Flying the Flag

Genre	Comedy-drama
Running time	30 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Languages	English
Home station	BBC Radio 4
Starring	Dinsdale Landen Peter Acre Moir Leslie
Creators	Alex Shearer
Writers	Alex Shearer
Producers	Pete Atkin Neil Cargill
Air dates	April 20, 1987 to August 4, 1992
No. of series	4
No. of episodes	28
Audio format	Stereophonic sound

Synopsis[link]

Created during the Cold War, this BBC Radio 4 sitcom chronicled the vagaries of diplomatic life in a fictitious eastern-bloc country. Dinsdale Landen starred as the British ambassador, with Peter Acre and Moir Leslie as his assistants, and Stephen Greif as the US Ambassador.

Later series moved with the times as the country embraced perestroika.

Cast[link]

Regular Cast[link]

• Ambassador McKenzie - Dinsdale Landen
• William Frost - Peter Acre
• Helen Waterson - Moir Leslie
• United States Ambassador - Stephen Greif
• Colonel Surikov - Christopher Benjamin

Production[link]

• Writer - Alex Shearer
• Producer - Pete Atkin (s1-2), Neil Cargill (s3)

Episode list[link]

See also[link]

• epguides.com
• radiolistings.co.uk

Look up flag in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

A flag is a colored cloth with a specified meaning.

Flag may also refer to:

Art and entertainment[link]

Film and television

• Flag (anime), a 2006 series by Kazuo Terada
• The Flag: A Story Inspired by the Tradition of Betsy Ross, a 1927 silent short film
• Foundation for Law And Government (FLAG), a fictitious law-enforcement agency in the TV series Knight Rider and sequels

Music

• Flag (note), a part of a note value in music notation
• Flag (James Taylor album), 1979
• Flag (Yello album), 1988
• Flags (album), a 2010 album by Brooke Fraser
• The Flag (album), a 1986 album by Rick James

Other media

• Flag (lighting), in film and photography, a device used to block light
• The Flag (novel), a 1965 novel by Robert Shaw
• Flag, a 1954/1955 painting by American artist Jasper Johns

Biology[link]

• Flag iris (disambiguation) or flag, various species in North America
• Purple flag or Patersonia, an Australian plant genus related to Iris
• Flagging (botany), a growth pattern that reduces or eliminates growth on one side of a tree or other plant
• FLAG-tag, a unique epitope added to proteins in biochemistry

Computers[link]

• Flag (computing), a true/false, on/off or open/closed indicator (boolean variable)
• FLAGS register (computing), a CPU register on x86 systems
• Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe (FLAG), an undersea fiber optic cable

Mathematics[link]

• Flag (geometry), part of a polygon, polyhedron or higher polytope
• Flag (linear algebra), an increasing sequence of subspaces of a vector space

Sports and games[link]

• Penalty flag or flag, a yellow cloth used by game officials in some field sports to indicate an infraction
• Flag, a baton used in the sporting event Beach Flags
• Flag, a type of bet offered by UK bookmakers
• Flag, a casino token used at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, Nevada

Other uses[link]

• Flag and pennant patterns, in technical analysis
• Flag Land Base, Fort Harrison Hotel, a Church of Scientology facility, Clearwater, Florida, U.S.
• Flag state, the state under whose laws a merchant ship is registered or licensed
• Flagstone or flag, a large flat stone used for paving, fencing, or roofing
• Flemish Aerospace Group (FLAG), an industry trade organization

See also[link]

• Flagg (disambiguation)
• Flagging (disambiguation)
• All pages beginning with "Flag"

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Wayne Madsen (born April 25, 1954) is a Washington, D.C.-based investigative journalist, author and columnist specializing in intelligence and international affairs.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]} He is the author of the blog Wayne Madsen Report.^[8]

Background and Early Life[link]

Madsen was born in Ridley Park, Pennsylvania on 28 April 1954 to an American mother and a Danish mariner. His grandmother, who emigrated to the U.S. with his father after World War II was Victoria Madsen, a Danish communist party official.^[9][10] In the 1950s Victoria Madsen was deported by the FBI^[11]

Madsen attended the University of Mississippi where he joined the Navy ROTC.

Career[link]

This section may contain improper references to self-published sources. Please help improve it by removing references to unreliable sources, where they are used inappropriately. (October 2011)

U.S. Navy[link]

Upon graduation from University of Mississippi, he joined the U.S. Navy. He was commissioned an ensign.

In 1982 he was stationed at the Coos Head Naval Facility. Naval Facility Coos Head had an allowance of twelve officers, ninety-five enlisted and 15 civilians. He was later given a bad fitness report by his executive officer, Lt. Cmdr. Marney Finch.^[12]

His new commanding officer at Coos Bay transferred him to Washington D.C. He resigned from the Navy in 1985 as a lieutenant, having been passed over for promotion. Madsen described himself as the "most senior lieutenant in the Navy"^[13] at the time of his resignation and has blamed his lack of advance on a powerful group of pedophiles hidden in the top of the U.S. Navy ranks. Madsen says that independent investigations into illegal homosexual activity in the federal government by other journalists were eventually published by the Washington Times in 1989.^[14][15]

