Yes, it’s sad if someone loses their life, but if it is proven that he was a terrorist so be it. What struck me of the story, wasn’t the fake passports, the massive killing team, but rather they nipped into toilets and came out with disguises such as false beards. It’s amazing how the spy world technology has evolved so much with real-time satellites, miniature earpieces, computer hacking etc… but yet they are still dependant on a guy in a fake beard.

Sometimes when I’m cutting grass, I turn my thoughts to this website and question how do I make it more popular? I’m not interested in SEO, rather maybe branding and sedition. I’m not wanting to be as large as google, but rather News International size. Then an idea struck me, what about a children’s book, as that should be so easy? All these minor celebs and Australian Prime Ministers can do it, so why can’t I? But by doing this would I be stepping on Mister 8s toes?

Biggest problem is I can’t draw, have no sense of visual-IQ-ness but that wont stop me.

The way the book works is “I do this ..you do that…” The “I” being a ordinary man in his 20s or maybe its a range of different people, the “you” being the Stasi.
It’s set in Berlin and it’s mostly dusk or night and Berlin looks like the set from the film Dark City with a big wall through it and the odd searchlight sweeping.
The Stasi is represented by men in tan mackintoshes and they either have a very bland face or they probably have no features on their face.
Some of the pages are:

I speak, you listen.
I is standing talking to someone in the hallway on the phone in a East German 1960s furnished flat and the Stasi is on the other side of the wall, with his back to the reader, has a set of headphones, one of those old double round tape decks and is writing

You speak, I listen
I is sitting in their flat listening to the radio. The radio is connected by a black wire to the next panel where You is talking into the old style of radio microphones

I do, you watch
I is distributing anti-communist leaflets, or something more banal, but you is talking notes from a darkened doorway or in a car and this leads to….

I watch, you do
Some you is smashing up the printing presses as I cowers as one of the You is striking down with a cosh.

I run, you stop me.
I’s path is blocked by the Wall and you is looking down from a tower.

Possible ending
You stop, I run
The Wall has a gap and You has their back turned to it and I is escaping… however do i want a happy ending or do I reverse these last two and You stop I run stays the same but I run, you stop me has I being shot by You from the tower?

Do you have any ideas? Do you wish to contribute drawings? Do you want to draw the book, publish it and send me the royalties? Or am I simply trying to avoid finishing the cutting of the grass?

New year is always a time for resolutions and this year this site is aiming to find out who was Ted Allbeury and by the end of the year present a page full of information and a small celebration of his works. Ted led probably the most interesting yet secretive (his page was deleted on wikipedia) life of all Cold War fiction authors and these are a few facts known about him:

In his book, the special collection (published in 1975) has the following biog:

“During and after the last war Ted Allbeury served as an officer in the Intelligence Corps, working on counter-intelligence duties. Since then he has been a director of an advertising agency, a farmer, a disc jockey and a PR consultant”

Then in his foreword of the book Ted writes:

“With this, my fourth novel, it is time I acknowledged my indebtedness to those who got me into the writing game and kept me at it.
I must start with the person who kidnapped my small daughter Kerry in November 1970 so that to this day I don’t know where she is……”

In his obituary in the guardian Len Deighton wrote:

“No one knew Ted very well. I saw him only now and again. And yet Ted was one of my close friends and I believe that he also felt close to me. Ted was not a renowned drinking companion and didn’t like social gatherings large or small. His life was given to his family and his work. He was a notable success in both these endeavours: his wife Graz adored him and his powerful writing talent is evident in his fine books.

Ted was a large, muscular man with a quick wit that did not match his hesitant and thoughtful responses. He had the easy confidence that comes with strength of mind and body, and could have been mistaken for the foundry worker he had once been. I believe he was the only British secret agent to have parachuted into Nazi Germany. He remained there until the Allied armies arrived. Then, with Ted appointed to a senior and important intelligence role for the occupying army, he became entangled in the arrangements for Barbara Hutton’s divorce from Cary Grant. It was one of the few personal stories that Ted enjoyed recounting.

During the cold war, Ted was running agents across the border that divided communist East Germany from the west. His luck ran out and the Russians left him nailed to a kitchen table in a farmhouse. Practised torturers, they made sure he had a chance to survive and take the story back to his fellow agents. The war never ended for him. His children were kidnapped and he pursued them to South America. Ted never told me what happened after that.

I urged Ted to write his memoirs but he could not be persuaded. He said he’d signed an official document that prevented him doing so. Well, that’s our loss, along with Ted himself: a hero, patriot, family man, friend and outstanding writer.

