The Representatives Challenge: Day 604

As already stated on the day after my release: "The instant that Labour lost control of Durham County Council, then I was granted an unsolicited tag for more than 10 weeks of future good behaviour. I invite each and every Member of Parliament for the area covered by Durham County Council, each and every member of Durham County Council, and each and every member of Lanchester Parish Council, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know." The current total is zero.

Furthermore, I invite each and every other candidate for the parliamentary seat containing Lanchester to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. In this case, names most certainly will be published, including as part of my election literature. The current total is zero. If that remained the case when the next General Election was called, then my literature would state that each and all of my opponents, by name, did not think that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. At least in that event, then I challenge Oliver Kamm to contest this seat.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

Involved In The Chain

He seems determined to line up with the people who now deny that Covid-19 ever existed and who stopped taking him seriously when he was vaccinated, and he still does not understand how the money supply works, but even so, Peter Hitchens writes:

The inflated grandees of Parliament's Privileges Committee are currently pondering the vast issue of whether Al 'Boris' Johnson misled the Commons about some office parties. I care little for Mr Johnson, but one has to ask why these persons do not investigate themselves for their utter failure to prevent a gross abuse of power by the Government during Covid.

They failed to challenge policies which smashed the economy to pieces, launched an uncontrollable storm of inflation, wrecked the NHS, maimed schools and universities, and destroyed personal freedom, in a misconceived belief that such actions were justified by Covid. The outcome in Sweden, where these mad things were not done, shows clearly that this was an inexcusable panic.

But that is not the main issue I wish to raise. For there is a far more important case in which a senior Minister needs to answer charges of misleading Parliament, one on which the whole issue of war and peace may turn. This country's attitude towards events in Ukraine is based on a slavish decision to do what the Americans tell us to do, rather than on any serious estimate of our own national interest. I believe this may drag us into prolonged war.

Even the poor King must take part, forced to say during his German visit that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was 'unprovoked'. This assertion is highly contentious and makes our monarch look silly and ill-informed. Even the anti-Russian Washington hawk Robert Kagan has clearly stated that it was provoked. Provocation does not, of course, justify any such invasion, but admitting that it took place might make our own policy less wildly militant and risky.

It is regrettable but true that most of our media and political class are unaware of one of the biggest events in modern European history – that this crisis began with the lawless overthrow of Ukraine's legitimately elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, in 2014. There is little doubt that this coup had Western backing.

Peaceful protests in Kiev had been infiltrated by ultra-Right thugs. As the Ukrainian sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko wrote in The Guardian soon before the putsch: 'Before the start of full-fledged street violence on 19 January, Western media were naively celebrating the 'European values' of the movement – despite the fact that the xenophobic, homophobic, nationalist Svoboda party had, with even more extreme groups, been involved in Euromaidan – as the protests are known – almost from the beginning.

They were using far-Right slogans, fighting with the police, leading occupations of administrative buildings and dismantling monuments. Yet neither the incidents of torture, lynching and public humiliation of alleged thieves in the protest camp, nor the beatings of homeless and drunk people nearby, have made it into the international media. David Roman, then a correspondent in Kiev for the Wall Street Journal, has since described the events:

'I must correct the impression… that a courageous popular response to armed repression led to victory for the protesters. On the contrary, on the last days of February 2014, armed thugs – many, if not most, heavily armed far-Right and neo-Nazi activists from western Ukraine – stormed Maidan square, killing and capturing police officers and forcing the hand of a government that, as well as being unpopular, was bankrupt and diplomatically isolated. Some people… may think this good and proper, so that Ukraine has a pro-EU, pro-American government. Personally, I was struck by the image of a democratically elected president escaping his country in the middle of the night, chased by hooligans holding Waffen-SS banners.'

In fact the last act of this putsch took place when several EU foreign ministers brokered a deal for early elections and major reforms between Yanukovych and the protest leaders. But the mob rejected it, preferring a violent overthrow to democracy. It all ended on February 22, with what was left of Ukraine's parliament endorsing the coup You might have thought that Western countries, committed to democracy and the rule of law, would have been shocked and disapproving. Not a bit of it.

On March 4, 2014, the then Mr William Hague (now Lord Hague of Richmond), as Foreign Secretary, stated in the Commons: 'Former President Yanukovych left his post and then left the country, and the decisions on replacing him with an acting president were made by the Rada, the Ukrainian parliament, by the very large majorities required under the constitution… so it is wrong to question the legitimacy of the new authorities.'

This statement appears to be seriously inaccurate. In his book Frontline Ukraine, Professor Richard Sakwa, of the University of Kent, states:

'The formal procedure required the establishment of a dedicated investigatory committee… its conclusions to be reviewed by parliament and then a vote in favour of impeachment if so decided, followed by a decision of the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court, and, finally – most importantly – a vote by no fewer than three-quarters of the constitutional total of the parliament (338 MPs). Instead, MPs were simply instructed to 'sack' Yanukovych.

'Even then, the vote did not reach the required majority: 328 of 447 MPs (73 per cent) voted to remove Yanukovych from the presidency on the grounds that he was unable to fulfil his responsibilities, even though an hour earlier on TV Yanukovych had insisted that he would not resign and at that point had not left the country. Article 111 of the constitution lists four circumstances in which an incumbent president may leave office – resignation, a serious health condition, impeachment, and death – none of which applied in this case.'

If this is true, then it seems to me that the whole publicly accepted idea of what is going on in Ukraine is simply wrong. And Lord Hague's words in the Commons have contributed to this. I have tried repeatedly to reach Lord Hague. So far, nothing. I have also sought a response from the Foreign Office. So far, nothing. I think this is more important than Mr Johnson's parties.

And:

The Assistant Chief Constable of Merseyside, Chris Green, has said that abusers of illegal drugs are responsible for the vast snakepit of drug-related crime which led to the unbearable death of nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel.

He said: 'There's a strong message, if those individuals who at the weekend are partying out in clubs or socialising in houses think they're not doing any harm by having a line of cocaine or doing whatever they want to do … Everyone involved in the chain is responsible. That is the reality. If there wasn't demand, there wouldn't be supply.'

And he is dead right. But perhaps he'd care to say how his force, or indeed any UK police force, has been treating the crime of drug possession? As I understand it, they have been turning a blind eye to it for about 30 years.

In which case the police too are involved in the chain. And if they think they're not doing any harm by this lazy, feeble laxness, they are very much mistaken. This is not the only horror they have on their conscience, and it will not be the last. Sensible countries such as Japan and South Korea still successfully prosecute abusers.

The Mucky Thirty

Craig Murray writes:

The Guardian, the Washington Post and Der Spiegel have today published “bombshell” revelations about Russian cyber warfare based on leaked documents, but have produced only one single, rather innocuous leaked document between them (in the Washington Post), with zero links to any.

