The transition to civilian rule in Egypt is "effectively over"

i saw this story when it broke early this morning... to me, it's a demonstration of just how tenaciously those who are accustomed to unfettered power and limitless reservoirs of stolen money and resources will finagle to make sure they stay on the top of the pile, the common good and the will of the people be damned...

from common dreams...

'Military Coup' in Egypt as Court Dissolves Parliament

CNN reports:

Egypt's highest court declared the parliament invalid Thursday, and the country's interim military rulers promptly declared full legislative authority, triggering a new level of chaos and confusion in the country's leadership.[...]

"Egypt just witnessed the smoothest military coup," said Hossam Bahgat of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, in a tweet after the high court's decisions Thursday. "We'd be outraged if we weren't so exhausted."

"Egypt is entering into a very dangerous stage and I think a lot of people were caught by surprise," he said.

Riot police and military personnel, some in armored vehicles, were outside the court ahead of the rulings. Military intelligence officers were also present.

After the ruling about Shafik was announced, a crowd of citizens shouted their disapproval. Military police moved to block the road in front of the court -- a major Cairo artery.

Ahram Online reports:

Eliminated presidential candidate Abdel-Moneim Abul-Fotouh on Thursday declared that allowing Ahmed Shafiq – the military's preferred presidential candidate – to vie for Egypt's highest office while dissolving the elected parliament and granting military police the right to arrest civilians represented a de facto "military coup."

"Anyone who believes that Egypt's millions of revolutionary youth will allow this to pass must be delusional," Abul-Fotouh declared.

i spent a great deal of time early last year watching the al jazeera livestream of the tahrir square protests and, finally, the capitulation of mubarak... ever since then, egypt's super-rich elites have been playing the waiting game, keeping all of the mubarak power and money system intact while throwing an occasional bone to the masses... now it looks like they've gone and made a master power play, effectively telling the egyptian people, "tough shit, we're in charge and we DARE you to do anything about it"...

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The more we grasp that our true allies may not speak our language ... the more powerful we will become

chris hedges...

Corporate power is global, and resistance to it cannot be restricted by national boundaries. Corporations have no regard for nation-states. They assert their power to exploit the land and the people everywhere. They play worker off of worker and nation off of nation. They control the political elites in Ottawa as they do in London, Paris and Washington. This, I suspect, is why the tactics to crush the Occupy movement around the globe have an eerie similarity—infiltrations, surveillance, the denial of public assembly, physical attempts to eradicate encampments, the use of propaganda and the press to demonize the movement, new draconian laws stripping citizens of basic rights, and increasingly harsh terms of incarceration.

Our solidarity should be with activists who march on Tahrir Square in Cairo or set up encampamentos in Madrid. These are our true compatriots. The more we shed ourselves of national identity in this fight, the more we grasp that our true allies may not speak our language or embrace our religious and cultural traditions, the more powerful we will become.

i have often been dismayed at how much of a bubble we live in here in the u.s... it's particularly apparent to me when i return from outside the country... the only global perspective most of us have is what dribbles down to us from our propaganda-spouting media (iran, iraq, afghanistan, arab spring, etc.) or from a dim awareness that virtually everything we buy - short of automobiles and food - comes from china...

fortunately, the occupy movement has begun to move beyond that kind of insular thinking at least to the extent that an increasing number of those involved identify with what's happening in tahrir square, spain and chile...

hedges is right... there is a global awakening and we need to embrace it as such... when i talk with my afghan friends - as i do regularly - i find they are struggling with the same issues of repression by their super-rich elites as their compatriots in egypt and our own occupy protestors here in the u.s... the false dichotomies of patriotism and nationalism heaped on us by our handlers only serve to keep us from the full realization that the "99%" are under the thumb of the "1%" globally, not just inside our borders...

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More tragedy in Cairo

from spiegel...


Stones thrown during clashes between soldiers and protesters in Cairo are
placed in a heart-shape around blood stains, in memory of protesters killed
during the latest clashes. Thirteen people have been killed in the violence
since Friday with hundreds suffering injuries. Over 100 demonstrators have
been arrested. The most recent clashes come just days after Egyptians voted
in the latest round of parliamentary elections. Protests against ongoing military
rule in the country have been ongoing since mid-November and have become
increasingly violent since then. Forty-two people were killed in street battles
in November. Both United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and US
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have expressed concern at the latest flare-up.

so sad...

