Middle East landscape rapidly changing

[give her dixie]

The Revolution will be televised

http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/

The Al Jazeera reporter Ayman Mohyeldin who is reporting from Cairo is a friend, and he is one brave reporter.
His reports from Cairo all day have been amazing, and has been the best so far in reporting the reality on the ground.

This is going to be one long night, and will be scary for everyone on the ground.

It is too late in the day for Clinton to enter the frame and ask for reform. There was no mention of reforms
over the years when then handed out blank cheques to that bastard Mubarak.

I hope there are no futher loss of life, and it stays as peaceful as possible.

A full curfew for Egypt has now been imposed. Needless to say it will not be heeded

[Ulick]

I see they are all heeding the carfew

Tweets coming through say the army are clashing with the police in Suez.

[give her dixie]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/world/middleeast/28diplo.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha22

Good link on the wikilinks papers between the US and Egypt.

The military have taken to the streets, and have taken the side of the protesters.

[give her dixie]

5 people now confirmed dead today, and almost 1,000 people injured.

Mubarak has yet to make a public statement, instead relying on his puppet masters in Washington
to address the people.

The Israeli embassy staff have been airlifted out, and have no immediate plans to return.

Protestors have now stormed the state TV station, wrecking equipment.

[give her dixie]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/28/hosni-mubarak-unite-country-hatred


Hosni Mubarak: How one man united a country – in hatred


The widespread protests that began against the regime of President Hosni Mubarak have spread in the last few days to encompass almost an entire people.

It now includes not only the stone-throwing youths who huddled in the fog of teargas below the underpasses near the centre of Cairo, or charged police on the Nile bridges, but Egyptians from all walks of life.

Old and young, the middle classes and the urban poor. Those who didn't take to the streets waved from their balconies or threw water bottles and onions to the crowd below to be used against teargas. Others handed out paper facemasks for the same purpose.

Down below the protesters carried signs that said "game over" and wrapped themselves in Egyptian flags. Cars and motorbikes sounded their horns.

In the city centre, at a tiny mosque in a side alley, before the protest started the men came for Friday prayers and heard a sermon that set the tone. "No one has the right to control you save for God," he said over the loudspeaker. "You have the right to speak out, only do it peacefully."

In the march that began in Muhand aiming to walk to the city centre Tahrir Square, the same message was delivered.

Among the thousands were doctors in white coats, students and professors, those working for NGOs, housewives and children, hotel staff and shopkeepers.

What is extraordinary is how this mass movement has all of a sudden united Egypt against a single figure – Mubarak – forging an unexpected alliance of members of the Muslim brotherhood with those more moderate, as well as union members, activists and those whose politics are only defined by wanting something else. Many of them have been united by social media, fuelling Egypt's fiercest protests for years.

"I'm here because I support it," said Muhamad Fakhri, a 52-year-old university professor outside the mosque where the march began.

"I don't support any of the opposition leaders. All I want is reform. I'm here because I can see Egyptian people have reached the moment when they must choose. Because people are crushed by the prices of food, because of unemployment, because people should have freedom and democracy. I came to express my opinion against what I believe this government is doing wrong."

The police lined up to block the route of the march. Protesters stepped forward to appeal with the officers to join them.

A middle-aged employee of a large charity, asking not to be identified, said: "The reason I am here is to join the revolution." He marched along the banks of the Nile with a column of protesters who had been hit by gas canisters thrown at them by police occupying a motorway bridge.

"I think the government will fall. I'm really hopeful. All these rumours that Mubarak's son, Gamal, has fled and that Mubarak himself has packed his bag."

The presence of so many women had initially helped moderate the violence. Groups of women chanted "Peaceful! Peaceful!" and seized rocks and stones from the young men.

By the day's end it seemed that all of Egypt had come to join them

[give her dixie]

Mubarak on live now:

http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/

[lawnseed]

how do you see this panning out dixie. will the new leaders of these countries be more radical ie muslim extremeist or more leftest socialist

[All of a Sludden]

how do you see this panning out dixie. will the new leaders of these countries be more radical ie muslim extremeist or more leftest socialist

They`ll be what the Americans want them to be. 

[ross4life]

Well i was due to fly out to cairo yesterday though with the on going  protests i decided to cancel my flight & spend the rest of the week in the peace & quiet of Cyprus

I guess i'll have to see Egypt on a later date.

[Denn Forever]

Well i was due to fly out to cairo yesterday though with the on going  protests i decided to cancel my flight & spend the rest of the week in the peace & quiet of Cyprus

I guess i'll have to see Egypt on a later date.

Good call I'd say.

[give her dixie]

Well, today has seen an increased rise in protests all over Egypt. Over 30,000 people are now in Tahrir Square chanting for the removal of Hosni Mubara. In the past hour, 2 F16 fighter jets have been flying over the city, along with helicopters. The military are holding positions, and havn't turned on the people, yet......

The police are nowhere to be seen, and many prisons have been opened as security gaurds have left their posts. US and Israeli ebassies have been deserted, and diplomats and their families have been airlifted out.
Many countries are requesting their citizens to leave, and flights are been sent to Egypt to take them home.

Egypt have shut down Al Jazeera, however, they are still there reporting undercover. http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/2007829161423657345.html

At this stage, there is only one solution. Mubarak must go. Nothing else is going to satisfy the Egyptians. The US are making a lot of noise, however, no one in Egypt cares about what they have to say as they choke on tear gas, get shot by bullets, and watch F16's try to scare them. All presents to Mubarak from Uncle Sam.

The next 24 hours are going to be very tense, and it is in this time that a solution has got to be found.

