Monday, February 21, 2011
Qaddafi’s Forces S
Neither side budging
Neither side budging in Wisconsin union fight - Yahoo! News
MADISON, Wis. – No resolution appeared imminent Monday to the stalemate over union rights in Wisconsin, leaving Senate Republicans resigned to forge ahead with less-controversial business such as tax breaks for dairy farmers and commending the Green Bay Packers on winning the Super Bowl.
As the standoff entered its second week, none of the major players offered any signs of backing down in a high-stakes game of political chicken that has riveted the nation and led to ongoing public protests that drew a high of 68,000 people on Saturday. Thousands more braved cold winds and temperatures in the 20s to march again on Monday, waving signs that said "Stop the attack on Wisconsin families" and "solidarity."
The 14 Senate Democrats who skipped town Thursday to indefinitely delay a vote on Republican Gov. Scott Walker's bill stripping most collective bargaining rights from nearly all public employees remained missing in action for a fifth day.
Walker refused to back down and again called on the Democrats to return and vote on the bill
"For those 14 Senate Democrats, you've had your time," he said. "It's time for them to come back and participate in democracy."
The Democrats have been far from in hiding. They've done numerous television interviews and two of them even participated, via telephone from an undisclosed location, in a brief meeting to schedule the Senate's session on Tuesday.
"You have shut down the people's government, and that is not acceptable," Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald said to them during the meeting.
Both the Senate and Assembly planned to be in session on Tuesday to take up the bill, but at least one of the missing Democrats needed to show up for a vote to be taken in the Senate. Assembly Democrats planned to offer dozens of amendments that could push a vote into Wednesday or later.
Although Tuesday's list of items, including the resolution honoring the Packers, is largely bipartisan, Fitzgerald hinted that he might try to push some more controversial ones later, even if the Democrats aren't back. Among the possibilities is a vote on the question of whether voters should be required to show identification at the polls.
Democratic Senate Minority Leader Mark Miller said Democrats were waiting for Walker to compromise.
"It's right in front of the governor," Miller said. "He just needs to pick it up and allow us to move on. ... This is a no-brainer."
Under one deal, the unions said they would accept paying more for benefits as Walker wants but still retain their collective bargaining rights. Another compromise offered by Republican Sen. Dale Schultz would remove collective bargaining rights just for two years.
Walker has repeatedly rejected both offers, saying local governments and school districts can't be hamstrung by the often lengthy collective bargaining process and need to have more flexibility to deal with up to $1 billion in cuts he will propose in his budget next week and into the future.
As he spoke under heavy guard at a late afternoon news conference inside his conference room, thousands of protesters could be heard through the doors blowing whistles, banging on drums and chanting "Scott Walker has got to go!"
"This guy is power drunk and we're here to sober him up," said Bert Zipperer, 54, a counselor at a Madison middle school who was among the protesters. "He wants to do it unilaterally without any compromise. He wants to be a national conservative hero and he thinks he can get away with this."
The emergency plan Walker wants the Legislature to pass would address this year's $137 million shortfall and start dealing with the $3.6 billion hole expected by mid-2013. The benefits concessions would amount to $30 million this year, but the largest savings Walker proposed comes from refinancing debt to save $165 million.
That portion must be done by Friday for bonds to be refinanced in time to realize the savings by June 30, the end of this fiscal year.
Walker said not passing the bill by Friday would make even deeper cuts necessary and possibly result in laying off 1,500 workers over the next four months.
Thousands of those affected and their supporters marched on the Capitol for a seventh straight day. Hundreds of them have been sleeping in the rotunda every night and several districts have had to close after so many teachers called in sick. The Madison School District was closed Wednesday through Monday but was expected to reopen Tuesday.
Districts in central Wisconsin were also closed Monday, but that was because of 10 to 12 inches of snow. Milwaukee schools were shut down for a pre-scheduled midsemester break. Those closures, on top of Monday being a previously scheduled furlough day for state workers, resulted in another large crowd Monday but an official estimate was not yet released.
