[…] In poring over all the dissimulation over weapons of mass destruction, the death of scientist David Kelly and, most recently, who knew what over the torture and murder of Iraqi civilians, it may be useful to bear one fragment of US history in mind. Paul Lindley, the former US Congressman, wrote in his They […]
Introduction The mid 1970s was not a good time to be a social democratic ally of the United States. In Britain we had “the Wilson plots’; in Australia Gough Whitlam, Jim Cairns and the Australian Labour Party got Governor Kerr and the CIA; in Germany Willi Brandt resigned after a “security scandal’; in New Zealand … Read more
Political activist Daniel Ellsberg and Professor Alfred McCoy have something special in common. Based on their actions and accomplishments of nearly thirty years ago, they have achieved the status of icons within the subculture of what passes for the New Left. Icon Ellsberg became a celebrity in 1971 after he leaked The Pentagon Papers, an … Read more
Miscellaneous Publications Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones’, The CIA and American Democracy, (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1989, price not stated) is, with Blum’s The CIA: a Forgotten History, the best single volume on the CIA. Of particular interest is the author’s account of the political system’s response to the revelations of CIA archives in the … Read more
[…] 23 by Christina Lamb, ‘Diplomatic Correspondent’ – a title once held by Coughlin – which claimed that Saddam Hussein had sent belly dancing assassins to London to murder his opponents there. Lamb sourced this to ‘a Foreign Office official’.(4) Where are they now? Skimming through the e-newsletter NewsmakingNews of 18 September I had […]
[…] on 30 October 1993. Kalugin was arrested at the airport and interrogated for hours on suspicion he may have been involved in the 1979 Georgi Markov ‘umbrella murder’ in London. Although released without charge, the resulting bad publicity destroyed Kalugin’s credibility, and my lawyers decided not to call him. Kalugin’s evidence would have been […]
From David Hambling On the topic of the People Zapper (Lobster 41 p. 9), the new ‘Active Denial System’ is probably not the first microwave weapon to be deployed. There have been repeated rumours of cruise missiles with HPM (high-powered microwave) warheads being used in former Yugoslavia to knock out communications centres, though apparently the … Read more
The rise and fall of the Bulgarian Connection Edward S. Herman and Frank Brodhead (Sheridan Square Publications, New York, 1986) When the Turkish Grey Wolves hold rallies they howl collectively. So, at times, do journalists of the ‘free press’. In 1979 Edward Herman wrote After the Cataclysm with Noam Chomsky in which they shredded Western … Read more
[…] America but for readers of this journal it won’t be of much interest. Sort of Greg Palast lite; Gore Vidal without the style. The Vatican Exposed: Money, Murder and the Vatican Paul L. Williams Prometheus Books, New York, 2003 h/b, $27.00 www.prometheusbooks.com A short (200 pages, large print) and sharp history of the Catholic […]
[…] and one of the co-founders of the Social Democratic Party. An odd, occasional visitor to these circles was William Whitelaw, who became Margaret Thatcher’s fixer after the murder of Airey Neave. Through the influence of his wife, Dee, a close friend of Susan Crosland, Ayer was once again politically active in the sixties but […]
