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While BushCo is just back from his quiet weekend vacation allegedly spent contemplating the ruins of his public agenda, his soulmate seems to know what he's got planned for 2006. Step One: Go all Dr. No on the ungrateful former Soviet republic, Ukraine:

Russia cut the flow of natural gas to Ukraine today as talks over pricing and transit terms unraveled into a bald political conflict that carried consequences for Ukraine's recovering economy and possibly gas supplies to Western Europe.

Effects were starting to be felt in Europe tonight. The Hungarian natural gas wholesaler MOL said that deliveries from the affected pipeline were down more than 25 percent, according to Reuters. The news agency added that in Poland, supplies dwindled 14 percent.

Russia wants to more than quadruple the cost of natural gas to Ukraine. Ukraine, trying to maintain a fragile economy would prefer that they did not. But in case you think that an Econ 101 graph explains this:

The dispute involves complex commercial arguments of Gazprom -- the company says it is charging Ukraine a price based on a basket of competing fuels on international exchanges, like diesel and bunker oil. But not far below that lies the embarrassing loss of a Kremlin-backed candidate in last winter's Orange Revolution.

Jonathon Steele had a story in the Guardian last year around the time of the big, U.S.-supported Orange Revolution about Putin's interest in Ukraine:

Ukraine has been turned into a geostrategic matter not by Moscow but by the US, which refuses to abandon its cold war policy of encircling Russia and seeking to pull every former Soviet republic to its side. The EU should have none of this. Many Ukrainians certainly want a more democratic system. Putin is not inherently against this, however authoritarian he is in his own country. What concerns him is instability, the threat of anti-Russian regimes on his borders, and American mischief.

All this is happening with Putin set to assume leadership of the G-8 this year. During his turn at the helm he wants to make energy security his premiere issue, instead of, you know, gay marriage. Okay, that was a cheap shot. I'm just jealous that Russia's crazy leader is so much smarter than ours.

In related news, did you make note of this paragraph from the increasingly famous Speigel story, US Determined to Attack in Iran:

Sources in German security circles told the DDP reporter that Goss had ensured Ankara that the Turkish government would be informed of any possible air strikes against Iran a few hours before they happened. The Turkish government has also been given the "green light" to strike camps of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Iran on the day in question.

That's horrifying for about a million reasons but especially interesting in the context of this post because of something Mr. Energy Security told Blair last year when the two were haggling over global warming and ending poverty in Africa in advance of the G-8 summit:

Mr Putin said he wanted to bring to the world's attention the plight of states such as Kurdistan and Moldova, which were not officially recognised as heavily indebted poor countries.

Correct me if I'm wrong, Sandy, but Kurdistan isn't officially recognized as anything more than a hornets nest that we helped hit with a big ol' stick or, in the best of worlds, a tar baby that will end up getting everyone who touches it stuck for a while, at least long enough for us to get a real president and Congress in place - one that knows how to handle Pooty Poot without starting WWIII.

Related: I would love to know where that Speigel story came from. It's nothing but bad news for BushCo as he struggles to keep Iraq from flying apart. The Kurds are making noise about civil war and now someone is talking about giving Turkey the okay to bomb them in Iran? If I were reading this in a spy novel, I'd be loving it. It's not so great in reality.

Generalissimo Francisco Franco ...

is still dead.  But I think I know where his supporters can find some kindred spirits:

HUNDREDS of right-wing demonstrators made fascist salutes and shouted insults against gays, Muslims and immigrants at a rally marking the 30th anniversary of the death of dictator General Francisco Franco yesterday.

If I Ran France

After several hours of reading about what's happening in Paris and ten minutes of writing about it, I've solved the immediate problem: I'd declare an amnesty period and set up about a million conferences with civic leaders in and out of the affected suburbs toute de suite before someone gets killed.   I'd muzzle the hardliners and get back control of my capitol and the news cycle.

UPDATE:  Well, this makes everything about a million times more difficult.  Stupid Chirac.  Are there any world leaders who aren't useless in the face of crisis?

France's urban unrest claimed its first victim today when a 61-year-old man beaten by a hooded youth in the Parisian suburb of Stains last week died of his injuries.

The man, Jean-Jacques Le Chenadec, had been in a coma since being attacked while talking with a neighbor about their cars near a working-class housing development.

