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.
Ah, Jesus. The Punch and Judy show missed a beat, but the new set of heads have found their voice now.
I wanna killfile.
At last a politician is saying something credible although I don’t believe the reason for the US blowing up its own landmark buildings was just to prop up Israel.
Isn’t it strange that we have to rely on our government’s enemies to bring home the truth.
“At last a politician is saying something credible although I don’t believe the reason for the US blowing up its own landmark buildings was just to prop up Israel.
Isn’t it strange that we have to rely on our government’s enemies to bring home the truth”
Nutter.
No wonder Craig can’t be arsed to write anymore. He’s clearly given up on you weirdoes.
Well at least you haven’t, eh Alan?
Hippy?
“Dr. Goebbels, is of course, best known as Hitler’s chief of “”cognitive infiltration.””
No, he is not, you blithering blustering buffoon!
Dr Goebbels, the poison dwarf, was Hitler’s chief of propaganda.
Mr Sunstein is a fine upstanding member of society who’s misguided about how effective cognitive infiltration could be as anyone who has ever tried to reason with paranoid people could tell you.
“The Punch and Judy show missed a beat, but the new set of heads have found their voice now.”
Don’t worry the baby’s in the very capable hands of the Rosicrucian Lesbian Zionist Collective. As long as the Ataturkian Freemasons don’t find out about it everything will be fine. Keep it under your Bilderberg Hats, please.
“Don’t worry the baby’s in the very capable hands of the Rosicrucian Lesbian Zionist Collective. As long as the Ataturkian Freemasons don’t find out about it everything will be fine”
It’s a cover-up. You’ve lost track of the crocodile, haven’t you ?
Heh glenn,
Why don’t you tell us why your stupid 911 Truth Movement has failed?
OK, I’ll give you Ahmadinejad, but isn’t he a human rights violator who denies the Holocaust and denies that there are gay people in Iran?
“Dr Goebbels, the poison dwarf, was Hitler ding United States Senators and Congressmen, senior military officers and many others who have openly stated they do not believe the 9/11 Commission report. Even the author’s of the 9/11 Commission Report have stated they do not believe the 9/11 Commission Report.
What is interesting is why people like Larry work unrelentingly to insult and ridicule those who suggest that 9/11 was not the work of 19 hijackers with box cutters, absurd though virtually all informed people consider that theory to be. It looks very much like an attempt at “choice architecture”.
“As was Goering, Sunstein is highly educated”
Goering/Goebbels… what’s the difference, eh?
A bit like Alfred/Lucretius.
“What is remarkable is the huge number of distinguished individuals including United States Senators and Congressmen, senior military officers and many others who have openly stated they do not believe the 9/11 Commission report.”
BWWWAAAHHHAAAAAA!
Btw, Craig Murray thinks you are a conspiraloon. Go back to the 911 thread. He called you idiots conspiraloons.
spotted, angrysoba!
May be Ahmadinejad is a human rights violator but let’s look at Bush and Blair and see how many people they’ve slaughtered and maimed both physically and mentally. Are we to believe Dr Kelly wasn’t murdered? Are we to believe that the state hasn’t been involved in conspiracy to torture? And also are we to believe that the state hasn’t incarcerated many innocent people to hide its theft of taxpayers’ money?
Larry, you appear to me to be nothing but a government hack.
May be Ahmadinejad is a human rights violator but let’s look at Bush and Blair and see how many people they’ve slaughtered and maimed both physically and mentally. Are we to believe Dr Kelly wasn’t murdered? Are we to believe that the state hasn’t been involved in conspiracy to torture? And also are we to believe that the state hasn’t incarcerated many innocent people to hide its theft of taxpayers’ money?
Larry, you appear to me to be nothing but a government hack who stays up night and day waiting to smear and twist the truth
Herve Leger
He’s paid Ruth, a sad affair when one has to sell one’s soul for lifestyle reasons.
I have studied the war on terrorism and it was better planned than the attack on Iraq and its subsequent destabilisation. What strikes me flat is that US decision makers are willing and able to act on books they regard to ‘show em’ the way’, a clear indication of the emptyness and lack of innovative thinking at the heart of Government.
It becomes open to suggestions from all sorts of vested interest and they have, not just during the last two decades. Whence the US military industrial complex and its bit players are able to influence the US towards war, they will, regardless of special relationships. Stooges like Blackwater and Israel are up for keeping tensions at the right level to intervene and come in as the bringer of freedom liberty and democracy, by force of the gun.
If there is oil to be had, any reason to spread violence and division for the next 50 years is welcome. 911’s protagonists were all known, project Bojinka was known for some time and the movements of suspects were reported and dismissed, waved off by people like Larry, it was planned and they let it happen, guilt by association, regardless of what ‘refurbishments’ went on throughout these three buildings.
The culminating event was the signature tune for the demise of the US. A longinthetooth dollar will be replaced soon with another currency, imho., the jitteries of the markets,the high gold price all is pointing towards it Steered or not, it shows us how inherently instabile and unsustainable the financial system really is, its hanging by a thread, just as a ghettoed society that has lost its will to care about the issues that matter to a globalised world and America. The war on terrorism will culminate in a larger war, thats their aim and we must do everything in our power to stop this mongering and self destruct from spreading.
looking forward to your book Ruth, sounds a cracker, but then Goebbels knew his stuff and the Larry’s of this world have all learned from the master of cognitive soothing and mind manipulation.
To state the obvious, I agree with Glenn, Richard and (in the past) others that I don’t see it as pleasant or useful to invoke the various perpetual and obvious trolls or to study them or to argue with them. I know it’s a temptation to do so, and that in this I have sometimes been the worst ‘offender’, but the best inoculation is silence.
