[UPDATE 12:30PM EST 11-29-04] Potentially, some very good news. Kuchma has proposed new elections. From Reuters:

Outgoing Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, facing mass protests over a disputed presidential election, Monday called for a new poll to help end the crisis tearing the nation apart.

If we really want to preserve peace and consensus and build this just democratic society, of which we speak so much but have failed to carry out in a legal way, let us have new elections," Kuchma said in a statement.

Kuchma, in power for 10 scandal-tainted years and widely accused of mismanaging the economy, said he had no intention of running in a new poll.

He spoke as the Supreme Court sat to try to resolve the election stalemate, though a decision could take days.
[...]

Another positive sign is reports that some of the Ukrainian "oligarchs" may be switching sides, or at least backing off their support of Yanukovych. The English language Kyiv Post is generally viewed as reliable. The internet activist site, Maidan, has a mix of rumor and reliable reports. Volunteer translators are apparently working non-stop to provide English-language versions of as much as they can. Worth visiting simply as a remarkable example of "citizen internet."

Dan Drezner has a good analytical roundup from early this morning, when he was not feeling very upbeat.

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Want a feel for "as it happens" -- check out Le Sabot Post-Moderne, a passionate Western partisan for Yuschenko's "people power" movement. Lots of photos connected with blow-by-blow what's going on with negotiations, rallies, etc. Although he admits he's so close to the on-the-ground action that it's hard to keep sight of the broader strategic goings-on.

Nonetheless, he has very interesting explanations about how the election was stolen and the Orange movement, not only in Kiev (or Kyiv if you spend more time with Ukrainians than Russians). Especially helpful is the correction, echoed by other bloggers, of the distorting East vs West narrative being imposed by outside commentators. [Map: The Economist, Nov 25 2004 "Europe's New Divisions"] This post from Le Sabot Moderne Saturday rips apart the Guardian. It starts:

Jonathan Steele's hit piece in the Guardian is a sad example of the condescension that so many hold for Ukraine. He insists on spinning this as a West-Russia dispute, as if the Ukrainians themselves have nothing to do with it. If he'd troubled himself to talk to some actual Ukrainians, he'd know that they're viewing this as a fight against a Mafia-esque ruling class which is using its powers to repress dissent, monopolize political power and cannibalize the nation's infrastructure through corrupt "privatization" schemes.

These oligarchs sound like just the sort of people a nice Lefty like Steele would be against. But I guess it's just more fun to poke a stick at the United States.

In an incredibly Orwellian moment, he dings the US for "provocatively" financing exit polls. Let's get this straight, the oligarch government was financing rigged polls to help justify their theft of the election. Yet it's the WEST who is trying to use exit polls to perform a coup? What a jackal.
[...]

Another blogger from Kyiv, Tulipgirl has a rich collection of Ukrainian activist details as well as a good variety of other links to blogs, sites and photo collections. Especially recommended is a just-created "blog of the revolution," Orange Ukraine, by a former Peace Corps volunteer who lives in Kyiv with his Ukrainian-born wife.

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[UPDATE 8:30PM EST 11-28-04] For those of you who just can't get enough Ukraine. A lengthy background piece -- giving a good deal more on who's who and the various events leading up to the current situation -- can be found on John Quiggin's personal blog, via Dan Hardie, by Tarik Amar, "who, Dan says, is doing a PhD on Soviet history and speaks Ukranian, German and Russian, among other languages, and knows the place very well."

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Other bloggers following developments closely are Fist Full of Euros and Daniel Drezner, who has a running news roundup. Drezner catches this interesting bit from the Kyiv Post:

Roman Olearchyk's analysis in the Kyiv Post suggests that elites in the eastern parts of the country would take steps beyond autonomy to protect their interests:

The business tycoons in eastern Ukraine that supported Yanukovych appear to be taking extreme measures to protect their interests, which include lucrative assets in Donetsk, Lugansk, Kharkiv and Luhansk. Government officials and legislators in these oblasts have in the past two days demanded the formation of an autonomous eastern-southern Ukrainian republic and are threatening to split their oblasts away from Ukraine altogether.
[...]

Similar story in MosNews.com [Map: MosNews.com, Nov 26 2004 "Pro-Russian Eastern Ukraine Threatens to Secede if Yushchenko Wins"].

