Who knows, maybe they're tired of framing small time criminals and intend to move up the food chain of power where the big boys play. Secrets in plain sight is an esoteric start but anything is better than nothing. They've sat on their hands since 9/11 while the rest of the planet has woken up.
I get all the agencies recorded through Google Analytics sniffing over my blog in the last year or so apart from the NSA who mask their visits. I'm most popular with the Department of Defence which is really the department of attack but they've long forgotten what words mean.
Well worthwhile listening to a couple of incredulous and intelligent U.S. citizens inspecting the latest Iranian conspiracy theory by the U.S. government. They tease it apart with rubber gloves, nose peg and tweezers before shooting holes in the most obvious ruse to get the U.S. plasma screen classes jerking off to bunker busting baby killers in Tehran and beyond.
My personal hypothesis? The story is so bad it was done deliberately to fuck up any chance the news media and a sea of nervous middle American prostate glands would take it seriously (and they had to be tipped off just to be on the safe side). Why would they do that? Internal conflict. It's everywhere and it goes right to the top of the U.S. power matrix.
I read so few books now compared to a few years ago when I never went anywhere without one, I thought I'd at least record the books I have finished. I recently completed Will Self's Great Apes. The introduction is one of the most exciting and thought provoking pieces of writing I've ever come across and so I expected it to be as good if not better.
However it wasn't. Either from cosmic serendipity or sheer volume of ground covered these days I found the time spent thinking about being a primate (albeit an extraordinary one) quite useful. It ties into Mark Earls Herd thinking a fair bit though I think it brings the topic to life in a way that non-fiction can't. I can't say I enjoyed all the primate language throughout the book, and I even found the plot a bit pedestrian, but it does achieve a satisfying reconciliation by having a point and a purpose and it's greatest achievement is to point out our evolutionary crossovers with other primates though I'm not a stand Darwinist on this matter at all.
At times it does feel like Self is making a point at somebody throughout the entire book, as well as in the beginning capturing the heady days of MDMA use and Jungle music from London in the mid 90's. This is probably to be expected from one of our generations most clever (and funny) writers, famous for shooting up heroin on John Major's Prime Ministerial jet back in 97 before Tony Blair and things... could only get better.
Of late Self has taken to smoking a pipe at the New Statesman and is intellectually breast feeding on the 911 commission report which is inexcusable but not unusual for influential writers, as none have the application to look at the weight of evidence or the courage to take an unpopular position on the matter.
Here's the first page:
