See note:(1) Did Staff D feed the Oswald-Kostikov lie to the CIA? Abstract: There exist at least four successive versions (or falsifications) of Silvia Duran’s so-called statement of November 23,1963, to the Mexican DFS (Dirección Federal de Seguridad), about her interviews of Oswald in the Cuban Consulate. The successive changes mirror the shift in the … 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
This is the text of a paper read by Jonathan Bloch at a meeting of the Campaign Against the Arms Trade in London in June 1985. The purpose of this paper is to examine selected aspects of British involvement in the training of foreign police personnel both here and abroad. Not much research has been … Read more
Parish Notices Mrs Anthony Verney died in early March this year. With her husband, Anthony, she was irradiated by persons unknown, for reasons unknown, at their retirement home in Kent. She is the first UK fatality of which I am aware resulting from the new generation of electro-magnetic weaponry; and it says much about this … Read more
In an article in the Journal of Popular Culture, (1) one of the editors of the Jonestown Report considers the role that conspiracy theories have played in the unfolding narrative of ‘Jonestown’. It is a worthwhile endeavour to which few scholars could bring better credentials. Rebecca Moore is a professor of religious studies at the … Read more
Dodgy dossiers Steven Kettell, author of Dirty politics? New Labour, British democracy and the invasion of Iraq (London: Zed Books, 2006), argues that New Labour wanted regime change in Iraq before Bush and before 9/11 and that the production of the WMD Dossier was one of the key components of a broader political strategy designed … Read more
Martin Dillon, Doubleday, London, 1994. This one, the third book called ‘the enemy within’ of last year, slipped by me at the time: I didn’t notice a single review. Most of it describes the IRA’s various campaigns against the British, not something I am interested in. However there is one rivetting chapter called, ‘The Intelligence … Read more
L. A. Naylor London: Roots Books, 2004, £12.99, p/b This book sets out to show how miscarriages of justice come about, and how difficult and protracted is the process of getting a wrongful conviction overturned. An estimated 3,000 wrongfully convicted people a year go to prison, according to a Home Office bulletin, and between … Read more
John Pilger Vintage Books, London,1998, £8.99 pb As one of the few serious radicals in this country to whom the mass media pay any attention, Pilger is important. This is a collection of essays, a few already published but most written for this book. We are back in what is recognisably Pilgerland: the corruptions of … Read more
The Brittle Society Alarmists, like Naomi Wolf, have been exaggerating the degree to which the US, and by implication the UK, have been slipping towards a police state. The evidence for true tyranny in either country is weak. However, since it came to power in 1997, it might be reasonably argued(1) that New Labour has … Read more
