British Spies and Irish Rebels British Intelligence and Ireland, 1916-1945 Paul McMahon Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2008, h/b, £30 First up, I have no specialist knowledge of this area, so if there any howlers in here, I’m unlikely to spot them. However, I know a good book when I see one. This has been … Read more
Mark Urban Faber and Faber London 1996 £16.99 The first sentence of Urban’s conclusion to this very interesting and rather important book is: ‘More than anything else, British intelligence is a system for repackaging information gathered by the USA.’ He might have added, ‘information gathered in large part at US bases in Britain’. Urban has … Read more
From David Guyatt: David Hambling’s comments in Lobster 39 (Feedback) underscore the extreme difficulties involved in firstly accessing, then corroborating and, finally, reporting stories that are as obviously sensitive as Operation Black Cat and Operation Black Dog. It is easy to raise what appear to be realistic technical objections, but the Black Dog story consumed … Read more
From David Hambling On the topic of the People Zapper (Lobster 41 p. 9), the new ‘Active Denial System’ is probably not the first microwave weapon to be deployed. There have been repeated rumours of cruise missiles with HPM (high-powered microwave) warheads being used in former Yugoslavia to knock out communications centres, though apparently the … Read more
Unfree press A recent release of previously undisclosed documents reveals that J. Edgar Hoover ordered the FBI to carry out the illegal surveillance of newspaper labour activists during the 1940s. Also revealed is the fact that informants included journalists who wanted Communists removing from the leadership of the Newspaper Guild.(1) Only following orders Psychologist Stanley … 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
Alwyn W. Turner London: Arum, 2008, h/b, £20 Punk monetarism The 15 years from 1969 to 1984 convulsed British society and pulverised its economy. By the end of this period, the post-war settlement, which had been assumed to last more or less indefinitely, was in ruins and the economic and social order we inhabit today … Read more
Kim Besly Kim Besly died in July. A brief notice appeared in the Guardian on 30 July 1996. Besly was one of the pioneers in this country in the campaign to alert people to the dangers of electromagnetic technology. I met Besly only once but Harlan Girard knew her better and, in response to her … Read more
Colin Challen MP First, buy your senator It wasn’t long after their election in 2000 that the business backgrounds of George W. Bush and Richard Cheney became mired in controversy. Cheney’s business career was not as long as Bush’s, but it personifies the role of crony capitalism endemic to U.S. politics. Cheney’s role as Halliburton’s … 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
