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.
Alfred seems to have painted himself into the corner in which his soapbox stands, again. Now watch him paint himself a door in the adjacent wall, and escape through it…
(So I turned off js, and it didn’t Remember Me any more. *sob*)
My god, Suhayl, that language should be locked up as a threat to national security all by itself. It’s horrible.
“delivers an enhanced crime and counter terrorist ‘vigilance’ capability within the maritime environment”, forsooth ! And what on earth is a Highlands and Islands Portal, do they mean “the coast” ? It claims to be a journo site ? Cut-and-paste, more like.
“Suspicious Characters ?” People who are clearly not local and whose actions do not fit into the daily routine of the area”. Aye, that’ll be right. Do wonders for the tourism, it will. And I thought it was bad enough having to show a passport to get to Orkney. They’ll probably put the Air Force on full alert next time I visit Sutherland for the purpose of committing Tunes at ungodly hours.
Jaded,
you could also try turning off “Remember what I enter into forms […]” (or something similar), and possibly also “Profile Assistant” (in Internet Explorer). Basically, try turning off things that have to check through all your text as you enter it.
Clark – I’m on ‘iceweasel’, which seems to be debian’s compilation of FireFox (these cutesypoo names annoy me). I don’t get that with the refresh; I turned off js, and ^R still brings it back to where it was as before. but “Remember Me” breaks. Silly, it could have been done perfectly well without. *shrug*. flash – thinking about it, I usually run with that turned off, I wouldn’t have noticed things here that used it. By ‘work’, in this sort of context, I mean “present readable text”.
I love your “painting” image. It’s a cartoon show.
Richard Robinson,
oh yes, I forgot the “Remember Me” script function. Sorry… I suppose the other four scripts must do something, too.
I think the painting image came from the intro to The Rolf Harris Show.
Goodnight all!
jaded – it’s things going on on your machine that’re clogging it up then, yes. I don’t know how to guess what, but Clark & glenn’s suggestions would be the sort of things to try. “Turn stuff off”.
But. You do the same thing with other blogs in the same browser, and it doesn’t happen there, only this one ? That seems odd.
Can someone point me to towards a blog that uses the same software?
Alfred: To your post of 21/9, 18:59…
I’d say the “English” culture is as badly damaged by proselytising fundamentalist christianists as their counterparts on the Islamic front. (I should mention my lack of qualifications for surmising these points – being Welsh, and only having an English wife and living there for a mere decade, plus our media and language, to inform my notions). Christianists fill the airways via the establishment BBC, which will _always_ wheel out some religious crank of the CoE or Catholic bent to inform us what God wants, whenever matters such as assisted suicide, euthanasia, abortion, stem-cell research, contraception etc. etc. are aired, as if they had as much say as those who study the matters scientifically.
From the way the BBC and Radio-4 carries on (the latter being the heavyweight arm of radio broadcasting), we are a Christian nation of regular churchgoers, despite a single-digit percentage of regular churchgoers, and very few of them of them being of working age. The recent visit by the Nazi pope is a good case in point – every last news-cycle was headed up by that miserable hypocrite making some denouncement of British culture, warning us of the evils of secularism, or lying about our involvement in WW-II (it was for God and Christianity that we fought, apparently).
You say, “The result is a widespread belief that religion doesn’t matter. That religious disputes are simply silly.” You don’t agree with that viewpoint, but I’d argue that is very true – it doesn’t, and they are. But there is quite an understanding that religious nuts don’t see things that way, and that is well recognised as being a very serious problem.
Unfortunately, the seething masses tend to write off anyone of the Muslim faith or Arab/ middle-eastern origin as being “Pakis”, their religion scoffed at and every opportunity taken to ridicule and undermine them. That makes Muslims, understandably, take on a bunker mentality and the failure to integrate becomes even worse. Look at the gutter-press headlines on any day of the week, and the overwhelming impression is that we’re being taken over. Hostility and racism is pumped by 90% of the bought press.
Ask your average C-class person, and they would think Islam means wanting to cut the throats of infidels, or kill yourself trying. Not surprising, if one only reads the gutter-press. Very sadly, again, these are the very people with whom a lot of Indians, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Arabs etc. have the most frequent contact, because they provide the services that are required after a night of heavy drinking, and will quickly conclude that British people are foul-mouthed, stupid, drunken and greedy, and prone to racism and violence. This is particularly true for immigrants trying to establish themselves in Britain, taking the less skilled jobs (taxi driving, fast-food, restaurant work and so on). The impression is one that lasts in the community!
*
I disagree with your conclusion, that Islam is on course for a final victory in Europe. Rather, I think that secularism will eventually win out. Despite bending over backwards for faith schools, churches, all that Christianist hogwash that gets pushed down our throats, we’re beginning to see sense. Hardly anyone practices religion, most are indifferent or suspicious about it.
