The Strength of the Wolf: The Secret History of America’s War on Drugs Douglas Valentine London/New York: Verso, 2004, h/back, £20 This comes garlanded with praise from Jim Hougan and Anthony Summers. The praise is justified: this is, as Hougan says, ‘a ground-breaking work of investigative reporting’; and it is, as Summers says, ‘a … Read more
Revolutions Per Minute number 9 BCM Box 3328, London WC1N 3XX 70pp., £4 Online at http://www.red-star-research.org.uk/rap/rapframe.html There is a very good Website, www.red-star-research.org.uk, which is the best single source of information on the Blair government, its financial supporters and networks. This pamphlet is a kind of spin-off from that site – the previous Revolutions … Read more
Volume 20 of Research in Political Economy, edited by Paul Zarembka, titled ‘Confronting 9-11, Ideologies of Race, and Eminent Economists,’ (JAI/Elsevier Science, Amsterdam, New York, Oxford, 2002) contains important essays on the current US administration’s foreign policy by Peter Dale Scott and David MacGregor. The abstract to Scott’s essay is : ‘The United States since … Read more
Abstract The Tribunal established to investigate complaints about phone-tapping and the activities of the intelligence agencies has, at its first ever public hearing, quashed rules made by the Home Secretary forcing the tribunal to hold all its hearings in secret. However, the Tribunal procedure remains too secret, and its decisions cannot be appealed. Malcolm Kennedy’s … Read more
Crime fighting? There must many candidates for the title ‘The most damaging thing I have read about this government’. My current candidate is a piece by Simon Jenkins, ‘A Keep Police off the Streets Strategy Unit’ (The Times 2 February 2002). After reminding the reader that in the UK the police are a local service, … Read more
Mandy’s place in things On 12 June 1999 The News, Portugal’s weekly English-language paper, ran this comment on the Bilderberg meeting which had then just taken place in Portugal. The 47th Bilderberg Conference has come to an end. Members and one-off participants have departed as discreetly as they arrived. Lines of black limousines, unmarked except … Read more
In this article I amplify and update my account of the crash that killed Diana, Princess of Wales, Dodi Fayed and Henri Paul which appeared in Lobster 37. Since it was written there have been a number of interesting developments – the publication of Trevor Rees-Jones’ book; James Hewitt’s impromptu recreation of the fatal car … Read more
Operation Julie, a nation-wide police investigation of LSD production, was launched in 1976. Two years later, although some 60 members of the British ‘microdot conspiracy’ had been convicted, Detective Inspector Dick ‘Leapy’ Lee was dissatisfied. The operational commander of ‘Julie’, Lee was interested in the international connections of the network, but was blocked from probing … Read more
Dangerous Liaison Between EU Institutions and Industry This is the first publication of Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), an Amsterdam-based foundation which will ‘monitor and report on the activities of European corporations and their lobby groups’. Very nicely produced and illustrated, this is 72 A-4 pages and costs £5.00 in the U.K. and US $10.00 in … Read more
The spectre of technofascism haunts the democratic nations. All the powers of the espionage empire and the scientific establishment have entered into an unholy alliance to evoke this spectre: psychiatrist and spy, Dulles and Delgado, microwave specialists and clandestine operators. Substantial evidence exists linking members of the American intelligence community — including the Central Intelligence … Read more
