Author: Jerome a Paris

click on picture to have large (450kb) version

The above map was published by Le Monde a couple of days ago. It shows the expected consequences of global warming by 2100.

See below for the translation and a few other pics.
The legend of the map:

• rising waters
  flooded coastlines
  submerged islands
  main coastal cities
• increasing temperatures
  less than 0.5°C (0.9°F)
  more than 3°C (5°F)
  more than 5°C (8°F)
• extension of deserts
  damaged land
  threatened land
• melting ice
  melting polar caps
  glaciers retreating
• flora and fauna
  displacement of biogeographic areas.

And a few local maps:

average cumulative loss in ice thickness of glaciers in Patagonia

hazel trees (on the basis of temperature increase of 3.6°C/6.5°F and doubling of CO2 levels)
red: current area, will have disappeared by 2080
light green:: current area, will still grow in 2080
dark green: new area of growth in 2080

robusta coffee: current area of growth (yellow), and area of growth if temperatures increase by 2°C (3°F) (red)

Bangladesh: areas flooded by a 50cm (20in) rise in water levels / a 100cm (40in) rise. Water is expected to rise by 40-50 cm by 2100. It went up by 1.8mm per year this century, but 3mm/y since 1993

If you have a subscription to Le Monde, here’s the link

I suggest a valuable mental exercise for every contributor who sincerely believes that there is nothing wrong with prostitution, that there should be no quibbling about the perfectly reasonable exchange of sex for money, etc.  Here it is:  every time (every single time) you hear someone, including yourself, use prostitution or sexual accommodation as a metaphor for spinelessness, gutlessness, venality, dishonesty, vacuity, weakness etc. — stop and issue a verbal correction.

When someone refers to the corporate media as “presstitutes,” interrupt and tell them that there is nothing wrong with prostitution, it is an honest profession and quite separate from corruption or cowardice.  When someone talks about spineless Democrats despicably “rolling over for” the Bush regime or the US press “going on its knees” to Bush, remind them that there is nothing at all demeaning about submitting to male sexual demands, particularly if money changes hands.  Every time someone calls a politician “corporate whore”, tell them how legit a career prostitution is or should be, and how unfair it is to invoke it as a casual insult.  Every time someone says “lies like a whore” or “whores around” or “what a cocksucker” or “he’s Cheney’s bitch” or “that sucks” or “I wouldn’t just bend over for that” or “jeez we really took it in the shorts that time” or any of the plethora of other everyday expressions that reveal a reflexive equation of sex and domination, receptivity and inferiority… interrupt the conversation, and defend the whores.

All the above, and most of what follows was written by European Tribune contributor DeAnander. I was planning to write today about World AIDS Day, but was struck by some of the content provided in several threads started (by AgnesaParis) in recent days over at the European Tribune about the sex trade, prostitution and the accompanying violence:

Legalising prostitution : a lesser evil ?
Evils of the world : of sexual slavery
The human body: yet another consumable?

There is an amazing wealth of information, polite discussion and links in these threads, so I can only encourage you to read them. I’d like to quote a few extracts by DeAnander, who is quite knowledgeable about the topic (but there are several other notable contributors, notably myriad about the Australian experience of legalisation of prostitution):

the harm done to women in prostitution is not merely a byproduct of the illegality of the trade and the secrecy, repression and coercion typical of an illegal business.  Harm is also the commodity being sold.  In the legal brothels of Australia, a woman can lose income if she refuses painful anal intercourse with a client;  her only other option is to charge more for enduring the painful experience.  I suggest the reader — particularly the hetero male reader — might wish to think seriously about how much a well-endowed man would have to pay him to cooperate with such a demand — would it be more than $500 AUD?  How much would it be?  What would it be like to make a living catering to such demands, several times a day?  To lose significant money by insisting on only “safe” or ordinary sex?  To be offered big bonuses for risking HIV infection by not insisting on a condom?  How much money would one have to earn to make it worthwhile?  Would it be preferable to other “dirty” jobs like bricklaying, ditch-digging, or cleaning toilets?

And more fundamentally, is there any such thing as a “fair price” for hurting and demeaning another person?  Perhaps we can calculate one by asking, What price would you or I pay to have our daughter, or any other woman we cared about, spared from such an experience?  What would we pay in ransom to get our daughter safely out of such a situation?  I’m thinking five figures, six figures, heck, most parents would pay whatever was asked, if they had to go into debt for the rest of their lives.  Why are not prostituted women paid these kinds of sums, if that is the fair-market price for the various harms they are expected to endure?

The question of why so many men wish to hurt or demean women is a far larger one.  The scope of a discussion of patriarchy, misogyny, and their bearing on male sexuality as constructed in various cultures around the world, is so vast that I doubt a whole forum could hold it, let alone one thread or diary.  (Head over to Stan’s place and join the brawl in progress.) I would suggest that for the moment, rather than fleeing to idyllic fantasies of Bonobo-land, those concerned with social justice should accept the prevailing Hobbesian realities: that many men enjoy hurting women and find sex inadequate unless it includes bullying and hurting;  that these men are very likely to try to buy access to “disposable” women and children for anonymous use, so as to avoid the complications and loss of reputation involved in being a known batterer or abuser within a community;  and working from these distressing but well-attested realities, figure out how to curb this tendency and protect our society’s most vulnerable women and children from it.  Figuring out how these men got to be this way and how we could raise boys to be less violent and hateful towards girls and women, would be a fine project;  but that’s a multigenerational effort.  In the meantime there is actually-existing abuse and suffering to be addressed, and no easy answers.  

Certainly criminalising the prostituted women themselves is absurd and misogynist.  They are either free agents engaging voluntarily in sexual trade, or victims of coercion, and in neither case are they coercing or doing harm to others.  Perhaps what should be criminalised is “profiteering off the sexual labour of another person” (there have been laws like this in the past prohibiting pimping specifically).  And of course existing laws against kidnapping, rape, assault and GBH should be applied without prejudice to offences against prostituted women (fat chance of that, in a world where male police, judges, lawyers and politicians are often among the men abusing the prostitutes, but it’s a nice idea).

The paper on choice, law, and prostitution is S Anderson, “Prostitution and Sexual Autonomy:  Making Sense of the Prohibition of Prostitution”, from Ethics July 2002.  I don’t think it is available online, unless you have access to Lexis/Nexis or something similar.  Which is a pity as it is one of the best discussions to date of the debate between normalisers and abolitionists.

