The privatisation of part of the Ministry of Defence’s Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) has been generally reported as a financial scandal. More important is what it tells us about the politics of New Labour. There are two dimensions to this: first there is New Labour’s commitment to big business and in particular to … Read more
This is a slightly abridged version of part of chapter four of Mark Curtis’s book The Ambiguities of Power: British Foreign Policy since 1945 (Zed Press, 1995) reviewed below. In August 1953 a coup overthrew Iran’s nationalist government of Mohammed Musaddiq and installed the Shah in power. The Shah subsequently used widespread repression and torture … Read more
[…] the development of the nuclear industry, at the expense of miners’ jobs. This is both an expression of US strategic involvement in British politics (around the cruise missile issue) and Mrs Thatcher’s desire to smash the trade unions.(10) In particular, I make the point that Troy Kennedy-Martin wrote Edge of Darkness after Rob Green […]
A new royalty? A few weeks before former BBC political editor Andrew Marr received two Broadcasting Press Guild awards – one as ‘best TV performer in a non-acting role’ – his journalistic colleagues were quietly made aware of a little drama in his own life. Typical of the message from editorial lawyers circulated among Britain’s … Read more
One of the benefits of living in the West is the freedom to criticize our politicians. The fact that the electoral system rarely reflects considered criticism is not the point. We have always known that it is centred on political parties that are run by small groups more intent on newspaper opinion, and on that … Read more
[…] to handle those uncouth Yanks, to hold their hands and cool their tempers. For example: There was Penkofsky, who not only saved the world during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but had been rebuffed by the Yanks; and then there was Gordiefsky on hand to whisper in Mrs Thatcher’s ear that Gorbachev was on the […]
In Lobster 40 I wrote about a long-term operation by elements within the US military and intelligence services to disinform those interested in UFOs. More information on this has subsequently come to light. The MAJESTIC mystery solved? The real author of this section is Martin Cannon: I have just rewritten his e-mail to me. The … Read more
[…] it.(15) A considerable chunk of the 9/11 ‘skeptics’ do not believe that a passenger jet crashed into the Pentagon: they think it was a jet fighter, a missile or a drone. From their position, this exhibition must be a fraud. But if it is a fraud, part of the wider 9/11 fraud, that is […]
[…] started his Presidency as a cold war liberal whose outlook resembled that of Alden Pyle in The Quiet American, the Bay of Pigs humiliation and the Cuban Missile Crisis put him on a sharp learning curve. At the end of his life he was talking of the need to build a world ‘safe for […]
From David Guyatt: David Hambling’s comments in Lobster 39 (Feedback) underscore the extreme difficulties involved in firstly accessing, then corroborating and, finally, reporting stories that are as obviously sensitive as Operation Black Cat and Operation Black Dog. It is easy to raise what appear to be realistic technical objections, but the Black Dog story consumed … Read more
