Arabic-language news channel appeals to Egyptian citizens to send in accounts of uprising, as state cracks down on media Egyptian authorities today arrested six al-Jazeera journalists as the government continues its media crackdown after a week of political protest in the country. The journalists were arrested and had their cameras and other broadcasting equipment seized by the military in Cairo earlier today, according to the satellite TV channel’s United Arab Emirates correspondent in Egypt, Dan Nolan . “Four soldiers entered our room took our camera. [We are] under military arrest,” Nolan posted on Twitter just after midday UK time. “Unsure if arrested or about to be deported. Six of us held at army checkpoint outside Hilton hotel. Equipment seized too,” he added . Al-Jazeera later reported that Nolan and five other reporters were being detained by police. The six reporters were released around one hour after they were arrested, al-Jazeera later confirmed. However, their equipment remains in the possession of the police. A spokesman for the channel said: “If anything, our resolve to get the story has increased.” Egyptian authorities yesterday took al-Jazeera off the air in the country , blaming the broadcaster for instigating the unprecedented country-wide protests against the president, Hosni Mubarak. The Arabic-language news channel today issued a plea for help from Egyptian bloggers and others to send in their eyewitness reports of the uprising, saying contributions had risen dramatically in the 24 hours it was forced off the air in Egypt. “This call goes out to bloggers, citizen journalists, and anyone with a camera who has content to send,” Al-Jazeera said in a statement. “We’ve already made great use of social networking, and today we’ve found public contributions intensifying.” Al-Jazeera’s Cairo operations were shut down after it broadcast an interview with the popular cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who called on President Mubarak to leave the country. The Qatar-based channel has faced interference with its transmission from Egypt since Friday, when authorities also shut down much of the country’s internet access. Al-Jazeera described the shutdown as an “act designed to stifle and repress the freedom of reporting by the network and its journalists” and aimed at “censoring and silencing the voices of the Egyptian people”. Al-Jazeera, which is owned by the emir of Qatar, has been reporting the Egyptian unrest since it erupted early last week. Government supporters and other Arab leaders have accused the channel of fermenting Egyptian unrest with its round-the-clock coverage. Over the weekend, when protests rumbled on in Egypt’s largest cities while the blackout of the majority of internet communication in the country continued, al-Jazeera said its English-language online livestream had been viewed for more than 26m minutes in 12 hours on Saturday. Al-Jazeera is the largest news broadcaster transmitting 24-hour coverage of the Egyptian uprising that is not wholly or in part owned by the country’s government. Journalists from a number of other organisations, including the Guardian , have been at the receiving end of rough treatment from the Egyptian police and army while covering the protests. The Guardian’s Jack Shenker was assaulted and arrested in Cairo last week, while the Times’s James Hilder was beaten and held at gunpoint over the weekend. More than a dozen journalists have been arrested in Egypt since the protests began, according to the latest figures compiled by the international press freedom group Reporters Without Borders. “The shutting down of al-Jazeera is a brazen violation of the fundamental right of Egyptians to receive information as their country is in turmoil,” said Mohamed Abdel Dayem, the Middle East and North Africa programme coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists. “The international community should prevail upon President Mubarak to lift this censorship immediately.” •
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Attacks on Cairo museums remind us that whatever happens in Egypt now, the key to its future lies in respecting its past In such tumultuous days for modern Egypt , does it matter what happens to the legacy of ancient Egypt? The answer surely has to be yes. There is no defence for the criminal acts of whoever damaged artefacts in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo , nor should it be seen as somehow detracting from the democratic cause to stress the world importance of these relics. I will confine myself to pointing out why this museum matters so much. This central Cairo museum houses the greatest collection of ancient Egyptian art and antiquities in the world. This is something of a miracle, given that from the time of Napoleon onwards Europeans tried to get hold of as much Egyptian treasure as possible. Colossal statues were dragged on to ships, mummy cases became must-have curios. The reason so many great objects stayed in Egypt is that idealists fought to keep them in the country – and modern Egypt maintains its heritage supremely well. An attack on the Cairo collection is therefore an attack on today’s Egypt, as well as that of Rameses the Great. The museum in Cairo holds innumerable masterpieces including the death mask and tomb treasures of Tutankhamun , the mannerist experimental art of the age of Akhenaten , and many profoundly moving sculpted portraits, wall paintings, and mummies. According to reports, two mummies have been ruined. The worrying question