By Thomson
President Barack Obama raised the stakes in the third straight day of budget talks Tuesday by warning that senior citizens and veterans may suffer first if the debt ceiling is not raised by Aug. 2.
The comments came as top Republicans toughened their stance in the deficit reduction talks.

Hours before heading to the White House, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said a “real solution” to the U.S. debt problem was unlikely while Obama was in office.

As politicians sparred, U.S. business leaders pressed Obama and congressional leaders to act swiftly to raise the $14.3 trillion U.S. debt ceiling or risk derailing a sputtering economic recovery and endangering the global financial system.

Obama said in an interview with U.S. television network CBS that checks to recipients of the Social Security retirement program may not go out in early August if he and congressional leaders do not agree on a debt deal.

“I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven’t resolved this issue,” Obama said, according to excerpts of the interview released before its broadcast.

“Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it,” Obama said. He said veterans checks and disability benefits could also be affected without a deal.

Despite months of talks, Republican and Democratic leaders were still at an impasse over a deficit reduction deal that would clear the way for Congress to raise the debt ceiling.

Republicans have balked at raising the debt limit without steep spending cuts, while Democrats say new tax revenues need to be part of any deal. Republicans oppose any increase in taxes which they say would hurt the economy.

“I have little question that as long as this president is in the Oval Office a real solution is probably unattainable,” McConnell said in a hard-hitting speech on the Senate floor.

But he said Republicans would ensure the government does not default on Aug. 2, when the Treasury Department has warned it will run out of money to pay the country’s bills.

Failure to seal a deal by Aug. 2 could spook investors, causing U.S. interest rates to surge and stock prices to plummet, and could put the United States at risk of another recession, Treasury officials and private economists have warned.

Obama’s warning that senior citizens — an active voting group — could suffer first if a deal is not reached could give lawmakers a nudge ahead of 2012 elections. Seniors punished Democrats last year for including Medicare cuts in their healthcare package and then turned on Republicans in a special New York election this year over a Republican plan to overhaul the healthcare program for the elderly.

It also evoked memories of the debt limit crisis of 1996 when Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin warned he would not be able to send out Social Security pension checks the next month if the ceiling were not raised.

The Republican-controlled House immediately voted to allow the government to issue more debt to make those Social Security payments.

If the debt limit is not raised in August, the Treasury would not be able to pay about 45 percent of its bills without borrowing more money, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank.

That would force the administration to make some difficult choices. One option could be to postpone a disbursement of more than $49 billion to Social Security recipients due on Aug. 3.

A U.S. State Department official expressed outrage and pressed Iran to reverse a court decision that gives an Iranian pastor an outrageous, and suicidal, choice: Reject his Christian faith, or die
The 32-year-old pastor, Yosef Nadarkhani, was arrested in October 2009 for apostasy because he objected to the teaching of Islam to Christian children at Iranian schools. He was sentenced to death by hanging late last year, a verdict that he appealed to Iran’s Supreme Court.

Late last month, the appeal appeared to have been granted, as his lawyer indicated to a news agency on July 3. But an Iranian human rights agency now says the ruling actually imposes the recant-or-die choice, according to CNSNews.com.

A U.S. State Department official issued a statement Wednesday expressing dismay at the prospect.

“While Iran’s leaders hypocritically claim to promote tolerance, they continue to detain, imprison, harass, and abuse those who simply wish to worship the faith of their choosing,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

“We join the international community in continuing to call on the Iranian government to respect the fundamental rights of all its citizens and uphold its international commitments to protect them.”

The indictment against Nadarkhani, a father and evangelical pastor who became a Christian at age 19, accused him of organizing evangelistic meetings, sharing his faith, inviting others to convert, running a house church, and “denying Islamic values,” CNSNews reports.

After his death sentence, his appeal appeared to win a reversal of the fate of hanging.

But the victory was not as clear-cut as it seemed, and Nadarkhani now has been told that he may face new charges or the case could be returned to the original sentencing court in northern Iran’s Gilan province, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, an association that Iranian human rights advocates established in 2009.

