Jerry Jackson

Archive for February, 2011|Monthly archive page

Globalism Pushing Middle Class Standard of Living Down to Third World Levels

In Economics, Society, World News on February 28, 2011 at 7:11 pm

From now on, whenever you hear the term “the global economy” you should immediately equate it with the destruction of the U.S. middle class.  Over the past several decades, the American economy has been slowly but surely merged into the emerging one world economic system.  Unfortunately for the middle class, much of the rest of the world does not have the same minimum wage laws and worker protections that we do.  Therefore, the massive global corporations that now dominate our economy are able to pay workers in other countries slave labor wages and import the products that they make into the United States to compete with products made by “expensive” American workers.  This has resulted in a mass exodus of manufacturing facilities and jobs from the United States.

Global Economic Crisis

Global Economic Crisis

But without good, high paying jobs the U.S. middle class cannot continue to be the U.S middle class.  The only thing that the vast majority of Americans have to offer in the economic marketplace is their labor.  Sadly, that labor has now been dramatically devalued.  American workers now must directly compete for jobs with millions upon millions of workers on the other side of the world that toil away for 15 hours a day at slave labor wages.  This is causing jobs to leave the United States at an almost unbelievable rate, and it is putting tremendous downward pressure on the wages of millions of jobs that are still in the United States.

So when you hear terms such as “globalization” and “the global economy”, it is important to keep in mind that those are code words for the emerging one world economic system that is systematically wiping out the U.S. middle class.

A one world labor pool means that the standard of living for the U.S. middle class will continue falling toward the standard of living in the third world.

We keep hearing about how the U.S. economy is being transformed from a “manufacturing economy” into a “service economy”.  But “service jobs” are generally much lower paying than “manufacturing jobs”.  The number of good paying “middle class jobs” in the United States is rapidly decreasing.  So how can the U.S. middle class survive in such an environment?

What makes things even worse for manufacturers in the United States is that other nations often impose a “value-added tax” of 20 percent or more on U.S. goods entering their shores and yet most of the time we do not reciprocate with similar taxes.

But whenever someone mentions how incredibly unfair and unbalanced our trade agreements with other nations are, they are immediately labeled as a “protectionist”.

Well, someone should be looking out for U.S. interests when it comes to trade, because the current state of the global economy is ripping the U.S. middle class to shreds.

Right now, the United States consumes far more wealth than it produces.  This nation buys much, much more from the rest of the world than they buy from us.  This is called a “trade deficit”, and it is one of the most important economic statistics.  The U.S. runs a massive trade deficit every single year, and it is wiping out our national wealth, it is destroying our surviving industries and it is absolutely shredding middle class America.

We cannot allow tens of thousands of factories to continue to leave the United States.  We cannot allow millions of jobs to continue to be “outsourced” and “offshored”.  We cannot allow tens of billions of dollars of our national wealth to continue to be transferred into foreign hands every single month.

The truth is that the global economy is bad for America.  The following are 23 facts which prove that globalism is pushing the standard of living of the middle class down to third world levels…. Read the rest of this entry »

Bush cancels out of event where Assange was due to attend

In Wikileaks on February 28, 2011 at 12:56 pm


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Julian Assange at New Media Days 09 in Copenhagen.

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Washington – Former president George W Bush abruptly cancelled a speaking engagement planned for Saturday after learning that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange had also been invited to attend.
Bush spokesman David Sherer on Friday said ‘the former president has no desire to share a forum with a man who has willfully and repeatedly done great harm to the interests of the United States.’
Bush had six months ago accepted the invitation to speak at the Young President’s Organization Global Leadership Summit in Denver, a gathering of young chief executives.
Assange was also apparently invited, though he is being held in London pending extradition to Sweden to face charges for sexual offences.
Many US politicians and the government officials have condemned WikiLeaks and its founder Assange for releasing thousands of private US diplomatic cables and Pentagon documents from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Excerpt from “The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century”

In Economics, Society, World News on February 27, 2011 at 10:59 am

Seal of the United States Department of the Tr...

