.

I have been lucky to have led a fascinating and varied life and as a result not only have a large number of high level contacts who would be the envy of any journalist, but am prepared to publish facts that mainstream political discourse finds uncomfortable.

To give just a few examples, this blog made public that Adam Werritty and Liam Fox had eight meetings with Matthew Gould, now British Ambassador to Israel, not the two reported in Gus O’Donnell’s whitewash “report”. At least two included Mossad, and the purpose throughout was to coordinate on the ramping up of official support for an attack on Iran.

This blog made public the deal whereby the US obtained Arab League support for the attack on Libya in return for US support for the Saudi invasion of Bahrain.

This blog revealed Lord Taylor of Blackburn’s role as bagman for New Labour, and for Jack Straw personally, in collecting from the defence industries, and BAE in particular.

This blog revealed the dirty deal between the British government and the Karimov regime to resume arms supplies and military training in return for logistic support for Afghanistan.

You would be surprised by how many people actually embedded in the establishment, including Members of Parliament and very senior mainstream media journalists, have told me they regularly read this blog to see what is really happening. it is an antidote to the model of single propaganda narrative that now characterises mainstream media.

The stratospheric rise of this blog up the industry rankings is not actually caused by a sudden increase in popularity. That popularity has been there for years. But at last it is being measured.

The old wikio rankings measured the number of links from other blogs; in the case of political blogs, only from other political blogs. So clusters of New Labour, Tory and Lib Dem blogs, by constantly linking to each other, could collectively drive themselves up the rankings.

But over 70% of incoming links to this blog are from outside the UK; they did not count for anything at all in the rankings. Nor did the frequent links to this blog from the sites of major newspapers and broadcast companies in the UK and around the globe.

Ebuzzing now has abandoned the old wikio algorithm in favour of a much wider measurement, which draws on more reference sources, including twitter and newspaper sites. The result reflects much more the actual readership and influence of a blog than did the old wikio rankings:

More than 2 million sources are catalogued and analysed. The semantic content ranking is performed automatically. Blog and article popularity are calculated using our algorithm, which takes into account content shares and recommendations on Twitter, Facebook and the primary content exchange platforms.

I think it is hilarious that the huge wedges of cash put by Lord Ashcroft or Unite into the Tory and New War Criminal blogging propaganda arms cannot see off this old chap with his ancient laptop.

The internet remains a great leveller, and that remains reason to hope.

19,000 athletes took part in the Olympics and Paralympics. 25,000 artists, performers and speakers participate – every August, in the Edinburgh Festivals. Total audience numbers for all Olympic venues across the UK were 8 million. Total audience numbers for the Edinburgh Festivals, every August, are 4.2 million. Crammed into an area not substantially bigger the the Olympic Park.

Total gross taxpayer subsidy for the Olympics was north of £12 billion. £12,000,000,000. Total gross taxpayer subsidy for the Edinburgh Festivals is south of £3 million. £3,000,000.

The Edinburgh Festivals every year bring a net inflow of 105,000 tourists to the UK who would not otherwise have come. By contrast the Olympics brought a net decrease in the number of tourists visiting the UK, not yet calculated exactly but likely to be around 200,000.

Yet the crazed doom-mongers of the security industry have not yet got hold of the Edinburgh Festival. There are no anti-aircraft missiles on blocks of flats in West Pilton, no frigates lurking in the Firth of Forth, no commandoes in motorised dinghies patrolling the Water of Leith. You can enter the King’s Theatre without a soldier rummaging through the pantie liners in your handbag. You don’t get a full body scan at the Usher Hall. Half the road lanes are not closed off for the use of very, very important bureaucrats. Small shopkeepers are not prosecuted for displaying Festival symbols.

And the fireworks are better. A lot better.

{Edinburgh’s summer festivals include the Edinburgh International Festival, the Fringe, the Film, Book, Television and Science Festivals. I missed some).

Regular readers know I love railways and am constantly on the move by train. They also know that I am constantly furious at the mess left by rail privatisation, with the most expensive rail fares in the world, plus massive taxpayer subsidies, leaving huge profits for private shareholders of operating companies on “can’t lose”, taxpayer underwritten deals.

I calculated that my “super off peak return” ticket from Ramsgate to Newark, bought yesterday for £83.70, costs over 20p a mile. I contemplated yesterday afternoon posting about what an incredibly large charge that is for train travel compared to other countries. I was going to invite people to give examples of per mile cost on other tickets in the UK and elsewhere.