Where are these documents and what do they actually say? Der Spiegel tells us:

“This is all chronicled in 1,000 secret documents that include 5,299 pages full of project plans, instructions and internal emails from Vulkan from the years 2016 to 2021. Despite being all in Russian and extremely technical in nature, they provide unique insight into the depths of Russian cyberwarfare plans.”

Ok, so where are they?

The media houses have cooperated on the leaks, and the articles have been produced by large teams of journalists in each individual publication.

The Guardian article is by Luke Harding, Stilyana Simeonova, Manisha Ganguly and Dan Sabbagh. The Washington Post article is by Craig Timberg, Ellen Nakashima, Hannes Munzinga and Hakan Tanriverdi. Der Spiegel’s article is by 22 named journalists!

So that is 30 named journalists, with each publication deploying a large team to produce its own article.

And yet if you read through those three articles, you cannot help but note they are (ahem) remarkably similar.

From Der Spiegel:

“ ‘These documents suggest that Russia sees attacks on civilian critical infrastructure and social media manipulation as one-and-the-same mission, which is essentially an attack on the enemy’s will to fight,’ says John Hultquist, a leading expert on Russian cyberwarfare and vice president of intelligence analysis at Mandiant, an IT security company.”

From the Washington Post:

“ ‘These documents suggest that Russia sees attacks on civilian critical infrastructure and social media manipulation as one and the same mission, which is essentially an attack on the enemy’s will to fight,’ said John Hultquist, the vice president for intelligence analysis at the cybersecurity firm Mandiant.”

From The Guardian:

“John Hultquist, the vice-president of intelligence analysis at the cybersecurity firm Mandiant, which reviewed selections of the material at the request of the consortium, said: ‘These documents suggest that Russia sees attacks on civilian critical infrastructure and social media manipulation as one and the same mission, which is essentially an attack on the enemy’s will to fight.’ ”

Note that it is not just the central Hultquist quote which is the same. In each case the teams of 30 journalists have very slightly altered a copy-and-pasted entire paragraph.

In fact, the remarkable sameness of all three articles, with the same quotes and sources and same ideas, makes plain to anybody reading that all these articles are taken from a single source document. The question is who produced that central document? I assume it is one of the “five security services,” which all of the articles say were consulted.

Same Debunked Claim

Revealingly all three articles include the comprehensively debunked claim that Russia hacked the Hillary Clinton or DNC emails. They all include it despite the fact that none of the three articles makes the slightest attempt to connect this allegation to any of the leaked Vulkan documents, or to provide any evidence for it at all.

The casual reader is led to the conclusion that in some way the Vulkan leak proves the Clinton hack — despite the fact that no evidence is adduced and in fact, on close reading, none of the articles actually makes any claim that there is any reference at all to the Clinton hack in the Vulkan documents, or any other kind of evidence in them supporting the claim.

That all three teams of journalists independently decided to throw in a debunked claim, unrelated to any of the leaked material they are supposedly discussing, is not very probable. Again, they are plainly working from a central source that highlights the Clinton nonsense.

The Washington Post does actually deign to give us a facsimile of one page of one of the leaked emails, which does indeed appear to reference cyberwarfare capabilities to control or disable vital infrastructure.

But the problem is they are showing us page 4 of a document, devoid of context. Why no link to the whole document? We can see it is about research into these capabilities, but presumably the whole document might reveal something about the purpose of such research — for example, is it offensive or to develop defence against such attacks?

I am always suspicious of leaks where the actual documents are kept hidden, and we only know what we are told by — in this case — a propaganda operation which, even on the surface of it, involves Western security services, U.S. government-funded “cyber security firms,” Microsoft and Google.

WikiLeaks, by Contrast

When WikiLeaks releases documents, they actually release the entirety of the documents so that you can look at them and make up your own mind on what they really say or mean. Such as, for example, the Vault 7 release on “C.I.A. Hacking Tools.”

My favourite Vault 7 revelation was that the C.I.A. hackers leave behind fake “fingerprints,” including commands in Cyrillic script, to create a false trail that the Russians did it. Again, you can see the actual documents onWikiLeaks.

I have no reason to doubt that Russia employs techniques of cyber warfare. But I have absolutely no reason to believe that Russia does so any more than Western security services.

In fact, there is some indication in this Vulkan information that Russian cyber warfare capability is less advanced than Western. With absolutely zero self-awareness of the implications of what they are saying, Luke Harding and his team at The Guardian tell us that:

“One document shows engineers recommending Russia add to its own capabilities by using hacking tools stolen in 2016 from the US National Security Agency and posted online.”

It is, of course, only bad when the Russians do it.

The fact there is virtually no cross-referencing to the Snowden or Vault 7 leaks in any of the publications, shows this up for the coordinated security service propaganda exercise that it is.

But there are numerous examples given of various hacks alleged to be committed by Russian security services, with no links whatsoever to any document in the Vulkan leaks, and in fact no evidence given of any kind, except for multiple references to allegations by U.S. authorities.

The Washington Post article has the best claim to maintain some kind of reasonable journalistic standard. It includes these important phrases, admissions notably absent from The Guardian’s Luke Harding led piece:

“These officials and experts could not find definitive evidence that the systems have been deployed by Russia or been used in specific cyberattacks.”

And:

“The documents do not, however, include verified target lists, malicious software code or evidence linking the projects to known cyberattacks.”

And:

“Still, they offer insights into the aims of a Russian state that — like other major powers, including the United States — is eager to grow and systematize its ability to conduct cyberattacks with greater speed, scale and efficiency.”

The last quote is of course the key point, and the Washington Post does deserve some kudos at least for acknowledging it, which is more than you can say for The Guardian or Der Spiegel. Even the Washington Post, having acknowledged the point, in no way allows it to affect the tone or tenor of its report.

But in truth there is no reason to doubt that the Russian state is developing cyberwarfare capabilities, and there is no reason to doubt that commercial companies including Vulkan are involved in some of the sub-contracted work.

But exactly the same thing is true of the United States, the United Kingdom or any major Western nation. Tens of billions are being poured into cyberwarfare, and the resources deployed on it by NATO states vastly outnumber the resources available to Russia.

Which puts in perspective this large exercise in anti-Russian propaganda. Here are some key facts about it for you:

Taking the Guardian, Washington Post and Der Spiegel articles together:

Less than 2 percent of the articles consist of direct quotes from the alleged leaked documents

Less than 10 percent of the articles consist of alleged description of the contents of the documents

Over 15 percent of the articles consist of comment by Western security services and cyber warfare industry

Over 40 percent of the articles consist of descriptions of alleged Russian hacking activity, zero of which is referenced in the actual Vulkan leaks

We get to see one page of an alleged 5,000 leaked, plus a couple of maps and graphics.

It took 30 MSM journalists to produce this gross propaganda. I could have done it alone for them in a night, working up three slightly different articles from what the security services have fed them, directly and indirectly.

