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.
Richard Robinson:”On the other hand, if we’re handing out gold stars for the positive bits, shouldn’t we also hand out black marks for the negative bits?”
Hey, I thought that’s what I was doing?
“The constant stream of people calling each other worthless is creating an environment where people behave worthlessly. And see how I’m at risk of turning into another of them, howling idiotically about how people are idiots.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90ELleCQvew
jeez, how can you live with someone for 20 years and not know what their ‘hygiene arrangements’ are? 🙂
otherwise, i think alan campbell’s somehow got access to the ‘random insult generator’. if this board wasn’t here for his pleasure and delight, what would he do with them?
angrysoba; i tend to believe that someone struggling, often painfully, for some kind of belief is more interesting than someone who is just plain bored and hateful. btw anno ended up calling shi’ite mullahs & their ‘terrorist’ followers names, not all Shias (eventually).
I regret writing those comments to Anno yesterday, my apologies. Guess I was kind of ticked off at being told what a degenerate, disgusting, filthy bunch we westerners are, and didn’t think about it too hard before hitting back in kind.
“angrysoba; i tend to believe that someone struggling, often painfully, for some kind of belief is more interesting than someone who is just plain bored and hateful. btw anno ended up calling shi’ite mullahs & their ‘terrorist’ followers names, not all Shias (eventually).”
I don’t know whether Anno eventually restricted his hatred towards mullahs and “terrorist” followers eventually, but he certainly referred to all Shias as “filthy” when I looked in for being terrorists and then tried to make some argument for how everyone killed in the glorious Sunni terrorist attacks in New York and Washington deserved it (or weren’t innocent). I did notice, however, that you especially rebuked him for his lunacy.
The point was that you and Clark would never have stood for it nor made apologies for someone who rattles off such bigoted and hateful nonsense were it not for some X factor ?” in this case Anno’s apparent Islamism.
But that’s not all.
It is quite possible that Anno is struggling, painfully, for a belief but if he is then he is someone to be pitied. Belief is not something you should have to struggle for. Belief is something that is largely involuntary. If I walk outside my house without an umbrella, before breakfast, while it is raining I don’t have much choice in whether I believe I am getting wet. Usually, the struggle to believe is a struggle against what you know to be true. So, someone may hear that their girlfriend is cheating on them and struggle, painfully, to believe it isn’t true. Yes, I suppose struggle for belief is interesting but the person doing so is pitiable.
yeah, he did take it back about all Shias – Sep 20th at 12.12 ish.
Clark, and everyone have ‘stood’ for Alfred (genocide in Leicester) too, among others. Anno will alter his more extreme positions, Alfred won’t. And the crazy anti-semites wouldn’t, either.
“Usually, the struggle to believe is a struggle against what you know to be true.”
Yes, I think you’re right. I also think the process of indoctrination into any ideology is a pitiable one. Still, what people will appear to believe quite easily, especially if they think it’s in their own selfish interests, never ceases to amaze me.
(coughs, goes off to overhaul/examine own beliefs rather hastily)
Angrysoba,
it isn’t to do with Islam. I understand some of the things that made Anno angry. Our corrupt politicians gave the banks free reign, plunging us into recession, and then bailed them out. Businesses folded. Hard workers were made unemployed, and then scorned as ‘lazy’. I hope that by extending sympathy, I may help to ameliorate the anger.
“Yes, I think you’re right. I also think the process of indoctrination into any ideology is a pitiable one. Still, what people will appear to believe quite easily, especially if they think it’s in their own selfish interests, never ceases to amaze me.”
Well, there is a certain truth to saying that people will sometimes happen to not notice what might be slightly inconvenient to their prejudices or deep-seated beliefs. But the struggle for belief is not simply a process of indoctrination but a process of self-indoctrination, if I understand you correctly, and that is a most pitiable fate. George Orwell wrote a famous essay on this:
http://orwell.ru/library/essays/nationalism/english/e_nat
“it isn’t to do with Islam. I understand some of the things that made Anno angry. Our corrupt politicians gave the banks free reign, plunging us into recession, and then bailed them out. Businesses folded. Hard workers were made unemployed, and then scorned as ‘lazy’. I hope that by extending sympathy, I may help to ameliorate the anger.”
