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Opponents of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi held a radio station on Wednesday in Al Baida, Libya.

Libya Revolt Spreads as Qaddafi Tightens Grip in Capital (February 24, 20The reasons for the revolt were not all economic. The recent uprising started with an old memory: the police last week arrested a human rights lawyer representing the relatives of more than 1,000 detainees, mostly from eastern Libya, who were massacred in 1996 at a Tripoli prison. 11)

Obama Condemns Libya Amid Stalled Evacuation (February 24, 2011)
Why the Disruption of Libyan Oil Has Led to a Price Spike (February 24, 2011) Stationed in front of the gate were burly guards with enormous machines guns and ammunition belts slung over their shoulders. Not far away, other armed men guarded an airport, and throughout the rebellious eastern half of this country, the protesters set up checkpoints and flew the old Libyan flag.

But at the radio station, Hamdi Zaidy, a former Libyan ambassador to Nigeria who has joined the antigovernment protesters, asked that any conversations about the state of the country be conducted outside of the building. “Qaddafi could bomb at any time,” said Mr. Zaidy, who was armed with a tiny Italian pistol.

One of the guards was actually a medical student. Mr. Zaidy said he was unsure whether the student knew how to use his machine gun.

Committed but ragtag, and with no weaponry to match a state’s power, Libya’s rebels anxiously awaited Colonel Qaddafi’s fall and hoped that their fellow citizens — and especially Colonel Qaddafi’s air force pilots — would join their side.

Though cities all along Libya’s eastern coast appeared to be controlled by Colonel Qaddafi’s opponents, supported by defecting soldiers and police officers, that control seemed tenuous and largely subject to the whims of the colonel’s feared militias and mercenaries, along with helicopters and fighter planes.

Alongside that fear was a determination to succeed, if only because for many of the protesters, failure to remove Colonel Qaddafi would mean death.

Others decided it was better to leave, and minivans filled with Egyptians streamed toward the border on Wednesday, past a cluster of people waiting for scarce cooking gas in Baida and past lines that formed at a gas station near the coastal town of Darnah.

Rumors circulated about the scale of the carnage in Tripoli, the capital, thought to number hundreds of deaths. Two people who spoke to relatives in Tripoli said the security forces had started staking out hospitals in order to arrest wounded protesters.

Mustafa Mohamed Abd al-Jalil, who recently quit his post as the justice minister and joined the protests, said different units of the security forces, led by three of Colonel Qaddafi’s sons, were still stationed around Tripoli.

Mr. Jalil, who was appointed to his post by one of the sons, Seif al-Islam Qaddafi, in 2007, said there were rumors of disagreements among the sons but no rift. He said that mercenaries had been arrested in eastern Libya, many of them coming from Chad and Niger, and that most of them had been hanged.

As he saw it, Colonel Qaddafi was teetering, and there was little chance he would survive. “If Tripoli falls, he will kill himself,” Mr. Jalil said. “Or the people close to him — maybe one of his sons — will kill him.”

In the meantime, Libyans focused their anger on the leader’s effigy, drawing Colonel Qaddafi as a clown in graffiti on a wall, or kicking a fallen poster of him at the La Abraq Airport, which had been the scene of a fierce battle last week. As the protesters told the story, a group of citizens traveled to the airport last week after hearing that mercenaries flown in by Colonel Qaddafi had arrived to put down the rebellion.

With eyes bruised from a beating and lacerations on his wrists, Rafaa Saad Younis said that he was among the group that went to the airport, but he said that he was taken hostage along with two dozen other people by a group of mercenaries and soldiers. He said the security forces killed people “in front of my eyes.”

Nothing set off both anger and talk of brutal revenge like the mercenaries. Cellphone videos were passed around among friends, showing black men, dead or being beaten.
Not far from the radio station, teenagers from Chad were among about 200 people detained in a school, people the government apparently sent to put down the uprising. Some said they belonged to the brigade supervised by Khamis Qaddafi, one of the colonel’s sons.

In one room, 76 men practically slept on top of one another, and one of them, Osman Ali, said they had come from the southern Libyan city of Sabha, which is loyal to Colonel Qaddafi. He said he and his fellow prisoners, along with hundreds of other people, were asked to attend a pro-Qaddafi rally in Tripoli last week, and then were put on a plane.

They were flown to Benghazi, he said, and were then sent to an army base that was surrounded by angry citizens. Mr. Ali said he and the other men never picked up weapons, but, he added, “We’re ashamed of what we did.”

