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
It is well known that counter insurgency expert Sir Robert Thompson, after his ‘success’ in Malaya, went to Vietnam, under the title of British Advisory Mission, to help the Americans. He was head of the mission until 1965, subsequently visiting Saigon a number of times before being appointed a special consultant by President Nixon. Less … Read more
The British American Project and the war on Iraq The war on Iraq proved a busy time for members of the British American Project (Lobster 33 et seq) on this side of the pond. To cover the American countdown to war, long-time UK advisory board member Jim Naughtie returned to the New York home of … 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
The Labour Party, War and International Relations, 1945-2006 Mark Phythian London: Routledge, 2007, £19.99, p/b Reviewed by: Bernard Porter The title of this book is slightly misleading – at any rate, it misled me. I was expecting a broader treatment of Labour’s debates over issues of war and foreign relations, which would have included colonial … Read more
Rogue State: A guide to the world’s only superpower William Blum Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine, 2000, $16.95 Globalize This! The battle against the World Trade Organization and corporate rule eds. Kevin Danaher and Roger Burbach Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine, 2000, $15.95 I have lumped these together partly because they are both published … Read more
Books St. Peter’s Banker, Michele Sindona Luigi Di Fonzo (Mainstream, Edinburgh, 1984) This is an important publication from a new Scottish publishing house, Mainstream. It runs through Sindona’s life, showing how he came to be in such a strong financial position that he could buy the Franklin National, one of the largest banks in the … Read more
Mel Gibson’s movie Throughout the ages, the Vatican’s iconic depiction of the Crucifixion has been an example of one of PR’s most effective ‘tactics’: the freeze-framing and subsequent promotion of a single event, to dictate perception, itself a marketing tactic. (The same ‘mind control’ is apparent in marketing today, when, say, a ‘life-style’ freeze-frame 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
Contemporary British Fascism: The British National Party and the quest for legitimacy Nigel Copsey Palgrave/Macmillan 2004, £47.50, h/b The Radical Right in Britain Alan Sykes Palgrave/Macmillan, 2005, £16.99, p/b Modern British fascism has been poorly served by academic research, especially when it comes to coverage of the last two decades. These books attempt to … Read more
