I apologise for the break, I have been setting up in Beirut to cover the Israeli assault from here.
This has been quite a logistic challenge. I am accompanied by Niels Ladefoged, the cinematographer with Wikileaks who was with Julian Assange on his flight to Australia. Readers of this blog know Niels as the cinematographer of Ithaka who was my companion on the month-long tour of Germany I made with that film.
We have needed to get to Beirut and then get safe accommodation, and organise internet access, a car and driver, interpreters, etc. I am lucky to have some very good local introductions to get us started, but obviously do not have the kind of support a media organisation offers.
One thing we have needed to obtain is passes to enter and operate in the evacuated areas of the city. We can without them move freely around much of Beirut including the centre, and film. We have also been able to enter the bombed-out areas and look, but could not stay longer and take pictures or videos there without permission from local committees, which we have been awaiting.
There are two dangers. The first is assassination by the Israelis, who target journalists specifically. The second is that local people are understandably outraged and are suspicious of westerners, with good cause. A cursory check of me first brings the information that I am a former British diplomat, which can bring misunderstanding. That is why permits and protection from local committees is highly recommended to us.
I have sketched out a first article about what I have seen, but really want to get images to accompany it. I am hoping we will solve this today.
It is very expensive to do this trip. I have no financial backing at all other than readers of this blog. Once I get out the first article I shall be launching a specific crowdfund appeal, but meantime if you haven’t subscribed yet, please do so using one of the methods below.
If you have subscribed previously using PayPal, the chances are your subscription has expired as PayPal stops it when your registered card expires. I have lost over half of all subscriptions this way.
We all have to do what we can to stop this genocide. I have helped initiate the genocide case against Israel at the ICJ, and have been lobbying at the UN for Israel’s suspension. But just now, being here reporting the Israeli assault from the resistance side is what I believe I can do best to contribute.
———————————————–
Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.
When a journalist writes this it generally means they will proceed to reveal something they hope will actually show them in a good light or justified in some way. But I have a real confession to make, of something I did that was wrong.
Somewhere in the UK, among the papers of a dead loved one which nobody has the heart to throw out, in cardboard boxes in dusty attics or deep in the filing cabinets of Jeremy Corbyn, exist still a few copies of thousands of letters bearing my authentic signature.
These letters, on expensive paper with an impressive Foreign and Commonwealth Office crested header, state that the British Government will not deal with the African National Congress because it is a terrorist organisation.
Many of them go on to state that Nelson Mandela is a terrorist who was rightly convicted of terrorism by a South African court after a free and fair trial.
I really did write those thousands of letters, not just sign them. I did not believe a single word of it, and was only “doing my job” as a civil servant, but in a sense that makes it worse.
So I know how many government functionaries currently feel in carrying out the government’s policy of supporting and indeed actively participating in genocide.
When I joined the FCO, in my “fast stream” intake of 22 I was one of only two who was not public school and the only one who was not Oxbridge. I also had the unusual background of being a member of CND, Friends of Palestine and various other activist groups.
I could not be excluded because in the several days and stages of public examinations I had (tied with 2 others) outperformed everybody else of the 80,000 people who had entered the Civil Service administrative exams (it was 1984 with 3.5 million unemployed).
But the security services were not happy, and my “positive vetting” was delayed. This is an extremely exhaustive process (nowadays direct vetting) for those with the highest security clearance. An MOD officer, usually retired military, is assigned to investigate everything about you for months, including interviewing many who know you.
So while I joined the FCO in September 1984, for five months I was not given a job but rather put on full time French language training together with three other misfits (one of whom I think was being given extra investigation because his uncle was Roger Hollis).
In the end my positive vetting was left with a query, and I was pulled in to see the Head of Personnel Department. They said that they had decided to grant my vetting certificate, but that I was going to be placed on the South Africa (Political) desk as a direct test of whether it was possible for me to put my politics aside and function as a civil servant.
So I did. You tell yourself many things to get by, chiefly that the UK is a democracy and ministers are elected by voters to determine policy; whereas you as a civil servant are merely carrying through the wishes of the voters.
Thatcher was Prime Minister and she simply was a straightforward supporter of apartheid. This is much denied but I am an eye witness. Geoffrey Howe was Foreign Minister and it was never easy to determine what he thought about anything. Junior ministers running day to day policy were Lynda Chalker and Malcolm Rifkind, who were both viscerally anti-apartheid.
But the line that Mandela was a terrorist and the ANC a terrorist organisation was dictated by Thatcher and absolutely insisted upon.
It is difficult now to explain the intensity of feeling in the UK and the strength of the anti-apartheid campaign. Scores of letters would arrive every day, many from MPs, and – this bit is hard to believe now – in those days every letter would be answered point by point, not with a generic reply.
I was writing those replies by hand, and then giving them to the secretaries to type up. In 1985 the Department got its first word processor and I was able to draft forty template paragraphs and select from those for the replies. But out those replies went from Craig Murray, stating that Nelson Mandela was a terrorist, thousands of them.
I was very actively involved in the Whitehall battle to change the policy, but that is a different story which I have in part explained before.
But this is an extremely important thought that I want you all to ponder.
In 1985, the Terrorism Act 2000 was still 15 years away. There was no such thing as a proscribed organisation under the Terrorism Act.
Under today’s legislation, every single one of those people writing in support of the African National Congress or out campaigning for the release of Nelson Mandela would have been liable for arrest under Section 12 1 (a) of the Terrorism Act.
That is the danger of allowing the state to dictate whom you must consider a terrorist and punishing those who disagree with the state.
In 1985 the official position of the British state was that the ANC were terrorists and apartheid South Africa were the good guys.
In 2024 the official position of the British state is that Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorists and apartheid Israel are the good guys.