And again this:

It is a post-Enlightenment, rights-oriented outlook that tells us it is not appropriate for a businessman to tell his secretary to dress sexy for the office, or to do his holiday shopping for him;  we draw a basic distinction between the kinds of services that are appropriately exchanged for money, i.e. ‘what is in my job description,’ and those which are, or should be, a reflection of intersubjectivity and reciprocity.  We look down on people who use sexual favours to get ahead in academia or the workplace.  We don’t want to work for bosses who grope the staff, or make pay raises conditional on a quick shag in the storeroom.

If we take a classic laissez-faire neoliberal approach to prostitution and say that there are no services which it is inappropriate to exchange for money, and that therefore performing sex for money is no different from typing or canning fish for money — hey, it’s just supply and demand, rational actors completing a transaction like any other in a free market — then how do we at the same time maintain that the secretary should not be required to fellate the boss?  After all, if there is nothing shaming or demeaning about performing sexual acts on persons for whom one has no intimate affection, no basis of trust or love, then why should this not be in her job description right along with shorthand and typing?

But instinctively we know that using the lever of money-power to coerce sexual service is a qualitatively different type of transaction from paying for 8 hours of someone’s time to translate documents or wash cars.   Permitting extreme physical intimacy from an untrusted and unloved Other or stranger, on their terms, according to their demand, requires a renunciation of fundamental human boundaries, the acceptance of a profound violation of personal space and bodily/emotional integrity.  Having at the same time to maintain a pretence — an artificial persona — only adds to the alienation.  Anyone who has ever worked Reception for 8 hours a day can tell you how wearying and crazy-making it can be to smile brightly and make nice with often obnoxious strangers all day, even when you are having trouble at home or not feeling very well — to have to put on an act all day long;  imagine having to provide them with the most intimate sexual services as well.

We can judge the depth of our attachment to personal integrity by the shock, outrage, and/or fear that we feel when we read about (or heaven help us, experience) male/male prison rape and prostitution.  When men in prison must submit to sexual service in order to survive or to get along or to earn money, we consider this a tragedy and a horror, a dreadful indictment of an inhumane prison system, a damaging and traumatising experience — even when some degree of (constrained) choice is involved, we know that rape and the threat of rape are forever hovering to sway that choice.  And we know that vanishingly small numbers of men would make those choices if they were free, on the outside.

But we are supposed to believe that women and girls — who live in a society not so different from prison society for men, where an unprotected female without wealth is at high risk for rape, and where the protection of one man (however exploitative) may seem better than being “thrown to the wolves” — take no harm from the same experience.  To believe this, seems to me, is to believe that men are somehow more real human beings, with more dignity and sense of self and self-worth, than women;  which, if I may speak strongly for a moment, is the fundamental assumption of a bigot — whether racial religious, or sexual.  To assume that another person’s self-respect and dignity are inherently of less worth or importance than another’s is surely the base assumption of anti-democracy, the root of caste and feudal class and race slavery.

When men are treated as sexual merchandise by other men in prison, we are deeply shocked and understand that this experience could wound and scar an individual’s soul and pride for life.  We understand the same when men are coerced into playing out pornographic scenes in Abu Ghraib.  When the coercion used is money rather than guns (or money and guns and fists in many cases), and the coerced or constrained person is female, for some reason we collectively believe that she is miraculously resilient and tough and ultra-balanced enough to take no harm from relinquishing her physical boundaries and allowing the occupation and use of her body by an untrusted other.

Again, all the above is not written by me, but by DeAnander, and certainly deserves a wider distribution.

Please ponder her words – and there’s lots more in the 3 threads linked to above.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and have written about this theme and similar ones in recent  weeks, for instance in the diary on Bushco’s vicious circle of mistrust, in my diary about religion, and in comments in the most recent dicussions between the Booman / Tribune crowd and Daily/ Kos about our collective and individual behavior on the internet.

The underlying theme is that of personal responsibility.
1) The tear wars

I have trouble taking seriously people that complain about being insulted and denigrated by insulting and denigrating others.

It kinda spoils the point, however legitimate it may have been.

If you start invective wars, you cannot complain that there are invective wars on dKos. But even if you started on the receiving end of insults, invective or poor behavior, you have a reason but you still have no excuse for feeding the war.

This is a political blog, i.e.  we are talking about words on screens and feelings inside you that nobody else sees. If you are hurt or unhappy, say it, explain why, and remain polite. If you do it any other way, all that will generate is hurt for others, and pretexts for others to send the same back at you. So you will prove that there are other stupid people around, but that does not make YOU less stupid. Take the high ground, use reason, argument, and be nice. You’ll be amazed how effective this is.

You are responsible for what YOU write. whatever the pretext, if you write stupid, you will be treated as stupid and you’ll get stupid in return, and if you write nasty, you’ll get nasty and you’ll be treated as nasty. And if you get unprovoked nasty or stupid, let those responsible be blamed for their behavior and do not use it to justify falling into the same, because you’ll enter the stupid or nasty category just the same.

2) The vicious circle of mistrust

The Bush administration is a great demonstration, on a grand scale, of the ability of people to use stupid or nasty behavior to justify their own stupidity or nastiness. The USA under Bush are conducting an amazingly heavy handed international policy, alienating friends, generating hate and mistrust everywhere, and not getting any progress on any of the goals they have set (security? fighting terrorism? what a joke).

That behavior can be linked to 9/11, which was an indisputably nasty and evil attack against the USA. But again, 9/11 was a pretext for what followed, but it does not justify it.

Whatever its causes, 9/11 happened. Once it had happened, the behavior of the USA was the responsibility of the USA, not of the terrorists.

It would have been possible to seek justice, not revenge.

It would have been possible to unite most other countries against terrorism, those that finance it, those that arm it, those that support it, instead of treating all of them as enemies or potential enemies.

It would have been possible to take the high ground, to show that America would still be bound by the rules that make it a beacon of democracy and civilisation, instead of unleashing its righteous military force without any restraint across the globe – and at home.

A crackdown on offshore financial havens and circuits, a reinforcement of international rules on nuclear proliferation, a coordinated fight against international trafficking (whether in drugs, prostitutes, cheap labor or others), and a serious push for democratisation in a number of countries would not have been resisted by the usual suspects in the circumstances following 9/11, and would have been supported with relief by many others. Instead, we had “you fucked with me, I’ll fuck with you (and anybody that looks like you)” and “What, Fuck. Not happy about what I’m doing? You’re with that fucker? Fuck you”.

And, how strange, we heard lots of “fuck you”s in return. 9/11 still hurts, a number of other people around the world hurt, and the likelihood of another 9/11 has only increased. Nasty and stupid breeds nasty and stupid. It’s not justified on either side, but again, do you really want to be judged by the standards of the other side? That will be Bush’s legacy “they started it and we’re no worse than Saddam”. What a sickening lack of ambition for oneself.

