I discovered this book at Chatham House library. The front cover image of Arkan with his trademark white tiger gave away a lot of the subject detail of the book. It focuses on the war of the former Yugoslavia. Later in the work we touch upon the mass atrocities in other wars such as in Syria and Rwanda and also look at the Rohingya refugee crisis and the actions of Burma. Deep analyses of all sides of the Yugoslav conflict reveal patterns and structures of the killing machines that were let loose during that conflict, very often, like Arkan’s Tigers, paramilitary non-State actors, from which the overseeing central State political authorities could distance themselves so as to absolve themselves of legal blame for some of the excesses.
It is clear that the State was still involved and indirectly participated in some of the worst violence. Often State media built up on a pedestal the heroes of the conflict, the irregular formations and their lead commanders. It wasn’t just the Serbs that had irregular formations. The Croats expanded through militia and the police and Bosnians irregulars had their ranks filled with Jihadists from far afiled, a foreign influx of seasoned, in essence, Islamic terrorists.
The Bosnian situation was dire with the Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats taking leave of command from their centres and, often at odds, going to the extreme, the culmination being the Srebenica massacre where Radovan Karadžić committed the genocide of 10000 Muslim civilians. Often it was the civilian populations that bore the brunt of the mass atrocities, regular armies, in general, sticking to the script of the international consensus of the rules of war.
The author looks at how the command structures are built up to allow these atrocities and micro-examines the causes of such inhumane brutality. There is crossover between State leaders, government, army, organized crime, paramilitaries, smugglers and football hooligans. The State does not tacitly recognise the authority to act of the irregular forces and thus can absolve itself of much of the blame although in the case of Bosnian leader, Alija Izetbegović, he was so obviously attached to the Muslim Jihadists and reliant on them despite him openly presenting as a European-style leader. Slobodan Milošević was more evasive in his political grandstanding and deceptive and presented a unified front to the outside world. Here is a good quote from the book:
‘Brendan Simms exposed what he called British ‘Serbophilia’ in his unforgiving indictment of Britain’s failed Bosnia policy. He argues that what was seen as Serbian military spit-and-polish, in contrast to the ‘rag-tag’ Bosnian Muslims, helped persuade British decision makers that the Serbian establishment were people the British could continue to do business with.’
The public mood globally, after Bosnia, had shifted and in ways in which the author describes an essential way in which to avoid mass atrocities, the international public outcry caused the world to intervene so as to prevent further atrocities in Kosovo.
I enjoyed learning in detail the more intricate, if brutal elements of the conflict and it is a detailed study of what until Ukraine had been the largest conflict on European soil since World War 2. Late on in the book, the author, Kate Ferguson, goes on to look at other arenas and I feel that she could indeed have written separate books for each of these spheres.
I hope to purchase a copy of this book once I return it to the library as it will be useful for future reference.
I am a new member of Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, in London. On a recent visit, I made use of the vast resources of a very well-stocked library at Chatham House and this book is the first of the loans that I have finished reading. It is apt as Keir Giles is indeed a senior consulting fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House. He is an expert on Russia and this was clear from the outset of this book, Moscow Rules.
I have read much material on Putin’s Russia in the last decade or so. I have also extensively studied the Cold War and beyond that into Tsarist Russia and the Revolution of 1917 and subsequent communism of the Soviet Union. I think that Keir Giles’ book stands out among many other titles in that he seeks to identify the difference between Russia, Russians, their leaders, and The West. Often, that there is a clear difference between Russia and ourselves, is glossed over. We see Russians as an extension of ourselves, with European, democratic, libertarian values. Russian commentators, who educate and inform Western readers on the subject of Russia, are indeed akin to us Europeans or North Americans and do in fact share our values. However, Giles is keen to point out that these Western-facing Russians are the minority, the tip of the iceberg and the extreme. Russians proper are not so European. As much as Peter the Great or Catherine the Great sought a European home for Mother Russia; that dream has never been achieved. Russia is such a vast continent spanning Europe and Asia and containing such vast isolated resources and diverse populations that, to consider it European. is just folly. Geographically, we are told of how the natural frontiers make defence an almost impossible task for Russian militaries to arrange conventionally. In Moscow they seek buffer states. ‘The only safe border is one with a Russian soldier on both sides’.
Giles identifies that strategically. Russia has changed little with regard to its foreign policy since Tsarist times, through Soviet Communism and into the post Soviet times of Yeltsin and now Putin. It always blows hot and cold in its foreign policy and relationship with The West. One of the biggest factors in Putin’s current stance is his concrete conviction about the fall of the Soviet Union as being the worst event in Russian history. The tumultuous topsy-turvy gangster capitalism that accompanied the Yeltsin era in a Russian flirtation with free market capitalism, brought the country to its knees. The people suffered a massive decline in living standards. Oligarchs got rich but the experiment with out and out capitalism just didn’t work. One of the main reasons for the fall of the USSR was a ‘betrayal’ by Ukraine in agreeing with Belarus to leave the Union after the Baltic States successfully seceded. In Russian, Ukraine means’ borderland’ and it is known as ‘Little Russia’ History with the ancient Rus capital of Kyiv in Putin and many Russian eyes does not separate Ukraine from the motherland. We have seen Ukrainian leaders of the USSR like Khrushchev and Brezhnev. It is the bread basket of Russia. One of the principal functions of the Ukraine borderland is to act as a territorial buffer to invading armies. This was the case when Napoleon came and also Hitler’s Nazi Invasion. It was clearly agreed at the end of the USSR, beforehand with Mikhail Gorbachev, that there be no further expansion of NATO into Russian imperial territory. This has proved a lie by The West. Whereas we see our export of Western democracy as a gift to Russia, the Russians see inequality, decadent and immoral sexual values, and an untrustworthy source of liars and values which simply are not native Russian. It’s like Christian missionaries, Western ventures into Russia.
