Tens of thousands protest in Egypt

[arthur]

[Image: 737d4316-2aef-11e0-a2f3-00144feab49a.jpg]

Egyptian security forces have used rubber bullets, tear gas and water canon in running battles with tens of thousands of anti-government demonstrators demanding that Hosni Mubarak, the president, step down.

The demonstrations, the fourth consecutive day of protests in Egypt, started after Muslim Friday prayers. The most serious clashes took place in the capital Cairo, but people also took to the streets in towns across the country.

Their scale is unprecedented in a country where any form of public dissent is usually harshly suppressed. Local media reported at ;east two deaths, one in Cairo and one in Suez, and dozens of injuries.

Some protesters shouted: “The people want to bring down the regime”, a slogan taken from the recent protests in Tunisia, that toppled Zein al-Abidine Ben Ali, who had been president for 23 years.

Sarah, a media production worker handing out vinegar to protesters to combat the effect of tear gas, said she was not afraid even though she knew the authorities might turn violent. “I know that they will attack us and maybe we will die,” she said.

Mohamed, a student soaked by water cannon fire, said he would not be cowed by the police response. “We will do what we need to,” he said.

Obtaining an accurate picture of the unfolding events has been hampered by the authorities ordering all mobile phone operators to suspend services in certain parts of the country.

There has also been a blackout of the internet countrywide for most of the day.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel laureate and reform advocate who returned to Egypt vowing to join the protests on Thursday, and thousands of people with him near Giza on Cairo’s outskirts were driven from the main streets following the heavy use of tear gas by the security forces.

However the crowd quickly regrouped and advanced again towards the police lines, demanding Mr Mubarak resign and singing the national anthem. Many chanted “Salamiya,” which, they said, means peaceful, to show they were not seeking confrontation.

A policeman said: “Whoever raises his head today we will stamp on it with our feet. Who is this ElBaradei who thinks he can lead Egypt?”

Al Arabiya television reported some policemen took off their uniforms and either joined the protesters or went home.

A Cairo housewife not participating in the protests said of Mr Mubarak said: “He should go now, with dignity. How long can this go on?”


Local media reported that security forces were beating many people, with Al Arabiya reporting that its crew was among those assaulted and had had its equipment confiscated. CNN, the US-based network, also reported that one of its cameras had been confiscated.

Police have closed off Tahrir Square in the centre of modern Cairo and clashes were reported outside the Azhar mosque in the heart of the old city. Protests were reported in Mohandassin, Shubra and Matariya in Cairo and in the provincial towns of Minya, Mansoura, Aswan and Alexandria, the port city of Suez, scene of violent clashes on Thursday, and the tourist resort town of Luxor.

Al Jazeera television reported that tens of thousands of people in Mansoura were trying to storm the headquarters of the ruling National Democratic party. Protesters have also been seeking to approach the presidential palace.

Vodafone, the UK-based mobile operator which runs a joint venture with Egypt Telecom, confirmed on Friday that it had been asked by the Egyptian government to “suspend services in selected areas”.

The crackdown on communication networks follows the arrest overnight of several leading members of the opposition banned Muslim Brotherhood.

Abdel-Gelil El-Sharnoubi, the editor of the Brotherhood’s official website, told Bloomberg that seven senior leaders from the group’s guidance council had been detained overnight.

Access to the internet was cut countrywide and television correspondents reported interference with mobile phones. Heba Morayef, Egypt researcher at Human Rights Watch, said: “The government stopped blocking Twitter yesterday, but then all of a sudden last night a lot of us couldn’t get internet – so people can’t organise.”

Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary-general, on Friday appealed to both Egypt’s leaders and its people to “avoid further violence”. “I have been calling on the authorities to see this situation as an opportunity to address the legitimate concerns of their people,” he told a news conference at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

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In case you are not tracking this news and kept wondering if the UMich Sentiment Survey has such drastic effect on the markets tonight, this is the actual reason.

And to add on.. Yemen and Jordan has just joined the Egyptians in their respective countries protests after the Tunisians.

Oil spike? Maybe.. I can see alot of oil traders are taking large positions on either side right now. Its volatile at current moment.

[kazukirai]

Wonderful reminder of what happens when you have politicians messing with the system- a lot of people suffer.

ElBaradei Unifies Opposition, Criticizes Obama; Business Grinds to a Halt; Ports Shut Down, Food Prices Soar; Shortages of Food, Water, Fuel

To be honest, I haven't been following this story because Egypt hasn't been on my radar but it's a nice reminder of how something in Tunisia can spark off something of an even bigger scale in a neighbouring country. I think this has become Too Big To Ignore (TBTI).

