With The Goons, you either love them or don’t. I’m simply not a fan. I know that David at the excellently designed and written Permission to Kill loves them, but I just don’t find them funny, and I know this may offend some of you, I don’t find Peter Sellers funny. Maybe it is a generational thing, he just doesn’t tickle my funny bone and it is the same with Spike Milligan. Harry Secombe to me is only associated with Songs of Praise, with him standing in some windy green grass covered hill belting out songs worshipping a Church of England God is all that I know him for.

To use a football (soccer) comparison, The Goons are like George Best, everybody says they are amazing, but not seeing them in their heyday, they mean nothing to you and you honestly think that they wouldn’t connect and survive with today’s audience. And my feelings towards The Goons is the same with Dudley Moore as I wonder if he was ever funny.

The lyrics are from the The Goon Show Site:

There were two Russian lovers
Walking hand in hand on the banks of a river
in a snow covered land.
A boy and a girl with starlight in their eyes
They kiss and caress as he tenderly sighs

(Various strange words getting faster until the Russian explodes!)

I didn’t like the song, I liked the first verse, the rest was a mess, yet some will say the “mess” is hilarious, but whatever floats your boat. If you disagree, let me know.

In another post on Cold War songs – I have been busy with other stuff and frankly it is easier to write posts on songs, than finish the 20 drafts I have on books and movies. Speaking/writing of which, I watched Crimson Tide this morning and is it better than The Hunt for Red October? – I might just well be.

This song is about Elton Johns love for a Russian man, but in the video, attached below, it features an East German female Border guard. There is no denying in the video that Nikita is a very nice looking woman, and maybe it is just my monitor or the shadows from the filming, but do you think she badly needs her upper lip waxed?
I will get round to publishing my review of her Moscow Nights one day and I do like the Apple Mac advert she did, even though I am not a fan of Apple and all their conformists (to conform is the greatest sin of a free man) aka fans.

The video has many highlights including a car which in had electric windows which was the height of technological advancement with an almost invisible chauffeur, who incidentally doesn’t get asked for his passport. However, when Elton John hands over his passport he is still wearing the same clothes as the picture in it and it ruins the image that he is a rich westerner offering to save this repressed female when he can only afford one set of clothes.

The East Germans, who seem very tolerant of people taking photos at the border crossing, refuse Elton Johns entry to the East allowing the video to play a dream sequence as the music goes instrumental. This dream sequence which highlights the riches of the West that Nikita can attain by fleeing to Elton. These include some badly dressed dancing underneath a disco-ball, watching Watford (a town which makes East Berlin seem like a paradise) play football, playing chess, where she has Tintin hair, and where Elton is marked by the queen, revealing yet again his sexuality – yes Elton you are gay, you don’t have to keep reminding us and I wonder whether he is thought of nowadays as firstly being gay or as a musician? I love Queen, and I never think of Freddie Mercury being gay first then a musician, rather just a musician, why does your sexuality have to define who you are Elton rather than your music?

This dream sequence continues with some truly awful garments as they play 10 pin bowling. The clothing in this video is so bad that for some reason the very old children’s TV show rent-a-ghost kept on popping into my head.
The lyrics are:

Hey Nikita is it cold
In your little corner of the world
You could roll around the globe
And never find a warmer soul to know

And if there comes a time
Guns and gates no longer hold you in
And if you’re free to make a choice
Just look towards the west and find a friend

Lets be honest, the video is a bit crap, the song gets tedious after a minute or so and instead of watching the video, waste your time by watching this instead:

The music industry is always aimed at teenagers dreaming or wanting to be or are in love. Hormonal changes mixed with cash and cheap consumer goods is a gold mine. However, I don’t think this record would have sold many as this song is about a boy who loved Agnes who was a spy – they are bred young in the USSR. The boy gets it out of his system that he was being used and by the end he is frankly glad that she is being electrocuted for breaking his heart, because of the line more power to you Agnes. When she is dead he will have no qualms in moving on.

Maybe there is some truth to the song in that we would like to have unfaithful exes put in the Chair because when you a teenager, there is no reasonable middle ground.

