CIA and MI6 not above doing business with whoever if the results are right

A while ago, I trawled the net for whatever pictures I could find of various world leaders schmoozing the Gaddafi. I came across several and published them. In view of today’s lead news on the BBC News website, I thought it might be worth publishing them again. What was that news? Well, despite our ostensible distaste for the various cutthroats around the world we choose to label as dictators, we are not above getting into bed with them when and if. And it seems that’s just what America’s CIA and Britain’s MI6 were doing for several years before Gaddafi’s recent difficulties. You can read more here.
In the meantime, here again are thoses piccies:


Blair greets his old mucker Muammar - God, I've missed you - no, I don’t have a gun in my pocket


Anything Tony can do - well, so can Barak. He manages to look sincere - go team Obama


... and don't forget good ol' Nicolas - can't let those bloody roast beefs steal all the glory

When it comes to reformed characters guys like Putin will yield to no one. How's it going, my old mate Muammar?

Finally, of course, Brown might have come late to the office of Prime Minister - or later than he demanded - but he was just as willing to kiss arse as his predecessor

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Off to France in seven days for a well-earned break, in the Haut Savoie just south of the Swiss border, where loads and load and loads of folk go skiing, but as in the middle two weeks of September there should be no snow whatsoever, I hope to God I don’t bump into any Brits. I don’t know what it is – perhaps it is my German blood – but I do find a great many Brits I meet abroad a complete embarrassment. The middle-class ones get very pretentious as the food and wine, and treat almost everything French as though it were manna from Heaven. ‘Lord, the French know how to live, could teach us a thing or two’. Er, no, actually, if we Brits regarded food as one of life’s pleasures rather than as mere sustenance and if, consequently, we gave a little more care and attention to its preparation, we, too, could eat like the French. As for the wine, there is as much bad wine around in France as in England. The main difference as far as wine is concerned between the French (and Italians and Spanish) and we Brits is that they will drink a glass or two and leave it at that, but we feel obliged to drink the whole bottle, start a second and see just how fast and far we can get off our faces with – the usual Brit touch – for the minimum outlay.
As for – well, I am too delicate to lay myself open to a charge of snobbery beyond the call of duty so I shall restrict myself to referring to this next group as the ‘not middle-class’, all they seem to want to do is to get as pissed as possible as fast as possible. ‘But didn’t you just say that about the middle-classes’ I hear you ask? No, not quite. The crucial difference is that the ‘not middle-class’ don’t get all hoity-toity about drinking wine whereas the middle-class like to imbue it with some kind of spurious cultural significance. ‘Lord, isn’t it great to live a little, I mean really live properly, you know the French could teach us a thing or two.’
I shall carry on doing my puzzles work while on holiday which means I had to dig out a chalet with wireless internet access. So, if I take any nice piccies, I shall post them here on this blog. Oh, and I am going with my younger brother who attended French schools for five years as a lad and speaks French. I , on the other hand, don’t.

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And just for the craic, a picture of my son taken nine years ago which I have been dicking around with.