The news pages this week have been full of contradictory stories about the planned Hinkley C nuclear power station – a sure sign that a big fight is raging.

First came reports that the that the UK government is “under pressure to abandon plans to construct UK’s first nuclear reactor for more than 20 years” in the Independent.

HSBC has produced “a damning report into the viability of the project”, it said. The Hinkley Point C plant in Somerset was “becoming harder to justify”, the bank’s financial analysts wrote, concluding: “We see ample reason for the UK Government to delay or cancel the project.”

According to Business Green, the HSBC report “warns the cost of the agreed price support will rise if wholesale electricity prices remain low, backs National Grid predictions UK energy demand will continue to fall, and raises concerns about the Europe nuclear industry’s track record for delivering new reactors on time and on budget.”

Giving this weight is that HSBC had been acting as an advisor to the £16bn project as reported by Bloomberg – meaning that they already have the inside track on the project and all its inconvenient secrets.

But then the deal is to be signed ‘within weeks’

Next thing, the Guardian reported that a deal with China to build the world’s most expensive ever nuclear plant “should be finalised within weeks”.

More accurately the headline should have read ‘months’. “David Cameron and China’s president Xi Jinping are expected to sign the deal at a meeting in the UK in October”, according to the newspaper.

“More than two thirds of the upfront investment costs for the controversial project will be provided by two Chinese companies. Beijing is keen to secure a greater stake in further nuclear power plants.”

In fact, of course, it’s nothing like that simple. The deal on the table is between the UK Government and EDF – and it’s not been signed. An added complication is that the company making the reactors for EDF, Areva, is close to bankruptcy.

On top of which the reactor vessel forged by Areva subsidiary Le Creuset for an identical reactor at Flamanville has severe metallurigical faults and may have to be scrapped. Areva has already cast the two reactors destined for Hinkley C and they may well have to be scrapped too. Also one of the reactor lids is being sacrificed for destructive testing.

Meanwhile heavy wrangling is going on between the two French state-owned companies, and the two Chinese state-owned companies hoping to get involved. The Chinese companies want to do much more than finance the deal – they want to get deep into the supply chain. Which is not what the French have in mind at all.

Nor is it what the British government has in mind – after commiting to a subsidy package independently estimated at €108 billion (£76 billion) they want most of the contracts to go out to British firms, not French or Chinese ones.

Maybe all this explains why it is that the government has so far spent £1.3 million on legal fees to the law firm Slaughter & May, as uncovered by Greenpeace Energydesk.

‘Good news’ planted by EDF?

A clue as to what the Guardian’s story is all about is lurking further down the Guardian article: “Sources at EDF confirmed it expected to see contracts signed in the  early autumn.”

Which strongly suggests that the story is the result of some heavy EDF spinning – doubtless in response to the negative coverage about the HSBC report and other bad news afflicting the Hinkley C project.

As part of its media offensive, EDF has also put the word out that it is placing £1.3 billion in contracts to the mainly UK based contractors, giving EDF boss Laurent de Rivaz the chance to claim that

“Hinkley Point C will be at the forefront of the revitalisation of the UK’s industrial and skills base, and we have worked hard to build a robust supply chain to support new nuclear in the UK. The project will boost industrial stamina in the UK and kick-start the new nuclear programme.”

So what’s the real situation? For a start, it would be extremely unwise for the UK to commit any serious money to the Hinkley C project until:

• There is a single example of a working reactor of the EPR design chosen for Hinkley C; currently all projects are running desperately late and over budget.
• Legal challenges in the European Court to the £76 billion subsidy package from the Austrian government and green energy suppliers have been safely put out of the way – something that’s a few years off at the very least, even if they fail – which they may well not.

So until both of those major obstructions are out of the way, it’s hard to imagine any meaningful deal being signed. But could the government now have turned against the project altogether?

‘One of the worst deals ever for British households and British industry’

A whisper in the wind comes from Lord Howell, former energy minister, who also happens to be father in law to George Osborne, the Chancellor. Speaking last month on the Energy Bill in the Lords, he made the startling statement that:

“By far the biggest obligation, or future burden, on consumers and households is the Hinkley Point C nuclear project. I am very pro nuclear and pro its low-carbon contribution but this must be one of the worst deals ever for British households and British industry.

“Furthermore, the component suppliers to EDF are in trouble, costs keep rising, no reactor of this kind has ever been completed successfully, those that are being built are years behind and workers at the site have been laid off, so personally I would shed no tears at all if the elephantine Hinkley Point C project were abandoned in favour of smaller and possibly cheaper nuclear plants a bit later on.”

Could Lord Howell’s unusually strongly worded views have been reflecting those of the Chancellor himself, as George Osborne (by new means a stupid man) gasps at the prospect of commiting so vast a sum of public money to such an obviously hazardous project?

Lord Howell concluded his nuclear remarks by saying: “A far better hope lies with the Japanese nuclear plants at Wylfa and Moorside. The Japanese can build quicker with more tested and reliable reactor designs, and, because of cheap gas for years to come, we will not need them so soon anyway.”

All of which makes it look as if the mood in government is increasingly towards bypassing the Hinkley C project and its failed EPR design altogether, and going stright for the more affordable AP1000 design (which does however have problems of its own). And EDF is desperately fighting back .

Will a Hinkley C  deal be signed between David Cameron and Xi Xinping in October? Very possibly there will be signatures on a piece of paper. Will Hinkley C ever be built? The smart money says no.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

In our town, we had the warmth of family life, the deep human bonds of community, festivals heralding each season, traditional culture and buildings passed down through history, as well as riversides where children played.

At 8:15 am, 6th August 1945, all of that was destroyed by a single atomic bomb. Below the mushroom cloud, a charred mother and child embraced, countless corpses floated in rivers, and buildings burned to the ground.

Tens of thousands were burned in those flames. By year’s end, 140,000 irreplaceable lives had been taken, that number including Koreans, Chinese, Southeast Asians, and American prisoners of war.

Those who managed to survive, their lives grotesquely distorted, were left to suffer serious physical and emotional aftereffects compounded by discrimination and prejudice.

Children stole or fought routinely to survive. A young boy rendered an A-bomb orphan still lives alone; a wife was divorced when her exposure was discovered. The suffering continues.

“Madotekure!” This is the heartbroken cry of hibakusha – the surviving victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – who want Hiroshima-their hometown, their families, their own minds and bodies – put back the way it was.

One hundred years after opening as the Hiroshima Prefectural Commercial Exhibition Hall and 70 years after the atomic bombing, the A-bomb Dome still watches over Hiroshima. In front of this witness to history, I want us all, once again, to face squarely what the A-bomb did and embrace fully the spirit of the hibakusha.