I can see the attraction of being a “journalist” shill for power, it has been very easy money for the Mucky Thirty.

A Publisher of Truthful Information

Ryan Grim writes:

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., is circulating a letter among her House colleagues that calls on the Department of Justice to drop charges against Julian Assange and end its effort to extradite him from his detention in Belmarsh prison in the United Kingdom.

The letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Intercept, is still in the signature-gathering phase and has yet to be sent to Attorney General Merrick Garland.

The Justice Department has charged Assange, the publisher of WikiLeaks, for publishing classified information. The Obama administration had previously decided not to prosecute Assange, concerned with what was dubbed internally as the “New York Times problem.” The Times had partnered with Assange when it came to publishing classified information and itself routinely publishes classified information. Publishing classified information is a violation of the Espionage Act, though it has never been challenged in the Supreme Court, and constitutional experts broadly consider that element of the law to be unconstitutional.

“The Espionage Act, as it’s written, has always been applicable to such a broad range of discussion of important matters, many of which have been wrongly kept secret for a long time, that it should be regarded as unconstitutional,” explained Daniel Ellsberg, the famed civil liberties advocate who leaked the Pentagon Papers.

The Obama administration could not find a way to charge Assange without also implicating standard journalistic practices. The Trump administration, unburdened by such concerns around press freedom, pushed ahead with the indictment and extradition request. The Biden administration, driven by the zealous prosecutor Gordon Kromberg, has aggressively pursued Trump’s prosecution. Assange won a reprieve from extradition in a lower British court but lost at the High Court. He is appealing there as well as to the European Court of Human Rights. Assange’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, who has been campaigning globally for his release, said that Assange’s mental and physical health have deteriorated in the face of the conditions he faces at Belmarsh.

Tlaib, in working to build support, urged her colleagues to put their differences with Assange the individual aside and defend the principle of the free press, enshrined in the Constitution. “I know many of us have very strong feelings about Mr. Assange, but what we think of him and his actions is really besides the point here,” she wrote to her colleagues in early March. “The fact of the matter is that the [way] in which Mr. Assange is being prosecuted under the notoriously undemocratic Espionage Act seriously undermines freedom of the press and the First Amendment.”

“In the future, the New York Times or Washington Post could be prosecuted when they publish important stories based on classified information.”

Tlaib noted that the Times, The Guardian, El País, Le Monde, and Der Spiegel had put out a joint statement condemning the charges, and alluded to the same problem that gave the Obama administration pause.

“The prosecution of Mr. Assange, if successful, not only sets a legal precedent whereby journalists or publishers can be prosecuted, but a political one as well,” she wrote. “In the future, the New York Times or Washington Post could be prosecuted when they publish important stories based on classified information. Or, just as dangerous, they may refrain from publishing such stories for fear of prosecution.”

So far, the letter has collected signatures from Democratic Reps. Jamaal Bowman, Ilhan Omar, and Cori Bush. Rep. Ro Khanna said he had yet to see the letter but added that he has previously said Assange should not be prosecuted because the charges are over-broad and a threat to press freedom. Rep. Pramila Jayapal is not listed as a signee but told a Seattle audience recently she believes the charges should be dropped. A spokesperson for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that she intends to sign before the letter closes.

Chip Gibbons, policy director for Defending Rights & Dissent, said that the relative silence from Congress on the Assange prosecution has undermined U.S. claims to be defending democracy abroad. “In spite of the rhetoric about opposing authoritarianism and defending democracy and press freedom, we really haven’t seen a comparable outcry from Congress — until now,” said Gibbons, whose organization has launched a petition calling on the Justice Department to drop charges. “Rep. Tlaib’s letter isn’t just a breath of fresh air, it’s extremely important for members of Congress to be raising their voices on this, especially those from the same party of the current administration, at this critical juncture in a case that will determine the future of press freedom in the United States.”

A significant number of Democrats continue to hold a hostile view of Assange, accusing him of publishing material that was purloined by Russian agents from the inbox of Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. The indictment, however, relates to his publication of government secrets leaked by Chelsea Manning more than a decade ago. “In July 2010, WikiLeaks published approximately 75,000 significant activity reports related to the war in Afghanistan, classified up to the SECRET level, illegally provided to WikiLeaks by Manning,” the indictment reads. “In November 2010, WikiLeaks started publishing redacted versions of U.S. State Department cables, classified up to the SECRET level, illegally provided to WikiLeaks by Manning.”

The U.S. government has made the general claim that Assange’s publication of classified information put sources and allies of the U.S. in harm’s way, though the government has been unable to provide any example of that. Meanwhile, the U.S. government itself has left thousands of Afghan civilians, who collaborated with the U.S., to their fates after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, raising questions about the sincerity of their lamentations over the security of those who work with the U.S.

The word “publish” appears more than two dozen times in the superseding indictment of Assange, in which he is accused of “having unauthorized possession of significant activity reports, classified up to the SECRET level [and] publishing them and causing them to be published on the Internet.”

The full letter is below.

Dear Colleague:

I’d like to invite you to join me in writing the Dept. of Justice to call on them to drop the Trump-era charges against Australian publisher Julian Assange.

I know many of us have very strong feelings about Mr. Assange, but what we think of him and his actions is really besides the point here. The fact of the matter is that the in which Mr. Assange is being prosecuted under the notoriously undemocratic Espionage Act seriously undermines freedom of the press and the First Amendment.

Defendants charged under the Espionage Act are effectively incapable of defending themselves and often are not allowed access to all the evidence being brought against them, or even to testify to the motivation behind their actions. The information that Mr. Assange worked with major media outlets like the New York Times and the The Guardian to publish primarily came from the documents leaked by whistleblower Chelsea Manning. These documents exposed a number of extremely serious government abuses including torture, war crimes, and illegal mass surveillance.

Mr. Assange’s prosecution marks the first time in US history that the Espionage Act has been used to indict a publisher of truthful information. The prosecution of Mr. Assange, if successful, not only sets a legal precedent whereby journalists or publishers can be prosecuted, but a political one as well. In the future, the New York Times or Washington Post could be prosecuted when they publish important stories based on classified information. Or, just as dangerous, they may refrain from publishing such stories for fear of prosecution.

The New York Times, The Guardian, El Pais, Le Monde, and Der Spiegel have taken the extraordinary step of publishing a joint statement in opposition to the indictment, warning that it “sets a dangerous precedent, and threatens to undermine America’s First Amendment and the freedom of the press.” They are joined in their opposition to Mr. Assange’s prosecution by groups like the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists. Numerous foreign leaders have also expressed their concern and opposition, including Australian PM Albanese, Mexican President AMLO, Brazilian President Lula da Silva, and parliamentarians from numerous countries including the UK, Germany, Brazil, and Australia.

If you have any questions or would like to sign on to this letter, please contact Rep. Tlaib’s Policy Advisor… Thank you for your partnership in defending the freedom of the press and the First Amendment.