The state can be wrong.
It is therefore not an irony that Starmer and Cooper banned Nelson Mandela’s grandson from entering the UK as a “terrorist sympathiser” because of his support for Palestine. In this as so much else, Starmer is a follower of Thatcher.
The difference forty years later is that the state is now persecuting British citizens and locking them up for daring to say that the state can be wrong.
The ANC example explains why it is essential we do not give way to this pressure.
Let us face facts. Like most resistance units against colonialism, the ANC were indeed forced by the exigencies of asymmetric warfare into actions that were careless of, or even targeted the lives of, colonial settler civilians.
That did not put them on the wrong side of history. Apartheid South Africa was wrong just as Apartheid Israel is wrong. Occupied people have, in international law, the right of armed resistance. Within that context of lawful struggle, individuals remain accountable for individual war crimes.
The Terrorism Act, abused by the Israel lobby to make it illegal to support Israel’s opponents, is fundamentally bad legislation. It literally provides for up to 14 years in jail if you “express an opinion” in favour of a proscribed organisation.
40 years ago it would have been used against the large majority of the population who “expressed an opinion” in favour of the ANC, officially viewed as a terrorist organisation.
The sickening ratcheting up of pressure on Palestine supporters by super Zionist Keir Starmer continued yesterday with a 6am raid on highly distinguished journalist Asa Winstanley. All his electronics and journalistic materials were seized.
Today 10 UK police launched a pre-dawn raid on the home of Asa Winstanley, one of Britain’s leading and most celebrated investigative journalists.
All this devices, so all his journalistic materials, were seized and are now with the authorities.
Panicked Zionist “elites” who run western states are lashing out in fear at their opponents. As their popular support evaporates in the face of clear evidence of appalling Israeli atrocities, they are resorting to the methods of fascism.
————————————————
Forgive me for pointing out that my ability to provide this coverage is entirely dependent on your kind voluntary subscriptions which keep this blog going. This post is free for anybody to reproduce or republish, including in translation. You are still very welcome to read without subscribing.
Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.
Today is my 66th birthday, so I am hoping that you will forgive an article that is at core the anecdotal ramblings of an old man.
It was inspired by horror at Wes Streeting (I could end the sentence there but I shall continue it) ‘s plan to give weight loss jabs to the unemployed.
The unemployed are more likely to be underweight than the population average, and this attempt to portray the unemployed as lazy couch potatoes is vile in many ways. Its masking as an “investment” in the economy by Big Pharma is chilling.
If it goes ahead, how many years do you think we are away from those who refuse to have the drug injected into their veins, having their benefits stopped?
How are we to view this attempt to use the “unproductive” as lab rats for Big Pharma?
It has also been announced that the government is to send employment advisers into mental health wards to try to get sick people back into work. This is astonishing. It is extremely difficult to access any mental health care at all on the NHS.
To get residential care requires in truth a level of mental health crisis that indicates a threat to life of yourself or others. Yet people from mental health wards are going to be got into work, when there are hundreds of thousands of perfectly well people desperate for a good job who cannot find one?
What is the purpose of this nonsense other than propaganda and stigmatisation of the unemployed?
Which leads me to my anecdotes on the NHS and its purpose.
Sixty years ago or so, when my siblings or I were sick enough to be in bed, my mother would phone the surgery and the GP would come to our home to see us. This was perfectly normal. It is probably difficult for Generation Z to believe this really used to happen.
Now if I am sick enough to be in bed, I have to phone the surgery precisely at 8am and go through the lottery of getting in to the phone queue, rather than the engaged signal as the queue is at capacity. I may have to call numerous times.
If I do manage to get into the queue I have to hope I get to the front of it before all appointments are taken. If I fail, I cannot make an appointment for the next day but have to try my luck again then, once more at precisely 8am, while a hundred other people are trying exactly the same thing.
If I am fortunate enough to make it through the queue, I am de facto triaged by a receptionist with no medical qualifications but to whom I have to explain my medical symptoms.
She will then, if she thinks I have a case, explain my symptoms to a doctor and I may come out of this process, not with the doctor coming to my home, nor with me attending the surgery, but with a phone call from the doctor and a down the line diagnosis.
I find that everybody I have spoken to – and from all parts of the UK – has to put up with the same system. I cannot believe we have fallen in to accepting this.
It is not medical treatment. It is not a national health service, it is a notional health service.
If I feel really bad I can attempt to bypass the system and go to the hospital Accident & Emergency service, which I will find clogged with scores of other desperate people, waiting hours and hours to try to get medical attention.
I have not told this story before, but about three years ago I was invited to a party in Ealing after one of the Assange hearings. I had just one glass of wine and started to feel dizzy and nauseous, so I made my excuses and left.
I got a taxi back to the hotel near the Old Bailey where I was staying, but collapsed in the street just across from the hotel. I vomited and could not stand up. The problem was my heart condition. I phoned 999 and was told by the ambulance service it would be approximately three hours before an ambulance could reach me.
Passers by assumed I was a drunk or drug addict and gave me a wide berth. After a very cold half hour (it was I think February) a group of Irishmen stopped to help me and carried me into my hotel. I quite soon fell asleep on the bed and the next morning felt fine – and went back into court.
I spent several months this year living in Greece. I had very bad bronchitis and pitched up at the local rural medical centre, the equivalent of the GP surgery. I was seen immediately by two doctors, examined at length, X-rayed and given an ECG and left with prescriptions, all within an hour of turning up.
Some months later I fell and dislocated my shoulder, in a highly remote rural location and after midnight. An ambulance arrived within half an hour and drove me for 90 minutes to the hospital in Volos, where my shoulder was reset.
Now here is the kicker. UK spending per capita on public healthcare is twice Greek spending per capita on public healthcare.
