On any other day it would have been the lead story.

But yesterday’s news day was no ordinary day. The conviction of 23 CIA operatives by the still independent judiciary in Silvio Berlusconi’s Italy was a remarkable first.

The CIA staff who included the Milan station chief (What is a secondary European city doing with a CIA station chief at all?) marked a major step in the struggle to bring to justice those responsible for the rendition and torture of suspects in the aftermath of 9/11. read more

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I have blogged before about the role “unproductive” trades are playing in the current stock market boom.

The FT today reports Goldman Sachs only posted one day’s trading loss in the past quarter – the quarter before saw two such days.

On 35 of the 65 days of trading in the last quarter the company made over $100 profits a day. Goldmans’ profit in the last quarter totalled $6 billion.

The surge in stock market trading is credited to the vast amounts of public money being injected into the world economy by governments trying to get bank credit flowing again. But as I reported on Monday, Lord Myners, the City Minister states that 70 per cent of all trading involves the holding of trades for nano seconds.

I commend today’s FT article.

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In the good old days anything Kim Howells MP had to say about pulling out of Afghanistan would not have made many waves.

But today’s Kim Howells is not the same as yesterday’s.

It would not be enough that he had been a Foreign Office minister. It is enough that he remains the chairman of the rubber-stamping Commons intelligence committee, so that today’s Kim Howells making a call for an exit strategy from Afghanistan, even before the appalling slaughter of five British soldiers by one of their Afghan colleagues, Mr Howells had made his call.

The question tonight is whether this signals the opening up of a schism in the Labour party over the war? It has been there all along but it has not been expressed in these terms.

The opening of Kim Howells’s mouth has inaugurated a new season, and we shall have to see who comes out to perform.

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I am of an age when I am forced to consult a dentist.

Yes a pre-fluoride, baby bulge babe I need my teeth fixed. Fillings, like buses, seem to take an age to materialise and suddenly appear all at once.

I had two to see to this week. My NHS dentist has retired since my last consultation – can I find another? Not a chance. So what do I do?

I go to the nearest dental entity I can find, and satisfactory it is – until I pay the bill: £250 for two fillings! AND he informs me I need two more doing – indeed he’s done much more.

My new dentist, lovely man that he is, is a man with a plan. To be truthful, a plan of straightening fillings, strengthening, and, forget five gold rings, FOUR gold caps.

Total price not unadjacent to more than several thousand pounds. I’m going for a total head transplant – cheaper.

But seriously, “free at the point of delivery’, what has happened to NHS dentistry? Has this vital division of our beloved NHS been allow very privately to go private?

Have you ever met a poor dentist? Is my dental experience a London affair? Is there a thriving NHS practice in Barrow-in Furness? Do pigs fly? Is the Pope a Catholic? Bring me my NHS dentist and my arrows of desire! My bow of burnished gold is very soon going to be my very expensively secured row of gold caps.

You think the ties are bright? Wait till you see the teeth!

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So it’s official: RBS is a nationalised bank. We today own 84 per cent of it, and that in my book makes it a government-owned bank. If it went bust – and still could – we would be paid out BEFORE the unfortunates who own the remaining 16 per cent.

It is even behaving like a nationalised bank, at last. No bonuses to anyone beyond the branch staff. And we are treating it like a state bank. We are insuring it – completely – and we are giving it tens of billions of pounds more of our money.

The 21st century is achieving something that a century of socialist endeavour across the world never achieved. Is it a good thing? God only knows.

And what of Lloyds? We seem to be easing the apron strings. But are we getting any of our billions back? Well, we ARE getting £2.1bn for insuring the thing for the past six months.

But all the rest? God only knows. God is going to be busy in these coming days and years. It is still far from certain that, if the banks crash again, we shall be able to save either bank.

All this against a backdrop in which a government minister has admitted that the current financial market is back to the worst of its worst behaviour – “deal churning”, or holding shares for a nanosecond before trading them again and again and again.

Lord Myners, the City minister, tells us in a BBC interview on File on 4 that a staggering 70 per cent of all share dealing is currently undertaken by these massive computer dealing systems that enable a trader to hold a trade for a nanosecond before selling.

It is a wholly unproductive activity and it is a part of what sank the world’s financial system a year – yes, just a year – ago. We have learned nothing. It is one reason why we should be very wary indeed of the current stock market boom and the current theoretical world recovery.

I must go and get some cash out.

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The kerfuffle over the sacking of the chief drugs adviser to the Home Office masks a much more serious crisis than any of the participants pretend.

Let’s face it. If we were to categorise risk, then undoubtedly alcohol would be a class A drug and so would tobacco. They both kill on an absolutely spectacular scale.

read more

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British Airways cabin crew meet today to decide whether to strike in protest against the changes BA plans to make.

Having taken two long-haul flights in the last two days, I’ve been able to talk to a few of them, and the atmosphere is mixed. read more

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If you associate Halloween with children “trick or treating” their way from door to door in the hope of a sweet or two, stop right there. I have been in Chicago over the weekend making a documentary loosely centered on the subject of war.

The city lived up to its windiness – it made for a spectacularly sunny Halloween with an icy wind billowing in off what amounts to the largest freshwater pond in the world. But whatever we were doing it was impossible to escape the festivities. read more

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It’s been the back room project of the coterie of Blair loyalists – Peter Mandelson, Jonathan Powell, and others.

So troubled has Mr Blair’s ‘non-candidacy’ for the Presidency of the EU become that both Gordon Brown and David Miliband were forced to break cover yesterday and, risking further domestic controversy, make a very public case for Mr Blair taking over the new lead role in Europe.

But the socialist group in Europe rejected their pleas, and without so prominent a bloc, Blair’s hopes are all but dead.

You read it here first – it was Snowblog that learned first of Mr Sarkozy’s rapid cooling on the matter.

The personal relationship between Nicolas and Tony remains strong, but Sarkozy is too wily a politician to have failed to spot the tide running against Blair, and with Germany’s Angela Merkel less than lukewarm on the idea, he gave up on his plan to anoint Mr Blair.

Barring ‘a walking on water’ moment, the ‘Blair project’ in Brussels is sunk.

As I blogged last week, the French are now much more excited by the idea of ‘young David (Miliband) taking over the potential more powerful EU Foreign ‘High Representative’ role.

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