The Yorkshire Ranter

“”Everything that you’re discussing is information you’re not supposed to have,” barked Pentecostal minister Robert G. Upton when asked about the off-the-record briefing his delegation received on March 25. Details of that meeting appear in a confidential memo signed by Upton and obtained by the Voice. The e-mailed meeting summary reveals NSC Near East and…

Now, having done the obfusc lesson, we can proceed to a practical exercise. William Safire, the New York Times’ pet neocon, has been expressing himself on the subject of the sarin shell. (Link) We shall see some examples in the text. “a small, crude weapon of mass destruction may have been used by Saddam’s terrorists…

Obfuscatin’! It’s the way of today – the all-purpose debating tactic that defends all kinds of otherwise indefensible abuses from climate change through the war against Iraq to speeding. As a service, the Yorkshire Ranter offers a brief guide on how to employ this scientifically proven technique to win your ideological battles tool. Yes, you…

I’ve just been doing some more searches about this. Need to read the docs first, thought. The names to watch are “Flying Dolphin”, “Air Cess”, “Santa Cruz Imperial”, and “Centrafricain Airlines”. As far as folk go, apart from the man himself, look out for Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed bin Saqr al Nayhan(link), Sanjivan Ruprah(link), and…

Well, I may have said that the neo-cons weren’t trying to claim that the alleged sarin bomb justified the invasion of Iraq. I wasn’t entirely right. The Times, that sad ruin of a newspaper, illustrated the story with a large picture of various chemical-looking tubes and instruction leaflets printed in Arabic, English and Russian. The…

Michael Howard stakes out a radical challenge to Blair “Mr Howard is thinking of ways within the parliamentary rules of presenting Mr Blair with some oysters at Prime Minister’s questions tomorrow (Wednesday). “The thing that disturbs me,” he said, “is that the in-fighting that is taking place at the highest levels of the Labour Party…

Despite yesterday’s discovery of a sarin-filled artillery shell in Iraq, the Americans seem strangely reluctant to trumpet the obvious fact that their mission has now been justified. A weapon of mass destruction has been found? So – where are the victory parades? Of course, there were a couple of flies in the sarin. The shell…

It is reported that the Health & Safety Executive is concentrating on an industrial oven at the Glasgow plastics factory that blew up and killed nine people. This oven is not like other ovens because this one is special. In fact, it’s that special it used to be a dustbin lorry!Report “Jim Fletcher, 33, a…

This leaves me utterly shocked. According to the Financial Times, (thanks to My Way of Thinking) the British Government is supporting efforts by the United States to prevent the international arms dealer and aerial smuggler Viktor Bout’s assets being frozen. Now this is insane. Not just immoral, but insane. Mr. Bout is a former KGB…

It is being widely reported that the General Staff have proposed a new policy in Iraq to the Government. Details are hazy at least as far as the public go, but it seems to suggest another huge deployment of troops – talking 3,000 rifles plus – to take over the Multinational Division South-Centre, the area…