The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government by David Talbot

Lobster Issue 72 (Winter 2016)

[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 […]

The Perennial Conspiracy Theory, and, The Hitler Conspiracies

Lobster Issue 84 (Winter 2022)

[PDF file]: […] of the Protocols impact in Germany and the USA in the 1920s and 1930s, as well as chapters on their post World War 2 life in Japan, Iran, Turkey, South Africa and the Arab world. There is also a useful chapter on the Protocols on the internet. For this reader, though, Beate Kosmala’s chapter, […]

Failed Führers: A History of Britain’s Extreme Right by Graham Macklin

Lobster Issue 83 (Summer 2022)

[PDF file]: Failed Führers: A History of Britain’s Extreme Right Graham Macklin London: Routledge, 2020, £24.99, pb John Newsinger Failed Führers is a volume in the Routledge Studies in Fascism and the Far Right series. At the moment there are almost 60 volumes in the series, already published or forthcoming. The handful that I have so far […]

Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare by Thomas Rid

Lobster Issue 83 (Summer 2022)

[PDF file]: Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare Thomas Rid London: Profile Books, 2020, 513 pp, £10.99 Colin Challen The dissemination of disinformation is as old as the hills, and now, thanks to the Internet, its transformation from the analogue age to the digital has given it what Rid explains as a post-modernist […]

Nixon’s Nuclear Specter by William Burr and Jeffrey P. Kimball

Lobster Issue 70 (Winter 2015)

[PDF file]: […] his Republican opponent, Barry Goldwater, over the nuclear issue and issued no nuclear threats during his presidency. President Carter raised the possibility of a nuclear attack on Iran during the hostage crisis. President Reagan presided over a massive nuclear build-up which came close to accidental thermonuclear war during the misinterpreted Able Archer alert. President […]

View from Bridge copy

Lobster Issue

[…] memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” I said, “Is it classified?” He said, “Yes, sir.” I said, “Well, don’t show it to me.” And I saw him a year or so ago, […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 86 (2023)

[PDF file]: […] the intelligence community, and President Biden, all of whom, notes Glenn Greenwald, have declared that “the gravest menace to American national security” is not Russia, ISIS, China, Iran, or North Korea, but “‘domestic extremists’ in general—and far-right white supremacist groups in particular.” The new information regulators failed to win over vaccine skeptics, convince MAGA […]

Knife Fights: A Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice by John A Nagl

Lobster Issue 70 (Winter 2015)

[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 […]

View from Bridge copy

Lobster Issue

[…] memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” I said, “Is it classified?” He said, “Yes, sir.” I said, “Well, don’t show it to me.” And I saw him a year or so ago, […]

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