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 military did not quite trust them, and sent in a follow-up strike with HE warheads. Perhaps a more worrying use of directed energy technology to control crowds is the ‘tetanizing’ laser under development. This will allow individuals to be paralysed from a distance of hundreds of metres. See http://www.hsvt.org/main.html
Also not receiving much attention is the Advanced Tactical Laser. As announced in Flight International 13-19 Feb 2001, p.18, this is a helicopter-mounted weapon. ‘The Department of Defense says the demonstration will focus on the feasibility of using laser weapons for military or law enforcement operations.’ Multi-megawatt law enforcement?? At least it is supposedly a precision weapon with sniper accuracy.
As for using EM radiation to affect the brain, it would seem that the effect would have to be very localised to produce a desired effect. It can, however, produce some surprising results – see http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4188203,00.html
From Kenn Thomas
I would like to make two observations. The first concerns the dispute I had with Martin Cannon about the Gemstone file material. Your tolerance for other points of view certainly stands in contrast with Cannon’s, whose personal attack on Stephanie Caruana was out of line, no matter what one thinks of Gemstone. Even if you think Gemstone is a ‘lot of baloney’ I stand behind my position that Caruana’s commentary on the emerging Roberts letters will be a lot more interesting than Cannon’s planned manuscript debunking of everything from Gemstone to the Torbitt document to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. As I’ve written elsewhere, Cannon’s views seem like garden variety CSICOP ‘skepticism’ that yields no new insight into the material. Even at the back of Lobster 41, Cannon repeats his desire to withdraw from serious parapolitical research, apparently preferring instead simply to write criticism of others he regards as not so serious on the topic.
The Lobster article on Gemstone, in fact, demonstrates more Cannon’s fascination with Roberts than meaningful criticism. It primarily consists of quotes from Roberts’ letters, with even Cannon admitting that words fail his true meaning as he plays amateur psychoanalyst at Roberts’ expense. It reminds me of the ‘skeptics’ who attack Lee Harvey Oswald as a psychopathological loner and ignore his connections to the spy world. As for Roberts alternating between ‘asking Nader for help and accusing him of being part of the Mafia’, that dynamic replayed among American voters in the election here last fall. Nader’s supporters certainly looked to him for help in changing the direction of the country; his critics suggested that as a spoiler, perhaps he worked in collusion with the extra-legal criminal element that ultimately stole the election (Bush’s ‘mafia’). That’s prescience, not psychopathology. It’s part of the reason I included one of Roberts’ letters on Nader in the latest issue of Steamshovel.
My second observation concerns Jonathan Moyle, the ‘gung ho Queen and country man’ you mention in your article on security agencies, who died after making inquiries into a helicopter deal between the Iraqis and Chilean arms dealer Carlos Cardoen. You discuss this as one of several anomalous deaths among intelligence assets in the context of asking why anyone would want to work for the spooks. Naiveté is the obvious answer, but you failed to mention that Moyle’s death fits into the story of another died-young innocent, Danny Casolaro. Columnist Jack Anderson entitled his report about Moyle ‘Another Casualty In the Octopus Case’ (Washington Post, August 28, 1991). In fact, arms merchant Ari Ben-Menasche identified Cardoen as the person who brokered the deal between Iraq and Earl Brian, corrupt functionary of the Reagan administration, for an illegal sale of the PROMIS software. Moyle no doubt imagined himself to be a super secret agent; Casolaro wanted fodder for a novel. The juxtaposition of their deaths, and the others connected the pursuit of this Octopus power bloc, says a little more about international conspiracy than understanding their individual motivations.
From Charles Pottins
Good to see you’re maintaining a sceptical eye on the ex-Living Marxism /Lying Marketing scam. I didn’t get to see your earlier piece on the Economist Intelligence Unit career link, unfortunately, so what I have to say may be old news, but here goes. Reading Wensley Clarkson’s book The Valkyrie Operation (1998) recently, I was struck by his remark that:
‘Between 1970 and 1990 the MoD recruited dozens of personnel after they had been discovered at Britain’s most highly acclaimed strategic studies centres, Oxbridge, Lancaster and Aberystwyth.’ (p.19).
I don’t know how much reliance can be put on the authors’ reference to British universities, what the centres at ‘Oxbridge’ are (though St. Antony’s, Oxford is known as Foreign Office territory); or why the centres at Hull and Kings College, London miss out on the acclaim. To be fair, this was not the book’s subject, anyway. But reference to Lancaster, which I attended as a mature student from 1969-72, put me in mind of the rumours one heard about the politics department there, the postgrad. students who went off for wargaming at Aberystwyth, and the controversy aroused by proposals for an outside-funded strategic studies centre. The vice chancellor, Charles F. Carter, being a Quaker, reputedly did not like the idea, and at a Board of Senate conference jokingly referred to his deputy, the head of the Politics Department, as ‘General Reynolds’. The university did host an out-of-term seminar in 1973, on the role of the military in dealing with industrial and civil unrest.
Well, since then, I see, the Lancaster campus has acquired a Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies, which boasts of its cordial relations with the military. And who is this I see among the ex-State Department and military personnel listed as the centre’s ‘research associates’:
‘Ms Joan HOEY, B.A. Joan Hoey is a Japanese expert and formerly had her own consultancy based in London. She is now on the staff of the Economist Intelligence Unit with specific responsibility for analyses of Eastern Europe and the Balkans.’
