The End of the Line

黑线不在了！

I will be posting here from time to time, when I want to go off on tangents that would interest me and me alone or when there are technical problems at the FI blog. Look out for very occasional updates.

This time, I'm afraid, there is no reprieve. After a year and a month of existence, I'm making my last ever post here. It's been fun and I think that I've had some good posts over the past while. Thanks very much to everyone who has been reading and commenting over the past year. In future, I'm aiming to get in at least one big post a week at the FI blog, which is taking on an interesting shape.

Here are some of my favourite posts:

The Myth of the Myth
The Bush White House Didn't Create the Fear or Terrorism

A critical treatment of an article with a left-wing slant on the war on terror

This award-winning blog

Giving Saddam the finger
Iraqis go to the polls

Welcome to the desert of the theoretical
Fisking a frog filosofer

A new movement is born

America, f**k yeah!

A conspiracy theory of my own!
Are they related?

The Great Chile Debate
This one ran and ran: Dick O'Brien doesn't do numbers, it seems

A Saudi Liberal Speaks

In Media Res
The global village idiots

The Error Strikes Back
Questioning the value of public intellectuals

So much for the Reform Movement and the Anglosphere

End of an Empire?
Review of Niall Ferguson's Colossus

Cow Demons
My notorious blogroll labels

The Irish Anti-War Movement on the March
Indymedia fails to stir the masses

Calling the EC President Race
A deft piece of political handicapping by your blogger

Film Review: The Day After Tomorrow
Hollywood gives global warming the Tellytubby treatment

A Union Man
I demand my rights!

Richard Lynn and the Salisbury Review
More IQ shenanigans from Ireland's leading "scientific racist", gaining exposure in a Tory journal

Knickers to Capitalism
What George Monbiot Misunderstands About Economics (followed up here and here and culminating in this)

Betting on Terror
Why the Pentagon's Abortive Terrorism Futures Market Was a Good Idea

Rory on the Radio

Rory Miller discussed the impact on Israeli and Palestinian politics of Ariel Sharon's illness on RTE Radio on Thursday night. John Downing of the Daily Star and Trevor Sargeant of the Green Party also took part. The discussion begins at 5 minutes 20 seconds and ends at 21 seconds 40 seconds.

No gas

Seems like I'm not the only person with an interest in Eastern Europe to forsee problems with Russian gas supply to Western Europe. The cut-off by Gazprom seems to have led to knock-on shortages throughout Europe and to have set the alarm bell ringing in London:

The British energy minister, Malcolm Wicks, today said the dispute could impact on supplies to the UK, but said the impact "should be less than elsewhere".

He said there was "no immediate threat" to UK supplies, despite the country now being a net importer of gas.

"We need to look at this one very carefully, but we are not a heavy importer of gas from Russia so the effects here should be less than elsewhere," he said.

EU energy ministers will discuss the growing crisis at an emergency meeting scheduled for Wednesday.