April 2005

It is reported that China is in the grip of mass demonstrations against all things Japanese. I’m sure it’s true, but then again…what about this? If this is accurate, here we have a serious rising that chased off the police and the local administration, with no sign of “anti-Japanese”. Two things come to mind: one,…

What with the go-go oil market, refinery bottlenecks, Nigerian strikes, global tension and stuff, there’s been a considerable degree of interest in the US zone of the blogosphere in questions relating to the price of petrol, the future of oil supply etc. Interestingly, this debate has not seemed to touch down in the British blogs…

I’ve just remembered, in the light of the shameful phoney-photo affair, that the FPO managed to pull that one too: their attack-dog parliamentary floor manager, Peter Westenthaler, produced a photo in parliament which he said showed a Green MP, Karl Öllinger, fighting a policeman. This, of course, showed that the Greens “were the party of…

Keefieboy, the Webmaster of Dubai, reported a few days ago that none other than the Minister of Information and Culture of the UAE had intervened in a police integrity case with “a demand for transparency”. Now, the responsible minister is one Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan, better known to TYR readers as the half-owner of…

Doug Farah reports on some developments regarding Viktor Bout in the Bosnian War. Now, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear he was involved – in fact, it would have been very strange if he wasn’t. And his ability to deal with all sides in a conflict is shown in Afghanistan and Angola. But…

TYR has covered several stories from the Ivory Coast’s conflict, really because it seems to me that it’s a kind of war that marks out our times. Remember the Ivorian air force and its drones and complete Israeli-run phonetapping centre? After the Ivorian leadership relaunched their war with an airstrike on inconvenient French peacekeepers (flown…

In a issue I’ve been meaning to bloggify, a Conservative councillor in Lyneham, Wiltshire, one Allison Bucknall, has been seeking an Anti-Social Behaviour Order against a web site on the grounds that “people looking for information might go there first”. Instead of what? I always thought Conservatives believed in free competition. It seems there is…

Sorry there’s been light blogging again. I’ve been in Globostan for the last couple of days, a land composed of airliners, airports, taxis, hotels where they show Bloomberg market reports in the bar-is nothing, nothing sacred?-and Scandinavian telecoms executives who look like Sven Goran Eriksson’s geeky older brother. Except for the guys from TELE-Greenland, who…

As well as the Elysee Palace, many other interesting folk crop up in my stats log. People who google for “obscure gay wank”. People who search for “Dzungarian Gate railway”. (I’m result no.9. How cool is that?) People who work for the Office of the US Secretary of Defence. Yes, gateway4.osd.mil, that means you. On…

A few days ago, the Grauniad carried a report from Baghdad quoting a briefing given by the departing UK senior officer in Iraq, Lieutenant-General John Kiszely. Kiszely has the reputation of being a brain, and I was keen to see what he had to say. He argued that the insurgents were on the back foot…