The Russian mentality of paranoia is justified. They do accept autocracy and it works. Yes, there is brutality and State oppression but also the Russians trust their leaders. The Tsar was holy, God’s representative on Earth. Although the horrors of Stalin are obvious, his personality cult was also very real indeed. What we see in our media’s depiction of Vladimir Putin, the Russians see exactly the opposite. He has genuine popularity and represents true Russian values. Propaganda and suppression of dissidents has a long history within Russia and is an accepted part of their culture.
The whole Russian language has its peculiarities and translation into and out of Russian is not straightforward. Giles identifies an example in the difference between Pravda and Istina.Pravda is a ‘tactical truth’ and Istina is the ‘real truth’. We don’t have equivalents in the English language. So often, Western ‘experts’ on Russia do not possess lived in experience of Russia and the cultural knowledge that accompanies native language skills. One has to think like a Russian in Russia in Russian to understand the country.
As the book draws to a conclusion, Giles doesn’t leave us with false hope that Putin will be ‘offski’ any time soon. And if he is, his replacement will have similar mentality and little will change; relationships between blocs could indeed disintegrate further. There is a certain stability and continuity in Vladimir Putin’s rule, as unpalatable as it might be at present. We seek rapprochement but we must recognise Russia’s point of view. NATO is encroaching and I personally see the argument being a double-edged sword regarding Ukraine. Both sides are equally guilty. It’s one thing Eastern European satellites signing up to NATO, but vast core areas of the Soviet Union adjacent to the Motherland signing up? It is unacceptable from a Russian perspective. You have to draw lines at some point. The whole Westphalian system is based on drawing borders and we know from other war experience that borders don’t necessarily export very well. Eg. The Middle East and Arab World. There needs to be some middle ground and it is important that politicians on both sides of the divide look at the psychology of their agreements and disputes and I think that by studying ‘Moscow Rules’, which is a very interesting, mainly psychological, exploration of the differences between Russia and us, any potential diplomat involved in international relationships, will be wiser and better armed in their ability to succeed in diffusing the ticking timebomb. I don’t think that there are many on the planet out there that wish for a full MAD Armageddon nuclear exchange between the old Cold War rivals.
It’s the first book that I’ve read from Chatham House library: I’m off to a good start and it makes me hungry for more. The library there is alone worth the membership fee alone for anyone with just a vague interest in international geopolitics. Chatham House is a renowned think tank with leading global experts. Knowledge is the key to all survival and is the essence of civilization.
I have previously read a lot of material on World War 2 codebreakers and the likes of Alan Turing and their critical work against Enigma and the invention of modern computing during that period. Of course, codebreaking and cryptography is not a new science and has been a critical part of both war and diplomacy since ancient times and has only increased in significance as time progresses. World War 1 is the second biggest conflagration to have occurred on this planet. It is no surprise that codebreaking was a key element to Allied success in this war. The first World War saw the invention of devastating new military tech such as the tank, the machine gun and the use of aircraft. In cryptography and codebreaking there were new technologies and new methods and on both sides a hard fought war was fought in these areas that really tilted the balance in the end on who became victors and who lost the war.
There was a lot of new technology in the period leading up to the war, in particular in the field of communications. Submarine cables for telegraph were still a relatively new phenomenon. Britain’s position as the bridge between Europe and America in the Atlantic, gave it disproportionate power when it came to cross-ocean cable communications. The British could cut off Germany from contacting the Americas and this they did. The Germans were forced to tactically avoid this blockade. They sent ciphered traffic across the British cables where possible. They tried setting up their own systems but achieved little success. They used neutral Madrid to route most of their telegraph traffic. The British allowed some of this as they were tapping all this traffic anyway. Often the Germans were trying to get the Latin American nations involved on their side in the war, the infamous Zimmerman telegram passed through this route where he openly tried to get the Mexican government enrolled in a border conflict with the USA.