Sincerely,

Rashida Tlaib

Member of Congress

Dear Attorney General Merrick Garland,

We write you today to call on you to uphold the First Amendment’s protections for the freedom of the press by dropping the criminal charges against Australian publisher Julian Assange and withdrawing the American extradition request currently pending with the British government.

Press freedom, civil liberty, and human rights groups have been emphatic that the charges against Mr. Assange pose a grave and unprecedented threat to everyday, constitutionally protected journalistic activity, and that a conviction would represent a landmark setback for the First Amendment. Major media outlets are in agreement:

The New York Times, The Guardian, El Pais, Le Monde, and Der Spiegel have taken the extraordinary step of publishing a joint statement in opposition to the indictment, warning that it “sets a dangerous precedent, and threatens to undermine America’s First Amendment and the freedom of the press.” 

The ACLU, Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Defending Rights and Dissent, and Human Rights Watch, among others, have written to you three times to express these concerns. In one such letter they wrote:

“The indictment of Mr. Assange threatens press freedom because much of the conduct described in the indictment is conduct that journalists engage in routinely—and that they must engage in in order to do the work the public needs them to do. Journalists at major news publications regularly speak with sources, ask for clarification or more documentation, and receive and publish documents the government considers secret. In our view, such a precedent in this case could effectively criminalize these common journalistic practices.”

The prosecution of Julian Assange for carrying out journalistic activities greatly diminishes America’s credibility as a defender of these values, undermining the United States’ moral standing on the world stage, and effectively granting cover to authoritarian governments who can (and do) point to Assange’s prosecution to reject evidence-based criticisms of their human rights records and as a precedent that justifies the criminalization of reporting on their activities. Leaders of democracies, major international bodies, and parliamentarians around the globe stand opposed to the prosecution of Assange. Former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer and the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatovic have both opposed the extradition. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has called on the U.S. government to end its pursuit of Assange. Leaders of nearly every major Latin American nation, including Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and Argentinian President Alberto Fernández have called for the charges to be dropped. Parliamentarians from around the world, including the United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia, have all called for Assange not to be extradited to the U.S. 

This global outcry against the U.S. government’s prosecution of Mr. Assange has highlighted conflicts between America’s stated values of press freedom and its pursuit of Mr. Assange. The Guardian wrote “The US has this week proclaimed itself the beacon of democracy in an increasingly authoritarian world. If Mr. Biden is serious about protecting the ability of the media to hold governments accountable, he should begin by dropping the charges brought against Mr. Assange.” Similarly, the Sydney Morning Herald editorial board stated, “At a time when US President Joe Biden has just held a summit for democracy, it seems contradictory to go to such lengths to win a case that, if it succeeds, will limit freedom of speech.”

As Attorney General, you have rightly championed freedom of the press and the rule of law in the United States and around the world. Just this past October the Justice Department under your leadership made changes to news media policy guidelines that generally prevent federal prosecutors from using subpoenas or other investigative tools against journalists who possess and publish classified information used in news gathering. We are grateful for these pro-press freedom revisions, and feel strongly that dropping the Justice Department’s indictment against Mr. Assange and halting all efforts to extradite him to the U.S. is in line with these new policies.

Julian Assange faces 17 charges under the Espionage Act and one charge for conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. The Espionage Act charges stem from Mr. Assange’s role in publishing information about the U.S. State Department, Guantanamo Bay, and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Much of this information was published by mainstream newspapers, such as the New York Times and Washington Post, who often worked with Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks directly in doing so. Based on the legal logic of this indictment, any of those newspapers could be prosecuted for engaging in these reporting activities. In fact, because what Mr. Assange is accused of doing is legally indistinguishable from what papers like the New York Times do, the Obama administration rightfully declined to bring these charges. The Trump Administration, which brought these charges against Assange, was notably less concerned with press freedom.

The prosecution of Mr. Assange marks the first time in U.S. history that a publisher of truthful information has been indicted under the Espionage Act. The prosecution of Mr. Assange, if successful, not only sets a legal precedent whereby journalists or publishers can be prosecuted, but a political one as well. In the future the New York Times or Washington Post could be prosecuted when they publish important stories based on classified information. Or, just as dangerous for democracy, they may refrain from publishing such stories for fear of prosecution.

Mr. Assange has been detained on remand in London for more than three years, as he awaits the outcome of extradition proceedings against him. In 2021, a U.K. District Judge ruled against extraditing Mr. Assange to the United States on the grounds that doing so would put him at undue risk of suicide. The U.K.’s High Court overturned that decision after accepting U.S. assurances regarding the prospective treatment Mr. Assange would receive in prison. Neither ruling adequately addresses the threat the charges against Mr. Assange pose to press freedom. The U.S. Department of Justice can halt these harmful proceedings at any moment by simply dropping the charges against Mr. Assange.

We appreciate your attention to this urgent issue. Every day that the prosecution of Julian Assange continues is another day that our own government needlessly undermines our own moral authority abroad and rolls back the freedom of the press under the First Amendment at home. We urge you to immediately drop these Trump-era charges against Mr. Assange and halt this dangerous prosecution.

Sincerely,

Members of Congress

CC: British Embassy; Australian Embassy

Declaratory Power

This was sent to the papers on Monday. Do please let me know if it has been published anywhere:

20 years on, and Fallujah still suffers from the cancers and birth defects that were imposed on it, yet Britain is sending depleted uranium to Ukraine. The difference between depleted uranium and radiological weapons, such as polonium-210, would strike most people as sophistic. If the Minister of State for Defence, Baroness Goldie, was in Scotland during any part of this decision-making process, then the High Court of Justiciary ought to exercise its declaratory power that this was so clearly comparable to an existing crime as to constitute a criminal act.

David Lindsay, Lanchester, Independent parliamentary candidate, 2019 and 2024

Councillor James Giles, Leader of the Kingston Independent Residents Group, the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames

Paul Knaggs, Chesterfield, Founder and Editor of Labour Heartlands, British Army combat veteran

Marie Macfarlane, Glasgow

Dr Yvonne Ridley, Jedburgh, author and journalist

Audrey White, Liverpool

The Representatives Challenge: Day 603

As already stated on the day after my release: "The instant that Labour lost control of Durham County Council, then I was granted an unsolicited tag for more than 10 weeks of future good behaviour. I invite each and every Member of Parliament for the area covered by Durham County Council, each and every member of Durham County Council, and each and every member of Lanchester Parish Council, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know." The current total is zero.

Furthermore, I invite each and every other candidate for the parliamentary seat containing Lanchester to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. In this case, names most certainly will be published, including as part of my election literature. The current total is zero. If that remained the case when the next General Election was called, then my literature would state that each and all of my opponents, by name, did not think that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. At least in that event, then I challenge Oliver Kamm to contest this seat.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

Posie Politics?