At noon, guitarist Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine took to a stage on the Capitol steps to fire up the crowd. He said he flew in from California to lend his voice to the protest.
"The future of workers' rights will be decided in Madison, Wisconsin," he said. "You're making history here."
He joked that he could hardly play the guitar because his fingers were numb. He sang a song with the refrain, "For the union men and women standing up and standing strong!" Each time he repeated that lyric, the crowd roared.
Walker's plan would allow unions representing most public employees to negotiate only for wage increases, not benefits or working conditions. Any wage increase above the Consumer Price Index would have to be approved in a referendum. Unions would face a vote of membership every year to stay formed, and workers could opt out of paying dues.
The plan would also require many public employees to cut their take home pay by about 8 percent by contributing more of their salaries toward their health insurance and retirement benefits, concessions the unions have said they're willing to accept.
But Walker and Republicans are showing no willingness to budge while the Senate Democrats say they are prepared to stay away for weeks if that's what it will take.
___
Associated Press writer Ryan J. Foley contributed to this report.
Qaddafi’s Forces Strike With Fury as Unrest Grows
By Monday night, witnesses said, the streets of Tripoli were thick with special forces loyal to Colonel Qaddafi as well as mercenaries. Roving the streets in trucks, they shot freely as planes dropped what witnesses described as “small bombs” and helicopters fired on protesters.
Hundreds of Qaddafi supporters took over the central Green Square in the capital after truckloads of militiamen arrived and opened fire on protesters, scattering them. Residents said they now feared even emerging from their houses.
“It was an obscene amount of gunfire,” said one witness. “They were strafing these people. People were running in every direction.”
The police stood by and watched, the witness said, as the militiamen, still shooting, chased after the protesters. The death toll could not be determined.
The escalation of the conflict came after six days of revolt that began in Libya’s second-largest city, Benghazi, where hundreds of people were killed in clashes with security forces, according to witnesses. Human rights activists outside the country said they had confirmed more than 220 deaths. The rebellion is the latest and bloodiest so far of the uprisings that have swept across the Arab world with surprising speed in recent weeks, toppling autocrats in Egypt and Tunisia, and challenging others in Bahrain and Yemen.
The day had begun with growing signs that Colonel Qaddafi’s grip on power might be slipping, with protesters in control of Libya’s second-largest city, his security forces pulled back to key locations in the capital as government buildings smoldered, and a growing number of officials and military personnel defecting to join the revolt.
But the violence Colonel Qaddafi unleashed Monday afternoon on Tripoli demonstrated that he was willing to shed far more blood than the deposed rulers of either neighboring Egypt or Tunisia in his effort to hold on to power.
Two residents said planes had been landing for 10 days ferrying mercenaries from African countries to an air base in Tripoli. The mercenaries had done much of the shooting, which began Sunday night, they said. Some forces were using particularly lethal, hollow-point bullets, they said.
“The shooting is not designed to disperse the protesters,” said one resident, who wanted to be identified only as Waleed, fearing for his security. “It is meant to kill them.”
“This is not Ben Ali or Mubarak,” he added, referring to the deposed leaders of Tunisia and Egypt. “This man has no sense of humanity.”
Colonel Qaddafi, for his part, remained largely out of sight. Around 2 a.m. on Tuesday, after a rainy day, he appeared on state television for about 30 seconds, holding an umbrella up through the open door of a passenger car. He denied rumors that he had fled to Venezuela and called the cable news channels covering Libya “dogs.”
As rioters overwhelmed the streets around 1 a.m. on Monday, Colonel Qaddafi’s son, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, delivered a rambling but bellicose speech threatening Libyans with the prospect of civil war and “rivers of blood” if they turned away from his father.
Apparently enraged by the speech, protesters converged on Green Square soon after and clashed with heavily armed riot police officers for several hours, witnesses in Tripoli said by telephone.
By dawn in Tripoli, police stations and government buildings — including the Hall of the People, where the legislature meets — were in flames. Debris fires from the rioting the night before burned at many intersections.
