As part of their outreach efforts the Air Force's entertainment liaison office has started running annual tours for dozens of Hollywood bigshots. Recently released documents detail last year's tour to US Space Command. In this focus episode I go through the documents page-by-page as an open source case study in the government-Hollywood relationship and in how to do this kind of research. (Read more...)
The last 24 hours of the Novichok saga has seen a new twist — European media are widely reporting that two Russian spies were caught attempting to either hack or break into the Spiez laboratory in Switzerland that was examining samples from the Salisbury poisoning. While this announcement of an event that happened months ago is clearly […](Read more...)
The story of the relationship between Disney and the various branches and agencies of the US government is long and complex. A recently uncovered memo adds one more episode to the relationship between Disney and the CIA, and revolves around a question that was critical for national security: How would the CIA get access to […](Read more...)
Reel Power broke the mould for books covering the role of Hollywood in promoting militarism, war and the political status quo. It took the Chomsky/Herman propaganda model and adapted it to film and TV, showing how Hollywood’s output varies, but tends to repeat and reinforce the same ideological priorities regardless of genre or budget. A […](Read more...)
The pain of 9/11 remains unresolved because the crime of 9/11 remains unsolved. In 17 years no one has been prosecuted for carrying out the attacks, and the court of public opinion is very much a hung jury.(Read more...)
Mark Felt is a 2017 biopic starring Liam Neeson as FBI Deputy Director Mark Felt, telling the story of his role in becoming a source for the Washington Post's reporting on Watergate. Following on from recent episodes on John Paisley and the Weather Underground, I offer a deconstructive view of Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House, and a critique of its historical inaccuracy and political deceit.
The US military has a drinking problem, but like most of its problems it's OK because the entertainment liaison offices are there to make sure Hollywood doesn't draw attention to it. From episodes of Wonder Woman through to blockbuster films, scenes of services members drinking have been edited or removed from scripts. (Read more...)
Image 5 in the Met Police’s CCTV collection of Petrov and Boshirov also poses some questions. Their timeline says: Image five shows the suspects ten minutes later — at 11.58 — on Wilton Road, Salisbury, we say, moments before the attack. The police did not say where on Wilton Road that this image was captured, but it is outside […](Read more...)
