If you can read you should read this if you read nothing else this decade. It’s all about how the Americans started torturing people, whose idea it was, how men like John Yoo came to provide the legal justifications, who was keen (the ideological core of the administration), who didn’t want to know (the FBI…
Read More Torture LawyersI recall I once told readers of this blog to watch out for anyone who starred in a “Young Enterprise” program or won an award for the so-and-so most likely to succeed in business. They’ll be the ones vanishing over the hills with Acme Materials Science Ltd’s total cash balances, while you try to work…
Read More Young Enterprise Curse WatchThis is interesting. Jim Bates, an expert witness for the defence in some of the Operation Ore cases we discussed, has been convicted of misrepresenting his qualifications. Specifically, the charges relate to whether or not he claimed to be an electronics engineer, despite not being one, and to his career in the Royal Air Force.…
Read More The PaybackMuch more is filtering out about the Bangkok Bout Bust; it seems fairly certain that his arrest was the result of a sting operation in which the DEA posed as buyers from the FARC. Bout booked a meeting room in the Bangkok Sofitel; he, and several others, were waiting for their guests to arrive when…
Read More Smulian In the Bag With Viktor BoutMartin Kettle can fuck off with this: The bright Tory shadow Cabinet Office minister Greg Clark asked recently why politicians are so ready to discuss antisocial behaviour but so poor at discussing its pro-social equivalent. Bright? Christ, we’re in a bad way. The first thing that needs discussing here is that “pro-social behaviour” is a…
Read More Blog de frappe tous azimutsWhat was a small British company doing importing vast quantities of arms from Bosnia? More importantly, what was it doing telling lies about their destination in order to clear Bosnian customs? What was it doing contracting with Tomislav Damjanovic, possibly Viktor Bout, and disgraced Iraqi minister Ziad Cattan to ship them to Iraq when the…
Read More 58,000 AKs in a Nottingham basement?There is no reason for anyone to think that the National Identity Register will not be compromised. Nobody serious in IT thinks that any networked computer system is immune to hackers, and that’s before you consider extrusion rather than intrusion; it’s a horrible misuse of English, but it’s the term used for attackers who come…
Read More The NIR Can and Will be CompromisedPerhaps that should be in Every Boy’s Handbook? RSA reports on an online shop set up specifically to drain stolen credit cards. A card costs between $2-5 a throw, presumably reflecting a low success rate in sucking them dry. Setting up a merchant account and DIYing, as most of Landslide’s customers did, is clearly the…
Read More HOWTO launder dodgy credit cardsWhat would you think if I told you the police had accused 5,000 British citizens of a really unpleasant, despicable crime, the sort of thing where just being questioned is the kind of news that could destroy your family, career, and psyche, that some 39 of them had committed suicide as a result, but quite…
Read More The Next Big Miscarriage of JusticeSomeone decides to rake through the Elf-Aquitaine embers, with the result that 42 persons are sent for by the judge. Including a whole slew of politicians – carrier-grade rightwing thug Charles Pasqua, crooked prefect for the Var Jean-Charles Marchiani, professional president’s son Jean-Christophe “Papa M’a Dit” Mitterand, and slightly surprisingly, Mitterand’s right hand man and…
Read More More updates from the crime beat