Washington Post reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s book on the days of the CPA in Iraq has been heavily praised; showered with awards and links and stuff. So I was pretty keen to get a copy. Just think of the horrible guts that might be in there. Unfortunately, I can report that it is desperately overrated. To…
Read More Imperial Life in the Emerald City: ReviewIt is quite possible to simultaneously believe that Benazir Bhutto’s career was considerably less perfect than her public image, and also that her assassination is likely to have nothing but bad consequences for Pakistan and quite a few other places. I say this because you’d be surprised; opinion has already broken between uncritical Diana-isation by…
Read More Tell me more about this “accepting ambiguity” trick, it sounds strangely fascinatingThe traditional TYR Christmas ceasefire will be in force up to the 27th. Not that you’d have noticed the difference lately; but anyway I’ll be back with some thoughts on 2007, the year of delivery (remember that?) for everything we’ve been saying about stupid government IT all the way back to 1999. Meanwhile, something from…
Read More Christmas CeasefireI’ve been reading old House of Commons Defence Committee reports – I was ill, forgive me. This one, from February, is likely to spin up to relevance any time now. It covers the Army’s FRES (Future Rapid Effects System) project, which was intended to provide a new armoured vehicle that would be light and handy…
Read More Unclear on the ConceptWell this is impressive; Polly Toynbee arguing that anyone who disagrees with ID cards is objectively pro-illegal immigrants being beaten up. Seriously; the argument is not that we need ID cards to keep the immigrants out, but that we need to cut the government some slack in order to stop them beating up illegal immigrants.…
Read More Polly Toynbee: Is an Egregious HackAn extra titbit on Nimrod: XV230 was the airframe that had refuelled from a TriStar the most. In second place was XV235; and on the 5th November, this aircraft experienced a fuel leak from one of those 38-year old rubber seals. In other news, apparently the decision to stop Nimrods air-to-air refuelling had little effect;…
Read More XV230 UpdateWhy must you record my phone calls? Are you planning a bootleg EP? (thnx, derausqed!) So said the Specials.Laura Rozen points us to a New York Times story regarding the wider telecoms surveillance effort that led to the great AT&T whistleblower case; it seems as good as certain that they got cracking the moment Bush…
Read More Datenschutz in AmerikaThis Brad DeLong post summarises criticisms of the Stern report on the economics of climate change and criticisms of the criticisms. Mostly, it’s concerned with the role of uncertainty; as the tail of the distribution includes some really horrible possibilities, it’s not sensible to assume that we’ll be OK because the middle of the distribution…
Read More A Fundamental ProblemThe good, good people responsible for the Iraqi employees’ resettlement scheme have hit upon a brilliant idea. It turns out that if you have completed the canonical 12 months, you are liable to be refused assistance if you stopped working for the British because you were being threatened; this is called “absenteeism”. Even if, as…
Read More Our Charming Governmentkill lourens horn. Lourens Horn is a South African mercenary who figured in the 2004 Equatorial Guinea coup attempt, and this post, which is what the homicidal googler landed on. I’m really not sure what to make of this.
Read More Genuinely Disturbing Search Request