Reading the newspaper, carefully

This Indy story is making some waves.

The first point I’d draw from it is that the UK special relationship with the Gulf states is getting another go-round, and William Hague seems mad keen. As well as a lot of effort to sell stuff, and the town the size of Wigan or Oxford made up of expats, there’s been informed talk of one or other GCC state wanting an RAF squadron stationed there (as if we had Typhoon airframes to spare, which we don’t, but that’s another story). A GCHQ presence fits right in. It also fits right in with the theme of keeping some of the Iraq/Afghanistan infrastructure in being on a long term basis.

The second point is that persons interested in knowing more would do well to consult a map of submarine cable landings. The third point is that Glenn Greenwald clearly has no idea who Duncan Campbell is, although I guess this is fair for someone who isn’t a British journalism trainspotter.

The fourth point is that there is a far simpler explanation of the story that works with both the Indy‘s claims and Snowden’s denial of giving them any information. That would be “the Indy deduced it by close reading of the Snowden stories, and then trailed it past a source”. Literally every occasion this blog has published substantive news (and it has! now and then in the last 10 years) was based on something like that, and IF Stone apparently said that it’s amazing what you can find out by reading the newspaper carefully.