Introduction In early January the American writer Martin Cannon, whose ‘Mind Control and the American Government’, was published in Lobster 23, and who has a very interesting letter in this issue, offered me a big piece of his on the so-called Gemstone File. Cannon had got access to some of the original documents on which … 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
The Economic League Labour Research (April 1988) have produced a written version of the essential content of the two World in Action programmes on it, with current personnel and the names of some 350 British companies which have funded the EL since 1972. In line with the thesis suggested by White in his essay (see … Read more
Ah, the wonderful private sector In ‘Blair anti-corruption plan weakened by British firms’ in The Independent 2 September 2002, Geoffrey Lean reported: ‘Britain has the world’s most corrupt companies, and some of the weakest legislation among industrialised countries for dealing with them….Half of the 70 companies identified by the World Bank as so corrupt that … 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
Intelligence and National Security Started in 1986, Intelligence and National Security is co-edited by Christopher Andrew and Michael Handel, and is the first British academic journal devoted to the area. I’ve seen 3 issues and while the standard of writing and research is extremely high from contributors like Lawrence Freedman, M.R.D.Foot and Bradley Smith, the … Read more
Richard M Bennett London: Virgin Books, 2003 £20 hardback This is 350 pages of summaries of political and historical conspiracies. It starts in 2330 BC but the first 2007 years take up only 84 pages. The content is mostly Anglo-American, especially after WW2. It is done chronologically, so you get odd sequences of subjects: … Read more
The articles on Blairism and contamination in Lobster 33 are tremendously useful in understanding the recent political changes in the UK, and also in understanding ‘fusion paranoia’ as a cross-contamination argument. Maybe it’s not a conspiracy, but it’s surely not a coincidence that the fusion idea was first put forth by New Yorker, a champion … Read more
From Anger to Apathy: the British Experience since 1975 Mark Garnett (London: Jonathan Cape, 2007) Dead Men Don’t Eat Lunch Geoffrey Gilson (self-published) Beyond Bullets Jules Boykoff’s AK Press, 2007: <www.akuk.com> Briefly Mark Garnett’s From Anger to Apathy: the British Experience since 1975 (London: Jonathan Cape, 2007) has had some fairly sniffy reviews but I … Read more
Elite Jottings Fascinating letter in the Daily Telegraph (see 4 January and 9 January 1985) on the career of Dom Mintoff, recently retired as Prime Minister of Malta. Mintoff was a Rhodes Scholar (1939-41) and the 4 January letter informs us that “in the flush of the George Cross award (to Malta) he wanted integration … Read more