3) Collective rules vs individual behavior

If I haven’t offended enough people already, let me wade back into the debate on religion, because it is directly linked to this. To me, religions can provide an anchor for our values and our ethics. The 10 commandments, other teachings in the Bible, and similar things in other religions, provide rules of behavior which, if properly followed, will guarantee public order and individual civility. But religions can also be abused if behavior becomes driven not by these rules, but by the desire that these rules be applied by others – and if it becomes acceptable to break the rules to ensure their future enforcement (upon others). When the end justifies the means. Personal responsibility means that you should apply the rules that you use to guide your behavior (whether inspired by religion, any other ideology or spiritual source, or your personal morals) to yourself before you seek to apply them to others.

You are responsible for YOUR acts. You may want to enforce respect of common rules (which religious rules are not in our societies), but you have to follow the procedures to do so and you must keep on respecting the rules yourself while doing so. Vigilantism is not responsible, and it makes you as bad as the mecreants you are trying to punish.

Civilisation comes from respecting the basic common rules of society. If you break the rules – EVEN IF it is only in reaction to someone breaking the rules to your detriment – you put yourself outside of that society. A strong society has procedures to deal with deviants, or it would not be strong. So trust your society a bit.

On dailykos, the rules are not so restrictive: don’t insult people, don’t treat them with contempt or disdain, don’t taunt or provoke them. Basically, the same rule as everywhere else: don’t do to others what you don’t want done to you. And again, you are responsible for what you do, not for what others do. And ultimately, others are not responsible for what you do.

Don’t be surprised if people react stupidly to your stupid comments – they are stupid and/or irresponsible, but as your initial reaction showed, that seems to happen to a lot of people. And you cannot use them as an excuse for what you do.

And there is enforcement on dKos: comment ratings are there for that purpose, and they do work. If someone insults you, put a polite comment explaining why you feel that comment was inappropriate and let others sprinkle the original comment with low ratings. If you put a rating yourself, or if you respond inappropriately, people will be more reluctant to blame the initial comment – or they will take sides, which only increases the scale of stupidity and nastiness.

Be responsible. Be nice. Be polite. Be respectful. Fight back on substance, not on tone. Don’t give others pretext in your tone to ignore your substance. It goes a long way, in your private life just like in public life.

It takes two to start a flame war. Blaming the other does not absolve you. You are responsbile.

I am responsible.

French philosopher André Glucksmann wrote a provocative piece in yesterday’s Le Monde, where he bemoans the “winds of hate” in our country.

He has been a tireless militant againt Putin and Russia’s ugly war in Chechnya and he also supported the invasion of Iraq on humanitarian grounds – Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator that needed to be brought down, and he had been critical before of the links between some parts of the French State with Saddam’s Iraq. In that sense he is close to the neocons, pro-American and anti-Russian. He still sees America as a force for good against tyranny and hate. Despite this, his words on France are interesting, and also provide some deeper insights.

Translation by me from the article in French in Le Monde:

In France as in the United States, integration is rife with conflict and contestation.  No one questions the “Frenchness” of the peasants who impose their will with easy recourse to violence, and one must recognize a properly French virtue in the firebombs of the suburbs. It is in France that our nihilist firebombers learn that what makes you strong is your capacity for nuisance.

The more you break, the more you count.  France, both the left and the right, should take a look at the mirror provided by the rioters.  Who claims to control Europe while in a  minority, even if it means declaring to the countries which are just freed from the domination of their Russian master that they have only one right, to keep silent?  Who votes with a 55 % majority against Europe by adding its vote to those from the extremes and the racists?  Who takes the risk to demolish fifty years of efforts?  Who is ready to get WTO to fail and ignores, in the name of our 2 % of peasants,  immense African misery?  French diplomacy behaves in the international arena as if all relationships were about who’s most harmful to whom.  Yesterday it was as friendly as possible with Saddam, today with Putin.  It dared call “resistant” the killers of Baghdad.

Similar nihilist behavior inside France creates its dreadful effects.  Examples of blackmail abound.  Lawlessness takes its toll both in elite France as in the lower classes.  Our suburbs are completely French.  It’s much too easy to stigmatize foreigners.  The firebombers are definitely at home here.  They are citizens of a country where the winds of hatred blow.

Now, one may agree or not with that pretty dark vision of France (as it were, I think there is too much truth in there for comfort, even if it is a very partial and selective view), but this begs a more general question: why such nihilism? Why such hate?

This is a theme I have touched upon before – that of zero-sum games. Why, after many years of our civilisation successfully growing out of its earlier misery thanks to the adoption of win-win rules (demcoracy, cooperation, openness, accountability) are we falling back to older, almost feudal, rules of behavior?

Is it the pressure of the monetisation of value (only money grants value, and what cannot be “valued” – in dollars – has no value for our society) and the even stronger pressure to maximize such value in the short term?

Is it the disappearance of ideologies (national, political or religious) and the (stifling, but reassuring) rules they imposed on all in society from the onslaught of individual liberty – and our inability to replace collectively-imposed morality by personal responsibility?

Is it just a temporary aberration, when a selfish caste has taken advantage of the openness and the wealth of the system to, quite simply, cheat – and setting the precedent for everybody else to follow, until order breaks down and we come to our senses and kick them out?

Selfishness rules. Instant gratification has become a “human right” ( a “z’acquis sociaux” for the French). Our role models (people on TV) lead us in that direction by their example, and we hate it when we cannot do the same. Some of us are better brought up than others to resist the temptation, but are treated as naive or are abused.

How do we take a stand against hate? One thing is certain: not by becoming hateful ourselves.

Wolfowitz, now President of the World Bank, was in Paris for a couple of days and he gave a press conference a few minutes ago. As a banker in (formerly?) good standing, I had the opportunity to join that press conference – and to put a couple of questions to him on behalf of DailyKos.com. (I chose dK over ET or BT in the hope that more journalists around would take note the “blogging” part)

• for the record, can you say when you knew that there were no WMDs in Iraq?

• what do you say about the US habit of putting abortion-riders on help for Africa?

First, a couple of pictures (via my phone, sorry for the quality):

Before I give you his answers, which came near the end of the press conference, let me summarise the whole thing for you.

This was organised by the European-American Press Club and the audience was a mix of French and Paris-based international journalists, as well as a smattering of bankers and corporate guys invited by the law firm that helped sponsor the event – thus my presence.

