Parafinance: Enron and drilling for red ink

Lobster Issue 43 (Summer 2002) £££

See Note (1) Introduction In The Wealth of Nations, a book supposed to underpin modern free-market philosophies, Adam Smith thought that the separation of management from ownership would inevitably gave rise to negligence and corruption. The owners of Enron were the shareholders, represented by pension funds, banks and trust funds. The chief managers of Enron […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 52 (Winter 2006/7) £££

Mr Tony was a spook? Issue 7 of Larry O’Hara’s Note from the Borderland () includes a section from the Anne Machon and David Shayler book, Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers (reviewed in Lobster 49), which was apparently dropped by the publisher. The key section is this, from an unnamed MI5 officer: ‘Blair was recruited early […]

SNAFU in Dallas

Lobster Issue 23 (1992) £££

[…] Gaulle in this period. But it is difficult to believe that any of the powerful elements in the U.S. state apparatus — the intelligence agencies or the Pentagon, for example — would have felt it necessary to ambush Kennedy if they just wanted to get rid of him or change some of his policies. […]

The View from the Bridge

Lobster Issue 37 (Summer 1999) £££

[…] by David Cairns, an ‘official in the European Union department of the Foreign Office.’ A familiar ring? In November 1997 the JFK Assassination Records Review Board released Pentagon documents which, according to the Reuters’ report on this, show that ‘The Pentagon drew up plans to mount a bloody “terror campaign” in the United States…. […]

Mark Felt, Jason Blair and ‘Misty Beethoven’

Lobster Issue 50 (Winter 2005/6) £££

[…] source. The results are there to be seen in your daily newspaper: story after story attributed to no one in particular: ‘Speaking on condition of anonymity, a Pentagon official said’, ‘White House sources denied’. So the news gets fuzzier – some would say it becomes more propagandistic – as sources disappear. Ambitious and calculating […]

Michael Ledeen again

Lobster Issue 49 (Summer 2005) £££

[…] ‘He was very concerned about getting along with the administration…… and “playing along” really meant to sustain the conceptions of the policy makers – particularly at the Pentagon and the Vice-President’s office – that Saddam Hussein was a real and imminent danger. ‘To do that, you had to accept some of these alarming reports […]

Why are we with Uncle Sam?

Lobster Issue 57 (Summer 2009) £££

[…] administration. (2) Young asked Cook why the British government supports the US so slavishly. ‘Because of the Ministry of Defence’s fanatical determination to keep close to the Pentagon. They will never do anything that puts that relationship out of line. The truth is that it is the pivot of all military careers and a […]

Reflections on the ‘cult of the offensive’

Lobster Issue 57 (Summer 2009) £££

[…] a natural order – or at least, should be made so. Hence, as we have also discussed, the efforts of Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney at the Pentagon to establish the pre-emptive principle as a part of the US strategic furniture. Despite mounting near-unilateral military efforts in Iraq and the Balkans, the doctrinal case […]

Deception

Book cover
Lobster Issue 55 (Summer 2008) £££

[…] was helping the USA in its war with the Soviets in Afghanistan, and (b) US arms corporations were making money selling weapons systems and planes to the Pentagon which were being passed on to the Pakistan military as part of the price of co-operation in ‘the war on terror’. In short: Pakistan acquired the […]

Iraq

Lobster Issue 47 (Summer 2004) £££

[…] Sir Michael is among a number of senior British commanders who are said to question Britain’s backing for a US invasion of Iraq, and are sceptical of Pentagon claims about Saddam Hussein’s links with the al-Qa’ida terror organisation and his stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction.’ (1) Even more off-message On 25 January 2004 […]

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