[PHOTO] Salt stains at Dufferin and Dupont

The winter is young and already the pavement is stained white.

[NEWS] Some links on the Charlie Hebdo shooting

• 3 Quarks Daily's S. Abbas Raza argues that the Charlie Hebdo shooting is one element of the issues of many in the Muslim world with their neighbours, something that gets mainly Muslim victims.


• Al Jazeera's Massoud Hayoun reports on fears among Muslims tht the Charlie Hebdo shootings might lead to a collapse in communal relations, while Arthur Goldhammer suggests that the magazine's lack of respect should be understood and not brushed over.


• Bloomberg notes the alarm among French Muslims.


• Bloomberg View places this in the context of Michel Houellebecq's new novel, Submission, mocked on the front page of the current issue.


• Buzzfeed shares some early responses from cartoonists to the atrocity and reports on the twelve dead.


• Daily Caller notes that one of the cops killed in the attacks, Ahmed Merabet, was Muslim.


• Joe. My. God. and Towleroad both note that American Catholic League president Bill Donahue has said the cartoonists should have known what they were getting into, that they provoked the attack.


• MacLean's shares Colby Cosh's meditations on the importance of the image.


• Torontoist shares photos of sympathy protests in Toronto.


• The Volokh Conspiracy has brief reactions reporting on the background of the people killed and their cartoons.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• blogTO rates the top ten buildings built in Toronto over the past fifteen years.


• Centauri Dreams looks at some of Kepler's candidate exo-Earths.


• The Cranky Sociologists applaud Howard Becker, sociologist of deviance.


• Joe. My. God. notes an Italian court's recognition of the citizenship of a foreign-born child of a same-sex Italian couple.


• Language Hat notes a site promoting the Aborigine language of Yugambeh.


• Language Log studies the problems of translating art language from Chinese to English.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money celebrates Kirby Delauter.


• Personal Reflections reflects on upcoming elections in Queensland.


• Peter Rukavina shares a link tracking electricity production and consumption on Prince Edward Island.


• The Russian Demographics Blog maps the origin of Russian soldiers killed in the fighting in Ukraine.


• Spacing Toronto looks at how, one day in Toronto, one railroad bridge was swapped with another.


• Towleroad notes how a Texan man still hasn't been charged with the murder of a lesbian couple including his own daughter after almost a year, and looks at a hate crime in Russia.


• The Volokh Conspiracy notes the visit of El Sisi to a Coptic Christmas mass, the first time any Egyptian president made this visit.


• Window on Eurasia suggests Russian policy towards Ukraine won't change until Russia changes, reports certain statistics from the periphery of Russia, and looks at the role of Russian media in encouraging ethnic violence.

[LINK] "Ferguson grand juror sues prosecutor"

I will be very interested to see what comes of this. From Al Jazeera:

A member of the grand jury that declined to indict police officer Darren Wilson for the shooting death of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in August sued the prosecutor in the case Monday, accusing him of mischaracterizing the grand jury proceedings.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed the lawsuit in federal court against St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch on behalf of an unnamed juror, identified only as “Grand Juror Doe,” who wants to speak about the investigation but would be in violation of Missouri law by doing so.

"Right now there are only 12 people who can't talk about the evidence out there," ACLU attorney Tony Rothert said. "The people who know the most — those 12 people are sworn to secrecy. What (the grand juror) wants is to be able to be part of the conversation."

The lawsuit questions McCulloch's characterization that "all grand jurors believed that there was no support for any charges" against officer Wilson, who shot Brown on August 9 and has since resigned from the police department.

The suit also claims that evidence was presented to the grand jury in a manner markedly different than in previous cases heard by the same grand jury, with the “insinuation” that Brown was the “wrongdoer” rather than Wilson.

Additionally, the suit claims the prosecutor's office presented applicable laws to grand jurors "in a muddled and untimely manner," unlike presentations in other cases.

[LINK] "Crude Collapse Seen Boosting China’s South American Clout"

Juan Pablo Spinetto and Anatoly Kurmanaev of Bloomberg write about how Chinese investment is coming to play an increasingly critical role in many South American economies, particularly the radical and oil-dependent Venezuela and Ecuador.

The worst commodities rout in six years is opening the door for China to increase its influence in Latin America, home to the biggest oil reserves outside the Middle East.

China, with the world’s largest foreign reserves at almost $4 trillion, agreed to a combined $27.5 billion of funding and investment with Venezuela and Ecuador in separate deals announced by South American officials this week in a bid to shore up their battered finances.

As crude’s 50 percent nosedive erodes reserves and funding options of OPEC’s two Latin American members, China, the world’s largest importer of commodities from oil to soybeans, is taking the opportunity to secure more resources in exchange for credit. While details of the accords weren’t divulged, locking in more oil supply to China may reduce the amount the countries have available to sell on the open market once prices improve.

“An opportunity to boost access in South America has emerged,” Paulo Vicente, a professor of strategy at Fundacao Dom Cabral business school, said in e-mailed comments. “This is the ideal situation for the Chinese to enter as saviors.”

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said yesterday he obtained $20 billion of new investment, without providing details. A day earlier, Ecuador signed loan deals with China for $7.5 billion, including a $5.3 billion credit line from the Export-Import Bank of China, according to an e-mailed statement.

Former President Hugo Chavez and his successor Maduro have turned to China amid tense relations with U.S.-funded multilateral organizations. China has lent more than $45 billion to Venezuela in the past decade, mostly in return for oil supplies, including a $4 billion loan in July.