What have we learnt in these 70 years?

Meanwhile, our world still bristles with more than 15,000 nuclear weapons, and policymakers in the nuclear-armed states remain trapped in provincial thinking, repeating by word and deed their nuclear intimidation. We now know about the many incidents and accidents that have taken us to the brink of nuclear war or nuclear explosions. Today, we worry as well about nuclear terrorism.

As long as nuclear weapons exist, anyone could become a hibakusha at any time. If that happens, the damage will reach indiscriminately beyond national borders. People of the world, please listen carefully to the words of the hibakusha and, profoundly accepting the spirit of Hiroshima, contemplate the nuclear problem as your own.

A woman who was 16 at the time appeals, “Expanding ever wider the circle of harmony that includes your family, friends, and neighbors links directly to world peace. Empathy, kindness, solidarity – these are not just intellectual concepts; we have to feel them in our bones.”

A man who was 12 emphasizes, “War means tragedy for adults and children alike. Empathy, caring, loving others and oneself – this is where peace comes from.”

These heartrending messages, forged in a cauldron of suffering and sorrow, transcend hatred and rejection. Their spirit is generosity and love for humanity; their focus is the future of humankind.

The pursuit of happiness for all humanity

Human beings transcend differences of nationality, race, religion, and language to live out our one-time-only lives on the planet we share. To coexist we must abolish the absolute evil and ultimate inhumanity that is nuclear weapons. Now is the time to start taking action.

Young people are already starting petition drives, posting messages, organizing marches and launching a variety of efforts. Let’s all work together to build an enormous ground swell.

In this milestone 70th year, the average hibakusha is now over 80 years old. The city of Hiroshima will work even harder to preserve the facts of the bombing, disseminate them to the world, and convey them to coming generations.

At the same time, as president of Mayors for Peace, now with more than 6,700 member cities, Hiroshima will act with determination, doing everything in our power to accelerate the international trend toward negotiations for a nuclear weapons convention and abolition of nuclear weapons by 2020.

Is it not the policymakers’ proper role to pursue happiness for their own people based on generosity and love of humanity? Policymakers meeting tirelessly to talk – this is the first step toward nuclear weapons abolition.

The next step is to create, through the trust thus won, broadly versatile security systems that do not depend on military might. Working with patience and perseverance to achieve those systems will be vital, and will require that we promote throughout the world the path to true peace revealed by the pacifism of the Japanese Constitution.

We must make 2016 a landmark year for nuclear peace

The G7 summit meeting to be held in Japan’s Ise-Shima next year and the foreign ministers’ meeting to be held in Hiroshima prior to that summit are perfect opportunities to deliver a message about the abolition of nuclear weapons.

President Obama and other policymakers, please come to the A-bombed cities, hear the hibakusha with your own ears, and encounter the reality of the atomic bombings! Surely, you will be impelled to start discussing a legal framework, including a nuclear weapons convention.

We call on the Japanese government, in its role as bridge between the nuclear and non-nuclear-weapon states, to guide all states toward these discussions, and we offer Hiroshima as the venue for dialogue and outreach.

In addition, we ask that greater compassion for our elderly hibakusha and the many others who now suffer the effects of radiation be expressed through stronger support measures. In particular, we demand expansion of the ‘black rain areas’.

Offering our heartfelt prayers for the peaceful repose of the A-bomb victims, we express as well our gratitude to the hibakusha and all our predecessors who worked so hard throughout their lives to rebuild Hiroshima and abolish nuclear weapons.

Finally, we appeal to the people of the world: renew your determination. Let us work together with all our might for the abolition of nuclear weapons and the realization of lasting world peace.

Matsui Kazumi is Mayor of the City of Hiroshima.

This Declaration was issued today by Mayor Matsui Kazumi on behalf of the City of Hiroshima.

More information:

• Mayors for Peace
• The Network for Peace calendar
• Nuclear Free Local Authorities
• CND’s Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki page

In the year after the atomic bombs were dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August 1945, the events were rarely considered or discussed in the West beyond their strategic or scientific relevance.

The experience of individuals on the ground and the confusion that arose at the appearance of radiation sickness were little known.

This was to change on August 31 1946, when the New Yorker devoted an entire issue to an extraordinary feature piece by John Hersey, simply titled Hiroshima. It sold out within hours and was subsequently published in book form.

Hiroshima was not the most devastating air raid of World War II, but the extreme vulnerability of cities to a single device was a new horror. As such it challenged established ways of thinking and demanded that writers find forms adequate to this new nuclear consciousness. Writing so early in the atomic age and with few precedents on which to draw, Hersey’s achievement is all the more remarkable.

Hersey was a war correspondent, but his prose is notable for its novelistic qualities. Drawing on extensive interviews, his telling of the stories of six survivors is seminal in both historical and literary terms.

Bearing witness

Perhaps Hersey’s greatest achievement is to render the Japanese bomb victims human to his American audience. After years of war, after the brutality of the Pacific campaigns, this is an aspect of the attack that had been neglected. By revealing the experience of some of World War II’s final victims Hersey stressed the devastating personal effects of this new and horrifying weapon.

His article does this by coolly confronting us with the physical and psychological traumas of war. When Mr Tanimoto grasps a woman’s hand her skin “slips off in huge, glove-like pieces”. The grotesque results of the bomb become clear; the human body revealed as meat.

When Dr Sasaki, overwhelmed in his hospital, becomes “an automaton, mechanically wiping, daubing, winding, wiping, daubing, winding”, we see how the mind’s capacity to empathise closes down in the face of trauma.

As one of the earliest examples of nuclear writing, Hersey’s Hiroshima also pioneers several motifs that shape literary responses to the bomb and through which we still talk about and understand nuclear threat.

The flash

Miss Toshiko Sasaki, “a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works”, experiences the explosion as a “blinding flash”. This idea of the atomic flash was itself to become a staple of nuclear literature.

The flash is the image with which Hersey begins Hiroshima and it is what connects his protagonists as they look up from different locations in the city and simultaneously become hibakusha, explosion-affected people. The flash is what fixes 8:15am on August 6 1945 as the instant the city turns into an atomic city.

The bomb’s capacity to transfix, to illuminate but simultaneously to blind is a preoccupation of nuclear literature. Hersey’s achievement is to find a neutral, unemotional prose that lessens the glare so we see the human stories.

That fear of sudden transformation of the world into something entirely new later came to haunt the Cold War. Douglas Coupland’s retrospective, seemingly autobiographical short story, The Wrong Sun (1994) astutely captures this acute nuclear consciousness.

The narrator’s everyday life stutters in constant expectation of “The Flash”. He carries on with the mundane routines of life, but sirens or sudden noises induce traumatic moments when briefly, incongruously, he thinks nuclear war imminent.

