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.
And while Angry is promoting my website, I might as well join him by expanding on my response to Abe Rene with a link to my evaluation of US policy in Iraq.
http://canadianspectator.ca/stuff/WWIII.html
The Intro is a bit convoluted but the message is in the text box below.
Abe Rene,
Jimmy Carter condemned Blair’s lack of leadership and timid subservience to George W Bush. Carter is against pre-emptive strikes. I am. Blair is a war criminal, a cold blooded murderer who recently tried to justify the Iraq war as essential to rid us of bad man Hussein and the *capabilities* he possessed for manufacturing WMD.
________________ .. ________________
The neighbours across the street are a ‘foreign’ bunch. One has a relative who is a biochemist. He has a library of books on bioterrorism and some say a laboratory. He has no precursors, no deadly virus strains, no chemicals, no nuclear materials. Their leader issues no threats to you, no acts of violence, no threats of invasion. In fact he has never ever entered your part of the street or your house.
Your name is Blair and the neighbour is an old mate known as Saddam. Blair tells everyone in the street that Saddam is dangerous.
Blair calls his associates, saying join me in a ‘coalition of the willing’ to get rid of Saddam. Even while the local ‘bobbies’ are searching Saddam’s sheds for evidence and against all laws, a date is agreed to strike.
As dawn breaks on March 20th 2003 and all the neighbours kids on that side of the street sit down for breakfast and a neighbours wife puts her baby to her breast for the early morning feed, the ‘willing’ strike, with fire, searing heat and deadly smoke.
A baby and her elder sister are burnt to death, boys who once played football in the street lose their arms and legs and teenage girls have their beautiful faces burnt beyond recognition.
We named the strike – ‘shock & Awe’ and it was over in days. Blair made millions from the associates glad to see the back of Saddam.
And the orphaned kids – hey they struggled on…
“Twenty years of people — first withering, wilting away, like flowers never allowed to see the light, never allowed to turn their faces to the sun, then from fading into shadows, faltering into a colorless background…bombed, massacred, slaughtered into a nothingness…the same nothingness that inhabits you daily…the same nothingness that makes you rush to your shrink, the same nothingness that you feed with your junk, the same nothingness that you fill with your consumer products…the same nothingness of your void, of the pit, the deep pit that you all live in, and I throw up some more, from the pits of my belly….
“So you “sacrificed” for us, so you liberated us from “tyranny”, so you “lived up to your responsibilities” — like you did in Falluja, Haditha, Mahmoudiya, Baghdad, Basra, Mosul, Ramadi…
dreoilin
Thanks for the link on ‘Tony Blair’s autobiography becomes crime book after Facebook campaign’
‘Bookshops have reported finding copies of A Journey moved to the crime section, as well as to the fantasy section.’
Ha ha very funny. Poetic justice.
Okay, Alfred, here again is my initial comment on avatar singh’s long post (why are we spending so much time on this?):
“Avatar, as before, you make some powerful points wrt covert operations, global hegemony, etc. but – as I’ve said before – I think you get carried away and tend towards the essentialising of entire peoples, calling, as you seem to do, for their extermination.
Look, if the UK sank into the Atlantic Ocean this very evening, does one imagine that the imperial wars and other heinous activities undertaken by the MI complex would cease? No. It’s not about ‘race’ or ‘ethnicity’ or whatever one wants to call it, it’s about money, power and the political and philosophical systems that buttress the acquisition and maintenance of those goals. Tribalisms of various sorts are utilised as vehciles for the pursuance of those neoliberal/ neocolonial aims. Do not mistake the husk for the kernel (as the Sufis say in an entirely different context). This fixation with ‘Anglo-Saxons’ (what, Ethelred the Unready?) and call for genocide is every bit as uncalled-for as similar exhortations wrt ‘the Jews’, ‘the Arabs’, ‘the Chinese’, or whatever.”
Suhayl Saadi
My post – and I think all the other critical posts referring to it – Glenn, Duncan, etc. – came after yours, because I hadn’t been on the boards until after you. I’ve already stated that I agree with you on the point you made that such views are unacceptable. I don’t know why you seem repeatedly to hit me with this particular stick. I make a point of criticising his views on ‘The English’ and then all I get is you, accusing me of not criticising his views on ‘The English’. It’s circular and pointless.
Are you trying to suggest, by this constant harping-on about it (and on previous threads too) that I hold secret anti-English fantasies? Well, (as I have explained on numerous occasions on previous threads) I can honestly say that I do not. Not even about Morris (Moorish) Dancers. Apart from anything else (and there is much else), the idea has no meaning for me. As I said, I don’t believe in tribalism in any case.