I then reflected that few of my long-suffering readers find my railway postings as interesting as I do, and decided not to inflict it on you.

Then this morning I went to catch the 8.37 from Newark, which gets in to London at 10.02. I am on it now. But I was informed that, whereas on South Eastern services from Ramsgate an off-peak service is one which gets into London after 10.00, on East Coast services an off-peak service is one which departs from wherever you catch it after 10.00. So the same train is not an off-peak service at one point in its journey, but becomes off-peak later on.

The first “Off-peak” service from Newark does not get into London until 11.35.

I reluctantly therefore asked to upgrade my “off-peak” ticket so I could get the 8.37. I was told this would cost £94.20!! However, the lady added helpfully, I could just buy a single to London for £74.50 and then use my off-peak ticket from London to Ramsgate.

This I have done. So my return journey from Ramsgate to Newark is costing me just shy of £160. It would be a lot cheaper to drive – in a Chelsea tractor.

You may recall I posted some time ago that when making a journey from Truro to York, the Virgin train from Truro was severely late, causing me to miss my advance purchased train to York. While I had shown my tickets and explained at Kings Cross, I had been told that as Virgin were a separate company, it was nothing to do with East Coast, and I had to buy a new ticket for £180. I applied to Virgin for a refund, who said that as their train had only been 52 minutes late, they owed me nothing and my missing a train from another company was not their business.

That was crazy. Now again, having different operating companies using different definitions of what constitutes “off-peak” coming into London is yet another example of the way the crazed “competition” model, in reality a series of taxpayer-funded private monopolies, works to the massive disadvantage of the consumer.

The railways need to be renationalised, and the modernisation and expansion of the network should be at the centre of economic growth strategy. A full 200mph high speed line to Aberdeen, another to Cardiff and a third to Stranraer for Belfast should be undertaken immediately. Beeching lines should be restored, and new lines to new population centres be a major priority. If the money from quantitve easing was applied to this and to homebuilding, rather than being given to the banking bonus pool as at present, we might actually see some life in our economy.

Let me be upfront: none of my usual contacts, so far, has any knowledge about the very clinical murders in France of the Iraqi origin British Hilli family. I have seen various internet reports of the links of Mr Hilli to the defence industry and that the French cyclist victim was linked to the nuclear industry. I am not immediately concerned that the other cyclist who raised the alarm was ex-RAF; had that fact been sinister, it would have been hidden or he might not have raised the alarm at all.

In short, I really do not know what is happening here and I don’t think normal hierarchies within British security agencies know either. It may be genuinely random, or not. I am not posting to speculate or to spread knowledge, but because unless I do post, commenters will derail other threads to discuss this. Should I discover anything, I will let you know. But we may well never know; we still don’t really know who killed JFK, or Hilda Murrell. There is always an answer, but it is not always known to the public.

No excuse can justify the failure to identify and help the poor little girl who was still alive in the bottom of the car. Discovering if anybody was alive in the car should have outweighed every other consideration for the emergency services. Protocols for the dead will not help them much, whatever they may achieve for abstract justice. The living are easier to serve well, and this was a gross failure.

This statement was written by Irmeli Krans, a Swedish police officer, on 20 August 2010 and amended on 26 August 2010. It purports to be the record of an interview with Sofia Wilen, but Sofia Wilen refused to sign the statement and has not done so to this day.

It is nevertheless this unsigned statement which the British High Court stated contains an allegation which would, if true, amount to rape. Some may recall that fact being triumphantly and aggressively read out to me on Newsnight by Gavin Esler, with no mention that the statement referred to had never been signed by the “complainant”.

The Swedish prosecutor, Marianne Ny, had told the British High Court that even though the statement was unsigned, it was valid as evidence under Swedish law (it would not be under British) because the interview was conducted before two witnesses, Irmeli Krans and Anna Ardin.

Contrary to police protocol in virtually every developed country, including Sweden, the interrogation although in a police station had neither been audio recorded nor video recorded. Irmeli Krans has claimed she could not find a working dictaphone – in a major Stockholm police station that does of course have video-taping facilities.

Irmeli Krans and Anna Ardin had known each other for at least two years before they were present together at the police interview of Sofia Wilen. They had been on the same ballot paper as candidates for the same political party in a council election. They were facebook friends and had exchanged messages on a relevant subject, the abuse of power by white men:

Irmeli Krans to Anna Ardin April 2009:

Hello! Thanks for the compliment. And like you say, white men must always defend the right to use abusive words. Then they of course deny that these very words are part of a system that keeps their group at the top of the social ladder.

