On her weekend visit, US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice indicated that the US is open to “warming” relations with New Zealand. This wee country has been left out of all the fun and games (the US won’t do military training exercises with Kiwis, despite the fact the two countries’ troops are active in Afghanistan, for example) because of a ban on nuclear ships entering its waters.

Media talk has edged around a free trade agreement. It’s a long way off, but it’s not a bad goal – depending on how far backwards New Zealand would have to bend to sign it. At the moment, a small-scale dairy exporter who wants to try its luck in the US market has to give a fifth of its takings to the US government in import tariffs. Cutting that back would be a good thing.
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Bisher al-Rawi was a UK-based informant for the MI5. As a way of saying thanks for all the hard work he put into liaising with and providing information on people under watch, the agency forwarded incorrect information to the CIA, and al-Rawi was kidnapped, put in nappies and a blindfold, strapped to a stretcher, and flown to Guantánamo bay. For a bit of variety the CIA threw in a three month stopover in a “Dark Prison” in Afghanistan where the only light he saw was the occasional dim beam from the guard’s torch and it was so cold he could feel ice crystals forming in his drinks.

We’ve heard about the horrors of Guantánamo Bay and the CIA’s black sites, but the level of official complicity seen in al-Rawi’s case is astounding. al-Rawi’s arrest was due to the MI5 deliberately passing on completely false information to the CIA, according to the Observer article which broke the story on Sunday. Read the rest of this article »

Paul Wolfowitz is a good man who is passionate about the plight of poor people in the world.

So said White House Spokesman Tony Fratto.
It’s quite true. Wolfowitz was clearly very concerned about his poor girlfriend’s miserable 130k salary.

Obama. The name leapt out at me from the shelves of an all-English second hand bookshop. It was just sitting there, collecting dust amongst the dross: the autobiography of one of the frontrunners in the competition to be the 2008 presidential candidate for the US Democrats. He’s black (well, half, to be precise) and up against Hillary Clinton. One Spanish journalist characterised the party’s “no-win” choice as like being asked “who do you love more, mommy or daddy?” Reading “Dreams from My Father”, I was well impressed by Obama’s background, philosophies and apparent honesty and, until I got right to the end, I was planning on writing a truly gushing appraisal (a bit like this one, ish).

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Tony Blair’s speech to the World Affairs Council yesterday was planned before the war started in Lebanon/Israel, but that is no excuse for him to try to wrap this conflict into the “War on Terror” paradigm. (Or, indeed, for his poor use of English. “Hearts and minds”? Please. “Arc of extremism”? Was this an attempt at paraphrasing “Axis of Evil” without sounding entirely like a doormat?)

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