Geopolitics & Empire

Writer Tom Secker discusses his latest book "National Security Cinema" and how the Pentagon uses Hollywood as a "gigantic engine of propaganda" and a "weapon of psychological warfare".

Writer Tom Secker discusses his latest book "National Security Cinema" and how the Pentagon uses Hollywood as a "gigantic engine of propaganda" and a "weapon of psychological warfare".

Show Notes

Documents Expose How Hollywood Promotes War on Behalf of the Pentagon, CIA and NSA

The Civilianization of Movie Scripts

Websites

Spy Culture

Spy Culture Patreon

Books

National Security Cinema: The Shocking New Evidence of Government Control in Hollywood

About Tom Secker

Tom Secker is a private researcher who runs spyculture.com—the world’s premier online archive about government involvement in the entertainment industry. He has used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain unique government documents since 2010, which has been reported on by Russia Today, Salon, Techdirt, The Mirror, The Express and other outlets. He has authored and co-authored articles for Critical Sociology and the American Journal of Economics and Sociology and hosts the popular ClandesTime podcast.

*Podcast intro music is from the song "The Queens Jig" by "Musicke & Mirth" from their album "Music for Two Lyra Viols": http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xN67XITvut4

Investigative reporter Trevor Aaronson discusses his book "Terror Factory" and how the FBI manufactures terror using 15,000 informants in order to satisfy a $3 billion budget.

Show Notes

http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/crime/2017/07/03/lawyers-seek-release-man-charged-16-months-ago-plotting-foiled-machine-gun-attack-milwaukee/424399001

https://www.rt.com/usa/395923-ohio-plea-terrorism-hitman

Websites

https://trevoraaronson.com

Book "The Terror Factory: How the FBI Manufactures Terrorism"

https://www.amazon.com/Trevor-Aaronson/e/B008Y3PQQ8/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1499900251&sr=8-1

About Trever Aaronson

Trevor Aaronson is the executive director of the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting and a contributing writer at First Look Media’s The Intercept. He is also author of The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism.

He co-founded the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, which has won national and regional journalism awards under his leadership. Aaronson reported and produced a one-hour documentary for Al Jazeera Media Network, “Informants,” about the FBI’s counterterrorism program.

Aaronson was a 2010-11 fellow at the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California, Berkeley. Previously, Aaronson was an investigative reporter and editor for The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, where his stories ranged from local government investigations to reporting in Asia, Africa and South America. He was also formerly a staff writer for Miami New Times and New Times Broward-Palm Beach.

A two-time finalist for the Livingston Awards, Aaronson has won more than two dozen national and regional awards, including the Molly National Journalism Prize, the international Data Journalism Award and the John Jay College/Harry Frank Guggenheim Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Award.

Aaronson has been featured on CBS This Morning, NPR’s All Things Considered, MSNBC, This American Life, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, WNYC’s On the Media and The Leonard Lopate Show, among others.

*Podcast intro music is from the song "The Queens Jig" by "Musicke & Mirth" from their album "Music for Two Lyra Viols": http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)

Investigative reporter Trevor Aaronson discusses his book "Terror Factory" and how the FBI manufactures terror using 15,000 informants in order to satisfy a $3 billion budget.

Investigative reporter Trevor Aaronson discusses his book "Terror Factory" and how the FBI manufactures terror using 15,000 informants in order to satisfy a $3 billion budget.

Show Notes

http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/crime/2017/07/03/lawyers-seek-release-man-charged-16-months-ago-plotting-foiled-machine-gun-attack-milwaukee/424399001

https://www.rt.com/usa/395923-ohio-plea-terrorism-hitman

Websites

https://trevoraaronson.com

Book "The Terror Factory: How the FBI Manufactures Terrorism" https://www.amazon.com/Trevor-Aaronson/e/B008Y3PQQ8/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1499900251&sr=8-1

About Trever Aaronson

Trevor Aaronson is the executive director of the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting and a contributing writer at First Look Media’s The Intercept. He is also author of The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism.

He co-founded the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, which has won national and regional journalism awards under his leadership. Aaronson reported and produced a one-hour documentary for Al Jazeera Media Network, “Informants,” about the FBI’s counterterrorism program. Aaronson was a 2010-11 fellow at the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California, Berkeley. Previously, Aaronson was an investigative reporter and editor for The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, where his stories ranged from local government investigations to reporting in Asia, Africa and South America. He was also formerly a staff writer for Miami New Times and New Times Broward-Palm Beach.

A two-time finalist for the Livingston Awards, Aaronson has won more than two dozen national and regional awards, including the Molly National Journalism Prize, the international Data Journalism Award and the John Jay College/Harry Frank Guggenheim Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Award. Aaronson has been featured on CBS This Morning, NPR’s All Things Considered, MSNBC, This American Life, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, WNYC’s On the Media and The Leonard Lopate Show, among others.