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Excerpt from “The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century”
The U.S. Treasury’s Financial Bailout

The bailout measures of late 2008 may have consequences at least as grave for an open society as the response to 9/11 in 2001. Many members of Congress felt coerced at the time into voting against their inclinations, and the normal procedures for orderly consideration of a bill were dispensed with.
The excuse for bypassing normal legislative procedures was the existence of an emergency. But one of the most reprehensible features of the legislation, that allowed Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to permit bailed-out institutions to use public money for exorbitant salaries and bonuses, was inserted by Paulson after the immediate crisis had passed.
According to Congressman Peter Welch (D-Vermont) the bailout bill originally called for a cap on executive salaries, but Paulson changed the requirement at the last minute. Welch and other members of Congress were enraged by “news that banks getting taxpayer-funded bailouts are still paying exorbitant salaries, bonuses, and other benefits.”[1] In addition, as the Associated Press reported in October 2008, “Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. questioned allowing banks that accept bailout bucks to continue paying dividends on their common stock. ‘There are far better uses of taxpayer dollars than continuing dividend payments to shareholders,’ he said.”[2]
Even more reprehensible is the fact that after the bailouts, Paulson and the Treasury Department refused to provide details of the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) spending of hundreds of billions of dollars, while the New York Federal Reserve refused to provide information about its own bailout (using government-backed loans) that amounted to trillions. This lack of transparency was challenged by Fox TV in a FOIA suit against the Treasury Department, and a suit by Bloomberg News against the Fed.[3]
The financial bailout legislation of September 2008 was only passed after members of both Congressional houses were warned that failure to act would threaten civil unrest and the imposition of martial law.
U.S. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., and U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., both said U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson brought up a worst-case scenario as he pushed for the Wall Street bailout in September. Paulson, former Goldman Sachs CEO, said that might even require a declaration of martial law, the two noted.[4]
Here are the original remarks by Senator Inhofe:
Speaking on Tulsa Oklahoma’s 1170 KFAQ, when asked who was behind threats of martial law and civil unrest if the bailout bill failed, Senator James Inhofe named Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson as the source. “Somebody in D.C. was feeding you guys quite a story prior to the bailout, a story that if we didn’t do this we were going to see something on the scale of the depression, there were people talking about martial law being instituted, civil unrest… who was feeding you guys this stuff?,” asked host Pat Campbell. “That’s Henry Paulson,” responded Inhofe. “We had a conference call early on, it was on a Friday I think – a week and half before the vote on Oct. 1. So it would have been the middle… what was it – the 19th of September, we had a conference call. In this conference call – and I guess there’s no reason for me not to repeat what he said, but he said – he painted this picture you just described. He said, ‘This is serious. This is the most serious thing that we faced.’”[5] Read the rest of this entry »

Gold, Silver,Crude Oil Sharply Higher As Violence in Libya Climbs

In Economics, Libya on February 26, 2011 at 10:01 pm


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Pie chart of world oil reserves by region

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The violent stand-off in Libya and elsewhere in the Middle East has triggered renewed speculation in precious metals and crude oil prices. The price of gold jumped $17.60 an ounce today to $1406 an ounce– much nearer its previous peak over $1420. Silver, as well, jumped over $2.00 an ounce to $33.91, precisely the scenario to make silver traders ecstatic. Meanwhile, crude oil, the commodity most directly affected by the intense political unrest, ran up over 5% in price in London to $107.60 a barrel. The last time oil sold at this level was in 2008, just on the eve of an approaching bubble at the $148 a barrel level. No doubt the pressure on oil prices was impacted by an oil workers strike in the Libyan oil fields, the cessation in exploration by BP, one of the major oil field operators there.There were reports that some European oil producing companies like Italy’s ENI, long a fixture in Libya, are thinking of evacuating their expatriate oil workers.Libya has the 9th largest amount of oil reserves in the world and is one of the lowest cost producing areas. A continuation of the shutdown in Libyan oil fields would mean a further spike in oil prices, and a threat to the rate of economic growth in Europe if not the US. In other words, political unrest is a boon to speculators like hedge funds and wealthy investors betting the commodity prices are going higher. But, it is on the other hand, damaging to middle class Americans who will hurt by higher gasoline costs this summer.


China: Free Unlawfully Detained Legal Activists, Relatives

In Activism, China, Human Rights, World News on February 23, 2011 at 3:37 am

Liu Xiaobo

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Government Expands Use of Extralegal Detention and House Arrest
FEBRUARY 22, 2011

(New York) – The Chinese government should immediately release three prominent lawyers arbitrarily detained and feared forcibly disappeared this month, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch also reiterated its call for the Chinese authorities to end the arbitrary house arrest imposed on Liu Xia, the wife of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, and on the blind legal activist Chen Guangcheng and his family.

