Central Perk

marți, 22 februarie 2011

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

Headsmacking Tip #17: Use Your Bio as an SEO Advantage

Posted: 22 Feb 2011 08:12 AM PST

Your online identity is going further, faster and with more impact than ever before, yet many of us miss out on the seemingly obvious SEO power of our personal and company biographies. It may be a headsmacker, but it's a good one - use your bio!

Personal/professional bios appear most frequently in four types of online sources:

Your Company/Personal Website - for example, I have a bio on SEOmoz and here on my personal blog
Events, Conferences and Webinars - here's my profile on the Searchfest site, on OMS and SMX
Content or Causes you Author/Contribute to - here's an old piece on the Y! Advertising Blog, some content I contributed for Brightedge's blog and an interview I did with Mixergy
Social/Web Profiles that Enable Full-Featured Bios - here I am on TED Conversations, on LinkedIn and Quora and

In many of these scenarios, I've not been strategic or smart about making the bio sections more useful for readers or optimal for SEO.

The image below shows some of the potential opportunities you can capture:

SEO for Bios

There's a few best practices to take away:

A great bio should have links - it's not just for SEO; users want to know, too! If I love a post or a piece of content or am inspired/interested by a line I read about someone, I should have the opportunity to learn more. That's why those links exist.
Co-citation is potentially important here. If I use the words "SEOmoz" and "SEO Software" together, there's a much better chance that over time, I'll get Google/Bing to recognize that the two are related. Currently, thanks to our history, they're much more likely to think that SEOmoz is a consulting company (I almost made "consulting" an image, just to over-emphasize that point).
Quantity of links and where they point is up to you. In the example above, I've got a lot of links - maybe too many, but because they're not aggressive with anchor text or clearly just there for search engines, it doesn't come across poorly (plus, as an SEO guy, folks might get suspicious if I didn't try linking in my profile!)
Length is often flexible - you may wish to work on several versions from the very short, one sentence snippet to the several paragraphs often afforded you on some sites/spaces.

I'm certainly not suggesting that we should all go stuff our profiles with obviously-SEO-intended links, using idealized anchor text for search engines to the point where it's barely readable. But, I would suggest that having an SEO review the strategy of evangelists, speakers and contributors of folks across your organization is likely a great idea. This is one of the most white-hat, natural and powerful forms of link building -- it's just poorly executed much of the time.

Recognize the opportunity - be as aggressive as you feel is appropriate with third parties who post your bio (to get the description you want) and be sure to think carefully about branding, co-citation and keywords.

p.s. Linkscape's web index just updated! New stats are below:

Pages: 41,806,430,494
Root Domains: 111,479,320
Subdomains: 387,061,888
Links: 423,876,083,081
% of Links that are Nofollowed: 2.18%
Average # of Links/Page: 61.69
% of Pages w/ Rel=Canonical: 7.02%

Check out the new data in OpenSiteExplorer, the Web App, the MozBar and our Labs Tools.

p.p.s. It's been a while since I did the last headsmacking tip (#16) way back in November of 2009! Hopefully this will spur me to re-visit the series more often.

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WANTED: Software Engineers REWARD: $12,000

Posted: 21 Feb 2011 10:14 PM PST

Posted by randfish

In 2010, SEOmoz's software business grew from 4,000 - 7,000 subscribers and $3.1mm - $5.7mm in revenue (more transparency on details coming soon). Our customers have been loving our products (our web app now supports nearly 30K campaigns) and our data (over 250 companies use our API), but we're nowhere near satisfied.

SEOmoz Software Revenue 2007-2011

(*note: consulting revenue, which ended in 2009, is not included; 2011 revenue is estimated)

It's our belief that growth is limited only by how much we can surprise, delight and reward our customers with software that rocks. We want to build more, faster and that's why today, we're announcing a new effort in bringing talented software engineers to the SEOmoz team.

Have Engineer Friends? Send 'Em Our Way

Why should you send your engineer friends to SEOmoz? Three big reasons:

They'll be joining an amazing team at a great company earning top salaries at a place that values their contributions (see below)
You'll get $12,000 in cash* (OK, probably a check, but still!)
They'll also get $12,000 in cash**

We're seeking 4-5 very talented engineers (possibly more) with experience handling large-scale problems like machine learning, web crawling, building and optimizing web services (APIs), coping with large quantities of data and dealing in massively distributed systems. You can learn more about the job requirements here.

