danalwyn

A lot has happened in Libya in the past few weeks, culminating with this weekend's push into Tripoli. A lot that seemed clear a month ago is no longer clear, and a lot that seemed impossible is no longer impossible.

If there's anything that should be clear from the Libya situation, it's that military affairs, social affairs, and economic affairs take time, where pundits take none. When the loyalists were on the verge of taking Benghazi, everyone was frightened that the end of the world would happen right there and then, that the war was lost for the rebels. This was part of what pushed the strong NATO intervention. When that intervention failed to win the war for the rebels in the first week, the words quagmire and "no end in sight" were tossed around. As the stalemate continued, that perspective gained strength, until the whole western intervention looked like just another bungled disaster. Now the interventionists are basking in their glory, and gloating to their more pessimistic colleagues.

Many people predicted the same thing - the war would be won for the rebels if they could figure out how to operate effectively and cohesively in the west against Gaddafi's greater firepower. They also predicted that, despite contrary appearances, international isolation was hurting Gaddafi's regime. Both those predictions appear true, as the rapid folding of regime forces has indicated. But it took time. Not that it took a long time - for a civil war to last only months is remarkably short, even in the age of motor transportation. All complicated affairs, and wars most of all, take time. For all we know, the rebels will suffer another reverse and be driven out of the city (although that looks unlikely).

That's probably the most important lesson we can learn about whatever happens in Tripoli today (the situation is still not clear), these things take time. Wars are not ended in days, effects are not instantaneous. If it takes half a year for a popular rebellion across an oppressed country to seize the capital of a hated and outdated leader, imagine how long it takes for a foreign country to occupy another and then try and change its entire political and social structure.

Oh, and the other thing to learn - people can take care of themselves if you give them the chance.

If you've got some goodwill to spare today, Tropical Storm Emily is hovering within 100 kilometers of Port-au-Prince, Haiti right now, a city where over 600,000 people are still living in tents. Currently it looks like the heart of the storm will pass slightly west of the main city, but even so a possibly devastating near miss is about to hit one of the world's largest populations of internally displaced homeless people. Wish them luck - it's too late now for anything else.

I'm a physicist by training, and physicists have never really like the shuttle program. It was a huge waste of money, a lot of expenditure of cash on sending people on the world's most expensive roller coaster ride in lieu of doing actual science (I think what really rubbed it in was the claims that the shuttle was up there to do scientific experiments). Their ability to do things like fix the Hubble Space Telescope was offset by the fact that each shuttle mission cost about $450 million - in other words we could probably build a new Hubble in exchange for three shuttle launches. The shuttle, and the ability to put a human being into space, needed to be upgraded years ago with newer, cheaper, and probably lower-flying technology. The money spent on NASA probably would have better benefited the human race by being spent on NASA's robotic exploration program then it did sending people into space to grow crystals.

That being said, there's still something monumentally nostalgic about the image of the shuttle landing for the last time. We've always cursed the shuttle, but we've done it with the obscure pride of knowing that human beings were still stepping into space. Now we have to wonder whether this is just a temporary break in the greater scheme of things, or if humanity has begun to turn its back on the stars for another generation. Let's all hope we figure out a better way to get up there soon.

And to keep with my habit of posting commentary on news about violence roundup of weird, potentially destructive news from the past [arbitrary number] of weeks. This time though, in keeping with the media's habit of ignoring serious topics in favor of celebrities, I'm ignoring serious wars all over the world to give the roundup from Southeast Asia.

( Srs Business And All That )

Is it wrong to find this article to be disturbingly hilarious?

( For the Link-Phobic )

Since this journal normally looks more like a news and politics blog then anything else, here are some updates from the last month for things I'm watching that could go boom just to prove that if I've been replaced by a doppelganger, he's at least consistent.

