Over at CT, a link to two polls – here and here. The killer finding is that the same sort of percentage of the US population, and the same sort of people, deny that Barack Obama is a US citizen *and* that the American and African continents were once part of the same landmass. Specifically,…
Read More tectonic platesWe’ve not had a good fake police story for a while. Here’s one, though; Californian driving a car kitted out as a police vehicle stops a real policeman and gets arrested. It’s not quite as good a story as all that – the real police car was an unmarked one, so the symmetry isn’t perfect.…
Read More fake private contractorsBruce Schneier and Jason Sigger, usually sensible sources, both mock a study by some thinktank or other which raises the supposed possibility of hackers “using the Internet to start a nuclear war”. As they both point out, the possibility of anyone getting access to the actual command and control firing chain with metasploit is so…
Read More police and thievesHere’s Henry from Crooked Timber not getting it. Here’s Randy McDonald not getting it. Look, the fact that neo-con wankers deal in baseless smears and mindlessly repeated talking points should neither be cause for surprise, nor should you hope to convince them of anything. I occasionally make the point that after the Left invented post-modernism,…
Read More hitler hitler hitlerThings are getting better in Iraq. If you’re mercenaries-turned-oil pushers Tim Spicer and Anthony Buckingham, that is! Heritage Oil has, indeed, struck oil. Up to 4.2 billion barrels of the stuff. This is of course very much subject to drilling, and even more so to Kurdish/Baghdad politics. If you’re trying to distribute wheelchairs, however, not…
Read More things are getting better in Iraq, for some values of better, for some values of Iraq…Proponents of UAVs like to talk about the “enduring stare”; their ability to remain on station, to keep pointing at the target, rather than taking discrete reels of photos. Blogging ought to be a bit like that; keep after the story, don’t accept the official news (or bullshit) cycle. Hence, this McClatchy story, which has…
Read More can’t we, you know, move on?So, it’s over; the British Army’s responsibilities in southern Iraq have been handed over, and now the rapid drawdown begins. Colour me delighted. But…this is also the last opportunity to do anything for past Iraqi employees. I’m aware that some number of them were taken to the UK, but I reckon someone ought to make…
Read More IraqInteresting to see Ahmed Chalabi admit essentially everything I suspected of him back in 2004. This must surely count in the top ten intelligence triumphs of history, along with ULTRA, VENONA, the Rote Kapelle and the Normandy deception plan.
Read More Chalabi: a place in historyBut not to the right people. Via Jason Sigger’s blog, the US Marines have second thoughts about all those new armoured wheeled vehicles they bought. Demanding more vague armoured vehicles was an easy cross-party response to Iraq; it got around saying whether you actually opposed the war, or what strategy you favoured. If you were…
Read More giant armoured bus considered harmfulThe times change; children don’t respect their parents, and everyone’s writing a book. However, the forces of interest don’t change, and one place you find them pure is the defence procurement economy. Consider this story. The first thing you’ll note is that it’s kinda plausible, if you’re the kind of person who reads this blog.…
Read More but what do the poor do with their lives?