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 fault. There are only two things you need to be against to be on our side, and those are the capitalist system, and the European Union (as currently constituted). We are internationalist, too, and see monetary union, for example, in a global context, as one of a series of structural adjustment programmes being inflicted on economies of all kinds….
The reason Spectre does not fully reflect the breadth of this original invitation is that we can only publish what people send. The organisations and individuals that have been helpful have tended to come from the CP tradition and its descendants……we would welcome submissions from anarchists, direct action groups, or anyone else with something interesting to say…….Spectre’s high production values are entirely due to the support of the Dutch SP, which prints us at very comradely rates and handles all the layout…..’
Spectre has now entered cyberspace. Its website address is: http://www.sp.nl/spectre/
Notes from the Borderland
Issue 2 of Larry O’Hara’s magazine appeared in late October. It includes:
- long essays by O’Hara on MI5 (after Shayler etc) and the hanky-panky in Leeds over the last few years between the BNP, AFA et al;
- Robin Whittaker on ‘A Method of Inducing Mind Disturbance in Targets Practicised by the British “Permanent Government”‘, an attempt to systematise what is known about this difficult subject – Whittaker has been dealing with a number of people who seem to be the victims of campaigns of official harassment;
- and a long piece by David Pegg which discusses a little known but very interesting book by Karl Marx, Herr Vogt: A Spy in the Workers’ Movement, which ought to raise an eyebrow or two out there on the British Left.
Notes from the Borderland is £2.50 per issue in the UK (in Europe add 15%; in the US/Canada add 20%) and appears twice a year from Larry O’Hara at BM Box 4769, London WC1N 3XX.
Digging again
Kenn Thomas’ Steamshovel Press issue 16 has appeared after a long delay caused by the collapse of one of its main distributors in the USA, with pieces on the Finders (an interview with the founder in which he blandly and not unconvincingly bats away all the talk of CIA); Project Mind Control (a not terribly interesting rehash of the mind control assassin thesis); UFOs, and an interview with the charlatan, John Coleman.
POB 23715, St. Louis, MO 63121, USA. And don’t forget Thomas’ Steamshovel Press Web site http://www.umsl.edu/~skthoma
The CAQ dispute
In the last issue I published an e-mail sent out by the sacked editor of Covert Action Quarterly. In any dispute there are two sides and when I went to print I had not received any response from the other side in the dispute. Responses from William Blum, CAQ founders Louis Woolf and Philip Agee – as well as replies to them from the sacked CAQ workers – I have now received. They amount to over 20 screen pages of text, far too much to publish; or, indeed, to summarise accurately. Anyone interested in reading this material send me an e-mail and I will forward it.
CAQ reappeared in October, a 20th anniversary edition, with essays by Edward S. Herman, Philip Agee looking back on the 20 years, Michael Parenti and Ramsey Clark; a collection of essays on Cuba; and a couple on the demonization of Serbia, one of them by Diana Johnstone, formerly of In These Times.
1500 Massachusetts Avenue NW #732, Washington, DC 20005.
Drug Money Times
The Drug Money Times appeared on the Net at the beginning of July. In its interview with Gary Webb, the San Jose Mercury News reporter who brought the CIA-contra-cocaine scandal to national attention two years ago, Webb reveals new information on the Mena Scandal, involving a secret-til-now FBI Organized Crime Drug Task Force into the criminal organization of Arkansas bond-daddy and Clinton best-friend Dan Lasater.
In the second edition of Drug Money Times the editor published a mixture of information and speculation on the late Barry Seal, the cocaine smuggler who was murdered in 1986. The information is that, while still a school pupil, flying enthusiast Seal was working with no less a person than David Ferrie. The speculation is that it was Seal who flew the assassins out of Dallas in November 1963. DrugMoney Times is at http://www.madcowprod.com
Weird Science
Frontier Sciences Foundation Catalogue is 70 pages of books/tapes/videos on the entire spectrum of the weird, the wacky and the wonderful which is mushrooming all over the place – everything from crypto-zoology to extraterrestrial archaeology, native American beliefs, UFOs, free energy etc etc. Nexus country writ large.
PO Box 372, 8250 AJ Dronten, The Netherlands. Fax 31-0321-31892
Gotcha! Pinko trouble-maker cons Lobster
On Sunday 5 July 1998 I received the following message from William Blum, author of the CIA: a Forgotten History and its update/expansion, Killing Hope.
Dear Robin,
On p.25 of issue 33 of Lobster [item now removed], you ran a story entitled ‘Japanese Retaliate Against the United States’. I’m sorry to tell you that this is a hoax. And I’m the author. (Henry is my middle name and William of course is my first name.) I submitted the article to the ANTIFA online news agency, informing the editor that it was a hoax, and he ran it with that knowledge. I forget now whether he indicated that it was a work of satire. A non-hoax version of the piece can be found on my website, amongst the essays at the end: http://members.aol.com/bblum6/American_holocaust.htm (notice the capital A and the underline)
Sorry about that.
Bill Blum