2004

Due to the failure of Blogstreet’s RSS panel service, there has been no Ranter Coverage section for a while. There is now a temporary version in operation courtesy of BlogFuel. This may have to become permanent, as Blogstreet has now been dead to the world for a week, all login and contacts pages pointing to…

Anthony Wells has an amusing post about compulsive parliamentary candidate Lieutenant-Commander Bill Boakes, who stood for election at every opportunity from 1951 to 1981 on a platform that varied from being a democratic monarchist campaigning for equal pay for women to being the “Air, Road, Public Safety White Resident” candidate (rather less fun). All very…

Back last summer I blogged on the destruction of a US Army tank in Iraq by insurgents using an unusual weapon. Wild speculation ranged at the time from a 1940 Soviet antitank rifle, perhaps souped up with new ammunition, to the first-ever use in anger of an electro-magnetic railgun. In the fullness of time consensus…

Multiple blogs report that the US Defence Department planned a raid into Liberia to capture the al-Qa’ida agent Khalfan Ghailani in November, 2001, but then cancelled it. Ghailani was eventually captured in Pakistan last week. Ghailani is said to have been sent to Liberia in 1999 to head AQ’s diamond trading activities, (link), where he…

Just back from a trip to god’s own county. Sighted in Bradford – billboards for the approaching referendum on a devolved government for Yorkshire. Now, I’m in favour of this, and I was a little surprised to see the lack of much campaigning activity. I would have thought that nothing would be an easier sell…

Well, the latest Orange Alert didn’t need much debunking – apparently the information involved originates from 2000. “Federal authorities said on Monday that they had uncovered no evidence that any of the surveillance activities described in the documents was currently under way.” This was, of course, widely predicted after the New Republic story that an…

The NY Times reports on a weird trend in the city – mock police alerts. “It goes something like this: On a typical block in, say, Midtown Manhattan, as many as 80 police cars quickly stream in out of nowhere, in neat rows, their lights and sirens going. The drills seem to take place on…

Excellent post from Russia on the Fallujah disaster. “Joint patrols”! That was it! Bush went on TV to tell the suckers that, “the situation in Fallujah is returning to normal.” Well, if “normal” is leaving the enemy in possession of the city, letting them ambush any Marine patrol they want, then Hell yeah, Fallujah was…

Medecins sans Frontieres has decided to withdraw from Afghanistan due to the degree of danger its staff are working in, as well as alleged manipulation of aid for military ends. Things are of course getting better, just as they are in Iraq. And why doesn’t Blair add “Heroin – now better and cheaper than ever…

Further developments on the Viktor Bout scandal are filtering through the blogosphere. Laura Rozen reports that a firm called something like “Jetline” associated with the colourful African aviation identity/evil quartermaster to world terrorism has been delivering goods to US armed forces PX stores in Iraq. This story then firmed up via Rozen and Douglas Farah,…