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.
glenn – “could move in to protect them”. Yes, that’s a worrying thought. I don’t think their equivalents in Iraq always got the best of help, did they ?
Tora Bora James Bond, yeah, maybe. I think I just find it hard to believe that a) a saudi ex-construction squillionaire with a personal dialysis machine ever finds himself utterly penniless, or b) that if he’s dead nobody else got their hands on any of it.
and, yes, as angrysoba points out, there are other interested parties too.
“What kind of sophistication is needed to download the Wikileaks files? Someone in ISI must have a computer.”
Of course, Angry. But sifting through raw intelligence requires a heck of a lot more than that (your shifting from AQ to Pakistan intelligence notwithstanding). These are basic reports, not the collated and cross-referenced documents that easily point to this or that person being collaborators, if you will.
On the other hand, we (being the US/UK/UN) will already have this information processed long since, and will surely know what it meant, and the context therein.
Are you seriously suggesting that grabbing this mass of unprocessed raw-intel info will allow AQ/ Taliban types to get the jump on us in protecting our helpers? Or are you just making mischief, as is your wont?
Glenn,
Re: But Alfred… surely if there was no accusation of deviancy, that too could have been construed as making us continue to think as we were meant to think (about Assange)? i.e., no accusation – Assange is a decent fellow, as we thought. But if there are accusations – well, it has to be a smear! It would work either way.”
Thus far I agree with you.
but when you say,
“The operation was a bit too smooth to be anything but the standard practice fairly incompetent smear tactics (as with Scott Ritter, Craig Murray, etc.). By too smooth, I mean too smooth for a “false-flag” smear operation.)”
I don’t follow. Why was the operation “too smoothe”. There was really nothing to it except Assange having sex with two women within 24 to 48 hours. I think Assange would be capable of that, and he does not deny it. He merely said that he did not have “non-consensual sex”, which is true according to his accusers!
The whole thing’s a joke.
You say, “atrocities already well documented are very valid and of course perfectly true, however, such documentation does not show the unalloyed glee with which the military thugs go about their business. ”
But Glenn, the glee with which military atrocities are celebrated has been shown on the Web, almost certainly many times. Recall that U-Tube vid of a missile strike, with commentary by a bunch of soldiers? Sorry I don’t have the link, but I’ll post it if I find it. The commentary was blood curdling.
You say, “That is not the way the proud and glorious heros, to whom it is almost obligatory to say, “Thank you for your service”, want to be regarded when returning to the US, having supposedly just rescued it from the savage hordes at the final hour.”
But a lot of those fighting for the US in Iraq are psychopaths, like the Black and Tans the British sent to Ireland at the beginning of the last century — and still remembered bitterly when I was in Ireland in the 1960’s (that’s where I was Suhayl, often under a bush sleeping off a surfeit of Guinness). And many of the contractors (100,000 of them in Iraq today versus 50,000 US soldiers) are not Americans althought they will gain citizenship in return for serving the US in Iraq. What their morality is one can only speculate, but many are probably criminals who find serving the US millitary an avenue back into society without jail time.
Re: “For “fake window dressing”, it certainly “, I’m not sure I follow and sorry I don’t have time to study the cause of confusion. But it was never my intention to suggest that the helicoper murders video was anything but genuine. What I would say, however, is that if you are setting up a fake leak site you have to give it authenticity, and the helicopter murders video provided that very effectively (irf, and this is as we agree all hypothetical, Wikileaks is not what it seems).
You ask “What sort of whistle-blowers do you think the Wikileaks alleged cover organisation wants to flush out? Is there anything worse than just material examples of what we already know…”
One can postulate many things about Wikileaks. One is that it aims to intercept information that would let the public realize that the war is a far more criminal enterprise than most now realize. For example, before the seige of Fallujah, I heard an American intellectual, I’m sorry I forget the name, speaking regretfully of the fact that when the British occupied Baghdad in the 20’s they were free to kill a hundred thousand people, i.e., that’s what they did. Now supposing Rumsfeld or someone hasd written a memo saying we really need to crush the Iraqi nationalists and the way to do so is kill as many people as we can — a hundred thousand, five hundred thousand, a million, I don’t care…”
Now that could lead to political instability in the us and perhaps a war crimes tribunal.
