Three women were released from thirty years captivity, according to the Beeb:-
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-25046624
Why have I inserted the question marks and quotation marks?
It all sounds very odd to me. The women were allowed out of the house from time to time, why didn't they run away, or contact a policeman or some other official? Why did they phone a charity? Why didn't they phone the police?
When the police were contacted, why didn't they go straight round to the house and demand admission?
There is probably something that I have missed. Would anyone care to enlighten me?
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>> There is probably something that I have missed.
Of course there is. None of us could have the slightest idea what went on or how the captors managed to keep the captives under control. There's an infinite number of possibilities. Human psychology is a minefield.
Maybe there was a reason they were too frightened to escape, threats against family and friends maybe? That's how traffickers keep young girls hostage in brothels against their will.
Who knows.
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>> Why have I inserted the question marks and quotation marks?
Nothing proven yet, which is why they're also used in the BBC headline. But I guess the fact it happened nearly a month ago (25th Oct) means the police and/or media think there's at least some substance to the allegations?
Last edited by: Focusless on Fri 22 Nov 13 at 12:56
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>> It all sounds very odd to me. The women were allowed out of the house
>> from time to time, why didn't they run away, or contact a policeman or some
>> other official? Why did they phone a charity? Why didn't they phone the police?
I think the psychology is A LOT more complicated than you think. Have you heard any of the accounts of survivors of these sort of situations being broadcast on the radio?
The youngest woman is thought to have been born in 'captivity'.
Massive press/media story though. Walked past New Scotland Yard while out getting a sarnie. Over a dozen TV cameras on the paved apron corner of Broadway and Carteret St focussed on the roatating sign and festive tree.
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>> Massive press/media story though. Walked past New Scotland Yard while out getting a sarnie. Over
>> a dozen TV cameras on the paved apron corner of Broadway and Carteret St focussed
>> on the roatating sign and festive tree.
>>
Is it today that your long holiday stops and you actually start work?
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>> Is it today that your long holiday stops and you actually start work?
:-))
Another week to go yet.
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>> >> Is it today that your long holiday stops and you actually start work?
>>
>> :-))
>>
>> Another week to go yet.
>>
Are we having a forum meet to celebrate?
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The media circus has decamped from Broadway but more background is emerging:
www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/25/london-slavery-suspect-communist-activist-balakrishnan
Seems more akin to a cult than people held in domestic servitude.
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It all sounds somewhat iffy to me too. I'm glad I'm not a police press officer any more.
If the 'case' is as complex as the Met have suggested I hope they can apply more brains to it than usually seems to be the case.
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I was half listening to the World at One and a brilliant press release was read from the organisation mentioned....must find a transcript.
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ringing speculation that it became the part-model for the Tooting Popular Front, the ludicrous political movement set up by Robert Lindsay in Citizen Smith, a BBC sitcom that began broadcasting in 1977.
Rather a clunky bit of writing from the Guardian ??
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Freedom for Tooting and Fulham for the Cup? Nothing wrong with that. Other than the wild optimism of the latter part.
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Workers' Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought.
Sounds like a parody..
Last edited by: madf on Mon 25 Nov 13 at 15:30
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You should have heard their press release.....absolutely Pythonesque...
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Bunch of weirdos, folie à trois (or is it cinq?).
Reminiscent of the left-populist religious nutter James Jones who persuaded his followers to go to Guyana and commit mass suicide.
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Brainwashed not that difficult to do with vunerable people.You have to feel sorry for the women.
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>> Reminiscent of the left-populist religious nutter James Jones
These groups develop over time, one thing leading to another. They are very strange.
It's easy enough to understand Jones - 'charismatic', completely mad and seeking power over others. What I can't fathom is the mentality of the followers. How did he find them, even among the American poor? How sheep-like can you get? The Jonestown story makes the blood run cold.
Emotionally, it's an extreme example of the sort of ecstatic, evangelical religious tradition not much seen in Europe since the middle ages, but still alive in the US (today's comic had a piece about a snake-handling preacher, complete with photo of the nutter waving a rattlesnake). But the intellectual vacuity of the devotees makes you want to weep.
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There are some traditions still left like that A.C.I've seen it in Holland some of the villages the old Gereformeerd religions.Modern society isn't for all it scares some people.Look at the Amish they are still trying to live a live which is way out for some people.
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>> There are some traditions still left like that A.C.I've seen it in Holland some of the villages
I did say 'not much seen' Dutchie... to tell the truth I've come across the odd example here too. But the groups are usually small and closed. No processions of chanting people whipping themselves at every step to be seen these days.
'Give up all that you own and follow me!'
