Month: March 2011

Edward Glaeser thinks cyberspace is a complement, rather than a substitute, to face-to-face interaction. Among his evidence:

Business travel seemed to rise, rather than fall, as the costs of electronic connection fell, quite possibly because – as our model suggested – cheaper electronic communications led to a more connected world.

The Guardian posts an excellent summary of the latest developments:

• Two explosions have rocked Tripoli this morning. One appeared to be a tanker on the bridge near the Rixos hotel and the other was towards the coast. will heighten nervousness in the capital, one of Muammar Gaddafi's few remaining strongholds.

• Forces loyal to Gaddafi have retaken at least two towns near the capital, according to the Associated Press. One of those apparently retaken was the strategic mountain town of Gharyan, the largest in the Nafusa Mountains.

• Two US warships are on their way to the Mediterranean but the prospect of western military action has receded after the Obama administration publicly distanced itself from David Cameron's suggestion that Nato should establish a no-fly zone over the country and that rebel forces should be armed.

• Libya has been suspended from the UN human rights council after a unanimous vote by the UN general assembly. UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said the decision, along with the rights panel's decision to set up an inquiry to investigate human rights abuses in Libya and the security council's referral of Libya to the international criminal court showed "that those who commit crimes against humanity will be punished, that fundamental principles of justice and accountability shall prevail".

• Fears are mounting of a humanitarian crisis at Libya's border with Tunisia after a stark warning from the UN high commissioner for refugees. The UNHCR said 140,000 people have fled Libya – half crossing into Egypt, and half into Tunisia. There is a backlog of 20,000 people on the Libya side of the border with Tunisia, according to the UNHCR

Follow their live-blog here for the latest. Scott Lucas looks elsewhere in the region this morning:

Pressure continued on the regimes in Yemen and Bahrain through further marches and demands — Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh is looking increasingly vulnerable, as he lashed out at supposed US and Israeli backing of protests. There were also marches by "hundreds" in Oman, but the situation appeared more settled than the previous three days in which at least six people were killed in clashes.

Protest also continues in Egypt, but the main news appeared to be the move of the Supreme Military Council towards negotiations with political groups on the transition to elections. Following Monday's five-hour discussion with youth organisations, the Council met political figures, including Mohamed ElBaradei and Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa, as well as lawyers, journalists, and businessmen on Tuesday.

A quieter day on the streets in Tunisia, but a tumultuous one inside the Government. Three Ministers left, including two former opposition leaders whose participation was considered a vital sign of consensus over the transition to elections and a new system.

Follow EA's live-blogging of Libya here and Iran here.

(Image by drawjosh)

Today on the Dish, Andrew challenged Niall Ferguson on whether McCain or intervention could help America's cause or the well-being of people in the Middle East. We tracked Tehran's heavy clashes and escalated repression, and Joel Wing traced Iraq's protests back to the Day of Rage. Richard Florida assembled the index of political unrest, Qaddafi was the sort of dictator to hang students in a university's main square, and according to the military, a no-fly zone would be a military operation. Egypt and Tunisia could learn from Asian revolutions and the small window of democratic opportunity that followed, Facebook mattered, and Egypt's military crafted their media campaigns.

Andrew demolished Huckabee's insane birther gaffe, Palin was still making Andrew nervous, and the Palestinian Prime Minister was following her Facebook model. Julian Assange pulled a Helen Thomas, and John Galliano pulled a Mel Gibson. Andrew still had problems with teachers' concessions as part of a larger union problem, even as they were winning the debate. Mickey commended MoveOn as the new union model, Wilkinson debated Ezra Klein on whether big labor is green, others argued public sector unions may be headed for the door, while Drum sounded the alarm for the GOP. Serwer called out Newt the culture warrior, Seth Masket argued you can't run government like a business, evangelicals wanted to cut spending for the poor, and the rich vote like rich people. Economists could be the new climatologists, and Noah Millman pondered American aversion to inflation.

