How public relations became the cutting edge of corporate power David Miller and William Dinan London: Pluto, 2008; £45 h/b and £14.99 p/b This is big stuff, ambitious and wide-ranging with an enormous amount packed into 180 pages of text (with 50 pages of notes, tables and index). Many books are too long: this is … 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
Rob Evans, Nicola Butler, Eddie Goncalves Student CND, London 1991, £3.00 The contents list is reproduced here. This is not my field but Rob Evans of the Campaign Against Military Research on Campus (CAMROC) now has quite a track record in this area. This is available at £3.00 from Student CND, 162 Holloway Road, London … 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
The 14th May 1988 issue of Middle East International carries an interesting article on the rise (but not yet fall) of a former high-ranking MOSSAD officer who, like Edwin Wilson, has turned his previous clandestine experience into profit through shady arms dealing. Mike Harari, leader of MOSSAD’s Munich revenge hit-squad exposed in 1973 after the … Read more
Pieces without an author’s name are by the editor Parish Notices For information thanks to Jane Affleck and Robert Henderson, in particular. I wasn’t going to add my 5p’s worth to the ‘Good-bye Tony’ feature in this issue. But since Our Great Leader announced he was slipping his moorings and was pushing off into a … Read more
Extracts from what are claimed to be CIA analyses of Israeli intelligence services found when the US embassy in Iran was taken have been published in Imam, October 1983 through to May 1984. 17 pages in all. To this untrained eye they look genuine; ie dull enough to be genuine. There is nothing that strikes … Read more
A Note on MRA, CIA and L. Ron. Hubbard In response to my snippet in issue 38 (p.22) on Moral Rearmament and the CIA, Daniel Brandt (1) sent me the following from Miles Copeland’s, The Game Player: Confessions of the CIA’s Original Political Operative (London: Aurum Press, 1989, pp. 176-177). This is a nice demonstration … Read more
Chip Berlet This 63-page essay describes a wide range of contacts between what in a British context would be described as right-wing conspiracy theorists and the left. Berlet documents a range of contacts between the far-right Liberty Lobby, followers of LaRouche, Bo Gritz and the Populist Party, the Christic Institute, Radio Free America and a … Read more
Dr. David Kelly The death of Dr David Kelly refuses to go away. Two groups of medical experts have expressed doubts about the suicide verdict. The International Toxicology Advisory Group have queried the conclusion that Kelly swallowed at least 20 co-proxamol tablets, which contributed to his death; (1) and a group of surgeons wrote to … Read more