*Podcast intro music is from the song "The Queens Jig" by "Musicke & Mirth" from their album "Music for Two Lyra Viols": http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)

Geopolitics & Empire · Stephen Kinzer: The True Flag of American Empire #051

Award-winning journalist, academic and author Stephen Kinzer discusses his latest book The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire.

Show Notes

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2017/05/13/new-allies-for-new-world/xVbB3usL9CPF7vvPDliTNM/story.html

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2017/06/10/saudi-arabia-destabilizing-world/ivMeb7TWGk1fQaVjZWWKGP/story.html

https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2017/05/27/foreign-policy-mixtape/3UEjCooruAmF3uHoJXQb8O/story.html

Websites

http://stephenkinzer.com

https://twitter.com/stephenkinzer

Books

https://www.amazon.com/Stephen-Kinzer/e/B00455F1NC/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1

About Stephen Kinzer

Stephen Kinzer is an award-winning foreign correspondent who has covered more than 50 countries on five continents. His articles and books have led the Washington Post to place him “among the best in popular foreign policy storytelling.”

Kinzer’s most recent book is “The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War.” The novelist John le Carré called it “a secret history, enriched and calmly retold; a shocking account of the misuse of American corporate, political and media power; a shaming reflection on the moral manners of post imperial Europe; and an essential allegory for our own times.”

Kinzer’s previous book was “Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America’s Future.” “Stephen Kinzer is a journalist of a certain cheeky fearlessness and exquisite timing,” The Huffington Post said in its review. “This book is a bold exercise in reimagining the United States’ big links in the Middle East.”

In 2006 Kinzer published “Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq.” It recounts the 14 times the United States has overthrown foreign governments. Kinzer seeks to explain why these interventions were carried out and what their long-term effects have been. He is also the author of “All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror.” It tells how the CIA overthrew Iran’s nationalist government in 1953.

Kinzer spent more than 20 years working for the New York Times, most of it as a foreign correspondent. His foreign postings placed him at the center of historic events and, at times, in the line of fire. While covering world events, he has been shot at, jailed, beaten by police, tear-gassed and bombed from the air.

From 1983 to 1989, Kinzer was the Times bureau chief in Nicaragua. In that post he covered war and upheaval in Central America. He also wrote two books about the region. One of them, co-authored with Stephen Schlesinger, is “Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala.” The other one, “Blood of Brothers: Life and War in Nicaragua,” is a social and political portrait that The New Yorker called “impressive for the refinement of its writing and also the breadth of its subject matter.” In 1988 Columbia University awarded Kinzer its Maria Moors Cabot prize for outstanding coverage of Latin America.

From 1990 to 1996 Kinzer was posted in Germany. From his post as chief of the New York Times bureau in Berlin, he covered the emergence of post-Communist Europe, including wars in the former Yugoslavia.

In 1996 Kinzer was named chief of the newly opened New York Times bureau in Istanbul, Turkey. He spent four years there, traveling widely in Turkey and in the new nations of Central Asia and the Caucasus. After completing this assignment, Kinzer published “Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds.”

He has also worked in Africa, and written “A Thousand Hills: Rwanda’s Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa called this book “a fascinating account of a near-miracle unfolding before our very eyes.”

Before joining the New York Times, Kinzer was Latin America correspondent for the Boston Globe. He is now a visiting fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, where he teaches international relations. He contributes to The Guardian and the New York Review of Books, and writes a world affairs column for The Boston Globe.

In 2009, Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois, awarded Kinzer an honorary doctorate. The citation said that “those of us who have had the pleasure of hearing his lectures or talking to him informally will probably never see the world in the same way again.”

The University of Scranton awarded Kinzer an honorary doctorate in 2010. “Where there has been turmoil in the world and history has shifted, Stephen Kinzer has been there,” the citation said. “Neither bullets, bombs nor beating could dull his sharp determination to bring injustice and strife to light.”

*Podcast intro music is from the song "The Queens Jig" by "Musicke & Mirth" from their album "Music for Two Lyra Viols": http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)

Award-winning journalist, academic and author Stephen Kinzer discusses his latest book The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire.

Award-winning journalist, academic and author Stephen Kinzer discusses his latest book The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire.

Show Notes

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2017/05/13/new-allies-for-new-world/xVbB3usL9CPF7vvPDliTNM/story.html

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2017/06/10/saudi-arabia-destabilizing-world/ivMeb7TWGk1fQaVjZWWKGP/story.html

https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2017/05/27/foreign-policy-mixtape/3UEjCooruAmF3uHoJXQb8O/story.html

Websites

http://stephenkinzer.com

https://twitter.com/stephenkinzer

Books

https://www.amazon.com/Stephen-Kinzer/e/B00455F1NC/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1

About Stephen Kinzer

Stephen Kinzer is an award-winning foreign correspondent who has covered more than 50 countries on five continents. His articles and books have led the Washington Post to place him “among the best in popular foreign policy storytelling.”

