The Scotsman and the New Zealand Dominion
October 1988
Mr Mark Goodwin, a spokesman for Vice President George Bush, adopted his most scandalised manner. “Someone who articulates that ought not to be allowed to operate heavy equipment,” he declared.
The idea which had so shocked Mr Goodwin was the suggestion that the release in Beirut last week of [...]
The Scotsman and the New Zealand Dominion
October 10 1988
At the Republican Convention in New Orleans this summer, the co-chairman of the Republican National Committee provoked some anxiety by referring to the League of Women Voters as the League of Women Vultures and then caught the attention of a second group of party faithful by hurling [...]
The Scotsman
Autumn 1988
Mitch Snyder is a nobody from nowhere. He is also a personal pain in President Reagan’s neck, the subject of a Hollywood film about his life, and – according to whose story you hear – either an egomaniac blackmailer or the last Good Samaritan in America.
When the city of Washington DC built fences [...]
The Scotsman
Autumn 1988
I discovered the secret of my conservative friend one Saturday afternoon in the Spring when he held a jumble sale to get rid of his cast-off possessions. There, among his old conservative clothes and his old conservative furniture, was a little book whose title caught my eye. “Look out, Whitey! Black power’s gon’ [...]
The Scotsman
Autumn 1988
Life is just fabulous. The brand new Mercedes 420 with the automatic gears and the air-conditioned interior parades proudly down Woodland Drive, past the make-believe Tudor mansions and the pseudo-Georgian palaces, and glides gently to a halt in front of a neo-classical gateway whose mouth is blocked by a heavy padlocked chain. A [...]
The Scotsman
Autumn 1988
Denice Speed is one of the night people. Every evening, soon after darkness has driven the office workers away, she and some 6,000 other men and women are bused into the plate-glass and chrome splendour of downtown Washington DC, where they split up and swarm like termites through the buildings that the day [...]
The Guardian, October 1988
Review of ‘Bullet catchers’ By Tony Geraghty
One of the many lingering images of the Falklands War is that of the thick-shouldered paratroopers jogging round the deck of their Task Force vessel chanting in time with the beat of their boots: ‘If-you’ve-got-a-low-I-Q-you-can-be-a-para-too.’
Apart from his authorship of the best-selling history of the SAS, Who [...]
The Guardian, October 1988
Review of ‘Journey Into Madness’ By Gordon Thomas
When the CIA set out to discover the magic arts of brainwashing and mind-control in 1952, its then Director, Allen Dulles, was clear about the kind of doctors he wanted to work on the project. ‘Each person’s ethics must be such that he would be [...]
The Scotsman
Autumn 1988
It is twenty one years since the night when a middle-aged Chinese man slipped quietly off his merchant ship in the sprawling harbour of New Haven, Connecticut and padded away into the darkness to become an outlaw.
Behind him in Hong Kong, the man had left his wife and five children living and sleeping [...]
The Scotsman and the New Zealand Dominion
October 3 1988
This is a most peculiar story. It has nothing to do with the Presidential election or the space shuttle or anything else. It does not even really tell you very much about America. It is just peculiar and rather sad.
It concerns a working couple from Pennsylvania, Ernest [...]
