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Ian Cobain

Forfatter af The History Thieves

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Fødselsdato
1960
Køn
male
Nationalitet
UK
Fødested
Liverpool, UK
Kort biografi
Ian Cobain has been a journalist since the early 1980s. He is a senior reporter on the Guardian. His inquiries into the UK’s involvement in torture since 9/11 have won a number of major awards, including the Martha Gellhorn Prize and the Paul Foot Award for investigative journalism. He has also won several Amnesty International media awards. 
http://theorwellprize.co.uk/shortlist...

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First, I'm sorry I've not been reviewing well recently, my mind's not been up to scratch.

but this book is really fascinating

I'd never heard of the civil war in Oman and the UK's key role in it before, it was astounding to read about.

Overally very readable, mostly new stuff (at least to me, I've never seen most of this stuff talked about) that gives a very good introduction to why the British state is inherently evil
 
Markeret
tombomp | 2 andre anmeldelser | Oct 31, 2023 |
In 1889, the first Official Secrets Act was passed and created offences of 'disclosure of information' and 'breach of official trust'. It limited and monitored what the public could, and should, be told. Since then, Britain's governments and civil service have been engaged in the greatest identity fraud of all time - the dishonest and manufactured creation of our understanding of the British nation, our history and our culture.
Many people are probably familiar with the phrase Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, but what happens when you aren't allowed to know the facts of the present, let alone those of the past. How can you ever learn anything when everything is a secret?
The History Thieves is a fascinating book that looks at a culture of secrecy grew into Official Secrets Acts and laws that made everything official a secret. And all this in a country that prides itself on being open, honest, and honourable. Of course, those countries that have experienced British rule may have a different view of the country. As this book makes very clear.
It is in many ways a disturbing book to read. Not only because of the horrific things that the British State did, rape, torture, murder etc., but also because when these facts come to life and are publicised nobody seems to care. Cobain recounts cases from Kenya, Northern Ireland, and elsewhere that clearly indicate that the British state was directly involved with terrible crimes and yet no reaction, no outrage, apart from the people directly involved. It was all for the good of the country, seems to be some sort of mantra used in its defence, but I'm not one who believes in the ends justifying the means. Jack Bauer is not a hero to emulate!
I would recommend that everyone read this book. It'll open your eyes to the horrors that are not so far away from you as you may think.
It also made me think of that Star Trek episode, was it Voyager, or TNG? where the crew encounter a planet that eradicated part of its population and then covered that fact up ((I googled. The answer is Star Trek : Voyager ad the episode is Remember )). If no one is around to remember a crime did the crime take place? In case you're wondering I'd argue, hell yes, the crime took place, and part of the crime is that no one acknowledges it.
You cannot be forgiven or something when you don't try to make amends, if you don't recognise what you did as wrong, if you pretend you never did it, then you aren't really sorry. You're just ashamed, as well you should be.
The British government has a lot to be ashamed for. But I'd guess that every government has its own history it would rather not reveal. The terrible thing is that we, those who elect them, don't really seem to care either.
… (mere)
 
Markeret
Fence | 2 andre anmeldelser | Jan 5, 2021 |
Ian Cobain is a respected journalist with a long track record of investigating governments’ malfeasance, and, particularly, their attempts to cover their tracks. His previous book, Cruel Britannia exposed the British government’s participation in the torture of suspected terrorists and the practice of extraordinary rendition.

In this book, he presents a history of the British government’s attempts to preserve state secrets, from the introduction of the first Official Secrets Act through a series of ever more intricate legislation. Cobain asserts, and it is difficult to disagree, that the combined effect of all this legislation is to keep the public in ignorance, and to limit access to official information as far as possible. While officials seem meticulously to have recorded everything that ever happened, they simultaneously strive to prevent anyone from ever reading those dusty files. While papers proliferate, there is a parallel obsession shared by Government and Whitehall to minimise public awareness of what has been done in their name. Under the mantle of the Official Secrets Act, and its legislative spawn, successive governments have been able to muzzle the Press.

There seems to be no partisan monopoly on the obsession with secrecy, with all governments, regardless of political complexion, striving to keep the public in ignorance. One consequence of this has been that, unknown to the British electorate at the time, there has not been a single year since the end of the Second World War in which Britain has not been involved in military action somewhere around the globe.

Unbeknownst to the public, in 1945, after the surrender of Japan, Britain became involved in fighting on behalf of the French in Indochina, combatting the Viet Minh and, essentially, sowing the seeds of the Vietnam War. They did this with the assistance of Japanese prisoners of war who were armed and ordered to fight against the Viet Minh insurrection. Shortly afterwards British troops were involved in a lengthy combat in Aden, though this struggle was never reported back home.

As the archaic British Empire metamorphosed into the post-colonial Commonwealth, and former colonies emerged into independence, one of the foremost priorities for the retiring administrators was to censor that any documentary archive inherited by the new regimes would not cause embarrassment back home. Britain has always prided itself on the apparently humane and supportive way it relinquished its imperial dominion. Rather than simply withdrawing at once, Britain encouraged the newly independent states to develop, bequeathing an administrative infrastructure modelled on the system back home. This self-congratulatory picture is far from accurate. There was, for example, a culture of organised cruelty throughout Kenya in the years immediately preceding independence, with atrocities by the military establishment seeming to be more the rule than the exception. It was, therefore, imperative that any documentation that might be passed to the new administration should be filtered thoroughly, to excise any official record. Hundreds of thousands of files were either destroyed or repatriated, to end up in secret vaults around the UK. This story was repeated around the globe. Cobain recounts the systematic destruction or concealment of literally hundreds of thousands of files.

In later chapters, he addresses the ill-fated Freedom of Information Act, envisaged by Tony Blair as a means to secure open government. In reality, the plethora of exemptions, and the lack of robust enforcement powers available to the Information Commissioner, have enabled the government largely to continue to obfuscate in their replies. As a civil servant, I was particularly interested in this aspect of the book. In my experience, request under the Freedom of Information Act do still exert considerable power (and certainly lend a burst of urgency as we scurry around looking for the answers), though I acknowledge the thrust of his argument. The Freedom of Information Act is definitely weaker than the public was led to believe when it was passed by parliament. Of especial interest, however, was the fact that a few years ago I drafted a reply to a request under the Freedom of Information Act from Ian Cobain himself. I can’t tell you what it was about – that’s a secret!

The description above may suggest that this book is a conspiracy theorist’s paranoid rant. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Cobain writes very clearly, as one would expect from a career journalist, and he seems to back up his assertions with a wealth of evidence.
… (mere)
 
Markeret
Eyejaybee | 2 andre anmeldelser | Sep 8, 2017 |

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Medlemmer
142
Popularitet
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Vurdering
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ISBN
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