With 185 out of 275 constituency results in, I am calling the election for President Elect Nana Akuffo Addo. There is a surprisingly uniform swing to Nana across every region of the country, and he cannot lose from this position.

This is the swing to Nana region by region, based on my constituency by constituency analysis of the results. There is a swing to the NPP in every single region.

Swing to Nana Akuffo Addo

Ashanti Region 6.1%
Brong Ahafo 6.3%
Central 7.6%
Eastern 5.1%
Greater Accra 4.2%
Northern 4.7%
Upper East 5.6%
Upper West 6.2%
Volta 3.2%
Western 9.2%

Ultimately I predict Nana Akuffo Addo will get a strong mandate with 53.1% of the vote once counting has finished.

I believe this result is a popular reaction against levels of corruption in Ghana that had become terrifying. I am very happy indeed that Ghana has yet again shown it is a mature democracy, and for the third time this millennium the ruling party has been democratically replaced by the opposition.

I am a long term fan of Ken Clarke, who walked today with the SNP and Caroline Lucas through the lobby to oppose the racist motivated disaster that is Brexit. Personally I dislike referenda in the extreme, those of us who genuinely are of the common clay know better than to romantically ennoble our peers. I strongly suggest you spend a couple of hours talking with ordinary punters on Ramsgate High Street before you decide they should determine the detail of high policy. I am decidedly with Edmund Burke on this issue.

The same goes for Scottish Independence. The majority of countries in the entire world achieved independence in my lifetime, and the vast majority of those without a referendum. At least seven member states of the EU obtained their current form and boundaries in the last three decades, without referenda.

If the elected representatives of the Scottish people – the MPs, MSP’s or both – were to come together as a national assembly and declare independence, that would precisely meet the process by which the large majority of countries in the world, including many EU members, achieved independence. The actual confirmation of that independence is by recognition at the UN, and nothing to do with internal process. The UN does not prescribe a referendum, which is very much the exception not the rule.

To return to Ken Clarke. A few years ago I debated against him at the Cambridge Union. After the post-debate reception, I returned with Malcolm Rifkind and Ken Clarke by the last train to London. Clarke came from first class to standard to find me and insisted I join them. He had a most expensive looking substantial pigskin briefcase. He opened it to produce, encased in foam moulding like a professional camera case, a bottle of perfectly chilled champagne and four flutes. A great man.
*******************************************************************************************************

Signed First Editions are now available direct from this blog! You can leave a message naming the dedication you want. Sold at cover price of £25 including p&p for UK delivery, £29 for European delivery or £34 everywhere else. Ideal Christmas presents!!

Julian Assange has published his statement given to the Swedish prosecutor. I give it in full below. I do implore you to read it. This is the first time his defence has been made public, although the media have been delighted to report the leaked allegations against him in detail.
His defence will not be given in the same detail in the media.

It is worth noting that under Swedish law the identity of both the accuser and the accused ought to be protected, but that did not prevent Swedish police and prosecutors leaking details to a complicit media, or the women concerned selling their story to the tabloids.

You really do owe it to yourself, to justice and to personal honesty to read Julian’s side of the story.

14/15 NOVEMBER 2016 QUESTIONING AT THE ECUADORIAN EMBASSY LEGALLY PRIVILEGED

You have subjected me to six years of unlawful, politicized detention without charge in prison, under house arrest and four and a half years at this embassy. You should have asked me this question six years ago. Your actions in refusing to take my statement for the last six years have been found to be unlawful by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and by the Swedish Court of Appeal. You have been found to have subjected me to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. You have denied me effective legal representation in this process. Despite this, I feel compelled to cooperate even though you are not safeguarding my rights.

I. THE SWEDISH PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION

I, Julian Assange, an Australian citizen, have had my passport taken by British authorities and so cannot provide formal identification, am in a situation of arbitrary detention according to the decision of the United Nations Working Group of Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) of 4 December 2015; a political refugee since 19 June 2012 at the Embassy of Ecuador with asylum which was granted by Ecuador on 16 August 2012, and hereby appear before the authorities of Sweden and Ecuador in the framework of a rogatory commission that has been entered between these two states, requested by the Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny, and declare that:
1. I ratify what has been expressed by my Ecuadorian lawyer, both in relation to this procedure today and the concerns about the procedure pursued against me in Sweden, including the failure to allow my Swedish lawyer to be present and the failure to provide me with exculpatory and other discovery material, which I have, to date, not been given proper access to, including in the preparation for this statement today.
2. Today, 14 November 2016, after having made myself available to the Swedish authorities since the start of this outrageous process six years ago, I am finally given the opportunity to give my statement to the Swedish preliminary investigation. I am grateful to Ecuador for attempting to facilitate this process in the circumstances where the Swedish prosecutor has declined, since 2010, to accept this, my first statement on the allegation against me.
3. I went to Sweden on 11 August 2010. During my stay, I met a woman (hereinafter called ”SW”). On the evening of 16 August, 2010 she invited me to her home. During the night and in the morning we had consensual sexual intercourse on several occasions.
4. I therefore could not believe my eyes when five days later I saw a headline in a Swedish tabloid that I was suspected of a crime and arrested in my absence. I immediately made myself available to the Swedish authorities to clarify any questions that might exist, although I had no obligation to do so.
5. That same day (21 August 2010), the Chief Prosecutor of Stockholm, Eva Finné, dropped the arrest warrant against me and within days would close the preliminary investigation with the finding that no crime whatsoever had been committed against the woman “SW” (who is the subject of this procedure). I drew the conclusion that, other than the worldwide damage to my reputation caused by millions of web pages saying that I was “wanted for rape”, my life, in this respect, would return to normal.
6. On 23 August 2010, the Chief Prosecutor of Stockholm, Eva Finné stated she “made the assessment that the evidence did not disclose any offence of rape”.
7. On 25 August, the Chief Prosecutor found that “The conduct alleged disclosed no crime at all and that file (K246314-10) would be closed”.
8. A week later, I learned to my surprise that a different prosecutor by the name of “Marianne Ny” had reopened the preliminary investigation without any consultation or opportunity for me to be heard – after I had already been cleared and the case had been closed.
9. That prosecutor eventually issued an extradition warrant against me, supposedly to take my statement, even though I left Sweden with her permission and in good faith, and had repeatedly tried to see if the prosecutor was ready to accept my statement. I had not and have still not been charged with a crime.
10. It has taken more than six years for the prosecutor to now obtain my statement. The delay is entirely caused by the prosecutor who re-opened the closed preliminary investigation. A prosecutor is, according to Swedish law (Chapter 23, Section 4 of the Procedural Code), obligated to conduct the preliminary investigation as expeditiously as possible and when there is no longer reason for pursuing the investigation, it shall be discontinued. At the preliminary investigation phase, the prosecutor is obligated to take into account all the circumstances: those against the suspect as well as those circumstances in favour of the suspect, and any evidence favourable to the suspect shall be preserved. The investigation shall be conducted so that no person is unnecessarily exposed to suspicion, or put to unnecessary cost or inconvenience.
11. Instead of following the law, prosecutor Marianne Ny has kept the preliminary investigation open without justification for over six years. She deliberately suspended her work to progress and bring to a conclusion the preliminary investigation. She has for more than six years refused to take my statement during which time she has done nothing to pursue the preliminary investigation. The preliminary investigation entered into a stasis more than six years ago. I have always demonstrated my willingness to cooperate in order to speed up the process – although there is no obligation whatsoever for me to do so. All the obligation is on the prosecutor to progress the preliminary investigation. This attitude of the prosecutor has clearly breached mandatory rules in Swedish law.
12. I reiterate that over the past six years, I have continued to call for this prosecutor to accept my statement, including by:
— Willingly attending a questioning on 30 August 2010 in Stockholm, where no questions were asked about the allegation, as I had already been cleared. — Staying in Sweden for more than five weeks longer than planned, repeatedly asking if or when I could give a statement, despite pressing commitments elsewhere. — Gaining the prosecutor’s consent to leave Sweden before doing so on 27 September 2010 in good faith, understanding that I was not required to provide a further statement for the time being. On the day I left the country three of my encrypted laptops were seized from me at Stockholm’s Arlanda airport. The laptops contained evidence of war crimes pending publication and protected legal correspondence. — Offering to return to Sweden to give a statement in October 2010.
— Offering to give my statement from London via numerous methods including telephone or videolink or in writing from London between October 2010 and up to and through the prosecutor unnecessarily issuing a European Arrest Warrant. The European Arrest Warrant attempted to extradite me, without charge, from the UK to Sweden, to take my statement. I was actively offering the testimony she claimed she wanted when she sought my arrest. — Providing a DNA sample six years ago in December 2010 when I was first arrested at Sweden’s request and which has been available to the prosecutor for the last six years. She has never bothered to even attempt to use it. — Offering to give a statement in London via Mutual Legal Assistance, among other suggestions, during my time of house arrest (7 December 2010 – 19 June 2012). — Offering to give a statement in the Ecuadorian embassy in London as from 19 June 2012, for instance via email from my Swedish lawyers on 24 July 2012 and during a meeting between my lawyers and the prosecutors in Stockholm 7 May 2013 – over four years ago and over three years ago respectively. — Offering to come to Sweden provided Sweden would give a guarantee that I am not extradited to another state over my publishing work. This offer was also requested by Ecuador through diplomatic channels and publicly in 2012, as I am a refugee in its jurisdiction.
13. As this demonstrates, although I have no obligation to do so, I have done everything within my power to offer my testimony to the prosecutor while protecting my right to asylum and protecting myself against the risk of extradition to the United States, where there is an open national security case against me. According to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, WikiLeaks’ alleged source in that matter, Chelsea Manning, has been subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in US detention, and has since been convicted and sentenced to 35 years in prison.
14. The state of Sweden has refused to provide me the necessary assurances against extradition or other transport to the United States since 2010 when such was asked by my lawyers and since 2012 when requested to do so by the state of Ecuador. Sweden has also refused to accept that the asylum Ecuador has granted me requires it to protect me from onwards extradition to the United States, despite this being the recognized norm in asylum cases, thus making it impossible for me to go to Sweden without giving up my fundamental right as a political refugee. This refusal to recognize my rights as a political refugee has been the sole impediment to my presence in Sweden. I explicitly offered to accept extradition to Sweden provided it simply guarantee that it will not transfer me to another state. This was declined.
15. Nevertheless, I have continued to offer the prosecutor my statement through mechanisms which can be employed to achieve her stated purpose without putting at risk my fundamental rights, which she has, until recently, rejected.
16. Two years ago the Svea Court of Appeal on 20 November 2014 severely criticized the prosecutor for her negligence:
“The Court of Appeal notes, however, that the investigation into the suspected crimes has come to a halt and considers that the failure of the prosecutors to examine alternative avenues is not in line with their obligation – in the interests of everyone concerned – to move the preliminary investigation forward.”
17. It was not until March 2015 that Marianne Ny finally – after she had been found in breach of her duties by Sweden’s Court of Appeal and my case was before the Supreme Court and it became apparent that she might lose – claimed that she would, under certain restrictive conditions, accept my statement after all.
18. Since that time, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) released its ruling on 5 February 2016 that my situation in the embassy amounts to an unlawful and arbitrary detention, in breach of Sweden’s binding legal obligations under international law. UNWGAD found that Sweden and the UK have disregarded the asylum that I have been granted by Ecuador, forcing me to choose between deprivation of liberty and the risk of losing Ecuador’s protection and being extradited to the United States.
19. It then took Marianne Ny more than 18 months after her claimed change of position at the Supreme Court to arrange this meeting. I have not been responsible for a single day of delay in this process. All the delay has been caused by prosecutor Marianne Ny and the state authorities. Again note that all the obligation is on the prosecutor.
20. Furthermore, the UNWGAD concluded that the Swedish prosecutor has breached my due process rights in the conduct of this preliminary investigation and that seeking my extradition to Sweden as the only option in these circumstances was ”excessive and unnecessary” [para 97]. In particular, it found:
“…after more than five years’ time lapse, he is still left at the stage of preliminary investigation with no predictability as to whether and when a formal process of any judicial dealing would commence…” [para. 97] “…Mr Assange has been denied the opportunity to provide a statement, which is a fundamental aspect of the audi alteram partem principle, the access to exculpatory evidence, and thus the opportunity to defend himself against the allegations…” [para. 98] “…the duration of such detention is ipso facto incompatible with the presumption of innocence.” [para. 98]

