Category: Uncategorised

Barnett Rubin’s take on Iran’s activities in Afghanistan. Iran is a long-time supporter of the Northern Alliance and the Karzai government, so has been supporting the US (& followers)’ efforts. With the escalation of US/Iranian confrontation, though, some Iranian leaders might sacrifice a friendly, stable Afghanistan in favour of harming the USA. That is, they might destabilise Afghanistan just to bog down the Americans. So the Bushies’ ranting about Iran in Afghanistan may not be entirely wrong.

Incidentally, like 90% of the worthwhile videos on the internet, this would function perfectly well without any pictures. I may be turning into a radio partisan.

[via Registan]

Sy Hersh is supposed to have incredible knowledge and attention to detail, right? Writing about “

the newly elected government of Britain’s Prime Minister, Gordon Brown

” must really help that reputation.

Amnesty have addresses and fax numbers for people to write to about the events in Burma. Also their usual advice on what to write.

Probably more useful than anything else we could be doing right now – although that’s not saying much

Is there any chance of these monks not being slaughtered, or at least jailed and beaten up?

I just read that 10% of perfume sold in the UK is sold at Heathrow airport. Huh? Can that really be true? Why?

[I looked briefly online for confirmation. There are several pages repeating the figure, but none giving a source for it]

[The Yorkshire Ranter](http://yorkshire-ranter.blogspot.com/) is well worth reading, for the incidental comments as much as for the main thrust of the posts. His [Review](http://yorkshire-ranter.blogspot.com/2007/08/review-ak47-story-of-peoples-gun.html) of a history of the AK-47 nicely explains:

Mikhail Kalashnikov’s background as the son of kulaks exiled to Siberia, and his running away to join the engineers – he fled the penal colony and jumped a train, eventually landing an apprenticeship in the Turk-Sib railway yards. This is something a lot of people fail to realise about the Soviet Union; as well as a bureaucratic tyranny, it was (especially up to the 1940s) a continent on the move, full of transients and orphans and bastards and geniuses.

Rob (WINOLJ) posted this on Facebook, and I feel obliged to propagate.

Also….

Why is it that we have tea bags, but not coffee bags?

[This is the kind of thing I can ask, safe in the knowledge that a good third of you were

born

knowing the answer]