The demise of Ken Livingstone as Mayor of London on 1 May was preceded by the publication of the latest account of his political career, Andrew Hosken’s Ken – The Ups and Downs of Ken Livingstone.(1) Although it contains some new and interesting material (but has no index), it is similar in many ways to … 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
Mel Gibson’s movie Throughout the ages, the Vatican’s iconic depiction of the Crucifixion has been an example of one of PR’s most effective ‘tactics’: the freeze-framing and subsequent promotion of a single event, to dictate perception, itself a marketing tactic. (The same ‘mind control’ is apparent in marketing today, when, say, a ‘life-style’ freeze-frame is … Read more
‘I know nothing about it. I don’t want to say I didn’t at the time, but today I have no knowledge of it.’ Former US Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara on the attack on USS Liberty. ‘As with the assassination of John F. Kennedy four years earlier, the official version [of the attack on … Read more
See note (1) Robin Ramsay The topic was suggested to me by Kevin O’Brien [of ICSA]. It wasn’t clear to me if it was simply that I was being played out a very long piece of rope with which to hang myself. At any rate, given such a wide title – and a title to … Read more
Election fraud Further to ‘How to fix an Election’ in Lobster 43, more news on the gentle art of perfuming a skunk. First Pick Your Voters Some strong contenders here. But first out of the hat is the Labour Party for performance during the all-postal voting experiments that were tried across the country in the … Read more
The assassinations of the 1960s A recently discovered sound recording of the assassination of Robert Kennedy shows that there was indeed a second shooter in the room. At least 13 shots were fired according to the analysis by Philip Van Praag, an expert in the ‘forensic analysis of magnetic media recordings’. Sirhan Sirhan’s gun could … Read more
The Stalker Affair Frank Doherty (Mercier Press, Cork, Ireland, 1986) The Genesis of Revolution James Kelly (Kelly-Kane, Dublin,1976) Frank Doherty, whose reports in the Dublin Phoenix and the Belfast Sunday News have frequently featured in Lobster, has uncovered a fascinating mass of information relating to covert cross-border operations by the Ulster security forces, and the … Read more
‘You don’t investigate people for why they think but for what they do.’ – former Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti (1) Introduction If nothing else, the Iran-Contra scandal temporarily illuminated the extent to which ostensibly private organizations have been helping secretive elements within the American government — in this case the core of the executive branch’s … Read more
Dick Russell Carroll and Graf, New York, 1992 This is one of the most interesting JFK assassination books to have emerged from the movie and 30th anniversary tie-in crop. Given the vast amount of attention paid to Gerald Posner’s ‘Oswald did it after all!’ apologia, Case Closed, it is unfortunate that Russell’s book still hasn’t … Read more
