Egypt protests Cairo is a war Zone

[Libaax-Sankataabte]

How much is corrupt Mubarak worth?

 

"$17 billion for Mubarak, $10 billion for his second son, Gamal, and $40 billion for the family " - ABC

 

Source

[General Duke]

Egypt at the crossroads

 

NA'EEM JEENAH | JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA - Feb 03 2011 18:20

 

1 comment | Post your comment ARTICLE TOOLS

 

Responding to demands of "Mubarak out!", Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak announced earlier this week that he would stay in power until presidential elections in September, and will oversee the formation of a new government and of constitutional amendments which will allow opposition candidates to run for president.

 

The announcement was made on the eighth day of national protests, when two million Egyptians occupied various city centres to protest against Mubarak's three-decade rule. Predictably, the protesters were unimpressed, and continued demanding his removal.

 

Within hours, Mubarak's announcement was followed by a call by the army for people to end the protests and return home, or face the prospect of violence. Not long thereafter, in a coordinated action, supporters of Egypt's ruling National Democratic Party descended on protesters in various cities, assaulting them, and rode into the protesting crowds with horses and camels, sparking clashes that lasted many hours. Soldiers on the scene did nothing, allowing the chaos to continue unhindered.

 

From the beginning, the regime's response to the uprising, which started on the January 25, was crafted by the military, in a way that would help maintain the status quo, allowing it to control politics in the most populous Arab country.

 

Mubarak, who is very ill, and, according to most observers, will likely not be alive for the September elections, first responded to the protests by dissolving his Cabinet and reappointing new ministers. General Omar Suleiman, the minister of intelligence who has a background as a master of torture, was appointed vice-president, and most other new appointees were members of the military. The Egyptian military has controlled politics in that country since Gamal Abdel Nasser's presidency, and the president has always been from its ranks.

 

When protests increased in size, the next response was Suleiman's announcement this week that Mubarak had instructed him to begin negotiations with opposition parties. Then came Mubarak's speech, saying he would not stand for the election in September, and would begin a process to amend the Constitution. Meanwhile, opposition parties, including the largest, the Muslim Brotherhood, were coming together to knock together a coalition that would be able to talk to the regime.

 

These developments point to a planned strategy by the military to regain control of Egyptian politics and to ensure the persistence of the status quo -- with some concessions to the people and the opposition. Clearly, the military has decided that Mubarak has become a burden, and is easing him out. But, his being from among their ranks, the army would prefer not to humiliate him and hang him out to dry. Instead, they will keep him as president, while Suleiman begins a negotiation process with opposition parties. The regime hopes that the beginning of the negotiation process will end the protests, that fatigue, the threat of a food crisis, and the attacks on protesters by NDP thugs will force demonstrators off the streets and back to their homes and jobs. Further, if the clashes between protesters and NDP supporters continue, the army will use that as an excuse to crush the protests, claiming it to be in the interests of law and order. And, to finally ensure that the protests end, Suleiman has already announced that no dialogue with the opposition can begin until protests are halted, effectively making the end of protests a precondition of negotiations.

 

Once the negotiations begin, the regime will attempt to drag it out until September, making the call for Mubarak's early resignation irrelevant. Opposition groups, however, clearly believing that they have the upper hand, have made Mubarak's stepping-down a precondition for entering negotiations. If the protests are crushed by the military, as is likely, the superior negotiating position will be in Suleiman's hands, and the opposition will be unable to leverage their precondition.

 

Meanwhile, the regime will effect amendments to the Constitution as a way of appeasing the opposition. It has already announced -- unilaterally -- that amendments will be effected within 75 days of February 2, and without the involvement of opposition parties. One of the objectives of the regime in the intervening period will be to create divisions within the opposition, emphasising differences between the leftist, nationalist and Islamist opposition groups, and between Muslims and Christians. Any divisions in opposition ranks will serve the regime's agenda and allow it to dictate the political changes that will take place.

 

In the period before the September election, any protests that take place could be addressed by co-opting individual members of the opposition into the Cabinet, or even creating a presidential council with Mubarak at its head, and including former IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei.

 

The military chiefs have played their cards very well. When police were pulled back from the demonstrations -- after having caused numerous deaths -- the soldiers moved in, but did nothing to quell the protests. Indeed, the impression from protesters was that the army was there to protect the people. Military chiefs have ensured that the military took no action against protesters, cultivating the image of the army as benevolent protectors -- which could serve it well now and during the negotiations process. It is possible, however, that as the violence against protesters continue, some members of the middle and lower ranks of the army will join the protesters.