German frustrations with British control of communications boiled over into full-scale hostilities. The Royal Navy were another dominant area where the German Navy faced an uphill struggle. The British were in effect starving the Germans into submission and denying them critical supplies, both military and civilian. In addition to communication control there was a full British Navy embargo in operation. What was the Germans’ answer to this? One of the most unpleasant aspects of the war, that did indeed provide the undoing of the German war effort was their submarine war in the Atlantic. They didn’t have the battleships or cruisers to defeat the Royal Navy but their submarine technology was more advanced and they sent U-Boats to attack not just military naval targets but also commercial vessels, of all countries, including neutral nations conducting merchant navy business across the Atlantic. The Kaiser’s hand was forced really and his people demanded action. He quivered throughout, stopping and starting the U-boat programme, bit ultimately public opinion did go in the Germans’ favour and the sinki9ng of the Lusitania was a turning point as it led to America entering the war proper.
It is interesting to note that British dominance in cable technology and communications was in a large part due to a public / private sector link up – The Italian businessman, Marconi, really embedded his business future with the British, providing the Allies with state of the art disruptive cutting edge technology that was the result of his pioneering inventiveness in the area of communication technology.
The office of Room 40, which is what the predecessor to Bletchley Park and GCHQ was known as, started very much as an informal amateur driven organisation and, by the end of World War 1, had suitably ‘professionalized’ and expanded and would later provide the core for many of the essential employees of Bletchley Park during World War 2. It was set up not far from Horseguards Parade in central London. Room 40 was the hub which controlled all the intercepted traffic and where the codebreaking, cryptanalysis and hard graft was done.
A talented bunch of people inhabited Room 40, many amateurs, a lot of women. Specialisation in certain niche areas was the norm. The new technology offered new challenges and I suppose the modern art and science of cryptography was developed in Room 40. Ancient cipher techniques such as the Caesar cipher were still in use. The German naval codebooks and traffic were encrypted using a hybrid mix of substitution and transposition ciphering. It wasn’t all that difficult to work out the German codebooks for seasoned Room 40 staff. Room 40 saw the first modern computer systems introduced. They were pretty rudimentary, based on punch cards but they did cut labour time when it came to data analysis, allowing skilled staff to utilise their time more efficiently.
I am at present a full-time cybersecurity student at Masterschool in Tel Aviv, Israel. We are studying cryptography which has an important role in internet communications – we were playing around on a virtual Enigma machine from World War 2 a few months ago. I have set up https://fourfourcyber.com as a cybersecurity business. What I particularly found intriguing in this book was that it took a detailed investigation into some example codes, seized or intercepted from the Germans and also looks direct at some of the code books. When you run though some examples as laid out by the authors it really helps to understand the exact process that is taking place. I found it pretty amazing understanding how an entire dictionary of a codebook could be constructed from just deciphering or working out a handful of words. Linguistic knowledge and skills were an important asset but fundamentally the whole process of decryption is basically like doing a crossword. In Room 40, as the war progressed these often larger-than-life cryptography eccentrics became better and better at handling German military and diplomatic systems. They were probably killing more German soldiers than any trench warfare and the efforts of Room 40 ultimately brought victory to the United Kingdom and her allies in a terrible conflict. Peace came sooner and the wisdom and knowledge gained from Room 40 was applied directly to the foundations of Bletchley Park and GCHQ, often these organisations being staffed by Room 40 veterans.
I had previously read Alison Weir’s most excellent book specifically on Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine many years ago so the author was familiar to me. I chanced upon this title in my local library (Caldicot) and thought I’d give it a go. It covers the lives of several British Queens, or rather the historical period in England during which they lived. The period is one of the most interesting periods, in my opinion, in British History. During the early Plantagenet monarchs, the revolutionary changes of the early Norman invaders to our country had settled down and stability in government and the rule of these Isles meant that this period was most fruitful in terms of British power at home and abroad and may foundations were laid for the future greatness of the British Empire and the basis of our country’s modern, developed, civilised society.
The book does indeed contain a revisit of Weir’s previous work and the first part is dedicated to Eleanor of Aquitaine who was the wife of King Henry II. There are four other queens in the book, three of whom are ‘Eleanors’. Alienor of Provence, Queen of King Henry III and also Eleanor of Castile, Queen of King Edward I. The other two queens are Berengaria of Navarre, Queen of Richard I and Isabelle of Angoulême, Queen of King John. As you can see from the exotic titles of all five queens, the Plantagenets were keen on extending their ties to European Royal bloodlines.
The whole period was rich in historic events. As the title suggests, this was the time of the crusades and many of the Kings went on crusade, most notably Richard I ‘The Lionheart’, who probably spent more time abroad during his reign, than at home in England. Wives were taken on crusade and although they were often kept safe in castles, sometimes danger could ensue, in particular during the arduous journeys to the Holy Land, usually by sea, where all sorts of perils arose.
This was a period were British dominions extended into continental Europe. One of the reasons why Eleanor of Aquitaine is one of my most favourite Queens is that during here reign, Britain was at its height in terms of land. Indeed the British crown held more territory in mainland France than the French King did. In addition to Normandy and Brittany the whole of the rich south western part of France that is Aquitaine became an integral part of our nation. Often the rulers had to spend a lot of time on the continent to deal with unruly tenants. Indeed the continental territories required more attention and management than the calmer more settled British Isles . As time passed these European dominions reverted back to French control. War, finance, marriages and deaths contributed to the erosion of British territory abroad. King John was known as ‘Lackland’ when he lost most of the European lands.
