Regime Changers Anonymous

Spokesman 107
Edited by Ken Coates

'The Security Service was officially launched in 1909 with a staff of two, who were supposed to defend the realm against Germany. Later they made a painless adjustment and began to defend it against Russia. As the two engaged ever larger numbers of accomplices it became clear that the realm which they defended consisted of ever smaller tracts of establishment England, setting its bounds somewhat short of the area occupied by the masses of the British common people …

… What can be done to clip the wings of all these spooks? Well, first of all, as far as the junior members of the team are concerned, substantial cuts can be made in their budgets. What precisely is all this intrigue for? How is it to be justified? It should surely be possible to control the expenditures of this kind of service in such a way as to reduce them to a minimum.

Then we shall be told that we need an intelligence service to apprehend terrorists. There are, unfortunately, numerous problems which the anti-terrorist services closely share with the warriors against subversion ... At the very least, there is a case for a close enquiry into this aspect of intelligence work. To learn the lessons of the wave of student arrests in Lancashire early in 2009 might be to discover some arguments for stringent budgetary controls.

But, disturbing though the activities of junior officials may be, the huge and overriding question which hangs over our political system, is how to get the spooks off the Downing Street sofas and to put politics in command.'

Ken Coates, excerpts from his Editorial. The full text can be read here.

CONTENTS:
Regime Changers Anonymous - Ken Coates

Fixing the Intelligence? - Tony Simpson

Law and War - Lord Goldsmith

The legality of the invasion of Iraq - Lord Steyn

Who killed David Kelly? - David Halpin

****

Haiku - Alexis Lykiard

Gallows - John Arden

The US and Israel - Noam Chomsky

Al Rabweh - John Berger

The Dice Player - Mahmoud Darwish

Reviews: Bruce Kent, Stan Newens, John Daniels,
Michael Barratt Brown, Romy Clark and Abi Rhodes

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