Tom Secker

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.

From SpyCulture:

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.

In the latest of our Homeland reviews, Tom and I tackle the latest episode, ¨Better Call Saul.” In true form to this season, the fifth episode completely resets the original storyline and refocuses our attention to the evil Russians. Tom and I discuss this development and how it plays out in the episode. From the bombing of General Yusuf’s plane, to the hack, to the revelation of Alison being a double agent, it is now all about the Russians.

Tom and I are back again with another Homeland review show. This week we begin by exploring Homeland’s blatant sexism and misogny. We focus first on Carrie and her characters return to bi-polar nymphomaniac, and how the show has routinely made Carrie into an awful female character that we all hate. Tom and I discuss our theories for why the producers have continued to make Carrie into a monster and how this translates into a larger picture of how we view the CIA through Carrie.

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?

From ClandesTime:

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?