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.
Petition against Waterstone’s, Piccadilly on Wednesday 8 September, 12:30pm, when war criminal Tony Blair will be at a book-signing event to launch his memoirs.
http://bit.ly/93tbfF
I don’t think anyone believed the smear attempt on Mr Assange from day one. It was so obvious.
I think the best the perpetrators could hope for is some psychological damage on the victim, but this is far outweighed by the damage to the already tenuous credibility of the western governments attempting this fraud.
EARTH TO TONY_OPMOC,
EARTH TO TONY_OPMOC,
What OS did that infection occur on?
Please respond…
Tony_opmoc has landed on Facebook for a de-brief 🙂
“Even in an Audience of 80,000 +
It is My Voice You Can Hear
Shouting For
MORE”
I’ve often wondered who that was.
Ruth, I think you might be right re. Jonathan Moyles et al. I’ve seen two versions on the web. The Daily Mail picked one version. Here is the other, the one which implicates the UK:
“Another theory is that the British government, headed by Margaret Thatcher, ordered former SAS intelligence agents to kill Bull because he was taking lucrative Iraq contracts away from arms companies controlled by influential British businessmen. In 1998, journalist Walter De Bock wrote in a Flemish daily newspaper, De Morgen, that Bull’s death and dealings in Iraq had connections to the assassination of a British journalist. On March 31, 1990, a little over a week after Bull’s murder, Jonathan Moyle was found hanging with a pillow case over his head in a hotel room in Santiago, Chile. Moyle, 28, had traveled to Chile to investigate a story on secret British involvement in weapons traffic to Iraq. Moyle’s death was initially ruled a suicide by Chilean police, and the British foreign office promoted vicious rumors that he had died in a bizarre sex ritual. Later, Moyle’s death was ruled a murder by a panel of Chilean judges. A British coroner agreed with the judges’ finding. The re-investigations discovered a needle mark on Moyle’s leg and drugs in his stomach. Murder disguised as suicide has long been a lethal tactic favored by intelligence agencies.”
Here’s the link:
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.printable&pageId=15682
Note the “drugs in his stomach” bit. Reminds you a little of David Kelly, no?
Wrt The Daily Mail, of course one would trust ’em as far as one could throw ’em. They’ll have their placemen, too, just like every other outlet.
However, it’s possible that apart from the anti-Labour stance which may have motivated some of their sympathetic coverage of Craig Murray et al, it may be that the ‘Nixon in China’ effect sometimes comes into play. Furthermore, they stand to profit form a good old yarn. In this case, it seems that there really is something very fishy indeed going on. But the Daily Mail knows its readership and they know that (even – especially – Right-wing) people are now very cynical about government in general.
We know they pander to certain elements in the UK with respect to specific thematic areas (shall we say).
To be fair, though, they have published very good articles criticising, eg. the non-reaction of Italian sunbathers to the accidental drowning of Roma girls on a beach. Some – a minority – of their readers made comments in response to that story that were disgraceful.
So it’s a mixed picture.
One requires the perception of an insect – multiple eyes, looking all ways. That’s it – we need to become The Fly. “Help me! Help me!”
On which note…
At the risk of having several consecutive posts again (TM, please be mellow, good-on-you!), here’s a link tro a letter I had published in this week’s New Statesman. Letters get edited for space and other reasons, so here, too, is the full version.
Although the published version especially might suggest anti-American sentiment, this is very far from the truth. As I’ve stated before, on other threads, I am pro-American. It is the control and mis-use of America by the MI Complex that I am against and to which I object.
Original version:
Now the published version – see link:
http://www.newstatesman.com/letters
Original version:
20th August 2010
Dear Editor,
The cliche’d, hyperbolic front cover and editorial title (NS, 23rd August 2010) detracted from the excellence of some of the articles within (Shackle on
Bradford and Husain on Faiz were particularly perceptive) relating to matters Pakistani.
However, as with much recent UK media reportage, some of the coverage seemed unduly influenced by the campaign of disinformation being waged by
reactionary, undemocratic forces against the current Government of Pakistan. In this context, the elevation of political celebrities (Fatima Bhutto, for example, seems bathetically obsessed with dynastic rage against Zardari), in the
absence of countervailing viewpoints and input from on-the-ground Pakistani
journalists, weakened the rigour and depth of the coverage.
Readers may wish to broaden their understanding by perusing the work of columnist, Nadeem Paracha (link) and Editor of The Friday Times, Raza Rumi (link).
Otherwise, as so often, the lingering impression is of Pakistan as a Petri dish and Pakistanis as bacteria. On the contrary, taking the long view of history, one could argue that both metaphorically and literally the “laboratory of world destruction” resides a little to the south of the Potomac River.
Yours sincerely,
Suhayl Saadi
Melanie Phillips – good God, I never thought I’d be posting a link to anything she penned. Apparently, I’m told by those who know that she used to be as much of a one-track ideologue when she wrote for The Guardian as she is now (in manner cliche’d, she just exchanged one set of ideologies for another).
