Patriots not sneaks After a year of New Labour I feel beholden to write something on this subject, but what is there worth saying that isn’t blindingly and depressingly obvious and predictable? Jack Straw, who took over as Home Secretary, and thus formally as the boss of MI5, is determined to sedate any sleeping dogs … Read more
by Peter Padfield Papermac, London, 1993, £12.99 There are now several versions of the Hess affair. One is the official story – a politician whose star is one the wane, attempts a spectacular comeback, fails, is locked up for forty years and finally commits suicide in despair. Another is the double theory, first outlined in … Read more
John Carter. Feral House, Portland (USA), 1999. Available in the UK from Counter Productions, P0 Box 556, London SE5 ORL , £15.99 plus £1.50p pp. The March Fortean Times launched this in some style, aping the book’s 1950s SF cover and giving it a respectful five page review. With the film rights sold and preparations … Read more
Travesty: The trial of Slobodan Milosevic and the corruption of international justice John Laughland London and Ann Arbor: Pluto Press; 2007, £14.99 (UK) $24.95 (US), p/b Laughland is an interesting figure, whose writing appears in media across the ideological spectrum, from the conservative right to The Guardian and here, Pluto Press. It is thus … Read more
Books St. Peter’s Banker, Michele Sindona Luigi Di Fonzo (Mainstream, Edinburgh, 1984) This is an important publication from a new Scottish publishing house, Mainstream. It runs through Sindona’s life, showing how he came to be in such a strong financial position that he could buy the Franklin National, one of the largest banks in the … Read more
Mark Curtis Zed Books, 1995, £14.95/£39.95 The opening lines of Curtis’ introduction are: ‘In attempting to understand Britain’s role in the world, two approaches are possible. In the first, one can rely on the mainstream information system, consisting primarily of media and academia, where commentators are presumed to provide analyses of current independent of the … Read more
James Carroll Boston: Houghton Mifflin; 2006, $30 h/b Juan Bosch was the president of the Dominican Republic from 1963-65. He tried to implement land reforms and was removed from office by a military coup which was then supported by the deployment of 20,000 US troops. In 1967 he published a little book called Pentagonism: … Read more
On April 22, 1993 both BBC1 and BBC2 showed on their main evening news bulletins a rather lengthy piece concerning America’s latest development in weaponry — the non-lethal weapons concept. David Shukman, BBC Defence Correspondent, interviewed (Retired) U.S. Army Colonel John B. Alexander and Janet Morris, two of the main proponents of the concept. (1) … Read more
Previous articles in Lobster (issues 39, 41, 43, 45) have followed Malcolm Kennedy’s case. The human rights organisation Liberty took his complaint about interference with his communications and other forms of surveillance and harassment, to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal. The IPT is the body set up under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) … Read more
Ismael Hossein-Zadeh New York and London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006 $75.00 (US), £37.99 (UK), h/b This is an interesting and timely book and it is a great pity it is so expensive. Put out as a paperback and maybe with a less academic-sounding title, this would sell. Little of it is intellectually taxing and any … Read more
