Lobster Issue 49 (Summer 2005) £££
Robert Parry Arlington (VA): The Media Consortium, 2004; $22.95 (US); p/b Order from <www.secrecyandprivilege.com> This is the book I have enjoyed most since the last Lobster and it is one of the best books I have read on American politics and parapolitics. Robert Parry really is very good indeed: he has the serious investigative … Read more
Lobster Issue 31 (June 1996) £££
Ivor Crewe and Anthony King Oxford University Press, 1995, £25 Few who lived through the launch of the Social Democratic Party are likely to forget the impact of the creation of the Gang of Four in 1981. The avowed intention of the four former Cabinet ministers was to offer Britain a fresh alternative – a … Read more
Lobster Issue 47 (Summer 2004) £££
Covert Action: The Roots of Terrorism Edited by Ellen Ray and William H. Schaap Melbourne and New York: Ocean Press, 2003, £14.95 The Politics of Anti-Semitism Edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair Oakland (US) and Edinburgh: AK Press, 2003, £9.00/$12.95 The Betrayal of Dissent: Beyond Orwell, Hitchens and the New American Century Scott … Read more
Lobster Issue 17 (1988) £££
The channels for US covert military aid to the Afghan mojahedin have been thrown into disarray by the death on August 17 [1988] of President Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan in an aircrash unexplained as we went to press. His death came at a particularly sensitive moment as the Soviet occupation forces prepared to withdraw and … Read more
Lobster Issue 35 (Summer 1998) £££
Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall University of California Press, Berkeley, 1998, $15.95 pb ISBN 0-520-21449-8 This is a revised and updated version of this book which was first published in 1991 (and was reviewed in Lobster 24). Since that first edition we have had the great furore over the 1996 stories published in … Read more
Lobster Issue 56 (Winter 2008/9) £££
[…] might be lies in the strong possibility that the extra money being defrauded from Medicare was being used by Recarey to fund medical aid for the Nicaraguan Contras. Whilst a Congressional Intelligence Committee found no evidence to support this theory, former CIA operative Jose Basulto told the Wall Street Journal in 1987 that he […]
Lobster Issue 55 (Summer 2008) £££
You might remember the red sofas, leather Chesterfields recovered in quieter fabric. You might remember that the talking didn’t end at any specific time, unique in an era when all television channels closed down at night. You might remember Oliver Reed getting drunk, although he was hardly the only disruptive guest. Reading Norman Baker’s book … Read more
Lobster Issue 35 (Summer 1998) £££
[…] was the limit respected, but that was because the Saigon regime fell before the limit was reached.) Congressional bans on aid to the death squads of the contras in the mid-1980s were secretly and illegally subverted by Oliver North in the Reagan White House with Pentagon and CIA support, provoking the Iran-Contra confrontation. Indonesia’s […]
Lobster Issue 52 (Winter 2006/7) £££
[…] in the last twenty years are spurious. Their account of the CIA is wilfully inadequate, even for a three page summary. They describe the funding of the Contras without mentioning drugs, even when the CIA itself has admitted getting permission from the US Attorney General to ignore cocaine dealing in return for donations to […]
Lobster Issue 13 (1987) £££
[…] terror and “terror” George Schultz actually says (p19): “it is not hard to tell … who are the terrorists and who are the freedom fighter …. the Contras in Nicaragua do not blow up school buses or hold mass executions of civilians.” This is preposterous, of course. I can’t be bothered doing it, but […]