Ermm… Clark, are you saying that Anno’s business folded because of the financial crisis?
Angrysoba,
I do not know. This is just the impression I’ve formed from some of Anno’s previous posts.
“I do not know. This is just the impression I’ve formed from some of Anno’s previous posts.”
Well, to be honest, recent economic news seems to me to be quite incidental to his banging on about “usurious Zionists”. It’s a very old, old topic.
Angrysoba,
it isn’t just recent economic news. I’m not sure of the definition of usury; my dictionary says something about “extortionate” interest charges. Well, the campaign to cancel third world debt has been going on all my life. The problem has just grown to include richer countries. On this, Anno is right. Thatcher and Reagan took the lid off finance. It just took a quarter century for the disaster to mature.
I don’t know what proportion of usurists are also Zionists. If Anno has evidence on this, I think that posting some links would be better than repeating this cliche.
Scary Tea Bagger:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbc064Uwax4&feature=related
angrysoba: thanks for the Orwell, much appreciated. Hadn’t read it for a while (what happens when one’s books are in storage). Not sure he is talking about quite the same thing, or at least, about Anno, though.
What I get from Anno is that he is a seeker: he is still trying to make sense of things. Because they are sononsensical he cannot, and so he is listening to other people who he hopes will stitch everything into one comprehensible template. In this he does resembles Orwell’s classifications; but Orwell sets everyone in concrete. People change. And of course he differs from steelback et al who are not trying to make sense of things: they are shitting on them.
Still, Orwell. “A nationalist is one who thinks solely, or mainly, in terms of competitive prestige”. And this is our society: look at the the annual GDP ‘league tables’. As dreoilin pointed out re Costa Rica, this is not at all the same as a ‘happiness index’. But then the power structures seem to have lost sight of that humble aim.
Did you see Nigel Farage lying about ‘city financiers’ on the tv on Sunday? According to him, bankers make wealth for the economy. This is an outright lie. They take interest, and many other charges as well. It doesn’t matter so much that they take it, as the fact that they have so much of it that they can tell governments what to do, even if it is directly opposed to the nation’s interest.
The selling off of government services did not remove power from the service providers. It transferred that power from voters, ordinary human beings, to global institutions. People seem to think that the absence of strikes preventing them getting to work is better than the presence of strikes by missiles and weapons of greater or lesser destruction, which make vast swathes of this earth hate our guts to the point of madness.
The prima facie evidence of Zionist involvement in government will-bending is the direction of malicious violence on Muslim countries, which even the former head of our intelligence services has ventured to suggest in total British understatement is detrimental to the security of this country. The ownership of vital nuclear, security and media services by Zionists, is vastly more threatening bto UK plc than a bunch of miners who wanted to earn more than £100 a week, because the Zionists are greedy and dangerous to others, while the miners were greedy and dangerous to themselves.
It’s a complete waste of time discussing all this with paid trolls like aNGRYSOBA and aLAN cAMEL. Their job is to argue the completely insular case that what this country does to other people is completely harmless to us and slightly beneficial. Nobody with a gram of commonsense agrees with them. The job of the trolls in the UK and US is to flounce Zionist-blackmailed violence by the state as macho and sexy, when it is in fact outrageous and suicidal.
Zionists don’t care if our victims and our crimes return to attack us, because they have an alibi: We were only helping, by manufacturing money and warning you about the terror threats ( that we created ).
If the people of this country can swallow Mrs Thatcher, hook, line and sinker, and still cannot get the barb out of their throats, 30 years later, then honestly I’d rather be somewhere else. Let them put their money where their troll-wide-boy lying mouths are and send me a one way ticket to almost anywhere else.
Again anno you make some interesting points. I remember a survey about how much wealth bankers contributed versus careworkers. The careworkers won hands down.
