The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations

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Lobster Issue 44 (Winter 2002/3) £££

[…] Before long, Bernays was helping Israel to lobby the US military and recasting India as a worthy recipient of $1bn-worth of aid. He became the propaganda master mind in overthrowing Guatemala’s elected government on behalf of the United Fruit Company (who were worried that the country’s socialist regime would harm profits). Mind you, Bernays […]

The Road to 9/11

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Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8) £££

The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America Peter Dale Scott London and Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007, prices in the UK from £16.95   The first third of this book, 120 pages or so, is part parapolitical and part deep history of America from Nixon to Ronald Reagan’s first election … 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 […]

A vote in the can is worth two for George Bush

Lobster Issue 48 (Winter 2004) £££

The apparent re-election of George W. Bush as US President seems to have its roots in a mechanical failure. On 12 March 2004, a car went out of control on a busy highway and propelled itself in front of an 18-wheeler. The driver – an African-American clergyman called Athan Gibbs – was killed outright. Gibbs, … Read more

The View from the Bridge

Lobster Issue 41 (Summer 2001) £££

Mandy’s place in things On 12 June 1999 The News, Portugal’s weekly English-language paper, ran this comment on the Bilderberg meeting which had then just taken place in Portugal. The 47th Bilderberg Conference has come to an end. Members and one-off participants have departed as discreetly as they arrived. Lines of black limousines, unmarked except … Read more

The British Right

Lobster Issue 16 (1988) £££

[…] to Mozambique. Perhaps the Foreign Office really does know that by these means Mozambique will be won for the West. But is that truly the aim in mind? If we stand back and look at southern Africa as a whole, and we consider British policy in the wider region, doubt rushes in.” She then […]

Tittle-tattle

Lobster Issue 52 (Winter 2006/7) £££

BAP There was a nice little twist to be observed by followers of the British American Project when Home Office minister Baroness Scotland dashed to Washington this summer seeking to prevent the extradition of the NatWest Three, caught in the long shadow of Enron. The old friend of Tony and Cherie Blair was a young … Read more

UFOs in the White House Pantry: The Rockefeller Initiative

Lobster Issue 33 (Summer 1997) £££

For almost two generations, researchers in the UFO field have suspected that there is a cover-up by US government agencies which prevents any meaningful progress in discovering the facts behind the UFO myth. The single most important factor supporting this view has been the alleged crash of a UFO at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. […]

The Party of Business and the Business of Parties

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Lobster Issue 44 (Winter 2002/3) £££

[…] are presumably all institutionally incorruptible, although I wonder if that dream would stand up to close examination. (3) ‘New’ Labour is as yet only a state of mind – the Labour Party remains the Labour Party, warts and all. It is right that these warts be exposed, for the slow pace of reform may […]

Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies and the CIA in Central America (Book review)

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Lobster Issue 24 (December 1992) £££

Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall University of California Press, Cambridge (UK) 1991, £8.95. The basic rule of politics, domestic and international is that my enemy’s enemy is my friend. That rule ensured that the CIA adopted as allies the opium growers of the Golden Triangle in the 1960s and 70s, and the heroin producing […]

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