[…] is about the worth of the state as planner since it is quite clear now that all large organisations have a tendency to sclerosis and entropy. They kill the human spirit by their very nature. To me, the Left ends up as an ethic of opposition to any attempts to assert essentialism over the […]
First supplement to A Who’s Who of the British Secret State See also: Part 1: Forty Years of Legal Thuggery (Lobster 9) Part 2: British Spooks “Who’s Who” (Lobster 10) Intelligence Personnel Named in ‘Inside Intelligence’ (Lobster 15) Philby naming names (Lobster 16) Spooks (Lobster 22) The official response to the ‘Who’s who’ Lobster special … Read more
I invited David Turner to begin writing a regular column for Lobster. He agreed then rang to tell me his computer had been attacked by a virus and could not meet my deadline. (He is the second contributor to this issue to have been virused recently.) But I had on file this splendid polemic written … Read more
Spectre In the last Lobster 35 I reported on the new anti-EU magazine Spectre and wondered about its political orientation. In response, the editor, Steve McGiffen, sent an exemplary piece of candour from which here are some extracts. ‘….. Our original statement, sent out very widely, made it clear that we are minimalist to a … Read more
[…] offers us a jumbled but fascinating story about Searchlight editor Gerry Gable. We are told that in 1986 there was evidence of an attempt to abduct and kill Gable, who then spoke to ‘a friend in Special Branch who decided to arrange armed bodyguards to watch over him’. This murder attempt involved a private […]
The Israel Lobby John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt London: Allen Lane, 2007, £25 This account of the relationship between the ‘Israel lobby’ in the US, the US state and Israel should be required reading for anyone with an interest – personal, professional or political – in the troubled affairs of the Middle East. … Read more
[…] London 1989 p. 429) ‘Ministerial approval’? Why is Carver keen to tell us this? The second was ‘West’s’, and the third is in Michael Asher’s Shoot to Kill: A Soldier’s Journey Through Violence (Viking, London 1990). Asher served in Northern Ireland in the Parachute Regiment and on p. 143 describes MRF: ‘…. ordinary soldiers […]
Ideas and Think Tanks in Contemporary Britain: Volume 1 edited by Michael David Kandiah and Anthony Seldon Frank Cass, London/Portland, Oregon, 1996 £29.50 As the title suggests this really contains two separate though not unrelated areas. The first is a series of shortish essays about so-called think tanks in the UK which follow on from … Read more
Travesty: The trial of Slobodan Milosevic and the corruption of international justice John Laughland London and Ann Arbor: Pluto Press; 2007, £14.99 (UK) $24.95 (US), p/b Laughland is an interesting figure, whose writing appears in media across the ideological spectrum, from the conservative right to The Guardian and here, Pluto Press. It is thus … Read more
Benny Morris London: I. B Tauris, 2002, £24.50, h/b In report after report on the major media we hear about or see pictures of ‘refugee camps’ in Israel – and no-one ever explains from where the refugees came. Perhaps editors think we know already. Benny Morris is an Israeli historian who became well known … Read more
