Sources

Lest we forget

Looking for something else I came across The CIA in Australia, a five-part transcript of 1986 Australian radio programmes on the CIA’s operation to get rid of the Whitlam Labour government in Australia in the 1970s. (Originally, Watching Brief, Public Radio News Services, Melbourne, Australia, October-November 1986.)

This is interesting stuff: the best account I have seen of those events, with interviews not only with journalists and researchers but also with some of Whitlam’s colleagues at the time.

In the last of the series, part 5, there is also some interesting material on the events then taking place in New Zealand as Uncle Sam tried to change New Zealand’s ‘no nuclear ships’ policy.

However, whoever had these tapes transcribed seems not to have bothered proof-reading the results and a number of the names in the story are wrong.

For Bernie Hawthorn read Bernie Houghton;
for Guy Parker read Guy Pauker;
for J. Lansdowne read Jay Lovestone;
for Roy Gudson read Roy Godson;
for Erwin Brown read Irving Brown;
for Tom Braydon read Tom Braden;
for Allan Wilks read Owen Wilkes.

The first of these transcripts is at http://serendipity.magnet.ch/cia/cia_oz/cia_oz1.htm

The McGuffin

Very late in the day I have become aware of a fascinating series of republican bulletins from Northern Ireland written by John McGuffin. Bulletins from 140 onwards – see what I mean about being late? – are at www.mcguffin.freeserve.co.uk

Direct Action

Kind words about this magazine in Direct Action no 16. Though this isn’t my cup of tea, I’m always happy to see the appearance of magazines which oppose the present murderous nonsense emanating from Washington and its flunkies like the Labour government. Direct Action is pretty much as its title suggests but in detail it is the magazine of the British section of the International Workers Association. Who they? you ask. That I don’t know.

Details at http://www.directa.force9.co.uk

Heavy weather

An impressive reworking of the evidence that the Libyans did not kill WPC Yvonne Fletcher was published in Squall and is – or was – on their Website at www.squall.co.uk/yes/ind2.html

Drug wars and

Another view of the Afghani mujahidin funding their war with the Soviet Union by selling opium – with the complicity of the US – was in ‘Britain’s secret army’ by Tom Carew in Sunday Times 13 August 2000.

Spectre

Spectre has been plugged before in these columns as one of the more interesting anti-globalisation, anti-corporate control magazines – and notable for presenting a European wide anti-EU perspective. The hard copy magazine is now defunct but the Web site is at www.spectrezine.org

CEO

The EU-monitoring organisation is Corporate Europe Observatory. Their free e-bulletins are fantastic pieces of research.

Corporate Europe Observatory
Paulus Potterstraat 20
1071 DA Amsterdam, Netherlands
tel/fax: +31-20-6127023
e-mail:
website: http://www.xs4all.nl/~ceo/

Still steamin’

Steamshovel Press launched an improved Website earlier this year, under the catchy if barely intelligible slogan, ‘All Conspiracy. No Theory’. www.steamshovelpress.com

Presswise

Presswise is a charity which primarily exists to represent the interests of those abused by the Press. Their Web site now contains details of the Robert Henderson/Blair Scandal. The details can be found by going from the Presswise Home Page (www.presswise.org.uk/) to either ‘Mediation’ and then ‘complaining to regulators’, or via ‘Briefings’ and ‘data protection’.

Kennedy and Europe

In 1992 a three-day conference took place at the European University Institute (Florence) on the subject ‘Kennedy and Europe’. The event brought together historians and eyewitnesses from both sides of the Atlantic. The academic papers have since been published as D. Brinkley and R. T. Griffiths (eds), John F. Kennedy and Europe, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge (1999).

The transcript of this has now been put on-line at the History of European Integration Site http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/history/rtg/re1/index.htm under Oral Histories.

I had a quick squint and one outstanding missing item appears to be Kennedy’s decision to allow the Italian Left into government. Kennedy’s death must now be the most over-determined event in world history and we do not really need another speculative reason for his death. Even so, in my opinion this is still an outside candidate for the reason he was shot (and the how: CIA/US military use their Italian links to activate the Mob in the US) and is quite a striking omission from these proceedings.