The Russians call it Kompromat – the use by the state of sexual accusations to destroy a public figure. When I was attacked in this way by the government I worked for, Uzbek dissidents smiled at me, shook their heads and said “Kompromat“. They were used to it from the Soviet and Uzbek governments. They found it rather amusing to find that Western governments did it too.
Well, Julian Assange has been getting the bog standard Kompromat. I had imagined he would get something rather more spectacular, like being framed for murder and found hanging with an orange in his mouth. He deserves a better class of kompromat. If I am a whistleblower, then Julian is a veritable mighty pipe organ. Yet we just have the normal sex stuff, and very weak.
Bizarrely the offence for which Julian is wanted for questioning in Sweden was dropped from rape to sexual harassment, and then from sexual harassment to just harassment. The precise law in Swedish, as translated for me and other Sam Adams alumni by our colleague Major Frank Grevil, reads:
“He who lays hands on or by means of shooting from a firearm, throwing of stones, noise or in any other way harasses another person will be sentenced for harassment to fines or imprisonment for up to one year.”
So from rape to non-sexual something. Actually I rather like that law – if we had it here, I could have had Jack Straw locked up for a year.
Julian tells us that the first woman accuser and prime mover had worked in the Swedish Embassy in Washington DC and had been expelled from Cuba for anti-Cuban government activity, as well as the rather different persona of being a feminist lesbian who owns lesbian night clubs.
Scott Ritter and I are well known whistleblowers subsequently accused of sexual offences. A less well known whistleblower is James Cameron, another FCO employee. Almost simultaneous with my case, a number of the sexual allegations the FCO made against Cameron were identical even in wording to those the FCO initially threw at me.
Another fascinating point about kompromat is that being cleared of the allegations – as happens in virtually every case – doesn’t help, as the blackening of reputation has taken effect. In my own case I was formerly cleared of all allegations of both misconduct and gross misconduct, except for the Kafkaesque charge of having told defence witnesses of the existence of the allegations. The allegations were officially a state secret, even though it was the government who leaked them to the tabloids.
Yet, even to this day, the FCO has refused to acknowledge in public that I was in fact cleared of all charges. This is even true of the new government. A letter I wrote for my MP to pass to William Hague, complaining that the FCO was obscuring the fact that I was cleared on all charges, received a reply from a junior Conservative minister stating that the allegations were serious and had needed to be properly investigated – but still failing to acknowledge the result of the process. Nor has there been any official revelation of who originated these “serious allegations”.
Governments operate in the blackest of ways, especially when it comes to big war money and big oil money. I can see what they are doing to Julian Assange, I know what they did to me and others (another recent example – Brigadier Janis Karpinski was framed for shoplifting). In a very real sense, it makes little difference if they murdered David Kelly or terrified him into doing it himself. Telling the truth is hazardous in today’s Western political system.
TM,
Sorry you are confused – see August 26th 4:18 and somewhere I wrote (forgotten) that Julian was at one time in Iraq helping DoctorsforIraq get ‘death squad’ casualties info out of Iraq using his cypher. Good man – good man.
But yes he/they was/were duped – Bradley’s leaked video was followed by crap to undermine WLs and I suspect they will get an admission from Bradley he was the source or maybe I’m losing it? You judge.
NB
Julian claimed that WikiLeaks had offered to let U.S. government officials go through the leaked documents to ensure that no innocent people were identified.
They did not respond? – now there is the clue.
Clark said: “I really can’t find any reason to distrust WikiLeaks.” Well, I agree with Clark. Indeed distrust in wikileaks is just what the intelligence services would want to generate, and I expect that they have a heavy duty PsyOps team working on doing just that ?” to the extent that it has caused many decent people to have false doubts. Indeed, all these discussion on Wikileaks may also serve to partially mask other incidents. I found this story about the recent tragic murder of MI6 Code breaker Gareth Williams to be very interesting.
http://news.uk.msn.com/world/articles.aspx?cp-documentid=154535696
Is it coincidental that William Hague, the Cabinet Minister responsible for oversight of MI6, has been so heavily SMEARED in the press just following reports (some accusatory) of the murder of their code breaker in mysterious circumstances??