And in further apparent confirmation, this just in from AFP: Yuschenko calls for prosecuting "separatist governors," while Yanukovych is off with Moscow's Mayor, Yury Luzhkov, visiting the Russian-speaking regions. "After a short meeting [in Lugansk] they were due to head to Severodonetsk to attend a meeting of 3,500 local officials from 17 regions that was expected to discuss holding a referendum on autonomy."   more »

[UPDATE 10:30PM EST 11-30-04] John Robb has translated the Afghan terror/drug conundrum into his "Global Guerrillas"-speak.

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From AdamSmithee, a first-rate source of interesting observations on development economics:

Moral Conundrum

Afghanistan has managed to drag a fair number of people out of absolute poverty in the past two years, with some effect on a range of health indicators. One huge reason is a rebounding opium crop, which may have accounted for as much as 60% of Afghanistan's economic output in 2003. As Brad DeLong points out, if you don't buy Third World products, their makers just have to go off and do something less rewarding. In the case of Afghanistan, that's likely to throw people back into absolute poverty, and that in turn means higher mortality. Heroin addiction is terrible. But death is surely worse. Given that, how hard should we pursuing opium growers in the country?

Well it may not be how we ought to be proceeding, but it seems the way we'll claim we're proceeding is to fight the "war on drugs" as the great scourage of a free and democratic Afghanistan. Via the FT, from a press conference Nov 18 2004:

Britain, the lead nation in the anti-narcotics drive in Afghanistan, admitted that there was a risk of the opium boom re-creating the conditions that the “war against terror” was supposed to eliminate.

Bill Rammell, the British foreign office minister responsible, said Afghanistan was a “narco-economy” and that the west needed to take urgent action.

“We have always held the view that if you have a narco-economy, those are the very conditions in which terrorism breeds,” he told a press conference in Brussels.

On Wednesday the US announced an $800m plan to fight Afghanistan's ballooning opium industry a big increase in spending that reflects growing concern about the threat of the drugs trade to the fragile country.

But the UN report made it clear that such a move could further destabilise the country.

The UN's drugs and crime office suggested that the lucrative poppy crop is one of the few things keeping the lawless country from falling further into anarchy and poverty.

“Narcotics are the main engine of economic growth and the strongest bond between previously quarrelsome people,” it said. The crop is now grown in all 32 Afghan provinces.

Afghanistan's opium economy is put at $2.8bn, producing 87 per cent of the world's total supply.

Now don't get me wrong, and I'm sure we're dealing with different time periods here, but $800 million in anti-drug trade efforts is almost one-third of the drug contribution to GDP. Maybe a simple set of cash transfers would do more to get some other economic activity going than trying to stamp out 60% of the economy?

They're at it again! Congress just can't seem to resist sticking their fingers in the foreign policy pie. This time, it's over the International Criminal Court. Granted, not the most sympathetic or easily defended of international endeavors from the US viewpoint. But Congress had already taken a major pot shot at it by conditioning military assistance on agreements to grant immunity to US servicemen.

Now they've buried in the Omnibus spending bill a provision that conditions economic assistance on immunity agreements.

Congress's action may affect U.S. Agency for International Development programs designed to promote peace, combat drug trafficking, and promote democracy and economic reforms in poor countries. For instance, the cuts could jeopardize as much as $250 million to support economic growth and reforms in Jordan, $500,000 to promote democracy and fight drug traffickers in Venezuela, and about $9 million to support free trade and other initiatives with Mexico.

At the behest of the State Department, a provision has been aded for executive waivers for NATO members and other key allies. So the countries most likely to be affected are the small poor ones that aren't strategically important to the US. Likely the ones most in need of the assistance, of course.

[UPDATE 1:30PM EST 11-29-04] Further information on which countries would be affected and the political battle lines within Congress is in a OneWorld.net piece today by Jim Lobe.

Although the opportunities to point out Reasons for Congressional Reform(TM)come fast and furious on a daily basis, from time to time Congress does something that deserves commendation. And so there's a tip of the hat when they do.

The giant spending bill that Congress passed on Saturday eliminated money for developing new nuclear weapons, including one that would be used to destroy underground bunkers. It also deeply cut the Bush administration's request for money for a new factory to make the triggers for nuclear bombs.

