Directory of British Political Organisations, 1994

Lobster Issue 27 (1994) £££

[…] of our civil libertarian position on immigration, victimless crimes, sexual freedom and tolerance, free speech and censorship, and threats to civil liberties, is hardly what comes to mind when the term ‘right-wing’ is used. Neither does the author mention that we have as many ‘links’ with libertarian socialists, anarchists, sexual minorities, other civil libertarians, […]

Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers

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Lobster Issue 49 (Summer 2005) £££

Annie Machon Lewes (East Sussex): Book Guild, 2005, h/b, £17.95   It is hard to ‘see’ this book because a lot of the material, especially in the first half, is familiar, half-remembered from the press reporting of the Shayler-Machon drama and the book Defending the Realm by Nick Fielding and Mark Hollingsworth. Nonetheless, familiar or […]

Secret Contenders

Lobster Issue 8 (1985) £££

[…] Russians. The KGB did the same with Russian students. The intelligence value was nil. In the early sixties the CIA placed a lot of hopes on ‘ mind control’, experimenting with drugs, hypnosis and programming a la ‘Manchurian Candidate’. The most bizarre episode in Beck’s book concerns an attempt by a CIA shrink to […]

Spy Master: The Betrayal of MI5

Lobster Issue 31 (June 1996) £££

[…] (p. 222) (emphasis added) ‘Hollis had set up the entire operation, without the knowledge of his staff’ (p. 255) A one-man Hollis operation? Hollis the Superman? The mind boggles. According to West, ‘The only conclusion possible from all of this is that Hollis was personally responsible for the Profumo debacle from start to finish. […]

Philanthropic imperialism

Lobster Issue 53 (Summer 2007) £££

[…] On a general level there is no reason to suppose that much work has been done that examines and scrutinises democracy building to an adequate level, never mind penetrating the intrigue or following the money. Wersch & Zeeuw (themselves funded by Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs via the Clingendael Institute) state that apart from […]

Willy Brandt: the “Good German”

Lobster Issue 22 (1991) £££

[…] advice which, looking back, I should not have taken. I was right to shoulder the political responsibility …… I could not have soldiered on with an easy mind.’ He was a sensitive person who placed a great deal on personal integrity and loyalty. At the moment of crisis “government officials and even Ministers, hastened […]

Acid: the secret history of LSD

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Lobster Issue 35 (Summer 1998) £££

David Black, Vision, London, 1998, £9.99 pb I enjoyed this book hugely, and I’d recommend it to anyone remotely interested in the politics of psychedelia – apart from anything else, there are stories here you almost certainly won’t have heard. However, overall it aspires to more than it can deliver. As the title implies, the […]

A Century of War: Anglo-American oil politics and the new world order

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Lobster Issue 49 (Summer 2005) £££

William Engdahl London: Pluto, 2004, £15.99, p/b   Google the author and you will find him listed as a senior member of the Lyndon LaRouche org in 1998, European Economic Editor of Executive Intelligence Review.() Although I have been told by his publisher that he is no longer with LaRouche, the book’s first edition was […]

Miscellany

Lobster Issue 8 (1985) £££

[…] the standard academic studies of domestic Italian post-war politics the ‘apertura’ merits merely a line or two. But with hindsight, and the recent events in Italy in mind, this is surely an area which will repay further study. This reminds me again of how important it is to re-read everything. I haven’t looked at […]

The Internet: a strategic assessment by the US Department of Defense

Lobster Issue 31 (June 1996) £££

[…] counter-intelligence purposes, but ‘if it became widely known that DoD was monitoring internet traffic for intelligence or counterintelligence purposes, individuals with personal agendas or political purposes in mind, or who enjoy playing pranks, would deliberately enter false or misleading messages’. Offensive uses of the internet: ‘Politically active groups using the internet could be vulnerable […]

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