A spook, moi? One of the formative experiences of my youth – and we’re talking early 1960s here, beatnik days, when wearing a narrow leather tie was pretty hip – was going to the Mound in Edinburgh on Sunday nights. The Mound is like Hyde Park Corner in London, a place where local by-laws allow … Read more
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE RE: MAJOR MEDIA RELEASES STORY ON ORIGINS OF IRANGATE IN SECRET ARMS-FOR-HOSTAGE-DELAY DEAL BETWEEN IRAN AND THE 1980 REAGAN PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN THE NATION (June 20, 1987 & July 4, 1987); IN THESE TIMES (June 24-July 7, 1987); MIAMI HERALD (April 12, 1987); SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER (April 12 & 25 (from LONDON OBSERVER) … Read more
Cock-up, conspiracy, or both? Israel and the Clash of Civilisations Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East Jonathan Cook London: Pluto Books, 2008, £14.99, p/b Was the invasion of Iraq a disastrous cock-up by the Americans and British, and by the Pentagon in particular? There certainly is a long line of people … Read more
Edited by Anthony Gorst, Lewis Johnman and W. Scott Lucas. Pinter/Institute of Contemporary British History London, 1991, £35 Goodness only knows what “politics and the limits of policy’ in the subtitle is supposed to mean. This is just a collection of essays on recent British history and was initially of interest because of the essay … Read more
Srebrenica In Lobster 46 I noted that the publisher of Cees Wiebes’ Intelligence and the War in Bosnia 1992-1995 had declined to supply a review copy. Mr Wiebes subsequently informed me that the full report on Srebrenica, commissioned by the Dutch government, including the material which made up his book, is on-line, in English, at … Read more
Turning up the Heat: MI5 after the Cold War Larry O’Hara Phoenix Press, London, 1994, £6 (p and p included) from BM Box 4769, London WC1N 3XX; cheques payable to Larry O’Hara. Since 1945 MI5 has had three main domestic targets: Soviet bloc espionage, the British Left and the IRA. With the Soviet target gone, … Read more
Mark Purdey Edited by Nigel Purdey East Sussex: Clairview Books, 2007 247 pps text, 8 pps of tables, £12.99 p/b Mark Purdy was an organic dairy farmer. This book results from his long battle against conventional wisdom concerning the source of ‘mad cow disease’, the variant CJD, and other neurodegenerative diseases which also affect humans. … Read more
The funding of Blair Sometimes chronology implies causality and sometimes not. Consider the following sequence of events: in January 1994 Tony Blair, then Shadow Home Secretary and career-long member of the Labour Friends of Israel, took a four day freebie trip to Israel, with his wife, at the expense of the Israeli government. Two months … Read more
Leonard Doyle, Guardian 24th February 1984. Sued by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for illegal surveillance of private citizens, Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) settled out of court. LAPD’s Public Disorder and Intelligence Division were accused of ‘organising a massive spying operation providing right-wing organisations with a sophisticated computer and handing on extensive files … Read more
Terrorism: how the West can win editor Benjamin Netanyahu (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London 1986) This is a collection of papers read at the 1984 Jonathan Institute conference on terrorism held in Israel, and because these were originally papers there is no documentation: what we have is 230 pages of assertions. The contributors range from current … Read more
