Baer is a former case officer for the CIA, and the books kind of make for a True Spook's rebuttal to paper-pushing psychopaths like Michael Scheuer, who, contrary to what he and the Faux News crowd insist on implying, has never actually been out in the field doing the real work of intelligence-gathering.

The view on what, exactly, has happened to the CIA over the last few decades makes a lot more sense than the Village explanation.  Essentially, Baer's view is that the CIA's failures -- not seeing the rise in radicalization in the Middle East, not knowing Saddam didn't have weapons of mass destruction, etc -- are a product of the fact that political meddling and the bureaucratic spinelessness that accompanies it has led the agency to do almost no actual, on-the-ground intelligence-gathering.

Instead, things like looking at satellite photos and making up stories to go along with them -- looking at you, Colin Powell -- have replaced the old-school stuff.

Anyway, recommended.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

I don't like video.  I can't be bothered with video.  I don't want to spend four minutes plus watching some permatanned robot reading out what I could read for myself in seconds.

Bah, humbug. I think I'm getting old.

you are the media you consume.

Oddly we both recognised each other straight away. I can't honestly say I was at my most femme last night, I'd just cycled to the fest and was hot, sweaty with hair pointing in all directions and wearing trousers (which never helps). So I was less confusing than normal.

keep to the Fen Causeway

And I'm definitely in favor of creating a Secretary of World of Warcraft.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

The authorities in Sri Lanka have arrested a popular astrologer who predicted that the president will be ejected from office, police say.

Chandrasiri Bandara announced last week that the government would flounder in September and October because of political and economic problems.

The opposition have condemned the arrest and warned that the country is heading towards a dictatorship.

That bar was The Stonewall.

Prior to this other gay groups such as the Mattachine society had tried the tactic of invisibility, adopting a preppy styl that rendered them anonymous within society. Effectively they colluded with society's prejudice against them. They railed against the queers and the drag queens who gave being gay a bad name, bleieving that, if only such people would go away, they would be accepted.

But after Stonewall, Gay liberation became more confrontational. Recognising that society would never accept them if they hid away, they began to challenge every aspect of the hypocrisy around sexuality.

And we are where we are. Gay people are largely accepted, discrimination against them is not just illegal in many countries but frowned upon. Many countries allow recognition of partnerships, something undreamed of a decade ago.

keep to the Fen Causeway