I have no idea why Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, as she would have to call herself on the ballot paper, would want to contest Keir Starmer's seat, especially since a serious Left campaign already has five thousand supporters since Tuesday, and an office. Yes, a real, actual, physical office, right there in the constituency. I know that for a fact. Watch out for the announcement of the candidate.

"Posie Parker" would do better to be standing against Rishi Sunak, the fifth successive Prime Minister under whom gender self-identification has become the law for all practical purposes across the public sector and its vast network of contractors, without anything so vulgar as a parliamentary vote, and in the teeth of opposition from the Morning Star, Counterfire, the Socialist Labour Party, the Communist Party of Britain, and so on, with both Alba and the Workers Party of Britain having been founded in so small part because of this issue. The CPB, the WPB and Alba are all growing especially rapidly, while of course Labour Party and SNP membership are both in free fall.

Of those listed, only Alba is iffy on Brexit; it wants an independent Scotland to be in EFTA. All of the others have been opposed to the EU forever, since Margaret Thatcher and Norman Tebbit were calling that position "Loony Left". Again, both Socialist Labour and the Workers Party have in no small measure been founded on this question. If there is a Left party in favour of gender self-identification, then it is the Alliance for Workers' Liberty, which is the fiercely pro-EU British branch of the Shachtmanism that produced the neoconservative movement. It does not play well with others on the Left.

One who does, however,  is my near neighbour, Daniel Kebede. Right on gender self-identification, right on Brexit, right on Ukraine, and right on economics, including the increasingly successful strikes, he is still only in his mid-thirties, he is no longer in the Labour Party, and today he was elected General Secretary of the National Education Union. A luta continua.

It continues in the pages of the right-wing papers, and on websites such as UnHerd and The Critic. Notice that apart from Sarah Vine, who concedes her debt to the left-wing sisters, the gender critics there are almost all at least broadly from the Left, and in many cases very strongly so. Julie Bindel, Kathleen Stock, Suzanne Moore, Julie Burchill, Sarah Ditum, Helen Joyce, Jo Bartosch, Lucy Masoud, Selina Todd, and so it goes on. Like several of those, Debbie Hayton is also an old school trade union activist. In any case, the right-wing papers are not going to be publishing these views in the near future, since their younger contributors, Conservative MPs and Ministers of the next 15 to 20 years, are sick of the potential damage to their careers.

The public sector has adopted gender self-identification as a consequence of privatisation, since it began as corporate policy, and the State now farms so much out that whatever the corporations want, then the State finds itself obliged to provide, if by no means necessarily unwillingly. Anyone who cannot see that gender self-identification is the logical consequence of the Thatcherite concept of a self-made man or a self-made woman is a caricature of a Tory anti-intellectual, who has simply never read anything, or even given anything any thought. Including many an article by the aforesaid gender-critical writers.

At the top of the Conservative Party, they can and do see that logic. That is why gender self-identification has happened entirely while they have been in office. That is also why it has become dominant in the Labour Party only under Starmer rather than under Jeremy Corbyn, who was conflicted on this as on many things, but who was especially close to the Morning Star and Counterfire sets. Sunak and Starmer are at one on the Scottish Gender Recognition Reform Bill, not that it is wrong at principle, but that it should be enacted at Westminster.

But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair's Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.

To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.

Orders The Immediate Release

Andrew Tate has been placed under house arrest, but he is out of prison. I am sure that I could stand no more than a few seconds in his company, but I cannot imagine that the United States would allow a white liberal American citizen to be treated as he has been, and I would not be at all surprised if little or nothing ended up coming of this.

I am a very accomplished rat-smeller. See Cardinal Pell, Julian Assange, Alex Salmond, Ched Evans, and the victims of Freya Heath, whose conviction was merely set aside on a procedural technicality. This has nothing to do with liking anyone. The beatification will presumably be the occasion of a Papal Visit to Australia, but if possible I shall be in Rome for the canonisation of Cardinal Pell. To keep Assange’s work going, then I would die in his stead. While I am opposed to the marrow of my bones to the political cause to which Salmond has devoted his life, I expect that he and I would get on. But I doubt that Evans and I would find much to talk about. I know that Heath’s victims and I would have more than enough for a very heated discussion indeed. And I have already said what I thought of Tate.

It is increasingly obvious that I have also been right all along about Prince Andrew, in whose defence I have been uniquely consistent. Moreover, since no charge or even arrest has followed the alleged allegation against Bishop Robert Byrne CO, then it is fair to assume that there has never been a Police investigation into His Lordship. He should now sue every media outlet that had suggested that there was one. An Oratorian does not take a vow of poverty, and the English Oratories have friends who could afford any lawyer in London. Despite the ostentatious traditionalism of certain aged Spectator Associate Editors and ageing Telegraph glamour boys, I alone have publicly defended Bishop Byrne. I have done so from the very start.

The Representatives Challenge: Day 602

As already stated on the day after my release: "The instant that Labour lost control of Durham County Council, then I was granted an unsolicited tag for more than 10 weeks of future good behaviour. I invite each and every Member of Parliament for the area covered by Durham County Council, each and every member of Durham County Council, and each and every member of Lanchester Parish Council, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know." The current total is zero.

Furthermore, I invite each and every other candidate for the parliamentary seat containing Lanchester to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. In this case, names most certainly will be published, including as part of my election literature. The current total is zero. If that remained the case when the next General Election was called, then my literature would state that each and all of my opponents, by name, did not think that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. At least in that event, then I challenge Oliver Kamm to contest this seat.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

Indictment

Hillary Clinton faked Russiagate, and Hunter Biden’s laptop has turned out to have been real, so when are they going to be indicted, and when is any client of Jeffrey Epstein’s going to be? The judge who authorised the initial raid on Donald Trump, Bruce Reinhart, was a federal prosecutor until 1st January 2008. One day later, he became a defence attorney representing Epstein’s employees.

I am not saying that Trump is innocent. He does not even deny paying off the prostitute who calls herself Stormy Daniels. It is just that, like you, I can think of plenty of other people who are no less guilty. Likewise, we have recently seen the guilty of Iraq reverently asked for their reflections two decades on. None of them has ever suffered professionally. Quite the reverse, in fact. 90 per cent of the British population saw through the Iraq War from the start, but none of the 60 million of us has ever been deemed capable of assuming any of those wholly discredited individuals’ positions in public life.

Instead, that British Deep State defenestrated Jeremy Corbyn. It is subjecting Boris Johnson to a kangaroo court. It incited violence against Nigel Farage, and the attempted murder of George Galloway. It tried to imprison Alex Salmond for the rest of his life. And it persecutes the world-historical figure of Julian Assange. Each of those will always be much bigger than any of his enemies, but the point still stands.

Hero, Not Zero

We must celebrate the full compatibility between the highest view of human demographic, economic, intellectual and cultural expansion and development, and the most active concern for the conservation of the natural world and of the treasures bequeathed by such expansion and development in the past. That means growth, industry, what someone once nearly called “the white heat of technology”, and the equitable distribution of their fruits among and within the nations of the world, so that everyone might enjoy at least the standard of living that we ourselves already enjoyed.