I’m not sure whether this is Cold War song or whether it is a spoof, or whether it is a broken heart song or all three, however you can’t deny that the influences of the time helped the writer to come up with a narrative.

Agnes, oh Agnes
Oh, how I love you
Agnes, oh Agnes
Oh, how you made me blue

Agnes, oh Agnes
Life’s more than I can bear
Cause Agnes, my Agnes
They’re giving you the chair
But even though you are a teenage Russian spy
Agnes, my Agnes
I’ll love you till you die

(Speaks in slightly weird accent)

I can’t help myself Agnes,
I love you till you die Agnes
Wave bye bye Agnes
More power to you Agnes

Thanks to grandprix1963 for the upload

. Teenage Dirtbag by Wheatus is better.

Produced in (I think) 1966, this song is a classic of the Red Menace that stalks America. A decade after the excesses of McCarthy-ism, this song was sung by Marty Robbins warning about Reds in our midst and how they will corrupt, how our feeble-brained and opportunistic politicians will let us down and that God, and only God will save the good ‘ol USA.
I have to be honest and say I never understood why the country singers and the South always think they are being infiltrated by the Reds or they are the moral guardians of the USA. Just because you have think having guns and your version of God doesn’t make you right.

You came down to this southern town last summer
To show the folks a brand new way of life
But all you’ve shown the folks around here is trouble
And you’ve only added misery to their strife
Your concern is not to help the people
And I’ll say again, though it’s been often said
Your concern is just to bring discomfort, my friend
And your policy is just a little red

Let’s look and find the strong and able leaders
It’s time we found just how our neighbours stand
If we’re to win this war with Communism
Let’s fight it here as well as Vietnam
Let’s rise as one and meet our obligations
So Communistic boots will never trod
Across the fields of freedom that were given to us
With the blessing of our great almighty God
Across the fields of freedom that were given to us
With the blessing of our great almighty God

It gets a five for the sheer paranoia that still lingers on about the evils of Communism and socialism.

I have to admit that I am a fan of McCarthy, not because he polarised the country or that he destroyed careers or that he almost stopped the right of free speech and association, but because of his utter lunacy and yet he managed somehow to grip the worlds leading nation in madness. Chaos is always so much more interesting.

Replace communism for children and imagine Joe McCarthy playing the lead character in this clip.

For awhile I’ve been meaning to do reviews of the James Bond soundtracks of the films which were made during the Cold War, but I just haven’t got round to it, and there is a part of me which thinks let Bond be reviewed by the professional Bond websites, however like the weather I am sure I will change my mind.
Instead, this author is trying to focus on the less obvious works of the Cold War fiction universe (CCCP review coming soon, maybe some Elton John) and what is better than a great 1980s dance song.

But I hear you cry, “this isn’t Cold War, its a sort of floor filler of the 80′s”. For all those disbelievers out there, enclosed is the cover from the single, the lyrics and most importantly the video which features the intro from leaders such as Nixon, JFK and Arafat before the wrestling match between Reagan and the forgotten, yet no less significant, Konstantin Chernenko, before a free for all with other world leaders and the world blowing up. In a very far sighted move the video producers engaged Boris Yeltsin to play Chernenko in the video. – yes a lie but the resemblance is a bit uncanny

The lyrics are:
Songwriters: Gill, Peter;Johnson, William;O’Toole, Mark William

The air attack warning sounds like.
This is the sound.

When two tribes go to war, a point is all that you can score

as it is still well ‘ard after all these years.

Recently my spirit for the site has been flagging. When I started I thought this site would be more interactive, people would write in the forums, I would have at least one other person writing a blog on the site, and out of all the absolute dross on the internet people would recognise my genius, take me to task on some of the political views I’ve written or stand up for le Carre and his truly awful writing or even one person would write a comment….. Instead it makes me think that my passion isn’t shared by many people out there, even though that doesn’t explain the volumes that Clancy et al sell, maybe my site is a lot of rubbish and my negativity towards some of the books are putting people off. I do get loads of comments on selling cigarettes, selling Viagra, sites where you can see hot photos of some person you never heard of or the opportunity to take part in some financial insurance scam but these spammers are just f**kwits, but at least they take the time to write. Recently some of the books I’ve read have been pretty poor, so bad that I couldn’t bring myself to write reviews – it’s not that the plots are bad, but rather it’s the writing and the feeling you get from some writers is that they are going through the motions and their lack of passion destroys the pleasure you get from reading their book. Woe is me!!