Now, it appears that the Gilan court will “question the defendant again in order to determine whether he believes in Islam or not. If he is a Muslim, Yosef Nadarkhani must be released. If it is determined that he is a Christian, he may repent from his faith. Otherwise, if he insists on his beliefs, the death penalty must be carried out,” CNSNews quotes the agency as saying. And the advocacy group Christian Solidarity Worldwide said, that, despite reports that the death sentence had been reversed, “in reality the Supreme Court appears to have added a precondition requiring him to renounce his faith, or face execution.”

Although Nadarkhani didn’t practice any faith before he became a Christian at 19, he was born to Muslim parents and Islamic law dictates that a child of Muslim parents is considered to be a Muslim.
Although apostasy is not an offense in the Iranian penal code, CNSNews reports that Iran’s constitution includes a clause demanding that, if a basis for a judicial ruling does not exist in the law, judges must turn to “reliable Islamic sources or a valid fatwa.”

The most recent execution of a Christian in Iran for his faith took place 21 years ago, when Assemblies of God Pastor Hussein Sodmand was hanged after refusing to recant, according to CNSNews.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the weekend publicly announced the Obama Administration’s desire to reestablish ties with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.

The Brotherhood responded this week by thanking Clinton, and issuing its first demand of its new American friends: drop support for the “Zionist regime.”

In an email response quoted by Bloomberg, Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Mahmoud Ghozlan stated that if America wants solid relations with the group, it should “stop supporting the corrupt and tyrannical regimes, backing the Zionist occupation and using double standards.”

It is important to remember that when the Muslim Brotherhood speaks of the “Zionist occupation” it does not mean only the Israeli presence in Judea and Samaria, the so-called “West Bank.”

The Muslim Brotherhood sees all of Israel as a cancerous growth that must be eradicated. The group supports returning Egypt to a state of war with Israel, and wants to see the entirety of the region become an Islamic Caliphate.
Former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was assassinated by the Muslim Brotherhood for making peace with Israel.
The Muslim Brotherhood is today the most organized political force in Egypt, raising expectations that it will win control of the government when Egyptians go to the polls in September.

This is who Obama and Clinton have as new friends.

http://cookingkosher.net

There are no accidents. Obama invited the outlawed Musim Brotherhood global jihadists to his submission speech in cairo in June 2009. Those of us that reported on it were ….. deeply disturbed by this pro-jihadist stand by an American president. His subsequent contacts with the group concerned us (and this was well before their coup on the Mubarak.

Now Obama will establish formal contacts with the genocidal, racist Islamic supremacist group. Muslim Brotherhood-tied CAIR must be squealing.

The MB as an international Islamic organization dedicated to the imposition of Sharia, by violent or peaceful means, throughout the world.

“International law enforcement authorities and Western intelligence agencies discovered a twenty-year old document revealing a top-secret plan developed by the Muslim Brotherhood, the oldest Islamist organization with one of the most extensive terror networks in the world to launch a program of “cultural invasion” and eventual conquest of the West that virtually mirrors the tactics used by Islamists for more than two decades” (more here). And according to Article Two of the Hamas Charter: “The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of the Muslim Brotherhood in “Palestine” (more here). The Organization of the Islamic Conference is the brainchild of the Muslim Brotherhood. CAIR in the USA has been linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood is acting to overthrow democratic governments world wide.

This Reuters piece tries to cast the Muslim Brotherhood in a soft light – I did not include the taqiya by the Reuters reporter, Mohammed.

Exclusive: U.S. to resume formal Muslim Brotherhood contacts

By Arshad Mohammed | Reuters – 6/29/11

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States has decided to resume formal contacts with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, a senior U.S. official said on Wednesday, in a step that reflects the Islamist group’s growing political weight but that is almost certain to upset Israel and its U.S. backers.

“The political landscape in Egypt has changed, and is changing,” said the senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “It is in our interests to engage with all of the parties that are competing for parliament or the presidency.”

The official sought to portray the shift as a subtle evolution rather than a dramatic change in Washington’s stance toward the Brotherhood, a group founded in 1928 that seeks to promote its conservative vision of Islam in society.

Under the previous policy, U.S. diplomats were allowed to deal with Brotherhood members of parliament who had won seats as independents — a diplomatic fiction that allowed them to keep lines of communication open.

Where U.S. diplomats previously dealt only with group members in their role as parliamentarians, a policy the official said had been in place since 2006, they will now deal directly with low-level Brotherhood party officials.

