Roundtable
I get regular e-mail bulletins from an organisation called the roundtable – not the Round Table but somebody? some people? – trying to document the US ruling elite by the study of its organisations. Really they should be called Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) – because it is the CFR they mostly write about; its personnel and their positions of influence in the US administration, NGOs, media, Congress and so forth. But they do it within the framework of Quigley’s thesis on the Round Table – hence their name. This is the primary Quigley site in the Web as far as I know. (http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/2807) Much of this valuable research. But there is one obvious problem. They note
‘Council on Foreign Relation member Clinton’s Whitehouse contains 300 or more Council on Foreign Relations members he appointed to the CIA, NSC, State Department, and other agencies.’
The roundtable people/person interpret the near universal membership of the CFR among US elite managers to mean that the CFR is running the US. But Nixon was in the CFR at the same time as the Trilateral Commission – a CFR spin-off also extensively documented by the roundtable – was grooming Jimmy Carter.(1) In other words, near universal membership of the CFR does not preclude conflict within the US ruling elites. The paradox here is that CFR would look much more interesting if only a significant minority of the US ruling elites were members. Then it is conceivable that membership might entail some kind of collective ‘line’. It isn’t interesting to be told so-and-so in the State Department is in the CFR: of course he or she is in the CFR; everybody is. Still, some very useful primary data here beneath the rhetoric and theories.
- There is a Trilateral site at http://trilateral.org/annmtgs/trialog/triglist.htm
Meet the new boss… same as the old boss
One of Lobster’s regular contributors of recent years had been having terrible trouble, first with his answering machine and then with his phone. He rang BT and a friendly BT engineer, after doing a recce of his line, told him he was being tapped. For doing what? Writing for Lobster? Jeeeeezzz….
Consider the case of the writer Robert Henderson. A right-winger, Henderson wrote an article for the cricket magazine Wisden Cricket Monthly, suggesting that maybe the English cricket team’s failure had something to do with the fact that the team contained a number of non-English – not non-white – players with resulting lack of esprit. A media witch-hunt duly ensued and Henderson was smeared as a racist crackpot. Henderson looked for redress in the usual channels – Press Complaints body, his MP – and discovered that the only redress is the courts and only the rich can afford libel actions.
Unhappy at the response of his own MP, Frank Dobson, he wrote to Tony Blair, when was Leader of the Opposition. To Blair he wrote 13 letters in all. A number of things then happened. Tony Blair called in the police but the Crown Prosecution Service found no crime had been committed. Undaunted, the Blair camp briefed their friends at the Mirror who then smeared and libelled Henderson in a way similar to their smearing and libelling of the Observer journalist Gregory Palast. Palast was a ‘sex pest’; Henderson a ‘stalker’. Henderson then received the attention of the secret state, having his mail interfered with and (he thinks) his phone tapped.
Henderson has written to everybody – hundreds of people, the entire British political establishment from Law Lords to Liberty – without getting any response.
This extraordinary if depressing tale is told in great detail by Dr Sean Gabb of the Libertarian Alliance in Free Life Commentary number 28 which is at http://www.btinternet.com/~old.whig/flcomm/flc028.htm
It also available in hard copy from as Political Notes No. 154, from the Libertarian Alliance, 25 Chapter Chambers, Esterbrooke St., London SW1P 4NN
United Nations inspectors
CIA officers (with SIS officers) infiltrated United Nations inspectors searching Iraq for chemical and biological weapons. (Independent 28 January 1999) Thus proving Saddam Hussein correct when he claimed the UNSCOM teams were spies and expelled them. (Said expulsion became the pretext for another wave of US bombing in Iraq…..) Extra! (Journal of Fair) March /April 1999, carried an account of the Washington Post‘s suppression of the story for several months at the request of the US administration.
130 West 25th Street, New York, NY 1001; web site at http://www. fair.org.
Ace Hayes
The widow of Ace Hayes of the Portland Free Press is seeking funds to enable her to create the Ace Hayes Memorial Research Centre to put Hayes’ library to public use. PFP at PO Box 1327, Tualatin, Oregon 97062; e-mail pfp@ teleport.com
Flatland
New issue of Flatland (no 16) in February. The usual unclassifiable mixture: some new research on the bombing of Earth First’s Judi Bari; Kenn Thomas on attempts to get Timothy Leary’s FBI file via the FOIA; a disinformation operation by South African intelligence (the non-existent FAPLA); a memoir of radical politics in the mid-West of the 1930s; interview with Flatland editor Jim Martin; plus new books and the Flatland catalogue.
$20 for four issues from PO Box 2420, Fort Bragg, CA 95437-2420.
Web site www. flatlandbooks.com; e-mail flatland @mcn.org
Lockerbie crash
On the Lockerbie crash a big piece has appeared in Covert Action Quarterly No 66 by William Blum. That issue also includes Diana Johnstone on the now largely forgotten Islamic Declaration of Bosnia’s Izetbegovich; and pieces on Algeria, Sudan, NATO, the accuracy (or not) of Cruise missiles, and US intervention in Congo.
1500 Massachusetts Avenue NW Washington DC 20005; e-mail info@ covertaction.org; and a new web site www.covertaction.org
Spectre
Spectre, the anti-EU journal, still going strong. Actually calling it anti-EU is not really accurate. It is anti-globalisation and multi-nationals, pro-green, with a focus on the EU. Beautifully produced and full of intelligent writing, it is £6.00 for three issues in the UK (or equivalent in other European currencies); add 50% if outside Europe from Spectre, BP5 Bxl 46, rue Wiertz, 1047 Brussels, Belgium.
AK Distribution catalogue
There is a new AK Distribution catalogue. Now at 127 pages, with index, this is a thing of some distinction. A very large chunk of the Anglo-American alternative/radical media (print, audio, video) is listed within.
AK now has a UK and US operation. In the UK at PO 12766, Edinburgh EH8 9YE (e-mail catalogue requests to ); in the US, PO Box 40682, San Francisco CA 94140-0682)
There is no price on the catalogue so I assume it is free.
Statewatch European Monitor
Statewatch European Monitor is a new publication from Statewatch. Vol. 1 no. 1 is 50 perfect (ie glue) bound pages of detailed analysis of events in the European Parliament, EU legislation, European court decisions, and a long list of summaries of reports to the EU in the fields of justice and home affairs, including Schengen.
£20 a year (two issues a year) for individuals. This includes free, unlimited subscriber access to the SEMDOC database on the Net. Payment by cheque or Visa and Mastercard to Statewatch, PO Box 1516, London N16 0EW
This is the place to watch the new European superstate taking shape.