However, my faith in cold war fiction has been restored by Black Ice as it was an absolute pleasure to read, especially after reading the soap opera-ish The Company and the dour, but not bad, Armageddon. For your pleasure I’ve attached the first page

If you’ve never come to in the middle of the night to find yourself approximately halfway between New York and Moscow, right up on top of the world, standing outside a block of flats wearing nothing other than a ladies’ silk dressing-robe – and that decorated with large scarlet kisses – allow me to describe the sensation.

Confused. That’s the word, I think. Confused, and cold around the knees.

I shivered, yawned and did a few push-ups with my eyelids while I applied my brain to some basic questions: like was it night or day? That isn’t quite as easy as it sounds. In the summer, about the only way you can tell is by the life in the city. From where I was standing, outside the flats high up on Vesturbrun, the place looked like early-closing day on the Marie Celeste.

That made it night. Still.

I looked and listened. Nothing. Only, in the distance, a car chugging and spluttering. An early worker. Or, here in Reykjavik, more likely a late reveller.

I called out her name, then stood there feeling silly. Solrun isn’t the sort of name you can go round shouting, not unless you’ve strayed into one of those operas where all the women look like sixteen-stone milkmaids. In any case, my cry fell into that damp silence like a stone down a well.

Then it struck me. If this was my debut in international espionage, I wasn’t doing too well. I mean, how would it look on my c.v.? ‘On his first operation, Craven actually lost the subject of his surveillance while she was in bed with him.’ Roger Moore never seemed to have these problems.

This book was narrated with a flippancy and an irrelevancy that appealed to me. The language was of a far higher standard than most books, and I include Deighton in this, that I have read recently. Also, kudos for describing my wife:

“When I come to think about it, I’ve never actually known a woman who rushed off home to mummy in moments of emotional crisis. My wife used to rush out and spend. To her, the cheque-book was a weapon of retaliation: it gave her a strike-back capability that was awesome”. - I am safe in the knowledge that my wife doesn’t read this blog.

The book is about a journalist who has been asked by the British Foreign Office on a one time mission, to go and catch up with his ex-girlfriend the stunningly beautiful Icelandic model Solrun. Yes, pet hated cliché that she is most gorgeous woman on earth, but the story would have suffered if she looked like Kelly Osbourne or some other fat ugly woman who is famous for no apparent reason and the strength of the writing allowed me to forgive this faux par. Sohrun is caught in a political public relations war between the USA and the USSR. If she defects to the Russians, this will drive up feelings of anti-Americanism and drive them out of their strategic base in Iceland.
Solrun has went on the run and is pursued by some journalists, two mad ex-US soldiers, a charming Russian with bad taste in furniture, a novelty toilet salesman, the Icelandic Intelligence Service and a man who speaks Esperanto.
It all sounds very flippant and irrelevant, but that would not do it justice as there is a very tight plot, the main character is very well described, there is constant action and the book manages to remind us that the Cold War wasn’t fought just in Berlin or Moscow, but everywhere that held a strategic importance to one side or the other. The book builds up very nicely before an ending that is brutal and leaves you a bit shell-shocked, so very well done Mr Dunne.

Overall:
According to the book, who would win the cold war: This book leaves you know doubt that both sides are as bad as each other, and we are all pawns who get easily distracted by reading about sexy Eskies.

Explosives/fight scenes etc.. : A scalping, a Russian gets beaten up, a man freezes to death, some unsafe bungee jumping, and a geyser gets angry.

Believability of the goodies: Sam Craven, believable as an under achiever and if you believe that old adage “it’s easier to laugh a woman into bed” to explain his success with Solrun. His background and his upbringing helped explain his motives and how he reacts to situations and at no point did you feel that his actions or his thoughts were out of character.
This book was narrated by Sam (no relation to Jon of newsround) and like the Quiller books or Deightons unnamed spies, he doesn’t go into detailed backgrounds on who he meets, rather he judges them on their actions and their reactions to events.