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Egyptian army major: I’m supposed to die for these people, not them die for me

it makes sense that there would come a point when even the most establishment and status quo among us can longer stand by while our fellow citizens are brutally repressed... i'm wondering when that realization will fully hit our militarized police here in the u.s...

the guardian...

Speaking next to an open window that looks out on to Tahrir Square, Major Tamer Samir Badr says he now feels it is his duty to protect 'these people who are fighting for our rights'. The 37-year-old claims many officers have been attending the protests secretly in civilian clothes.

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Cairo, Tahrir Square: November 19 - 22

a round-up of the last four days of the egyptian revolution... a very important compilation of key events...



this certainly puts our occupy efforts in stark perspective, doesn't it...? the egyptians have no delusions that their super-rich elites and the military that empower them have no intention of going quietly into that good night... we here in the u.s. are just starting to wake up to that fact... god forbid that we have to deal with their level of violence and repression but seeing what has been taking place in places like uc davis et al, i'm not so sure it isn't coming quicker than we might think...

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A smidgen of good news from Tahrir Square

i posted extensively on the february uprising in egypt (here) and have been following it ever since, altho' recently i've been focusing more on our own domestic uprising...

i was thrilled beyond words to see egyptians come together to challenge their u.s.-sponsored puppets and persist beyond all reasonable limits in insisting that real power was vested in the egyptian people and not their super-rich elite overlords... i was glued to the al jazeera livestream for the better part of every day and repeatedly felt chills running up and down my spine as i watched...

i didn't believe for a single moment then that the egyptian ptb would easily step aside any more than i believe now that our own super-rich elite overlords in the u.s. will do anything other than give a condescending nod to the concept of citizen-led democracy, social justice and the quaint notion of service to the common good...

i give the egyptian people enormous credit... their persistence is a shining example for us all... may they prevail...


A suspected police informer was surrounded by an angry crowd after he
was severely beaten in Tahrir Square in Cairo on Monday.
Moises Saman for The New York Times

Egypt’s Civilian Government Submits Offer to Resign

After three days of increasingly violent demonstrations, Egypt’s interim civilian government submitted its resignation to the country’s ruling military council on Monday, bowing to the demands of the protesters and marking a crisis of legitimacy for the military-led government.

The step was reported by Egyptian television, and it remained to seen whether the military would accept or reject the offer of the resignation, which followed the most sustained and bloodiest challenge to military’s hold on power since the fall of Hosni Mubarak as demonstrators clashed with security forces around Tahrir Square and across the country.

again, may they prevail, and may my country finally decide to pull its head out of its ass...

Crackdown in Cairo, excuses in Washington

As Egyptians return to Tahrir Square, the Obama administration sides with the military

keep your eyes and ears open... very shortly, we'll be inundated with propaganda telling us that egypt will fall under the control of radical factions of islam if we don't support the egyptian military and their rule of brutality...

and, btw, where did the egyptian military get their equipment and learn their tactics...?

Egypt uses U.S. teargas on pro-democracy crowds

600 injured as military clashes with demonstrators demanding return to civilian rule

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OWS - the continual necessity for acting and thinking boldly

i regularly think back to my time in kosovo this past february, glued to the al jazeera livestream from cairo... i was thrilled beyond words to see the people in egypt rise up and insist on taking their power back from one of the world's most decidedly corrupt regimes... the fact that mubarak had been a long-time ally of my own country was not a small part of my jubilation...

when the ows movement began here two months ago, i was equally thrilled... while that thrill has dissipated somewhat, i am still of the firm belief that ows is the most exciting development in the u.s. in my lifetime...

i worry over what, if anything, the next evolution of ows will look like... as the author of this excerpt, recently returned from egypt, states, whatever evolves, it must be big and bold... we are at a time in the history of our country and of the world where only big and bold will do...

[T]he most valuable organizing nugget I carried back with me [from Egypt] is the continual necessity for acting and thinking boldly. As an organizer here in the US, I was taught to be pragmatic and practical - go for what you can win in a specific time horizon. As an organizer, we ask leaders to dream, to name the things that hold them back from being happy, free and prosperous. And then, we set limits on those dreams, or cut them into bite-sized chunks that are so small, they sometimes bear little resemblance to the massive, audacious canvas that the leaders first painted for us. We negotiate ourselves down before we even get to the real negotiation table.