Engineers: Challenging Problems, Brilliant Co-Workers & Some Cool Bonuses Await You, Too

As part of this process, we're making things interesting for talented engineers, too:

If you refer/apply yourself, you'll receive a $12,000 cash hiring bonus**
If you're not in the Seattle area, we can offer up to $10,000 to help you (and your family) move to the area
If you make it to our final interview round (for a chat with our full team), you'll walk out with a free iPad
Start your new job right with a $5,000 shopping budget to spend on the hardware/software/accessories of your choice (for either home or office!). Need a new desk and chair set for you spare bedroom to work those odd hours in comfort? Go for it. New laptop? No problem.
Salaries for engineers at SEOmoz are substantively above the average/median for Seattle (according to Payscale, Glassdoor, SimplyHired). We'll be on par with the offers you get from Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. in cash, and we're even better on stock.
Benefits at SEOmoz rock - we have a great health and dental plan (for you and your family / S.O.), we'll cover your home Internet and your cellphone bill, 20 days of vacation time annually, transportation options, 401K plans and more.

That said, we should all be picky about where we work and where we interview. It's not just about the salary, the bonus, the iPad or the shopping spree - there are other things that matter to us (and likely to you) when considering where to work:

Will I be working on fun, interesting problems that will challenge me professionally and grow my skills?
Will I learn from my co-workers and influence them positively?
Does the company compensate generously and appropriately?
Does my work make a recognizable impact on the company and the world?
Am I contributing to a mission I believe in and a company whose core values I respect?

It's my belief that SEOmoz does a solid job on all of these:

The problems we face include "web scale" challenges - crawling, indexing and building metrics on billions of pages; collecting, filtering and making sense of millions of pieces of social data from Facebook, Twitter and other platforms; serving massive amounts of data to thousands of paying customers in a performant environment.
The engineering team at SEOmoz is a remarkable and talented group. You'll be side-by-side with engineers with impressive backgrounds and serious accomplishments on the product and technology side.
We are in the top quartile of compensation for software engineers in Seattle and our benefits, stock options and perks are considerably above the average.
What you build will have a direct, measurable impact on our subscribers - and you'll be able to see it in the membership statistics and hear it directly through our many feedback channels (we get more than 300 messages about our products each week!). And, you won't just be helping SEOmoz customers - our mission of making it easier for ideas to be shared on the web is carried out every day, and we have tons of great stories and feedback to show it.
We think it's great that Google, Bing, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the entire web ecosystem have built such remarkable platforms for sharing information. But, it's hard to get noticed in all the noise and hard to know what will help make your ideas scale and spread. That where SEOmoz comes in - our software is meant to help companies and organizations of all sizes and shapes to better spread their messages in organic, white hat ways. It's a mission we've found incredibly rewarding and we think you will, too.

Why Do We Need So Much Engineering Talent?

Because SEOmoz is taking off.

Today, we provide some of the web's best and more popular software to help marketers understand, evaluate and improve their SEO efforts. In the months to come, we're expanding to help marketers conquer all of organic marketing - from SEO to social media to blogging, local campaigns, content marketing, PR/media and more. This means huge challenges like increasing the size, freshness and quality of our web index (currently ~45billion pages, moving up to 100 billion), building a "mention" index on our Blogscape platform that lets marketers see where their brand names are being used across the web (even if no direct links exist), scaling analytics, improving our machine learning algorithms, exponentially growing our data storage while simultaneously making things faster.

And, unfortunately (or fortunately), our requirements for engineering talent are extremely high. We interview a lot of candidates and need not only the best and brightest in challenging fields (machine learning, large-scale crawling, natural language processing, large-scale distributed systems, etc.), but folks who fit with our core values of TAGFEE.

We owe it to our customers and our mission to build amazing software and that means recruiting remarkable engineers. It's great to be a profitable startup, but money sitting in the bank won't do us, or our community any good. We want to put these dollars to work and build something revolutionary - we're aiming to be the future of organic web/inbound marketing software.

Top 10 Reasons Why Should You Join SEOmoz

Because a post like this wouldn't be complete without a top 10 list!

