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.
Ruth,
yes, of Blair, I think that I cannot wish upon him anything worse than to be what he so obviously already is.
Glenn,
those are all valid points about the way that Angrysoba argues; this is what I mean when I complain about his argument technique. The reason that I’m forgiving of this is related to my points about polarisation; September 4, 2010 12:13 PM. Angrysoba is in a small minority here and he gets insulted quite a lot, so maybe he fights rather desperately in compensation. If the polarisation could be ameliorated maybe he’d be more mellow. I just get the feeling that Angrysoba wouldn’t support any mass slaughter or gross injustice, and even though he may fight dirty in an argument, he wouldn’t support people actually suffering.
I watched the video you linked to. In the related windows were others that apparently show Benazir Bhutto talking about Osama bin Laden as if he was alive, after the Frost interview. This does make it look like she just said the wrong name to Frost, or is there something more that I don’t know?
Somebody,
thanks for the MediaLens link, which I forgot to mention earlier.
Alfred,
yes, I shouldn’t have written ‘trolling’; you weren’t obnoxious. I got very annoyed with you when you couldn’t see or refused to admit that you’d pre-selected your sample when you compared the wealth of the UK and India, many threads ago. I think I remember the bit about Jack Straw now; it was someone else who had some respect for him back in his Student’s Union days, I think.
Nevertheless, you are one of the stranger fish on this site.
“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”
Well, it obviously had been found by me, as is evinced by my use of the word “murdered” when it wasn’t used by Alfred himself (Dreoilin picked up on that!)
One of the reasons why I asked Alfred for his source is that he had said Benazir Bhutto had made this claim on the BBC. The video of the Frost interview comes from, of course, Al-Jazeera. So was there another video from BBC? Alfred still hasn’t produced it if there was. Clearly, the video from Al-Jazeera is very poor evidence of Benazir Bhutto believing Osama bin Laden to be dead. If she knew of Osama bin Laden being “murdered” then this would be a massive story not just casually remarked on in the middle of an interview. Anyone with any sense knows that she actually meant to say “Daniel Pearl” as Omar Sheikh is famous for being responsible for his murder.
“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.”
BINGO!
Actually, the interesting part of the interview is when she is talking about a retired member of the security forces that she thinks is threatening her and responsible for the horrific suicide bombing that killed so many people on her return to Pakistan. She is talking about Hamid Gul, right?
Clark, I spelled out all my logic about all on the other thread. It’s serves no purpose to tell you a second time. I would advise listening to the wise words of glenn, as he seems to know what’s up. They are launching wars and taking over the world. Millions will die and it will all be a pointless disaster anyway. And people are taking me to task for insulting their envoys on Craig Murray’s blog? It’s surreal. I’ll go and fetch my red carpet for them then.
In a nutshell, if anyone thinks that angrysoba isn’t a paid shill that works in online propaganda full time, then they are seriously a few cans short of a six pack. The guy would make the 9/11 Commission look legitimate. My opinion!
Clark: “I watched the video you linked to. In the related windows were others that apparently show Benazir Bhutto talking about Osama bin Laden as if he was alive, after the Frost interview. This does make it look like she just said the wrong name to Frost, or is there something more that I don’t know?”
No, I think you’re completely spot on there Clark.
There’s this video, which I think you are referring to, which explains it quite well and he comes to the same conclusion as I did and as Suhayl did independently. And again, I will just point out that I think the “retired military officer” Benazir Bhutto refers to is Hamid Gul just as evidence that I know what Benzair Bhutto had meant without having to know the name. So many of these conspiracy theories seem to rest on hearing one isolated quote taken out of context and repeated without any apparent understanding of the wider events the speaker is talking about.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IIn_UnLO9I&feature=related
Me/Alfred,
yes, there is indeed a difference between spoken and written debate. In speech, what is said is gone in a moment, but when writing it is fixed upon the page and will be used as reference, so one should be more careful.