I will analyse Anna Ardin’s behaviour in detail in a further post in a few days. According to Ardim, Sofia Wilen contacted her concerned that unprotected sex with Assange may have given her a sexually transmitted disease. Rather than take her to a medical facility, Ardin took Wilen to a police station, under the pretext that the police might be able to compel Assange to take an STD test – which even in Sweden must be an extraordinary proposition.

Ardin did not take Wilen to the nearest police station. She took her right across Stockholm to the police station where Ardin’s friend, lesbian feminist campaigner Irmeli Krans, was serving. They arrived at 2pm and rather than see another officer, they waited two hours until Krans came on duty. Then Ardin was present throughtout Krans’ interview of Wilen – which appears to have very much informed Ardin’s presentation of her own subsequent allegation against Assange. Ardin’s “assault” by Assange took place several days before the Wilen “assault”, but was not reported by Ardin until two days after she had sat through Wilen’s interview with her friend Krans.

And always remember, Wilen refused to sign the resulting statement, given here, as a fair account of what occurred.

Statement of Irmeli Krans

Following is Krans’ interrogation of Sofia Wilén 20 August 2010, subsequently modified by Krans 26 August 2010.

Background

Sofia says she saw an interview a few weeks ago on TV with Julian Assange who is known to be behind the WikiLeaks publication of US military documents from Afghanistan. Sofia thought he was interesting, courageous, and admirable. For the next two weeks she watched the news carefully, she read a lot of articles, and saw interviews. One evening when she sat at home and Googled the name Julian Assange she discovered he was invited to Sweden to hold a lecture arranged by the social democrat brotherhood movement. She posted a message to the brotherhood press secretary Anna Ardin whose contact details she found on their website and asked if he would be coming to Sweden and if she in such case could attend his lecture. She offered to help out with practical details in return. Anna Ardin replied that she’d forward her message to those in charge.

But Sofia got no further reply and suddenly one day she saw an ad with the time and place for the lecture. The lecture was to be held in ‘LO-borgen’ at Norra Bantorget Saturday 14 August. She rang those in charge on Friday and asked if it was OK to attend. She was told she was one of the first to apply and it’d be OK. She took the day off from work and went to LO-borgen on Saturday. She saw a woman who she presumed was Anna Ardin standing outside LO-borgen and went up to her and introduced herself. Anna told Sofia that she was on the list so she was welcome to attend. At the same time the lecturer himself, Julian Assange, approached with a man in his 30s. She got the impression the man was Julian’s press secretary or something similar. Julian looked at Sofia as if he was amused. She got the feeling he thought she didn’t belong there in her shocking pink cashmere jumper amongst all the other gray journalists.

The Lecture

She sat at the far right front when she entered the venue, the lecturer would stand all the way to the left. The room seemed full of journalists. A half hour before the lecture was to begin, Anna approached Sofia and asked if she could help buy a cable for Julian’s computer. They needed a cable and Sofia had offered to help out. Sofia went up to Julian to ask what type of cable he needed. He explained what he needed and then wrote it down on a small piece of paper. She took the paper and placed it immediately in her pocket. Julian looked contemptibly at her and said ‘you didn’t even look at the note’. She told him she didn’t need to as he’d already explained what type of cable he needed.

She took a cab to the ‘Webhallen’ boutique on Sveavägen but they were closed. The time was 10:30 and the store would open first at 11:00. But that’s also when the lecture was scheduled to begin, so Sofia started feeling stressed. The cabbie drove her instead to the Haymarket where she purchaed two types of cable for safety’s sake. She got back in time, she had the right type of cable, but she wasn’t thanked for her help by Julian. The lecture went well.

The Lunch

There were many journalists who wanted to interview Julian after the lecture. Sofia stayed around because she too wanted to speak with him. She asked Anna if this was possible and Anna said Julian would stand outside the entrance to LO-borgen to be accessible to the public in case anyone wanted to ask him questions. Sofia went out and sat in the shade and waited for the interviews to be over. There were more interviews outside. Sofia approached LO-borgen again and overheard that the brotherhood people were going to treat Julian to lunch. Sofia asked if she could come along too, after all she’d helped them with the cable. She was invited and went together with Anna, Julian and his entourage, and two members of the brotherhood to a restaurant on Drottninggatan across from the Central Bathhouse. She ended up next to Julian and started talking with him. He looked at her now and again during the lunch. On one occasion when he put cheese on his knäckebröd she asked him if it tasted good and then he reached over with his sandwich and fed her with it. Later during lunch he said he needed a charger for his laptop. She said she could get one for him, after all she’d got the cable for him earlier. He put his arm around her and said ‘yes you gave me the cable’. Sofia thought this was flattering for it was obvious he was now flirting with her.