There were some very important occurrences during the Crusades period. King John was forced to acquiesce to his barons and sign Magna Carta in 1215. Magna Carta is one of the most quintessential pieces of legislation and is the cornerstone of constitutional rights in many modern Western societies, including the USA.
Some of the relationships between Kings and Queens were very lasting and very romantic. I particular King Edward I and Eleanor of Castile had a very close relationship that produced an amazing 18 children, most of whom unfortunately didn’t survive infancy. King Edward I constructed a series of huge crosses across the country to commemorate his beloved queen after her parting from this life. Religion played a crucial role in society, often the Pope was called upon to intervene in a lot of Royal matters, be it consanguinity in marriage, to taking the Cross for crusade or just settling land disputes with barons. A position in the Church was much sought after and we cross paths in the book with Geraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales) who was an ever-present in the Royal Courts and Vatican, on his ceaseless quest to obtain the hallowed Archbishopric of St. David’s in Wales.
In the later stages of the book I couldn’t believe encountering my little Welsh border home town in the text. Caldicot doesn’t get many mentions in any literature, although it does have a wonderful Castle which dates to around this period. King Edward I was very active beating back the Welsh who wouldn’t accept overlordship from London. Llywellyn ap Gruffydd, Prince of Wales, fought hard to preserve Welsh independence but ultimately died in battle against King Edward’s forces. King Edward established Caernarfon as his base in Wales with the castle there that he erected being modelled on the ancient walls of Constantinople. The Royal couple passed through Caldicot during one of the ‘progresses’ they made, visiting different parts of the country.
‘On 26 November (1284) the royal couple visited St. David’s. the Welsh capital, as guests of Bishop Thomas Bek, and attended a service in the cathedral. Then it was on to Cardiff, Caldicot and Chepstow.’ [Weir 2020:379]
I randomly found this book on the shelves of Caldicot library. I read a lot of books on U.K. Intelligence services: MI5, MI6 and GCHQ. During the war…. Mt grandfather (GaGa) was in 618 Squadron RAF and 143 Coastal Command. He didn’t really speak to me much about World War 2 itself until quite late on in his life. Typical of an Armed Forces Officer, though, he kept a pristine home and in part of this home, in his back garden, where he had erected a wigwam, at the top of his garden, lay a treasure trove of WW2 memorabilia. The lost fascinating of items to me as a kid were all his ‘secret’ gadgets. He had all these sort of special James Bond Q-like military aids, secret maps, secret compartments. The most fascinating of all his possessions for me was his ‘trick’ compass which was a normal RAF uniform button, which unscrewed to reveal a miniature, fully-working compass. Whenever I visited him I forced him to show me it God knows how many times – with the full story of how, if he was shot down by the Luftwaffe, behind enemy lines, this little compass would help him to escape and evade capture and get home safe and sound. Of course, he was lucky and although he saw a lot of action, he never got downed in Nazi Occupied Europe or in the later stages of the war in Japanese held South East Asia. He always mentioned this secret intelligence service MI9 which was much more powerful and effective and secret than MI5 or MI6 or any others and was the ‘real’ secret’ service but that you wouldn’t read about them in any newspapers etc. I didn’t really pay much attention, just enjoyed the idea of British ingenuity and secret gadgets. Old Gaga retained a fascinat6ion with all gadgets for the rest of his life, and any Xmas or Birthday presents usually involved some sort of novelty gadget style fun toy that would keep him amused for a bit.
Fast forward to the actual book review now. I have read this and appreciate that MI9 did exist ad that everything he said was basically completely true and indeed the book documents the full lists of gadgets handed out to RAF pilots and others who faced the potential of capture on foreign shores. Indeed James Bond, creator Sir Ian Fleming was connected to MI9 along other (less fêted) famous espionage figures such as Kim Philby. MI9 were the par excellence intelligence service of World War 2 for Britain – It encompassed Room 900 and also IS9. Their mission was focussed on ‘Escape and Evasion’. Whereas services such as SOE, MI6 and GCHQ (Bletchley Park – Alan Turing, Enigma Code, computers etc) did exist and indeed were often established due to WW2, MI9 was so clandestine that very little information has ever been released and much is still locked away in the archives. This book therefore was well-researched. It does tell the most remarkable tales, one of the most exciting collection of narratives I have encountered in studying WW2 history.
MI9 did indeed liaise and work with the collaboration of the other intelligence agencies, although frictions andEscape andEvasion, rivalries did exist. We look at its formation at the start of the book.
It was created specifically to deal with the issue of servicemen who were ‘behind enemy lines’. In addition to ‘Escape and Evasion ‘ which was the main goal, it also was a direct intelligence-gathering operation with any repatriated personnel being debriefed for vital intelligence about enemy movements and other critical information related to the enemy and the situation of other allies in hostile territory. They set up training programmes for all personnel such as RAF pilots, and D-Day Landing soldiers, who were at risk of enemy capture.
