So, Barack Obama is now an evil warmongering bastard like all the others who wants to invade Pakistan or a girly man who doesn’t want to nuke Pakistan, depending on ideological preference. The reason was a speech on foreign policy he recently gave, and subsequent reporting. You can see how it happened. It spooked me;…
Read More Reading the Documents: Obama vs PakistanContrary to what John Robb says, the supposed plot (no explosives, information from a sooper source, mystery men) to attack a jet fuel pipeline into New York (JFK) airport does not bear out his theories as anything distinct from good old-fashioned counterinsurgency. Robbo is right that the pipeline was a good target, but I suspect…
Read More Limits of RobbismWell, the decisions are in on the plan to break up the Home Office into the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry for Counter-Terrorism, National Security, Border Control, and Unauthorised Ball Games. And the snark in that link remains applicable. The only interesting news is that it’s even worse than I thought. Not only does…
Read More Political GOTO considered harmfulWhilst we’re on the subject of spooks, by the way, this tale on Slugger O’Toole is completely ridiculous, for reasons fully explained in a comment I left there. Simply, the Government has plenty of places to go underground right huurr in the South-East, without needing to go to Northern Ireland (seriously! the only part of…
Read More bunker mentalityThe plan to break up the Home Office and let John Reid keep the macho bits is permitting us a rare glimpse of the core executive in action. Consider this story in teh Grauniad. First of all, note the close symbiosis of the Cabinet Office and the intelligence services – historically, the Cabinet Secretariat evolved…
Read More Deep rumblings in the deep stateSpyBlog 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!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!This is the full text of John Reid’s speech to the Labour Party Conference. In it, Reid states unequivocally that he does not believe that the State should be subject to law. And let’s be clear. It cannot be right that the rights of an individual suspected terrorist be placed above the rights, life and…
Read More John Reid: the most dangerous man in BritainA man in Doncaster gets caught speeding in the firm’s van. Fearing for his livelihood, he decides to eliminate all traces – including the camera. Fortunately for him, he’s a railway welder and has access to thermite. Ah, thermite.. I remember this as the coolest reaction going in school science. For the un-initiated, the thermite…
Read More Thermite ahoy!The last post went a bit off-topic as the rockets got in the way of the strategy. So, a recap. Hezbollah is following, I think, a sort of fleet-in-being strategy. They want to keep their militia and their quasi-state role inside Lebanon, and anything that weakens the Lebanese government is conducive to that. Even being…
Read More Maintenance of the aim