But then you whiffle on about ‘Zionists’ as though repeating this word was some kind of magical solution. It is not. Just as Hitler blaming ‘the Jews’ was no solution to anything. What are *you* doing to help people in this? What are *you* doing?
btw I am fed up with people calling angrysoba a ‘paid troll’. Deal with his points, which are made well, please.
It’s obvious that Linda Norgrove was about to do a Lady Di or an Yvonne Ridley and give an unwelcome propaganda boost to the so-called enemy in Afghanistan.
Even the fucking yanks can see that sending in a drone might have been counter-productive. So they flew in by stealth and chucked in a hand-grenade.
Vomit-choking crocodile tears from wILLIAM hAGUE that he might have intitially released water-muddying, wrong information. Blair-stretching insincerity and ought to be shot at dawn for an unbelievably unconvincing performance.
Are we going to have to live for years on years with strings of ex-party leaders from the ranks of disgraced New Labour? As well as tory blanks?
“Are we going to have to live for years on years with strings of ex-party leaders from the ranks of disgraced New Labour? As well as tory blanks?”
look like it, yep. Plus ca change…
“Clark, and everyone have ‘stood’ for Alfred (genocide in Leicester) too”
I’m sorry ? Did you mean ‘against’ ?
Technicolour and your Ilk
Why was it so glaringly obvious that closing down British industry was a good thing? Quite a lot of coal gets burned in China I believe. Why is it so glaringly obvious to those who detest the religion of Islam that trillions of our nations resources should be spent victimising British Muslims and assassinating others abroad?
aNGRYSOBA’s points are only well-made to those who detest Islam with every fibre of their being. Those who prosper under tyrants are definitely deranged themselves.
I can understand atheism or agnosticism, but I still don’t understand why that justifies the atheist/agnostic fundamentalist/ state violence against the innocent aqdherents of Islam. The case for atheist fundamentalist state violence which you people would like to promote under a smokescreen of political correctness cannot be made in public, because it is more outrageous than Nazism or Stalinism. But your agents and allies whom you have financed with the country’s wealth, continously fight your cause, without openly admitting anything.
Blackmail on governments and leverage of raw economic power is wielded on behalf of the enemies of Allah’s religion, by the Zionist bankers because you are mostly spineless shite.
‘stood’ for: as in, put up with, engaged with.
anno are you so blind? i had these conversations at the time of the attacks. this was not a war on ‘islam’. this was a cynical corporate take over: oil and gas and geopolitical land grabs. reduce it to religion if you want; it doesn’t change it. but in doing so you play the corporate game; well done.
and don’t you ‘ilk’ me. I have travelled. People who happen to be Muslim happen to be my friends.
as for ‘prospering’ that’s a joke you are not qualified to make, or justified in making.
technicolour – “‘stood’ for: as in, put up with, engaged with”
This gives (me) the impression that those who entered into discussion with Alfred were accepting his statements. If you review the various discussions, I think you’ll see that those who attempted to engage with him were, by and large, trying to present rational arguments for why his points were distasteful, dishonestly argued, and generally wrong. Why, in fact, they were _not_ putting up with them.
yes, of course. i mean, i was there. what i meant, although I was obviously putting it badly, was that no-one was saying ‘i will not even listen to your point of view’. people were listening to, or reading, it and challenging it. angrysoba seemed to be suggesting that anno was some kind of special case because no-one was condemning him out of hand. he is not. that’s all.
er, richard robinson, why don’t you remember those discussions? they are engraved on my mind, for sure.
“the case for atheist fundamentalist state violence which you people would like to promote under a smokescreen of political correctness cannot be made in public, because it is more outrageous than Nazism or Stalinism. ”
“you people”. Nice one, anno. I guess you don’t know how hard I, and ‘people like me’, tried to oppose these attacks. Assuming that I/we did nothing, or even supported them, given that 70 percent of the country was opposed too, is rewriting history, to suit your extremism and is very sad.