One titanic instant

Hersey mentions tales of blast shadows, imprints on walls or roofs thrown by the bomb’s heat in which people’s final moments are preserved. He notes that fanciful stories accumulate around them. They have continued to, becoming important nuclear motifs.

In Ray Bradbury’s short story There Will Come Soft Rains (1950), all that remains of a family are their silhouettes, thrown onto a wall in “one titanic instant”. Most poignantly, the shadow of a young boy, “hands flung into the air”, is cast upon the wall. Higher up is a tossed ball and opposite the boy is a girl, “hands raised to catch a ball which never came down”.

More recently, Kamila Shamsie’s beautiful novel Burnt Shadows (2009) takes as its central image the birds, cranes, seared into the flesh of her protagonist Hiroko as her patterned kimono is incinerated by the atomic flash at Nagasaki.

The sense of time being frozen is a repeated nuclear motif. Hersey describes Father Kleinsorge returning to Hiroshima and finding “bicycles, shells of streetcars and automobiles, all halted in mid-motion”.

The cusp at which the city ‘becomes’ atomic is briefly preserved and for a few days after the bombing Father Kleinsorge can traverse both its pre-nuclear and nuclear states. Hiroshima is, in this description, the symbolic gateway through which humans enter the nuclear age.

The nuclear uncanny

Perhaps most interestingly Hersey also broaches the unsettling radioactive legacy of the bombing in his piece. When Miss Sasaki returns to the city just three weeks after the attack she finds an extraordinary profusion of plant life growing in the ruins. It seems so unlikely, so overly abundant, that it “gave her the creeps”. With dubious scientific legitimacy Hersey writes that the bomb “had stimulated” the roots of plants.

The unspoken implication is that some ‘unnatural’ quality of the bomb – radiation presumably – has induced this unsettling abundance. Miss Sasaki’s uneasiness and Hersey’s ambiguous phrasing introduce an important cultural trope through which nuclear technology and materials are experienced and perhaps misunderstood.

It is an example of what the anthropologist Joseph Masco calls the “nuclear uncanny“: a psychological phenomenon by which the world is experienced as unsettlingly different when thought of as ‘nuclear’.

In the moving additional chapter to Hiroshima, published on the 40th anniversary of the bombing in 1985, Hersey wrote that the world’s memory was getting “spotty”. Perhaps our cultural memory of atomic attack is spottier still, another 30 years on.

So if you haven’t read it before, take some time to read Hiroshima this anniversary weekend. It remains one of the rawest, but most humane, accounts of this world-changing event.

By giving us a glimpse of the human consequences of atomic attack, Hiroshima warns us of our capacity for inhumanity. It remains largely silent on the military and political decisions behind the attack, but is perhaps all the more powerful for that.

It asks of us only one terrible thing: that we bear witness to the event; that we remember.

The book: ‘Hiroshima’ by John Hersey can be read on the New Yorker website, or purchased as a book.

Daniel Cordle is Reader in English and American Literature at Nottingham Trent University.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

A new study shows that perovskite solar technology slashes the energy used in making solar panels.

The crystalline silicon panels that dominate the market may take 30 months to four years to ‘pay back’ the energy used in their manufacture. Amorphous silicon comes out better at under two years.

But according to the new study by scientists at Northwestern University and the US Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, perovskite solar modules have an ‘energy pay back time’ (EPBT) of just two to three months.

The EPBT of solar panels is based on the time it takes for panels to produce electricity equivalent to sum of all the energy needed to mine, process and purify raw materials, and to manufacture and install the final product.

Perovskites lag behind silicon in conversion efficiency, but they require much less energy to be made into a solar module. So perovskite modules pull ahead with a substantially shorter energy payback time – the shortest, in fact, among existing options for solar power.

“People see 11% efficiency and assume it’s a better product than something that’s 9% efficient”, said corresponding author Fengqi You of Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. “But that’s not necessarily true. One needs to take a broad perspective when evaluating solar technology.”

In fact, some perrovsite cells have achieved 19% efficiency using an inexpensive and versatile ‘spray-on’ technology developed at the University of Sheffield – still lower than the 25% achieved by the highest-performing silicon cells, but getting close. Los Alamos National Laboratory achieved 18% efficiency in January this year using cystalline pervoskite cells.

Life cycle assessment

In what’s called a cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment, You and his colleagues traced a product from the mining of its raw materials until its retirement in a landfill. They determined the ecological impacts of making a solar panel and calculated how long it would take to recover the energy invested.

“Soon, we’re going to need to produce an extremely high number of solar panels”, said You. “We don’t have time for trial-and-error in finding the ideal design. We need a more rigorous approach, a method that systematically considers all variables.”

This study looked at the energy inputs and outputs of two perovskite modules – the crucial panel components that convert sunlight into electricity. To get a complete picture of the environmental impacts of a perovskite the researchers also analyzed metals used for electrodes and other parts of the device.

One of the modules tested includes lead and gold, among other metals. Many perovskite models have lead in their active layer, which absorbs sunlight and plays a leading role in conversion efficiency. The module used gold as its cathode in order to prevent corrosion.

“People in the research community have expressed concern because everyone knows lead can be toxic”, said Seth Darling, an Argonne scientist and co-author on the paper. “However the team’s assessment showed that gold was much more problematic.”

Gold isn’t typically perceived as hazardous, but mining the precious metal is extremely damaging to the environment. So before putting a perovskite panel on the market, the gold will need to be replaced by more sustainable – and less expensive – materials, for both environmental and economic reasons.

Commercial production within two years

In 2013 Science magazine listed perovskite solar cells as one of the year’s ten  biggest breakthroughs. “A new breed of materials for solar cells burst into the limelight this year”, the citation stated.

“Known as perovskites, they are cheap, easy to make, and already capable of converting 15% of the energy in sunlight to electricity. While that remains below the efficiency of commercial silicon solar cells, perovskites are improving fast. One particularly promising feature is that they can be layered on top of silicon solar-cell material to harness a range of wavelengths that neither could capture alone.”

Perovskite technology is still pre-commercial, but the very low energy cost indicates that major price falls relative to the current generation silcon panels are to be expected as the new technology matures.

A further challenge will be to extend the lifetime of perovskite modules to make sure they are stable enough for long-term commercial use enduring for decades on end, said You, who believes the panels could soon be on the market:

“Despite a few necessary improvements, perovskite technology could be commercialized within two years if researchers use comprehensive analysis to optimize the selection of raw materials and manufacturing.”

One of the motivations for this study, according to the authors, was the need to improve technology so that solar energy can be scaled up in a big way to meet the projected doubling of global energy demand by 2050 in an environmentally friendly way.

