UPDATE: Mubarak to stay
Maybe not.
"Labor strikes bolster protesters’ cause in Egypt; Government officials issue stern warnings" by Kareem Fahim, New York Times / February 10, 2011
CAIRO — Labor strikes and worker protests that flared across Egypt yesterday affected post offices, textile factories, and even the government’s flagship newspaper, as protesters recaptured the initiative in their battle for the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak.
At the newspaper, Al Ahram, freelance reporters demanding better wages and more independence from the government snarled one of the state’s most powerful propaganda tools and seemed to be forcing a change in its tone. Yesterday, the front page, which had sought for days to downplay the protests, called recent attacks by pro-Mubarak protesters on Tahrir Square an “offense to the whole nation.’’
They are putting AmeriKan reporters to shame.
In the face of unrest now in its 16th day, government officials delivered stern warnings that seemed to reflect hardening positions and growing impatience with the protests.
The country’s foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, dismissed calls by Egyptian protesters and Vice President Joe Biden to scrap the country’s emergency laws, which allow the authorities to detain people without charge.
“We have 17,000 prisoners loose in the streets out of jails that have been destroyed,’’ Aboul Gheit said. “How can you ask me to sort of disband that emergency law while I’m in that difficulty?’’
You can thank your soon to be ex-boss for that!
His comment came on the heels of a warning from Mubarak’s hand-picked successor, Vice President Omar Suleiman, that the only alternative to constitutional talks was a coup.
Call it whatever you want. Just GIVE the PEOPLE WHAT they WANT!
Several hundred of the prodemocracy protesters who marched on Parliament, a few blocks from Tahrir Square, camped out there overnight.
Related: Camping Out in Cairo
By midday, hundreds of workers from the Health Ministry, adjacent to Parliament and a few hundred yards from the square, also took to the streets in a protest whose exact focus was not immediately clear, Interior Ministry officials said.
By nightfall, tens of thousands of protesters filled the square and more than 1,000 prepared for another nighttime encampment outside Parliament.
Government officials said the protests had spread to the previously quiet southern region of Upper Egypt.
In Port Said, protesters set fire to a government building and occupied the city’s central square. There were unconfirmed reports that police fired live rounds on protesters Tuesday in El Kharga, 375 miles south of Cairo, resulting in several deaths. Protesters responded by burning police stations and other government buildings, according to wire reports.
In one of the flashpoints of unrest yesterday, some 8,000 protesters, mainly farmers, set barricades of flaming palm trees in the southern province of Assiutm, according to the Associated Press. They blocked the main highway and railway to Cairo to complain of bread shortages. They then drove off the governor by pelting his van with stones.
Increasingly, the clamor for Mubarak’s ouster seemed to be complemented by strikes.
In the most potentially significant action, about 6,000 workers at five service companies owned by the Suez Canal Authority began a sit-in Tuesday night. There was no immediate suggestion of disruptions to shipping in the canal, a vital international waterway leading from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea....
If there are disruptions that will be the casus belli for USraeli invasion.
While state television has focused on episodes of violence that could spread fear among the wider Egyptian public and prompt calls for the restoration of order, Al Ahram’s coverage was a departure from its usual practice of avoiding news that embarrasses the government.
Sounds like the television we get here.
In the lobby of the newspaper yesterday, journalists were in open revolt against the newspaper’s management and editorial policies. Several said the editor of the English-language division heads to the square to join the protests every night, joined by many of the staff.
So when does the Globe staff rise up?
Globe Employees Applaud a Rapist
Oh.
:-(
Some called their own protest a microcosm of the Egyptian uprising, with young journalists leading demands for better working conditions and less biased coverage.
An antigovernment protester wept during a candlelight vigil yesterday for those killed during the uprising in Tahrir Square. (John Moore/Getty Images)
AmeriKan reporters can't hold a candle to the Egyptians.
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Related:
"The Lessons of the Egyptian Revolution for People Throughout the World
The courage of the Egyptian protesters - even in the face of extreme police brutality - is obviously a large part of why the Egyptians succeeded in kicking Mubarak out of office.
Indeed, I think that the Egyptians adopted the tactics of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., to great effect. They were peaceful in the face of murder and brutality by Mubarak's thugs, which discredited Mubarak in the eyes of the world.
Had the protesters fought back, the regime would have successfully used that as an excuse to crack down and brutally break up the protest movement. The world would have just averted its eyes, and all would have been lost....
***************
Exposing the "false flag" attacks by agents provocateur was also critical, since failure to expose such deception would have allowed Mubarak to stay in power.
But it is important to acknowledge that Mubarak didn't actually agree to leave until the Egyptian people started striking.
Before the strikes, Mubarak said he would not run for reelection in September, but would hang on until then.
Egyptians started a nationwide strike only yesterday ... 24 hours later, Mubarak is on his way out so fast that the door is hitting him in the back.
While the regime and the military paid lip service to "hearing" the protesters and agreeing to meet their demands, it wasn't until the people started hurting the powers-that-be in their wallets - through strikes - that anything actually changed.
This shows that protests are not enough anymore. Not in Egypt ... not in the West.
People throughout the world living in tyrannical conditions need to engage in strikes and other active (but peaceful) forms of civil disobedience which hit the tyrants and their supporters in their pocketbook before we can take our countries back....
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I share his outrage at the situation and the fact that the odious dictator is staying on.
