{"id":6907,"date":"2017-11-27T09:24:57","date_gmt":"2017-11-27T14:24:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6907"},"modified":"2017-11-27T09:24:57","modified_gmt":"2017-11-27T14:24:57","slug":"kompromat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6907","title":{"rendered":"****Kompromat"},"content":{"rendered":"
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CC BY-SA HonestReporting.com, flickr\/caseydavid<\/p><\/div>\n

By Stanley Johnson \u2013 If you\u2019re one of the millions of people on both sides of the Atlantic who look back on the elections of 2016 and say, to yourself or at the top of your lungs, \u201cWhat just happened?\u201d this satirical new political thriller is for you.<\/p>\n

Its characters are such thinly disguised versions of today\u2019s leading political figures, you can be forgiven for thinking you\u2019ve inadvertently picked up a recent copy of The Times<\/em>. Much-needed is the list of its many characters\u2014from the US, Russia, Germany, China, various other countries, four \u201ckey animals\u201d and, most numerous of all, leaders of the UK. \u201cKompromat\u201d is a Russian word<\/a>\u2014a portmanteau meaning compromising material, and in this novel\u2014as, possibly, in real life\u2014most of these countries hold plenty of it on each other.<\/p>\n

As the book opens, a 2016 US presidential candidate is participating in an international wildlife expedition that hopes to radio-collar a tiger. Events go wrong almost immediately. The candidate ends up in a hospital where the Russians plant a bug in his body. The CIA, ever on the ball, figures this out, and replaces it with their own bug. And they\u2019re not the only ones. By the book\u2019s end, America\u2019s new president unwittingly has unwittingly become another \u201cVoice of America.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the British have problems of their own. Its Secretary of State for the Environment is approached by the Russians, who have singled him out as a leading light of the \u201cEurosceptic wing\u201d of the Conservative Party. He learns the Prime Minister agreed to the Referendum on EU membership (the \u201cBrexit\u201d vote) for a reason no more complicated than money. Apparently, the PM believed the vote would never actually occur and, even if it did, it wouldn\u2019t succeed, and the Party would receive money for doing nothing.<\/p>\n

Author Johnson devises numerous amusing and convoluted scenarios in which the hapless politicians become entangled. In his scenario, these byzantine schemes are organized and carried out by the Russian Security Service\u2014the FSB, heir to the KGB\u2014\u201c to change the whole structure of international politics.\u201d The book is not only entertaining, it makes you think \u201cwhat if?\u201d and, as more news drifts out of world capitals, perhaps \u201cwhy not?\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson is a former politician and member of the Conservative Party, and a former employee of the World Bank and the European Commission, who has held a number of prominent environmental posts as well as being an environmental activist. In the time preceding the Brexit vote, he co-chaired Environmentalists for Europe. Although he\u2019s on record as opposing the Referendum, his son Boris was a key leader of the \u201cleavers.\u201d The book is in development for a six-part television series too.<\/p>\n

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By Stanley Johnson \u2013 If you\u2019re one of the millions of people on both sides of the Atlantic who look back on the elections of 2016 and say, to yourself or at the top of your lungs, \u201cWhat just happened?\u201d … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"****Kompromat - a hilarious political satire about the US presidential election and Brexit. \"So THAT explains it!!\"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[272,193,40,268,126],"tags":[1180,333,1181,1179],"class_list":["post-6907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comedy","category-espionage","category-fiction","category-politics","category-reading-2","tag-kompromat","tag-london","tag-russia","tag-stanley-johnson"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1Np","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6907"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6907\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6909,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6907\/revisions\/6909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}