Welcome to Mars: Fantasies of Science in the American Century 1947-1959

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Lobster Issue 57 (Summer 2009)

[…] were the other stories. Some were the horror stories with which we have become familiar: for example MK-Ultra and Ewen Cameron’s insane experiments with reprogramming the human mind which Hollings discusses. But also: by 1959 Cary Grant had taken LSD over 60 times as part of a Hollywood set who were using it with […]

Wallace on Pincher on Wallace

Lobster Issue 21 (1991)

[…] my personal view of the named politicians was. It is, therefore, nothing short of disinformation for him to claim otherwise. p. 171 ‘Evidence of Wallace’s state of mind is contained in an essay ‘Ulster — a State of Subversion’, which he admits he wrote himself. His own conclusion was that….’ The ‘essay’ to which […]

Fifth Column: A brief sojourn East of Suez: a last gasp for British great power status

Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8)

[…] sort of stability to Anbar – but we are sure it is not quite what the mild-mannered liberal and evangelical advocates of peace and reconciliation had in mind when they surged around the government for pet project funding. The illusion of Northern Ireland is that constant dialogue and alternatively talking tough and offering concessions […]

Acid: the secret history of LSD

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Lobster Issue 35 (Summer 1998)

David Black, Vision, London, 1998, £9.99 pb I enjoyed this book hugely, and I’d recommend it to anyone remotely interested in the politics of psychedelia – apart from anything else, there are stories here you almost certainly won’t have heard. However, overall it aspires to more than it can deliver. As the title implies, the […]

The murder of Hilda Murrell: ten years on

Lobster Issue 27 (1994)

Introduction Clear cut examples of political murder, or state assassination in the mainland UK have been virtually non-existent. It is that fact which has helped focus so much attention on the deaths of Hilda Murrell and, in Scotland, of Willie McRae. Lobster got into this area relatively early, printing in issue 16 a long report … Read more

Behind right-wing conspiracy theories

Lobster Issue 8 (1985)

[…] organisations. Their members included aristocrats and prominent people in many countries. Their popularity reflected the ideas of the Enlightenment when the hold of Christianity on the European mind was weakening and being replaced with occultism and a fascination with antiquity. Educated men believed in a vague human brotherhood and tolerance, to be brought about […]

Marching to the fault line: The 1984 miners’ strike and the death of industrial Britain

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Lobster Issue 57 (Summer 2009)

[…] industrial trade union, led by CPGB members and ex-members, opposing government policy, was more than enough. The nonsense – the communist conspiracy theory – in Mrs Thatcher’s mind was of no relevance to MI5. But it surely is relevant to this story. Beckett and Hencke give us an expanded take on the received version […]

The Westminster Whistleblowers

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Lobster Issue 53 (Summer 2007)

The Westminster Whistleblowers: Shirley Porter, homes for votes and twenty years of scandal in Britain’s rottenest borough Paul Dimoldenberg London: Politicos, 2006, £12.99, p/b   The author was a Labour councillor in Westminster during Porter’s ‘reign of terror’ and was instrumental in eventually bringing her down. With an insider’s view he has written an immensely … Read more

A Bilderberg Press Release

Lobster Issue 35 (Summer 1998)

A Bilderberg Press Release I don’t think I’ve ever published a press release before, but this is unmistakably a press release from last year’s Bilderberg meeting.(1) There is the occasional oddity in this, possibly caused by e-mail transmission, which I’ve highlighted, and I’ve arranged the participants by country, rather than alphabetically as in the original. … Read more

Enduring Freedom

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Lobster Issue 47 (Summer 2004)

Global Intelligence: the World’s Secret Services Today Paul Todd and Jonathan Bloch, London and New York, Zed Books, 2003 h/back £32.95/ $55.00 p/back £9.99/ $17.50   ‘We lacked specific information on many key aspects of Iraq’s WMD program’ – Vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, Stuart Cohen, December 2003 With the spectacular failure of […]

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