Republican's export Cuban refugees to Australia

In an artful display of political sleight of hand, both the Republican Administration of the United States and The Government of Australia have ingeniously decided to "resettle up to 200 refugees processed in the other country every year."

The Mutual Assistance Arrangement reported by news.com.au quoting Australian Minister for Immigration Kevin Andrews states:

"Under this arrangement, the US will consider people who arrive in excised offshore places and have been taken to Nauru for further processing..."

Methinks someone's too clever for their own good.

To explain from the U.S perspective, there has been a record of complaints levied by some South American refugee groups including Haiti that the United states was employing a two tiered refugee process that was biased in favour of Cubans. In response to this, the then Clinton Administration implemented a policy of repatriating Cuban refugees who had not landed on U.S. soil back to Cuba.

Whilst this policy has gone some way to ameliorating concerns by other ethnic refugee groups it angered the large Cuban ex-pat constituency based in Florida as exampled during the 2004 U.S. elections and discussed in The CarpetBagger Report: Republicans, the 2004 Election, and the Cuban-American vote

"Cuban Americans have always opposed the policy and hoped Bush would back them on refusing to return these 12 would-be immigrants to Castro for punishment. At a minimum, they argued, the 12 should be sent to a third country."

I can only assume that in response to this Cuban constituency backlash that the U.S has artfully come upon the idea of simply sending these Cuban refugees to Australia as a means of meeting the concerns of all refugee groups--Cubans included.

Am I being cynical? I think not. To explain if it was not about this then why isolate just Cubans for the exchange program with Australia?

On the ground reportage: where's the point?

I see Michael Thurston's news story in The Australian from Tehran of Iran holding 15 British sailors. For a Journalist based on the ground in Tehran it's interesting to see that his report at no stage quotes Iranian officials about their side of the story. Makes you wonder what the point is in having him there when getting Iran's perspective was as easy as reading Iran's Press TV coverage on the web?

The Shatt al_Arab has been a disputed waterway between Iran and Iraq since before Saddam was a small boy. For the most part, since the 1975 Algiers Agreement and excluding the Iran/Iraq war, it has been a shared waterway and for good reason--it's very shallow and very narrow.

Michael's article disingenuously ignores that the inspection was of an Iranian flagged vessel most likely on the Iranian side of the Shatt (assuming of course that one can ever truly be on one side over the course of traversing the Shatt).

UN Security Council resolution 1723, which is what the British are operating under, gives them the right as afforded by the Iraqi government to inspect any and all vessels in Iraq's waterways but NOT in Iran's.

The Shatt then provides ideal opportunity for confusion about territoriality which I imagine is the reason why the Brits think they can get away with the odd--"my mistake" infraction of Iran's sovereignty in their quest to uncover a nuclear smoking gun.

Interesting also that this happens just in the lead-up to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's impending visit to New York to address the UN Security Council. One cannot help but think that the COW is looking to avoid another Chavez style outburst at the U.N. probably the reason why they delayed in getting the Iranian visas processed in time as well as I read now that Ahmadinejad has canceled his visit.