Best to stick to the issues, whether for, against or in between.
Ruth, I’d be very eager to read your book – do let us know when it’s due out. And good luck with it. I’m not sure of the prudence of announcing it – given the presumed subject-matter – until it’s really due out imminently, though. Nonetheless, all the best with the project and with much admiration for your courage. Thanks.
Technicolour, this is why – on these specific issues – at one point I referred to anno and Alfred as two sides of the same coin. Both have often really excellent things to say about other matters, but both have intractable hobby-horses (as, to some extent, do we all, as you suggest, though unfortunately these particular equines appear impervious to rational, or even numinous, argumentation!). I am reminded of the haunting British film,’The Rocking-Horse Winner’, based on a D.H. Lawrence story, which starred, I think, John Mills.
A new Windows virus called Stuxnet seems to be targeted at Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor:
http://www.langner.com/en/
“…we can expect that something will blow up soon. Something big”.
The Bushehr reactor seems to be using a pirate copy of Windows:
http://www.upi.com/enl-win/b00bf188f7671cf2f939d18b1453852f/
This is extremely irresponsible.
Thomas Pynchon’s ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’ is set in World War II. Multinational conglomerates are selling the means to make weaponry (chemicals, explosives, industrial machinery) to both sides. Germany has a targeting problem with the V2 rockets – they need to know where they land. No problem; the companies that straddled the English Channel before the war started always have an employee in the right place to report back. Just doing his job. THIS is the Military Industrial Complex – it isn’t one country vs. another, it’s corporatism vs. The People.
Jaded,
you were asking for another blog with the same software (Movable Type) as this one. Remarkably, the security expert Bruce Schneier uses it for his blog – so maybe Moveable Type is not so bad after all! Here’s Schneier’s article on the Stuxnet virus:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/09/the_stuxnet_wor.html
Suhayl
Ancestry is irrelevant in Islam, but so is Sufism. I get frustrated with nonsense. When people talk about ‘ the market ‘ which has now let us all down, I satirize it with miracle Thatcher pee, When People talk about Shi’a Islam I satirize it with the term ‘ terrorist ‘ which the Zionists use against the Muslims.
Talking of Rumi, I was in Konya last month where there is a Sufi shrine, a museum which contains the tombs of many dervishes, whom their followers believe are still alive and able to transport their prayers to Allah. Every tomb has an enourmous hat wrapped in a scarf at its head, and many tourists do the rounds. Why don’t they move it down the coffin to save embarrassment by acting as a huge codpiece in case any beautiful Japanese ladies come round?
It is not a one-sided discussion. I don’t have time to engage in mutual admiration with fellow contributors, but I wouldn’t return to this blog day after day if I did not agree with much of what is said here, including you Suhayl. But I don’t like the lies which the West has placed in the public imagination about Islam, and I challenge errors if I can.
Sufism is categorically not any part of the Islam which was brought to us by our prophet, peace be upon him. But it is of course definitely part of what Islam has become. I don’t put myself above others in my thoughts or deeds, because I know that I myself am part of this degenerate religion. Just I state the obvious, that it needs reforming, and there is a promise of a generous reward for those who try to rectify Islam.
Okay, thanks, anno.
A couple of days ago I was watching the farce of the Quartet appearing at the UN, followed after a few seconds of newstime by Ahmedinajad, in the same room with the same officionados guiding him. Talk about American TV wrestling.
Blair was being given the big cold shoulder by Hillary Clinton. You could see her cursing under her breath, ‘ Don’t let me be seen within fifteen paces from him. Hasn’t anybody told him he’s yesterday’ man. Somebody in the morgue should have been paid to bury him, not keep on coming back to scare the punters with his glassy stare and uncomfortable mortuary grin.
This article:
http://frank.geekheim.de/?p=1189
argues that Stuxnet was an (Israeli?) attack upon Iranian uranium enrichment centrifuges at Natanz, rather than the Bushehr (or any) reactor.
Extremely irresponsible using Windows Grrrr! – process control should be Unix in my book.
The statement records, ‘License has expired’ Clark
“The Bushehr reactor seems to be using a pirate copy of Windows”
“OMG!!!, we’re a’ doomed”, etc. Also, via Wikipedia, a story that Siemens warn against changing the hardcoded passwords. And fingers pointing at the Russian contractors, with other examples … this is all quite insane, if true.
There’s a nice comment somewhere under Bruce Schneier – “Can anyone think of any other field of software where people would be saying, My god, this is so fiendishly clever and well written that it could only be the work of government employees ?”. Which strikes me as both funny and possibly pointful.
I saw this via warincontext.org, btw, you ? Worth a recommendation, if anyone’s not familiar with it.
Oh, and, Anno – thanks for what you say. There’s a bit upthread where I got bad-tempered and lumped you together with the various absolutists, I should take that back.
And now, there are things I should be doing …
Mark Golding,
the process control targeted by Stuxnet resides in PLC chips. The PLC chips are not part of Windows. However, they are programmed from Windows via a proprietary programming suite, and it is this that Stuxnet exploits.
Yes, the error message says the license has expired, so maybe the original copy wasn’t pirate – but Windows error messages are often subtly (or blatantly) misleading. I’m nonetheless astounded that Iran trusted the US software giant Microsoft for a mission-critical application like reactor monitoring! I suppose that complacency about software is very widespread. It’s highly ironic that the US DOD and the Iranian nuclear program have both been compromised by the use of Windows!