Books Secret Contenders Melvin Beck (Sheridan Square Publications, US 1984) The CIA Christmas party of 1958 found 48 year old all-American boy, Melvin Beck, getting the offer of overseas work with Clandestine Services. He “struck like a hungry bass” and landed in Havana in 1959, just as the first Russian freighter was arriving. Fairly early … Read more
John Smith: Old Labour’s lost leader? In non-New Labour Labour Party circles the late John Smith is remembered with great reverence.(1) Quite what this is based on escapes me. All I can identify is his dislike of Peter Mandelson: Smith kept him at bay therefore Smith was a good man seems to be the argument. … Read more
Lord Stevenson Media coverage of four senior bankers arraigned before the Treasury Select Committee in February centred on whether the representatives of the Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS would utter the word ‘sorry’ about behaviour that has landed the British taxpayer in the soup. In what appeared to be a well-rehearsed effort, all duly … Read more
At the end of World War II, hundreds of thousands of non-German workers, mostly from the Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries, were stranded in Germany, while many thousands more were fleeing from areas overrun by Soviet forces. Most of these workers were anti-communist, anti-Soviet and anti-Russian; some had voluntarily collaborated with the Nazis, … Read more
Policing (a) and the miners 3 page overview in Labour Research (September) Officers being sent straight from training school (Guardian 20 November) Police installing alarms in homes of (some) working miners. (Guardian 27 November) Police officers being charged a ‘fee’ of a bottle of whisky to get on lucrative picket duty. (Daily Telegraph 25 October) … Read more
Ken Hollings London: Strange Attractor Press, 2008, p/b, £11.99 This is a fascinating book but I found it terribly hard to write about. Looking for the opening thought to kick-start this I read again the introduction by Erik Davis.(9) He writes: ‘Hollings has collected together a mass of real signs and symptoms drawn from a … Read more
Introduction Like most dramatic and unsettling political events, the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II by Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca temporarily captured the imagination of the world’s media and political pundits. Although the initial public outrage and concern generally faded once it became clear that the Pope would survive, certain individuals and groups … Read more
Fijian politics, which has been made increasingly chaotic by various coups and counter-coups over the last 14 years, is dominated by racial identity interests. On the one side are the native Fijians, the original Polynesian inhabitants of the island, and on the other, the Indian Fijians. The native Fijians, though still comprising 51% of the … Read more
Hugh Wilford London: Frank Cass, 2003; £22.99, h/b This book is a striking example of how far we have come. A senior British academic writing a book with this title was inconceivable 20, even 10 years ago. But there is now a group of British academics, historians mostly, who are working on the history … Read more
George Gregory Korkala was the ‘soldier’ in the activities of ‘lieutenant’ Frank Terpil and ‘leader’ Edwin Wilson. Wilson and Terpil are both ex-CIA, though when their relationships with the ‘company’ ended is not known. Korkala was arrested in February 1982 at a trade fair on security devices in Madrid. Spanish police carried out the arrest … Read more