Immigrants might come with an enthused notion of their faith, but subsequent generations will – on the whole – find it less appealing. The Islamic faith only appears striking because it is at odds with a general and increasing air of secularism, the relatively new arrivals give a misleading appearance of a growing acceptance.
Of course, converts and zealots see it entirely differently – ask Anno or Avatar. A more typical person will say religion is irrelevant or more vigorously oppose it. Eventually, I think (and hope) Europe is where religions will die out, and science and reason will prosper.
“How do you explain tourism, Alfred? And the fact that most people, religious or not, are not killers? But we’ve been here before. ”
From which one is supposed to infer what, exactly? That I said all Muslims are natural born killers? If so, then Technicolor lies.
What I stated was that Muslims are people prepared to kill for their religion. There is nothing remarkable about that. When the Archbishop of Canterbury says it is right for Christians to kill, most English Christians will do just that: witness the action of British forces in two World Wars. Likewise, Muslims are faithful to their spiritual leaders, but more so.
But if I am wrong, let Anno and Russian Muslim correct me.
“””Re: “And, did this British Nation notice that there was anyone there already ?”
“You’ve raised this issue before, and I have responded to it.”
Not in any way that addresses your prescription about how everybody should stay in their ethnic homeland”
Obtuseness here abounds. The question “And, did this British Nation notice that there was anyone there already?” is not the question “[how do you] address your prescription about how everybody should stay in their ethnic homeland”
Furthermore, Richard Robinson’s statement embodies a lie. I have never stated, and would be a fool for stating, that “everybody should stay in their ethnic homeland.”
If a country allows one to enter, why should one not do so, if so inclined? But if 65% of the the citizens of a democratic country such as Britain, and 75% of the indigenous people of Britain, and 85% of the indigenous people of England where most immigrants to Britain live, and 95% of the indigenous people of a city such as Leicester, where the indigenous population are now a minority in their own home, wish an end to mass immigration, then I say that constitutes a case for government action.
Although my view is not the view of most people writing here, it is the view of most British people and should, if Britain is a democracy, be acted upon by the Government.
Clark, I like your idea of the painted door. Thanks for the tip. But I need more than a painted door to dodge the flack here. I don’t expect to be back.
Glenn, As always, your comment is civil, thoughtful and quite possibly correct.
I agree that Christianity is now a negligible force in Britain, a fact attributable at least in part to a church led mainly by secularists. The only spiritual content to Anglicanism seems to be of African origin. Bishop Tutu, I believe, is a truly great man and with leadership of that kind, Christianity in Britian could have had a future.
True, Britain’s rationalist tradition is against all religion. But rationalism is confined to a small minority of the population. And anyway, one doesn’t have to believe in God to be a Christian. Pasternak put the point brilliantly in the mouth of someone speaking with his nephew:
“What you don’t understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.”
Indeed, one may wonder if Jesus himself believed in God as, dying in agony, he uttered those most poignant words “my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
And can any competent theologian believe that Jesus even existed? Obviously, he was not the child born in a manger of a virgin, greeted by three kings guided by a star, the man who walked on water, turned water into wine, was betrayed, crucified and then rose from the dead and ascended unto heaven — that’s a mix of astrology and the story of earlier saviors — Mithras and many others.
But unmitigated secularism does not seem a viable option. Muggeridge, I believe, was correct in saying that when people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing, they believe in anything. So what next, voodoo, witchcraft, or just maybe, a return to God in the person of Allah — a disaster, in my view, because it would mean the eclipse of a wonderful civilization: the common law, the traditions of tolerance, individual liberty, freedom of speech, a system of representative democracy (essentially destroyed already by the party and lobby systems), and a brilliant artistic, literary, musical and architectural tradition.
None of that is to suggest an antangonism to Islam, but the Islamic state is for Muslims and I am not a Muslim, I don’t wish to be a Muslim and I would find it unbearable to live under the kind of theological despotism that constitutes an Islamic state.
Secularism in Britain is hard for me to distinguish from nihilism, and does not, therefore, seem to provide the basis for a viable civilization. Britain’s parlous economic condition, its pathetic efforts to “punch above our weight” militarily, the absence of credible political leadership, the craven subservience to Israel and the United States, all suggests a society in terminal decline.
So if Allah doesn’t pick up the pieces as Chrisendom turns to dust, what are the alternatives? Communism has failed, Facism of the marching, flag-waving variety is surely too much for Britons to swallow, so could it be Chinese secularism meliorated by Buddhism and Confucianism. The Chinse may soon be top dogs. There’s may be the way forward. Or is a revival of English (which includes the Welsh and even the Scots unless they insist on going their own way) civilization possible?