is which mummies, for at the heart of this museum is a collection of resin-coated bodies removed from the tombs in the Valley of the Kings. These are, as they say in Sicily, excellent cadavers – the mummies of some of ancient Egypt’s greatest rulers. In a fuller – and very personal – account that Egypt’s great archaeologist Zahi Hawass posted on his website yesterday, he says the 10 looters even damaged one of the fabulous objects from Tutankhamun’s tomb. He also says he has had worrying reports from other sites, but also that young archaeologists and others are volunteering to give their lives to protect their country’s unrivalled heritage of beauty and history. But the fact is that nothing in the Egyptian Museum is ordinary or dull. It is one of the most magical collections on Earth. No damage to its collections can be considered slight, or dismissed as trivial – even when compared with the great events happening outside. Whatever happens in Egypt now, the precious human inheritance of its ancient past must be defended. Rationalise the destruction of history and you will be amazed at what you rationalise next. Museums Egypt Middle East Protest Jonathan Jones guardian.co.uk
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Egypt’s desperate regime is sending message of terror to the people: either Mubarak or the deep blue sea After six days of unprecedented protests, Hosni Mubarak and his regime still refuse to go . The fig leaf covering this regime has finally fallen, revealing the ugly naked truth. It is a regime that has worked solely and exclusively for its own survival. The events of the past days show that it is ready to burn the whole country if necessary. Friday 28 January will always be remembered as one of the worst days in Egypt’s history as protesters went in their thousands on to the streets across the country, calling for an end to the whole regime. Security forces lashed out against them more ruthlessly than ever before, using lethal weapons and so much teargas that many people inside neighbouring houses choked. They shot indiscriminately with rubber bullets and, some say, with live ammunition. By the afternoon security forces were no longer able to contain the rising tide of protesters. They suddenly withdrew from the scenes of protest leaving security for the army to take over. The following hours saw a complete absence of security on the Egyptian streets. Some buildings, including the National Democratic party headquarters in Cairo, were set alight. The fire department was nowhere to be seen and the fires everywhere were left to rage on as though it had been given orders not to budge. Mubarak did not speak to the people except late on Friday night after the security situation had already deteriorated. When he gave his statement he didn’t announce that he was stepping down as the protesters were insisting. Instead, he decided to form a new government with the same old figures. Mubarak gave no indication that he understood the message. Throughout Saturday protests continued everywhere. Demonstrators showed that they did not accept the offer made by Mubarak the night before. Nothing less than complete regime change would satisfy them. On Saturday morning, I went out to buy some essential foodstuffs. On the streets of Alexandria, no traffic police were anywhere to be seen. Some local young men volunteered to stand at important junctions to organise the traffic. I was really surprised at how orderly motorists were behaving. They followed the instructions of the volunteers and gave way to other motorists – something I haven’t often observed before. At Carrefour supermarket I could not use my Visa card because the internet was not working – just another side-effect of the total media blackout imposed in Egypt. In the early afternoon there were worrying reports of armed gangs and thugs roaming the streets of Alexandria, as elsewhere in the country, and attacking people in their homes. Through the loudspeaker of the local mosque, which had never before been used for anything other than the call for prayers, the imam began to urge the young men of the neighbourhood to go down to the streets to protect their homes and families. My friends in other areas reported the same. Were the imams perhaps tipped by the regime to make these calls in order to create a sense of insecurity and fear in people? Was it a ploy to keep all young men on the streets standing guard all night and too tired in the morning to join the demonstrations? Although difficult to ascertain now, such a scenario is not as far-fetched as it may seem. What is certain, however, is that the response to the imams’ invitations was instantaneous. A few men from my building and the adjacent ones went down carrying clubs and sticks to ward off any trespassers. A friend of mine called in total panic. “The waterworks have been hit,” she said. “The water supply will be cut off.” I ran to store some water. I already feel I am in a war zone. The landline phone didn’t stop ringing. Friends and family relayed the same message: gangs were attacking and terrorising people throughout the neighbourhood. I heard with horror that dangerous prisoners were released from prisons all over the country and were let loose on the streets. They carried various types of weapons and even automatic guns. Systematic and methodical looting and burning were reported throughout the country, carried out by thugs affiliated to the security forces of the ministry of interior. The popular committees formed to maintain peace and security