[PDF file]: The Devil’s Chessboard Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government David Talbot William Collins, London, 2015 HB, 686pp., illus., index, bib., refs., £25.00 This truly excellent biography is at least partly a biography of two men, Allen Dulles and his older brother John Foster. I write ‘at least partly’ because the […]
[PDF file]: […] and ensuing civil war. Finally Cockburn gets to the rise of ISIS, which he spotted very early on, and the present chaotic situation with Saudi Arabia and Iran funding proxy armies and NATO member Turkey assisting ISIS and attacking the Kurds (who are fighting ISIS). The major theme here is this: as happened in […]
[PDF file]: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War 1 to 9/11 Kathryn S. Olmsted Oxford University Press, 2009, £12.99, p/b Robin Ramsay 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 her final paragraph: […]
[PDF file]: […] Acknowledgements (p. viii): ‘This is a history of things that did not officially happen using primary sources that few realise exist.’ If the subheads are familiar – Iran, Suez, Oman, Yemen, Malaya, Indonesia, British Guyana, Northern Ireland etc. – most of the content is new, thanks to an enormous effort at official file reading […]
[PDF file]: […] his Republican opponent, Barry Goldwater, over the nuclear issue and issued no nuclear threats during his presidency. President Carter raised the possibility of a nuclear attack on Iran during the hostage crisis. President Reagan presided over a massive nuclear build-up which came close to accidental thermonuclear war during the misinterpreted Able Archer alert. President […]
[PDF file]: […] the Saudis. AlQaeda’s atrocities were deliberately intended to provoke sectarian civil war, a methodology that is continued by Islamic State today. This inaugurated the proxy war with Iran that the Saudis have been waging in Iraq and later in Syria ever since. The extent to which the United States has found itself caught in […]
[…] the intelligence community, and President Biden, all of whom, notes Glenn Greenwald, have declared that “the gravest menace to American national security” is not Russia, ISIS, China, Iran, or North Korea, but “‘domestic extremists’ in general—and far-right white supremacist groups in particular.” The new information regulators failed to win over vaccine skeptics, convince MAGA […]
[PDF file]: […] like Mary Poppins meets Adrian Mole. For example, she describes how she travels with a largely American group of Aspen Institute people to meet the Shah of Iran whose ‘father had occupied the throne in a bloodless military coup’. Wasn’t there just a bit more to the CIA’s Operation Ajax than that, Shirley? 1 […]
[…] memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” I said, “Is it classified?” He said, “Yes, sir.” I said, “Well, don’t show it to me.” And I saw him a year or so ago, […]
[…] the intelligence community, and President Biden, all of whom, notes Glenn Greenwald, have declared that “the gravest menace to American national security” is not Russia, ISIS, China, Iran, or North Korea, but “‘domestic extremists’ in general—and far-right white supremacist groups in particular.” The new information regulators failed to win over vaccine skeptics, convince MAGA […]
