BFP Radio

Today, almost all politics are a politics of fear, and almost all policies are defended and excused through some notion of 'security'. Fear-therefore-security is the dominant political dynamic of our time. This week I take a look at these concepts, exploring whether all politics is a politics of fear, and offering examples of when this can work well and when it can work very badly. I focus in on the recent general election in the UK, showing how every candidate, even those offering some degree of real opposition, are all engaged in a politics of fear and security.

This week I talk to Ed Opperman, a private investigator, author and the host of the radio show The Opperman Report. We discuss the moral challenges of investigation, asking whether private investigators are any more ethical than regular police. Ed shares some stories from his decades working in this field, before we move on and discuss how this applies to the alternative and web-based research subculture.
Listen to the Preview Clip Here

Listen to the full episode here (BFP Subscribers Only):

In this episode I do a critical review of No Easy Day, the real-life story written by a former Navy SEAL who was on the Abbottabad raid. I look at the controversy around the book, which is still going on, and ask whether it is all either a smokescreen or a promotional technique. Then I analyze the content of No Easy Day, asking the big questions: (1) Was it really Bin Laden that they killed? (2) Does this book support the official lie about the Abbottabad raid? (3) Is this a piece of officially-sanctioned propaganda?

Today I am joined by Pearse Redmond of PorkinsPolicyReview.com and one of the hosts of the BFP roundtable. We expand on the last two episodes, responding to some listeners comments, in particular explaining our views of the Oded Yinon plan for a 'greater Israel' and the persistent but false rumour that Shin Bet were secretly behind the Entebbe hijacking.

This week I present a mini-documentary on the rise of the neocons in the 1970s and how they turned Cold War paranoia into War on Terror paranoia. I look at the people and organisations involved: Henry Jackson and the Coalition for a Democratic Majority, Richard Pipes and Team B, the reformed Committee on the Present Danger and how this all ties in with the Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism in 1979.

In the first of a three-part series I look into the 1979 Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism, where the ideology of the current War on Terror was conceived. I focus in on Benjamin Netanyahu, who hosted the conference and later wrote a book on all the major speeches and discussion. I round off by tracing the legacy of this conference via the example of the original Mohammed cartoons controversy in 2005.
Listen to the Preview Clip Here

Listen to the full episode here (BFP Subscribers Only):

In the following on from the last episode I had a casual late night chat with Guillermo Jimenez of De-Manufacturing Consent. We picked up on some of the ideas and comments on the previous episode and fleshed them out, talking about our own experiences of trying to maintain sanity while investigating the insane. The core topics in this conversation are the importance of skepticism, intuition and having a sense of humor.
Listen to the Preview Clip Here

Listen to the full episode here (BFP Subscribers Only):

In the opening episode of this new show Tom explores the question of conspiracy theories and the roles they can play and effects they can have, both good and bad.  He offers the case study of a documentary about a teenager who tried to incite his own murder through an internet chatroom, and draws out some parallels between that story and how people engage with conspiracy theories.  He also explains a little about what to expect from the show as it progresses, and asks for your opinions and answers to this question.
Listen to the Preview Clip Here