MI5.com

What can one make of that fact that http://www.mi5.com/ is a website lavishly constructed by a 'UK citizen' systematically subjected to 'a campaign of harassment...through the broadcast and print media, verbal abuse at work, and molestation in public and during travel'?

'The first 15 years of the MI5 Persecution were conducted using conventional techniques of two-way televisions through which newscasters peeked at me while they read the news, particularly Buerk and Lewis; MI5 agents following me around London and around the world to shout abuse on the street; and surveillance, electronic bugging of every accommodation I stayed in for any period of time. However, beginning August 2005, MI5 with the assistance of the Americans employed a hideous mindcontrol technology which directly read my mind and inflicted voices and thoughts on my mind. I obtained some evidence of this, so the sceptical reader can assure himself it is real world and not imaginary.'

Take a look. One 'inadvertent' effect of the site is to undermine less excitable critiques of state surveillance on the web. So it's hard not to wonder who is really behind it. Or is that being paranoid?

prose

http://rcjzeustuqdfmtyb.blogspot.com/

Okay, this blog's a dodgy little construction - one of thousands - designed to send gambling pop ups and adult friend-finder ads etc. But the prose is quite something. Below is a sample.

veral days atethe download steal to clapthing.This doesn't go, must eat, which the afraid meal differ somethe download steal to clap, also want strong endure to eat.She be not willing to let we the good download steal to clap on the hoof, we must be on the hoof!"The Guangxu excitedly says that"calculate you for the sake of me "" you trust and I listen to you."Jeanthe download steal to clapthe imperial concubine be strong to endure to painfully sad a point to nod."Want only me deathless, want only her for a dayYxtwgrmk

Beauty finds strange bedfellows.

The other Litvinenko

Fascinating reportage from Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy in the Guardian Weekend supplement, denied front-page in favour of some coke-head Manhattanite. Lack of faith in their story? In the fading buzz of Polonium?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,2246124,00.html

The article presents a very different Litvinenko, out of his depth in UK exile, trying ‘to punt his knowledge to private security companies’ whose presence is always enough to get me thinking. Anyone got any good links on these stalwarts?

As Scott-Clark and Levy note: ‘The crime was fixed in the west’s collective imagination as a Putin plot to snuff out a brave dissident, a whistleblower who had stood up to the dark forces emanating from the Kremlin.’ Delicacies inevitably involve the £50bn Russian deposits in the City. But also, even more complexly, Litvinenko’s somewhat desperate and scrubby work on behalf of Berlusconi and the Italian (far) right. Mario Scaramella got him working for the Mitrokhin commission, formed in 2001 by Berlusconi for the purpose of digging up supposed KGB associations in the Italian establishment – ‘in reality a vehicle for smearing Berlusconi’s socialist enemies.’

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Scaramella.

It was Scaramella dipping Sushi with the Russian at his infamous last meal in Piccadilly Itsu.
According to the journalists, ‘Litvinenko began dredging Italy’s underworld, which had links with the Russian and Ukrainian criminal clans, which in turn had powerful connections in the Kremlin.’ These attempts to link the Italian Left and the KGB took them onto dangerous ground. General Anatoly Trofimov’s comment in 2000: ‘Prodi is our man in Italy’, proves invaluable. Trofimov has since been assassinated.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,2763,1457554,00.html

The whole thing once again suggests the bizarre extent to which the cold war endures in sunny Italy. In comes Robert Seldon Lady – undercover CIA agent accused of ‘rendering’ an Imam to Egypt where he was tortured as a terror suspect. Litvinenko and Mitrokhin help dig him out of trouble. A google search turns up this great little investigative site:

http://cryptome.org/lady-eyeball.htm
Plus: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/08/321321.html

Litvinenko and Scaramella repeat the Prodi allegations on camera. In comes Gerald Batten, a British MEP from the UK independence party. He meets Litvinenko, Itsu, March 9th. Four days later Batten demanded an inquiry into Prodi at the European Parliament. This causes uproar in Italy with general election imminent and Prodi threatening to sue them. Scott-Clark and Levy don’t mention that his intervention comes up tops on You Tube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHJhsIOY0zU

Berlusconi’s forced to wind up the Mitrokhin Commission. Prodi wins....This is only a selection of the events explored in the feature. Well worth a look.

the ones that didn't get away

http://krapolov.blogspot.com/

Ghost Trader

A good con man chooses a mark who wants to make money, thinks he’s found an easy way, and is willing to place himself in a morally suspect position for big profit. That could be called a bank. It’s important that the mark always believes they have the upper hand.

