politics

The 2010 thriller Unthinkable courted controversy by depicting the torture of a suspected terrorist who claims to have planted nuclear bombs in three US cities.

Deep Impact is one of a pair of twin films released in 1998 that were based around a giant meteor colliding with earth. The film and its twin, the more successful Armageddon, were both supported by NASA and the Department of Defense.

Lawmakers in Florida are seeking to strike a balance between protecting the families of the victims of mass shootings and protecting the media’s ability to accurately report on the events.

It takes many hours to read the Mueller report, but the deeper you dig, the more arresting insights and intriguing plot twists you find.One surprising insight: Many of the players in the Trump campaign appear to be apolitical. They don’t grasp for power; they seek what’s “good for business,” in the words of former campaign chair Paul Manafort.

Case in Point: Carter Page

Beginning on page 95, the report recounts the saga of Carter Page, candidate Trump’s foreign policy adviser.

It is nearly as long and as chock-full of Russian names as any novel by Tolstoy. It is such good reading that it should not be left to the pundits to digest. Dive right in and you’ll almost immediately come up with intriguing tidbits. First, there’s a “caveat emptor” message from the author:

On this month's subscriber-only podcast I break

Every year an estimated 3 million children witness gun violence — and the impacts can last a lifetime. Lizzie Eaton knows this all too well.Eaton is one of the high school students from Parkland, FL, who are fanning out to share with the rest of the country what they’ve learned about gun violence.“There’s no way to prepare for a tragedy like this,” she said.

According to the New York Times, the official story we’ve been told about the Skripals isn’t true, and wasn’t true when the UK government told it to us.(

At a time when Americans are grappling with climate change, gun violence, voter suppression, and an immigration crisis, many economists — both conservative and progressive — would like to add to that plate of worries: a looming recession.After all, it’s been a decade since the US economy began to rebound from the severe financial downturn of 2008.

Universal background checks for gun purchases are one of the more popular gun control measures, with 97 percent of the public in favor of them. Acting on this popularity, the Democratic-controlled House passed a bill that would establish them nationally.

Vice has won awards along with praise from audiences and critics alike, but how well does it inform its audience about Dick Cheney? This week I take a look at the important material that Vice overlooked, or didn’t know about.

Little Mizz Innocent has been languishing in development hell for several years as the 'female Jason Bourne movie' has struggled to get into production.

For those who support a diverse and independent media, the last few decades have not been kind.In 1996, antitrust restrictions were relaxed on radio ownership.

The production of Ice Station Zebra is a great case study in just how much influence the Pentagon can have over a movie script.  The initial script - by multi-Oscar winning writer Paddy Chayefsky - was rej

Good news for reformers trying to take the politics out of drawing legislative boundaries: The two cases of partisan redistricting now before the Supreme Court are so blatant, they almost scream “unconstitutional.”The bad news? Justice Anthony Kennedy — the court’s swing vote who at least seemed open to the notion that the court should regulate the practice — is long gone. His replacement? The very conservative Brett Kavanaugh.What’s at stake is the future of democracy, reform advocates say.

It is likely tons of ink and thousands of hours of airtime have been consumed by members of the media speculating on the contents and the timing of the Mueller report. That report has been submitted.

A new CNN four-part original series on the fall of President Richard M. Nixon — Tricky Dick — had its premiere March 17.

Word about the entertainment liaison offices continues to spread - The Statist Quo podcast recently did a focus episode on the DOD's film office, Phil Strub and the rewriting of movie scripts.  Hosted by Matt, a US Army veteran and ex-convict, the epis

As gun control advocates see more of their proposed policies become law, another group with a decidedly different aim is also gaining momentum. It’s a loose network of local officials who are refusing to enforce the new laws, which include measures to require universal background checks, or ban assault weapons, or temporarily remove firearms from those deemed a danger to themselves or others.

Manhattan is the kind of place where you can find just about anything. But it seems like the most improbable location in the world for a KGB Espionage Museum. Yet such a place has opened in a storefront at 245 West 14th Street, Manhattan — right in the heart of former enemy territory. (At least I hope it’s “former.”)

The 2008 Wall Street crash has inspired little more than a staccato response from Hollywood, with very few films taking the subject seriously. In this episode I examine and review two of the more prominent movies that cover this topic – The Big Short and Margin Call.

This is the second of our two-part series from John Newman’s Into the Storm: The Assassination of President Kennedy Volume III. For Part 1, please go here.

