Biggest news ever! (category: communists)

What is with the Telegraph and their non-stories about ancient commie misdeeds? Yesterday it was the blockbuster news that the Soviets had covered up Yuri Gagarin's missed landing after his space flight (he landed 200 miles from the target area, apparently).

Today it's the equally huge news that Soviet spy Kim Philby "turned to drink" after defecting to Russia in 1963:

Kim Philby, the British double agents [sic], tried to drink himself to death in Russia after losing faith in communism, his last wife has claimed.

Rufina Pukhova, a Russian-Polish woman who married Philby after he defected to the Soviet Union in 1963, said he had also been depressed by his failings in the years leading up to his death.

She told a Russian newspaper that Cambridge-educated Philby, who died in 1988, would drink two glasses of cognac a night before asking her to hide the bottle as his drinking threatened to get out of hand.

And that's the story. Two glasses of cognac. Hell, I used to drink that (well, a pint of Mr. B--same difference) before I brushed my tooth in the morning.

Mrs Pukhova, now 78, told Moskovsky Komsomolets: "His alcoholism was suicide ... he once even said that it was the easiest way to bring life to an end.

"If he continued drinking, he got inebriated quickly and changed in front of your eyes."

Why, I've never heard the like.

Philby was viewed [sic] as a traitor in Britain after his work as a double agent for the KGB was made public, but was welcomed as a hero in Russia – a reputation that remains to this day. . . .

Mrs Pukhova said: "Kim believed in a just society and devoted his whole life to communism [she must be a drunk, too]. And here he was struck by disappointment, brought to tears. He said, 'Why do old people live so badly here? After all, they won the war'."

Despite living in exile, Philby retained one connection to Britain – the cup of English tea he would drink with milk from a fine porcelain cup at 5pm as a daily ritual, The Guardian reported.

Awwww. Speaking of the Grauniad, some raisin-brain columnist conducted an "interview of sorts" with a couple of the Blac Bloc-ers who tore up shops (which is not violence, remember) during the budget-cut protests in London the other day. Actually what he did was print some questions the Bloc-heads posed to themselves and then answered. Hard-hitting. One q & a:

Don't you think the violence has invalidated your message?

Our only collective points were the promotion of a confrontational attitude and the use of symbolic direct action to show that direct action in the wider society was both valid and possible, and that there is a radical movement in this country that's going to put up a fight. We made these points. Anyway, you cannot be "violent" to property. The police chose to attack and arrest people in their defence of property, and got themselves hurt in the attempt. If they had acted rationally, and decided a cracked window was not worth a protester's cracked skull, they would have been fine.

Glenn Spagnuolo, eat your shriveled, black little heart out.