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I blog rarely. There’s just too much bad stuff to comment on, words don’t seem enough, and many others say it well enough anyway.

But I do sometimes share correspondence I’ve had with my MP, another spineless and in-the-mould Tory – but could equally be Labour or any of the others these days. Truthfully, I hardly know why I bother – we’re always exhorted to write to our MPs but, really, they’re so controlled, bought and whipped, what the heck’s the point?

This latest set of emails was prompted by a mail from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign on the eve of the vote on an SNP motion calling for a ceasefire in Gaza; we were asked to write to our MPs asking them to support the motion.

What happened at that debate (a way too generous term for the bawling hypocrisy that took place that day in the House of Commons) is now history – some kind of shameful, dirty history that reflects clearly the lack of any moral decency, honesty or compassion proudly exhibited by most of our so-called elected representatives.

The bombs still fall and the murders of innocents in Palastine go on, even as the International Court of Justice’s ruled for Israel to take all measures to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza. Another international ruling ignored.

George Galloway’s success in the Rochdale by-election is a glimmer of hope, although the blanket bias across all mainstream media and political classes will make it hard to turn a spark into a blaze. Galloway hopes that this kind of thing could be replicated in constituencies around the country at the forthcoming general election, and we can but hope. And, in the meantime, do our best to connect and create action locally.

Galloway ain’t everyone’s cup of tea but Craig Murray – as usual – nails it. (George kicks off this recent broadcast in fine form with some on-the-nail observations about all the above.)

So here we go with the emails:

Hi Robert

Hope you’re keeping well.

Please vote for a ceasefire in Gaza today – it’s your chance to do the right thing for peace and justice, to be on the right side of history.

With the international court ruling that there’s a case to be made that Israel is committing genocide and, indeed, insisting that Israel desists from its military operations (which ruling Israel is blatantly ignoring), the British parliament must stand up for justice and the rule of law.

Please reply post haste to confirm you will be supporting, voting and arguing for and immediate ceasefire.

Many thanks and beset wishes

Dear Jolyon,

Many thanks for your email.

The situation in Gaza is incredibly worrying, and I echo the calls of the Foreign Secretary for both sides to reach a ceasefire deal, as they did in November, which includes the release of all hostages.

It is by urging both sides and key third countries to work towards this type of deal that the UK can play a positive role. Demanding a unilateral ceasefire is not helpful. Hamas started this conflict and continue to fuel it by keeping the hostages – the onus must be on them just as much as it’s on Israel to bring hostilities to a close.

I am glad that the United States has now adopted this position, coming in line with what has been UK policy for a number of months.

The SNP motion does not recognise the nuance which is necessary in this matter, so I will not be voting for it today.

Given that the UK has been calling for a proper bilateral ceasefire for a while now, such a motion is unnecessary.

Thanks again for contacting me about this important issue. I will continue to follow the situation in Israel and Palestine very closely.

Kind regards,

Robert

Hi Robert

Thank you for the reply – I’ve mailed you several times about the appalling and unjust treatment of Julian Assange being meted out by your governent and received no reply, so I was pleasantly surprised.

I wonder if your email is, in fact, a government template provided for such correspondence: do you really believe that this conflict started on October 7th last year? To state that “Hamas started this conflict” suggests a level of historical (recent and ongoing) ignorance that I hardly expect from someone of your education.

Do you have any idea how many hostages – prisoners held with no charge and no due process – are being held by the Israeli state? Again, your lack of any basic understanding of both the inequities and the historical context of the current slaughter of innocents is somewhat shocking; these facts are hardly hidden.

Perhaps your failure to engage with the international court’s finding on potential genocide is, therefore, less of a surprise. Shame on you.

Regards

Jol

Dear Jolyon,

No, these are my views – which are very similar to the Government’s, but not identical.

I do not deny the longevity of this conflict, but this recent war was clearly started by Hamas when they intentionally slaughtered Israeli civilians on October 7th.

Regards,

Robert

I could have gone on, but there’s no opening eyes of people who will not see.

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How many times do you have to write to your MP to get an answer? Other than some auto-response via email.

But perhaps I’m asking too much. Why on earth should the representative of my local contituency bother with what I have to say? I probably need to re-read the meaning of ‘representative democracy’. No doubt, Google and Wikipedia will put me right.

My MP is not only my MP. He is Robert Buckland, Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor. So I’d like to think that justice would be his bag. Darn, maybe I need to check with Wiki about that one too.

The lack of justice in the case of Julian Assange – it’s hard to call it anything other than persecution – is something that vexes me deeply. And I want my MP to acknowledge that, at the very least.

