Ah yes, the summer and autumn of 2004. The beaux jours of rightwing horseshit, back when an actual neocon disinformation job was targeting a short who’s who of blogging. It seems to be time for some of those years’ shit to float up to the surface. Here’s Dan Rather, suing CBS. Rather contends not only…
Read More covering the story: a glimpse of the press in actionSo, Viktor Bout’s extradition came up in court. Again. And this time the man himself took the stand to say a number of markedly sovok things – apparently the US is only doing this to divert attention from its internal problems and to prevent international peace between Russia and Thailand. Do you realise that in…
Read More can I get a witness? can? I get? a witness?!Does anyone subscribe to this publication? I’d really like to see their story on Tomislav Damjanovic.
Read More blegOK, so there’s this Il-76 with something called “East Wing” stuck a week in northeastern Brazil on its way from Dakar to Cochabamba in Bolivia. Not the busiest route, you might think. But “East Wing” was formed as a successor to none other than GST Aero, sez ATDB.aero; and out of their six aircraft, three…
Read More we give it straight, it ain’t no trivia…Whilst I’m on the VBeat, it’s probably about time for an update on the extradition hearings. Here’s the AP wire story on the last court appearance on the 4th of November. Bout’s lawyer is now pursuing a defence based on challenging the legality of extradition, after the main man apparently gave up stalling tactics. The…
Read More doodling wolves on a notepadInformation is filtering through that an Antonov-12 has been lost on take-off from Al-Asad airbase in Iraq on Thursday. So far there is very little available, but we do have a few facts. The ASN is currently describing it as operated by “Falcon Aviation” and states that the entire crew of 7 died. We’re getting…
Read More paranoia is total awarenessIt seems to be “Blogging Stuff I Studied At University” Day. Here’s an interesting story via the Armchair Generalist concerning the Proliferation Security Initiative, and the case of a North Korean Ilyushin-62 that was apparently prevented from transiting Indian airspace out of suspicion that it was carrying “something” from there to Iran. I’ve always thought…
Read More trickledown logisticsSo Hazel Blears thinks blogs are terrible, rightwing, shallow, cynical, contributing only snark to the debate, no new ideas, no policy analysis, no organising. Her evidence for this consists of cites to Iain Dale and Paul Van Der Staines. Well, you can see how she got those ideas. I should, I suppose, Engage More Fully,…
Read More may the work speak for itselfJust to say that the Viktorfeed/Google Maps mashup is now working, and it’s here. Relatedly, the URL for the GeoRSS feed is changing; replace seagrass.goatchurch.org.uk/viktorfeed.xml with www.harrowell.org.uk/viktorfeed.xml.
Read More participatory panopticon python programming postWell, there’s something for you. Viktor Bout’s lawyer actually showed up for a hearing; this is after lawyer no.1 repeatedly failed to appear and pleaded sickness (“I…I have a heart condition. I have a heart condition. If you hit me, it’s murder…”) and lawyer no.2 found he was permanently busy. I had wondered if he…
Read More further stages of the extradition process