By Steve Clemons

— Steve Clemons

Via FrumForum, I ran across a surreal Bundeshwehr performance of Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water” as the send off for recently resigned German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg. I’m speechless. Well, nearly.

There are more than sixty of leading young activists from revolts and revolutions throughout the Middle East at the 6th Annual Al Jazeera Forum. I am attending this fascinating meeting as a guest of Al Jazeera. Turkey Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu just landed in Doha to speak at the meeting tomorrow.

I recorded a few minutes of comments outlining my concerns over the Libya No-Fly Zone debate. In short, a no-fly zone is a high cost, low return strategy that doesn’t necessarily create a military tipping point in favor of the Libyan opposition.

(Steve Clemons & Wadah Khanfar speak at TED 2011 Long Beach; photo credit: Mohamed Nanabhay) The quality of comments have improved dramatically during the period I and my team have been serving as moderators. I am going to test out releasing the reins again and see how this goes.

US Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder just gave an on-the-record State Department conference call readout of NATO meetings on Libya and what capacity NATO might have on hand for various contingencies there. I tried but failed to get a question in, and the subject I would have raised was not covered in the call.

Fareed Zakaria has a piece in this morning’s Washington Post titled “America’s Grim Budget Outlook.” But his argument is less about budget cutting than the investment deficit America’s future faces compared with other periods of its history.

Al Jazeera Director General Wadah Khanfar gave a stirring tour de force of authoritarian control, conflict and change in the Middle East at the TED 2011 meeting in Long Beach which I attended this past week.

Maryland is wrestling with marriage equality legislation right now, and Maryland Delegate Sam Arora of Montgomery County — someone I thought was on track to be one of the new, great, young progressive leaders of the nation has just screwed over his constituents, including many in the gay community from whom he raised a lot…

This is a guest note by Lawrence Wilkerson, Visiting Harriman Professor of Government and Public Policy at the College of William and Mary, and Arturo Lopez-Levy, Lecturer in the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. Dawn Gable contributed to this article.