Earlier this week, Saif al-Islam Alqadhafi, the son of Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi,  sent a letter (excerpted below) to German Chancellor Angela Merkel regarding a recent gift from her country to Israel:

We read with great surprise news reports indicating that the German Government will support the State of Israel by offering gifts in the form of a sophisticated submarine and two Missile botas to be added to the five submarines which have already been provided to Israel, the price of which was paid by the German tax-payers.

...I do not think that tht German people who have suffered dictatorship, supression and terrorism either during the Nazis era or the commnist reign, which are well known to Her Excellency Dr. Angela Merkel agree to the money of tax-payers being spent to purchase offensive non-defense weapons and submarines ...I do not think that the Greman tax-payers seek the enhancement of the offensive capacity of the world's greatest human rights violating State in the world.

...today you are thoughtful towards Israel to atone for the mistakes of the past, but I assure you that one day you will be thoughtful towards us to atone for today's mistakes."

The letter has been fairly widely distributed to journalists. Saif is thought to be increasingly influtential in shaping Libya's foreign policy, though interestingly, he writes the letter on behalf of the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation rather than his father's government.

With Google threatening to pull out of China, immitation versions of the search engine and its video subsidiary YouTube have emerged to take their places on the Chinese internet:

YouTubecn.com offers videos from the real YouTube, which is blocked in China. The Google imitation is called Goojje and includes a plea for the U.S.-based Web giant not to leave China, after it threatened this month to do so in a dispute over Web censorship and cyberattacks.

The search engine behind Goojje was likely designed before the Google-China kerfuffle began then renamed as a marketing gimmick, and indeed the results it returns are fairly different than Google's. (Goojje vs. Google searching for "Foreign Policy".). The site apparently complies with Chinese censorship guidelines, like the old chinese google. I tried searching for "Dalai Lama" and got his official website. "Rebiya Kadeer" worked also. When I typed in a Google-translated version of "Dalai Lama" in Chinese characters, the top result was an article titled, "The Road of Treason." When I typed in "Falun Gong," in English, I got an error message. The same thing happened on multiple computers.

YouTubeCn is more more freewheeling, with videos on the persecution of Falun Gong and Rebiya Kadeer available. While the layout is an almost exact rip-off of YouTube, the videos are really buggy with many requiring new versions of flash player and others not working at all. 

Neither site seems like much of a substitute for the one it's based on in terms of functionality. I don't think Baidu should have much to worry about. 

Ben Bernanke is just one easy vote away from winning a second term as the chairman of the Federal Reserve. (Meaning Janet Yellen doesn't need to pack her bags.) 

Opposition to Bernanke had been brewing since last spring, steeling in the last few weeks as a string of high-profile senators -- Republicans and Democrats, among them Barbara Boxer and John McCain -- said they opposed giving the Princeton academic another term at the helm of the world's most important central bank. 

To explain the nuts and bolts of the process: Several senators had threatened to filibuster Bernanke, preventing the chamber from calling an up-down vote to confirm him. Bernanke's nomination just cleared the high supermajority hurdle to end that debate, with 77 senators voting to get the motion onto the floor. Now, Bernanke needs 51 senators to say yes, which they're planning to do this afternoon.

In the final speech of debate on the nomination, Sen. Chris Dodd said, "This is not some assistant undersecretary of some other agency. This is the central bank chairman of the most important central bank in the world. [Reconfirming Bernanke] is a critically important component in continuing our path to economic recovery." Sen. Jim DeMint is now tweeting his disapproval. 

Shouldn't be going on for too much longer, but interested readers can watch the Senate floor live on C-SPAN here.

Update: Bernanke was confirmed, 70-30.

That's the banner finding of this poll released today in the Miami Herald, via Ben Smith. The poll paints a picture of a devastated Haitian-American community, which numbers around 530,000 and is centered in Southern Florida. Other statistics: 

• Three out of five said they lost a loved one in the earthquake, which killed approximately 200,000
• Two out of three said they would be willing to return to Haiti temporarily to help in the reconstruction
• The U.S. government and United Nations received high approval ratings for their disaster relief efforts
• Two in three disapproved of the way the Haitian government handled the disaster (though, to be fair, it was completely destroyed in the quake)
• Four in five have already sent money, and a vast majority say they would adopt an orphaned Haitian child

As Michael Clemens argues in this Foreign Policy article, and as the Haitian-American community has been vocally advocating, the best way for the United States to help Haiti isn't just to provide sustained aid for rebuilding. It is to allow more Haitians to immigrate and to send remittances back to the devastated nation.

For those of you who don't subscribe to the bimonthly print edition of Foreign Policy, you're missing a great feature: the FP Quiz. It has eight intriguing questions about how the world works.

