Talking about the political horizon in parallel

Condi Rice is in the Middle East, doing her darndest to solve that region’s problems. While Israeli PM Olmert is insisting that Palestine shouldn’t even have formed a government before the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, Condi is spewing platitudes and inanities about “establish[ing] a common agenda” and how “I think it can help all of us to have a destination in mind. I think this time it is best to talk about that political horizon in parallel. But I sincerely hope in the future the parties themselves can talk about the political horizon themselves.”

Fareed Zakaria lists the many promises the Maliki regime has made about reconciliation which have not been kept.

The Novgorod police broke up the demonstration yesterday, with great violence. A spokesmodel for the city claimed it was necessary to protect the children in the area. But as I mentioned yesterday, it was the government itself that put them there, in a children’s festival they scheduled in the location the demonstration organizers had announced they would be using.

In a statement about the British sailors seized by Iran in the Tonkin Gulf the territorial waters of Iraq and/or Iran, Tony Blair seems rather worried that Iran isn’t getting the message that he doesn’t, you know, like that sort of thing: “I hope the Iranian government understands how fundamental an issue this is for us. We have certainly sent the message back to them very clearly indeed. They should not be under any doubt at all about how seriously we regard this act, which is unjustified and wrong.”

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