The Paris Review (PR hereafter except in quotations) has a new editor. Philip Gourevitch, a National Book Critics Circle Award winner for his book, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories From Rwanda and a writer for The New Yorker, has taken the position that was held … Read more
Obituaries Ace Hayes (1940-1998) by Daniel Brandt Ace R. Hayes, 58, an activist and political researcher who was well-known in the Portland, Oregon area, died on February 13, 1998 from an aneurism in the brain. Corruption and conspiracy in high places is the name of the game, but Ace was on the case. His broad … Read more
In this issue, as in No 3, we are recycling a lot of material from Irish newspapers, and one in particular, the Sunday News. One of our Irish readers describes the Sunday News as ‘almost wholly Catholic..Nationalist … moderately Social Democratic Labour Party rather than moderately Republican.’ We have no way of checking the veracity … Read more
US bioweapons in Korea? In Lobster 44, p. 27, I noted the ongoing controversy about the alleged use of biological weapons by the United States during the Korean War: material from Soviet archives appeared to show that the ‘evidence’ of said biological weapons had been faked to embarrass the Americans; but this ‘evidence’ has since … Read more
‘Rug merchants’ was the epithet former White House Chief of Staff Don Regan used to describe the Iranians who negotiated secret arms deals for nearly a year with senior officials of the Reagan Administration, including Oliver North of the National Security Council. Regan’s dismissive characterization hardly did justice to the sales skills of North’s Mideast … Read more
One of many reasons why the lobbying industry attracts opprobrium is because Britain’s political system offers only limited public sector facility to those who wish to influence it but lack the funding and/or patronage to do so. ‘The lobbyists’ did not cause the injustice. It is up to government to come up with the solutions. … Read more
The Time of The Assassins: The Inside Story of the Plot to Kill the Pope Claire Sterling, Angus and Robertson, London 1984 The Plot to Kill the Pope Paul B. Henze, Croom Helm, London 1984 These two books cover the same ground, more or less, and have the same thesis: the KGB used the Bulgarians, … 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
Political activist Daniel Ellsberg and Professor Alfred McCoy have something special in common. Based on their actions and accomplishments of nearly thirty years ago, they have achieved the status of icons within the subculture of what passes for the New Left. Icon Ellsberg became a celebrity in 1971 after he leaked The Pentagon Papers, an … Read more
Jackboots and Sporran: the strange world of Robert Gayre Kevin Koogan in ANARCHY No.38 (Box A 84b Whitechapel High St., London E1 7QX) This is fascinating stuff, the history of some of the more obscure corners in the neo-nazi American/European right-wing since WW2. But it has an odd feel to it, as if it were … Read more