[Jon-san]

It's caused STI to go into a 50 point drop. Wow... Correction days ahead?

[sgd]

this is bad. Democracy will never work in middle east with the arabs just look at Iraq and Afganistan, this is a mistake on part of american policy and obama administration, this will come back and haunt them several decades from now.

Israel is going to be in trouble, Egypt is the largest of her neighbors and currently friendly towards israel, Jordan is another that have also previously signed peace treaty. If egypt goes up in flames and a new leader emerges that is hostile jordan will likely back out of it too. The israelis will now be under preassure to return to the bargaining table with palestinians for new peace talks or it's going to be back to the old days again.

I see a possible middle eastern war maybe 3-4 years on the horizon.

[sgd]

[Image: obama.mubarak.jpg]

source: http://defense-update.com/wp/20110202_cairo-2011.html

There is a lot of confusion about the ongoing Egyptian crisis, yet it is vital that people understand what is really at stake here.

It all happened before, but unfortunately, the American leadership headed by Barak Hussein Obama seems to have a short memory- or is simply ignorant of the new Middle East- already on its way becoming a radical Islamic caliphate.

Former US President Jimmy Carter will go down in American history as “the president who lost Iran” a major US ally, turning into a brutal Islamic state, destabilizing the entire Middle East. Now, thirty years later, President Obama is losing western oriented Turkey, Lebanon and now Egypt to the same fate. What started a few weeks ago in the so-called “Jasmine Revolution” in Tunis- has engulfed millions of Egyptians in their “Twitter Revolution” , with the epicenter culminating in Tahrir Square urging 83 year old President Hosni Mubarak to go, under Obama’s obsessive pressure.

The collapse of the old regime in Cairo, once it takes place, will have a massive impact on the entire region. The Domino effect, is shaking the rulers in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. Israel’s thirty year long peace treaty with Egypt is questionable and will require a comprehensive strategic re-assessment, with significant military and economic repercussion.

Obama’s incomprehensible incompetence in foreign affairs has already become deadly for Middle East and for the entire western world- his present mishandling of the dangerous developments in Tunis, Beirut and now Cairo- seem catastrophic, to say the least.

Within days, America’s position in the “moderate” Arab world crumbled into an unprecedented abyss. So many carefully built relationships, which kept this volatile region on the brink of war, by careful crisis management and wise statesmanship in Washington, have evaporated, within days, into chaos and dangerous anarchy, from which only irresponsible elements, such as Islamic Jihad can benefit.

And so they shall indeed, sooner than later, as history teaches us here, for decades, but unfortunately, these trends remain strangely unheeded in Washington, as by many European leaders, which should know better, being already next in line, as targets of Islamic fundamentalism.

Freedom and liberalism are at the roots of western society and its culture and should be nourished by every democracy- but, as history in the Middle East has, time and again demonstrated, the Arab world has not yet absorbed the benefits of this domain and extremist elements exploit free elections as convenient instruments in gaining ruthless power for their Islamic ambitions. Hezbollah and Hamas are only two recent detrimental events.

Now the Washington’s oppressive demand to dismantle Hosni Mubarak’s thirty year rule, which may not have been based on liberal principles, but nevertheless kept eighty million people living in peace for three decades, within a volatile region, in which thousands of Egyptions lost their lives in three wars with Israel. Now, with Mubarak, the Tyrant gone, and with chaos and anarchy ruling the streets, with no reliable leadership in sight, the scene will soon be ripe for an Islamic take over, which will have serious consequences. These will not only be highly precarious for the Egyptian people, longing for freedom, which will be denied them, but catastrophic for the entire region. The big question asked by secular moderates is wether Muslim Brotherhood will hijack the “Twitter Revolution”? Indeed, many of the Egyptian seculars demonstrating in the streets of Cairo, are fearing the Muslim ‘fixers in the shadows’ may emerge as Egypt’s new leadership.

So who are those Islamic elements, which are sofar carefully watching events, waiting in the background, only to make their move when the right moment arrives.

Introducing the Muslim Brotherhood

Being the most organized factions in Egypt, excluding the army, the Muslim Brotherhood has a long history in Middle East politices and foremost in Egypt. Founded by Imam Hassan al-Banna in 1928, as an Islamic political social movement, its ranks swelled to nearly two million members, during WW2, supporting the Nazis, involved in agitation against the British, espionage and sabotage, as well as support for terrorist activities orchestrated by the Mufti Haj Amin el-Hussaini. The Brotherhood has been an illegal organization, but remains the largest opposition group in Egypt, advocating Islamic reform. In the 2005 parliamentary elections, the Brotherhood’s candidates, who had to run as independents due to their illegality as a political party, won 88 seats (20% of the total) to form the largest opposition bloc. However in last November elections, the Brotherhood was totally banned, which may have aggravated the tension already building up against Mubarak.

