[…] bleak winter of 1944-45, when Philby was busily forming his new Soviet counter-espionage section, that Muggeridge met him again… Two small incidents imprinted themselves indelibly on Muggeridge’s mind. Each concerned Philby. The first was a heated discussion at table about the rights and wrongs of withholding important Bletchley intercepts from the Soviet Union. It […]
Researching the European State: a critical guide Edited by Tony Bunyan Statewatch PO Box 1516, London N16 0EW £7.00 With sixty A4 pages plus a six page index, this is, as the title suggests, an annotated bibliography. The flyer which came with it accurately described it thus: ‘This is the first bibliography on the European […]
[…] fired some 400 Soviet experts, on the spurious ground that they were no longer needed. The relevant CIA department, known as Covert Action, ceased to operate. Never mind Crozier forgetting – and The Times subs missing – that it was Gerald Ford who succeeded Nixon, not Jimmy Carter, it was Crozier’s use of the […]
[…] ideology and policy formulation and the techniques used to communicate ideas and mobilise mass action in support of those ideas. Above all, we need get inside the mind of the secret state, to start thinking a bit harder about why it behaves as it does domestically and internationally. What it thinks as a […]
[…] Hanssen was bad! (But no info about his specific badness, and no mention of the tunnel the Americans dug under the Russian embassy, or vice versa). Never mind! Bin Laden bad! The longer articles similarly crash on the rocks of recycled press reports. ‘Peru is a nation not usually associated with spy dramas’ begins […]
See note(1) Very few notions generate as much intellectual resistance, hostility, and derision within academic circles as a belief in the historical importance or efficacy of political conspiracies. Even when this belief is expressed in a very cautious manner, limited to specific and restricted contexts, supported by reliable evidence, and hedged about with all sort … Read more
In an article in the Journal of Popular Culture, (1) one of the editors of the Jonestown Report considers the role that conspiracy theories have played in the unfolding narrative of ‘Jonestown’. It is a worthwhile endeavour to which few scholars could bring better credentials. Rebecca Moore is a professor of religious studies at the […]
The Trial of Saddam Hussein Abdul Haq Al-Ani, Clarity Press, Atlanta, GA., 2008 Abdul-Haq Al-Ani’s troubling manifesto on behalf of the murdered Iraqi leader exposes bloody doings of empire from a lucid political-juridical perspective. ‘Imperialism is a universal historical phenomenon, but it remains, nevertheless, evil’, he writes (p. 23). ‘I use the term European [imperialism] … Read more
[…] Belfast worsened and, as an interim measure, Gibbons ordered 500 rifles to be transported to Dundalk on the border. The rifles had been stockpiled with this in mind – against the advice of Kelly, as they were traceable to the Irish Army – after a potential purchaser in August 1969 turned out to have […]
[…] about Spanish history and just skipped those sections.) The book as a whole is an interesting account of the post-war British left, albeit from one particular viewpoint; and, despite odd flashes of score-settling, Meltzer is an amusing raconteur. But a memoir without a name index…..? A metaphor involving tits and a bull comes to mind.