Yet while we spend twice as much, the experience of this patient (I did warn you this is going to be personal and anecdotal) is that key aspects of the Greek system are far better.
The NHS is in a state of near disaster. The reason is that it has been hollowed out for private profit, with the designated “profit centres” which give a high return hived off to private contractors (though not visibly to the patient), and the public purse left paying for the complicated and expensive bits.
Of course, we hear from those the wonderful stories of great care.
The reason we pay such a huge sum per capita for public healthcare – £3,600 a year for every man, woman and child in the UK – and get such a totally unacceptable service in return, is that private companies are sucking out the money for profit.
10% of NHS patients are in fact privately treated, overwhelmingly for the cheapest and simplest problems, and private contractors suck 18% of the NHS budget.
I do not pretend that reform is not needed in the NHS – but getting out the private bloodsuckers and removing the profits would be a good first step.
Renationalisation of the NHS is urgently required.
If it were not so profitable then private healthcare lobbyists would not be bribing our politicians. Keir Starmer, Wes Streeting and Yvette Cooper have between them received over £750,000 from private healthcare lobbyists and companies.
As with the Israel lobby, the essential corruption of our politics is what drives the entire policy agenda of the political class. There is an overwhelming case for banning elected politicians and their parties from accepting large donations.
The chances of this happening short of a revolution are zero.
May I urge you to look at this video of the public meeting we held on the NHS during my Blackburn election campaign. Leaving aside my very obvious exhaustion, I was absolutely fascinated by the speeches of Mary Whitby and Dr Bob Gill.
Purely in terms of its content, I think paradoxically this small gathering was one of the best political meetings I have ever witnessed. I absolutely promise you it is worth your time and attention, and you will come out of it looking at the NHS in an entirely different light.
I most certainly did.
————————————————
Forgive me for pointing out that my ability to provide this coverage is entirely dependent on your kind voluntary subscriptions which keep this blog going. This post is free for anybody to reproduce or republish, including in translation. You are still very welcome to read without subscribing.
Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.
Today is the grand opening of the Salisbury Festival of Russophobia, otherwise known as the Public Inquiry into the death of Dawn Sturgess, an unfortunate victim of imperialist spy games.
Do not be fooled. This is not in any sense a genuine public inquiry, supposed to get at the truth. This is an inquiry like the Hutton Inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly, designed entirely to conceal the truth and further the official narrative.
In the Kelly case, the official narrative was that one of the world’s leading experts in chemical weapons, with access to instant-action neurotoxins, decided to kill himself after leaking that Iraq had no WMD. He chose to do so by cutting his wrist veins with a rusty penknife and waiting for a slow and painful death in the woods.
The ambulance crew who picked Kelly up testified that there was very little blood and they did not think that he could have bled out, but the Inquiry considered there was little blood because it must have “soaked into the soil”. Nobody thought to dig up the soil and check.
In the Dawn Sturgess case, we are supposed to believe that two top Russian agents sent to kill Sergei Skripal chose a “novichok” nerve agent as the manner of death. In broad daylight they painted this on the front door of his house, in full view of the neighbours and passers-by on the packed housing estate and without any protective equipment, despite the fact that a tiny droplet on your skin could kill you.
The agents then went for a walk in Salisbury town centre, looked in the window of an antique shop, and put the perfume bottle containing the novichok back in its packet including somehow resealing the cellophane wrapping. They then placed the “perfume” in a charity bin.
They then made their getaway on the notoriously unreliable Sunday train service.
The Skripals came back home, and both touched the door handle. Despite the novichok being instant-acting and extremely deadly, they then went out for lunch and ate a full meal and drank wine and had a high old time for three hours, being joined and photographed by their MI6 handler Pablo Miller (whose existence is D-noticed).
After their meal, the novichok finally took effect and they both collapsed on a park bench. Despite the fact that they were different ages, sexes and weights and presumably contacted differing amounts of novichok, they both collapsed at just the same moment, about three hours after contact, so neither of them was able to call for help.
But luckily the very first person to come across them on the park bench was, completely by coincidence, the Chief Nurse of the British Army, who just happened to be passing. They went to hospital and were saved and did not die after all.
A policeman sent to their house touched the door handle and also got novichok poisoning, and he later got ill and was hospitalised, but did not die either. He had returned to his own home and later it was found that he had got novichok all over the light switches and door handles there, but by great fortune his family, who continued to live in this house, did not get ill from it.
The official explanation of this is that it was “a miracle”.
Meanwhile, the “perfume” sat in the charity bin. It sat there for months and months, despite the fact that it was emptied regularly and despite the fact that Charlie Rowley was one of a number of people who also regularly stole from that bin.
Somehow both the bin’s official and unofficial emptiers continually missed the perfume bottle, again and again and again. Finally, several months later, the perfume bottle’s mysterious invisibility cloak failed and Charlie Rowley saw it.
He gave it to his girlfriend Dawn Sturgess, who put some perfume on and died. Charlie Rowley got ill but did not die. He was later able to tell the press inconvenient facts, like the cellophane on the perfume was fully sealed and that he took stuff from that bin fairly often.
When Rowley and Sturgess were taken to hospital, the police descended and sealed off the house and made a massive terrorism theatre of searching it, that went on for days. They were searching for a small container of liquid.
Finally, after days and days of 24/7 painstaking combing through the house by England’s finest, somebody spotted a perfume bottle sitting in plain sight on the kitchen counter, and the novichok was found!
Presumably the perfume’s invisibility cloak had spluttered into life again for a few days before fizzling out.
That really is the official story. Yes, it really is. You are not supposed to notice the massive glaring holes in it. If you want to check up on all the sources and links, here is one I made earlier.
