Lobster Issue 56 (Winter 2008/9)
Ronald Gray, founder and owner of The Hammersmith Bookshop (1948-1963) and Hammersmith Books (1963-2000) died on 30 May at the age of 87. He was a most remarkable person, with a passionate interest in everything relating to politics and to recent history. He developed the vast stock of out-of-print books in Hammersmith Books to reflect … Read more
Lobster Issue 28 (December 1994)
Is your journey really necessary? The Guardian ‘Weekend’ section of August 13, 1994, carried a piece called ‘The Seeds of Madness’, about Mark Purdey, the dairy farmer who has opposed the British agro-chemical industry, believing that the so-called ‘mad cow disease’, BSE, was the result of organo-phosphate poisoning. Life became complicated for him and the […]
Lobster Issue 38 (Winter 1999)
[…] in US history to be charged with a particular minor technical offence connected to ‘consensual searches’ and is sentenced to three years in prison; the FBI Special Agent in Charge of the New York office, who comes to the defence of this INS official, is suspended two months before he was due to retire. […]
Lobster Issue 24 (December 1992)
[…] with photocopied police and intelligence files on the IRA, and we have learned that the UDA’s ‘intelligence officer’ in the 1980s, Brian Nelson, was an Army Intelligence agent, this is a pretty stupid line to defend. Nonetheless this line is at the heart of both of the Bruce and Urban books. Urban is an […]
Lobster Issue 56 (Winter 2008/9)
[…] to the GLC in Croydon North East in March 1980. He was later a Labour councillor in Islington in 1982-1986 and thereafter for many years an election agent and researcher for Jeremy Corbyn MP. An accurate monograph of his political activity and connections would make interesting reading. He has a particular interest in Kurdish […]
Lobster Issue 45 (Summer 2003)
Assassination or ‘targeted killings’? Joshua Raines of the University of Iowa College of Law argues that although assassination, ‘narrowly defined’ [sic], is illegal, ‘targeted killings’ could well be permissible under ‘just war’ criteria. The US should therefore pass legislation that allows for ‘…targeted killings under a very narrow range of circumstances with adequate checks built … Read more
Lobster Issue 28 (December 1994)
[…] functioned as an army intelligence officer during Vietnam, turning to civilian spookery in the late 70s. In 1982 he met Oliver North, who posed as a CIA agent named John Cathey. North coveted Reed’s Piper turboprop airplane for use in the contra war. Reed was asked to give up the plane, report it as […]
Lobster Issue 38 (Winter 1999)
[…] do know something, there are some dumb mistakes. The Fluency Committee was not set up in Whitehall to examine the evidence that Harold Wilson was a Soviet agent (p.148); Colin Wallace has not ‘admitted putting out anti-Wilson material in an operation known as Clockwork Orange’ (p.149). Do such minor errors matter? I doubt it […]