Watergate revisited: Hougan’s Secret Agenda Introduction No apologies for returning to Jim Hougan’s Secret Agenda. As Steve Dorril said in Lobster 8, this is a major event. This essay is in two parts. In the first I make some critical remarks about Secret Agenda’s central theses; In the second I speculate about other items on … Read more
Anti-Alienism in England after the First World War – David Cesarani – in Immigrants and Minorities, March 1987 Pressure Groups, Tory Businessmen and the aura of political corruption before the First World War – Frans Coetzee – in Historical Journal, December 1986 Military Intelligence and the defence of the realm: the surveillance of soldiers and … Read more
Web of Deceit: Britain’s Real Role in the World Mark Curtis London: Vintage, 2003; p/b, £7.99 This latest analysis of British foreign policy by Mark Curtis could not be better timed. With more than a million Britons on the streets of London protesting against the Iraq war earlier this year there is a potentially large … Read more
Major Farran’s Hat: Murder, Scandal and Britain’s War Against Jewish Terrorism 1945-1948 David Cesarani London: William Heinemann, 2009, h/b, £20 On 6 May 1947 a British undercover squad, under the command of Major Roy Farran, picked up sixteen-year-old Alexander Rubowitz, a young Zionist activist. He was taken away for ‘interrogation’. After an hour of … Read more
A Note on MRA, CIA and L. Ron. Hubbard In response to my snippet in issue 38 (p.22) on Moral Rearmament and the CIA, Daniel Brandt (1) sent me the following from Miles Copeland’s, The Game Player: Confessions of the CIA’s Original Political Operative (London: Aurum Press, 1989, pp. 176-177). This is a nice demonstration … Read more
Controlling the Human Mind: The Technologies of Political Control or Tools for Peak Performance Dr Nick Begich Anchorage, Alaska: Earthpulse Press, 2006, $18.00 ISBN 1-890693-54-5 The author may be familiar as the author of the book Angels Don’t Play With This HAARP, which I haven’t read but which had a substantial readership among those … Read more
Paul Foot Bookmarks, London, 2000, £14.99 The first thing that struck me reading this anthology of Paul Foot’s journalism was what a good writer he is. In individual articles this may not be noticed; but in book form Foot’s clear, simple writing style is very striking. The articles come from mainstream media – the Guardian, … Read more
Back to the future: the USA, the UK and Iraq The US threatens to attack Iraq and is backed by the UK. There are objections in the UN Security Council from Russia and France. A large task force is assembled. Guess what happens next? Not a lot. There is a diplomatic crisis temporarily resolved after … Read more
Blair and Gladstone Tony Blair’s Labour Party conference speech this year galvanised the delegates who were especially moved by his suggestions that Britain could play the role of an international troubleshooter, bringing liberal values, civilisation and the benefits of its skills in conflict resolution to troubled parts of the world. There were however some more … Read more
9:11 Revealed. Challenging the facts behind the War on Terror Ian Henshall and Rowland Morgan London: Robinson, 2005; £8.99, p/b A declaration of a kind of interest: one of the authors of this book, Ian Henshall, is the Chair of INK, the Independent News Collective, to which Lobster belongs and whose leaflets Lobster has … Read more