· Theodore (Ted) Edward le Bouthillier Allbeury, novelist, born October 24 1917; died December 4 2005

So if you know something about Ted or his fictional characters, please drop us a line here at the stasi.

In the spirit of giving back, once a month I will write a tutorial on things I’ve learned from using free open source.

This website runs wordpressmu with the buddypress plug-in. It also uses mediawiki to run The Stasi Files. On my home PC, which runs ubuntu I have XAMPP, WordPress and Buddypress installed so that I can play with the themes.

This tutorial will explain how I set up the local test environment and as I’m a noob I will try and keep Terminal to a minimum as really it’s a pain when you are used to Windows.
The versions I’m installing are:
XAMPP 1.72
WordPressmu 2.8.5.2
Buddypress 1.1.2

XAMPP, this is needed as this creates databases on ubuntu which allows you to run wordpress and buddypress.
Steps:
1. Download it from Apache Friends
2. Once it’s downloaded go to Applications >>Accessories>>Terminal
3. Now in Terminal type in sudo tar xvfz xampp-linux-1.7.2.tar.gz -C /opt and enter your password
This should extract, if it does not and comes with error saying no file exists, make sure you have terminal location e.g yourname@desktop:~$ the same place where you downloaded the file. I find it’s always easier to move the file rather than trying to get terminal to point to the right location.
4. Extraction successful
5. Still in Terminal, type sudo /opt/lampp/lampp start
6. In your browser, type in localhost and hopefully you will see this:

7. Select your language and lets enter XAMPP.

8. Lets sort out some security. In Terminal enter sudo /opt/lampp/lampp security Note, it’s not proper security but I use the the same password for all the next steps.
8.1 Password write yes and type and retype your password
8.2 MySQL accessible via network. Do you want to turn it off? write yes
8.3 The MySQL/phpMyAdmin user pma has no password set!!! write yes and type and retype your password
8.4 MySQL has no root passwort set!!! write yes and type and retype your password
8.5 The FTP password for user ‘nobody’ is still set to ‘lampp’. write yes and type and retype your password
8.6 Done
8.7 Refresh your browser in XAMPP and it will ask you for a user name and password. The user name is lampp

9. In your browser, select from the left menu under tools phpmyadmin. The user name is root.
You will now see this screen:

10. Enter a name for your database, mine is called testwpmu, and press create
11. Finished

Now lets install WordPressmu

1. Download it from mu.WordPress.org
2. Extract it
3. Now in Terminal write gksudo nautilus and enter your password and in that new file window get to where you extracted the folder and copy it.
Can’t find it? Try going to the top level, then home, then yourname and downloads
4. Copy all the files in extracted wordpress-mu folder and paste it into opt>>lampp>>htdocs
5. Still in the file browser go to the top level and then etc>>hosts and open with gedit
6. Add the line 127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain save and exit
7. Open a new instance of terminal and write sudo chmod 777 /opt/lampp/htdocs/wp-content/
8. Now we can install wordpressmu in the browser
8.1 In your browser enter localhost.localdomain
8.2 Blog Addresses – select Sub-directories (like example.com/blog1)
8.3 Database Name testwpmu (from point 10 above)
8.4 Username is root, password is the password from 8.4 above
8.5 Leave everything as they are and change the Site Title to whatever you want. I’ve called mine “My test place” and I entered my email on the next line and press Submit
8.6 There will be whole bunch of writing but as long as it says “Congratulations! Your WordPress µ site has been configured” thats all that matters

9. Remember!!!! to take a note of the admin and the wordpress generated password before you press log in.
10. Now log in.
11. Run the upgrade across all the blogs, highlighted in yellow at the top of the dashboard to keep wordpress happy
12. In Site Admin >Options and at the very bottom enable plugins by ticking the box and pressing Update options

Now lets install Buddypress

1. Lets close all the terminals and file windows down so that we can start with an uncluttered desktop apart from the opened dashboard in wordpress.
2. Download buddypress in another tab from Buddypress.org
3. Extract the folder.
4. In Terminal write gksudo nautilus and enter your password and in that new file window get to where you extracted the folder and copy it.
5. Copy the folder to opt>>lampp>>htdocs>>wp-content>>plugins
6. Now in the folder opt>>lampp>>htdocs>>wp-content>>plugins>>bp-themes cut the two folders bp-default and bp-sn-parent paste them in opt>>lampp>>htdocs>>wp-content>>themes.
7. In your wordpress dashboard, go to Plugsins>>Installed and activate Buddypress. Do not do it for sitewide.
8. Now in the wordpress dashboard, go to Site Admin >> Themes and select no for all Themes apart from BuddyPress Default
9. In the wordpress dashboard, go to Appearance >> Themes and activate BuddyPress Default.
10. Your work is done, and if you right-click visit site in the top left hand corner and open in a new tab, you will see the Buddypress Theme.