Before Egypt, I was taught that politics is the art of the possible. After Egypt, I question whether we should all be reaching for the impossible and ludicrous. Who knows who else might agree? A common call for the laughable and ridiculous widens the possibility for what can and should happen.

this takes me back to what i posted earlier - i believe we should be giving serious consideration to a constitutional convention...

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Fake Democracy - Noam Chomsky, March 13

great stuff from professor chomsky - as always...

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Meanwhile, Egyptians are busy documenting their fallen government's use of torture

do you think we in the u.s. could take a lesson here...?

With Mubarak out of power, Egyptians turned today on the brutal State Security Services he used to cement his reign. Thousands of protestors stormed the agency's main headquarters in Cairo, ransacking offices and searching for evidence of Mubarak's wrongdoing among classified documents. This is basically like if Americans were given free reign at the FBI's HQ.

The State Security Services were responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses during Mubrarak's 30-year rule, according to the AP. "We all suffered and saw horrible torture at the hands of this agency," one protestor said. And many of those who raided the agency's offices today were victims of abuse.

not only did they raid the headquarters of the state security services, they also documented everything they found, posting it on social networking sites... NOW, it's getting really REAL...!

again, scott horton...

This weekend tens of thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators in Egypt [flooded] the Internet with pictures of the cells and torture devices used there. Leaders of the effort said their raid was undertaken to preserve evidence of the mistreatment of prisoners so that appropriate measures could be taken for accountability in the future. Around the world, the outcry against this regime of torture and terror is rising and fueling massive public uprisings–as we see today in Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Yemen.

here's a photo gallery... like scott says, what if the american people could do the same at fbi headquarters...

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The ripple effects of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya continue to spread

in addition to what's happening in northern africa, the near east and the u.s., we're starting to see tremors in the balkans (croatia and albania, specifically) and southern africa (zimbabwe)... having just been in zimbabwe last week and had a member of mugabe's secret police join the second day of our conference to make sure we weren't plotting against the government, i'm not surprised to see things being stirred up against yet another corrupt dictator...

croatia...

Croatian police clashed with about 15,000 anti-government protesters who rallied in Zagreb on Saturday, with 33 people injured and 58 protesters taken into custody, according to reports of the Croatian news agency HINA. The protesters, among whom were masked members of the Bad Blue Boys group of football supporters, demanded protection of war veterans from prosecution. They clashed with the police in an attempt to reach St. Mark's Square, where the government is located. The police were forced to use force as some protesters acted violently and tried to break police cordons, Zagreb police chief Tomislav Buterin was quoted as saying at a news conference, adding that 33 people were injured in the process, including journalists. A great number of policemen were guarding the downtown area and helicopters were seen flying over the city. The situation calmed down around 4 p.m. local time (1500 GMT). At another Zagreb square Bana Jelacica, thousands protested peacefully against the government and in support of a Croat war veteran awaiting extradition to Serbia in a Bosnian prison. A similar protest was also organized in the eastern Croatian city of Osijek. Croatian police clashed with about 15,000 anti-government protesters who rallied in Zagreb on Saturday, with 33 people injured and 58 protesters taken into custody, according to reports of the Croatian news agency HINA.

The protesters, among whom were masked members of the Bad Blue Boys group of football supporters, demanded protection of war veterans from prosecution. They clashed with the police in an attempt to reach St. Mark's Square, where the government is located.

The police were forced to use force as some protesters acted violently and tried to break police cordons, Zagreb police chief Tomislav Buterin was quoted as saying at a news conference, adding that 33 people were injured in the process, including journalists.

A great number of policemen were guarding the downtown area and helicopters were seen flying over the city. The situation calmed down around 4 p.m. local time (1500 GMT).

At another Zagreb square Bana Jelacica, thousands protested peacefully against the government and in support of a Croat war veteran awaiting extradition to Serbia in a Bosnian prison.

A similar protest was also organized in the eastern Croatian city of Osijek.

croatia isn't the only balkan country ripe for political upheaval... only a month ago, i was in kosovo and i can tell you, the corruption there is on a par with the worst of them... in fact, there has already been uprising and unrest in albania, kosovo's close neighbor, as recently as late january...

zimbabwe's mugabe is still managing to keep his heel on the throat of his people but, once the ball gets rolling, that might change quickly...

Zimbabwe's capital, Harare, remained tense Tuesday as military and police maintained a show of force though protests against President Robert Mugabe called for by a group on the Internet social media site Facebook failed to materialize.

