Back in May: Somebody is clearly rationing the leaks according to partisan considerations; I for one can’t wait for Gideon’s exes to hit the tabs, but do you see any of that? Well, you still don’t. After all, look what crawled out of his expenses; he bought a house, which he later sold at a…
Read More I think Flipper is trying to tell us something!A quick UR-CAK update. The owners are vigorously protesting, but it still isn’t clear who they are. The crew apparently claimed that the arms belonged to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence, and the handling agent and the Equatorial Guinea government say they are for Equatorial Guinea. But it seems that the plane came from Zagreb,…
Read More Kano seizure updateWe keep hearing that the Iranian government, or at least one of the competing centres of power within it, is trying to jam satellite TV downlinks and harassing the owners of satellite dishes. The BBC World Service and Al-Jazeera have reportedly both been targeted, specifically as they both use one of the HotBird satellites over…
Read More satellite’s gone, way up to Mars…So we’ve got an Antonov-12 seized in Kano with a load of guns heading for Equatorial Guinea. The Nigerian press have more; the Daily Independent says the aircraft made an unscheduled technical stop at 0400 local time, and that the Ukrainian crew and an unspecified Nigerian are in the hands of the State Security Service.…
Read More dad, won’t you get me out of this?The Heaving Strangler has a beef with the existence of the BBC’s Web site. Of course, the main point here appears to be naked self-interest, especially as their actual proposals seem to involve forming a joint Rothermere-Lebedev-Murdoch cartel, a sort of Unholy Alliance. But here’s the interesting bit; I remember the Tories whining about the…
Read More what used to be is never gonePeople are talking about using “cyberwar” to assist the Iranian opposition. Let’s put some of our new cyber-warfare capabilities to the test, quietly and covertly of course, to disrupt Tehran’s ability to shut off the flow of information to Iranians and between them This makes no sense at all, even less sense than “cyberwar” usually…
Read More what is cyberwar?Shorter Martin Kettle: Both the state Tony Blair left the Labour Party in and the failure of European centre-left parties that adopted a Blairite compromise with neo-liberalism show that we need still more Blairite compromising with neo-liberalism Jesus wept. I am not joking. Meanwhile, I wasn’t aware of this: Martin Kettle & Lucy Hodges (1982)…
Read More death or glory becomes just another storyThe oldest trick in the book of tatty British industry. When times turn tough, find anyone who’s been caught innovating, and sack them. Hence the Obscurer gets rid of Simon Caulkin’s management column, part of their generally excellent business section’ s highly reliable opinion page with William Keegan. But I suppose it leaves more space…
Read More tattyI’ve just been geocoding. In fact, I’ve been putting together a non-GPS geocoding function for FixMyS60. Specifically, I can say that I have no use whatsoever for geonames, which although it has an interesting range of Web services doesn’t seem to have any data in it. I love OpenStreetMap, and it’s possible to query its…
Read More easter eggPhilip Hammond is whining. One year ago, Philip Hammond thought the economy was OK, that the crisis was made up, and that everything would be even more wonderful if he got a tax break on his own property interests. In fact, Hammond was arguing frantically for the government to encourage people to buy property into…
Read More Sauce!