But everything I say about Assange is hypothetical, I don’t know the truth. But neither does clark! Or if he does, he is not what he says he is.
Thankws for your encouraging comment. I’d almost reached the conclusion that I should leave before I was voted off the island.
Cheers
“Are you seriously suggesting that grabbing this mass of unprocessed raw-intel info will allow AQ/ Taliban types to get the jump on us in protecting our helpers?”
Sure. The newspapers can read the reports so why can’t the Taliban. And if people are named in the reports or the location of the people is clear to the Taliban then why wouldn’t they be able to identify the people who have been assisting the ISAF?
Is this just more spurious special pleading from you?
“I’d almost reached the conclusion that I should leave before I was voted off the island.”
Well, you’ve already left for good a number of times. You still find your way back, though.
And if you feared getting kicked off the island maybe you have yourself to blame for making proggressively more ludicrous claims each time you post. Now, you’re suspecting Clark of being an intelligence asset! Ha ha!
“But everything I say about Assange is hypothetical, I don’t know the truth. But neither does clark! Or if he does, he is not what he says he is.”
But isn’t this exactly what a smear is? It isn’t always an outright accusation but, in the case of Assange being able to associate him with rape without having to prove anything. The initial accusation is enough because in many people’s mind it will stick: “Isn’t he the bloke that raped them Swedish girls?” It doesn’t matter for him that the charges were dropped and yet now you and “TM” before you amuse yourselves by implying that Clark and Assange and intelligence assets.
Are you unhappy that Assange is actually doing something or, in your mind, would you rather a dissident be a big useless ball of fantasising paranoia?
Just Asking Questions…
Sigh… Angry, I take it you’ve decided to ignore my points above, in favour of the establishment line on the whole business. How entirely unlike you.
“Sigh… Angry, I take it you’ve decided to ignore my points above, in favour of the establishment line on the whole business. How entirely unlike you.”
Your points? They weren’t very clear. They seemed like some handwaving about how intelligence is much more complicated than I imagine. You didn’t exactly explain why and you didn’t explain what “we” could do about it you just suggested that “we” could make contingency plans to counter any intelligence the Taliban gleaned from the reports. All very vague and I doubt you have read all the reports so I have no idea how you can know what information the Taliban could possibly get from them. Without anything more than a half-hearted attempt you just suggest they wouldn’t even bother or couldn’t possibly find the reports useful.
So, have you read all the reports?
Do you have as much on the ground intel as the Taliban?
Do you know that members of the ISI are not helping the Taliban despite what Benazir Bhutto has explicitly said on a number of occasions and has been backed up by numerous journalists in Pakistan and also been confirmed by the London School of Economics (that famed school of neocons, eh?)?
Instead of arguing about whether the Afghan War Diaries contain material that endangers Afghans etc, maybe someone should go and read the leak and actually find out.
Alfred, there could be invisible fairies at the bottom of my garden, and you wouldn’t be able to disprove it. You keep focusing on *Assange’s* bona fides, but *WikiLeaks* is a small team. There is masses of material on their site that is hugely embarrassing to many different organisations. You don’t like the War Diaries, so suddenly you’re claiming that WikiLeaks *could* be a front. Cryptome.org have complained about WikiLeaks funding, but not about their authenticity. And I *really* think they would.
When you do something as important as the people that you’re besmirching, I’ll stop slagging you off. And if you think I’m not what I seem, well, you must know someone in the UK; put us in touch and they can check me out.
The significance of WikiLeaks over YouTube videos is that WikiLeaks is far more difficult for the Mainstream Media to ignore or dismiss. WikiLeaks have been criticised, on this thread I believe, for giving the War Diaries to Mainstream newspapers. But doing so forces those newspapers to acknowledge this information. They *can’t* say they didn’t know, or that their journalists can’t be expected to trawl through every video on YouTube.
There is also the matter of authenticity. The Collateral Murder video was decrypted from the US military’s own recording. It’s not something shot on a camcorder and possibly dubbed subsequently. It *proves* that US command knew what happened in the field.
alfred – “But everything I say about Assange is hypothetical, I don’t know the truth. But neither does clark! Or if he does, he is not what he says he is.”
angrysoba – “But isn’t this exactly what a smear is?”
