Tag: Six In The Morning

I Am President For Life And Forever  

Can Egypt’s revolution stay the distance?

After thirty unbroken years as President of Egypt, it had seemed as if Hosni Mubarak’s charmed career was finally coming to an end.

But yesterday, Cairo’s famous traffic jams were back. Businesses, shops, and banks were open across the capital. Barack Obama spoke of the “progress” the Egyptian government was making towards reform. And though still in tens of thousands, the numbers at Tahrir Square were probably down on the previous day.

Meanwhile, Mr Mubarak, the great survivor, was using all the guile that has kept him in power for so long to produce a series of sweeteners – including a 15 per cent pay rise for state employees – to widen his public support.  

For Some Reason They Don’t Trust Or Believe You  

Egyptian government offers concessions as street protests continue

The Egyptian government yesterday began to offer possible political concessions in an effort to control the crisis still engulfing the country, as tens of thousands of determined protesters rallied for a 13th day to demand the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak.

The new promises of political reform were treated with caution by the opposition groups as they held the first of a series of meetings – including the first between the hitherto outlawed Muslim Brotherhood and the regime – to discuss their demands with Mr Mubarak’s deputy, Omar Suleiman.

There’s The Door Don’t Let Hit You On The Way Out  

Protesters in Tahrir Square are right to be sceptical despite the apparent shake-up in Egypt’s ruling party

Robert Fisk: Mubarak is going. He is on the cusp of final departure

The old man is going. The resignation last night of the leadership of the ruling Egyptian National Democratic Party – including Hosni Mubarak’s son Gamal – will not appease those who want to claw the President down. But they will get their blood. The whole vast edifice of power which the NDP represented in Egypt is now a mere shell, a propaganda poster with nothing behind it.

The sight of Mubarak’s delusory new Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq telling Egyptians yesterday that things were “returning to normal” was enough to prove to the protesters in Tahrir Square – 12 days into their mass demand for the exile of the man who has ruled the country for 30 years – that the regime was made of cardboard.

The Square That Is The Center Of Their Universe  

CAIRO, Egypt – Dozens of Egyptian women spilled out of a mosque in the Dokki neighborhood Friday, only their eyes visible from black veils that flapped in the breeze.

Marching in formation, they set off for downtown Cairo, where they hoped to join hundreds of thousands of protesters in Tahrir Square who were calling for the removal of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

When pro-Mubarak youths jeered at them from a balcony overhead, the women raised their voices louder. “Go home!” the youths yelled at the women, who replied by chanting, “He’s leaving! We’re not leaving!”

I Wont Go! I’m Holding By Breathe Now I’m Stomping My Feet  

As protests build, the U.S. faces the difficult task of supporting reform while maintaining ties with an ally who has long blamed the U.S. for the theocracy in Iran and the chaos in Iraq.

Mubarak digs in against reform, as he always has

Reporting from Washington – Embattled yet unbending, President Hosni Mubarak is sending a message that he remains deeply suspicious of reform efforts in Egypt and resistant to the calls from Washington and his own populace for him to step aside.

But this is not just the face of a leader in crisis. This is the way Washington’s relationship has always been with Mubarak. Two years ago, a secret cable from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo described Mubarak as stubborn and stone-faced when pressed to make reform, and maintaining that he is the only barrier standing in the way of disaster.

Send In The Thugs Bring In The Thugs, Wait They’re Already Here  

The sky was filled with rocks. The fighting around me was so terrible we could smell the blood

Robert Fisk: Blood and fear in Cairo’s streets as Mubarak’s men crack down on protests

“President” Hosni Mubarak’scounter-revolution smashed into his opponents yesterday in a barrage of stones, cudgels, iron bars and clubs, an all-day battle in the very centre of the capital he claims to rule between tens of thousands of young men, both – and here lies the most dangerous of all weapons – brandishing in each other’s faces the banner of Egypt. It was vicious and ruthless and bloody and well planned, a final vindication of all Mubarak’s critics and a shameful indictment of the Obamas and Clintons who failed to denounce this faithful ally of America and Israel.

I Get To Be The Next President  

Exclusive intervew: Robert Fisk meets Mohamed ElBaradei, Egypt’s saviour-in-waiting

Mohamed ElBaradei: The man who would be President

Man of the moment? Of course Mohamed ElBaradei is. But man of the people, I have my doubts. He doesn’t claim to be, of course, and sitting in his garden easy chair near an impossibly blue but rather small swimming pool, he sometimes appears – even wearing his baseball hat – like a very friendly, shrewd and bespectacled mouse. He will not like that description, but this is a mouse, I suspect, with very sharp teeth.

It’s almost a delight to dissect the bigger mice who work in the White House and the State Department.

“Do you remember how on the second day, all we heard was that they were ‘monitoring the situation’. On the second day, Secretary Clinton said: ‘We assess the situation as stable’; it was funny yesterday, too, to hear Clinton say that ‘we have been urging the Egyptian Mubarak for 30 years to move on this – and he moved backward – how on earth can you still ask him to introduce democratic reform?

Dictators Only Leave Through Force They Don’t Understand Peaceful Transition    

Opposition Rallies to ElBaradei as Military Reinforces in Cairo

Egypt’s powerful Muslim Brotherhood and the secular opposition banded together Sunday around a prominent government critic to negotiate for forces seeking the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, as the army struggled to hold a capital seized by fears of chaos and buoyed by euphoria that three decades of Mr. Mubarak’s rule may be coming to an end.

The announcement that the critic, Mohamed ElBaradei, would represent a loosely unified opposition reconfigured the struggle between Mr. Mubarak’s government and a six-day-old uprising bent on driving him and his party from power.

The U.S. Loves Those Middle East Dictators  

More Egyptian protesters demand that White House condemn Mubarak

 In a dusty alleyway in downtown Cairo, Gamal Mohammed Manshawi held out a dirty plastic bag Saturday afternoon. Inside were smashed gas canisters and the casings of rubber bullets that he said Egyptian police had fired at anti-government demonstrators.

“You see,” the 50-year-old lawyer said, displaying the items. On the bottom of each were the words “Made in the USA.”

“They are attacking us with American weapons,” he yelled as men gathered around him.

In the streets of Cairo, many protesters are now openly denouncing the United States for supporting President Hosni Mubarak, saying the price has been their freedom.

A people defies its dictator, and a nation’s future is in the balance  

A brutal regime is fighting, bloodily, for its life. Robert Fisk reports from the streets of Cairo



It might be the end. It is certainly the beginning of the end. Across Egypt, tens of thousands of Arabs braved tear gas, water cannons, stun grenades and live fire yesterday to demand the removal of Hosni Mubarak after more than 30 years of dictatorship.

And as Cairo lay drenched under clouds of tear gas from thousands of canisters fired into dense crowds by riot police, it looked as if his rule was nearing its finish. None of us on the streets of Cairo yesterday even knew where Mubarak – who would later appear on television to dismiss his cabinet – was. And I didn’t find anyone who cared.