Psst! Wannabuyanuke?
So Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, has signed a detailed confession about how he provided a great deal of nuclear how-to, including lots of details, to Iran, Libya and North Korea. (NY Times story here)

President Musharraf is of course shocked, shocked! to find out that this was going on.

The American and Pakistani statements, of course, put the blame squarely on Khan, and not on any members of the government, since we've found ourselves in the unenviable position of needing Musharraf to stay alive and in power since he's far and away the best of several options for the rulership of Pakistan. (For one, he's somewhat opposed to the fundamentalists, despite the fact that they control the army and de facto a good fraction of the country.) Unfortunately, quite a few of his countrymen disagree with that last estimation, or at least so it would seem given the number of people who have tried to kill him in the past few months.

So is anyone at all surprised by any of this?

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Spy vs. Spy
The userpic is a bit more appropriate than usual in this case. It's a report about a CIA operation back in the early 80s to deal with how the Soviets were "acquiring" US technology secretly. If this is indeed the case, and I have no reason to believe otherwise, I must say that this was simply beautiful. The story, by William Safire, here.

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One more news post for the day...
One third of the Iranian parliament has just resigned. This comes in protest of the Guardian Council's decision to ban over half the candidates for parliament for standing for office, including a large number of incumbents. The move comes after a three-week sit-in which the current parliament held in protest.

The situation is heating up; whether this will be the thing that triggers a large-scale change remains to be seen. Best of luck to the reformers.

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