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.
“NOT forgetting that while bin Laden is on the FBI’s “most wanted” list, when they were asked why he wasn’t listed for 9/11 (FOI request?) they replied that they ‘didn’t have enough evidence’.”
NO! It was not a Freedom of Information request. It was some bloke who phoned up the FBI to ask them. The State Department, however, do want him:
http://www.rewardsforjustice.net/index.cfm?page=Bin_Laden&language=english
The whole “Bin-Laden-Isn’t-Wanted-for-9/11-On-The-FBI’s-Most-Wanted-List therefore he isn’t responsible” meme is just silly.
The escape of OBL from American forces:
http://www.topdog04.com/000781.html
TM, you’re back! How’s BC? Is there much panspermia going on there? Do the outlaw motorcycle gangs carry life in their machines?
Angrysoba, it is interesting that you have declared yourself a social democrat. I’d like very much to hear more on such matters. Give us your world-view, man!
“The whole “Bin-Laden-Isn’t-Wanted-for-9/11-On-The-FBI’s-Most-Wanted-List therefore he isn’t responsible” meme is just silly.”
Why, then, don’t they cite him on their most wanted list?
“Angrysoba, it is interesting that you have declared yourself a social democrat. I’d like very much to hear more on such matters. Give us your world-view, man! ”
Oh God, don’t.
Is it impossible to keep things even remotely related to the topic of this thread?
Or is this Suhayl Saadi’s personal web site, where he can encourage anyone to expand on anything whatsoever, however tedious?
OK, Suhayl, you were here first, yet I am the first to object to Avatar Singh is again calling for genocide against the English.
Craig Murray’s Web admin should check to see where Avatar Singh’s IP address is located. If it is in the UK, then Singh’s comments are, among other things, treasonous, I should think. And if they are, anyone aware of it who fails to report it to the proper authority is guilty of the crime of misprision of treason.
That aside, Singh’s comments are mostly nuts. The idea that Britain rules the world is certainly absurd: Britain is simply a fascist hyena, to use outdated terminology, or a running dog of US imperialism.
“The modus operandi of english is by propaganda and spying through british media-paper, bbc and television”
The BBC plays it’s part, a rather minor one, in pushing imperialist propaganda, but very few people outside Britain listen it.
“they have infiltrated american media and holly wood”
Bollocks. Hollywood wiped out Ealing Studios and most of the other British film makers, despite the fact that, unlike Hollywood, they employed actors who could act and directors who could direct.
And as for the Brits “taking jobs from real americans too” LOL. The Brits have as much unemployment and industrial decline as the Americans.
“They are real enemy of europe”
Nah, you got that wrong. Europe is the real enemy of Britain.
“Look ate how they destryed japansesw economy through manipulative stock market-while their market never crashes”
Never? LOL
“and their low life living in factory turned apartmnets-so ugly-”
Exactly, Britain is fast headed for the third world.
oh, the lurking bigots re-emerge. Grand piece, Suhayl.
Alfred (or am I talking to TM now?), I scanned avatar sngh’s post, as it seemed very similar to the previous one, I felt maybe he’d copied and pasted it again, so I didn’t really read it all. So be mellow, Alfred, think of all that panspermia and mushroomic thought…
I think the anonymous post was you as well, no?
Tedium is the facilitator of transcendental meditation.
Anyway, outlaw motorcycle gangs are fascinating. They deal in heroin, most of which comes from Afghanistan.
Discussions on threads can weave – they don’t need to be literalist. Thinking outside the box produces a live and dead cat, simultaneously as our friedn with the long name jested.
Think of Guinness and the Bush (not burning), Alfred, think of Guinness and the bush.
Thanks, technicolour. Thanks for your good vibes, ‘real’-ness and humanity.
Oh, Alfred, learning more of angrysoba’s views on the world is not tedious, in my view; he’s been a major contributor to this blog over the past however long (as have you, my good man). Sometimes one agrees, sometimes one disagrees, sometimes one agrees with qualifications; it’s the way of discourse. So, let’s hear from him on matters of the world.
Go on, angrysoba, sock it to us!
In matters rhetorical, psychological and virtual, the tangential is sometimes the most effective mechanism. it’s the overtones and resonances, man, it’s the echoes of things just beyond our grasp.
