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EXCLUSIVE: Libyan Opposition Leader Says ‘There Is No Way’ U.S. Arms Will Go To Extremist Rebels

By Ben Armbruster on Apr 4, 2011 at 5:00 pm

Part of the debate in Washington regarding the U.S. and coalition intervention in Libya is whether or not to arm anti-government forces there. While some, including President Clinton, support the idea, some Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill are urging caution. “I think at this stage we really don’t know who the leaders of this rebel group are,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said. And House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) said yesterday that the U.S. should proceed with caution because extremists, including Al Qaeda elements, are operating within the Libyan rebel movement.

Ali Suleiman Aujali, former Libyan ambassador the U.S. and now the Transitional National Council’s official U.S. representative, wrote in a Washington Post op-ed last week that the U.S. must arm the rebels. “We need better arms and the training to use them.” Today in an exclusive interview, ThinkProgress asked Aujali if he could alleviate concerns that U.S. and allied arms might end up in the hands of extremists:

AUJALI: The Libyan people don’t want to change the Qaddafi regime with an extremist regime. This is number one. Number two, of course, if Libya, they received the armament or receive training assistance, of course it has to be used and has to be in the right hands. There is no way they will make these arms available for everybody to get them and do what they want with them.

This is a very serious issue. We have to be responsible and we are responsible. But we ask of course the international community to help the rebels, airstrikes by itself is not enough. We need weapons to fight Qaddafi. We need weapons to defend ourselves. We need weapons to protect the Libyan civilians which was recognized by the international Security Council.

We also asked Aujali to respond to a recent reported proposal from Muammar Qaddafi’s sons Seif and Saadi in which their father would be removed from power to make way for a transition to a constitutional democracy under the direction of Seif. “This initiative is born dead,” Aujali said, adding, “There is not much difference between Qaddafi and his sons.” Watch the entire interview:

Aujali also spoke at the Center for American Progress today and insisted that the opposition movement in Libya is not an extremist one. “Nobody can claim that al Qaeda is behind this or extremist is behind this,” he said, adding, “We will never allow al Qaeda, the Libyan people they will not change Qaddafi’s regime by al Qaeda or by extremists.”

Defense Secretary Robert Gates last week appeared to concur with this sentiment, saying there is “absolutely no evidence” that Libyans support Al Qaeda.

Transcript: Read more

Politics

Salazar Blasts Gulf Disaster Company Transocean for Touting ‘Best Year In Safety’

By Guest Blogger on Apr 4, 2011 at 4:50 pm

Our guest blogger is Kristen Bartoloni, Researcher for Progress Central.

Deepwater HorizonOn Friday, Transocean, the company that operated the infamous Deepwater Horizon oil rig, told its shareholders that it gave its executives multi-million-dollar bonuses based on the company’s “best year in safety performance.” Today, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar lashed out at the global offshore drilling company, which moved its official headquarters from Houston to Zug, Switzerland in 2008 in order to avoid paying taxes to the United States government. In a statement to ThinkProgress, Salazar criticized the company’s “complacency” about the explosion that killed 11 people, spewed 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, and caused irreparable damage to Gulf communities:

At the end of the day, it was that complacency that created an oil spill that was pouring over 50 thousand barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico a day.

Using the justification of the company’s “exemplary statistical safety record,” Transocean’s executive compensation committee — GenOn Energy CEO Edward R. Muller, oil industry lawyer Martin B. McNamara, and retired Shell executive Robert Sprague — granted CEO Stewart Newman $6.3 million in bonus and “incentive compensation.”

Climate Progress

Salazar blasts Gulf disaster company Transocean for touting “best year in safety”

By Joe Romm on Apr 4, 2011 at 4:48 pm

Transocean now says statement “may have been insensitive.”

Deepwater HorizonOn Friday, Transocean, the company that operated the infamous Deepwater Horizon oil rig, told its shareholders that it gave its executives multi-million-dollar bonuses based on the company’s “best year in safety performance.” CAP’s Kristen Bartoloni has the what-were-they-thinking story of week.

Read more

Yglesias

Phase Out Credibility

By Matthew Yglesias on Apr 4, 2011 at 4:45 pm

Given that one key part of the pitch for Paul Ryan’s plan to phase Medicare out and replace it with a private voucher system is the idea that anyone 55 years or older will be unaffected by the plan, it’s probably worth asking about the credibility of this promise. Today, people who are 55 years or older can count on political resistance to taking their Medicare away for two reasons:

— People 55 years and older don’t want to lose Medicare.
— People 54 years and younger want to have Medicare some day.

