Rare feature, this, but the Observer has news: the Stevens report says, apparently, that the US National Security Agency was monitoring her phone calls the night of her death. A couple of questions: didn’t they have anyone better to bug? And, more importantly, what was the French government’s position on this? The Obscurer makes the…
Read More Sunday Princess Diana BloggingSpyBlog hits the nail on the head: isn’t it time for the government to disclose the actual numbers on how much po-210 (and anything else) was floating around Alexander Litvinenko’s carcass? Scaramella walked from UCH two days ago, just after having told his boss’s pet paper back in Italy he was dying of radiation sickness.…
Read More Teh data, fools!In comments, Teresa argues that Rumsfeld’s incompetence can be traced to his time as a fighter pilot. Over at Yglesias’s, “Ajay” makes the same point with regard to John McCain, with impressive brevity: Good grief. Aviators. I admit the cocky buggers are handy to have around if you want a plane flown somewhere, but they…
Read More Sources of stupiditySo the BBC was blegging last night for information on Transaero’s B737 EI-DDK, an aircraft involved in the Litvinenko case which is reportedly all hot with po-210. You just knew this blog would end up being involved, didn’t you? Transaero is a fairly respectable outfit, set up as a competitor to Aeroflot in 1991 and…
Read More EI-DDKSo Mike Turner, CEO of BAE SYSTEMS, and friends are moaning about being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office over the Al-Yamamah kickbacks. They are claiming that thousands of jobs are at stake if the Saudis pull out of their order for Eurofighters, and therefore the government ought to quietly call off the SFO and…
Read More Don’t throw me into that…That leaked Rumsfeld memo. What strikes me is that it’s incredibly poor in quality. Rumsfeld was clearly…well…labouring under delusions of adequacy when he wrote this. Consider the “options”. “Significantly increase the number of US trainers and transfer more equipment to Iraqi security forces,” “Reduce quickly the number of US bases, currently 55, to five by…
Read More Even More Iraq!The war comes to Iraq the Model. A modest proposal, if I may. Comments like this one are not “supporting Iraqi democracy”: Congratulations Mohammed. You and your neighbors have taken the first step toward democracy and living as free people. It appears you are coming to the realization that being “free” comes with taking the…
Read More Supporting Iraqi democracyApparently the alternative to the Baker commission/TYR solution in Iraq – get the fuck out under a negotiated settlement with Iran – that the White House is floating is a “tilt to the Shia and Kurdish 80 per cent. I find it a little hard to work out how we are meant to tilt to…
Read More Pinball WizardChatter builds around the suggestion that security control of Basra might be handed over in early 2007. We’ve had quite a lot of this stuff before, tales that significant reductions in force might occur in six months’ time (one Friedman) and more recently announcements that such-and-such a province has been “handed over”. What we haven’t…
Read More Just one more FriedmanZawinski reports trouble with a 4GB SD card and a Treo 700p gadget. I am not very surprised, although for other reasons. Earlier this year, I was offered a Qtek S200 Windows Mobile PDA, and I transferred a 1GB Mini-SD loaded with photos, Stone Roses and Steely Dan songs to it. Within the week it…
Read More Big SD cards