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 […]

Web update

Lobster Issue 44 (Winter 2002/3) £££

[…] and Technology http://www7.nationalacademies.org/nsb/NSB_Reports.html Report from National Academy of Science’s National Research Council, 4 November 2002. Recommends highest priority be placed in 4 areas: developing calmatives (sleep-inducing and mind altering) and malodorants to control crowds; more advanced directed-energy systems for stopping vehicles or vessels; marine barrier systems to stop attack vessels and protect perimeters; and […]

Paul Foot 1938 – 2004

Lobster Issue 49 (Summer 2005) £££

[…] you get some actors?’ (There were two sitting in the room, drinking tea.) No: Loach wanted us to improvise it. So in front of some professional actors, mind, we spent an excruciating 15 minutes trying to improvise a dialogue about the 1970s, pretending to be a British Army officers engaged in a cabal. We […]

No smoke without fire?

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Lobster Issue 52 (Winter 2006/7) £££

The Secret of Bryn Estyn: The Making of a Modern Witch Hunt Richard Webster Oxford: The Orwell Press, 2005, £25   This is an account of the various child abuse and satanic abuse cases that developed across the UK from the mid ’80s onwards. At the phenomenon’s peak, around 1995, many police forces were carrying […]

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 […]

Feedback

Lobster Issue 44 (Winter 2002/3) £££

[…] that someone’s lying, or they may simply have been produced by fallible human beings. You start out by doubting the official story, but you keep an open mind and apply the same sceptical standards to all the alternative versions. Debunking an error is an endless process, even if you believe you’ve seen a white […]

Notes From the Underground: British Fascism 1974-92

Lobster Issue 23 (1992) £££

[…] as a result of police horse action. Despite the fact that the NF had not engaged in violence that day, thenceforth they were associated in the public mind with mayhem, and realised the Left were opponents who could not be ignored, or placated. A November 1974 members’ bulletin called for the expansion of ‘facilities […]

Tittle-tattle

Lobster Issue 55 (Summer 2008) £££

[…] the siting of US missiles around Russia in his capacity as Poland’s Foreign Minister. Mention Poland in British politics and the name Denis McShane MP springs to mind. The son of a Polish émigré, McShane was, like Sikorski, deeply involved in Solidarity there before he rose to prominence in international relations, in his case […]

Liddle and Lobbygate: reflections on a Downing Street drama

Lobster Issue 36 (Winter 1998/9) £££

[…] be Mandelson’s next-door neighbour in West London) and within a day Draper had lost his lobbying job. Soon thereafter he was shorn of his weekly ‘Inside the mind of New Labour’ column in The Express which Draper claimed to have had regularly vetted by the then Minister Without Portfolio. In the next few days […]

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 […]

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