The others left after lunch, leaving only Sofia, Julian, and Julian’s companion. They went off together to buy an electric cable for Julian’s computer. ‘Kjell & Co’ didn’t have the product, so they went on to Webhallen but it was closed again. They walked back on Sveavägen towards the Haymarket and talked about what they’d do next. Julian’s companion asked him if he wanted to come along and help move furniture for his parents and Sofia offered Julian a visit at the natural history museum where she worked. It was decided Julian would accompany Sofia to the museum and his companion left them. Julian and Sofia went into the Haymarket subway station where she purchased a blue access card good for the day as he didn’t have the monthly commuter card and no money either as he said. They took the train towards Mörby Centrum and stepped off at the university stop. A man in the subway recognised Julian and told him how much he admired him.

The Natural History Museum

On the way from the university subway station Julian stopped to pet a few dogs, which Sofia thought was charming. In the museum they went to the staff room where Julian sat down and starting surfing the net, he was looking for tweets about himself. They sat there waiting for a film that was to be shown at Cosmonova at 18:00.

They were let into the cinema by Sofia’s colleague and Julian held Sofia’s hand. In the darkness of the cinema he started kissing her. A few latecomers arrived and sat behind them and so they moved to a row at the back. Julian continued kissing her, touched her breasts under her jumper, undid her bra, unbuttoned her pants, caressed her buttocks, and sucked her nipples. He muttered about the armrest being in the way. She was sitting in his lap when the lights went on and he tried to put her bra back on. She thought it embarrassing to sit there in view of her colleagues who she knew could have seen it all.

They went out through the inner courtyard and she went to the toilet. When she came out, he was lying on his back on a picnic table resting, he said he was very tired. He was supposed to be at a crayfish party at 20:00 and wanted to sleep 20 minutes before leaving. They lay down together in the grass next to each other and he had his arm around her. He fell asleep and she woke him twenty minutes later. Then they promenaded over lawns, passed cows and Canadian geese, he held her hand, it was wonderful in all possible ways and he told her ‘you’re very attractive to me’. He’d also told her in the cinema she had pretty breasts. She asked him if they’d meet again. He said of course they would, they’d meet after the crayfish party.

She accompanied him to the Zinkensdamm subway station where he caught a cab back to Anna Ardin’s where the party was to take place. He gave her a hug and said he didn’t want to part from her and encouraged her to charge her cellphone. She went home to Enköping, arriving at home at 23:00. She had a voice message waiting from Julian from 22:55 when she’d recharged her phone, telling her to ring him when her phone was working again. She rang back at 23:15, realising he was still at the party. She’d developed a stomach cramp from a sandwich she’d eaten on the way home and told him she wanted to go to bed. He insinuated it wasn’t about stomach cramps as much as a feeling of guilt.

On Monday

She rang Julian twice on Sunday but his phone was turned off. She told her colleagues at work on Monday what had happened at the weekend. They told her Julian felt dumped and therefore hadn’t rung back so that the ball was in her court. She rang him and he answered. She asked if they should do something together. He said he’d be at a meeting which could take a long time up until 20:30 but he could ring her back later. He also asked about her stomach cramps. He insinuated she’d lied about her cramps and he used the third person to tell her. She promised to wait for him so after she finished work at 19:00 she went to Kungshallarna and had sushi. Afterwards she strolled about town and ended up in the old town where she rang him back at 21:00 when he still hadn’t got back to her, asking what was going on. He said he was in a meeting in Hornsgatan and he wanted her to come there. She got the address and went there. She couldn’t find the address when she arrived, rang Julian, and spoke with a man who spoke Swedish who explained she was to get in through a side entrance. She stood there and waited for him when he came out together with a another man, they said goodbye to one another and looked very happy.

