Randy McDonald, and probably others, seem to have found the Afzal Amin piece baffling, so I thought I’d draft a brief explainer as follows. Afzal Amin, potential Tory MP and ex-army officer, tried to incite the EDL to stage a provocative demonstration in his heavily Muslim constituency during the campaign, while also inciting a group…
Read More More questions on the Biryani Project.Am I right in thinking that Moazzam Begg’s political role is getting more complicated, more important, and more impressive? Here’s a story. It kicks off with: British jihadi fighters desperate to return home from Syria and Iraq are being issued with death threats by the leadership of Islamic State (Isis), the Observer has learned. A…
Read More Moazzam Begg, always in the paper, rarely reported.Back from MWC. Heavy cold. Browser queue jammed with stuff. I’m going to do a brief succession of link posts to clear up. (Happenings last week; huge Leveson revelations, James Murdoch out, King Mob abolished workfare, horse, Borisbus fiasco, debate on Daniel Morgan, even more Leveson..) This one deals with everyone’s favourite global geo-political region,…
Read More Middle Eastern LinksDoing real-time PCR in unusual conditions. Just how Obama watched the raid in real time. Hoping for the end of the war in Afghanistan. After weeks of debate among civilian and military leaders, the National Security Council recently endorsed key elements of the State Department’s reconciliation strategy. Starting peace talks has now become the top…
Read More OBL linksThere’s a good debate in Jamie Kenny’s comments about the political upshot of bin Laden’s death in Pakistan. For what it’s worth, I’m with Dan Hardie on this – it’s a very important political fact that the intelligence hierarchy a) couldn’t or wouldn’t catch bin Laden and b) couldn’t or wouldn’t protect him any longer.…
Read More obl isi faqHow did the Americans make sure their raid on Osama bin Laden wasn’t misidentified as Pakistan’s real enemy? This was surely a major planning constraint. It’s been suggested, plausibly, that the bulk of their radar assets are positioned along the international border and the LOC, but once you get to Abbottabad you’re not that far…
Read More A questionThis has done the rounds and been roundly done for all the right reasons. There is almost nothing the Obama administration does regarding terrorism that makes me feel safer. Whether it is guaranteeing captured terrorists that they will not be waterboarded, reciting terrorists their rights, or the legally meandering and confusing rule that some terrorists…
Read More Authoritarianism Does Its ThingThere’s quite a lot of buzz about this story, in which a DHS report into criminal use of aircraft over the South Atlantic gets rehashed. The “Air Cocaine” case in Mali has given the whole thing another layer of sexy, of course, and it’s good to know that the problem is recognised – even better…
Read More the all purpose al-Qa’ida argument applied to aviationAs you’ll probably have guessed, I’m not terrified by the pantsbomber. As Spencer Ackerman puts it: it doesn’t do any good to blow this out of proportion, since blowing things out of proportion to spur an overreaction is Usama bin Laden’s explicit strategy However, as more details have filtered out, I’ve revised my original view…
Read More the boy’s a time bomb!Here’s that that jihadi having a row with an Aussie blogger. Quick recap – she linked to a text of his as an example of Al-Qa’ida thinking, he noticed the referral and the traffic, he replied to deny association with the OBL team but to boast of everything else. Some points on the text. 1)…
Read More the pundit internationale