Month: March 2011

From the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office:

“We can confirm that Moussa Koussa arrived at Farnborough Airport from Tunisia. He travelled here under his own free will. He has told us that he is resigning his post. We are discussing this with him and we will release further detail in due course. Moussa Koussa is one of the most senior figures in Gaddafi’s government and his role was to represent the regime internationally – something that he is no longer willing to do. We encourage those around Gaddafi to abandon him and embrace a better future for Libya that allows political transition and real reform that meets the aspirations of the Libyan people”.

He may not be the only one deserting the nutter:

Al Jazeera's Anita McNaught tells us that Koussa was not alone, and that there are several senior Libyan government figures waiting to fly to European capitals.

She said they include the current head of intelligence, the oil mininster, the secretary of the general peoples' congress and a deputy foreign minister. She tells us:

"It seems the government of Gaddafi is collapsing around him tonight, and they're running for the hills. But it's all about Cololnel Gaddafi here. The people are loyal to him, not to his ministers, so how this will be taken by the Libyan people is another matter – that's if they know what's going on. Today, state TV said that Moussa Koussa was going on holiday. We'll see if they say the same for these others."

The best scenario – given the insanity of actively funneling arms to the Libyan rebels, and training and aiding them on the ground – is a collapse of the regime around Qaddafi. If Al Jazeera's report pans out, the defection of the foreign minister, the intelligence chief, and the oil minister seems pretty devastating to me.

(Photo: Libya's Secretary of the General people's committee for Foreign Affairs, Moussa Koussa, is pictured at the start of the second session of the meeting gathering five Foreign Affairs minister of Arab Magreb Union (UMA) and five from the European Union in Tunis on April 16, 2010. By Fethi Belaid/Getty.)

I'm still absorbing this news and don't want to vent immediately, because there is still part of me that simply cannot believe that president Obama has already ordered covert action in Libya on one side in a civil war, and is now actively discussing whether to arm that side in another chaotic Muslim country, committing the United States to yet another war against yet another tyranny simply because we can.

It's so surreal, so discordant with what the president has told the American people, so fantastically contrary to everything he campaigned on, that I will simply wait for more confirmation than this before commenting further. I simply cannot believe it. I know the president is not against all wars – just dumb ones. But could any war be dumber than this – in a place with no potential for civil society, wrecked by totalitarianism, riven by tribalism, in defense of rebels we do not know and who are clearly insufficient to the task?

By all means keep the no-fly zone to protect unarmed civilians from brute military force. But that must be the total sum of the commitment.

Bryan Walsh analyzes Obama's new energy speech:

It's notable that perhaps the most ambitious part of the President's speech—his pledge, repeated from the State of the Union, to call for a Clean Energy Standard (CES) that would ensure 80% of our electricity would come from clean sources by 2035—still includes fossil fuels. Natural gas is part of that "clean energy," and while it's certainly cleaner than coal or oil, it still emits a lot of carbon.

E.M at DiA notes that "those parts of the president’s plan that need congressional approval—the clean energy standard, more subsidies, extra funding for research on whizz-bang energy technology—will never receive it." Dave Roberts hopes for more:

I really do think that energy security is an area where Obama could make waves. A muscular climate-hawk stance on energy security could shake up some stale partisan debates and generate some new coalitions. But that's not going to happen if Obama takes this half-ass approach.

Ryan Avent continues to lobby for a gasoline tax.

(Photo by Nikolaj F. Rasmussen, who captions, "Originally a coal-fired power plant, H. C. Ørstedværket was rebuild in 1994 to combust natural gas.")

Ezra Klein fears the market reaction a government shutdown:

A last-minute deal tells the market that America is a country that dithers and procrastinates and anguishes but eventually makes the necessary decisions to avert terrible consequences. We can be trusted to follow through, even if only at the last minute. A shutdown tells the market that our political system has become so dysfunctional that we actually can’t be trusted.

It's the weirdest sign that you may be expecting:

In fact, says author Sera Young, in some cultures eating dirt is the go-to pregnancy "gotcha" symptom—the same way that every American knows to suspect a woman who pukes in the morning, or wants pickles with her ice cream.