I think you may need to mark yourself in a bit more clearly on your map of the world. It wasn’t just that you were advocating a homeland for the British; you were claiming that there had been a “genocide” in Leicester! If you will write things like that, you’ll inflame the conversation.
Jaded,
look at the above about Benazir Bhutto. Angrysoba is clearly right. There is NO point basing our anti-war arguments upon fictions, we will undermine our own position. Angrysoba’s arguments can help us refine our own.
Glenn said: “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).”
Then:
“The guy is lousy, Clark, I’ve got no respect at all for him… 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.”
Glenn also said: “AS tries to associate his opponents (not fellow debatees, note) with positions they’ve never uttered, to try to bring discredit on them.”
Yet, you were the one who said Larry and I were “tea-baggers” and “birthers” when neither of us ever expressed any tea-bagger or birther opinions. I simply pointed out that many of the original teabaggers were actually 9/11 conspiracy theorists so it blunted your own accusations to call us teabaggers in the first place. And you’re STILL doing the whole “guilt by association” thing again yourself by saying the worst thing about me is that you associate me with Tom and Larry. So these are the famous double standards of Glenn rising again.
Angrysoba,
hey, don’t pick a fight. You’ve made an important point since your September 4, 2010 10:23 AM post. Like I just wrote of you, Glenn would be opposed to mass murder and injustice, you disagree about ‘facts’ but probably aren’t far apart on morals.
And you actually countered my points against _you_ how, apart from trying to deflect them with yet more personal attacks? Heh! You know the Tu Quoque attack is not actually a refuting of the original argument… right?
It’s this confounded polarisation thing again – I think it’s partly to do with writing comments in an Internet environment where people are anonymous and probably widely dispersed across the globe – people are much more likely to be aggressive in such a situation than they would be face to face or if identities were declared.
I saw an article about chat-room bullying amongst teenagers which said that in face to face interactions, when the victim cries, most people will stop picking on them, but on the Internet such body language is hidden, and the attack is likely to be pursued much further.
You are too modest, AS – it’s nothing to do with 9/11. You tried to associate me with some 2012 end-times Mayan nonsense which had never even been discussed on any thread here, until you pretended that I supported such notions.
It’s very, very sad to see someone spend a lot of time and effort, trying to build their own blog up an’ all, but all they’ve got at the end of the day is innuendo, smear tactics and cringe-worthy partisanship.
Glenn,
don’t fight; you’re not on opposite sides! Friendly fire warning!
“It’s very, very sad to see someone spend a lot of time and effort, trying to build their own blog up an’ all, but all they’ve got at the end of the day is innuendo, smear tactics and cringe-worthy partisanship.”
There, there.
*pats Glenn on the head*
Glenn,
yes, Angrysoba pushes too hard. Forgive him, he’s human.
Angrysoba,
that’s patronising! You’re BOTH sinners. And so am I.
Aww, angry! That’s feeble even by your miserable, flakey standards.
*
Clark: I’m not so sure. I think you’re too kind… AS will excuse all too many establishment atrocities. I cannot.
Glenn,
I think it’s a matter of belief. Angrysoba doesn’t believe that such bad things have happened. Sorry, clumsy language. He thinks they’ve happened, but he estimates the magnitude lower than you do, or he estimates that the alternative would have been worse, and he’s no better at admitting that he was wrong that you are.
Glenn: I think you should admit that you were wrong about Benazir Bhutto.
Angrysoba: I think you should apologise for accusing Glenn of 2012 stuff.
We’re all just humans; it’s our diversity that gives us strength. Evolution’s lesson.
Clark: I’m not sure where I was wrong about Benazir Bhutto, nobody apart from yourself to date has even suggested I made an incorrect assertion (not even AS, amazingly enough). If I made one, I’d be happy to correct it. You leave me somewhat puzzled about my culpability regarding the subject.