There is no U.S. legal prohibition against dealing with the Muslim Brotherhood itself, which long ago renounced violence as a means to achieve political change in Egypt and which is not regarded by Washington as a foreign terrorist organization.

But other sympathetic groups, such as Hamas, which identifies the Brotherhood as its spiritual guide, have not disavowed violence against the state of Israel.

The result has been a dilemma for the Obama administration. Former officials and analysts said it has little choice but to engage the Brotherhood directly, given its political prominence after the February 11 downfall of former President Hosni Mubarak.

STIRRING UP DEMONS

U.S. President Barack Obama will surely face criticism for engaging with the Brotherhood, even tentatively.

Howard Kohr, executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, made clear the pro-Israel group’s deep skepticism about the group in a speech last month.

“While we all hope that Egypt emerges from its current political transition with a functioning, Western-oriented democracy, the fact is the best-organized political force in Egypt today is the Muslim Brotherhood — which does not recognize Israel,” Kohr said.

Former U.S. diplomats said the United States had to engage with the Brotherhood given its influence in Egypt.

“We cannot have a free and fair election and democracy unless we are going to be willing to talk to all the people that are a part of that democracy,” said Edward Walker, a former U.S. ambassador to Egypt and Israel who now teaches at Hamilton College.

“It’s going to stir up demons,” he added. “You have got an awful lot of people who are not very happy with what the roots of the Brotherhood have spawned … There will be people who will not accept that the Brotherhood is of a new or different character today.”

Egypt’s parliamentary elections are scheduled for September and its military rulers have promised to hold a presidential vote by the end of the year.

U.S. dealings with the Brotherhood have evolved over time and officials have found ways to keep lines open under the cover of one diplomatic fig leaf or another.

“We have not had contacts with the Muslim Brotherhood,” then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in response to a question at the American University in Cairo in June 2005. “We have not engaged the Muslim Brotherhood and … we won’t.”

The group says it wants a civil state based on Islamic principles, but talk by some members of an “Islamic state” or “Islamic government” have raised concerns that their goal is a state where full Islamic sharia law is implemented. The group says such comments have been taken out of context.

“It’s critical … that we make it very, very clear to Egyptians, if we are going to do a meeting, that we are no less opposed to the ideas they represent,” Abrams said, noting that there are splits among Brotherhood members.

“We have to think about whether we can use meetings to deepen those splits and to help, quietly, those who are trying to moderate the positions of the Brotherhood,” he added, saying the United States should choose its interlocutors with care and that the talks need not be conducted by the U.S. ambassador.

On top of 23 percent inflation and growing government debt, worsening blackouts have emerged as a serious dilemma, forcing Chavez’s government to announce rationing measures including rolling power outages in some parts of the country.

Chavez is increasingly focused on shoring up support ahead of his 2012 re-election bid, and some analysts say his domestic woes seem to be limiting his international reach in Latin America.

“President Chavez is going through a very difficult time,” said Maria Teresa Romero, a professor of international studies at the Central University of Venezuela. “He’s not the same Hugo Chavez he was four, five years ago.”

She said Chavez no longer has the financial ability to promote oil-funded diplomacy the way he did several years ago, and is increasingly consumed with confronting issues such as the blackouts, deadly prison riots and deficiencies in the health care system.
“If he can’t handle such serious problems that are slipping out of his hands such as electricity … how can it be explained that he’s going to help other countries?” Romero said. She said elsewhere in Latin America, “They see he’s weak.”

The leftist leader has long reinforced his alliances selling oil on credit and offering investments to build refineries in countries such as Ecuador and Brazil. The refinery projects, however, have been delayed for years, and other Chavez ideas such as a natural gas pipeline across South America have yet to get off the ground.

During more than 12 years in office, Chavez has been joined by increasing numbers of left-leaning leaders in Latin America, and has enjoyed close ties with presidents from Bolivia’s Evo Morales to Argentina’s Cristina Fernandez.

Yet Chavez has also increasingly faced unfavorable public opinion in countries such as Peru, where President-elect Ollanta Humala, once an open admirer of Chavez, has since distanced himself and indicated he favors the moderate, business-friendly policies of former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

A poll in 18 countries last year by Latinobarometro, an independent Chile-based organization, found that on average people gave Chavez a 3.9 on a scale of 1 to 10 – the second-worst score on the list after his ally and mentor Fidel Castro.

