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
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
Abstract The Tribunal established to investigate complaints about phone-tapping and the activities of the intelligence agencies has, at its first ever public hearing, quashed rules made by the Home Secretary forcing the tribunal to hold all its hearings in secret. However, the Tribunal procedure remains too secret, and its decisions cannot be appealed. Malcolm Kennedy’s … Read more
[…] the SAS to gather intelligence, assassinate terrorists and run loyalist agents. Loyalist paramilitaries were supplied with intelligence files on members of the IRA to enable them to kill people considered a threat by the authorities’. (p 180) ‘A former general…..said it was debilitating for the regular army to find the two leading organizations MI5 […]
[…] fundamentally neo-conservative NuLab were a group of ex-CPGB members and one ex-Trot (Mulgan), who in their left incarnations despised the Labour Party, and finally got to help kill it off.(2) Notes Leadbetter’s views on the current economic crisis in late October are at A sample: ‘This is the high-water mark of the deregulated, bonus-driven, […]
Web update Jane Affleck Thanks to Terry Hanstock and David Turner for contributions. Comments and details of interesting websites are welcome: my email address is 101521.3515 @compuserve.com Freedom Of Information Campaign for Freedom of Information http://www.cfoi.org.uk ‘The Campaign for Freedom of Information campaigns against unnecessary secrecy and for greater public access to official and other … Read more
John Ross Common Courage Press Monroe, Maine, 2000, $15.95 (pb) (www.commoncouragepress.com) John Ross is the foremost chronicler, in English, of modern Mexican history. He is particularly knowledgeable about the Zapatista movement and its revolutionary forerunners. In addition to the very good The Annexation of Mexico – from the Aztecs to the IMF, about said country’s … 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
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
