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

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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 […]

Cloak and Dollar, and, Know Your Enemy

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Lobster Issue 43 (Summer 2002)

[…] behind US foreign policy…..was the defence of democracy’, is a joke. Or a lie. The ‘essential idea’ was to defend US economic and geopolitical interests and never mind how much (non-white) blood was spilt. It gets worse. I always look at the assassination of John Kennedy as a touchstone for academics writing about America […]

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

Northern Ireland redux

Lobster Issue 38 (Winter 1999)

[…] picture was extremely fuzzy – presumably taken with a long lens – and it is impossible to tell whether the two women are 20 or 50, never mind whether they were attractive or not. Livingstone states in his column: ‘The spy master Peter Wright, of Spycatcher fame, makes no mention in his book of […]

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

Friends of the British Secret State

Lobster Issue 16 (1988)

[…] to a reliable journalist to expose that charlatan please feel free to use it. Traitors do not deserve to get away with this kind of behaviour never mind to defame the reputation of a real hero like Airey Neave. I hope this note is of some use. Comments I am not going to rebut […]

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 […]

The View from the Bridge

Lobster Issue 33 (Summer 1997)

[…] transmit suggestions, interfere with both short-term and long-term memory…’ Next time you read about or hear about someone claiming that the CIA (or whoever) is controlling their mind or body, re-read this paragraph before dismissing them as a nutter. Gordon Brown is not gay – official One of the really comic episodes in the […]

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

Lobster Issue 38 (Winter 1999)

[…] fired some 400 Soviet experts, on the spurious ground that they were no longer needed. The relevant CIA department, known as Covert Action, ceased to operate.’ Never mind Crozier forgetting – and The Times subs missing – that it was Gerald Ford who succeeded Nixon, not Jimmy Carter, it was Crozier’s use of the […]

Sex and Rockets: the occult world of Jack Parsons

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Lobster Issue 40 (Winter 2000/1)

John Carter. Feral House, Portland (USA), 1999. Available in the UK from Counter Productions, P0 Box 556, London SE5 ORL , £15.99 plus £1.50p pp. The March Fortean Times launched this in some style, aping the book’s 1950s SF cover and giving it a respectful five page review. With the film rights sold and preparations … Read more

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