[…] Beckett tells us that the CPGB’s then industrial organiser, Peter Carter, wrote a report on the strike which was ‘so strongly critical of Scargill that the CP suppressed it.’ (p. 207) Look, no sources. These are fascinating anecdotes but they are unsourced, like the rest of the book. Why do people do lots of […]
The publication of Frank Kitson’s Low Intensity Operations in 1971 created a storm on the left.(1) An influential British army officer with considerable experience of colonial warfare was advocating that the army prepare for counterinsurgency operations at home. As far as Kitson was concerned there was a serious danger of revolutionary disturbance in Britain in … Read more
See also: British Fascism 1974-92 (Lobster 23) British Fascism 1974-92 (II) (Lobster 24) British fascism 1983-6 (Lobster 25) British Fascism 1983-6 (II) (Lobster 26) In Lobster 25 my study of the National Front (NF) ended at the start of 1986, when, despite storm clouds on the horizon, the NF was the largest, most visible, and … Read more
McKinney/Africa/covert action Democratic Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney sponsored a forum, ‘Covert Action in Africa: A Smoking Gun in Washington, D.C.’ And this isn’t just cold war history; this is names, people and companies doing it today. The text of the meeting is at www.copvcia.comand Red spiels The Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) has now posted … Read more
[…] in the USA, but Australia. Somehow — how? why? — the Australian cultural climate has produced the same curious, populist (yes) nexus of hidden history, conspiracy theories, suppressed cures and medicines, and ‘free’ energy devices hitherto only seen in the USA. How real most of it is, I have no idea. But for the […]
Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair London:Verso, 1999, £10 Much has been written about the role of the Central Intelligence Agency in the global drugs trade but this is the first book that actually brings it all together in one place. The authors haven’t exposed much that is new, instead they have taken all … Read more
In mid-November 1993, after six years of research, 42-year old Eileen Welsome produced a gripping series of articles examining the life and death of five people — a railroad porter, a house painter, a carpenter, a politician and a homemaker — used as human guinea pigs by the US Department of Energy. Appearing in the … Read more
‘The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it and ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.’ – Winston Churchill On July 17, 1996, 230 people boarded TWA Flight 800 at Kennedy airport, New York. About twelve minutes after take-off, 8.31 pm, the plane exploded and crashed into the waters off Long … Read more
Desmond Bristow with Bill Bristow Little, Brown and co., London, 1993 Shoot the marketing department. There is almost nothing about ‘moles’ in this book. The reality is a mildly interesting account of Bristow’s MI6 career from 1940-1956, most of it spent in Spain. A few names are named — but 40 years on, who gives … Read more
[…] meant, of course, is that the public was once again treated to the orthodox version of the Watergate affair, while coverage of the alternative theory was effectively suppressed (except to the extent that Liddy himself was able to articulate it). Readers of the newspaper can only have been perplexed by the jury’s 7-2 ruling […]
