I admire the French for their respect for public intellectuals, but someone should tell Bernard Henri-Levy to stop talking to the international media.

In the next few days, there will be plenty of opportunities to talk about all the implications of bin Laden's death, but now such talk seems inappropriate.

I would like to take a moment to consider the victims of Osama bin Laden, a man who dedicated his life to achieving political aims through the indiscriminate killing of innocent men, women, and children. We here in the United States think of the September 11th attacks when we think of bin Laden's crimes, but people in and of dozens of countries across the world counted among the many thousands of his victims. The vast majority of these men, women, and children were not soldiers, politicians, or diplomats; they were ordinary people going about their daily lives when suddenly, at a time not of their choosing, their lives were terminated by an act of violence.

I remember walking through the Killing Fields in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, one of the most sobering experiences of my entire life. Yet what aroused my anger most was the fact that the Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot, died peacefully in his sleep, never brought to justice. History is full of mass murderers and butchers and tyrants who lived out their days peacefully while the memory of those killed by their actions linger on, painfully, among the survivors. I'm not a bloodthirsty man, but to think that bin Laden received what he wrought on so many others represents a measure of justice, no matter how imperfectly. For this fact alone the news of his death is worth celebrating.

I'll have plenty of comment in the coming days, but for now I'd prefer to remember those who felt bin Laden's terror most acutely.

Hey Muammar- did you see the body on that one?

Finally, what the world needs: a dispatch from one of Muammar Gaddafi's Ukrainian nurses:

The Ukrainian press called us Gaddafi’s harem. That’s nonsense. None of us nurses was ever his lover; the only time we ever touched him was to take his blood pressure. The truth is that Papik [Gaddafi] was much more discreet than his friend, the womanizer Silvio Berlusconi.

Ouch.

Nine days ago, Hu Xijin, the editor in chief of The Global Times, assembled all of the Chinese staff into the paper’s large conference room and shut the door. As is nearly always the case with such meetings, the expats, known as “foreign experts,” were not permitted inside.

Hu had a direct and simple order for his shock troops staff: They were to go to their desks and seek out any Chinese comment threads, any discussions on Chinese BBS’s and portals and blogs — any discussion on the Internet at all — about the detention of Ai Weiwei and counter them with the party line, as expressed so clearly and ominously in a recent Global Times editorial, namely that Ai Weiwei is a self-appointed maverick who deserves to be detained, and who is being used by hostile Western powers to embarrass, hurt and destabilize China. This was not a request, it was a direct order. It was compulsory.

Sinister, but unsurprising.

UPDATE: James Fallows also cites Richard's post and asks "how much of the current crackdown reflects over-confidence by the government? How much reflects its nervous insecurity?". I would say "nervous insecurity" is the key driver in most decisions made by the Chinese government. There's a common misconception that because it's authoritarian, the Chinese government is highly stable. If anything, the opposite is true, hence the obsession with "security". To Westerners, a character like Ai Weiwei seems harmless because our societies tolerate eccentric members with unorthodox political opinions*. Yet in China the Communist Party fears that by allowing a few dissidents to speak out against the State with impunity would simply embolden others and threaten the Party's grip on power.

*Lest Westerners- or just Americans- start to feel good about ourselves it's worth remembering that eccentrics with unorthodox political opinions weren't tolerated during the McCarthy era, for one. Again, insecurity was the driver.

These two articles intrigued me for a few reasons. One, I have contributed articles for free several times over the years and expect to continue doing so for the foreseeable future. Two, I worked for a company in China that routinely hired unpaid interns to perform certain tasks. Three, I currently attend a Master's program that requires all students to complete an internship (paid or unpaid) in order to graduate.

It seems that the unpaid bloggers at The Huffington Post were particularly upset that they did not see a cent from THP's recent merger with AOL. In theory, they have a case. Arianna Huffington and her partners have profited  from the labor provided by these bloggers and refused to give them a piece of the pie. This policy is by no means a secret- Huffington herself has said repeatedly that her website will pay for reporting, not opinion. After all, there are countless people around the world publishing their opinions on the Internet- I am one of them. Why should we get paid when we'd do it for free?

