The Yorkshire Ranter

What happens when something reaches critical mass? I’ll tell you – a huge ball of really hot radioactive stuff spreads out in all directions in instants. That’s roughly what’s happened since earlier this morning with The Story. The LA Times has an impressive story giving quite a lot of detail on the whole thing. Apparently,…

Newsweek has blasted the Viktor Bout scandal wide open, at long last. Key message: “In an effort to crack down on one of the world’s most notorious international criminals, President George W. Bush last summer signed an order barring U.S. citizens from doing business with Russian arms trafficker Victor Bout. But not long afterward, U.S.…

Newsweek reports on Bernard Kerik’s time in Iraq. Apparently he preferred going out on night raids after the “bad guys” with other officials’ South African bodyguards to working with the Iraqis. That throws a little light on how he became known as the Terminator of Baghdad, I suppose. No wonder Doug Brand had to beg…

In distant Afghanistan, meanwhile, the US Central Command has launched another offensive, this time entitled Operation LIGHTNING FREEDOM (Link). Phil Carter of Intel Dump reports on the strategic orientation of this new push, specifically that it doesn’t seem to be focused on “The Hunt for Bin Laden” but more on an effort to secure more…

Whether it was the nanny, the money, the dodgy behaviour in Saudi, or the common or garden failure in Iraq, Bernard “Political Criticism is the enemy’s best friend” Kerik is not going to be Homeland Security Secretary. Ha.

Meanwhile in Vienna, more details are out about the poisoning of Yushchenko. It is reported (German language) according to the doctors that he had something like a thousand times the normal level of the stuff in his flesh, which implied an original dose of something under a gram. Damage to his intestines suggested that the…

Der Standard, Vienna’s newspaper with a website that really could be better organised, reports that Yushchenko’s doctors have now confirmed that he was suffering from dioxin poisoning. The short article in German basically says that Drs. Michael Zimpfer and Nikolai Korpan informed the press today that they diagnosed a dioxin poisoning. Interestingly, though, the medical…

Does anyone now remember Ivan Rybkin, the Russian politician who vanished during the presidential campaign back in February and who claimed to have been drugged by the secret services? He turned up in London having been missing for several days, and announced in a bizarre press conference hosted by zillionaire exile Boris Berezovsky that he…

Meanwhile in Keighley, two women have climbed onto the roof of the Territorial Army drill hall to protest feared plans to disband one or more Yorkshire infantry regiments. Good luck girls, but I fear the aroma wafting over the road from the chippy and the bar of the Volunteers may take hold as the evening…

Atrios reports on a US school that is teaching its pupils that “slaves lived a life of plenty, of simple pleasures”. There’s more, if you can stomach it, but just a thought: if you’re worried about US domination, wait a generation. One day George W. Bush will seem intelligent.