the hc book club, page-64

Well, I've just finished reading An Officer and A Spy by Robert Harris. This the historical novel about Albert Dreyfus that I alluded to near the beginning of this thread.

While I had vague recollections of what it was all about, or at least thought I did, upon reading it, I was gobsmacked at how little has changed from the end of 1800s to now.

Dreyfus was an officer in the Franch Army accused, arrested and condemned as a spy for the Germans. He was a Jew and, as it turned out was framed up by the military secret service. The real perpetrator was a certain Count Esterhazy and.... well you can read the rest and I strongly recommend you do because it is a real page turner.

For me what this recounting of reality showed is that any hated group in society is vulnerable to this kind of attack as people's prejudices get in the way of their clear thinking.You have only to see the number of anti muslim posts in these threads to confirm this idea.

Secondly and again this is so timely to what is happening right now with regard to our own security services, any secret security agency is subject to corruption and needs careful oversight. You have only to look at the out of control bugging of the Indonesian PM and East Timor to confirm this. I suspect the truth of those two issues will not be revealed for many years to come if ever.

Seems in the past couple of hundred years, we havn't learned much...