Interesting, Challenging Problems (strategic and technical, and often on a very large scale)
Engineering Centric Company (development and software are the core of our company's product and the largest team - you won't be in the "IT department," you'll be a key member at the heart of SEOmoz)
Customer Focused Roadmap (we don't just build things that sound interesting, we build things we know our customers want, need and use - and when we do, we get great feedback directly from thousands of paying members)
Transparency (you'll always know how the company is doing week-to-week and quarter by quarter. Virtually every metric except salaries are shared throughout the organization)
Profitability (we're in the black - no burning runways or panicked cries for venture capital. We've got a proven business model and we've been doubling our revenue for 3 years)
Excellent Compensation (We pay in the top range of salaries for software engineers in Seattle based on experience + skills. You won't have to sacrifice pay to work at a great startup vs. a behemoth)
Amazing Co-Workers (Ask anyone in the Seattle tech, marketing or startup community and they'll tell you - SEOmoz's people aren't just talented, they're truly good people who care about each other and are a pleasure to spend time with)
Flat Organization (If you struggle against the politics and bureaucratic inefficiencies of a big organization, you'll love it here. We have smallish teams, 30 people in total, and only a single layer of management - you'll report directly to the VP of Engineering)
We Listen (Our engineers have contributed substantively to the product roadmap, to new ideas we implement, even to how we decorate the office)
Great Benefits, Perks + Fun Stuff (we play Xbox Kinect on Friday afternoons, snacks in the office, 401K plans, flexible and generous vacation time, a great health/dental plan and more on the way)

We hope you'll send your friends, family members and fellow Venture Brothers addicts our way :-)

* NOTE: The referrer will receive this bonus only after the engineer stays employed at SEOmoz for at least 90 days after his or her start date. The referrer must also complete and return a w-9 in order to receive the bonus. The referrer is responsible for paying taxes on the referral bonus. Also, to qualify for the referral bonus, the successful candidate must have accepted our offer of employment within four months of your referral.

**NOTE: The $12,000 signing bonus applies to all new engineering candidates, but must be paid back if you leave the company prior to 12 months.

One more note: Candidates must be eligible to work in the US (citizenship, green card, visa, etc). While we'd love to recruit more from out of the country, it's not yet something we have the resources/connections to provide.

p.s. We also want to acknowledge our friends in Cambridge and the crew at EnergySavvy, who are both offering a $10K referral bonus currently (it's a great time to be, or know, an engineer!)

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Live from Cleveland: Winning the Future Forum on Small Business

Your Daily Snapshot for
Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2011

Live from Cleveland: Winning the Future Forum on Small Business

Today, President Obama is travelling to Cleveland, Ohio for the Winning the Future Forum on Small Business. You can watch portions of the event throughout the day at WhiteHouse.gov/live.

Here's the lineup:

11:35 a.m. EST: President Obama's opening remarks
1:00 p.m. EST: Live discussion with Austan Goolsbee, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, responding to your questions and comments submitted via Advise the Advisor
1:55 p.m. EST: President Obama's closing remarks

Watch live.

Photo of the Day

President Barack Obama meets with members of the Boy Scouts of America in the Oval Office, Feb. 16, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

SEOptimise

Blaming SEO for Bad Search Results is like Blaming Mechanics for Bad Roads

Posted: 21 Feb 2011 05:15 AM PST

For most people, SEO still is either a complete unknown, magic or the scapegoat for almost everything that doesn’t work on the Web. In particular, bloggers seeking attention, publicity and links love to leverage all the ignorance and prejudice and launch attacks on SEO as a whole again and again.

Recently, another popular blogger, who leads one of the most important technology blogs (which uses all kinds of SEO techniques) did it again. This time it was not the average “SEO is rubbish” attack; it was a broader “search sucks” attack where of course not search engines themselves are guilty of being broken but the scapegoat: SEO.

Before we go on, let me define SEO again for all those who still don’t understand it: SEO is the craft of fixing and improving websites so that they can be found in search results, among others. Of course, good SEO is also good for the users. I know this SEO definition is still kind of abstract, so let me use a metaphor to explain it even better:

Imagine the Web as a virtual world, where search engines provide the transport infrastructure to move from A to B.

