Letter from America

Lobster Issue 28 (December 1994) £££

Compromised Reporting Taking its cue from a powerful network of far-right radio commentators, the American press insists on noting only those financial scandals which don’t sully ultra-conservative politicians. Of either party. For example: Rush Limbaugh, who has become the Republican Party’s Goebbels, loudly applauded Clinton’s appointment of Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen, an appalling Texas (Democrat) … Read more

Western Goals (UK)

Lobster Issue 21 (1991) £££

Organisation, History and Politics In the early years of the Thatcher decade, the radical or ‘new’ right was generally treated as though it was a united palace guard for libertarian Conservatism. More recently it has become clearer that the radical right in Britain was, at best, an ‘anti wet’ alliance between authoritarian/ nationalist and libertarian/radical … Read more

The CIA and the Culture of Failure

Book cover
Lobster Issue 57 (Summer 2009) £££

John Diamond Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2008, h/b. No price is stated but it’s around $30 on-line. In The Guardian on 4 March 2009 William Dalrymple wrote: ‘Eight years of neocon foreign policies have been a spectacular disaster for American interests in the Islamic world, leading to the advance of Hamas and Hezbollah, the … Read more

Policing Politics: Security Intelligence and the Liberal Democratic State

Lobster Issue 27 (1994) £££

Peter Gill Frank Cass, London, 1993 Academia’s a swine. Writing an essay on International Relations (the ideological version of Foreign Office ‘realism’) for my Politics MA, I managed to smuggle in a few references to actual politics — European Nuclear Nuclear Disarmament, the SNP, and ‘independence within Europe’, that kind of thing. Flushed with success, … Read more

We’re breaking new ground: Operation Century

Lobster Issue 39 (Summer 2000) £££

Ian Cameron 17pp + 11pp documents £2.50 incl. p&p from 10 Knox Court, Studley Road, London SW4 6SA. I’ve got fucking A levels in fucking whacking fucking people…. Your fucking ceasefire’s going….I’ll be in touch with you fucking soon….You watch your fucking car. On 9 February 1996 the IRA ended its cease fire by bombing … Read more

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 32 (December 1996) £££

Who’s kidding whom? The September issue of Fortean Times carried a five page article by Robert Irving, ‘The Henry X File’, about Armen Victorian. It was a very strange article, part profile, part smear job. Armen was ‘twice reportedly seen in the back of a Soviet embassy limousine in Ottowa… rumours associated [him] with the … Read more

The biggest of big lies?

Lobster Issue 55 (Summer 2008) £££

The Dismantling of Yugoslavia Edward S. Herman and David Peterson Vol. 59, No 5 of Monthly Review (online) Price stated as $5.00, €3.00, £3.00; but e-mail <> to check postage costs. In almost every conflict since WW2 in which the Americans have taken part they have been on the side of exploitation, oppression, torture, and … Read more

‘Privatising’ covert action: the case of the Unification Church

Lobster Issue 21 (1991) £££

‘You don’t investigate people for why they think but for what they do.’ – former Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti (1) Introduction If nothing else, the Iran-Contra scandal temporarily illuminated the extent to which ostensibly private organizations have been helping secretive elements within the American government — in this case the core of the executive branch’s … Read more

The View from the Bridge

Lobster Issue 37 (Summer 1999) £££

Alien baloney In Nexus vol 6 no 2 is another dollop of what seems to me to be obvious disinformation about UFOs and the US government. Another batch of MJ-12 documents have surfaced in America, given to a researcher called Timothy Cooper by a (now conveniently dead) source. Nexus prints some largish chunks from them. … Read more

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