Craig Murray, I know I know but he is quite clearly on the money in this, has written another long piece which takes the form of a forensic demolition of an article written by a journalist called Dani Garavelli. Garavelli's article consists of relaying in fawning terms what a number of the alphabet women now want to say about the case (while bemoaning the apparent fact that they have "no voice") and the prosecution case. If one only read that article one might easily wonder if the jury had taken leave of its collective senses.
The title of the article is
I have a plan so that we can remain anonymous but have maximum effect, which is part of a text sent by woman H, one of those at the absolute centre of the orchestrated stitch-up, to a number of the others. (The main orchestrator of all this was in fact woman A, but woman H was also in it up to her neck. When the identities of these two are revealed a lot of people are going to be very surprised. I nearly fell off my chair when I discovered who woman H is.) This, perhaps more than the other message reading "we have lost this battle but we will win the war" sent round by Leslie Evans within minutes of the judgement in Salmond's favour in the Court of Session, is the strongest evidence of there being a conspiracy among the women to have come out in court (a lot of the evidence of collusion and conspiracy was ruled inadmissible at the start).
You might think this was news. Someone pointed out that if you google that text string, Murray's article is the only one that comes up. He says that he saw all the mainstream newspaper and TV journalists close their notebooks and stop taking notes when the defence witnesses came into the witness box. I don't know about that, but I do know that while the prosecution case was reported in salacious detail, with every allegation about Salmond's behaviour quoted with apparent relish on the front pages, when it came to the defence evidence the journalists somehow managed to repeat their reporting of the prosecution evidence. If you were just reading the newspapers or watching the TV you would have learned almost nothing of it, and certainly not that woman H had been clearly shown to be a liar and the prosecution didn't even bother to cross-examine the defence witnesses who gave that evidence. Not even the time-honoured "I put it to you Mrs Barber that there were indeed four people at that dinner", which lawyers say is quite telling.
Then of course there are the other lies such as several of the women testifying to having complained about Salmond's behaviour at the time to their line manager, but the line manager in question, Karen Watt, categorically saying that didn't happen.
These "silenced, voiceless" women had their evidence heard in a court of law. Since then they have had two more bites at the cherry, one in the form of an "open letter" put out by Rape Crisis Scotland which included the breathtaking lie that the nine women have never communicated with each other about their alleged experiences, and that even now none of them knows the identity of the others. Despite them having (anonymously) co-signed an open letter. Not to mention the WhatsApp group that they used to co-ordinate their lies.
At the same time Alex Salmond has not said a word in public, and neither have the seven or so female witnesses for the defence who all appeared under their own names in court with no attempt to hide behind alphabet soup. Apparently it's OK to insinuate that they're liars though.
Whatever you think of Alex Salmond he is not a sex pest. He's a tactile sort of person and he himself said he wished he had been more conscious of other people's personal space, but apart from the alphabet women, who all know each other and are all part of the same inner ring of Scottish politics, everyone will tell you that these touches are in no way sexual. The police chased another 400 women to try to find one single complaint from someone who was not part of that clique of harpies, and failed. Bear in mind this is a man who was an MP at Westminster from 1987 to 2001, and that the Security Services hated his guts. If there had been anything then that wasn't squeaky-clean, they would have been all over it. One woman whom someone had observed being kissed on the cheek by Salmond when they met in a theatre foyer was apparently approached and asked if she wanted to press a sexual assault charge on the basis of that. That's the depth of the barrel-scraping that went on.
So, as Bluesjnr has helpfully pointed out, never mind what you think of Salmond or his politics, this is an amazing story, a genuine conspiracy theory that is turning out to be absolutely true, but all the press can do is publish repeated borderline-defamatory stories about "Salmond sleaze". As someone on twitter keeps saying, when is Alex Salmond's trial expected to finish?
: Sherlock!