In Lobster 11 we included a little appendix on ‘the Pinay Circle’. Lobster 11 was done at full-tilt, researched, written and produced in about 4 months, and there were a number of bits and pieces we didn’t evaluate which went undigested into the appendices. One was this Pinay Circle. At the time all we had … Read more
A Hack’s Progress Phillip Knightley Jonathan Cape, 1997, £17.99 This is a highly enjoyable and very well written memoir by one of our senior investigative journalists. As a young-Aussie-leaves-home-and-sees-the-world tale this is nearly as entertaining as the celebrated Clive James version (and with fewer forced jokes). Any journalist’s memoirs are welcome: it’s always interesting to … Read more
I was a student here (1) from 1971-74 doing a social science degree; but more importantly, between 1976 and 1982 I was on the dole much of the time and spent most of my days in the library here, educating myself in post-war history, American history, what was available then about the intelligence services – … Read more
Defector Politics: or, grooving with Mr G. The six months since the last Lobster have been the most interesting period in defector politics – the attempted political exploitation a Soviet defector – that I can remember. Oleg Gordievsky has really been having himself a time and putting himself about! Even I have a Gordievsky anecdote. … Read more
Political activist Daniel Ellsberg and Professor Alfred McCoy have something special in common. Based on their actions and accomplishments of nearly thirty years ago, they have achieved the status of icons within the subculture of what passes for the New Left. Icon Ellsberg became a celebrity in 1971 after he leaked The Pentagon Papers, an … Read more
The Spycatcher’s Encyclopedia of Espionage Peter Wright Heinemann, Australia, 1991 The cover-blurb says this is ‘the rest of the story’. It feels more like the out-takes from Spycatcher spiced with a few more fragments of interesting gossip. And I do mean fragments: the interesting bits of 260 pages — largish print and much white space … Read more
War stories Evidence that the Royal Air Force colluded with their German enemies in the most secret air mission of the Second World War has been discovered in the Czech Republic. The personal log books of some of the 87 Czechoslovak fighter pilots who escaped the 1939 German occupation of their country to fly RAF … Read more
The view from the bridge Bilderberg and the EU The Diaries of former Liberal-Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown, (volume one 1988-1997, London: Allen Lane, Penguin, 2000) is a pretty uninteresting read with a couple of striking sections. Pages 42-46 contain his account of attending a Bilderberg meeting – by far the longest and most detailed account … Read more
The Trial of Saddam Hussein Abdul Haq Al-Ani, Clarity Press, Atlanta, GA., 2008 Abdul-Haq Al-Ani’s troubling manifesto on behalf of the murdered Iraqi leader exposes bloody doings of empire from a lucid political-juridical perspective. ‘Imperialism is a universal historical phenomenon, but it remains, nevertheless, evil’, he writes (p. 23). ‘I use the term European [imperialism] … Read more
The European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT) has been in the forefront of encouraging further EU integration for over twenty years. However, many Eurorealists appear unaware of the ERT. Intended to increase awareness, this article will merely sketch the ERT and its activities. Making no claims to originality, ([1]) the article briefly examines the ERT’s … Read more