There is always climate change, and any approach to it must protect and extend secure employment with civilised wages and working conditions, encourage economic development around the world, uphold the right of the working class and of people of colour to have children, hold down and as far as practicable reduce the fuel prices that always hit the poor hardest, and refuse to restrict travel opportunities or a full diet to the rich. In Britain, we must be unequivocal about regretting the defeat of the miners in 1985.

We sent our manufacturing to India and China, yet now we have the gall to criticise their carbon emissions. And we expect to depend for energy on the Sun, the wind and the tides, precisely because it is beyond our power to stop them from doing what they do and we just have to live with it, yet we also expect to be able to stop climate change rather than finding ways of living with it. I am strongly in favour of solar, wind and tidal energy in the mix. The base of that mix is nuclear and coal. The coal without which there can be no steel, and thus no wind turbines or tidal turbines.

Any economic arrangement is a political choice, not a law of physics, and the “free” market cannot deal with climate change while defending and expanding our achievements. That is precisely why it is being promoted. But instead, we need the State, albeit a vastly more participatory and democratic State than has often existed. The energy sources to be preferred are those which provided high-wage, high-skilled, high-status jobs. 

Let us harness the power of the State, and deliver an all-of-the-above energy policy based around civil nuclear power and this country’s vast reserves of coal. Around those twin poles of nuclear power and of the clean coal technology in which Britain was the world leader until the defeat of the Miners’ Strike, let there be oil, gas, lithium, wind, solar, tidal, and everything else, bathing this country in heat and light. This is why we have a State.

Fracking? There is no problem with any energy source in principle, but none of that shale gas has turned up yet, and if it is anywhere, then it is in heavily populated areas that could do without the earthquakes, the poisoned water, and all the rest of it. Say it again, harness the power of the State to bathe this country in heat and light from oil, gas, nuclear, wind, wave, tidal, solar, and that without which there could also be no steel for rigs, pipelines, power stations or turbines, namely coal. Britain stands on one thousand years’ worth of coal, and was the world leader in clean coal technology until the defeat of the miners in 1985. Again, do not vote for anyone who will not say that the miners were right.

The opinion polls bear no resemblance to real votes cast, and even the Labour poll lead has halved since Rishi Sunak took over. Halved. The Labour vote has gone through the floor at all but one by-election since Keir Starmer became Leader, with one of those recording Labour’s lowest ever share of the vote. Council seats that were held or won under Corbyn have fallen like sandcastles, taking control of major local authorities with them. That is the bread and butter of the party’s right wing, who are not otherwise the most employable of people.

But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair’s Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.

To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.

The Representatives Challenge: Day 601

As already stated on the day after my release: "The instant that Labour lost control of Durham County Council, then I was granted an unsolicited tag for more than 10 weeks of future good behaviour. I invite each and every Member of Parliament for the area covered by Durham County Council, each and every member of Durham County Council, and each and every member of Lanchester Parish Council, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know." The current total is zero.

Furthermore, I invite each and every other candidate for the parliamentary seat containing Lanchester to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. In this case, names most certainly will be published, including as part of my election literature. The current total is zero. If that remained the case when the next General Election was called, then my literature would state that each and all of my opponents, by name, did not think that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. At least in that event, then I challenge Oliver Kamm to contest this seat.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

Essential Living Needs, And Nothing More?

Robert Jenrick was so bent that even Boris Johnson had to sack him. But he is back now, his £45 million to Paul Desmond quietly forgotten, although the billionaire Desmond had to give him only £12,000 to get it. What a cheap date Jenrick is.

Still, it all adds up. Jenrick's manor house in Hertfordshire is worth over a million pounds, and his two houses in London are worth two million each. His own business, you say? Is he not claiming a penny of expenses towards them, then?

Even if Jenrick really were making full use of his three publicly subsidised private houses within a few miles of each other, none of them anywhere near his constituency, then at the last count there were 676,452 empty homes in England alone. 40,000 asylum seekers could easily be given one each.

If we are to have prison ships, then they should be for the likes of Rishi Sunak, who, hot on the heels of his impossible tax return, has failed to declare his wife's shares in a childcare agency that will benefit from the Budget. Or Jenrick, so bent that even Johnson had to sack him.

Neither An Indulgence, Nor An Offence, But A Misfortune?

Keir Starmer's preferred candidate at Islington North is Praful Nargund, who is the CEO of a private health company while sitting on the Boards of six more.

He is already a Labour councillor in Islington, although, before anyone starts, his ward is in Emily Thornberry's constituency.

If you are going to advocate voting for this person against Jeremy Corbyn, then I do not know what to say to you.

Reflects The Priorities

Not for the first time, Humza Yousaf is showing himself to be petty, factional, and exactly why we all love politics.

My favourite development so far has been that Michael Matheson has been appointed Cabinet Secretary for NHS Recovery.

Recovery from whom, Humza? Recovery from whom?

The Representatives Challenge: Day 600

As already stated on the day after my release: "The instant that Labour lost control of Durham County Council, then I was granted an unsolicited tag for more than 10 weeks of future good behaviour. I invite each and every Member of Parliament for the area covered by Durham County Council, each and every member of Durham County Council, and each and every member of Lanchester Parish Council, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know." The current total is zero.

Furthermore, I invite each and every other candidate for the parliamentary seat containing Lanchester to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. In this case, names most certainly will be published, including as part of my election literature. The current total is zero. If that remained the case when the next General Election was called, then my literature would state that each and all of my opponents, by name, did not think that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. At least in that event, then I challenge Oliver Kamm to contest this seat.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

Severe?

Sixty-eight. My father died when he was 68. Yet we are allowing the retirement age to go all the way up to that, whereas France stands on the brink of revolution at the suggestion of an increase to 64. Emmanuel Macron is demonstrating how violently authoritarian "centrism" is when challenged, a foretaste of any Starmer Government that we might ever have the misfortune to suffer, yet we are coming to realise that the reason why the French will never be made to work until they dropped, or reduced to a pension such as ours that was less than half their present one, was precisely because this was how they reacted to the suggestion of far less than that.

We also look approvingly at the Dutch farmers, and while some of us are baffled as to how this Israeli Government was supposed to be different from its predecessors, we cannot deny our admiration for those who have risen against it. We observe all of this against the background of our own strikes, which will soon have been running for a year. Lo and behold, the terrorist threat level in Northern Ireland, and thus in practice in the United Kingdom as a whole, has been increased to severe. From a Government already possessed of powers beyond those which the Israeli Government was seeking to give itself, prepare for the clampdown. And prepare to be told to blame it on the New IRA.

