Lobster Issue 52 (Winter 2006/7)
[…] British Government to the Americans’ in MI6’s house journal, The Sunday Telegraph (9 July 2006). What that ‘kow-towing’ looks like was illustrated in ‘Blair beefed up his Iran speech to please Bush’ (Sunday Telegraph 28 May 2006) in which Toby Harnden and Patrick Hennessy reported: ‘Tony Blair made significant changes to one of his […]
Lobster Issue 51 (Summer 2006)
[…] such instance, the September 11, 2001 attacks are another. Operations can fail as with the Bay of Pigs or succeed only too well Guatemala, Iran, Congo their unforeseen consequences bringing disaster for the locals or the masters of the operatives. Counterintelligence can fail to find spies Aldrich Ames […]
Lobster Issue 49 (Summer 2005)
Robert Parry Arlington (VA): The Media Consortium, 2004; $22.95 (US); p/b Order from 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 journalist’s […]
Lobster Issue 57 (Summer 2009)
[…] advance of Hamas and Hezbollah, the wreckage of Iraq, with more than two million external refugees and the ethnic cleansing of its Christian population, the rise of Iran as a major regional power, and now the implosion of Afghanistan and Pakistan, prob-ably the most dangerous development of all.’ But for whom has this been […]
Lobster Issue 56 (Winter 2008/9)
[…] the party massacre, ‘no one dared to question anything. This meant that the regime of Saddam Hussein acquired infallibility through fear and silence.’ (p. 50) War with Iran was Saddam Hussein’s second mistake. Egged on by the West, both sides prodigiously expended blood and treasure. Peace in 1988 was closely followed by widespread circulation […]
Lobster Issue 46 (Winter 2003)
Advertising In 1960s Iraq, the children of the poor carried their most treasured possessions to school in much coveted, branded soap-powder packets. When these eventually disintegrated, what remained was stuck up on the classroom wall. As a result, children could pick out the words ‘Tide’ or ‘Omo’. Praised by their teacher for doing so, a […]
Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8)
[…] cities of Pakistan and even into its military and intelligence services. Western operations in West Asia have to deal with a world beyond Afghanistan that encompasses Pakistan, Iran and Central Asia – as well as India with its massive Muslim population that sometimes chafes under the even more massive presence of aggressive Hindu nationalism. […]