The View from the Bridge

Lobster Issue 44 (Winter 2002/3)

[…] closures. No reference is made to bringing company or country down. In the intervening twenty years Edwardes’ memory has gilded the lily. Spook think The Security Service mind is a wonderful thing. To it a potential risk is the same as an actual risk. Thus we discover that Lord Bethell, a Conservative Whip in […]

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 […]

Thinking about the Falklands

Lobster Issue

[…] even more in her determination to demonstrate the “persistence of illusions about Britain’s place in the world.” (1) This version of events is attractive to the liberal mind because it looks like an exemplary demonstration of the cockup theory of history, and it is that which passes for political sophistication in most of respectable […]

Policing Politics: Security Intelligence and the Liberal Democratic State

Lobster Issue 27 (1994)

[…] out no operation, investigation, surveillance or action against any individual otherwise than for the purposes laid down in its directive.’ The words ‘lying’ and ‘bastard’ come to mind, as they say. Gill takes a deep breath and contents himself with observing that ‘such an inquiry, to be carried out properly, would have taken many […]

Watergate revisited: Hougan’s ‘Secret Agenda’

Lobster Issue 9 (1985)

[…] as the Nixon people knew that the CIA knew, they (the White House) must have known that it was all going to come out. With this in mind we should perhaps not so readily accept Hougan’s assertion that the Agency couldn’t have foreseen the outcome. Indeed, we need not assume – as Hougan does […]

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

Re:

Lobster Issue 48 (Winter 2004)

Who was who? The newly published Oxford Dictionary of National Biography not only surveys the lives of the great and the good, but also includes accounts of individuals in the murkier fields of human endeavour. Over fifty spies are listed, for example, including historical figures such as ‘Parliament Joan’ (c1600-1655?) and ‘Pickle the Spy’ (c1725-1761). … Read more

Web update

Lobster Issue 35 (Summer 1998)

[…] Expose Government Corruption and Corporate Crime http://www.well.com/user/pfrankli/ Provides info on high level corruption and crime; eg Danny Casolaro case (INSLAW, PROMIS etc); Iran-Contra affair; BCCI; Panam flight 103; Savings and Loan Industry failure; CIA; NSA; FBI: government corruption during cold war, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s etc. Extensive links, including material on conspiracies, mind control, media censorship.

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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