Glenn,
sorry, I probably got it wrong. It’s up there on the thread, somewhere…
My point is that Benazir Bhutto made a mistake in her interview with Frost – she meant Daneil Pearl, not Osama bin Laden. That’s what I think you were wrong about in your September 5, 2010 1:38 AM comment.
Well folks, I’d best get at least a bit of sleep. I should mention, in case anyone tries to contact me, that the e-mail address on my web page is not working properly right now – TalkTalk are ‘improving’ their service.
Goodnight.
Glenn: “And you actually countered my points against _you_ how, apart from trying to deflect them with yet more personal attacks? Heh! You know the Tu Quoque attack is not actually a refuting of the original argument… right?”
It wasn’t actually an example of “Tu Quoque”. I was pointing out your double standards as this “AS tries to associate his opponents (not fellow debatees, note) with positions they’ve never uttered, to try to bring discredit on them” is exactly what you do. Whereas the stuff about Mayan prophesies was, if I remember correctly, something of an interpretation of my remarks to you. After all you said that the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was going to spin so far out of control that we’d all be dead in 2012. I referred to it as a 2012 Apocalypse scenario, which it is, and you got all agitated about me misrepresenting you.
“Clark: I’m not sure where I was wrong about Benazir Bhutto, nobody apart from yourself to date has even suggested I made an incorrect assertion”
Actually three of us have pretty clearly said we think you are wrong. But I’ll say it again, “YOU ARE WRONG!”
Benazir Bhutto was obviously talking about Omar Sheikh killing Daniel Pearl not killing Osama bin Laden. It was a slip of the tongue because she had just been talking about Osama bin Laden. Your justification for believing she really did mean Osama bin Laden is just special pleading:
“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.”
Why should confusing an “Eastern name” with a “Western name” cause us to apply different standards? What does it matter if Osama bin Laden and Daniel Pearl are of different ethnicity? And what’s with the argument from incredulity, “It’s hard to imagine… ” No, it’s very clearly not difficult to see that Benazir Bhutto could confuse the two.
If you remember the one about Dick Cheney saying “Osama bin Laden” instead of “Saddam Hussein” which all of us accepted at the time as a simple error you’ll find that Saddam Hussein also has two names instead of Osama bin Laden’s customarily used three names (actually both have longer full names but never mind that.) Osama bin Laden is a radical Wahabist whereas Saddam Hussein was an Arab nationalist ?” “how could the two be confused?” you might ask! And, whatever else you might think about Dick Cheney, most of us don’t deny the man is very smart so your other special pleading and argument from incredulity “It’s hard to imagine a mind as collected and sharp as X’s… ” also fails.
As for your, I think, rather snide “That Omar Sheikh had merely killed a reporter would not have made such a strong point”, as mere as Daniel Pearl’s murder was to you, it was still a massive story. The deaths of journalists are very often big news stories.
Actually, one thing Benazir Bhutto gets wrong in the interview is that she says Omar Sheikh had killed some British and American tourists by beheading them. This is not true, they were never killed. He was only convicted of kidnapping them.
There is a chapter in Jason Burke’s book “Al Qaeda” (chapter 6 “Militants”) in which some of his story is told.
The story around Omar Sheikh is very mysterious and probably explains her fear that some people in Pakistan’s security services are highly untrustworthy. I think I may have mistaken the retired officer she was talking about. It could instead have been Ijaz Shah (though she does think of Hamid Gul as being a co-conspirator). Ijaz Shah (or Ejaz Shah) was the investigating officer into the Daniel Pearl murder and Omar Sheikh had turned himself in to Shah saying that Daniel Pearl was already dead. A week later, while Omar Sheikh was still in custody, President Musharraf had said he expected Daniel Pearl would turn up alive. Shah appears to have kept Musharraf out of the loop. If you can find it in the library there is an interesting discussion of this in Ahmed Rashid’s Descent Into Chaos (pp.151-154). Musharraf, for his part, has made a string of claims that Omar Sheikh was with Indian intelligence or with MI6.