Most stores and schools were closed, and long lines were forming for a chance to buy bread or gas. Protesters had torn down or burned the posters of Colonel Qaddafi that were once ubiquitous in the capital, witnesses said.
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Reporting was contributed by Sharon Otterman, Neil MacFarquhar and Kareem Fahim from Cairo; Nada Bakri from Beirut, Lebanon; and Colin Moynihan from New York.
FT.com / Brussels - Italians fear African migration surge
Italians fear African migration surge
By Stanley Pignal in Brussels and Giulia Segreti in Rome
Published: February 21 2011 23:23 | Last updated: February 21 2011 23:23
Fears of a possible surge of north African immigrants undermined European efforts to craft a joint response to Libya’s bloody crackdown against anti-government protesters.
In the wake of the bloodshed in Tripoli, EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels condemned the violence and called for restraint on all sides, as they considered the repercussions of the wave of fallen and tottering regimes in the region.
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But Italy, which has in recent years seen a huge influx of illegal immigrants arrive from Libya, sounded a more conciliatory tone, worried that the departure of the Gaddafi regime could result in more migrants.
Franco Frattini, foreign minister, warned of the dangers of Libya becoming an “Islamic Arab Emirate at the border of Europe”, as he reiterated calls for a closer partnership with north Africa, which would provide European trade and investment in exchange for political reform.
The division followed last week’s threat by Libya to stop co-operation on migration matters if the EU encouraged protesters. The warning was dismissed as “state blackmail” by France and Germany.
Fears of a surge in illegal immigrants are most acute in Italy. Lampedusa island near Sicily has received nearly 6,000 migrants from Tunisia since the regime there collapsed last month.
Officials fear the numbers could swell if anarchy grips Libya.
Under the terms of a secretive 2009 deal between Rome and Tripoli, the Libyan authorities have co-operated in intercepting boats seeking to cross to Europe, also taking back migrants caught by Italian coastguards without assessing their claims to asylum under international law.
The agreement, which has been severely criticised by the Vatican and human rights organisations, has proved effective. Immigrants landing at Lampedusa have decreased by 98 per cent, from 37,000 in 2009 to 400 in 2010.
At Rome’s request, the European Commission on Sunday started co-ordinating a taskforce of border specialists to help patrol around Lampedusa.
Silvio Berlusconi, Italian prime minister, will hold a special cabinet meeting on Thursday to discuss the issue of illegal immigration from North Africa.
During his last visit in Rome last August, Mr Gaddafi urged the EU to give $7bn a year to curb the flow of African migrants.
Under the accord, Italy pledged to pay $7bn over 20 years as reparations for its colonial rule from 1911 to 1943.
In return, Libya not only granted the immigration deal, but also gave Italian companies priority in infrastructure projects.
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Libya Violence Escalates as Qaddafi's Son Vows `Rivers of Blood' - Bloomberg
Muammar Qaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam. Source: AFP/Getty Images
Libya erupted into violence last night after Muammar Qaddafi’s son threatened “rivers of blood” and deployed security forces on protesters, some of whom claimed control of the second-biggest city, Benghazi.
At least 250 people died in Tripoli alone, al-Jazeera reported, citing witnesses. Troops attacked “terror” hideouts and urged citizens to fight back the “organized gangs that are destroying Libya,” state television said. Amid the violence were signs that some officials and troops were deserting.
Oil surged to the highest in more than two years. Libya, holder of Africa’s largest oil reserves, is the latest country in the region to be rocked by protests ignited by last month’s ouster of Tunisia’s president and energized by the Feb. 11 fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Violence has flared in Yemen, Djibouti, Iran and Bahrain as governments cracked down on demands for change.
“This is not a regime that will compromise,” said Dirk J. Vandewalle, author of “A History of Modern Libya” and an associate professor of government at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. “Whichever way this goes, we can expect a good amount of chaos and bloodshed.”
Diplomats in several cities were reported to have abandoned the Qaddafi regime to protest against the violence. Two Libyan warplanes crossed to Malta and requested asylum after refusing to bomb protesters, according to al-Jazeera.
