Lobster Issue 76 (Winter 2018)
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[PDF file]: […] Acknowledgements (p. viii): ‘This is a history of things that did not officially happen using primary sources that few realise exist.’ If the subheads are familiar – Iran, Suez, Oman, Yemen, Malaya, Indonesia, British Guyana, Northern Ireland etc. – most of the content is new, thanks to an enormous effort at official file reading […]
Lobster Issue 73 (Summer 2017)
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[PDF file]: […] this in essay in Lobster 72 at . 14 History occurs in a context not of minutes but years, decades, even centuries. When the US embassy in Iran was seized after the overthrow of the Shah, none of the respectable media explained that the Shah had been installed by the CIA after having overthrown […]
Lobster Issue 73 (Summer 2017)
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[PDF file]: Sex scandals and sexual blackmail in America’s deep politics Jonathan Marshall Note: In my ‘Blackmail and the Deep State’, also in this issue of Lobster, I discussed the importance of political blackmail as a force in America’s deep politics from the late 1950s to Watergate. This article, which also addresses Watergate, focuses on the politics […]
Lobster Issue 72 (Winter 2016)
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[PDF file]: The Devil’s Chessboard Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government David Talbot William Collins, London, 2015 HB, 686pp., illus., index, bib., refs., £25.00 This truly excellent biography is at least partly a biography of two men, Allen Dulles and his older brother John Foster. I write ‘at least partly’ because the […]
Lobster Issue 71 (Summer 2016)
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[PDF file]: […] and ensuing civil war. Finally Cockburn gets to the rise of ISIS, which he spotted very early on, and the present chaotic situation with Saudi Arabia and Iran funding proxy armies and NATO member Turkey assisting ISIS and attacking the Kurds (who are fighting ISIS). The major theme here is this: as happened in […]
Lobster Issue 70 (Winter 2015)
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[PDF file]: […] the Saudis. AlQaeda’s atrocities were deliberately intended to provoke sectarian civil war, a methodology that is continued by Islamic State today. This inaugurated the proxy war with Iran that the Saudis have been waging in Iraq and later in Syria ever since. The extent to which the United States has found itself caught in […]
Lobster Issue 85 (Summer 2023)
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[PDF file]: […] irony as ‘killed in action’! (p. 36) Smiley went on to serve in Iraq and Syria before taking part in the 2 little known British occupation of Iran, a joint operation with the Russians. For a while, he was stationed in Tehran where he and his fellow officers had ‘an enjoyable time’, especially in […]
Lobster Issue 84 (Winter 2022)
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[PDF file]: The Fate of Abraham: Why the West is Wrong about Islam Peter Oborne London: Simon & Schuster, 2022, £25 (h/b) John Booth If you need a revival of spirit and energy this summer, Peter Oborne’s ambitious new book could help top up your political Vitamin D. For in its telling of some of the history […]