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War on Terrorism (Politics)
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Mick Harper
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He voted against appeasement.

Not possible technically. He only became an MP in 1940 when appeasement was off the agenda. Unless you mean he was a Churchillite or something.

He had a good war.

Well, this is is the True Mystery. In March 1940 the (since 1931) Tory MP for Kettering takes on a footling job (police magistrate) but which, being an office under the Crown, nevertheless requires his resignation from the Commons. A completely unknown son-of-an-Italian barrister is selected by the Chamberlainites to inherit the seat (all wartime by-elections were uncontested by the main parties). Having gone to all this trouble to get the young Profumo into Parliament, he promptly goes off to the army with such success he winds up a brigadier. [Like Enoch Powell and Ted Heath by the way] A great MP he turned out to be. Unless it was for some other purpose.
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Hatty
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Mick Harper wrote:
Why was he touring Germany in 1938 in the first place?

Perhaps he was instructed to meet up with German embassy staff

Gisela was reported as being "on intimate terms with the German Military Attache in Paris" in 1938, leading the Home Office to recommend she be barred from entering Britain.

Her spying seems to have consisted of information

Ran a secret wartime information service for the Nazis in Paris, under the cover of a "commercial information bureau" which also saw her visit Italy and Greece.

Gisela Winegard (Klein) is said to have made "a large number of useful contacts in Oxford" in the mid 1930s. She was 'working as a mannequin'. It is not stated who was her pimp... sorry, manager. Profumo?

It's not only 'Lady Astor' who had misgivings. She was deported because she

had been ordered to leave the UK in 1935 and 1936 for working as a fashion model while on non-working visas.
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Hatty
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How did Gisela Klein, deported from Britain in the late 1930s and reportedly a spy in the 1940s, get to the USA? She

...was imprisoned for espionage after the Allies liberated Paris in late 1944. Edward Winegard was her US Army jailer and married her after getting her released.

She may have acquired an American husband plus citizenship but she wasn't apprently considered quite kosher, having

...come to the attention of the US Secret Service post-war and accused of harbouring the on-the-run chief of a German spy ring while living in the south of France.

It must have been common knowledge that Mrs Winegard was German-born (from Dusseldorf) so why would Voice of America suddenly rate her as unemployable?

...was sacked by the Voice of America radio station in Tangier in early 1950 when her "pro-German sympathies" and imprisonment were revealed.

She seems to have been distrusted by westerners (except, it seems, Profumo) so if Gisela was working for an intelligence service she appears remarkably ill-suited for the work. That's why not a single Nazi spy operated in Britain during the war?
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Mick Harper
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I think everything (ha!) is pointing to her being a Soviet recruiter. That is why she is in Oxford trailing her chemise and snaring Profumo. It appears she was 'turned' because getting deported for working with a tourist visa (are you kidding?) and then swanning around Germany with Profumo makes no sense otherwise. There must be some reason why Profumo zooms from a nobody in 1936 to be given a freebie seat in the House of Commons in 1940. It may be something to do with keeping Italy out of the war.

But (my theory goes) the British think they've turned a German agent into a British one whereas in reality they haven't turned a Soviet agent. This is why she ends up in France during the war -- perhaps a member of the Rote Kapelle -- back ostensibly working for the Germans. She is picked up as such by the Americans in 1944 but reveals her true loyalty (sort of) and gets an entrée into America via a convenient marriage to Mr Winegard (spare me the "I fell in love with a Nazi spy" storyline). How the Voice of America (a CIA operation) fits in I have no idea but spare me the "I harboured a Nazi spy on the run even though nobody gave a rat's arse about Nazis by this time" storyline. A ballet, now that I could believe.
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Hatty
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This Edward Weingard is rather mysterious. It's claimed that he already knew Gisela but no when/ where/ why is provided since no details about Edward W are available online (only the Gisela/Profumo connection)

an American army officer by the name of Edward Winegard, whom Klein had previously met, secured her release and later married her in Hamburg.

I'd assumed the marriage took place so she would be accepted in the US but it turns out not only did they not marry in the US but they didn't live there either. The couple moved around Europe, we're told, but the US intelligence people didn't lose sight of them

In 1947/48 they ‘were in trouble with the American Intelligence Service for having harboured the chief of a German spy ring’.

Not just Gisela, then. They are 'in trouble' as a couple. It's been pointed out (not by me) that Klein is a common Jewish name. Weingard is also a common Jewish name. Both have German roots.

How the Voice of America (a CIA operation) fits in I have no idea but spare me the "I harboured a Nazi spy on the run even though nobody gave a rat's arse about Nazis by this time" storyline.

The Voice of America may be a cover story

Klein was later sacked from her job as a filing clerk in the Naval Department in Tangier, Morocco, when it was discovered that she had worked for the Germans during the war and was ‘100 per cent pro-German’, the document said.

Tangier makes more sense now. Somehow she'd been accepted in a sensitive position so yes, having a Nazi past would probably warrant dismissal. Either way, a bit embarrassing.
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Mick Harper
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I don't know about more sense. Tangier was the espionage capital of the world on account of its equivocal status and strategic position. I may be wrong, but a US Navy presence wouldn't have been permitted there at any time under its internationally-agreed governing statutes.

