[…] 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, […]
The Secret of Bryn Estyn: The Making of a Modern Witch Hunt Richard Webster Oxford: The Orwell Press, 2005, £25 This is an account of the various child abuse and satanic abuse cases that developed across the UK from the mid ’80s onwards. At the phenomenon’s peak, around 1995, many police forces were carrying […]
[…] that someone’s lying, or they may simply have been produced by fallible human beings. You start out by doubting the official story, but you keep an open mind and apply the same sceptical standards to all the alternative versions. Debunking an error is an endless process, even if you believe you’ve seen a white […]
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 […]
[…] the siting of US missiles around Russia in his capacity as Poland’s Foreign Minister. Mention Poland in British politics and the name Denis McShane MP springs to mind. The son of a Polish émigré, McShane was, like Sikorski, deeply involved in Solidarity there before he rose to prominence in international relations, in his case […]
[…] you get some actors?’ (There were two sitting in the room, drinking tea.) No: Loach wanted us to improvise it. So in front of some professional actors, mind, we spent an excruciating 15 minutes trying to improvise a dialogue about the 1970s, pretending to be a British Army officers engaged in a cabal. We […]
[…] the nature of money, and informed by thousands of yellowed pages in the archives of the Bank of England, Preparata throws a shaft of light into the mind of Montagu Norman, the bank’s Governor for almost a quarter of a century. Thus we embark on a world historical game of ‘follow the money’. Under […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] of the British state; and on the dominance of London and Roseland (rest of the south of England); and on nationalism and identity. Nairn has a powerful mind, a wide knowledge rooted in Marxism, and wonderful savage rhetoric. Here are some quotations. You could almost pick quotes at random; much of it is like […]
[…] (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. […]
