It is a difficult time for Britain’s security and intelligence agencies. Not only have the old certainties collapsed with the Berlin Wall, Britain’s economy is in increasingly dire shape, and current levels of government funding for the agencies can no longer be taken for granted. (1) As a result, both the major agencies, MI5 and … Read more
Market failure and the delusions of privatisation Warrick Funnell, Robert Jupe and Jane Andrew London: Pluto Press, 2009, p/b. £19.95 Very carefully the authors – a professor of accounting at the University of Kent (Funnell) and two of his colleagues – work their way through the experience of privatisation in the UK, Australia, the USA, … Read more
Harold Smith (Lobster 25) Observer editor Jonathan Fenby replied to a letter from Harold Smith on 17 June, 1993: ‘I don’t think it is a story we want to go back over.’ Back over? On 4 July the Observer ran a third of a page on the political situation in Nigeria, ‘New rules, new date, … Read more
It is impossible to ignore the continuing Iraq story but difficult to decide to what, of the mountain of information we are being presented with, we should pay attention. The general drift of the British state’s policy has been clear: concede a little; maintain what’s left of the cover-up; concede a little more; maintain what’s … Read more
Empires Apart: America And Russia From The Vikings To Iraq Brian Landers Hove: Picnic Publishing, 2009, £15, p/b Is America an empire? Tsarist Russia and its Soviet successor were certainly seen as such through western eyes. That America is not showing the heavily ideologised world through which we frame history. In a bold sweep … Read more
Just ten years ago the issues were so simple, the arguments so clean. The concept of hackers was cute and quaint, best understood through Hollywood thrillers like ‘War Games.’ The major media had yet to use the word ‘cyberspace,’ a term just then created by William Gibson in Neuromancer, his first masterpiece in a strange … Read more
Authority and order are back on the European political agenda. I want to put forward an hypothesis that readers can test against the facts. If I am right, then it opens up a new field of enquiry for parapolitical investigators. Let me state the thesis briefly: the need to create an international infrastructure of authority … Read more
Cloak and Dollar: A History of American Secret Intelligence Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones London: Yale University Press, 2002, £22.50 Know Your Enemy: How the Joint Intelligence Committee Saw the World Percy Craddock London: John Murray, 2002, £25 Jeffreys-Jones is Professor of American History at Edinburgh University and writes on the American intelligence services. His book’s subtitle … Read more
As Scott Van Wynsberghe has ‘outed’ himself as a transvestite let me ‘come out’ of the intellectual closet and admit that, like Sylvia Meagher, I also have some UFO books on my shelves. Over the last 20 years or so I also have acquired some books on ‘earth mysteries’ (though I never found a ley … Read more
The most reported episode at the 2002 Labour Party Conference was the tour of Blackpool made by ex-President Clinton and film star Kevin Spacey. Given the status and photogenic nature of the individuals concerned this was hardly surprising. Little was said in the media, though, about the duos’ grand entrance, accompanied by the Prime Minister … Read more