Musical chairs continued at the NYT, Alexis unmasked Twitter's MayorEmanuel, and the publisher could die at the hands of a 26-year-old self-publishing author. CEOs with daughters paid female employees more, child brides had lower literacy rates, and Carol Joynt confessed how breast cancer is a swim in quicksand. Dish readers loved cock and boner too much to go along with the new rules, while Beast readers bemoaned Andrew's loyalty to the Pope. Bush gave the original King's Speech, people should write like they talk, and beards were mysterious and practical. 

Hewitt award here, quote for the day here, FOTD here, MHB here, VFYW here, and VFYW contest winner #39 here.

–Z.P.

Andrew Gelman rejects overconfidence in punditry:

[O]f course it makes sense that different people have different views about foreign policy. What stuns me (although I know it shouldn't anymore) is that these pundits seem so clueless, so unaware that not everyone agrees with their premises. If Prell and Hitchens could just sit in a room for a few minutes together, talk about how much they hate Obama, and then discuss the Middle East, maybe they'd each realize, just a little bit, that their views are not so universally accepted. Prell would learn that at least one wholesome Obama-hater does not think that Mubarak is such a good [long-term] deal for the Middle East, and Hitchens would learn that you don't have to be a European-style softie to be skeptical of faraway regime changes.

Those are the words of Nadia, a young female activist fighting for democracy in Egypt, three years before Mubarak was forced from office. For more on the roots of the Facebook revolution, check out Frontline's excellent supplement to its recent episode:

Back in July 2008, Australian television profiled Egypt's young democracy activists and their savvy use of social media. The film included the April 6 Movement's Ahmed Maher and blogger Wael Abbas, both featured in FRONTLINE's Revolution in Cairo. Several activists, who just got out of prison, were reluctant to appear on camera; much of the film, reported by Sophie McNeill, was recorded in secret.

One young activist, Belal Diab, recalls how he heckled Egypt's Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif at a Cairo University event, and made sure his friend used his mobile phone to record and upload his protest to YouTube. He had demanded the release of all April 6 Movement detainees. His family told him not to return home that night.

Although Egyptians weren't yet ready to support the young activists back in 2008 because of the regime's brutal crackdown on the April 6 Movement, the young activists never stopped believing that their day would come: "Our generation believes it is like planting a palm tree," Diab says about their growing use of online tools. "We might not eat its dates, but the next generation will."

It's coming – if this becomes more common:

Amanda Hocking is 26 years old. She has 9 self-published books to her name, and sells 100,000+ copies of those ebooks per month. She has never been traditionally published.

This is her blog. And it’s no stretch to say – at $3 per book/70% per sale for the Kindle store – that she makes a lot of money from her monthly book sales. (Perhaps more importantly: a publisher on the private Reading2.0 mailing list has said, to effect: there is no traditional publisher in the world right now that can offer Amanda Hocking terms that are better than what she’s currently getting, right now on the Kindle store, all on her own.)

And that is stunning news.

Indeed. Watch this space.

Exum seconds General Jim Mattis's comments on the difficulty of establishing a no-fly zone:

I have been working under the suspicion that most of the good-natured people clamoring for a no-fly zone in Libya have not thought very hard about what, exactly, that might entail. Most of the people insisting the United States DO SOMETHING are either ignorant about the risks and complexities of contemporary military operations or gloss over those risks and complexities. [For more on no-fly zones, read this informative piece by my old colleague Michael Knights.]

Some anti-Qaddafi rebels are now mulling requesting a possible UN-sponsored bombing raid on some of Qaddafi's military installations. That isn't a no-fly zone. But even that limited amount of foreign intervention is controversial in Libya:

The anti-government protesters in Libya, like their counterparts in Tunisia and Egypt, have drawn broad popular support — and great pride — from their status as homegrown movements that toppled autocrats without outside help. An intervention, even one with the imprimatur of the United Nations, could play into the hands of Colonel Qaddafi, who has called the uprising a foreign plot by Western powers seeking to occupy Libya.

Dan Savage asks it.

Julian Assange goes all Helen Thomas on us. Who you gonna call? Goldbuster!