Most websites are like buildings, while some are more like cars, buses, trains or even planes. A blog like ours at SEOptimise is like a bus: it has lots of outgoing links and thus leads to lots of places many people want to go to. Whereas a site like Microsoft.com is like a huge building complex or a skyscraper. People need cars and buses, and of course they need an infrastructure to get to where they want to go. Google is like that infrastructure; it has a road, rail and airport system leading to all kinds of destinations. So people need car-like or bus-like sites to get there.

The SEO specialist is like a mechanic.

The SEO specialist doesn’t build the road system or control the airports, but he allows you to get to where you want to go by fixing your car or bus. An SEO may be an architect as well. You may ask an architect to refurbish a home or a shop, or to build one. Now imagine blaming mechanics for harassment by TSA on airports, for dilapidated public transport systems in US cities or the broken railroads in both the US/UK. Did the mechanics repair too many cars, so that the streets are jammed with traffic? Are they guilty of repairing cars? Are there too many planes in the sky because mechanics have fixed them? Are there too many buildings out there because evil architects have refurbished them?

Likewise, blaming the SEO industry for bad search results is nonsense and absurd. Let’s take a recent example from the “increasing spam by SEO means” debate: content farms. Content farms are the Walmarts of the Internet. One stop shops for everything. It may be low quality, cheap and Made in China but people flock there by the thousands. Do you hate Walmart? Why do you go there then? I have read lots of criticism of Walmart but I’ve rarely heard the idea that it’s evil architects who brought us Walmart to pollute our environment. And it’s not evil mechanics fixing your cars who have allowed the public rail or road system to deteriorate.

The only thing you can blame mechanics and architects for is that they broke cars instead of fixing them, or that they built houses that break down or shops that don’t sell.

Incidentally, Techcrunch, the tech blog which has published the nonsense article about SEO being to blame for bad search results, uses outdated SEO techniques such as PageRank sculpting (using the nofollow attribute on internal links). Effectively, they mark their own internal links as untrustworthy. They should blame their own mechanic for being bad at SEO.

* Image by Jeffrey Smith.

Seth's Blog : Asymmetrical mass favors, a tragedy of our commons

[You're getting this note because you subscribed to Seth Godin's blog.]

Asymmetrical mass favors, a tragedy of our commons

If the farmer and the baker make a trade, both win. The farmer benefits from having someone turn his wheat into flour and bake it, and the baker gets money from the bread he sells that he can use to buy things he needs (like food).

This sample math of the transaction (Pareto, et. al.) created the world we live in. It also is connected to the idea of a favor.

A favor is the first half of a transaction. I ask you to do something for me today, something where I will probably benefit a lot in exchange for a small effort on your part. Inherent in the idea of a favor, though, is that one day soon, the transaction will be completed. One day, I will do something for you that gives you a benefit.

As Pareto and any economist will tell you, we willfully engage in this transaction because we'll benefit. Maybe not right now, but soon.

By spreading the idea of the trade over time, the favor makes trades more likely to occur, and also makes sure that they are even more efficient. If I'm already holding open the heavy door, holding it two more seconds for you is easy for me. And then, the next time you're holding open the door, you'll be more likely to hold it for me.

If I recommend you for a job, it doesn't take much effort on my part, but you might get three years of gainful employment out of it. And of course, you're happy to complete that transaction as soon as you can, because no one wants to walk around owing favors.

The efficiency caused by this sort of exchange is so extraordinary that we built it into the social contract. I'm not just selfish if I let the door slam as you walk toward the elevator--I'm rude. I'm risking becoming an outcast.

Favors are so ingrained that the next step was inevitable: Mass Symmetric Favors. Halloween is a great example: How else to explain a hundred million people buying half a billion Snickers bars? We give away the candy because it's expected, and because people gave us candy when we were kids, and because people are giving our kids candy as well. To opt out is uncivilized.

School taxes create a similar obligation. If you don't pay when you're childless, there will be no one to pay when your kids are in school. (And you have to live in a world with uneducated people). And so the transactions are spread out over time, everyone giving and taking, not so much keeping score as knowing that a key part of civil society is to participate in these mass fungible favors.

But!

There's a big but. The internet and other connecting tools now make it easy to create the asymmetrical mass favor--in which one person can ask a large number of people, some of them strangers, some friendlies, some friends--for an accommodation that may very well never be repaid.

