While most entertainment supports or promote the military, police and intelligence agencies there is a smaller but important sub-genre that critiques and satirises the security state. On this month’s subscriber-only podcast I look at four examples – two TV series and two films – that mock and criticise the security and intelligence agencies. From Snake […](Read more...)
The death of weapons expert and UN inspector Dr David Kelly in the summer of 2003 is one of the Iraq War’s most enduring mysteries. While the case was officially ruled a suicide, this conclusion was reached by an informal government inquiry which the Blair government used to replace the normal, legal inquest procedure. In […](Read more...)
As the Amesbury poisoning drama enters its third act we have been given an entirely new set of claims regarding Novichok, which directly contradict the previous claims. With an air of ‘scientific’ authority the BBC is now telling us that Novichok could be around for decades, implying that everyone in Britain is at risk of […](Read more...)
John Paisley was a senior CIA officer who worked on Team B, was the Agency’s liaison to the Watergate burglars, and according to some was a Soviet double agent. In 1978 he disappeared while sailing in the Chesapeake Bay, and the body that washed up was never definitively identified as his. This week we take […](Read more...)
With the Russian World Cup proving to be one of the most entertaining, unpredictable and violence-free tournaments in recent memory the British government has been asking what it can do to disrupt the event. As with everything else, this government has proven short of ideas and has simply opted for a repeat of the last […](Read more...)
One of the growing markets in spy fiction is pop culture aimed at teenagers or ‘young adults’. The CHERUB series by Robert Muchamore depicts a junior wing of MI6, with the first novel in the series – The Recruit – depicting the recruitment, training and first mission of our protagonist, James Adams. This week I […](Read more...)
Julia Kristeva is one of the 20th century’s most famous female intellectuals who has won numerous gongs and awards for her contributions to linguistics, philosophy, psychoanalytics and semiotics. She was part of the top-level French philosophical clique that included Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida. She was also, it is alleged, a spy for the Bulgarian […](Read more...)
As the Russian football team stands on the brink of qualification for the World Cup knockout rounds for the first time since the Soviet era, Western media begrudgingly grants them some credit. However, there is no sign of any apology for the years-long propaganda campaign that pre-emptively branded the Russian World Cup as a locus […](Read more...)
For the last few weeks I’ve been working a research project on how the Pentagon’s entertainment liaison offices deal with the subjects of military mental health and suicide. Today the fruits of that research were published by Insurge Intelligence, a crowdfunded journalism platform run by Nafeez Ahmed, who also published an exclusive on National Security […](Read more...)
