March 2004

Just to put this on record – the Daily Express is running with “THE TEEN BOMBERS” as its (huge) headline today. The story is apparently the arrest of a suspected al-Qa’ida cell as detailed below, but the headline sounds so much like a band that I had an odd feeling that I might have been…

BBC NEWS link Police have seized half a ton of ammonium nitrate fertiliser, in a self-storage warehouse near Heathrow Airport. Further action resulted in eight arrests. Those arrested are apparently all British. (What was that about fighting a war on terrorism in Iraq?) The stuff in question is a old favourite in the terrorist kitchen.…

Juan Cole’s Informed Comment link “A subcommittee of the Israeli Parliament has issued a report sharply critical of Israeli intelligence failures concerning weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It notes that Mossad thought Iraq’s programs and stockpiles were a threat, which they were not, and yet seemed unaware of how much progress Libya had made…

As a further contribution to our occasional series on aviation security, I’d like to call this to your attention. “A psychic’s warning that a bomb might be on a Dallas-bound passenger jet at Southwest Florida International Airport prompted federal and local officials to search it with bomb-sniffing dogs.” Well, I have suggested in the past…

Story David Miliband, the quintessential Blairite (he was the head of the No.10 Policy Unit before feeling – y’know – a need to get back to the, ah, communities – and getting himself elected for South Shields, a Labour fortress so safe that it is usually the first seat in the country to announce its…

Like asking the Kennedys for security advice….like asking Jeffrey Archer to look over your CV….like taking a nap at Dr. Shipman’s surgery…you wouldn’t think anyone would seriously seek PR advice from the chap who ran John Major’s 1997 campaign. But that’s just what the prime minister has done! The man chosen for the new job…

We welcome My Way of Thinking, who has started linking to the Ranter.

As a brief guide, here are some reasons why the bashers who are still spewing vitriol about the Spanish elections are lying. Now, their main line is that this is “appeasement”. Further to this, they claim that the PSOE was “opportunistic” and “took orders from terrorists”. The point is apparently that “you cannot run away…

On Wednesday, I reported that Ha’aretz was covering a British programme of semi-military aid to the Palestinian security organisations in Gaza. By Saturday, The Guardian was running this. “The British involvement is initially modest, limited to providing financial, logistical and other support on security matters to the PA. But if the pilot schemes are successful…

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