Mga app ng Google
Pangunahing menu

Post a Comment On: Steve Sailer: iSteve

"Mushroom Cloud over Tirana"

23 Comments -

1 – 23 of 23
Anonymous Anonymous said...

But where did the several hundred million in small arms ammo disappear from?

Given the figures involved, there would still be a sizable hole in Albania's amoury if this explosion were an unrelated accident. My guess is the any accounting paper trail ended like the victims lives with that explosion.

Arn't Albanians purported to frequently be relatively ruthless criminals? Wasn't Sasha Cohen frightened enough to change his Borat character from Albanian? Remember Belushi?

4/5/08, 9:35 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Welcome to Albania. The country with the lowest IQ of any European country.

http://www.volkmar-weiss.de/table.html

4/5/08, 9:42 PM

Anonymous Muswell Hillbilly said...

And I foolishly thought this AEY story couldn't get any awesomer.

4/5/08, 9:48 PM

Blogger gcochran said...

I thought everybody was familiar with SAIC: I guess it all depends who your homies were.

4/5/08, 10:41 PM

Anonymous testing99 said...

Most likely Steve it was stupidity in handling the ammo dumps that caused the explosion. There was an even LARGER explosion IIRC in Oakland that wiped out most of the Black Stevedores. They went on strike for better safety and were imprisoned.

After Hoxha was deposed something like that was likely just a matter of time.

SAIC has a HUGE HQ in Falls Church. I used to pass it every day. They are also very big in computer security. FWIW I've heard they are very solid in who they hire and how they operate.

4/5/08, 11:09 PM

Anonymous Ian said...

Steve wrote:
> Generally, I hate videos

I am curious why ...

4/6/08, 3:04 AM

Blogger Steve Sailer said...

1. They often bogged down my four-year-old PC.

2. I can read faster than I can watch.

3. They're much harder to skim than text. I end up laboriously going back to see stuff I missed.

4/6/08, 3:30 AM

Anonymous headache said...

Great work Steve. Now you know why the NYT were so desperately avoiding the ethnic angle. You can say it was threatening to blow up in their faces.

BTW, the KLA were always really just a type of mafia gang. Albanians all over Europe have a reputation for being criminals. Its amazing what sort of people the self-righteous and respectable international community will support when it suits their designs.ns.

4/6/08, 4:22 AM

Anonymous headache said...

Maybe somebody did blow it up to cover up thefts and it got out of control because he was too dumb to determine the actual size of the would-be explosion.

4/6/08, 4:29 AM

Blogger Jeff Burton said...

SAIC is a "Beltway Bandit." They got fat and happy milking lucrative federal contracts. I sub-contracted for them back in the early '90's - they marked up my invoices by insane amounts - not that I cared, because I was doing fine anyway.

4/6/08, 5:02 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

SAIC is about as shadowy as Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Northrup-Grumman, or any other large defense contractor. They just specialize in areas the general public (and most news reporters) don't care about.

Steve-since you appear to lack knowledge in this area, I'd suggest you look up CACI ("Captains and Colonels Incorporated," as the wags like to call it) and Vinnell (which appears to be a Northrup-Grumman subsidiary nowadays).

SAIC, CACI and Vinnell were in this field a long time before over-hyped newbies like Blackwater and Triple Canopy.

They have their faults, but, in my opinion, the criticism of them has been inaccurate. They're about as clumsy and inept as any other big bureaucracy, but the field they specialize in makes their screw-ups seem a lot more sinister than they really are.

Planetary Archon Mouse

4/6/08, 6:05 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Steve-

I know you are on a limited budget, but if you're looking for something to replace your 4 year old PC, why not try the Asus Eee? The lower end models run about $350 with tax included, and, from what I know of your habits, I think it will be more than sufficient for most of your needs. (If you have trouble using the version of Linux on it, you can get Windows on it, although it increases the cost, and then you'll need to shell out more money to get the MS Office Suite on it.)

The one downside to it is the size of the hard drive, but you can get an external USB drive for storage. (I'm a weirdo in that I don't do much photography or video, so I can backup all my data in under 4 GB, but I realize most people need more than that.)

Planetary Archon Mouse

4/6/08, 6:14 AM

Anonymous neil craig said...

Less amusing news from Albania is that our KLA allies were able to kidnap 300 Serb teens, dissect them & sell the organs to NATO members hospitals. Really.

