The Yorkshire Ranter

It’s been reported this week that the rate of violence in Iraq is now down to what it was in April, 2004, by no less an authority than General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. I thought I’d look up the Ranter for that month and check what was going on. First we…

The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has at last added a whole wedge of Viktor Bout’s companies to its asset blacklist. Not only that, but the key management including his brother Sergei, Richard Chichakli, Sergei Denissenko and Valery Naydo are on there too. It’s not as comprehensive as I might…

Via BoingBoing, across the wires the electric message comes that some random geek surfing Usenet has discovered what appears to be a 30 minute news bulletin on a major terrorist assault on the US, with plague, chemicals and crashing jets. All the stuff Mahmoud Abu Rideh would be getting up to, if he wasn’t confined…

Now, I know I’ve been seriously remiss here, but I hope this will satisfy both Chickyog and also Yorkshiresoul, who have both seen fit to demand that I answer five questions about books. You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be? Well, I was tempted to say John Locke’s Second Treatise…

…I became withdrawn. The only thing I knew how to do was to keep on keepin’ on, like a bird that flew. Well, that’s enough Bob Dylan. The original advice issued by Lord Goldsmith on the legality or otherwise of an invasion of Iraq, the one issued before the infamous “page of A4”, the one…

Al-Jaz has got hold of a confidential forecast by some French investment bankers that suggests the oil price may reach $380 a barrel by 2015. Now, there seems to be something of a competition among bankers at the moment to see who can do the most terrifying Oil Price Deathwatch, what with the Goldman Sachs…

Why can’t they just play nicely? A maritime incident has occurred in the Aegean, where Greek and Turkish coastguard vessels confronted each other after a Greek fishing boat allegedly infringed Turkish territorial waters. At the same time, a Turkish general announced that certain confidence building measures might be suspended after a Turkish flag was defaced.…

Ye may recall my obituary on French crook Alfred Sirven, the former World’s Most Wanted Man and kingpin of the Elf-Aquitaine scandals. There’s an interesting report (French) in Le Figaro on a new development in one of the scandal’s many wings. Renaud van Ruymbeke, the judge who is still investigating the “frigates affair” section of…

Read this, and also this. It’s worth it. Then ask yourself why a Bulgarian helicopter full of mercenaries was clattering around with Fijian security guards aboard to guard the security of the security guards travelling in it. Then read this Washington Post story regarding life as a mercenary in Iraq, and enjoy the following stupidity…

John Robb says interesting things about Iraq, as does Steve Gilliard.