The book contains lots of detail of the escape routes set up, often run by families of resistance Europeans, many young women, who were dissatisfied with Nazi occupation and felt compelled to actively engage the enemy by assisting allied servicemen in any way possible, often very much putting their own lives and the lives of their families and loved ones directly on the line. Indeed if an allied soldier was caught by the Nazis he would often be interred in a POW camp but as unpleasant as the experience was, he would survive. The brave European citizens risking all for the ‘rat-lines’ would have no such luxury. If they were betrayed or captured by the Nazis they were simply shot – Indeed for every successful repatriation, there was an estimated one dead European civilian in the analysis of post war statistics. These people often did it all at their own expense and it is to the credit of I9 that as the war ended and in the aftermath one of the main mission focuses was to provide good financial renumeration for these European heroes and heroines.. The Comet Line was probably the most famous of the escape routes and an obvious lead character was the remarkable young Dédée. Rat Lines were operational in Paris, in Belgium, in Holland, in Italy and indeed in Germany itself and also in South East Asia, in the jungles where the attitude to prisoners by Japanese soldiers was entirely different and Pyrenees and Alpine mountain passes were replaced by tropical rainforest jungle. We hear of the Naga Queen in the Naga Hills of Burma.
Famous stories such as ‘Escape from Colditz’ were based on reality as indeed was ‘Escape to Victory’. I was amazed at the ingenuity of prisoner escapes and just how well organized and versatile and creative the allied POWs were. They used to get smuggled board games from home sent in, secretly containing all the necessary gadgets and escape materials.
MI9 was disbanded after World War 2 and to my knowledge doesn’t exist today. It makes James Bond even look dull. It is such an exciting really war time adventure story and the truth is we are probably only just scraping the surface of the reality of what actually happened in MI9. It’s like ‘Allo Allo’ just without the faux-pas comedy and some real bravery and action. In an age of #brexit it is worth noting just how much the Europeans put on the line for our troops and the real heros of the story are not the POWs or the MI9 officers, but the simple young women and families who went that extra mile to defeat Nazism and win World War 2 for the allied cause.
#centuryofgaga My grandad was Flight Lieutenant William Gordon Gerrard (26.05.1923-14.02.2015). sadly he didn’t make it to celebrate his 100th Birthday (today: 26.05.2023) but I’m most certainly raising a glass to him up in the surly bonds, and this book review is part of the tribute I pay to him to continue his legacy and that of his fellow patriotic countrymen who served us so well during World War 2 and who must be pretty thin on the ground nowadays as we lose aa wise generation who understood what a a genuine global conflagration consisted of. In this tense hostile global atmosphere where it’s pretty much boiling over militarily into World War 3, it makes the study of the history of the previous world wars that much a critical pursuit or paramount importance and therefore I’d encourage you to go out and read Helen Fry’s book on MI9, perhaps.
This is just another one of the many books I’ve read on the security services / spies / intelligence agencies in general. I guess I have a morbid fascination. Non-fiction throws up some pretty weird stuff – Life itself is a lot stranger than fiction. This tale from a turncoat ex MI5 employee David Shayler, comes from a time of great change in the world, Security Services in general and it interests me in particular as I was living down in London at that specific time and had what I believe to be my own brush with Shayler’s employers. It was at a time (in history) when people still bought and read daily newspapers and not just get all their news information off Donald Trump’s twitter feed. I can distinctly remember all the controversial headlines about the whole affair.
The book is written by some Daily Mail journalists, a sort of hive for some of the smelliest sort of flies that the tabloid journalist industry attracts so automatically I was on my guard as to the agenda and the sort of bias, provocation, and fascist ideology of the book. Also, let’s get one thing straight. David Shayler is not a hero like they might try to portray him as, he’s not even an anti-hero. He’s just a sort of bo standard below-average MI5 officer, a disgruntled employee, a whistleblower. He knows what he’s signed up to by applying for the job in the first place, by successfully passing the vetting and by being offered a position. I think the Official Secrets Act as much as anyone may find it repulsive and disagree with it is pretty clear and explicit in what it states. Basically Shayler is a criminal and this book is evidence of his crime. He’s broken the Official Secrets Act, he’s also clearly committed treason and although he perhaps lacks the glamour of those that have gone before him such a Kim Philby, he’s certainly nothing more than traitor scum acting against the interests of this country which is exactly what MI5 or their employees are not supposed to be doing. Mi5 is their to protect the nation and yes, the job is difficult but I think the outset that Shayler has failed totally to appreciate the patriotic element of the work. It may have changed since the cold War and be [perhaps a little more boring, but it will adapt like many other industries and indeed since the time of publication MI5 has adapted, facing a new enemy is Islamic terror and the end of the Cold War has proven only really to be a brief ceasefire as the Russians are now back on the scene added to which a growing threat from China makes MI5 an even more critiical organization in the contemporary (and future) world.
