The BBC has posted a piece extolling a new film about the wartime (WWII) Operation Mincemeat, which was intended to mislead the Germans as to the Allies intentions of invading Sicily by means of purveying a phony set of war plans conveniently appended to the body of a drowned British officer – the purported Major Martin.
The BBC article breathlessly discusses tradecraft involved in giving the dead body of the fictional Major Martin a believable background and situation:
“They worked together to build this completely imaginary world,” explains Macintyre. Working alongside formidable administrator Hester Leggett and the ambitious young secretary Jean Leslie (played by Penelope Wilton and Kelly Macdonald), they sourced an ID card, a uniform, the underwear befitting an officer, and furnished Major Martin with all manner of “wallet litter”. This included a note from his bank manager, saying he was overdrawn; receipts and ticket stubs from various theatres and clubs, to demonstrate his appetite for nightlife; and, most poignantly, love letters from his beloved “Pam”, with whom he’d had a whirlwind wartime romance. They even gave him an engagement ring.“
The BBC is presenting this story with a straight face, irrespective of the fact that elsewhere in their organisation they are now purveying exactly this same sort of hand crafted malarkey regarding Russia and Ukraine with the base motive this time of deceiving the British general public. The BBC mustn’t understand irony
Walrus –
So you are saying Boris J, under the supervision of MI-6 zombies, suckered Putin into invading Ukraine, and then bamboozled Zelensky into resisting. Those wily sassenachs must be at it again. All to what end? To shut down Nordstream? Revenge against the EU? To starve the third world? To buoy up American wheat farmers and/or the MIC, hmmm maybe the Yanks instigated it?
BTW, I saw the original of that movie back in the 1950s. This new film will have a hard time topping it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-nz-rpF3gA
Leith, Yes, “The Man Who Never Was” was a great film for its day. It is one thing to conduct disinformation operations against an enemy in wartime, that is honourable. Conducting the same against your own citizens is another.
Regarding the origins of the Ukraine conflict, are you trying to suggest that the West, under American leadership, did NOT play a role in fomenting this mess? On that note, Professor John Mearsheimer would disagree as I do.
In my opinion, the key we are missing in this dispute is any consideration of Russian public opinion. We don’t speak Russian and our lousy mainstream media won’t cover this subject. We instead rely on creeps like the Kagan clan to interpret. Would it surprise you to learn that Putin has an approval rating in the seventies? Furthermore did you know that the Russian public allegedly perceives this matter to be an existential threat and that they are in favour of frying the planet before they lose?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
This is an English language site which will give some insight into the Russian point of view https://www.donbass-insider.com/
There are also a number of Russian posters at Telegram and it’s easy enough to copy and paste into Google translate and see what they are reporting from ther front lines.
The BBC certainly won’t be doing a show about MI6 and Christopher Steele any time soon. Have they apologized for spreading all that ‘disinformation’ about Russia Collusion yet?
Shows how our spooks have gone downhill since then. Chumley wasn’t even a pro. Just a man too tall for a Spitfire. Yet he and his team put together what seems to have been an immaculate scam. I thought this touch was genius , leaving this crumpled note in the Major’s wallet- “Why did we meet in the middle of a war? What a stupid thing for anyone to do.”
The Germans are almost as sentimental as the English. While they were swallowing the lump in their throat over that, inconvenient questions, like why haven’t the rest of the crew washed up somewhere, would have been forgotten. Our spooks had craftsmanship in those days. True British quality.
Eighty years later we’re down to Steele and Dearlove and the best they could come up with was Golden Showers.
EO – Chumley (or Cholmondeley) not only did much of the planning. He dressed and prepared the corpse at the mortuary, inserted it and the briefcase into the container, filled it with dry ice, and drove it from London to Greenock for transfer to the submarine. But Mincemeat was just one of hundreds of deception ops that were put over on Hitler and Tojo. It is probably more interesting to the film industry because of the morbidness of the story. I am more impressed with Operation Bodyguard. And also with the USN Beach Jumpers who took their inspiration from a Brit named Bromley-Davenport.
Walrus – There are other conspiracy theories floating around that Churchill instigated Hitler’s Operation Barbarosa. Maybe Stalin was right not to trust perfidious Albion back in the Spring of 41. (Snark!) I await the day when noble Russian patriots throw Putin out of office and build him a little retirement dacha in Magadan or Kolyma. I’m aware of the polls. In any case the Russian people will support their troops, and that means supporting whoever is in charge. And that will include whoever comes out on top after the deluge.
You know what is even more ironic? How nakedcapitalism and consortiumnews shout for free speech with Scott Ritters twitter accounts getting banned while these sites themselves exercise very handed control of the comments to control the discussion and silence dissenting opinions and regularly shadow ban users.