Alfred talks of treason. He should look to all those members of the Friends of Israel lobby groups within Parliament, within the EU and within the churches who ALL show allegiance and support to the Zionist state, a foreign power.
Qaark, so disingenuous at first, now so quickly opinionated. Has the transition left you feeling a little jaded?
dreoilin: so well said. thanks.
Jaded? Jaded? Qaark is your buddy, Jaded? Is that what you’re suggesting, technicolour? Or am I missing a pulsar here?
Oh yeah, I forgot to say that outlaw motorcycle gangs originated in California among some of the men who were demobbed from WW2; hence the ‘flying’ gear, the addiction to adrenaline, etc. They allegedly deal in many aspects of criminality, including arms and drugs. They are also extremely litiginous.
So, here we have a by-product of American militarism (one might argue) which reportedly is deeply enmeshed in weapons and drugs and which is almost always extremely right-wing and pro-imperialist.
The subject of the thread – though like a Biblical patriarch, as ingo rightly pointed out, the thread has begat many other subjects along the way – is Assange and Wikileaks and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and all associated with those voluminous and bloody subjects.
Heroin, guns, militarism, imperialism, tribalism – outlaw motorcycle gangs purportedly exemplify these things and so seem to me to be of deep relevance.
So, you see, an almost causal ‘knight’s move thought’ on my part – OBL and MO allegedly escaping on vicarious Afghan versions of ‘Harley-Davidsons’ across the wastelands of the frontier – leads back to another prong of the subject at hand.
One must first imagine that one is a cloud. See?
Angrysoba,
that page you linked to is quite interesting:
http://www.rewardsforjustice.net/index.cfm?page=Bin_Laden&language=english
Look at the actual charges. Osama bin Laden is wanted ‘in connection with’ 9/11; he’s only wanted ‘for’ the 1998 embassy bombings. The murder and conspiracy to murder charges are both for US nationals *outside* the USA.
I don’t want to start an argument here. It’s just that you’ve linked to that page before, but I’d never noticed those details.
TM,
thanks for the topdog04 link; interesting timeline.
All,
There’s some (ex?) US military high-ranking officer with a book about Osama bin Laden’s escape from Tora Bora. I browsed into that story accidentally a couple of days ago, but I can’t remember the details now. Someone please remind me.
Dreoilin: your mention of evidence reminds me that Bill Clinton said in an interview (after 9/11) that not taking UBL when the Sudanese had him in custody was the biggest mistake of his career – and the reason was that they didn’t have the evidence necessary.
Regarding whether democracy should be forced on others, I would say that the Taleban did not come to power as a result of democratic elections, nor did Ayatollah Khomeini. Having done so, women were the first to be enslaved.
My main complaint with Rumsfeld’s vision of a ‘tidal wave of democracy’ overwhelming all dictatorial regimes in the Islamic world, is not so much the idea as the execution. Bad planning, in a nutshell. Like binning a 900 page report written by the brightest and best in the State Department (too much brain food there for ex-wrestler Rumsfeld). Like sacking every ex-member of the Baath party and so adding many of them to the insurgents in Iraq. Not to mention general American egoism that led to UBL escaping – because, according to one newspaper report, British special forces found out where he was, but the Yanks muscled in as they wanted the prize, and while they dithered, he escaped. Also failing to take British advice thinking that this was the UK just trying to recapture colonial glory – something that even Prince Andrew complained about.
“Regarding whether democracy should be forced on others”
“Democracy” is the very definition of what can’t be forced on people. It’s when they have ways of making up their own minds without any fucker forcing them.
“OK, Suhayl, you were here first, yet I am the first to object to Avatar Singh”
Why is it that Suhayl, particularly, is supposed to apologise to Alfred every time avatar singh says something ? Aren’t they different people ?
Since we have abandoned relevance, and we have just passed the aniversary of 9/11, here’s a useful sumary of some 9/11 facts from Eric Margolis.
ME
“Democracy” is the very definition of what can’t be forced on people. It’s when they have ways of making up their own minds without any fucker forcing them.
Yes, that’s the general idea. It only falls over when you elect someone the US and their pals don’t like – such as Hamas.