In addition, for an aspiring writer or journalist, not all rewards are pecuniary. Finding a good media job resembles a Catch-22: in order to get experience, you need to already have it. In the pre-web days, aspiring writers had to start on the bottom rung of the ladder and only through years of hard-work and a break or two could they rise to the top. Now, the matriculation process for talented writers has accelerated rapidly through facilitators like The Huff Post. Good, talented writers writing for free can get major exposure if they're chosen by the Huff Post as a blogger. While the rewards won't be monetized, they'll be able to attract a wider audience for their work as well as buttress their resume. Both of these are real, non-financial benefits that will help the writer meet career goals more easily.

The process with internships work the same. Most interns are asked to work for free. Yet in exchange, they receive a valuable professional contact who will be obliged to assist them through writing recommendation letters and the like; real professional experience which they can put on their resume and that may be inherently valuable; and the strong possibility of being selected by the company as a full-time employee when the time comes. If companies were required to pay their interns (some do so already), then there'd likely be far fewer internship opportunities available. Put it this way- most of the students in my Master's program would still seek summer internships even if they weren't required to do so.

On the particular merits of the suit against the Huff Post/AOL merger, I do think it would have been appropriate for Arianna Huffington to kick back some of that money to her army of bloggers. Yet I don't think the present business model is an any way immoral, and actually think that we have more and better published opinion than ever before due in part to organizations like the Huff Post.

I'm working on a piece at the moment discussing the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who was recently detained by the Communist government and has not been heard from since. Ai is of a significantly higher profile than many other Chinese dissidents; he designed Beijing's iconic Bird's Nest Olympic stadium, and has been a popular presence on Twitter since joining the medium a few years ago. Ai has had several run-ins with the government in the past but has not been detained at such length and without contact with the outside world as he is now. Here is a TED video of the man, discussing his life, art, and politics, recorded a few months ago.

(via Jeremiah, who attended the show in Beijing and was similarly irked by Dowd's column)

Because Barack Obama is not George W. Bush, this war has the veneer of multilateral respectability, from the cover of the United Nations to the insistence that the U.S. is allowing the British and French to lead to the pledge not to use American ground forces. Yet at the end of the day, this is an instance of the U.S. and its allies invading a sovereign country in order to overthrow its leader, as Simon Tisdall correctly points out.

I remain baffled what the West expects to accomplish from intervening in the Libyan civil war. Let's say that the West succeeds in toppling Gaddafi and installing the country's opposition as the legitimate government in Libya. (Lest you assume that this is a mere formality, read this New York Times article). Do we know how (or whether) the new regime will behave? Do we know whether they'll have the ability to manage Libya's complex system of tribal loyalties and run a stable government? Do we know whether they'll cooperate in repelling terrorism, something that Gaddafi quietly accomplished?

This war seems to be fought solely for the consciences of the West, almost just so we don't have to read about Gaddafi's brutality in the newspapers. Very few of the arguments I've read in support of the invasion have cited the American national interest, relying mostly on vague pronouncements of our "credibility" and "moral standing".  If these two goals were legitimate, why haven't we then invaded Bahrain and Yemen, two states who have violently repressed popular uprisings in recent days?  Perhaps if their leaders had the habit of wearing colorful clothes and making absurd statements the Western appetite for warfare would have grown.

Or if we wait another eight years or so, there will be another opportunity to use our military to intervene in another unnecessary conflict. If you have a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail.

One, as the Times article suggests, readers have grown accustomed to reading the entire newspaper online for free. What will happen when they're no longer able to do so? One possibility is that they'll simply go to other papers, like The Washington Post. But the two aren't perfect substitutes. The Post is great for political coverage, but for international news it doesn't compete with the Times.

What about other sources? The blogosphere now is as rich as ever before, and you can find great information on just about any topic, for free. But is it a substitute for a daily paper? I don't think so. Even expert bloggers rely on the newspaper for the factual underpinnings of their work.

A second reason this news is interesting is that it challenges the notion that what we encounter on the Internet won't be free anymore. I can remember thinking that iTunes would fail because people wouldn't pay a dollar for a song they could simply download for free. But it didn't happen that way. People, I think, instinctively prefer paying for a commodity, even if they have little sympathy for the pocket books of rich musicians.

The same is true of the NY Times. I spend 13 dollars a month on a Saturday/Sunday paper subscription. People I've spoken to have remarked that a newspaper subscription seems extravagant for a grad student, but to me it's a bargain.