“How quickly do we have to get a technology to market to save the planet?” asks Darling. “And how can we make that happen?”

The paper: ‘Perovskite Photovoltaics: Life-Cycle Assessment of Energy and Environmental Impacts‘ is published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science.

Also on The Ecologist: ‘Seven breakthrough solar technologies – but will they work?‘ by Zachary Davies Boren.

This research was conducted in part at the Center for Nanoscale Materials, a DOE Office of Science User Facility supported by the DOE’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences, and was funded by Northwestern’s Institute for Sustainability and Energy.

Principal source: Megan Fellman, science and engineering editor at Northwestern, and Payal Marathe, Argonne National Laboratory.

Six years after first promising to “roll back the spectre of a warming planet”, Barack Obama finally committed the US to unprecedented action against climate change yesterday.

The sweeping new curbs on carbon emissions from power plants he announced are equivalent to taking 70% of American cars off the road.

The culmination of his long-fought battle against coal industry lobbyists and climate change sceptics in Congress was greeted with jubilation by many environmentalists who described the tougher-than-expected regulations as a “game-changer”.

Describing it as “the single most important step America has ever taken in the fight against climate change”, Obama warned it was almost too late: pointing out that 14 of the 15 warmest years on record have already fallen in the first 15 years of this century.

“Climate change is no longer about protecting the world for our children and grandchildren, it is about the reality that we are living with right now”, said Obama in a speech announcing the plan. “We are the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it.”

‘We can solve this thing, but we have to get going’

But, recalling his own experience amid the smog of 1970s Los Angeles, Obama also insisted that tackling climate change was an achievable goal – comparing it to past environmental achievements in improving air quality, and measures to tackle acid rain and polluted rivers.

“I don’t want my grandkids not to be able to swim in Hawaii or climb a mountain and see a glacier because we didn’t do something about it”, he added in an unusually personal speech on a subject that has previously proven toxic for his political strategists.

White House officials hope the timing of their binding pollution regulations – the first ever US limit on carbon pollution from power plants – will help persuade other big carbon-emitting countries to sign up to international targets at a major climate change conference in Paris this December.

“I don’t want to fool you, this is going to be hard. No single action, no single country will change the warming of the planet”, added Obama. “But today, with America leading the way, countries representing 70% of carbon emissions have announced plans to tackle emissions … We can solve this thing, but we have to get going.”

King Coal’s big cutbacks

Under the Clean Power Plan, published in its final form by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Monday, states will now be required to work with electricity producers to reduce overall carbon emissions by 32% below 2005 levels by 2030.

The target is slightly higher than the 30% cut envisaged under draft proposals last year, but states have been given an extra two years before implementation becomes mandatory and are left to decide what mix of renewable energy, gas generation or efficiency savings is the best way to achieve the target.

The 1,000 fossil fuel-fired power plants in US are by far the largest source of CO₂ emissions in the country, making up 32% of total greenhouse gas emissions. Experts predict the EPA standards will force US coal production back to levels last seen in the 1970s.

Investment in renewable alternatives, such as wind, hydro and solar power, together with mandatory new carbon-capture equipment are expected to cost the electricity industry $8.4bn, although the EPA claims this will be dwarfed by $34-$54bn in wider environmental benefits.

Some campaigners stressed the carbon reduction targets, which are already partially achieved by many states, are only a start toward what is necessary to curb climate change.

“While historic, when measured against increasingly dire scientific warnings it is clear the rule is not enough to address our climate crisis”, said the Friends of the Earth president, Erich Pica. “This rule is merely a down payment on the US’s historic climate responsibility.”

Others heralded the rule as a turning point. “It’s a simple idea that will change the world: cut carbon pollution today so our kids won’t inherit climate chaos tomorrow”, said the Natural Resources Defense Council president, Rhea Suh.

Vera Pardee of the Center for Biological Diversity added: “While the plan should have been stronger and implemented reductions more quickly, it lays a solid legal foundation for further efforts to avoid global warming’s most dangerous consequences.”

Many international companies have also supported the plan. EBay, Nestlé and General Mills were among 365 businesses to sign a letter in support of the proposals and encouraging states not to delay implementation.

But not everyone is happy

Nonetheless the plan is expected to run into a wall of opposition from Republican-controlled states, many of whom fear it will decimate jobs in the coal industry and drive up electricity prices for consumers.

The depth of feeling among many on the right is particularly visible in the party’s presidential primary, where few major candidates acknowledge the need for emissions controls to tackle climate change.

Jeb Bush, seen as the leading establishment contender for the Republican nomination, slammed the rule as “irresponsible and overreaching” in a statement. “The rule runs over state governments, will throw countless people out of work, and increases everyone’s energy prices.

“Climate change will not be solved by grabbing power from states or slowly hollowing out our economy. The real challenge is how do we grow and prosper in order to foster more game-changing innovations and give us the resources we need to solve problems like this one.”

Texas senator Ted Cruz added: “The president’s lawless and radical attempt to destabilise the nation’s energy system is flatly unconstitutional and – unless it is invalidated by Congress, struck down by the courts, or rescinded by the next administration – will cause Americans’ electricity costs to skyrocket at a time when we can least afford it.”

‘Not a moment too soon’

The president first pledged to tackle climate change in his 2009 inauguration address, a commitment he reiterated four years later, but despite more modest achievements on fuel efficiency standards and renewable energy investment, a comprehensive legislation was blocked in the Senate.

Instead, his administration has sought to use pollution control legislation to circumvent political opposition with executive actions that are underpinned by supportive supreme court rulings.

Speaking yesterday, Obama said it was not a moment too soon. “This is one of those rare issues, because of its magnitude and scope, that if we don’t get it right, we may not be able to reverse. There is such a thing as being too late when it comes to climate change”, said the president.

Dan Roberts is the Guardian’s Washington Bureau chief, covering politics and US national affairs. Previously, he worked as the national editor in London and was head of business. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram.

This article was originally published by Guardian environment  and is reproduced here with thanks via the Guardian Environment Network.

In advance of the UN climate summit in Paris, campaign groups are urging the banking sector to take one concrete step towards combatting the climate crisis, and quit financing coal.

It is hard to think of a UK business sector in more dire need of an image boost than the banking sector. The UK’s three biggest banks – Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays and HSBC – appear stuck on a never-ending, Escher-esque scandal treadmill of their own making.

Round and round they go, ripping off small businesses (RBS), enabling Latin American drug cartels to launder billions and orchestrating tax evasion in Switzerland (HSBC), and blatantly mis-selling payment protection insurance to vulnerable customers (Barclays).