 

Paris

I've been following the Paris riots story closely but writing nothing because I know nothing. That said, I was born knowing more than the wingers who have jumped all over the story from the beginning christening it a Parisian Intifada. I guess it would be possible to find a more inflammatory label but I'm not sure what it would be. All my reading outside the few minutes I spent wallowing in winger muck has been an attempt to educate myself on the situtation. Jerome a Paris, who writes the best energy columns on the internets, and lives in Paris along with some extended family, has a great rundown that jibes with most of what I've been reading at other trusted sites:

This is not to deny that the situation is tense, and that the events of recent nights don't signal some real problems in these neighboroods, but it's not like it's war, ot the "end of France" or a crippling crisis for the country.

What it is is a real political crisis for the government, caught between the Le Pen-light shenanigans and provocations of Sarkozy (which are strongly approved and encouraged by a good part of the 'law'n'order' rightwing crowd in the country, but criticised by a majority today, including the moderate right)) and the silence of the rest of the government, led by Villepin, which was hoping that the crisis would burn Sarkozy but did not expect to be caught in the flames as well. The combination of tough, provocative words to start with, an unstable mix of toughness and conciliatory words, and nonstop coverage of burning cars on TV has led to more. Burning cars are nothing new - there was an average of 100 per day in France throughout the year, and it never made the news beyond statistical reports and an quick image once in a while when there was another incident to talk about. But today, it is having a political impact and the political outcry fuels the phenomenon. (The mayor of my aunt's city duly came to visit and be photogrpahed yesterday - sometimes it seems it's the only thing that bring these people around).

What's real is that social budgets for these cités (those that allow the associations to run sport activities, literacy classes and the like) have been cut in the past 3 years, because, as always, this is the easiest thing to do politically.

What is real is that local police forces have been reduced (in Clichy, where it all started, the police has 15 officers vs 35 in the past) and replaced by national police who do not know the neighborood and are pretty aggressive in their behavior - and especially in their overuse of id controls which target only people of color.

What is real is that France made a choice 30 years ago to preserve the jobs of those already integrated, and made it difficult to join that core. Thus unemployment, or unstable employment (temping, short term contracts, internships) touches only those that are not yet in the system - the young and the immigrants, or those that are kicked out - the older and less educated blue collar workers in dying industries. So in neighboroods where you have a lot of young immigrants, the problems are excerbated.

And finally, what is real is that everybody is aware that nothing serious will be done before the 2007 presidential election. With a lame duck, aging, corrupt President fighting it out with his ambitious interior Ministry (Sarkozy), policy is forgotten to spin, politicking and the like and nothing happens - but people are crying for solutions, and not everybody is willing to wait another 18 months for someone to have a clear mandate and do something. The feeling of fin de règne is pervasise and highly corrosive today.

Sarkozy would likely be an improvement over today, in that he would have a clear mandate if elected, and full powers, but he would be likely to run a Bushist policy of tough posturing, tax reform for the rich - and, this is France, getting the TVs not to talk about the banlieues anymore. He is an opportunist and a power hungry reactionary, I don't even see him "liberalising" the economy. But the banlieues do not need more growth, what they need is for the State to come back in full force - bring back the local police presence, give real support to the schools and all the associations that do integration work (it's criminal to cut subsidies to literacy classes, for instance), and actually get things done on improving the housing stock, instead of shuffling money between departments as emergencies arise, and, where necessary, improving transportation links to the big city where the jobs are.

What is not happening is any "intifada"; France is not burning; I still doubt that its integration model is failing ; what is clearly not tolerable anymore is how an underclass (not necessarily only the immigrants, but where they are clearly over represented, and definitely young and undereducated) has been sacrificed and abandoned in the country's (real and mostly successful) efforts to adapt to increasing international competition. They must be brought back into the fold, and toughness is not the way.

This dKos diary, Could Parisian Riots Happen Here?, is also a good read. And then there's this one, from the What-You-Need-is-a-Haircut school of sociology.

UPDATE: Atrios chose today to mention Paris as well. He's got a good link to Blogoland, which takes on the Right's excitment over the riots.

UPDATE: TPM Cafe's got a good Paris post as well.

UPDATE:  Another good EuTrib post that gives some perspective.

UPDATE:  Best post on the situation yet comes from Iddybud (no surprise)

Quotes from the Summit

From a good Rohter/Bumiller NYT story :

The president told reporters that if he saw the Venezuelan leader at the summit, "I will, of course, be polite." Mr. Bush added, "That's what the American people expect their president to do, is to be a polite person."

So no upstaging Chavez with  25,000-person rallies in any Argentine stadiums of his own.  It's really only polite.  BushCo had over a hundred thousand chanting his name earlier in the day. 

"Look, I understand not everybody agrees with the decisions I've made, but that's not unique to Central or South America," Mr. Bush said. "Truth of the matter is, there's people who disagree with the decisions I've made all over the world. And I understand that.  But that's what happens when you make decisions."