Lawyers Tang Jitian, Teng Biao, and Jiang Tianyong were separately taken away by Public Security agents last week in Beijing and have not been seen or heard from since. The authorities have failed to give any reason or formal notification to their relatives, and all three are believed to be at risk of ill-treatment and torture.


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“Citizens’ demands for the state to respect its own laws are getting louder,” said Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. “But the government is responding with even less regard for legal procedures, arbitrarily arresting lawyers and placing well known activists and their family members under illegal and indefinite detention.”

Police forced their way into Tang Jitian’s Beijing apartment early on the morning of February 16, 2011, and immediately took him away, returning later to search the apartment. Jiang Tianyong was arrested in Bejiing on the afternoon of February 19 while visiting his brother. Several men forced him into a car, and the police returned later that day to seize his computer. Teng Biao, a lecturer at China University of Political Science and Law, was arrested the same afternoon. Police searched his home the next day and seized two computers, as well as several books, documents, and DVDs.All three activists are leading lawyers from the weiquan, or “rights protection” movement, whom the government has deprived of their professional licenses in recent years. Judicial authorities have done this apparently in retaliation for the lawyers’ refusal to desist from cases that the authorities see as politically sensitive such as abuses of power, wrongful convictions, and illegal land seizures.

Under international law, authorities commit an enforced disappearance when they fail to acknowledge holding someone in custody or provide no information on the person’s fate or whereabouts. “Disappearances” increase the likelihood of torture or other ill-treatment, Human Rights Watch said.

Read the rest of this entry »

Internet Restricted in Bahrain as Protest Escalates

In Activism, Internet Censorship, Society, World News on February 23, 2011 at 3:26 am

As protests continue in Bahrain, data suggests that access to many websites has been restricted there.

Arbor Networks, a security research company that tracks Internet traffic, told The New York Times on Friday that traffic into and out of Bahrain has dropped between 10% and 20% below expected levels. Traffic normally only drops that low during natural disasters or global sporting events.

The graph below shows Bahrain’s Internet traffic levels this week compared to average traffic levels during the previous three weeks. The traffic this week has been significantly lower than usual. Arbor Networks told The Times that it couldn’t absolutely rule out technical difficulties as a cause for the drop, though the most likely cause was blocked websites.

A Harvard University website that crowdsources reports of inaccessible webpages shows that many sites, including bahrainonline.org and bahrainrights.org, have been reported to be inaccessible. But almost all of the reports were made before the protests in Bahrain started.

Last month, Egypt blocked websites like Twitter and Facebook in response to unrest before blocking the Internet altogether (See that graph here). The success that Egyptian protesters had in ousting former president Hosni Mubarak despite these drastic digital measures is often cited as enhancing the confidence of protesters in Bahrain, Algeria and elsewhere in the Middle East.

While data suggests that Bahrain is restricting the Internet in response to unrest in the same way Egypt did, Arbor Network’s Internet traffic data shows nothing out of the ordinary in Algeria’s Internet traffic (at least between February 10 and 13).

Internet Censorship in Bahrain.

Internet Censorship in Bahrain

In Case Your School Isn’t Zero-Intolerant Enough

In Human Rights, Society on February 23, 2011 at 2:27 am

Brazilian Federal Highway Police at work.

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By now, we’re almost numbed to stories likethis one, in which an 11-year-old boy who was told by his therapist to draw pictures instead of act up when he was upset ended up being hauled off to the principal’s office after drawing some stick figure violence and the phrase “teacher must die.” But what gives this Drudge-bait a little extra oomph is that when the school proved to be insufficiently hardass about the incident, the cops came in.

The school was aware that the boy was in treatment, determined he was not a threat, notified his parents and sent him back to class. His mother, “Jane” was shocked when Arvada Police showed up at their home later that night.

She says she told her son to cooperate and tell the truth, but was horrified when they told her they were arresting him and then handcuffed him and hauled him away in a patrol car. His mother says she begged police to let her drive her son to the police department and to let her stay with him through the booking process but they refused.

They put him in a cell, took his mug shot and fingerprinted him. He says he thought he was going to jail and would never be able to go home again. […]

At first school officials did not want to press charges, but changed their mind when police called them later that night. A juvenile assessment report shows he’s never been in legal trouble before and is at low risk to reoffend. […]


[H]is parents say it has cost them thousands of dollars so far.

Sometimes I try to re-imagine the routine hijinks of my Carter-Reagan adolescence through the lens of modern-day tolerance and law enforcement…nope, can’t do it.

Reason on school zero-tolerance policies here.