Cheers.
Alfred
“…a return to God in the person of Allah — a disaster, in my view, because it would mean the eclipse of a wonderful civilization: the common law, the traditions of tolerance, individual liberty, freedom of speech, a system of representative democracy (essentially destroyed already by the party and lobby systems), and a brilliant artistic, literary, musical and architectural tradition.” Alfred
Alfred, this invocation of a non-existent spectre sounds a little – a lot – like the apocalyptic mantras of His Esteemed Holiness, Guru Nicholas Griffin and his acolytes, disciples, apostles and evangels.
“Perhaps, then, to save London-I-mean-England-I-mean-Britain, Operation Kraken is the solution! Nessie is the beast, the symbol of Mahound, Tash and Baal. Even her shape in the water, 666, is redolent of that Luciferine arabesque.
Let us invoke the Narnian texts of Holy Joe C. S. Lewis and the Anglo-Saxon Middle Earthen scriptures of J.R.R Tolkien and let us take up our silver, elfin swords and our platinum spears (on discount from B and Q) and let us together, as though one (sleek, toned, but not morbidly obese) body, let us vanquish the swarthy ones who have been duped by the Evil One with false gods, alien-everything, greasy late-night kebabs and lascivious, veil’d goddesses.
Operation Kraken! Close off the portals of the Highlands and Islands (and rocks) to Nessie. Bomb Nessie! She is the Beast and must be destroyed. To save London-I-mean-England-I-mean-Britain-I-mean-Europe-I-mean-Christendom-I-mean-God’s-Eternal-Kingdom-shining-on-a-hill.”
Lone Englander, on thong and stone throne, pondering deeply upon the vagaries of destiny and the shapes of clouds.
“Despite bending over backwards for faith schools, churches, all that Christianist hogwash that gets pushed down our throats, we’re beginning to see sense …”
Why do you people have state-sponsored faith schools? Such things would not be tolerated in the States. Why are you people still so religious?
Craig –
You’ve probably already seen today’s article in the Guardian on Miliband / Foreign Office / torture?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2010/sep/21/mi6-consulted-david-miliband-interrogations
Suhayl
If sawwaf/ soof/ sufism ( arabic = wool hair ) is central to the Islamic faith, why is the only reference to it in the Qur’an about its ability to keep people warm.
The medieval English kings used to wear hair shirts to scratch them after they had committed many Tony Blair style sins. Are you recommending the same for CM contributors, to free themselves from all this pent up crusader sin?
Did they notice that there was somebody there before them? When Tony Blair went into Iraq, he assumed that the residents wouldn’t mind being killed in the course of regime change. The fact is that we had put Saddam in power, and the residents were thinking to themselves, ‘Oh dear, here we go again.’ And they are still thinking that in a short period of time, the existing tyrants and their Iraqi pimps will sell them on again, possibly to the Chinese when they squash the dollar into powder, one day soon.
goodness this is depressing. Alfred, it’s not working, and now you’re making new things up. Muslims are people prepared to kill for their religion, are they? (I see you’ve even moved away from the qualifier ‘truly religious’). Did you read the Koran quote?
‘If 95 percent’ indeed. Is that all you have, fantastic statistics? For the record, Leicester’s Muslim population, after decades of what opponents call unfettered immigration, currently stands at 2.97 per cent.
Climate change and war. These are the two causes of migration; not ‘Muslims’ or religion. But in the meantime, blame one small group and indulge in the kind of fearful slander so beloved of the far right, of course. You are yourself in an extreme minority, as you will see by looking at the risible BNP vote. Perhaps this is why you need to carry on like this.
Glenn,
thanks for your excellent post of September 22, 2010 2:50 AM.
Suhayl Saadi,
you make me laugh. Yes, this ridiculous fear-inducing, fear induced feedback process. One day, I hope, it will all be seen for the madness it is.
Alfred,
don’t go threatening to leave again, you have good contributions to make. But you obviously have a bee in your botnet about racial, religious and cultural conflict; my guess is that there is something frightening you. Worry not; human diversity will not die out. Look to evolution, Nature’s lesson. Never has it become the case that some species is so successful that it has eaten or displaced all others.
One day, the World will be one, with no borders that restrict movement of people – such borders are silly, they never did restrict pigeons – but still the diversity of people and cultures will prevail. The real threat to Nature’s diversity is not immigration, it’s the current mass extinction being caused by (mostly White) humans and our as yet primitively applied technology.
Technicolour,
you missed out ‘economics’. I find it remarkable that the same papers that tell us that it is good to have a strong currency also tell us that far too many people want to come to Britain. What do they expect?