arrested some of these thugs and discovered that they carried police identity cards. Many of them were what is called “secret police”. So this was the regime’s infernal security apparatus let loose on the people of Egypt. We locked our door as securely as we possibly could. We also pushed a chest of drawers against it as an extra precaution against a possible attack, although we realised that no wooden door and no chest of drawers would stand the attack of automatic guns. We locked the kitchen door to create another barrier in case they came through it. The young men standing guard in front of our building kept watch through the night. I heard gunshots in the distance, although it was difficult to make out whether they were fired by the thugs or the people of the neighbourhood. I felt my blood pressure rising by the minute and my palpitating heart going haywire. I stayed with my family cooped up in front of our television screen throughout the evening. We have no internet and text messaging has been disabled. We are virtually cut off from the rest of the world. My nephew has a start-up company in the field of IT that depends entirely on the internet. He is in total distress. “I am going bankrupt,” he says. So this is the regime’s message of terror to the people: either Mubarak or the deep blue sea. It is becoming clearer by the minute that the regime is fighting for its life and will do whatever it takes to enforce submission, either by cutting off all our means of communication or, if necessary, by stopping the air we breathe. Egypt has turned into a huge prison-house. I remember always George Orwell’s 1984 and Room 101 where dissidents are tortured into submissiveness. I feel that we are already in that room, with rats and unimaginable horrors attacking us. Will we end up crying out “We love you, Big Brother”? I doubt it. Egypt Middle East Protest Amira Nowaira guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media Is anyone else as tired of this latest talking points by Republicans that continually goes unchallenged by the media — spending cuts are going to create jobs. John Boehner claims he’s got hundreds of economists who agree with him after Chris Wallace points out that a lot of economists don’t agree with him, but of course Wallace didn’t bother to ask him what some of their names were. How about we fix our trade laws and quit rewarding companies for outsourcing American jobs? Heaven forbid that never seems to be part of the conversation from our politicians when the topic of jobs comes up. Nicole: Anyone wish that Wallace the Lesser would have asked him for just one or two of the names of those “200 economists” that Boehner insisted agree with this ridiculous meme? It’s one that Rep. Robert Hurt (R-VA05) also repeated in a widely-disseminated op-ed this weekend : As the failed trillion dollar stimulus proved, increased government spending did not create the millions of jobs promised and only added to our record-breaking deficits and over $14 trillion in debt. The new projection that this year’s deficit will reach nearly $1.5 million only reinforces the need to cut up Washington’s credit cards once and for all. That is why I have been proud to support many measures that have come before the House that will rein in out of control government spending and help put Central and Southside Virginia on a true path towards a long-lasting economy recovery. Those measures include voting to cut non-security discretionary government spending back to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels and voting to repeal the budget-busting government takeover of health care, cutting $2.6 trillion over ten years and reducing the deficit by $700 billion. The House has also voted to cut Congressional budgets, to end the wasteful mandatory printing of bills, and to end the taxpayer funding of presidential election campaigns and party conventions, saving taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. Failed stimulus? Are we in the midst of another Great Depression? No? Wasn’t that the purpose of the stimulus, to pull us back from the brink? The only reason it didn’t do better were all the stupid concessions added to get the Republicans to sign off on it. And as far as jobs are concerned, the unemployment rate is still bleak, but to ignore that the Obama administration — even with all the obstruction placed before them by the Republican Party — managed to create more jobs in 2010 than Bush did in all eight years of his term put together is fundamentally disinforming the public. But that’s the plan for the GOP. If you get enough right wing people on traditional media and right wing blogs repeating ad nauseam that the stimulus didn’t work, well, then no one challenges these failed ideas that Boehner advocates. And it may backfire on them in the end : Obama felt the need to push health reform while at the height of his influence. GOP activists may feel the same way about spending. They should be wary. This isn’t to say that some immediate well-targeted spending reductions are a bad idea. They are not. But the mindless across-the-board cuts (excluding, of course, defense, veterans benefits, homeland security, and Medicare), the GOP has in mind seem both clumsy and counterproductive in today’s economy. Just as Democrats paid a steep price for pursuing health reform at a time of high unemployment, so may Republicans pay dearly if they try to rapidly shrink government while the economy remains weak. Ideological purity is one thing. But it rarely trumps bad timing.