The "war crimes prosecutor" admits this & that she made only the briefest investigation, which proved it was true after "reliable journalists" reported it to her but not to us.

As you will have seen, with the exception of a brief mention by Fox & a couple of Italian papers, this has had zero coverage in our allegedly honest press. Had it happened in Tibet we would have banner headlines.

http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/ips040108.htm

It seems a world, or at least Europe & America, run by organleggers who, perhaps merely because it is now technically possible, engage in obscenities Hitler never aspired to is what we have to look forward to.

4/6/08, 6:43 AM

Blogger Jody said...

I'm with Greg. I thought SAIC was far less secretive than RAND. And the reverse vampires.

4/6/08, 10:35 AM

Blogger TGGP said...

Between finding the Vanity Fair article from Lew Rockwell when it was first published and then linking to it in a recent AEY post, I never heard anyone reference SAIC. It's always Halliburton and occasionally RAND. SAIC is the biggest contractor though.

4/6/08, 12:20 PM

Anonymous testing99 said...

Steve, try Linux to extend the life of your PC. Something like Ubuntu, just select/install a Window Manager like Fluxbox, XFCE that is lightweight and won't bog your computer down.

Ubuntu has lots of how-tos in viewing videos. I use it a lot and while there's a few tricks to get CNN and Fox videos to play, Youtube worked pretty straightforward. If you can follow a cookbook recipe you can install the codecs on Linux to see pretty much any type of video.

Try a "live boot" CD from Ubuntu, don't install, see if you like it. You can dual-boot or make the whole thing linux. If you have a real old machine (90's vintage) you can probably use it with Damn Small Linux or Puppy Linux which is built just for that. All the downloads are free, just burn the iso files to CD and you're good.

If you can trade time for money, Linux can help you out.

4/6/08, 1:39 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well what were those guys with the cameras expecting? Were they sitting up there, a mile or so away, waiting for an accident, or rare birds to fly by?

Do we know?

4/6/08, 3:31 PM

Anonymous Half Sigma said...

SAIC is familiar to me, they had a contract to fix certain border inspection machines for DHS before the contract was stolen away by the Alaska natives.

4/6/08, 6:44 PM

Blogger Concerned said...

anonymous

1. would you please make up a nick?

2. SAIC is not as transparent as the other companies you cite. It's not public and th others are. I know because I looked it up on google finance to see how their stock was doing. Unless I got it wrong - can you cite the ticker?

4/6/08, 7:22 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

e the guys with cameras. Just watching the vids it looks like a fire was already burning, so that, or a first unfilmed explosion would alert people to get the camera out. Than bang, bang & BANG etc.

4/6/08, 8:07 PM

Blogger James B. Shearer said...

Another consideration is that thieves robbing ammo depots probably do not always obey the appropriate safety regulations.

4/7/08, 12:05 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

SAIC has been sued a number of times in fraud actions. One suit involved their bilking(alleged) on a Treasury Mint Plant in the Dallas-Ft Worth area. They paid out some sums in a settlement. Other googles searches reveal other False Claims Act qui tam actions
But, on any qui tam actions, they would be barred most likely(as to the private qui tam plaintiff) since any disclosure in the press bars a private qui tam action; THE JURISDICTIONAL BAR GAME TO PROTECT swindlers OF USA ACCOUNTS.
Strange, isn't it Congress set up news in the Press as a grounds to bar private qui tam actions. That must make the New York Times happy who may have been fed stuff from DOJ, to set up any bar to suits. The NYT a puppet of the Bush DOJ.
The FRONT seems to have a lot of connections inside the U S GOV, they didn't get the big load of ammo contracts because they liked young Efriam's Miami style KOOL breeze hair cuts. Cheney, so proud, the young and the restless Ak-47 runner, making it big, getting a slice of the pie( to show it is more than Halliburton). Your tax money at risk in the breakdown of accountability that is the trademark of the Cheney-Bush(W), Administration

4/7/08, 8:21 PM

Anonymous Douglas Knight said...

SAIC is public, NYSE ticker SAI; google finance responded well to SAIC, too.

But they only went public in late 2006.

4/9/08, 8:25 AM

Comments are moderated, at whim.
You can use some HTML tags, such as <b>, <i>, <a>

Comment moderation has been enabled. All comments must be approved by the blog author.

You will be asked to sign in after submitting your comment.
OpenID LiveJournal WordPress TypePad AOL