I had intended to attend the inquiry in person. Even the most incompetent lawyer would be able to demolish this ridiculous official narrative with great ease. But then I realised that the entire Inquiry is structured to prevent that happening.
Nobody is going to ask difficult questions. The one person who could is the lawyer representing the family of Dawn Sturgess, but her family have been propagandised into total adherence to the official line, presumably by a combination of mainstream media and official hand-holding.
Sturgess’s family have understandably become focused on hatred for the Russians, whom they have been told killed their daughter. The line their KC is instructed to pursue is to query why the state was not more effective in protecting their daughter from those evil Russians.
The other “core participants” – the council, police and health authorities – will be back-covering on similar lines, and we can be pretty sure the Inquiry will conclude with plaudits all round about how well everybody pulled against the evil Ruski menace, and a few “lessons learned” saws.
The role of the “public” is to witness the show inquiry. Nobody else gets to ask a question. “Intelligence” material provided by the security services will not be made public. The Inquiry has already been told this morning by the British Government representative that this is essential to assure future informers of confidentiality.
The scene has been set by an utterly ludicrous attempt to stir up Russophobia by MI5. In the last week the Head of MI5 has solemnly assured us that Russia is attempting to launch chaos on the streets of the UK, and we are told by security service sources that the evil Ruskis plan to disrupt UK ambulances.
I am pretty sure Putin also has an evil plan to eat your grandmother.
Never Trust A Man Who Dyes His Hair
Dawn Sturgess died six miles from the official UK govt facility that manufactures novichok “for test purposes” – and incidentally where David Kelly once worked. Her death reinforced the official Salisbury narrative at a time when public scepticism was growing.
I am pretty sure poor Dawn, who had fallen on hard times and was just the kind of person the Establishment views as dispensable, was a victim of state violence.
I am quite certain that if so, it was not the Russians.
————————————————
Forgive me for pointing out that my ability to provide this coverage is entirely dependent on your kind voluntary subscriptions which keep this blog going. This post is free for anybody to reproduce or republish, including in translation. You are still very welcome to read without subscribing.
Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.
Before Alex Salmond, Scottish Independence was an impossible dream, a romantic aspiration, outside the realm of practical politics. After Alex Salmond, it is the dominant question in Scottish politics and by far the biggest threat to the UK state.
I would argue that, with every poll for a decade showing overwhelming support for Independence among the under 30s and support for the UK only in a majority in the over 55s, Alex made Independence inevitable.
In Scotland’s national story, he deserves a place alongside William Wallace and Robert Bruce. (In my last conversation with Alex, about two weeks ago, he told me that new historical research made it pretty certain that Robert the Bruce was born in England. I told him that I knew that – in the family castle near Chelmsford, Essex, to be precise – and I had in fact published it about twenty years ago.)
I am really sad he has left us. It leaves a hero-sized hole in my consciousness. Very shortly after he retired as First Minister and Nicola Sturgeon replaced him, I said in reply to a comment on this blog that while I was not sure about Nicola, I would walk through fire for Alex.
In the end I did have to walk through fire, being imprisoned for publishing too much of the truth about the plot to destroy Alex and his reputation. Afterwards Alex very simply said “You had my back. I will always have yours.” We never mentioned it again; we both understood.
I am not going to give a history of Alex’s political career. There are plenty of others to do that. But I do want to recall that Alex was the only leading British politician to oppose the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999 – on the day that Tony Blair called on NATO to intensify the bombing.
Alex vigorously opposed the invasion of Iraq and led campaigns to have Tony Blair impeached by parliament after being proven to have lied over Iraqi WMD, and also campaigned for charges against Bush and Blair at the International Criminal Court. He opposed the devastating bombing of Libya that plunged that country into a chaos from which it has never recovered.
His penultimate tweet referenced Starmer as following in Blair’s warmongering footsteps:
Starmer’s “we stand with Israel” declaration seems eerily reminiscent of a previous Labour Prime Minister’s open-ended commitment of some 20 years ago to stand with the USA on Iraq “come what may”. (1/3) https://t.co/s0oExsqwwc
Alex led an extremely tight and efficient SNP government of Scotland from 2007–2014 which had a long list of social accomplishments to be proud of and established Scotland as a more left-wing polity than England, with no tuition fees, free social care for the elderly, better childcare, free NHS prescriptions etc.
His weakness was that he was over-trustful and did not see the British security services coming. I know, because he told me, that Alex regretted allowing Angus Robertson to force through an amendment to SNP party policy in favour of Scotland remaining in NATO. Ironically, Alex did so because he thought it would pre-empt and buy off the US and UK security services, when of course they were actually behind it.
I do not pretend I had more than a nodding acquaintance with Alex before the plot to destroy him came to fruition. When he summoned me to meet him urgently on a cold, damp Edinburgh night I was delighted to go to see my hero. What he told me dropped my jaw.
But what stays with me most about that evening, in a bedroom of the George Hotel in Edinburgh, is that what he told me made it absolutely obvious that the plot against him was initiated in and directed from Nicola Sturgeon’s office. He was plainly in huge emotional pain over this.
He was also focused on Liz Lloyd, whom he believed to be an MI5 agent. He said that Lloyd had no connection to Scottish Independence and had initially been placed inside the SNP as an intern to an MP (or MSP, I forget) by a British Government graduate training scheme.
If you want to revisit today the conspiracy against Alex Salmond, I do recommend you read my affidavits in my own contempt of court hearing (as redacted for publication by the Crown Office).
The state deemed these affidavits so dangerous that Scotland’s corrupt judiciary quite literally ruled that they do not exist at all. They are “so evidently untrue as not to require cross-examination”. They were not accepted as evidence in my own case for which they were my evidence, which is truly remarkable. I was jailed with my evidence not even considered, or tested, as “self-evidently untrue”.
