“This is our message to all over the world:
We don’t want to ask anyone for our freedom. We will get our freedom. We are not cowards.”
This was filmed by Philip Rizk and I posted a shorter version without translations a few days ago. He describes the scene:
Following Friday prayers on January 28 we joined protesters marching through the streets of Imbaba in Cairo, Egypt. The crowd of 100 that we joined kept increasing and continuously joined with other marches in the same quarter North West of downtown Cairo. By about 1pm the protesters numbered around 15,000 marching towards Galaa Square and attempting to get across the Nile to Tahrir Square, downtown Cairo. In Galaa square we met two other large marches from Giza and Mohandiseen that had already tried to cross to Tahrir and had come under heavy tear gas fire. Shortly thereafter the converged protesters stormed past the security forces and streamed into Tahrir Square. Soon thereafter the security forces that had used brutal force to stop the protests disappeared and the central square of downtown filled with demonstrators sharing one united call: “down with Hosni Mubarak.” In the early evening protesters burnt down the regime’s National Democratic Party headquarters. The streets were filled with tear gas, burning police vehicles and chants of celebration.
In the English Civil War, about 10% of the population of England died and many more died in the aftermath. Is Mubarak really prepared to kill that percentage of Egypt’s population and is Washington really prepared to sit back and let him do it? I’m afraid the answer is almost certainly yes to both questions. All for poor little Israel.
The US has the illusion that people want to BE like them…
Here is the hypocrisy of Washington: If this was happening in Iran the WH discourse would be completely different.
ObaOba is a gutless brand.
Mubarak is the tip of an entire party. The parts of the iceberg we don’t see are pure corrupt evil– composed of hundreds of thousands of officials, big and small. That iceberg suffers no qualms about smashing the youthful Arab desire for democratic modernization, taking their countries out of their corrupt one crop (oil) banana republic economies. The Vice President and his generals are global criminals and cannot be good shepherds for transition to democracy. As in the Bucharest uprisings of 1989, youthful idealism will not turn manure into gold. Many turns of the worm must precede that sheen.
I can only hope that Israel realizes that as the only sci/tech modern state in the entire region it alone can fulfill the dream of these Young Arab modernists all over the Middle East determined to make their countries modern democracies. We can’t rely on paid harlots in service of US/EU oil companies. Israel could now become the very “light onto the [Arab] nations” its founders wished it to become. But the Netanyahu Govt’s call for support of Mubarak causes me to fear that fear trumps the Jewish Ethic in Israel today.