Introduction What follows is an interim report about Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple. In so far as it has a central thesis, it is that Jones initiated the Jonestown massacre because he feared that Congressman Leo Ryan’s investigation would disgrace him. Specifically, Jones feared that Ryan and the press would uncover evidence that the … Read more
The idea that the Security Service, MI5, colluded with British fascism in the inter-war years is not to be found in the existing literature on the subject. On the contrary the fascists are depicted as the victims, rather than the beneficiaries of MI5’s attentions. MI5, it is generally argued, viewed fascism as a potential danger … Read more
Wishing and hoping I met Tony Benn only once, while researching Smear! He’s a lovely man with a big blind spot about the politics of the early 1980s in general and the Militant Tendency in particular. Here’s Benn in the course of an appreciation of Arthur Scargill on his standing down as President of … Read more
[…] California; and a little petty crime. This is the ‘alternative society’ of the time – or a version of it – but Blum’s obsessions are politics not drugs or rock music. Somehow Blum got a nasty – on the evidence of this book – a terminal dose of the desire to look the reality […]
Frost/Nixon Or, a load of old dick When Frost/Nixon first appeared at the Donmar Warehouse theatre in London back in 2006 I wondered why on earth anyone would want to stage, to recreate, what was, essentially, a non-event. Why indeed? One can imagine mere actors relishing the opportunity to ‘interpret’ Frost and Nixon but who … Read more
[…] a picture of him with Oliver North. I mean, he got very involved with us at one time. He liked the fast life. He liked to do drugs. He was big into racing cars. He liked women and he raised money for us among loyal Tories in England. That money would then get funnelled […]
The three Arrigos In the last Lobster (‘Spookaroonie’, p. 26) I noted the comments on <intelforum.org> of Maria Arrigo, a ‘social psychologist with experience in [intelligence] operations’ asking for evidence of ‘covert weapons experiments in post-war South America’ and wondered what was afoot. It was just an interesting little snippet which I came across at … Read more
[…] twenty years are spurious. Their account of the CIA is wilfully inadequate, even for a three page summary. They describe the funding of the Contras without mentioning drugs, even when the CIA itself has admitted getting permission from the US Attorney General to ignore cocaine dealing in return for donations to the Contras. You […]
edited by Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones and Christopher Andrew Frank Cass, London/Portland, Oregon, 1997, £15.00 pb There are two kinds of books about the CIA: there are those like William Blum’s, advertised in this issue, which see the CIA simply as part of the US post-war empire, the sharp end of imperial enforcement, somewhere between the … Read more
David Black London:Vision Paperbacks, 20001, £9.99 This a revised edition of the book which was reviewed in Lobster 35. I’m not sure how new it is. I no longer have the original edition but this seems pretty similar to it. What is new is some material on the activities of Steve Abrams, one of the … Read more
