[…] This is the book of the TV series on Channel 4 in 2001. Through a series of encounters Ronson presents various aspects of the current, predominantly American, conspiracy theory culture. A bit like Louis Theroux, Ronson tries to come across to his subjects as a completely harmless nebbisch in the hope that they won’t […]
A Very British Jihad: Collusion, conspiracy and cover-up in Northern Ireland Paul Larkin Belfast: Beyond the Pale, 2004, £10.99 p/back Larkin was an investigative journalist and producer for the BBC in Northern Ireland and this book is based round the TV programmes he made there about the paramilitaries and the British state in the […]
Tom Bower London: Fourth Estate, 2001, £6.99 After tackling the Paperclip Conspiracy, Klaus Barbie, Nazi medical experiments, looted cash from holocaust victims in Swiss banks and various tycoons (Rowland, Maxwell, Fayed) the latest target for a thorough Tom Bower investigation is Sir Richard Branson, though this is a tale on a smaller scale […]
[…] Keith Dovkants described the operation, as the sub-heading to his piece had it, as ‘a classic sting operation set up by MI5 who were alerted to the conspiracy by a paid informer’. This was apparently revealed to Dovkants by two Polish journalists who had been tipped off that all was not what it seemed. […]
[…] could go on but mocking this delusional system of belief is too easy to be much fun. The LaRouche nonsense is only interesting to those who collect conspiracy theories. Since the John Birch Society’s reworking of Nesta Webster, there have been very few authentically modern conspiracy theories. LaRouche has produced one. Is it more […]
[…] interview various experts. (5) Unfortunately, the remainder of the book enters into the realms of bizarre speculation, with sections headed ‘Agencies of Masonic Government’ and ‘The Bloodline Conspiracy’. The main thesis is that Diana was killed because she was being groomed as the figurehead of a campaign to usurp the House of Windsor (apparently […]
[…] 688/9. Smith p. 154. There is now a large literature on this. There is a discussion of that literature in Niall Ferguson’s recent review essay, ‘Bankers: Beyond Conspiracy Theory’, in Twentieth Century British History, vol 4, 1993. The exposition which first struck me was Frank Longstreth’s essay ‘The City, Industry and the State’, in […]
[…] things have changed since this issue. A sample copy for $5 from PO Box 9, Franklin Park, NJ 08823-0009, USA. I have issue 2 of Paranoia, The Conspiracy Reader, which began this year. This is very nicely produced, 24 pages with a glossy cover and illustrations, but the material is distinctly patchy. So issue […]
[…] case still trundles along; in 1968 de Courcy was awarded costs of £6,000 and all claims against him were ‘released and extinguished’. At the centre of the conspiracy, de Courcy claims, was a circle of former intelligence officers, friends of Rothschild and Philby. In September 1963 de Courcy wrote a remarkable series of letters. […]
[…] vast area of human political activity is consigned to a land marked ‘Here Be Monsters’. Anything in this land is a marvel, mere fable (or rather ‘ conspiracy theory’). Vast swathes of contemporary history and current state practice simply do not exist not, at least, until the files can be opened and academic […]