Julian and Sofia walked up Hornsgatan towards Slussen and from there to the old town. They sat by the water at Munkbroleden and he commented on girls who sat there as ‘lonely and abandoned’ and who ‘probably need saving’. They lay down and starting making out, heavily. Amongst other things he put his hands under her jumper and when they left the area she noticed people were looking at them. They decided to go home to her place. They went into the subway where his card was now invalid and she got him through by swiping her own card twice. They took the train to Enköping from the central station, she paid for the tickets, SEK 107 (~$10) each. He claimed he didn’t want to use his credit card, he didn’t want to be traced. They sat in the direction the train would move all the way back in the car. Julian connected his computer and started reading about himself on Twitter on the computer and on the phone. He devoted more attention to the computer than he did to her. She’d suggested they take in at a hotel but he said he wanted to see ‘girls in their natural habitat’.

To Enköping

It was dark when they got off the train and they passed old industry buildings where he went off to pee. She also took a pee. When they arrived at her flat she went in before him into the bedroom to clean up a bit before he saw it. They took off their shoes and the relationship between them didn’t feel warm anymore. The passion and excitement had disappeared. They made out in the bedroom but she wanted to brush her teeth. It was midnight, pitch black outside, and they brushed their teeth together – it felt banal and boring.

When they want back in the bedroom Julian stood in front of Sofia and grabbed her hips and pushed her demonstratively down on the bed, as if he were a real man. He took off his clothes and they had foreplay on the bed. They were naked and he rubbed his penis against her nether regions without penetrating her but he got closer and closer to her slit. She squeezed her legs together because she didn’t want sex with him without protection. They carried on for hours and Julian couldn’t get a full erection. Julian had no interest in using a condom.

Suddenly Julian said he was going to go to sleep. She felt rejected and shocked. It came so suddenly, they’d had a really long foreplay and then nothing. She asked what was wrong, she didn’t understand. He pulled the blanket over himself, turned away from her, and fell asleep. She went out and got her fleece blanket because she was cold. She lay awake a long time wondering what had happened and exchanged SMS messages with her friends. He lay beside her snoring. She must have fallen asleep for later she woke up and they had sex. She’d earlier got the condoms and put them on the floor by the bed. He reluctantly agreed to use a condom even if he muttered something about preferring her to latex. He no longer had an erection problem. At one point when he mounted her from behind, she turned to look at him and smiled and he asked her why she was smiling, what she had to smile about. She didn’t like the tone in his voice.

They fell asleep and when they woke up they could have had sex again, she’s not really sure. He ordered her to get water and orange juice. She didn’t like being ordered in her own home but thought ‘whatever’ and got the water and juice anyway. He wanted her to go out and buy more breakfast. She didn’t want to leave him alone in the flat, she didn’t know him well enough, but she did it anyway. When she left the flat he lay naked in her bed and was working with his phones. Before she left she said ‘be good’. He replied ‘don’t worry, I’m always bad’. When she returned she served him oatmeal, milk, and juice. She’d already eaten before he woke up and spoken with a friend on the phone.

The Assault

They sat on the bed and talked and he took off her clothes again. They had sex again and she discovered he’d put the condom only over the head of his penis but she let it be. They fell asleep and she woke by feeling him penetrate her. She immediately asked ‘are you wearing anything’ and he answered ‘you’. She told him ‘you better not have HIV’ and he replied ‘of course not’. She felt it was too late. He was already inside her and she let him continue. She couldn’t be bothered telling him again. She’d been nagging about condoms all night long. She’s never had unprotected sex. He said he wanted to come inside her, he didn’t say when he’d done it but he did it. There was a lot running out of her afterwards.

She told him what happens if she gets pregnant. He replied that Sweden was a good country for raising children. She told him jokingly that if she got pregnant then he’d have to pay her student loans. On the train to Enköping he’d told her he’d slept in Anna Ardin’s bed after the crayfish party. She asked if he’d had sex with Anna but he said Anna liked girls, she was lesbian. But now she knows he did the same thing with Anna. She asked him how many times he’d had sex but he said he hadn’t counted. He also said he’d had a HIV test three months earlier and he’d had sex with a girl afterwards and that girl had also taken a HIV test and wasn’t infected. She said sarcastic things to him in a joking tone. She thinks she got the idea of taking the drama out of what had happened, he in turn didn’t seem to care. When he found out how big her student loan was he said if he paid her so much money she’d have to give birth to the baby. They joked that they’d name the baby Afghanistan. He also said that he should always carry abortion pills that actually were sugar pills.

