Seymour M. Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot (Boston: Little Brown, 1997) Seymour Hersh is one of those figures with no real equivalent in British journalism. For one thing, the budgets, the armies of fact-checkers and, indeed, the market for this sort of extended politico-analytical foray just does not exist over here. Writing from a … Read more
Feedback Mark Taha (see Lobster 21, p. 25) wrote. ‘As someone who never joined any of the groups Larry O’Hara deals with [Lobster 23] but has attended their meetings, reads their publications, once nearly joined, and describes himself as a Libertarian Conservative Nationalist, (sic!) I read his article with interested. I noticed a few errors. … Read more
NuLab and Uncle Sam In the last issue I discussed the research by Giles Scott-Smith on the US State Department’s funding of a big freebie trip to the US for Mrs Thatcher in 1967, after the US embassy in London had spotted her as a possible future prime minister. Scott-Smith has more information on the … Read more
C. Gordon Tether Mike Peters in Lobster 32 mentioned a book – actually, a pamphlet – called The Banned Articles of C. Gordon Tether (ISBN 0905821009) in which Tether had published those items written for his Financial Times column which the editor had seen fit to pull. Not having looked at it for about a … Read more
Political activist Daniel Ellsberg and Professor Alfred McCoy have something special in common. Based on their actions and accomplishments of nearly thirty years ago, they have achieved the status of icons within the subculture of what passes for the New Left. Icon Ellsberg became a celebrity in 1971 after he leaked The Pentagon Papers, an … Read more
The channels for US covert military aid to the Afghan mojahedin have been thrown into disarray by the death on August 17 [1988] of President Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan in an aircrash unexplained as we went to press. His death came at a particularly sensitive moment as the Soviet occupation forces prepared to withdraw and … Read more
Drugs, oil and war Peter Dale Scott Oxford (UK) and New York : Rowman and Littlefield Inc; 2003, $22.95, p/b On the left-hand page facing his first page of text Scott gives us two definitions of deep politics, the concept he introduced which succeeded his earlier concept of parapolitics. deep politics: ‘all those political … Read more
Robin Ramsay is the co-founder of Lobster and the current editor. For contact details click here. Books by Robin Ramsay Politics and Paranoia (Hove: Picnic Publishing, 2008) Who Shot JFK? (2002) The Rise of New Labour (2002) Conspiracy Theories: Almost Everything You Need to Know in One Essential Guide (2000) Smear! Wilson and the Secret … Read more
When Labour narrowly won the October 1964 election they were greeted by dismal balance of payments figures. An external deficit in the region of £800 million was forecast, twice what had been expected (although the actual figure has since been revised down to £372 million). The government attempted to manage the crisis by a package … Read more
The funding of Blair Sometimes chronology implies causality and sometimes not. Consider the following sequence of events: in January 1994 Tony Blair, then Shadow Home Secretary and career-long member of the Labour Friends of Israel, took a four day freebie trip to Israel, with his wife, at the expense of the Israeli government. Two months … Read more