‘Genocide’
“We find it impossible to stay silent,” Libya’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Ibrahim Dabbashi, told reporters. “The Libyan mission will be in the service of the Libyan people rather than in the service of the regime.” He accused the regime of “genocide.”
Brent crude for April settlement adding as much as 2.5 percent to $105.08 a barrel. It traded at $104.87 at 5:08 p.m. in London yesterday. Persian Gulf shares extended declines, with Dubai’s benchmark index dropping to a six-month low.
“This is much, much worse chaos than we saw in Egypt or Tunisia,” said Daniel Byman, director of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University in Washington. “They’re in a civil war, at least a low-level one, right now. The question to me is, does the regime capitulate or does the civil war intensify.”
Arab League Meeting
The Arab League will meet today to discuss the turmoil in Libya, al-Jazeera said. The broadcaster televised pictures of what it said were corpses of Libyan civilians killed in the clashes, some charred and with bullet wounds.
“Instead of weeping over 84 dead people, we will weep over hundreds of thousands of dead,” said Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, the son of the Libyan leader. “Rivers of blood will flow.”
He said the army will “impose security and get things back to normal, whatever the price,” and warned that the conflict may drive oil companies away. Several international companies in Libya announced evacuations or halted operations. Royal Dutch Shell Plc said it evacuated the families of personnel in Libya, and Norway’s Statoil ASA closed its offices and said it is evacuating expatriate workers.
Shares in Italy’s Eni SpA, which produced 244,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day in Libya in 2009, fell 5 percent at 4:50 p.m. in Milan.
“Libya has oil,” Qaddafi’s son said. “This oil will be burnt. Thugs, criminals, gangs and tribes will burn it.”
Vulnerable Regime
Protesters said they had taken over Benghazi, the Associated Press said, citing witnesses. The International Federation for Human Rights said more than 300 people have been killed in the past week.
The Quryna newspaper, based in Benghazi, reported that the country’s top judicial official, Mustafa Abduljelil, resigned to protest the violence. Libya’s representative to the Arab League quit his post and sided with the protesters, Egypt’s state-run Middle East News Agency reported yesterday. Libya’s ambassadors in China, India, the U.K., Indonesia, Bangladesh, Poland and the Arab League also resigned, al-Jazeera said.
“The regime is exceptionally vulnerable right now,” Byman said. “You’ve seen defections among the elite. That’s a good sign the regime has problems.”
Thousands of people demonstrating yesterday in Benghazi were met by gunfire from forces loyal to the regime, New York- based Human Rights Watch said, citing reports from witnesses.
‘An Obstinate Place’
“Benghazi is always known for resisting tyranny and diktats, it’s an obstinate place,” said Faraj Najem, a historian and author of “Tribes, Islam and State in Libya.”
The leader of the opposition Front for the Salvation of Libya, Ibrahim Sahad, told ABC television that some army units in Benghazi had defected to join the protesters and were helping to protect them.
“The world is watching the situation in Libya with alarm,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said last night. “Now is the time to stop this unacceptable bloodshed.”
U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron denounced the violence as “appalling and unacceptable” while in Egypt yesterday, where he was the first Western leader to visit since Mubarak’s fall.
Protesters across the region have focused on the same blend of economic ills, political repression and unelected rulers in power for decades.
In Yemen, the poorest country on the Arabian peninsula, President Ali Abdullah Saleh held a press conference in the capital, Sana’a, to rule out meeting the demands of protesters seeking an end to his more than 30 years in office. People took to the streets for an 11th day as Saleh said their calls for regime change are “not logical.”
Regional Turmoil
Thousands gathered outside Sana’a University and in the southern provinces of Aden and Taiz, while followers of the Shiite Houthi rebel group joined in the protests by holding a demonstration in the northern Saada province, according to activists in Sana’a. At least five people have been killed.
In Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, opposition groups are drawing up demands and discussing the government’s call for dialogue, said Ebrahim Sharif, head of the National Democratic Action Society. Protests have been led by the Shiite Muslim majority, which says it is discriminated against by Sunni rulers.
Thousands of mainly Shiite demonstrators are camped in the central Pearl Roundabout in the capital, Manama, after tanks, armored personnel carriers and riot police withdrew on the orders of Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa.
Analysts including the Eurasia Group, a New York-based company that assesses political risk, have warned of the risk of unrest spreading to Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter.
Saudi Arabia neighbors Bahrain and has a Shiite minority population in the east, where most of its oil is produced. It was the lowest-ranked Middle Eastern country in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2010 Democracy Index, which classified all Gulf nations as authoritarian regimes.
Swap contracts for Saudi Arabia, used as a measure of confidence although the country has no debt to insure, rose basis points to 144 yesterday and have almost doubled since the end of January, according to CMA prices. Saudi Arabia’s Tadawul stock index fell for a seventh day, dropping 0.6 percent. The Bloomberg GCC 200 Index of Gulf stocks fell 0.4 percent to a four-month low.
“Perception of risk is only increasing,” said Alia Moubayed, senior economist at London-based Barclays Capital. “Investors will not take any sort of half solutions to be enough for calming their sense of risk aversion.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Mariam Fam in Cairo at mfam1@bloomberg.net; Kevin Costelloe at kcostelloe@bloomberg.net; Massoud A Derhally in Beirut, Lebanon at mderhally@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at barden@bloomberg.
China: Not Quite a R
China: Not Quite a Revolution - James Fallows - International - The Atlantic
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Feb 21 2011, 3:15 PM ET By James Fallows
By Jeremiah JenneFirst of all I want to thank Jim for giving me this opportunity. My usual audience consists of two classes of Chinese history students per semester and a handful of loyal readers who follow my blog, Jottings from the Granite Studio.
There has been a lot written in the past 24 hours about China's still-born "Jasmine Revolution," and I agree with those commentators who feel the chances of an Egypt-style revolution are very remote -- at least in the short term.
First of all, while many in China are griping about inflation, rising food prices, and the great difficulties in finding affordable housing in China's booming cities, there is a general sense -- especially those in urban areas -- that life is steadily improving.
That's not to say there are not conflicts and contradictions in Chinese society. Each year there are thousands of cases of unrest, local demonstrations, and violent clashes between the disaffected and those felt to have benefited unfairly from the system or against the system itself. But despite all the sparks, the tinder never catches, and the reason is that China's leaders have learned from history.
On May 4, 1919 students protesting the cession of Shandong Province to Japan as part of the Treaty of Versailles took to the streets of Beijing. They were soon joined by workers, journalists, merchants, and the common people of the city...and then the movement spread to Tianjin, to Shanghai, and to Guangzhou. The government wobbled and eventually collapsed in the face of massive popular opposition and unrest.
Seventy years later, a similar scene played out before the eyes of the world. The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 may have begun as a student movement, but soon other groups linked their own grievances with those expressed by the student protesters and before long the streets were flooded with ordinary Beijing citizens who felt the need to express their solidarity with the demonstrators in Tiananmen Square.
In both cases, what started as a single group airing their specific problems developed into something much larger as the movement spread to other classes and to other parts of the country.
The CCP knows that they could never hope to suppress every single act of defiance in a country as large and diverse as China, so they have instead chosen to invest time, money, and energy in preventing these acts from linking together, either vertically across class lines or horizontally across geographic space. Chinese government Internet controls (the Net Nanny) are aimed less at clumsily blocking information than at disrupting the kind of online sites or platforms through which disparate groups of people can come together to organize and plan.
The Party also goes to great lengths -- sometimes in the form of staggering overreaction -- to stymie the emergence of any group or ideology that could present itself as an alternative to the CCP. This lack of an organized opposition allows the Party to present a false dichotomy to China's people, a dichotomy best described three centuries ago by Louis XV of France as: Après moi, le deluge.
In short: Stick with us, because without us there will be only chaos.