21. As a result of the Swedish prosecutor’s actions, UNWGAD found my circumstances to be of an increasingly serious deprivation of liberty which is of an indefinite nature and is already far longer than the maximum penalty I could ever theoretically face in Sweden. For these reasons UNWGAD found that the severe and indefinite nature of these deprivations amounts to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in breach of Sweden’s obligation under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) Article 7. The severity of this treatment is further confirmed by the expert opinion of Fernando Mariño, the former President of the UN Committee Against Torture, which is entered into the official record of this proceeding.
22. Ten months after the UNWGAD determination the harshness of the situation continues to affect my physical and psychological health. My lawyers have informed the Swedish authorities of the ongoing deterioration of my health through the medical certificates and expert opinions of Dr. Michael Korzinski and Dr. Fluxman, from 11 November 2015; of Dr. Ladbrooke from 8 December 2015; of Dr. Michael Korzinski from 15 June 2016; and of Dr. Ladbrooke from 9 November 2016.
23. And so, finally, here we are today, under the jurisdiction of Ecuador, with my rights ever increasingly limited, as my Ecuadorian defence counsel has expressed. After more than six
years, I am finally being given the “opportunity” to give my statement but with my Swedish counsel having been excluded and under a clear situation of legal defencelessness, resulting from years of negligence and intentional and unlawful delays by the Swedish authorities.
24. All the irregularities that have occurred through the acts or omissions of the prosecution authority and the six-year delay to date of this disproportionate, inhumane and unlawful preliminary investigation have permanently destroyed all possibilities for me to properly defend myself – which is no doubt their intention.
25. Following the above, I wish to express in the strongest terms, that, in addition to the breaches of my due process rights in the investigation to date, the procedure to be adopted today in taking my statement further breaches those rights:
— My Swedish defence lawyer was not permitted to be present today, despite the fact that these proceedings concern a Swedish criminal preliminary investigation. — In the opinion of my general practitioner, I am unfit to prepare and participate in these proceedings (after having been denied hospital treatment and sunlight for 4.5 years). — My Ecuadorian defence counsel has had no access to the case file, let alone in Spanish, the language he understands, nor has he had adequate time to prepare my defence. — My lawyers and I have not been permitted access to the case file. — I have been denied my request to read the text messages that my Swedish defence lawyers have read, which are a key element to my defence because they clearly show that I am innocent.
26. Due to all the shortcomings stated above, prosecutor Marianne Ny should have drawn the obvious conclusion that she discontinue the preliminary investigation.
27. In this context I once again remind you that I have already been cleared and that the preliminary investigation was closed by Chief Prosecutor Eva Finné in August 2010.
28. Given this history I have good reason to have concern about whether this “preliminary investigation” is being conducted in good faith and whether honest and impartial consideration will be given to my statement. I suspect that the real purpose of the Swedish prosecutor coming here today is not to obtain my statement but is simply a ruse to tick a box to ensure the technical possibility to indict me, irrespective of how I answer any questions.
29. I do not believe that prosecutor Marianne Ny is acting in good faith or with the objectivity and impartiality required of her office. For example, after circumventing the Chief Prosecutor of Stockholm’s decision to close this case, prosecutor Ny has made at least 40 press releases and press conferences about me where my name has been published, even though there is no charge against me and I have been previously cleared, subjecting me to endless needless suspicion, in clear violation of her duty to not do so under Chapter 23, Section 4 of the Swedish Procedural Code.
30. My overall conclusion is that the prosecutor’s conduct of the preliminary investigation, for all the reasons above has continued to deprive me of the right to defend myself.
31. I have no obligation to cooperate with this abuse, but I find myself in a coercive situation. I am meant to be protected by the decision of the UNWGAD which makes it clear that this “preliminary investigation” has violated my human rights and that its attempts to arrest me should be discontinued immediately. That decision was issued almost a year ago, but my situation remains unchanged. Despite the many violations already described I feel compelled to give my statement today so that there can be no more excuses for the Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny to continue my indefinite unlawful detention, which is a threat to my health and even to my life. I have been pushing and indeed litigating for this prosecutor to take my statement for more than six years. The prosecutor has made excuse after excuse to not take my statement. I will not grant this prosecutor any excuse to continue to avoid taking my statement as I fear she would use it as a means to indefinitely prolong my cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

