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"Christ, I miss the cold war"....
It is weird not to have a current show on the air during the entire week. Penny Dreadful, I miss you already. When does Doctor Who start again, August? I've heard there were leaked scripts, and can only hope everyone who does like to get spoiled will discuss them below a cut, because I really don't want to know anything.
Meanwhile, there's always that farcical soap, reality. Seems we've arrested our second American spy today. This one wasn't working for the BND but he did work for the German defense ministry. Meanwhile, the US press has started to notice there might be a problem but assures us Obama didn't know a thing about the first spy. (Presumably even less about the second.) This, strangely enough, is not reassuring. Spare some pity for Hillary Clinton who is currently in Europe promoting her book and had all her interviews both on tv and with the papers circling not said book but about the US spying onminions allies instead. (At least she didn't use the same lame Casablanca quote which everyone, from Obama downwards, used when discussing the previous American-German disaster.)
Deliberately amusing instead of farcical: JKR wrote a Rita Skeeter gossip columm on Harry Potter and friends showing up at the World Quidditch Cup, and it's a hoot. I've always suspect she had great fun spoofing the tabloid style for the Rita articles quoted in the later Potter novels (and of course for the excerpts of Rita's scandalous tell-all Dumbledore biography), and here she's doing it again ("Does Hermione Granger prove that a witch really can have it all? (No – look at her hair.)"), complete with Rita insinuating Harry's forbidden love for...no, not Draco: As their devoted fans and followers will remember, Potter and Krum competed against each other in the controversial Triwizard Tournament, but apparently there are no hard feelings, as they embraced upon meeting (what really happened in that maze? Speculation is unlikely to be quelled by the warmth of their greeting).
Harry/Victor: surely someone has written that already?
Meanwhile, there's always that farcical soap, reality. Seems we've arrested our second American spy today. This one wasn't working for the BND but he did work for the German defense ministry. Meanwhile, the US press has started to notice there might be a problem but assures us Obama didn't know a thing about the first spy. (Presumably even less about the second.) This, strangely enough, is not reassuring. Spare some pity for Hillary Clinton who is currently in Europe promoting her book and had all her interviews both on tv and with the papers circling not said book but about the US spying on
Deliberately amusing instead of farcical: JKR wrote a Rita Skeeter gossip columm on Harry Potter and friends showing up at the World Quidditch Cup, and it's a hoot. I've always suspect she had great fun spoofing the tabloid style for the Rita articles quoted in the later Potter novels (and of course for the excerpts of Rita's scandalous tell-all Dumbledore biography), and here she's doing it again ("Does Hermione Granger prove that a witch really can have it all? (No – look at her hair.)"), complete with Rita insinuating Harry's forbidden love for...no, not Draco: As their devoted fans and followers will remember, Potter and Krum competed against each other in the controversial Triwizard Tournament, but apparently there are no hard feelings, as they embraced upon meeting (what really happened in that maze? Speculation is unlikely to be quelled by the warmth of their greeting).
Harry/Victor: surely someone has written that already?
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It's Harry Potter - I'm pretty sure someone has written every possible pairing, somewhere *g*. This is the fandom that gave us Hogwarts/Giant Squid.
The whole thing is delightful, and I especially loved the bit about Luna's robes.
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The "how dare they spy on us while we're investigating them" attitude in that article is a bit, um.... since I take it as a given that German intelligence is also spying on the US whenever they can. It's just that they're following Rule #1, as you say: Don't get caught.
Perhaps the settlement of the investigation could include the BND giving the CIA some refresher classes?
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Actually, no. Among other things for the pragmatic reason that we can't compete in manpower, money or tech when it comes to spying. Also there's the quaint notion that you don't spy on allies, and the more pragmatic one that while Germany has no way to make the US suffer that wouldn't hurt us more (case in point: currently we can't even kick a few known CIA agents out which would happen with the agents of any other country in such an incident), the US has plenty of ways to make Germany suffer if they'd catch a spy. And lastly, it's not like there aren't plenty of other countries to spy on. Or try. I wasn't kidding about the BNDs reputation being rubbish. The efficient post war German spies, the ones later known to the public at least were all East German. Most famously Guillaume who was Chancellor Willy Brandt's personal assistant; his discovery as an East German mole was one of the main reasons, though not the only one, for Brandt's downfall and Schmidt becoming Chancellor in his stead. But the East German secret service also had plenty of moles in the BNDs administration via specifically trained agents romancing secretaries, something that wasn't discovered until after reunification which was when a lot of files suddenly became available.
