Russia

Douglas Farah reckons the Russians are trying to press the US State Department to press for Viktor Bout’s release, or rather his extradition to Russia, which would amount to the same thing. It’s an interesting suggestion, although usual caveats apply to a story sourced to Bill “WMD to Syria!!” Gertz. I can imagine them pitching…

Read More Even More Viktor Bout Arrest Blogging

Russians! Russian air force out again, in some strength; and exercising a whole range of types, including the White Swan…sorry…Tu-160 BLACKJACK, BEAR, BACKFIRE, and MiG31 and Su27 fighters into the bargain, to say nothing of jet tankers. For people who aren’t making a political point, they certainly look like it. Meanwhile, the French Air Force…

Read More The King called up his jet pilots; he said you’d better earn your pay

Russians! Not just Alissa this time; the Il-78 tankers, A-50 AWACSki, Bears and Backfires got to come out and play with the entire Russian navy. I think they’re trying to make some sort of point.

Read More Again

James Glanz of the NYT reports at great length on the electrical siege of Baghdad, with detail, network maps, and more. Great. Obviously, this being a blog, the primary meaning of this is an excuse to moan about the press. Why didn’t Glanz (or anyone else at the NYT) report on this back in 2004,…

Read More Electricity – let it wash all over me! Or not

SpyBlog hits the nail on the head: isn’t it time for the government to disclose the actual numbers on how much po-210 (and anything else) was floating around Alexander Litvinenko’s carcass? Scaramella walked from UCH two days ago, just after having told his boss’s pet paper back in Italy he was dying of radiation sickness.…

Read More Teh data, fools!

So the BBC was blegging last night for information on Transaero’s B737 EI-DDK, an aircraft involved in the Litvinenko case which is reportedly all hot with po-210. You just knew this blog would end up being involved, didn’t you? Transaero is a fairly respectable outfit, set up as a competitor to Aeroflot in 1991 and…

Read More EI-DDK

It’s been a weird political week, no? There was “Loyalist” (scarequotes included because my definition of loyalty doesn’t include shooting fellow citizens, constables & c) nutbag Michael Stone’s public freakout-cum-terrorist attack on Stormont. I haven’t laughed as much in years – seriously, ten years ago this would have meant blood in the streets, all 39…

Read More Anarchy in the UK!