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Click here to view this media House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) says it’s not a threat. Even as he admitted that not raising the debt ceiling would mean a “financial disaster” for the US and the world, the Speaker implied Sunday that Republicans would hold the debt limit hostage if Democrats didn’t agree to deep spending cuts. “I know you’re not threatening to default, but do you agree with administration officials and other economists that defaulting on the full faith and credit of the United States would be a financial disaster?” Fox News’ Chris Wallace asked Boehner. “That would be a financial disaster,” the Speaker agreed. “Not only for our country, but for the worldwide economy. Remember, the American people on election day said we want to cut spending and we want to create jobs. You can’t create jobs if you default on the federal debt.” “Listen, there has been a spending spree going on in Washington the last couple of years that is beyond control,” he added. “And the president is going to ask us to increase the debt limit, he’s going have to be willing to cut up the credit cards. We’ve got to work together by listening to the American people, and reducing these obligations that we have.” “So, defaulting on the full faith and credit is unacceptable to you?” Wallace pressed. “I don’t think it’s a question that is even on the table,” Boehner replied. But for several Republican lawmakers, the issue did seem to be on the table. Following big Republican wins in the November midterm elections, tea party favorite Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) suggested that refusing to raise the debt limit should be the first order of business. Reps. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), and Jack Kingston (R-GA) have pledged to vote against an increase. Rep. Mike Lee (R-UT) vowed to vote against the dept limit, as did Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN). Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has threatened to hold the debt ceiling hostage over cuts to Social Security. Republican senators provided an average of 39 votes to raise the debt ceiling while George W. Bush was president, but only one supported the increase under President Barack Obama.
