This supports the news from correspondents in Cairo: ElBaradei and ‘whitey’ are targeted by the Mubarak goons. Any reporter or journalist with a white face in the area of pro-Mubarak forces have their laptops and cameras destroyed, beaten and barely escape alive. Two instances of Dutch reporters with a white face gotten severely beaten and barely escaped alive through intervention of an Egyptian soldier and a couple of civilians.
Tahrir square and surroundings is divided in protesters and pro-Mubarak thugs using knives, daggers and bloodied machetes. Getting in the wrong crowd will get you killed. Dutch reporters with an Arab appearance can move around freely. ElBaradei is called a traitor and seen as a new puppet of the U.S. to preserve the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty. Situation can turn for the worse and can even become a Mossadeq moment.
Earth Tremors ME >>
With Internet back on, watch for the YouTube videos of ugly scenes in Suez, Alexandria and Cairo. Muslim Brotherhood has the grass roots organization to profit from any form of “democracy.” On the streets the anger targets Mubarak, his inner circle, Jews (Israel) and the U.S. The official media has done its best to censor those scenes from the public in the West. RT Video interview Dennis Kucinich.
Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu of Israel is in danger of becoming the Mubarak of the peace process. Israel has never had more leverage vis-à-vis the Palestinians and never had more responsible Palestinian partners. But Netanyahu has found every excuse for not putting a peace plan on the table. The Americans know it. And thanks to the nasty job that Qatar’s Al Jazeera TV just did in releasing out of context all the Palestinian concessions — to embarrass the Palestinian leadership — it’s now obvious to all how far the Palestinians have come.
No, I do not know if this Palestinian leadership has the fortitude to close a deal. But I do know this: Israel has an overwhelming interest in going the extra mile to test them.
Why? With the leaders of both Egypt and Jordan scrambling to shuffle their governments in an effort to stay ahead of the street, two things can be said for sure: Whatever happens in the only two Arab states that have peace treaties with Israel, the moderate secularists who had a monopoly of power will be weaker and the previously confined Muslim Brotherhood will be stronger. How much remains to be seen.
ElBaradei laments Western support for repressive Arab regimes
(Tegran Times) April 4, 2010 – In recent weeks the state-controlled press has called the Nobel peace laureate a traitor, and described his campaign for political reform as “tantamount to a constitutional coup”. Meanwhile his supporters have been arrested and allegedly tortured by security services.
“I was hoping for a slightly more quiet life,” he admitted to the Guardian in his first international interview since returning to his native country in February. “But this is a place where I have friends, where I have family, where I have ties, and when I hear people telling me, ‘you have to come and help fight for change’ of course I have to weigh in and see what I can do. ”
“How successful I will be I don’t know, but at least in the past couple of months alone I’ve managed to make people less afraid, I’ve managed to make people understand that the political system is the key to overcoming stagnation, and I’ve managed to make people understand that there are alternatives to Bin Laden on one side or autocracy on the other.”
Sceptics would raise an eyebrow at that list of successes, especially as ElBaradei is coy about his exact intentions regarding next year’s presidential election. So far he has insisted that he will not run unless a “constitutional revolution” takes place to establish a genuine system of democracy rather than the current “sham” system, but that has not stopped him intensifying his public appearances.
ElBaradei’s arrival at Friday prayers on March 26, 2010 in Cairo’s Hussein mosque sparked a media scrum. It also provided a rebuttal of sorts to critics who claim that he is too far detached from the hardships of the ordinary Egyptians he claims to be fighting for.
“”I’m not trying to act presidential, I’m just want to go down and meet people and listen to their different views,”” he said. “”It shows that it’s not just the so-called intellectuals or educated that want change in this country, but rather everybody; even those that do not feel strongly about ‘political freedom’ still need to eat, they still need to have a home.””
Since his triumphant return to Cairo, ElBaradei has clocked up a series of Egyptian and Arab TV appearances in an effort to spread his demand for domestic change. But he used his first English-language interview to draw parallels between Egypt’s malaise and the wider framework of western foreign policy.
- Who’s Who in the Egyptian Demonstrations
- The Role of the Egyptian Military in Domestic Society (1997)
- Military in Egyptian Politics
- U.S. State – Background Note: Egypt
- Israeli democracy will soon change, says Israeli-Iranian activist
- Turkey as Model State for a Reformed Egypt?
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