Que sera, sera, dude.  After all, the planet is really just a focus group.

Mercy Corps

If you're looking for somewhere to help the earthquake victims in Kashmir, I'm suggesting Mercy Corps.  It's got a four-star rating from Charity Navigator and none of the administrative problems of the Red Cross. 

Excellent Qualifications for a Diplomat

ElBaredei survives the Bolton-sponsored coup:

Mr. Bolton had convinced his colleagues at the State Department and the White House that Dr. ElBaradei should be ousted, but administration officials said he had failed to win international backing or to persuade anyone with comparable credentials to step forward to replace him.

Ooooh, so close - if he could have only, you know, been able to convince people other than the ones he could browbeat and fire for not agreeing with him.  I'm sure he'll do great at the U.N.

Talking About Spreading Freedom Without All the Killing and Depleted Uranium

I stayed up late last night to watch a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum on, where else, C-SPAN. The participants were South African President Thabo Mbeki, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, Tony Blair, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton and Bono. Also allowed to shout from the floor was Bill "would it help if I killed a kitten?" Frist.

You can read about the big points made by the panel here. Bono called for debt relief and trade. He also said that the crisis needs to be marketed better so that people who want to help, can do so and will pressure their governments to get on board. Clinton said that AIDS drugs have to get to the people who need them now. I didn't hear Blair and Gates speak. The African presidents both talked about the need for peace in Africa and supported debt cancellation.

From what I saw, Bono and Clinton made the most persuasive points as to why we should care and why helping Africa is do-able. Bono:

"It really is quite obscene that poor countries become net capital exporters to rich countries because of that," [debt servicing] he told the forum.

"It's not the usual bleeding heart debate going on here," Bono remarked, warning of the danger that some of Africa's poverty, disease and conflict-ridden states could turn into destabilising hotbeds of extremism.

"I said how dangerous it is to leave Africa in this state, there are 10 or 12 potential Afghanistans there," he added.

Gee, that would have made a better inaugural address than the fourth grade "Why I Love Freedom" report that BushCo delivered.

Clinton, who looked like he was energized by Bono's clear thinking on the subject, cut to the chase. He said that all of what was being discussed was cheap. He said that BushCo just asked for $80B more for Iraq. We're spending that per year. What's needed in Africa could be accomplished for "a pittance of that." He repeated "cheap" a few times and ended:

"If you want to talk about changing the tone here, this is cheap, the corruption and confidence issue is bogus," he told the audience.

"We ought to start with Aids, with infrastructure, and getting the medicine," Clinton said.

Is it any wonder that BushCo, who wouldn't have been able to hold his own with the people on that stage for five minutes, couldn't make any time on his busy schedule to even talk about concrete ways to spread freedom's liberitudinous flames?

It's the Thought that Counts

Nicholas Kristof is back telling us what a good job BushCo has done in his role as Christian Scourge of Sexual Slavery. And, even though he wrote this same column a year ago, he doesn't tell us what exactly BushCo has been doing, only that President Bush's State Department has been "taking the lead." Kristof suggests that the White House should scold and shame some more. Or ... maybe Kristof could encourage BushCo to fund his Millenium Challenge Account, which was supposed to show badly behaved States that they could climb on the foreign aid gravy train if they'd clean up their acts. As of the beginning of this year, the MCA had yet to disburse a dime.

Kristof may be interested to know that nine of the sixteen countries targetted by the MCA have serious problems with sexual slavery: Armenia, Benin, Bolivia, Georgia, Ghana, Honduras, Mozambique, Senegal and Sri Lanka. Any money spent in those countries to lift women out of the poverty that forces them and their families to be easy prey for sexual slavers, would be well spent.

So do as Kristof says and contact your congress members (Senate, US House) to ask them to make ending human trafficking around the world a priority. And when you do, remind them that for all of BushCo's big talk, he has failed, once again, to follow through on a promise he made to the world.

Freedom!

Note to Politicians on Both Sides of the Aisle and Jim Jeffords

Please resist the temptaion to refer to any coming financial hardship as a "tsunami." Durbin did it today when he was talking about the pension and healthcare crisis for retirees. La Norquistimo did it last week when he was talking about all the people who find him unpleasant. Wait, he was talking about some other overwhelming tide of public opinion. Either way, four weeks isn't enough time to start throwing the term around. Don't make me haul out pictures.

UPDATE: 1.26.05: Add media whores to the list of people who should know better than be told not to use the word "tsunmami" unless they're describing an actual tsunami. Duckman at the Left Coaster picked up the hor-hor-horrible Howie Kurtz doing it.