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 […]

The rise of warfare capitalism

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Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8)

[…] were former members of the Communist Party or members of the Demos think tank. Names like Peter Mandelson, Stuart Hall, Martin Kettle and Martin Jacques spring to mind immediately What particularly interests me about Marshall’s book is its dissection of Christopher and Peter Hitchins’s politics and what it says about the absorption of former […]

Welcome to Mars: Fantasies of Science in the American Century 1947-1959

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Lobster Issue 57 (Summer 2009)

[…] were the other stories. Some were the horror stories with which we have become familiar: for example MK-Ultra and Ewen Cameron’s insane experiments with reprogramming the human mind which Hollings discusses. But also: by 1959 Cary Grant had taken LSD over 60 times as part of a Hollywood set who were using it with […]

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 […]

The Politics of Apolitical Culture: The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA and post-war American hegemony

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Lobster Issue 43 (Summer 2002)

Giles Scott-Smith London: Routledge/PSA 2002, £55   This is a welcome addition to the growing literature on the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA-funded operation that ran for two decades after World War II of which Encounter magazine was the best-known British component. Giles Scott-Smith has added to the historical record well illuminated by Christopher … Read more

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 […]

Coach into pumpkin: some problems with Paget

Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8)

[…] I might take this as a claim that Britain’s security and intelligence institutions have been involved in assassinations (the attempts to get Nasser or Lumumba spring to mind). Paget’s reply to Fayed’s assertion is: ‘It is important to note in the Stevens (Northern Ireland) Report that the term “agents” is used to refer to […]

Marching to the fault line: The 1984 miners’ strike and the death of industrial Britain

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Lobster Issue 57 (Summer 2009)

[…] industrial trade union, led by CPGB members and ex-members, opposing government policy, was more than enough. The nonsense – the communist conspiracy theory – in Mrs Thatcher’s mind was of no relevance to MI5. But it surely is relevant to this story. Beckett and Hencke give us an expanded take on the received version […]

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.

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