The covert origins of the Biafran War

Lobster Issue 25 (1993)

[…] white sahibs retaliated by calling the white officials of the South, who were forever building schools and dispensaries, “nigger lovers”. ‘In this topsy turvy world of secret intelligence reports, MI5, pimps, prostitutes, rape and murder, presided over by the Colonial Office and Harold Macmillan, it was not surprising that the Nigerian political leader of […]

Still hazy after all these years

Lobster Issue 57 (Summer 2009)

[…] hinted that something might turn up from an unexpected quarter. Turner suspects that Farewell America was that something; that although the book was put together by French intelligence people, it was the contact with Kostikov which led to it. The pseudonymous writer of the book was Thomas Buchanan, author of the 1964 Who Killed […]

My encounter with George K. Young and Tory Action, 1979-1988

Lobster Issue 52 (Winter 2006/7)

[…] MI6 no. 2, George Kennedy Young, loomed large in the imagination of the section of the British left which was interested in the political activities of former intelligence officers. His activities with Unison in 1973-5 remain unclear but here John Andrews describes the group which succeeded it, Tory Action. Lobster 19 contained an autobiographical […]

Our Friends in the North West: The Owen Oyston Affair

Lobster Issue 34 (Winter 1997)

[…] Murrin told Sir Peter Blaker, ‘An alternative funding source really needs to be lined up but I can only leave that to you. My own network of intelligence is now building up and I would expect results after the summer.’ 30 July Owen Oyston resigned as chairman of Red Rose Radio. September Oyston bought […]

Ken Livingstone’s questions

Lobster Issue 16 (1988)

[…] two further occasions in 1983. 26 NOV 72 Serial No: D 7364 C. I. A. This Certificate of Credentials is issued under the authority of the Central Intelligence Agency. It is requested that the bearer be afforded the necessary help to enable him to satisfactorily discharge his duties. 15 November 1971: Harold Wilson visits […]

The View from the Bridge

Lobster Issue 37 (Summer 1999)

[…] by all manner of spooks to run all manner of disinformation while he was editor and this spiel of his on Chile looks very much like an intelligence briefing – maybe even one of those distributed at the time of the Chile coup when Neil was working for the Economist, a regular outlet for […]

Beyond Hypocrisy: Decoding the news in an age of propaganda

Book cover
Lobster Issue 24 (December 1992)

[…] Terrorism Industry: the experts and institutions that shape our view of Terror, written with Jerry O’Sullivan (for Pantheon Books, New York, 1990) an examination of the think-tanks, intelligence agents and assorted media manipulators who have attempted to develop ‘terrorism’ as a more cogent focus of political loyalty than the tattered remnants of its predecessor, […]

The crisis

Lobster Issue 57 (Summer 2009)

In Parish Notices in the last issue I wrote ‘there isn’t much in this issue about the economic situation because there really isn’t much to say that hasn’t already been said, for example by Larry Elliot in The Guardian every week.’ Well, I changed my mind about that and here are the bits I found … Read more

Euro-bound? Or: the same river twice

Lobster Issue 39 (Summer 2000)

[…] In the Sunday Times of 5 December 1999 Stephen Grey reported: Tony Blair is under pressure from European leaders to support the creation of a ‘federalised’ EU intelligence service to help manage world crises. The move, proposed by Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor, and President Jacques Chirac of France, is seen as the first […]

The Rhodes-Milner Group

Lobster Issue 13 (1987)

[…] issues, then there is some conspiring that goes on in CFR, not to mention in the Committee for Economic Development, the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency.” G. William Domhoff, “Who made American Foreign Policy 1945-1963?” in David Horowitz ed. Corporations and the Cold War, (Monthly Review Press, New York, 1969) p34n […]

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