This book is good for the soul as it allows the reader to enjoy the English language in a cold war setting and the story never let go as the plot revealed itself over the course of the book. For once I wholeheartedly agree with the quotes on the back “Crisp characters, amazing pace. every low punch in the book on target” and “Sharp, funny and stylish”

Buy it from Amazon, or you can read it online (not really recommended as you can’t enjoy a book on a monitor) at Open writing or you can read the author write about his days at The Sun at Ranters

Google analytics always show that one of the search terms that my site falls under is CIA fiction cold war. However, I rarely read books about the CIA, as I think the European spies are better. European spies, are grubbier, more inventive, more morally ambiguous where the American cold war fiction books are more military. For instance, Jack Ryan, the books are great, but he isn’t a spy, rather he is an analyst who gets caught up in military fights. It’s a sense of identifying with the characters and I struggle with some CIA books. It is like Nina Simone – I love her voice, her songs, the rawness but I don’t like the song Young, Gifted and Black. Not because I’m racist, far from it, but rather I’m not young nor black and that songs audience isn’t a middle-aged guy writing a blog about cold war books as he drinks some Château de Cardboard.

So I tried to put my prejudice against American CIA books aside as I read The Company, however from the start I had trouble identifying with the three main characters as they were a bunch of Yale rowers, getting involved in the Great Game, and they knew that they were fighting the good fight on their side and this rubbed me up the wrong way. I like my characters to have a bit of class war in them as I detest when it’s the gentlemen spies from Oxbridge or they are doing it for God, Queen and Country. On a side note, I though the Matt Damon film The Good Shepherd was absolute rubbish and this book had the same air as the film.

This book then follows the divergent paths this troika follow and charts the successes and failures of the three principal characters and the CIA in Hungary, Cuba, Soviet invaded Afghanistan and Russia under Gorbachev. The book mixes real events with real characters and in the end you don’t care what happens rather you begin to set yourself the mental goal of finishing this book. This isn’t a reflection of the books length, for instance I would say Leon Uris’ Armageddon has far more words and it makes you think, where The Company just made you groan.

Overall:
According to the book, who would win the cold war: The novel doesn’t allow you to make a guess as it tries to follow the real time-line.
Explosives/fight scenes etc.. : Hungary rebels, Cuba gets invaded, Russia has a revolution, Afghan kidnapping and escape, some fake East German police shooting, trawler blows up, pope gets knocked off and Yeltsin explains how he lost his fingers.

Believability of the goodies (CIA):
John J. McAuliffe, was the central character of the Yale rowing troika. He was supposed to represent the fighting Irish immigrants, he had the red hair with red moustache and the lothario personality to match, and was the American taking the Soviets on in East Berlin and landing with the Cuban exiles in the Bay of Pigs. He was a man who knew God was on his side, and whatever actions he takes are justified as he is fighting for the right side. He had everything going for him, yet he just didn’t come alive, maybe the author had too many central characters and their effectiveness was diluted?

Elliott Winstrom Ebbitt II. a.k.a. Ebby was a good character, however what made him unbelievable was the massive change in personality in the book. This was a man who fought against the Nazis for the OSS, came back to civilian life, missed the excitement and the sense of patriotism or purpose and decide to join the CIA. However, he gets captured by a Russian trawler captain and when he goes to Hungary you sense that he doesn’t know what he is doing or how he should act. As an OSS veteran you would expect a certain type of personality and the intelligence to to do things, where as the book progressed he became more and more an apparatchik making his back-story questionable.

Harvey Torriti a.k.a the Sorcerer was the most interesting character in the book. He was the hard-drinking anti-political correctness Man in Berlin. He had the rawness, the peasant cunning and the thirst to take on the Russians and win. He knew the rules of the Game and was probably the most fleshed out character, not just in girth, in the book, however sadly he seemed to be a bit of a sideshow to the shallow boring Company men. I would hope Littell brings out books on Torriti, however they might have a problem conveying any fear for the reader on the survival rate of the hero as in this book he ends up fat and constantly drunk in a nursing home.