The simple example is the person running for the Metro North commuter train that leaves at 5:20. She's only 2 minutes late. If she misses it, she's delayed half an hour. Surely the people on the train can wait a hundred and twenty seconds.

Not really. Not if there are 300 people on the train. That's a one-hundred hour penalty on the passengers, and if there's no reasonable expectation of each of them somehow finishing the transaction one day in the future, the entire system will fall apart. No, in the abstract, we WANT the conductor to say 'sorry.'

It gets far more dramatic when we think about spamming 10,000 or a hundred thousand people with your resume or plea for help.

The problem is that under the cover of the social contract, under the guise of doing what's civilized, what some people are doing is beginning exchanges that they and those they engage with know will never be consummated. She's not transacting, she's taking.

And people resent her for it. "It can't hurt to ask," is almost never true, but here, especially, it hurts a lot. What the person looking for the favor is doing is actually undoing the tacit agreement we all live by, by seeking a favor when the recipient has no real (social) choice in the matter.

The favor is too important to be discarded, but the internet is making things that look like favors (but are actually asymmetrical takings) more and more common. It's putting pressure on people who are usually open to a favor to do the difficult thing and just say no.

[Tomorrow: the other side]

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luni, 21 februarie 2011

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Students, Activists Arrested in Zimbabwe for Watching Al Jazeera
Gallup Economic Confidence Index Stuck at -26 Since February 2009
Warplanes, Militia Fire on Libyan Protesters; Libya’s U.N. Diplomats Break With Qaddafi, Call Leader "Genocidal War Criminal"; Gaddafi Flees Libya?
Libya Faces Civil War; Qaddafi's Son Says Rivers of Blood Will Flow; Chaos in Morocco; Oil Spikes

Students, Activists Arrested in Zimbabwe for Watching Al Jazeera

Posted: 21 Feb 2011 08:13 PM PST

In a preemptive move to prevent a democratic uprising in Zimbabwe, President Robert Mugabe has cracked down on those watching the BBC or Al Jazeera. The mere act of watching such videos might land someone in prison for 20 years.

Please consider Arrests in Zimbabwe for Seeing Videos

Dozens of students, trade unionists and political activists who gathered to watch Al Jazeera and BBC news reports on the uprisings that brought down autocrats in Tunisia and Egypt have been arrested on suspicion of plotting to oust President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.

James Sabau, a spokesman for the police force, which is part of the security services controlled by Mr. Mugabe's party, was quoted in Monday's state-controlled newspaper as saying that the 46 people in custody were accused of participating in an illegal political meeting where they watched videos "as a way of motivating them to subvert a constitutionally elected government."

The evidence seized by the police included a video projector, two DVD discs and a laptop.

Lawyers for the men and women in custody said they had not yet been formally charged but had been advised that they might be accused of "attempting to overthrow the government by unconstitutional means," a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

Mr. Mugabe, who turned 87 on Monday, and his party ruled Zimbabwe single-handedly from 1980 until 2009, when regional leaders pressured him into forming a power-sharing government with his longtime political rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, after a discredited 2008 election. Mr. Tsvangirai withdrew from a June runoff that year to protest state-sponsored beatings of thousands of his supporters. An estimated 350 people died in the violence.

And while the army in Egypt did not side with Mr. Mubarak when his people rose up against him, most analysts assume that the leadership of Zimbabwe's military would try to crush any such movement — though such an effort would also severely test the loyalty of impoverished soldiers to their military commanders.

"Indeed, the single most important lesson from Tunisia and Egypt is that we as Zimbabweans are our own liberators," Trevor Ncube, owner of three independent newspapers in Zimbabwe and The Mail & Guardian in South Africa, wrote this week in The Mail & Guardian. Mr. Ncube added later, "The world will only help us when we stand up and fight for our freedom and reclaim our country from Mugabe and the arrogant clique around him."

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Gallup Economic Confidence Index Stuck at -26 Since February 2009

Posted: 21 Feb 2011 07:37 PM PST

After a quick jump from -60 in February 2009 to -26 in June 2009, the Gallup Weekly Confidence Index has been range-bound between -20 and -30 ever since. The confidence index now sits at -26, where it was two years ago.

Gallup's Economic Confidence Index is based on the combined responses to two questions, the first asking Americans to rate economic conditions in this country today, and second, whether they think economic conditions in the country as a whole are getting better or getting worse. Results are based on telephone interviews with approximately 3,500 national adults; margin of error is ±2 percentage points.

