See also: Part 2 in Lobster 38 ‘In any event, and whatever certain people in a certain department in the CIA may have been after, as far as the work of the Congress was concerned the perceived need to be perpetually “of the Left and on the Left” led sometimes to grotesque intellectual contortions.'(1) The … Read more
Steamshovel 11 The arrival of a new Steamshovel is an event. No matter that I am going to want to be picky about something in it, every issue contains items both substantial and intriguing – and much that would find a home nowhere else, that I can think of. (Except maybe Lobster. I wish I … Read more
Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy Vincent Bugliosi New York & London: W. W. Norton, 2007 xlvi + 1612 pps. + CD-ROM End Notes and Source Notes (958 + 170 pps.). Illustrations, bibliography, index, $49.95. ‘Reclaiming History is important not just because it’s correct, though it is. It’s significant not just … Read more
Veterans of a notorious Miami-based CIA dirty tricks team have boasted that they were helped by British Intelligence officers to sink an East German ship loaded with British-built Leyland buses. Three years after the CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, the MV Magdeburg was hit by a Japanese ship in the River Thames. When … Read more
Unfree press A recent release of previously undisclosed documents reveals that J. Edgar Hoover ordered the FBI to carry out the illegal surveillance of newspaper labour activists during the 1940s. Also revealed is the fact that informants included journalists who wanted Communists removing from the leadership of the Newspaper Guild.(1) Only following orders Psychologist Stanley … Read more
Brice is right? An ‘immoral’ government has undermined human rights in Northern Ireland and is threatening to do the same across the rest of the United Kingdom, argued Professor Brice Dickson, the then Chief Commissioner of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission,([1]) in an interview with ePolitix.com to mark Human Rights Day last December.([2])He claimed … 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
Denis McShane Clarendon Press, Oxford, £37.50 The origins of the Cold War in Europe has been a major battle ground now for nearly 40 years. The first version of the story, written while the Cold War was still going on and produced as part of the ideological struggle, was a simple folk tale of evil … Read more
Publications Orders for the Captain James Kelly (Kelly-Kane, Bailieboro, Ireland, 1971/86) Kelly’s Genesis of Revolution, reviewed in Lobster 13 gave an overview of the Irish situation during the period 1969-73, from the Dublin arms trials to the failure of Sunningdale. It advanced the theory that a war of attrition between the British Army and the … Read more
Echelon The piece below arrived, through the magic of e-mail forwarding, via the following: Jane Affleck, Terry Hanstock, and Julian Assange. The report referred to is a companion to Nicky Hager’s book Secret Power (review in Lobster 32 at p. 47). See also ‘The Technology of Political Control’, Robin Ballantyne, in Covert Action Quarterly, Spring … Read more