Continue reading …No one wants the Muslim Brotherhood to take over, no one wants violence – just elections and a new constitution This is a sweet, sweet revolution; it is peaceful. Tell everyone we are peaceful. We do not owe this revolution to the Muslim Brotherhood, not to anybody. They say the Ikhwan is more organised – maybe. But this is the people on the street; this is not about any political party. Look, he says, more and more people are coming; Tahrir Square is getting more and more full. I am sorry, the man tells me, but I hate your president. What is this speech he gives? Why can’t he support us? He says we can have human rights but he gives us no political rights? To America, we are monkeys, monkeys, monkeys. We Egyptians don’t deserve a constitution, don’t deserve freedom, don’t deserve democracy. We are in the streets every day since 25 January and you give us Omar Suleiman , an agent? We are out here demanding our rights and you give us the head of intelligence? We will not accept Suleiman. America puts the security of Israel above the people of Egypt. We are monkeys to America. They are saying we Egyptians don’t deserve political rights, don’t deserve freedom. It’s over… the fact that the outside world continues to engage this guy Mubarak is ridiculous. It’s over. This has nothing to do with any political party. It is truly a popular movement. There is concern about what is going to happen next. We need to continue to experience this with joy. We have to remain peaceful until we get our demands. Look, there are more and more people walking into Tahrir Square. We want new elections to set up a committee to write a new constitution. We want clean elections; once we have a new constitution, we can elect a new government. We are not less than South Africa. Tell the Americans we are not less than South Africa. We deserve our rights. So far the judges have not spoken yet. We are waiting to hear from the judges about bringing about the constitutional changes that we need. But the judges are not being allowed to speak to the people. Clinton just spoke: she says we deserve human rights. We want political rights. Please tell the people in America we want our rights. Please explain we don’t have internet. Everyone has to understand that the rights of the Egyptian people are being sold for Israel’s security. Our rights are being sold. It’s as if we are monkeys. They have one strategic consideration and that’s Israel. We sleep at night in fear. We sleep without police at night. Do you know what that’s like? To wake up one day and there’s no police, no prisons, no safety? The police is over. We are scared. The curfew was for 6pm and the police were told to go home. There are two theories of what happened to the police a) the police were shocked by the people’s reaction, got scared and took off b) the ministry of the interior is teaching us a lesson, so they withdrew the police to scare us. But it backfired. We were out all night in the streets guarding our neighbourhood in Zamalek. Together, neighbour with neighbour. We worked together. Most of us hadn’t even met before this. The ministry of the interior pulled all the police to scare us: it backfired. We are taking care of each other. There is too much anger at police. Some are good and tried to stop the chaos. But there is a lot of anger: in one neighbourhood someone got shot. The interior ministry is under siege; they are shooting live ammunition into the crowds. There is a street battle. This is why they turned the phones back on because the ministry of interior people needed to be able to talk to each other – they had no phones themselves, they were using walkie-talkies. In some police stations, there are stand-offs. Police are trapped and they are shooting. The army needs to take over the interior ministry. Nothing short of this. The level of demand is high. The people are so aware, they know what they want. The majority of people are happy but some are scared and concerned about what will happen next. No one wants the Muslim Brotherhood to take over, no one wants violence. We are being peaceful, tell them we are being peaceful. On Thursday night they shut down the internet. Khalas . Tell them we have no contact, no texting, no internet, nothing. Listen, they are chanting in the streets: “Gamal, Gamal, tell your father we hate you.” Are the crowds anti-US, I ask. Not so far, no anti-American sentiments in the crowds. They have brought back the slogan from the 1980s: “Mubarak traitor, agent of Americans.” It’s a sweet, peaceful revolution. Tell them. Look, more and more people are coming into Tahrir… Egypt Protest Middle East Amr Shalakany guardian.co.uk