 

The end game for the Egyptian military is one in terms of which it can strike a deal with the emerging power-brokers -- ElBaradei, and other opposition figures -- where the political influence and economic interests of the military are protected under a new dispensation, and where it is able to maintain a direct relationship with American and European military structures. This will ensure that, even if democracy emerges in Egypt, the military is able to maintain its domestic power, and continue to fulfil the foreign agenda to which it is committed. To ensure that the military will continue fulfilling such an agenda, Western - especially American -- officials have been in close contact with the new vice-president, new prime minister and other leaders of the military over the past few weeks.

 

The Egyptian regime and the military in particular from the presidency of Anwar Sadat, have fulfilled Western, especially American, objectives in the region. In particular, the Camp David accord between Egypt and Israel, and the subsequent role of Egypt has ensured that Israel has been well served. Indeed, as a result of that accord, Israel has been able to decrease its military spending and to rely on Egypt to, for example, maintain the siege on Gaza, a key recent tactic of Israel against the Palestinians. If ElBaradei becomes the new president after Mubarak, the army will be able to rely on him to support -- even if uncomfortably -- this agenda. If the military loses its political influence, and becomes completely subject to civilian authority -- an option that it will fight against -- the balance of power in the region insofar as the Palestinian-Israel issue is concerned could change dramatically.

[General Duke]

Gues who got an interview with the laughing Cow himself..

 

"'If I resign today there will be chaos," Hosni Mubarak tells ABC News's Christiane Amanpour in an interview today:

 

I told Obama: 'you don't understand the Egyptian culture and what would happen if I step down now'."

[Libaax-Sankataabte]

 

Pro-Mubarak supporters surrender to opposition demonstrators during rioting near Tahir Square in Cairo. Egypt's government sought to quell unrest in the country.

Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/Resignation+would+bring+chaos+Mubarak+claims/4216485/story.html#ixzz1CvnXg35k

[Libaax-Sankataabte]

Shocking Video: Protesters Hit By Pro-Mubarak Car

 

 

[GoldCoast]

I enjoyed the historical context this article provided:

 

 

LONDON -- What a supreme irony it was for me to be in London and Paris between Saturday and Tuesday this week, as the popular revolt against the Hosni Mubarak regime reached its peak in Cairo, Alexandria and other Egyptian cities. To appreciate what is taking place in the Arab world today you have to grasp the historical significance of the events that have started changing rulers and regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, with others sure to follow. What we are witnessing is the unraveling of the post-colonial order that the British and French created in the Arab world in the 1920s and 30s and then sustained -- with American and Soviet assistance -- for most of the last half century.

 

It is fascinating but quite provincial to focus attention -- as much of the Western media is doing -- on whether Facebook drove these revolts or what will happen if Muslim Brothers play a role in the governments to be formed. The Arabs are like a bride emerging on her wedding day and many people are commenting on whether her shoes match her gloves, when the real issue is how beautiful and happy she is. The events unfolding before our eyes are the third most important historical development in the Arab region in the past century, and to miss that point is to perpetuate a tradition of Western Orientalist romanticism and racism that has been a large cause of our pain for all these years. This is the most important of the three major historical markers because it is the first one that marks a process of genuine self-determination by Arab citizens who can speak and act for themselves for the first time in their modern history.

 

The two other pivotal historical markers were: first, the creation of the modern Arab state system around 1920 at the hands of retreating European colonial powers. Some of them were intoxicated with both imperial power and, on occasion, with cognac, when they created most of the Arab countries that have limped into the 21st century as wrecks of statehood. Then, second, the period around 1970-80 when the Euro-manufactured modern Arab state system transformed into a collection of security and police states that treated their citizens as serfs without human rights and relied on massive foreign support to maintain the rickety Arab order for decades more. Now, we witness the third and most significant Arab historical development, which is the spontaneous drive by millions of ordinary Arabs to finally assert their humanity, demand their rights, and take command of their own national condition and destiny.

 

Never before have we had entire Arab populations stand up and insist on naming their rulers, shaping their governance system, and defining the values that drive their domestic and foreign policies. Never before have we had self-determinant and free Arab citizenries. Never before have we had grassroots political, social and religious movements force leaders to change their cabinets and re-order the role of the armed forces and police. This is a revolt against specific Arab leaders and governing elites who implemented policies that have seen the majority of Arabs dehumanized, pauperized, victimized and marginalized by their own power structure; but it is also a revolt against the tradition of major Western powers that created the modern Arab states and then fortified and maintained them as security states after the 1970s.

 

The process at hand now in Tunisia and Egypt will continue to ripple throughout the entire Arab world, as ordinary citizens realize that they must seize and protect their birthrights of freedom and dignity. It is a monumental task to transform from autocracy and serfdom to democracy and human rights; the Europeans needed 500 years to make the transition from the Magna Charta to the French Revolution. The Americans needed 300 years to transition from slavery to civil rights and women’s rights. Self-determination is a slow process that needs time. The Arab world is only now starting to engage in this exhilarating process, a full century after the false and rickety statehood that drunken retreating European colonialists left behind as they fled back to their imperial heartlands.