This is just further evidence of what most know. There was a recovery in financial assets but no recovery in the real world.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Warplanes, Militia Fire on Libyan Protesters; Libya’s U.N. Diplomats Break With Qaddafi, Call Leader "Genocidal War Criminal"; Gaddafi Flees Libya?

Posted: 21 Feb 2011 12:40 PM PST

In what may be best described as the start of a civil war, Warplanes and Militia Fire on Protesters in Libyan Capital

The faltering government of the Libyan strongman Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi struck back at mounting protests against his 40-year rule, as helicopters and warplanes besieged parts of the capital Monday, according to witnesses and news reports from Tripoli.

By Monday afternoon, a witness saw armed militiamen firing on protesters who were clashing with riot police. As a group of protesters and the police faced off in a neighborhood near Green Square, in the center of the capital, ten or so Toyota pickup trucks carrying more than 20 men — many of them apparently from other African countries in mismatched fatigues — arrived at the scene.

Holding small automatic weapons, they started firing in the air, and then started firing at protesters, who scattered, the witness said. "It was an obscene amount of gunfire," said the 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 escalation of the conflict came after Colonel Qaddafi's security forces had earlier in the day retreated to a few buildings in the Libyan capital of Tripoli, fires burned unchecked, and senior government officials and diplomats announced defections. The country's second-largest city remained under the control of rebels.

Security forces loyal to Mr. Qaddafi defended a handful of strategic locations, including the state television headquarters and the presidential palace, witnesses reported from Tripoli. Fires from the previous night's rioting burned at many intersections, most stores were shuttered, and long lines were forming for a chance to buy bread or gas.

Libya's U.N. Diplomats Call Qaddafi "Genocidal War Criminal"

The New York Times reports Libya's U.N. Diplomats Break With Qaddafi

Members of Libya's mission to the United Nations publicly repudiated Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi on Monday, calling him a genocidal war criminal responsible for mass shootings of demonstrators protesting against his four decades in power. They called upon him to resign.

The repudiation, led by Libya's deputy permanent representative at a news conference at the mission's headquarters in New York, amounted to the most high-profile defection of Libyan diplomats in the anti-Qaddafi uprising that has convulsed Libya over the past week.

"We are sure that what is going on now in Libya is crimes against humanity and crimes of war," the deputy permanent representative, Ibrahim Dabbashi, told reporters in the ground-floor lobby of the Libyan mission on Manhattan's East Side, adorned by a large portrait of Colonel Qaddafi in tribal dress atop a white horse.

About a dozen of Mr. Dabbashi's colleagues stood behind him as he spoke, looking tense and nervous.

"We state clearly that the Libyan mission is a mission for the Libyan people," he said. "It is not for the regime. The regime of Qaddafi has already started the genocide against the Libyan people."

He called upon Colonel Qaddafi to step down and leave the country "as soon as possible."

British Foreign Secretary says Gaddafi Heads for Venezuela

British Foreign Secretary William Hague claims Information Gaddafi on way to Venezuela

Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Monday he had seen some information to suggest Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi had fled the country and was on his way to Venezuela.

"You asked me earlier about whether Colonel Gaddafi is in Venezuela," he told reporters on the sidelines of a European Union foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels. "I have no information that says he is, but I have seen some information that suggests he is on his way there at the moment."

Diplomats said Hague was not referring to rumours circulating in the media about Gaddafi's whereabouts, but to separate sources for the information.

Venezuela denies reports Gaddafi's on his way

The first casualty of war is the truth, so it's hard to know what to believe. However, Venezuela denies reports Gaddafi's on his way

Venezuela's Communications and Information Minister Andres Izarra told the Latin American television network Telesur denied reports that Gaddafi's may be headed for Venezuela. Other government sources rejected his imminent arrival as well, following suggestions by British Foreign Secretary William Hague that Gaddafi could be on his way to Venezuela.

'I have no information that says he is (already there), although I have seen some information that suggests he is on his way there at the moment,' Hague said in Brussels earlier Monday.

The Venezuela of left-wing populist President Hugo Chavez has held friendly ties with Gaddafi's fellow-oil producing Libya. Gaddafi visited the South American country in September 2009, while Chavez reciprocated in October 2010.

