[…] seems unable to recognise that whilst Iraq does not present the challenges of a jungle topography, it does contain a human challenge more demanding. No amount of Agent Orange and puppet regime change will make the Islamic undergrowth disappear; it will merely help to propagate a diffuse but deeply rooted resistance which Bush’s tough-talking […]
The Christie File part 3, 1967-75 Stuart Christie p/back, £34 (inc. p and p) from <www.christiebooks.com> Like the first, reviewed in Lobster 44, this third volume (300 pages, indexed) in Christie’s autobiography is done on A4 pages with the central text bordered with photographs of the people and incidents concerned, newspaper clippings, posters, cartoons etc. … Read more
[…] anyone not asleep at the wheel has taken for granted for years; some fragments on the MI5-MOD-Tory Party operations against CND; and one (conveniently dead) alleged MI5 agent, Harry Newton. Yet no journalist to my knowledge has ever got paranoid about her, seriously wondered if she was part of some wider operation. (I don’t […]
The Spycatcher’s Encyclopedia of Espionage Peter Wright Heinemann, Australia, 1991 The cover-blurb says this is ‘the rest of the story’. It feels more like the out-takes from Spycatcher spiced with a few more fragments of interesting gossip. And I do mean fragments: the interesting bits of 260 pages — largish print and much white space … Read more
David Black, Vision, London, 1998, £9.99 pb I enjoyed this book hugely, and I’d recommend it to anyone remotely interested in the politics of psychedelia – apart from anything else, there are stories here you almost certainly won’t have heard. However, overall it aspires to more than it can deliver. As the title implies, the … Read more
[…] probably be against the civilian population of large cities. It can be well imagined the degree of consternation, as well as fear and apprehension, that such an agent would produce upon a large urban population.'(6) Hamilton made a number of proposals for the elimination of large populations, among them ‘fission product aerosols to subject […]
[…] book, like all the others, does not explain the Reagan phenomenon. RR Deadly Deceits Ralph McGeehee (Sheridan Square Publications Inc. USA 1983) Ralph McGeehee was a CIA agent for 25 years operating mainly in South East Asia. He is now a bitter opponent of his old firm and the anger comes through clearly in […]
Puppet Masters: the Political Use of Terrorism in Italy Phillip Willan Phillip Willan’s Puppet Masters: the Political Use of Terrorism in Italy, (Constable, London, 1991) is a detailed and interesting book, dealing in a thorough (if partially flawed) way with a fascinating subject. It covers a wide array of interlocking subjects including the infamous P2 … Read more
Counter-insurgency in Rhodesia J. K. Villiers (Croom Helm, London, 1985) An expanded Masters thesis, full of descriptions of psychological operations by the Rhodesian forces (which failed utterly: and no wonder, they were useless), and rather less about pseudo-gang activities which, like their equivalents in the British operations in Kenya, were a success – i.e. they … Read more
Jane Kelsey, Pluto Press, London 1996, £14.99 Kelsey describes how a handful of bureaucrats in the New Zealand state, backed by some of the big New Zealand companies, seized control of economic policy in New Zealand and imposed on it a bizarre amalgam of the IMF restructuring programme traditionally imposed on the Third World, traditional … Read more