In early 1977 the producers of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes approached the Pentagon about filming a couple of brief scenes at National Guard armories.  Even though the National Guard Public Affairs staff thought it was a fun film and were happy to h

Able to fire 25 rounds per second, and with a standard drum magazine of fifty .45-caliber rounds, the Thompson submachine gun, or tommy gun, was the weapon of choice for gangsters of the Prohibition era.

CNN is certainly aggressive in questioning the myths fathered by President Donald Trump. But how does it stack up in the truth-telling department when it comes to former presidents? To determine that, you can watch its new series, The Bush Years: Family, Duty, Power, to air tonight — and then come see a small selection of what we have unearthed.

The Last Ship is one of the most popular cable TV shows of recent years, as well as one of the most successful pieces of militainment. In this episode I examine the politics of the show, in particular how it depicts a conflict between the US and China.

House Oversight Committee members had a lot of questions Wednesday for Donald Trump’s former “enforcer” Michael Cohen. We found both the questions and the answers intriguing — as we assume most people did. However, at WhoWhatWhy, we’re not just about the questions asked. We’re also about the questions that were not asked. The dog that did not bark, if you will.

The core issue around which Michael Cohen’s explosive claims revolve is lying. Cohen admits that he lied in the past, but says that he did so at the direction of Donald Trump. In this week’s congressional hearings, the Republican committee members focused on lying, said that Cohen cannot be trusted now because he had lied before, and implied that they themselves would never lie.

Just like other government agencies the FBI are deeply involved in the entertainment industry, collaborating with film andTV producers to polish the Bureau’s public imageand project their messaging into the minds of moviegoers.

This week, it’s wall-to-wall Michael Cohen on Capitol Hill. Cohen, testifying both behind closed doors and in public to not one, not two, but three committees, is revealing new things, some extraordinarily newsworthy, explosive, consequential, even profound. Notwithstanding that, there is no indication that Donald Trump’s former “enforcer” is telling all.

#_ftn1">Martin Lobel, JD  specializes in crisis management and represents many investigative reporters in addition to being an expert on the constitutionality of state taxes. He has written extensively on tax issues.

#_ftn1">Martin Lobel, JD  specializes in crisis management and represents many investigative reporters in addition to being an expert on the constitutionality of state taxes. He has written extensively on tax issues.

Compared to the DOD, the US intelligence agencies support a more politically diverse range of movies, from the hi-tech surveillance thriller Enemy of the State to torture porn like Zero Dark Thirty and Unthinkable.  One such controversial movie was Shooter, which depicts a deep state element framing a Vietnam veteran fo

I recently joined Henri of Fortress on a Hill to discuss the National Geographic drama series The Long Road Home, in light of the over 400 pages of documents that I obtained detailing the US Army's support for the show.

Saturday was a turning point in American history. For perhaps the first time ever, one of the biggest legacy news organizations published a fair, fact-based article about a political assassination without dismissing, out of hand, any evidence of conspiracy.

When Donald Trump promised that he would only hire the “best people,” maybe he should have been pressed on what, exactly, they would be good at. Because it’s clearly not running the US government. Over the past two years, it has become clear that liars, grifters, conmen, opportunists, and crooks seem to be drawn to the president like flies to … well, you know. Now, however, a situation is arising for which one of Trump’s “best people” seems ideally suited for forcing regime change somewhere in the Americas.

The DOD claim that they only rewrite Hollywood scripts in order to ensure accuracy and to inform the public about the military and its mission. This is total bullshit.

I recently found out that Strub retired from his job as the DOD’s Hollywood liaison last July, though this wasn’t covered by any news outlets and the DOD didn’t bother to tell anyone.

The US Coast Guard's film office remains open despite the government shut down.

In my final review of The Wire I discuss how the core theme of season 5 – truth &

The Pentagon's censorship of movie scripts is fairly well established - I have documented numerous instances on this site. But their ultimate power is the ability to kill a production, to prevent a film being made.

A story doing the rounds claims that the Trump administration is taking advantage of the government shut-down to change the rules by which the Department of the Interior processes and responds to FOIA requests.

Newly-released documents on the Institute for Statecraft's Integrity Initiative suggest that they had a hand in the Salisbury poisoning fiasco that dominated the British press last summer.

A few months ago, then DOD Hollywood liaison Phil Strub gave an interview in which he described the work of the entertainment liaison offices.

2018 was another year of chaos — in politics, economics, culture, the climate and in most other areas of life worth talking about.