special relationships

Any discussion of Huawei relating to the Chinese “National Intelligence Law” has to start out from the recognition that all states, always, have tried to weaponize telecommunications systems and have taken considerable legal powers over people and property involved, even where they didn’t create the assets and organizations themselves. Take a look at Section 94,…

Read More Enough with the bad faith about Huawei.

Back at the end of 2007, as we dived into the trough of the Great Recession or Great Financial Crisis or Second Great Depression or what you will, a crucial decision was taken. Verizon Wireless, then still a Vodafone division, chose LTE for its new mobile network, and put one of the most important women…

Read More Ten Years of 4G: Trump, Snowden, Huawei, and Brexit

I’ve been saying for a very long time – back to 2006, I think, but the earliest TYReference I can find is that the difference among European countries that hopped into Iraq with both feet and those that didn’t is the difference between those who had independent satellite imaging and those who didn’t. This is…

Read More Whoosh

I notice people are whining about BBC “payoffs” again. This is pathetic. If the BBC is meant to be independent, that means politicians of all descriptions shouldn’t be able to threaten the people who work there with the sack. This can be achieved in two ways – either we take the politicians’ power over the…

Read More The price of BBC independence. In favour of cynical payoffs

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.