I really do not wish to spend any more time discussing avatar singh’s views on the English. I think that any reasonable person would agree that calling for the extermination of anyone is unacceptable.
Thank you for answering on Assange.
Now, can we get back to TM? Are you, or are you not, TM? There is a yes or no possibility here. Most people, when someone says, ‘was that you who posted that post?’ would say, ‘no’ or ‘yes’. It would only be if someone didn’t want to be seen to be misleading in writing that they might avoid answering the question. I have no problem with it if you were ‘TM’. It’d be quite funny, actually. Several people who regularly post here have adopted alternative pseudonyms from time-to-time (eg. crab/ sandcrab) and there have been other entities who seemed to drift in and out of the webverse, eg. D-A-L-E-K – who one assumes is busy out at the edge of the cosmos, fighting Time Lords.
Btw, if anyone’s interested in the venerable tradition of Morris Dancing – I think it’s a wonderful dance, redolent of paganism and much else besides, possibly of Berber origin, in fact – here’s a fascinating website ah, I see there’s good-old-bad-old-Cecil Sharp again!):
http://www.icknieldwaymorrismen.org.uk/morris_dancing.html
Hmm… for such a great researcher I’m surprised this wasn’t found fairly easily by Angry, instead of repeatedly demanding it from others:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnychOXj9Tg
Go on to 2:13 and Benazir Bhutto mentions Omar Sheikh, “The man who murdered Usama Bin Laden.”
Concerning TM – I don’t think Alfred is so shy that he’d find the need to invent an alternative identity to put forward a point of view.
Good point, Glenn.
So, ‘Trade Mark’, reveal thyself! At least, say, “I am not Alfred Burdett”, or “I am the ghost of Ingrid Bergman”, or “I am your greatest fan. Play ‘Misty’ for me”. On second thoughts…
Also, in the clip, did Benazir Bhutto mean to say, ‘Daniel Pearl’ and instead said, ‘Usama Bin Laden’? Did Frost pick up on it? The clip doesn’t show us what happened after her bit of dialogue on this.
Alfred: The war on Iraq was badly planned from the point of view of its ostensible objectives: get rid of Saddam and set up a democracy. There was no planning for the aftermath. I regret that the story of Rumsfeld literally binning a 900 page report from the State Department on managing the aftermath is believable.
I don’t believe that it was Blair who instigated the war on Iraq, but rather that he was too ready to go along with the decision of Bush & Co, and failed to exercise a restraining influence to ensure at least that te planning would be good enough to prevent the chaos that followed.
Recently I have finished a very good book about the war in Iraq, “Joker One” by Donovan Campbell. It is written from the perspective of a young U.S. Marine officer in Ramadi who had known about (and disapproved of) the abuse in Abu Ghraib. The story of his platoon is one of trying to maintain ideals under immense pressure. Here is the website with some reviews:
http://www.joker-one.com/reviews
Any news when your holiday ends stupidlamby? Oops, I mean angrysoba. That was a serious question. Just curious…
I agree, Abe. Essentially, when Bush came to power, Blair ceased to be the leader of an independent country.
One could argue, though, that the UK’s independence was compromised decades earlier. But this brought it out more starkly. Blair seemed in thrall, like a madman or like someone with a gun to his head. There was no gun and he was not mad, he was (and is) just plain bad.
Of course, following the invasion of Kuwait and the war to reverse the invasion, there was the whole decade-plus of sanctions (and their effects) and covert air-strikes during the Bush Senior and Clinton years. Major and Blair were part of that, Madeleine Albright’s “…the price is worth it”, mass death, etc.
But it was a definitive, and I believe shameful, moment in British history when, as you suggest, Blair went along overtly and evangelically with a war of aggression based on patently hollow premises.
Sounds like a very interesting book, too. I’d much rather read a book written by a soldier who was on the ground than one by a discredited and obnoxious politician like Tony Blair.
Did you read what he is alleged to have said? It was something to the effect that (I paraphrase): ‘They [the soldiers] are dead, but I am alive’ – as though he were the Messiah and could redeem their loss by his very continuing existence, by bearing witness. It was in one of the ‘papers, I forget which, The Indie or The Herald, this week.
No, Mr Blair, it is the widows, the orphans and the fatherless children – in Iraq, the USA and the UK – who will bear witness. They will bear witness to the monstrosity of your crime.
Wotcha. Oh, someone attacking angrysoba for no reason; they must be bored.
Hey people. How’s life?