One has to wonder if calls by the Libyan delegates for Qaddafi to leave someone got twisted into "Qaddafi has already fled".

Given numerous intelligence failures in the past several weeks, there is no reason to give strong credence to much of anything except live coverage or actual eyewitness accounts from reputable sources.

Al Jazeera Live Blog

Inquiring minds may be interested in the Al Jazeera Libya Live Blog

Here are some items of note ...

Leading Sunni Cleric issues fatwa encouraging the assassination of Gaddafi.

10:40pm: Yusuf Al Qardawi, a leading Sunni cleric, has just issued a fatwa on Al Jazeera Arabic, encouraging the assassination of Gaddafi.

10:25pm: More on the resignation of the two diplomats from the embassy in Washington DC. Counsels Saleh Ali Al Majbari and Jumaa Faris denounced Gaddafi, saying he "bears responsibility for genocide against the Libyan people in which he has used mercenaries".

They said they had nothing to do with the events and they no longer represent Gaddafi's regime - but that they represent the Libyan people. The pair also called on Barack Obama to "work urgently with the international community to press for an immediate cessation of the massacres of the Libyan people", and they are asking the United Nations to impose a no-fly zone imposed on Libya to prevent the arrival of mercenaries to Libya.

9:41pm: Egyptian foreign ministry spokesman Hosam Zaki says the Egyptian army has been ordered to facilitate the evacuation of all Egyptians from Libya. Some 100 buses, full of Egyptians, are on their way to the Libya-Egypt border - where the army has set up relief tents.

The ministry is "deeply concerned" by Saif Gaddafi's speech last night, which they say accused Egyptians of being behind Libya's violence

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Libya Faces Civil War; Qaddafi's Son Says Rivers of Blood Will Flow; Chaos in Morocco; Oil Spikes

Posted: 21 Feb 2011 03:58 AM PST

The playbook in Libya looks nothing like what recently transpired in Tunisia and Egypt. As Libyan protests escalate, Qaddafi's Son Warns of Civil War.

A five-day-old uprising in Libya took control of its second-largest city of Benghazi and spread for the first time to the capital of Tripoli late on Sunday as the heir-apparent son of its strongman, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, warned Libyans in a televised speech that their oil-rich country would fall into civil war and even renewed Western "colonization" if they threw off his father's 40-year-long rule.

Witnesses in Tripoli interviewed by telephone on Sunday night said protesters were converging on the capital's central Green Square and clashing with the heavily armed riot police. Young men armed themselves with chains around their knuckles, steel pipes and machetes. The police had retreated from some neighborhoods, and protesters were seen armed with police batons, helmets and rifles commandeered from riot squads.

"The state has disappeared from the streets," said Mansour Abu Shenaf, a writer living in Tripoli, "and the people, the youth, have practically taken over."

The younger Mr. Qaddafi blamed Islamic radicals and Libyans in exile for the uprising. He offered a vague package of reforms in his televised speech, potentially including a new flag, national anthem and confederate structure. But his main theme was to threaten Libyans with the prospect of civil war over its oil resources that would break up the country, deprive residents of food and education, and even invite a Western takeover.

"Libya is made up of tribes and clans and loyalties," he said. "There will be civil war."

The whereabouts of Colonel Qaddafi himself remained unclear on Sunday. Over the last three days his security forces have killed at least 173 people, according to a tally by the group Human Rights Watch. Several people in Benghazi hospitals, reached by telephone, said they believed that as many as 200 had been killed and more than 800 wounded there on Saturday alone, with many of the deaths from machine gun fire. And after protesters marched in a funeral procession on Sunday morning, the security forces opened fire again, killing at least 50 more, Human Rights Watch said.

Under Colonel Qaddafi's idiosyncratic rule, tribal bonds remain primary even within the ranks of the military, and both protesters and the security forces have reason to believe that backing down will likely mean their ultimate death or imprisonment.

But in a break with the Qaddafi government, the powerful al-Warfalla and al-Zuwayya tribes came out against Colonel Qaddafi on Sunday. "We tell him to leave the country," a spokesman for the al-Warfalla told the pan-Arab news channel Al Jazeera.

The Libyan government has tried to impose a blackout on the country. Foreign journalists cannot enter. Internet access has been almost totally severed, with only occasional access, though some protesters appear to be using satellite connections or phoning information to services outside the country.