I’m not too keen to talk about James Jesus Angleton, Kim Philby and the rest of the historical characters who appeared in this book as the book wasn’t really about them unlike Shadow of Shadows where George Blake was a central character. However I will quickly say that Angleton, if he was a smart as he was, he ruined it by having such poor presentation skills. If you are going to destroy the careers of serving officers and put the CIA into civil war, at least be able to explain your decisions, allow substantive investigations and be open and transparent when you convict someone. How can you be open and transparent in a secret service? You need to be with personnel issues, else you will create a cancer that will destroy your organisation. After all there are more 9-5 bureaucrats compared to those out sneaking Soviet scientists out. Do you think he felt such a fool when his alleged best friend Philby was a mole and you wonder how many secrets Angleton inadvertently passed over?
Also, the author of the last book I reviewed Mongoose R.I.P William F. Buckley Jr had a mention which was nice.

Believability of the baddies (KGB):
Yegeny Alexandrovich Tsipin: He was the Soviet member of the troika. He had the most interesting job as he was a deep cover Soviet spy in the USA, however the book wasn’t named the KGB rather The Company so out of the three of the original trio, he featured the least and in compensation he was given a small starring role during the Soviet coup in 1991. Typical lovers story where he falls in love with a Russian woman, but he finds out that she is Jewish, therefore not allowed to KGB serving officers, and worse than that she investigates Stalin’s crimes and dismisses the argument that Stalin was a mistake, rather she believes communism is a crime. Yegeny has to choose between serving his country and her, so he picks his country and she fades out, but like all soap opera-ish fiction, Yegeny stills carries a torch for her and they meet under the more outwardly enlightened regime of Gorbachev and to this readers astonishment, they both still love each other. Also, the revelation that Yegeny was an unofficial spotter, who spotted Leo just didn’t fit with the rest of the story.

Leo Kritzky: Leo was one of the original troika, and all along was a Soviet agent. Like the other characters there was a wooden-ish to his character and his unmasking as traitor wasn’t too much of a surprise. It was a lack of surprise as in fiction whenever three people are involved two are on different sides and one is a traitor. What was well written, was how he became a spy, how he met his wife and his interrogation by Angelton. Leo justifies his conversion to communism with all the usual idealism about the brotherhood of man, and then when he defects to Soviet Russia he finds the barbaric-ness of the system and how the leaders have betrayed communism and that communist salvation and his own, can be found through the armed support of Yeltin during the Coup of 1991. I know the author tries to follow historical precedent where the mole in the CIA starts with K, names ends with ski, but this is a work of fiction, you do have a licence to be inventive. Why does the mole always have to the emigrant from the East, and whose father failed under the capitalist system and killed himself. Why not make the mole like Robert Hanssen (who is mentioned in the book) without the sexual deviancy, a god fearing Christian. Yes, Hanssen has some Polish in him, but my point still remains valid.

Starik, the old man and puppet master. Either Stalin or Beria or one of the gang used to be a paedophile, but why make this character one? Does it add anything to the story? No! Why can’t the main adversary just have normal tastes? Seriously I could easily run the KGB and order my operatives to kill the Pope without my down time needing to filled by my “nieces”. This American trait to constantly de-humanise the bad guys always annoys me. For instance, I love the old black and white movies which were made during and just after the second world war. There was always a clear distinction between the UK and the USA produced films. The American ones always had the Nazis portrayed as evil to the core, raping nuns and killing babies, where the British films showed the enemy as Germans with the odd Nazi, with his black-hearted ways in charge. Evil is more convincing when it’s somebody like Himmler, a small normal looking man, who kills millions and set the world alight with a stroke of a pen, rather than a paedophile who climbs to the top. Maybe it is because to be a leader within a bad guy cabal, for lack of a better description, you must be socially accepted by your peers and share similar personality traits, didn’t Hitler remove Roehm, the brown shirt leader, to primarily consolidate his grip on the party, but also because his homosexuality and the rest of the leaders of the S.A. was alien to him and the goals of the Third Reich?