If a “divide and conquer” strategy succeeds in abolishing Medicare for people born after 1956, then what happens to this political economy? Over time you’ll have a growing set of private voucher firms lobbying for more people to lose Medicare and be put into the voucher pool. You’ll also have a declining set of people born before 1956 to object to Medicare abolition. And you’ll have an ever-growing pool of people born after 1956 who’ve been told that they’ll never benefit from Medicare no matter what happens, but who are being asked to pay the taxes that finance it.

That doesn’t strike me as a remotely sustainable equilibrium. If you take Medicare and change it, you can phase those changes in over time. But you can’t introduce a radical discontinuity into the program and then promise everyone over a certain age that the discontinuity won’t impact them. Obviously some people will die before the change is universalized, but universalization is made all but inevitable by introducing the discontinuity.

Climate Progress

David Orr on confronting climate collapse

By Climate Guest Blogger on Apr 4, 2011 at 4:35 pm

“Happy talk” was not the approach taken by Lincoln confronting slavery, or by Franklin Roosevelt facing the grim realities after Pearl Harbor. Nor was it Winston Churchill’s message to the British people at the height of the London blitz. Instead, in these and similar cases transformative leaders told the truth honestly, with conviction and eloquence.

Guest blogger David Orr is one of the true environmental visionaries.  I’ve known him for years, and he sent me the new preface to the paperback edition of his book “Down to the Wire” after reading my post last night on why we need to talk about climate change.

Here is an extended excerpt:

Read more

Climate Progress

Salazar Blasts Gulf Disaster Company Transocean for Touting ‘Best Year In Safety’

By Kristen Bartoloni on Apr 4, 2011 at 4:10 pm

Deepwater HorizonOn Friday, Transocean, the company that operated the infamous Deepwater Horizon oil rig, told its shareholders that it gave its executives multi-million-dollar bonuses based on the company’s “best year in safety performance.” Today, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar lashed out at the global offshore drilling company, which moved its official headquarters from Houston to Zug, Switzerland in 2008 in order to avoid paying taxes to the United States government. In a statement to ThinkProgress, Salazar criticized the company’s “complacency” about the explosion that killed 11 people, spewed 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, and caused irreparable damage to Gulf communities:

At the end of the day, it was that complacency that created an oil spill that was pouring over 50 thousand barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico a day.

Using the justification of the company’s “exemplary statistical safety record,” Transocean’s executive compensation committee — GenOn Energy CEO Edward R. Muller, oil industry lawyer Martin B. McNamara, and retired Shell executive Robert Sprague — granted CEO Stewart Newman $6.3 million in bonus and “incentive compensation.”

“Transocean just doesn’t get it,” presidential oil spill commissioner William Reilly said in the conference call with Salazar. Reilly’s commission found that “systemic failures by industry management” and a “culture of complacency” were at the root of the disaster that Salazar characterized as a “nightmare” and “tragedy.”

Update

Transocean admitted this afternoon to CNN that its language “may have been insensitive,” but made no apology for its multi-million dollar payouts:

We acknowledge that some of the wording in our 2010 proxy statement may have been insensitive in light of the incident that claimed the lives of eleven exceptional men last year and we deeply regret any pain that it may have caused. Nothing in the proxy was intended to minimize this tragedy or diminish the impact it has had on those who lost loved ones. Everyone at Transocean continues to mourn the loss of these friends and colleagues.

Climate Progress

AMA: Climate change is affecting the health of patients — and physicians are starting to see the results

By Joe Romm on Apr 4, 2011 at 4:00 pm

If physicians want evidence of climate change, they may well find it in their own offices. Patients are presenting with illnesses that once happened only in warmer areas. Chronic conditions are becoming aggravated by more frequent and extended heat waves. Allergy and asthma seasons are getting longer….

Scientific evidence shows that the world’s climate is changing and that the results have public health consequences. The American Medical Association is working to ensure that physicians and others in health care understand the rise in climate-related illnesses and injuries so they can prepare and respond to them. The Association also is promoting environmentally responsible practices that would reduce waste and energy consumption.

That’s from a must-read editorial today from the American Medical Association, “Confronting health issues of climate change.” The AMA is but the latest major health organization to study and speak out about “the biggest global health threat of the 21st century,” as the medical journal Lancet‘s Health Commission put it.