I swear to you and to the entire world, on my life and on every thing that I love or that is holy, that every single word is true. There has never been any evidence that anything in them is untrue. Everything we have learnt about the SNP in the last three years supports the truth of my story. Nothing has contradicted it.
In that last conversation with me, Alex was excited about recent council by-election results for his new party, Alba. It has been obtaining about six per cent, which would be enough to get representation in the Scottish parliament with its proportional system. More importantly, most SNP voters were now giving second preferences to Alba rather than the Greens, which he felt was an important shift.
Alex was very happy that Alba was more openly radical than the SNP. Anti-NATO and anti-monarchy, it represents a more radical route to Scottish Independence.
For a former First Minister to be building up a tiny party from scratch and getting 6% of the vote may be portrayed by some as humiliating. But Alex was really excited and upbeat about it; he relished the challenge and was thinking long term. There were days in his young life when 6% would have been a decent result for the SNP. He was simply bubbling with enthusiasm.
I should also recall the occasion when he hosted Peter Oborne, David Davis and me to dinner at a Mayfair restaurant and we got through three bottles of champagne before we even started to order. Alex was enormously good company and really enjoyed the finer things in life.
Heaven just got more fun. At least Alex will never have to worry about seeing his perjured accusers there.
————————————————
Forgive me for pointing out that my ability to provide this coverage is entirely dependent on your kind voluntary subscriptions which keep this blog going. This post is free for anybody to reproduce or republish, including in translation. You are still very welcome to read without subscribing.
Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.
There is literally no act so vile that the UK, US and Germany will not support if perpetrated by the terrorist state of Israel.
Yesterday Israel:
deliberately attacked UN peacekeepers in three separate bases;
bombed residential central Beirut killing and maiming hundreds;
abducted, beat up and held an American journalist;
slaughtered 30 Palestinian refugees in an UNRWA school;
was found by an official UN Commission Report to be guilty of the crime against humanity of “extermination” in Gaza.
Any single one of these outrages would be roundly condemned if committed by any country at all except Israel, and would lead to repercussions.
But Israel can commit them all in a single day and suffer not one word of obloquy from the leading Western powers (although it does appear that the attack on UN peacekeepers may have snapped Macron’s subservience – whether it’s just a blip remains to be seen).
The UN Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, dated 11 September but released yesterday, is incredibly damning and will be a key document for the ICJ Genocide case against Israel brought by South Africa et al.
It notes 498 Israeli attacks on healthcare facilities in the Gaza strip and – much less known – 500 attacks on healthcare facilities in the West Bank, although individually less severe.
Here are some highlights of the report:
9. Hundreds of medical personnel, including three hospital directors and the head of an orthopaedic department, as well as patients and journalists were arrested by Israeli security forces in Shifa’, Nasr and Awdah hospitals during offensives. In at least two cases, senior medical personnel died in Israeli detention. Reportedly, 128 health workers remain detained by Israeli authorities as at 15 July, including four Palestine Red Crescent Society staff members.
10. As at 15 July, 113 ambulances had been attacked and at least 61 had been damaged. The Commission documented direct attacks on medical convoys operated by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the United Nations, the Palestine Red Crescent Society and non-governmental organizations. Access was also reduced owing to closure of areas by Israeli security forces, delays in coordination of safe routes, checkpoints, searches or destruction of roads.
11. The Commission investigated the 29 January attack in Tall al -Hawa on a Palestinian family and a Palestine Red Crescent Society ambulance that had been called to their aid. The family consisted of two adults and five children, including 15-year-old Leyan Hamada and 5-year-old Hind Rajab. They were attacked while trying to evacuate in their car. The ambulance, carrying two paramedics, Yousef Zeino and Ahmed al-Madhoun, was dispatched after its route had been coordinated with Israeli security forces. It was hit by a tank shell at a distance of some 50m from the family’s car. Hind was still alive at the time that the ambulance was dispatched. The presence of Israeli security forces in the area prevented access. As a result, the family members’ bodies could not be retrieved from their bullet-ridden car until 12 days after the incident. The ambulance was found destroyed nearby, with human remains inside.
I find it impossible to get inside the head of our Zionist politicians. Have they persuaded themselves that somehow these things did not really happen, or have they convinced themselves that this is a price worth paying in some wider scheme of things?
Al Shifa Hospital
If so, what precisely is that wider scheme of things?
22. According to the Media Office of the de facto authorities in Gaza, more than 500 bodies were found in mass graves located on hospital grounds, including at Shifa’ and Nasr hospitals. Satellite images from 23 April show at least two possible mass graves at Nasr Hospital. The de facto authorities in Gaza have said that several bodies were found undressed and handcuffed, indicating that the victims might have been executed. One witness involved in the exhumation of bodies near Nasr Hospital told the Commission that he had seen bodies with gunshot wounds in the head or neck. Israeli security forces have denied burying bodies in mass graves, although they acknowledged that soldiers searching for the bodies of hostages had exhumed some mass graves.
It is very well worth reading the entire report. It was very hard to extract highlights for you because it is all worth posting. I skip over a huge amount on the devastating consequences of the destruction of medical facilities, and on torture of detainees. But this next really is a must read:
62. The Commission documented more than 20 cases of sexual and gender-based violence against male and female detainees in more than 10 military and Israel Prison Service facilities, in particular in Negev prison and Sde Teiman camp for male detainees and in Damon and Hasharon prisons for female detainees. Sexual violence was used as a means of punishment and intimidation from the moment of arrest and throughout detention, including during interrogations and searches. Acts of sexual violence documented by the Commission were motivated by extreme hatred towards and a desire to dehumanize the Palestinian people.