Last thing: Remember after a reboot, you always need to run in Terminal, type sudo /opt/lampp/lampp start else wordpress doesn’t run.

Enjoy and if you find any errors or something is unclear or…. please let me know.

The Berlin Wall was coming down was fantastic for human rights and all that, but seriously I do think it was the end of the Golden Age for espionage writing. Who doesn’t love reading a good book, where you feel the border guards are after you and somehow you must get over the Wall and rescue the Western world from an evil plan hatched in the brain in some godforsaken Communist?
Or dog-fighting between your jet and a swarm of MiGS?
Or what about submarine movies, as terrorists nowadays don’t have submarines as they are a bit lame in gadgets. They might rig up a bomb to a mobile phone, but anybody can do that after watching a few episodes of the A-Team or Burn Notice or Chuck.

With the Soviets, you could identify or empathise with them as they looked like us, but a bit materially poorer obviously, and you could easily see yourself as the Head of the KGB, crushing evil Western Imperialist Spies and maybe launching the Red Army through Western Europe and invading the UK, but it’s a struggle nowadays reading a book and thinking of yourself hiding in a cave and your great master plan is to send a human or a truck bomb into a marketplace. Reading Cold War Fiction makes me believe I could be spy as I would blend in, but in fiction now I would look out of place standing in Kabul or in the Middle East.

The Cold War also had Vietnam and IRA fighting SAS veterans who rarely suffered battle fatigue, rather they would pick up ninja-esque tactics from their enemy before hosing down a few Communists, where now we have in fiction veterans who after therapy and drugs, and who only serve their country by fighting drug lords, people smugglers or a nutter in a cave, even though the newer trend is now to create enemies from our country/establishment as we have fictional Al-Qaeda fatigue.

The Cold War allowed writers to use all the terrorist organisations as being supported by evil Communist madmen in opulent palaces across Eastern Europe or the odd nutter in a tent, where now in the fictional world we are left with terrorists being supported by the nutters in a tent or a cave. With Russia getting stronger under Putin, we are having Cold War Mark II, but it’s too high-tech with no care-factor for us and limited to industrial espionage rather than a battle of ideas of Us against Them.

This Us against Them gave us a sense of identity and it permeated throughout the culture and so we could identify with say Doc Brown screaming about the Libyans and thinking that he in later life is wearing a radiation suit because of all the fallout from the atomic wars, but nowadays as a people we seem more divisive than ever and are fighting amongst ourselves over immigration, jobs, money etc.. and maybe this is because human nature needs us to have a big bully on the block and with the Soviets and the Nazis before them, gone, who are we now joined up against?

I don’t want films of the calibre of Red Dawn, The Hunt for Red October, TV Series like the Sandbaggers replaced with modern day rubbish like The International, Phantom Below, or Two and a Half Men (why is this crap even on TV, is there a joke in it?) I miss the tacky computers and their graphics from the Cold War, the glamour of a dinner-suited super spies dancing under disco balls before using a set of dodgy papers and going over and smuggling out a key defector.

I’m not for one second suggesting the Wall coming down was bad thing, but instead can we just forget the Wall fell down and carry on writing the good stuff?

Armstrong Sabian, aka Mister 8 is running the coolest contest on the web. The prize on offer is a Baby Boomer Trivial Pursuit card signed by Len Deighton.
To win, here is Mister 8s challenge

Give us a glimpse of what an adaptation of Horse Under Water might look like. Show us a movie poster, a scripted scene, a theme song, an animation, a trailer, a level from a video game, a comic, a selection from a radio play, etc. etc. We’re not too particular. Just get it to us by midnight EST on Dec. 12th by emailing your submission (or a link to your submission) to mister8 (at) mister8.com! Improve your odds with multiple entries!

Its a fantastic prize deserving from you a fantastic entry, so get your thinking caps on.

Full details can be found here: Mister 8 Contest

Gardening…2 1/2 acres…housework, as house is up for sale….. daughter sick and needing hugs all day long, no time to do some posts, so instead a blatant rip-off of a certain persons “book cover of the week”.
Instead of completely plagiarising that idea, this is best cover of a book that I own that isn’t used for a cold war or espionage novel, but could be.

The book One of Us by Michael Marshall Smith is an excellent book – nuff said