His phone rang and he had a meeting with Aftonbladet on Tuesday at noon. She explained to him that he’d not make the meeting on time and he pushed his entire schedule forward an hour. Then they rode her bicycle to the train station. She paid his ticket to Stockholm. Before they parted he told her to keep her phone on. She asked if he’d ring her and he said he would.

Afterwards

She rode her bicycle home, showered, and washed her bed sheets. Because she hadn’t made it to work she called in sick and stayed home the whole day. She wanted to clean up and wash everything. There was semen on the bed sheets, she thought it was disgusting. She went to the chemist’s and bought a ‘morning after’ pill.

When she talked with her friends afterwards she understood she was the victim of a crime. She went into Danderyd hospital and went from there to the Söder hospital. There she was examined and they even took samples with a so-called ‘rape kit’.

Forensic Certificate

Sofia gives her permission for obtaining a forensic certificate.

Claimant Counsel

Sofia desires a claimant counsel she will identify later.

Sundry

Julian says his name is Julian Paul Assange and was born 31 December 1971.

Interrogator’s Comments

Sofia and I were notified during the interrogation that Julian Assange had been arrested in absentia. Sofia had difficulty concentrating after that news, whereby I made the judgement it was best to terminate the interrogation. But Sofia had time anyway to explain that Assange was angry with her. I didn’t have time to get any further details about why he was angry with her or how this manifested itself. And we didn’t have time to get into what else happened afterwards. The interrogation was neither read back to Sofia nor reviewed for approval by her but Sofia was told she had the opportunity

to do this later.

First a statement of interest. I have given talks to classes at London Metropolitan University, attended a couple of conferences there, and been quite heavily engaged as an unpaid adviser to the Ghanaian side in (so far successful) negotiations for LMU acourses to be taught in Ghana.

There is no doubt that LMU is a real university, with some of its teaching and courses of world class. There is also no doubt that it does more than perhaps any other UK university to bring in students from communities which have not traditionally been high-achieving in education.

There is also no doubt at all that LMU had many hundred genuine, hard working overseas students who were performing well on their courses, and who have now been forced out, without notice. For the government to say they are being helped to find other universities is not good enough. In many cases they will be disadvantaged by lack of commonality of content with their new co-students on the first two years of the course, not to mention the massive disruption of moving home, losing part-time jobs, friends, babycare or healthcare arrangements etc. Suddenly to ban a university not just from accepting new international students, but from teaching all those it already has, is an act of monstrous disproportion affecting two thousand of people.

That there has been virtually no public outcry is a measure of just how accustomed we have become to extreme abuse of arbitrary power by government – and of the easy acceptance of the anti-immigrant agenda by mainstream media.

There is no doubt there was a massive problem with illegal immigration disguised as education. It focused on language schools in particular. There are of course some excellent language schools which do a good job, but there were certainly hundreds which scarcely functioned at all. I know, as personal friends, a number of “students” who have been here – in one case for over eight years – and literally never once visited their supposed place of education. It is also a fact that several of these fake colleges were owned and run by organised crime, as one of a number of rackets of the interests that established them. The government has closed down many scores of these fake colleges in the last three years. That is good. As Margaret Hodge was complaining yesterday, it had deported very few of the 60,000 or so identified fake students here from those colleges.

Unlike Ms Hodge, I regard that as good also. While in favour of preventing illegal entry, I am not in favour of uprooting people forcibly from wherever they have succeeded in making a home.

The root of London Metropolitan University’s problems was a stupid “anti-elitist” New Labour decision that real, large, world-respected universities must be treated in the immigration rules exactly like a pretend language school housed in one room above a laundrette.

A university is perfectly capable of judging who is and who is not performing their studies adequately – indeed that is one of the prime functions of a university. Yet the UK Border Agency has imposed a whole new raft of extra criteria like percentage of lectures attended, and bank balances to be maintained, and forced the universities at their own cost to put in place resource expensive systems for monitoring it (yes, even the bank balances).

Yet these criteria are nothing to do with academic achievement – I attended less than 5% of lectures over my university career, and the bare minimum of tutorials I could get away with, yet I got a first. Similarly the university is best placed to know what level of English language understanding is needed for which particular course, but again the UK Border Agency imposes its own criteria – and indeed this has been the major reason given for acting against London Metropolitan University.

Universities are supposed to be self-governing institutions. The intrusion of the immigration authorities into their running is an appalling development which should alarm everyone. Overseas students who fail cease to be students; at that stage the university should and will inform the immigration authorities of their change of status. It is not the job of UKBA to determine who has passed and who failed. As long as the university recognises an individual as part of the university community; that is their legal status. The UK Borders Agency is not a degree-awarding body. It should attend to its own business.

