This is a slightly abridged version of part of chapter four of Mark Curtis’s book The Ambiguities of Power: British Foreign Policy since 1945 (Zed Press, 1995) reviewed below. In August 1953 a coup overthrew Iran’s nationalist government of Mohammed Musaddiq and installed the Shah in power. The Shah subsequently used widespread repression and torture … Read more
[…] 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 […]
[…] anti-Semitic. Emigre groups, especially Ukrainians, are being allowed to broadcast their rewrite of WW2 in which they didn’t collaborate with the Nazis, didn’t participate in the mass murder of Jews in the Ukraine, and didn’t form a Ukrainian division in the SS, etc.. Anti-Semitism seems to be built into Ukrainian nationalism. This should be […]
MI5 and the Wilson Plot The MI5 website (www.mi5.gov.uk) has a section called ‘myths and misunderstandings’, which features, among other things, ‘the Wilson Plot’. The paragraph it devotes to this episode is worth studying. It refers the reader to Spycatcher and Peter Wright’s allegation that ‘up to 30 members of the Service had plotted to … Read more
Clippings The Lie Detector Story In the wake of the Prime case, US intelligence has made polygraph (lie detector) introduction into GCHQ at Cheltenham a condition of future GCHQ-NSA cooperation. “At a meeting in July with Civil Service union leaders, Sir Robert Armstrong, the Cabinet Secretary, made it clear that Senior Whitehall officials were reluctant … Read more
Inside the League Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson (Dodd, Mead and Co., New York 1986) This is the only book I know on the World Anti-Communist League. Most of it is new to me but the few bits I am familiar with look accurate, and it is reasonably well documented. It is really in … Read more
[…] Ray had managed to acquire the identities of four men in Toronto who all looked like him, but omitted any of the subsequent research on the King murder, such as that by John Edginton, the British TV producer, and particularly by Dr William Pepper. Godfrey Hodgson’s obit in the Independent (25 April 1998) was […]
[…] 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
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