Jerome Kerviel, rogue trader. ‘Ghost trader’ in the French parlance. 3.7 billion gambled away since December. One way to fend off the winter blues. But like Leeson, he was neither rogue nor ghost but a man seduced by the ethics of his own employer. ‘It doesn’t seem that he was able to benefit from these colossal trades and directly he did not’ – Chief-Exec of Société Genéralé, Daniel Bouton. Locked inside the vacuum-sealed ethical logic of the privatised company, Kerviel was fine while he was hedging bets and playing small. His mistake was over-ambition. He switched to playing futures. Placing spreads.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/01/24/bcnsocgen624.xml

The symbol of our market is not the troubled trader but the punter with a spread on it going down. There's something sublime about betting on the market without investing in it.

http://www.iii.co.uk/spreadbetting/

Invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails, as Joyce once described the figure of a god-like artist.

sleep

When someone sleeps they become a child again, perhaps because in sleep one can do no evil and one is unaware even of one's own existence. By some natural magic, the worst criminal, the most inveterate egotist is made sacred by sleep. I can see no perceptible difference between killing a child and killing someone while they sleep.

...From the simple rise and fall of our lungs to the building of cities and the drawing up of imperial frontiers, I consider every movement, every motivating force in life to be a form of sleep, to be dreams or intervals that occur involuntarily in the pauses between one reality and the next. And at night, like some abstractly maternal figure, I bend over the beds of both good and bad children, made equal in the sleep that makes them mine.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

Was Pessoa writing a blog - unknowing, unpublishable? His disquiet fragments lying in their trunk like a lightbulb smashed decades before electricity arrived.....

http://www.disquiet.com/pessoa.html

'Sleeping tushy' appears to have cornered the mainstream market for somnambulant porn, with an obsessive association between sleep and the baring of buttocks. 'Night Invasion' achieves a slightly enhanced verisimilitude, with pseudo-night vision effects. 'The Land of Nod' documents films and television programmes with sleeping scenes. 'If you aren't into it, you won't get it' the home page confesses, admirably.

http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Gallery/2633/

Actaeon

Operation Ore continues its protracted, experimental revelation of the soul. Chris Langham confesses and everyone agrees and understands and no one is sure if that is quite enough. What does it mean to leave it there? Why does trauma lead to repetition?

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/tv/2008/01/chris_langham_appears_on_tv.html

Meanwhile, the internet grows fetishes we barely have names for. 'Real tears' loom large. One day, perhaps, they will form a standard currency, like gold. I find I'm willing to watch well-fed Americans cry, but not those I suspect of historical misfortune: Asian or Eastern European women. One site devoted to 'special exercises' seems to draw upon cold war fantasies of Russian gymnasia. The girls are convincingly upset. Custodians of record: Orbiter LLC, based in Gibraltar.

I search online for 'anonymous offshore banking' and a sponsored link appears, courtesy of HSBC. A case study of their typical offshore customer introduces me to 'Jean-Pierre' a Reservoir Engineer for a multinational oil company. He needs an offshore account because he's always travelling, and needs 24 hour access to call centres and on-line banking. Um... There's even a picture of him, pensive in a hard hat, no doubt wondering where on earth he's going to pay his taxes.

http://www.offshore.hsbc.com/1/2/international/current-accounts/offshore-bank-account/currentaccounts-casestudy

truth

Behind me in a cafe, a fervent man with a lot of notes discusses July 7th conspiracies with a young, female journalist.
'The shadows are superimposed on the photograph.'
'Accounts changed significantly as survivors discussed it amongst themselves.'
'No one saw the man get on the train.'

My searches lead me to the July 7th truth campaign. They wouldn't want it called 'conspiracy theory'.

http://www.julyseventh.co.uk/

Rough Guides tell me 'Conspire' originally meant 'to breathe together'.

omniscience

Texperts offer me three free questions (http://www.texperts.com/). Ask anything, the mobile phone service says. I try:

1. Q: Where can I get a good fake passport?
A: I'm sorry. We don't answer that sort of question.

2. Q. Which jurisdictions are least likely to co-operate with UK authorities?
A: Most countries in Africa and Asia have no extradition treaty.

3. Q. What's the most likely course of action against a detective sergeant considered too alcoholic to carry out their duties?
A: I'm sorry, we can't find any information on that subject. We have not charged you for this response.