Kinzer’s most recent book is “The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War.” The novelist John le Carré called it “a secret history, enriched and calmly retold; a shocking account of the misuse of American corporate, political and media power; a shaming reflection on the moral manners of post imperial Europe; and an essential allegory for our own times.” Kinzer’s previous book was “Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America’s Future.” “Stephen Kinzer is a journalist of a certain cheeky fearlessness and exquisite timing,” The Huffington Post said in its review. “This book is a bold exercise in reimagining the United States’ big links in the Middle East.”

In 2006 Kinzer published “Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq.” It recounts the 14 times the United States has overthrown foreign governments. Kinzer seeks to explain why these interventions were carried out and what their long-term effects have been. He is also the author of “All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror.” It tells how the CIA overthrew Iran’s nationalist government in 1953. Kinzer spent more than 20 years working for the New York Times, most of it as a foreign correspondent. His foreign postings placed him at the center of historic events and, at times, in the line of fire. While covering world events, he has been shot at, jailed, beaten by police, tear-gassed and bombed from the air.

From 1983 to 1989, Kinzer was the Times bureau chief in Nicaragua. In that post he covered war and upheaval in Central America. He also wrote two books about the region. One of them, co-authored with Stephen Schlesinger, is “Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala.” The other one, “Blood of Brothers: Life and War in Nicaragua,” is a social and political portrait that The New Yorker called “impressive for the refinement of its writing and also the breadth of its subject matter.” In 1988 Columbia University awarded Kinzer its Maria Moors Cabot prize for outstanding coverage of Latin America.

From 1990 to 1996 Kinzer was posted in Germany. From his post as chief of the New York Times bureau in Berlin, he covered the emergence of post-Communist Europe, including wars in the former Yugoslavia. In 1996 Kinzer was named chief of the newly opened New York Times bureau in Istanbul, Turkey. He spent four years there, traveling widely in Turkey and in the new nations of Central Asia and the Caucasus. After completing this assignment, Kinzer published “Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds.”

He has also worked in Africa, and written “A Thousand Hills: Rwanda’s Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa called this book “a fascinating account of a near-miracle unfolding before our very eyes.” Before joining the New York Times, Kinzer was Latin America correspondent for the B...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Goyu9Ro3dpg

Russian physicist-engineer and nuclear expert Oleg Bodrov discusses the Russian nuclear-industrial-complex and how nuclear energy and nuclear weapons threaten humanity.

Show Notes

http://www.nuclear-free-future.com/en/laureates/laureates/oleg-bodrov

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/628592/Chaos-Russians-flee-Chernobyl-style-plant-radioactive-leak

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fki5fi8CTYA

Websites

http://www.greenworld.org.ru/?q=ang_news

About Oleg Bodrov

Oleg Viktorovich Bodrov studied engineering and physics at the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute. Following his studies, he became a researcher testing nuclear submarine reactor units at the Alexandrov Scientific Institute. On the night of June 20, 1979, an explosion occurred inside the institute's nuclear submarine test tank, killing two workers. While analyzing the accident, Oleg learned of other whitewashed serious mishaps, including the nuclear meltdown of a submarine reactor some five years before – an accident turned state secret. Oleg tells us: "That is when I understood I need to use my knowledge not for military research, but to protect nature from the nuclear industry."

Together with 1999 Nuclear-Free Future Award laureate Lydia Popova, Oleg is a founding member and, since Lydia's passing, chairperson of the GREEN WORLD Council. From 1998 to 2003, Bodrov was the moving spirit behind the Clean Baltic Coalition. In 2004, nominated by the environmental community, Oleg was named Russia's "Green Person of the Year." Since 2006, Bodrov has published a number of manuscripts and produced four documentary films on the technical and social aspects of decommissioning nuclear power plants, labors that have not only reshaped thinking at RosAtom (the State Corporation for Nuclear Energy in Russia), but sparked interest internationally among government authorities and concerned citizens beset by the same problem: what to do when the reactor's time has come? Bodrov has traveled with his PowerPoint presentations to Lithuania, Belarus, Germany, England, and the USA. Our laureate describes his role in the push for a nuclear-free world as that of a "philosopher-organizer."

*Podcast intro music is from the song "The Queens Jig" by "Musicke & Mirth" from their album "Music for Two Lyra Viols": http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)

Russian physicist-engineer and nuclear expert Oleg Bodrov discusses the Russian nuclear-industrial-complex and how nuclear energy and nuclear weapons threaten humanity.