In the summer of 1980 the BBC's flagship documentary series Panorama was developing a TV special about British intelligence. This was the first film of its kind, and perhaps unsurprisingly Thatcher's government was not happy about it. Downing Street put pressure on the film-makers via BBC Director-General Ian Threthowan, and an MI5 lawyer previewed the film and provided detailed feedback on what to remove.
It is always amusing to see ideology blind people to reality.
A recent example of this has been the reaction of the British Parliamentary establishment and the UK mainstream media to Prime Minister Theresa May’s visit to Washington D.C. to meet with President Trump.
It seems that the old hands in Whitehall and Fleet Street think they can do something that thus far the Democratic Party, much of the Republican Party, the CIA, the NSA, the Pentagon, and China, have been unable to do, which is pressure Donald Trump to change his mind.
In the 1980s, British Prime Minister Thatcher and President Reagan depicted neoliberal or “free market” capitalism as the ideal system, a dogma that extends to the present despite its horrific failures and other options, says Sam Ben-Meir. By Sam Ben-Meir Oct…Read more →
Washington is Hollywood for ugly people, said Paul Begala (probably). Washington is the entertainment capital of the world, said Jack Valenti. Washington's influence on Hollywood, the state's influence on popular culture, is the primary topic of this site. But what about Hollywood's influence on politics, the influence of popular culture on the state?
By God, how Tony Blair and his ilk have degraded the public discourse. He warns that a Jeremy Corbyn government would be “a very dangerous experiment”.
In fact, it would not be an experiment at all. Ideologically, it would look a lot like the government of, say, Clement Attlee in 1945, which brought us such “dangerous” experiments as the National Health Service. And that, of course, was exactly how the welfare state was portrayed by the Conservatives of the time.
5/5 (12) This very unusual story was shared by Mr. K.L. a regular reader and contributor of articles here, and this one I have to pass along, for it deals directly with President Obama's recent visit…
The post THAT BARILOCHE VISIT… AGAIN: STRANGE GOINGS ON IN SPACE, ... appeared first on Giza Death Star.
The Panama Papers, a one-year investigation by over 100 reporters worldwide (The International Consortium of Investigative Journalism) of offshore money hiding/laundering/taxation avoidance, is a cause célèbre of underhandedness seldom, if ever, revealed to the world’s public. It is comparable to lifting a rotting log in the woods and finding an active nest of millipedes, red worms, and cockroaches scampering about to escape the bright sunlight. They can’t stand the sunlight because darkness is their life.
Tom Clancy's books are known for their technical accuracy, their political realism and their curious ability to foreshadow future events. In this episode we explore his government connections - to the FBI, CIA, Pentagon and the White House. We examine whether these connections are what enabled Clancy to write such prophetic fiction, and the impact of that on his readers.
With Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at US $ 2.94 trillion (2014), the UK has the fifth largest economy in the world after Germany and Japan. It also suffers from acute income and wealth inequality and, according to Oxfam, who know all about poverty, “one in five [or 20%] of the population live below our official poverty line, meaning that they experience life as a daily struggle.”
