April 30, 2005

We’ve just had a surge of traffic, for once not entirely associated with Viktor Bout. Metafilter linked to a story, from some time ago, regarding Shanaz Rashid, the grateful Iraqi woman who appeared on stage with Blair at the Labour conference. She had every reason to be grateful, because her husband had been named Minister…

The FAZ reports on regions of Germany along the borders with Poland and the Czech Republic. Apparently, despite predictions of a crime wave, it actually fell by 10%.

According to IT Week’s pet blogger, it’s now possible to go to India as a backpacker and work in a call centre handling calls from the UK. For Indian wages, naturally. I’m not sure whether to be amused at the stupidity of literally paying to be exploited, or revolted by the hypocrisy.

It’s been reported this week that the rate of violence in Iraq is now down to what it was in April, 2004, by no less an authority than General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. I thought I’d look up the Ranter for that month and check what was going on. First we…