The Yorkshire Ranter

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,…

The UKIP (or Swivel-Eyed Loons, as blogging SOPs oblige me to call them)’s Godfrey Bloom, MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber has made a fool of himself by trying to get on to the European Parliament’s women’s rights committee despite his obvious handicap. To the obvious handicap he lost no time in adding several more…

Story (in German) It is reported that the three US civilians accused of operating a private jail in Kabul (see below) have claimed before an Afghan court that they acted with the knowledge and encouragement of the US Army in Afghanistan. Their leader, Jonathan Keith Idema, claimed to have handed over “international terrorists” on two…

Well, perhaps the longest and most tiresome defence policy spin war in memory is over and the full details are out. In some ways it wasn’t as bad as the tireless briefers kept suggesting to susceptible papers like the Telegraph – the maximum horror versions included, for example, the scrapping of both the RAF’s Jaguar…

Boo! to the Voice of America thanks to one of their employees, who searched the web for “phone lines porno sao tome” and somehow hit the Ranter (we are the 30th Yahoo result for that). What the broadcaster desperate for West African dirty talk (or possibly information on dialler scams) got would have been the…