Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA and the Secret History of the Sixties by Tom O’Neill

Lobster Issue 80 (Winter 2020)

[PDF file]: […] for LSD research. This, of course, sets off – admittedly faint – alarm bells that the HAFMC research had something to do with the CIA’s MK-Ultra ( mind control) project. MK-Ultra These alarm bells go off big time however, when O’Neill brings in Dr Jolyon West – the man who conducted the notorious experiment […]

South of the border (occasional snippets from)

Lobster Issue 91 (2025)

[PDF file]: […] of ‘crass assassination plots’.2 Which is an odd way of describing what had happened, as the Merriam-Webster definition of crass is ‘having or indicating such grossness of mind as precludes delicacy and discrimination’.3 Indeed, leading figures from the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) would have it very differently. Speaking a month after the […]

Holding pattern

Lobster Issue 71 (Summer 2016)

[PDF file]: […] is at 2 scepticism (given full wind on social media) when post-election stories about anomalous results started to trickle in. The example that is foremost in my mind is the constituency of Bedford Borough, my place of birth and a key Tory-Labour marginal. Here it was reported that a sack containing 5,000 extra votes […]

Inside the Trump Administration

Lobster Issue 83 (Summer 2022)

[PDF file]: […] purely partisan political purposes or personal gain’. There had been what amounted to a ‘kind of privatization of national security’. (p. 253) Rudy Giuliani immediately springs to mind in this regard. This was to lead to her giving evidence at Trump’s first impeachment, a key witness whose testimony took 10 hours to deliver. But […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 80 (Winter 2020)

[PDF file]: […] on the free market/business groups assembled around the Conservative Party’s spokespeople on the environment and economic policy, on a site that is new to me, DESMOG.uk.13 Never mind the imminent collapse of the environment, what we need is more economic freedom and less government regulation! The question that always arises with these groups is […]

Kelly Bond 007 essay

Lobster Issue

[…] began writing the 007 books, the official story is that Fleming began to write ‘the spy story to end all spy stories’ in order to ‘take his mind off an impending marriage’. While marriage for the long time bachelor was certainly in the works, other more important things were on his mind. Noel Coward, […]

The View from the Bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] review was reposted at Aaronovitch Watch at . put on their front pages the fact that the Labour Party had hired a former Obama strategist to master mind their forthcoming election campaign. Of course they looked to America. Where else? As these columns have reported ad nauseam for nearly twenty years, the Labour Party […]

The DRE newsletter (June – August 1963)

Lobster Issue 83 (Summer 2022)

[PDF file]: […] vessel’s seaworthiness, thus relaxing the Customs office’s surveillance and allowing the raiding party to escape. It is safe to say that no Customs official in their right mind would have taken the unsupported word of the boat’s owner on something so crucial. Cuban surnames follow the Spanish pattern. An individual’s surname is their father’s […]

1976 and all that: the IMF incident

Lobster Issue 89 (2024)

[PDF file]: […] 23 November 1976 Tony Benn noted in his diary, ‘Peter suspected the figures produced by the Treasury.’ As did Prime Minister Callaghan: ‘The only doubt in my mind, borne of previous experience, was how far to trust the figures.’ James Callaghan, Time and Chance (London: Collins, 1987) p. 422. Healey wrote: ‘I cannot help […]

Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor / Hiroshima / 9-11 / Iraq by John W. Dower

Lobster Issue

[…] of war), the length and verbosity of the various US enquiries set up to determine culpability for being ‘unprepared’ at Pearl Harbour, suggest a widespread frame of mind that takes as its starting point that America is entitled to regard itself as invulnerable.1 This conclusion is strengthened by the author neglecting to discuss the […]

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