Obituaries: Kim Besly & Anthony Verney

Lobster Issue 32 (December 1996)

[…] in an effort to dissuade them from protesting the basing of nuclear armed Cruise missiles on British soils. If the United States Air Force and the Central Intelligence Agency had just played their cards cooly, Kim Besly would have remained a foot soldier in the battle against American imperialism. However one thing led to […]

Understanding others

Lobster Issue 50 (Winter 2005/6)

[…] and error in Northern Ireland, involves the following: A comprehensive plan to alleviate the political conditions behind the insurgency; civil-military cooperation; the application of minimum force; deep intelligence; and an acceptance of the protracted nature of the conflict. Deep cultural knowledge of the adversary is inherent to the British approach.’ In his interesting short […]

Spook-wise: MI6 and Clare Short

Lobster Issue 40 (Winter 2000/1)

[…] Africa. The spooks must love having Labour in office, terrified to oppose anything they ask for. Hitherto secret Whitehall committee trying to deal with unauthorised exposure of intelligence material was itself exposed in the Sunday Times 21 May 2000. A page of the Guardian (tabloid section) 24 September 1999 was devoted to the Ken […]

The Men with the Guns

Lobster Issue 8 (1985)

The Men with the Guns G.F. Newman (Sphere, London 1984) I’ve got a lot of time for G.F. Newman. He’s written some of the best, sharpest, things about contemporary Britain: the Law and Order series and the Terry Sneed novels are the obvious places to start. But this – perhaps because of the shift to … Read more

Articles

Lobster Issue 13 (1987)

[…] US War Department. “The solution was very simple. If State would not approve immigration due to derogatory OMGUS (Office of Military Government US) reports, the JOIA (Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency) would change the reports.” Date-line Washington: anti-Semitism and the airwaves Lars-Erik Nelson in Foreign Policy No.65, Winter 1986 Since Reagan took office Radio Liberty, […]

The view from the bridge. Hidden Agendas. Jack Hill. Ghandi. Sinn Fein. Oswald

Lobster Issue 36 (Winter 1998/9)

[…] party magazine of the Hindu nationalist party now in government in India, BJP Today, has suggested that the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi was the work of British intelligence agents. The article, written by R. Chandrachundan, a close friend of Ghandi’s son, reports the presence of two men from the British consulate with cameras on […]

The view from the bridge. JFK. Waco. Oklahoma. Timor. Moral Rearmament Movement

Lobster Issue 38 (Winter 1999)

[…] (See the anodyne obit in Guardian 25 October). Expendables Two recent examples of the way HMG treats its employees when they become embarrassing. Peter Bleach, a former intelligence officer turned arms dealer, is in prison in India after an arms deal he was involved with went sour. The Indian court agreed to examine notes […]

The British Lion “Letters to the Editor”, from Maxwell Knight

Lobster Issue 25 (1993)

[…] tungsten, a ‘strategic’ metal, became embroiled in the region’s indigenous organised crime and began what Marshall, after P.D.Scott, calls the ‘government-gang symbiosis……. The common nexus between narcotics, intelligence, ultraright nationalism, organized crime, and respectable politics in Asia has thus had ominous parallels in the United States.’ (p. 461) This esssay makes a very interesting […]

Value Wars: The Global Market versus the Life Economy

Book cover
Lobster Issue 44 (Winter 2002/3)

John McMurtry London: Pluto Press, 2002, pb £15.99   I shouldn’t be reviewing this. I haven’t digested it properly and it is going to take some time to do so. But I don’t want to leave this for six months without promoting it. I used to try and preserve books in good condition, didn’t write … Read more

PR, espionage and language

Lobster Issue 50 (Winter 2005/6)

[…] pride: if the British are doing it, so should we. This meant that a welfare issue could be prioritised. At times, it could also mean that the intelligence services could pass a coded message, via Hansard, to, for example, a senior health professional who was a source in another country, without being seen to […]

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