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

Book cover
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

Book cover
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

Lockerbie, the octopus and the Maltese double cross

Lobster Issue 27 (1994) £££

[…] Talb. After lengthy sessions with CIA personnel, the Maltese shopkeeper who had previously recognised a photograph of Talb — a 35 year-old Palestinian — apparently changed his mind and fingered a Libyan airline official in his fifties. This identification, along with allegations — later disproved — that a Swiss-made timing device for the Lockerbie […]

Edward Heath made me angry

Lobster Issue 48 (Winter 2004) £££

[…] account. Christie knew a couple of the AB people slightly, his circle butted onto theirs at a couple of places, and you can imagine how the SB/MI5 mind viewed that. Just to make sure, they planted the detonators ‘found’ in his car. It appears, indeed, that, with the exception of Christie (who was acquitted) […]

Recent JFK (and related) literature

Lobster Issue 31 (June 1996) £££

BROWN, Walt. Referenced Index Guide to the Warren Commission. Wilmington (Delaware): elmax, 1995. 303 pps. An essential work of navigation for anyone sailing the seas of the Report and the Hearings and Exhibits. Supplements rather than replaces the search facilities on the Warren Commission CD-ROMs. COLLOM, Mark, and SAMPLE, Glen. The Men on the Sixth … 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

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

The View from the Bridge. Psy-ops. Common Cause. Larry Flynt. Hepple/Matthews. John Ware

Lobster Issue 35 (Summer 1998) £££

A stranger harvest The best single volume on the alien abduction connundrum I have come across is C.D. B. Bryan’s Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London 1995). In it Linda Moulton Howe, the American film-maker who made A Strange Harvest about the ‘cattle mutilation’ phenomenon in the United States, describes to … Read more

The Party of Business and the Business of Parties

Book cover
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 […]

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

Accessibility Toolbar