63. The Commission found that forced nudity, with the aim of degrading and humiliating victims in front of both soldiers and other detainees, was frequently used against male victims, including repeated strip searches; interrogation of detainees while they were naked; forcing detainees to perform certain movements while naked or stripped and, in some cases, also filmed; subjecting detainees to sexual slurs as they were transported naked; forcing naked detainees into a crowded cell together; and forcing stripped and blindfolded detainees to crouch on the ground with their hands tied behind their back.
64. Several male detainees reported that Israeli security forces personnel had beaten, kicked, pulled or squeezed their genitals, often while the detainees were naked. In some cases, Israeli security forces personnel used such objects as metal detectors and batons. One detainee who had been held in the Israeli security forces personnel Negev prison stated that, in November 2023, members of the Keter unit of the Israel Prison Service had forced him to strip and then ordered him to kiss the Israeli flag. When he refused, he was beaten and his genitals were kicked so severely that he vomited and lost consciousness.
65. The Commission also received credible information concerning rape and sexual assault, including the use of an electrical probe to cause burns to the anus and the insertion of objects, such as sticks, broomsticks and vegetables, into the anus. Some of those acts were reportedly filmed by soldiers. In July, nine soldiers were questioned and several arrested for allegedly raping a detainee and causing life-threatening injury at Sde Teiman.
66. The Commission has determined that detainees were routinely subjected to sexual abuse and harassment, and that threats of sexual assault and rape were directed at detainees or their female family members. One detainee held in Sde Teiman reported that female soldiers had forced him and others to make sounds like a sheep, curse the Hamas leadership and the prophet Muhammad, and say, “I am a whore”. Detainees were beaten if they did not comply. In another case, a soldier took off his trousers and pressed his crotch to a detainee’s face, saying: “You are my bitch. Suck my dick.”
67. Female detainees were also subjected to sexual assault and harassment in military and Israel Prison Service facilities, as well as threats to their lives and threats of rape. The sexual harassment included attempts to kiss and touch their breasts. They reported repeated, prolonged and invasive strip-searches, both before and after interrogations. Women were forced to remove all clothes, including the veil, in front of male and female soldiers. They were beaten and harassed while being called “ugly” and had sexual insults, such as “bitch” and “whore”, directed at them. In one case, a female detainee in an Israel Prison Service prison was denied access to her lawyer after she had informed him of rape threats.
68. The Commission received reports from the Palestinian Authority about the rape of two female detainees. It is attempting to verify the information.
69. Female detainees were photographed without their consent and in degrading circumstances, including in their underwear in front of male soldiers. In one case, a detainee was subjected to repeated and invasive strip-searches following her arrest at a police station in northern Israel. She was beaten, verbally abused, dragged by her hair and photographed in front of an Israeli flag. The photos were posted online.
You will recall that a UN inquiry was by contrast unable to confirm any of the allegations of rape by Palestinian resistance on 7 October 2023 – despite the fact that Israelis are obviously much freer than Palestinians to communicate and provide evidence.
The commission does however go on to state that there is credible information that some Israeli hostages held in Gaza have been subject to sexual abuse.
The heart of the conclusions of the Commission’s report is this:
88. The offensive on Gaza since 7 October has resulted in the destruction of the already weak health-care system in the Gaza Strip, with detrimental long-term effects on the civilian population’s rights to health and life. Attacks on health-care facilities are an intrinsic element of the Israeli security forces’ broader assault on Palestinians in Gaza and the physical and demographic infrastructure of Gaza, as well as of efforts to expand the occupation. The actions of Israel violate international humanitarian law and the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, and they are in stark contravention of the International Court of Justice advisory opinion of July 2024 .
89. The Commission finds that Israel has implemented a concerted policy to destroy the health-care system of Gaza. Israeli security forces have deliberately killed, wounded, arrested, detained, mistreated and tortured medical personnel and targeted medical vehicles, constituting the war crimes of wilful killing and mistreatment and the crime against humanity of extermination. Israeli authorities carried out such acts while tightening the siege of the Gaza Strip, resulting in fuel, food, water, medicines and medical supplies not reaching hospitals, while also drastically reducing permits for patients to leave the territory for medical treatment. The Commission finds that these actions were taken as collective punishment against the Palestinians in Gaza and are part of the ongoing Israeli attack against the Palestinian people that began on
7 October.
I understand that there may be nothing here that you did not already know. But to see it all set out starkly, by a UN Commission which has verified the information, makes it much more difficult for the political class simply to ignore.
I am simply unable to begin to understand, on a personal basis, the politicians who can condone, support and in fact participate in what Israel is doing. It is simply beyond me.
Every time I worry that public interest is faltering and people have become inured to genocide, the Israelis manage to do something still more outrageous. Thankfully social media makes it very hard to hide this.
The political class will never restrain Israel from empathy for the suffering or any sense of moral duty. They may start to do so from a sense of self-preservation.
————————————————
Forgive me for pointing out that my ability to provide this coverage is entirely dependent on your kind voluntary subscriptions which keep this blog going. This post is free for anybody to reproduce or republish, including in translation. You are still very welcome to read without subscribing.
Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.
Western governments are deeply involved, strongly against the will of the majority of their population, in committing a colonial genocide of indigenous people. This happens because the political class have been bought by the Zionist lobby. The causes may run deeper, but that is the mechanism.
Democracy has therefore failed, having been fatally corrupted. In these circumstances, civil disobedience is not just ethically justified, it is the duty of the good citizen.
Palestine Action continue their highly effective actions to disrupt the chain of supply of the Israeli weapons industry.
On Friday morning I was at the Old Bailey with Palestine Action co-founder Richard Barnard (and afterwards in the pub, but let us draw a veil).