Wolfowitz made a short 10-minute speech and then answered questions from the floor. Below is a reconstitution of what was said from my notes. It’s not necessarily verbatim, but it is accurate as far as I can remember it.

His speech
He started by noting the importance of the current Doha round of trade talks. He stressed that agricultural subsidies are very damaging to growth in the emerging markets and that it is very important to reduce them. He noted that lowering industrial bareers would also help development.

After suggesting some estimates of the potential gains (he gave the USD 300 billion figure), he also noted that emerging countries also had a lot to do to eliminate obstacles between themwelsves and within countries. He gave the example of a lorry loaded with goods which, on the road from Abidjan (Cote d’Ivoire) to Lago (Nigeria), has to go through 69 checkpoints.

He noted that Africa was the focus of the World Bank and that it was a good thing to be in Paris as there was no need to explain here how important Africa is (he was coming out of a meeting with Chirac). Poverty is twice as prevalent as 20 years ago on the continent, and 300 million people live with less than a dollar a day.

He was in Paris the day befroe for a joint WB/WHO/French government conference on the UN Millenium healthcare initiative and repeated that preventable diseases and AIDS were absolute priorities.

He noted that the World Bank was a very important and very sound instituion, and that it played a vital role with most African countries which are utterly dependent on its aid.

It also has a role to play in the coordination of the reaction to the avian flu, to support the costs associated with prevention measures (estimated at 1-1.5 billion dollars).

As president of the World Bank, he acknowledged the vital necessity to coordinate work with countries like France and institutions like the European Commission in Brussels.

Altogether, a very diplomatic and unsurprising discourse.

The Q&A

French TV: you said two years ago that France needed to be punished for its attitude on Iraq. Now you meet Chirac in the middle of riots. What did you tell him?

A: I hope they are only a temporary phenomenon. We’ve had our own episodes of troubles in the 60s and 80s and I certainly am in no position to give lessons. France is a great country and I am sure it will solve its problems.

Reuters: what do you think of the fact that a 100 billion dollar debt relief package for Iraq was put in place in record time, when the rich countries have so much trouble putting in place a smaller package for African countries that presumably need it more?

A: well, Iraq is different, it was Paris-club debt [i.e. bilateral government to government] linked to arms purchases. African debt relief is a multilateral effort involving the WB, which certainly needs to be pushed.

French Radio: What do you think of Chirac’s proposal for a tax on air traffic to finance the fight against AIDS?

R: The Director of WHO says that for AIDS, the problem is not money but the capacity for the healthcare systems of these countries to absorb it. The WB is working to improve the healthcare systems there.

Newsweek: You’ve been instrumental in starting the war in Iraq, which has cost upwards of $100 billion, and much less is made available for Africa. Don’t you regret that decision?

A: Question about Iraq come only when I do press conferences in the USA or Europe. Elsewhere, people are more interested in what the WB is doing. But Iraq is a fundamental fight, as demonstrated again recently in Jordan. These people are killers and we must fight them. Look at the heroes of last 30 January who took real risks to vote.

[a couple of questions on Africa and development which I missed]

He notes that there are two groups in the USA that care about what’s going on in Africa (and what the WB does): the African immigrants, and the evangelicals.

Here I go
Q: Jerome G., blogging for dailykos.com: what do you say about the US habit of putting abortion-riders on help for Africa? And, for the record, can you say when you knew that there were no WMDs in Iraq?

A: (slightly embarrassed) “I know only what the intelligence consensus told me. Going back over 15 years, everybody thought that there were WMDs. There are still lots we don’t know. There was lots of destructing stuff and lots of hiding stuff, so we still don’t know. I am telling you categorically that, when planning the war, our biggest fear was that WMDs would be used. Thus our need for speed and surprise. Again, this was the conclusion of 15 years of intelligence going back to the Clinton Presidency. I don’t know if there are WMDs in Iraq or not.”

“On abortion, this is more a congressional than an administration issue, not that I speak for either. There are no restrictions in the funds allocated by the USA to the WB. It is “unfortunate” that obstacles are put in the use of funds for abortion related reasons.”

There was one last question which I missed, and the press conference ended. Wolfowitz talked with a couple of people and was led to another room for an interview with CNN’s Jim Bittermann (who was co-organiser of the event) – so check it out and if anyone sees it, feedback will be appreciated.

So there, my début as journalist!

Altogether, he was mostly diplomatic and unsurprising. He was slightly annoyed at the number of questions about Iraq at first, but then he came back to the topic on his own to defend Bushco’s policies. I found him a bit embarrassed by my questions, but then that’s maybe some projection of mine. I was actually surprised that he answered anything on the WMD question, even if it was to peddle a debunked absurdity – as the whole think was in front of several TVs (although I doubt it was live).

I am especially proud to have spoken explicitly on behalf of bloggers – we’re going places, people!

The wingnuts are not just content to watch happily as France becomes Baghdad sur Seine (you know, the place from which good news are not reported…), they HAD to bring France into Plamegate.

And it’s brilliant in its simplicity: Wilson is a French agent provocateur, manipulated thanks to his oversized ego…

This is the theory published by the grandly named American Thinker, and promptly circulated by the right wing blogosphere:

Joseph A. Wilson IV: The French Connection

There are an amazing number of French fingerprints all over the Plame-Wilson affair. While it is not easy to penetrate the dark fog of lies, there is a highly consistent pattern pointing to French government involvement with a Watergate-style assault on the American Presidency, fronted by Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.

I wonder what a Watergate-style assault on the American Presidency is, given how that was an assault by the American Presidency on political opponents… But maybe it means that France is being Nixon in this story?

In 2002 French intelligence forged the notorious document claiming that Saddam tried to obtain Niger uranium. The Italian middle man, Rocco Martino, later confessed to French involvement in open court. Rocco Martino might sound like a small-time mafia hood from the Sopranos. Actually, he works at times for Italian military intelligence. The truth about the French connection came out when Martino confessed in court that the French had given him the forged document to peddle to various intelligence agencies. The Italians and French have had a furious war of words ever since then about who was responsible for the forgery.

The only source I have found on this is this article in the Telegraph (a virulently anti-French British paper), which, despite its catchy title, only points that Martino (i) is involved in the forgery, and (ii) also worked for the French (but nothing specific is said about the Frenhc working on these documents with him, despite strong innuendo).

Fair enough: muddy enough these already dark waters, and maybe enough doubt will be sown.

