Back from MWC. Heavy cold. Browser queue jammed with stuff. I’m going to do a brief succession of link posts to clear up. (Happenings last week; huge Leveson revelations, James Murdoch out, King Mob abolished workfare, horse, Borisbus fiasco, debate on Daniel Morgan, even more Leveson..) This one deals with everyone’s favourite global geo-political region,…
Read More Middle Eastern LinksIs there a drone bubble? It’s not clear whether this is more like the .com bubble, when a lot of useful stuff was built but a couple of years too early, or more like the housing bubble, when a lot of stuff was built in the wrong places to the wrong standards at the wrong…
Read More RQ-170 upshot, part 2: the bubbleThe fact that a majority of this year’s graduates from USAF basic pilot training are assigned to drone squadrons has got quite a bit of play in the blogosphere. Here, via Jamie Kenny, John Robb (who may still be burying money for fear of Obama or may not) argues that the reason they still do…
Read More The RQ-170 hack and the drone bubbleI have been reading Curzio Malaparte’s Technique of the Coup d’état this weekend. It’s a fascinating document – the basic argument is that the October Revolution represented an exportable, universally applicable technology for taking control of the state, quite independent of ideological motivation or broader strategic situation. It was already fairly well-known at the time…
Read More Reflections on a HOWTOSwinging off a discussion at Jamie Kenny’s of climate deniers, I wonder what Jamie thinks about Steve Levine’s thesis here that China’s emerging culture of mass protest, the famous Mass-Group Incidents or MGIs, may have major and positive consequences for Chinese energy policy and therefore for the world. It’s surely time we started calling the…
Read More MGIs for cleaner skies, and Power Tool of the WeekAlliance 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!One thing that is perhaps being overlooked by people discussing whether or not it would be wise to impose a no-fly zone over Libya is exactly what such a zone would set out to prevent. When it was first suggested, it was inspired by the general horror that the Libyan government was having crowds of…
Read More And it’s one jet airliner, for ten prisoners…Sultan al-Qassemi kicks in a data point to the ArseDex. Apparently Libyan agents are distributing flyers in Guinea and Nigeria calling for mercenaries to fight for $2,000 a day. Yesterday, loyalist thugs cost $500 a day in Libya. Even with the huge supply of potential thugs in sub-Saharan Africa’s demobilised militias being available, the ArseDex…
Read More the CIA decided they wanted Roland dead, so that son of a bitch Van Owen cut off Roland’s headI’m beginning to worry seriously about Korea. There’s the wikileaked cable suggesting that Chinese tolerance is running out. There’s more recent confirmation. This after the initial non-reaction. Even if Peter Foster is right that the Chinese position hasn’t changed that much, it still looks like something has changed in the deterrent balance. On the other…
Read More Moulded from birth. Forged by hatred. Honed in ignorance.Two things: brief piece about the Toyota Hilux, preferred transport to the world guerrilla, and a fatwa against mobile money transfer. You know you’ve made it when you’ve been fatwa’d. More seriously, this huge Guardian piece on Iranian policy in Iraq is well worth reading. It’s interesting, to say the least, that the people Sadr…
Read More a slight return from 2004…