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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

The Thimble Riggers: The Dublin Arms Trials of 1970

Lobster Issue 45 (Summer 2003) £££

James Kelly Published by the author at 30 Curzon St., Dublin 8 ISBN 0 9535992 0 5, £11.95, p/b This is the second version of this story by James Kelly. The first, Orders for the Captain, was reviewed in Lobster 15. Kelly was a senior officer in the Irish intelligence service who became involved in … Read more

Defrauding America: a pattern of related scandals

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Lobster Issue 31 (June 1996) £££

Rodney Stich Diablo Western Press, USA, 1994 The first thing to be said is that this is a huge (650 pages), fascinating book; and I recommend it. It is really three stories interwoven. The first section describes the author’s experience of trying to alert the American civil aviation industry, then the politicians and then the […]

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 […]

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