Robin Ramsay

Robin Ramsay   (editor, author)
Born	1948 Edinburgh, Scotland
Founder/Owner of	Lobster Magazine
Interests	deep politics
Robin Ramsay is co-founder and editor of the Lobster Magazine. He writes about politics, para-politics and deep Politics.

Robin Ramsay (born 1948, Edinburgh, Scotland) is an author, and co-founder and editor of the magazine, Lobster. Ramsay writes about politics, "para-politics" or Deep Politics. His books have been published by Harper-Collins and Pocket Essentials. His writings have resulted in him receiving death threats from a fascist group calling itself "Combat 18".

Robin Ramsay studied at Stirling University but left after a term and moved to London. Ramsay later took a degree at Hull University where he became interested in the John F Kennedy assassination. While investigating the case Ramsay met fellow Kennedy assassination enthusiast Stephen Dorril and together they started a magazine about para-politics. Lobster magazine first appeared in September 1983 as a 24-page A5 magazine. He also draws on his research and writes a regular monthly column in the Fortean Times.

"Conspiracy theories"

Although Ramsay's magazine Lobster includes articles concerning political conspiracy, and he has written a book on the subject, Gareth Mclean writing in the The Scotsman newspaper, says that Ramsay "hates conspiracy theories", quoting him as saying "The term conspiracy theory is used by various intellectual establishments to dismiss people like me. It's irritating but there's nothing you can do about it."

Personal

Robin Ramsay is the eldest child of a food chemist father and housewife mother.

Guardian journalist Robert McCrum describes Ramsay as "an extrovert, fast-talking Scot with jack-of-all-trades experience in alternative journalism, jazz music and the theatre".

In July 1988 Ramsay made an extended appearance on the Channel 4 discussion programme After Dark, alongside Merlyn Rees, H. Montgomery Hyde and others. The programme can be accessed online here.

Publications

• Smear: Wilson and the Secret State (1992) HarperCollins, ISBN 0-586-21713-4 (co-authored with Stephen Dorril)
• Prawn Cocktail Party: The Hidden Power of New Labour (1998) Vision Paperbacks, ISBN 1-901250-20-2
• New Labour (2002) Pocket Essentials, ISBN 1-903047-83-8
• Conspiracy Theories (2006) Pocket Essentials, ISBN 1-904048-65-X
• Politics and Paranoia (2008) Picnic Publishing ISBN 0-9556105-4-0
• Who Shot JFK? (2nd ed. 2009) Pocket Essentials, ISBN 1-84243-232-X

Articles

• Robin Ramsay, ""The Gemstone File" International Times, Vol.4, Number 11, 1978, retrieved 17 August 2012

Bibliography

• "Sexed-up files, lies and surveillance tapes ... One man's search to uncover what lies beneath", Hull Daily Mail, July 13, 2007 Friday, page 10
• "Shock Lobster", Sunday Herald, 17 August 2003. Online at U. Utah

Opinion on Lockerbie

In the Summer 2014 edition of Lobster magazine, Robin Ramsay deals with three aspects of the Lockerbie bombing:

1. Review of Morag Kerr's book;
2. Lockerbie quagmire; and,
3. Craig Murray's viewpoint.

Unimpressed by dull book

Robin Ramsay reviews Morag Kerr's book "Adequately Explained by Stupidity? Lockerbie, Luggage and Lies" which left him unimpressed:

"Kerr is a drole writer: chunks of dull technical stuff are punctuated by things like this (admittedly the best example) on page 178:

‘There is another possibility. Perhaps the senior detectives were so convinced of the involvement of the German-based cell of the PFLP-GC that they couldn’t conceive of the bomb not having come from Germany. In other words, perhaps those in charge of this investigation were as dumb as a bag of hammers that failed hammer school.’

"I think the case she makes is plausible: the bomb was planted at Heathrow and the Libyans are innocent. But the last detailed account of the story I read was Paul Foot’s, which was a long time ago, so what do I know?"