The US dovernment might share common goals with Hizb u Tahrir. quoted by A Singh.
Indeed, part of CM’s brief when in the employ of Her Majesty, was to foster the racial tensions we later saw in Kurgistan. The principle target of Her Majesty’s aggression being the rise of Islam. Gonks of the world unite against the truth of Islam!
CM didn’t object to the part of his mission that could be considered as chess game manoeuvering against other superpowers. He objected to the cause of British Gonkery being weakened by open involvement in torture
I’m fed up with Mark Golding getting his knickers in a twist about an invasion of Iran. The Shi’a religion is not Islam. It is part of the Universal Gonk faith that opposes Islam.
The idea that Pakistan would defend Iran as a centre of the Islamic faith is ridiculous. They wouldn’t open their shawwal to pee on Iran’s attackers, let alone launch missiles against them.
The US seeks regime modification in Iran before re-arming Iraq as a Shi’a pseudo-chaliphate, whose function will be to intimidate the whole of Sunni Islam.
Israel is bored and scared of this task after 60 years. If you have a dog, why make yourself tired by barking.
The wealth of Iraq will be converted into an arsenal bigger than Saddam’s, and the infrastructure will start to be rebuilt under foreign and Iranian contractors.
The British Ambassador to Pakistan is Shi’a, and his mission is to forge links between the Gonks of Pakistan’s ruling elites and Iran. Unfortunately the aggression of Iraq and Afghanistan has exposed Her Majesty’s ruthless purpose:
which is to repeat the failed efforts of previous centuries of Inmperial domination all over the world to destroy the truth of Islam.
Hi, Mr Pyjama, just keep repeating the mantra that the US is not at war with Islam. Some of your own mugs might even go out and buy the tea cups and the tea shirts, but the rest of the world will never be deceived again about the real motives of the Gonk-world order.
You are living in a Gonk theme park dream, Mr O, if you think the world has failed to notice the relentless slaughter of Muslims in the last decade. Even Avatar Singh is tired by the rivers of blood being repeated again after the Uk is supposed to have left his continent 60 years ago.
I guess they calculated when they left that transport systems would improve sufficiently for them to return when and how they pleased. And then there is the British Muslim population to work and spy upon. Plus ca change, plus c’est les memes Gonques who continue to try to extinguish the light of Islam.
The Mail on Sunday have these two articles. The first reports on the paramedics who attended Dr Kelly and the other the total corruption of Blair.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1311255/Dr-David-Kellys-body-obviously-moved-Paramedic-death-scene-reveals-concerns-Hutton-Inquiry.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1311237/Special-investigation-How-Blair-rescued-Palestine-deal-worth-200m-2m-year-paymasters.html
‘Gonks’ – anno, that’s a new word for me – I like the sound of it!
Anonymous poster at 3:08am – yes, exactly.
It’s telling that people tend to see those reaching for hegemonic power on Planet Earth are doing so against their particular tribal grouping/ theology. My view is that those reaching for such power and continuing wealth are doing so for its own sake and that in the course of that quest will utilise anything, everything and everyone they can. So, they will utilise democratic protagonists, liberals, Islamists (of various groupings), fascists, leftists, populists…
Oh yes, and divide-and-rule, always. Sadly, those who can be divided-and-ruled never seem to cease to allow themselves to be so apportioned and so are condemned to remain relatively weak. Mediaeval western European propandistic (propagandistic, even in those times) concepts of uniting around a theological standard are misplaced and seem to em to be a sign of desperation, the longing for a ‘Magnificent Seven’ writ large, a dream of sleeping heroes.
Historical narrative (or pseudo-narratives) will be drawn into service as propaganda tools, as has always been the case.
The core aim is simply to perpetuate wealth and power.
Anno, I understand your point about the purpose of British diplomacy. However, I think that Craig’s actions represent a far deeper transfiguration than you suggest. There are many diplomats who argue in the manner you suggest for the purposes you suggest. But they do not openly take on the state/ the US-UK imperial war project, etc. and risk life, limb and financial security, reputation, the lot, for it. They do not generally become public figures opposing imperial wars of aggression. I think there is a fundamental difference between being disingenuous within the fabric of imperialism (‘How best to rule the world’) and coming out as a vehement opponent of the project, at least in its dominant manifestation. It’s not to say that someone will be a revolutionary – I don’t think CM has ever claimed that he was other than a liberal and a democrat (as we know that those words, esp. the first of them, both carry baggage which has not always been liberatory). But unless we need everybody to think and act identically and in the way we think and act, we have to accept that such movement , of necessity and by definition, must be broad ‘churches’, must have a ‘catholic’ ontology. This is the mistake which many fringe left-wing groups used to make, and it is why they used to splinter and it is why they failed. Dogmatism is the enemy of liberation!
