How the Daily Mail invented Britain's bungling-est spy-agency

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Glad you’re front-paging this Cory. I was all agog earlier reading this, and want to give Boinger mjackmjackmjack props for posting this link in the Snowden sysadmin link earlier. That’s a properly gobsmacking account that helps put today’s NSA and CIA mischief in a right proper perspective.

You hit the highlights, but there was one that you missed that I think was key: In order to get maximum ‘market exposure,’ the Daily Mail changed the purported German invasion route so that it went through towns that had a large Daily Mail circulation!

While the old saw says you can’t make stuff up like this, some really did - and most likely they still are. Occam’s Razor y’all.

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edit: since 22 people are trying to figure out what this comic is; I just pulled this one off google image, but here is the original. yes, that’s Poe. Hark, a vagrant: 213

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It’s really a great article.

On the other hand, the Daily Mail are such wimps! I mean, the Hearst Papers got themselves a real war (Spanish-American) and helped set up a century of drug war as well.

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Wait, people Didn’t recognise that as Poe???

I knew that Spooks wasn’t a documentary, but I had no idea how shockingly bad things really are
 :frowning:

Adam Curtis has a blog? Well, that’s my Sunday afternoon all sewn up–love Curtis. Love the “I’m talking about ice cream so here’s a video clip of a train” editing style, love the soundtracks, love the message.

Does anyone else agree that Curtis is a really strong example of what Structuralism looks like when it’s made into art? His main theme is the interface between community (horizontal relationship, similar motifs) and individualism (vertical relationship, chronological order). His video clip collages seek to ‘jive’ with his message, his documentaries seek to link seemingly disparate ideas into an underlying motif.

Anyway, I dig Curtis. Are there any other Curtis fans out there?

A propos of virtually nothing, yet somehow fitting in with my view of Curtis and completing it–here’s this lesson on game theory from a British game show.

Fascinating stuff. Still bizarre to me that Adam Curtis started out on That’s Life!

Funnily enough, I recently worked my way through John le Carré’s Karla Trilogy, and also read Spycatcher (oddly, co-written by Paul Greengrass, director of the Bourne films) - I got the impression from reading it that Peter Wright was entirely delusional - he seemed to be claiming credit for everything ever done by MI5.

If you’re a big adam curtis fan, you’re really in for a treat. His blog is fantastic. I love his use of archival tv mixed in to the long articles. Some of them will take several hours to get through if you watch all of the videos. I only wish there where more blogs of such a high standard. FYI if you’re in the uk he’s putting on some shows with massive attack in manchester this year.

Those gerbils must have been Russian spies.

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