Dave Renton Pluto, London, 1999, £9.99 This book has been touted in some areas as a radical, new contribution to the study of fascism; and it is certainly well-packaged and cheap. To start with the good points which, although few, are important: if you want to know who the current academic theorists on modern … Read more
Brian Crozier HarperCollins, London, 1993 This is a very interesting book which greatly adds to our knowledge of the clandestine shaping of British politics in the 1970s and 80s. It is also a book which, like Chapman Pincher’s Inside Story, will repay repeated re-reading. But amidst all the new material a surprising amount of these … Read more
In October the US Government hired advertising doyenne Charlotte Beers as Under-Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.(1) She intended ‘commissioning research into the Arab mentality’, confirming what we already knew: the American Government has so little respect for its many Arab/Muslim citizens, it has had to commission research into who they are. … Read more
Harold Pinter defined American foreign policy thus: ‘Kiss my arse or I’ll kick your head in.’ William Blum counts the heads that have been kicked. United States foreign policy In 1975, there was a committee of the US congress called the Pike Committee, named after its chairman Otis Pike. This committee investigated the covert … Read more
Anthony Glees, Philip J. Davies, and John N. L. Morrison London: The Social Affairs Unit, 2006, £20, h/b The Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) is a recent addition to the roster of Whitehall bodies; the motives of those who created it, as the authors show, are obscure and its role to some extent remains … Read more
In the course of my research into the U.S. Army LSD tests (see Lobster 23) among the U.S. Army records, I encountered a few vague references to similar experiments conducted in the U.K.. On February 28, 1993 I faxed a letter to Dr. Graham S. Pearson, the Director of the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment … Read more
Policing London No 13 July/August Includes 6 pages on the miners, which compliments GLC report (see below); two page summary of recent police harassment of gays; summary of changes to date in Police and Criminal Evidence Bill. Still the best thing of its kind extant. £1 per issue: from Police Committee Support Unit (DG/PCS/602) County … Read more
Seymour M. Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot (Boston: Little Brown, 1997) Seymour Hersh is one of those figures with no real equivalent in British journalism. For one thing, the budgets, the armies of fact-checkers and, indeed, the market for this sort of extended politico-analytical foray just does not exist over here. Writing from a … Read more
Clint Eastwood Movies Flags of Our Fathers, directed by Clint Eastwood and to be released in Britain in December 2006, is an example of post-9-11 PR. It tells the story of the 1945 battle for Iwo Jima and has been described as the first film in which the balance of combat and public relations has … Read more
Snitch Culture: How the citizens are turned into the eyes and ears of the state Jim Redden, Feral House, U.S., 2000, $16.95 (pb) Earth Rising: The Revolution, Toward a Thousand Years of Peace Dr Nick Begich and James Roderick Earthpulse Press, Ancorage, Alaska $17.95, 2000 (pb) (available through Flatland) ‘We live in a society driven … Read more