The whole reason why the first American spy in this latest series of incidents was caught was that he was greedy enough to want to become a triple agent and approached the Russians, who WERE under surveillance by the BND - but the Americans weren't. Because, see above. It's just not done. Well, until now. And I hope it won't be because honestly, there are more important things to spend the national budget on.
One thing the Süddeutsche Zeitung recently pointed out: the CIA for all its reputation has to be rubbish as well, given that they managed to miss predicting any of the major earthquakes in the last thirty years - the Wall falling and the collapse of the Iron Curtain in general, Al Quaida, now ISIS - to quote the article, for an intelligence service whose purpose it is to explain to the President the way the world works and to predict some of those developments, it keeps failing. And other than industrial espionage, I can't see a point of the CIA infiltrating the services over here, because what on earth are they hoping to find out this way (other than trade advantages)? The current betting score on the World Cup? Phone and internet conversations, they listen to anyway, they don't need the German surveillance for that. (Actually, it's the reverse: when the BND started to suspect the triple wannabe of having approached the Russians, they asked their American compadres for access to any email accounts he might have in addition to his official ones.)
ETA: I spoke to soon: the top CIA official in Germany has just gotten kicked out: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/10/germany-asks-top-us-intelligence-official-spy-row
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And yet, they still seem to embarrass themselves in public less than the CIA.
I wasn't, btw, specifically targeting Germany with that remark; I'm cynical enough to assume any government will spy anywhere they think it'll benefit them. It's not a gentleman's game; at best, one is politer and more discreet when spying on allies. (Or should be, anyway; see again CIA cock-ups.) Though I agree that any spying between the US & Germany is a waste of resources better spent elsewhere.
I suspect some of it is simply that it's easier: recruiting a bureaucratic asset in a western European country uses techniques that were established decades ago, in a language and cultural context that the US intelligence community isn't still scrambling to catch up on. It's a lot safer, to the bureaucratic mind (and the CIA is toxically bureaucratic), than trying to infiltrate some scrubby non-state insurgent group where a captured spy could end up executed on live TV. (Very embarrassing to his superiors, that.) And the CIA is cripplingly risk-averse.
the CIA for all its reputation has to be rubbish as well, given that they managed to miss predicting any of the major earthquakes in the last thirty years
Oh, I think there's no question of that. Whatever reputation the CIA still has, it's trading on what it earned decades ago; in most of my lifetime, it's been wrong on almost every major issue to come to light. There's a reason, when I'm writing espionage fiction, that I make up my own fictional department, and it's not just because I want the freedom to invent my own jargon.
(Actually, it's the reverse: when the BND started to suspect the triple wannabe of having approached the Russians, they asked their American compadres for access to any email accounts he might have in addition to his official ones.)
And apparently the Americans handed it over, without noticing that they were thereby exposing themselves, which just... *headdesk*
the top CIA official in Germany has just gotten kicked out
Oh, dear. That doesn't bode well. Not that I blame them, mind.
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August 23, I believe. (During Manchester Pride - I wonder whether they'll manage to get permission to show it?)
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* Given that I have been cheerfully singing the first verse of the Marseillaise for years, and I have no sisters with French citizenship.
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Oh Lord our God arise,
Scatter our enemies,
And make them fall.
Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks,
On thee our hopes we fix,
God save us all!
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Wednesday 8 December 1762: At night I went to Covent Garden and saw Love in a Village, a new comic opera, for the first night. I liked it very much. I saw it from the gallery, but I was first in the pit. Just before the overture began to be played, two Highland officers came in. The mob in the upper gallery roared out, “No Scots! No Scots! Out with them!”, hissed and pelted them with apples. My heart warmed to my countrymen, my Scotch blood boiled with indignation. I jumped up on the benches, roared out, “Damn you, rascals!” hissed and was in the greatest rage. I am very sure at that time I should have been the most distinguished of heroes. I hated the English; I wished from my soul the Union was broke and that we might give them another battle of Bannockburn. I went close to the officers and asked them of what regiment they were of. They told me Lord John Murray’s, and that they were just come from the Havana. “And this,” said they, “is the thanks that we get – to be hissed when we come home. If it was French, what could they do worse?”
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