‘Conspiracy Theories’ and Clandestine Politics

Lobster Issue 29 (1995) £££

[…] operations since the establishment of the Soviet Union, or that international front groups controlled by the Russian Communist Party have not systematically engaged in worldwide penetration and propaganda campaigns. It is nonetheless true that scholars have often hastened to deny the existence of genuine conspiratorial plots, without making any effort whatsoever to investigate them, […]

Fifth Column: Plots, smoke and mirrors – managing our Muslim brothers

Lobster Issue 52 (Winter 2006/7) £££

[…] the press might collude in keeping its existence (rather than its personnel) secret. This network has been operating since 2002 and has motive and means for anti-Islamist propaganda operations and for the laundering of Guantanamo and Arab states’ security and intelligence information. It is allegedly a Franco-US funded operation. Given what we know about […]

The New Public Diplomacy: Soft power in international relations

Book cover
Lobster Issue 51 (Summer 2006) £££

[…] the case of ‘public diplomacy’, while public does mean open, diplomacy doesn’t mean diplomacy. ‘Public diplomacy’ is a recent term for a range of activities hitherto called propaganda, public relations, advertising and psy-ops. So while this book could have been been about the CIA, IRD, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its little […]

Kitson, Kincora and counter-insurgency in Northern Ireland

Lobster Issue 10 (1986) £££

[…] of Operations (military administration). Templer was an absolute dictator, and as dictator was able, eventually, to achieve the kind of comprehensive and coordinated intelligence, police, military and propaganda operation which is at the heart of Kitson’s thesis, but which was never really achieved in Northern Ireland. One of the striking sections of the Templer […]

Publications and Book Reviews

Lobster Issue 9 (1985) £££

[…] unrest among the natives by the classic Imperial methods which had worked so well in Malaya against the Communist guerillas – a co-ordinated intelligence drive, a big propaganda campaign, mass round-ups of suspects, attacks on guerillas’ arms-supplies and cross-border sanctuaries – and then, if all else failed, negotiations from strength. None of these grand […]

Northern Ireland redux

Lobster Issue 38 (Winter 1999) £££

[…] him a Polaroid photograph taken of the dead Green. This is awkward for the British state – and Taylor. Acknowledging this would be to give too much propaganda advantage to the IRA. So this is Taylor on Nairac: ‘There were rumours and allegations that Captain Robert Nairac, a legendary army intelligence and liaison officer […]

A (very) brief history of Christian politics in the United States

Lobster Issue 51 (Summer 2006) £££

[…] be presented with the drama of a showdown between democracy and totalitarianism which used the categories of individualism and collectivism in a slightly different way. The cultural propaganda developed for use in Western Europe took a shape not so different from that of Cold War Christianity, although the details were strikingly different. The early […]

Forty Years of Legal Thuggery

Lobster Issue 9 (1985) £££

[…] MP CON 1974-79 COUNCIL OF GB-USSR ASSOC 1977-79 CHATHAM HOUSE ON LOTS OF COMMITTEES A MEMBER OF HESELTINE’S DS 19 GROUP. WAS CLOSELY INVOLVED IN THE ANTI-CND PROPAGANDA EFFORTS. BLATHERWICK, DAVID ELLIOT SPIBY OBE (1973) B 13.7.41 MI6 (C) 1964 MECAS 1966 3RD LATER 2ND SEC FO 1968 KUWAIT 1970 DUBLIN 1973 1ST SEC […]

Truth Twisting: notes on disinformation

Lobster Issue 19 (1990) £££

[…] Deacon also defends old friends – the Goldsmith/ Spiegel case, the nuclear power lobby, SDI etc – and reveals recent thinking on the spook-connected British right: ‘Russian propaganda has found its way into British schools….Christianity has in recent years been distorted into a “front organisation” for international communism . ……Friends of the Earth draws […]

007: a new theory

Lobster Issue 9 (1985) £££

[…] that a Soviet plane had fired at something, and they knew a Korean airliner had crashed. Even if they thought the Schultz story was wrong, once the propaganda had started to flow (“This was the Soviet Union against the world and the moral precepts which guide human relations among people everywhere” – R. Reagan) […]

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