'No thanks. You're a mad liar and you smell nasty.' Why don't people all think that?
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Those terrorists those who blow them up with bombs believe that 72 virgins are waiting for them in heaven.
Brainwashing can do wonders!!
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>> Brainwashing can do wonders!!
The brain needs to be more or less empty in the first place for it to work.
Terrorists, jihadis and suicide bombers are often described as 'intelligent' and 'well-educated', with letters after their names to prove it.
All that shows really is that the education system is so advanced in this country that people can learn to parrot enough to get a degree - nearly always in a science or technology subject, philosophers and art historians are rarer - without engaging the intellect at all, without developing the mind, without grasping fully the meaning of what is learned. Highly qualified perhaps, but staggeringly thick and empty-headed.
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>> Those terrorists those who blow them up with bombs believe that 72 virgins are waiting
>> for them in heaven.
I wonder why none of them realises that getting through 72 would be achieved pretty quickly, then you are left with 72 ordinary women, if indeed you are left with them. Does anyone ask what will happen once they've been gotten through, and does anyone consider the provenance of those virgins and the morals around something which is essentially prostitution with no payment/upside for the provider of services? If you don't get to keep them once you've had your fun, what do you do for the rest of eternity? What other marvels await in Paradise?
I also wonder why it never crosses their minds that they are being told there are physical pleasures to be had in a spiritual place, which is of course an impossibility. It's all an impossibility, every single religious fairy story about the after life, perhaps there is one but the chances that any Earthly religion created by Earthly physical creatures has hit upon the one one true reality of the after life is so infinitesimally small as to render it unworthy of a moment's consideration.
Cobblers to it all.
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This is almost certainly the only thing on which you & I will agree, Alanović. :-)
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I imagine that, given a beer or eight or a glass of wine or nine, some degree of common ground could be found with most people, Rog. We are both car enthusiasts I expect, after all.
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..........I'm only a poor old age pensioner - innit?
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I was thinking a wealthy pensioner from Slurrey, as it goes. Drives a prestigious and rare Japanese limo.
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>>Why don't people all think that?
Social misfits with a primeval need to belong to a tribe, "normal" tribes won't have them so abnormal ones seem to be secondarily attractive?
Examples might include, football hooligans, drug takers, members of religious cults, Vauxhall owners clubs, Star Trek fan clubs, anything really which confers a group identity however dubious its merits may seem to those outside it.
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I see your point A.C you can think for yourself some people can't.I used to see it at work .Its psychology you are a member of a team.And gradual you lose your own identity.It happens very suttle but it happens.
The way of the world.
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You could say that about football crowds Runfer.It is tribal like I said before people are very easy to manipulate.
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Adolf Shicklegruber was good at that!
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>> I used to see it at work .Its psychology you are a member of a team.And gradual you lose your own identity.
Yes. People who get jobs with the longer-toothed sort of corporations are progressively corralled into adopting at work the sort of psychopathic, dishonourable behaviour that in private life would get them beaten up or never spoken to again.
'Get with it! This is a business, not a charity. Perhaps you aren't happy here?'
Cartload of monkeys, human beings.
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Religious organisations take full advantage of people's frailties!
(I'm really Richard Dawkins, don't you know?)
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Some political parties are like that Roger. A charismatic leader preaching a simplistic messages to those wanting certainty and easy solutions. Of course an intelligent chap like you wouldn't fall for something like that.
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No - I would not and I have not. :-)
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>>Cartload of monkeys
Well of course we are. Smart ones, evolved ones to be sure, but monkeys nonetheless. With many of the same failings when it comes to getting on with other monkeys, invading other monkey's territories, killing other monkeys, stealing from other monkeys, mistrusting monkeys who don't look like our sort of monkey, striving for power within the tribe etc etc...
Monkeys indeed and not all that far removed.
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There are of course degrees of this sort of thing.
Locally we have the Jesus Army - a sect founded by a charismatic Baptist forty or so years ago. Some Members live communally in large houses or on farms. Others live out in ordinary village houses. Many also work for church businesses such as Goodness Foods or it's building arm.
Quite strict stuff about the benefits of abstaining from unmarried sex and strongly dissaprove of TV.
There have been occasional suggestions of a cult in the media.
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>> Interesting reading
It has its charm hasn't it?
Incredibly tiring though, that incessant vuvuzela blare on one or perhaps two notes.
Just as well we didn't know the fascist bourgeois state was in a blind panic about the work of these NUR comrades, or we might have worried.
I used to know a Maoist. Rather surprisingly he was an extremely rich scion of a Manhattan residential property dynasty, living in California. We knew him because he had previously rented a room in a flat of ours in London. He was a bit tiresome in a way though, po-faced, sanctimonious and paranoid about being rich. Not all bad, but incapable of having a good time.