Bonjour Monsieur Zionista. 😉
Hi Tech,
Just finished watching “The Ghost” – Ewan McGregor hired to complete the memoirs of a former British prime minister, played by the awfully boring Pierce Brosnan. Not bad. Bit of a romp given the day that’s in it.
Jaded, why do you put a full stop after your name?
Alfred,
the importance is not in “personality”, it’s in identity. I succeeded in contacting Angrysoba by making myself contactable, via my web page. I went to Angrysoba’s blog:
http://angrysoba.blogspot.com/
and asked him to contact me via the e-mail address on my web page, which he did.
Indeed I am a tosser. I don’t consider myself ‘communist’, though I do believe in the virtue of good community, and I think that the option to live more communally would be a fine thing.
I accused you of ‘subtle trolling’, I believe, for want of a better description of your bizarre habit of making indefensible arguments and then defending them with strained logic, and eventually resorting to some grammatical get-out clause.
Nowhere have I had anything good to say about Jack Straw; if you don’t post a link I’ll assume that you must have dreamed this.
I really appreciated your observations on globalisation and how it affected your publishing business.
I have more important things to think about. If I end up analysing such little trivialities, then I may end up going stark raving bonkers like that Larry guy. Sorry dreoilin! 😉
Maybe it is something I will one day address in my memoirs…
Technicolour: Hello!
Alfred: Good points about the Iraq ‘war’.
Dreoilin: Thanks for the quote of Layla Anwar.
Jaded.: Chill out, for goodness’ sake!
“Any news when your holiday ends stupidlamby?”
“I have more important things to think about.”
Don’t we all.
night night folks
Technicolour,
“Life is not a spectacle or a feast. It is a predicament”. George Santayana.
Suhayl: “Blair seemed in thrall”. I would say; he may have been en-thralled by the White House, without the latter needing to work too hard. I’m more wary about saying he was ‘plain bad’, because I ask: which of us has conquered our own worst selves?
An Iranian Communist had shared a jail cell with Ayatollah Khamenei under the Shah and they agreed that ‘come the revolution’ there would be no more such treatment. Look at Iran now. Here’s his website:
http://houasadi.wordpress.com/category/a-look/
Suppose that from the group comprising Craig Murray, yourself, Dreoilin and a few others came the President of the United States, Secretaries of Defense or State, and PM, that 9/11 happened, and none of the people I mentioned had any memory of the past 15 years or the personal memories they have now but others leading up to those positions. I wonder how history would have developed.
That’s exactly it though dreoilin. He clearly stated he was on holiday from work and, if anything, has spent more time on Craig’s site since then. Considering the time he does spend here is centred around spreading disinformation and covering up government terrorism, then I think the act of exposing him to all is rather more important than full stops after names. Ha ha. Unless of course you disagree… Have a good kip. Or rather, sleep on it. 😉
Clark, people helping to cover up government terrorism need to be exposed in my view. If we disagree, then we disagree. I’m not going to argue with you.
Jaded,
I don’t believe Angrysoba and the utterly obnoxious Larry to be the same person. I find Angrysoba’s faith in mainstream accounts frustrating, but he does engage in argument and he does references sources, unlike Larry, who mainly just contradicts and slings insults. Angrysoba has also criticised Larry twice, very strongly. If that’s how it looks to me, then it may appear the same to others. Thus you may weaken your credibility by treating them as the same person.
Also, I don’t find Technicolour to be a supporter of Israeli atrocity. If you know of any posts to the contrary, please reference them for my benefit.
“”Life is not a spectacle or a feast. It is a predicament”. George Santayana.”
Life is like a bowl of All-Bran.
You wake up in the morning and it’s there”.
Small Faces
Clark: That may be, but AS is _so_ forgiving with people with whom he feels he has a common enemy – and that means us on the whole. Remember all the high-fiving and towel-flicking AS and the larry creature enjoyed, while the latter was being every bit as obnoxious as he was consistently before and since. Same with that Tom thug he fawns over. AS likes ad hominem attacks to smear his opponents (and come on, they are always ‘opponents’ not ‘debatees’, if you do not readily agree with him).
Don’t forget he told you that he wouldn’t care if he were on the same side of a position as Mengele, it’s the facts of the point in question that matter. Fair enough, but not when he gets all excited in declaring that teabaggers think 9/11 was an inside job, and now that fine principle of his suddenly doesn’t apply. (Teabaggers don’t, incidentally, as AS doubtless knows – he’s being dishonest again. Or incredibly lazy.) AS tries to associate his opponents (not fellow debatees, note) with positions they’ve never uttered, to try to bring discredit on them.