The FBI just leaked a claim that Rocco did it just for the money. That is very doubtful. The French naturally deny any responsibility, but the forged document was dropped on the public at exactly the time that Dominique de Villepin, then Foreign Minister, was in New York trying to make Colin Powell believe that France was prepared to help overthrow Saddam. The French forgery was a stink bomb, designed to be exposed in public as soon as Colin Powell publicly accepted it.

(…)

It was a carefully planned ambush. Timmerman summed it up by saying that

“Chirac lied to the president of the United States, and then he ordered his Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin to do the same thing with Colin Powell.”

And then, they pulled the plug.

De Villepin’s ambush triggered a giant anti-American firestorm in Europe and around the world. Germans, French, Brits and Swedes were foaming at the mouth for months and months. France was therefore extremely successful in discrediting American policy against Saddam.

The Brits? You mean these people actually care about public opinion, as opposed to what the actual policy of the government was?

And how could the great American fight for freedom be discredited by those corrupt French?

But that was not enough, because Saddam was quickly knocked over by the US-led coalition forces. Somehow the media fires had to be kept alive.  The “Bush lied us into war” slogan had to be kept going in the minds of the public.  

Enter our hero, Joseph C. Wilson, from stage left. The French forgery about Niger led straight to Wilson’s bogus trip to Africa. Wilson supposedly went there to find out the truth for the CIA. But every government involved already  knew the truth about the bogus document, because it showed incorrect names of Niger officials. A single telephone call to Niger would have established that fact.

“Bush lied us into war” slogan had to be kept going in the minds of the public. That’s an interesting way to rewrite history, don’t you think? Now that it is an established fact, long after the war and way too late, it’s easy to claim that this was said back then.

And do I also detect an attempt to brush over the fact that this “obvious forgery” was nevertheless vetted by everybody in the Bush administration and used in the SotU?

But it gets better:

The reason why Wilson had to travel to Niger in person to “investigate,” while drinking mint tea with his uranium mining friends, was to establish his bona fides – to make him an instant “expert witness” on Saddam’s dealings with Niger. Did French intelligence urge Wilson to make his trip and enlist his wife Valerie to propose him?

So it’s not just ambassador wilson who’s a French agent, but also his wife! Quick, what are the CIA and the FBI doing?

Notice that the modus operandi for the Wilson trip was much the same as for the Niger forgery: a classic con game. Find a sucker, tell him what he wants to hear, and use that credulous embrance by the mark to destroy your enemy. In the first case the sucker was Colin Powell. In the second case it was the New York Times Op-Ed page.  In both cases the enemy to be shafted was George W. Bush and the administration. This is how disinformation is supposed to work.

Yep, the world is full of evil plots.

Joseph Wilson had intimate French connections for many years before his mint tea-sipping journey to Niger. In fact, he met his first wife at the French Embassy in Washington. His second wife, Jacqueline, to whom he was still married when he took up with Valerie Plame, was a former French diplomat.  There is even a report that she was a “cultural attaché” in Francophone Africa, a post often used as cover for intelligence operatives, though this remains quite a murky point, as tradecraft suggests it should.  

Oh, Wilson cheated on his wife, and – gasp – another of his wifes was also probably a French spy. Quick, give him the Légion d’Honneur.

Well, hypothetically just suppose for a moment that Wilson’s strings are being pulled by the French. What motivates the French government? They have been very clear about that.

Jacques Chirac and his close ally Dominique de Villepin have long proclaimed France to be the strategic enemy of American power. Paris openly yearns to lead the European Union to superpower status, in order to undermine American “hegemony,” and above all for the eternal grandeur of la belle France. (…) France’s short-term aim for the Niger forgery was to block US actions against Saddam Hussein, or at least to discredit America in the run-up to the Iraq war. The long-term strategic purpose was to drive a wedge between the US and Europe, so that the European Union – guided by France – could be persuaded to revolt against fifty years of US leadership of the West.  

This strategy succeeded, but not completely. The American action in Iraq provoked massive public fury in Europe, whipped up by the government-owned media and the Left. It caused a rift in public opinion that continues today. Had Tony Blair not gone along with President Bush against Saddam, the EU might now be going on its separate way, aiming for world domination, just as de Villepin has fervently advocated. If the EU Constitution had been approved, as the media confidently predicted it would be, Jacques Chirac might now be running to be the first president of Europe.

So the citizens of France, thankfully, are not interested in the grandeur de la belle France, and helped to kill the plans for EU “world domination”. Hey, I know, they must be agent provocateurs for the US government. Think about it, it’s obvious!

For decades France has conducted major industrial espionage in the United States. Having Wilson as a source on Clinton’s National Security Council would be an obvious boon for that purpose. Had John Kerry won the 2004 election, Wilson might now be back in the White House, perhaps helping his good friends abroad. He was therefore a very good prospect for French intelligence to cultivate, especially given the lax security standards of the Clinton years.  And if Wilson and Plame do succeed in bringing down George W. Bush, Chirac and de Villepin would be overjoyed.

I’m sorry, I can’t help quoting lots of pieces form that article. Now we have Wilson, Clinton and Kerry as French agents. Seriously, US counter-espionage sucks!

French hatred of American power is the reason why France pressured Turkey (anxious to enter the EU) to block the US IV Infantry  Division from crossing Iraq’s northern border to help knock over Saddam Hussein.  Had the IV ID hit Saddam from the North while Tommy Franks attacked from the South, the current Iraqi insurrection might have been crushed even before it got started, the Baathist hardcore unable to flee north to the Sunni Triangle and entrench itself among the small percentage of Iraqis who benefited from Saddam’s rule. The original plan envisioned just such a pincer movement. We therefore owe many of our 2,000 soldiers’ deaths to deliberate and malicious French sabotage, with thanks to Dominique de Villepin and Jacques Chirac.

Our tentacles reach everywhere. We killed the 2,000 US soliders. (you gotta love that quote, by the way: “entrench itself among the small percentage of Iraqis” – the enemy is a minority, supported by a minority, but that makes them strogn enough to fight the US Army). We have more power over close US allies than even the US. Why do we even need the EU to aim for world domination?

There is every reason to believe that France desperately wants this White House to be weakened or overthrown. They would be happy with Hillary Clinton or any other Democrat as president, because the Euro-socialist, non-interventionist base of that party is compatible with French policies and strategies.

Fair enough. Hillary is a traitor too. But why would we want the Bush administration overthrown? We play them so easily in our quest for world domination that it would probably be a bad idea to put anyone less clueless in place, dontcha think?!

A strong America wielding its mighty military force is de Villepin’s worst nightmare.

Well, it’s mostly a nightmare for Iraqis, and for its very own soldiers, all dying pointlessly in a war of choice.