Give Wikileaks a chance ?” You need them!!!
“TM” is Alfred.
Angrysoba, how do you know? Is Alfred into transcendental meditation? Or are you…? (!) Do reveal all, please.
“Indeed distrust in wikileaks is just what the intelligence services would want to generate, and I expect that they have a heavy duty PsyOps team working on doing just that…”
Richard, you are making the same mistake, or the same deliberately false inference, that Clark is making, which is to infer that the absence of evidence of dishonest intent is evidence of honest intent.
What you are asking people like Bradley Manning to do is to put their life and liberty in the hands of those who they cannot be sure are trustworthy. And for what purpose? What can Wikileaks do for a leaker that the Climategate email leaker was unable to do for himself?
You talk about causing “many decent people to have false doubts.”
But in fact that is either counsel based on false logic or deliberate deception. How do you know the doubts are false? You don’t you can’t. Therefore, why encourage people to risk their life and liberty to leak information via Wilileaks when they can leak it as effectively and with greater personal safety in other ways.
You talk of the “tragic murder of MI6 Code breaker Gareth Williams,” but you fail to grasp the obvious point that if his death had anything to do with leaking intelligence information it could have been the result of seeking Wikileaks as an intermediary.
What no one here has so far done, and what I believe no one here can do is demonstrate that Wikileaks does anything that is necessary to the enlightenment of the public or the protection of liberty.
So far, according to Mark, Wikileaks has scored an own-goal with the Afghanistan papers.
A common coin on this blog seems to be the smear and the illogical or irrelevant inference.
For example Somebody said:
“The CEO of Intel is one Paul Otellini.
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/bod.htm
I don’t give a stuff what the CEO of Intel has to say. The Zionist Hasbara trolls are always keen to mention the name when they are boasting about Israel’s technological achievements. They also mention phamaceuticals but never their weaponry used to kill the Palestinians.”
Apparently, I’m a Zionist troll because I quoted a Jew, Andy Groves, who is not best known as a Zionist.
LOL
Any how, I did not say Andy Grove is the current CEO of Intel, but if anyone doesn’t know that he was one of the founders of Intel and long-time CEO, they don’t know much about silicon valley.
But I did not know Groves was a Jew, merely that he’s a very smart guy. It is interesting, though, to add his name to the rather long list of members of the rather small expatriate Hungarian Jewish community who proved to be geniuses.
“”TM” is Alfred.”
Intriguing thought, angrysoba – how do you reach it ?
The styles of writing and reasoning do look similar, now you mention it, but … 14 posts, on this thread, and not a trace of the usual idee fixe ? And that (rather unpleasant IMO) “patriotism” jibe against Clark doesn’t seem to sit very well with the Great British Mitochondria stuff ?
“Avatar Singh – the main effect of your bizarre post was to make me want to defend the English – and i’m Scottish.”
Good on you Duncan.
But you should bear in mind that to the Anglophobe Indian, there is no distinction between Scotland and England, which means that you are as much in the firing line as any other citizen of the UK.
And in this context, no distinction between England and Scotland is justified.
The Scots voted enthusiastically for the Act of Union because it let them in on England’s profitable trade in slaves, sugar and tobacco, etc., their own tropical colony, The Darien Scheme, having failed.
My own view, as noted elsewhere, is that posts by Avatar Singh should be expunged from this blog: they infringe the Race Relations Act, they infringe the Anti-Terrorism laws and they constitute an incitement to violence.
Although Avatar Singh’s case may be more psychiatric than political, his postings deserve the attention of the security services.
Finally, does anyone know who Angrysoba is?
The above was posted by me!
TM, you are quoting the wrong person. I didn’t make the remarks that you offer to debate with me.
Curiously, following angrysoba’s comment, I remember Alfred making the same mistake. Roderick Russell has the same initials.
Sorry, me at 7:04
Avatar Singh: “entglish are the curse of this world and are real pestilence which should ebe eliminated.” I can’t do that. One of them invited me to lunch a month or two ago. You see, it would be downright ungrateful.
