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 […]

Defending the Realm: MI5 and the Shayler Affair

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Lobster Issue 38 (Winter 1999)

[…] a Philip Agee of the 1990s; and I for one am still unclear as to why he blew the whistle in the way he did. But never mind: thanks to Shayler’s information we have an insider account of MI5’s recent activities. The authors have compiled a quick sketch of MI5’s history up to the […]

The Politics of Apolitical Culture: The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA and post-war American hegemony

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Lobster Issue 43 (Summer 2002)

Giles Scott-Smith London: Routledge/PSA 2002, £55   This is a welcome addition to the growing literature on the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA-funded operation that ran for two decades after World War II of which Encounter magazine was the best-known British component. Giles Scott-Smith has added to the historical record well illuminated by Christopher … Read more

Coach into pumpkin: some problems with Paget

Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8)

[…] I might take this as a claim that Britain’s security and intelligence institutions have been involved in assassinations (the attempts to get Nasser or Lumumba spring to mind). Paget’s reply to Fayed’s assertion is: ‘It is important to note in the Stevens (Northern Ireland) Report that the term “agents” is used to refer to […]

Print: Journals and book review

Lobster Issue 17 (1988)

[…] some such isn’t too expensive. The Radical Right: a world directory Ciaran O Maolain Longman, London This is as massive and impressive as it sounds, a fairly mind blowing piece of research. The subject index runs to 69 pages. There will be nits to pick from almost everybody interested in the right, but this […]

Popular Alienation

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Lobster Issue 33 (Summer 1997)

[…] for example contains this sequence of articles: a piece about Gerald Posner’s Case Closed; a piece called ‘Secret Service Masers Kill and Make Whores’ about implants and mind control programmes of the US government, which ought to be a spoof but probably isn’t; an interview with a man called Lars Hansson which covers the […]

Sex and Rockets: the occult world of Jack Parsons

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Lobster Issue 40 (Winter 2000/1)

John Carter. Feral House, Portland (USA), 1999. Available in the UK from Counter Productions, P0 Box 556, London SE5 ORL , £15.99 plus £1.50p pp. The March Fortean Times launched this in some style, aping the book’s 1950s SF cover and giving it a respectful five page review. With the film rights sold and preparations … Read more

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 […]

Clinton and Quigley: a strange tale from the U.S. elite

Lobster Issue 25 (1993)

[…] a kind of bible. Here was the proof, the academically respectable proof, of the great conspiracy. It may not have been quite the conspiracy they had in mind, but it was a conspiracy nonetheless. But apart from them, the only people who seem to have taken Quigley on board have been Shoup and Minter […]

Systemic Corruption, Systemic Solutions

Lobster Issue 38 (Winter 1999)

[…] Did the £12 million donation to the Dome buy the tax exemption? We can’t know (though prevarications on chronology to investigative reporters suggests a guilty state of mind). Certainly, the donation made turning down requests for meetings and secret negotiations difficult. Secret meetings are held for the purpose of keeping others out. In the […]

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