And I Bet Their Boyfriends Threatened Him Afterwards, Too

From the British tabloid, THE SUN:

Diplomat ‘blackmailed by Russians’

By ALEX WEST

Published: 11 Jul 2009

SHAMED British diplomat James Hudson may have been targeted for blackmail by Russian spy agencies, it was hinted last night.

The podgy envoy, who quit in disgrace after being filmed having sex with two hookers, could have been the victim of an elaborate plot by Moscow’s intelligence services.

Speculation was growing that the Russians tried to use the sleazy video to “persuade” Hudson, 37, to work for them — but that he refused and owned up to his UK Government seniors instead.

One security source said: “It is possible that, having been caught, Hudson refused blackmail attempts by the Russians which would have amounted to treachery on his part.

“He may then have admitted his misjudgment to his bosses, being allowed to resign without disciplinary action.”

The film showed Hudson — British Deputy Consul General in the Urals city of Ekaterinburg — romping with two blondes in a brothel.

And the mystery over the video deepened after it emerged it had been posted on the internet for a MONTH without identifying him. He only resigned on the day someone who knew his status offered the story to Russian tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets.

Denis Tokarsky, who runs the Urals edition, said: “A source offers me information from time to time, and on this occasion it was about British diplomat James Hudson. Nobody made me publish it.”

It is not believed Hudson had access to any high-grade secret information so his value to the Russians would have been minimal anyway.

Russian intelligence agency the FSB had no comment but local cops have suggested Hudson might have been blackmailed by criminals trying to extort cash or UK visas. He has gone into hiding since quitting the Foreign Office.

His visibly upset mother Kathleen said at the family home in Poplar, East London: “I haven’t seen or heard anything from James. I don’t know where he is.”

Hudson’s ex-wife Sally told yesterday’s Sun she was revolted by his antics and glad she divorced him in 1997.

* * *

Man, why don't they try that on me? I'll give 'em whatever they want.

I'll leave you to your own devices in finding the video. The hookers look okay, I wonder what he paid for them, or maybe their fee was included with the blackmail money. . .

Some Reviews of Movies Concerning Russia or Russians

Eastern Promises -- Viggo Mortensen plays a mysterious thug working with a white-slave type ring of Russian gangsters in London and getting involved with a hot blonde English doctor and the abandoned child of one of the prostitutes.

This is a cool movie, and Viggo gets the inscrutible bad-ass Putin imitation down pretty well. And they obviously had advisors about the tattoos and the "Vor V Zakone" old school gangster stuff. Also loved the fight scene in the banya -- that's just the shitty kind of thing Russians would do, jumping you when you're relaxing naked.



They blew a couple of small things however -- a guy like the one Mortensen is playing probably would wear a cropped or shaved head rather than the slicked-back pompodour; and I've been told that those old school gangsters in fact had a rule about never wearing ties. And there's a scene where a guy is drinking vodka out of the bottle, without a shotglass or pickles. Wouldn't happen.

All the white-slave prostitute stuff sounded about right. (Lured with promises, rather than just stuffed in a box, as too many movies would have you believe.)


BIRTHDAY GIRL -- Guy sends off for a Russian mail-order bride and ends up involved in a bank robbery scheme when the girl's Russian "cousins" come to town. This was better than I thought it would be, and Nicole Kidman really nailed the pale, anemic, dead-eyed tawdry sexiness of a Russian girl pretty well. Vincent Cassel is also suitably overbearing, unctuous, violent and threatening as a Russian hood.


A few questions come to mind about how she -- and her cousins -- managed to get visas to go to England so easily, however. Normally he'd have to go see her in Mosocow or wherever.

As for the "happy" ending -- well, without spoiling much, let's just say his troubles might just be beginning, hooked up with a chick like this.

HITMAN -- Video game chraracter Agent 47, gets mixed up in plot to assassinate the "moderate" Russian president and a conspiracy that, coincidentally, involves a Russian hooker. (I'm glad these movies are being accurate about the profession of every single Russian woman on the planet.) The hooker is played by Olga Kurylenko, who is in fact Ukrainian, however, and invests the prostitute with far too much humanity to be an accurate portrayal. She looks pretty awesome naked, though, I must say.

I liked the way the President of Russia's brother was a drug-dealing long-haired slave-trader, although he and his henchmen seemed too Eurotrashy and long-haired to be good Russian thugs. (Not a track-suit in sight.) The KGB -- oh, sorry, I mean FSB -- agent was the usual guy doing a German imitation, however.

Of course, if you wanted to train a bunch of ghost-like inconspicuous international assassins, why you would shave their heads and tattoo a barcode on the back of it is beyond me. . . and why a barcode, anyway? Did they have to scan their heads occasionally to ascertain prices or something? Well, what can you expect from a secret organization that just calls itself "The Organization" . . .

All Heart

A recent instant message conversation relating to renting a boat for my going away party, with a former girlfriend.

[6/25/2009 11:43:47 AM] Olga says: www.povolge.ru

[6/25/2009 11:44:20 AM] Olga says: http://povolge.su/

[6/25/2009 11:44:36 AM] English Teacher X says: think the prices are the same?