Qaddafi's Son Says Rivers of Blood Will Flow

Bloomberg has some interesting details in Qaddafi's Son Warns of Libyan Civil War, Offers Dialogue

"Instead of weeping over 84 dead people, we will weep over hundreds of thousands of dead," Saif al-Islam Qaddafi said on state television. "Rivers of blood will flow."

Qaddafi said some demonstrators had captured military equipment, and warned that the conflict may halt the flow of oil. BP Plc halted exploration work in the Libyan desert.

Libya, holder of Africa's largest oil reserves, is the latest country in the region to be rocked by protests ignited by the ouster of Tunisia's president last month and energized by the fall of Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak on Feb. 11. Violence has flared in Yemen, Djibouti and Bahrain as governments sought to crack down on demands for change.

"The speed of the whole thing in Libya has surprised most of the specialists because Colonel Qaddafi established a very special repressive system of his own," Amin Saikal, director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at Australian National University, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television. "Probably the casualties will be extremely high and therefore Qaddafi will be left with very little credibility to really go on and govern the country for much longer."

In Yemen, President Ali Abdullah Saleh held a press conference in the capital, Sanaa, to rule out meeting all the demands of protesters demanding his ouster. Demonstrators took to the streets for an 11th day as Saleh said their calls for regime change are "not logical."

In Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, seven opposition groups were drawing up demands to put to the government as they discussed 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 Bahrainis yesterday poured back into the central square that has become the focus of protest in the Bahraini capital, Manama, after tanks, armored personnel carriers and riot police withdrew on the orders of Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa. Unions called off a general strike planned for today in response.

Demonstrations also were reported yesterday in Iran and Morocco. One protester was shot dead in Tehran as thousands gathered in main squares in the Iranian capital and clashed with government supporters, Dubai-based Al Arabiya television said. Security forces also clashed with demonstrators in the city of Shiraz, it reported. There were clashes last week between protesters and security forces in Djibouti, the Horn of Africa nation that hosts the only U.S. military base on the continent.

Chaos in Morocco

Please consider Fears of Chaos Temper Calls for Change in Morocco

For Morocco, a kingdom on the western edge of North Africa, the calls for change sweeping the region are muted by a fear of chaos, a prevalent security apparatus and genuine respect for the king, Mohammed VI. Since he took the throne in 1999, the king, who is only 47, has done much to soften the harsh and often brutal rule of his father, Hassan II.

On Sunday, in response to a "February 20 Movement for Change" that began on Facebook, more than 10,000 people turned out in cities across the country to call for democratic change, lower food prices, freedom for Islamist prisoners, rights for Berbers and a variety of causes, including pan-Arab nationalism.

"This is a start," said Imane Safi, 18, who was at the demonstration in Casablanca. "The Arab world is changing and the Moroccan people need a change in the Constitution for more democracy. We want a country like Britain, with a constitutional monarchy and a strong Parliament that is not corrupt."

Oil Rises as Libya Violence Prompts Middle East Supply Concern

Bloomberg reports Oil Rises as Libya Violence Prompts Middle East Supply Concern

Oil for April delivery rose for a fourth day in New York as violence escalated in Libya, bolstering concern supplies will be disrupted as turmoil spreads through the Middle East and North Africa.

"Libya is producing 1.5 million to 1.6 million barrels a day, so any unrest is concerning," Andrey Kryuchenkov, an analyst at VTB Capital, said by phone from London. "Until things settle there, prices are underpinned."

Libya, the eighth-largest oil producer among those with quotas in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, has become the focal point of region-wide protests ignited by the ouster of Tunisia's president last month and energized by the fall of Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak last week. Violence has flared in Yemen, Djibouti and Bahrain as governments sought to crack down on calls for reform. Demonstrations also were reported yesterday in Iran and Morocco.

"There is also the continued risk that this contagion will spread into Iran or another country in the region that is more important to the global oil market," Ben Westmore, a minerals and energy economist at National Australia Bank Ltd., said by phone from Melbourne.

Contagion List

Libya
Yemen
Djibouti
Bahrain
Iran
Morocco

Tunisia, and Egypt were relatively peaceful, what will the rest bring?

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

marți, 22 februarie 2011

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