2004

AP reports on the collapse of security on the roads of Iraq, including the route to Baghdad airport. Although the military now call it RPG Alley and the British Embassy has banned its staff from using it, the alternatives are even worse. After all, the route to the western border passes through Ramadi and Fallujah.…

The Kyiv Post reports on the frantic events yesterday in Ukraine (separatist referendum called off due to insufficient supply of separatists, vote of no confidence in the prime minister, prime minister says he will ignore it, talks break down, talks back on, agreement reached – maybe..). Broadly, the government side agreed to the principle of…

(Part of an occasional series) The draft ID Cards Bill is now out, (you can get a copy here) and it is just as bad as we thought. After all, you might think a huge government database linking all its information about all of us was bad enough. But what would you say to this?…

Ha’aretz reports on Ukrainian Jews’ view of the election crisis, revolution, etc. They quote Leonid Finberg, director of the Jewish Institute of Kiev, as follows: “”I am convinced the article was commissioned to blacken the name of Yushchenko and sabotage a source of support for him,” said Leonid Finberg, director of the Judaica Institute in…

Something was annoying me about all this stuff of “US-guided branding strategies” that’s coming out of the Grauniad, and I fortunately remembered what it was. All the features they spoke of as being invented by evil political consultants are actually part of a genuine European history of the recent past. “One-word branding”? Well, it’s certainly…

My Technorati link cosmos just flashed up with a new blog linking to the Ranter (I have it as an RSS feed into a Firefox live bookmark). Eagerly I clicked on the newcomer – and found an odd, poorly designed thingy with repeated posts about “gift cards”. Not posts with information in them really, but…

The Observer reports on the gathering threat of another Rwandan intervention in the DRC. Back in June, I reported that just as fighting broke out anew in eastern Congo, one of Viktor Bout’s aircraft had shown up in Kigali. (Linky) It’s no surprise to notice this key paragraph, then: “n the towns of Walikale and…

Tomorrow, the ID Cards bill gets its first reading in the Commons. We are holding a public meeting on Tuesday, 30/11/04, at 1900 in the location following: Tuesday 30 November 2004, The Brix, St Matthews Church, Brixton, London SW2 1JF If you go to that – even if you don’t – you might also want…

Excellent blog here, reporting in detail on just how the elections went on in the officially pro-Yanukovich regions of the Ukraine. It’s too long to quote, but well worth reading. Analysis moment: if you were going to be paranoid about it, Russia might have a lot to gain in the event of a secession by…

Cocaine now cheaper than a glass of wine. Regular Ranters will no doubt remember that I’ve long thought that Tony Blair’s success in getting drug prices down should form part of Labour’s election campaign. Time was that hard drugs cost the earth and polluting petrol was cheap. Now, petrol is like rocking-horse shit and you…