In 1984 he "benefitted from the 1983 bombing of the Computer Area in the Washington Navy Yard" and the 1984 White House screening of the movie War Games which he suggests prompted President Reagan into putting money into computer security. He was loaned in 1984 to the NSA by the Navy to work in computer security.^[14]

He has been described by Andrew Sullivan of the Atlantic Monthly as a conspiracy theorist.^[16]

Post Navy Career[link]

Between 1985 and 1989 Madsen held a series of jobs, first working for RCA as a government consultant on contracts for the National Security Agency (NSA). Later he worked for the Navy's Naval Data Automation Command as a civilian employee. After this Madsen briefly established his own consulting firm, then worked for the National Bureau of Standards, and later for the State Department.^[14]

In 1990 Madsen joined CSC, working there from 1990 until 1997,^[14] when he joined the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) as a senior fellow. In late January 2005 Madsen left EPIC.^[14]

Journalism career[link]

Madsen says that in 2001 he was denied a press pass as an Internet journalist to cover the first inauguration of George W. Bush.^[17]

In 2005 Madsen began working as a free-lance journalist for publications such as The American Conservative, CorpWatch, CounterPunch, CovertAction Quarterly, In These Times, Multinational Monitor, The Progressive and The Village Voice. His columns have appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Columbus Dispatch, Houston Chronicle, Philadelphia Inquirer, Miami Herald and the Sacramento Bee. Madsen also publishes his own news blog.^[11]

Reporting and Opinions[link]

In 2002 he suggested to the Guardian newspaper that the United States Navy had aided in an attempted overthrow of Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez.^[18]

In January 2002 he expressed concern over the possible use of torture by the United States government against suspected terorrists,^[19] as well as possible plans to use the military in domestic law enforcement, in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.^[20]

In 2003 he said that he had uncovered information linking the September 11 attacks to the government of Saudi Arabia as well as to Bush administration.^[21] In 2005, he wrote than an unidentified former CIA agent claimed that the USS Cole was actually hit by a Popeye cruise missile launched from an Israeli Dolphin-class submarine.^[22]

In 2005 he said that the pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC, had pressured American politicians to stay away from protests against the Iraq War.^[23]

In 2006 he criticized the Iraq Study Group, saying:

"I think it is a whitewash group and nothing will come of it, except that they may concoct some reason for the US to stay the course in Iraq, with perhaps a little more international support, like Germany and Canada. The commission is a whitewash because the members are all consummate Washington insiders, many of whom have a political and financial stake in the successful outcome of the war. The longer the war goes on the more money they make."^[24]

Later that year he criticized the movie industry for indirectly causing suffering in Africa by promoting diamonds in movies like Breakfast At Tiffany's and Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend. He included Leonardo DiCaprio, whose film Blood Diamond dealt with the issue, as well as Russell Simmons who is selling a line of "nonconflict diamonds." Madsen said about them, "It's a p.r. campaign. They should be saying, 'Don't buy diamonds at all.'"^[25]

In a 2008 ArabNews article, Madsen is quoted as suggesting that the criminal prosecution of New York State governor Eliot Spitzer was partly due to the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad.^[26]

On June 9, 2008 he reported that unnamed "GOP dirty tricks operatives" had found a Kenyan birth certificate registering the birth of Barack Obama, Jr. on August 4, 1961. "However, the registration is a common practice in African countries whose citizens abroad have families with foreign nationals."^[27] This birth certificate was a cornerstone of the "Kenyan Born" subset of the birther conspiracy theories, and Madsen's article was cited in a Washington state petition challenging Obama's eligibility to serve.^[28]

On April 25, 2009, Madsen reported that some unidentified UN World Health Organization officials and scientists believed the 2009 new H1N1 strain of swine flu virus appeared to be the product of U.S. military sponsored gene splicing, as opposed to natural processes.^[29][30] While it can not be ruled out that the virus was created in a research laboratory or vaccine factory, the most plausible explanation is that the virus is the result of modern farming techniques. New Scientist magazine cited the example of a H1N2 influenza pandemic in the 1990s that only affected pigs in the United Kingdom. This subtype of the H1N2 was also a reassortment (mix) of swine, human and avian strains.^[31]

In July 2009, Madsen released a report saying there was a Q Group within the National Security Agency tasked with concealing US government involvement in 9/11.^{[32][verification needed][unreliable source?][dead link]}

In 2010, Madsen reported in the Pakistan Daily that unnamed sources suggested that the company formerly known as Blackwater, had been conducting false-flag operations in Pakistan that were blamed on the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan.^[33]

Bibliography[link]

• Jaded Tasks—Brass Plates, Black Ops & Big Oil: The Blood Politics of Bush & Co. (TrineDay, 2006) ISBN 0-9752906-9-X
• America's Nightmare: The Presidency of George Bush II with John Stanton (Dandelion Books, 2003) ISBN 1-893302-29-6
• Forbidden Truth: U.S.-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy, Saudi Arabia and the Failed Search for bin Laden (foreword) Jean-Charles Brisard, Guillaume Dasquie (Nation Books, 2002) ISBN 1-56025-414-9
• Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa 1993-1999 (African Studies) (Edwin Mellen Press, 1999) ISBN 0-7734-8002-1
• Handbook of Personal Data Protection (New York: Macmillan Publishers Ltd, 1992) (reference book on international data protection law) ISBN 1-56159-046-0

References[link]

External links[link]

• Wayne Madsen Report