That's really where a lot of the fascination comes from for me. Why is this tendency so specific to pregnant women? And why does the frequency of pica vary depending on location? Even though people do this all over the world, studies have shown some big differences between populations. For instance, Young writes, .01% of pregnant Danish women eat dirt, but 56% of pregnant Kenyan women do.

Al Jazeera updates on the worsening situation for the rebels:

Troops loyal to longtime Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi have capitalised on an apparent slowdown in the frequency of coalition air strikes in the east and have pushed back opposition rebels, taking the strategic oil town of Ras Lanuf.

Regime forces shelled rebel fighters with mortars and possibly Grad rockets on
Wednesday, forcing them to retreat from Bin Jawad through Ras Lanuf, more than 200 kilometres east of Sirte, Gaddafi's well-defended hometown.

The reversal for Libya's nascent opposition came after their forces had made a speedy, two-day advance from Ajdabiya under the protection of international air cover.

Things are also not going well in Misurata, the only rebel-held town in western Libya, where at least 18 civilians were killed today:

Gaddafi's forces are launching intensive and vicious military campaigns against us in Misurata [says a rebel spokesman]. They are determined to capture the city. Today was tough for the rebels.

(Photo: Libyan rebels flee from Ras Lanuf to Uqayla, 20 kilometres (12 miles) east of Ras Lanuf, on March 30, 2011, as loyalist forces overran the Libyan key oil town. By Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images)

Kristina Dell tracks college admissions trends:

“We already know this will be the hardest year in history for college seniors,” says [Michele Hernandez, president of Hernandez College Consulting]. She cites more kids applying, while most schools aren’t increasing their class size. It’s an unforgiving formula. “A few years ago, kids were applying to four or five schools,” says Greg Roberts, dean of admission at the University of Virginia. “But now it’s not uncommon to apply to 10 or 12 or in the extreme even 20 or 30.”

Yglesias believes Romney's religion will hamper his campaign:

I think Romney has less of a “Mormon problem” than he does a “Christian problem.” Specifically, it’s very important to a lot of American Christians that other people be Christian. The media is dominated by secular people who aren’t invested in this sort of thing, and tend to accept at face-value the idea that Mormonism is one of several Christian denominations, but a great many Christians disagree with this diagnosis.

Julian Sanchez says the only question that matters when debating copyright is "whether a marginal restriction on the general ability to use information incentivizes enough additional information production over the long run to justify denying that marginal use to every other human being on the planet":

Wise assessment of copyright policy should have nothing to do with how you feel about the person or entity who holds the right at any particular time, because copyright policy is not about identifying wonderful and meritorious people and ensuring—certainly not as an end in itself, anyway—that their income is proportioned to their intrinsic moral desert—or lack thereof. We are all the massive beneficiaries of millennia of accumulated human scientific knowledge and cultural output, and not one of us did anything do deserve a jot of it. We’re all just extremely lucky not to have been born cavemen. The greatest creative genius alive would be hard pressed to create a smiley faced smeared in dung on a tree trunk without that huge and completely undeserved inheritance.

Mark Hosenball reports:

President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing covert U.S. government support for rebel forces seeking to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, government officials told Reuters on Wednesday.

Doug Mataconis wonders who leaked the info and why. Douthat sees a pattern:

No sooner had the president finished speaking than the Times’s Eric Schmitt came out with a story undercutting the idea that America can be just be one partner among many in the Libyan operation. (American military involvement, Schmitt reported, “is far deeper than discussed in public and more instrumental to the fight than was previously known.”) The next day in London, representatives of the allied powers took turns insisting that regime change was, in fact, the coalition’s goal in Libya. And 24 hours later, with Qaddafi’s forces counterattacking and the rebels falling back in disarray, American policymakers find themselves furiously debating whether our air campaign needs to be supplemented by an effort to arm the rebels directly — which would obviously represent a further escalation of the conflict, and one that would arguably fall outside the United Nations mandate that we claim to be enforcing.