I hold the whole message that Shayler and the writers are trying to present as completely invalid and very easy to discount. Zero sympathy for him. Nobody should be reading his revelations. Yes maybe a private letter to the MI5 boss would have been OK. But selling your story to the Daily Mail and anyone else with a chequebook? At least Kim Philby was sort of driven by ideology and is therefore it’s much more easy to identify with him. Shayler just basically wanted a nice comfy hug payout so he didn’t have to worry about his mortgage. Selfish capitalist. Thatcherist, blinkered self-aggrandisement and totally free of ethics and morality. About as close as we get to James Bond his little escape to France where his greed catches up with him and he eventually gets raided and arrested by the French authorities He was probably given a nice comfie bed and a constant supply of fresh croissants out there, just in case and It wasn’t corruption or anything like injustice. He was a serious wanted criminal and that is what INTERPOL etc is set up to sort out. Cheered me up when he finally got to Belmarsh. I’m tempted to look up his wiki but to see where he is now but it will just annoy me further.
He’s an anonymous dot in a big blob and the secrecy of the work, yes it’s underpaid, difficult and the whole system and organization is frankly sh*t but so is everything else in #brokenbritain and has been for a long time. It’s reality. You don’t get to cut corners in life. Just a buy a lottery ticket like anyone else – I’m glad the sort of celebrity tabloid culture has removed a lot of power from the redtops with their lottery payout bribes to corrupt people and deliver huge sales. The British Press is by far the biggest threat to National Security we have. Greed and capitalism has turned them into the most sinister devious body of enemies ever produced on this island. They will stop at nothing to subvert Britain, the Commonwealth or the Empire. Just examining a tiny of fraction of Prince Harry’s valiant quest against them seeking justice is total proof of their treachery. Shame Murdoch didn’t holiday with Maxwell and the rest really as Davy Jones’ locker seems the best place for them all.
Well, looking directly at the book, Shayler claims MI5 cocked up IRA city of London attacks, He claims through word-of-mouth secondary information about an assassination plot by the British government on Colonel Gaddafi – Yes, well, Mr Shayler, Gadaffi (now dead of course), may have certain human rights etc but after Lockerbie he’s pretty much clear as an enemy of the British people and State. That’s who MI5 and MI6 and GCHQ are supposed to be targeting really. I was gutted that you didn’t take the offer by the Libyan intelligence service to clear off to Tripoli, would have made a much more exciting tale, one way or the other.
It’s no recruitment manual for MI5, further justification that the actual job is absolutely nothing at all like a James Bond film. The appendix 2 of Shayler’s recommendations for organizational change, probably the most boring tract of text I’ve ever read, but is great in clarifying just what a hideous corporate body of bureaucratic bungling the MI5 security service is. I can see why MI5 officers can be so deadly effective and dangerous if they are spending 23 and half hours chained up to a desk under a pile of paperwork and government forms then I guess that for the half hour allocated break where they get to do the glamorous work in high speed car chases, staking the State’s budget on roulette spins and copping off with foreign birds etc, they are going to be so angry and wound up and pissed off that they’ll pretty much take out all their frustrations on any target and cause serious destructive damage.
Some of the revelations were significant like how much financial wastage there is. An example is the £25 million spent on an amateur computer system that didn’t work and that they had to go out and buy an off the shelf version of Microsoft Windows 95 to sort out the IT in this critical department of National Security shows clearly that mismanagement is very possible and real.
I think that it does clarify the need for change and that there are serious inadequacies and probably worse than a standard government civil service department I think that we could maybe look to other countries and the way they handle their intelligence services. The CIA and Mossad, for example, are vastly different. In many ways they have more liberty and power and more open and more effective. Our secrecy laws are a bit archaic. There is most certainly a lack of balances and checks in place for our intelligence services that would limit abuses, enable necessary change and improve efficiency and productivity and better achieve the desired goal of national security. I think that for this country James Bond is quite a double-edged sword. Whereas on the one hand it is a very positive and successful (fictional) brand, I would argue it is the very epitome of global espionage propaganda achievement, par excellence. Equally it is quite old now and it must entangle the intelligence services in manacles really and be very frustrating. Deception works to a point but needs to be balanced a bit with reality, openness and honesty.
I think looking back that even though it was pretty damned boring, that Dame Stella Rimington, as head of MI5 who released a boo, that this book was actually a watershed moment and an historic change in methodology for MI5. Yes, Ok we end up with the sort of Shayler trash a s a result. But is signals that change is happening.
I feel like a nosey idiot myself for contributing to the obvious treason of Shayler et all by purchasing the book. But it is an interesting read and I think might, if used properly, be useful to enact change. It must be a very popular text out in the Kremlin in Moscow or Pyongyang or Beijing or the Afghan Cave complex. It demonstrates weakness to our enemies, possible exploits and perhaps encourages hostile attacks on out nation. But it’s subject an idiot who I highly doubt had much access at all to any form of high-level security information. Vetting system is broken obviously. What to do about it aside from the recommended changes – well, really push the death penalty for treason to properly discourage future Shaylers – Hanging, drawing and quartering must have a value aside from public entertainment. I discount most of the so-called scandal and I’m pretty confident that although there have been mishaps and errors that MI5 in fact do actually run an effective security service with regard to domestic issues. The lack of serious security incidents on British soil is testament to their work being efficient.
