[…] capability or it had some advance inkling of what was about to happen. Two sleepless British government ministers next morning clearly did not. You make your own mind up. Washington’s objective What was more important was the message. The subtext of coverage from the US was that Europeans should be more aggressive about their […]
[…] closures. No reference is made to bringing company or country down. In the intervening twenty years Edwardes’ memory has gilded the lily. Spook think The Security Service mind is a wonderful thing. To it a potential risk is the same as an actual risk. Thus we discover that Lord Bethell, a Conservative Whip in […]
[…] that the authorities in Nottingham would use their own police officers to resolve what was a civil law situation, but that’s Thatcher for you.’(24) All in the mind? A series of experiments ‘tested whether lacking control increases illusory pattern perception… …as the identification of a coherent and meaningful interrelationship among a set of random […]
[…] by circling sharks. The Politicisation of Polly Peck ‘Certain values in life are higher than commerce, profits or personal benefits. The issue of northern Cyprus in my mind should be valued that high’ – Ail Nadir. (4) From 1987 onwards, Polly Peck became increasingly a political entity, as well as a commercial one: in […]
[…] Talb. After lengthy sessions with CIA personnel, the Maltese shopkeeper who had previously recognised a photograph of Talb – a 35 year-old Palestinian – apparently changed his mind and fingered a Libyan airline official in his fifties. This identification, along with allegations – later disproved – that a Swiss-made timing device for the Lockerbie […]
The Triumph of the Political Class Peter Oborne London: Simon & Schuster, 2007, £18.99 Thinker, Faker, Spinner, Spy: Corporate PR and the Assault on Democracy Edited by William Dinan and David Miller London: Pluto, 2007, £15.99 End Times: The Death of the Fourth Estate Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair CounterPunch and AK Press, Oakland … Read more
[…] it is reasonable to assume that the “safe on Sakhalin” message was a deliberate lie. It was a lie with far-reaching effects. Firstly, it set the world’s mind at rest about 007. At the time of the broadcast 007 was several hours late at Seoul – clearly a news story in the making. Moreover, […]
Introduction Despite their reputation for ’empiricism’, British academics have tended to treat political power by means of abstract concepts rather than empirical information about the actions of determinate individuals and groups (e.g. Giddens, 1984, 1985; Scott, 1986). After a brief efflorescence of empirical studies of the so-called ‘Establishment’ in the early 1960s, sociologists in Britain … Read more
[…] 1953. This is Fisk’s observation on that 1997 meeting at Woodhouse’s retirement home in Oxford: ‘The coup against Mossadeq, the return of the Shah, was, in Woodhouse’s mind, a holding operation, a postponement of history. There was also the little matter of the AIOC, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company – later British Petroleum – which […]
[…] behind US foreign policy…..was the defence of democracy’, is a joke. Or a lie. The ‘essential idea’ was to defend US economic and geopolitical interests and never mind how much (non-white) blood was spilt. It gets worse. I always look at the assassination of John Kennedy as a touchstone for academics writing about America […]
