Left of the Boom

The campaign against the IED threat in Iraq resembled in some respects the Battle of the Atlantic. Starting from nearly nothing in 2003 the “improvised explosive device” lurking under the roadbed, embedded in a concrete curb, in a dead dog or a garbage can — or sometimes taking the form of a long string of [...]

Informal networks

The Daily Mail tells the story of how a far flung bunch of strangers, including Michael Yon, created a temporary, self-organized network to get a British soldier an artificial lung he needed to survive until he could be flown to a specialist facility for treatment. The soldier was shot accidentally on his own base. What [...]

Faith in Cynicism

News that a son of the founder of Hamas, a 32 year old man named Mosab Hassan Yousef, has denounced his father’s cause and converted to Christianity is bound to received with disbelief in sophisticated circles, especially since Mosab spent years fighting the shadow war alongside his sire. The WSJ has the basic story. Throughout the [...]

Shaken and Stirred

Imagine a Chechen whose leadership of secret GRU units earned had earned him the highest award the Russian government could bestow; then double crossing the Kremlin and going over to the other side. What might happen?  That man, Sulim Yamadayev, was shot in a luxury hotel in Dubai according to the New York Times as [...]

Blue Plate Special

Congressman Paul Ryan has had considerable success lately explaining the main problem with health care — and with “social democracy” — in general: it’s unsustainable. It’s an old message which has until recently taken a back seat to the idea that the welfare state was the wave of the future. OpenLeft argued that the hidden [...]

To Sir With Love

A Rhode Island teacher’s union criticized President Obama for supporting efforts by Central Falls School District superintendent Frances Gallo to fire the entire staff of a school whose results have scandalously dismal. The President said “If a school continues to fail its students year after year after year, if it doesn’t show signs of improvement, then [...]

Who’ll go under the bus?

Barack Obama’s excruciating campaign to impose United Nations sanctions on Iran in a last ditch attempt to stop their acquisition of a nuclear weapon has come down to two roadblocks: Brazil and China. China’s reluctance to support sanctions can be put down to its growing economic ties with Iran and a geopolitical desire to hamstring [...]

The Evil that Men Do

News that one of two children who killed a two year old toddler 17 years ago has been reincarcerated has shocked advocates of rehabilitation in Britain. James Venables, now 27, has been sent back to jail for unspecified violations of his conditions of release. The BBC reported that “one of James Bulger’s killers has been [...]

The Rumor of War

What if World War 3 has started and nobody knew it? If conflict in the 21st century takes takes the form of intelligence operations and targeted assassinations is it really war any more? Maybe it’s illegal to attack a government but if you do it slowly, quietly enough, then no red lines are crossed; no [...]

Humble Pie

The Internet’s ability to sustain the Long Tail, to provide enough space to cater to the interests of what would otherwise have been a small and scattered group of people sharing similar interests, has allowed not just communities of perverts, but connoisseurs of esoterica to flourish. For example, there are a strangely large number of [...]