Starik, had a master plan codenamed Kholstomer, which was to bring about the capitalist destruction of the USA by destroying the dollar in the currency markets. This was plan which was featured in the very first pages of the book, and necessitated the killing of the Pope and so this is a central plot. This plan was warned by Angelton and Starik was planning for this for decades, First Secretarys of the Communist Party were frightened of implementing it, yet the author choose to wrap it it up in a page or so and all behind the scenes – all this build up for a lame fizz. Also, the other thing that annoyed me about the Kholstomer plot was that Starik hired a top assassin to carry out the killing of the Pope, and once he does the deed Starik easily kills him. Why not give the assassin some sense of professionalism, and give him an insurance like how some of the characters who supplied the matériel in The Day of the Jackal were untouchable by the sniper.

I’m one of these people that never liked Alice in Wonderland, I have no intention of ever seeing the new movie, and yet it must be the most referenced book in fiction. This is the book that Starik choose to read to his pre-pubescent harem every night for a minimum of 40 years and I’m just wondering whether cardboard characters in a spy novel would be bored of the same book.

As I was reading this novel I thought it’s written like a TV movie or one of those TV series/special events starring Robert Mitchum and then I discovered it is a TV mini-series starring a failed Robin, the man who is starring in the worst spin-off of all time – Chris O’Donnell, yet admittedly he played well a woman in Two and a half men, and I wasn’t surprised. There is a blandness and a softness to these TV series and this book conveys the same tones.

The book never evoked any feeling in the reader. For instance the book is set during the Hungarian uprising and the Invasion of the Bay of Pigs and Littell doesn’t make the reader care. Any other author would make you feel the tension of the uprising, the rumblings of the Soviet tanks along the cobblestones, the fear and confusion as one of the main characters is trapped in a barracks surrounded by the Soviet oppressors, even throw in a bit of propaganda where it makes it clear to the reader that the West is fighting a good fight and the communists are evil, or alternatively make you feel disgusted that the West egged on the Hungarians, the Cubans and the Iraqis at the end of Gulf War One and then didn’t follow through and left them be massacred by their oppressors.

Littell also went Tom Clancy post 2000, where he makes the main characters for awhile the sons of the main protagonists, and like The Teeth of The Tiger, you think why are you wasting my time with these clearly inferior characters, let’s just focus on the main ones and give them a natural conclusion. This part of the book, (book written in 2002) allows the author to warn about bin Laden and the backfiring of giving stingers and support to the Afghans and mujahideen, and it comes across as the authors smugness and maybe to show that the book has relevance to today. Yet it feels out of sync with the characters and the mood of the times that helping them to beat the Soviets was the right thing to do.

In summary, it could have been so much better, all the ingredients were there, it had a good enough plot, it had some fantastic backdrops, it appeared well researched and then it just didn’t come together which was such a pity.

One very last point, as I was getting the picture for the book from the amazon store I read how many people think this is a massive book at 900 pages. 900 pages isn’t a lot and the font is big enough and in my opinion it is just stupid to judge a book on it’s length rather than its enjoyment. Come on people you don’t get a badge of honour or need a health warning for reading a book longer than 300 pages and length doesn’t justify calling a book epic.

My biggest communist novelty mistake was not realising Castro was in Hanoi the same day I was. Instead of having the joy of listening to the man ramble on for X amount of hours, I did the sights and the tomb of Ho Chi Minh. ‘Uncle’ Ho’s mausoleum was quiet, respectful and you had to dress neatly which was a huge comparison to Chairman Mao’s in Beijing which was just a free for all, tacky, especially at the end of it when you are assaulted by the street vendors, all within the grounds of his mausoleum. I still have to see Lenins, however I’m hoping Castro when he dies, must be soon-ish, gets embalmed and stuffed and put on public display. It’s not out of respect for Castro, rather some people collect snow-globes, I just want to have a full suite of dead embalmed Communist leaders. On a side-note I think using a jackhammer and breaking into Stalins concrete protected tomb would be too much, however if I was seriously drunk and I was one of those Russian oil-barons, I wouldn’t rule it out.