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I don't reckon there'll be any 'slavery' charges at the end of all this. couple f minor assault charges at best.
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If slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1833, did that mean it was legal in Britain before then? But surely we didn't have slavery here? Why don't we hear of plantations and factory workers in chains? Why wasn't there a famous slave market in London?
Of course there was poverty, wage-slavery, exploitation, etc. But not the open buying and selling of human lives in cattle markets, surely?
Has there in fact ever been legal slavery in Britain, apart from under the Romans?
Perhaps the feudal system came close, but even serfs had rights, they were citizens, and after the Black Death quite a lot of negotiating clout.
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>> If slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1833, did that mean it was
>> legal in Britain before then?
"Slavery in the British Isles dated from before Roman occupation. Chattel slavery virtually disappeared after the Norman Conquest. It was finally abolished by the Slavery Abolition Act 1833..."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_British_Isles
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>> Chattel slavery virtually disappeared after
>> the Norman Conquest.
That what I suspected. So it was perfectly legal right up to 1833, but apparently no one ever exercised that right?
Why was that? It appears to be a normal state of affairs anywhere else in the world unless actively suppressed, and then requires constant vigilance to stop it re-emerging. Yet in Britain apparently not. Is that a cultural thing?
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There was an interesting piece on Charles Manson in the London Review of Books a couple of weeks ago. Worth a visit to the website but I'm not sure if you have to be a subscriber to read it.
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Anything new in it MH? My heart sinks slightly at the prospect of perhaps seeing it. Manson was a capable but essentially stupid street hustler mining a rich vein of dumb masochistic 'flower children', yuck.. like a bunch of rabbits in front of a snake.
I was in California briefly in the seventies, Berkeley and then a week staying in the seedy end of Hollywood. Thought it the stupidest place I'd ever seen. Staggering, tabloid vacuity even among people who saw themselves as alternative. Genial on the whole however.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Tue 26 Nov 13 at 15:28
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"So it was perfectly legal right up to 1833, but apparently no one ever exercised that right?"
No. By common law there was no right to exercise authority over a slave in England or Scotland prior to 1833. A court case had confirmed that. The situation was different in the colonies and the 1833 Act abolished slavery in most of the Empire although in most cases the slaves became "apprentices" with little immediate change in their circumstances
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>> I don't reckon there'll be any 'slavery' charges at the end of all this. couple
>> f minor assault charges at best.
>>
There won't be.
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>> There won't be.
The arrests/bail are stated to relate to immigration offences. If adults appear willingly to submit to being brainwashed in a 'cult' there's probably little the authorities can do unless violence or non-consensual sex etc. can be proven.
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Apparently there was an unexplained fall from a window, resulting in rather a lingering death, in the seventies. The 67-year-old founder members were pulled at the time, but no evidence so released although the police weren't convinced that it was just a fall.
Oddly enough the defenestrated lady bore the same name as someone I know quite well.
However I feel it was a bit melodramatic to say this group of weirdos was in any way comparable with the poisonous twerp Manson let alone James Jones who really was extraordinary.
I was slightly acquainted in the sixties with a Trinidadian who did a sort of Manson a few years later. A friend brought Michael de Freitas to my house in Highbury. He was fairly clever, amusing almost, but an obvious villain, with form as a landlord's enforcer in fifties Notting Hill, really a ruffian. Soon he was hustling John Lennon, a soft touch at the time, for money to open 'The Black House' in London, and after Malcolm's London visit changed his name to Michael X. Later he went back to Trinidad and ran a sort of commune financed by a rich and obviously silly Englishwoman. Presently Mansonian vainglory took hold and she and a local cousin of de Freitas were murdered. Michael was hanged, and I didn't shed any tears or mind there being a death penalty in Trinidad. Not for cats like him anyway.
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>> unexplained fall from a window, resulting in rather a lingering death, in the seventies.
Nineties, my mistake, sorry. I also regret calling Rose Dugdale 'obviously silly', although it's hard to imagine a sensible reason why she would have wanted to stay in de Freitas's house after a day or two. I seem to remember a suggestion that the poor woman was killed when she ran out of money, or refused to give Michael any more.
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I was highly amused by the press and the radio (specially that vacuous tart Vanessa Fatz) claiming this was case was the tip of a slavery iceberg, trying to suggest a major part of the service economy was provided by slaves.
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I would welcome some slaves chez nous to release me from my daily grind of gardening, cooking, cleaning, and cheffing.
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Three Women Released From "Imprisonment"? - Alanovich