Chavez scored 5 on the same annual survey in 2005, and has declined steadily since, said Carlos Macuada, a Latinobarometro researcher in Chile.

“As the years have passed, his image has been viewed more negatively by people in Latin America,” Macuada said.

The poll in September and October surveyed more than 20,000 people and had a margin of error of about plus or minus 3 percentage points, he said. Public opinion toward Chavez varied widely by country, with 69 percent in the Dominican Republic and 55 percent of Venezuelans saying they view Chavez favorably. In Colombia and Mexico, in contrast, only 14 percent expressed a favorable view of Chavez, and in Peru, 18 percent.

Chavez’s approval ratings at home have slipped in the past few years as the country weathered a recession, and have been hovering in the 50-percent range. Polls suggest he remains the country’s single most popular politician, and in recent months the economy has returned to positive growth. Still, other woes weighing on him include Latin America’s highest inflation, one of the region’s highest murder rates and corruption that critics say is among the worst in the world.

While Chavez has been away in Cuba, a deadly prison riot left 22 dead, and at least two soldiers and one prisoner were killed days later when troops stormed the prison trying to disarm inmates. The bloody riot prompted the government to announce plans for a new ministry dedicated to prison issues.

It’s unclear how soon Chavez could return from Cuba, where he underwent surgery June 10 to have a pelvic abscess removed. Cuban state media published photos of him on Saturday standing next to his hospital bed and smiling beside Fidel and Raul Castro.

Chavez clearly wants to be back in Caracas in time for a July 5-6 summit of presidents from across the hemisphere on the 200th anniversary of Venezuela’s independence. He has promoted it as an event to lay the groundwork for a new bloc, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, which would exclude the United States and Canada.

Chavez has kept up his vociferous antagonism toward the U.S., especially after Washington imposed sanctions on Venezuela’s state oil company last month for supplying fuel to Iran.

Aside from his long-running feud with the U.S., though, Chavez has taken a less confrontational approach recently with other Latin American leaders, and in particular has opted for a cordial relationship with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, a U.S. ally whose predecessor, Alvaro Uribe, was a staunch Chavez adversary.

Steve Ellner, a political science professor at Venezuela’s University of the East, said he doesn’t think Chavez’s international influence is weaker, but rather that “he is following a more cautious approach than he did a few years back with regard to inter-American relations.”

Ellner said he thinks the pending creation of a new bloc of Latin American and Caribbean countries furthers Chavez’s international aims.

“Chavez’s main goal has been to isolate the United States,” Ellner said, adding that Chavez views the U.S. “as the main impediment to his vision of change for the region.”

However, Romero said Chavez is clearly focusing first on Venezuela’s internal problems, while being more moderate internationally and trying to avoid the verbal spats he had in years past with leaders of Colombia, Mexico and other nations.

“He hasn’t really fought again with anyone, and I don’t think he’ll do it from now until the 2012 elections,” Romero said. “He’s taking a lower profile.”

The Obama and Chavez are even sharing campaign signs.

It’s comforting to know that like so many other countries in the “developed world,” while the President of Costa Rica calls for austerity, there are “public servants” here totally taking the piss by giving themselves outrageous increases on top of already obscenely generous salaries.

The Autoridad Reguladora de los Servicios Públicos (ARESEP) regulates the prices of electricity, water, gasoline and a few other public services but clearly has a problem when it comes to paying attention to the recommended guidelines for their own salaries.

While the government recommends a salary increase of 2.33%, ARESEP gave 3.9% – 10.7% raises in salary to 40% of their staff.
The General Manager received a 8.7% increase to c4,356,225 which is US$8,765 per month.
The Superintendente received a 8.2% increase and now earns US$8,853 per month.
There is even a secretary (“Secretaria 3″ earning US$1,246 per month.
The ‘Regulador General’ Dennis Meléndez – who now earns c5,507,611 per month which at 497:US$1 is US$11,081.71 per month – defended the expenses saying that the costs had no impact on the national budget, since the entity is financed by fees paid by regulated entities and companies.