Yet early this month, four Protestants, at least one with known Loyalist paramilitary connections, were arrested in relation to the attempted murder of Detective Chief Inspector John Caldwell. There has always been a school of thought that the New IRA was a false flag operation. The old IRA was riddled from top to bottom with Police informants, MI5 assets, and so on, as was the Real IRA, and as at least has been the much older Continuity IRA, which goes back to the split over abstentionism in 1986. The recent documentaries about David Rupert, and about "Robert" by the superlative Peter Taylor, undeniably broke ground, and were a reminder of how good the BBC could be, but they could not have surprised anyone.

The Far Right is the most constant and the most potent, but by and large real and perceived terrorist threats come and go. 20 years ago, imagine the suggestion that the Mayor of London and the First Minister of Scotland would both be Muslims, with the very Prime Minister two of three South Asians from three different parties. I did have to laugh at the recent AUKUS event, and not only at the idea of Britain's striking fear into China by sending submarines to the other side of the world sometime around 2040. That was the Tricontinental WASP Empire, was it? Anthony Albanese, Joe Biden and Rishi Sunak? The only thing funnier was that the Australian Labor Party, the American Democratic Party and the British Conservative Party were now fully interchangeable. Would you surrender your gun to any of them, any more than to Peter Dutton, Donald Trump or Keir Starmer?

Sunak is not wrong that the violence that affected most people in Britain was not terrorism, but antisocial behaviour. Two Prime Ministers in the last 10 years, one of whom was also the last Mayor of London, have been members of an organisation that existed specifically in order to commit criminal damage and other offences, even including assault, just so that its members could prove their ability to pick up the bill. Imagine that a group of youths the same age, but on a council estate, were to organise themselves into a club, complete with a membership list, officers, some sort of uniform, the works, all for the express purpose of smashing up pubs. They would rightly go to prison, and I do not say that lightly. Not so the longest-serving Chancellor of the Exchequer of the last 15 years, like those two Prime Ministers a known user of illegal drugs. Like them, he had in his time burned a £50 note in front of a beggar such as the Government is "cracking down on", though not by giving them homes and jobs. Tony Blair lives.

It is always about class. About 70,000 children are reported missing right here in Britain each year, yet the Home Office is to allocate hundreds of thousands more pounds to the search for Madeleine McCann, whom there is no realistic chance of finding dead, never mind alive. Did her parents have their other two children taken away? Those twins were two when their parents left them with their not quite four-year-old sister in a foreign country and went out on the town. People without the McCanns' advantages lose their children for far less.

Charles Dickens would have done as well with the McCanns and their sycophants as he would have done with the Bullingdon Club and its Old Boys. Great Expectations is about the corrosive effects of snobbery on the character, and those of us who were already fans of Steven Knight can only find ourselves wishing that he had written something completely original on that theme. His latest offering is shaping up to be good Knight. Sadly, it is bad Dickens. 

Now, there were brown people in the England of the period, including of Estella's standing. It is not unfaithful to the novel to make her as Jane Austen made Miss Lambe in Sanditon. The book does not say that the Gypsy-born Estella is white. Nor does it specify Pip's age, and putting him at the start in his late teens rather than the usual 12-ish is not a bad idea in relation to the narrative timeline. But while a youth of that age in the early nineteenth century would indeed have sworn fulsomely and all the rest of it, Dickens allows us to presuppose that, in the way that he never expressly says that Oliver Twist's Nancy is a prostitute, or that Fagin is pimping out the boys, both of which were as obvious to his original readers as they are now.

If Knight, the Dickensian influence on whose work has always been glaring and glorious, had wanted to include those things expressly, then he ought to have done that from scratch, of which he would have been more than capable. As it is, what he has written is worth watching as an example of his work, though not as example of Dickens's, and we may look forward to his treatment of phenomena such as gave rise to the McCanns or to Boris Johnson. The hugely popular and highly populist Dickens would indeed have been writing for the nine o'clock evening slot on television today. It is a noble aspiration to be his heir.

Widespread and Alarming

As William Hill is fined £19.2 million, the debate on the last, sainted Labour Government's Opposition-supported deregulation of gambling is now open. We need to ban Fixed Odds Betting Terminals, empower local authorities to limit the number of gambling venues, insist on the use of that power, end gambling on television, and end the advertising of gambling other than at venues such as casinos and betting shops. That would be a start, anyway.

Nothing To Lose But Our Chains

10 years ago, Jeremy Corbyn was the only MP to defend the memory of Ed Miliband's father. Today, Miliband accused Corbyn of anti-Semitism, which the motion barring him from being a Labour candidate did not mention. Despicable stuff. However venerable the Today programme may be, it is not covered by parliamentary privilege. Corbyn should sue.

Being in a trade union that was affiliated to the Labour Party now feels like scabbing. If Unite were still affiliated in 2026, and if no one with a higher profile had stepped up to the plate, then I would be a candidate for General Secretary, both to secure disaffiliation from the Labour Party, and to secure disaffiliation from the ILGA. Join Unite Community here.

The Representatives Challenge: Day 599

As already stated on the day after my release: "The instant that Labour lost control of Durham County Council, then I was granted an unsolicited tag for more than 10 weeks of future good behaviour. I invite each and every Member of Parliament for the area covered by Durham County Council, each and every member of Durham County Council, and each and every member of Lanchester Parish Council, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know." The current total is zero.

Furthermore, I invite each and every other candidate for the parliamentary seat containing Lanchester to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. In this case, names most certainly will be published, including as part of my election literature. The current total is zero. If that remained the case when the next General Election was called, then my literature would state that each and all of my opponents, by name, did not think that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. At least in that event, then I challenge Oliver Kamm to contest this seat.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

Significantly Diminished?

Presented with a broad field of candidates, between one quarter and one third of the SNP's few remaining members decided not to vote in what amounted to the election of the next First Minister? Really?

Humza Yousaf claims to have been brought into politics in opposition to the Iraq War, yet he will now be in government at the pleasure of the born again warmongers, and privatisers, of the Green Party, who are particularly enthusiastic cheerleaders for a war that now involves the British deployment of depleted uranium to Ukraine, a decision that was probably made at least in part in Scotland.

I give Yousaf a year, and that is being generous. Longer than Liz Truss, I suppose, but most of his party's MSPs backed him, whereas most of her party's MPs did not back her. Still, he is not very good to begin with, he has barely won, and much of the party truly hates him.

Bringing us to Keir Starmer. The Corbyn thing is not news. Did it not happen months ago? But the protests against an Israeli Government so utterly typical that it is even headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, are the context in which tomorrow's motion can no longer mention "anti-Semitism". That Jeremy Corbyn cannot be a Labour candidate is now officially because he led the party to defeat at the last General Election. Well, karma can be a bitch, Starmer. Karma can be a bitch.

Corbyn would certainly be the First Past the Post at Islington North. Look out for Labour guff about physical fear being the reason why they could not find a candidate against him. No, dears, you just did not fancy coming fourth or below in an English seat. Most Guardian and Observer columnists live there or very nearby. Put up or shut up.