[LINK] "Czechs Hope Chinese Romance Will Lure Thousands to Prague"

Speaking as someone coming from L.M. Montgomery-dominated Prince Edward Island, Bloomberg's Lenia Ponikelska describes a perfectly plausible tourism scenario for the Czech Republic. (I'd suggest that maybe the Czechs might want to create a long-running media franchise, the better to build sustainable interest.)

The tiny Czech Republic is hoping to see a flood of Chinese tourists this year after the Asian country releases the romance film “Somewhere Only We Know” next month.

Filmed in Prague’s cobblestone Old Town and medieval district below the castle, the film tells the story of a young Chinese girl who arrives to retrace her grandmother’s steps through a 1940s romance. The movie, directed by actress Xu Jinglei, will be released in mainland China on Valentine’s Day.

A greater influx of Chinese tourism would add to an almost tenfold increase since 2005, according to data from the Czech Statistics Office. Chinese tourists are among the biggest spenders per capita in Prague, and can help make up for declining numbers of visitors from Russia, who have fallen in number due to the ruble crisis.

“The movie has the potential to appeal to millions of Chinese viewers and we expect a huge impact on travelers’ numbers,” Jiri Duzar, a senior project manager at the Czech Tourism state agency, said by phone yesterday. “My guess is that it will bring tens of thousands of Chinese to visit the city.”

[. . .]

The number of tourists from China rose 22 percent to 163,589 in the first three quarters of 2014 from a year ago, according to the Czech Statistics Office. The number of Russians visiting the Czech Republic dropped 9.3 percent to 545,486.

[LINK] "New Year Won't End Argentina Bond Mess"

Bloomberg View's Mac Margolis notes that Argentina's debt-related economic issues are ongoing.

Argentina would love to forget 2014; the new year now gives the country some reason to celebrate. At the stroke of midnight, Dec. 31, a vexing pay-one, pay-all clause that has kept the South American debtor at knife point with aggressive bond holders expired, so clearing the way for a fresh start to settling one of the nastiest sovereign debt disputes on record.

In theory, at least. The end of the rights-upon-future-offers (RUFO) clause offers all combatants a face-saving way out of a financial labyrinth that might have been concocted by Argentine fabulist Julio Cortazar and has ensnared relations between borrowers and lenders well beyond the River Plate. Released from RUFO’s leonine grip, Argentina may now strike a deal with a cranky minority of insurgent creditors without incurring a flood of cross-claims of the 92 percent of creditors demanding equal treatment.

But hold the Malbec. For those counting on a quick patch-up between the government of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and the rapine holdout funds, led by NML Capital Ltd., the hedge fund controlled by billionaire Paul Singer, the wind kicking up from the pampas is less than caressing.

[. . .]

“We are not crawling through the desert in search of every last dollar,” [Finance minister Axel Kicillof] said last month, even as the credit-starved country tried and failed to flog sovereign bonds. Apparently, not even the double-digit return offered by Argentina attracted investors.

You wouldn’t know from the two-fisted rhetoric out of Buenos Aires that Argentina is in dire shape. Inflation is soaring, the economy slipped into recession last quarter, and prices for soybeans, the country’s leading commodity, are sliding. A pariah in the credit market, the country has relied on government intervention and an $11 billion loan from China to halt the peso’s toboggan slide against the dollar and slow the hemorrhage in hard currency reserves.

[LINK] "Provocative Books Tap a Mood of Profound French Anxiety"

The New York Times' Rachel Donadio notes how the recent non-fiction of Éric Zemmour and Michel Houellebecq's new novel both reflect a growing and worrisome vein of malaise in France, dealing with a new worrisome sense that the centre does not hold, anything is possible, and Islam will be in whatever form a contender.

With an ambitious initial print run of 150,000 copies, “Submission” is already the No. 1 seller on Amazon in France. It is likely to join another book with a similar theme on best-seller lists: “The French Suicide,” a 500-page essay in which the journalist Éric Zemmour, 56, argues that immigration, feminism and the 1968 student uprisings set France on a path to ruin. The top seller in France, the book has sold 400,000 copies since its release in October, according to its publisher, Albin Michel.

Though Mr. Zemmour’s is a work of reactionary nostalgia and Mr. Houellebecq’s a futuristic fantasy, both books have hit the dominant note in the national mood today: “inquiétude,” or profound anxiety about the future.

Fueling this anxiety for many French are the fears of non-Muslims about Muslims, the threat posed by groups like the Islamic State and their recruiting in Europe, and rising anti-Semitism. More broadly, concern has grown that the political center is eroding and that extremes are rising in a way reminiscent of the 1930s, along with a sense that France, which prides itself on its republican tradition and strong, centralized state, has ceded too much power to the European Union.

“I think this anxiety is the idea of seeing France give up on itself, of changing to the point of no longer being recognizable,” said the philosopher Alain Finkielkraut, whose much-debated 2013 book, “L’identité Malheureuse,” or “The Unhappy Identity,” discussed the problems immigration poses for French identity and cultural integration. “People are homesick at home,” he added, speaking two days before the attacks.

Mr. Zemmour and Mr. Houellebecq wade into similar swampy waters, but reach different shores. “It’s the same book, in that both talk about the same subject: the irreversible rise of Islam in society and in politics,” said Christophe Barbier, the editor in chief of the newsweekly L’Express.

[DM] "On systematically overestimating population sizes"

I've a post up at Demography Matters noting how the popular wisdom about the size of different populations is drastically wrong. Where do these beliefs come from? Tell me, there.