It was no surprise that the revolt started here, in a part of Libya ignored by the government, said Mahmoud Mabrouk, whose niece was killed in last week’s violence. “It was a very oppressive regime, and this area was deprived,” said Mr. Mabrouk, who was visiting the Shahhat radio station. “If you go to Tripoli, you will see new projects and job opportunities for people.”

The reasons for the revolt were not all economic. The recent uprising started with an old memory: the police last week arrested a human rights lawyer representing the relatives of more than 1,000 detainees, mostly from eastern Libya, who were massacred in 1996 at a Tripoli prison.

Eastern Libya was also a center of resistance against the Italian occupation in the early 20th century, Mr. Mabrouk said. He mentioned Omar al-Mokhtar, who fought a guerrilla war against the Italians and was hanged in 1931.

With Colonel Qaddafi’s posters gone, Mr. Mokhtar’s face almost alone decorates the streets of eastern Libyan towns.

I am a psychologist in California. I want to use the latest tech stuff that connects people world wide. Frankly, I think that Google wins hands down. And will continue to. I cannot imagine an Apple person helping freedom and democracy come to Egypt. I can see why someone connected to Google did assist. All about freedom!

Here’s my reasons why I like my Goggle phone more than I-Phone:

Apple wants people to stay in the Apple world and not stray. Hence Apple applications cannot be used on Google phones. I really like Words with Friends first developed by Apple. It could not be accessed by my Google phone. I just heard that Google now has Words for Friends. Great to hear!

Google gave the world YouTube. And look what that has done for freedom to say what is going on through out the world. Apple has not done anything comparable.

Today someone sent me a terrific YouTube from Mama Hope. A great take off on the CA governor when he was in movies done by a young African boy who wants no pity. He wants a chance. Can you imagine Apple making it possible for simple videos from Africa to be broadcast to the world?

When I buy a Google application it typically costs me 99 cents. And if I don’t like the application I can return it within 24 hours and get my 99 cents back. Apple in comparison charges $5 or so and there is no return policy.

When I read stuff on the Internet using my Google phone it is nicely sized and easy to read. When I use the I-Phone I have to play around with the size of text. For someone who has visual problems –which I do — the Google sizing is much easier to use.

Now I read that Google will take 10% to cover costs compared to the 30% that Apple charges. Do you see a pattern here? I do. Apple wants a monopoly and does all to create and continue a monopoly. Google wants the world to have access to the world’s information. Of course, one might wonder what “information” is and who will be in control.

In the long run it’s best that we have both Apple and Google. Competition, free enterprise …. it works! written by Cameron Jackson drCameronJackson@gmail.com

The phrase “30 percent” now amounts to fighting words in the media and gadget industries.

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Apple’s taking 30 percent of app store subscriptions is an unkind cut
That’s the share of revenue Apple will keep from new subscriptions and media purchases made in an iPhone or iPad application through its App Store – part of a feature it launched Tuesday for its mobile devices.

Apple knows a thing or two about smartphones, tablets and getting users to buy things on them through its App Store. So why is this a problem?

Because Apple doesn’t just want to offer the store’s one-click buying as an option to companies that sell subscriptions or extra content inside programs. It will require that they add App Store transactions – and demand that they offer users the same price in the App Store and at their own Web site.

Developers have until June 30 to correct existing applications.

Further, Apple’s news release spells out that an app cannot even include a link to an outside Web store. And Apple won’t tell developers who their customers are unless they allow that disclosure, a move guaranteed to infuriate publishers used to knowing their readers.

Essentially, Apple proposes to annex a developer’s subscription business – then charge that firm 30 percent for the privilege.

That 30 percent figure is the same share Apple keeps from sales of applications, where it provides valuable hosting services, copious bandwidth and one-click installation and updates.

But in providing subscription billing, Apple won’t do much more than move money from one party to another. The fees for that sort of financial convenience, whether you conduct your transaction through PayPal or the check-cashing place a few blocks from my house, tend to be around 2 percent.

Apple cites only one exemption to this new policy: Subscriptions that come free with the purchase of something else, such as a print subscription to a newspaper.

(Web-based applications, meanwhile, remain unaffected by Apple’s App Store rules.)

Remember when people in the news business were hoping that Apple was throwing them a lifesaver with the iPad? That device may look more like an anvil after this news.