These stupid and intrusive regulations must be repealed.

If Assange is ever extradited to Sweden, the danger is that the evidence against him will be held entirely in secret. ALthough published in Sweden, the evidence so far has not been published in the UK except for some extremely selective quotes designed to damage Assange as much as possible.

This is (in translation) the full Swedish police statement arising from Ardin’s interrogation and approved by Anna Ardin. I gave it here without comment. Some further analysis of Ardin will follow in a later post, along with Sofia Wilen’s full statement.

I will however note here the fact that, following this statement, Ardin did produce a condom split across the top to police as evidence. However forensic examination showed not only that there was none of Assange’s DNA on the condom, but that it had never been worn by anybody.

It is impossible to put on a condom and leave no microscopic traces of the fact.

That does not of itself make Ardin’s story untrue. This is her statement:

The chief interrogator rings claimant Anna Ardin (hereafter ‘Anna’) for the purpose of conducting an interrogation because of the event described above (‘rape or sexual molestation at Tjurbergsgatan 36 up to 2010-08-14 12:00’).

Anna says she’s worked as a press secretary and political secretary for Sweden’s christian social democrats – the brotherhood movement. Anna says she was involved in organising a seminar that was to take place on 14 August where Julian Assange had been invited in as a lecturer.

Because Anna would be out of town 11 – 14 August she lent her flat to Assange. But Anna returned to Stockholm already Friday 13 August because she had a lot of work to do for the seminar. Anna and Assange have never before met personally but only had contact via mail and the telephone.

The Friday in question Assange and Anna went out and ate dinner together. They’d agreed that Assange would go on living in Anna’s flat despite her coming home a day early. After their dinner on the town they went back to Anna’s flat and drank tea.

In answer to a question Anna says that neither she nor Assange drank alcohol that evening. When they sat and drank tea Assange began caressing her leg. In answer to a question Anna says Assange earlier in the evening had not made any physical approaches save now which Anna initially welcomed. But it felt ‘uncomfortable from the get-go’ as Assange was rough and impatient. According to Anna, ‘everything happened so fast’. He ripped off her clothes and in conjunction with this pulled at and broke her necklace. Anna tried to put some clothes back on again because things were going too fast and it felt uncomfortable but Assange immediately took her clothes off again. Anna says that she thought she actually didn’t want to go any further but it was too late to say ‘stop’ to Assange when she’d ‘gone along with it this far’. She thought she ‘could blame herself’. So she let Assange fully undress her.

Then they lay in the bed. Anna was on her back and Assange was on top of her. Anna thought Assange wanted to immediately put his penis in her vagina which she didn’t want as he didn’t have a condom on. So she tried to twist her hips to the side and squeeze her legs together to prevent a penetration. Anna tried several times to reach for a condom which Assange stopped her from doing by holding her arms and prying open her legs and trying nevertheless to penetrate her with his penis without a condom. Anna says that in the end she was ready to cry because she was pinned and couldn’t reach a condom and thought ‘this might not end well’. In answer to a question Anna says Assange must have known she was trying to reach for a condom and he was holding her arms to stop her.

Assange asked after a while what Anna was doing and why she was squeezing her legs together. Anna then told him she wanted him to put on a condom before he entered her. Assange released her arms and put on the condom Anna got for him. Anna felt a huge unexpressed reluctance from Assange to using a condom which led to her getting the feeling he didn’t put on the condom she’d given him. She therefore reached down with her hand to Assange’s penis to check if he’d really put the condom on. She could feel that the edge of the condom was where it should be at the root of Assange’s penis. Anna and Assange resumed having sex and Anna says she thought ‘hope it’s over soon’.

Anna notices after a while that Assange withdraws from her to fix the condom. Judging from the sound, it sounded to Anna like Assange took the condom off. He entered her again and continued the act. Anna again checked his penis with her hand and again felt the edge of the condom where it should be and so let the sex continue.

After a while Assange ejaculates inside her and thereafter withdraws. Anna saw that the condom didn’t have semen in it when Assange took it off. When Anna began moving her body she noticed how things were running out of her vagina. Anna understood rather quickly that it must be Assange’s semen. She pointed this out for Assange but he denied this and told her it was she who was wet with her own juices. Anna is convinced that Assange, when he withdrew from her the first time, deliberately broken the condom at the tip and thereafter continued the sex with the resulting ejaculation. In answer to a question Anna says she didn’t look closer at the condom, if it was broken as she thought, but she says she thinks she still has the condom at home and will look at it. She says that even the bed sheets used on that occasion are most likely still in her hamper.