It’s also not completely certain that Omar Sheikh was the actual killer of Daniel Pearl either. It is pretty clear he was involved in the kidnapping, but Khaled Sheikh Mohammed has claimed responsibility for the killing. He was tortured of course, so the confession is hardly reliable:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/13/070813fa_fact_mayer?printable=true
“Angry, I know you don’t subscribe to the former and thus have no need of the latter but since you were seemingly willing to entertain, at least temporarily, the hypothesis that the bin Laden videos were false I presumed you were thereby flirting with the troof to see what it felt like. Felt good huh? 🙂
And anyway, if bin Laden is shooting them how come he can’t afford a decent video camera?”
Ha ha! Yes, King of Welsh Noir, it is a bit fun to engage in conspiracism and that, I think, is one of its attractions. But I think Clark has said it best here:
“There is NO point basing our anti-war arguments upon fictions, we will undermine our own position.”
angrysoba at September 5, 2010 7:34 AM
I don’t think this guy is widely read, I think he’s widely briefed.
————————————
As for bin Laden being dead, as far as I know it’s not all based on Benazir Bhutto making a mistake in her interview with Frost. There have been various reports from various sources (Taliban?) and didn’t one guy say he knows where his grave is? I’m not going Googling, the references are on the net.
As for Angry’s assertion that “the view is not one that is common in the mainstream press”, I wonder what mainstream press he’s referring to. I suspect he’d talking about the USA (which wouldn’t be surprising). I already pointed out that Jon Snow of Channel 4 News has stated that he has believed him dead for quite some time. Is Jon Snow better informed than Angry? I would imagine so – unless Angry is being ‘informed’ from elsewhere of course.
“Have a good kip. Or rather, sleep on it.”–Jaded
I’m one of those people who cringes when she sees “turnip’s” for sale in the local shop. I’ve been looking at your full stop for ages, and wondering what it signified (if anything). But never mind, I’m not on a crusade about punctuation – I was just momentarily curious.
“And people are taking me to task for insulting their envoys on Craig Murray’s blog?”
No, I think Angry is a right slippery character, and his arguments always lead to the same conclusion: whatever the government said is correct. And boy, does he put in his time here. Why? And what’s his blog all about? It looks like padding to me. And hasn’t he just recently stopped linking to it with his name? Why is that I wonder?
“by saying the worst thing about me is that you associate me with Tom and Larry”–Angry
Why wouldn’t he? You were always chortling along with Larry on the 9/11 thread, egging each other on, and who brought Tomk here only you?
“it is a bit fun to engage in conspiracism”
So that’s what you’re at then.
Thanks, Alfred (or ‘Me’!), angrysoba and Clark. Angrysoba, yes it seems incredibly murky, doesn’t it, the ISI, etc. Thanks for the book recommendations. Another good one is ‘Military Inc., by Ayesha Siddiqui. Like Craig Murray, she knows what she’s talking about, having worked within the system.
http://www.amazon.com/Military-Inc-Inside-Pakistans-Economy/dp/0745325459
Clark,
You were right about it being one browser. The temp goes up, the fan goes crazy, and the CPU is very high, but only when I visit here with one particular browser. The others are fine. [“Speedfan” is a handy little yoke.]
I suspect that Jaded’s full-stop is a subtle sign that Jaded is working for the Finality School of Iteration, a shady group said to have been put together by one of the cardinals in the court of Pope Gregory IV and rumoured later to have re-located to a wind-blown isle off the west coast of Scotland. Their acolytes are disseminated throughout society and always use full-tops in unexpected places. It is the sign. Beware.
Jaded, come clean now, you are Gregory’s girl, no?
(!!!)
Richard, life is indeed a bowl of All Bran, as Stanley Unwin, Mad John, Rene and the Fly knew all too well. ‘Ogden’s Nutgone Flake’. Fantastic album.
‘Song of a Baker’ had a Sufi inspiration.