Richard was charged with support for terrorism under Section 12 (1) of the Terrorism Act in relation to a speech that he gave a year ago today. This carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years. He was also charged with incitement to criminal damage.
The trial has been set for Manchester on 14 April. I hope that we can see a very large show of support outside the court on that day. Because it is a jury trial, to discuss the facts of the case could be in contempt of court.
I think I may however note that ministers and officials had discussed the prosecution of Palestine Action activists with representatives of Israeli weapons companies and of the Israeli Embassy. It is entirely illegitimate for private companies and foreign states to influence prosecutions.
Barnard nevertheless had been told that the investigation was closed – until it was revived and charges brought by the new “Labour” government, with the specific involvement of the Attorney General.
I then headed to Blackburn in relation to some individual cases of injustice and imprisonment on which I was asked for help during my election campaign, and am working.
By sheer coincidence, while I was there two female supporters of Palestine Action were arrested just outside town, at the Palestine Action protest at the BAE factory at Samlesbury.
What is very plain is that the police used quite unnecessary levels of violence to arrest two young women, who were not engaged in violent behaviour. There was no need whatsoever for officers to press one woman down to the road with their knees in her back, and pinion her arms behind her back with handcuffs.
This routine use of state brutality to discourage dissent is so commonplace now it is accepted as normal. But we must never allow it to become normal.
The women were taken to Blackburn police station and I was able to get down and join the small vigil outside protesting at their being held.
Meanwhile Palestine Action have come up with another brilliant move this week, targeting the offices of Allianz Insurance, who both invest in and insure the activities of Elbit systems, the Israeli arms manufacturer with several UK factories.
Palestine Action has my wholehearted support because their activities are carefully targeted at the roots of the Israeli arms industry in the UK. This is the right kind of direct action.
I am less enamoured of the activities of climate change protestors Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion. Either causing major disruption to the general public, or carrying out acts deliberately intended to cause shock and outrage, appear to me very strange activities which are counter-productive in gaining public support.
You can make intellectual arguments for closing roads or tube lines or pretend attacks on sanctified art works, but if the net result is to antagonise the general population to your cause, it is just an exercise in self-righteousness.
This does not mean in any way I support the excessive jail sentences that have been handed out to climate protestors. I certainly do not, and believe custodial sentences to be completely inappropriate for political protest.
But if they were to target for direct action the corporate HQs of Big Oil, or their major financiers and suppliers, they would be hugely more effective in getting their message across.
We know for certain that for decades the environmental movement has been heavily infiltrated by government agents. My suspicion is that some of the strange and unhelpful paths direct action protestors have gone down were initiated by agents provocateurs.
My admiration for those willing to act on their beliefs is not dimmed where they are slightly misguided in targeting.
In this increasingly authoritarian society, we shall continue to see growing numbers of political prisoners. The linked website is a good start but does not include the many cases of young Muslims jailed on extremely dubious terrorism-related convictions.
It is essential to the health of society that there is a vanguard of people willing to take direct action and ultimately to pay the price of imprisonment. Every great movement for social justice has needed such.
“What they hold over us is fear of getting arrested or going to prison. But if anything, this experience has taken away my fear. They’ve done the worst that they can do to me and I’m fine.”
Forgive me for pointing out that my ability to provide this coverage is entirely dependent on your kind voluntary subscriptions which keep this blog going. This post is free for anybody to reproduce or republish, including in translation. You are still very welcome to read without subscribing.
Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.
At the end of Julian Assange’s testimony before the Judicial Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, 95% of the entire room of 220 people rose in a standing ovation.
The audience consisted of members of the Parliamentary Assembly, who are delegated members of their national parliaments, from all over Europe. Furthermore they included members of the full European political spectrum, including the dominant national parties.
The audience also included Council of Europe staff and experts, and worldwide media. Note this well – and I have never witnessed anything remotely like this – the 100 or so media representatives all stood and joined in the applause. I need to stress this was largely not the alt media, but the legacy media in all its pomp.
Glancing up a level, they were even standing and applauding behind the glass of the interpreters’ booths.
The dignity and clarity of Julian’s prepared statement and the stark honesty of his delivery provoked this reaction, coupled with sympathy for a man who has unjustly suffered extreme hardship and deprivation for years. I hope it was a valuable and affirming moment for Julian, so richly deserved.
But I must confess I looked over at the applauding media, and thought how Julian had been slandered and traduced and his case entirely misrepresented for over a decade. I recalled how he had been wrongly represented for years as a sexual offender and as a lunatic who smeared excrement on walls.
Oh well … “there is more joy in heaven at one sinner that repenteth”. If the mainstream media are now willing to give positive coverage to Julian’s thoughts, that will be a good thing, as indeed largely happened over this event. His words on the assassination of journalists in Gaza and on the programming of targets in Gaza using AI were an excellent pointer towards where his thoughts are trending.
I also was very worried about Julian’s health. I do not wish in any way to detract from his extremely good performance and the success he had and deserved. But to me, the signs that he has not fully recovered yet were very obvious. His physical recovery appears to be complete; he looked fit and had lost that prison puffiness. But after years of isolation the brain takes longer to re-adapt to stimuli.
The old sparkle and fire were not yet quite there. His voice had little variation in tone and pitch, and a slight hesitation in delivery. He answered questions adequately and thoughtfully but the quickfire command was lacking and sometimes he appeared not to have caught the thrust of the question.
When asked a question by German MP Sevim Dağdelen – a constant friend and doughty campaigner for him for many years – he plainly did not recognise her and at that point declared himself too tired to continue.
I am well acquainted with jet lag, and this was not just that.