II. REASONS WHY I TRAVELLED TO STOCKHOLM IN AUGUST 2010

32. I am the editor-in-chief and publisher of WikiLeaks, a publishing organisation specializing in the analysis of records under risk of censorship that are of political, diplomatic, historical or ethical importance. Among other countries, WikiLeaks publishes and analyses documents that concern the United States, Sweden and the United Kingdom, including millions of documents relating to actions of military, intelligence and foreign services. I have received numerous awards in relation to my publishing work, including the 2008 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award, The Economist New Media Award (USA) 2008, the 2009 Amnesty International UK Media Award (New Media), the 2010 Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (USA) award, the 2011 Sydney Peace Foundation Gold Medal (Australia), the 2011 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism (UK), the 2011 Walkley Award for Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism (Australia), the 2011 Blanquerna Award for Best Communicator (Spain), the 2011 International Piero Passetti Journalism Prize of the National Union of Italian Journalists, the 2011 Jose Couso Press Freedom Award (Spain), the 2012 Privacy International Award, the 2013 Yoko Ono Lennon Courage Award, and the 2013 Global Exchange Human Rights Awards, as well as formal nominations for the United Nations’ Mandela Prize (2014) and for the past six consecutive years for the Nobel Peace Prize.
33. The US launched an investigation against me in early 2010 under the Obama administration, while Hillary Clinton was the US Secretary of State. This administration has expended very substantial resources on attempting to prosecute me and attempting to spy on my publishing work despite its constitutionally protected status. The US government’s WikiLeaks investigation is described in official diplomatic correspondence as being “unprecedented in scale and nature”.
34. All the citations I mention are in my affidavit from 2 September 2013, which I am entering into the official record of this proceeding.
35. The US government has periodically confirmed in public that the national security case against WikiLeaks remains open and ongoing, including in proceedings from this year. Numerous human rights and freedom of speech organizations such as Human Rights Watch have criticized the Obama administration for pursuing a criminal case against WikiLeaks and me.
36. The investigation against Wikileaks is led by the FBI and has involved a dozen other agencies, including the CIA, the NSA, and the Defence Intelligence Agency. The US government has described the investigation as a “whole of government” investigation. In Alexandria, Virginia, a Grand Jury has been meeting behind closed doors for the past six years under case number 10GJ3793 to explore ways to imprison me and seven others who they have identified as “founders, owners or managers of WikiLeaks”. The prosecution in the Chelsea Manning case attempted to establish that Private Manning acted as an agent under my control rather than as a journalistic source of mine, even though in Private Manning’s own statement to the court, she said this was not the case. The US military charged Private Manning with twenty-two counts in connection with the release of more than 700,000 classified or confidential documents to WikiLeaks. On 30 July 2013 private Manning was convicted of twenty of these counts and sentenced to thirty-five years in prison on 20 August 2013.
37. Private Manning was detained for more than 1,000 days before the trial commenced. During this time she remained for 258 days in solitary confinement. The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture found that the conditions and length of private Private Manning’s confinement at Quantico, Virginia, amounted to “inhuman and degrading treatmen t”. Private Manning’s lawyer, David Coombs, said that the treatment of Private Manning was an attempt at breaking her so that Manning would implicate me. The US military court system eventually found that Private Manning was unlawfully punished as a result of this treatment while in US custody. Private Manning was convicted of espionage; the first whistleblower ever so convicted. Private Manning was acquitted of the “aiding the enemy” charge, but the US government could still seek to employ this charge against me. Private Manning is serving a 35 year prison sentence.
38. According to the respected UK newspaper The Independent, the US and Sweden entered informal talks regarding my extradition from Sweden to the United States in early December 2010. These talks of my extradition concerned the US Grand Jury and FBI investigation against WikiLeaks, which is also the reason that Ecuador granted me asylum.
39. The aggressive calls to stop WikiLeaks from publishing were the reason for my travel to Stockholm. US officials’ rhetoric grew increasingly aggressive in the period immediately prior to my visit to Sweden on 11 August 2010. In June, a Daily Beast news report entitled ‘The State Department’s Worst Nightmare’ revealed that the Pentagon was “conducting an aggressive investigation” into whether WikiLeaks had 260,000 US diplomatic cables and the material’s whereabouts.
40. Two days later, an article titled ‘Pentagon Manhunt’ appeared, describing Pentagon investigators desperately trying to track me down in relation to the impending publication of Cablegate:
“Anxious that Wikileaks may be on the verge of publishing a batch of secret State Department cables, investigators are desperately searching for founder Julian Assange”.
41. On 17 June 2010 US Department of Defense spokesman Geoff Morrell stated there was an
“ongoing criminal investigation [concerning WikiLeaks], involving the Army Criminal Investigation Division, as well as, I believe, some other law enforcement agencies.”
42. The Pentagon officials “would not discuss the methods being used to find Assange, nor would they say if they had information to suggest where he is now.” On reading this, I realised WikiLeaks’ continued ability to publish effectively and my own personal safety were at serious risk.
43. During the month of July I worked with a team of journalists in the United Kingdom to publish the Afghan War Diaries: 75,000 secret Pentagon documents about the war in Afghanistan, which included the detailed records about the deaths of nearly 20,000 people. The day after WikiLeaks published the Afghan War Diaries, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs stated that WikiLeaks “poses a very real and potential threat”.
44. I published the Afghan War Diaries approximately two weeks before I travelled to Sweden. In the aftermath of the publication, US government officials made efforts to influence the way in which the media reported on our publications. The purpose was to delegitimise WikiLeaks protections as a publisher under the US First Amendment. For example, it attempted to falsely cast WikiLeaks as an adversary, opposed to US national interests, a false claim that I would later see echoed in Swedish media.
45. The New York Times reported that the White House had emailed its reporters with suggested “reporting tacks to take” on WikiLeaks and WikiLeaks’ disclosures, in an attempt to induce news outlets into referring to WikiLeaks in these terms.
46. The White House sent an e-mail with the subject heading “Thoughts on Wikileaks” containing a memo in which the White House
“advised journalists on possible reporting tacks to take on the [Afghan War Diaries] documents […] As you report on this issue, it’s worth noting that wikileaks is not an objective news outlet but rather an organization that opposes US policy in Afghanistan.”
47. I also learned from news reports that security authorities from my home country Australia were assisting the US intelligence investigation into WikiLeaks and me:
“Australian security authorities are assisting a United States intelligence probe into the whistleblower website Wikileaks and its Australian founder and editor, Julian Assange. The US request for support in what Australian national security sources described as ‘a counter-espionage investigation’ preceded Wikileaks’ dramatic publication yesterday of a leaked US military operations log, described as an ”extraordinary compendium” of 91,000 reports by United States and allied soldiers fighting in Afghanistan.”
48. On July 28th, just three days after publishing the Afghan War Diaries and two weeks before I travelled to Sweden, US Department of Defense Secretary Gates “called FBI Director Robert Mueller and asked for the FBI’s assistance in [the WikiLeaks] investigation as a partner.” The US Defence Department declared:
“Calling on the FBI to aid the investigation ensures that the department will have all the resources needed to investigate… noting that use of the bureau ensures the investigation can go wherever it needs to go.”
49. The New York Times reported that US Defense Secretary Robert Gates
“declined to comment about the investigation beyond noting that he had enlisted the Federal Bureau of Investigation to assist Army investigators, a move that is seen as a precursor to potentially charging people who are not uniformed service members […] A person familiar with the investigation has said that Justice Department lawyers are exploring whether Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks could be charged with inducing, or conspiring in, violations of the Espionage Act, a 1917 law that prohibits the unauthorized disclosure of national security information.”
50. On 1 August 2010, the press reported that the FBI and British police were carrying out searches and interrogations in the UK, where I found myself at the time, in connection with WikiLeaks’ publications.
51. Over the next days, US rhetoric and actions against WikiLeaks intensified. Prominent commentators and former White House officials championed extraterritorial measures and the violation of international law “if necessary”.
52. One of these commentators was former presidential speech writer Marc Thiessen, who published a Washington Post article entitled ‘WikiLeaks Must be Stopped’:
“…the government has a wide range of options for dealing with him. It can employ not only law enforcement but also intelligence and military assets to bring Assange to justice.”
53. Thiessen argued that the US should put pressure on any state in which I was located and that the US should, if necessary, arrest me even without the consent of that state. He cited legal advice from the Department of Justice regarding FBI operations abroad:
“The United States should make clear that it will not tolerate any country — and particularly NATO allies such as Belgium and Iceland — providing safe haven for criminals who put the lives of NATO forces at risk. With appropriate diplomatic pressure, these governments may cooperate in bringing Assange to justice. But if they refuse, the United States can arrest Assange on their territory without their knowledge or approval.”
54. Thiessen further asserted that the FBI could violate international law in order to stop me and apprehend other people associated with WikiLeaks’ publishing activities. Thiessen cited a Department of Justice memo:
“the FBI may use its statutory authority to investigate and arrest individuals for violating United States law, even if the FBI’s actions contravene customary international law” and that an “arrest that is inconsistent with international or foreign law does not violate the Fourth Amendment.” In other words, we do not need permission to apprehend Assange or his co-conspirators anywhere in the world.
Arresting Assange would be a major blow to his organization. But taking him off the streets is not enough; we must also recover the documents he unlawfully possesses
and disable the system he has built to illegally disseminate classified information.
This should be done, ideally, through international law enforcement cooperation. But if such cooperation is not forthcoming, the United States can and should act alone.”
55. Seven days before I travelled to Sweden I was acutely aware that my personal safety was at risk. Scott Horton, legal affairs and national security contributor at Harper’s, wrote the article ‘WikiLeaks: The National-Security State Strikes Back’:
“[Assange] will certainly be targeted for petty harassment and subject to steady surveillance, and efforts to kidnap him are almost certainly being spun at this very moment.”
56. Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell announced an anti-WikiLeaks task force comprised of 80 people was operating 24 hours a day. One month later, it had grown to 120 people. The “distinct responsibility” of the Information Review Task Force – dubbed by some occupants as the “WikiLeaks War Room” – was
“…to gather evidence about the workings of WikiLeaks that might someday be used by the Justice Department to prosecute Assange and others on espionage charges.”
57. The article “’The General Gunning for WikiLeaks” described the task force:
“In a nondescript suite of government offices not far from the Pentagon, nearly 120 intelligence analysts, FBI agents, and others are at work—24 hours a day, seven days a week—on the frontlines of the government’s secret war against WikiLeaks. Dubbed the WikiLeaks War Room by some of its occupants, the round-the-clock operation is on high alert this month …”
58. The same article states that Brig. General Robert A. Carr, who runs “the Pentagon’s equivalent to the CIA”, the Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), was “handpicked” by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to head the team because he “is highly respected …and a fitting adversary to Assange”.
59. General Carr’s “central assignment” was reportedly “to try to determine exactly what classified information might have been leaked to WikiLeaks”. General Carr testified at the Chelsea Manning sentencing hearing on 31 July 2013.
60. I followed closely how pressure mounted on US allies to track my movements and to stop our publications. Official sources within the administration revealed to the press that the US was not only considering how to prosecute me in relation to WikiLeaks’ publications in the US, but was also requesting their allies to prosecute me under their own national security laws:
“American officials confirmed last month that the Justice Department was weighing a range of criminal charges against Assange and others […]
Now, the officials say, they want other foreign governments to consider the same sorts of criminal charges.”
An article published the day before I went to Sweden stated that “The Obama administration is pressing Britain, Germany, Australia, and other allied Western governments to consider opening criminal investigations of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and to severely limit his nomadic travels across international borders, American officials say.”
61. In addition to the stated intention to restrict my freedom of movement, the US government attempted to convince its allies not to allow me entry into their territory as a warning to me, to those working with me and WikiLeaks, and to our supporters:
“Through diplomatic and military channels, the Obama administration is hoping to convince Britain, Germany, and Australia, among other allied governments, that Assange should not be welcome on their shores either, given the danger that his group poses to their troops stationed in Afghanistan, American officials say. They say severe limitations on Assange’s travels might serve as a useful warning to his followers that their own freedom is now at risk.”
62. The Australian government publicly entertained the possibility of canceling my passport, reportedly as a result of pressure placed on Australia by the United States. Australian Attorney General Robert McClelland assured the United States that the Australian government would “provide every assistance to United States law-enforcement authorities”, including by exploring the possibility of canceling my passport.
63. US pressure even resulted in public attempts to influence decisions based on human rights considerations where I and WikiLeaks were concerned. Through US ambassador to Switzerland Donald Beyer, the Obama administration pressured Switzerland not to grant me political asylum while I participated at the UN Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review of the United States. US ambassador Beyer gave an interview to Swiss newspaper Sonntag:
“The United States ambassador to Switzerland, Donald Beyer, has also entered the Wikileaks debate. He has warned the Swiss government against granting Assange asylum, which the Australian founder of Wikileaks has said he was considering requesting. “Switzerland should very carefully consider whether to provide shelter to someone who is on the run from the law”.
64. The Daily Beast reported that Washington was prepared to review its diplomatic relations with Iceland because parts of WikiLeaks operations had been conducted in that country:
“An American military official tells The Daily Beast that Washington may also want to closely review its relations with Iceland in the wake of the release of the Afghan war logs.”
65. In the context of my heightened concerns about US activities in the United Kingdom in relation to the WikiLeaks investigation, I decided to leave the country. When I travelled to Sweden on 11 August 2010, the aggressive rhetoric against me had reached new heights.
Former CIA general counsel Jeffrey Smith told National Public Radio:
“I think it is entirely appropriate for us to be very aggressive […] If I were the US government, I would be trying to make it as difficult as possible for the WikiLeaks founder to continue to do business… To the extent we can persuade our allies to consider prosecution, I think that’s all to the good.”
66. On the same day I arrived in Sweden, 11 August 2010, I received information from an Australian intelligence source that extra-legal actions might be taken against me by the US or its allies. This was later reported in the Australian newspaper The Age:
“An Australian intelligence official privately warned Wikileaks on August 11 last year that Assange was the subject of inquiries by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, and that information relating to him and others associated with Wikileaks had been provided to the US in response to requests through intelligence liaison channels. The Australian intelligence official is also claimed to have specifically warned that Assange could be at risk of ‘dirty tricks’ from the US intelligence community.”
67. Friends and associates of mine and volunteers for WikiLeaks were regularly targeted at borders from this moment on. Border searches and interrogations have affected security researcher Jacob Appelbaum, who had given the keynote speech in my place at the HOPE conference on 16 July 2010. In an interview for Democracy Now, Appelbaum described the targeting he experiences at airports:
In the period of time since [the HOPE conference on 16 July 2010] they’ve started detaining me, around a dozen-plus times… I was put into a special room, where they frisked me, put me up against the wall… they took my laptop… then they interrogated me, denied me access to a lawyer. And when they did the interrogation, they have a member of the U.S. Army, on American soil. And they refused to let me go. They … implied that if I didn’t make a deal with them, that I’d be sexually assaulted in prison.
68. Within days of arriving in Sweden I became concerned about my safety and security there, in particular because of the pressure being brought to bear on US allies, including Sweden.
69. I was aware of the publicly stated attempts to track my movements. I used a number of risk minimisation procedures, including relying on the goodwill of friends and their circles for my safety and to protect the confidentiality of my whereabouts and communications.
70. My contacts in Sweden had arranged for me to stay in two safe houses during the few days I had intended to stay in Sweden. One of the safe houses belonged to a journalist who I knew and another to a Social Democrat party figure unknown to me who had lent her apartment while she was away, or so I had been told. However, because these two original safe houses arranged prior to my arrival became known very soon, I stayed in three additional safe houses between 11 and 20 August 2010.
71. I travelled to Sweden to put in place a legal strategy to try to protect our publishing servers, some of which were in Sweden. I believed these assets were at risk as a result of the intense
political pressure from the US described above. I met with the Swedish Pirate Party, which was represented at the European Parliament at the time, who agreed to host copies of WikiLeaks servers under their party name in order to further protect our publishing work. I also felt it was best to leave the United Kingdom at that time because the FBI was known to be carrying out operations in connection with the investigation into our publications. I intended to stay in Sweden for less than a week.
72. My dependency on other people while in Sweden was aggravated when, shortly after my arrival in Stockholm, my personal bank cards were blocked. On 13 August 2010, the WikiLeaks organization’s Moneybookers account could no longer be accessed. That same day, I contacted the company, who replied: “following recent publicity and the subsequently (sic) addition of the Wikileaks entity to blacklists in Australia and watch lists in the USA, we have terminated the business relationship”. I requested further information from MoneyBookers on 13 August and 16 August regarding the closure, including which blacklists and watchlists my accounts and/or WikiLeaks’ account had been added to, but I was refused this information.
73. The freezing of WikiLeaks’ Moneybookers account was an early example of what in December 2010 would become a concerted extra-judicial global economic blockade against WikiLeaks by US financial service companies, including VISA, MasterCard, PayPal, Bank of America, Western Union and American Express. The blockade was the subject of several court actions, a European Commission investigation, a resolution by the European Parliament, and condemnation by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression. On 24 April 2013 the Supreme Court of Iceland found the blockade against WikiLeaks to be unlawful.
74. As a result of being suddenly cut off from personal and organizational funds upon arriving in Sweden, I had to rely on others not only for shelter, but also for food, safety and telephone credit. Unfortunately, I knew very few people in Sweden and those I did were only sporadically in the country.
75. On 13 August 2010 one of the main Swedish newspapers, Svenska Dagbladet, published an article entitled ‘Defence ministry prepared for the next leak’, which reported that the Swedish Ministry of Defence had a dedicated group ‘preparing for WikiLeaks next publication’ and had analysed 76,000 previous publications from WikiLeaks in relation to Swedish troops in Afghanistan.
76. Five days later, Swedish state television (SVT) published a segment entitled ‘We risk United States relationship deteriorating’, which argued that the presence of WikiLeaks in Sweden would negatively affect the strategic relationship between Sweden and the United States.