So I emailed. Twice. But no reply. I even tried a proper letter, actually shoved through his office letterbox in Old Town, Swindon. Nothing, nada – not a squeak. Buckland’s email auto-respond finishes “Please be patient with us over other matters at this time.”

Well, my first email was sent in October 2019 – that was already six months after Julian had been forcebly removed from the Ecuadorian Embassy and bundled into a black maria, Belmarsh bound; the start of another phase in his ordeal. So I don’t think I’m being impatient.

So I’m sharing my latest letter, below. As you’ll see from the update from Stella Morris – Assange’s partner – at the bottom of this crowdfunding page, the US has no intention of letting UK justice get in the way of extradition and further torture of this splendid journalist.

So, if you’re minded, please take the time to write or take your own action to raise awareness and get some action and this innocent man released. Thank you.

Dear Robert

I am writing to you as my Member of Parliament on a matter of great importance.

I know that mental health is a subject close to your own heart, and I hope you read this letter with an open heart and mind.

You know that Julian Assange is still being held in solitary confinement in Belmarsh high security prison, despite not having been charged with - let alone found guilty of - a single crime (excepting a single bail violation).

You know, too, that the Central Criminal Court in January ruled that Assange cannot be extradited to the US - his mental health, the judge ruled, is too vulnerable.

How then can you justify Assange’s continued incarceration in these harsh, damaging and - for a non-violent extradition case - completely inappropriate conditions? 

Over 100 British doctors have published in the Lancet a letter entitled End torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange. Their letter, enclosed, references other expert testimony - including that of UN Special Rapporteur on Torture - that supports the call for fair and human treatment of this political prisoner.

Do you not support these calls for humanity and fairness, Robert - particularly for someone whose mental health is on a knife edge?

The High Court is currently considering the US application for leave to appeal the extradition ruling - but bail during this process has been denied. 

There is no end in sight. And each day you keep Assange in these inhumane and unjust conditions is another day of solitary psychological attack that Assange faces in a British jail under your watch as Justice Secretary.

If his health was too vulnerable to be extradited to the US, how do you think he is fairing under these conditions? 

Reading the enclosed open letter and related reports, you can only conclude that Assange’s continued incarceration in these conditions represents a direct and deliberate attempt to further debilitate him, both mentally and physically. 

His death, whether by his own hand or from other health causes, gets ever more likely due to the treatment you are overseeing.

Robert, please get back to me with your responses to these questions as a matter of urgency. Many thanks.

Yours sincerely

Find out more, stay in touch, get involved:

Check out my last blog post about Julian, with a bit more background and the song, We are the dead, dedicated to the man.

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Words spoken by Winston, the protagonist in George Orwell’s 1984. He’s with Julia, his lover and partner-in-thoughtcrime, staring out over the courtyard below their rented room, their hideaway.

In an age where every room in every building has a telescreen – a two-way communication device that watches, that listens, and that drip-feeds a steady stream of propaganda, they think they’ve found some respite – a musty room above a junk shop in the proletariate side of town. Free from prying eyes of the Party, perhaps.

But he knows, they both know, there is no escape. The system is too pervasive, too complete in its myriad of spies, informers, cameras, microphones. Party officials and Thought Police and neighbours and children, all waiting for a sign to turn them in. And then …

We are the dead.

It was Julian Assange I had in my mind when I wrote my song, We are the dead, which you’ll find on the latest album, Welcome to Zombieland. (If the lyrics aren’t clear enough, the live version has a little homemade video that kinda pushes the point too.)

The parallels are there.

As Winston knew would happen, they are arrested (turns out that the room was rented to them by a member of the Thought Police – all along there was a telescreen hidden behind a picture in their room).

As with Julian Assange, they are kept in solitary confinement. We follow Winston as he is tortured. And whilst Winston’s torture still feels in the realms of sci-fi, with buttons, machines and intangible but excruciating pain, that of Julian Assange is the banal drip, drip of isolation, psychological attack, insecurity and debasement. Torture tried and true, nonetheless.

Assange’s extradition trial, a sure-footed mockery of justice, due process and any concept of fairness, was completed with scarce a comment from the mainstream: big business, corporate media, the security state and captured politicians – the perfect recipe for public apathy as British justice and values are swept, with little ado, over a still and silent cliff edge.

Any of Craig Murray’s reports from the trial – he was virtually the only reporter to get access to the public gallery and observe the trial first-hand; video-links were denied, too, to NGOs, MEPs, and most media organisations – are worth the read: to the point, stark in their honesty. Here’s his last report, day 21, and a video interview with RT if you prefer it face to face.

