[…] which safeguarded the route to India. It was at this point that Britain’s Liberal government decided on intervention. It hoped for French support, which would, in Gladstone’s mind at least have helped to preserve some element of international respectability about the enterprise – but none was forthcoming. So a unilateral British invasion occurred. Arabi’s […]
[…] appeared this year on the CBS News website(2) and in The Times.(3) Has the Bilderberg meeting stopped asking for media silence? That would be my guess. Never mind that the CBS story inevitably framed the subject matter – Bilderbergers in the Obama administration – as the ‘crazy’ concerns of ‘conspiracy theorists’,(4) this is a […]
[…] even more in her determination to demonstrate the “persistence of illusions about Britain’s place in the world.” (1) This version of events is attractive to the liberal mind because it looks like an exemplary demonstration of the cockup theory of history, and it is that which passes for political sophistication in most of respectable […]
[…] Still very much in the land of the living is an old political associate of both departed peers, Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee. A teasing thought crossed my mind during the phoney leadership war in the days before the Labour Party conference when Toynbee switched her allegiance to David Miliband from Gordon Brown. (We are […]
Henry McDonald and Jim Cusack London: Penguin, 2004, £12.99, p/b Henry McDonald’s highly readable recent book with Jim Cusack on the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) is everything that other recent offerings on the subject were not. On the one hand, it avoids the kind of borderline homo-erotic sensationalism, in which the atrocities of self-serving … Read more
[…] out no operation, investigation, surveillance or action against any individual otherwise than for the purposes laid down in its directive.’ The words ‘lying’ and ‘bastard’ come to mind, as they say. Gill takes a deep breath and contents himself with observing that ‘such an inquiry, to be carried out properly, would have taken many […]
I sent the following by e-mail to a number of people: ‘Thus Martin Jacques in the New Statesman: ‘For the next 30 years, neoliberalism – the belief in the market rather then the state, the individual rather than the social – exercised a hegemonic influence over British politics, with the creation of New Labour signalling … Read more
The Case Against Israel Michael Neumann Oakland (US): CounterPunch, $15 Edinburgh (UK): AK Press, £10, 2005 The Power of Israel in the United States James Petras Atlanta and Black Point: Clarity Press and Fernwood Books, 2006, $16.95 In a year in which Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and Gaza were accompanied by more stories of … Read more
[…] as the Nixon people knew that the CIA knew, they (the White House) must have known that it was all going to come out. With this in mind we should perhaps not so readily accept Hougan’s assertion that the Agency couldn’t have foreseen the outcome. Indeed, we need not assume – as Hougan does […]
[…] was perceived as anti-socialist/communist, the FCS became cheerleaders for whichever bunch of murderous thugs happened to be getting support from Washington: Renamo and the Contras come to mind. About Mozambique or Nicaragua, they knew the best part of fuck-all; but they didn’t need to: if X was fighting a socialist government, X deserved their […]