What did you do, against the attacks, precisely? Anything as brave or as law-changing as the B52 two, for example?
“er, richard robinson, why don’t you remember those discussions?”
I do. Oh, I do … thanks for the clarification at 11:04. It’s what I thought you must have been meaning, but couldn’t see how to get there, I was taking the opposite sense from “stood for”. I see what you mean now.
I still remember the startled feeling of “Oh, _that’s where the phrase came from” when I heard a bitch being described as far enough in heat that she’d stand for the dog … which may help explain my reaction to it in this context ?
I’m getting twitchy, I’m sorry. You were making a good point before I got in the way, carry on …
Here’s a story that I came across earlier today :-
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03E6DB1E38F930A25757C0A9629C8B63
A bunch of baboons take a chance to make themselves a social set-up that suits the majority better than the usual arrangement. I find this really heartening.
Anno… you might feel a bit put upon when you get a bunch of replies at once, all disagreeing with you. Don’t feel put upon. It’s just a bunch of people defending themselves, after you figuratively walked into a room and hurled a bunch of unkind assumptions and insults at the occupants.
You mentioned atheists, and asked why that justified aggression toward Muslim states. Good Lord, man, are you serious? I know personally only a single person in the UK who thought invading Iraq was a good thing, and he only believes that because he doesn’t follow the news much at all, and considered, “Saddam Hussein is a very bad dictator, and we had to put a stop to him!” – that’s all there is to it, as far as he’s concerned. (He’s a sort-of Christian, btw.) Nothing to do with hating Muslims, note – he thinks we were doing Iraqis a favour.
Everyone else I know – indeed every single atheist without exception that I’m aware of apart from Peter Hitchens (and maybe that turncoat bastard Nick Cohen) – was profoundly against the war. The idea atheists would want to cause harm to Muslims or any other group as an idealogical aim, is ludicrous, Anno – seriously.
Look at the British Humanist Association, or the National Secular Society, or the US-based FFRF (Freedom From Religion Foundation), or scores of other atheist institutions – all were 100% against these wars. You should have heard Mike Malloy on the subject – in fact, you should listen to him anyway now.
We atheists have “agents” that we’re financing, to do all this war-mongering for us? Seriously?? Jewish ones no doubt. Come on, do me a favour. Instead of throwing around these incredibly fanciful accusations, which are totally void of fact, look for evidence instead of assuming it. Look at what the aims of these atheist/humanist organisations actually are – peace, science, reason, tolerance and an end to bigotry. Commendable notions, surely, even to those of a religious persuasion.
There’s nothing incompatible with atheists’ ideas of how to get by, and that of Muslims. Or Jews or Christians, Hindus and especially Buddhists. The point that atheists have is that they don’t believe in any of the other people’s gods, just as the respective religions mentioned don’t (by and large) believe in the gods of the others. Atheists just believe in one god less than _you_, whatever your religion. And believe me, there’s a heck of a lot of gods not to believe in! (Zeus, etc. etc.)
In short, atheists have nothing against Muslims. You are completely incorrect to assert that us atheists promote or welcome the aggression of the UK against Muslim countries.
All
Briefly, ok, that was the strategy of Mrs T. and it is the status quo today. You are not part of it, nor am I, and you oppose it, same as me. I am not scratching around for a meaning to life, or a faith to follow. I have understood very clearly what monotheism requires of me for far longer than I have been a Muslim. Islam connects to my personal understanding of the world which I formed in childhood at a very posh prep school that the people who run this country are without any honesty or principle. They are thieving liars.
Other people see different solutions to the same problem. But for myself, I see the whole energy of the Political, domestic and international/ professional class, yes I mean doctors and lawyers, as being directed at deceiving people and grabbing advantage to their own nationality or narrow ideas.
An analysis of the corruption is required to dismantle it, but when you do that everyone complains that the fabric of British society is being destroyed. We have to destroy the selfishness of our leaders in order to avoid their conclusion that aggression pays. Full stop, chalas, period, towow.
This blog has officially reopened!