I very much enjoyed yesterday’s survey of current events with Mark McNaught of Independence Live. I hope you enjoy it too. The initial technical problems don’t last very long, and you get to see the view from my balcony at the end!
UPDATE GREAT NEWS: Swedish prosecutors are about to announce the dropping of the investigation into Julian Assange on sexual offence allegations. There never were any charges and the allegations were always nonsense, as detailed in the below article I wrote a month ago:
A few months ago I asked Julian whether he expected that Donald Trump would end the case against him in the United States. WikiLeaks had after all published the DNC and Podesta emails, which revealed the corruption at the heart of the Clinton campaign and the way the Democratic primaries had been rigged against Bernie Sanders.
Julian replied that no, he expected the opposite to be true. Trump would feel the need to be openly active against Assange to show that there had been no relationship between him and WikiLeaks. Julian was of course right, and Trump’s Attorney-General has announced that the United States wants to extradite Assange on charges of espionage related to the Snowden revelations of mass illegal government surveillance.
It is worth noting that this is not really new. The Obama administration was sitting on sealed indictments against Assange for years. Obama prosecuted more whistleblowers than any other President in history. Having come to power promising to take action against senior CIA figures for waterboarding, the only person his Administration prosecuted – and jailed – over it was John Kiriakou for blowing the whistle on waterboarding.
Obama’s policy of not confirming or denying the charges against Assange in the States, enabled the media propagandists to pour scorn on Assange’s repeated insistence he was in the Ecuadorean Embassy to avoid extradition not to Sweden, but to the USA. That is now undeniable.
There are no rape charges against Assange in Sweden. There are espionage charges against Assange in the USA.
The evidence in the Swedish Assange allegations was originally reviewed by the chief prosecutor in Stockholm who declared there was no case to answer. It was then taken up – as allowed in the Swedish system – by a second prosecutor, Marianne NY, who has a campaigning third wave feminist agenda.
The European Arrest Warrant against Assange was signed not by any court, but by Marianne Ny. It was not on the basis that he was charged with any offence, but that he was wanted for questioning by the prosecutor. This can never happen again – UK law was subsequently changed so only a court, not a prosecutor, must sign the warrant.
Questioning is now complete. Assange has still not been charged. And yet his legal status according to the UK government is still that he is pending extradition for questioning – even though the questioning finished in the Ecuador Embassy last November.
The sexual allegations against Assange in Sweden have always been risible when considered in detail. The physical evidence against Assange is faked. The condom he allegedly wore and furtively ripped during intercourse with Anna Ardin contains none of his DNA – a physical impossibility had he worn it.
Assange’s DNA is present in another condom provided by Sofia Wilen, but there is no dispute the pair had consensual sex with that condom. What is alleged is that after drowsing off post-coitus, Assange initiated sex a second time while Wilen was still, in her own words “half asleep”, so she was not able to give fully informed consent. Assange adamantly denies this.
The women were questioned six years ago, as was Assange. All the physical evidence was collected and assessed. For five years Assange has been proclaiming his willingness to be questioned by Swedish authorities inside the Ecuadorean Embassy. Marianne Ny did nothing. The fact that there was no viable case against Assange and no genuine investigation in progress, was a determining factor in the decision of the extremely eminent international jurists of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, that Assange is being arbitrarily detained and should be freed. The UK and Swedish governments accepted the UN process and fully participated in it, and then appealed and lost again, but still refuse to accept the result. Neither the UK nor Sweden has ever failed to support any other decision of the UN Working Group.
Eventually Marianne Ny was forced by legal action by Assange to assure the Swedish Supreme Court she would move the investigation forward. Finally last November a Swedish prosecutor and Swedish policeman questioned Assange, over two days, in the Ecuadorean Embassy. Remember this was a follow up to his initial interview in Sweden six years ago. Julian also at the questioning in November gave an extremely comprehensive written statement.
The questioning was in November. It is now nearly May. The police and prosecutor had had six years to assess and analyse all the other evidence – including the testimony of the women and their text messages, which are crucial to the case. The follow up Assange questioning was the last thing Marianne Ny had to drag it out.
Yet there are still no charges. There are still no charges. Assange’s status is still that he is wanted for questioning, even though the questioning is all done. The Swedish establishment, an extremely tight knit and closed apparatus, appears unwilling to bite the bullet of admitting the whole has been nonsense. The tactic appears to be to sit it out another couple of years until the statute of limitations kicks in, and thus avoid admitting there was never a case.
You would have to be profoundly deaf not to hear the tramp of authoritarian boots currently marching all over the body politic of western societies. With racism, intolerance and the security state in the ascendant, now we need whistleblowers (and their publishers) more than ever. Those on the left who were distracted by the CIA’s “rape” dog whistle need to rediscover their critical faculties and get behind WikiLeaks.
There are no rape charges against Julian Assange in Sweden. There are espionage charges against Julian Assange in the USA.
The lies against Assange and WikiLeaks are no longer tenable.
So many American advisers, so much American corporate money and so many American analytics lie behind May’s campaigning. Of course some family traits emerge from this common heritage. All the American pictures here are from one particular President – Richard Nixon.
Much has changed in the last week with the Labour and Tory manifesto launches. Today there was a council by-election in Enfield Lock ward of Enfield North constituency. This is important because Enfield North was one of the few Labour gains in 2015 and the Tories only need a swing of 1.2% to get it back. It is the Tories’ 12th most likely gain, and one they should take easily if they are going to get the big majority predicted.
Here was the result:
It is worth noting the unusually high turnout: 32%. This is almost certainly explained by the proximity to the general election, and for the same reason voters are likely to have concentrated on national rather than local factors.
The net swing from Labour to Tory was only 0.3%. Labour would hold Enfield North on that swing. Indeed, UK-wide the Tories would only gain Chester and Ealing Central on a 0.3% swing.
Of course I do not pretend that you can really extrapolate from a single London ward across the whole country. But over 4,000 people cast real votes in that by-election compared to the 1,100 sample of the average opinion poll. It is undeniably true that the Conservatives would have expected to do a good deal better in Enfield Lock today. I do not think we are getting a true picture of what is happening in the country from the polls and the media. There is life in this election yet.