III. THE PERIOD 14-20 AUGUST 2010

77. I met “SW” during my visit to Stockholm. The first time I met her was on the morning of 14 August 2010 when she came to a speech I gave on what my work revealed about the war in Afghanistan, in which Sweden has troops under US command. She sat in the front row and
photographed me. She came to the small private lunch after my talk where one of the organizers stated that she was a volunteer for their organization although they would later claim that this was not true. Due to the security threats against me as a result of my work, I was in a precarious situation. I relied on the kindness of strangers and the safety and discretion they were willing to offer me. I was in a foreign northern country, where I did not speak the language. I had no access to cash because the bank cards I was travelling with had been frozen due to the extra-judicial political measures taken by financial service companies against my organization and me (which are well-documented and the subject of extensive litigation).
78. Prominent “pro-war” personalities were calling for my assassination and capture, and the US administration had stated publicly that my movements were being tracked. “SW” appeared to be sympathetic to my plight and also appeared to be romantically interested in me. She was not close to people I was close to, so it seemed that those who meant me harm would be unlikely to try to find me by monitoring her movements. She said she worked at the National Museum so I asked her to show me, to try to establish her bonafides. At the Museum an IMAX film was playing, where she kissed me and placed my hands on her breasts. She asked whether I was staying with woman “AA”, a Swedish politician, and seemed concerned by it in a manner which I found strange.
79. At her initiative we met again on the evening of 16 August 2010 and she suggested we go to a hotel in Stockholm. For security reasons, I said I would prefer to go to her house even though it was outside of Stockholm. She then invited me to her home. We went by train and she paid for my ticket since my bank cards had been frozen.
80. “SW” made it very clear that she wanted to have sexual intercourse with me. I felt concerned about the intensity of “SW”’s interest and I also deeply loved another woman, which played on my mind and left me emotionally distracted. “SW” knew an unusual amount of detail about me, and appeared annoyed with me when I was on my phone searching for news related to the US official government statements against me. I perceived she was irritated when I wasn’t giving her my full attention.
81. I felt there was a risk my location would be revealed and that she might act unpredictably if she believed I was rejecting her. During that night and again in the morning we had consensual sexual intercourse on four or five occasions. Her words, her expressions and her physical reactions made it clear to me that she encouraged and enjoyed our interactions.
82. I would later discover that she had collected dozens of photos of me in the weeks before we even met. Her recent FLIKR photo account was filled with pages and pages of photos of me and no other person.
83. In the morning she went out to pick up breakfast for us. After enjoying breakfast together, I left her home on good terms. At no stage when I was with her did she express that I had disrespected her in any way or acted contrary to her wishes other than to not be interested in her enough to pay her attention above my security situation or attempts to sleep. She accompanied me to the train station on her bicycle and we kissed each other goodbye. She asked that I call her so we could see each other again and I said I would. She called the next day or the day after. We made friendly small talk but we were quickly disconnected due to a failing mobile connection. I did not call her back due to problems obtaining telephone credit (as a result of my bank cards being blocked) and the pressing security situation.
84. I spoke to her next on Friday 20 August, after a Swedish friend said that he had heard that “SW” was at the hospital and that she wanted to talk to me. As I had not called her back, and she had previously gone through considerable effort to attract my attention, I was initially concerned that she may have attempted self-harm in order to force me to pay attention to her. So I called her. She said she was at a hospital and asked me to come down to meet her to test myself for sexually transmitted diseases so she would not have to worry while she was waiting for her own test results (HIV, for instance, needs months to show up).
85. But I was busy that day attempting to deal with the escalating political and legal threats against me from the Pentagon. I said I couldn’t do anything until the next day (a Saturday). She said that it was normal in Sweden to go to the police to get advice about STDs and that if I didn’t come down to the hospital she would go to the police to ask whether I could be forced to get tested. I told her I found her mention of police strange and threatening. She stated that she was only concerned about the tests and that it had no concealed meaning. I agreed to take the test out of goodwill and to reassure her, although I told her I could not do it until the following day, Saturday.
86. We were in agreement and arranged to meet the following day in the nearby park around lunchtime when I would have time to get tested. She said she was fine and seemed at ease.
87. You can imagine my disbelief when I woke the next morning to the news that I had been arrested in my absence for ”rape” and that police were ”hunting” all over Stockholm for me.
88. Her behaviour towards me on the night in question and in the morning made it clear that she actively and enthusiastically wanted me to have sex with her. This is also shown by text messages “SW” sent to her friends during the course of the evening I was at her home and during that week, which the Swedish police collected from her phone. Although the prosecutor has fought for years to prevent me, the public and the courts from seeing them, my lawyers were permitted to see them at the police station and were able to note down a number of them, including:
— On 14August 2010 “SW” sent the following text to a friend: I want him. I want him. Followed by several more of similar content (all referring to me) in the lead-up to the events in question (13:05); — On 17 August “SW” wrote that we had long foreplay, but nothing happened (01:14); then it got better (05:15); — On 17 August, after all sex had occurred, “SW” wrote to a friend that it ”turned out all right” other than STD/pregnancy risk (10:29); — On 20 August “SW”, while at the police station, wrote that she “did not want to put any charges on Julian Assange” but that “the police were keen on getting their hands on him” (14:26); and that she was “chocked (sic shocked) when they arrested him” because she “only wanted him to take a test” (17:06); — On 21 August “SW” wrote that she “did not want to accuse” Julian Assange “for anything”, (07:27); and that it was the “police who made up the charges (sic)” (22:25); — On 23 August “AA” (the other woman whose case was dropped in August 2015) wrote to “SW” that it was important that she went public with her story so that they could form public opinion for their case (06:43);
— On 23 August “SW” wrote that it was the police, not herself, who started the whole thing (16:02); — On 26 August “AA” wrote to “SW” that they ought to sell their stories for money to a newspaper (13:38); — On 28 August “AA” wrote that they had a contact on the biggest Swedish tabloid (12:53); and “SW” wrote that their lawyer negotiated with the tabloid (15:59);
89. These text messages clearly show what really happened between “SW” and me. It is clearly consensual sex between adults. The communication between “AA” and “SW” later sadly speaks for itself.
90. The prosecutor’s allegation in the extradition proceeding was reported to be that one of these sexual interactions started the next morning while “SW” was asleep (in the same bed after a night of consensual intercourse) and that when she woke up she consented to the intercourse in question, but for the first few moments was not theoretically capable of consent due to sleep.
91. This is false. I was certain “SW” was not asleep. I was also certain she expressly consented to unprotected sex before such intercourse started. This is also evidenced by “SW”’s own text messages. For example, my lawyers refer me to the following text message to her friend:
— 17 August, 08:42 am: JA did not want to use a condom.
92. Then a day later she explicitly texts her friend that she had not, in fact, been asleep.
— 18 August, 06:59 am: I was half asleep.