After the above mentioned incident Anna says she and Assange didn’t have any more sex. Yet Assange went on living with her up to and including Friday 20 August. According to Anna Assange made sexual overtures every day after that evening when they’d had sex. For example by touching her breasts. Anna rebuffed Assange on all these occasions and Assange accepted it. On one occasion, Wednesday 18 August, he’d suddenly removed all his clothing on his lower body and thereafter rubbed his lower body and his erect penis against Anna. Anna says she thought this was strange behaviour and uncomfortable and had therefore moved down to a mattress on the floor and slept there instead of up in the bed with Assange. The next night Anna stayed with a friend because she didn’t want to be around Assange because of his strange behaviour. She even pointed out after Wednesday 18 August that she didn’t want Assange staying any longer in her flat which he didn’t respond to until Friday when he took his things and returned her flat key.

In answer to a question Anna says Assange lived with her but they hardly slept together because Assange was up at night working with his computer. She mostly got up in the morning about 07:00 when he went to sleep.

In answer to a question Anna says she knew of Sofia when she’d been in contact with Anna before the above mentioned seminar and been part of the audience. According to Anna Sofia had purchased electrical cables for Assange and been with Anna and Assange at the lunch after the seminar. Anna noticed Assange flirted with Sofia during the lunch and understood that they’d afterwards begun some sort of relationship when Assange rang Sofia later in the evening when he was at Anna’s at the crayfish party.

She received an email message from Sofia Friday 20 August where she wonders if she can reach Assange as she had something important to tell him. Anna understood immediately what it was about and contacted Sofia who then told her what had happened to her, that she and Assange had had sex and that he didn’t want to use a condom etc. Sofia wanted to follow this up with the police and Anna decided to follow along, foremost as support.

Anna says she already heard from several sources that Assange ‘chases all women who cross his path’. Considering Assange’s reputation Anna felt it very important that they used a condom the time they had sex, that is the day before the seminar.

Anna says she’s felt terrible after the occasion when she and Assange had sex. Foremost because of the worry she’d been infected by HIV or some other STD. Anna says she freely consented to have sex with Assange but she couldn’t have let it happen if she’d known he didn’t have a condom. Anna has been in contact with the health centre and been given a time for tests next week. Anna approves of the police having the results of these tests.

Anna does not want any help from the crime victims unit but will get back to us if she feels it’s necessary.

Interrogation read back and approved.

I cannot raise an iota of interest in which Conservative Tory, or which Lib Dem Tory, occupies which Cabinet post. I am much more concerned that the government has made squatting a criminal act, ending 35 years of statute law and 400 years of common law protection for the homeless. How did this happen without significant public debate when the legislation was going through?

Most Cabinet jobs provide extremely posh taxpayer funded housing, in addition to the several other homes most politicians of rank appear to own. Meantime an estimated 50,000 people in England and Wales have just become criminals for living in what are, indubitably, their homes if not their property.

The right and wrongs of squatting are complex and highly dependent on the individual circumstances. But I have little sympathy for the owners of second (holiday) homes, or investment properties which attract squatters. My own home in Ramsgate is one of three identical properties in a row, one of which has been completely empty for at least two years. Homelessness, housing shortage and housing misallocation are complex problems. But the idea that the solution is to use the full weight of the state against whe weakest and most disadvantaged individuals in the conundrum, is not one any decent person should entertain.

Yet again, I find myself completely perplexed by the coalition government doing things nobody genuinely in the tradition of British liberalism could possibly entertain. More puzzling still, I know Grant Shapps, the Housing Minister, and he is friendly, kind, earnest and well-meaning. I cannot understand the strange power of collective ativism which appears to take over those in government.

The police, of course, instantly have 50,000 new criminals to arrest, and indeed a bounden duty to go out and arrest them. Several chief constables will be keen on this, as squatters are a very easy target compared to real criminals and their clear-up statistics will look good. I am trying to rationalise this extraordinary excrescence of the arrogance of the propertied classes. Perhaps the Occupy Movement and this are symptoms of a kind of Reformation and Counter-Reformation in modern thought. Or perhaps the UK really is becoming a particularly horrible kind of place to live.