Mongoose R.I.P is the story of three of the missions where the Kennedy brothers are trying to kill Castro. In later editions it is billed as a Blackford Oakes book, but in this he has a secondary role, as Castro is the main character and it follows him as he tries to avoid being assassinated, how he positions Cuba in the eyes of the Russians and how to strike back at the main enemy i.e. the USA.

As this is an alternative history, Buckley uses the three (out of the 638) most publicised assassination attempts on Castro in the course of the book:

1) Wetsuit with toxins – This is an idea by the CIA/ OSS legend Wild Bill Donovan. In this Donovan comes across as a soldier who was very brave in combat, yet when it came to trying to remove Castro he came across like an excited schoolboy with impractical ideas.

2) The lover, Maria. After a year in Miami she returns to Cuba and tries to poison him by hiding pills in her cold cream. Another idea by Donovan. Good idea, but poorly executed and planned. On the first night this woman is back, she tries to poison him, however Castro security detail has already discovered the pills. Hindsight is great, but what should have happened was that she comes back, embeds herself with Castro for a few months and then the CIA slips her the pills. To try on your first night and to smuggle the pills in yourself is just stupid.

3) An old comrade of arms, Rolando Cubela, tries to shoot Castro. This attempt is the one where Blackford Oakes is involved in, as he supplies the rifle, the reward money and the co-ordination for a new provisional government. Cubela misses.

With his mistress trying to kill him and the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion a few years before, Castro plans a revenge on America and Kennedy. This revenge is helped by the discovery that a missile was left hidden behind by the Russians after the missile crises, which the Russians ‘forgot’ to tell the Cubans about. Castro also has problems with the USSR as he feels his country is not being respected enough by the Russians, so he plans to hurt the Russians and the Americans at the same time as he will launch a nuclear missile at the Americans and blame it on the Russians. For this to work, Castro needs a Russian missile specialist to defect and the best way is through the specialists family, however these are all held ‘hostage’ in Russia awaiting for their non-defecting husbands to return from overseas. Castro starts dropping hints on how much he respects the Chinese, and in Khrushchev’s fury/appeasement he invites Castro to the May Day celebrations in Moscow, thus giving Castro the opportunity to carry out his plan.

Blackford Oakes is now in Cuba. Blackford like the James Bond from the book Casino Royale, is unlucky in love and his life as an agent comes across like Bonds as very bleak with a deep sense of loneliness. Events control Blackford and Bond rather than being the cause of events. In Casino Royale, the woman Bonds loves is a traitor and kills herself, in this book, Oakes longtime lover runs away and marries a man, who in a surprising coincidence gets killed as he and Blackford plan Cubela’s attempt.

A disillusioned young man enters the scene and approaches the Cubans and says he will kill Kennedy from the book depository in Dallas. The Cubans give him unofficial support and plan, as backup, to drop the bomb on Dallas if the man misses. Either way Kennedy is dead, but does he take Dallas with him? Eventually Blackford has to make the choice between the president he deeply cares for and the people of Dallas.

This book also touches on the Cuban revolution that Castro led and how he promised Cubans free democratic elections when they overthrew Batista. However, in the end Castro, like most dictators, created a cult of himself and destroyed his country. The only difference between dictators and politicians is that dictators kill the population, where politicians ruin the population. Normally I would write about US politics, the corruption of all politicians, but I thought this time I should write sweeping statements and make Spanish stereotypes.

The Spanish and thus their colonies, have never had true freedom of expression of the people. They have always been dominated by their Royal family, by the State or by the doctrine of religion. Other lands imported new ideas, new thoughts and expanded upon them where the Spanish seem to conform to whoever is in charge. Some countries have had reformations which drastically change the way the people act and think, where the Spanish had an Inquisition that consolidated the power of the Church. (Spain, as we know it, never became democratic till the very late 1970′s and in 1981 there was still a coup attempt.) This culture of repression or dominance is in the Spaniards soul (even now they have problems defining what is Spain and what should be autonomous), creates an environment which allows Caudillos to take root and flourish. With that in mind, transfer the above broad sweeping statements to Cuba, which was a Spanish colony, and in steps Castro the only* modern day Caudillo – charismatic, civil war winner and disciplinarian with his brand of Communism – Impossibilism, with a Cuban flavour.