IV. SUBSEQUENT DEVELOPMENTS

93. Although the police initially opened an investigation into ‘rape’ in relation to woman AA, there was no allegation in her testimony that she had been raped. She expressed in her statement to the police that she consented to sex and subsequently tweeted on 22 April in 2013 “ I have not been raped”.
94. The press was immediately and unlawfully informed that there was a warrant for my arrest for what was reported as the “rape of two” women. The prosecutor unlawfully, and without any subsequent explanation or remedy, immediately confirmed to the press that there was a live warrant for my arrest. The prosecutor’s breach triggered an avalanche of news reports. Within days there were millions of references online which associated my name with the word ‘rape’.
95. Immediately the police accusations were used to attack WikiLeaks’ work and my reputation as its publisher. US Defense Secretary Robert Gates celebrated the news of my ‘rape’ arrest warrant with a smile, telling reporters that the arrest “sounds like good news to me”. Various twitter accounts officially associated with the Pentagon spread descriptions of me as a “rapist” and a “fugitive”. This slander was then used as a means to attack my organization’s reputation.
96. I canceled my other appointments and remained in Sweden. I gave an interview to the police on 30 August 2010 in relation to the only remaining allegation. The Agreed Statement of Facts and Issues submitted to the Supreme Court of the UK states:
“On 30th August 2010, the Appellant, who had voluntarily remained in Sweden to cooperate with the investigation,attended for police interview in respect of the ongoing Preliminary Investigation in respect of AA’s report. Heanswered all questions asked of him.”
97. I was highly concerned for my personal safety and the safety of WikiLeaks’ operations while I remained in Sweden, but I stayed for another five weeks after the ‘preliminary investigation’ was initiated in order to clear my name and to cooperate with the police investigation. Only after I had obtained an assurance from the prosecutor Marianne Ny that I could leave the jurisdiction did I prepare to leave the country
98. Less than 24 hours after the warrant for my arrest was issued, the chief prosecutor of Stockholm was appointed to take over the investigation and canceled the arrest warrant, stating “I don’t believe there is any reason to suspect that he has committed rape”.
99. Shortly after prosecutor Marianne Ny had resurrected the “SW” allegation, the head of the Swedish military intelligence service (“MUST”) published an article ‘WikiLeaks is a threat to our soldiers’. I became increasingly concerned about Sweden’s close relationship to the US government in military and intelligence matters.
100. Through the diplomatic cables I also learned of secret, informal arrangements between Sweden and the United States. The cables revealed that Swedish intelligence services have a pattern of lawless conduct where US government interests are concerned. The US diplomatic cables revealed that the Swedish Justice Department had deliberately hidden particular intelligence information exchanges with the United States from the Parliament of Sweden because they believed the exchanges were likely unlawful.
101. The US diplomatic cables, reports by major human rights organizations, and the UN’s own findings made me aware that Sweden had been complicit in torture as a result of its participation in secret CIA renditions from 2001 through to at least 2006 (which I would subsequently reveal). The rendition of the Swedish political refugees Agiza and Alzery resulted in strong condemnation by the UN Committee Against Torture, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and others. There is still complete impunity for the officers of the Swedish state involved and their US counterparts. No charges have been laid although the complicity of the Swedish state has been well established in successful civil litigation. I subsequently learned that Sweden was partly implicated in CIA renditions of its own citizens from Djibouti in 2013. My Swedish lawyer Thomas Olsson represents one of the rendered.
102. Through an intelligence source, I became aware that on 19 August 2010, the Swedish Security Service (SÄPO) had requested information about me from an Australian intelligence organization. The Australian intelligence organization (ASIO) responded to the request with information about me on 21 August 2010.
103. On 29 November 2010 WikiLeaks commenced publishing Cablegate, 251,287 US State Department diplomatic cables. The classified diplomatic dispatches related to every country
in the world. In terms of content, it was the largest set of classified documents ever to be published.
104. The next day State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley stated that “we are investigating aggressively” into WikiLeaks and that a State Department “War Room”, which is different from the Pentagon “War Room”, had been set up.
105. On 30 November 2010, two days after WikiLeaks started publishing Cablegate, Interpol, at the request of Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny, issued a Red Notice to 188 countries for my arrest in relation to the Swedish “preliminary investigation” (for which no charges or indictment existed). At the request of the Swedish prosecutor Interpol also made the notice public.
106. The Swedish prosecutor issued a European Arrest Warrant on 2 December 2010 to the UK which was processed by the UK Serious Organised Crimes Agency (SOCA).
107. I lost my freedom on 7 December 2010, the day after UK authorities certified the Swedish extradition warrant. I appeared at the police station, having made a prior appointment. I was arrested and placed in solitary confinement in the highest security unit of Wandsworth prison, the CSU.
108. The day after I was imprisoned, the UK newspaper The Independent reported that US and Swedish officials had entered informal talks regarding my extradition from Sweden to the United States in connection with the US Grand Jury and FBI investigation against WikiLeaks.
109. After ten days, the UK courts found that I should be released on bail. In response the Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny instructed her representatives in the UK, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), to appeal to keep me in prison, but the UK courts found her request to be excessive.
110. I was moved to house arrest after providing UK authorities with £340,000 (nearly half a million dollars) and having an electronic monitoring device fitted to my ankle.
111. On 13 January 2011 the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) wrote to Marianne Ny, assuring her “Please do not think that the case is being dealt with as just another extradition request”.
112. I was forced to meet with police for 551 days in a row. I continued publishing regardless.
113. I applied for asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy on 19 June 2012. The embassy was then surrounded by police at an admitted cost to the UK taxpayer of £12.6 million by October 2015.
114. On 28 October 2014, the UK Minister of State of Hugo Swire, told Parliament that “if she [Marianne Ny] wishes to travel here to question Mr. Assange in the embassy in London, we would do absolutely everything to facilitate that, indeed, we would actively welcome it.”
115. On 14 November 2014 I submitted my case to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD).
116. On 20 November 2014 Sweden’s Court of Appeal (Svea) found that the Swedish prosecutor had breached her duty by failing to accept my statement.
117. On 12 October 2015 the UK announced that it was removing the overt police around the embassy as it was “no longer proportionate”.
118. On 14 October 2015 London police chief Bernard Hogan-Howe told the Standard that the visible police were being removed from the embassy encirclement as “it seems a disproportionate response” and “we think the public are not necessarily supportive of it.”
119. Subsequently (6 Feb 2016) the London Times would report that the removal of overt police was also due to “fears that officers of the diplomatic protection group standing guard were thought to resemble jailers” during the UNWGAD determination. However the 12 October statement reveals that the “overt” police had in fact been replaced with a “strengthened” “covert plan”.
120. On 5 February 2016 UNWGAD found that I have been unlawfully deprived of my liberty since 7 December 2010 as a result of the actions of the Swedish prosecutor.
Answer to subsequent questions:
You have subjected me to six years of unlawful, politicized detention without charge in prison, under house arrest and four and a half years at this embassy. You should have asked me this question six years ago. Your actions in refusing to take my statement for the last six years have been found to be unlawful by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and by the Swedish Court of Appeal. You have been found to have subjected me to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. You have denied me effective legal representation in this process. Despite this, I feel compelled to cooperate even though you are not safeguarding my rights. I refer you to my statement where all these questions were answered.