Clark, generally agreed (and glenn, seconded too). But Alfred has a bee in his bonnet about ‘Muslims’ you know, not about immigration per se,
if you look at net levels of migration/immigration, the UK has got it levelled out. Not surprising, as it’s so hard to get here. All of this is just an excuse, you know.
Technicolour,
I was scared of Muslims when I was younger. It’s just an instinctive fear of ‘The Other’, and the more obviously different some group is, the stronger the stimulus for the fear. The behaviour it produces gets called ‘racism’ or whatever, and is treated as the primary problem, but really it’s an effect, not a cause. We can’t do anything about the cause except recognise the feelings within ourselves, because the feelings are instinctive, evolved.
Of course the Mainstream Media have a well developed talent for identifying instinctual urges and capitalising upon them. Round and round it goes, until a person wakes up to their (ancient, evolved) feelings, rather than the rationalisations that they have built around them.
I’m not sure it’s instinctive. Children are curious, not hostile. If they are brought up in a friendly multicultural society, or even in a cheerful and welcoming family, I doubt there is fear of the ‘other’?
That’s why extremists tend to run in families cf Nick Griffin. Give me the child before the age of seven etc. It’s training. Thankfully, one can learn and educate oneself out of it.
Children haven’t been noticeably scared of me in Muslim countries, for example, at least not more so than anywhere else 🙂
I think the reason I was scared was that there was just the one Muslim, the first I’d actually seen. Multiculturalism dilutes these fears, the ‘other’ becomes familiar. But I don’t think it works framed on a TV screen or a newspaper picture, especially on the news, as people tend to get on the news when there’s conflict involved, so the fear gets reinforced.
Fear also gets picked up unconsciously. My mum always taught me the equality of all peoples, but it was clear to me that she didn’t *feel* that way.
And yes, curiosity is instinctive, too. You see the same thing in cows. They’re curious, and like to come and look at strangers – if you sing to them it sometimes attracts them! But at a distance of about a couple of paces, fear becomes their stronger feeling, and they come no closer. The ones at the back push through to the front, but then shy away just the same.
Our feelings are not all aligned as if we were designed machines. For instance, all people have altruistic and competitive urges in varying degrees. These become expressed in the Left / Right ‘divide’, amongst other ways.
Clark, I have actually sung to cows :); a friend of mine used to play his guitar to sheep, with the same results (they particularly enjoyed flamenco, apparently) I think we are possibly unusual? But they’ve been trained from an early age to fear and be controlled by humans so it’s amazing their curiosity has survived (and their fighting spirit, quite often).
“Furthermore, Richard Robinson’s statement embodies a lie. I have never stated, and would be a fool for stating, that “everybody should stay in their ethnic homeland.”
Of course, you always phrase things so carefully … “Virtually all wars, are motivated by clan, tribal or national fears and rivalries. Therefore, the best way to ensure global stability is to guarantee the survival of all people in their traditional homelands”, for eaxample, doesn’t preclude their _also_ rampaging around the world swamping everyone else. Even if you did wring your hands explaining about how world stability would be better off for their doing the other thing.
“Children haven’t been noticeably scared of me in Muslim countries, for example, at least not more so than anywhere else :)”
I think it’s a very various thing.
I spent a bit of time in the early ’70s doing the ‘hippy traveller’ thing in Morocco (repetition alert, I think I told this story before ?). Not wishing to be brought down by materialistic concepts like “owning a watch”, I was persistently failing to get to the bus station in time (Fez. Mud walls, birds nesting. Beautiful); eventually I got so pissed off at missing busses that I just stomped off along the road out of town waving my thumb & asking for a lift, without much idea what might happen. What did happen was, every little village I stopped in, people were offering me a drink of water, a place to sleep … I must have been /way/ outside their comfort zone. The explanation seemed to be that they knew their beliefs obliged them to look after travellers. (ob-I’m male. Women who were there in that era may have had different experiences, even if the bit about the camels is a windup). In the course of that, I met a couple who had hitched from Tunisia, along the Algerian coast. They had not had such an enlivening time, what the people knew in the villages they went through was that people with fair hair are just /wrong/, and must be dealt with by throwing stones at them until they go away. (Explanations are subject to translation errors and uncertainty, of course, since I don’t speak the right languages. But the experiences are there anyway.)
What I mean is, children as just-born have very little except the ability to learn. Which they are _very_ good at, and do very quickly; from whatever’s around them. So, generalisations are difficult, unless you can be sure they’re all given exactly the same starting points to learn from. Which you can’t.
@ Ed
Craig – You’ve probably already seen today’s article in the Guardian on Miliband / Foreign Office / torture?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2010/sep/21/mi6-consulted-david-miliband-interrogations
I have just seen it. No surprise but still shocking. His hands are as soiled as Straw’s.