Winston was broken; he came to know that two plus two equals five, and his love for Big Brother knew no bounds.

Reports from concerned people with expertise, for example a group of doctors whose letter was published in the Lancet, make it clear that Julian Assange is, in similar fashion, being destroyed; if not in front of our eyes, at least within reach of our keyboard and monitor.

If extradited, he faces the rest of his life in a US Supermax prison. We’re kept at bay. Black-out on news. Communications cut off. Gentle demonstrators trashed. Julian knows, we are the dead.

In a previous blog I quoted from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Now at the end of that book, another passage that seems more than relevant:

The Church of Reason, like all institutions of the System, is based not on individual strength but upon individual weakness. What’s really demanded in the Church of Reason is not ability, but inability. Then you are considered teachable. A truely able person is always a threat.

And as we watch our rights being put on hold, temporarily we’re told, and our movements as well as our thoughts watched, weighed and measured, as we spend our waking moments living in virtual spaces devised by algorithms and implented by blindmen, as we sleepwalk clutching to the straw that it will all be OK, as we watch our leaders grin and sign treaties and bury the starving and bomb the poor, as we learn to hate and to forget or to ignore or disdain, as dystopia becomes the new normal, how those words ring true.

The schools might be open for the time being, but minds are closed. We are the dead.

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It’s taken me longer, lot longer to get to this post. A few months of whirl, I guess. Started with the first of September.

The tour was planned and mostly booked to kick off on second October and, whist we were still in June, July, August …October seemed a way off. Plenty time to finish recording and mixing the new album, not to mention getting the CD made.

But start September signalled four ferkin’ weeks to get the job done. Frantic might be overstatement, slight. I cut out the tracks that didn’t make it this time, tracked a couple of vocals for a final time, and mixed at home. Not my original plan but the wheel was spinning.

Mixing is quite fun and many will tell you it’s make or break stuff – you choose what stays and what goes, what stands out and what’s hidden, and how big a cave you want to echo around each instrument. Techie stuff.

Mastering on the other hand is a dark art and, like other dark arts, one is still not quite convinced whether it’s more brilliance or more bag’a’bull. Anyhow, it’s definitely the thing to do and I know of no other so fine a mixer as Pete Maher. In fact, I know of no other, but that’s beside the point – a quick glance at the greats and once-greats he’s mastered will suffice.

Whilst Pete was doing his magic, I diddled up the CD cover on a rather out of date Photoshop – I’d toyed with Welcome to Swindon for the debut album title, and had looked at a real sign that stands on the Aldbourne Road coming into town. So I guess that was somewhere there in the recesses, and then, of course …Welcome to Zombieland. Mask up, babies!

Album cover, Welcome to Zombieland, 2020

I got this over to the production plant who got the presses working whilst the masters were being finished – printing the cover takes longer than getting the CD made.

Pete came through with the goods, working late, sometime 9 or 10pm on the deadline day we’d agreed. Straight over to Media Plant – they did a great job for last year’s My Nebraska too – who bunged it over to their factory in the Netherlands. And we were on our way. I think I had the finished product back to my door within 10 days, well within my deadline anyhow.

Next it was time for pre-tour warm-up gig in Swindon. Some venues are gently starting putting on live music, but not many. So finding a place to host wasn’t that easy. I don’t think it was reputation preceding. You can just imagine the levels and issues and contingencies needed to put on a gig in Zombieland.

Delightfully, the wonderful Ashford Road Club came through. They deliberated, discussed and digested. And said yeahhhhh. It’s an old-school members club, just up the road from my gaff, where I’ve been a member and enjoyed the occasional beer and sandwich over the years I’ve lived in town.

There’s a skittles alley – with dart boards running along the side wall – and, neither sport being much in action, a date was agreed. Limited seated-only guests, and everyone had to become a member, but hey, a great little venue. Live from the Skittle Alley ain’t too far from Hollywood Bowl. I guess.

We had a blast. Plenty potion was consumed and no one sung along cos they ain’t allowed. Maybe they mimed. Anyhow. I don’t seem to have any pics from the night, but there’s live footage on my Jol Rose Music Facebook page. If you can hear me above the cackle.

From there it was final checks, insurance and car service, accommodation and gig confirms (still some changes and extras coming in, others going out), till very early in the morning on second October I hit the road in darkness to get the morning ferry, Harwich to the Hook. Welcome to Zombieland.

(Check back soon from thoughts on Zombieland Global and touring in the midst.)