Some recent JFK literature In front of me is a copy of Guth and Wrone’s The Assassination of John F. Kennedy: A Comprehensive Historical and Legal Bibliography 1983-1979 (1980), nearly 450 pages, running to some 5,134 entries covering books, magazine articles, records, TV programmes, and news items from both the New York Times and the … Read more
Garbis Altinoglu CL Publications, PO Box 24, Leeds, LS8 1UU ISBN 0-9540410-0-3, £8.25, p/b Online here: http://www.turkishmarxist.dds.nl/english/book/intro.html Though there are some sections in which Turkey’s role vis-à-vis the US and NATO are considered, for the most part this is a detailed account of the Turkish state’s murder and torture of its left and Kurdish opponents. … Read more
Election time! Ah, the roar of the hustings; the pulse of democracy is about to be taken. The enduring worthiness of our political system is about to be proven yet again. But what’s that you say? Something’s not quite right with the result? You smell a rat? Be quiet. Such things only happen in tin-pot … Read more
Robin Ramsay Often referred to in other things is Israeli Foreign Affairs, ‘an independent monthly report on Israel’s diplomatic and military activities world-wide’. It is 8 pages A4 and though this is not a subject I am interested in, this looks very impressive and is thoroughly documented. September 1988 includes (using IFA’s headlines) Jerusalem Christian … Read more
Gore Vidal London: Abacus, 2002, £10.99, p/b Once upon a time collections of essays by Gore Vidal would appear every few years or so in this country in those neat little Panther paperbacks: On Our Own Now (1976), Matters of Fact and of Fiction (1978), Pink Triangle and Yellow Star (1982) for example. The … Read more
SIS is dead – you read it first in Lobster – but the funeral has not been announced. Established in 1909, it will not make its centenary. SIS once offered a global brand operating in a market that had been previously divided along the lines of accepted cartels (market fixing). Its market-share, however, has been … Read more
Dan E. Moldea W.W. Norton, London and New York 1995 I didn’t notice this when it was first published and came across a remaindered copy. Unlike the JFK murder, this case is absolutely straightforward. The forensic evidence is quite clear and inarguable: Robert Kennedy was shot three times at point-blank range – i.e. a range … Read more
Beatrix Campbell London: Lawrence and Wishart, 2008, p/b, £14.99 ‘The rule of law is the cornerstone of democracy,’ a High Court judge said in February in relation to the case of alleged torture of a British resident held in Guantamo Bay. This book is solely about Northern Ireland’s recent history and it shows how … Read more
This conversation with Peter Dale Scott was recorded in London at the end of August 1984. For the most part it is verbatim Scott: my contributions have been tidied up a good deal. As anyone who has met me knows, I am not as concise and articulate as the ‘RR’ presented here. This text is … Read more
Sean McPhilemy Roberts Rinehart, Boulder, Colorado, USA, 1998, $24.95 Sean McPhilemy was the producer of a Channel Four documentary, ‘The Committee’, shown in 1991, which made a series of startling allegations about collusion between the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and Protestant paramilitaries in Northern Ireland in the killing of Catholics. The programme — which I … Read more