What this is, is exactly what Alfred does. Time and again, he waves these things in peoples’ faces and then shows how he can deny responsibility for saying them.
” maybe someone should go and read the leak and actually find out”
Yeah, Clark, go to it: 70,000 documents, or is it over 100,000 with the second batch.
LOL, that’ll shut you up for a bit.
In the meantime, all anyone else will know is what the mainstream media tell them the leaks say.
“When you do something as important as the people that you’re besmirching…”
Do you really think the truth can be established merely by assertion — A person creating their own reality needs a psychiatrist.
Richard, go to bed. You make no sense.
Yes, I see that article to which I linked last night is disputed and is likely to be a fake, which is somewhat of a relief… at least, I think it’s a relief. Sorry, I should’ve checked properly.
Alfred, give my regards to the Hibernian bush!
Angrysoba, though I haven’t finished it yet, the ‘God’s Delusion’ book is excellent and is a very useful and enlightening for agnostics/atheists/people with doubts (which means a lot of people) and as you illustrate with your vignette, one can never discount the memetic (!) impact of such things.
Having said that, I don’t think the disclaimer was up on the site when I posted the link, otherwise I’d have seen it since it’s right at the top of the requisite page. Just illustrates how much disinformation and sheer nonsense there is out there. It must be difficult for websites to know. The waters are muddy from the surfeit of ‘information’; a product of our hyper-connected age and the facility for anyone to type-up something and post it under the name of an academic/other respected person. In more ways than one, then, identity itself has become a commodity, a moveable asset. In this morass, where is truth?
“Here’s the full article by Professor Kushner, who also wrote what looks like a fascinating book:
http://wikispooks.com/wiki/Document:Israel_v_the_United_States_and_Iran
I hope he’s not correct. The scenario he posits is monstrous.”
What does it matter that the article is a hoax. I mean, who the hell is Professor Kushner, and why would it matter whether he wrote it?
It’s a silly collection of paragraphs without any citations or even an attempt to document its claims.
It doesn’t illustrate just how much “disinformation” is out there – but it does demonstrate what sort of person will fall for absolute faith-based crap because he or she really wants to believe it.
I thought you were smarter than that, Suhayl. You’d fall for anything.
Suhayl Saadi,
Mark Golding,
looking at the timings of the posts, it seems very likely that the discovery that “Kushner’s” article was actually fake was posted shortly after you’d looked at the article.
“it seems very likely that the discovery that “Kushner’s” article was actually fake was posted shortly after you’d looked at the article”
–Clark
Looks like it was uploaded AND edited by “Peter”
http://wikispooks.com/wiki/User:Peter
and is he Sabretache, who posts here or used to?? See bottom of the User page. There’s a link to
http://sabretache.blogspot.com/
Mark said above
“Suhayl, did you notice the derivation is contested by Kushner”
at September 7, 2010 10:52 PM
(Who’d be Kushner eh? Being impersonated on the web.)
“The Collateral Murder video was decrypted”
That was the word. I wrote ‘unencrypted’. Grrrr …
You can tell I’m no spook.
Dreoilin,
well spotted.
I’ve been looking around the WikiLeaks site. I can see why it is such a disappointment to single-minded conspiracy theorists. Mostly it exposes the all pervasive influence of money and lobbying upon various decision making processes. There is plenty that illuminates the self sustaining nature of the military-industrial complex. But I’ve found one particularly juicy article so far, which includes hydrogen peroxide, uranium, thorium, lithium metal, thermite, aluminum powder, and beryllium:
http://www.sunshinepress.org/wiki/The_%22dirty_bomb%22_that_disappeared
On WikiLeaks, that well known CIA front, we find the following:
The CIA: Drugs & Thugs International
As noted above, U.S. destabilization programs and covert operations rely on far-flung networks of far-right provocateurs and drug lords (often interchangeable players) to facilitate the dirty work for U.S. policy elites and American multinational corporations. Throughout its Balkan adventure the CIA made liberal use of these preexisting narcotics networks to arm the KLA and provide them with targets. In their public pronouncements and analyses however, nary a harsh word is spoken.
