Category Archives: Travel

Operation Global Media Domination: Politics Day

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TIAToday, as you may have noticed, was Politics Day at the ol' raincoaster blog. And, surprisingly, I find that the only thing which out-pulls sex and/or curling (curling porn was a top search, btw) is politics. Glad I found something that did. Getting a wee bit tired of the eedjuts coming to this blog via searches for "Mango Porn."

I am indeed a famewhore of the highest order (the lower orders have to sit on the unshaded side of the temple and stick to beige robes) but even I am not gonna be rooting for more dead Canadian soldiers or pissy, self-serving and moronic Tory policies from the remarkably lifelike Stephen Harper or the remarkably simian George W. Bush. Although I do admit a peculiar fondness for the video of that funny little Chaplin impersonator and that funny Turko-American writer fellow.

At last, a CIA program even *I* can support!

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Russia, from the CIA factbook

No, seriously. Thanks to my beloved paranoiacs at Cryptome I’ve found a CIA program I can actually support. Cheer. Rip off, even. And I encourage you and everyone you know to do the same.

George C. Minden, who for 37 years ran a secret American program that put 10 million Western books and magazines in the hands of intellectuals and professionals in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, died on April 9 at his home in Manhattan. He was 85.

Captain Freedom (who, by the way, was censored by Photobucket)Mr. Minden was president of the International Literary Center, an organization financed by the Central Intelligence Agency, which tried to win influential friends by giving them reading material unavailable in their own countries. The material ranged from dictionaries, medical texts and novels by Joyce and Nabokov to art museum catalogs and Parisian fashion magazines.

The people who received the reading matter were generally Communists or professionals and intellectuals working for Communist regimes. They thought the books were being donated by Western publishers and cultural organizations.

The C.I.A.’s purpose was to offer an alternative, culturally engaging reality that had the implicit effect of promoting Western culture. Mr. Minden did not see a need to bluntly refute Marxist dogma, on the theory that people could use common sense and their own observations to reject Communist arguments.

The project became something of a personalized book club; files were kept on recipients’ reading tastes, so as to better satisfy them in the future.

Hmmmm, I always wondered about the forehead from which Amazon sprang, fully-formed…now we know. 

Mr. Minden wrote in an internal memo that the West‘s main obstacle was “not Marxist obstacles, but a vacuum,” and that “what is needed is something against frustration and stultification, against a life full of omissions.”

Proselytizing for freedom of choice and independence of thought sounds like a pretty noble set of goals for the CIA, and they deserve a big hand for undertaking this project. Let’s keep the dream alive by doing this on our own, shall we? You know that’s what Minden would have wanted.

Suggested targets of this consciousness-raising guerrilla intelligence action include: Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Russia, China, Indonesia, the Sudan, Uganda, and the United States of America.

Hu and Bush, Heckler and Gitmo

My First Book Review: well, since school anyway, and there we always had to conclude that Dickens was the greatest prose stylist the universe has ever seen

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A review of The Dream of Rome, by Boris Johnson, who is on the blogroll over there if you look closely.  And all of this was posted over there anyway, but give the man a click. It's the least you can do since none of my readers will ever vote for a Tory anyway.

First off, I don't review. I opine. This will hopefully excuse much.

As an introduction to the Roman Empire and the reasons for its long-running success, The Dream of Rome is perfectly marvelous. Boris obviously loves his subject, knows it fluently, and isn't afraid to go to the experts when he's at a loss. Picks interesting experts, as well. And of course the writing flows like the river in a Hudson School painting. It's quick, it's beautiful, and it's sometimes challenging.

And, like the contemporary Hudson river, it's sometimes full of crap.

As an explanation of why the EU is doomed to failure, however, The Dream of Rome fails to prove its case. Really, it must be said that it doesn't seem to try very hard. Boris has some policy points to make, and he makes them, but any examination of the EU is glaringly incomplete without mention of our apparently limitless desire to form meta-states like the UN, NATO, G7, NAFTA, etc etc. There is a reason behind this, and it's not mere economic advantage. Nor is it mere ego.

The only emperor-manque the world has who has any sort of real power is Osama bin Laden. So it's easy to see the point of the Americans who don't want his videos and audio broadcast, lest they start a cult of personality. His power comes from the fact that he writes the cheques. Once that stops, he's over.

William S. Burroughs, who had a knack for being as right as he was wasted, wrote a fascinating piece on why we don't have grand Augustus figures anymore. Here it is:

No More Stalins, No More Hitlers

We have a new type of rule now. Not one-man rule, or rule of aristocracy or plutocracy, but of small groups elevated to positions of absolute power by random pressures and subject to political and economic factors that leave little room for decision.

They are representatives of abstract forces who have reached power through surrender of self. The iron-willed dictator is a thing of past.

There will be no more Stalins, no more Hitlers.

The rulers of this most insecure of all worlds are rulers by accident. Inept, frightened pilots at the controls of a vast machine they cannot understand, calling in experts to tell them which buttons to push.

–William S. Burroughs, "No More Stalins, No More Hitlers," from Dead City Radio, Island Records, 1990; and Interzone, Viking Books, 1989.

Slight Bitter Aftertaste

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Black and TanBen & Jerry's, no longer owned or operated by either Ben or Jerry, finally catches on to the fact that not all of their customers think a "Black & Tan" ice cream will go down smoothly.

Ben & Jerry's, the socially aware ice-cream maker, has apologised to Irish consumers for launching a new flavour evoking the worst days of British military oppression.

Black and Tans, irate customers explained, was the term for an irregular force of British ex-servicemen recruited during the Irish war of independence and renowned for their brutality, including the 1920 massacre of 12 people at a Dublin football match.

Some things are still hard to swallow after seventy-six years.

Doomed Internet Project #995,228,135

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Teaching Americans how to behave.

Working in touristy areas like Gastown, Granville Island and the Quay, I've seen some beauts. The French woman who loudly and Frenchly slagged everything in the store before buying the hideous and hideously overpriced sweater known to the staff as "the Dead Ostrich." We ventured an "Au revoir!" and suggestions for local restaurants all in fluent French as we were packing up her loathesome electric blue monstrosity. She couldn't leave without it, so she had to stand there realizing we'd understood every word she'd said.

There were also the obnoxious Germans, and the Saudis who seem to think they carry a little bubble of the Kingdom around with them…but mostly, there were the Americans.

Someone once asked me why we never saw any polite, quiet Americans, and I replied that we did, but we just mistook them for Canadians. We grew tired of answering, "Why are all your prices in Canadian dollars?" and "Why does your money come in different colours?" and "It's just the same as Seattle," which I kind of enjoyed hearing because it was the signal for Frances and me to start talking in French. Her French was dreadful, but it was good enough to shut the Americans up.

"Remember," I said to one truly obnoxious fellow, "when you got on the big silver bird [insert hands making plane shadow puppet] you left your country."