Intelligence Reports: Secret American-French Cooperation...

Intelligence Reports: Secret American-French Cooperation, the Bulgarian Umbrella Murder, Slovakia Almost Went East and Other Spy Stories, Olivier Schmidt, L'Harmattan, 2008

This is a book of 1990's spy and political articles that were first published in "Intelligence", a French on-line magazine.

America and France are the only members of a new, and extremely exclusive, nuclear stewardship club. They now have the technical, and computer, capability to be able to simulate nuclear explosions in the laboratory. This means that they are now able to develop new nuclear weapons without having to ignite them. As far as the public is being told, nuclear stewardship means being able to test and simulate the aging process of nuclear arms.

Jonathan Aitken was a British Member of Parliament who spent most of the 1980's as a "fixer" for Saudi Arabia, buying cars, boats, expensive properties, and blonde prostitutes, for Saudi use. Any attempt at a political career was stymied by Margaret Thatcher, who personally hated him. Aitken was also involved in several very secret arms deals sending arms to Iraq and Iran. After Thatcher was deposed, Aitken was invited to join the Cabinet, but was dis-invited for breaking the ethical rules. A very public libel trial ended with Aitken going to jail for perjury. A person would have thought that Aitken's friends, in Saudi Arabia and in British Intelligence, would have helped him with his legal troubles, but they preferred to let him twist in the wind.

The Netherlands actually disbanded their foreign intelligence service in the 1990's; a book about it became a best seller. Georgi Markov was a Bulgarian dissident who was killed in London by a poison pellet fired from an umbrella. A well-known German politician supposedly committed suicide in a Geneva hotel room. The interesting part is that his German province played a vital role in secret arms traffic between Israel and Iran that Tel Aviv would prefer not make it to the front pages.

I very much enjoyed reading this book. I also have a college degree in politics, and am something a lifelong foreign politics "junkie." The only possible downside is that this book requires more than a layman's knowledge of international relations. For those with such knowledge, here is a highly recommended book.

The Intelligence Files: Today's Secrets, Tomorrow's Scandals

The Intellligence Files: Today's Secrets, Tomorrow's Scandals, Olivier Schmidt (ed), Clarity Press, 2005

This is a collection of articles from a European online journal called "Intelligence". They deal with that netherworld where national and international politics, the military and the spy business intersect.

It sounds like a good thing for developing countries to put aside large tracts of land for "nature." Such a practice has now become required to receive Western aid. The poorer a country is, the more land they have to take out of production. How can a country dig itself out of poverty if large portions of their territory are no longer available for farming or livestock? To give one example of this new form of empire, 40 percent of the territory of Tanzania is now within strictly protected zones.

An extremely sophisticated radar system, called Have Stare, is being installed in Norway, its official purpose being to monitor space junk. Its actual purpose is as part of the Star Wars missile defense system. Ever since a passenger plane crashed in Lockerbie, Scotland, in the late 1980s, the whole world has blamed Libya. They recently "admitted" responsibility, even though the evidence to prove it was flimsy, at best.

If any one event can be said to have started "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland, it was the shootings of more then 40 unarmed protesters by British troops in 1972 in Londonderry (Bloody Sunday). A government inquiry, which became dismissed as a whitewash, absolved the soldiers of responsibility, declaring that they fired in self-defense. An independent inquiry came to the conclusion that the protesters really were unarmed, and that the British troops fired first.

I totally enjoyed this book, and learned a lot from it, but I am something of a foreign politics lover. More than the usual amount of knowledge of world affairs would help when reading this book, but it is very highly recommended.