Global police moves against ‘hacktivists’

In Activism, Hacktivist, Human Rights, Society, World News on February 22, 2011 at 4:55 am

U.S. Navy Lt. j.g. Jason S. Hall (right) watch...

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An online “hacktivist” group that brought down the websites of perceived opponents of WikiLeaks has itself become the target of an international police crackdown.

The London Metropolitan Police arrested five men in connection with a recent spate of attacks by Anonymous, behind last month’s revenge assault on the websites of a number of organisations that had severed links with WikiLeaks.

In the US, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said it executed “more than 40” search warrants on Thursday to gather evidence likely to lead to arrests.

The FBI said it was working on the case along with the UK, “authorities in the Netherlands, Germany and France”. Spokeswoman Jenny Shearer said no US arrests had been made by late afternoon on Thursday. “Evidence is being gathered and the investigation is ongoing”, she said. “These things do take time”.

The Met’s e-Crime unit said five men aged between 15 and 26 were being held following a swoop on residential addresses in the West Midlands, Northamptonshire, Hertfordshire, Surrey and London on Thursday morning in the UK in relation to offences under the Computer Misuse Act 1990.

The maximum penalty under the UK act is 10 years imprisonment and a £5,000 fine. The FBI said those convicted in the US also could face 10-year sentences.

Anonymous, a disparate group of online activists that has previously carried out campaigns against the Church of Scientology and the record industry, claimed last month’s attacks on companies including MasterCard and PayPal were a response to attempts to hinder WikiLeaks’ freedom of speech campaign.

The internet activists used a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, overloading the targeted websites by bombarding them with requests. “Facilitating or conducting a DDoS attack is illegal”, the FBI said. “The victims included major US companies across several industries”.

An FBI spokeswoman told the FT that the US warrants were under seal. Since the attack software distributed by Anonymous members does not disguise the internet addresses of those participating in the electronic assaults, former law enforcement officers have predicted that traffic logs from the companies affected would lead to internet service providers – the likely recipients of at least some of Thursday’s search warrants – and then in short order to the attackers themselves.

In response to the UK arrests, Anonymous issued an open letter to the government via Twitter, the messaging site, explaining that it saw DDoS attacks as the modern digital equivalent of a sit-in demonstration, rather than a criminal action.

“Just as is the case with traditional forms of protest, we block access to our opponents infrastructure to get our message across,” the letter said. “It is clear then, that arresting somebody for taking part in a DDoS attack is exactly like arresting somebody for attending a peaceful demonstration in their hometown.”

The letter accused the arrests of being “politically motivated, and were being carried out under pressure from the US government”, adding that the potential punishments were disproportionate.

Activity in Anonymous chat rooms has been subdued recently. Activists have been fretting about a rumoured international “swoop” by the authorities since mid-December. Dutch police arrested two teenagers last month in connection with the DDoS attacks.

“Most of us have been laying low for a good while now. People were getting arrested and our VPN [virtual private network] got taken down by the feds [police],” one Anon told the FT on Wednesday.

He said that recent arrests had exposed a weakness in the group’s shroud of anonymity. “They logged our IRC [internet relay chat] servers … stupid people. So the feds know about every one of us.”

One of the Dutch people arrested has been released but the other remains in “deep trouble”, the Anon said.

French police launched an investigation in the immediate aftermath of the cyberattack by Anonymous. In December they detained a 15-year-old on suspicion of participating in the hacking, holding her for several hours of questioning, according to a report on the website of Le Parisien newspaper. The girl was later released, but an inquiry is underway to determine her exact involvement, the paper says.

The WikiLeaks website and its controversial founder, Julian Assange, are immersed in a political storm following the leak highly sensitive US government cables.

Earlier this month, it emerged that Twitter had been asked to hand over documents to the US government including internet addresses and phone numbers of Mr Assange and WikiLeaks supporters in multiple countries.

Many lawyers say the US government faces stiff obstacles in its bid to build a case for the extradition of Mr Assange. The Pentagon describes as “premature” reports that the US government had failed to establish a link between Mr Assange and Bradley Manning, a former US intelligence official, facing charges of leaking classified information.

But establishing conspiracy charges against the two, or prosecuting Mr Assange on other grounds, could prove especially demanding.

Meanwhile, Mr Assange will appear in court next month to decide whether he should be extradited to Sweden in connection with alleged sex crimes.