To legitimise a true caudillo, you need to have an event where against all odds he wins and shows his total command, not just of his forces but also hints at spiritualism where an unseen greater force is helping. And what better for Castro to exploit than the shameful Bay of Pigs episode.

Mongoose R.I.P hints at Castro’s spiritual luck, as he has premonitions of danger and thus takes step to avoid it and his people are left in awe of his gift. In the book compared to Castro, Kennedy and Khrushchev are seen as weak unintelligent leaders, Kennedy is seen as a girl-banging, childish thinking president, where Khrushchev is seen as a vain old man. The author, Buckley seems not to have a love-hate relationship with Castro, but rather a bitter love-spurned relationship as on the love side he seems to respect Castro and builds up his intelligence above his own president, and he supports the ideals of the revolution but Castro’s refusal to enact the polices that he fought for and the steady elimination of all his rivals allows Buckley to demonise Castro at the same time.

And a very small last point, the bad guys i.e the Cubans drink coke and the Americans drink pepsi.

William F Buckley Jr had a supremely gifted intellect, and some of his other non-fiction writings are superb, where this book is well written, very good storyline and the nice use of alternative history, yet there is something missing which stops the reader being fully engrossed in the book. In simple terms I wouldn’t miss my stop on the train, as I have done with other books, as the book doesn’t make you exclude all else going on around you. Anyway, very good book, well worth a read.

* Chavez and the rest don’t count. The only other man that could be called a caudillo, even though he is not latin would be Gaddafi.

Libya, the country with the laziest flag, have always been seen, and rightly so, as a nation state sponsor of terrorism. This was especially true in the 1970 and 80s and the West never did more than lob a few missiles at Gaddafi, which missed, before they welcomed him back into the worlds community as he came bearing gifts of oil for a Prime Ministers brother. It is acceptable to remove some leaders and fight some wars than others.

With Mister 8 going AWOL, I thought I would take an extract of Ion Pacepa from his book Red Horizons about Gaddafi.

….When the two leaders had finished their scheduled time together, Ceauşescu informed Gaddafi that his personal aide-de-camp and his presidential aeroplane had to fly back to Romania and return the night to bring him an important document.

The next morning Gaddafi arrived punctually, an unusual occurrence in those days. When the two leaders came together, Ceauşescu had a large, antique, chased silver box in his hands. Opening it, he took out a very old, handwritten book. “This is the original manuscript of the first translation of the Koran into the Romanian language, made hundreds of years ago. We have only this one copy, but I only have one real brother. It is for you to keep, my brother.”

Colonel Gaddafi dipped greedily into the beautiful old book. Visibly moved, he literally could not speak. Eventually he managed to stammer, “My brother! You are my brother for the rest of my life!” at the same time vigorously embracing Ceauşescu.

The Koran manuscript was the gift Ceauşescu had planned all along for Gaddafi. “Going by the feel I’ve gotten for Gaddafi, there’s nothing that would hook him better than our antique manuscript of the Koran,” he explained to Nicolae Doicaru and me. Doicaru was the chief of the DIE at the time, and he was personally running the operation. “And nothing,” Ceauşescu continued “would impress him more than for me to present it to him spontaneously, as if in reaction to the force of his personality.” The scenario for transporting the Koran to Tripoli during the night had been worked out long before Ceauşescu left Romania.

According to wikipedia, the source of all truth - “In September 1978, Pacepa received two death sentences from Communist Romania, and Ceauşescu placed a bounty of two million US dollars on his head. Yasser Arafat and Muammar al-Gaddafi set one more million dollars reward each. In the 1980s, Romania’s political police tasked Carlos the Jackal to assassinate Pacepa in America in exchange for one million dollars.”

Enclosed is a clip of some Libyan terrorists trying execute a thief.

For being really light on posts recently, but it has taken a lot of time working on the new layout and the backend of the site:
- some stuff still to do
- a few css quirks still floating about
- the background which is hacked. if the screen doesn’t go red press ctrl-f5
- been working on the map icons

I still have been reading, but it will take time to write the reviews, and I am not ashamed to say that I have wasted so many blissful hours playing the old Monkey Islands 1 and 2.