Lobster Issue 57 (Summer 2009)
Frost/Nixon Or, a load of old dick When Frost/Nixon first appeared at the Donmar Warehouse theatre in London back in 2006 I wondered why on earth anyone would want to stage, to recreate, what was, essentially, a non-event. Why indeed? One can imagine mere actors relishing the opportunity to ‘interpret’ Frost and Nixon but who … Read more
Lobster Issue 52 (Winter 2006/7)
Clint Eastwood Movies Flags of Our Fathers, directed by Clint Eastwood and to be released in Britain in December 2006, is an example of post-9-11 PR. It tells the story of the 1945 battle for Iwo Jima and has been described as the first film in which the balance of combat and public relations has … Read more
Lobster Issue 36 (Winter 1998/9)
edited by Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones and Christopher Andrew Frank Cass, London/Portland, Oregon, 1997, £15.00 pb There are two kinds of books about the CIA: there are those like William Blum’s, advertised in this issue, which see the CIA simply as part of the US post-war empire, the sharp end of imperial enforcement, somewhere between the … Read more
Lobster Issue 43 (Summer 2002)
[…] injuring all but one of its occupants. Immediately after the crash and before the emergency services arrived, Henri Paul was injected with a cocktail of alcohol and drugs to help establish him as the posthumous patsy. Diana was left to succumb to her injuries, her deliberately slow progress to hospital being part of a […]
Lobster Issue 56 (Winter 2008/9)
The three Arrigos In the last Lobster (‘Spookaroonie’, p. 26) I noted the comments on <intelforum.org> of Maria Arrigo, a ‘social psychologist with experience in [intelligence] operations’ asking for evidence of ‘covert weapons experiments in post-war South America’ and wondered what was afoot. It was just an interesting little snippet which I came across at … Read more
Lobster Issue 52 (Winter 2006/7)
[…] motive in many cases. The individuals concerned often lived in small towns with few prospects, were unemployed, had generally difficult circumstances, had debts and were dependent on drugs.( ) They would be contacted by former colleagues, journalists or solicitors, told that they could make financial claims funded by legal aid and sheltering behind the […]
Lobster Issue 36 (Winter 1998/9)
[…] classic Tory background. Eton/Oxford, inherited Beaverbrook wealth, writing speeches for Selwyn Lloyd (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) at 19 etc. He was also a libertarian, calling for drugs to be decriminalised, conducting numerous high society affairs and surviving an Official Secrets trial in 1969, having revealed too much about whom Britain was backing in […]
Lobster Issue 43 (Summer 2002)
[…] of influencing the democratic process. (The coked-up monkeys, similarly, were a rigged sample evidently intended to provide support for a larger campaign – the floundering ‘War on Drugs’). Labour figures moved to distance themselves from the attempted fraud. Campaign manager Peter Mandelson announced that ‘I have made clear……. that nothing of the kind should […]