A Quarter Million Today, Hoping for a Million on Tuesday,
Crying FOR Hosni Mubarak’s Resignation ON Wednesday
Singing “I’ll Fly Away” from My Eagle’s Height on Thursday,
As world waits to see who will fly up to fill Mubarak’s Roost.
January 31, 2010
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
Begin Excerpt 1 from THE JERUSALEM POST
250,000 protesters gather in Cairo’s Tahrir Square
By ASSOCIATED PRESS AND JPOST.COM STAFF
01/31/2011 16:14
Curfew-defying protesters continue 7th day of anti-government demonstrations calling for Mubarak’s removal; Al-Jazeera network says 6 English-language journalists arrested, subsequently released.
Around 250,000 protesters gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square Monday afternoon as anti-government protests continued for the seventh day, the pan-Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera reported.
Protesters ignored the state-imposed curfew which began at 3 p.m. as a coalition of opposition groups called for a million people to take to the streets Tuesday to demand the removal of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the clearest sign yet that a unified leadership was emerging for Egypt’s powerful but disparate protest movement.
Earlier Monday, Al-Jazeera reported that six of its journalists were in Egyptian custody after authorities ordered the closure of the network’s Cairo office. By mid-afternoon, the network reported via Twitter that
the six were released but that authorities had seized their equipment.
The Qatar-based network said the journalists were working for its English-language channel — a sister operation to the flagship Arabic service.
The detentions came a day after Egyptian authorities shut Al-Jazeera’s office, complaining its round-the-clock coverage was slanted toward protesters and could encourage more unrest which has reached its seventh day.
Al-Jazeera denounced the closure as an attempt to muzzle open reporting as anti-government demonstrations and protests continued. The network had managed to continue coverage in Egypt with fixed-position cameras and reports by phone.
On Monday morning, Egyptian helicopters were sighted flying above Tahrir Square, CNN reported.
Egyptian soldiers and armored tanks continued their presence on city streets, CNN said and Al-Jazeera reported that the military presence in downtown Cairo “just keeps getting stricter day by day; there’s more roadblocks, more barbed wire, there’s more restrictions on who can move about and TV cameras are more restricted.”
In an online audio posting on the network’s Twitter feed, Al-Jazeera “has confirmed that regular police are redeploying in the city, they’re back on the streets…they were seen at a police station…on the west side of the Nile, southwest of central Cairo.”
An Al-Jazeera correspondent said the police were spotted “at a police station where the civilians on the street reportedly were not actually unhappy to see them. They were shaking hands and talking casually, perhaps happily…which might not make immediate sense since these are the people who are blamed for the deadly violence that racked the city just days ago but that’s what our crews are seeing.”
A leading Muslim Brotherhood official told The Associated Press that the fundamentalist movement wants to form a committee of opposition groups along with Nobel laureate and leading reform advocate Mohamed ElBaradei as a way of uniting the disparate groups calling for the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak.
Saad el-Katatni said that his group has not selected ElBaradei to represent it.
The outlawed Muslim Brotherhood is Egypt’s largest opposition movement, and wants to form an Islamist state in the most populous Arab nation.
The police, which before the revolt could be seen on nearly every corner, melted away Friday, giving way to looting and arson.
Gangs of thugs have cleared out supermarkets, shopping malls and stores, as well as luxury homes and apartments in affluent residential areas in the suburbs.
On Monday, police were beginning to redeploy in many neighborhoods.
Begin Excerpt from Al Jazeera
ElBaradei: Cut US Mubarak support
With his feet on the ground in Egypt, opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei presses the US to abandon Hosni
Mubarak.
Last Modified: 30 Jan 2011 21:00 GMT
Mohamed ElBaradei says he’s been ‘mandated by the people’ to help create a ‘unity government’
GALLO/GETTY
Egyptian opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei has put pressure on the United States to support calls for Hosni Mubarak, the embattled Egyptian president, to step down, saying “life support to the dictator” must end.
In a series of interviews with a US television networks from Cairo on Sunday, ElBaradei also said he had a mandate to negotiate a national unity government and would soon reach out to the army, at the heart of power in Egypt for more than a half century.
ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace laureate for his work with the UN nuclear agency, said it was only a matter of time before Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt for three decades, stepped down.
He urged Barack Obama, the US president, to take a stand.
“It is better for President Obama not to appear that he is the last one to say to President Mubarak, ‘It’s time for you to go,'” he told CNN.
Mubarak’s democracy ‘a farce’
ElBaradei, a possible candidate in Egypt’s presidential election this year, dismissed US calls for Mubarak to enact sweep ing democratic and economic reforms
in response to the protests.
“The American government cannot ask the Egyptian people to believe that a dictator who has been in power for 30 years would be the one to implement democracy. This is a farce,” he told the CBS program “Face the Nation.”
“This first thing which will calm the situation is for Mubarak to leave, and leave with some dignity.
Otherwise I fear that things will get bloody.
And you (the United States) have to stop the life support to the dictator and root for the people.”
ElBaradei returned to Egypt on Thursday night in the midst of large-scale protests that have left Mubarak clinging to power with the army in the streets.
ElBaradei addressed the protesters in Cairo on Sunday.
Muted US response
Obama is performing a delicate balancing act, trying to avoid outright abandoning Mubarak — an important US strategic ally of 30 years – while supporting protesters who seek broader political rights and demand his ouster.
The US response to ElBaradei’s return has so far been muted, perhaps signalling a reluctance to be seen as meddling in a country where Washington has long cast a shadow with annual aid of about $1.5 bn per year.
ElBaradei is a well-known figure in Washington. He had an uneasy relationship with the administration of former President George W. Bush after he disputed the US rationale for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Earlier on Sunday, a leading member of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood said Egyptian opposition forces had agreed to support ElBaradei to negotiate with the government.
In his US interviews, ElBaradei rejected concerns about extremism within the Muslim Brotherhood, which is popular among the underprivileged, partly because it offers social and economic services in deprived neighbourhoods.
“They are no way extremists. They are no way using violence,” he told ABC’s “This Week” programme.
“This is what the regime … sold to the West and to the US: ‘It’s either us, repression or al Qaeda-type.
Source:
Agencies
FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner.
We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more detailed information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml.
You may use material originated by this site. However, if you wish to use any quoted copyrighted material from this site, which did not originate at this site, for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner from which we extracted it.