Making waves in the quagmire

All the great parapolitical causes célèbres turn into quagmires and Lockerbie is no exception. The quagmire is created by the complexity of the material – which facilitates varying interpretations – the role of state agencies in muddying the water, and the incompetence of some of those who engage with the subject. One of the competents engaged with Lockerbie is the journalist and author John Ashton, whose site on the subject would be the place to start if exploring the quagmire is of interest. One of those making waves in the quagmire is a former diplomat, Patrick Haseldine. Ashton has written a couple of critiques of Haseldine.

Craig Murray's viewpoint

Former British ambassador Craig Murray commented on Lockerbie on his blog on 11 March:

The information on Lockerbie published in today’s Daily Mail from an Iranian defector, matches precisely what I was shown in a secret intelligence report in the FCO just around the time of the first Iraq war – that a Syrian terrorist group was responsible acting on behalf of Iran. It was decided that this would be kept under wraps because the West needed Iran and Syria’s quiescence in the attack on Iraq. I was at the time Head of Maritime Section in the FCO’s Aviation and Maritime Department. I was shown the report by the Head of the Aviation Section, who was deeply troubled by it.

The UK authorities have known for over 20 years that Megrahi was innocent. The key witness, a Maltese shopkeeper named Tony Gauci, was paid a total of US $7 million for his evidence by the CIA, and was able to adopt a life of luxury that continues to this day. The initial $2 million payment has become public knowledge but that was only the first instalment. This was not an over-eagerness to convict the man the CIA believed responsible; this was a deliberate perversion of justice to move the spotlight from Iran and Syria to clear the way diplomatically for war in Iraq. It will of course be argued, probably correctly, that now Syria and Iran are the western targets, it is in the interests of the CIA for the true story to come out, (minus of course their involvement in perverting the course of justice).

That is why we now hear it was Syria and Iran. But it so happens that is in fact the truth. Even the security services and government can tell the truth, when the moment comes that the truth rather than a deceit happens to be a tactical advantage to them.

Evidence supporting Murray’s view in the last sentence above is provided by the SIS/FCO’s man on The Telegraph, Con Coughlin, in his piece on 11 March.

Many of the comments beneath Murray’s item are interesting and illustrate the ‘quagmire’ I referred to above in an earlier item.

 

Documents by Robin Ramsay

Title	Document type	Publication date	Subject(s)	Description
Document:Decoding Edward Jay Epstein's 'LEGEND'	Wikispooks Page		Edward Jay Epstein Legend JFK Assassination	Robin Ramsay claims that Edward Jay Epstein's Legend is disinformation.
Document:Our Secret Servants - The Shayler Affair	Article	1 January 1998	MI6 MI5 David Shayler	MI5 and its schizophrenic relationship with government

 

