[…] scale of the Soviet ‘threat’ climaxed with the Team B episode in 1976/7 in which ‘the hawks’, those who claimed that the CIA was biased towards a liberal, detente-oriented view and was unable to adequately depict the Soviet ‘threat’, were given access to the CIA’s own data and asked to prepare another, competing estimate […]
[…] During the sixties McGrath held Sunday night meetings at his house in the University area, attended by up-and-coming Unionists. He forecast a holocaust in Ulster and portrayed liberal Unionists as IRA dupes. In 1969 he founded an Orange Lodge: in line with his claim that Protestants originally inhabited Ireland, its motto was in Gaelic. […]
[…] Arbetaren (The Worker), and extensive reading of both the émigré and internal publications that stand outside both the official media of the state of Iran and the liberal democratic consensus of the western democracies. The first part of the book is a look at Iran from the inside. It gives a full account of […]
I began writing this at the beginning of August. It was then some 8 months or so after Colin Wallace’s release from prison. Some kind of summing up seemed appropriate. A great many journalists have now looked at his allegations – a handful in some detail – and, so far, they have all stood up. […]
See note(1) Like some Russian high official come to treat with Chechen rebels, CIA Director John Deutch arrived in force — by heavily-armed motorcade, and with helicopter cover. SWAT teams swarmed over the building that was Deutch’s destination. But on November 15, 1996, Deutch’s destination was in fact only the auditorium of Locke High School … Read more
[…] down Shylock with guile and subtlety in The Merchant of Venice, Barney Greenwald reducing Commander Queeg to a gibbering mess in The Caine Mutiny and the gentle liberal Henry Fonda destroying Lee J Cobb to get his “not-guilty” vote in 12 Angry Men.’ I doubt if the publicity machine behind Frost/Nixon could have put […]
This piece by Daniel Brandt began as a short letter commenting on my review of Right Woos Left by Chip Berlet (Lobster 23 p. 34). I wrote back and asked if he would like to expand it. And so he did, writing almost the whole thing at one long sitting. Anyone who joined the U.S. … Read more
The Money and the Power: The Making of Las Vegas and Its Hold on America 1947-2000 Sally Denton and Roger Morris London: Pimlico, 2002, pb, £15 John Burnes It’s hardly news that Las Vegas was a city run by the Mob. Or that it was fuelled by financial corruption. Or that both of these […]
The killing of WPC Yvonne Fletcher in public view and for no apparent reason remains one of the most notorious murders of recent decades. For sixteen years there have been few signs of any serious attempts to locate and bring to justice the perpetrator of this outrage. Finally, this April, in an outstanding piece of … Read more
‘God Helps the Bad when they outnumber the Good‘ (Mexican proverb) Business brought me to Mexico City on the day Luis Donaldo Colosio, Presidential candidate for the PRI (Partido Revoluncionario Internacional), was assassinated in Tijuana. The TV coverage of the event was every bit as obscure and unhelpful as the TV reporting after the JFK … Read more
