Hi-tech computer voting is now the order-of-the-day in America. In October 2002 the US Administration passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) which authorised $4 billion for states to use the Direct Recording Election system (DRE) equipment which would have to meet certain standards (set by the Act) by the year 2006. At which point, … Read more
Matthew R. Simmons London: Wiley, 2005, h/b Ironic, perhaps, that I finished reviewing this book in Calgary, just south of the largest land-based oil project in the American hemisphere, the Athabasca shale tar sands oil recovery projects. Collectively these will realise investment between 50 and 100 billion dollars over the next ten years. Pipelines … Read more
Compiled by Jane Affleck The US GAO is the investigative arm of the US Congress, and is charged with examining all matters relating to the receipt and disbursement of public funds. It conducts audits, surveys, investigations and evaluations of federal programmes, either at its own initiative or at the request of Congressional Committees or members. … Read more
Suffer the innocents? The Stevens inquiry into Britain’s state assassination policy in Northern Ireland in the 1980s began in September 1989. The police officers who signed up for it didn’t think it would take long to do. ‘We thought it was going to be a fairly routine investigation. We didn’t expect to find that there … Read more
The debate about whether the British should have a military presence East of Suez seemed to have been settled under the Wilson-Callaghan Government in the 1960s and 1970s. The process of withdrawal started with the independence of India and Pakistan (widely celebrated in the UK media recently on its sixtieth anniversary), was confirmed by the … Read more
See note (1) James ‘Bo’ Gritz, linked to the US Army Intelligence Support Activity (ISA), was detained with Lance Corp. Edward Trimmer whilst trying to enter Thailand. (Guardian 23rd September 1983) They were apparently on another mission looking for American POWs. In December, for the first time since 1975, American troops were in Laos investigating … Read more
Organisation, History and Politics In the early years of the Thatcher decade, the radical or ‘new’ right was generally treated as though it was a united palace guard for libertarian Conservatism. More recently it has become clearer that the radical right in Britain was, at best, an ‘anti wet’ alliance between authoritarian/ nationalist and libertarian/radical … Read more
Mark Felt is ‘Deep Throat’. Bob Woodward says so, and his word is law in this particular arena. No matter that Woodward had a dozen sources, some of whom may have been more important than Throat himself. The point is that ‘Throat’ is anyone Woodward says he is, and he says he is Felt. In … Read more
See also: British Fascism 1974-92 (Lobster 23) British Fascism 1974-92 (II) (Lobster 24) British fascism 1983-6 (Lobster 25) British Fascism 1983-6 (II) (Lobster 26) In Lobster 25 my study of the National Front (NF) ended at the start of 1986, when, despite storm clouds on the horizon, the NF was the largest, most visible, and … Read more
BERR In a profile of John Hutton, the new Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, Hutton said that Labour ‘is the natural party of business’,(1) another benchmark (or, in Corinne Souza country, ‘rebranding’) in the shift from old to New Labour. For it was Harold Wilson’s boast that he had made Labour … Read more