I think everyone that has ever heard of Boris Johnson associates him with lies. Oborne, who is an established veteran political journalist, in this relatively brief text, exposes the extent of the former Conservative Prime Minister’s almost total aversion to the truth. He reckons Johnson has told over thousands of lies and although the scope of the book is not to document every single lie and prove it is a lie, it just gives a brief overview of some of the worst and most notorious of these lies, especially those told in Parliament. Oborne believes and I think quite justly that by undermining the integrity of Parliament where under the Ministerial Code of Conduct it clearly states the rules with regard to any false information being given by an MP to be a serious breach. The problem of policing this is brought into question and the lack of proper discipline seems to have only encouraged Johnson to continue to bring the whole institution of government into disrepute.
In an act of political neutrality Oborne compares Boris’ lies with those told my Tony Blair, especially regarding the second Iraq war. He also mentions that Bill Clinton was a proven liar. Angela Merkel fairs more favourably with her poor East German background, hard-working ethics, and scientific rigour contrasting with Johnson’s privileged, elitist Etonian, comedy gaff brush-offs and aloofness. Donald Trump is seen as a mentor and the Atlantic relationship seems to have been convenient for both in their endless quest for omnipotent control of media and disregard for traditional political values, even those values inherent in their own parties. Oborne acknowledges the extremism of Trump but equates Boris’ vile lies to be on a par, if somewhat disguised within the bounds of British society.
When illustrating an example of a lie, Oborne is careful with regard to defamation laws, to provide footnote examples and often internet links with proof of the lie. He often refers to his own extensive website that documents more fully the comprehensive voluminous curriculum vitae of Boris Johnson’s lies.
I won’t spoil the book for the reader in this review to give examples of the many lies. Suffice it to say there are the obvious ones you probably know already plus some that escaped the radar of many including me. I don’t think it’s anything for Boris to be proud of and it will most probably be a long time before the integrity of Parliament and trust of the voting public is regained. A shameful legacy for a Prime Minister.
I like the art of Picasso, I like the city of Paris, and I like the books of Dave Haslam.
I was therefore pleased to hear of the release of this book which studies the life and art of famous Spanish artist, Pablo Picasso, in particular his séjour in the vibrant cultural capital of France, Paris, during the Belle Époque, where the artist was free to explore exciting new art styles such as ‘Cubism’ and could revolutionize the world of art in a society of changing cultural values. There was a shift in the world of Art and modern artists no longer sat cosy in the courts of Kings such as Velásquez who came before Picasso as a heavyweight in Spanish Art. The new artist got down with the people and Picasso likes it rough and ready, his work in Paris focussed on the seedy side of life in Pigalles – the SoHo of Paris , with paintings of prostitutes, hedonistic bars and the paintings helped to pay off his lengthy tabs in the quintessential Montmartre cafés. The rapid growth of Parisian café culture helped in the empowerment of women with traditional waiters giving way to the mass employment of waitresses due to the sheer volume of employment available. Often women in cafés were featured in Picasso’s art, sometimes often quite controversially considering the rather chauvinistic attitudes of the age. It is noted that Picasso was conforming as an artist to the concepts of Baudelaire’s theory a of a new style of art.
I know the Montmartre and Pigalles area well, in particular the nightclubs and I believe that the Sacré-Coeur is the most beautiful of all of Paris’ great tourist attractions. I could relate to the geography and Haslam is interesting in the manner in which he develops the local detail as he traces a lot of the sites from the Picasso era through to the present day documenting the change of building use, often central cultural locations disappointingly becoming modern supermarkets. You can tell from Picasso’s art that he’s likely to be quite an interesting bloke and I think perhaps based on what I have read it seems his art is actually quite conservative compared with his total hedonistic lifestyle. I’m surprised he managed to do any painting at all considering his rather tumultuous and very active love life. It seems old Pablo had quite a habit of keeping several women on the go at once, preparing his next relationship well in advance and sometimes event with the women involved openly knowing of their competition. He had a casual and regular opium-smoking habit and liked the odd Absinthe but claimed that toxins didn’t inspire his art at all. Possible to agree or disagree with this statement. The Cirque Medrano seemed a very interesting place and Picasso was a patron. Also, the Ballets Russes emerged during this period, bringing great characters such as Nijinsky to the area. Indeed Paris, during the Belle Époque gathered together many famous faces from across global cultural industries and Picasso was a central figure that bound many of these luminaries together.
The whole Belle Époque period was drawn to a close with the onset of World War I, although the Montmartre area in Paris continues to this day to be a central hub for art and culture folk.I enjoyed hearing about his friendship with Apollinaire. The book is quite brief but is very eloquently written, by an author who is obviously no stranger to nightlife, being a former Haçienda resident DJ in Manchester This gives this book a nice little entertainer’s inside touch. I really appreciated learning more about a famous artist that I already liked and I intend to consult the references to find a more detailed biographic account of Pablo Picasso’s life. I think it would also be worth investing in some of the other available titles in the Configo Publishing Art Decades series.
Jim ‘Shaft’ Ryan is a famous house music DJ from Birmingham who along with his brothers, Mick and Dermot, and their mate Lee, responsible for the seminary U.K. and global nightclub brands, Miss Moneypennys and Chuff Chuff. Jim is also my mate.
