Mandy, The Independent and Europe As pictures of H’Angus the Monkey, the new elected mayor of Hartlepool, filled the news pages, it emerged more quietly that the other public face of that poor North-East town, Peter Mandelson, had joined the international advisory board of News and Media, the owners of The Independent and The Independent … Read more
Official openings We don’t have a Freedom of Information Act, and are not likely to get one from any of the British political parties. Imagine a conversation in the office of the new Labour Prime Minister in a year or three: ‘FOI? Too much trouble, too much aggro with Whitehall. As if we need any … Read more
Pieces without an author’s name are by the editor Parish Notices For info/help with this issue, thanks to the usual suspects, especially Jane Affleck; and also to Paul Stott. Among the contributors to this issue Jonathan Bloch is co-author of British Intelligence and Covert Action and Global Intelligence and the World’s Secret Intelligence Services Today. … Read more
[…] he was last sighted during the general election of 1987. Shipley inhabits that grey area between the pseudoacademic/academic front and the intelligence services. He is probably a spook but there isn’t any evidence. After the rioting in Handsworth in Birmingham, Shipley explained to the readers of the Daily Telegraph (12/9/85) that members of the […]
Ismael Hossein-Zadeh New York and London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006 $75.00 (US), £37.99 (UK), h/b This is an interesting and timely book and it is a great pity it is so expensive. Put out as a paperback and maybe with a less academic-sounding title, this would sell. Little of it is intellectually taxing and any … Read more
The view from the bridge Bilderberg and the EU The Diaries of former Liberal-Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown, (volume one 1988-1997, London: Allen Lane, Penguin, 2000) is a pretty uninteresting read with a couple of striking sections. Pages 42-46 contain his account of attending a Bilderberg meeting – by far the longest and most detailed account […]
[…] defectors’ programme run by the CIA or ONI, the ‘self-indoctrinated’ Marxist Marine Oswald actually did go over to the other side, returning to the U.S. as a spook of two masters — in the manner of Magnus Pym, the hero of A Perfect Spy. The Le Carre angle is plausibly presented — Russell relies […]
Peter Oborne London: The Free Press (Simon and Schuster), 2005, £7.99, p/b Before his minutely detailed account of some of New Labour’s lies Oborne gives us a potted history of lying in the past 25 years to show us how relatively truthful New Labour’s predecessors were. This old nag won’t run. For example, he … Read more
[…] nicely produced, and rather good – or would be if you are interested in Soviet disinformation chiefly within the Third World. (And its got to be a spook operation.) Available from Ickham Publications Ltd., Westonhanger, Ickham, Canterbury CT3 1QN. Executive Intelligence Review We recently received a copy of EIR, the main journal of the […]
It is a difficult time for Britain’s security and intelligence agencies. Not only have the old certainties collapsed with the Berlin Wall, Britain’s economy is in increasingly dire shape, and current levels of government funding for the agencies can no longer be taken for granted. (1) As a result, both the major agencies, MI5 and … Read more