Undeterred by the furore surrounding WikiLeaks, the group’s former spokesman this week launched his own whistleblowing website. Daniel Domscheit-Berg’s OpenLeaks website bills itself as “a non-profit community and service provider for whistleblowers and organisations, media, and individuals who engage in promoting transparency. It makes leaking at a local, grassroot level possible and allows for certain scalability.”

Read @FT.com

Libya protests spread and intensify quickly

In Activism, Human Rights, Libya, Society, World News on February 22, 2011 at 4:32 am

Scores of people have been reported killed in continuing violence in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, amid escalating protests against Muammar Gaddafi‘s 40-year rule across the north African nation.


Deep cracks were showing and Gaddafi seemed to be losing vital support, as Libyan government officials at home and abroad resigned, air force pilots defected and major government buildings were targeted during clashes in the capital.

At least 61 people were killed in Tripoli on Monday, witnesses told Al Jazeera. The protests appeared to be gathering momentum, with demonstrators saying they had taken control of several important towns and the city of Benghazi, to the east of Tripoli.

Protesters called on Monday for another night of defiance against Gaddafi, despite a harsh security crackdown by his government.

A huge anti-government march in Tripoli on Monday afternoon came under attack by security forces using fighter jets and live ammunition, witnesses told Al Jazeera.

Libyan authorities have cut all landline and wireless communication in the country, making it impossible to verify the report.


As violence flared, the Reuters news agency quoted William Hague, the British foreign secretary, as saying he had seen some information to suggest that Gaddafi had fled Libya and was on his way to Venezuela.

But Al Jazeera’s Dima Khatib, reporting from the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, said government officials there denied that Gaddafi was on his way to the South American country.

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The Libyan deputy foreign minister also denied that Gaddafi had fled the country.

With reports of large-scale military operations under way in Tripoli, a spokesperson for Ban Ki-moon said the UN chief held extensive discussions with Gaddafi on Monday, condemned the escalating violence in Libya and told him that it “must stop immediately”.

”]Protests against Gaddafi's rule have prompted harsh reprisals in several cities

” … The secretary-general underlined the need to ensure the protection of the civilian population under any circumstances. He urged all parties to exercise restraint and called upon the authorities to engage in broad-based dialogue to address legitimate concerns of the population,” Ban’s spokesperson said.

For this part, several Libyan diplomats at the country’s UN mission called on Gaddafi to step down.

Ibrahim Dabbashi, the deputy ambassador, said that if Gaddafi did not relinquish power, “the Libyan people [would] get rid of him”.

“We don’t agree with anything the regime is doing … we are here to serve the Libyan people,” he told Al Jazeera.


Dabbashi urged the international community to impose a no-fly zone over Libya to prevent mercenaries, weapons and other supplies from reaching Gaddafi and his security forces.

He said the Libyan diplomats were urging the International Criminal Court, the Netherlands-based body, to investigate possible crimes against humanity in the Libyan context.

Arab League to meet

Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr Al-Thani, Qatar’s prime minister and foreign minister, called for an extraordinary meeting of the Arab League to take place on Tuesday. The aim is to discuss the current crisis in Libya and to put additional “pressure” on the government, he told Al Jazeera.


Talking to Al Jazeera, Libya’s deputy ambassador to the UN Ibrahim Dabbashi condemns Gaddafi’s regime

Hamad bin Jassim said the international community must act now. “I feel a big sympathy for the Libyan people. We don’t accept using force in this way or any way against the people or against any nation from their governments,” he said.

“And we make our declaration in this space and we think that the international community should also take a stand against what is happening in Libya at the moment.”

“I think the [UN] Security Council has to play a role. The condemnation is not enough … I think the five permanent members and others, they should take the responsibility and do something to help the civillian people in Libya, because what is happening is not acceptable in any way.”

Earlier in on Monday, Ahmed Elgazir, a human-rights researcher at the Libyan News Centre (LNC) in Geneva, Switzerland, told Al Jazeera that security forces were “massacring” protesters in Tripoli.

Elgazir said the LNC received a call for help from a woman “witnessing the massacre in progress who called on a satellite phone”.

Libya Protests: Gadhafi Weakens As Protests Escalates.

In Activism, Human Rights, Libya, Society, World News on February 22, 2011 at 4:17 am

The old medina in Central Tripoli; There are 2...

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CAIRO — Deep cracks open up in Moammar Gadhafi‘s regime after more than 40 years in power, with diplomats abroad and the justice minister at home resigning, air force pilots defecting and a fire raging at the main government hall after clashes in the capital Tripoli. Protesters called for another night of defiance in Tripoli’s main square despite the government’s heavy crackdown.