Maybe the Iraq War is actually a French plot to weaken the USa further? Maybe Chalabi, the architect of that strategy, is really a French agent? So many possibilities, the mind reels…

The incidents have spread, and have become locally more violent, but this hides very different trends:

• In the greater Paris area, violence is now going down (426 cars burnt, including 18 in Paris itself, vs 741 the previous night, of which 36 in Paris),

• it has been spreading to many large (and a few small) provincial towns (982 cars burnt vs 554 the night before), with 274 town touched (211 the night before).

• locally, violence has increased, with 36 police officers injured (21 the night before), including 2 seriously by gunshots.

One man has died from his injuries sustained after he was hit on Friday while trying to take out a garbage bin fire. It is the only casualty so far remotely connected to the incidents, although there have been several close calls.

Additionally, a number of “institutional” buildings (schools, town halls, post offices, social security and bank buildings) have been variously damaged.

Obviously, this is big news in France, and there is a clear sense of a major crisis situation, with tremendous political consequences (which I would describe briefly as whether we’ll have a major shift to the hard populist right or not). The only good news I can see is that the only injuries have been counted amongst the police, which means that orders for restraint in the use of force have been given and are followed. The other item is that the increasing numbers of incidents probably reflect some form of copycat action in smaller towns, and the lower numbers around Paris sound like good news.

But hey, I am part of the French chattering elites, so I’ll indulge below in more denial and rationalisation in reaction to an article in the Financial Times (one of the less sensationalist British papers):

Liberté, égalité et fraternité – but only for some

The violence appears to be the loudest wake-up call for France’s ruling class, within which Mr Chirac has long thrived, and which has long lectured others on the success of its social model. Irritation in the French press about the news coverage the riots have received abroad also reflects how humbling they have been been for the chattering classes.

While much of the violence is happening only a few miles from the Elysée presidential palace, Mr Chirac and his ministers have until now preferred to ignore the growing social unrest rather than accept that France’s integration model has failed.

This head-in-the-sand attitude is summed up by the president’s refusal to allow Insee, the state statistics arm, to ask people about their ethnic origins in surveys and censuses, thus preventing anyone knowing how segregated French society has become.

Instead, Mr Chirac clings to the idea that all French citizens are equal under the republic’s revolutionary ideal: Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. In practice, this means immigrants are expected to adapt to France rather than the other way round.

This policy worked reasonably well when Italians, Armenians, east European Jews, Spaniards and Portuguese arrived during various periods of the 19th and 20th centuries and assimilated easily.

But the model has broken down for more recent waves of immigrants from former French colonies in north and sub-Saharan Africa. Many found themselves excluded from mainstream society, living in outer-city ghettoes. Their children, most of whom were born in France, find themselves in ghettoised schools and with little chance of gainful employment.

Previous immigrants, too, could easily adapt to France’s insistence on a strict division between church and state. But Muslim immigrants in particular, who make up 10 per cent of France’s population, have had a more difficult time adapting to a secular state – they felt singled out two years ago when the government banned the wearing of headscarves in schools.

As I wrote yesterday, there is a real case to be made for a failure of the French model, in that it puts an undue burden on the youth, and especially on the children of the latest immigrants. But to call this a failure of immigration is unduly hasty.

Irritation in the French press about the news coverage the riots have received abroad also reflects how humbling they have been been for the chattering classes.

Yeah right, irritation is because the elites have been humbled (if only!) and not because the coverage has been sensationalist and driven by schadenfreude or French-bashing (and I am not even talking about the rightwing “Intifada” commentary). A surprising number of comments to my “aunt” diary yesterday basically accused me of rationalisation, denial or worse, just for giving a different point of view to the main viewpoint currently developed in English speaking media. But that coverage is, of course, pefectly impartial and not at all driven by ideology or by country rivalries.

the president’s refusal to allow Insee, the state statistics arm, to ask people about their ethnic origins in surveys and censuses

Amazing ignorance by that journalist. It’s the law! Criticise the law for its blind secularism, but not the authorities for respecting the law! Unbelievable.

all French citizens are equal under the republic’s revolutionary ideal: Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. In practice, this means immigrants are expected to adapt to France rather than the other way round.

WTF? France is supposed to adapt to immigrants? What’s that supposed to mean, exactly? The issue is that France is not treating French kids as French kids but as somewhat inconvenient visitors. They don’t want France to change, but to accept them fully.

This policy worked reasonably well when Italians, Armenians, east European Jews, Spaniards and Portuguese arrived during various periods of the 19th and 20th centuries and assimilated easily.

But the model has broken down for more recent waves of immigrants from former French colonies in north and sub-Saharan Africa

Again, what unbelievable ignorance. Assimilated easily? Has this journalist not heard of the affaire Dreyfus? The fascist movements in the 30s? The hate against each of these successive waves of immigrants?

Previous immigrants, too, could easily adapt to France’s insistence on a strict division between church and state.

Italian and Polish catholics? Really? That was not easy then.

I’ll stand by my point. It’s too early to tell if France will successfully integrate North Africans or not, but I am not at all pessimistic that we’re on our way and we will. We only see the non-integrated minority, not the invisible integrated majority.

and please note, as this article reminds us – France has ALWAYS been a country of immigration, and ultimately a pretty successful one. This is not about integration, this is about the macro-economic choices made 30 years ago to protect the middle classes by dumping the lumpen-proletariat, a significant part of which is immigrants and children of immigrants.

The USA has been smarter, by making the macro-economic choice of protecting the rich by dumping the lumpen proleratiat and the middle classes, thus spreading the pain wider…

from the European Tribune

One of my aunts lives in one of the cités in the suburbs where the “new Intifada” is taking place – the new “Baghdad on the Seine“. Her building suffered a fire yesterday night, started by the usual suspects in the neighborhood (they blew up two motorbikes in a local on the ground floor), ignored for almost one hour by the police and firemen. The solidarity of the inhabitants helped to evacuate everybody, and provide temporary shelter while the fire raged. Most people went back home the same evening as the fire was doused eventually.

A few cars were also burnt in the neighborood, but hardly more than usual. It’s one of those things that happen and that you don’t really worry about if you live there. This week, it goes on TV if you do it, so of course more are tempted to do so (last night saw 1300 cars burn, up from 900 the previous night), including in provincial cities. There is no coordination of anything, it’s just mostly copycats by bored kids who are suddenly getting a lot of attention.