With respect, who are you to state that “The Shi’a religion is not Islam”? Whether or not one believes in any form of deity, let us assume for the purposes of argument that one exists. Surely then, arguing from the theological point-of-view, it is the deity who would decide ‘what is, and is not Islam’. Furthermore, this constant obsession with narrow tribal exclusivity reminds one more of the mindset of the Inquisition or that of some of the more ‘extreme’ Presbyterian sects. It also, in my view, derives from a 1980s fixation – dependence – on the mores of identity politics. This is itself, in my view, a rubric of divide-and-rule.
Quite frankly, I don’t care what might, or might not, be this or that or the next thing. Bombing and invading a country in a war of aggression and killing millions of people is simply wrong.
Somebody, thanks for the links (and you managed to post two links in a single post!). So, re. the Kelly case, key documents, in both hard and digital form, go missing just before a possible inquest? The paramedic is very brave, coming out again like that, effectively taking-on the deep state. There is so much stench from all of this case, it threatens to pollute the very air we breathe.
Wait a minute, this has got to be a sick joke. Last week, people were joking that this is exactly what the authorities would say next. Reality is always stranger than fiction. So this is going to be the official explanation: “‘Ee zipped himself in, yer Honour. Honest.”
Yeah, right.
Ah, Stephen Milligan, the tangerine-man. How convenient. So one assassination (oh, sorry, I mean suicide) becomes the reference point for another. Brilliant!
“There were reports yesterday that Mr Williams’ family, upset at the slow progress of the police investigation into his death, want to commission their own post-mortem examination.”
Now let’s wait for all the usual supporters of official mendacity to begin to buttress this ‘theory’ with their manifold voices. Wait for it…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1311214/Detectives-believe-GCHQ-spys-death-sex-game-went-wrong.html
Btw, I like the photo of the two waitresses. Very fin de siecle Toulouse Lautrec. It seems a little inappropriate, given the circumstances, that they are grinning, presumably flattered by the sudden media attention. That’s a different issue, though.
Re Mail Online article about Gareth Williams, the coffe shop encounter is a sketch from ‘Bloody Hell, It’s Harry and Paul’ even down to the two girls being Polish. Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse I mean. The sports bag looks a bit small, I thought it would be more like ones you take skiing. A bit fishy.
‘The paramedic is very brave, coming out again like that, effectively taking-on the deep state.’
I agree.
The deep state’s got its back against the wall. I don’t know how it’s going to wriggle out of this one though I wonder if Dr Kelly’s family will be leant upon to stop a full inquest. From the comments I’ve read I would guess the majority of the population believe Dr Kelly was murdered by the state.
Goodle Russian to English translation of Cijeyli at September 12, 2010 4:17 AM:
How to iron a shirt from the mint tissue? [/ Url]
I would like to hear sovety.u we share the company in most cases, all the time dragged me to sit with someone from our “in house”, the sauna, in the park, the cafe, then somewhere else, but I like to communicate, but not every weekend? Tired. Husband 23, I 25. Even as it emerged from the student’s age (we are not together his university), when I brought this joy, now other interests. I’m afraid, in the case if nominated the claim, he would say – well, do not go, stay home. So I want to and he did not go, and spent time with my PPC. Thanks for the advice.
That must be a very secret message. Certainly I haven’t a clue what it might be about.
If you remember there was an episode of CSI (yes, okay, I know), in which a circus contortionist shut himself in a box in order to commit suicide by asphyxiation. So, are the authorities now going to follow the plot device of a TV drama in order to cover-up what really happened in the Gareth Williams case? Let’s see how this plays out.
http://wikispooks.com/wiki/Gareth_Williams#Speculation_1_-_The_Manhattan_11_connection.3F