After the celebrations in October 2009 marking the 60th Anniversary of the founding of the PRC, I wrote a short post about why this false dichotomy worked so well for the CCP:
In Western Europe and North American our dystopian nightmares, those of science fiction and political thrillers, as well as in our history books, involve tyrants who acquired too much power and used that power to brutalize people.
From the Chinese perspective, in particular as written in the history textbooks used in PRC schools today, the greatest horrors have not come at the hands of the all-powerful state, but in times when the state was too weak to defend itself and the people: the depredations of the European imperialist powers in the 19th century at the expense of a rapidly weakening Qing Empire and the starvation and disasters of the warlord period in the early 20th century. Even under a period of relative prosperity in the 1930s, Chiang Kai-shek's control never extended much past a few central provinces in the Yangzi region. Locked in struggle with the CCP, the Nanjing government lacked the political will to build a new society or improve the lives of China's rural population, and soon that gargantuan task took a back seat to mere survival as the forces of both the KMT and the CCP were overrun by the Japanese onslaught.
Even if we look at the latter half of the 20th century, a period not covered quite so thoroughly in the PRC school curriculum, the personal experience of many Chinese during the Cultural Revolution serves as fresh reminder about what can happen when the central government abandons order and stability in the name of "idealism."
Whether you agree or not, the salient point is that many people in China do calculate the risk versus reward of taking on the government not only in terms of their own personal safety (because the Party still can be very brutal towards those it feels are a threat to its legitimacy) but also in terms of the larger cost of revolution and the possibility of undoing the very real gains many people in China have made over the past thirty years.
While it can be easy to sell a message of "Stick with us or face the consequences" when you have near total control over the education, information, and media environments, it is still worth noting that an awful lot of people in China, especially in Beijing, buy into this. So long as this is the case, and so long as there aren't any events or causes which mobilize popular discontent across class lines or geographic distance, the chances of a revolution -- of any flavor -- in China will remain quite remote.
Jeremiah Jenne is a PhD candidate in Chinese history, living and working in Beijing. He is the author of the blog Jottings from the Granite Studio.
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Seven Reasons Mike Huckabee Might Not Run for President -- Daily Intel
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Photo: Lior Mizrahi/Getty Images
He's the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination according to many polls, he's releasing a campaign-manifesto-type book, Simple Government, and yet Mike Huckabee, as ABC's George Stephanopoulos noted in their interview this morning, is "about the most ambivalent front-runner" you'll ever see. Stephanopoulos probably read this morning's Washington Post story, in which Huckabee seems to dwell on the downsides of another campaign for the White House.
Lacks Necessary Messianic Self-Delusions: "I'm not one who thinks the future of the world is depending on whether I run for president."
Hates the Endless Debate Schedule: "We just rehashed the same stuff, over and over. I was bored with it," Huckabee said. "It was the same tripe, and I found it just incredibly disgusting, and ultimately meaningless."
Enjoys Current Job As a TV Host/Radio Commentator: "It could be that I've found my niche," he said. "I may be doing what I need to be doing, which is very fulfilling."
Which by the Way Has Him Rolling in Cash Money:
When Huckabee and his wife, Janet, picked out the lot for the house they are building on a Florida beach, "We just looked at each other and started laughing. We thought, can you believe we can do this?" he said. "Our first apartment was $40 a month. Our closet in this house will probably be as large as that tiny little apartment."
Concerned About Fund-raising:
"One thing I'm certainly going to gauge over the next few months is, would there be a substantial financial support? We did it before on a dime to the dollar of my opponents. I think it would be difficult to do again, because there would be higher expectations. I don't plan to jump in a pool that has no water."
Uneasy About the Tea Party: "What I don't know is, does this translate into a party of such ultraorthodoxy that no one with a record of actually governing can get through the mire?"
Not Confident About Beating Obama: Obama "is going to be much tougher to beat than people in our party think."
