Alex > Recent Status Updates

The CIA once tried to persuade a married couple to let the woman have an affair with a KGB officer. Because they treated the report like a sitcom, it was soon leaked. The KGB officer was hauled back to Moscow, the couple developed marital problems, and the CIA got zero new useful intelligence.

That one time the CIA accidentally engineered a small genocide in Burundi through a false-flag propaganda campaign, priceless!

The Angolan War could've been won quickly, but the budget was too tight and the objective was to make victory harder for the MPLA.

I'm amazed by the sophistry of the Supreme Court, establishing powers not found in the Constitution by means of comparison with foreign nations.

I'm not disappointed in how juicy this book is. A few pages in and there's a kafkaesque scene of CIA "generals" holding a purposely boring lecture, and trying to interpret whether Kissingers grunt of "umpf" was a grunt of approval or disapproval of a clandestine military intervention.

In Bulgaria, prisoners were clubbed to death and corpses fed to pigs. But I guess they had a good literacy rate, so all is good in the minds of commies.

Just stumbled on the infobox for Pitesti. I knew much of it already, but I don't think this prison can ever really fail to surprise you.

Almost 40% of all prisoners for "crimes against the state" in Czechoslovakia in 1950 had been workers before their arrest. That's what the official archives show.

Really good information on the persecutions under the european communists.

One muslim, Mustafa Pipa, was executed in Albania for supporting the Franciscans during the first wave of anticlerical persecution. Among the other victims were:
- Gaspar Thaci, Archbishop of Shkoder
- Vincenc Prennushi, Archbishop of Durres
- Bishop Volaj
- BIshop Gijni
The news magazine of Albania, Nendor, bragged that 2169 religious houses were closed, including 327 catholic churches.

Whoever doubts that the Soviet Union was imperialist should read Klement Gottwalds speech before parliament during december 1929.

Very impressed with Nicolas Petkows last words during his trial.

Hungary, with a population of 9,000,000, saw 600,000 deported after the Second World War, of which around 200,000 never returned.

A really nice book. I like it so far.

More information on the repression of the Catholic Church in Poland.

Witold Pilecki sounds like a hero to me. He provoked his own internment so he could build up a resistance network in Auschwitz. His payment from the Soviets was torture and a bullet to the neck.

Lucyna Dziurzynska-Suchon told of a miracle on this page. Very beautiful.