See note(1) Like some Russian high official come to treat with Chechen rebels, CIA Director John Deutch arrived in force — by heavily-armed motorcade, and with helicopter cover. SWAT teams swarmed over the building that was Deutch’s destination. But on November 15, 1996, Deutch’s destination was in fact only the auditorium of Locke High School … Read more
Introduction Despite their reputation for ’empiricism’, British academics have tended to treat political power by means of abstract concepts rather than empirical information about the actions of determinate individuals and groups (e.g. Giddens, 1984, 1985; Scott, 1986). After a brief efflorescence of empirical studies of the so-called ‘Establishment’ in the early 1960s, sociologists in Britain … Read more
‘Rug merchants’ was the epithet former White House Chief of Staff Don Regan used to describe the Iranians who negotiated secret arms deals for nearly a year with senior officials of the Reagan Administration, including Oliver North of the National Security Council. Regan’s dismissive characterization hardly did justice to the sales skills of North’s Mideast … Read more
Cloak and Dollar: A History of American Secret Intelligence Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones London: Yale University Press, 2002, £22.50 Know Your Enemy: How the Joint Intelligence Committee Saw the World Percy Craddock London: John Murray, 2002, £25 Jeffreys-Jones is Professor of American History at Edinburgh University and writes on the American intelligence services. His book’s subtitle … Read more
[…] and covert political groups, which are a common feature of modern politics. For this and other reasons, serious research into genuine conspiratorial networks has at worst been suppressed, as a rule been discouraged, and at best been looked upon with condescension by the academic community.(3) An entire dimension of political history and contemporary politics […]
[…] effect was to make my desire to see Socialism established much more actual than it had been before.'(5) What Orwell found, however, was that this revolution was suppressed, not by Franco, but by the Communists. Much to his surprise, it was the Communists who were restoring bourgeois order behind the Republican lines, dismantling the […]
A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility Taner Akcam London: Constable, 2007, 576 pp., £9.99, p/b The Kurdish and Armenian Genocides: From Censorship and Denial to Recognition Desmond Fernandes Apec Forlag: 2008, 309 pp., £16.99, p/b Denial of the Holocaust is very much the preserve of the fascist right and … Read more
[…] Australian Attorney General’s department, and written by Gerard Walsh, a former Deputy Director-General of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO, equivalent to our MI5). The report was suppressed by the Australian government, which later released a censored version. An uncensored copy was obtained and posted on the net by Electronic Frontiers Australia. The report […]
Web update Jane Affleck Thanks to Terry Hanstock and David Turner for contributions. Comments and details of interesting websites are welcome: my email address is 101521.3515 @compuserve.com Freedom Of Information Campaign for Freedom of Information http://www.cfoi.org.uk ‘The Campaign for Freedom of Information campaigns against unnecessary secrecy and for greater public access to official and other … Read more
At the end of July this year the struggle between Lonrho and the Al-Fayed family over the Al-Fayed purchase of the House of Fraser made the front page, lead story, of the Guardian (July 30 1988: see also Independent 1 August 1988). The occasion was the leaking of some reports, legal advice from Sir David … Read more
