Experimental Blog # 165

Quotations and comments from "The Art of Betrayal - The Secret History of MI6" or Life and Death in the British Secret Service by Gordon Corera

"The task of the Secret Intelligence Service{SIS} - or to use its more popular name MI6 ..."

"The British public had become obsessed with traitors .."
"On both sides of the Atlantic, a fire had been lit by *******'s betrayal < > It blazed with fierce intensity, nearly consuming both the CIA and MI6 until it burnt itself out."
"The early 1960s were a golden age for the small army of Soviet spies plying their trade in Britain."

"Did it all matter? Did the spying and the lying and betraying make any real difference? Critics argue that all the spying accomplished was to raise the temperature by heightening suspicions that fuelled the Cold War in which ignorant armies clashed by night. Those who believe in intelligence say it did make a difference by managing a hostility that was real and dangerous."

"Donald Rumsfeld expressed this strange view best when he said 'the absence of evidence is not absence of evidence'."

By the end of this book, which is filled with fascinating and often tragic stories, but not so many basic facts, is the author Gordon Corera completely oblivious, or is he only pretending?

Experimental Blog # 164

Quotations from "The Faiths of the Postwar Presidents - From Truman to Obama" by David L. Holmes

"In Christianity, four churches fall into the liturgical category: Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Episcopal, and Lutheran. These four churches worship in a more formal way than the churches categorized as nonliturgical - such as the Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Pentecostal, Mennonite < > Liturgical churches emphasize the Christian sacraments, follow patterns of worship inherited from centuries of Christianity, and tend to be less emotional and more ritualistic than services in nonliturgical churches."

"Evangelical Christians view the Bible as the supreme authority for faith and conduct, emphasize born-again conversion experience{and not simply baptism} as the entrance to Christianity, and believe that a personal relationship with Jesus Christ is not only possible for humans but essential to their salvation."

"Eisenhower presided over a major religious revival in the United States. < > Every religious group that occupied the approximate American religious center - Judaism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and mainline Protestantism - grew. It was an unexpected legacy for a president who was raised in the extreme left wing of American religion."

As for President John F. Kennedy:
"The religious profile of Rosemary, the oldest sister, is difficult to determine. < > Possibly bipolar < > After a lobotomy arranged by her father when she was twenty-three caused permanent disability, Rosemary was placed in the care of nuns in rural Wisconsin for the rest of her life."
"But the most sweeping assessments came from Kennedy himself. "If I had to live my life over again," he wrote to a friend, "I would have a different father, a different wife, and a different religion.""

" ...the churches that Lyndon Johnson attended were what Christianity refers to as "liturgical churches.""
"Johnson probably hopped from church to church for a combination of reasons."
"Thus Johnson varied the churches he attended - Christian{or Disciples of Christ}, Episcopal, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Baptist, and others."