Quote:Mubarak to Amanpour: 'If I Resign Today There Will Be Chaos'...

Egypt is rioting over our spring collection, designer Kenneth Cole tweets!

Speeding Police Truck Runs Over Protesters...

CBSNEWS Lara Logan, Crew Detained...

FOXNEWS reporter, cameraman beaten, hospitalized...

Quote:"We warned of instability but not exactly where it would come from [and in what form]," she said. "That happened at the end of last year."

Quote:Comment: US media commentators have treated American audiences to excesses of hyperbole and exaggeration. Headlines described Egypt as on the brink (of what, pray?) and in chaos. This is entertainment not journalism.

Quote:US Issue. [color="#FF0000"]The US administration has acted with insufficient data and prematurely. Cairo is not Egypt. Just as Washington is not the United States. Television images of events in Cairo are hardly an adequate evidentiary basis for abandoning a US ally of 30 years. It might be time for political change, but not based on superficial TV coverage of al Tahrir Square.



The US might have damaged irretrievably its relationship with Egypt because of inaccurate, incomplete analysis, biased advice and lousy timing, if Mubarak remains in office. He and his Saudi, Israeli and Jordanian supporters are likely and rightfully to resent the ill-advised, overt US siding with a small number of hard core demonstrators in Cairo. Moreover, it remains unclear whether the anti-government protestors are pro-democracy instead of pro-Sharia, in their hostility to a secular Presidential government.[/color]



There is still no good news from Egypt tonight and there is still no sign of a revolution, just poverty and unemployment.



Methodological comment: The collapse of a regime is not inevitable. The regime under stress always is trying to find a line it can hold. Some regimes retain the potential to muster sufficient resources to stop the decline, stabilize conditions, limit damage and trounce the opposition. In those infrequent cases, power sharing is avoided and the government recovers its power for a time.



In the cases in which a regime recovers its power, the underlying grievances almost always are economic, rather than ideological.



The new Army-backed government of Mubarak/Suleiman has stopped the decline, stabilized conditions and begun to limit the damage caused by the protestors. The anti-government elements have failed to capture Cairo. Failure to capture Cairo means failure.



In retrospect, they appear to have had a primarily economic agenda. This was treated as a challenge to authority by the government, a huge mistake that made matters much worse. Amending the constitution and other political reforms, which resonate so well in the US media, are irrelevant to the shortages of bread and water.



The Egyptians need food and water more than democracy. Political reform is cheap and easy to enact, but completely misses the point.

Quote:There is a system within the US Marines that alerts the immediate families of high-ranking marines when their marine will soon be deployed to an emergency situation where they will not be able to talk to their spouses or families.



That alert just went out, says our source.



This senior Marine told our source that the Pentagon will deploy "multiple platoons" to Egypt over the next few days and that the official reason will be ‘to assist in the evacuation of US citizens."

Quote:During the years when Abdel Gamal Nasser was in power, which he assumed by placing his predecessor Muhammad Naguib under house arrest, he would sweep elections with 95% of the vote.



Nasser may have had little time for parliamentary niceties but he needed to go through the motions of holding elections to maintain the facade of Egypt being ruled through popular will and not despotic dictatorship.



Given Nasser’s amazing popularity and the fact that he lived in the era of raging Arab nationalism — to which he contributed in no small measure — he need not have slyly instructed the stuffing of ballot boxes. But Arab rulers aren’t expected to take chances; Nasser may have been adventurous abroad, albeit with disastrous consequences, but he was a cautious man at home.



After the votes were counted and tallied, Nasser wo-uld thank his people and praise their wisdom. And wonder aloud why five per cent Egyptians were unhappy with him. It would be more of a complaint than an expression of concern.



Nasser was succeeded by Anwar Sadat who simply ignored what people thought of him: Had he been sensitive to popular opinion, he would have neither booted out the Soviet ‘advisers’ who crowded Cairo during Nasser’s time nor thrown open Egypt’s doors to the Americans.



More importantly, he wouldn’t have dared sign the Camp David Accord of 1978 and the peace agreement with Israel a year later, thus becoming the first Arab leader to recognise the Jewish state and establish diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv. Sadat paid for this indifference with his life: He was assassinated, in full public view during the October 6 parade in 1981, by a group of Islamists in the Army led by Khalid Islambouli.



Hosni Mubarak, who narrowly escaped death on that fateful day, wrought venge-ance like a pharaoh in implacable rage.



The assassin and his co-conspirators were executed; tough Emergency laws were imposed; an elaborate security apparatus was devised; and, the mukha-barat, or secret police, the mainstay of Arab regimes, strengthened.



Admirers of Mubarak, of whom there are still many in Egypt, believe the president wanted to avenge the death of Sadat who had appointed him his second-in-command, thus ensuring his succession to the throne. It was a declaration of loyalty to the assassinated leader.



