Clinton Tells Qaddafi "Surrender Now"; More Protests in Yemen, Bahrain, Oman

Libyan rebels now hold about 80% of the country. France is sending an airlift of medical supplies, including doctors and nurses to aid the rebels. Think anything else might be in those planes?

Regardless, Qaddafi is holed up in Tripoli with options growing smaller by the day. The only country that might take him is Venezuela. Why anyone would take him is beyond me.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has stepped up the rhetoric as International Pressure on Qaddafi Intensifies.

An international campaign to force Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi out of office gathered pace on Monday as the European Union adopted an arms embargo and other sanctions, as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton bluntly told the Libyan leader to surrender power “now, without further violence or delay.”

Germany proposed a 60-day ban on financial transactions, and a spokeswoman for Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said that contacts were being established with the opposition.

Italy’s foreign minister on Sunday suspended a nonaggression treaty with Libya on the grounds that the Libyan state “no longer exists,” while Mrs. Clinton said the United States was reaching out to the rebels to “offer any kind of assistance.”

France said it was sending medical aid. Prime Minister François Fillon said planes loaded with doctors, nurses and supplies were heading to the rebel-controlled eastern city of Benghazi, calling the airlift “the beginning of a massive operation of humanitarian support for the populations of liberated territories.”

Across the region, the tumult that has been threatening one autocratic government after another since the turn of the year continued unabated. In Yemen, protests drove President Ali Abdullah Saleh to make a bid for a unity government, but the political opposition rapidly refused. An opposition leader, Mohamed al-Sabry, said in a statement that the president’s proposal was a “desperate attempt” to counter major protests planned for Tuesday.

In Bahrain, protesters blocked access to Parliament, according to news agencies. In Oman, whose first major protests were reported over the weekend, demonstrations turned violent in the port city of Sohar, and spread for the first time to the capital, Muscat.

Third Night of Protests in Oman

Bloomberg reports Youth Protests Enter Third Night as Sultan Promises to Create Jobs

Hundreds of Omani protesters gathered in the city of Sohar for a third night, demanding that the government open talks on their demands for more jobs, higher pay and more representative political institutions.

Khaled Maqbuli, a leader of the protest, called on the demonstrators at a roundabout in the center of Sohar, north of the capital, Muscat, to stay peaceful and avoid confrontation with the army and the police. Two people were killed, several wounded and a supermarket set on fire over the past two days.

“We are peaceful, we have demands, we are not saboteurs,” Maqbuli, 26, said through a loudspeaker. “We want the government to send civilian people to discuss our demands; we have nothing to say to the military.”

Sultan Qaboos Bin Said, the country’s ruler since 1970, “has received the demands of the citizens in all the provinces and is giving them his attention,” state television reported.

If governments could easily create jobs they would. Look no further than the US for proof. Only private enterprise can create jobs, at least lasting ones.

Governments can only take wealth from one place and distribute it elsewhere, by taxation, by force, or by the hidden tax of inflation that comes from printing money. When the stimulus ends, so do the jobs, except the bureaucratic ones, where massive pension problems and needless bureaucrats remain.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
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