I am also well acquainted with the effects of solitary confinement, having endured four months of it. Julian has endured 17 times more, preceded by eight years in the Embassy, with the added extreme pressure of not knowing when and even if it would ever end. Remember, as reported by Prof Nils Melzer, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, and now reaffirmed by the Council of Europe, Julian’s treatment amounted to years upon years of torture.
Julian himself stated at the start of his presentation that “the years of isolation have taken their toll”. In a press conference afterwards, Stella stated that, without violating Julian’s privacy, his recovery is far from complete.
I hope that the support of the Council of Europe has given a real boost to Julian’s morale, but I also hope that he will now return to concentrate on his recovery and not seek to dive back in to public affairs again too fast.
I see great pressures on Julian from those who wish, from the best of motives, to involve him in various causes in this crucial moment of crisis, of not just armed conflict, but a crisis of values and beliefs exacerbated by technology.
Julian indicated that his primary future interests may lie in AI, cryptology and neurotechnology and their uses and abuses. In the press conference without Julian, Kristinn Hrafnsson, Editor in Chief of Wikileaks, said that the future of Wikileaks and Julian’s role in it would be discussed, but Julian had only been free a few weeks and more time was needed before big decisions were taken.
I am sure this is right, and please take this article as a plea from me to everybody to leave Julian alone and give him more time – as much as he wants – fully to recover. He is a man, not a cause or a principle.
I might add here that obviously my own 14 years of work in campaigning to free Julian is done. This was a triumphant coda. Here I am looking very much younger making a speech outside the Ecuadorean Embassy on the day Julian entered it:
Here I am more than a decade later making a speech after his last High Court extradition appeal hearing:
It was a long, hard road in between, and one that took me across the world and caused me to meet so many wonderful campaigners and make so many wonderful friends, every one of whom contributed to the climate that eventually led to Julian’s release.
You can see Julian’s full speech and question and answer session here:
The Council of Europe is the grandfather of European institutions. It is not the European Union and is not the Organisation for Cooperation and Security in Europe. The Council of Europe’s mandate is to promote democracy and human rights, and it was a key instrument of detente, although Russia has recently left in protest at hypocrisy in the Council’s targeting.
Unlike the European Union, the Council of Europe has no economic role. Unlike the European Parliament of the EU, which makes law in conjunction with the Council and Commission, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) is not a legislative body. Nor is it directly elected.
National parliaments of the member states of the Council of Europe send delegates from among their members to comprise PACE. So it consists of national domestic MPs.
In the case of the UK, several of these are members of the House of Lords. We therefore had the anomaly that the judicial committee before which Julian appeared, in a European body dedicated to promoting democracy, was chaired by a British politician for whom nobody had ever voted, Lord Richard Keen, a Scottish Tory.
The subsequent debate passed a resolution which specifically recognised that Julian Assange had been a political prisoner. This was the only aspect of the report and resolution on which the Atlanticists attempted to mount a rearguard action. They did not attempt to remove the elements on freedom of speech and information, on US war crimes and ending impunity, on protection for whistleblowers, on abuse of judicial process, or on the appalling conditions of Julian’s detention. But they did try to remove the phrase political prisoner.
They failed. Only the extreme Atlanticists voted for the amendments to that effect, primarily from the British Conservative Party and the Polish Law and Justice Party. At the final vote on the resolution they could muster only 13 votes against to 88 for.
The reason that delegates from ALDE and the EPP supported the resolution in PACE, when their colleagues in the European Parliament blocked such action, is that party leaderships take much less control in PACE. It was therefore able to set up a committee to investigate the case, with an excellent report produced by its Icelandic rapporteur.
I spoke with three members of the committee who all told me they had been shocked by how much the true facts of the case diverged from media accounts.
The European Parliament by contrast has refused to look at the Assange case at all and both the EPP and ALDE have point blank refused to discuss it even at internal group meetings.
This PACE report has no enforcement clout, but it can make a real difference to perception. The PACE report and resolution on torture and extraordinary rendition, for example, to which I myself gave witness evidence, had a major effect on public and political opinion and in getting the media to accept those events as fact.
The European Court of Human Rights is a Council of Europe body. Resolutions of PACE are of interest to the ECHR. One thing we learnt from Julian is that his plea bargain contains provisions against him going to the ECHR over his treatment, and against making Freedom of Information requests.
I assume that if he breaks these conditions, there is a mechanism within the USA by which his prosecution or at least sentencing can re-open. But I cannot see how it could be enforced against him in Europe. The ECHR is not going to accept that the right to appeal over fundamental rights can be signed away in a coerced agreement, and I cannot see even the UK seeking to extradite somebody to the US because they appealed to the ECHR.
It appears unthinkable.
It may be relevant that among Assange’s strangely large entourage were the Belgian and French lawyers who had been specifically tasked with preparing his appeal to the ECHR had the UK courts ordered his extradition. So watch this space…
It is also of note that PACE has selected Sweden for a Periodic Review of its human rights record beginning next year. Those behind the selection proposed it specifically so that a report can be produced that takes a deep dive into the extraordinary concoction of sexual assault allegations against Assange and their misuse by the authorities, as detailed in Nils Melzer’s remarkable book. So again, watch this space…
The blog is in something of a financial crisis. Over half of subscriptions are now “suspended” by PayPal, which normally happens when your registered credit or debit card expires. The large majority of those whose accounts are “suspended” seem to have no idea it has happened. This is different from “cancellation” which is deliberate.
Please check if your subscription is still active. There is in fact no way to reactivate – you have to make a new subscription with a new card if your card expired.
The bank standing order method works very well for those who do not want to use PayPal.
————————————————
Forgive me for pointing out that my ability to provide this coverage is entirely dependent on your kind voluntary subscriptions which keep this blog going. This post is free for anybody to reproduce or republish, including in translation. You are still very welcome to read without subscribing.
Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.
