Disinfowars

Jacob Appelbaum is a journalist, hacker and a major developer on the TOR project. However, he neglects to mention the origins of TOR (the Office of Naval Research) or the Pentagon's role in funding its development. In this episode I reflect on whether Appelbaum should be taken seriously as an advocate for an open society free from mass surveillance. Using a recent presentation by Appelbaum I explore how his proposed solutions and means of circumventing surveillance technology are exactly the reason why a politics of anti-surveillance is unlikely to emerge from the hacker culture.

ISIS are a terrifying, devastating Sunni militia that emerged out of the Iraqi insurgency and the anti-Assad jihad … except they aren't particularly religious! And their origin story makes no sense. And militarily speaking they are a joke who could be wiped out within weeks if NATO wanted that. In this episode I take a sideways look at the Islamic State, which isn't very Islamic and isn't a state, and ask what they really are, if anything.

The Power of Nightmares was possibly the last great documentary series produced by the BBC. A decade after it was first broadcast I look back at the series, offering a brief review before using this as a basis for analyzing recent events. I discuss the criticism of the filmmaker Adam Curtis for his superficial take on 9/11, before exploring the 'defection' of Jamal Al Fadl, an associate of Osama Bin Laden. I also examine author Jason Burke's claim that 'Al Qaeda doesn't exist' and thus that there is no guiding force behind the globalization of Islamism.

The Friday the 13th massacre in Paris was the worst attack in Western Europe since Madrid in 2004, leaving well over a hundred people dead. Responsibility has been claimed by the Islamic State and French leader François Hollande has promised 'merciless' retribution.

Howard Hunt was a CIA operative, a Bay of Pigs veteran, a Watergate conspirator and spy novelist. He also confessed to his involvement in the assassination of JFK, implicating Lyndon Baines Johnson, Cord Meyer and others. However, aside from this one confession in 2003 he had always denied the rumors and theories, under oath to Congressional investigations, in interviews, even suing news outlets that alleged he was part of one of the highest profile crimes of the century.

Watergate is the quintessential conspiracy, one that went all the way to the White House and took down a presidency. But it is a story that is almost always provided without context, and with no mention of certain key facts. J Edgar Hoover died only a couple of months before the Watergate break-in, so the FBI was in the midst of a succession crisis when they were hit with the most controversial investigation in their history. Did this lead their deputy director Mark Felt, passed over by Nixon for promotion, to leak the story to Bob Woodward under the guise of Deep Throat?

In 1971 DOD analyst and RAND Corporation employee Daniel Ellsberg leaked The Pentagon Papers - the DOD's Top Secret history of the Vietnam War. This is one of the biggest and most famous leaks in history, but there remain huge questions about why this happened. Was Ellsberg a genuine whistleblower? Or were the Pentagon Papers leaked as part of a distraction and disinformation campaign?

Former CIA officer and NSA contractor Edward Snowden has recently joined Twitter. While this is hardly headline news the story has gone around the world, reported on by dozens of major media outlets. A follow-up story, that Snowden accidentally received 47 gigabytes of emails as a result of joining Twitter also got enormous attention, despite being obviously untrue.

Deep state intellectual Zbigniew Brzezinski turns up everywhere but he is perhaps most known for his role in the founding of Operation Cyclone - NATO's program to support the mujahideen in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. The media coverage, both mainstream and alternative, has focused on misleading interpretations of what happened and when, much of which has been encouraged by Brzezinski himself.

David Shayler is possibly the most famous security service whistleblower in British history. He has also claimed to be the Messiah. In this episode I delve into Shayler's story and his influence on the 9/11 and 7/7 truth movements, where he has always advocated the most lunatic, tabloid versions of events. I ask if his behavior has been designed to make conspiracy theorists and whistleblowers look crazy, and going deeper than that whether he was some sort of test to see how much the truth movement would tolerate.