The police toughness is just plain posturing by Sarkozy, as the police know very well who does what in the neighborood and didn’t and do not intervene. One reason is actually that the local gangs don’t attack so much the locals (or the police) as they fight other gangs from nearby cities for sometimes trange turf or other arcane reasons. Also, there isn’t that much violence, but isolated incidents and the spectacular, but mostly harmless, car fires. Firemen say explicitly that they let them burn out rather than intervene, as their interventions only excite the gangs more and have little use (unless the fire presents any danger of spreading, which is rarely the case).

Now one thing to note is that these neighboroods are not ghettos. My aunt lived there most of her life, she was a teacher in a nearby pre-school and has a mostly normal middle class life. There are lots of minorities, lots of kids with dysfunctional families, an obvious lack of jobs, and decrepit buildings, but it’s not a rundown place, it’s not cut off from the rest of the country, and there is a lot of solidarity between the inhabitants.

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.

[ed] AP story

UPDATE Postscript. Just watched the evening news here. The events of last night, naturally enough, took most of the air time. Chirac spoke, saying that restoring order is the only priority right now. There was a lot of coverage in various places. Most of it showed shocked and uncomprehending populations in these cités, half “white” and half “dark”. They showed how the whole cité and the teachers came to clean up the school that was burnt overnight, and which will thus be open again tomorrow. They showed groups of citizens that occupy their local infrastructure (unarmed) simply to create a presence and show that it is valued. They showed some youth saying that they were sick to death of not finding jobs because the don’t have the right name, and expressing their anger at Sarkozy’s words; there was an interview of inhabitants (again, half white and half brown) of one cité complaining about the racism and provocation of the police.

In 20 minutes, there was not a single mention of religion. Again, these events are not motivated by religion, they are motivated by economics, and by the (correct) feeling of these youth that they are excluded from “normal” society. all they want is a job, a car and decent housing, to live their lifes normally. Now a significant proportion of this underclass is indeed of Arab or African origins, and thus Muslim, but they are all French by nationality.

A final word: I am not trying to downplay the significance of these events, but I do think they need to be put in perspective, and the shrillness of the English language press made me want to give another view. Burning cars are not a good thing, but htey are not the end of the world either, and no sign of any Intifada (or the USA and the UK would be in one as well). The violence unleashed in the past two days will not be tolerated much longer, neither by the inhabitants of the cités nor by the State, and a combination of both actions will prevail.

Now the open question is what the political fallout will be. Will the right use it to push tough law and order policies (to shoot the messenger, effectively), or will France take a hard look at its social model and decide that it is high time to do something for these kids and these cités? On this I must admit that I am not so optimistic.

U.S. Wind Industry to Break Installation Records, Expand by More Than 35% in 2005

The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) stated today in its Third Quarter Market Report that the U.S. wind energy industry will install about 2,500 megawatts (MW) of new wind power this year, a record amount that will help lower skyrocketing home heating and electric bills by reducing the demand for natural gas. Wind energy projects also bring new jobs, rural economic development, and tax revenues to cash-strapped states without creating any of the harmful side-effects associated with conventional power generation.

Obviously, the above is the PR release by the industry association, so it is naturally upbeat and positive, but in this instance, they are actually right to be so.

For the full year 2005, the USA will reclaim, for the first time in a long while, the crown of the biggest market for wind power, in terms of newly built capacity, with 2,500 MW, while both Spain and Germany, the two market leaders, are expected to build about 1,600-1,800 MW this year.

In terms of installed capacity, Germany is still far ahead, and Spain a little bit ahead of the USA:

As the first table showed, and the graph below underlines, the USA has had to face brutal variations in new installations, due to an uncertain regulatory framework:

The collapse of the industry in both 2002 and 2004 was due to the expiry of the federal mechanism which supports renewable energy, the PTC, a tax credit of 1.9 cents/kWh given to renewable energy producers for the first 10 years of production. In 2001, Congress renewed the mechanism – for just two years – just a few months before its expiry at the end of the year. In 2003, it was not renewed until October 2004 (and then just till then end of 2005), but it was extended to the end of 2007 recently, thus ensuring that the next 3 years will see a number of projects developped.

The consequence of such shortsightedness in what is a heavy industry is that turbine manufacturing capacity worldwide, which was underutilised in 2004 due to the collapse of the US market, is this year stretched and unable to respond to demand. All turbines to be manufactured until the end of 2006 have already been sold as of today.

Denmark, the pioneers, Germany, now the market leader, and Spain, have all developped their industry on the back of supportive regulatory frameworks (typically, guaranteed dispatch of production and a guaranteed sale price for the electricity). The US mechanism, the PTC, is not as strong, but have proved to be sufficient to develop a number of projects. But turning that mechanims on and off every two years is absurd and has definitely prevented the emergence of a homegrown industry in the USA. (GE, the main US manufacturer of turbines, built its operations from the purchase of German manufacturers and still has a storng base in Europe; the European players, who do not have GE’s balance sheet, have limited their investments in the US).

And yet, the industry can provide a LOT of jobs. The AWEA, the industry association, estimates that the construction of 50 GW of wind power (8 times the current installed capacity, but only 50% more than Europe’s existing capacity) would create 150,000 jobs over the next 5-10 years.

10 MW bring about 40 jobs over one year and 2 full time jobs over 20 years, or 80 man-years.

The other argument these days, as I wrote last week, is that wind power today is actually helping to lower electricity costs for utilities in a context of high gas prices. The subsidy is still needed for the time being as wind power needs 10-15 years of stable high prices to pay for the initial investment, but the required level is now below market prices – if these last, then wind will NOT need subsidies of any kind at all. The good news for now is that production costs do not vary with fuel costs, and those utilities that have purchased wind power – and sold it on to their users under special plans, can keep their prices low today.

And this is especially important in a context of localised shortages of natural gas and a strong likelihood of insufficient gas supply in the medium term, with North American production peaking (dixit ExxonMobil):

as the AWEA press release mentions:

One megawatt of new wind energy is enough electricity to power 270-300 homes2.

“Wind power’s rapid growth provides what is potentially the quickest and best supply-side option to ease the natural gas shortage,” said AWEA Executive Director Randall Swisher. “We are hopeful that the momentum started in this record-breaking year will continue because of the Congress’s foresight in extending the wind energy production tax credit through December 31, 2007. The wind power industry is stepping up to provide the U.S. with a significant amount of its power needs in this time of uncertainty.”

The growth in wind power construction comes at a time when customers across the country are facing electricity and natural gas rate hikes due to the natural gas supply shortage, with 2005-2006 winter gas prices projected at $10-13/thousand cubic foot (mcf), compared to last year’s average prices of $5-7/mcf. Wind power, which generates energy without using fuel, provides a hedge against rising energy costs because wind energy production is immune from fuel price spikes.