A Facebook page called "Zimbabwe Million Citizen March" called for protests in Harare, Bulawayo and other major cities to “demand the end of the 31-year rule of the iron-fisted and corrupt dictator Robert Mugabe."

Zimbabwean authorities for weeks have warned against any attempt to emulate the mass protests seen across North Africa and the Middle East, and recently arrested 45 people on charges of treason alleging they were conspiring to topple the government.

Those arrests and a general crackdown has been condemned by the United Nations and other human rights groups. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay condemned the arrest and alleged torture of activists and said the arrests “appear to be part of a growing crackdown on civil society and members of the political opposition."

we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg... i predict when we hit june, we might not recognize a lot of the world we thought we knew - and that will be a very good thing...

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Chomsky: "democracy is dangerous and intolerable" and stability "means obedience to US domination"

as usual, professor chomsky 'splains it ever so much better than most...

There is a reason why there is so much concern about the democracy uprising in the Arab world than in, say, the sub-Saharan Africa. This is where the major energy resources of the world are. There is quite a good reason why the US and its allies will pull out the stops to prevent any really functioning democracy from developing in the Arab world.

[...]

The leaders of the EU and of the US happen to agree with the ruling clerics in Iran that democracy is dangerous and intolerable.

[...]

You have to remember that stability is a cold code word. Stability doesn't mean stability; it means obedience to US domination.

[...]

Support them as long as possible. When it is no longer feasible, maybe it is the army's turn to turn against them or send them out to pasture, forget about them, issue a ringing declaration about how we are on the side of the people and how we have always loved democracy and then try to restore as much of the traditional regime as possible.

[...]

[E]lite elements are in the West, in Egypt, the old regime, and Iran and elsewhere are not ready for democracy. People are ready for democracy everywhere. That is the problem elite face.

yes, our super-rich elites cannot be happy with current developments...

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More from Wisconsin - "This is what democracy looks like"

john nichols writing in common dreams...

[T]he governor’s radical proposal went to such extremes in its anti-labor bias that it sparked a protest movement so large, so steady and so determined in its demands that it is now commonly compared with the protests that have rocked Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries.

paul krugman...

Last week, in the face of protest demonstrations against Wisconsin’s new union-busting governor, Scott Walker — demonstrations that continued through the weekend, with huge crowds on Saturday — Representative Paul Ryan made an unintentionally apt comparison: “It’s like Cairo has moved to Madison.”

It wasn’t the smartest thing for Mr. Ryan to say, since he probably didn’t mean to compare Mr. Walker, a fellow Republican, to Hosni Mubarak. Or maybe he did — after all, quite a few prominent conservatives, including Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santorum, denounced the uprising in Egypt and insist that President Obama should have helped the Mubarak regime suppress it.

In any case, however, Mr. Ryan was more right than he knew. For what’s happening in Wisconsin isn’t about the state budget, despite Mr. Walker’s pretense that he’s just trying to be fiscally responsible. It is, instead, about power. What Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to do is to make Wisconsin — and eventually, America — less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy. And that’s why anyone who believes that we need some counterweight to the political power of big money should be on the demonstrators’ side.

it's an awakening, no doubt about it...

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Is Wisconsin the United States' Egypt...?

ya know, that would be infinitely cool if it was... god knows, we're long over due...

katrina vanden heuvel...

A friend e-mailed me this morning, "Do you think events taking place in Wisconsin might be as important as what's happening in Cairo, if the media really got the word out? Might it be the spark to halt the Tea Party Express?" Another friend e-mailed, "It's possible that this labor strike in Wisconsin could become our Uncut." (In response to Britain's draconian public spending cuts, citizens there formed UK Uncut, a Twitter-organized movement, to protest wealthy tax evaders. If the rich paid for their fair share of taxes, the movement argues, the pressure on the state budget would diminish or disappear.)

Wisconsin's Republican governor and Republican-dominated legislature are moving to destroy organized labor, moving to abolish democratic rights that were the essence of the New Deal, and treating working-class Americans as though they were meaningless in our country's mosaic. Meanwhile, those who are responsible for the catastrophic financial crisis are riding high--and in the name of deficits they largely caused, they insist that those who worked a lifetime to build and own their homes, to send their children to public schools, to have security in their retirement years, to have decent medical care--that those citizens should pay the price for budgetary crises in honor, dignity and decency.

john nichols...

David Vines, a University of Wisconsin student joined the mass protests against Governor Scott Walker’s attempt to strip public employee unions of their collective bargaining rights on Monday. The political science student marched on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. He slept overnight in the Capital to make sure that the legislature did not approve Walker’s plan without a fight.