I've got Weingard down as a Commie. It's standard GRU/KGB operating policy for its agents to marry at will and separate at will, according to need. (Of the Soviet state, I mean.) Philby was still pining for his Russian agent Austrian wife he had to leave in 1938 when he became a Franco-sympathiser, after the war when he was officially a British-sympathiser, but of course he wasn't Russian-trained. What she thought of him has not been made available.
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Mick Harper
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There was an interesting exchange on a Waco mini-series I have been watching

FBI negotiator: If we just wait a few more days, they'll come out peacefully.
FBI hard hat: You're ignoring the wider picture.
FBI negotiator: What could be more important than resolving the siege without bloodshed?
FBI hard hat: There is one law enforcement officer for every 5000 members of the public. It only works if the public think we are stronger than they are.
FBI negotiator: So, aren't we?
FBI hard hat: Every day people see us sitting out here helpless in the face of some bad dudes toting weapons, one of them decides maybe we're not and starts thinking about what to do about it.

And so it has proved.
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Mick Harper
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This principle -- two principles -- is currently playing out in Moscow and Hong Kong. The US embassy in Moscow issued a map of the demonstrators' march this weekend warning people (in English) to keep clear because of threats of violence. A very normal consular function. The Kremlin hauled them in, accusing them of publicising the march! The Russians have decided on a maximum repression approach. By contrast, in Hong Kong, the Chinese government has been staying its hand with remarkable forbearance, weekend after weekend after weekend.

Notice there is no particular difference between the two governments in terms of either their overall power or their attitudes to dissent, it is merely a tactical decision about which strategy to adopt to solve a particular problem. In my judgement both are getting it wrong but I am wrong about fifty per cent of the time.
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Mick Harper
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Her Majesty's Secretary of State for The Army drove Keeler to his home in his red mini car. The butler and the rest of the staff had gone to bed so Profumo let them in with his own key. After sex in the marital bed, they drove to Chelsea to see a former Secretary of State for the Airforce whose brother, the Third Earl of Dudley, later proposed marriage to Mandy Rice-Davies.

What kind of butler goes to bed before the master of the house has returned from an evening out and hasn't even told a footman to stay up? My God, standards had slipped by the 1960’s.
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Hatty
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Secretary of State for the Airforce whose brother, the Third Earl of Dudley, later proposed marriage to Mandy Rice-Davies.

The above-mentioned Secretary of State for Air was George Ward, 1st Viscount Ward of Witley. No relation to Stephen but in 1962 George married Barbara Mary Colonsay McNeill, former wife of Michael Astor, a brother of 'Bill' Astor, 3rd Viscount Astor.
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Mick Harper
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All this began because I couldn't see how Ivanov and Keeler could possibly drive from Cliveden (and rubber-dubbing with Mr and Mrs Profumo) to the mews flat and rubber-dubbing with one another. Since this is the Profumo Affair in a nutshell, it's kinda important. Since those naive and under-researched days of yore, I have learned that a) Christine Keeler could drive and b) Ivanov drove around in a red sports car. More fool me, more ignorant and over-exuberant fool me.

The fact that Christine Keeler was the only poor teenage girl in Britain in the years 1945-65 who had learned to drive (I've checked) and that Ivanov was the only Russian diplomat in the world 1917 - 2019 with a bright red sports car (I've checked) is just something I will have to come to terms with. Oh and that tiresome habit of mine of saying "I've checked" when really I mean "Nobody has checked and maybe they should but since they haven't and since they never will and since they will never even say 'You've got a point' and even if they did they would apply careful ignoral anyway" you will have to come to terms with it.
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Mick Harper
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2019 Spending Round

The 20,000 increase in police numbers has run into a snag. So many police stations have been closed that many 'street bobbies' will have nowhere to go at the end of their beat. If you are prepared to put one up for the night, you are asked to place a blue light in a prominent place. A red one if not.
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Mick Harper
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You can agree or disagree with Trump inviting the Taliban for talks at Camp David (personally, I think it shows a commendably innovatory approach to a hitherto intractable problem but would have proved entirely futile) but only anti-Trump die-hards, i.e. everyone, would go all of a quiver about Camp David being where somebody or other connected to 9/11 once sat down and might or might not be upset at it being chosen. No wonder problems are intractable. There's no pleasing some people i.e. all people.

Just to clear the matter up, civil wars can never be ended with peace talks, except in the sense of discussing the terms of surrender of one side or the other, so these are not peace talks. They are (cf Kissinger in Paris re Vietnam) a search for some formula to allow the USA to extricate itself from a situation of its own making in a way that doesn't expose them to the world, and to one another, as a bunch of foolish fainthearts.

PS 'Foolish' is bad, 'faintheartedness' can be good or bad.
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Boreades


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Just in case any anti-Trump die-hards are about to get upset, let's not forget you don't have to call them "peace talks".

e.g. Bill Clinton and the Camp David "Accords". Between Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian chairman Yasser Arafat.

Less face is lost when the Accord doesn't go according to plan.
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Mick Harper
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An excellent illustration of the difference between an international war and a civil war. In the former, both sides can go home so it is possible to have a 'peace' rather than a 'surrender'. In the latter, they can't so the best you can get is a surrender disguised as a peace. This is how the late (civil) war in Northern Ireland was brought to an end -- everyone had to pretend it wasn't a straightforward defeat suffered by the IRA.

Palestine started life as a civil war but the Israelis have had a couple of generations to turn it into something else. They resolutely refused by a) not coming to terms with either their own or anybody else's Arabs and b) expanding 'Palestine' indefinitely into Arab territory. If anyone honestly thinks the dispute can be brought to an end by negotiation ... let 'em try. It can only end one way and that's the utter defeat of one side or the other and the Arabs ain't going anywhere.
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