Minimum Salaries in Costa Rica.
In January 2011 we published Minimum Salaries in Costa Rica 2011. Professional soccer players earn US$591 per month and we noted that the minimum salary of a general mechanic in Costa Rica is ¢245,813 (US$493) per month, a basic unskilled construction worker earns ¢221,495 (US$444) and a cook earns ¢245,813 (US$494) slightly less than a cashier who earns ¢249,725 (US$501) per month.
If I was a Tico working like a dog earning less than US$500 per month, I’m not sure if I would be too thrilled to discover that Dennis Meléndez was earning US$11,081.71 per month – 22 times as much as I was – for regulating the price of electricity and a few other products and services.

Mr. Meléndez seems incapable of understanding that the more money they are paid in salaries means the more money the “regulated entities and companies” must charge their consumers, people like you and I who use electricity, water and gasoline!

In an economically naive statement Dennis Meléndez added that: “We do not help nor worsen the fiscal situation.” (“Nosotros ni ayudamos ni empeoramos la situación fiscal”.)

One can’t help but asking who’s job it is to regulate the regulator?

Written by Scott Oliver, author of 1. Costa Rica Real Estate Scams & How To Avoid Them, 2. How To Buy Costa Rica Real Estate Without Losing Your Camisa, and 3. Costa Rica’s Guide To Making Money Offshore.

http://www.centralamericanretreats.com

WASHINGTON—
The State Department has been secretly financing opponents of Syrian President Bashar Assad, the Washington Post reported, citing previously undisclosed diplomatic documents provided to the newspaper by the WikiLeaks website.

One of the outfits funded by the U.S. is Barada TV, a London-based satellite channel that broadcasts anti-government news into Syria, the Post reported Sunday. Barada’s chief editor, Malik al-Abdeh, is a cofounder of the Syrian exile group Movement for Justice and Development.

The leaked documents show that the U.S. has provided at least $6 million to Barada TV and other opposition groups inside Syria, the newspaper said.
President Obama’s administration has reached out to Assad’s regime, hoping to persuade it to change its policies regarding Israel, Lebanon, Iraq and support for extremist groups. In January, the U.S. stationed an ambassador in Damascus, the capital, for the first time in five years.

The Post said it was not clear from the WikiLeaks documents whether the U.S. was still financing Assad’s opponents, though they showed funding had been set aside through September 2010.

Syrian activists have been staging protests against Assad’s authoritarian regime for more than a month. More than 200 people have been killed as security forces tried to crush the protests.

On Sunday, gunmen opened fire during a funeral for a slain anti-government protester, killing at least three people, according to witnesses and activists. Tens of thousands of Syrians took to the streets nationwide despite Assad’s promise to end nearly 50 years of emergency rule this week, a key demand of the protesters.

Last week, the State Department said Iran appeared to be helping Syria crack down on protesters, calling it a troubling example of Iranian meddling in the region.

“If Syria’s turning to Iran for help, it can’t be very serious about real reform,” spokesman Mark Toner told reporters.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing covert U.S. government support for rebel forces seeking to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, government officials told Reuters on Wednesday.

Obama signed the order, known as a presidential “finding”, within the last two or three weeks, according to four U.S. government sources familiar with the matter.

Such findings are a principal form of presidential directive used to authorize secret operations by the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA and the White House declined immediate comment.

News that Obama had given the authorization surfaced as the President and other U.S. and allied officials spoke openly about the possibility of sending arms supplies to Gaddafi’s opponents, who are fighting better-equipped government forces.

The United States is part of a coalition, with NATO members and some Arab states, which is conducting air strikes on Libyan government forces under a U.N. mandate aimed at protecting civilians opposing Gaddafi.

In interviews with American TV networks on Tuesday, Obama said the objective was for Gaddafi to “ultimately step down” from power. He spoke of applying “steady pressure, not only militarily but also through these other means” to force Gaddafi out.

Obama said the U.S. had not ruled out providing military hardware to rebels. “It’s fair to say that if we wanted to get weapons into Libya, we probably could. We’re looking at all our options at this point,” the President told ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer.

U.S. officials monitoring events in Libya say that at present, neither Gaddafi’s forces nor the rebels, who have asked the West for heavy weapons, appear able to make decisive gains.

