Today I read that the US, in it's continuing effort to advance human rights, come up with a blacklist of countries that have failed to stop trafficking people. Can you guess the 2 countries in the Americas which are in that list?

Let's see. It can't be Columbia can it? No much too civilized. Maybe Haiti? No not likely. How about Panama. Not a chance. Ah yes, of course, what a surprise. Cuba and Venezuela.

And then they wonder why people apply a hint of salt to the US's good intentions...

When is a wall not a wall?

In the New Yorker we get the following paragraph:

In 2005, Banksy travelled to the West Bank, where he painted the security fence at Bethlehem with a trompe-l’oeil scene of a hole in the concrete barrier, revealing a glittering beach on the other side; it looked as if someone had dug through to paradise.

The article contains a photo and caption as well.
A Banksy trompe-l’oeil painting on a security fence in the West Bank.

Strange that the painting in the photo seems to be on a big motherfucking wall, while the fence in front of it is paint free. I wonder if they got the wrong painting.

Today's morsel:

Rising from the dust of the city's Green Zone it is destined, at $592m (£300m), to become the biggest and most expensive US embassy on earth when it opens in September.

It will cover 104 acres (42 hectares) of land, about the size of the Vatican. It will include 27 separate buildings and house about 615 people behind bomb-proof walls. Most of the embassy staff will live in simple, if not quite monastic, accommodation in one-bedroom apartments.

and later...

Toby Dodge, an expert on Iraq at Queen Mary, University of London, has just come back from a month spent in Iraq, largely in the Green Zone. He thinks the Americans are unlikely to pull out of Iraq fully until the end of the next presidency at the earliest, and so the new embassy will serve its purpose for several years to come.

"A fortress-style embassy, with a huge staff, will remain in Baghdad until helicopters come to airlift the last man and woman from the roof," he said, adding his own advice to the architects of the building: "Include a large roof."

There is one added irony - the embassy is one of the few major projects the administration has undertaken in Iraq that is on schedule and within budget.

From the Guardian:

The general was on the phone to another officer when I entered. He was jokingly threatening the caller: "Shut up or I will send democracy to your town."