From the building that houses the ministry for trade, industry, consumer and diaspora affairs in Dominica you can see the Windsor Park cricket stadium and Roseau's grammar school. Take a short trip towards the West Coast Road and you'll pass the Princess Margaret hospital. All the tropes of postcolonial nationhood are here. The Queen smiles from the notes while towns called Trafalgar and Portsmouth pepper the map.

There is limited truth to the notion that the American political agenda is so overwhelmed with healthcare reform that nothing of consequence will happen at the major international gatherings that Barack Obama will attend this week.

Bribing leaders in the Afghan hinterland to take sides in the clash of civilisations is no easy task. The CIA used to offer local chiefs money for information, but then they would spend it so ostentatiously they effectively blew their own cover. Operatives used to give weapons before it turned out that the arms were being sold on and used against them.

Spare a thought, and maybe even a dime, for Kenneth Gladney. In August he and other members of the right-wing St. Louis Tea Party arrived at a town-hall meeting organized by Missouri Democrat Russ Carnahan to lobby against universal healthcare. In the spirit of this fraught summer, a fight broke out, ending in six arrests.