Kevin Danaher (ed.) Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine, U.S., 2001, $15.95 www.commoncouragepress.com This volume contains 27 short essays by everyone from Fidel Castro (rather impressive, if he wrote it himself) through Chomsky, and Naomi Klein to Margot Smith, whose essay is titled ‘Granny Goes to Washington and Goes to Jail’. So: this runs from … Read more
Briefly Just published is Kevin Coogan’s magnum opus on the strange America fascist, Francis Parker Yockey, Dreamer of the Day, Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International, (Autonomedia, Brooklyn, USA, 1999). It arrived to late for inclusion in this issue but will be reviewed in Lobster 39. Further information can be had on the … Read more
The 80 Greatest Conspiracies of all Time Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen New York, Citadell; 2004; distributed in the UK by Turnaround (www.turnaround-uk.com); p/b, £13.99 The latest edition of the Vankin-Whalen book, all 700 pages of it. The previous version was ‘The 70 greatest…’ and the authors haven’t bothered to write a new introduction … 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
There is an unmistakable thread running through America’s move eastward since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Using their vast economic clout – in the form of loans, grants and sanctions – and backed by threatening military supremacy (to say nothing of the devious use of ‘unattributable’ mercenary groups such as the MPRI), … Read more
The view from the bridge Bilderberg and the EU The Diaries of former Liberal-Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown, (volume one 1988-1997, London: Allen Lane, Penguin, 2000) is a pretty uninteresting read with a couple of striking sections. Pages 42-46 contain his account of attending a Bilderberg meeting – by far the longest and most detailed account … Read more
Why do they do this? In the previous issue I referred to the fictitious comments attributed by Tony Blair to a doctor in Africa. They’ve done it again. In February Blair’s spin doctor in chief, Alastair Campbell, claimed to have saved a man from being beaten by muggers, The Mail on Sunday (23 February) traced … Read more
Given a WTO-driven free trade regime in a world without enforceable international law and with large accumulations of capital emerging from the supply of consumer wants (including guns, sex, labour, drugs, untaxed goods and unregulated financial services), the lifting of capital controls by the Reagan-Thatcher generation also meant the globalisation of criminality in all its … Read more
Assassination or ‘targeted killings’? Joshua Raines of the University of Iowa College of Law argues that although assassination, ‘narrowly defined’ [sic], is illegal, ‘targeted killings’ could well be permissible under ‘just war’ criteria. The US should therefore pass legislation that allows for ‘…targeted killings under a very narrow range of circumstances with adequate checks built … Read more
Dominic Streatfeild London: Hodder and Stoughton 2006, £20, h/b One of the gaps in the parapolitical library has been a great pull-together of the material on ‘mind control’. And Streatfield has done it, and done it rather well. He is a documentary film-maker and some of the chapters here read rather like scripts. All … Read more
