Topic: What's up with the Arabic countries?

[subvinorosa]

Honey banana, I hope that your family stays safe. 

[smokester]

It must be really conflicting for you Hmed. Not that it is any of my business but I am left wanting desperately for you and your family to be safe, but by the same token, I also want the will of the people to prevail.

I hope then that the situation sees sense and is resolved with minimal bloodshed if any at all, although that is completely unrealistic at this point.

The reporting of the situation here is pretty unbiased and unsensational as far as I am aware (although I read more that I watch), and this was suggested reading for those who want a quick understanding of why it is happening:

http://tahirimran.com/what-egyptians-want-to-change-a-chat-in-tahrir-square-cairo/

[hmed2390]

Thank you for the kind wishes everyone, it means a lot to me.

I'm concerned about my family but I'm also in support of their cause and hope that this reforms the government in a way that will benefit everybody.

Thanks for the link Smokes, I too prefer to read my news.

Pretty much the story goes: the corrupt leader of Tunisia gets outcasted from the government and the Egyptians see this as a stepping stone for themselves. Mainly through social networking thousands of people answer to the call of a need to attempt similar for a better tomorrow. A fair cause , however, there's a key difference between Egypt and Tunisia and what works in one may not necessarily work in the other as evidenced thus far. For one, the Military & Police Force were behind overthrowing the corrupt government in Tunisia, so it was basically the force of a country against a tyrannical ruler. The winning side is inevitably predetermined. In Egypt's case, protests took place in the thousands and then the millions , where free speech is a lost cause to begin with, to tamper with that by requesting that Hosni Mubrarak resigns without a centralized organization to fall back on is a quick recipe for hardships, not to say in any way that it's a waste but it was rushed and not well-thought out. And as Smokes' link briefly sums it up, the people aren't to blame it's the government that's oppressing and keeping Egypt's economy,technology,society, and education in the dark. It then becomes more understandable for people to protest at large and with so much hatred and to be fueled by anger ahead of planning than it is for the government to react in the ways that it has. So far it's a mess because there is no centralized leadership in the protests , no planning(or time for planning now) and no one coming forward directly demanding exactly what it is that they want and how. Add to that the way that Hosni Mubarak reacted in a matter of hours notoriously shows off his totalitarian model of running things. The Egyptian people are fed up, their rights aren't being delivered , and they want to collectively make that call for change with the hopes that it leads to a successful attempt as was observed in Tunisia for a better future , for growth and a more celebrated collection of common interests such as the establishments of a minimum wage among others. So now unfortunately it's a matter of observation and patience.

[hmed2390]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/01/hosni-mubarak-egypt-president

Update:

Hosni Mubarak vows to stand down at next election ? but not now

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's announcement that he will serve out remaining term immediately rejected by angry crowds


Egypt's embattled president, Hosni Mubarak, last night bowed to the pressure of millions of people massing on the streets, pledging to step down at the next election and pave the way for a new leader of the Arab world's largest country.

But Barack Obama, who effectively withdrew US support for the leader of its key Arab ally in a day of fast moving developments, gave an equivocal welcome to the speech by saying that "change must begin now" while praising the "passion and dignity" of the demonstrators in the streets as an inspiration.

Mubarak said he would not be a candidate for a seventh term but would remain in power to oversee reform and guarantee stability ? a position that was immediately rejected by angry crowds and promised yet more drama in Egypt's extraordinary crisis.

"In the few months remaining in my current term I will work towards ensuring a peaceful transition of power," Mubarak said. "I have exhausted my life in serving Egypt and my people. I will die on the soil of Egypt and be judged by history" ? a clear reference to the fate of Tunisia's president who fled into exile last month.

Looking grave as he spoke on state TV in front of the presidential seal, Mubarak attacked those responsible for protests that had been "manipulated by political forces", caused mayhem and chaos and endangered the "stability of the nation".

In a defiant, finger-wagging performance the 82-year-old said he was always going to quit in September ? " a position he had never made public until now.

Opposition leaders had already warned throughout a dramatic eighth day of mass protests that only Mubarak's immediate departure would satisfy them.

The Egyptian leader made his announcement after meeting a White House special envoy who conveyed the message that Washington had in effect withdrawn US support for the man who had been the linchpin of its Middle East strategy.

The White House declined to reveal details of the message conveyed by the envoy, Frank Wisner, a former US ambassador to Cairo who is close to Mubarak other than to say he urged him not to seek re-election. But after the Egyptian leader's speech, Obama spoke to Mubarak for 30 minutes and then made a statement at the White House in which he praised the protesters and called for the transition of power to begin immediately.