Quotes by Robin Ramsay

Page	Quote	Date	Source
"Lone nut"	“Nor, for example, is there any reason to interpret the 'lone assassin' verdict, which emerged immediately after the assassination as itself an indicator of the conspiracy at work. On the perspective I am suggesting, almost before Kennedy's heart stopped beating the one thing which everyone involved would have agreed upon, without discussion, never mind coercion, was that a 'lone nut' verdict had to emerge. The 'truth' was not an issue: in politics the 'truth' is simply a tool.<a href="#cite_note-7">[7]</a> The point about the 'lone nut' is that it was then, and remains (cf Hinckley) the only safe explanation for political assassination within America. 'Disney America'<a href="#cite_note-8">[8]</a>, the fantasy pluralist democracy described in the textbooks on the American political system, cannot accommodate planned political assassination.<a href="#cite_note-9">[9]</a>”	1983	Lobster Magazine
1989	“In one sense MI6 and MI5 have got it right, are, in fact, a brilliant success. Faced with their biggest crisis of the post-war period, the end of the Red Menace which justified the budgets, the careers and the gongs, they have emerged with budgets renewed, new agendas approved; untouched by the politicians, unsupervised by anyone, still - we are not supposed to laugh - still accountable to the Crown not Parliament ( i.e. to no-one). Both MI6 and MI5 have reacted to the new conditions post Cold War in thoroughly competent, even creative ways. Needing something something to justify the budget, MI6 picked the international drug trade. Far as I know, since MI6 joined the 'war against drugs' the price of cocaine and heroin in the UK at street level has halved: it is now cheaper to get off your face, as they say in Hull, on smack than it is on alcohol. And didn't I read a few months ago that MI6 had persuaded Clare Short to task them to provide her with early warning of coups in the developing world? An honest-to-goodness license to do anything, anywhere. Only a Labour government, timid and ignorant, would fall for a proposal as preposterous as that one. MI5 hardly paused for breath after losing the KGB 'threat' contained in the Soviet Embassy and its Trade Mission, before acquiring the domestic terrorism franchise from the Met Special Branch and beginning the process of hyping up the animal rights and green activists as a new terrorist threat. (And they are getting a new definition of terrorism run through the Houses of Parliament to support it.) Of course, only the politicians and some of the media - the handful who are paying any attention at all - take the talk of the war on drugs seriously. MI6 don't, I am sure; any more than they seriously intend to provide Clare Short with an early warning of coups in the Third World. At the higher levels of MI6, MI5 and all the rest they must be chortling in the senior dining rooms at the incredible gullibility of the British political class - and this present lot in particular.”		Lobster Magazine
1994 Scotland RAF Chinook crash	“After seventeen years of blaming the two pilots of the RAF Chinook which crashed in 1994, killing all 29 people (senior police and secret police), the MOD changed its mind and announced that it wasn’t their fault at all: it was the helicopter. Even to a casual reader like me this was obvious almost immediately after the official lies were issued. But the RAF as an institution went along with the lie. Why? Because they did not want to blame the helicopter. Criticising Sikorsky, its maker, is criticising America.”	2012	Lobster Magazine
Bellingcat	“Among [Bellingcat]'s current personnel we have a former British Army officer, a former employee of GCHQ, former members of the US Department of Defense, the US Secret Service, the US Army and the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office .”	2021	Lobster Magazine
NHS	“At first look II is neither surprising nor sinister... The striking thing is the listing of an II subgroup on NHS reform, which has nothing to do with Russian disinformation operations. Given the orientation of the group, we may safety presume that the subgroup’s purpose wasn’t to oppose NHS ‘reform’ – i.e. its privatisation. And this suggests a wider, neo-liberal agenda.”	2020	Lobster Magazine
Research Foundation for the Study of Terrorism	“The new 'anarchist threat' has its own (slight) intellectual support unit, the Research Foundation for the Study of Terrorism. RFST's trustees are Paul Wilkinson, Michael Ivens of Aims, Norris McWhirter of the Freedom Association and John Newton Scott. Its address is 40 Doughty Street, the address of Aims. Their first contribution came out at the end of 1987 - Anarchist group Class War are systematically harassing London docklands residents - there are "Bash the Rich" marches, a pamphlet, Written in Flames, telling you who to bash - and Without A Trace on evading arrest apres-bash. Also involved are the Direct Action Movement (DAM) and groups named Hurricane and Flamethrower - oh, and the Animal Liberation Front. So there you are; they're all in it together. Battle Stations! … RFST aren't even close (and probably didn't try to be). Class War have never been at the centre of anything and provoke the same mixture of disdain and suspicion among anarchists as Militant do from socialists. The 'Bash the rich' marches were indeed Class War's idea; but the last one was in 1985. The campaign of yuppie-harassment never amounted to much more than aerosols, noise and bent aerials. Without A Trace is a forensics manual. Neither it nor Written in Flames has any connection with Class War. The Animal Liberation Front is supported by a wide variety of people, including anarchists, Christians and a character in the TV soap, Brookside. In any case all ALF actions are local and uncoordinated.”	November 1988	Lobster Magazine
Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories	“You might think that this memorandum would be fairly central to any discussion of the current prevalence of conspiracy theories, yet is not indexed in the new Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories (briefly reviewed in this issue). Which says quite a lot about said Handbook.”	2020	Lobster Magazine
Sunday Times	“The Sunday Times was a serious, respectable newspaper until Andrew Neil became its editor in the mid-1980s and turned it into a mouth-piece for MI5 and the MOD to run their rubbish through.”	8 November 2000	Lobster Magazine
Truth	“After a political event of the size of JFK’s assassination or 9/11, everybody runs for cover and prepares their exculpatory narrative. ‘The truth’ doesn’t make it onto the political agenda. This is normal bureaucratic behaviour.”		Lobster Magazine

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References

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