Masopher's Mind

Regarding the “spy swap of Summer 2010”, an interesting few points raised themselves to me.

Finally a few former cold war spies poked their heads above the parapet, mostly those tied back to the Spy museum in Washington DC. All current spies and think tanks remained quiet, except for a few casual opinions floated by the council on foreign relations. Think tanks deal with official policy rather than unofficial channels of information perhaps. I was regaled by a former KGB director as he let the current FSB officials have a full broadside of his disdain. One could tell that he styles himself one of the “true Cheka” and that he thinks the pretenders in Moskow are unprofessional buffoons. As they rightly would be; the KGB had godlike powers in the Soviet Union. Prime Minister Putin, a former KGB chief, has wisely crippled the agency so that he and his successor can sleep relatively peacefully at nights. The KGB was the breeding ground for Soviet Leaders who came to power with a wealth of dirty secrets and shadowy backers from the military and industry.

Nina L. Khrushcheva the great granddaughter of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was also contacted by one of the Russian spies. Hardly following in her sires footsteps she is a teacher/advisor on Media and Culture in the United States. She was approached by a “heavily accented” “Richard Murphy” who never once spoke or admitted that he was Russian despite Nina’s insistence that he give up the charade! She too seems to think that the FSB has produced some very poor graduates.

The swap itself happened very quickly arranged by Leon Panetta and the head of the Russian FSB. A plane full of Russian Agents left the states and landed in “spy city” Vienna. Another plane containing 4 Russian turncoats (KGB men and scientists who had spied for MI6 and the CIA) landed and the swap occurred, old spies swapped for new spies.

An Iranian spy story also emerged to less fanfare. Months ago an Iranian Nuclear scientist was reported to be kidnapped when visiting Saudi Arabia. He then turned up in the USA with conflicting stories; half the time saying he was kidnapped the otherhalf of the time saying he was seeking asylum. While the Russian spy scandal was going on he turned up at a Pakistani embassy asking to be taken back to Iran. Lots of beating for you when you get home Shahram! The American “backpackers” who are going on leisurely strolls between a country at war and a country that America has no official ties with were probably lumped in on the deal, even though everyone denies this so far.

Castro emerged from his hospital quarters showing final sparks of communist fervour. Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez locked up a few of his critics.

MI6 computer nerd Daniel Houghton who was trying to sell secrets to the (Israelis/Russians) is claiming he was acting under orders from schizophrenia induced “voices” probably wont be getting very far. Unlike the more exotic flavours of the cold war mentioned today, Daniel is just some dumb bastard trying to fuck his former employee for something that the Russians/Israelis probably already know or don’t care about.

It used to be a sexy world, but we all have seen what Daniel Craig does now. James Bond and Jason Bourne don’t use gadgets or have surreptitious, exchanges they have superhuman punch-ups. The spies of old probably do belong in the spy museum.

More and more it looks like isolated  North Korea may have actually attacked South Korea. Will it lead to war? Unlikely. North Korea has gotten away with worse. We already know North Korea has developed and tested nuclear weapons and we already know North Korea has developed and tested missile platforms to deploy said weapons to threaten South Korea and Japan. America…not so much and worse yet, not the United Kingdom.

British Conservative and Labour administrations claims to keep nuclear weapons to “deter” North Korean aggression are at best hollow and uneducated and at worst outright lies. Nuclear weapons do not deter development nor do they deter aggression.

Iran develops nuclear technology as it likes and it performs aggressive postures against its neighbours (taking over oil fields in Iraq, carrying out harassment and military manoeuvres in the Strait of Hormuz). Iran also continues to fund Hezbollah and supply them with even more advanced weaponry for the inevitable conflict with Israel.

Britain’s fleet of 4 Vangard class submarines do not in any way threaten any states but the one they were originally intended to threaten: Russia. Just as the missile shield being used to coral Russian territory (yet somehow protecting Europe from Iran) is only meant to defend against Russian ICBMs, British subs sailing into the Baltic from Scotland are only meant to attack Russian cities. With North Korea to the East of Russia it is believable to say interceptors and military bases are there to stop NKs McGuyver-ed together missiles but credibility begins to slip when Polish interceptors are needed to stop Iran’s yet to exist missiles. A more suitable place might be Cyprus or Turkey…I’m no geo-stategist nor am I a rocket scientist…I’m just considering the shortest distance between two points.

