The Trial of Saddam Hussein Abdul Haq Al-Ani, Clarity Press, Atlanta, GA., 2008 Abdul-Haq Al-Ani’s troubling manifesto on behalf of the murdered Iraqi leader exposes bloody doings of empire from a lucid political-juridical perspective. ‘Imperialism is a universal historical phenomenon, but it remains, nevertheless, evil’, he writes (p. 23). ‘I use the term European [imperialism] … Read more
See note(1) By some standards, the loss of 269 souls aboard Korean Air Lines flight 007 on August 31, 1983, was a modest disaster. The Titanic, for example, claimed 1503 lives; the Lusitania 1198. But historians may come to believe that the political implications of the downing of the civilian 747 airliner by a Soviet … Read more
Volume 1: Reflections of the Participants, Mark Baimbridge (ed.) Volume 2: Current Analysis and Lessons for the Future, Mark Baimbridge, Philip Wyman and Andrew Mullen (eds.) Exeter (UK) and Charlottesville (USA): Imprint Academic, 2006, single volumes £17.95 (uk ) and $34.90 (US) Andrew Mullen, who has written about the EU in these columns, brought … Read more
Extracts from the memoirs of the late General Fardust on the Iranian Pahlavi dynasty, published in 1978. Translated from the Farsi and introduced by Armen Victorian. Hossein Fardust was perhaps the closest person to the late Shah of Iran, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi. They went to school together and Fardust became the Shah’s closest friend — … Read more
Kevin Danaher (ed.) Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine, U.S., 2001, $15.95 www.commoncouragepress.com This volume contains 27 short essays by everyone from Fidel Castro (rather impressive, if he wrote it himself) through Chomsky, and Naomi Klein to Margot Smith, whose essay is titled ‘Granny Goes to Washington and Goes to Jail’. So: this runs from … Read more
Colin Thompson was in his sixties, with bottle-bottomed glasses. He was carrying a laundry basket when we met, so he offered me his forefinger to shake instead of his hand. When I asked who he had voted for, Colin became visibly confused. It was just after 9 pm on 5 May 2005 and polling stations … Read more
Britannia’s Burden: the Political Evolution of Modern Britain 1951-1990 Bernard Porter Edward Arnold, London, 1994. Bernard Porter’s latest is a Marxist text-book. However it is Marxism with a difference. There is no happy ending nor even the promise of one. The argument is serious and absorbing. It does not observe the normal conventions of blandness … Read more
Maggie, Maggie, Maggie Giles Scott-Smith,(1) who wrote about the Congress for Cultural Freedom in Lobster 36 and 38, has written a very interesting study of Margaret Thatcher’s first visit to America in 1967.(2) Scott-Smith shows that Thatcher, then a junior shadow spokesperson in the Tory Party, was talent-spotted by the State Department’s man in the … Read more
James Rusbridger I. B. Tauris, London 1991, £8.95 James Rusbridger is Peter Wright’s cousin oddly enough, and occasionally assisted MI6 in the 1950s and 60s, an experience which has left him a cheerful cynic. He canters briskly and amusingly over the field of spook foul-ups in the post-war period to ‘show the pointlessness of so … Read more
Weapons of Mass Deception: The uses of propaganda in Bush’s war on Iraq Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber London: Robinson, 2003, p/b, £6.99 Regime Unchanged: Why the war on Iraq changed nothing Milan Rai London: Pluto, 2003, p/b, £10.99 The Rampton/Stauber book appeared about 6 weeks after the attack on Iraq ended and concentrates … Read more