Everyone else, put aside any doubts about Corbyn, and get on board for the Left's most famous victory in living memory both in Western Europe and, for want of a better term, in the Anglosphere. Corbyn's reelection would cause dancing in the streets on every continent. Parts of Latin America might declare public holidays. I am not joking. Be part of it. You know you want to. Including if you see yourself as the anti-Establishment Right. You will not get another chance like this to sock it to The Man, who is now known by name as Keir Starmer.

Christopher Snowdon and Peter Hitchens would no doubt both see themselves as such, at least since the fall of Truss in Snowdon's case. He can discredit Trussian libertarianism to his heart's content by giving a twice-annual flogging to his dead hobbyhorse of British Summer Time all year, or even of Central European Time, but Hitchens's voice is too important across a wide range of issues to be drowned out by the reaction to his calls for the abolition of BST. If that debate ever began in earnest, then Snowdon would win, for exactly the reasons that Hitchens states. It is Snowdon's that is the lifestyle of the political and media elite. For the sake of the fight for railways and against drugs, for civil liberties and against wars, leave this alone.

Although he ended up being vaccinated anyway, Hitchens initially lined up with the libertarians against the Covid-19 measures, and those of us who instead adhered to the medical advice were not wrong to do so. That advice may turn out to have been wrong, although that was no part of the argument against it at the time, which was ideological. But we would still be right to have followed it while it stood. As lockdown opponents became anti-vaxxers, who seem to think that they have been conclusively proved right even though that has not happened and their arguments were political rather than medical, so anti-vaxxers are mutating into deniers of the existence of Covid-19. Yes, you read aright. They hold that there has never been any such virus as SARS-CoV-2. Again, if you want to be taken seriously on other issues, then keep away from all of that. It helps never to been anywhere near it.

People who opposed medical vaccination are in no position to defend recreational drug use, and the fact that nitrous oxide is given to pregnant women is no more an argument for the legal mass availability of laughing gas than the use of morphine in labour would be an argument for the legal mass availability of heroin. But there is no reason to expect Michael Gove to deliver on this.

Having returned to these shores, Prince Harry has not been arrested for his Class A drug offences, any more than his United States visa has been revoked. When he was so out of it that he thought that he was having conversations with a pedal bin, then he was surrounded by some of the most carefully vetted Police Officers in the world. They often are. Last May, Gove himself was described in edited Fleet Street copy as having been on " a cocaine binge". He and Boris Johnson, who is no longer an American citizen, have lied on their United States visa applications, as has Harry. They are not the only ones, although presumably no one will bother in future. As Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng was obviously off his face at the funeral of the late Queen. The Truss Government was so awash with cocaine that it scandalised the servants.

We need a single category of illegal drug, including cannabis, with a crackdown on possession, including a mandatory sentence of two years for a first offence, three years for a second offence, four years for a third offence, and so on. (I no longer believe in prison sentences that include the possibility of release in less than 12 months; in that case, then your crime was not bad enough to warrant imprisonment, which the possession of drugs is.) We need to restore the specific criminal offence of allowing one's premises to be used for illegal drug purposes. And Hitchens's The War We Never Fought should be taught in schools, as pro-drugs propaganda is routinely. But since drugs-based blackmail is fundamental to political power in this country, we can forget it.

So much for that confidence and supply agreement with the DUP. All it asked, and I am glad for the people who benefited from this, was an extra billion pounds, £100 million per vote. Social conservatism for Great Britain never seems to have occurred to the DUP. Anyone would think that they were Irish. But any dependence on them is long gone. Instead, we have the Windsor Framework, which assumes a case for Northern Ireland to be in the Single Market, though conveniently without any danger of even the remotest popular influence, that is also the case for Great Britain to be in the Single Market, though conveniently without any danger of even the remotest popular influence. Give it five years. Under any party.

After all, the parliamentary boundaries are being redrawn so as to restore normal service and stop General Elections from being decided in places that never voted for Thatcherism. Thatcherism at the time was a force both of and for social liberalism, and it was ferociously Eurofederalist, with any opposition to that project derided as "Loony Left". The Thatcherite heartlands became the backbone of the Coalition, and they expressed their approval of its record by giving its Prime Minister an overall majority in 2015.

The South then largely voted Remain, in accordance with Conservative Party policy at the time. That party installed a Thames Valley Remainer as Leader and Prime Minister without any sort of election, and if the 2015 Parliament had run its course, then scores of seats would have turned from Blue to Yellow in 2020. That would also be true if the 2017 Parliament had run its course, with the overall result that Corbyn's Labour would have been the largest party in the hung Parliament of 2022. Unsurprisingly, those Thatcherite, liberal, pro-EU areas are now preparing to return Liberal Democrats in 2024. And matters are being arranged so that theirs would once again be the votes that mattered.

Like the rise of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, and like the vote to Remain of those places which did so, the resurgence of the Lib Dems in the monied shires of Southern England bespeaks that the vote was a nice thing to have, but that people who got their way by other means every day did not really need it. If 60 per cent of the laws to which they were subject were made without the formal participation of their elected representatives, well, those were still going to be the laws that they themselves wanted, because that was how the world worked.

But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair's Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.

To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.

The Representatives Challenge: Day 598

As already stated on the day after my release: "The instant that Labour lost control of Durham County Council, then I was granted an unsolicited tag for more than 10 weeks of future good behaviour. I invite each and every Member of Parliament for the area covered by Durham County Council, each and every member of Durham County Council, and each and every member of Lanchester Parish Council, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know." The current total is zero.

Furthermore, I invite each and every other candidate for the parliamentary seat containing Lanchester to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. In this case, names most certainly will be published, including as part of my election literature. The current total is zero. If that remained the case when the next General Election was called, then my literature would state that each and all of my opponents, by name, did not think that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. At least in that event, then I challenge Oliver Kamm to contest this seat.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

Potentially Transformational, Indeed

Keir Starmer’s “values” are apparent from the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act and from the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act. Faced with Baroness Casey and Dame Rachel de Souza, Starmer has instead favourably quoted a 1975 speech by Margaret Thatcher, in which she vilified the Shrewsbury 24 and the Clay Cross Councillors, setting the scene for the policing of the Miners’ Strike, for the clubbing of pregnant women at the Battle of the Beanfield, for Hillsborough, and so on. It is scandalously downplaying the role of spycops against trade unions, and the role of the Government in blacklisting trade unionists, but the Undercover Policing Inquiry is making it clear that the likes of Starmer are unfit for public life.

Labour has reverted to type as the party for people who thought that the only problem with the wars, with the austerity programme, and with the authoritarian measures necessary to enforce them, was that they did not go far enough. Such people are not in the Conservative Party, because they dislike country house Tories and the private sector middle class. Labour is their device for harnessing the power of the State to lord it over everyone else.

But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair’s Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.

To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.