Cicero's Songs

In espionage the standard of proof is a variable measure. There are very few times that information can be said to be "beyond reasonable doubt". Nuances and circumstances acquire great significance and it requires an analyst with a deep sense of intuition to piece together an accurate narrative from small pieces of partial information. There may be much data, but to find the information it contains is like putting together a shattered mirror, where you do not know whether you have all the pieces. Thus intelligence can be a double-edged sword, and it is dangerous to rely purely on secret intelligence without bringing one's own sceptical biases into the equation.  Spies are much given to using two quotes from Sherlock Holmes: the first dictum is about positive truth: "once you eliminate the impossible, what ever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth". The second is "the curious incident of the dog in the night time" "the dog did noth...

I do not know if Jeremy Corbyn subscribes 100% to Marxism as a political agenda. He has certainly praised Karl Marx and suggested that there is much that can be learned from his writings . Even if Mr. Corbyn is only an admirer, rather than an adherent, of Marxism, it opens up a myriad of questions. For whether Mr. Corbyn himself is a Marxist or not, many key players in his emerging leadership team unquestionably are Marxist adherents. Seamus Milne has made statements, for example, which not only advocate Marxism, but the narrow revolutionary offshoot of Marx, Marxism-Leninism. He has made statements which support the position of Stalin , even in his most bloodthirsty policies.  The problem I have here is that there is no government that has been accepted as Marxist that has not launched the most vile crimes against the people they purport to govern. Every single government that has been Marxist has also been a murderous tyranny . The Soviet Union killed an estimated ...