Many thanks to all the staff, medical and otherwise, at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary who hauled my carcase out of the ambulance and restored it to an appearance of intelligent life over the last five days. A timely reminder that we never know when disaster will strike, and need to make progress all the time. I am now thinking how to intensify my campaigning for Scottish Independence.

Profound apologies to those who submitted orders for signed copies of Sikunder Burnes and have not received them yet. By a happy coincidence I am restored home and this same day the new print run has arrived at the warehouse, so I will get on to it right away. Hopefully the book will now get into the shops well before Christmas. Very few have actually ever appeared in a shop, largely because to date almost all stocks have been hoovered up by online suppliers. Promotion has also been patchy, particularly in England, and I am very grateful to the efforts of blog readers in that respect on my behalf with bookshops. Continuing feedback is still very welcome.

******************************************************************************************************

Signed First Editions are now available direct from this blog! You can leave a message naming the dedication you want. Sold at cover price of £25 including p&p for UK delivery, £29 for European delivery or £34 everywhere else. Ideal Christmas presents!!

Being stuck in hospital watching the BBC relentlessly push the UKIP anti-immigration agenda is not the best of Sunday mornings. Especially when paying ten pounds for the privilege on the morally disgusting Patientline system.

I have spent the last couple of days as the guest of Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, which is annoying as there is much I wanted to write about.

Was meant to be tonight at premiere at Ecuadorean Embassy of new John Pilger doc which event hopefully will put minds at rest over Julian.

Apologies recent orders of signed copies of Sikunder Burnes delivery will be delayed a bit till I get out.

The National newspaper has used that snappy headline over an excerpt from Sikunder Burnes they publish today. It is from the Chapter “Peshawar Perverted” and here is a brief extract of the extract.

These unpublishable moral delinquencies included paedophilia. Several British officers noted the children around Avitabile. Lieutenant William Barr was entertained to a nautch in 1839: “Amongst the number were a few children, varying from seven to ten years of age, who … are gradually being initiated into the mysteries of a craft most derogatory in its nature, as carried on in the East … Behind the governor stood two of his servants, a pair of diminutive Afghan boys … one of whom … would have made a remarkably pretty girl; he, however, looked quite out of place in attendance upon a masculine individual like Avitabile, and would have been better suited for the occupation of a lady’s page.”

SURGEON-GENERAL Atkinson noted of Avitabile the same year: “He lives in good style, and is distinguished for his hospitality, which has been amply experienced and acknowledged by the British officers… On every occasion, his table has been crowded with guests, and, according to oriental custom, the sumptuous entertainments always concluded with a grand nautch, his figurante-company of Cashmeer women consisting of about thirty, singers and dancers from the age of twelve to twenty-five.”

By 1840, Avitabile was entertaining so many British officers that he obtained a monthly allowance of Rs1000 towards the expense. Here we have one of those rare glimpses behind the curtain that reveals the truth about the “nautches” which were such a frequent feature of the lives of British officials: “At the same time the Government of India, who had heard of the disgraceful orgies which attended some of the entertainments, directed that none but the most senior officers were to be entertained by him, and gave the political officer an allowance of 500Rs a month, on behalf of the younger ones.”

So the senior officers got the disgraceful orgies, and the junior officers got dinner with Mackeson.

The National reproduce a large version of the most common sketch of “Alexander Burnes” to illustrate the book extract, despite the fact the book goes to some lengths to show it is not actually a sketch of Alexander Burnes. But you can’t expect picture editors to read books, I suppose. The print edition of the National also contains a sub-heading below this picture in what looks like Latin but isn’t. I have no idea why.

For a broader perspective on the book, there is an excellent account here of some of the themes I highlighted at a talk on Saturday.

As far as I can gather Sikunder Burnes has currently sold out absolutely everywhere except for a few copies left at Amazon, which bought up most of the stock. There were 19 other suppliers available through Amazon alone, but every single one has sold out. It is being urgently reprinted – for the second time – and the publisher assures me will be back in the shops before Christmas. Reminds me of Cabbage Patch Dolls!

**********************************************************************************************************************

Signed First Editions of Sikunder Burnes are now available direct from this blog! You can leave a message naming the dedication you want. Sold at cover price of £25 including p&p for UK delivery or £29 for overseas delivery. Ideal Christmas presents!!

Liked this article? Please share using the links below. Then View Latest Posts

I have been quite amused to receive some – well actually rather a lot of – rather aggressive tweets and other social media messages from people who believe Julian Assange is dead, and are therefore outraged I had supper with him on Friday. This seems to me the ultimate in concern trolling – to pretend to adore someone so much that you are angry and upset to find the object of your adoration has not been killed or kidnapped. There are youtube videos alleging that Julian is dead which together have attracted millions of viewers. It is a peculiar kind of cargo-cult.

We now have the situation where people who had never heard of Julian a year ago are demanding that he must be visited not by long-term associates, like John Pilger and myself, but by a “trusted person”, by which these new devotees mean someone Julian has never seen before, probably working for Rupert Murdoch. Best of all are the demands for photos with a sock on the head or a newspaper. To pander to these silly demands would be a never-ending task, and merely spark a new round of craziness – “that sock on his head is photo-shopped”, “that was a double at the window”. It is not a game in which I have any interest. Undoubtedly some of it is stirred up by security services anxious to muddy the water about the authenticity of Wikileaks’ work. But most of it is from decent and genuine but misguided people.

I have been visiting Julian since before Jane from Idaho heard of him, and the purpose of visiting him is not to provide comfort to Jane from Idaho. If my word does that, fine. If she does not want to take my word, also fine. But if people could at least research who John Pilger, Yanis Varoufakis and myself are before deciding we are a CIA plot, that would be helpful. Stopping the aggressive and insulting tweets would be nice too.

New Book: Sikunder Burnes: Master of the Great Game – by Craig Murray

Liked this article? Please share using the links below. Then View Latest Posts

Anybody who, like myself, has devoted much of their life to African development, is bound to have acquired a bias towards Fidel Castro. Cuba played a crucial role in sustaining the liberation struggles throughout Southern Africa. If Castro had done nothing else, he would deserve warm remembrance for that. But much less well-known in Europe is Cuba’s extraordinary contribution to healthcare throughout Africa. Ghanaian, Togolese and Beninois villages and hospitals had excellent Cuban doctors, and I know part-Cuban families in each of those countries as a result. I am sure it was widespread across much of Africa, I just highlight that for which I can personally vouch. That a tiny island, itself a victim of colonialism and slavery, should be able to make a contribution to African healthcare that can without a stretch be mentioned in the same sentence as the aid efforts of the major western powers, is an incredible achievement.

It was of course the export of Cuba’s tremendous domestic achievement in healthcare and education, and some of the attempts these last 24 hours to belittle that have been pathetic.

But human rights are an absolute, and here there is no doubt that Castro’s record was not good. That he came to power in bloody revolution was not something for which I believe
Castro deserves blame. Nobody denies the dictator he opposed was vicious, and the organised crime and government nexus in Cuba pre-Castro was abhorrent. That people would die during a violent revolution was inevitable, that the immediate aftermath would be bloody, also inevitable. That a wealthy displaced class backed by the United States would attempt violent reversal, assassination, sanctions and every possible kind of political, economic and personal device to reverse the revolution was an act of political will. But against that background, could Castro have done more to inculcate basic human rights in Cuba? Yes, I believe he could and should have done.

I am open to the idea that revolutionary change requires revolutionary justice for a short period. The example of Egypt, back under an appalling military dictatorship, shows what happens when a decent leader like Morsi is too kind or timid to solidify revolutionary change by a wholesale clean-out of the corrupt justice system. But once things settle down, you have to restore order and proper process and genuine access to justice for ordinary people, even or especially against the ruling party. You have to leave space for people to express opposition and even organise politically against you. You cannot consider yourself as Nietzschean superman and decide that you know best for the people whatever they may think themselves or – and this is most pernicious – that commanding a majority entitles you to trample any minority. That the USA and its allies, by unremitting and extreme pressure and physical threat, played a counter-productive role in getting Castro to reform and respect human rights, is certain. But that still does not justify Castro’s domestic repression. He was wrong there, and another path was open – as demonstrated for example by Jerry Rawlings in Ghana, who seized power militarily and ruled as a revolutionary before he transitioned himself and his country successfully from dictatorship to democracy, without abandoning left-wing values.

So Castro is not faultless by any means. But on any objective measurement of his actions and behaviour against the accepted standards of western democracy, both Castro’s philosophy and his practice were much closer to Western standards than those of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who nobody could ever accuse of respect for democracy and human rights, and on whose death the British government flew its flags at half mast. The kind of armed struggle which King Abdullah covertly promoted was wahabbist jihadism, not African liberation. Yet he was officially honoured.

The highest figure I have seen attributed to Castro for deaths of political opponents is about 9,000, and it appears that includes people killed during the initial revolutionary fighting and in the Bay of Pigs invasion. I am entitled to criticise Castro for arrests, detentions, torture and political murders. Those who supported and assisted other dictatorships in Latin America which killed, tortured and harassed many more people than Castro, are not entitled to criticise Castro. That embraces most of the critics who are currently filling the news bulletins. The Imperialism and neo-Imperialism against which Castro stood, with undoubted personal courage, has been much more deadly than Castro, and infinitely more aggressive.

New Book: Sikunder Burnes: Master of the Great Game – by Craig Murray

Liked this article? Please share using the links below. Then View Latest Posts

Just got back after a long chat with Julian Assange. We were joined for a light supper by the ever interesting and ebullient Yanis Varoufakis. Another of those brilliant evenings that will live in the mind.

