February 3, 2005

The mighty FT has a very interesting story today about the exposure of an extremely worrying arms deal in the Ukraine. Regular readers will be well aware that I’ve been hoping that the Ukrainian revolution may lead to us discovering much more about the Viktor Bout system – Kuchma’s Ukraine was, next to Transdnistria and…

The Georgian Prime Minister (German link) has been found dead in a friend’s flat, apparently gassed by the stove. The friend, a provincial governor, also died. The article quotes the director of the Tbilisi gas board (not a source I ever thought I’d quote) as saying that a high concentration of gas was detected in…

Time to update the blogroll! Soj, Nadhezda, Chris Lightfoot, Toby, Eurosavant, the Dubai Webmaster and some obscure economist can all have a link.

CNN has a hotster of a story about that “Oil for Food Scandal!” that the Right has been hyperventilating about. The short version is that, according to official documents, the US Government was happy to ignore the smuggling of oil out of Iraq because it served other purposes, specifically keeping Jordan and Turkey sweet. This…