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
[…] of our civil libertarian position on immigration, victimless crimes, sexual freedom and tolerance, free speech and censorship, and threats to civil liberties, is hardly what comes to mind when the term ‘right-wing’ is used. Neither does the author mention that we have as many ‘links’ with libertarian socialists, anarchists, sexual minorities, other civil libertarians, […]
[…] for this sensitive mission, there was only one crew-member, the pilot. This makes sense in terms of secrecy, a consideration that would have been paramount in the mind of the CIA planners. Because of this necessary limitation, is it not possible that the aircraft was adapted to carry its munitions on wing pylons that, […]
[…] 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 […]
Rodney Stich Diablo Western Press, USA, 1994 The first thing to be said is that this is a huge (650 pages), fascinating book; and I recommend it. It is really three stories interwoven. The first section describes the author’s experience of trying to alert the American civil aviation industry, then the politicians and then the […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] Expose Government Corruption and Corporate Crime http://www.well.com/user/pfrankli/ Provides info on high level corruption and crime; eg Danny Casolaro case (INSLAW, PROMIS etc); Iran-Contra affair; BCCI; Panam flight 103; Savings and Loan Industry failure; CIA; NSA; FBI: government corruption during cold war, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s etc. Extensive links, including material on conspiracies, mind control, media censorship.
Who was who? The newly published Oxford Dictionary of National Biography not only surveys the lives of the great and the good, but also includes accounts of individuals in the murkier fields of human endeavour. Over fifty spies are listed, for example, including historical figures such as ‘Parliament Joan’ (c1600-1655?) and ‘Pickle the Spy’ (c1725-1761). … Read more
[…] Russians. The KGB did the same with Russian students. The intelligence value was nil. In the early sixties the CIA placed a lot of hopes on ‘ mind control’, experimenting with drugs, hypnosis and programming a la ‘Manchurian Candidate’. The most bizarre episode in Beck’s book concerns an attempt by a CIA shrink to […]
[…] (p. 222) (emphasis added) ‘Hollis had set up the entire operation, without the knowledge of his staff’ (p. 255) A one-man Hollis operation? Hollis the Superman? The mind boggles. According to West, ‘The only conclusion possible from all of this is that Hollis was personally responsible for the Profumo debacle from start to finish. […]