This behaviour is of course accompanied by obscene bonuses that the same banks have still seen fit to churn out to staff as regularly as clockwork every year since the 2008 crash.

Reporting from outside RBS’s City of London headquarters in November last year as a further multi-bank scandal concerning illegal foreign exchange rate manipulation was breaking, the Economics Editor of Channel 4 News, Paul Mason, visibly fighting back the expletives, let rip on air:

“I’m just sick of it, after six years why do we have to keep coming to do it?”

He was referring to yet more time spent covering yet more market manipulation, with little in the way of effective sanctions being dished out to prevent it, Mason’s angst summed up the UK public’s views about the banks.

Ending climate crimes

RBS, Barclays and HSBC just happen to also be, in BankTrack’s estimation, the UK banking sector’s top ‘climate criminals’, having doled out, according to our conservative estimates, in excess of £40 billion to the global coal industry in the last ten years.

In spite of this, and mindful of the fact that the UK’s big three could really be doing with a much-needed injection of positive PR, we’ve decided to provide them with a (free of charge) tailor-made solution with the potential to bring about major and – crucially – rapid advances in the struggle against global climate change.

This summer, with the collaboration so far of groups including Global Justice Now, Greenpeace, Move your Money and 350.org, we’ve launched an international public campaign in the run up to the United Nations Paris climate summit at the end of the year.

We’re urging RBS, Barclays, HSBC and the rest of the world’s big banks to do the Paris Pledge and publicly commit to a phase out of their financing for the coal industry.

Such global summits are of course manna from heaven for PR flacks that hover around – or are embedded within – big corporations such as banks.

We’ve already seen BNP Paribas, currently the top French coal bank by a long way, provoking widespread incredulity and criticism by becoming one of the corporate sponsors of the Paris summit. This announcement came just a few weeks after BNP Paribas stone-walled the opportunity at its AGM to say or do anything positive about its deep ties to coal.

HSBC – banking on climate spin?

In the UK bank context, HSBC has been the first mover when it comes to jumping on the Paris summit ‘pro-climate’ bandwagon, but its intentions thus far appear paper thin at best. To date, HSBC is one of only two international banks – along with Dutch bank ING – to have joined a coalition of 43 ‘CEO climate leaders’ calling for “concrete climate action“ from world leaders.

This coalition proclaims: “We welcome transparency and disclosure regarding financial investments and policies in relation to all energy-related activities –  including fossil-based and alternative”, concluding that “Delaying action is not an option – it will be costly and will damage growth prospects in the years to come.”

It all sounds admirable and reasonable – but when are these ambitions going to be realised? HSBC, in fact, still refuses to disclose information related to its energy-related activities.

Like almost all of the world’s major banks, HSBC is notably shy about disclosing its financing for coal, oil and gas, preferring to focus in its annual and other reports on any clean energy investments it can possibly point to.

Barclays gets out of mountain-top removal coal mines

The same is true at Barclays, though the bank’s fossil fuel policies have shown some signs this year of being dragged out of the twentieth century.

In April the bank joined a growing number of its competitors in getting out of financing the highly controversial mountaintop removal (MTR) coal mining practice that has devastated ecosystems and communities, most strikingly in the Appalachian mountains in the eastern US.

And that’s definitely the kind of change we need: as recently as 2013 the bank was reckoned to be the world’s biggest financier of MTR companies.

RBS – welcome transparency, but little else to like

The picture is different, however, at RBS where for a few years now the bank still associated with Fred ‘the Shred’ Goodwin has – really – been shedding a good degree of light on its entire energy investment portfolio.

Although still to publish its full Energy Review report for 2014, RBS estimates on the sustainability section of its website that of the several billion pounds it invested in the energy sector last year, “22% of our general lending to our top 25 power customers is funding coal and gas energy generation, and 6% is funding energy generation via renewables.”

While the transparency is welcome, the statistics represent a jaw-dropping discrepancy from a bank that has sought to shake off the ‘Oil Bank of Scotland’ tag by positioning itself as a renewables champion, and that 12 months ago was telling us that within five years it “aims to lead from the front on ethical banking“.

With RBS currently embarking on a major pullback from global markets to streamline its business and focus predominantly on the UK and Ireland, it now has a golden opportunity to jettison its coal and other fossil fuel investments for good.

Mainstream calls for radically different approach

It is not just campaigners arguing the case for banks to quit coal. At the end of June those renowned tree-huggers at KPMG warned in a new report that the European banking sector must adopt a “radically different approach for directing capital toward environmentally and socially sustainable economic activities.”

Focusing on 12 major European banks, including RBS, Barclays and HSBC, KPMG offered a frank and damning assessment that the banks in question are simply not doing enough to incorporate environmental and social (E&S) considerations into their operations.

“E&S issues like climate change, water scarcity and ecosystem decline are already impacting the risk profiles and current and future cash flows of sectors and companies they finance and invest in”, the ‘Ready or not?‘ report argues.

“Not taking into consideration these E&S issues in valuing and rewarding economic activity would be unwise and reduce the banks’ resilience. It is not a matter of ‘if’ E&S externalities will be internalised by regulation, market dynamics and stakeholder actions, but ‘when’ and ‘to which extent’ this will happen.”

The ‘Crédit Agricole moment’

French bank Crédit Agricole, another of the banks in KPMG’s firing line, notably made a major move forward by announcing in May that it is ending direct financing for coal mining projects. For other corporate lending and underwriting activities, it “will not develop relationships with clients predominantly active in coal mining.”

That’s almost, but not quite, a blanket pull-out from coal mining for Crédit Agricole. The bank has told us that their commitments means that they will not touch global coal players with more than 50% of their business in coal mining, thus excluding 30-40 companies that the French bank previously supported.

Nonetheless, this is a major breakthrough within the European banking sector, and in the climate change debate may come to be seen in future years as the ‘Crédit Agricole moment’. As the bank further notes in its updated coal sector policy,

“Coal raises a specific dilemma to the extent that, while a significant share of the global energy mix is still based on its combustion, the current development of the coal industry seems incompatible with the international agreement to combat climate change.”

This is about as close as one can imagine to a proper statement of ‘climate activism’ from a bank, and of course the sea change has in large part been brought about thanks to more than ten years of campaigning from our colleagues at Friends of the Earth France and other groups.

Now we are campaigning to extend this ‘Crédit Agricole’ moment across the European banking sector, in the UK and beyond, and to seize the opportunity afforded by the Paris climate summit.

Achieving this would free up capital to invest in the booming, but still under-funded, renewables and energy efficiency sectors, and avoid the huge risks of stranded assets which come with financing old dirty energy.

It could also contribute to turning round the reputations of some household banking names by getting them working tangibly and urgently in the public interest.

They certainly need it.