ON the WIRE
I’ve heard David Cameron wants to break with the Blair neocon legacy, pare down British presence in Afghanistan, and build new relations with emerging powers.
Yiks! Does that mean he is moving away from the CFR’s and good ‘ol Henry Jackson’s Society interventionalist policy or Jose Maria Aznar aasumption that all is lost without undying support for Israel?
All this deserves a few gold stars, the Government does seem to have the right aim in Afghanistan.
Cameron’s attack on Israel in Turkey was an eye opener, severely let down by doing the same to Pakistan in India.
Does this mean MI5 are at ‘war’ with SIS? – they should be after the crap intelligence on Iraq.
Is a deal with Iran in the offering? – that would be the clincher for me – not Euro membership remaining open or talk that poor William Hague has had an affair with ‘chrith-toffer.’
Richard,
My apologies for misattributing Roderick Russell’s comment to you.
My apologies to Roderick Russell too.
It occurred to me at the time that the remark I was commenting on did not seem consistent with Richard Robinsons’s earlier comments.
I should have checked. But as you can see, there were a number of things going on at the same time and I made several mistakes including forgetting my own name, or at least forgetting to sign my name to my comment.
it is actually rather easy to mistake who said what on this blog because the software does not position responses in relation to the comments to which they refer.
Anyway, in signing this TM, I think I have the correct identity — if anyone cared, and I don’t really see why, unless it helps those who engage in smear tactics to have a clear identity to smear.
“Two classified documents recently released by WikiLeaks express the CIA’s concern that the populations of European countries, which oppose their governments’ war policies, are not succumbing to the usual propaganda spun through the media. For the rulers of the world, this is a conundrum, because their unaccountable power rests on the false reality that no popular resistance works. And it does.”
John Pilger, ‘Flying the Flag; Faking the News’ 3 Sept
http://www.truth-out.org/flying-flag-faking-news62920
Here’s a question about the recent cricket scandal. The Pakistani High Commissioner raised the question of the News of the World video being faked after the event. Here’s my question: how would it be possible to prove that they were genuine? Did the NOTW have them seen by police and make sworn statements before the match, or what?
Dreolin,
A brilliant piece of truth that was also portrayed in a similar documentary recently.
One has a certain sense that Bernay’s assumption that propaganda is ‘an important element of modern society’ is passed its ‘sell by’ date. My great grand-father was a telegraphist and became ‘all knowing’ because of ‘the wire’ and near instant news and opinions, although severely filtered for public consumption.
I am convinced the Beeb and Rupert Murdoch et al still believe in a dumb gullible public although it seems from this report the CIA are moving into the reality of public critical intelligence, backed by the Internet, whistle-blowers and even the loose mouths of engineers working for the intelligence services ;-).
Popular resistance works – WE can prove it – Right here!
Thanks, Dreoilin, much appreciated. Go for it! Yes indeed, Mark and Dreolin, we won’t ever be fooled again. Not that ‘we’ (you, me, the hearth cat) were ever fooled in the first place.
Well, angrysoba, tell us how you know – know, not imagine – that TM is Alfred. Come on. And as someone said, who are you? I ask this literally, not rhetorically.
Alfred, are you TM? TM, are you Alfred?
Anonymous poster at 7:02pm, tell me, will you be informing “the security services” on bloggers here? Are you the same anonymous blogger who seemed to infer that my ‘Aethelred the Unready’ comment was not strong enough? Are you Alfred, too?
Alfred, do reveal yourself, there’s a good man. I can’t see the trees for the wood.
I am me. I am. Me.
I’m with you, Mark … No wonder the Pentagon is spending millions (billions?) trying to find ways to police the net, while the Australian Government (before the election) tried to introduce a net “filter” on spurious grounds (even if it was going to be unworkable). We have a plethora of sources that our parents didn’t have, and an ability to organise the likes of which has never been seen before.
Vive le WWW
dreoilin,
Pilger makes some good points. However, the bit about the documents “released” by Wikileaks (like they have some official function to release classified documents) is a little odd. It certainly gives me little reason to trust Wikileaks that they “release” such trite stuff.
