2005

After the FAZ, it’s the turn of the London Evening Standard to reverse the attribution on Dr. Thompson’s obituary of Nixon. What is it with these people? Here’s the link to their story. Scroll down a little, and it’s cock-up ahoy in paragraph 11: “At the height of the Watergate scandal he was described by…

The New York Times reports extensively on the Iraqi insurgent campaign against Baghdad’s infrastructure, specifically oil refining, electricity production and water supply. According to the Iraqi oil minister: ” “There is an organization, sort of a command-room operation,” Thamir Ghadhban, the Iraqi oil minister, said Thursday in an interview. In his area of responsibility, Mr.…

Abu Aardvark brings up the old question of the Iraqi secret police files that somehow wandered into the possession of Ahmed Chalabi after the fall of Baghdad. It was widely accepted that ownership of the papers might be a potent source of political pull, permitting blackmail of almost anyone. The Aardvark points out that they…

The Washington Post reports on the background of the election-day riot and shooting at Camp Bucca, Umm Qasr, the main coalition jail in Iraq. “”What happened here on January 31st has changed the dynamics” of managing such situations, said Maj. Gen. William Brandenburg, who oversees U.S. military detention operations in Iraq and toured the facility…

We don’t have to believe it if we don’t want to, but then that’s conservative talk. Dr. Hunter Stockton Thompson shot himself in the kitchen of his Aspen bunker yesterday. He is dead. I would like to report that he screamed across the firmament of a clean blue sky in a thundering scimitar of dirty…

Newsweek reports at some length on the operations of the so-called “torture flights”, the two no-titles jets allegedly used by certain parts of the US government to transfer suspected terrorists to countries where they may face a worse fate. The Ranter of the 15th of November 2004 covered a previous version of the story, however…

The outstanding Gene Expression has a brief post with links to a variety of guides on how to spoof automated fingerprint readers. It’s clear that, using fairly simple and widely available technology, spoofing is feasible. It’s also clear that, whatever the ID-control technology, criminal creativity will catch up with it – after all, the same…

Phil Carter’s Intel Dump reports on a Wall Street Journal story on a rash of apparently unauthorised irregular forces appearing in Iraq. (Note: original story is locked in a subscription ghetto) It is reported that “The unplanned units — commanded by friends and relatives of cabinet officers and tribal sheiks — go by names like…

I’ve only been watching the Great Gannon Hunt in passing, but this is amazing: it is said he knew about the opening of the Iraq invasion four hours beforehand. Now this is even more important than the link makes out: H-hour in Iraq was brought forward by 24 hours at the last moment, because of…

Juan Zarate, US Assistant Treasury Secretary for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crime, gave a long testimony to the Senate Financial Services Committee yesterday. It’s good to see that, in his words: “Treasury is also working with the interagency community to identify and shut down illicit financiers who have penetrated the diamond and precious commodity industries…