2005

Anyone who puts their money into this must be either a fool or a hero: INTREPID gold explorers have extended their search for the precious metal to Iran, a country largely untouched by Western mining companies. A small mining play whose field of operation is, ahem, Iran. One for my Completely Crazed Business Ventures list,…

Phil Carter of the outstanding Intel Dump has been mobilised into the 101st Airborne Division. This represents a considerable improvement, I think, in the US Army’s capabilities. Phil is a former paratrooper (or more accurately, now he is again), Civil Affairs specialist and Military Police officer turned lawyer, whose coverage of the US Army’s manpower…

John B. has an interesting post up about British and English identity. His premise is that, in effect, England doesn’t exist. Or at least, there are parts of the geographical entity of that name that do represent the stereotype “England”, but they should not obscure the parts of England that don’t. Now, I’ve been known…

Looking up those Sharjah Airport departure boards yesterday, I thought it might be an idea to collate the Boutcos as a psuedo-timetable. So here goes. SHARJAH (SHJ) ARRIVALS 23/06/05 0900 TEB1102 Kabul (“Tenir Airlines”) 1500 PHW051 Hyderabad (Phoenix Avn) 1545 TKY118 Baghdad (“Thai Sky” – a new one on me) 1600 AWZ202 Khartoum (Airwest/East West…

My HOWTO Occupy Tunisia post has been attracting referrals from companycommand.army.mil, a forum set up by the US Army for officers returning from or going to Iraq to share experience and knowledge. A sensible idea. I’m rather pleased they read it. However, because as far as I know those of us outside the US DoD…

(Expanded from a comment at AFOE) The LA Times reports in detail on the recent insurgent company-sized assault on Abu Ghraibh prison. It was deeply scary: they staged diversionary raids all round the area to hinder relief and confuse the issue, then assaulted the position from three directions at once, having laid down a bombardment…

It’s been brought to my attention that the ever-informative Sharjah Airport online departures board shows that an Irbis Air Co. flight departed for nowhere else than Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan this morning. (Thanks, Hannah!) Further digging down the lists shows that, in fact, Irbis is running a regular service to the base, which has…

Phil Carter has an interesting post on why the US military establishment is still failing to provide the language skills and area knowledge its soldiers need. Rather, the post is good, but the comments discussion is cracking! Phil’s basic point is that there are nowhere near enough Arabists in their forces (no surprise, perhaps, given…

Ministers were told of need for Gulf war ‘excuse’, says the Murdoch Times. Another memo, it seems. The leaks are coming thick and fast now, no? “The warning, in a leaked Cabinet Office briefing paper, said Tony Blair had already agreed to back military action to get rid of Saddam Hussein at a summit at…

Two years ago today, The Yorkshire Ranter was born in a striplit computer room in Royal Holloway College’s International Building. Since then we’ve had ranting, spam, funnies, mystery jets, vituperation, stupidity, more ranting, and some terrible afternoons spent with HTML and frustration. I’ve picked over yards of extremely dull official documents, debated the EU with…