Cheeky.

Moments after the US' first commercial rocket "Falcon 9" failed to launch at the last second and at around the time I was making the first part of my first post yesterday (19/5/12) China put blind, self-taught human rights lawyer Chen Guangcheng on a plane to the USA. As a result he arrived in very tense US airspace just as the G8 Summit was breaking up and the UEFA Champions League final was coming to a conclusion. So I think it's fair to say that the Chinese have registered their disapproval of recent US foreign policy.

The G8 did produce a single page communique which I may or may not get around to reading today. After all while the voting public have a right to know broadly what was discussed and a little bit of structure helps get conversation going producing communiques isn't really what the G8 Summit is about.

Today (20/5/12) focus shifts from Camp David, Maryland to Chicago, Illinois for the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) Summit. Here large protests are predicted driven mainly by opposition to US involvement in Afghanistan. However the original plan was for the G8 Summit to be held at the same venue so traffic congestion aside the security operation should be more then able to cope. In fact considering that a large part of the NATO Summit will be deciding who pays for security in Afghanistan following the NATO withdrawal showcasing just how good the US is at that sort of thing could well back-fire.

Also at around 02:00GMT today (20/5/12) a 6.0 magnitude earthquake struck at a shallow(ish) depth of 10km below the surface of Bologna in northern Italy. Six people are reported killed so at the risk of sounding both tasteless and a bit crazy I would say the message was something along the lines of "If the Northern League want explosions in Italy...."