No-fly list turns aside French plane

That prize absurdity, the U.S. "no-fly list", re-routed an Air France plane last week -- the plane was not even trying to land in the United States.

Apparently somebody in the U.S. government doesn't like Franco-Colombian journalist Hernando Calvo Ospina, a leftist writer for the Le Monde Diplomatique. The French airline didn't furnish its passenger list to U.S. authorities for the Paris-Mexico flight, but did send the list to Mexico. As it approached U.S. airspace, the plane was diverted to the French Caribbean island of Martinique because someone listed was on board. Ospina was informed that he was the reason for the change by the co-pilot.

"I was speechless and my first reaction was to ask, 'Do you think I'm a terrorist?'," he said. "He replied 'no' and said that was why he told me about it, adding that it was extraordinary and the first time it had happened on an Air France plane."

Agence France Presse, via Actualite de la Bourse

Ospina seems to write about U.S. bad behavior in Central America and Cuba. His book Bacardi: The Hidden War recounts how the rum company uses its cash to support Cuban exiles who attack the Castro government.

Obviously, the writer Ospina must be a danger to the United States.

And some wonder why the U.S. president met with some skepticism from Latin Americans at the Summit of the Americas in Port of Spain last week.