 

It takes time and energy to re-legitimize an entire national governance system and power structure that have been criminalized, privatized, monopolized and militarized by small groups of petty autocrats and thieving families. Tunisia and Egypt are the first to embark on this historic journey, and other Arabs will soon follow, because most Arab countries suffer the same deficiencies that have been exposed for all to see in Egypt. Make no mistake about it, we are witnessing an epic, historic moment of the birth of concepts that have long been denied to ordinary Arabs: the right to define ourselves and our governments, to assert our national values, to shape our governance systems, and to engage with each other and the rest of the world as free human beings, with rights that will not be denied forever.

 

In January 2011, a century after some Arabs started agitating for their freedoms from Ottoman and European colonial rule, and after many false starts in recent decades, we finally have a breakthrough to our full humanity.

 

 

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

[Khayr]

Prometheus, I take any thing written from the washington post by someone with the last name Cohen and that is written about Egypt, muslims, gaza and the Shariah - with a grain of salt's weight! It is inadmissable evidence, as the "expert" that El Punto quoted is heavily biased and has alot to gain, in their not being an "islamist" controlled state in Egypt.

[LayZie G.]

GoldCoast;691548 wrote:

Another pathetic cry for attention which I will refuse to entertain seriously for a third time. Its a fact that the revolution is popular in nature, and not the workings of the Muslim Brotherhood. They even admitted so themselves. The January 25th protests which started the uprising were solely the workings of the countrys network of secular activists and opposition leaders. They had a resonance and as a result have grew into the popular movement theyve become

today which has gotten the support of all facets of society including the countrys

Chrisitian minority.

How is this narrative consistent with yours of thuggery and terrorism?

GoldCoast, what is the population of Cairo? How many hooligans called "the naar square" home the last 10days? And are you going to come here and say the entire Cairo population are out there causing mayhem?

 

Essentially, you are saying not all of Cairo(which is the current hotbed of chaos and a good reason for using the city as an example) but all of Egypt are out on the streets, throwing stones, bleeding to death and if thats not enough, they resort to looting and probably resort to setting vehicles and buildings on fire with a side dish of threats of beheadings.

 

Please, put your glasses on, grab a pen and a paper and do some serious calculations, no cheating.(calculator is a big no no for you)

 

I find it incredible that you would log in to SOL with a straight face and repeat some of the Arab media's talking points. Waxaan oo kale mar danbe meesha hala imaanin.

 

Just like you, I tune to the same foreign coverage (yes, even arab media) and I see what you see. Few hundred(maybe thousands) of disgruntled youth, who have no future and probably have been sniffing glue the night before having a go at the middle age fadhi kudir crowd(you know the shiisha smoking, coffee drinking), while the overwhelming majority of Egyptians have been brought to their knees, cairo and else. Some locked in their homes, glued to their television sets and if they dont have television, those day labourers are putting their 2, 4 or 6 yr old son or daughter to bed not knowing if they will feed them little less than the day before or whether or not they have anything to feed them at all? This is the reality that faces many Egyptians...and especially CAIRO residents.

 

BTW, the person who will never be somebody(directed at your last post) needs some serious history lessons if he thinks the Arab world and Egypt's history started in the 20th century. Maybe while you are crunching some of those numbers above , you might want to grab a book too.(just a sisterly advise)

 

 

 

SANKA, don't turn this into a Forbes 100 list where it concerns the Al-Kingpin. Instead, ask yourself, is the enormous source of wealth warranted? It's a legitimate question, one that should be open to debate.

[Jacaylbaro]

Ha Walaaqnaato ..........

[Jacaylbaro]

Today is gona be a really BIG day ,,,, The protesters will move to the Presidency right after the Juma Prayers.

[nuune]

Layzie-Gaal is with Mubaarak and fully supports the government, the Americans and the West is against Mubarak and his regime, it is time for Layzie-Gaal to pick sides, Mubaarak or the West.

 

 

Breaking news: Obama wants immediate resignation of Mubarak, EU leaders in Brussels wants that to happen ASAP, it is sad when the West dictates who should go and who should stay, they clearly betrayed Mubarak on this, they supported him with his corruption and imprisonment of his own people, now they tell him to go when their interest is in danger, but he will not obey their orders as was clear from last night's meeting with ABC Network.

 

 

Ps: half of that British charter flight PAX from Cairo to Gatwich were all Somalis, British citizens of course, they talked about the horrible scenes in Cairo at arrival.

[Jacaylbaro]

He doesn't want to leave a country and system ,,,,, All he wants to leave is a total chaos

[Herer]

USA totally failed its influence in Egypt

[General Duke]

[General Duke]

Nuune, adeer whats with the name calling? Dont insult the sister. Come on people lets stock to the topic. This is big news..