[labyrinth] twists and turns of the unstraight

There are such bizarre things going on behind the scenes right now that it is like a bad B movie - you know, the one where someone comes out and says something is happening and most people say, "There, there, take your tablets, Jamesie," until he is eventually smothered in mire.

Just now, I had the misfortune to see an email, from July, which had been doctored. I know this because in the original, it was mainly about a particular blogger and a little over one paragraph about me but in the doctored version it is one paragraph about him and a diatribe about me.

[THIS FRAGMENT HAS NOW BEEN REMOVED BY REQUEST ON OCTOBER 10TH]

Right, I have to say there are a few of us on this case at the moment, some quite extraordinary things have come to light and it points very strongly to our emails being hacked, doctored and distributed as if they were original. Let alone the gross disloyalty of supposed friends, of which one we are fairly certain has the technical expertise to bring this off.

And this author calls my actions bizarre?

Certain people have felt complete freedom to slander me behind the scenes in the past months, whilst smiling on my blog but more particularly in the last week and one name keeps popping up, the common link, a non-visitor, always close to the action and a total innocent. Now that's no surprise but what on earth has come over the others?

The answer is partly in the word "appeasement".

Why would I continue to hobnob with someone who has poured dirt on me and put about the diametric opposite of the truth in most cases? Why would I hobnob with someone who chooses to select certain incidents and present them in such a way that he/she is a babe in arms but I look like a dangerously edgy character?

I think the motivation is fairly clear, wouldn't you say? Either that or they clearly don't have the antennae to see that I usually go back to friendly relations because:

1. I don't hold grudges, don't like feuds and prefer to forget something, once it is over;
2. I prefer to just blog and create things rather than spend my life on dirty slanging matches;
3. I ultimately have faith in human nature, to my detriment;
4. I see it as their problem, not mine.

I wonder if the appeasement theorists have ever heard the expression "olive branch"? No? The down side of this - and it has been commented on this blog by some friends I do consider loyal - is that by putting up with things and letting them continue, true friends depart, perplexed and a bit upset.

I know how true friends act, I know how true friends very much do not act. Trouble is, when a friend receives an email from another blogger whom he has always thought is a pukkha sahib and that sender has misinformed him by passing on some tidbit, he then goes back to my blog with new eyes, sees some perplexing comments by me out of context and starts to come to conclusions.

This is how character assassination works - a little bit here, a few skewed comments there, damning with faint praise and so on. It is never a frontal assault, such as I have been known to do. It's always behind the scenes , heavy with innuendo and half-completed sentences and the one who is the target carries on, oblivious to his every word being scrutinized for juicy morsels.

What's the purpose? Well, in most cases, perhaps they don't think that far along - everyone likes to ooh and ah and tut tut, after all. In one or two cases though, it is much more to an agenda. Watch what happens to me in Bloghounds in the next few days and you'll see what I mean. There are interesting things going down there.

That reminds me of the accusation doing the rounds that I really love - that my megalomaniacal reason for helping start Blogpower and then Bloghounds was to lord it over a group as a god. Does that sound like my rhetoric, by the way? And if it were so, why would I be forever stepping down, urging devolution, asking others to be admins? Seems strange behaviour for a megalomaniac.

In the end, one has two choices:

1. Seek out, identify and answer every allegation and misconstruction one by one, wasting time, wasting nerves and playing to someone else's agenda, hanging on to something already lost;
2. Identify areas of one's life which are giving grief and excise them, keeping the eyes focused on the main issues - true friendships, job and personal blog.

Last volley - everything I have written at Blogpower, Bloghounds and on this blog is true. Look over, scrutinize my better posts where I get my teeth into some issue, link by link by link and at the end I ask that if I have made any factual error, please correct me. Why should I be capable of that in posts and yet not in real life?

When I say I have evidence, then I do. When I have a reason for not using it, there is a reason., a sound reason. When I'm on a case, then there is a case. When I don't have enough for a final conclusion, I present it as an open-ended question. I'm my own worst enemy in later backtracking in the interests of peace and harmony. That is a stupid thing I do because it detracts from what had gone before. Someone once said I was a cow who gave good milk and then kicked the bucket over. Perhaps.

This blog will continue because even though this post concentrates on negatives, there are many, many other positives which are a bit unsung and there are so many issues to blog on. I wouldn't die for my blog, no way but it is certainly a nice outlet and point of communication.

So to hell with the detractors and let's see what tomorrow brings.