Action: Support our call and insist on a much better deal for public health, the environment and the climate by pressuring banks to end their financial life support for coal.

Greig Aitken is coal campaigner with BankTrack, a Netherlands-based campaign group tracking the operations and investments of private sector banks and their effect on people and the planet. Join the Paris Pledge campaign and support the call for banks to sign the pledge to quit coal. Twitter: @BankTrack

The siege of Knightsbridge is both an emblem of gross injustice and a gruelling farce. For three years, a police cordon around the Ecuadorean embassy in London has served no purpose other than to flaunt the power of the state. It has cost £12 million.

The quarry is an Australian charged with no crime, a refugee whose only security is the room given him by a brave South American country. His ‘crime’ is to have initiated a wave of truth-telling in an era of lies, cynicism and war.

The persecution of Julian Assange is about to flare again as it enters a dangerous stage. From August 20, three quarters of the Swedish prosecutor’s case against Assange regarding sexual misconduct in 2010 will disappear as the statute of limitations expires.

At the same time Washington’s obsession with Assange and WikiLeaks has intensified. Indeed, it is vindictive American power that offers the greatest threat – as Chelsea Manning and those still held in Guantanamo can attest.

The Americans are pursuing Assange because WikiLeaks exposed their epic crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq: the wholesale killing of tens of thousands of civilians, which they covered up, and their contempt for sovereignty and international law, as demonstrated vividly in their leaked diplomatic cables.

When did the rule of law ever matter to powerful states?

WikiLeaks continues to expose criminal activity by the US, having just published top secret US intercepts – US spies’ reports detailing private phone calls of the presidents of France and Germany, and other senior officials, relating to internal European political and economic affairs.

None of this is illegal under the US Constitution. As a presidential candidate in 2008, Barack Obama, a professor of constitutional law, lauded whistleblowers as “part of a healthy democracy [and they] must be protected from reprisal”. In 2012, the campaign to re-elect President Barack Obama boasted on its website that he had prosecuted more whistleblowers in his first term than all other US presidents combined.

Before Chelsea Manning had even received a trial, Obama had pronounced the whisletblower guilty. He was subsequently sentenced to 35 years in prison, having been tortured during his long pre-trial detention.

Few doubt that should the US get their hands on Assange, a similar fate awaits him. Threats of the capture and assassination of Assange became the currency of the political extremes in the US following Vice-President Joe Biden’s preposterous slur that the WikiLeaks founder was a “cyber-terrorist”. Those doubting the degree of ruthlessness Assange can expect should remember the forcing down of the Bolivian president’s plane in 2013 – wrongly believed to be carrying Edward Snowden.

According to documents released by Snowden, Assange is on a ‘Manhunt target list’. Washington’s bid to get him, say Australian diplomatic cables, is “unprecedented in scale and nature”. In Alexandria, Virginia, a secret grand jury has spent five years attempting to contrive a crime for which Assange can be prosecuted. This is not easy. The First Amendment to the US Constitution protects publishers, journalists and whistleblowers.

Faced with this constitutional hurdle, the US Justice Department has contrived charges of “espionage”, “conspiracy to commit espionage”, “conversion” (theft of government property), “computer fraud and abuse” (computer hacking) and general “conspiracy”. The Espionage Act has life in prison and death penalty provisions. .

Assange’s ability to defend himself in this Kafkaesque world has been handicapped by the US declaring his case a state secret. In March, a federal court in Washington blocked the release of all information about the “national security” investigation against WikiLeaks, because it was “active and ongoing” and would harm the “pending prosecution” of Assange. The judge, Barbara J. Rosthstein, said it was necessary to show “appropriate deference to the executive in matters of national security”. Such is the ‘justice’ of a kangaroo court.

Sweden’s theatre of legal absurdity

The supporting act in this grim farce is Sweden, played by the Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny. Until recently, Ny refused to comply with a routine European procedure routine that required her to travel to London to question Assange and so advance the case.

For four and a half years, Ny has never properly explained why she has refused to come to London, just as the Swedish authorities have never explained why they refuse to give Assange a guarantee that they will not extradite him on to the US under a secret arrangement agreed between Stockholm and Washington. In December 2010, The Independent revealed that the two governments had discussed his onward extradition to the US.

Contrary to its 1960s reputation as a liberal bastion, Sweden has drawn so close to Washington that it has allowed secret CIA ‘renditions’ – including the illegal deportation of refugees.

The rendition and subsequent torture of two Egyptian political refugees in 2001 was condemned by the UN Committee against Torture, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch; the complicity and duplicity of the Swedish state are documented in successful civil litigation and in WikiLeaks cables.

In the summer of 2010, Assange had flown to Sweden to talk about WikiLeaks revelations of the war in Afghanistan – in which Sweden had forces under US command.

“Documents released by WikiLeaks since Assange moved to England”, wrote Al Burke, editor of the online Nordic News Network, an authority on the multiple twists and dangers facing Assange, “clearly indicate that Sweden has consistently submitted to pressure from the United States in matters relating to civil rights. There is every reason for concern that if Assange were to be taken into custody by Swedish authorities, he could be turned over to the United States without due consideration of his legal rights.”

Why hasn’t the Swedish prosecutor resolved the Assange case? Many in the legal community in Sweden believe her behaviour inexplicable. Once implacably hostile to Assange, the Swedish press has published headlines such as: “Go to London, for God’s sake.”

What can explain Ny’s intransigent behaviour?

Why hasn’t she? More to the point, why won’t she allow the Swedish court access to hundreds of SMS messages that the police extracted from the phone of one of the two women involved in the misconduct allegations? Why won’t she hand them over to Assange’s Swedish lawyers?

She says she is not legally required to do so until a formal charge is laid and she has questioned him. Then, why doesn’t she question him? And if she did question him, the conditions she would demand of him and his lawyers – that they could not challenge her – would make injustice a near certainty.

On a point of law, the Swedish Supreme Court has decided Ny can continue to obstruct on the vital issue of the SMS messages. This will now go to the European Court of Human Rights. What Ny fears is that the SMS messages will destroy her case against Assange.

One of the messages makes clear that one of the women did not want any charges brought against Assange, “but the police were keen on getting a hold on him”. She was “shocked” when they arrested him because she only “wanted him to take [an HIV] test”. She “did not want to accuse JA of anything” and “it was the police who made up the charges”. (In a witness statement, she is quoted as saying that she had been “railroaded by police and others around her”.)

Neither woman claimed she had been raped. Indeed, both have denied they were raped and one of them has since tweeted, “I have not been raped.” That they were manipulated by police and their wishes ignored is evident – whatever their lawyers might say now. Certainly, they are victims of a saga which blights the reputation of Sweden itself.