911 conspiracy theorists might like to pore over the six reports from the 9/11 Commission to Congress that wouldn’t have see public exposure but for that well known hoax, WikiLeaks, available by doing a search on “9,11” (please include the comma) on this page:
http://www.sunshinepress.org/wiki/Category:Congressional_Research_Service
The more I look around the WikiLeaks site, the more obvious it becomes that the various intelligence agencies set it up to give themselves much needed and deserved publicity and public exposure. As a spook myself, I can tell you that it’s a thankless task, influencing international politics all day behind the scenes while the idiot ‘elected representatives’ hog all the limelight, so I’m eternally grateful to Assange, and I would never dream of having him accused of rape.
PUBLIC MEETING: AFGHANISTAN – TIME TO GO
WEDNESDAY 8 SEPTEMBER 7PM
HOUSE OF COMMONS (RIGHTSIDE ENTRANCE):
Speakers include CAROLINE LUCAS MP, JEREMY CORBYN MP, PAUL FLYNN MP, JOAN
HUMPHRIES (Military Families)
(Tony McNulty’s doppelganger)
‘Guests invited to a party at the Tate Modern art gallery in central London to celebrate the publication of the former prime minister’s autobiography, A Journey, have been told that it has been postponed, a spokeswoman for Blair’s publishers, Random House, said.’
http://tinyurl.com/2ucod5o
(Guardian)
That Onion parody of a report of a “Truthers monument” is very good. It might make a good April Fool joke.
Dreoilin: “Yep, we’re all in the same ward, drooling into our porridge and talking conspiracies.” D, I would never accuse you of such bad table manners. Besides, you might prefer soda bread for all I know.
The 9/11 commission reports tell me this:
The US is willing to spend $5.6 billion promoting the ‘American brand’ in Pakistan but when it comes to flood relief we witness a s-l-o-w $50 million relief aid when 14 million Pakistanis are now without homes.
Ahh sorry – hegemony and US bases are more important than famine, disease and displacement. Past history confirms only £60 million of a promised $150 million has been available in Iraq to directly help the 4 million Iraqi families displaced by an illegal war.
Figures!
Abe: Interestingly ‘conspiracy’ is synonymous with ‘coalition’ i.e. ‘coalition’ of the willing – yes you’re right – a ‘truthers’ monument will be erected in 2012 – students in MK College are planning the event – it will represent a triumph over deception.
at September 8, 2010 2:41 PM: Are you talking about Milton Keynes College? If so, I would advise your students to study books such as David Aaronovitch’s “Voodoo Histories” and Patrick Moore’s “Can you speak Venusian?”. Organise proper debates or discussions about such matters, and beware of weird conspiracy theories in general.
Instead of reading Voodoo Histories, why not read the words of John Farmer the senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission who claimed that what the public and media were told by military and government officials ‘was almost entirely, and inexplicably, untrue.’
Since he wrote the canonical 9/11 Commission report, it follows that the official account is based on lies.
As for Aaronovitch, wasn’t he the sage who said if the WMD didn’t show up he would never believe a word the government said ever again?
“As noted above, U.S. destabilization programs and covert operations rely on far-flung networks of far-right provocateurs and drug lords (often interchangeable players) to facilitate the dirty work for U.S. policy elites and American multinational corporations. Throughout its Balkan adventure the CIA made liberal use of these preexisting narcotics networks to arm the KLA and provide them with targets. In their public pronouncements and analyses however, nary a harsh word is spoken. ”
This is rather mundane stuff that’s been kicking around for years. And it comes with no documentation or sources. Quite useless, in other words.
And anyhow, the piece, which is by Tom Burghardt (posted on the blog “Antifascist Calling” on December 7, 2008) appears multiple times on the Web, including, purportedly, on Professor Michel Chossudovsky’s site “GlobalResearch.ca” (see reference at http://waronyou.com/forums/index.php?action=printpage;topic=4180.0), although if GlobalResearch.ca did publish it, they have since thought better of it and removed it from their site
So from this item, Clark, it seems that Wikileaks is just padding out its archive with miscellaneous crap scooped from the Web.
But anyway, good lad, keep looking. Doing research is better than worrying about those faeries at the bottom of your garden, and who knows, you may find something important on Wikileaks that we didn’t already know (those of us who already knew something).