On this last point, though, Huckabee might have misinformed himself into being overly wary. Huckabee told Stephanopoulos this morning that "only one time since 1868 has an incumbent president been taken out who ran for reelection, and that was when Jimmy Carter ran in 1980." Stephanopoulos didn't correct him, but that's clearly not accurate. In addition to the recent example of George H.W. Bush, who lost in 1992, Herbert Hoover and William Howard Taft also failed in their quests for a second term. Once Huckabee brushes up on his history, taking on an incumbent might seem a little less daunting.
Does Mike Huckabee still want to be president? [WP]
Mike Huckabee: Obama 'Tough to Beat' [ABC News]
Huckabee calls Obama tough to beat, but historical rationale falls short [Hill]By: Dan Amira Filed Under: what the huck?, 2012, mike huckabee, politics
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Gadhafi's hold on Libya weakens in protest wave - Yahoo! News
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.
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 central Green 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.
The capital Tripoli was largely shut down Monday, with schools, government offices and most stores closed, except for a few bakeries serving residents hunkered in their homes, residents said. Outside, armed members of pro-government organizations called "Revolutionary Committees" circulated in the streets hunting for protesters in Tripoli's old city, said one protester, named Fathi.
Protesters planed new marches Monday evening in the capital's main Green Square and at the leader's residence.
A similar march the night before sparked scenes of mayhem in the long heavily secured capital.
Sunday evening, protesters from various parts of the city streamed into Green Square, all but taking over the plaza and surrounding streets in the area between Tripoli's Ottoman-era old city and its Italian-style downtown. That was when the backlash began, with snipers firing down from rooftops and militiamen attacking the crowds, shooting and chasing people down side streets, according to several witnesses and protests.
Gadhafi supporters in pickup trucks and cars raced through the square, shooting automatic weapons. "They were driving like mad men searching for someone to kill. ... It was total chaos, shooting and shouting," said one 28-year-old protester.
The witnesses reported seeing casualties, but the number could not be confirmed. One witness, named Fathi, said he saw at least two he believed were dead and many more wounded. After midnight, protesters took over the main Tripoli offices of two state-run satellite stations, Al-Jamahiriya-1 and Al-Shebabiya, one witness said.
Fragmentation is a real danger in Libya, a country of deep tribal divisions and a historic rivalry between Tripoli and Benghazi. The system of rule created by Gadhafi — the "Jamahiriya," or "rule by masses" — is highly decentralized, run by "popular committees" in a complicated hierarchy that effectively means there is no real center of decisionmaking except Gadhafi, his sons and their top aides.
Seif has often been put forward as the regime's face of reform and is often cited as a likely successor to his father. Seif's younger brother Mutassim is the national security adviser, with a strong role in the military and security forces, and another brother Khamis heads the army's 32nd Brigade, which according to U.S. diplomats is the best trained and best equipped force in the military.
The revolt in Benghazi and other cities in the east illustrated the possibility of the country crumbling.
In Benghazi, cars honked their horns in celebration and protesters in the streets chanted "Long live Libya" on Monday after bloody clashes Sunday that killed at least 60 people as security forces defending besieged stations opened fire with heavy caliber machine guns and anti-aircraft guns.
Benghazi's airport was closed, according to an airport official in Cairo. A Turkish Airlines flight trying to land in Benghazi to evacuate Turkish citizens Monday was turned away, told by ground control to circle over the airport then to return to Istanbul.
There were fears of chaos as young men — including regime supporters — seized weapons from the Katiba and other captured security buildings. "The youths now have arms and that's worrying," said Iman, a doctor at the main hospital. "We are appealing to the wise men of every neighborhood to rein in the youths."
Youth volunteers were directing traffic and guarding homes and public facilities, said Najla, a lawyer and university lecturer in Benghazi. She and other residents said police had disappeared from the streets.
After seizing the Katiba, protesters found the bodies of 13 uniformed security officers inside who had been handcuffed and shot in the head, then set on fire, said Hassan, the doctor. He said protesters believed the 13 had been executed by fellow security forces for refusing to attack protesters.
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AP correspondents Sarah El Deeb and Hamza Hendawi in Cairo contributed to this report.