Via comments at Our Word, Rob makes this excellent point. It’s always struck me as a serious tactical mistake for those on the left to argue against laissez-faire on the grounds that it deprives people of economic security, because this hands a powerful rhetoric of liberty to the right, who basically only care about it…
Read More The freedom to get crushed by a crane jibFailed states and warzones, like Iraq, create a plume of violence downwind of them, like burning oilwells. Iraqslogger: Sulaimaniyah, Feb 17, (VOI)- Iraq’s Kurdistan region border guards arrested on Saturday two persons while trying to smuggle arms to Iran, an official at Sulaimaniyah border guards department said. “The border guards arrested today two persons trying…
Read More Wrong Way – Go BackBBC News: UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has said the operation to hand over frontline security in Basra to Iraqi troops had been “completed” and been “successful”. Asked about reports he would announce within weeks an effective halving of UK troop numbers in Iraq, he told the BBC’s Sunday AM: “Let’s wait and see.” He…
Read More Posted without commentSimulated Laughter reads an al-Qa’ida document and asks if the terrorist disorganisation is moving to a new phase of “lone wolf” individualised terrorism. They argue that this would be a very bad thing. I disagree. I suspect the core of the disagreement is probably a cognitive framework issue. Laughter argues that the worst acts of…
Read More A man alone ain’t..Remember this post? It looks to me like they cut back their activities over Christmas, whilst it was on the table. But now, with this explicitly rejected, and the talk of “the 80 per cent solution” and such..well, all that keeps it from being a betrayal is that there was no explicit offer, at least…
Read More Surging insurgentsThis is now getting silly. Admiral Fallon, the head of CENTCOM, is saying that he has no idea who might be smuggling weapons into Iraq. General Pace of the JCS says he hasn’t seen any evidence that the Iranian government is involved or even merely complicit. One wonders who the people at the “anonymous briefing”…
Read More This is officially getting ridiculousTories? Tories? Did someone say Tories? Yes, they surely did..Teh Grauniad covers a speech by Alan Duncan, the shadow DTI Secretary, to the Centre for Policy Studies, on the topic of youth. Verbatim: We need to empower teachers so that they can exert the control too many parents are unwilling or unable to exert,” Mr…
Read More All you need to know about the ToriesA lot of ISP people are concerned about the volume of peer-to-peer traffic on their networks, especially thick stuff like video. To be more specific, they are usually concerned about the volume of P2P traffic their users draw from outside their networks, as after all, it’s the extra upstream transit they pay for, or the…
Read More Topology-aware P2PApparently, Dick Cheney’s lawyers are actually trying to invoke in court this batshit insane doctrine they seem to have cooked up, that claims that Cheney is both part of the Executive and the Legislature, and that therefore he answers to neither. That’s just head-spinningly weird. They are arguing, in a sense, that a sort of…
Read More Schrödinger’s VeepFollowing an unexpected referral to this blog, I came to this discussion of Theodor Adorno. Well, that takes me back. I remember having reams of him stuffed down my neck at Vienna University in the winter of 2001, which I didn’t like in the least. I certainly didn’t like the cult of personality some people…
Read More The enemies of embittered freedom come in unexpected forms