Northern Ireland Act 1974

Lobster Issue 14 (1987) £££

[…] more to boost support for those pursuing a violent solution for Northern Ireland than anything that they could have done themselves. There is no doubt in my mind that the Royal Ulster Constabulary had a shoot-to-kill policy. That has been successfully covered up, but it came close to exposure when Mr. John Stalker was […]

The Big C: Further notes on ‘conspiracy’

Lobster Issue 24 (December 1992) £££

[…] to an interview with Jonathan Vankin, author of what sounds like a kind of compendium of conspiracies and conspiracy theories, Conspiracies, Cover-ups and Crimes: Political Manipulation and Mind Control in America (Paragon Books). Vankin offered this: ‘The accepted paradigm — the established view that the conspiracy theorists are struggling to overthrow — might be […]

Elvis has left the building: Political Perspectives on the Fall of Polly Peck

Lobster Issue 41 (Summer 2001) £££

[…] by circling sharks. The Politicisation of Polly Peck ‘Certain values in life are higher than commerce, profits or personal benefits. The issue of northern Cyprus in my mind should be valued that high’ – Ail Nadir. (4) From 1987 onwards, Polly Peck became increasingly a political entity, as well as a commercial one: in […]

MI5: New Threats for Old? Turning up the Heat: MI5 after the Cold War

Lobster Issue 28 (December 1994) £££

[…] writing the Security Service had not quite taken over all the areas they have set their minds on. Apparently with the model of the FBI’s franchise in mind – subversion, terrorism, espionage and federal crime – Mrs Rimington is pitching to take over part of the police’s crime franchise. She offers MI5’s ‘distinctive role…..the […]

Hacks, pols and PR

Book cover
Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8) £££

The Triumph of the Political Class Peter Oborne London: Simon & Schuster, 2007, £18.99 Thinker, Faker, Spinner, Spy: Corporate PR and the Assault on Democracy Edited by William Dinan and David Miller London: Pluto, 2007, £15.99 End Times: The Death of the Fourth Estate Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair CounterPunch and AK Press, Oakland … Read more

Books and Pamphlets

Lobster Issue 13 (1987) £££

[…] new member of a very small category, the geopolitical conspiracy theory satire. (Only Report from Iron Mountain and the various books by Robert Anton Wilson spring to mind in this area.) For this reason alone it is worth getting. (How effective a piece of satire, and how good a piece of writing, is a […]

UFOs and the governments of the USA and UK

Lobster Issue 32 (December 1996) £££

[…] proposal and submit it to them. When I inquired about some landing reports, I was asked to specify the date of the particular cases I had in mind. Although this is a component of the MOD, it is not situated in Whitehall. Neither is it Defence Intelligence 55 (DI55), though sources within DI55 have […]

There’s no smear like an old smear

Lobster Issue 23 (1992) £££

[…] nation-wide occurrences.’ Bessie Braddock assured the reader that this ‘bears all the distinctive marks of a genuine Communist directive’. Although it is difficult to parody the Stalinist mind, I doubt that even the Cominform would actually have written that ‘new and concentrated effort must be made by specially suitable undercover activists to penetrate into […]

Feedback

Lobster Issue 40 (Winter 2000/1) £££

[…] for this sensitive mission, there was only one crew-member, the pilot. This makes sense in terms of secrecy, a consideration that would have been paramount in the mind of the CIA planners. Because of this necessary limitation, is it not possible that the aircraft was adapted to carry its munitions on wing pylons that, […]

The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East

Book cover
Lobster Issue 51 (Summer 2006) £££

[…] 1953. This is Fisk’s observation on that 1997 meeting at Woodhouse’s retirement home in Oxford: ‘The coup against Mossadeq, the return of the Shah, was, in Woodhouse’s mind, a holding operation, a postponement of history. There was also the little matter of the AIOC, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company – later British Petroleum – which […]

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