Cailean Bochanan

5th February, 2011

There is quite a lot of hype going around the British left in the wake of the dramatic events in Egypt. That great revolutionary upheaval is being seen as a possible model for Britain where discontent is growing as economic conditions deteriorate and  the coalition government, already seen as lacking legitimacy, seeks to impose draconian cuts in a vain attempt to prevent a full-blown sterling crisis and in the process has provoked a student rebellion.

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Justin Raimondo

Antiwar.com

2nd February, 2011

The Egyptian events seem, on the face of it, fairly straightforward: a tyrant in office for30 years, propped up by fulsome US support and a very efficient secret policeapparatus, faces a full-scale revolution by his brutalized subjects, who are – finally! – enraged-beyond-endurance and just can’t take it anymore. A million people in the streets of Cairo are telling us this story, and one would think the wise thing to do would be to take their word for it.

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But the West, the world’s great champions of democracy, can’t bring themselves to call on the dictator to step down

Guardian

2nd February, 2011

Mohamed ElBaradei has called on the international community to urgently withdraw support from “a regime that is killing its people”, following a day of intense violence in Cairo that left at least one dead and several hundred more injured.

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Vijay Prashad

Counterpunch

2nd February, 2011

From inside the bowels of Washington’s power elite, Frank Wisner emerges, briefcase in hand. He has met the President, but he is not his envoy. He represents the United States, but is not the Ambassador. What is in his briefcase is his experience: it includes his long career as bagman of Empire, and as bucket-boy for Capital. Pulling himself away from the Georgetown cocktail parties and the Langley Power-point briefings, Wisner finds his way to the Heliopolis cocktail parties and to the hushed conferences in Kasr al-Ittihadiya. Mubarak (age 82) greets Wisner (age 72), as these elders confer on the way forward for a country whose majority is under thirty.

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Today’s Zaman

3rd February, 2011

With everyone curious about how Turkey would react to public demonstrations taking place in Egypt seeking the resignation of long-entrenched President Hosni Mubarak, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan took sides with the Egyptian public, calling on Mubarak to heed the call of the Egyptian people.

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PressTV

2nd February, 2011

The Iranian foreign ministry has condemned the US attempts aimed at stifling the popular uprising underway in Egypt, warning of outrage in the Muslim world.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast criticized on Wednesday “the efforts of the rulers of the United States to prevent the tremendous movement of Egypt’s magnanimous nation,” the ministry said in a statement.

He also addressed Washington’s recent dispatch of its former ambassador to Egypt, Frank Wisner, to Cairo, blaming the move as part of a US scheme aimed at “devising deviatory plots.”

Egypt witnessed on Wednesday the ninth day of unprecedented protests against the three-decade authoritarian rule of President Mohamed Hosni Mubarak. At least 300 people have died since the demonstrations began, according to an estimate by the United Nations.

US President Barak Obama — whose country has generously funded Egypt’s unpopular regime over the years — recently praised an apparently tactical announcement by Mubarak that he would not contest the upcoming presidential election.

But analysts rule out the likelihood of Mubarak’s step-down, citing the president’s thirty-year-long grip on power.

The Obama administration has also called for an “orderly transition” of power in Egypt, leaving out the people’s right to opt for the leadership of their choice.

Washington has also moved to defend Wisner’s travel to Cairo, saying the former envoy “has the opportunity to gain a perspective on what they’re thinking and what their ideas are in terms of process that we’ve clearly called for.”

Mehmanparast said the US meddling and efforts to create domestic tensions and divisions among the Egyptian people remind of Washington’s “old and repetitive copies” of plots against the Iranian nation.

“a criminal regime using criminal acts.”

The same regime the West wants in charge of “the transition to democracy- Mubarak must go!

PressTV

2nd February, 2011

Noted Egyptian opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei blames Cairo for clashes between anti-government protesters and the regime’s so-called sympathizers, warning it could lead to a “bloodbath.”

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