One of the projects eliminated was the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, widely known as the bunker buster; the administration had wanted $27.6 million for the program.

A special commendation to Rep David L. Hobson, chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development. In an August speech he said he viewed

...the administration's call for research on the new bombs and the earth penetrator, along with a proposal to shorten the lead time required to resume nuclear testing, as "very provocative and overly aggressive policies that undermine our moral authority to argue that other nations should forgo nuclear weapons.''

"We cannot advocate for nuclear nonproliferation around the globe and pursue more useable nuclear weapons options at home,'' Mr. Hobson said at the symposium, which was sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment.

The Senate was friendlier to the Energy Department's budget request but in a closed negotiating session to reconcile the two measures, Mr. Hobson's position prevailed.

Go, Davey, go!!

Oh, it was a fine day on Capitol Hill. And clearly too much to expect that the session would end without providing at least several handfuls more of compelling reasons for Congressional reform.

The Omnibus budget bill got caught up in a complicated little wrinkle, for all the world to see on CSPAN. Seems someone (turns out a House Republican) unbeknownst to certainly the Democrats and, according to Sen Stevens, unbeknownst to the Senate Republicans as well, tried to slip a little passage in the volumnious text.

It would have given the Chairmen of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees or their "agents" the power to review any American's tax return with no restrictions whatsoever. Josh Marshall has many of the lovely specifics, but here's the core:

Specifically, none of the privacy law restrictions -- or the criminal and civil penalties tied to them -- would apply when the Chair or anybody he or she designates as his or her "agent" looked at your tax return.
[...]
Sen. Stevens of Alaska, Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, originally blamed the provision on a 'staffer'. But later, according to the AP, Sen. Frist and "congressional aides" said it was inserted at the behest of Rep. Istook [R, Ok., Chair, House Transportation Sub-Committee of Appropriations Committee].
[...]
At the last minute, Senate Democrats caught the language (keep in mind these omnibus bills can be like phone books), protested and the Republicans beat a hasty retreat. Some of it is discussed in this AP article at MSNBC, though they lamely call it a "tax-disclosure gaffe."

The Republicans are acting like it was all an innocent mistake. And it seems clear that there are Republican senators who didn't know anytihng about it and are pissed. But clearly this was no accident, unless provisions have started to write themselves.

The Kossacks had a field day, live blogging the Senate floor appearances of outraged Democrats. The Republicans must be glad they're leaving town for Thanksgiving right about now.

With President Bush off to Santiago's APEC meetings for a rare display of multilateralism -- getting the North Korean talks going again, reinvigorating a Western hemisphere free trade pact -- somebody's got to keep up the side. The Republicans on the Hill have marched into the breach, intent on once again earning their unilateralist stripes.

From the business pages of the FT, that mouthpiece for the Socialist Internatonale, comes this tid-bit:

The US Congress is threatening to cut off funding for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development unless the OECD ends efforts to promote fair international tax competition.

The measure, which could deprive the Paris-based think-tank [i.e., the policy club of wealthy countries, where the US has significant influence, ed.] of its largest funding source, is part of a huge spending bill that Congress is trying to pass by this weekend.
[...]
The OECD wrangle has been fuelled by anti-tax groups that say the organisation is wrongly attempting to penalise countries that lower their taxes to attract investment. Senator Judd Gregg, incoming chairman of the Senate budget committee, has added language to the spending bill that would halt OECD funding unless the organisation stops pressing tax-haven countries in the Caribbean and elsewhere to share information on companies that may be attempting to evade taxes.

You say whaaaat....?! Used to be that when Congresmen or Senators would get up to this sort of nonsense, someone from the White House congressional liaison office and Treasury would do a full-court press. The idea was to avoid just the sort of situation we have here -- a half-baked but extreme over-reaction that would be extremely damaging to US external relations, coming to the surface at the eleventh hour, mixed in with an urgent omnibus bill, and with enough publicity that the Senator has to save face.

When ol' Jesse departed the Senate and the Foreign Relations Committee, there was an audible sign of relief across every department and agency in Washington that does business with an international organization. But now that "unilateralism" has become a badge of courage, seems like everyone wants in the act.

That's left it to the OECD to try to explain things to the nation's represenatives:

Donald Johnston, the OECD secretary-general, was in Washington this week lobbying Congress to drop the provision. Nicholas Bray, a spokesman for Mr Johnston, said many in Congress misunderstood the OECD initiative, which is not aimed at “tax harmonisation” but at “levelling the playing field in terms of foreign competition on tax policy”.

