When falsehoods are bared, we have to be alert to those that will take their place as well as the ones that remain concealed.(1) At the time of writing (October 2004), the deluge of media coverage on the false justifications for the Iraq war – now understandably giving way to greater anxieties about the well-being … Read more
The story of the Ulster Citizens’ Army (UCA for the rest of this essay) is a tiny fragment in the intricate history of Protestant politics in Northern Ireland in the mid 1970s – so tiny that none of the general accounts I have looked at even mention it. But the UCA lingers on: it is … Read more
Al Martin Pray, Montana: National Liberty Press, 2001, $14.95, ISBN 0-97-10042-0-X Alexander ‘Al’ Martin is a retired Lt. Commander in the US Navy, a former member of the Office of Naval Intelligence and a middle-ranking player in the thicket of scandals known as Iran-Contra. This might be the most startling book written about post-war American … Read more
What our pols read on their hols This summer it was hard to avoid laudatory pieces about or extracts from the Drew Weston’s book The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation.(1) Here, it was said, was the explanation of how George Bush beat the Democrats and – by … Read more
On 8 July the Foreign Minister, Robin Cook, announced that the Libyan Government accepted ‘general responsibility’ for the death of WPC Yvonne Fletcher and normal diplomatic relations with Libya were being restored. The media reporting of this accepted the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) spin that it meant the Libyans have admitted killing Fletcher. The … Read more
MI6: Fifty years of Special Operations Stephen Dorril Fourth Estate, London, 2000, £25 hb Harold Smith As I can testify from personal experience, having in 1960 been summoned to Government House in Lagos, Nigeria, to have my death sentence pronounced by the Governor General, MI6 is brutal, cruel, merciless and totally unforgiving. Dorril’s courage, … Read more
Is the picture on the right that of the old Spycatcher himself, Peter Wright? It has been used as if it is three times, in the Sunday Times on 12 July 1987 and 16 October 1988; and more recently, the version shown, heavily cropped to illustrate Wright’s obituary in the Independent, 28 April 1995. It … Read more
Michael Phayer Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008, p/b, £15.99 In 1997, urged on by the US government, fourteen European countries together with Canada and Argentina, established commissions to investigate the involvement of their banks in the holding of assets looted by the Nazis and their allies during the Holocaust. One particular sovereign state refused … Read more
David Black London:Vision Paperbacks, 20001, £9.99 This a revised edition of the book which was reviewed in Lobster 35. I’m not sure how new it is. I no longer have the original edition but this seems pretty similar to it. What is new is some material on the activities of Steve Abrams, one of the … Read more
Peter Taylor has made more TV programmes about Northern Ireland since 1969 than other any British journalist. His most recent was the documentary, Loyalists, earlier this year, a series of interviews with Loyalist paramilitaries and politicians. This was followed by a book, Loyalists (Bloomsbury, 1999), which contained some of the interviews in that programme. Like … Read more
