This BBC Radio 4 documentary about the British nuclear deterrent and the people who operate it is absolutely cracking. Not surprisingly, the man behind it is none other than Professor Peter Hennessy (can we call him Henn-dawg yet?). One of the things that stands out is the amount of desperate psychological coping going on. The…
Read More mentalities, bunker, and otherwiseFirst: the Ethiopian army claims to have killed a Canadian colonel fighting with Somali insurgents. I assume they mean a Canadian who claims to be a colonel in the insurgency, rather than a Canadian colonel who joined, but who can tell these days? Secondly, here’s a special one – Jewish settler caught firing improvised rockets…
Read More Two odd thingsSo we had the world’s first military coup motivated by a 3G network licence, in Thailand; we had the shootout between the Chalabi Boys and Orascom security men in Baghdad. Now, there’s the Hezbollah/Amal coup de force (or de folie as Robert Fisk preferred), motivated in part by the Lebanese government’s desire to control their…
Read More scaleydelic!I’m beginning to think that it’s possible to discern so many similarities between really stupid opinions on terrorism that we can call it a theory. Specifically, if you’re talking about state sponsorship, you’re probably wrong, unless overwhelming evidence contradicts this. As far as I can tell, the modern version of this theory originated in the…
Read More A unified theory of stupidity on terrorismNow it’s all over, what was all the shooting about? To answer that question, we’d first need to know something of each side’s aims. Hezbollah’s were reasonably clear, at least as far as the decision to take the two soldiers prisoner went: put pressure on the Israelis to release their remaining Lebanese prisoners, and not…
Read More A war for neuroticsJamie K thinks the UNTSO post was bombed to prevent them observing a possible Israeli flank movement from the northern tip of the country, around Kiryat Shmona, down the Litani valley to the sea, with hopes of cutting off the retreat, which means going further into Lebanon. He quotes me, in comments, suggesting that this…
Read More Right flankIt seems that, after a week’s bombing to get in the mood, the Israeli army is going back into southern Lebanon. What are they trying to achieve? A question that could have been asked all week, but one that gains force with this escalation. Everyone’s talking about either “clearing a one-mile strip” along the border…
Read More Another dip in the quagmire