Every unit of electricity that is produced by a wind farm is one for which the country does not have to burn natural gas or other resources. And because prices at the margin are volatile and sensitive to supply and demand pressures, each unit of natural gas conserved by wind energy helps shave down costs even further in times of crunch.

AWEA estimates that an installed capacity of 9,200 MW of wind power will save over half a billion cubic feet of natural gas per day (Bcf/day) in 2006 3, alleviating a portion of the supply pressure that is now facing the natural gas industry and is driving prices upward. The U.S. currently burns about 13 Bcf/day for electricity generation, which means that by the end of the year wind power will be reducing natural gas use for power generation by 4-5%.

Another benefit of wind power plants is that they can be permitted and built quickly (1-2 years), whereas the drilling of new natural gas fields and the construction of Liquefied Natural Gas terminals takes longer. AWEA projects that over 14,000 MW of wind capacity could be part of the nation’s generation supply by the end of 2007, producing the equivalent of .85 Bcf/day of natural gas.

Also, wind power helps to cut pollutant emissions significantly, as the power sector is a major contributor for a number of noxious pollutants:

and just a reminder: wind turbines kill a negligible number of birds:

Peak gas will be felt this winter. Get your local utility to get involved into windpower.

(And if this sounds like self-interested information, I suppose it is. So what?)

A final note: the “koswind” had started well over the summer, but we’ve all been busy since then and it has stalled somewhat. I’d be interested to hear from those of you that would be interested and able to commit real time on this (especially corporate/securities lawyers).

Iran’s president names `unknown’ for oil post

In many appointments, Mr Ahmadi-Nejad has favoured friends. He has brought in both his brother and close allies from Tehran city council, where he was mayor before being elected president, as official advisers.

At the same time, he has removed many senior officials, including those who conducted two-year negotiations with the European Union over Iran’s nuclear programme. Mr Ahmadi-Nejad replaced them with less experienced fundamentalists.

(…)

Ansar Hezbollah, the militant fundamentalist group, has argued appointments should be based on religious commitment rather than friendship.

Hmmm…

• nominating incompetent cronies to senior posts?
• counting on friendliness or closeness rather than ideological purity (or competence)?
• being criticised by his own fundamentalists?

Who does that remind you of?

It seems that the new Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, and George Bush deserve each other. The problem, of course, is that it’s really worrying news. In the US, you have avowed torture-proponents running the army, obnoxious incompetents running diplomacy (well, almost, Bolton is only at the UN), and the shining examples or Miers and Brownie. In Iran, it’s only the oil industry and their nuclear diplomacy which is threatened…

Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, president of Iran, nominated a largely unknown figure, Sadeq Mahsouli, as minister of oil on Wednesday, adding further mystery to the direction of his new administration.

Mr Ahmadi-Nejad’s original nominee, the conservative academic Aliasghar Zarei, was one of four ministerial nominations rejected by Iran’s parliament, in which a majority of deputies are, like the president, fundamentalist conservatives.

An oil official said he had “never heard of” Mr Mahsouli, who was “definitely not from the ministry”. Mr Mahsouli may face a rough ride in the parliament, where Kamal Daneshyar, head of its energy commission, expressed regret at the nomination. “When there is no knowledge about them [nominations] . . . it’s not clear what the result of any vote will be,” he said.

Elyas Naderan, a prominent fundamentalist deputy, said parliament preferred a ministry run by an acting minister rather than a minister who lacked qualifications. Iran is the second largest oil producer in the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Iranian news agencies reported Mr Mahsouli was a former commander in the Revolutionary Guards and a former deputy governor of Western Ajerbaijan province – apparently when Mr Ahmadi-Nejad was governor of neighbouring Ardebil province.

So at least Iran can rely on some reality-based decision making from its fundamentalists… And the fact that fundamentalists are more effective at blocking nominations than the minority opposition looks a lot like what happened over Miers.

Mr Ahmadi-Nejad (…)has removed many senior officials, including those who conducted two-year negotiations with the European Union over Iran’s nuclear programme.

Mr Ahmadi-Nejad replaced them with less experienced fundamentalists, at a time when the International Atomic Energy Agency is contemplating referring Iran to the UN Security Council and where the president’s own rhetoric over “wiping Israel from the map” has left Iran isolated internationally.

Iran has also decided to replace its three ambassadors to France, Germany and Britain – the three countries who have led the EU in talks with Iran. Also being replaced is the ambassador to Geneva, Mohammad-Reza Alborzi, who also played a key role in nuclear negotiations.

Nice. Now the European countries do not have anyone to talk to anymore. What a nice situation to be when the stakes are, oh only whether the country will have a nuclear bomb or not?!

Private business is meanwhile alarmed by Mr Ahmad-Nejad’s economic management, as his appointment of relative liberals to leading posts has clashed with the president’s statist rhetoric. The Tehran Stock Exchange index this week fell below the psychologically important 10,000 mark, down from around 12,500 at June’s election. “I see a lack of strategy across the board, even chaos,” said an Iranian analyst. “The budget deficit and inflation will grow markedly by the end of the year.

Budget deficit? Inflation? Lack of (economic) strategy across the board? Check. Well, actually, Bush has the tax cuts going for him in terms of coherence, so score one for him there…

Among the senior clerics he reveres in the holy city of Qom is Ayatollah Mohammad-Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi, dubbed the “spiritual father” of the fundamentalists, who advocates cultural isolation from the west. Mr Ahmadi-Nejad’s sense that Iran is under attack is shared by many of the new cabinet, half of whom have a military background.

Isolation from the world? A sense that the country is under attack? Again, troubling similarities…

So, am I reading too much into this? Is this a skewed European viewpoint, whereby we naturally see the USA as the “biggest danger” around and are giddily keen to find similarities between US democracy and dictatorial regimes elsewhere?

But hey, Iran is not completely a dictatorship, as glimpsed in the above article, and as can be read in this article from the Independent (already behind a subscription wall, but a copy can be found here: Ten very surprising things about Iran).

What we can say, I think, is that Bush and the Iranian fundamentalists are objective allies in finding an enemy in each other which allows them to rouse (or scare) their respective populations and make them forget about real domestic issues. As the experience of both countries shows, this can only last for a time, before people start caring again about real issues that affect them, and get tired of fundamentalism, but any new crisis or external enemy can re-start the cycle again easily.

Thus I do fear that with the two countries having bellicose leaders, any crisis will be amplified and not resolved, and being in the middle, I am not really overjoyed with it.