The ‘rape’ that never was

For Assange, his only trial has been trial by media. On August 20, 2010, the Swedish police opened a ‘rape investigation’ and immediately – and unlawfully – told the Stockholm tabloids that there was a warrant for Assange’s arrest for the “rape of two women”. This was the news that went round the world.

In Washington, a smiling US Defence Secretary Robert Gates told reporters that the arrest “sounds like good news to me”. Twitter accounts associated with the Pentagon described Assange as a “rapist” and a “fugitive”.

Less than 24 hours later, the Stockholm Chief Prosecutor, Eva Finne, took over the investigation. She wasted no time in cancelling the arrest warrant, saying, “I don’t believe there is any reason to suspect that he has committed rape.” Four days later, she dismissed the rape investigation altogether, saying, “There is no suspicion of any crime whatsoever.” The file was closed.

Enter Claes Borgstrom, a high profile politician in the Social Democratic Party then standing as a candidate in Sweden’s imminent general election. Within days of the chief prosecutor’s dismissal of the case, Borgstrom, a lawyer, announced to the media that he was representing the two women and had sought a different prosecutor in the city of Gothenberg. This was Marianne Ny, whom Borgstrom knew well, personally and politically.

On 30 August, Assange attended a police station in Stockholm voluntarily and answered all the questions put to him. He understood that was the end of the matter. Two days later, Ny announced she was re-opening the case.

Borgstrom was asked by a Swedish reporter why the case was proceeding when it had already been dismissed, citing one of the women as saying she had not been raped. He replied, “Ah, but she is not a lawyer.” Assange’s Australian barrister, James Catlin, responded, “This is a laughing stock … it’s as if they make it up as they go along.”

Sweden’s ‘special relationship, with the US

On the day Marianne Ny reactivated the case, the head of Sweden’s military intelligence service – which has the acronym MUST – publicly denounced WikiLeaks in an article entitled “WikiLeaks [is] a threat to our soldiers.”

Assange was warned that the Swedish intelligence service, SAPO, had been told by its US counterparts that US-Sweden intelligence-sharing arrangements would be “cut off” if Sweden sheltered him.

For five weeks, Assange waited in Sweden for the new investigation to take its course. The Guardian was then on the brink of publishing the Iraq ‘War Logs’, based on WikiLeaks’ disclosures, which Assange was to oversee. His lawyer in Stockholm asked Ny if she had any objection to his leaving the country. She said he was free to leave.

Inexplicably, as soon as he left Sweden – at the height of media and public interest in the WikiLeaks disclosures – Ny issued a European Arrest Warrant and an Interpol ‘red alert’ normally used for terrorists and dangerous criminals. Put out in five languages around the world, it ensured a media frenzy.

Assange attended a police station in London, was arrested and spent ten days in Wandsworth Prison, in solitary confinement. Released on £340,000 bail, he was electronically tagged, required to report to police daily and placed under virtual house arrest while his case began its long journey to the Supreme Court.

He still had not been charged with any offence. His lawyers repeated his offer to be questioned by Ny in London, pointing out that she had given him permission to leave Sweden. They suggested a special facility at Scotland Yard commonly used for that purpose. She refused.

Katrin Axelsson and Lisa Longstaff of Women Against Rape wrote: “The allegations against [Assange] are a smokescreen behind which a number of governments are trying to clamp down on WikiLeaks for having audaciously revealed to the public their secret planning of wars and occupations with their attendant rape, murder and destruction …

“The authorities care so little about violence against women that they manipulate rape allegations at will. [Assange] has made it clear he is available for questioning by the Swedish authorities, in Britain or via Skype. Why are they refusing this essential step in their investigation? What are they afraid of?”

Assange vindicated in UK courts – but nothing changes

This question remained unanswered as Ny deployed the European Arrest Warrant, a draconian and now discredited product of the ‘war on terror’ supposedly designed to catch terrorists and organised criminals. The EAW had abolished the obligation on a petitioning state to provide any evidence of a crime. More than a thousand EAWs are issued each month; only a few have anything to do with potential ‘terror’ charges.

Most are issued for trivial offences, such as overdue bank charges and fines. Many of those extradited face months in prison without charge. There have been a number of shocking miscarriages of justice, of which British judges have been highly critical.

The Assange case finally reached the UK Supreme Court in May 2012. In a judgement that upheld the EAW – whose rigid demands had left the courts almost no room for manoeuvre – the judges found that European prosecutors could issue extradition warrants in the UK without any judicial oversight, even though Parliament intended otherwise. They made clear that Parliament had been ‘misled’ by the Blair government. The court was split, 5-2, and consequently found against Assange.

However, the Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, made one mistake. He applied the Vienna Convention on treaty interpretation, allowing for state practice to override the letter of the law. As Assange’s barrister, Dinah Rose QC, pointed out, this did not apply to the EAW.

The Supreme Court only recognised this crucial error when it dealt with another appeal against the EAW in November 2013. The Assange decision had been wrong, but it was too late to go back. With extradition imminent, the Swedish prosecutor told Assange’s lawyers that Assange, once in Sweden, would be immediately placed in one of Sweden’s infamous remand prisons..

Assange’s choice was stark: extradition to a country that had refused to say whether or not it would send him on to the US, or to seek what seemed his last opportunity for refuge and safety.

Step forward plucky Ecuador

Supported by most of Latin America, the courageous government of Ecuador granted him refugee status on the basis of documented evidence and legal advice that he faced the prospect of cruel and unusual punishment in the US; that this threat violated his basic human rights; and that his own government in Australia had abandoned him and colluded with Washington. The Labor government of prime minister Julia Gillard had even threatened to take away his passport.

Gareth Peirce, the renowned human rights lawyer who represents Assange in London, wrote to the then Australian foreign minister, Kevin Rudd: “Given the extent of the public discussion, frequently on the basis of entirely false assumptions … it is very hard to attempt to preserve for him any presumption of innocence.

“Mr. Assange has now hanging over him not one but two Damocles swords, of potential extradition to two different jurisdictions in turn for two different alleged crimes, neither of which are crimes in his own country, and that his personal safety has become at risk in circumstances that are highly politically charged.”

It was not until she contacted the Australian High Commission in London that Peirce received a response, which answered none of the pressing points she raised. In a meeting I attended with her, the Australian Consul-General, Ken Pascoe, made the astonishing claim that he knew “only what I read in the newspapers” about the details of the case.

Meanwhile, the prospect of a grotesque miscarriage of justice was drowned in a vituperative campaign against the WikiLeaks founder. Deeply personal, petty, vicious and inhuman attacks were aimed at a man not charged with any crime yet subjected to treatment not even meted out to a defendant facing extradition on a charge of murdering his wife. That the US threat to Assange was a threat to all journalists, to freedom of speech, was lost in the sordid and the ambitious.

