Lobster Issue 53 (Summer 2007) £££
We learn from the former Governor of the Bank of England, Lord Edward George, that, faced with the prospect of recession ‘at the beginning of the decade’, the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) encouraged house prices and personal debt to rise. Speaking to the House of Commons Treasury Committee George said, inter alia: `In the … Read more
Lobster Issue 44 (Winter 2002/3) £££
Russell Holden Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002, hb, £47.50 The author is an enthusiastic supporter of the ‘reforms’ of the Labour Party and a Senior Lecturer in European Studies. His thesis is that the changes in Labour’s policy from anti- to pro-EU membership are the core of the ‘reforming’ of Labour in the 1980s and 90s … Read more
Lobster Issue 37 (Summer 1999) £££
Paul Lashmar and James Oliver Sutton Publishing, Stroud (UK) £25.00 hb This is a really interesting and important book – perhaps the most important book about the British secret state since Fitzgerald and Bloch’s British Intelligence and Covert Action in the early 1980s. The incremental uncovering of the Information Research Department (IRD) story has been … Read more
Lobster Issue 41 (Summer 2001) £££
Espionage is two things – a career and a lifestyle. Both can be wildly exciting. Those who deny this have never been spies. Children born to SIS agents enjoy this lifestyle which can have many advantages. The home environment is usually stimulating, cosmopolitan and informed. There can also be one-off bonus such as acquisition of … Read more
Lobster Issue 32 (December 1996) £££
Kim Besly Kim Besly died in July. A brief notice appeared in the Guardian on 30 July 1996. Besly was one of the pioneers in this country in the campaign to alert people to the dangers of electromagnetic technology. I met Besly only once but Harlan Girard knew her better and, in response to her … Read more
Lobster Issue 4 (1984) £££
Leonard Doyle, Guardian 24th February 1984. Sued by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for illegal surveillance of private citizens, Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) settled out of court. LAPD’s Public Disorder and Intelligence Division were accused of ‘organising a massive spying operation providing right-wing organisations with a sophisticated computer and handing on extensive files … Read more
Lobster Issue 51 (Summer 2006) £££
HP source ‘The plot against Harold Wilson’, the drama-documentary broadcast on BBC 2 on 16 March, was a strange affair. It was really little more than a World in Action half hour from the late 1970s puffed-up, complete with redundant reconstruction of Wilson and Marcia Falkender meeting BBC journalists Penrose and Courtiour (Pencourt). Is the … Read more
Lobster Issue 22 (1991) £££
In Lobster 19 I tried to convey some sense of a very complicated area I had come across which concerned the uses, misuses and effects of electromagnetic fields. Although not really in Lobster‘s territory (which is?) — and well beyond my technical competence — this seemed very important. If true, this is the most important … Read more
Lobster Issue 14 (1987) £££
Tribune 21/28 August 1987 JOHN WARE is an investigative reporter, widely regarded, by his peers, as one of the best television journalists working in this country. He worked with World in Action and is now with BBC’s Panorama. It was to John Ware that Panorama entrusted its investigation into the Wilson-MI5 plots after the BBC … Read more
Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8) £££
Who Really Runs the World? The war between globalization and democracy Thom Burnett and Alex Games New York: The Disinformation Company, 2007, p/b, $13.95 Who’s Watching You? The chilling truth about the state, surveillance and personal freedom Mick Farren and John Gibb New York: The Disinformation Company, 2007, p/b, $13.95 Two more from the … Read more