But Mubarak’s critics, of whom too there are many (as the protests which began on January 25 demonstrate) insist he was mortified by the possibility of meeting Sadat’s fate.



Hence his ruthless extermination of Islamists who had infiltrated the system, including the Army, and struck roots in Egyptian society at large. The Muslim Brotherhood, long banned, faced the full fury of the state.



Apocryphal stories abound how he instructed the mukhabarat to raze a poor, largely slum-dominated, neighbourhood of fashionable Zamalek when Islamists declared the setting up of the ‘Islamic Republic of Imbaba’.



Mubarak continued to sweep elections, but with a lesser margin: His NDP got 85 per cent of the vote in last winter’s parliamentary election. He didn’t complain about 15 per cent not voting for his party, but believed it would be seen as evidence of the elections being free and fair. That, of course, was far from the truth.



If Nasser had ballot boxes stuffed as a measure of ample precaution, Mubarak had to do so out of necessity. As the 2005 election showed, any degree of free polling would lead to the Muslim Brotherhood gaining parliamentary space and political legitimacy.



The Ikhwan won 88 seats in 2005 (its candidates contested as ‘Independents’); it boycotted the 2010 poll because of the regime’s crackdown. Even a quasi-free election would have seen the Muslim Brotherhood winning nearly half, if not more, of the 444 seats that are open to contest.



Mubarak may have staved off the Ikhwan’s march temporarily, but an Islamist surge is now unstoppable. Whenever fresh elections are held, the Ikhwan will emerge as the single largest group, if not the victor.



That, and not the hullabaloo at Tahrir Square, will mark the end of the Nasser-Sadat-Mubarak era. It will also see a tectonic shift in Egypt’s relationship with the world on either side of Suez, beginning with Israel.



It’s a future fraught with frightening possibilities, never mind the politically-correct bunk-um that we are getting to hear and read courtesy Al Jazeera and the lib-left media.



Nasser had seen into the future and sought to remorselessly stamp out the Muslim Brotherhood: He sent its ideologue Sayiid Qutb to the gallows and outlawed the organisation. Sadat flirted with the Ikhwan on the sly, hoping to tame its leaders.



It proved to be a star-crossed affair. Mubarak cracked down on the Brotherhood and forced it to the margins of Egyptian polity but couldn’t stop Egyptian society from being seduced by the charms of radical Islamism. Qutb had also seen the future, as had Hasan-al Banna before him.



It’s easy to scoff at Ayatollah Khamenei’s comment, but he is just being blunt when he says the world is witnessing an “Islamic wave”. How we deal with it is an entirely different issue.

Quote:CAIRO – Egypt's military announced on national television that it stepped in to "safeguard the country" and assured protesters that President Hosni Mubarak will meet their demands in the strongest indication yet that the longtime leader has lost power. In Washington, the CIA chief said there was a "strong likelihood" Mubarak will step down Thursday.



State TV said Mubarak will speak to the nation Thursday night from his palace in Cairo.

The military's dramatic announcement showed that the military was taking control after 17 days of protests demanding Mubarak's immediate ouster spiraled out of control.

Quote:The source did not know how long the military would reign nor what mechanism or timetable would be put in place to end the military's administration of power, but said that "when (the transfer of power from Mubarak) does happen, they will presumably indicate the direction of the country."



The source drew parallels with the Army coup of 1952, and the removal of King Faroukh, noting that it took six months before the monarchy was dissolved and the modern republic formed.



The source said this marks "a moment of grave magnitude for the national security of Egypt."



The official said he doubted that Mubarak would be prosecuted after leaving office.

"No specific allegations of wrongdoing have been made against him," said the source, adding that if any allegations surface later on, it would be a judicial function to resolve them. The source predicted, without certainty, that Mubarak will retire to Sharm el-Sheikh and lead an "isolated" existence.



[color="#FF0000"]The official also expressed criticism of the Obama administration and the American press for short-changing the reform process that Mubarak and Suleiman had begun to put in place, and which the official claimed had been moving along "fine" in "very rapid" fashion.[/color]

Quote:From Stratfor, citing BBC Arabic.



EGYPT: MUBARAK HAS ALREADY LEFT COUNTRY - REPORT



Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has reportedly already left the country, and his speech scheduled for the night of Feb. 10 has been pre-recorded, BBC Arabic reported. Some reports indicate Mubarak will speak within two hours, while other unconfirmed reports say he left the country as early as yesterday

Quote:Saudi Arabian King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz is alive, a source close to the monarch said on Thursday denying reports of his death. "The king is presently in Morocco; he is in good health and good spirits. The report on his death is untrue," the source in Morocco said. Islamtimes.org web portal reported on Thursday that King Abdullah suffered a sudden heart attack after a phone conversation with U.S. President Barack Obama, during which they discussed the events in Egypt. The portal said doctors were unable to save the king and he was pronounced dead, but "his death was not reported...