Motley Moose – Archive

With surprising speed the Libyan Democratic Movement is sweeping westward towards Tripoli.

As of 0300 GMT Monday, Gaddafi’s home town of Sirte- said to be the big battle before Tripoli – is reported to be in Democratic hands. Democratic forces have therefore crossed 570 km from Benghazi and are now only 159 km from Misrata and 450 km from downtown Tripoli.

As more land and people and military equipment comes under the control of the Democratic movement it remains to be seen who will be standing with Gaddafi in coming days.

OK, fine. Everyone else can lay around and have a few beers and I’ll take care of everything. Don’t get up, just relax and I’ll make sure the lights stay on and the place stays clean and the maniacs don’t kill the kids and dinner is ready on time.

No problem.

Nato takes charge of enforcing Libya no-fly zone (as long as the US takes the heat).

Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Thursday that after lengthy negotiations the 28-member alliance reached a deal to enforce the no-fly zone. … Rasmussen said the Nato operation was limited to enforcing the no-fly zone…

Sure, as Gaddafi shells cities you’ll orbit overhead.

Consider this a petulantly  Open Thread.

Intervention in Libya begins. French warplanes have now begun to take out Kadaffi’s assets on the ground.

Image Popa Matumula

French warplanes have hit four tanks used by forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi on the outskirts of the opposition stronghold of Benghazi, on a day when opposition fighters in the city reported coming under constant artillery and mortar fire.

The action marks the first international military move against the Libyan leader, and it comes a day after the UN Security Council authorised a no-fly zone over the North African country.

A spokesman for the French military had confirmed that his country’s fighter jets have attacked another vehicle belonging to Gaddafi’s forces.

“The vehicle was clearly identified as being enemy,” army spokesman Colonel Thierry Burckhard said after the first UN-mandated air strike, describing the target as “a vehicle that was threatening the civilian population”.

* Editor’s note: The live blog takes place in the comment section.

Driving home today I heard Elliot Abrams on NPR in an interview.  He opened with this:

Mr. ELLIOTT ABRAMS (Senior Fellow, Middle Eastern Studies, Council on Foreign Relations): What the president began to say after 9/11 was that there was no special exception for the Arab world, that we had supported stability in the Middle East at the cost of liberty. And that we weren’t going to get stability either. And, of course, this is at a time when most of these regimes look completely stable. So the point I was making is he had it right in saying that these were not as stable as they appeared to be.

Elliot Abrams is right.

His comments are exactly correct. That was the one thread of Bush’s blunderfooted post-9/11 direction that I always agreed with while I rapidly became dissatisfied with his method. That one part of his legacy is quickly being proven as a real inflection in western policy. It isn’t OK to support tyranny ever, no matter what benefits it has for you.

It was true in Taiwan sixty three years ago this Monday. We should do what we can so that in  sixty three years there are only stone markers to the follies of the past.

The ranting lunatic who yesterday threatened to (effectively) execute the entire population of his country is today drawing his last set of breaths in power, and perhaps at all.

Consider this a Final Farewell Open Thread.

Libya might be liberating, Bahrain seems poised on the brink of democracy, the Tunisian people have found massive blocks of cash and jewels stolen by their former “leader” and banjos still kill fascists.

What’s on your mind?

The Egyptian Parliament is dissolved.  The Constitution – violated in spirit for thirty years – is void. The Egyptian Army announced today the formation of a counsel to draft a new Constitution and stated that it will remain in charge for six months or until elections happen – whichever comes first.

“If the Egyptian people can create a democracy in the heart of the Arab world, it will be a more significant contribution to civilization than the great pyramids,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)

Egypt is providing a window to many Americans into an Middle Eastern world they never knew existed. Many can be forgiven, perhaps, for understanding so poorly what resides in the hearts of people in the Middle East, when the blaring brass horns of ostentatious oil barons and violent extremists so nearly drowned out the stifled murmurs of millions. Many truly believed that “this is the way they are over there”, many others wrote into the story their own fears.

Like believing an abusive father who declares, “I know these kids, they need a strong hand”, we took for granted the notion that ‘over there’ people only understood force.

But, just like here, the wild-eyed extremists and bloated pompous wealthy are rare. We never heard the rest, because they were never free to speak.

We hear them now.

Last night in Cairo hundreds of thousands of people of all walks of life stood in Tahrir Square waiting for their ‘President’ of thirty years to announce his resignation.

Instead, the crowd was presented with the face of a crooked old man lost inside the stained-glass windows of the billionaire palace lifestyle his people have paid for.

It is past dawn in Egypt today, and the forces aligned against each other will play out one way or another.

Consider this an Open Thread

In Cairo and across Egypt things are settling into a Next Phase it would seem. Enough time has passed that people on all sides – including musicians – have been able to think and produce and prepare for…?

What’s your take, Mooses? Is it The Calm, and if so, what is it Before?

Update Al Jazeera Liveblog is a great source for tracking the general trend.

Good summary in this video coverage:

Consider this an Open Thread.

While screwing around looking for a way to exercise my Capitalist Pig inclinations and get someone in Antarctica using our stuff*, I happened across yet another expression of human coolness.

Scarlet Knight, First Robotic Ocean Glider, Crosses the Atlantic

In a different age this would have been a story that everyone knew about, like when Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh explored the Marianas Trench.

Today, however, we just do this kind of thing so much we don’t see it.

You probably missed this one. I did. That’s because so many people are doing so many interesting and wonderful things all the time that there is no way to keep up with it all. Buried in this ocean of creation are seeds that we cannot predict the impact of. While it makes for popular fiction to imagine robotic sharks carrying nuclear warheads, reality instead holds autonomous gliders sailing the currents of the world’s oceans feeding us more information than we could have imagined.

These “known unknowns” related to the major issues of our times give me hope. I know I don’t know what people will innovate in the future. Not for the environment, not for healthcare, not for agriculture and not for sociology. I can see the shape of possible futures where our challenges in these areas can be dealt with, if people get innovative in ways I know I don’t know yet. People from Rutgers to Cairo prove me right every day.

* (Hey, I’ll give it away to be able to say: “People use our gear on *every* continent.” ;~)