The guy is lousy, Clark, I’ve got no respect at all for him. No disrespect to yourself, you’re a great diplomat. But it doesn’t pay to give people like that any benefit of the doubt, where motive cannot be trusted, nor word relied upon, nor any standard upheld.
Abe – “”Blair seemed in thrall”. I would say; he may have been en-thralled by the White House, without the latter needing to work too hard.”
Yes. One possibility is: vanity.
We heard it all over the place, “suave subtle Brits with all their colonial experience, so not like those barbarous Yanks”. He thought he had enough influence to make it better than it would have been without him.
And Claire Short, said she’d resign and then didn’t, because they were going to do it anyway but if she was part of it she could make it less bad than it would have been otherwise.
And this horrible cascading vision of people doing things they knew shouldn’t have been done because they knew they were Good People.
But I’m not sure there’s much evidence they made any difference at all.
Time to retire, so here’s some peaceful and uplifting music: the national anthem of Namibia:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jcs-F9RIjjY
Blair will be imprisoned by bodyguards for the rest of his life.
Hi Suhayl: I find it hard to imagine Benazir Bhutto would just slip in Usama Bin Laden instead of Daniel Pearl… it’s not as if we’re talking about the same class of individual at all. Three names instead of two, a western name instead of eastern, and a white reporter instead of the most stupendously famous Saudi royal. It’s hard to imagine the two would become interchangeable in one’s mind – particularly in one as collected and sharp as Benazir Bhutto’s.
That particular interview clip might not have included it (I just searched for “benazir bhutto frost”, checked it included the relevant bit being demanded as proof by a lazy interlocutor, and posted the link), but Benazir was claiming she was in fear of her life above all from Omar Sheikh. Mentioning him as the man who murdered UBL is one reason why she should have every right to fear him – after all, if UBL could be murdered by this man, nobody could be safe. That Omar Sheikh had merely killed a reporter would not have made such a strong point.
As for Frost, it blew right by him, apparently. But then, and no disrespect to his illustrious career, he is getting on a bit.
Clark,
Thank you for your kind comment. Sorry to have been hyper aggressive about whatever it was.
Cheers,
“I accused you of ‘subtle trolling’ …”
Clark, I’m scrolling through comments backwards.
the thing about “trolling” is what I was not prepared to accept because I do not see that what I post as inflammatory, extraneous or off-topic — well not more than most.
Possibly you could make a case that a particular statement was obnoxious, but I was not convinced that you’d made a case.
But anyhow, I am sorry that my mind is so muddled that I confused you with someone who did declare a Communist leaning. I should have researched the point, challenging though that seems on this site.
So, I withdraw without reservation my claim that you are a Communist, and apologise in addition for my impulsive use of a derogatory epithet, which I regetted almost immediately and the more so now. I am sure what I said was entirely unjustified.
Suhayl,
Re: “Okay, Alfred,
… My post – and I think all the other critical posts referring to it – Glenn, Duncan, etc. – came after yours, because I hadn’t been on the boards until after you.”
OK, Suhayl, sure, I was being unreasonably aggressive.
I was chairman of debates at school and, briefly, at university. It was bad training — I’m inclined to say almost anything to get a reaction, although with complete sincerity in the heat of the moment. In writing, errors and insensitivity seem worse than in the cut and thrust of debate. I am sorry if I attempted to score a point unfairly.
“I’ve already stated that I agree with you on the point you made that such views are unacceptable.”
My point Suhayl was not particularly addressed at you although you were directly in the firing line.
There is a discrepancy between the way some people here react to opposition to mass immigration, yelping racist and other nasty terms (see the nasty things said about me on this thread based on what I am supposed to have said on the subject of immigration elsewhere), and their, initially, mild reaction Avatart Singh’s expression of explicit and virulent Anglophobic racism, e.g., by yelping “uncalled for”!
As to your views, Suhayl, I wish to suggest nothing. I accept the truth of whatever you say. But your views do not always seem to me to be entirely clear.
What I have witnessed here, is a tendency to call opposition to mass immigration racism, while at the same time the assertion of the existence of the British race is ridiculed as a nonsense. But you cannot have it both ways. We are either all the same, in which case opposition to mass immigration cannot be racism, or we are not all the same, in which case the British nation has a right to a homeland where they will not be swamped out by other ethnicities.
For advocating the latter view, you have, in the past, called me a “racialist” which is no damn different from calling me a racist. Now you seem to be saying that we are all the same (“Apart from anything else… the idea [of the English nation it appears from the context] has no meaning for me), therefore, your allegation of “racialism” seems illogical and hypocritical.
Having come under so much fire and having had to retract and apologise for so much I have decided to change my name.