Surely not the same Ms. Joan Hoey who, as Joan Philips, was well-known to readers of L(iving) M(arxism) magazine for her scathing attacks on anyone who thought Slobodan Milosevic and his Serb nationalist thugs were to blame for massacring civilians in Bosnia? Indeed the same. But wasn’t that lady a member of the central committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, and specifically, secretary of its front Campaign Against Militarism? So we understand.
I have been told that the status of ‘research associate’ is only honorary, and one should not attach importance to it. But what’s honourable about it, for a campaigner against militarism? Still, I don’t suppose it did any harm to Ms. Hoey’s career prospects with the Economist Intelligence Unit.
As an old-fashioned Marxist, used to finding that left-wing politics could be an obstacle to employment, I can understand an LM seller’s scorn when, asked about my own outlook, I foolishly used the obsolete expression ‘class struggle’.
From M. R. D. Foot
Scott Newton’s reproaches to me about where Hess was wounded are misplaced: he should go back to the written evidence, instead of relying on a television trap.
On page 73 of Charles A. Gabel’s Conversations interdites avec Rudolf Hess (Paris: Plon, 1988) under the date of 16 May 1979, the pastor records that Hess had a good laugh over the idea that he was not himself; reported that the director of the British military hospital in Berlin, and a surgeon, had in fact found the celebrated – though barely discernible – scars; and went on to give minute details of how he had been wounded.
Scott Newton replies
Professor Foot’s letter just repeats the point he made in the first place [in Feedback in Lobster 41] and fails to grapple with the evidence in the French documentary, ‘Tribulation’, which I mentioned. I cannot believe that such a distinguished historian believes TV material to be innately worthless. Yet this is what his assertion – not argument – about a ‘television trap’ suggests.
If Professor Foot has any further doubts about the bona fides of ‘Tribulation’ he should contact Hugh Thomas, who was interviewed for the programme. Thomas was told about Gabel’s shock at hearing the truth concerning Hess’s scars by the people who made the documentary. He has also spoken to and corresponded with Gabel on this subject.
Of course TV-based evidence is open to corruption as is any form of material. With this in mind we should be cautious about taking at face value testimony from Karel Hille’s as yet unseen documentary, ‘Rudolf Hess: the Appalling Truth’. Hille’s programme features interviews with Thomas himself, other researchers, journalists, historians (including me), and a specialist in gunshot wounds. It supports the Hugh Thomas thesis that the man who turned up at Dungavel on 10 May 1941 was a fake. This was the ‘double’ who was later tried at Nuremburg and imprisoned in Spandau where he was murdered in 1987.
The documentary shows us Wolf-Rudiger Hess admitting that his father’s scars from the First World War were ‘clearly visible, front and back’. There is the late Adolf Galland, one of the Luftwaffe’s most distinguished fighter pilots, explaining how Goering ordered him to shoot down Hess on the night of 10 May 1941, and adding, interestingly, that the Messerschmidt being flown by the Deputy Fuhrer could never have reached Scotland. There is even a helpful appearance by M.R.D.Foot, for which he receives ‘special thanks’ in the credits at the end of the programme. If and when Hille’s feature is ever shown (and the delay in its broadcasting is rather curious) shall we all be entitled to call it a ‘television trap’, too?
From Raymond Challinor
I would like to comment on the John Newsinger review of books about British fascism. My family came from the Potteries, and in 1929 Lady Cynthia Mosley was the Member of Parliament for Stoke South. My mother, Lora Challinor, was one of her keenest supporters. She stayed with the Mosleys at Smethwick. According to my mother, Lady Cynthia was distressed by her husband’s move towards fascism, followed him with reluctance, and his political transformation probably hastened her death.
When I raised her remarks with Robert Skidelsky, Mosley’s biographer, he claimed there was no truth in them.
As an MP, 1929-31, Lady Cynthia’s political position appears to have approximated to those of the present Labour left, say Wedgie Benn. Besides have a good line on environmental matters that would endear her to our contemporary Greens, she took an interest in welfare legislation. She upbraided Neville Chamberlain for saying that hand-outs merely sapped the moral fibre of the poor:
‘All my life I have had something for nothing. Why? Have I earned it? Have I deserved it? Not a bit. I just got it through luck. Of course some people might say I showed great intelligence in the choice of my parents, but I put it down to luck. And, if I may be permitted to say so, a great many people on the opposite side of the House are also in the same position. They also have always got something for nothing. Now the question is: are we demoralised? I stoutly deny that I am.’ (Hansard, 30 October 1930)
Lady Cynthia made a pilgrimage to see Leon Trotsky. He then had been exiled to the Princes’ Island on the Bosphorous. She wrote to him admitting that she was the daughter of Lord Curzon, the well-known anti-Soviet politician, and that Ramsay MacDonald’s Labour government had recently denied Trotsky a visa. However she went on to state that she was ‘an ardent socialist’ who thinks ‘less than nothing of the present government.’ She went on to comment on Trotsky’s autobiography:
‘I have just finished reading your life which inspired me as no other has done in ages. I am a great admirer of yours. These days when great men seem so few and far between it would be a great privilege to meet one of the enduring figures of our age and I hope with all my heart you will grant me this privilege.’
Four years later, in his Diary in Exile (pp. 86-7), Trotsky reproduced Cynthia Mo-ley’s letter in full. Clearly, Trotsky gave her a dusty response. The question is whether this was the most prudent attitude for Trotsky to adopt. He also exhibited similar hostility to other freebooting radicals who may not have ended up on the barricades, but nevertheless performed a useful function by exposing the evils of existing society.
It may be that Trotsky’s hostility to Cynthia Mosley, at a time when she was having a profound political and psychological crisis, helped to tip the balance.