Spectre In the last Lobster 35 I reported on the new anti-EU magazine Spectre and wondered about its political orientation. In response, the editor, Steve McGiffen, sent an exemplary piece of candour from which here are some extracts. ‘….. Our original statement, sent out very widely, made it clear that we are minimalist to a … Read more
This piece by Daniel Brandt began as a short letter commenting on my review of Right Woos Left by Chip Berlet (Lobster 23 p. 34). I wrote back and asked if he would like to expand it. And so he did, writing almost the whole thing at one long sitting. Anyone who joined the U.S. … Read more
Bilderberged again Giles Radici’s Diaries 1980-2001 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2004) isn’t terribly interesting but it does contain some snippets about Radici’s activities at the annual Anglo-German Konigswinter conference and one or two on his time at St Antony’s College (as a ‘parliamentary fellow’). There is also a section (pp. 336-7) on his attendance at … Read more
[…] men to ‘kill on sight’. The squad is known as Echo Four Alpha (or E4A), sometimes working within special support units. Constable John Robinson, acquitted of the murder of Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) member Seamus Grew was a member of an 11-strong special support unit, operating from Police Headquarters in Knock. In fact […]
Since the storming of the Iranian Embassy in London on 5 May 1980, the Special Air Service (SAS) has become a cultural phenomenon as much as a military one; has become, in the words of its former Director, Peter de la Billiere, ‘a living embodiment of the individualism of the British’. Their heroic exploits have […]
One of many reasons why the lobbying industry attracts opprobrium is because Britain’s political system offers only limited public sector facility to those who wish to influence it but lack the funding and/or patronage to do so. ‘The lobbyists’ did not cause the injustice. It is up to government to come up with the solutions. … Read more
[…] account, was “so British as to belong to a past backed by an Empire that ruled the waves,” a world where “theft, deception, lies, mutilation and even murder are possibilities.” (p13) Cavendish and Young were to work together from 1973 in Unison, the co-ordinating committee which was to play its part in the anti-Wilson […]
One of the recurring sub-themes of the literature on intelligence systems in the West in the past decade has been the status of the claims made by KGB defector Golitsyn. Until recently all the book-reading public knew about Golitsyn was (a) that he has exposed some (relatively minor) Soviet operations; (b) made a series of … Read more
[…] signs of deliberate disinformation.(7) To know Bill Clinton and die? There is an extraordinary 1994 pamphlet by the editor of something called The Wall Street Underground, titled Murder, Bank Fraud, Drugs and Sex, that links 21 deaths to Clinton and Arkansas.(8) My faith in the author, Nicholas A. Guarino, is not heightened by the […]
[…] they are doing anything wrong or unusual. G2, 27 March, 2007. Did anyone in that press office know that the theme of the book is the meaningless murder of an Arab? Four of them were reviewed in The New York Review of Books 1 March 2007. The National Institute of Standards and Technology issued […]
