[PDF file]: […] even so, it’s the negatives that stand out. Anglo-American intelligence agencies have failed to predict wars and uprisings, made international situations worse through their covert interventions ( Iran in 1953 is the big example, but there are many others), abused human rights, broken everyone’s laws, routinely spied on innocents, been penetrated by enemies as […]
[PDF file]: […] commonly accepted that Iraq either possessed such weapons or was seeking to develop them during the 1980s. Indeed, Iraq was known to have used chemical weapons against Iran during the 1980-88 conflict between the two states and against the Kurds in the Halabja massacre of 16 March 1988. Removing Iraq’s WMD capacity was seen […]
Misc reviews These reviews of mine were written for other publications. Robin Ramsay Who killed Dag Hammarskjold? The UN, the Cold War and white supremacy in Africa Susan Williams London: Hurst and Company, 2011, £20.00, h/b. After travelling thousands of miles, visiting many libraries and archives, interviewing the surviving eyewitnesses and reexamining the previous inquiries, […]
[PDF file]: […] foreign invader, usurping the presidency from the American people’. Indeed he might well be ‘a crypto-Muslim terrorist’, someone in league with ‘Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram, Hezbollah, and Iran’. (p. 21) This was all part of the conspiracy culture that became ‘central to the politics of the Christian Right’. Leading the way were the ‘birthers’. […]
[PDF file]: […] of the Protocols impact in Germany and the USA in the 1920s and 1930s, as well as chapters on their post World War 2 life in Japan, Iran, Turkey, South Africa and the Arab world. There is also a useful chapter on the Protocols on the internet. For this reader, though, Beate Kosmala’s chapter, […]
l Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War 1 to 9/11 Kathryn S. Olmsted Oxford University Press, 2009, £12.99, p/b 1 1 If I was going to be generous I would say ‘Close but no cigar’ to professor Olmsted’s account. She has at any rate identified one of the central issues, expressed in […]
[PDF file]: Failed Führers: A History of Britain’s Extreme Right Graham Macklin London: Routledge, 2020, £24.99, pb John Newsinger Failed Führers is a volume in the Routledge Studies in Fascism and the Far Right series. At the moment there are almost 60 volumes in the series, already published or forthcoming. The handful that I have so far […]
[PDF file]: […] the cumulative picture of SIS is truly well-informed. His comments about ‘our support for forces of moderation around the world’, followed by almost in the same 17 Iran has accused Britain of not only carrying out ‘secret espionage activities in the country but also funding and supporting certain terrorist groups. . .’ The Times, […]
[PDF file]: Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare Thomas Rid London: Profile Books, 2020, 513 pp, £10.99 Colin Challen The dissemination of disinformation is as old as the hills, and now, thanks to the Internet, its transformation from the analogue age to the digital has given it what Rid explains as a post-modernist […]
[PDF file]: Contents Lobster 60 SUCCESS The CIA in Guatemala, 1954 James Lusher On 18 June 1954, following the positive outcome in Iran a year previously, backed by the President, Congress and the State Department, the CIA launched their next interventionist operation. It entailed replacing the Guatemalan left-wing, reformist leader Jacobo Arbenz Guzman – seen by […]