But the US president did not explicitly call for Mubarak to resign immediately, leaving open the possibility of Washington accepting the Egyptian leader overseeing the transition in the face of unprecedented protests and an insistence by opposition leaders that they would not negotiate while Mubarak remains in power.

"What is clear, and what I indicated tonight to President Mubarak, is my belief that an orderly transition must be meaningful, it must be peaceful and it must begin now," said Obama.

"Furthermore the process must include a broad spectrum of Egyptian voices and opposition parties. It should lead to elections that are free and fair."

But in Washington and Cairo there were questions over the Obama administration's position with some Americanpoliticians, such as John Kerry, chairman of the Senate's foreign affairs committee, saying Mubarak must resign immediately.

Certainly many Egyptians want that. "May it be tonight, oh God," chanted the crowds in Cairo's Tahrir Square as they waited to hear the historic speech.

Mubarak's statement came at the end of a day that saw epic protests. Millions of people rallied across the country.

"Illegitimate," chanted the vast crowds choking Tahrir Square. "He [Mubarak] will leave, we will not leave," went another slogan, in a festive atmosphere that belied the tense stalemate that has emerged between the people and the regime over an extraordinary 48 hours.

With the army standing by its landmark pledge not to use force against demonstrators, Mubarak faced an intense and co-ordinated US campaign to persuade him and the powerful Egyptian military to effect "an orderly transition".

But as troops barricaded the presidential palace with barbed wire, Egypt's fractured opposition rallied together to reject any talks with the ruling National Democratic party on political reform, insisting the president must stand down before any dialogue can get under way.

On Monday, Mubarak ordered his new vice-president and intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, to begin a dialogue with opposition groups, including the powerful Muslim Brotherhood. "Omar Suleiman approached us, and we have rejected his approaches," Essam el-Arian, a Brotherhood spokesman, told the Guardian. "As long as Mubarak delays his departure, these protests will remain and they will only get bigger."

Mohammed ElBaradei, 68, the former UN nuclear weapons inspector who has been nominated to lead any negotiations, met protesters and the US ambassador to Egypt, Margaret Scobey, insisting afterwards that no talks were possible while the president remained in power.

"I hope to see Egypt peaceful and that's going to require as a first step the departure of President Mubarak," he told al-Arabiya TV. "If President Mubarak leaves then everything else will progress correctly."Mass protests were reported across Egypt, including in Alexandria, Suez and many other cities.

Underlining the regional impact of the crisis, the Jordanian prime minister was sacked after weeks of protests over price rises and unemployment and inspired by events in Tunisia and now Egypt.

The Foreign Office said in a statement last night: "We have been clear in public, and with President Mubarak and his government in private, about the need for a transition to a broader-based government that will produce real, visible and comprehensive change."

William Hague, the foreign secretary, said a charter flight would be sent to Cairo to bring Britons back but they would have to pay ?300 for the service.

Finally, the US offers more than lip service for once.

[laama]

I wish all the best for you hmed2390 and your family and friends there.

I guess Western States are more worried what's happening to Suez channel than ordinary citizens.

[subvinorosa]

Have hope hmed.

[hmed2390]

Thank you Sub, laama.



http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2011/feb/02/barack-obama-egypt-mubarak-protests

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2011/feb/01/hosni-mubarak-egypt-address-tv

[goldshirt*9]

trouble in the square at cairo at the moment 

[xtopave]

I've just found this thread. Hmed, you said you heard about your family and friends on January 30. Have you heard about them since? Hopefully they're OK.

[hmed2390]

trouble in the square at cairo at the moment 

Yep. 10 dead and over 1500 injured.

I've just found this thread. Hmed, you said you heard about your family and friends on January 30. Have you heard about them since? Hopefully they're OK.

