Ismael Hossein-Zadeh New York and London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006 $75.00 (US), £37.99 (UK), h/b This is an interesting and timely book and it is a great pity it is so expensive. Put out as a paperback and maybe with a less academic-sounding title, this would sell. Little of it is intellectually taxing and any […]
[…] of the reader. Did the publisher rush things, hoping to capitalise on the topicality of the Scott Report? A few revisions with the interested lay reader in mind might have led to a rather more accessible product. All this is a pity because the overall effect is lucid, penetrating and convincing. The five propositions […]
Election time! Ah, the roar of the hustings; the pulse of democracy is about to be taken. The enduring worthiness of our political system is about to be proven yet again. But what’s that you say? Something’s not quite right with the result? You smell a rat? Be quiet. Such things only happen in tin-pot … Read more
We know that torture is going on in secret and not so secret prisons. We know thanks to the excellent research done by <www.cageprisoners.com> that elements of the British government, be they MI5, MI6 or diplomats from the FCO, have been involved. Yet we seem unable to stop it. Civic society raises its voices in … Read more
Steamshovel 11 The arrival of a new Steamshovel is an event. No matter that I am going to want to be picky about something in it, every issue contains items both substantial and intriguing – and much that would find a home nowhere else, that I can think of. (Except maybe Lobster. I wish I […]
Reflections on the ‘cult of the offensive’: pre-emptive war, the Israel lobby and US military Doctrine In our book, Spies, Lies and the War on Terror,(1) a central theme is the ascendancy of pre-emptive war doctrine in US military strategy and its impact on public perceptions and the construction of political narrative. A parallel and […]
[…] beginning of the book he describes the UCA as ‘a completely fictitious left-wing loyalist paramilitary organization invented by British intelligence’. By p. 71 he has changed his mind and says ‘the British Army may not have been the inventor of the UCA.’ In fact, as the Information Policy briefing on the UCA reproduced in […]
[…] inquiries into past spying’ (Guardian, 27 March 1995). There are a few MPs who know something of the intelligence services: Tam Dalyell and Rupert Allason spring to mind; and others willing to ask awkward questions. None of those were appointed by the leaders of the two main parties to the committee. It would have […]
[…] This does not prove he would have withdrawn completely, including the 16,500 advisers. However, the record is clear that he had laid the groundwork for doing so.’ Mind you, 16,500 ‘advisers’…. a lot of advice, Kemo Sabe. The Hilsman letter was part of a mail-out from the Assassination Archives and Research Centre, which continues […]
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 […]