On the other hand. Lockheed Martin makes around 8 billion dollars a year from selling and maintaining advanced ballistic weapons which may never get used to countries like the UK. With Trident it will lock in over 100 Billion. The company makes lots more selling to the US Department of defence (DOD) but as was warned by Eisenhower, the Military-Industry is now vital to the US economy.  American Military-Industry is not vital to the British economy however and only takes away from the money that could be spent on civilian aerospace, transit, industrial and agricultural sectors.

Maybe Russia still is a problem, maybe the cold war is not really over…then come clean. If we still need to attack Russia, just say so. We have guarded against Russia for decades and  if we still need to then lets do, but stop feeding us this inconsistent and untrue line, NK and Persia are not detered and you know it.

After the second world war, when Europe collapsed in the most dramatic fashion since the fall of Rome: When Russian and American tanks roamed freely along Austrian, German, French and English roads, something unique happened. More so than Hitler’s horrific rise, it dawned on Russian and American leaders one thought even more monsterous: The world was theirs to take.

For Americans it may have been a desire to spread the plum candy liberal democracy of being able to spin a wheel and get money, for Russians it may have been a hard working sombre but highly educated man wiping his brow after a day working in “the peoples” field but in both of these imaginations they totally disregarded the core concept of free will and self determination.

After decimating the Japanese empire with nuclear weapons, there really were no alternative ideologies left to give pause to the onslaught of liberal capitalism and communism, except for each other, and so; with German scientists at their command, America and the Soviet Union began to mutually threaten the world with Armageddon.

Once they reached the stage of MAD (mutual assured destruction) other weapons were soon employed the most potent of all being….the simple lie.

When a child discovers the art of misrepresenting the facts it is a glorious event. The child lies just to see what its all about. It lies because lying is possible. It lies for attention, it lies so it doesn’t look bad, it lies to avoid stress the child lies because its parents lie. Mom and dad lie to them about beings that give them stuff for being good in case of the fat red man, free as in the case of the bunny or in exchange for something, like the tooth fairy. One can see why lies were appealing to thinkers in Moscow and Washington DC.

The lie has always existed in state affairs. Propagation of truth is always mixed judiciously with exaggerations and opinions as the propagator sees it and would like to be seen. Weilded correctly, the truth is a devastating weapon. My former professor, a military IO (information operations) man, once said that the best weapon is the truth. I agree, but unfortunately the truth is an expensive weapon in a society of morally corrupt individuals and even though one drop of truth has the potency of 100 Hiroshimas, a thousand lies are just as effective and easier to make.

France, a badly broken and belittled belligerent in the bellicose of the early 20th century was first to jump onto this fact. Perhaps fostered in the courts of Louis and Napoleon, the DeGaullists, desperate to denounce the dualism in the world spread rumours (perhaps via their cousins in Britain and Moscow) which helped to ratchet up the rhetoric and tensions between the two super powers. Once they obtained their own nuclear deterrents (and began proliferating technology to Syria, Saddam’s Iraq and Libya) they perhaps began to feel slighly more at ease. At ease, because they too can now trigger the deaths of millions.

The lies, cloaked truths, creation and spread of secrets was perhaps the most devastating weapon used in the cold war. Devastating because unlike the weapons of science, the weapons of the “humanities” were used indiscriminately.

20 years after the fall of the iron curtain, we live with a nuclear legacy that continues to endanger the lives of billions of people who don’t give a shit about the choice between capitalists raping us or communists enslaving us. In truth we probably want neither, nor do any of us care for nuclear weapons. Now all 6 billion of us have to deal with a few thousand Islamists grabbing those same weapons and exterminating us in their war against a few hundred imperialists.

American President, Barrack Obama has admirably made great steps on the trudge back to “Global zero”.  It will take 30 years just to get rid of half of the current capability. We will have to deal with cold war nukes for a long time to come but the lies that were also created and continue to be created will last even longer.