Julian is very aware of the persistent rumours about his position or health. He is fine apart from a cold, and buoyed by recent events.

Liked this article? Please share using the links below. Then View Latest Posts

There is a depressing familiarity to the Cyprus peace talks which have just broken up in Geneva. The proposals, issues and arguments are extremely similar to those which featured in the rejected Annan plan in 2004, and before that in talks I helped broker between Denktash and Clerides in 1994.

I was head of the FCO’s Cyprus Section from 1992-4 when we made a concerted effort to achieve a resolution, based on the fact that both Greek and Turkish Cypriots had leaders of commanding authority, who had as young men been partners in a law firm together. As usual, I attempted to use very personal diplomacy to convince the parties of my own sincerity. This caused one of my more threatening FCO career hiccoughs when I had a private, long and enjoyable lunch with Rauf Denktash. Denktash afterwards gave an enthusiastic report of it to a close confidante, who happened also to be an MI6 agent. MI6 issued an intelligence report based on this agent’s account, including that I had stated that our Ambassador to Cyprus, David Dain, was much too close to the Greek Cypriots and his positions were not always the reflection of the view in London. There were also some unflattering comments on Dain’s personal vanity.

I had not actually made the remark straight out about Dain’s view not reflecting London, though Denktash had probably picked up my sub-text correctly. I am sorry to say the more personal remark was probably accurate. You see, Denktash hated Dain with a passion, and to have responded to that with a straight defence would not have helped persuade Denktash to trust me. Plus I was in fact truthful about London perception. What was not helpful was for MI6 to include these remarks in their report. They did so because MI6 did not actually want us to achieve a peace settlement on Cyprus. It is the old Imperial divide and rule. A united Cyprus would very soon start demanding the return of the British sovereign base areas. So there you are – I was undermining David Dain and MI6 were undermining me. Welcome to how the British government really works – and those of you who have read Sikunder Burnes already will precisely recognise the syndrome.

But on the substance, the outlines of the settlement were very similar to those currently being discussed. A federal system, with specific provisions for rotation of executive posts, and a land division giving the Turkish region approximately 29%. I was personally troubled by the idea of any ethnic provisions in the constitution – reserving or rotating specified posts according to ethnicity seemed to me wrong then, and still does now. But it was put to me strongly that these were the established understandings on which a settlement might be reached, so that was the basis of the Denktash/Clerides talks in 1994, and of the Annan plan a decade later. To me, its fundamental flaw was a failure to permit free movement for all Cypriots throughout the island. For North and South Cyprus to be separate states inside a national federation seems to me reasonable, and revolving executive positions between North and South Cypriots is also reasonable, but not if people are defined ethnically rather than by place of residence, and not if there are ethnic settlement restrictions internally. I believe these proposals still exist in the current negotiations.

However I was just a facilitator and I am not a Cypriot, so I tried, over 20 years ago, to help broker an agreement including ethnic provisions which I personally disliked. The biggest practical difficulty was agreeing the territorial division – while around 29% was not hard to settle, precisely which areas was. The major problem was the extremely strong political influence of the Morphou community among Greek Cypriots. The Turkish side was willing to give up the Karpass Peninsula. This made much sense – in Greek Cyprus, every centimetre of shore is covered in cement and every grain of sand with a sunbed. The Karpass has miles of the most beautiful and undeveloped beaches on the island. By comparison, Morphou has famous orange groves. These have much less commercial value but a hold on the psyche you probably have to be a Greek Cypriot to understand. To give up Karpass leaves Turkish Cyprus integral. To give up Morphou splits it in two. Plus there was then a surviving Greek Cypriot community in Rizokarpass. If I could have persuaded Clerides to give up Morphou for Karpass, I think we could have made great ground in 1994.

We failed because both Greek and Turkish Cypriots were less interested in actually reaching an agreement than in asserting their victimhood. The truth of the matter is that it is both pointless and difficult to ascribe blame to the two communities. You could choose any starting point in a thousand years. Many original Cypriots naturally changed religion and ethnicity according to their masters at the time. The island’s history of both civilisation and conflict is truly fascinating. In the modern conflict, the attempt by Greece to annex Cyprus as the first act of a military dictatorship was very wrong. The wave of ethnic cleansing and atrocity following the subsequent Turkish invasion was also very wrong. Turkey’s deliberate and aggressive importation of settlers to change the population balance was wrong. But we are where we are. Greek fury that the world does not accept their simplistic story of Turkish invasion and persecution lay behind the Greek rejection of the Annan scheme in the 2004 referendum. For the EU to admit Cyprus to membership before a settlement was reached was a massive mistake.

There should be much more protest at the fact that, in 2016, Britain still maintains ownership of large parts of the territory of Cyprus and bases substantial military forces in occupation there. This is straightforward Imperialist aggression. Britain uses Cyprus purely in order to interfere militarily in the Middle East, which a large majority of people now realise is not in the interest of the ordinary British population. By giving up its Cypriot territory, Britain could contribute very substantially to breaking the impasse in negotiations.

So here we are again, another decade on and another peace process. My experience of Cyprus was a massive help to me in understanding the Balkans, where the underlying issues are precisely the same. But I also see an interesting parallel with Palestine.

Rather than two state entities, the international community has always insisted that Cyprus must remain a single state, but one which will have a federal structure with provisions for sharing and rotating executive power between communities. While Turkish mass importation of settlers might have been illegal, talks have proceeded on the basis that people are where they are and reverse ethnic cleansing is not the solution.

For me, these principles should also apply to Palestine. There are not two viable states in Israel/Palestine, the land of the Palestinian authority having been split into a few tiny and isolated Bantustans. What is needed is a unitary state of Palestine incorporating all the land of Israel/Palestine, with Federal states within it, and power sharing and rotation arrangements. The principle that people are where they are should apply to the bulk of illegal settlers in Palestine as in Cyprus. Compensation arrangements should be very important; reverse ethnic cleansing on any large scale should be shunned. A deal on Cyprus has been stalled for fifty years, but at least people are talking. It is time for Israelis and Palestinians to start a conversation too, and for the international community to acknowledge that the “two state solution” was only ever a sham, a cover for the slow but very sure Palestinian genocide we are witnessing.

**********************************************************************************************************************

Signed First Editions of Sikunder Burnes are now available direct from this blog! You can leave a message naming the dedication you want. Sold at cover price of £25 including p&p for UK delivery or £29 for overseas delivery. Ideal Christmas presents!!

In December 2002 I cooperated closely with the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Theo van Boven, who was paying an inspection visit to Uzbekistan. As I recorded in Murder in Samarkand “against the protocols, the Uzbek authorities refused to let him enter the SNB holding centre in Tashkent, the most notorious of all the torture sites.” I upbraided the Uzbek Foreign Minister for this.

That kind of contempt of the UN is perhaps expected of dictatorships. But consider this. The Immigration detention centre at Yarls Wood became notorious for the sexual exploitation of female detainees by staff, on a large scale. In April 2015 the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, Rashida Manjoo, visited the UK. The government denied her entry to Yarls Wood. In accordance with UN protocols, she went anyway, and was blocked from entering – on the direct orders of Home Secretary Theresa May

You very probably did not know that, because the great problem our society faces is an over-mighty executive government backed by corporate wealth which controls a corporate media. But it is typical of May’s instincts, and they are terrible. Her default position is retreat into secrecy and blatant abuse of power. That is precisely what we are seeing over Brexit, where there is no plan and much to hide. May’s natural instinct is to brook no opposition, debate or discussion of her actions, but to proceed on the basis of executive fiat, with as little information as possible given to parliament, devolved authorities and – Heaven forfend – the public.

Everything you do on the web is now stored for twelve months by the security services. They can hack into your laptop or phone to see what is on there without any conditions at all. Not only do they not need to convince a judge you are suspected of a crime, they do not need to even pretend to actually suspect you of anything at all. They can just decide to target you and go fishing. The UK has now zero right to online privacy and the most vicious security service powers of any democracy. Indeed when you combine powers with capability (and the security service are recruiting tens of thousands more staff to our stasi state) the UK is now the most authoritarian country in the world. The legislation. passed this week, was framed by Theresa May as Home Secretary and received no significant opposition from the UK’s complicit political class.

This mass gathering of data is nothing to do with fighting terrorism – being lost in a massive ocean of irrelevant data is actually a major hindrance to fighting terrorism. It is about social control. I have nowhere heard this better explained than by John Kiriakou, former senior CIA agent who was jailed as part of the Obama administration’s vicious war on whistleblowers, after Kiriakou blew the whistle on CIA torture. Kiriakou’s speech on receiving the Sam Adams award in Washington is well worth hearing, and beings 1 hour and 3 minutes in here.

It was May who sent poster vans around London urging immigrants to go home, and whose anti-immigrant instincts were so strong she banned the tiny number of Afghan interpreters for UK armed forces from being given asylum in the UK. That May is intellectually out of her depth is plain even to Conservatives every Prime Minister’s question time in the Commons. Expect her to fall back more and more on those instincts for secrecy and authoritarianism – and the abuse of the massive powers of the state.

**********************************************************************************************************************

Signed First Editions of Sikunder Burnes are now available direct from this blog! You can leave a message naming the dedication you want. Sold at cover price of £25 including p&p for UK delivery or £29 for overseas delivery. Ideal Christmas presents!!

“We do not agree the right of self-determination applies to the Chagossians”, says Foreign Office minister Alan Duncan, who later clarifies that they are not “a people”. If you can stand it, you can watch the urgent question in the Commons today which forced the government to defend the decision they had sneaked out via a written answer.

http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/99da1ec6-4cd2-4f51-9d90-41463e0ed657

The debate starts at 10.34 – if you put the cursor to the bottom of the picture a slider appears. It is excruciating to watch. In an unusually full House of Commons (not a high bar) there is indignation and real anger on all sides, with even Tories describing the decision to continue the eviction of the Chagos islanders as “dishonourable”.