Yes I did xtopave and have been keeping in contact with them since. They're all doing alright thank god. Thank you very much for asking.


http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/02/egypt-internet-back-up-as-protests-turn-violent-in-cairo/

Egypt Internet Restored; Cairo Protests Turn Violent

Egypt Internet Restored; Cairo Protests Turn Violent

Supporters of President Hosni Mubarak, riding camels and horses, fight with anti-Mubarak protesters in Cairo Wednesday. Several thousand Mubarak supporters, including some riding horses and camels and wielding whips, clashed with anti-government protesters as Egypt's upheaval took a dangerous new turn. Mohammed Abou Zaid/AP

Internet access in Egypt was restored Wednesday as protests turned violent in the capital, a day after president Hosni Mubarak said he would not step down immediately and as pro-government demonstrators, some on horseback and camels, took to the streets and challenged opponents of the regime.?Egyptian Internet providers returned to the Internet at 09:29:31 UTC (11:29am Cairo time). Websites such as the Egyptian Stock Exchange, Commercial International Bank of Egypt, MCDR, and the US Embassy in Cairo, are once again reachable,? James Cowie of Renesys said in a blog post.

?All major Egyptian ISPs appear to have readvertised routes to their domestic customer networks in the global routing table?The rebooted Egyptian table is smaller than it was a week ago, but that?s mostly because of a normal process called ?reaggregation? (the deletion of very small, specific customer routes that are partially or totally redundant with existing announcements, generally for purposes of traffic engineering). That?s to be expected: the Egyptian table had gotten pretty dense with redundancy in the week leading up to the takedown, and it?s been cleaned up in the process of being brought back.

?It wasn?t totally smooth; a few larger network blocks belonging to the Egyptian Universities Network (AS2561) were still missing. Unfortunately, these included the address space that hosts the .eg top level domain servers. The routes have since recovered.?Egypt?s internet clampdown last Friday came just as street protests were poised to ramp up in a ?Day of Rage.? Despite the aggressive tone and some looting, protests through the weekend ? though heavy on property damage, especially to government and ruling-party installations ? were not marked by significant clashes with the military. Dozens, however, were killed.

With the restoration of access, Twitter lit up from the scene. Among those in tweeting from Tahrir Square are Pulitzer-prize-winning New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof (@NickKristof), who just sent this series of messages via the web:

    In my part of Tahrir, pro-#Mubarak mobs arrived in buses, armed with machetes, straight-razors and clubs, very menacing.

    I saw some people who were motionless and seemed badly injured. Hard to know casualties, but they?re adding up.

    Pro-#Mubarak thugs at #Tahrir v hostile to journalists. Several journalists attacked. I was threatened but am fine.

    Pro-Mubarak thugs everywhere have same talking points, same signs, same hostility to journalists. An organized crackdown.

    I tried to interview a young woman who was surrounded and bullied by Mubarak?s thugs. She stood her ground.heroically.

    Then the mob prevented me from talking to her, and she slipped away. It?s #Mubarak thugocracy on #Tahrir.

Egypt?s reason for cutting off the internet, and to tamp down mobile networks, seemed obvious: to complicate the ability of the protesters to organize. Clearly, that was not effective. The government?s reason for restoring the internet is not as clear, even as Mubarak takes a more-defiant tone and as the uprising, and the government?s response to it, is playing out on live TV.

It?s possible, of course, that restoring internet access (whose absence did nothing to quell the uprising anyway) is part of a larger effort to appear accommodating in the face of confrontations, which journalists on the scene report seem trumped up with the sudden, coincidental appearance of armed pro-Mubarak partisans.

Josh Leffler, a  25-year-old student attending the American University in Cairo, who has participated in the protests for the past three days, said he believes the restoration of internet access just as the protests turned violent for the first time was not a coincidence. ?This is obviously an extremely clever way of trying to manipulate the flow of information to reflect poorly on the protesters,? he wrote in an e-mail to Wired, in which he also confirmed internet access has been restored in Cairo.

[subvinorosa]

I hope things work out.  Not just for your family hmed, but for Egypt.

[hmed2390]

Thanks Sub, so do I.

[goldshirt*9]

unfortunately this occurs when one in power does not want to give it up.

Tunisia / Egypt / Jordan where next

if any of the big oil producing countries start to go this way, then
what will happen .
will the west remain a bystander

[hmed2390]

unfortunately this occurs when one in power does not want to give it up.

Tunisia / Egypt / Jordan where next

if any of the big oil producing countries start to go this way, then
what will happen .
will the west remain a bystander

It's a good thing, people are fighting injustice after being oppressed for too long. All of this is long past due.

[smokester]

will the west remain a bystander

It's no different in the West - Italy (and everyone else) wants Berlusconi out, me and millions of others want the Condems out and are in some cases protesting violently, Ireland's government on the brink of collapse and so on.  Egyptians are just exercising the same right to protest, but we are all poo scared that the authorites are going to go "Tiananmen" on them and is why we must pay the situation interest and implore our governments to support what's right.