Permanent Record by Edward Snowden

Lobster Issue 80 (Winter 2020)

[PDF file]: […] the powers-that-be. According to Greenwald’s somewhat hysterical formulation, the citizen understands that if they ‘. . . pose no challenge and you have nothing to worry about. Mind your own business, and support or at least tolerate what we do, and you’ll be fine. Put differently, you must refrain from provoking the authority that […]

THEY KNEW: how a culture of conspiracy keep America complacent by Sarah Kendzior

Lobster Issue 88 (2024)

[PDF file]: […] and conspiracy theories, that in many ways serve to distract from, and cover-up, what is actually going on. As she points out: Watergate, Iran-Contra, the CIA’s MKUltra mind control experiments, the aborted 1960s false flag Operation Northwoods and other US government plots were all, at some point, labeled wild conspiracy theories – until they […]

Is there a ‘political class’?

Lobster Issue 61 (Summer 2011)

[PDF file]: […] about this, remembering the dominance of Oxbridge-educated elites in British politics during the 1960s and 1970s when I was a young man. Recently, however, I changed my mind. The key moment for me was an MA dissertation by a student of mine, on the impact of the 1979 Brandt Report (North-South: a programme for […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 92 (2026)

[PDF file]: […] Cold War there have been occasions when the intelligence services, the CIA and SIS for example, actually did provide intelligence of substance. The first that springs to mind was the Cuban missile crisis, when the information from the Soviet intelligence officer Penkofsky about the actual accuracy of Soviet missiles did appear to play a […]

Deep Kiss: How the Washington Post missed the biggest Watergate story of all

Lobster Issue 75 (Summer 2018)

[PDF file]: […] sabotage has surfaced. But, from Haldeman’s January 1969 encounter with Nixon (described above), we know that Nixon entered office with his own subterfuge weighing heavily on his mind. This might have been compounded by the fact that, when he took office, Nixon abandoned any pretence at seeking peace and escalated the Vietnam War instead. […]

Falling Down: The Conservative Party and the Decline of Tory Britain by Phil Burton-Cartledge

Lobster Issue 84 (Winter 2022)

[PDF file]: […] Interpretation’, Sociological Review, volume 3 (1910). 6 4 stock market and to changes in State pension levels. This can all make for considerable anxiety, a state of mind likely to be intensified by rapid shifts in the political, economic and social environment. What had been seen as the stable and unchanging values of the […]

End Times: Elites, Counter Elites, and the Path to Political Disintegration by Peter Turchin

Lobster Issue 87 (2023)

[PDF file]: […] to control, not just the future but also adjacent scholarly disciplines. As Theodor W Adorno wrote of philosophical systembuilders, this is a symptom of the ‘belly turned mind’. My riposte on Turchin’s behalf is that internal divisions amongst the US elites – described in depth in End Times and now playing out within the […]

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