Everyone benefits – except Assange

Books were published, movie deals struck and media careers launched or kick-started on the back of WikiLeaks and an assumption that attacking Assange was fair game and he was too poor to sue. People have made money, often big money, while WikiLeaks has struggled to survive.

The editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, called the WikiLeaks disclosures, which his newspaper published, “one of the greatest journalistic scoops of the last 30 years”. It became part of his marketing plan to raise the newspaper’s cover price.

With not a penny going to Assange or to WikiLeaks, a hyped Guardian book led to a lucrative Hollywood movie. The book’s authors, Luke Harding and David Leigh, gratuitously described Assange as a “damaged personality” and “callous”.

They also revealed the secret password he had given the paper in confidence, which was designed to protect a digital file containing the US embassy cables. With Assange now trapped in the Ecuadorean embassy, Harding, standing among the police outside, gloated on his blog that “Scotland Yard may get the last laugh”.

The injustice meted out to Assange is one of the reasons Parliament reformed the Extradition Act to prevent the misuse of the EAW. The draconian catch-all used against him could not happen now; charges would have to be brought and “questioning” would be insufficient grounds for extradition.

“His case has been won lock, stock and barrel”, Gareth Peirce told me, “these changes in the law mean that the UK now recognises as correct everything that was argued in his case. Yet he does not benefit.” In other words, the change in the UK law in 2014 mean that Assange would have won his case and he would not have been forced to take refuge.

Ecuador’s decision to protect Assange in 2012 bloomed into a major international affair. Even though the granting of asylum is a humanitarian act, and the power to do so is enjoyed by all states under international law, both Sweden and the United Kingdom refused to recognize the legitimacy of Ecuador’s decision.

Ignoring international law, the Cameron government refused to grant Assange safe passage to Ecuador. Instead, Ecuador’s embassy was placed under siege and its government abused with a series of ultimatums.

When William Hague’s Foreign Office threatened to violate the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, warning that it would remove the diplomatic inviolability of the embassy and send the police in to get Assange, outrage across the world forced the government to back down. During one night, police appeared at the windows of the embassy in an obvious attempt to intimidate Assange and his protectors.

Since then, Julian Assange has been confined to a small room under Ecuador’s protection, without sunlight or space to exercise, surrounded by police under orders to arrest him on sight. For three years, Ecuador has made clear to the Swedish prosecutor that Assange is available to be questioned in the London embassy, and for three years she has remained intransigent.

In the same period Sweden has questioned 44 people in the UK in connection with police investigations. Her role, and that of the Swedish state, is demonstrably political; and for Ny, facing retirement in two years, she must ‘win’.

Another legal victory – but justice denied

In despair, Assange has challenged the arrest warrant in the Swedish courts. His lawyers have cited rulings by the European Court of Human Rights that he has been under arbitrary, indefinite detention and that he had been a virtual prisoner for longer than any actual prison sentence he might face.

The Court of Appeal judge agreed with Assange’s lawyers: the prosecutor had indeed breached her duty by keeping the case suspended for years. Another judge issued a rebuke to the prosecutor. And yet she defied the court.

Last December, Assange took his case to the Swedish Supreme Court, which ordered Marianne Ny’s boss – the Prosecutor General of Sweden Anders Perklev – to explain. The next day, Ny announced, without explanation, that she had changed her mind and would now question Assange in London.

In his submission to the Supreme Court, the Prosecutor General made some important concessions: he argued that the coercion of Assange had been “intrusive” and that that the period in the embassy has been a “great strain” on him. He even conceded that if the matter had ever come to prosecution, trial, conviction and serving a sentence in Sweden, Julian Assange would have left Sweden long ago.

In a split decision, one Supreme Court judge argued that the arrest warrant should have been revoked. The majority of the judges ruled that, since the prosecutor had now said she would go to London, Assange’s arguments had become “moot”.

But the Court ruled that it would have found against the prosecutor if she had not suddenly changed her mind. Justice by caprice. Writing in the Swedish press, a former Swedish prosecutor, Rolf Hillegren, accused Ny of losing all impartiality. He described her personal investment in the case as “abnormal” and demanded that she be replaced.

Having said she would go to London in June, Ny did not go, but sent a deputy, knowing that the questioning would not be legal under these circumstances, especially as Sweden had not bothered to get Ecuador’s approval for the meeting.

At the same time, her office tipped off the Swedish tabloid newspaper Expressen, which sent its London correspondent to wait outside Ecuador’s embassy for ‘news’. The news was that Ny was cancelling the appointment and blaming Ecuador for the confusion and by implication an ‘unco-operative’. Assange – when the opposite was true.

Living under the dark shadow of American menace

As the statute of limitations date approaches – August 20 – another chapter in this hideous story will doubtless unfold, with Marianne Ny pulling yet another rabbit out of her hat and the commissars and prosecutors in Washington the beneficiaries.

Perhaps none of this is surprising. In 2008, a war on WikiLeaks and on Julian Assange was foretold in a secret Pentagon document prepared by the Cyber Counterintelligence Assessments Branch. It described a detailed plan to destroy the feeling of “trust” which is WikiLeaks’ “centre of gravity”. This would be achieved with threats of “exposure [and] criminal prosecution”.

Silencing and criminalising such a rare source of truth-telling was the aim, smear the method. While this scandal continues the very notion of justice is diminished, along with the reputation of Sweden, and the shadow of America’s menace touches us all.

Listen to Eric Draitser’s interview with John Pilger on Episode 12 of the CounterPunch Radio podcast.

This is an updated version of John Pilger’s 2014 investigation which tells the unreported story of an unrelenting campaign, in Sweden and the US, to deny Julian Assange justice and silence WikiLeaks.

More information:

• justice4assange.com/extraditing-assange.html
• independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/assange-could-face-espionage-trial-in-us-2154107.html
• youtube.com/watch?v=1ImXe_EQhUI
• justice4assange.com/Timeline.html
• justice4assange.com/Timeline.html
• pdfserver.amlaw.com/nlj/wikileaks_doj_05192014.pdf
• wikileaks.org/59-International-Organizations.html
• s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1202703/doj-letter-re-wikileaks-6-19-14.pdf
• theguardian.com/media/2015/jul/23/julian-assange-ecuador-and-sweden-in-tense-standoff-over-interview?CMP=twt_gu
• assangeinsweden.com/2015/03/17/the-prosecutor-in-the-assange-case-should-be-replaced/
• justice4assange.com/Prosecutor-cancels-Assange-meeting.html

John Pilger can be reached through his website, where this article was originally published.