I knew that Jim had trained as a Catholic priest before becoming entangled in the acid house movement and I know he does quite a bit of academic work. He’s not stupid, for sure. I was pleased to hear about the release of this poetry book on Black Country Radio and surfed over to Amazon and picked up a copy. I wasn’t expecting wonders but to be honest, after reading the collection of poems that Jim has produced here, I can say that I am pleasantly surprised. The collection is well-balanced, covers a wide range of life topics and the poetry is neat, punchy, with excellent meter and range of vocabulary and a lot of it even neatly rhymes. We delve into religion with a bit of his Irish Catholic roots shining through, there is a great poem about Jim’s father covering family life and for the DJ and clubber there’s even some great little poems dedicated to his life as an electronic musician, ‘12” Single’ being the highlight. Some of the poems ask questions about contemporary life and values and often there is a dark insight into morality and values, with Jim not shying away from exposing human frailties and the dark undercurrents of modern life. My personal favourite poem and the one which I most identified with was ‘Fear Panic and Chaos’. I think that Jim’s work as a professional DJ helps his poetry in the neat rhyming and its meter. The reader is treated to the insight of a veteran DJ with a rich tapestry of life experience behind him and the book is a well-presented offering to British culture. The collection leaves you in a pleasant mood and I would recommend going out and treating yourself to a copy.
Alev Scott is a young female Brit whose mother has Turkish Cypriot roots and in this great study of modern turkey she relocates to Istanbul and immerses herself as much as possible in Turkish society Long time leader Erdogan, has done a lot to change Turkey in the past couple of decades in which he has held power. Some of it has gone down well but there has also been a great deal of controversy. At present, Turkish politics is in the headlines as Turks go to the polls to vote in a general election and it is predicted to be very close with Erdogan’s long reign very much under threat.
The book detail s a lot of the change and how on the one hand Turkish life is so radically different from the London Scott grew up in but on the other hand how Westernised and modern this bridge state between Europe and Asia is. We look at not just the political angle but also the social angle and the role of women in Turkish society, the religious aspect of life here and also more peculiar idiosyncrasies of Turkey.
It surprised me to learn how Erdogan, who stands on the political right has re-invigored Islamic values in Turkey, contrasting with the post-Ataturk secular legacy that has really been bringing Turkey much closer to Europe over the past century. This was one of the main aims of the great Kemal Ataturk’s legacy for his beloved nation. Turkish accession to the EU is, however, still on the brink, and no closer to happening with the modern politicians tending to look for other options and a closer relationship with the Middle East and Islamic World seems to be quite appetising, not forgetting ties with the controversial Russia who use Turkish tourism and finance significantly the Turkish economy. Headscarves have been allowed back in public spaces, including universities and schools and on the whole, the public are utilising the opportunity to visually demonstrate their devotion and integrating well with those remaining Turks who stick to the secular traditions.
The Gezi Park protests that filled international news programmes are covered in detail and it is quite bizarre how such a minor incident got totally out of control and the brutal response from the government seemed quite dangerously totalitarian and scarily undemocratic with police looking quite nasty lot. I’m sure that Gezi Park will still feature heavily in the minds of voters in the forthcoming elections.
The economy is addressed and I enjoyed hearing about the cultural importance of the Turkish barber as there are many Turkish barbers in the local Welsh village where I live and I think that they are great social places and friendly and I can see why they are so highly regarded in Turkey proper. Some of the wealthy Turkish business leaders seem very extravagant and overall it seems as though business in Turkey is quite thriving although perhaps slightly different compared with business in other large states such as London or New York where a more brazen form of capitalism exists.
We look at not just life in the big city of Istanbul but also venture out to the provinces and hear about the Kurdish issue. It seems as though the future of the Armenian and Kurdish issues seems to be a bit more closer to a peaceful resolution with new generations feeling less aggrieved by historical incidents and more keenly identifying as Turks However, there is still marginalisation and tensions.. Rural life is a lot more conservative and traditional and there is a difference yet it isn’t so radically strange which pleasantly surprises the author. I lied hearing about the local vegetable sellers, challenging the supermarkets with their neighbourhood market square one man stalls, totally supported by elderly housewives and a cornerstone of the suburban communities.
We venture into the bizarre with some cultural treasures such as camel wrestling, take a look at the mobs of passionate Turkish football fans, explore transsexual prostitution in Istanbul, the dangers of the PKK and Islamic State and war in Syria and also the move towards Islam playing a more integral and open part of society.
Turkey maintains an exotic appeal to Westerners and I identify this in this exploration of Turkish culture. It is a powerful nation set in a critical geographical junction between East and West. Perhaps Ataturk would be disappointed to learn of the move away from his secular state but I don’t think that this is a problem and it could make Turkey appeal even more to foreigners and help them develop and grow their still relatively young nation. The author does well in giving a good analysis of what it is to be a Turk and to cross-examine the culture , politics and economy of a wonderful and interesting place.
Wez G Books 
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