The Egyptian Brotherhood has also strong links with Al Qaeda. Dr Ayman Muhammad Rabaie al-Zawahiri, a leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood, had joined al Qaeda in 1998 to become Osama Bin Laden’s Second in Command. Several of Al Qaeda’s prominent leaders were also members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

Mohamed ElBaradie, the Nobel Laureate who ran the International Atomic Energy Agency, now aspires to serve as an interim leader, following Mubarak’s regime. He is supported by the Muslim Brotherhood, and, in turn, tries to portray the Islamic organization as a moderate, social oriented faction, which should not arouse fear in the mostly secular majority, now demonstrating against the military regime. But once the Brotherhood will gain political power filling the vacuum, those very seculars will be in for a terrifying surprise, as happened to the secular student of Tehran thirty years ago.

But there is an even more sinister scenario lurking in the shadows. The Mubarak regime has long been suspicious of the connection between the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Iran, based in large part on Iran’s strong ties to Hamas, an offshoot of the Brotherhood. Although most oriental analysts claim that Sunni Egypt is far from coming under the banner of Tehran’s Shiite influence, it is perhaps lesser known, that Egyptians are more receptive and positively disposed toward Shiism than other Sunni Arabs. One reason is the Fatimid Dynasty that was established in Egypt in the tenth century as an offshoot of the Shiite Ismaelite movement. According to official estimates, the Shiites constitute less than 1 percent of the Egyptian population (approximately 657,000), but Muhammad al-Darini, a prominent Sunni who converted to Shiism, puts the figure at 1.5 million, However the Muslim Brotherhood, although being Sunni in its religion, has already long-standing relationship with the Shiite clerics in Tehran Following the 1979 Islamic revolution, the Egyptian Brotherhood openly sided with Khomeini’s revolutionaries as they overthrew the Shah. Now ignoring lessons from the past, Obama and his aides gamble that an anti-American Islamist government in Cairo, allied with Iran won’t emerge from the chaos. But when polled only recently, 59% of Egyptians said they backed the Islamists, which should have raised alarm bells in Washington long ago. As the world now watches the present turmoil in Egypt, there is a palpable fear that the Muslim Brotherhood will eventually seize power. With Iran already deeply involved with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, there is little doubt that, given the opportunity, Tehran’s Islamic specter will also target Cairo.

[corydorus]

Let's look at the other side of the coin.

Egypt has been relatively stable for so many years but ordinary people still so poor. What's the point ? To help Amrericans so that they can print more money, inflats their homes and sponser their over budget military? or helping Egyptians? Is it better for them to emerge a people leader and slowly change to less radical if so. I htink is a good change. Bad news for middle-east stability but this is something that needs to be manage not avoid.

[freedom]

the president I like of Egypt is Nasser.

the defeat of the war with Israel had much to do with US, rather a personal failure of Nasser.

[arthur]

Egypt stands as a poltical stable zone in that region as well as a economic port of call for the US and her allies interest.
Some of us may already know that:
1. Suez Canal is operated by Egyptians.
2. Nasser was among the first, if not the first president to offer an olive branch to Israel after the Yom-Kipper war (or was it another war)?

In any case, the US has vested interest in keeping that country secure and stable.
I sincerely hope that Egypt will not return to Islamic fundamentalism like after the fall of Shah of Iran then.
It will bring another degree of political instability into that region and economics as the Suez Canal is to European ships navigation as important as Singapore's port to ships from South China Sea to Indian Ocean.

In the words of German Chancellor Merkel's; a system of poltical stability and process should be thought up and implemented first before sworing in another incumbent prez. Else it will be like the non-stop change of Thailand presidents after the downfall of Thaksin. I agree absolutely. But still ideals and realism is far from each other on ground level there i guess.

[corydorus]

Isreal gobbled up the sinai, smashed the entire convoys of Eqypt there. Basically no way Egypt has any reserve to get back the land.
Isreal then use the land return as conditional offer for peace which ends the war front quickly as they neither want to extend their planes lose over the canel. Eqypt land being reduced by half, so return of sinai for peace is too good a bargain not to reject.

I believe thailand non-stop change of presidents are becoz of the hidden hand behind meddlings to keep themselves in absolute power unlike malaysia sultans who lost almost all powers. The thai royals have power over the military. In certain sense the King is well respected but i am not so sure about the rest of royals.

[freedom]

the idea that Isreal is built among Arab countries is the reason for instability of Middle East.