The government argues that the Chagossians are not “a people” distinct from the Mauritians, therefore they do not have a right of self-determination. This piece of sophistry is designed to answer the obvious question of why the Chagossians have less rights than the Falkland Islanders or Gibraltarians. The actual answer – that the Chagossians are not white – is not one the government wishes to give. It also begs the question, if the Chagossians are Mauritians, why are the islands not a part of Mauritius?

The government produced a paper on prospective resettlement, imposing arbitrary conditions on where and how the Chagossians could live designed to make life as difficult as possible. Those conditions included that there could be no civilian use of the airstrip – which I am glad to see Alex Salmond challenged in the Commons. Chagossians could work at the US airbase, but only on condition their partners and children would not be permitted to be with them. Fishing – their traditional activity – will be banned by the UK government’s marine reserve.

Given these conditions, Duncan kept reiterating, only 223 Chagossians actually wanted to return. And that was not a viable population (which will be news to many inhabited islands).

Support for the government was very thin. The most notable contribution was from the Rt Hon Sir Desmond Swayne MP, who oozing contempt for dusky foreigners intervened solely to state that it would be impossible to return the islanders because the government would be put to the expense of building a prison for them. (He really did say this, I am not making it up, you can see it on the link.)

It takes New Labour however to win the lying through your teeth prize, which the unctuous Chris Bryant duly did. He deplored the deportation of the islanders, ignoring the fact that he had served as a minister in the 13 year Blair/Brown governments which did nothing to right the wrong and indeed fought against the islanders as hard as the Tories. But Bryant wished it to be known that the Labour government’s introduction of the marine reserve had no connection at all to denying the islanders the right of return, as was frequently wrongly claimed. Having said that the lying little bastard sat down.

The most amusing moment was when Kate Hoey stated that she knew Alan Duncan personally and he was a decent chap whose heart was secretly not in this despicable decision. Duncan felt the need to deny this vehemently, knowing that being less than totally heartless, particularly in matters relating to Imperial treatment of foreigners, was career death in the May government. I must say, from Duncan’s demeanour I saw no sign he has ever been troubled by humanitarianism.

I was proud that no less than five SNP MPs intervened and many more bothered to turn up, while another Scottish MP. Alistair Carmichael made a very good and principled point on the absolute right of the islanders to live on their islands. It was the SNP who made the most obvious point of all, that it made no sense for the government to claim that a population which had sustained itself on the islands in the 1960’s quite happily could not do so again. Indeed modern technology will make it rather easier.

Signed First Editions of Sikunder Burnes are now available direct from this blog! You can leave a message naming the dedication you want. Sold at cover price of £25 including p&p for UK delivery or £29 for overseas delivery. Ideal Christmas presents!!

I argued for Scottish Independence on the grounds that we should break away from the UK – a state which was continually complicit in illegal war, support of dictatorships, purveying arms for war crimes and torture.

I have friends of all kinds of political persuasions, but I do not know a single person who is prepared to defend the British government’s decision today to continue the ethnic cleansing of the Chagos Islanders. Do you?

I have been campaigning on the subject on this blog for a dozen years, and the only hopeful sign has been an increase in public awareness from a very low base. There is no possible defence for deporting an entire island population to make way for a US military base on Diego Garcia. It ranks with the worse crimes of Empire, and let us not forget it happened in 1971, not in old history. Let us also not forget that both Labour and Tories supported this crime.

The decision is the more disgusting as it is taken under the “Royal Prerogative” after years of court battles. As I posted a couple of days ago, the government stated that returned islanders would not be allowed civilian use of the US military airport. They now state that without an airlink there could not be a viable population on the outlying islands.

Let me give you this quote from Sikunder Burnes p.376

Those who believe the British Empire was beneficent might consider this account by a junior officer:

“Their wells, by which they irrigated the land, were blown up with gunpowder and rendered useless. These people lived, in great measure, on dried mulberries, as the land would not produce enough corn for their consumption. There were beautiful mulberry trees around the forts. Every morning and evening two companies from each regiment were sent out to cut them down.

We found that by cutting rings through the bark into the heart of the trees, it was effectively destroyed as if it was cut down… and it was lighter work… we became quite adepts in the work of destruction, and a greater scene of devastation was perhaps never beheld.”

The deliberate starvation of the civilian population was an appalling crime. A rural economy dependent on tree crops could not survive the complete destruction of the trees, as there was nothing to live on until new trees grew. Some areas have never recovered from the deliberate devastation of the rural economy.

I have no doubt the majority of people in the UK would be horrified by the deportation of the Chagos Islanders. But the entire political and economic structure of the UK state is such that it is inevitably a satrap to United states Crimes, be it in Diego Garcia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya or elsewhere. The only remedy is for the United Kingdom and its worldwide imperial pretensions to be ended as a state. I express this view succinctly here:

I do hope that outrage at the Chagos decision will cause my friends in England to renew their determination to effect revolutionary change. Here in Scotland we must renew our determination to break up the UK at the earliest possible moment.

For the Chagos Islanders we send our love, and encouragement, and urge them not to give up hope. This must be the start of a new and more radical phase in the struggle. Perhaps it is time for a Chagos flotilla?

Signed First Editions of Sikunder Burnes are now available direct from this blog! You can leave a message naming the dedication you want. Sold at cover price of £25 including p&p for UK delivery or £29 for overseas delivery. Ideal Christmas presents!!

It is indeed peculiar that Trump can be elected President on 47.4% of the popular vote. But not nearly as peculiar as that the Conservatives can have untrammelled power in the UK on 36.9% of the popular vote. Both electoral systems need reform, but the UK’s is absolutely indefensible.

There is a tiny blogroll down the bottom right hand margin of this blog, and most of the blogs on it have fallen by the wayside over the 12 years we have been going. But one which goes from strength to strength is Informed Comment by Juan Cole, whom I view as a towering intellectual figure. I have read reams and reams of comment on the direction of politics with the election of Trump, but Juan’s take is the best I have seen and I do urge you to read it.

The fact that death rates are actually increasing among middle aged white males in the USA is truly startling. To my understanding that is not yet the case in the UK, but what is true here is that the life expectancy gap between the rich and poor is growing again after a century of falling.

I think it is pretty common ground that we are seeing a reaction against the political class by the dispossessed former industrial working and middle class. That is scarcely remarkable. Given the vast increase in wealth inequality, against which this blog has been railing since its inception, a reaction is inevitable.

There are two ways the establishment has sought to divert this anger.

The first, and highly successful method is to convince people that it is not the massive appropriation of resources by the ultra-wealthy which causes their poverty, it is rather competition for the scraps with outsiders. This approach employs pandering to racism and xenophobia, and is characteristic of UKIP and Trump.

The second approach employs the antithesis to the same end. It is to co-opt the forces marginalised by the first approach and rally them behind an “alternative” approach which is still neo-liberalism. This is identity politics which reached its apotheosis in the Clinton campaign. The Wikileaks releases of DNC and Podesta emails revealed the extreme cynicism of Clinton manipulation of ethnic group votes. Still more blatant was the promotion of the idea that Hillary being a corrupt neo-con warmonger was outweighed by the fact she was female. The notion that elevating extremely rich and privileged women already within the 1% to top positions, breaks a glass ceiling and benefits all women, is the precise feminist equivalent of trickledown theory.

That the xenophobic strand rather than the identity politics strand won will, I predict, prove to have no impact on continued neo-liberal policies.

The British Labour Party has played identity politics for generations just as blatantly, as I know from my experience campaigning in Blackburn. The resources of state institutions are directed to obtain geographically and politically cohesive ethnic block votes.

Both Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn faced intellectually risible accusations of misogyny from the neo-liberal faux-feminists when they presented an alternative economic policy. This is the most conclusive proof of the appropriation of identity politics to the neo-liberal cause.

Opinion polls both before and after the US election appear to demonstrate beyond doubt that Sanders would have trounced Trump. But to a certainty, the financial and international interests who bankrolled Clinton would much prefer Trump to Sanders.

A number of people have been questioning what Hillary’s banker backers will make of her defeat. The answer is they will not be too disappointed. She earned her money by seeing off Sanders.

It is fascinating to see that the attitude of the salaried establishment, both elected and administrative, of the Labour and Democratic parties to Sanders and Corbyn has been identical.

The Labour nomenklatura tried to defeat Corbyn’s election by disqualifying or barring from voting well over 100,000 voters. The Democrat nomenklatura succeeded in their equivalent task by devices including a rigged count in Nevada, collusion with Clinton in sequencing of primaries to harm Sanders, and passing of debate questions in advance.

While Corbyn has retained his leadership position, he is not in control of the party machinery which daily leaks and spins against him. His leadership has been fatally undermined from day one by humiliating, vicious and continual attacks given to the media by his own party. As time goes by, it is more and more plain he is not able to get rid of the MPs and functionaries whose sole purpose is to promote right wing ideology. There is currently a controversy as to whether Dave Nellist and other old socialists should be permitted to rejoin. I cannot understand why they would wish to be in a party with John Woodcock, Simon Danczuk, Jess Phillips and lest we forget, still Blair, Mandelson and Campbell.

In short, in neither the US nor the UK is a viable radical alternative going to be put before the electorate in the near future. Those who believe either Brexit or Trump presage a break from neo-liberalism will be sore disappointed. They represent the continuance of neo-liberalism, but with popular discontent diverted into added racism.

Signed First Editions of Sikunder Burnes are now available direct from this blog! You can leave a message naming the dedication you want. Sold at cover price of £25 including p&p for UK delivery or £29 for overseas delivery. Ideal Christmas presents!!