It certainly has been a very historic 2 weeks, and has changed the face of the middle east for sure. There is no going back now, as people are rising up, and saying NO to brutal dictators.

[give her dixie]

Hillary Clintons speech on the current situation in Egypt, with sub titles explaing what she actually means.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rBuMuzhvYeA

[give her dixie]

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/an-arab-revolution-fueled-by-methods-of-the-west-1.340079

An Arab revolution fueled by methods of the West

So what has happened so far? A corrupt president in Tunisia flees, to cheers from around the world. Protests erupt in Egypt, and gloom descends. Protests are held in Iran, and the world cheers. A prime minister is deposed in Lebanon, to fear and dread. An Iraqi president is overthrown in a military offensive, and it's called democracy. Raucous demonstrations take place in Yemen, and they're called interesting but not terribly important.

Why the different reactions? This is supposedly the new Middle East the West always wanted, but something still isn't working out. This isn't the Middle East they dreamed of in the Bush administration, and not what nourished Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's wildest dreams. A new, unexpected player has appeared: the public.

Up to now, the world has been divided into two camps: "complicated" countries where the government represents the public and every decision is subject to public oversight, and "easy" countries where business is conducted at the top and the public is just window dressing. The dividing line between the two has always been starkly clear. Everything north of the Mediterranean belonged to the first group and everything to the south and east to the second.

The north had political parties and trade unions, a left wing and a right wing, important intellectuals, celebrities who shaped public opinion, and of course, there was public opinion itself. In the south the division was simple. It was the distinction between moderates and extremists, meaning pro-Westerners and anti-Westerners.

If you're a Saudi king who buys billions of dollars of American weapons, you're pro-Western and therefore entitled to continue to rule a country without a parliament, one where thieves' hands are amputated and women aren't allowed to drive. If you're an Egyptian president who supports the peace process, you're pro-Western and have permission to continue to impose emergency rule in your country, jail journalists and opposition members, and fix elections.

And what if you're the ruler of Qatar? There's a problem classifying you. On the one hand, Qatar hosts the largest American military base in the Middle East. But it has close relations with Iran and Syria. On the one hand, its ruler promotes democratic values and its foreign minister occasionally meets with top Israeli officials. But it nurtures Al Jazeera.

Of course, we love Al Jazeera when it shows us exclusive pictures of mass demonstrations, discloses secret documents, and is open to interviewing Israeli and Jewish spokespeople. But we hate it because it covers Hamas and Hezbollah's successes. The huge challenge of categorizing Qatar shows that the terms pro-Western and moderate have no connection to the universal values the West seeks to export. They only represent the degree of the fear and the threat posed by the values the anti-Westerners send to the West.

And all of a sudden, into the whirlwind, into the era of certainty and the lexicon in which the region's countries are neatly packaged, the Arab "street" erupts, a sophisticated street. It uses "our" methods: Facebook and Twitter - the tools of democracy we have invented - to present us with a situation of disorder. How do you defend yourself against this? This Arab street has already used these tools to depose Tunisian President Zine El Abedine Ben Ali, and its ideas have gone viral. What if it manages to establish democracy in Egypt? In Yemen? Look what happened to the Shah of Iran, albeit using now-outmoded cassettes.

And when Al Jazeera's cameras come close to the demonstrators, it also becomes clear that these are not religious radicals. Lawyers, journalists, university students, women with their heads uncovered, high school students, the secular and the religious are taking to the streets. They're not shouting "God is great," but "corruption out," "dictator out" and "we want jobs." Such nice slogans make you identify with them. In the words of "The Internationale": "arise ye workers from your slumber." It makes us want to join them until we remember that, as U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt described Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza, he "may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch." It's disrupting the order of things.

We don't have to wait for other regimes to fall to understand that the revolution is happening before our very eyes. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak will not fall due to demonstrations in Cairo's Tahrir Square, and Yemen's ruler will also continue to rule by force. But it's a revolution of awareness and of the fundamental notions of what the Middle East is. Most importantly, we need a revolution in the way the West views the region.

[seafoid]

the neocons have lost it

http://www.amconmag.com/postright/2011/01/29/the-neocons-have-lost-it/

The zionists have lost it too

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israel-urges-world-to-curb-criticism-of-egypt-s-mubarak-1.340238

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/for-obama-egypt-protests-may-garner-a-new-friend-israel-1.340237

 

Rand Paul hasn't

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/u-s-democrats-and-pro-israel-lobbies-slam-republican-senator-s-call-to-halt-israel-aid-1.339662

 

The administration "has been way behind the curve," said former Jordanian foreign minister Marwan Muasher, a vice president at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "So far, they're just reacting. They're looking at it from two prisms – the need for stability . . . and the peace process in Israel.

"This is not about Israel," Muasher said. "I wish for once the United States would just leave Israel out of this and look at it for what it is. People are fed up with corruption, and they want a better government." Egypt and Jordan, the only two Arab governments to have made peace with Israel, are central players in the faltering U.S.-backed Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/30/AR2011013004401.html
 

bijou January 30, 2011 at 11:51 pm

http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/01/30/2742769/hoenlein-elbaradei-a-stooge-for-iran

Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice-president of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, accused ElBaradei of covering up Iran's true nuclear weaponization capacities while he directed the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog.

"He is a stooge of Iran, and I don't use the term lightly," Hoenlein said in an online recorded interview with Yeshiva World News on the Egyptian crisis. "He fronted for them, he distorted the reports."

[seafoid]

Amazing video that is a riposte to all of the Islamophobia out there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hBV0ApIh_4&feature=player_embedded