The question I'd like to highlight this week is:

How many people worldwide serve in the military?

a) 10.5 million           b) 20.5 million           c) 40.5 million

Answer after the jump …

Read on

As Dan Drezner, Josh Rogin and other have already noted, last night's State of the Union address was, as expected, remarkably light on foreign policy. Drezner argues that this is because a president focusing on events beyond U.S. borders will, by definition, seem out of touch with the concerns of ordinary voters in a time of economic distress.

But it is still striking that in a time when the United States has troops fighting two wars, one of which the president has recently expanded, the nation's ongoing military engagements got such short shrift in the speech. Here's what the president had to say about Afghanistan, where he recently committed an additional 30,000 U.S. troops:

And in Afghanistan, we're increasing our troops and training Afghan security forces so they can begin to take the lead in July of 2011, and our troops can begin to come home. (Applause.) We will reward good governance, work to reduce corruption, and support the rights of all Afghans -- men and women alike. (Applause.) We're joined by allies and partners who have increased their own commitments, and who will come together tomorrow in London to reaffirm our common purpose. There will be difficult days ahead. But I am absolutely confident we will succeed.

I don't think the speech needed to be dominated by war talk or that the domestic agenda Obama discussed was trivial, but I do think that a (admittedly reluctant) war president owes the public a reminder of why the war is worth fighting, not a brief laundry list of updates and vague goals. Compare it to Harry Truman's 1951 State of the Union, which put the escalating fight in Korea right at the top:  

As we meet here today, American soldiers are fighting a bitter campaign in Korea. We pay tribute to their courage, devotion, and gallantry.

Our men are fighting, alongside their United Nations allies, because they know, as we do, that the aggression in Korea is part of the attempt of the Russian Communist dictatorship to take over the world, step by step.

Our men are fighting a long way from home, but they are fighting for our lives and our liberties. They are fighting to protect our right to meet here today--our right to govern ourselves as a free nation.

The threat of world conquest by Soviet Russia endangers our liberty and endangers the kind of world in which the free spirit of man can survive. This threat is aimed at all peoples who strive to win or defend their own freedom and national independence. 

He would also lead with Korea the following year. Here's how Lyndon Johnson started in 1966: 

Our Nation tonight is engaged in a brutal and bitter conflict in Vietnam. Later on I want to discuss that struggle in some detail with you. It just must be the center of our concerns.

But we will not permit those who fire upon us in Vietnam to win a victory over the desires and the intentions of all the American people. This Nation is mighty enough, its society is healthy enough, its people are strong enough, to pursue our goals in the rest of the world while still building a Great Society here at home. 

Even as public anger at the war and his handling of it grew, Johnson continued to make a centerpiece of his addresses.

Whatever you think of these presidents, the wars they oversaw, or the goals they describe, their speeches at least conveyed that these military conflicts were at the "center of their concerns." In his early addresses, George W. Bush would generally begin with a heavy focus the war on terror and Iraq, but he emphasized these issues less and less later on.

War is typically considered an extraordinary event, worthy of commanding the attention of both government and public. Today, judging by its cursory treatment in Obama's speech, the blood and treasure that the United States is putting into Afghanistan seems very far from the center of the U.S. government's concerns, just background noise for domestic policy debates. That may say less about Obama than how used to ongoing conflict the U.S. public has become over the past decade. 

Perhaps the most talked-about moment in Obama's speech in the hours and days to come is going to be his rejoinder to the Supreme Court's recent decision on campaign donations from corporations:

With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests –- including foreign corporations –- to spend without limit in our elections. (Applause.) I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. (Applause.) They should be decided by the American people. And I'd urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to correct some of these problems.

Video making the rounds now clearly shows Samuel Alito mouthing the words "not true" after Obama made the claim about foreign corporations, an unusual breach of decorum for a sitting Supreme Court justice. His colleagues sat impassively, though they clearly were not happy at being singled out for criticism in a State of the Union address.

The majority's decision in the case in question, Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, reads:

We need not reach the question whether the Government has a compelling interest in preventing foreign individuals or associations from influencing our Nation's political process. . . Section 441b is not limited to corporations or associations that were created in foreign countries or funded predominantly by foreign shareholders. Section 441b therefore would be overbroad even if we assumed, arguendo, that the Government has a compelling interest in limiting foreign influence over our political process.

In other words, the court essentially said it wasn't going to decide on whether foreign corporations can claim First Amendment rights. You might say it was an open invitation to let Congress weigh in on this question, or let interested parties duke it out in the courts.

UPDATE: Linda Greenhouse thinks Alito was reacting to the "century of law" bit, not the point about foreign corporations.