Alternate Seat of TYR

I recall I once told readers of this blog to watch out for anyone who starred in a “Young Enterprise” program or won an award for the so-and-so most likely to succeed in business. They’ll be the ones vanishing over the hills with Acme Materials Science Ltd’s total cash balances, while you try to work [...]

This 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 [...]

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 [...]

Much more is filtering out about the Bangkok Bout Bust; it seems fairly certain that his arrest was the result of a sting operation in which the DEA posed as buyers from the FARC. Bout booked a meeting room in the Bangkok Sofitel; he, and several others, were waiting for their guests to arrive when [...]

Everyone was all over this NYT story about those vanishing cargoes of guns in Iraq. It’s nothing new if you’ve been reading this blog; we’ve been concerned about this ever since 2005. And, unlike Spencer Ackerman, we’ve got the whole supply chain; those guns didn’t come on no C-17, Spence, but on JLI and Aerocom [...]

G3 Systems Ltd must have been very proud when Tony Blair visited the logistics base it built in Afghanistan for the British Army a few months ago, and again when Defence Secretary Des Browne came calling. Their website boasts of offering a wide range of services to the armed forces, especially the supply of various [...]

What was a small British company doing importing vast quantities of arms from Bosnia? More importantly, what was it doing telling lies about their destination in order to clear Bosnian customs? What was it doing contracting with Tomislav Damjanovic, possibly Viktor Bout, and disgraced Iraqi minister Ziad Cattan to ship them to Iraq when the [...]

David Phinney notepads something interesting about the scandal-lapped Kuwaiti contractor on the US Embassy in Baghdad:
From spring 2006: The general manager for the US Embassy contractor, First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting has two airplanes the company can’t register and is piloted by a German pilot named Wolfgang …. The general manager also has another [...]

So dodgy Russians have bullied Fasthosts into darking Craig Murray’s blog, as well as a gaggle of others on the same virtual machine. (Iron-clad integrity *and* technical chops; what more do you want?) Naturally, this has only spread the poison; so here’s the complete text. Kindly post it on your own blog.
In a creative note, [...]

This list of Blackwater boss Erik Prince’s campaign contributions has been getting heavy-traffic blogger attention due to his donation to a fake Green Party candidate.
There’s better, though: consider these two line items in relation to one another.

Prince, ErikMcLean, VA 22102Prince Group/Chairman PRINCIPLES EXALT A NATION POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE $1,000 primary 01/04/06
Principles, eh? And what do [...]