“The anomaly of going to war in your own country was not lost on Harry.” (Harry’s Game, Gerald Seymour, Fontana, London 1975) Airey Neave was killed in March 1979 by a bomb planted beneath his car just outside the Houses of Parliament. The then little known Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) soon claimed responsibility. The … Read more
[…] rational attempt by the Chamberlain wing of the Tory Party to rejig the post-Versailles world in a way which would keep Germany a member of the international, liberal (economically liberal) world. ‘Between 1921 and 1940 the dominant alliance in Britain was founded on a coalition between a ruling élite centred on the Treasury, the […]
[…] armies of fact-checkers and, indeed, the market for this sort of extended politico-analytical foray just does not exist over here. Writing from a New York Times ‘ liberal’ perspective, he remains – in contrast to Chomsky, Cockburn and Hitchens – very much the critical insider. In keeping with this stance, however, Hersh has an […]
Free Ride Department Meanwhile the Rand Corporation (that liberal think tank in Santa Monica which helps decide which Russian cities should be atom-bombed) has declared that the federal government must continue to support an obscure military satellite system known as Global Positioning Network. Much beloved by high-tech hikers and rental car enthusiasts, the GPS […]
The Trial of Saddam Hussein Abdul Haq Al-Ani, Clarity Press, Atlanta, GA., 2008 Abdul-Haq Al-Ani’s troubling manifesto on behalf of the murdered Iraqi leader exposes bloody doings of empire from a lucid political-juridical perspective. ‘Imperialism is a universal historical phenomenon, but it remains, nevertheless, evil’, he writes (p. 23). ‘I use the term European [imperialism] … Read more
[…] General Secretary of the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU), 1948-57; General Secretary 1957-64. John Raeburn, past Secretary of London Trades Council. (58) Phillip Fothergill, ex-President of the the Liberal Party. Admiral Lord Cunningham (who as Chief of Staff had in 1945 threatened Attlee with resignation over defence policy.) And a coterie of other retired senior […]
John Ross Common Courage Press Monroe, Maine, 2000, $15.95 (pb) (www.commoncouragepress.com) John Ross is the foremost chronicler, in English, of modern Mexican history. He is particularly knowledgeable about the Zapatista movement and its revolutionary forerunners. In addition to the very good The Annexation of Mexico – from the Aztecs to the IMF, about said country’s … Read more
[…] they included Alan Sked, who later split from it to launch the UK Independence Party. Sked, who began his political career as a parliamentary candidate for the Liberal Party in 1970, eventually left the UK Independence Party in 1998. He is an historian and published Britain’s Decline (1987) an extremely gloomy look at the […]
For some time, the world’s secret services have been making use of loose structures parallel to the official clandestine hierarchies for their more controversial activities. Fred Holroyd’s revelations have shown how the British state employed Loyalist paramilitaries for kidnap and assassination operations in Eire, whilst the Irangate hearings have exposed what is, so far, the … Read more
[…] two world wars, etc? I believe he worshipped power and for him the global power of European culture meant that it must be right. He was a liberal and believed that liberalism belief in freedom, rights, democracy, equality of women was essentially a European idea, linked to a ‘European structure of mind’ […]