[6/25/2009 11:45:40 AM] Olga says: yeah

[6/25/2009 11:45:53 AM] English Teacher X says: there are some boats on here with 2000 rubles for up to 15 people

[6/25/2009 11:46:05 AM] English Teacher X says: but of course if you call, they will say, "Oh, no, now it costs 3500"

[6/25/2009 11:48:28 AM] English Teacher X says: i invited my old girlfriend who lives in Kazakhstan, and her only response was to post a bunch of pictures of her and her new boyfriend on vkontakte. (Ed. note: Vkontakte is the Russian version of Facebook.)

[6/25/2009 11:48:34 AM] English Teacher X says: you girls are all heart, you know it?

[6/25/2009 11:49:20 AM] Olga says: we all what?

[6/25/2009 11:49:28 AM] Olga says: yeah, that was rude of her! (Ed. note: Olga announced to me she was going to marry her new boyfriend about a week before my 40th birthday)

[6/25/2009 11:49:36 AM] English Teacher X says: you are "all heart"

[6/25/2009 11:49:51 AM] Olga says: and what does it mean?

[6/25/2009 11:50:01 AM] English Teacher X says: can't you see the sense of it?
[6/25/2009 11:50:07 AM] English Teacher X says: you are one big heart

[6/25/2009 11:50:11 AM] Olga says: only posittive

[6/25/2009 11:50:23 AM] English Teacher X says: i am being sarcastic, you see. . .
[6/25/2009 11:50:30 AM] English Teacher X says: because we all know, Russian women don't have hearts
[6/25/2009 11:50:34 AM] English Teacher X says: only big Gucci purses

[6/25/2009 11:51:31 AM] Olga says: Lui Vouiton to be more specific

[6/25/2009 11:52:18 AM] English Teacher X says: you know, i find myself wanting to become very wealthy and famous
[6/25/2009 11:52:26 AM] English Teacher X says: not because I would enjoy it
[6/25/2009 11:52:36 AM] English Teacher X says: but only to make all my ex-girlfriends angry

Asshole Part 2

This happened last summer:

We were drunkenly wandering around the embankment -- me and two or three others -- and we got a call from another teacher who was at a birthday party of one of his students.

This was a Russian lower-class birthday party -- a blanket on the grass and some plastic jugs full of beer and a couple of bottles of vodka.

As always they insisted we drink vodka, unaware of its instant Jekyl-and-Hyde effect on many of us.

Later the birthday girl made fun of my accent when speaking in Russian.

"How's my accent on this," I immediately replied in Russian. "Fuck you bitch, suck my dick, up your ass and your big cunt..." I continued in this vein until I had used every Russian obscenity I knew.

The birthday girl immediately burst into tears.

Another teacher admonished me and told me it was beyond a joke; my face was twisted with hatred while I did it. "She started it!" I whined.

That was among the first of the times I really considered leaving.

Revenge of the Old Stinker

So I got together this year with an old girlfriend, the one from this post:

Monday, April 10, 2006
Former Girlfriend Predicts My Future
Last May I started going out with this girl from Kazakhstan. She was with a guy when I met her, but she broke up with him on the spot. We came to my house briefly with a couple of other people to change and have a few drinks before going to a nightclub and she gave me a blowjob in the kitchen while the other people sat, rather uncomfortably, in the living room.

We went out for a few weeks, but we really didn't get along well at all -- or, I should say, we got along in bed fairly well but not really anyplace else.

We broke up several times, but then always would get horny and end up in bed again, until finally I bit the bullet and insisted that the arguing had to end once and for all, and we shouldn't see each other.

Within about three months, she was married to another guy she knew. Then she was pregnant about two months later.

She continues to send me SMS messages occasionally, berating me for not being married.

"You're going to be an old stinker!" she warned me today.

* * *

She got divorced at the end of last year. If I were a more childish person that would satisfy me.

There's a zen saying about "If you stand by the river long enough, the body of your enemy will come floating by"; naturally, I think I would go a bit further and say that if you sand by the river long enough, you'll forget all about why you were angry in the first place.

Wife Huntin'

One of our teachers is a 45-year-old middle-aged guy from America and, although he's rather into the teaching as well, after whatever crappy warehouse job he was doing in America, is not at all bashful about the fact that he's here looking for a wife. (He's proposed to about half his female students and several girls in adminstration, I think.)

"American women are too materialistic," he said when he first got here.

Another teacher and I immediately just burst into laughter, by way of response, before offering a few words of caution.

He's scoured the internet as well looking for wives, here in provincial Russia, where the man-woman ratio is supposedly 2 or 3 to 1, but just isn't having any luck. I think he had a "maybe" once but it didn't work out.

(It seems like most of the guys who come here seeking wives don't find them -- the only ones who end up getting married are the ones who come here looking for a good time, and some she-devil soon gets her cast-iron claws into him.)

Anyway, as a vacation this summer, this guy has lined up a month-long stint in the Ukraine, where he says the shattered economy means that there are tons of beautiful women looking for husbands.

(Exactly what many of you out there are thinking about Russia, I'm sure, and exactly, of course, the reason he came to Russia in the first place.)

Most of the Russian girls I know who marry foreigners do it when they go abroad to work or study; if you want to find a Russian girl, you may as well do it in Atlantic City, NJ, Ocean City, Delaware, or Naples, Florida during the summer. There are tons of them there on the "Work and Travel" program, which may as well be re-named "Marry and Travel." I'd imagine summertime English programs in England or America are good pickings, too.

Drunk's Eye View of Cheap Russian Nightclub