Abu Muqawama on Pakistan: Raise your hands if you think Pakistan would totally sell the U.S., India, and Afghanistan down the river to earn it a (temporary and illusory) respite from the Islamist insurgents currentlythreatening Islamabad. (You can’t see it on your computer monitor, but Abu Muqawama is typing with one hand because the other…
Read More Answering the wrong questionThis is hilarious, and depressing: you may find tech-libertarians annoying, but just think yourself lucky we got Paul “Van der” Staines, and not this guy. Dmitri Golubov, for it is he, was nailed in 2005 for running a massive credit-card phishing operation (in that case he was probably behind some percentage of the spamwave I…
Read More Hands across the sea continentMartin 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 azimutsFebruary 23, 2008: One of things that I find so frustrating about blogging is dealing with people who are either stupid, venal or willfully choose to misrepresent your views. More often than not, these people post anonymously and decide to tar their opponents with the epithet “racist”, “homophobic” or “fascist” in the hope that by…
Read More Donal Blaney: HypocriteIt looks like an attempt to censor rightwing arsewit Geert Wilders’s anti-Islam home movie has broken YouTube. Pakistani authorities issued a circular to ISPs in Pakistan demanding that they block access to YouTube; but this doesn’t explain why it’s unreachable from the UK. A traceroute to www.youtube.com goes into PCCW’s network and dies; the explanation…
Read More YouTube is Borked: Pakistani Censors SuspectedI’m very glad to see that Abu Muqawama, Phil Carter, and Lt-Col. Bob Bateman have been quick to leap on the inevitable attempt to swiftboatise this story. Especially as Abu, I thought, was showing worrying signs of going into the “good news the MSM is suppressing” mental death spiral and turning progressively into Blackfive With…
Read More SupportJohn Band has some thoughts about Northern Rock. So do I; more precisely, I have some thoughts about the Tories’ performance in the crisis. It’s been appallingly silly, irresponsible, and sometimes plain ignorant. For example, last autumn the Tories seem to have thought that the Bank of England’s loan to the Rock was taxpayers’ money.…
Read More Tories: UnseriousI thought it was Felix Salmon who made a very good argument for a carbon dioxide tax rather than a cap-and-trade system, referring to British Columbia’s decision to introduce a progressively increasing levy on fossil fuels and make a matching cut in general taxation. But it wasn’t; anyway here goes. If you read this blog…
Read More The Gobbles Have ItOK, so it’s frankly hilarious that a RESPECT councillor and Socialist Workers Party member has defected to the Tories. But describing him as a “socialist jihadist conservative” is offensive, stupid, illiberal and anti-democratic, not to mention libellous. For a start, it assumes facts not in evidence. Mr Hussain is not, to the best of my…
Read More James Graham Badly Needs to Wind his Neck InThis story about the US Democrats, and specifically the Obama campaign, and their strategy based on small, autonomous campaign groups working from a honking gurt database of voters, hooks into something I’ve been thinking recently; in all kinds of fields, it’s all about big enabling systems that small autonomous organisations can benefit from. This is…
Read More Small groups and big systems