However, she’s written a very good piece today, though of course, she is unable or unwilling to suggest that the covert UK state murders its own citizens on its own soil.
She’s couched it in cursorily patriotic terms, but that’s persiflage. It really sends questions to the heart of the matter and, by singular ommission, I think let’s the readers speculate on whether the UK state might have been a little more ‘active’ in these individuals final posting (shall we say):
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1307281/MI6-spy-Gareth-Williams-unsung-hero-shadowy-spooks-trying-blacken-name.html
Okay, folks, enough. I’m off to watch CSI (since clearly I have developed CSI Syndrome).
Re. Gerald Bull and Jonathan Moyle:
http://www.blythe.org/Intelligence/readme/81sum
From the Master, himself:
“We did a lot of direct action. Assassinations.”
John Le Carre, 28th August 2010.
Yet all that time, it was steadfastly denied by the UK government and by the UK intelligence services. I remember. Don’t you? It was only 18.3 years ago. So, for the entire 45 years of the Cold War, they lied to us.
So why would it – the killing and the lies – have stopped now?
Answer: it hasn’t.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/defence/7969482/John-le-Carre-We-carried-out-assassinations-during-the-Cold-War.html
I think the UK was also involved in supplying South Africa (the South African and Biological Weapons Programme) with tons of equipment and precursors for synthesising chemical weapons. I’ve read that according to the procedings in Pretoria, ‘front’ companies were set up in partnership with an employee of the UK Foreign Office. The UK helped with large-scale production of nerve gases and biological toxins. Apparently, the whole programme was fronted by pharmaceutical companies set up on the instructions of the DTI and Foreign Office and a set of reports indicating the results of biological tests on live subjects were sent to Porton Down in 1988.
Then there’s the sending of B. anthracis to Iraq.
So I think Dr Kelly may have had a lot to say.
I see Julian Assange, the world’s most well-promoted ‘whistle-blower’, agrees with Craig Murray about 9-11.
Maybe no-one’s told him about Building What?
http://sydwalker.info/blog/2010/08/27/bulding-what-the-demand-for-9-11-justice/
‘False conspiracies’ eh Julian? That’s a good line. LOL.
You’re wasting your time posting stuff about 9/11 here Syd.
Julian Assange won the same award for “integrity in intelligence” (counter intelligence, maybe) as Craig Murray, so everyone here knows he’s a man of unquestionable integrity.
PS. Glad you put “whistle blower” in quotes. As I noted above, it could be hazardous in the extreme to any real whistle blower to hand their stuff to Wikileaks before making it public through other channels.
“You’re wasting your time posting stuff about 9/11 here Syd.”
Or anywhere.
Incorrect i’m afraid Lamby. Otherwise, freaks like you wouldn’t be contaminating the internet. QED…
Now off to bed with you little boy. :-0
Larry, formerly banned as a provocateur, seems to have achieved rehabilitiation as a member of the Craig Murray blog bodyguard tasked with suppression of 9/11 truth.
Of course Assange doesn’t believe in the insane claims of 911 truthers. He’s not a moron, after all.
Absolutely, Ruth.
Good on you Syd. I have just had a look at your site and your stand with the Palestinians for justice is excellent.
your blog and have my children check up here often.
Nice Blog Syd – Bravo
I hope Craig can stop the annoying Ad Bots with a filter. Any ideas Clark?
Disappointing from the BBC: “wikileaks founder wanted for xxx” (roughly, fingering the organisation) on the front page, then “julian assange cleared [or whatever]” the next day (or so). Presumably not much connection between those stories to the man on the Clapham omnibus. Of such things is the modern media made.
The demand for the truth about 9/11, which means a real forensic investigation and judicial process, is not only about justice.
More importantly, it is about freedom and liberty ?” and not just in the United States.
See Paul Craig Robert’s article:
Death of the First Amendment ?” The Nazification of the United States.
http://buchanan.org/blog/death-of-the-first-amendment-the-nazification-of-the-united-states-4323
“September 11 destroyed more than lives, World Trade Center buildings, and Americans’ sense of invulnerability. The event destroyed American liberty, the rule of law and the US Constitution.”
Weirdly, this is too difficult for folks like Craig Murray to grasp, apparently.
“I hope Craig can stop the annoying Ad Bots with a filter. Any ideas Clark?”
I dunno. The spambots seem to make as much sense as Larry and many of the others posting here.
LOL
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/27/fidel-castro-osama-bin-laden-us-spy
Ah, tremendous. And I wonder what bin Laden says about Castro ?
I suppose it could be an effective way of forestalling an “al Qaida in Cuba” panic ? That’d be all they need …
I’ve got a nice book out of the library at the moment – “The Island That Dared”. Dervla Murphy on Cuba. It’s kind of a pleasant combination. Interesting.
Suhayl: it is outrageous that Castro is pinching ideas from The Onion. Still, what else can one expect from a no-good Commie Red?
PS. Or could it be that the Guardian took a page out of The Onion’s book?