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Thousands rally in Cairo to defy curfew as Hillary Clinton calls on Hosni Mubarak to allow ‘orderly transition’ The Egyptian opposition leader, Mohamed ElBaradei, tonight predicted change within “the next few days” as western leaders pointedly declined to throw their support behind the country’s embattled president, Hosni Mubarak. In another dramatic day, thousands of protesters kept up the pressure on a defiant Mubarak amid sporadic violence and signs that the US and allies may ditch him unless he allows an “orderly transition”. ElBaradei, the former chief UN arms inspector and de facto leader of the opposition, called for the president to step down at once as demonstrators massed in Cairo’s central Tahrir square to ignore a night-time curfew. ElBaradei, who is now backed by the powerful Muslim Brotherhood and other opposition groups, said he wanted to negotiate about a new government with the army, which he described as “part of the Egyptian people”. Military helicopters and F16 fighters were seen and heard overhead as crowds streamed towards the rally – an apparent show of force that provoked both fear and ridicule. “The people want the regime to fall,” protesters chanted as ElBaradei walked to the centre of the square. Tanks, many emblazoned with anti-Mubarak slogans, were stopped from entering. “You are the owners of this revolution. You are the future,” ElBaradei declared. “Our essential demand is the departure of the regime and the beginning of a new Egypt in which each Egyptian lives in virtue, freedom and dignity.” Mubarak was shown earlier on state TV conferring with his newly appointed vice-president, the intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, and senior generals – a clear attempt to demonstrate that he enjoys the solid support of the armed forces. Western diplomats said they saw no sign the military was prepared to ditch the president. In other key developments: • Al-Jazeera satellite TV was ordered to close because of its coverage of the protests. • Thousands of prisoners, including Muslim Brotherhood activists, escaped from four jails. • The death toll over the past six days was reported to have risen to 102. • Large-scale protests erupted in Alexandria, Egypt’s second city, after the funerals of victims of the unrest. • British nationals in Cairo, Alexandria and Suez were told to leave if it was safe. • The US said it was organising flights to evacuate its citizens and urged all Americans in Egypt to consider leaving. Underlining international concern about the continuing crisis in the Arab world’s largest country, Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, said she wanted Egyptians to have a chance to chart a new future. But she added pointedly: “It’s not a question of who retains power. It’s how are we going to respond to the legitimate needs and grievances expressed by the Egyptian people.” EU foreign ministers, meeting in Brussels tomorrow, are expected to echo that message. William Hague, Britain’s foreign secretary, told Sky News there had to be a shift to an “open and democratic society”, adding “whatever that means for President Mubarak.” Clinton and Hague both alluded to fears of growing Islamist influence. “What we don’t want,” Clinton said, “are radical ideologies to take control of a very large and important country in the Middle East.” David Cameron is understood to have had a “difficult” conversation with Mubarak on Saturday. Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, told his cabinet he was “anxiously following” the crisis, warning that Israel’s 30-year-old peace agreement with Egypt must be preserved amid concern about arms smuggling into the Gaza Strip. ElBaradei’s emergence as the opposition candidate for a new government injected new drama into the crisis as Osama Ghazali Harb of the National Democratic Front talked of a “transitional administration” that would oversee the cancellation of the emergency laws and the release of all political prisoners. It seems unlikely at this stage that the Mubarak government will agree to negotiate with ElBaradei, but the demand adds a significant new element to the drama.According to some reports police are due to return to the streets on Monday but the security of most neighbourhoods in Egypt lay in the hands of their citizens as residents set up makeshift barricades and formed local patrols to protect themselves from violence. Egypt Middle East Protest Jack Shenker Ian Black guardian.co.uk
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Army has played leading role in managing events and may well determine next stage of crisis Hosni Mubarak sought to boost his battered image as Egypt’s leader today, flaunting the support of the armed forces, whose loyalty he will need to retain if he is to survive in office. The embattled president was shown on state TV visiting an army operations centre, listening to briefings as if directing a battle and flanked by his new deputy, Omar Suleiman, and defence minister, Mohamed Hussein Tantawi. With protesters and opposition parties demanding Mubarak’s immediate departure, he is showing his instinctive reliance on the military, backbone of the Egyptian regime since Gamal Abdel Nasser and his fellow “free officers” overthrew the monarchy in the 1952 revolution. Since troops were deployed in Cairo on Friday, the army has played a leading role in managing events and may well determine the next stage of the crisis. Mubarak’s key move has been the appointment of Suleiman, his veteran intelligence chief, as vice-president, and Ahmed Shafiq, formerly minister of aviation and commander of the air force, as prime minister. Neither ordinary people nor commentators were impressed by what looked like the shuffling of a familiar pack. “The appointments show that the regime isn’t serious about real, meaningful reform,” Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Centre told al-Jazeera. “If you were serious about democracy, would you