Lobster Issue 19 (1990) £££
This began as a review of Deacon’s Truth Twisters by David Teacher, and grew as we both saw bits and pieces we could add to it. Richard Deacon’s The Truth Twisters (McDonald, London 1987: Futura, London 1988) is a classic of Western disinformation purporting to describe Soviet disinformation. Deacon lines up all our favourite state … Read more
Lobster Issue 48 (Winter 2004) £££
The Enemy Within: The Secret War Against the Miners Seumas Milne London: Verso, 2004, p/back, £8 GB84 David Peace London: Faber & Faber, 2004, p/back, £12.99 On the 20th anniversary of the most significant power struggle in post war Britain, two very different books on the miners’ strike of 1984-85, read alongside each other, … Read more
Lobster Issue 41 (Summer 2001) £££
Blowback: the cost and consequences of American Empire Chalmers Johnson London, Little, Brown and Company, 2000, £18.99 (hb) Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism John Cooley London, Pluto Press, London, 2000, £12.99 (pb) It has recently been revealed that the CIA inadvertently helped to create Soviet chemical and biological weapons by convincing the Soviets … Read more
Lobster Issue 55 (Summer 2008) £££
From Anger to Apathy: the British Experience since 1975 Mark Garnett (London: Jonathan Cape, 2007) Dead Men Don’t Eat Lunch Geoffrey Gilson (self-published) Beyond Bullets Jules Boykoff’s AK Press, 2007: <www.akuk.com> Briefly Mark Garnett’s From Anger to Apathy: the British Experience since 1975 (London: Jonathan Cape, 2007) has had some fairly sniffy reviews but I … Read more
Lobster Issue 28 (December 1994) £££
Compromised Reporting Taking its cue from a powerful network of far-right radio commentators, the American press insists on noting only those financial scandals which don’t sully ultra-conservative politicians. Of either party. For example: Rush Limbaugh, who has become the Republican Party’s Goebbels, loudly applauded Clinton’s appointment of Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen, an appalling Texas (Democrat) … Read more
Lobster Issue 41 (Summer 2001) £££
Trimble Henry McDonald, London: Bloomsbury, 2000, £16.99 The Dublin and Monaghan Bombings Don Mullan, Dublin:Wolfhound Press, 2000, £9.99 David Trimble’s first political involvement began in 1972 when, as a young law lecturer at Queens University, Belfast, he joined William Craig’s Vanguard movement, a hard line right-wing Protestant supremacist organisation that made clear it was ready … Read more
Lobster Issue 52 (Winter 2006/7) £££
The Secret of Bryn Estyn: The Making of a Modern Witch Hunt Richard Webster Oxford: The Orwell Press, 2005, £25 This is an account of the various child abuse and satanic abuse cases that developed across the UK from the mid ’80s onwards. At the phenomenon’s peak, around 1995, many police forces were carrying … Read more
Lobster Issue 39 (Summer 2000) £££
On the jacket of his new book, reviewed in this issue, Steve Dorril writes there that he ‘is founder-editor of the widely respected journal’ Lobster. I invite you to look on the rear cover of this magazine and see who the editor is. That’s right: it’s not Steve Dorril. I have resisted going into detail … Read more
Lobster Issue 52 (Winter 2006/7) £££
Conjuring Hitler: How the Western Elite Incubated Nazism – 1900-38 Guido Preparata US: University of Michigan Press, 2005; h/b, $90.00; p/b $28.95 UK: Pluto Press, 2005; h/b £60.00; p/b £17.99 I would like to introduce a recently published book that has been overlooked. Guido Preparata’s Conjuring Hitler: How the Western Elite Incubated Nazism-1900-38 reinterprets … Read more