The German Secret State Police in Spain: Extending the Reach of National Socialism

Germany encroached in Spain's internal affairs that followed providing military support the Spanish Civil War in the interest of pursuing National Socialist objectives through the establishment of an extensive apparatus of National Socialist organisations in Spain, including the Gestapo. Cooperation was officially established between Spanish and German police on 25 November 1937, which was extended to the Spanish political police on 31 July 1938, when they entered into a secret agreement with the German Gestapo for mutual assistance. The Gestapo trained the Spanish ordinary police and political police to contribute to maintaining the Franco regime in control of Spain, just as the Gestapo in Germany was charged with investigating and suppressing all forms of anti-state tendencies, and exported its methods and proceedings to Spain under the guise of contributing to the struggle against the alleged danger of worldwide communism. In addition to cooperation with Spanish police on suppressing dissent against the Franco regime, other functions related to serving the interests of National Socialist Germany, which deployed the Gestapo for various purposes while Spain constituted an extension of National Socialist Germany's sphere of influence. This was ensured through the Gestapo maintaining a presence in Spain until 1945.     

The Secret Society's Secret: The Invoked Reality of the Tiandihui

This essay examines two sets of reports in the Qing-dynasty Jiaqing and Daoguang periods (respectively 1796-1820 and 1821-45) in order to understand better the perceived reality of the Tiandihui.The first set,found among the papers of Jiangxi governor Xianfu (1809-14),allows a comparison of a criminal gang that invoked the Tiandihui ceremony with one that did not.The second set includes the diary of Taihe county magistrate Xu Dihui (in office from 1824) that recorded various events which came to be reported to the senior officialdom as having been conducted by secret societies.By collating the incidents as reported in the diary and memorials to the emperor,the authors argue that the pressure of the administrative process was responsible for the ultimate acquiescence by the Hunan governor Han Wenqi (in office 1825-29) in the perception of an indisputable connection of the incidents with secret societies.Moreover,both sets of reports show that participants in secret-society ceremonies and officials who suppressed them knexv that the acclaimed networking of the Tiandihui as implied in its folklore was very far from the reality.     

The Training of Secret Police in Conflictual Intelligence Cultures: British Failure in the Middle East during the Cold War

This article explores the nature of security training chiefly associated with MI5. It shows that, akin to the security training implemented throughout the colonies, policy-makers in London hoped to strengthen Middle Eastern security services via British training, which would safeguard British interests in the region. This article argues that an unintended consequence was that strengthening Middle Eastern security services became part of the problem rather than the solution. The policy served mainly to bolster increasingly unpopular, authoritarian regimes against a rising tide of anti-British sentiment. Thus, British foreign, more specifically anti-Communist, policy in the Middle East was short-sighted and a failure.     

滇东城子村藏在"蜂巢堡垒"里的千年秘密

在云南泸西县永宁乡的茫茫深山中,隐藏着一座不为人知的千年古村落。它最为奇特的地方。在于它的建筑。     

神奇隐蔽术 变色龙的“秘密武器”

<正>变色龙王国马达加斯加的三宝——猴面包树、狐猴和变色龙可谓是当地最有特色的生物景观了,它们在马达加斯加岛上分布广泛,且数量多,种类齐全,深受人们的喜爱。而马达加斯加又称得上是变色龙的天堂,全球一半种类的变色龙都生活在这片土地上,大部分还都是马达加斯加的独有物种,在其他地方是难觅踪迹的。     

The Secret of England's Greatness

The Secret of England's Greatness is a portrait by Thomas Jones Barker of Queen Victoria meeting an African envoy and presenting him with a copy of the Bible. Painted around 1863, it has become an icon of British imperialism in this period and of the justification of colonial expansion in terms of the transmission of the values of the Bible. As such, the portrait appears confident and unambiguous: the secret of England's greatness is unravelled and the truth is exposed. This article seeks to disturb the apparent absence of mystery in this painted encounter and to examine what remains concealed in the meeting between the white sovereign and the black emissary. Moving from Barker's painting to William Mulready's The Toyseller, which was completed in the same years and depicts a black pedlar trying to sell a wooden toy to a white mother and child, the article uncovers, within the language of painting and its surrounding discourses, a different kind of disturbing and exhilarating secret, concerned with racial identity and mid-Victorian desire. Working from a reading of the surface of the paintings to related representations of blackness in nineteenth-century science and culture, the article considers how The Toyseller negotiates the proximity of the figures of the black pedlar and the white mother and child and the significance of the compositional gap between them and suggests that Mulready's painting visualizes many of the issues that were at the heart of British imperialism in the middle of the nineteenth century, following the abolition of slavery.     

“蜂”言“蜂”语说蜂群

<正>近些年,有关蜂子蛰死人的报道屡见不鲜,在这些报道中,甚至用上了"杀人"这样的字眼,以描述其凶狠,可谓"蜂"声鹤唳,谈"蜂"色变。我常年游走于山林之间,寻找那些在都市里难得一见的昆虫,把它们美丽的倩影拍摄下来,这样免不了跟各类蜂群打交道。十几年下来,跟"蜂烟蜂雨"的亲密接触,使我对蜂群的内幕有了进一步的了解,读懂了一些"蜂"言"蜂"语。我也试图,用我捕捉到的画面,去揭开"杀人蜂"神秘的面纱。     

The CIA's Secret War in Tibet

hefirstAmericansNawangGayltseneversawhadsmall,silvereaglespinnedontheircaPs.Nawangwillneverforgetthoseeagles.Theyseemedauspicious,liketotemsofvictorvorsuccess.Today,hisfacewrinklesintoasadsmilerememberingthis.TheAmericanscame,hesaid,inabigturbopropplane,a…