appoint the chief of intelligence as your vice-president?” Crowds gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, chanting: “Hosni Mubarak, Omar Suleiman, both of you are agents of the Americans.” Still, the army remains relatively popular with Egyptians – certainly far more than the interior ministry’s security and riot control units. Troops have been guarding main installations since police lost control of the streets, but they have failed to enforce the curfew and have often fraternised with protesters rather than confronting them. Suleiman and Tantawi are untouched by the taint of corruption and personal wealth, unlike many in power. Suleiman, 74, is seen as fiercely loyal to Mubarak and has been intimately involved in the most sensitive issues of Egypt’s national security and foreign policy for nearly 20 years. In 1995, two years after taking over Egypt’s General Intelligence Service, he saved the president’s life during an assassination attempt in Ethiopia. He was also instrumental in defeating the insurrection mounted by Egyptian armed groups such as Islamic Jihad. In recent years, one of Suleiman’s biggest preoccupations has been dealing with the volatile Palestinian file, mediating between the western-backed Fatah movement and the Islamists of Hamas – a group with special resonance in Egypt because of its control of the Gaza Strip and its links to the Muslim Brotherhood. He has also been involved in mediation attempts between rebels and the government in Yemen. Analysts speculate that one possibility for the next step in Egypt is that the US, now calling for “an orderly transition” in response to the crisis, could try to persuade the generals that Mubarak should step down and allow political reforms to begin. The chief of staff, Sami Enan, returned at the weekend from a visit to Washington, whose military aid has been a crucial asset to the regime since Egypt’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel. But diplomats said there was no sign that senior military men in Cairo were preparing to ditch the president. Observers note that it was Tunisian generals who persuaded Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali to flee into exile this month after weeks of unrest. When Mohamed ElBaradei announced that he had been delegated by opposition groups to discuss the formation of a national salvation government, he said that he would “be in touch soon with the army,” adding pointedly: “The army is part of Egypt.” The military, however, will be suspicious of the influence of the outlawed but semi-tolerated Muslim Brotherhood, which has been keeping a low profile in the protests so far but has now indicated that it is supporting ElBaradei. Egypt Middle East Protest Ian Black guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media So did Fran Townsend (former Homeland Security Advisor under George Bush) just admit we sent (via rendition ) detainees to Egypt to be tortured? Sort of, unintentionally. Marcy Wheeler at Firedoglake has more. When Mona Eltahawy explicitly described what many of us learned from Jane Mayer –Hosni Mubarak’s appointed Vice President, Omar Suleiman, has a long history of cooperating with us in accepting and torturing people rendered to Egypt–and when Wolf asks whether this went on in the Bush Administration (it dates back to the Clinton Administration), Townsend explains the best known example is that of Maher Arar. Wolf corrects her that that involved Syria. Poor Fran can’t even keep her torture states straight. She should have remembered former CIA agent Bob Baer’ s famous maxim: “If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear – never to see them again – you send them to Egypt.”
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Click here to view this media Noted Egyptian journalist and speaker Mona Eltahaway takes CNN to task for their sensational descriptions of the events in Egypt and call it for what it is: a people’s uprising and revolution. The New York Times describes an interview on CNN with Mona Eltahawy: Eltahawy … appealed to the media to not fall for what she described as a Mubarak regime plot to make the protests in Egypt seem like dangerous anarchy. “I urge you to use the words ‘revolt’ and ‘uprising’ and ‘revolution’ and not ‘chaos’ and not ‘unrest, we are talking about a historic moment,” she said. Moments later, as Ms. Eltahawy suggested that looting and damage to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo shown on Egyptian television was the work of “the police and the thugs of Hosni Mubarak,” the lower third of the screen displayed the banner headline: “EGYPT IN CHAOS.” She added, “Egyptians want to fix Egypt, they don’t want to destroy Egypt.” The network then displayed video from Egyptian state television of damage to the museum, which has been shown around the world on Saturday. Less than hour later CNN finally smartened up (a little) and began calling it what it is, as Robert Mackey noted. Less than an hour after Mona Eltahway, an Egyptian blogger and journalist, appealed to CNN to stop focusing on looting and security problems in Egypt following the government’s decision to withdraw the police from the streets, the broadcaster has changed its onscreen headline from “CHAOS IN EGYPT” to “UPRISING IN EGYPT.” enlarge
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