Here’s more:

Read more

Politics

Sharron Angle Labels President Obama A Domestic Enemy

By George Zornick on Apr 4, 2011 at 4:00 pm

Sharron Angle was last seen losing a race for U.S. Senate to Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) in an election in which her extreme positions and statements damaged her standing with even some Republicans in Nevada. For example, she said she opposed abortions even in cases of rape or incest because it would interfere with God’s “plan.” She also famously suggested “Second Amendment remedies” to electoral losses.

Now, Angle is back on the campaign trail and running for the House of Representatives. But she doesn’t appear to have toned down her extreme rhetoric. Last week, Angle sent out an e-mail blasting the Veterans of Foreign Wars for endorsing Democrats. In an e-mail titled “Don’t Allow are (sic) Veterans to be Betrayed any longer,” Angle compared Democrats to members of Al Qaeda:

The founding principles of our nation have been under siege for some time. It’s not just radical groups like al-Qaeda that threaten our liberty, either. Many of our own elected leaders have decided that the Constitution is archaic and, therefore, can be ignored! (Case in point: nationalized healthcare.) Modernized communication technologies, the liberal media, and Alinsky-like doctrine have accelerated a moral decline and an historical ambivalence that threaten the American way of life for us and future generations.

In an interview this weekend with KSNV’s To the Point, Angle was questioned about the e-mail, and not only stood firm in her assertion, but specifically singled out President Obama as a domestic enemy:

ANCHOR: Is that enemy inside the federal government? Elected members of Congress or Senate, is that the enemy?

ANGLE: Well certainly we’ve seen some leadership that has embraced things that we as Americans are really shocked at seeing, and I think that that comes directly from the leadership of the president. He has been not convincingly a constitutionalist and we know that our constitution is what should drive our involvement throughout the world, in things like what has just happened with, uh — Libya.

Watch it:

Angle is running to represent Nevada’s 2nd Congressional district, which she won by seven points last fall, despite losing the general election to Reid.

Yglesias

Google Bids $900 Million To Stave Off Patent Lawsuits

By Matthew Yglesias on Apr 4, 2011 at 3:59 pm

Google’s Kent Walker explains why the company’s bidding $900 million to secure Nortel’s portfolio of intellectual property:

So after a lot of thought, we’ve decided to bid for Nortel’s patent portfolio in the company’s bankruptcy auction. Today, Nortel selected our bid as the “stalking-horse bid,” which is the starting point against which others will bid prior to the auction. If successful, we hope this portfolio will not only create a disincentive for others to sue Google, but also help us, our partners and the open source community—which is integrally involved in projects like Android and Chrome—continue to innovate. In the absence of meaningful reform, we believe it’s the best long-term solution for Google, our users and our partners.

Call it a sign of the nutty times we live in. The point of patents is to encourage innovation by creating financial incentives to innovate, but mismanaged patent law is becoming a huge impediment to innovation in the software space. And there are no real heroes here. As NB pointed out to me today, Google’s not above filing its own ridiculous patent claims:

Google’s Doodles have certainly come a long way from their humble beginnings, but the company has now pulled off what may be its most jaw-dropping feat yet — it’s just been awarded a patent for them. Described as “systems and methods for enticing users to access a web site,” the patent credits Google co-founder Sergey Brin as the sole inventor, and it comes more than ten years after Google first filed the application.

The “systems and methods” in question are that they use cute different versions of their icon on certain days to project an imagine as a fun-loving company. And then, I guess, they threaten to sue you if you do the same. Fun!

Alyssa

Forty Whacks

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Apr 4, 2011 at 3:28 pm

When I think about it, Chloe Sevigny’s really spent an awful lot of time on-screen around murderers. She’s serial killer Patrick Bateman’s secretary in American Psycho, murderer Michael Alig’s girlfriend in Party Monster, a researcher in The Killing Room, Brandon Teena’s girlfriend in Boys Don’t Cry, Robert Graysmith’s girlfriend, wife, and ex-wife in Zodiac, and daughter of a possibly murderous Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints prophet on Big Love. So maybe it’s about time she got to kill someone on-screen, or at least get accused of it, as she will in HBO’s new Lizzie Borden miniseries. I’ll be curious to see if the series comes down on the side of Borden’s guilt or innocence, and how much it explores the extent to which the Borden family was isolated and resistant to modernity.

In an odd way, Lizzie Borden’s story feels like a macabre fairy tale to me. It’s a story that’s so familiar that I need an interesting interpretation to hook me into it, as if it’s fiction, more a form than a specific story. Obviously it’s history, these were real people who were murdered, it’s a genuine mystery that will never really be unraveled now that everyone who was involved in it or might be invested in the outcome is dead and gone. That transmutation of life into fictional clay is easier than perhaps it ought to be.

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