President Putin and Sochi 2014 PR

Lobster Issue 67 (Summer 2014) FREE

[PDF file]: […] chess master Natan Sharansky, or writer Alexander Solshenitsyn, once household names in the West but neither of whom are ‘celebrities’ in the West today. Also keep in mind that this is a two-way generational phenomenon. Young Eastern Europeans have absolutely no memory of Communism or the former Soviet system any more than Western ones […]

Unredacted: Russia, Trump and the Fight for Democracy by Christopher Steele

Lobster Issue 91 (2025) FREE

[PDF file]: […] unfolds. Steele observed the collapse of Soviet Communism firsthand. He describes one particularly telling incident he witnessed in Moscow in 1991 that very much sticks in the mind, both his and mine. He saw a car crashed into a lamp-post with a dead driver at the wheel on his way home one Friday night […]

Reading between the lies: Edward Jay Epstein and Lee Harvey Oswald’s ‘Historic Diary’

Lobster Issue 71 (Summer 2016) FREE

[PDF file]: […] lost source as the Q-Diary for convenience.5 Enter Epstein Under what circumstances did the Q-Diary get redrafted into the manuscript we know today? This question exercised the mind of assassination researcher Edward Jay Epstein in the 1970s as he amassed the material that would form the basis for his 1978 Legend:The Secret World of […]

The Lost Peace by Richard Sakwa

Lobster Issue 88 (2024) FREE

[PDF file]: […] co-operation between the members of the United Nations Security Council (though that would be acceptable to the USA, as long as they were all of the same mind as Washington). Instead it was to be founded on commitment to a ‘rules-based international order’, in which universality trumped regional blocs and balance of power arrangements. […]

Deep Kiss: How the Washington Post missed the biggest Watergate story of all

Lobster Issue 75 (Summer 2018) FREE

[PDF file]: […] sabotage has surfaced. But, from Haldeman’s January 1969 encounter with Nixon (described above), we know that Nixon entered office with his own subterfuge weighing heavily on his mind. This might have been compounded by the fact that, when he took office, Nixon abandoned any pretence at seeking peace and escalated the Vietnam War instead. […]

LBJ: doubles and disinformation

Lobster Issue 67 (Summer 2014) FREE

[PDF file]: […] even his clothes looked exactly like the President. It was as if a ghost had suddenly appeared. Even his voice sounded so much like Mr. Kennedy’s. My mind simply couldn’t absorb it all and Louise was struck dumb, her eyes wide open in amazement. Lish introduced the double as a fellow agent and apologized […]

Misc reviews

Lobster Issue

[…] slogan – or mission statement – ‘all conspiracy – no theory’; and that is on the front cover of Popular Paranoia, along with: ‘Conspiracy! UFOs! True Crime! Mind Control! Parapolitics!’; a pulp crime scene painting, sprawling woman, man with gun in hand; and the title, in pulp magazine typeface, Popular Paranoia. Is Thomas telling […]

Is there a ‘political class’?

Lobster Issue 61 (Summer 2011) FREE

[PDF file]: […] about this, remembering the dominance of Oxbridge-educated elites in British politics during the 1960s and 1970s when I was a young man. Recently, however, I changed my mind. The key moment for me was an MA dissertation by a student of mine, on the impact of the 1979 Brandt Report (North-South: a programme for […]

The Conversation

Lobster Issue 86 (2023) FREE

[PDF file]: The Conversation Colin Challen It was a word salad of mind-numbing banality, replete with boilerplate platitudes (“national renewal for a new national purpose”), management-speak gibberish (“delivery-focused crosscutting mission boards”) and meaningless drivel (a more “empowering, catalytic” government). These are not the words of an Opposition leader connecting cleverly with the British people and on his […]

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