[…] down Shylock with guile and subtlety in The Merchant of Venice, Barney Greenwald reducing Commander Queeg to a gibbering mess in The Caine Mutiny and the gentle liberal Henry Fonda destroying Lee J Cobb to get his “not-guilty” vote in 12 Angry Men.’ I doubt if the publicity machine behind Frost/Nixon could have put […]
The Money and the Power: The Making of Las Vegas and Its Hold on America 1947-2000 Sally Denton and Roger Morris London: Pimlico, 2002, pb, £15 John Burnes It’s hardly news that Las Vegas was a city run by the Mob. Or that it was fuelled by financial corruption. Or that both of these […]
The killing of WPC Yvonne Fletcher in public view and for no apparent reason remains one of the most notorious murders of recent decades. For sixteen years there have been few signs of any serious attempts to locate and bring to justice the perpetrator of this outrage. Finally, this April, in an outstanding piece of … Read more
This piece by Daniel Brandt began as a short letter commenting on my review of Right Woos Left by Chip Berlet (Lobster 23 p. 34). I wrote back and asked if he would like to expand it. And so he did, writing almost the whole thing at one long sitting. Anyone who joined the U.S. … Read more
‘God Helps the Bad when they outnumber the Good‘ (Mexican proverb) Business brought me to Mexico City on the day Luis Donaldo Colosio, Presidential candidate for the PRI (Partido Revoluncionario Internacional), was assassinated in Tijuana. The TV coverage of the event was every bit as obscure and unhelpful as the TV reporting after the JFK … Read more
[…] of some of the clashes and policy disputes which historians of the period will find useful; and there is the striking comment: ‘Margaret Thatcher never believed in liberal economics – it is a complete misreading of her beliefs to depict her as a nineteenth-century liberal….. emotionally she was an authoritarian and protectionist.’ (p. 183) […]
[…] points the finger at either Captain Hall (Naval Intelligence…. yet another nautical connection) or one G. H. Mair, a leader writer for the Manchester Guardian, the great Liberal newspaper. Casement’s appeal was heard – and dismissed – by the same judge who dealt with the Pemberton-Billing/Allen trial, Mr Justice Darling, an ex-Conservative MP. Other […]
It is impossible to make an omlette without breaking eggs. — James Anderton on anti-terrorism My anger in this case stemmed from the denial that things had gone wrong, that no eggs were broken even though the omlette was there to see. — John Stalker David Murphy, The Stalker Affair and the Press, Unwin Hyman, … Read more
Electromagnetics & VDU News Subtitled ‘a News Report on Non-ionising Radiation’, this is now up to volume 6, and is now extremely impressive – and pretty alarming. Vol. 6 nos 1-2, for example, includes: Dramatic cuts in EMF exposure demanded by US draft report; biggest EMF lawsuit launched by top attorney – then dropped; breast … Read more
[…] on the sinking of the Belgrano is a mistake. With all due respect to the dead, there are more serious issues at stake. RR Oil… The received liberal version of the Falklands War now seems to be something like this. By a combination of cockups (the information on the threat of an Argentine invasion […]
