Pretexts

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Lobster Issue 46 (Winter 2003)

[…] seems unable to recognise that whilst Iraq does not present the challenges of a jungle topography, it does contain a human challenge more demanding. No amount of Agent Orange and puppet regime change will make the Islamic undergrowth disappear; it will merely help to propagate a diffuse but deeply rooted resistance which Bush’s tough-talking […]

The Men with the Guns

Lobster Issue 8 (1985)

[…] A third version appeared in 1980, entitled Beyond The Gemstone Files. It claimed to have being ‘written’ by one Peter Renzo, who claimed to be an ex-CIA agent. (A story and excerpts from this appeared in the Boston Globe April 19 1980). Renzo was, of course, a bullshitter, and, as the excerpts show, all […]

Beyond Hypocrisy: Decoding the news in an age of propaganda

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Lobster Issue 24 (December 1992)

Edward S. Herman (with illustrations by Matt Wuerker) South End Press, Boston, USA, 1992, $13.00 (USA). The passing of the Bush regime is a good time to pause and express thanks to one of those American writers who have tenaciously dug out the reality behind the business-sponsored counter-revolution that has largely formed the politics of … Read more

The Cecil King coup plot

Lobster Issue 55 (Summer 2008)

[…] Blair and Gordon Brown, have been Thatcherite. Cusack and McDonald, The UVF, (Dublin: Poolbeg, 2000) White, B., John Hume: Statesman of the Troubles (Belfast: Blackstaff, 1984) Ulster, October, 1986 The title of the article was ‘John Hume: CIA agent’. In Lobster 33. David Trimble savaged the Jonathan Powell memoir in a review in The Guardian

Vatican Connections

Lobster Issue 1 (1983)

[…] Calvi’s death.(City Limits 8th July 1983). Information on British Freemasons and their links to other Masonic organisations? John McCaffery, of Rorsburg, Scotland. A former war-time British intelligence agent, McCaffery died in February. Just before his death he made out an affidavit stating that he had plotted with Sindona in an attempt to overthrow the […]

Wallace on Pincher on Wallace

Lobster Issue 21 (1991)

[…] the Directorate of Army Security at that time had joined the Directorate from Northern Ireland where he had worked closely with MI5. In particular, he ran an agent named James Miller, who infiltrated Tara, the Loyalist paramilitary group linked with the Kincora child sex scandal. Last year, the BBC’s Public Eye programme broadcast details […]

Acid: the secret history of LSD

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Lobster Issue 35 (Summer 1998)

David Black, Vision, London, 1998, £9.99 pb I enjoyed this book hugely, and I’d recommend it to anyone remotely interested in the politics of psychedelia – apart from anything else, there are stories here you almost certainly won’t have heard. However, overall it aspires to more than it can deliver. As the title implies, the … Read more

The CIA, the British Left and the Cold War: Calling the Tune?

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Lobster Issue 49 (Summer 2005)

[…] its creation, it always seemed likely that Bilderberg was a British enterprise; and Wilford concludes this, citing a C. D. Jackson comment that Retinger was a British agent, an opinion ‘pretty well shared by some other people who are in a position to know better than I ’ – reference, presumably, to the CIA […]

Mind control

Lobster Issue 28 (December 1994)

Is your journey really necessary? The Guardian ‘Weekend’ section of August 13, 1994, carried a piece called ‘The Seeds of Madness’, about Mark Purdey, the dairy farmer who has opposed the British agro-chemical industry, believing that the so-called ‘mad cow disease’, BSE, was the result of organo-phosphate poisoning. Life became complicated for him and the […]

Children and the Official Secrets Act

Lobster Issue 55 (Summer 2008)

Some of the spook recruitment pitches in the media of the last two years have gone out of their way to impress upon prospective candidates the family-friendly credentials of the major state spook employers.(1) But such measures, no matter how sincere and/or necessary, are for the most part aimed at a parent’s convenience – and … Read more

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