OK, so I was wanting to know about that Hezbollah WiMAX net. The original source of the story appears to be this Time report: Although Hizballah is known for its massive Iran-funded social welfare system that provides everything from soup to education, construction materials and matchmaking services for Lebanon’s Shi’ite underclass, cell-phone service is not…
Read More It’s good to talkRemember when we nixed the January 2007 Iranian weapons scare? We explained how pretty much any competent terrorists could build an EFP, and followed up with the revelation that the steel balls came from an Indian bike parts factory. Well, this made me smile. Iraqi officials also have accused Iran of meddling in violence and…
Read More which in your case you have not gotSo we had the world’s first military coup motivated by a 3G network licence, in Thailand; we had the shootout between the Chalabi Boys and Orascom security men in Baghdad. Now, there’s the Hezbollah/Amal coup de force (or de folie as Robert Fisk preferred), motivated in part by the Lebanese government’s desire to control their…
Read More scaleydelic!After not much happened for a while, charges have been filed against Viktor Bout in a US court. The indictment charges Viktor Bout with four terrorism offenses, including conspiring to kill Americans, conspiring to kill U.S. officers or employees, conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and conspiring to acquire and use an anti-aircraft missile.…
Read More Viktor IndictedThe Independent has been doing a great job tracking a crucial new trend of our times; the way modern counterinsurgent practitioners are making common features of suburban life into quiet weapons against the common enemy. 12th April: Under the protection programme, sometimes called School Councils or School Shuras, villagers agree to provide a small quota…
Read More Bourgeois COINThis looks like a must-read; Kevin Myers’ personal history of 1970s Belfast, complete with fundamentalist landladies, Provos concerned about the morality of using a condom in the initiator for a carbomb, the only civil war in history where both sides were receiving welfare benefits from the same government, the UDA as the only terrorists in…
Read More hey hey hey, ring ring ringWell, I never imagined Robert Mugabe’s new survival gambit would be just to pretend it wasn’t happening. But it does permit us to answer the question of just how small a state can get and still function; to be clear, I don’t mean a state in the juridical/diplomatic sense, but rather in the political, realist…
Read More The real minimal stateKing’s College London’s terribly smart and not at all sinister Insurgency Research Group have some relevant facts about a controversy between Daniel Davies and I. Recap: Dan apparently believes that it’s better to let jihadis advertise on the Internet, on the principle that they will attract lots of idiots, self-dramatising teens, and committee fetishists, who…
Read More Human Capital Saving in a Terrorist CellLet me count the ways. If you think Phorm – the evil advert-spooking system practically all the UK’s eyeball ISPs want to force on you – isn’t so bad, I’ve got news for you. First of all, let’s have a look at this Grauniad Tech article. BT’s 2006 trials certainly involved some sort of interception,…
Read More Phorm, how do I hack thee?Az-zaman, via Cole reports that the Iraqi government “honoured” SCIRI…sorry…ISIC militiamen for their role in the Basra fighting, and that some 10,000 of them were officially signed up to the Government’s own forces (I thought they already were). The reason for this step is apparently that large numbers – thousands – of men in the…
Read More Mutiny