In Lobster 17 we published two German intelligence reports on a covert propaganda group called the Pinay Circle. In this article we give background and investigate the Pinay Circle’s activities. Member of Parliament ‘G’: I don’t know if it (the Pinay Circle) has any political significance, but, in any case, it has little impact. For … Read more
Weird Web Professor Peter Dale Scott reported the following in March. ‘Four times today I have tried to go to www.counterpunch.org. And four times Netscape was unable to find it. This happens frequently on my computer to websites which share my opinions, or to which I am hotlinked. And when I searched for ‘Alex Cockburn’ … Read more
‘They’re blanks!’ Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin? Barry Chamish Brookline Books, PO Box 1046, Cambridge, MA 02238, USA, $15.95 This is an interesting and important book. To its content I will return. But who is the author? Chamish is one of those names you cannot avoid if you potter around in the American conspiracy sections … Read more
Bernard Donoughue London: Jonathan Cape, £25, h/b Political diaries are among my favourite reading. In that genre this is an absolute belter; but not for the minutiae of policy formation, with which Donoughue was primarily preoccupied, or the account of the government’s handling of various incidents, interesting though they are; but for the picture … Read more
Books The Secret War: an account of the sinister activities along the border involving Gardai, RUC, British Army and SAS Patsy McArdle (Mercier Press, Dublin 1984) McArdle is a journalist with Downtown Radio in Northern Ireland. Journalists sometimes write really good books, but McArdle’s is a stinker, little more than a jumbled collection of recycled … Read more
Harold Weisberg Harold Weisberg died at his home in Frederick, Maryland, on 21 February from a kidney ailment at the age of 88. He was one of the first generation of Warren Report critics along with Vincent Salandria, Ray Marcus, Mark Lane, Sylvia Meagher and others. He was a tireless critic of the Report and … Read more
Harold Pinter defined American foreign policy thus: ‘Kiss my arse or I’ll kick your head in.’ William Blum counts the heads that have been kicked. United States foreign policy In 1975, there was a committee of the US congress called the Pike Committee, named after its chairman Otis Pike. This committee investigated the covert … Read more
The history of the police, fascism and anti-fascism in Britain, is dominated by three very different interpretations. First, there is the argument that the police acted as a constraint against fascism: intervening against fascist groups as the need arose. Second, there is the opposite view: that the police were a hindrance to anti-fascists, acting always … Read more
See also: Part 1: British Fascism 1974-92 (Lobster 23) Part 3: British fascism 1983-6 (Lobster 25) Part 4: British Fascism 1983-6 (II) (Lobster 26) The 1986 National Front Split (Lobster 29) Introduction In the first part of this essay, in Lobster 23, after reviewing the strategies adopted by significant British fascist parties in the period, … Read more
Michael Phayer Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008, p/b, £15.99 In 1997, urged on by the US government, fourteen European countries together with Canada and Argentina, established commissions to investigate the involvement of their banks in the holding of assets looted by the Nazis and their allies during the Holocaust. One particular sovereign state refused … Read more