Gadhafi’s regime appeared to be preparing a new major assault in the capital Monday night in an attempt to crush unrest that has already swept the eastern parts of the country – leaving Libya‘s second largest city in protesters’ control – and was now overwhelming the capital of 2 million people.

State TV at nightfall Monday announced that the military had “stormed the hideouts of saboteurs” and called on the public to back the security forces as protesters called for a new demonstration in central Green Square and in front of Gadhafi’s Tripoli residence.

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Military warplanes were seen swooping low over the city in the evening, and snipers had taken position on the roofs of buildings around Tripoli, apparently to stop people from outside the capital from joining the march, according to Mohammed Abdul-Malek, a London-based opposition activist in touch with residents.

Communications into the capital appeared to have been cut, and mobile phones of residents could not be reached from outside the country. State TV showed images of hundreds of Gadhafi supporters rallying in centralGreen Square Monday evening, waving pictures of the Libyan leader and palm fronds.

The eruption of turmoil in the capital after six days of protests and bloody clashes in Libya’s eastern cities sharply escalates the challenge to Gadhafi, the Arab world’s longest ruling leader. His security forces have unleashed the bloodiest crackdown of any Arab country against the wave of protests sweeping the region, which toppled the leaders of Egypt and Tunisia. At least 233 people have been killed so far, according to New York-based Human Rights Watch.

The chaos in Libya, an OPEC country that is a significant oil supplier to Europe, was raising international alarm. Oil prices jumped $1.67 to nearly $88 a barrel Monday amid investor concern. European nations were eying an evacuation of their citizens.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, visiting neighboring Egypt, called the Libyan government‘s crackdown “appalling.”

“The regime is using the most vicious forms of repression against people who want to see that country – which is one of the most closed and one of the most autocratic – make progress,” he told reporters in Cairo.

The heaviest fighting so far has been in the east. In Libya’s second largest city, Benghazi, security forces opened fire on Sunday on protesters storming police stations and government buildings. But in several instances, units of the military turned against them and sided with protesters.

By Monday, protesters had claimed control of the city, overrunning its main security headquarters, called the Katiba.

Celebrating protesters raised the flag of the country’s old monarchy, toppled in 1969 by a Gadhafi-led military coup, over Benghazi’s main courthouse and on tanks around the city.

“Gadhafi needs one more push and he is gone,” said Amal Roqaqie, a lawyer at the Benghazi court, saying protesters are “imposing a new reality … Tripoli will be our capital. We are imposing a new order and new state, a civil constitutional and with transitional government.”


Gadhafi’s son, Seif al-Islam, went on state TV in the early hours Monday with a sometimes confused speech of nearly 40 minutes, vowing to fight and warning that if protests continue, a civil war will erupt in which Libya’s oil wealth “will be burned.”

“Moammar Gadhafi, our leader, is leading the battle in Tripoli, and we are with him,” he said. “The armed forces are with him. Tens of thousands are heading here to be with him. We will fight until the last man, the last woman, the last bullet.” he said.

He also promised “historic” reforms in Libya if protests stop, and on Monday state TV said he had formed a commission to investigate deaths during the unrest. Protesters ignored the vague gestures. Even as he spoke, the first clashes between protesters and security forces in the heart of Tripoli were still raging, lasting until dawn.

During the day Monday, a fire raged at the People’s Hall, the main hall for government gatherings where the country’s equivalent of a parliament holds its sessions several times a year, the pro-government news web site Qureyna said.

It also reported the first major sign of discontent in Gadhafi’s government, saying justice minister Mustafa Abdel-Jalil resigned from his post to protest the “excessive use of force against unarmed protesters.”

Libya’s U.N. ambassadors called for Gadhafi to step down, and there were reports of a string of ambassadors abroad defecting. Libya’s former ambassador to the Arab League in Cairo, Abdel-Moneim al-Houni, who a day earlier resigned from his post to side with protesters, issued a statement demanding Gadhafi and his commanders and aides be put on trial for “the mass killings in Libya.”

“Gadhafi’s regime is now in the trash of history because he betrayed his nation and his people,” al-Houni said.

A Libyan diplomat in China, Hussein el-Sadek el-Mesrati, told Al-Jazeera, “I resigned from representing the government of Mussolini and Hitler.”

Two Mirage warplanes from the Libyan airforce fled a Tripoli air base and landed on the nearby island of Malta, and their pilots – two colonels – asked for political asylum, Maltese military officials said.


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