expected to march. As the time difference is around 6 hours earlier, in
Egypt, lots of information should be around the evening news channels
here. As Rachel Maddow showed lots of actual footage and a couple of
interviews on Thursday's show, we can expect decent coverage tonight,
Friday, 6 PM PDT, 9PM EDT, MSNBC. I may post something on Saturday.
Ed
Democracy Now just reported that thousands of people have already
been arrested, including some leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood and
Mohammed ElBaradai, Nobel Prize winner and former head of the UN's
Nuckear Regulatory Agency. He'd just yesterday returned to support
the uprising. Hundreds of thousands have already taken to the streets
throughout Egypt. Alll this just before this evening's marches begin.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/01/27-11
Egypt's Day of Rage Goes On. Is the World Watching?
The scale of protests in Egypt has shaken a regime that has long relied on
citizens' passivity to retain power
by Amira Nowaira
The Guardian/UK: Thursday, January 27, 2011
Tens of thousands of Egyptian demonstrators took to the streets on 25
January, young and old, Muslim and Christian, rich and poor, educated and
not so-educated. They all chanted "Long live Egypt", "Life, liberty and
human dignity" and "Down with the Mubarak regime".
The day marked for the celebration of Police Day was dubbed the Day of Rage.
The protests, which continued through a second day in almost every part of
the country, are showing no signs of abating on the third day, with a
million-strong march scheduled for Friday. These demonstrations are sending
shivers down the spine not only of the regime but of its friends and allies
as well.
The scale of the protests came as a blow to all those who have been betting
that a sleeping dragon will continue its slumber. For three decades now,
Egyptians have been kept on a tight leash, fed more with promises than with
bread. They were cajoled into compliance by a media that has the interests
of the regime at heart and a religious establishment that owes its
allegiance and existence to the state, but were often threatened into
submission by the force of the baton if they refused to comply.
Egyptian grievances are numerous. They have seen neither the fruits of peace
nor of the huge economic growth that Egypt is reported to be making in
international economic indices. What they experience on a daily basis is
endless queuing for inedible bread and suffocating traffic congestion as the
police force is increasingly burdened with the task of protecting the regime
and its men.
There were also demonstrations last month calling for a minimum monthly wage
of 1,200 Egyptian pounds (roughly £130). Too much, said the government. It
could only promise to institute a minimum wage of 400LE (£43). This is
hardly surprising from a government made up of businesspeople who no doubt
have a vested interest in keeping wages as low as possible. The spokesmen of
the regime shamelessly argued that it was a fair wage to expect.
For some years now, the Mubarak regime has been heading for disaster. With
rampant unemployment, soaring prices and a 30-year long state of emergency,
its popularity has dropped to an all-time low. But more importantly, it has
repeatedly shown its total disregard for public opinion, a disregard that
would have amounted to political suicide under any other system.
An obvious example is the rigged parliamentary elections of November 2010,
which were perhaps the worst in Egypt's history. The ruling National
Democratic party had the audacity to announce that these elections were one
of the fairest in Egypt's history. Ahmed Ezz, the
iron-tycoon-turned-politician and one of the new guard at the NDP, who is
known to have masterminded the electoral operation, triumphantly announced
the results. He stated that the landslide victory that secured 98% of the
parliamentary seats for the ruling party was the result of its popularity on
the streets and the fruit of the hard work of its members.
The initial call for the Day of Rage was made by young Facebook activists
inspired by the success of Tunisians in overthrowing Ben Ali. The Facebook
invitation for the protests received 95,000 positive responses. Other forces
and opposition groups later responded to the call, including the Muslim
Brotherhood, whose participation has so far been quite low-key.
For the first time in decades, Egyptian protesters went out in unprecedented
numbers across the whole country with one slogan: "People want the regime to
fall". They made their demands clear. Mubarak should step down, the illegal
parliament be dissolved and emergency law be suspended. The call was for the
whole country to rally and unite, and there were no religious chants or
slogans.
The reaction of the regime to the protests so far has been pathetically
inadequate. It shows that this regime is still in denial. While Mubarak kept
his silence, the interior ministry took on the task of communicating with
the people, in the only way it knows how to. As it cracked down on
demonstrators, it issued statements, banning any further protests and
repeating the same old excuses. It blamed the Muslim Brotherhood for what it
called riots on the streets and blamed their members for infiltrating the
crowds in order to wreak havoc. This is supposed to do the trick of scaring
the world about the propsect of an imminent Islamist takeover of Egypt - a
fear that the regime has painstakingly been fostering. The interior ministry
also blamed the ill-defined but frequently invoked "foreign hands" that are
always bent on fomenting trouble and inciting people against their loving
and God-fearing rulers.
State-controlled newspapers have also shown that their reports are approved,
if not written, by the security apparatus. People were shocked to see the
headlines of the state-run Al-Ahram newspaper on 26 January, after a day of
massive protests in different Egyptian cities: "Widespread protests and
disturbances in Lebanon". Egyptian state television was no better. While the
streets were teeming with protests, it offered its usual mix of cookery
programmes and soap operas. The demonstrations were, no doubt, happening in
another country.
The reaction of Arab and international media has also been disappointing.
Throughout the first day, there was a near-total disregard of the events
happening on Egypt's streets. Al-Jazeera, which always follows important
events as they happen, covered the demonstrations rather mutedly at the
beginning, while concentrating on Lebanon. When it finally got round to
covering the events, the coverage was poor in comparison with Tunisia.
Western media, including CNN and the BBC, gave Egypt very limited space.
The so-called free world that prides itself on championing the causes of
liberty and democracy seemed rather bewildered at what was happening and
official statements took time to appear, if they did at all. The American
and European governments' endorsement of the Mubarak government meant that
they systematically turned a blind eye to its violation of human rights and
its repression of dissidents. All Barack Obama could say in his comment on
Egyptian elections was to say that he was concerned at the situation. He
expressed no shock, condemnation or blame for the blatant violations of the
most basic of democratic principles.
Hillary Clinton has reiterated her belief in the stability of the regime and
has asked all parties concerned for restraint. She was probably too busy to
follow the news closely. Otherwise she would have learned that peaceful
demonstrators were attacked with rubber bullets, electric batons and tear
gas, all incidentally made in the US. This is not to mention the new
invention by the Egyptian security apparatus, which was reported to have
used sewage water in dispersing demonstrators. But to give Clinton her due,
she has politely asked Egyptian authorities to unblock Facebook and Twitter,
which they did for a couple of hours.
The young people who have succeeded in rallying people around a common cause
are out on the streets, reinventing themselves and the whole country. Their
voices are loud and clear. The regime is now forced to listen. And the whole
world will have to take heed.
© 2011 Guardian News and Media
Amira Nowaira obtained her PhD in English from Birmingham University. She is
former chairperson of the department of English at Alexandria University and
is currently professor of English literature in the same department
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