What would you think if I told you the police had accused 5,000 British citizens of a really unpleasant, despicable crime, the sort of thing where just being questioned is the kind of news that could destroy your family, career, and psyche, that some 39 of them had committed suicide as a result, but quite…
Read More The Next Big Miscarriage of JusticeThe Sindy has been getting a lot of blogosphere points for this article, which alleges that a mysterious ailment of bees is caused by “radiation” from mobile phone networks. Nowhere is it mentioned that an identical, and unexplained, condition has been documented as early as 1896, before the invention of radio and a hell of…
Read More The Rays from Outer Space Strike Canary WharfOK. Remember a few months ago, the Sundays were briefed about one of Tony’s eye-catching initiatives – to launch a magnetic levitation high-speed rail link from London up to Scotland? Well, if it ever had any substance, it’s now a dead parrot. And so are all maglev projects, which should bring a hearty cheer from…
Read More Maglev is DeadWhilst we’re on the subject of spooks, by the way, this tale on Slugger O’Toole is completely ridiculous, for reasons fully explained in a comment I left there. Simply, the Government has plenty of places to go underground right huurr in the South-East, without needing to go to Northern Ireland (seriously! the only part of…
Read More bunker mentalityThe plan to break up the Home Office and let John Reid keep the macho bits is permitting us a rare glimpse of the core executive in action. Consider this story in teh Grauniad. First of all, note the close symbiosis of the Cabinet Office and the intelligence services – historically, the Cabinet Secretariat evolved…
Read More Deep rumblings in the deep stateOver the last few months, I’ve done a succession of posts which can be read under the tag TWOS, for the war on stupidity, which explore various forms of ideology and consensus. More related posts will be tagged as I go. But is this just an exercise in pooflinging? Beyond tirades about managerialism, Tony Blair,…
Read More Method, not ideologyI recall a fellow student at RHUL, an American, who argued constantly that this-or-that detail of Chinese economic growth meant that democracy in China was imminent and George Bush was right. So thought Thomas Friedman, whose The Lexus and the Olive Tree was at the time a set text on our course (MSc International Relations!).…
Read More Caffeine Bomb!This 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 ridiculousApparently, 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 VeepOK, so there’s a memetracker web service called Visibility Index that claims to monitor “positive” and “negative” Internet activity about your company. Seems either Caterpillar, Inc. or someone with an interest in them is using it. On Sunday, I used a metaphor and described Thomas Barnett as being like a Republican caterpillar beginning to stretch…
Read More When Memetrackers Attack