My arrogant opinions about politics, culture, science fiction, and whatever else I feel like talking about.

A Book Recommendation

        Spies, The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev.  Vassiliev cowrote The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America--The Stalin Era, a task for which he was uniquely qualified — for Vassiliev was a KGB agent with access to many of the official KGB files, and the project was OK'd by the new Foreign Intelligence Service.  I liked The Haunted Wood, but most of its content I already knew from other sources.

        Well, it turns out that Vassiliev, when looking at the files, copied down extensive material on KGB agent identities and operations in a series of notebooks.  He didn't have the notebooks available when he cowrote The Haunted Wood, but he has since gotten them out of Russia, and they reveal an extraordinary amount of new information, as well as confirming info on old controversies. If you're a 'truth about espionage' junky, as I am, this book is for you.

        Oh, if you're Wikipedia, this book is most emphatically NOT for you, or for anyone else.  References to it that I've added to Wikipedia pages keep getting deleted.  Apparently, while Wikipedia information must be verifiable, it can't be both verifiable and in disagreement with the prejudices of the people running the site.

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        And the angel said unto them, "Be not afraid!  For, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.  For unto you is inaugurated this day in the city of George a Saviour, which is B. Hussein Obama the President."  And since then, everything has been perfect.   (The Gospel According to CNN, Chapter 2, verses 8-11.)

Posted by: saintonge at 18:38 | link | comments
and now for somthng compltly dif

The Germans Have a Word For It.

        And the word in question is "schadenfreude".  It's the joy taken in someone else's misfortune.

        I shouldn't indulge in it, but sometimes I just can't help myself.  And this is one of those times.  Dan Rather is suing CBS News, because they were mean to him when he committed "Rathergate."

        For those of you who don't remember, "Rathergate" was the story Mary Mapes produced, and Dan Rather hosted on 60 Minutes Wednesday, in which they claimed that they had proof that then President George W. Bush had received special treatment during his stint in the Texas Air National Guard.  To 'prove' this, they had the allegations of a Democrat who was actively supporting Kerry in the election, and who had told different stories in the past (those different stories were something CBS never brought up, by the way).  CBS also had documents allegedly typed by Bush's former commanding officer.  The only problem was, the documents were phony.  The "source" was a guy who'd made wild accusations about Bush in the past, and who claimed he'd received them from someone else in the Texas National Guard, a man who would, however, deny it if they asked him about them.  Later, he said he got the documents from a mysterious woman who's name he didn't know.  The documents themselves were wordprocessed, a technology that didn't exist in 1972.

        Within a few hours of the airing of the original story, various people were suspicious of said documents.  They went looking, and soon found evidence of the utter impossibility of the documents having been produced in 1972 (unless Bush's superior, Col. Jerry Killian, kept a Linotype machine hidden away somewhere to use in writing himself memos).  CBS did its best, but eventually they buckled under the unrelentng pressure of evidence and admitted that they couldn't prove the documents were authentic, and that some of the documents examiners they'd consulted before the broadcast thought that the "memos" were forged. Further, CBS had to admit that they had tried to defend the story without bothering to see if the criticisms were true.  Rather was forced to retract the story on the air, and apologize for running it.

        The final result was that producer Mary Mapes was fired, three executives were asked to resign (they did, eventually, after making undisclosed settlements with CBS), and Rather was eased out of the news anchor chair after a "decent interval".  Danny Boy's been angry ever since.  He just couldn't leave well enough alone.  He still maintains that the documents are genuine, still insists that its up to the critics to prove they're phony, and is still suing CBS for making him fess up to his pecadillos.

        And as the "Rather biased" reporter twists in the wind, I just love it.  "More, more, I'm still not satisfied."

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        And the angel said unto them, "Be not afraid!  For, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.  For unto you is inaugurated this day in the city of George a Saviour, which is B. Hussein Obama the President."  And since then, everything has been perfect.   (The Gospel According to CNN, Chapter 2, verses 8-11.)

Posted by: saintonge at 17:54 | link | comments
idiots, weirdness, insanity, blowhards, george w bush, incompetence, dishonesty, fairness, reality, illogic, rathergate, mary mapes, stupidity springs eternal, the worlds smallest violin

Too Good to be True, but It Is

        Dan Rather wants a presidential commission to meet, to consider how to "save" the news business, or the "truly free and independent press", as he called it.  We're all the poorer because of the lack of a "watchdog on power", we suffer from the diminuation of investigative journalism, and the decline in war correspondents.

        Somehow unmentioned in the speech, at least as the Aspen Daily News reported it, is the fact that the press currently regards itself as a hostile neutral when reporting on U.S. wars, ready to spread enemy propoganda.  Nor did he mention the way "investigative journalism" has become advocacy journalism, with the "watchdog" of the press surpressing inconvenient facts.  And of course, the sheer dishonesty of so many news reports wasn't brought up.

        Hey Dan, here's an idea: in order to strengthen the news media, it should start admitting its ignorance of almost everything important, and stop its frequent lying.

        But I won't hold my breath on that one.

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        And the angel said unto them, "Be not afraid!  For, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.  For unto you is inaugurated this day in the city of George a Saviour, which is B. Hussein Obama the President."  And since then, everything has been perfect.   (The Gospel According to CNN, Chapter 2, verses 8-11.) rant end

Posted by: saintonge at 03:01 | link | comments
idiots, incompetence, dishonesty, ignorance, reality, rathergate