Henry McDonald and Jim Cusack London: Penguin, 2004, £12.99, p/b Henry McDonald’s highly readable recent book with Jim Cusack on the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) is everything that other recent offerings on the subject were not. On the one hand, it avoids the kind of borderline homo-erotic sensationalism, in which the atrocities of self-serving … Read more
HANSARD Cols 231-238 7 JULY 1987 6.22 pm Mr. Ken Livingstone (Brent, East): I shall start by praising my predecessor. Mr. Reg Freeson. There are some who may be surprised at that. Our differences were political and I do not think that anyone would suggest that he did not serve his constituency as well and … Read more
I invited David Turner to begin writing a regular column for Lobster. He agreed then rang to tell me his computer had been attacked by a virus and could not meet my deadline. (He is the second contributor to this issue to have been virused recently.) But I had on file this splendid polemic written … Read more
In February this year, unnoticed by the press, a funeral took place in a quiet Sussex village. In attendance were some famous names from London society of the fifties and sixties, and two men in regulation dark suits from an undisclosed department of the Security Services. They had been contacts for the deceased, Maria Novotny, … Read more
Democracy building or democracy assistance, is a putative socio-economic policy solution, which, because of the extent of the political and economic forces impacting on it, has become a contemporary socio-economic problem. Democracy building’s institutional formation rests upon a reconfiguration of Cold War positions that retain, what Dr. Michael Pinto-Duschinsky termed ‘such interference,’(1)so as to continue … Read more
In mid-November 1993, after six years of research, 42-year old Eileen Welsome produced a gripping series of articles examining the life and death of five people — a railroad porter, a house painter, a carpenter, a politician and a homemaker — used as human guinea pigs by the US Department of Energy. Appearing in the … Read more
Since the storming of the Iranian Embassy in London on 5 May 1980, the Special Air Service (SAS) has become a cultural phenomenon as much as a military one; has become, in the words of its former Director, Peter de la Billiere, ‘a living embodiment of the individualism of the British’. Their heroic exploits have … Read more
John Carter. Feral House, Portland (USA), 1999. Available in the UK from Counter Productions, P0 Box 556, London SE5 ORL , £15.99 plus £1.50p pp. The March Fortean Times launched this in some style, aping the book’s 1950s SF cover and giving it a respectful five page review. With the film rights sold and preparations … Read more
Phoenix: Policing the Shadows Jack Holland and Susan Phoenix Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1996 The Origins of the Present Troubles in Northern Ireland Caroline Kennedy-Piper Longman, London, 1997 The war in Northern Ireland is apparently in its closing stages. There is still some way to go before it is all over, however, and undoubtedly there … Read more
How often does the conspiracy buff/ parapolitics connoisseur stumble upon a new, all-colour, glossy parapolitics magazine at W. H. Smith’s at Euston Station? Not that often. When I called Private Eye to mail order a copy of Paul Foot’s fascinating report on the Lockerbie trial, I was assured that I could buy a copy at … Read more