( The World Keeps Going Faster )

Fukushima has largely fallen off the news, but when it re-emerges it tends to be in some sort of panic-laden title that doesn't actually say anything. Nevertheless the crisis continues. At first we were worried about the reactors exploding, then about the Spent Fuel Pool burning to the ground. Now we're down to high-radiation water leaking out into the ocean. We've pretty much run the gamut from super-critical down to merely urgent.

Nevertheless, radiation is still spreading out there, so if you're concerned about friends and family in Japan, here's the word:

( Radiation )

In short, the crisis level has decreased significantly, but the long-term worries about radiation leakage remain. Additionally there's still a chance for things to go catastrophically wrong, but with each passing day it might actually be less.

So, this is what I've gleaned regarding Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi. Most of it is boring, but that's a good thing. When things about reactors become exciting, that's when you should start being worried.

I should say, that I'm not a nuclear engineer. I do, however, have the same qualifications it seems as a lot of people writing articles for the media, which is to say a Bachelor's degree and the ability to read Wikipedia. So I wrote this to make myself learn the material, and try to keep my head straight. There are probably factual errors. In fact, I guarantee there are factual errors. You should take the word of real nuclear engineers over me.

Furthermore, this is not in any way up to date. The best place to find updates is probably on Facebook, from the page for the International Atomic Energy Agency, or (if you trust them) from the English press release page for the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) (both are slower then normal news, but more accurate).

( Reactors Are (Fortunately) Boring )
I'm hoping things get better. So far the past two days seems to have been a long, painful exercise in hanging on by the fingernails. Now it looks like the wetwell on Unit Two was damaged during the explosion that destroyed their containment system. Also, it appears that part of the building for Unit Four is on fire (this is less of a concern, Unit Four was shut down for maintenance at the time of the earthquake, and so there's nothing to cool in the meantime). Unit Two was already having problems - it's hot enough that they have problems pumping the water in. Meanwhile, Kan has moved the evacuation zone now to twenty kilometers, and the stay-at-home to thirty.

I'm going to post this and hope that things get better, and that we keep hanging on. I think they have a fighting chance. I think that even if they do have a breach, that the effects will be mostly minimal when compared to the effects of the rest of the tsunami. But I'm not all that confident anymore. Hopefully optimism will prove to be correct here.

Dear America,

Don't be stupid.

The Coast Guard was searching for a man in the Pacific Ocean near the Klamath River in Del Norte County in Northern California. The man was swept away after he and two friends reportedly traveled to the shoreline to take photos of the incoming tsunami waves, Lt. Todd Vorenkamp said. His friends made it back to shore.

Quote from MSNBC.

Well, predictably, the neo-cons realized that they finally had a chance to do something. After all, Egypt and Bahrain (and Saudi Arabia when it goes) are all US allies, so you can't sell them out for something as transient or useless as freedom or democracy or some other things like that which we don't really care about. But nobody likes Gaddafi. So that gives us a chance to call out the troops and get some primo photo ops.

(Not to say that the liberal interventionists and anti-genocide people haven't gotten their share).

Fortunately, a bunch of people have showed up to throw cold water on people. First it was CENTCOM's James Mattis throwing water on John McCain. Now it's escalated to Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

In fact, out of the people I normally respect, I haven't seen much enthusiasm for the whole "let's go save Libya" crowd. This is in contravention to a lot of calls from inside Libya - Twitter and Facebook are filled with calls for the world to watch and for someone to do something about the fact that Gaddafi is firing on his own people. But even among those who really like democracy and really want to help Libya don't seem to have much enthusiasm for it.

( Nobody Wants to Risk a No-Fly Zone )

Nobody wants to take responsibility for bombing Tripoli on their own. The Americans and the Europeans may be sending more and more ships, but for now all they'll do is stand off the coast. Unless Gadaffi forces their hand, the US will wait for the UN to approve, and with the Russians threatening to veto it's a good thing Libya is doing a good job of freeing itself without our intervention, because they'll be waiting for us for a long time.