Everyone who applies their mind to political events knows that politicians rarely move their lips without lying and that most government actions are justified on the basis of false premises.
If the CIA have only just tumbled to this and think it can be acknowledged only in a classified document, they might as well give up.
But of course they’ve known this to be a problem all along. Hence, plans for false flag terrorism to intimidate and panic people who would otherwise oppose government policy (e.g., Operation Northwoods).
And hence also those Haliburton detention centers.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/42458/
Evidently, US Government has been prepared for some time to lock up large numbers of people who fail to succumb to the usual propaganda.
Then there was that UK report on the potential of the middleclass to revolt. Does anyone have a link to info. on that?
Wahhh! don’t mention the hearth cat, Suhayl, she died on me.
TM
Pilger is an excellent journalist, has been around a long time, and I’ll warrant he has some impeccable sources. If he’s not suspicious of Wikileaks, then neither am I. For now.
“(like they have some official function to release classified documents)”
I think you’re reading something into that that’s not necessary. Assange has made it clear that they hold info until they can evaluate it, possibly unencrypt it, check it out. Then they “release” it. Nothing odd about the word at all.
Anonymous poster at 7:02pm, tell me, will you be informing “the security services” on bloggers here?
Suhayl, I said it was me at 7:03pm
And I said that Avatar Singh’s remarks should
“be expunged from this blog, because they infringe the Race Relations Act, they infringe the Anti-Terrorism laws and they constitute an incitement to violence.”
I also said that they deserved “the attention of the security services”, which is quite different from saying that I would report them to anyone. My object was to draw to the attention of those connected with this blog the vicious content Singh’s post.
But do you not agree. I mean, Singh appears to be a genocidal maniac. So if he is not of interest to the security services, who is? Don’t you want those bums to do anything useful. I mean, you help pay they wages, don’t you?
Abe,
I believe the Pakistani High Commissioner suggested that the video tape was not dated.
“Did the NOTW have them seen by police and make sworn statements before the match, or what?”
Wasn’t the cricket match the day following the video taping? There would have been little time, if the tape was genuine. I gather the cricketers have been released by police, without charge, and without restrictions.
Ok, I’m off, had a sick tummy all day and got nothing done. Something I ate … See yez later.
Dreoilin, very sorry to hear about your cat.
And ought not we and everyone to be focussing on the content of the leaks from Wikileaks, rather than on whether or not so-and-so might be an asset. Ultimately, what intriguing on one level, that’s a somewhat circular form of activity and possibly ultimately fruitless, since it’s very difficult to prove a negative.
Having said that, and I know it’s an entirely different situation, but the allegation that Simon Weisenthal worked for Mossad left me… saddened.
While I feel that it was right to bring Nazi murderers to justice, for anyone to work with the murderous organisation that is Mossad is a negation of their own humanity. This is emblematic, surely, of the paradox of Israel.
Yet it is perhaps a salutory reminder, firstly that it is facile for people to yell, “Paranoia!” at the mention of covert activity (if during his lifetime anyone had claimed that Wiesenthal was working for Mossad, they’d have been ostracised) and secondly that sometimes one ought to consider questioning one’s own assumptions and those assumptions which at a particular historical juncture seem to construct received wisdom.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/02/simon-wiesenthal-worked-f_n_703629.html
Dreolin, try natural ‘Greek’ yoghurt.
Oh gaggg! Blair is on our Late Late Show! I’m running for the ‘Greek’ yogurt …
I take your point, Alfred. Thanks. Yes, I do agree that such comments are unacceptable.
Now, are you indeed TM?
And what do you think of Aethelred the Unready?
“Oh gaggg! Blair is on our Late Late Show! I’m running for the ‘Greek’ yogurt”
I don’t think he meant to throw it at the telly ? Ah well, never mind.
Sorry to hear about the cat.
“… the links between the security services and British business run deep…”
The Daily Mail, 26 August 2010
Indeed. As Roderick Russell and others have been telling us for ages.