View from the bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] He is In this column in Lobster 87 I mentioned two of his recent essays which are online. They are ‘UK “Black” Productions: Forgeries, Fake Groups, and Propaganda, 1951–1977’ at and ‘The Information Research Department, Unattributable Propaganda, and Northern Ireland: Promising Salvation but Ending in Failure?’ at 1 . 2 1 self-described there as […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 81 (Summer 2021)

[PDF file]: […] a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council?58 or 55 or 56 Check the material on this Twitter stream from Piers Robinson from the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media at . 57 With everybody and their cousin trying to disinform us, this is about as ‘sticky’ an area as exists at the moment. […]

AFRICOM, NATO and the EU

Lobster Issue 67 (Summer 2014)

[PDF file]: […] developed into colonies between the 17th and 20th centuries. The deep imperial interests, complex trade associations, and huge profits (potential or actual) meant that ‘postcolonialism’ – a propaganda word for reconstituted colonialism – was never going run smoothly, particularly in the face of rising Soviet influence in Ethiopia, Somalia, Angola, and elsewhere in the […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 92 (2026)

[PDF file]: […] as “the 6I” or “Sixth International”. This network operated as a private sector version of the Information Research Department (IRD), a Foreign Office unit focused on anticommunist propaganda. • The Pinay Circle: Lobster #17 (1988) discussed Crozier’s involvement with the “Pinay Circle” (or Cercle), a private intelligence gathering group connected to James Goldsmith and […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 78 (Winter 2019)

[PDF file]: […] his blog Craig Murray refers to Bellingcat thus: ‘Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations. . .’ 15 One of their reports begins thus: ‘A sophisticated phishing campaign targeting Bellingcat and other Russia-focused journalists. . .’ (emphasis added) or 16 […]

British Writers and MI5 Surveillance 1930-1960 by James Smith

Lobster Issue 66 (Winter 2013)

[PDF file]: […] certainly not the naïve literateur, taken advantage of by Cold Warriors, that he presented himself as. Spender was, in fact, ‘well integrated with the British Cold War propaganda effort’. Which brings us to MacColl, Littlewood and the Theatre Workshop. The released Theatre Workshop file, covering the years from 1951 to 1960, has some 250 […]

The secret life of Bellingcat’s so-called ‘Timmi Allen’

Lobster Issue 87 (2023)

[PDF file]: […] aware of his borough’s historic status, and he would no doubt have learned all about its glorious past during his formal education. Living alongside this flourishing pro-Soviet propaganda installation, and occasionally venturing inside it, can only have exercised a strong influence on Olaf’s developing mind. One might describe it as immersive indoctrination, and it […]

Iraq and intelligence

Lobster Issue 65 (Summer 2013)

[PDF file]: […] on my computer. It was obviously written around 2004 and, as far as I can see, was never used. M ichael Moore’s film ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ is great propaganda but, like all propaganda, it isn’t about the truth. In a section mocking the so-called ‘coalition of the willing’ which supported the US invasion of Iraq, […]

View from 92

Lobster Issue

The view from the bridge Robin Ramsay *new* FIMI YouTube is now littered with AI political propaganda. The material I have seen, mostly talking heads, is anti-Trump. And much of it is good, too. Indeed, the AI talking heads are more interesting – more coherent, better scripted – than their human counterparts. These films […]

The ‘Intentional Fallacy’ revisited

Lobster Issue 72 (Winter 2016)

[PDF file]: […] the impression that Trotsky was the focus of all opposition to Stalin. The sympathy shown for the infamous ‘show trials’ coincides with the author’s view that their propaganda target was not domestic but foreign: namely that Stalin would not tolerate Western subversion, even if it meant sacrificing loyal communist dissidents to make the point. […]

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