A newsletter that's unfortunately becoming all too essential regular reading is Steven Aftergood's Secrecy News from the Project on Government Secrecy of the Federation of American Scientists. Today's issue (Nov 18, 2004) had the following alarming item.

* * * * * * * *

WILL CONGRESS CRIPPLE INTELLIGENCE OVERSIGHT?

Congressional oversight of intelligence may be sharply diminished as
a result of ongoing negotiations between House and Senate conferees
over pending intelligence reform legislation, the Los Angeles Times
reported yesterday.

"Sen. John D. 'Jay' Rockefeller IV (D-W. Va.), a member of the
conference committee, said the Senate's chief negotiators had
accepted a House demand stripping out all congressional oversight
of the national intelligence director," wrote Mary Curtius in the
Los Angeles Times.   more »

Courtesy the Washington Post, another installment in the saga of the shift in the balance of economic risk away from capital and toward labor. This time brought to us by the Pension Benefits Guaranty Corporation.

A significant portion of the skyrocketing deficits is due to declared or likely-to-be bankruptcies in the airlines and steel industries. Deregulation of airlines may have expanded services and reduced the price of flying for us as consumers, but it looks like we may be picking up some of the tab as taxpayers.

Oh, and perhaps we should consider this little item when we're figuring out how to fund the transition cost of privatizing part of Social Security. Although it must be admitted, $20+ billion is easy to overlook when you're talking in fractions of a trillion.

Struggling under a cascade of bankruptcy filings in the airline and steel industries, the government's pension insurance agency said yesterday that its deficit has more than doubled in the past year -- to $23.3 billion.

The figure is so large that an overhaul of the way traditional pensions are funded and insured has become essential, several experts said. Pensions of about 44 million workers and retirees are insured by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.
[...]
"The bottom line seems to be that there really is a PBGC crisis, though to date neither Congress nor the [Bush] administration has been treating it as such," said Dallas L. Salisbury, who heads the Employer Benefit Research Institute in the District.

There are three basic ways that the deficit can be made up: (1) revaluation of assets through a bull market (combined with some "aggressive" portfolio management); (2) increasing revenues through larger premium payments from employers; and (3) taxpayers making up the difference.

Door Number 1 isn't what you'd want to bet the farm on, as hopefully someone learned in 2000.   more »

Both the Israeli and Palestinian breeds. And there might be some American and European varieties with a few ruffled feathers as well. About time!

Jailed Palestinian to Run for President

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[UPDATE 11-14-04 12:20PM]

Well this was quick!

2 dead as Moussa Arafat's forces clash with Abbas guards

At least two people were killed Sunday when bodyguards of former Palestinian prime minister Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) exchanged fire with troops under the command of Gaza security chief Moussa Arafat as Abbas paid a visit to an official mourning tent for Yasser Arafat in Gaza City.
One of the two killed in the shooting is believed to have been a bodyguard for Abbas. The former prime minister, who was named earlier Sunday as Fatah's candidate for the Palestinian Authority chairmanship, was unhurt in the shooting; five other people were wounded.

The 69-year-old Abbas was accompanied by Mohammed Dahlan, the former Palestinian security chief in the Gaza Strip.

Apparently the gunmen shouted "Abbas and Dahlan are agents for the Americans" . Seems the lines in Gaza remain sharply drawn from the conflict a few months ago, with Abbas-Dahlan versus Moussa Arafat. And these are the folks who are supposed to be working together with the Egyptians to plan for transition security when Israel proceeds with disengagement! Have to pity the Egyptians on this one.

Just in case anyone was wondering, "Bush will still pursue 'agressive foreign policy'" according to Colin Powell in an interview with the FT. (State Dept transcript here.)

“The president is not going to trim his sails or pull back,” Mr Powell told the Financial Times on Monday. “It's a continuation of his principles, his policies, his beliefs.” In his first interview since the presidential election last Tuesday, Mr Powell stressed Mr Bush had won a mandate to pursue a foreign policy that was in the US national interest.

That policy would also be in the interest of friends and alliances, and while it would be “multilateral in nature”, the US would act alone where necessary.   more »