Friday Afternoon Cigar

We're about half way through Ion Mihai Pacepa's new book, Disinformation.  He shares the honor with Ayn Rand as the only other author to have two books in our Library book list at the left.  Pacepa ran Communist Romania's Intelligence organization before defecting to the US in 1978.  You can't get better insight into the priorities and attitudes of the former Soviet leaders than what you get from Pacepa.

Disinformation centers on the KGB smear campaign against pope Pious XXII.  Despite all evidence to the contrary, the Soviets wanted to discredit the Vatican (and all religion) by connecting them to Hitler and the Nazis.  Pacepa explains how this was done using media, the arts, etc.  While explaining this, he exposes other Soviet practices, priorities and attitudes.  Here is a timeless lesson on P98:

Totalitarianism always requires a tangible enemy.  The Jews, who for centuries had not been protected by the power of a state, proved a convenient enemy for both Nazism and Communism.  Nowadays the general perception is that Nazi Germany was the cradle of anti-Semitism - and it is not easy to change that perception.  Nevertheless, before the words Nazi Holocaust were on everyone's tongue, we had the Russian word pogrom, meaning massacre.  

We smoked a Rocky Patel Edge on a beautiful Ohio Friday.