It seems to be “Blogging Stuff I Studied At University” Day. Here’s an interesting story via the Armchair Generalist concerning the Proliferation Security Initiative, and the case of a North Korean Ilyushin-62 that was apparently prevented from transiting Indian airspace out of suspicion that it was carrying “something” from there to Iran. I’ve always thought…
Read More trickledown logisticsSo Hazel Blears thinks blogs are terrible, rightwing, shallow, cynical, contributing only snark to the debate, no new ideas, no policy analysis, no organising. Her evidence for this consists of cites to Iain Dale and Paul Van Der Staines. Well, you can see how she got those ideas. I should, I suppose, Engage More Fully,…
Read More may the work speak for itselfYou are unlikely to find anything much better to read than Nir Rosen‘s report from Afghanistan. It’s the journalism we’ve been yelling at the professionals to do for years. There’s far too much to summarise, but one thing that strikes me is the sense of a world of tiny, hyperlocal, byzantine conflicts, with sudden interventions…
Read More Superior Quality RecordingsMobile phone wars. Georgians complain they can’t get American submarine cable engineers to come back, for fear. And they sue. The Administrative Panel of the Tbilisi City Court has rejected an appeal filed by Russian cellco MegaFon against fines imposed by the Georgian National Communications Commission (GNCC) for unlicensed use of radio frequency spectrum within…
Read More GSM Warlord, againJust to note that one issue of the Sun this week managed to rehash the much debunked pirates will knifecrime our asylums!!! story, yet again. It’s still drivel, of course; after all, here are those excitingly amoral Frenchmen, about to wire their pirates up to the ship’s power bus….or not. The latest lot are heading…
Read More Piracy Drivel WatchOK, someone’s left an armed UAV in the changing rooms. Is it you, Harrowell? No? Speak up? America? Turkey? Italy? Well, it would be interesting to ask somebody how many Predators the RAF possesses at the moment, compared to a few weeks ago. Relatedly, this is wrong: Pakistan, Afghanistan, nuclear proliferation and trans-national Islamic terrorism…
Read More Mr 10% meets the 27%ers up townI don’t believe this; note the lack of any direct evidence, not even packets of Indian steel balls. What I do believe is that we’re heading for a serious catastrophe with regard to Pakistan. As I’ve said before, the American meta-narrative seems to be that it’s something like a 50s-70s rightwing military dictatorship in Southeast…
Read More I see no joy, I see only sorrow, I see no chance of your bright new tomorrowWell, there’s something for you. Viktor Bout’s lawyer actually showed up for a hearing; this is after lawyer no.1 repeatedly failed to appear and pleaded sickness (“I…I have a heart condition. I have a heart condition. If you hit me, it’s murder…”) and lawyer no.2 found he was permanently busy. I had wondered if he…
Read More further stages of the extradition processYou’d think someone who specialises in blogging about “public diplomacy” would notice when someone refloats a rah rah painted school success story from 2003. Iraqna didn’t “happen”; Orascom built it back then, and didn’t we all hear so much about how Iraqis had mobile phones? You didn’t hear so much, outside the trade, about how…
Read More Well, what about those Iraqi MOBILE PHONES? EH? EH?Late to the party, I know. But is this the worst example of biometrics as a religion yet? So the Shia-led, pro-Iranian government of Iraq we’re desperately propping up doesn’t like the Sunni, Iraqi chauvinist countergangs we organised to prop them up much. So the plan to reintegrate them, as they say, into society as…
Read More SELECT * FROM policies WHERE irishash=”0xSTUPID”;