Definitions? Or Whoops! A paradigm An American magazine called Mondo 2000 ran an amusing piece called ‘The Conspiracy Top Ten’. In it ‘Zarkov’ offered this definition: ‘Conspiracies may be better understood as organizations pursuing their own ends, who desire no publicity as to their true objectives and methods.’ Which sounds interesting at first then dissolves … Read more
How MI6 and the CIA were involved in the death of Princess Diana Jon King and John Beveridge New York: SPI Books, 2002, £18.95 In the five years since the Paris car crash that killed Princess Diana, Dodi Fayed, and Henri Paul, interest in Diana herself may have waned, (1) but the circumstances surrounding her … Read more
Ideas and Think Tanks in Contemporary Britain: Volume 1 edited by Michael David Kandiah and Anthony Seldon Frank Cass, London/Portland, Oregon, 1996 £29.50 As the title suggests this really contains two separate though not unrelated areas. The first is a series of shortish essays about so-called think tanks in the UK which follow on from … Read more
Authority and order are back on the European political agenda. I want to put forward an hypothesis that readers can test against the facts. If I am right, then it opens up a new field of enquiry for parapolitical investigators. Let me state the thesis briefly: the need to create an international infrastructure of authority … Read more
Mark Hollingsworth and Nick Fielding Andre Deutsch, London, 1999 £17.99 At one level this whole Shayler affair is quite odd. For Shayler is the quintessential, contemporary, football-mad, New Labour-oriented, a-political technocrat – someone who can use the word ‘modern’ without blushing and putting it in scare quotes. (Shayler’s complaints about MI5 can be seen in … Read more
The Oyston Affair appears to have been the longest and most expensive privately-funded political dirty tricks campaign in recent British history. The astonishing 15-year campaign waged against Owen Oyston by Michael Murrin, the owner of a fish and chip shop in the village of Longridge, Lancs, was backed by help and cash payments raised by … Read more
Anthony Glees and Philip H. J. Davies London: The Social Affairs Unit, 2004, £30, h/b This is a curious little book (112 pp.) in which two conservative intelligence academics wrestle with the realities of the events leading up to the attack on Iraq. But what manner of beast is a conservative intelligence academic? The … Read more
The conspiracy trail is littered with unresolved leads, but few can be more important than Lee Harvey Oswald’s visit to Mexico shortly before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. What was the purpose of Oswald’s visit to Mexico City? Was it Oswald or an impostor who visited the Cuban and Soviet embassies? And what … 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
Colin Challen Vision Paperbacks, London, 1998, £7.99 It says something about this society of ours – and about the academics who make a living teaching what they call ‘politics’ – that this is the first book about the funding of the political party which has been in power for most of this century; and it … Read more
