Did the UK and France get around the Missile Technology Control Regime in order to sell Saudi Arabia the Stormshadow air-launched cruise missile just by draining off some of the fuel to get the range under a key number? This should probably get more publicity than it has.
Read More at last, a post with rocketsAbsolutely, certainly, without a doubt the most important bit in the News of the World case: Last Friday, a high court judge ordered NoW to make available Mulcaire’s notes to the growing list of people suing the paper. Justice Geoffrey Vos, who is in charge of the hacking cases, ordered “rolling disclosure” to all claimants.…
Read More BritiLeaks: the best website that doesn’t exist yetAlliance Géostrategique is having a month on the theme of independence. Some thoughts: First of all, we’re constantly exhorted to act as individuals but also to be aware of interdependence. “Interdependence” seems to be the neoliberal mirror image of “solidarity” – rather than being a force that makes for positive liberty, it seems to be…
Read More declare independence. don’t let them do that to you!This post brings several things to mind. Apparently, eastern Libya was a hugely overrepresented area among the international jihadis who went to Iraq and there exploded. Clearly, this means that you can’t assume that they’re fighting for democracy, whiskey, sexy. However, it’s also very likely that this represented a deliberate policy on the part of…
Read More status: it’s complicatedIf you need anything to read this week, don’t stick around here. Nick Davies for, as they say, the win. Follow the links – it gets better. There’s much more detail here. This is a truly amazing story of crypto-politics, journalism, police corruption, and general depravity. Do you prefer the police/Murdoch spy who went to…
Read More If these are the compromises, the power better be goodDo I notice a common style between Nasr City Security Crisis Management Centre and Erich Mielke’s office? Lots of blonde panelling, display walls of spook stars. Of course, Egypt’s secret police had both Soviet and East German advisors in the Nasser years, but you wouldn’t have expected that to include an interior designer.
Read More get the lookIs it meaningful to say that the Egyptian revolution is calming down, or petering out? I ask because a common flaw of the reporting on it has been to treat the basic dynamics of mobilisation as if they were signs of huge political shifts behind the curtain. It’s obviously true that both revolutionaries and reactionaries…
Read More From the noisy phase to the quiet phaseThis is one of the most interesting stories in the Wikileaks cable dump. The Saudis use the existence of the French national imagery satellite capability, and David Ignatius’s column in the Washington Post, to resist efforts by the Americans to stop them using US arms and satellite data provided for use on Al-Qa’ida for other…
Read More a glimpse of imagery diplomacyIn my continuing fit of doom about Korea, this isn’t helping – a US Military Sealift Command reserve freighter full of Maritime Prepositioning System kit is practising offloading it all in a Korean port. Supposedly, when they’re finished they’ll put it all back aboard and sail away. If you believe that, though… The MPS is…
Read More Korea: logistics, and propagandaI think most of my readers also read Patrick Lang’s blog, but I think this guest post is the best thing yet written on the Taliban/SIS/McChrystal/Petraeus fake sheikh affair. Really, there’s a great movie to be made here – the multiplicity of motives, the ironic contrast between the absurd story and the deadly serious interests…
Read More review of a movie that doesn’t exist yet