While U.S. and allied airstrikes have seriously damaged Gaddafi’s military forces and disrupted his chain of command, officials say, rebel forces remain disorganized and unable to take full advantage of western military support.

SPECIFIC OPERATIONS

People familiar with U.S. intelligence procedures said that Presidential covert action “findings” are normally crafted to provide broad authorization for a range of potential U.S. government actions to support a particular covert objective.

In order for specific operations to be carried out under the provisions of such a broad authorization — for example the delivery of cash or weapons to anti-Gaddafi forces — the White House also would have to give additional “permission” allowing such activities to proceed.

There is no reason to justify the United States being involved in a civil war in Libya and make no mistake no matter what lies we here from Washington this is WAR, this is the OBAMA WAR for no reason. The Congress should demand the United States be removed from the combat. If France and Britian want to fight this war then they should fight it without us.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH and it is time for Congress to get off their hands and stop this OBAMA WAR. Cut spending on countries that are out to kill OUR people and save that money to cut our debit. Let the Arab people pay for our helping them out and let them carry the fight if that is what they want.

Libya: Snipers Shoot Mourners, Killing at Least 15Feb 19, 2011 – 11:37 AM
CAIRO – Moammar Gadhafi’s forces fired on mourners leaving a funeral for protesters Saturday in the eastern city of Benghazi, killing at least 15 people and wounding scores more as the regime tried to squelch calls for an end to the ruler’s 42-year grip on power.

Libyan protesters were back on the street for the fifth straight day, but Gadhafi has taken a hard line toward the dissent that has ripped through the Middle East and swept him up with it. Government forces also wiped out a protest encampment and clamped down on Internet service throughout Libya

Snipers fired on thousands of people gathered in Benghazi, a focal point of the unrest, to mourn 35 protesters who were shot on Friday, a hospital official said.

A hospital official said 15 people were killed, including one man who was apparently hit in the head with an anti-aircraft missile. The weapons apparently were used to intimidate the population.

“Many of the dead and the injured are relatives of doctors here,” he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. “They are crying and I keep telling them to please stand up and help us.”

The official said many people were shot in the head and chest. The hospital was overwhelmed and people were streaming to the facility to donate blood.

Like most Libyans who have talked to The Associated Press during the revolt, the hospital official spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

Before Saturday’s violence, Human Rights Watch had estimated at least 84 people have been killed.

Just after 2 a.m. local time in Libya, the U.S.-based Arbor Networks security company detected a total cessation of online traffic in the North African country. Protesters confirmed they could not get online.

Information is tightly controlled in Libya, where journalists cannot work freely, and activists this week have posted videos on the Internet that have been an important source of images of the revolt. Other information about the protests has come from opposition activists in exile. Egyptian officials briefly tried to cut Internet service during the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak on Feb. 11, but that move was unsuccessful.

Libya is more isolated, however, and the Internet is one of the few links to the outside world. The Cairo-based Arabic Network for Human Rights Information released a report back in 2004 that said nearly 1 million people among Libya’s population of about 6 million had Internet access at the time. That was just three years after Internet service had been extended to the public.

About 5 a.m. Saturday, special forces attacked hundreds of protesters, including lawyers and judges, camped out in front of the courthouse in Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city.

“They fired tear gas on protesters in tents and cleared the areas after many fled carrying the dead and the injured,” one protester said over the phone.

Doctors in Benghazi said Friday that 35 bodies had been brought to the hospital following attacks by security forces backed by militias, on top of more than a dozen killed the day before. Standing in front of Jalaa Hospital morgue, a witness said that the bodies bore wounds from being shot “directly at the head and the chests.”

Residents of the city set up neighborhood patrols on Saturday, after police left the streets.

“We don’t see a single policeman in the streets, not even traffic police,” a lawyer in Benghazi said. People regarded the disappearance of the police as an ominous sign, fearing that pro-government forces would soon follow up the encampment raid with house-to-house attacks.

Switzerland-based Libyan activist Fathi al-Warfali said that several other activists had been detained including Abdel-Hafez Gougha, a well-known organizer who was being held after security forces stormed his house in a night raid.

Gadhafi is facing the biggest popular uprising of his autocratic reign, with much of the action in the country’s impoverished east.