Why? “This is what the founders intended,” says Vines.

And he is right.

When Democratic members of the Wisconsin State Senate walked out on Capital on Thursday – denying the Republican majority quorum that was necessary to pass the legislation -- they were attacked by Walker and his cronies. The governor called the boycott a “stunt” and claimed the Democrats were disrepecting democracy.

After all, Walker’s backers noted, the governor and his Republican allies won an election last November.

That is true.

But Wisconsin’s greatest governor, Robert M. La Follette, declared: “"We have long rested comfortably in this country upon the assumption that because our form of government was democratic, it was therefore automatically producing democratic results. Now, there is nothing mysteriously potent about the forms and names of democratic institutions that should make them self-operative. Tyranny and oppression are just as possible under democratic forms as under any other. We are slow to realize that democracy is a life; and involves continual struggle. It is only as those of every generation who love democracy resist with all their might the encroachments of its enemies that the ideals of representative government can even be nearly approximated."

La Follette’s point, apparently lost on Walker, is that democracy does not end on Election Day. That’s when it begins. Citizens do not elect officials to rule them from one election to the next. Citizens elect officials to represent them, to respond to the will of the people as it evolves.

i'm at the airport, headed off for southern africa and won't be back until the end of may... however, you can be absolutely sure i will be following developments closely... i can't think of anything i'd like better than to see my fellow countrymen rise up to reclaim the power that has consistently been grabbed, wheedled, poached and stolen... and when i say "reclaim," i'm totally serious... every human being is born with that power but, through on-going manipulation and deception down through the ages, many of us have come to believe that power is something that belongs to other people... it's the phenomenon and the myth of learned helplessness and it's way past time to drive a stake through the heart of that sucker...

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For 30 years, your nation financed & supported me, politely overlooking corruption and repression all the while

tom tomorrow strikes again...


Click image for larger version

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The Egyptian military shows good faith

i may be wrong (cuz, lord knows, i am the LAST person you would want to be attempting to deliver a credible prediction on anything about egypt - or any other country for that matter), but i think the egyptian military is going to pull off this transition and pull it off well... they've managed to keep the trust of the egyptian people despite 30 years of strongman rule and i don't think they're of a mind to squander it now... besides, they've never been under this kind of a global spotlight and they know that every move they make is being closely watched... on top of all that, how they handle the situation will set the template for every other populist movement in the region...

Egyptian military dissolves parliament

Egypt's new military authorities say they are dissolving parliament and suspending the constitution.

In a statement on state TV, the higher military council said it would stay in power six months, or until elections.

in effect, they've set the timeframe for elections at six months, coinciding with the time period mubarak originally set for stepping down...

p.s. yes, i have been keeping up with the revelations about the egyptian military's role in torture and human rights violations... all i have to say about that is i think such behavior is the sad norm for a powerful military, regardless of the country... and, yes, uncle sam, i'm looking at YOU...!

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Crossing the "fear barrier"

listening to rania, a human rights activist, speaking to al jazeera from the 6th of october bridge in cairo... she says that once the egyptian people crossed the "fear barrier," there was no stopping them...

i've said all along that fear is the principal tool used by our overlords to keep us in our place... if you look at just how much fear gets stoked on a daily basis - terrorists, swine flu, home foreclosure, crime, even losing one's job - we are mercilessly manipulated on a daily basis...

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Celebrating Egypt - fireworks in Beirut, Gaza and Tunisia... Even some good words from a former Israeli cabinet minister

there's no historical precedent... i've said before, i've been waiting for something like this all my life...

Celebrations erupted across the Middle East on Friday after Hosni Mubarak stepped down as Egypt's president. From Beirut to Gaza, people rushed into the streets, handing out candy, setting off fireworks and shooting in the air.

Even in Israel, which had watched the Egyptian protesters' uprising against Mubarak with concern, a former Cabinet minister said Mubarak did the right thing. "The street won. There was nothing that could be done. It's good that he did what he did," former Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, who knew Mubarak well, told Israel TV's Channel 10.

Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel, and there are fears the 1979 accord could now be challenged.

Moments after Egypt's Vice President Omar Suleiman made the announcement of Mubarak's resignation, fireworks lit up the sky over Beirut. Celebratory gunfire rang out in the Shiite-dominated areas in south Lebanon and in southern Beirut.

On Al-Manar TV, the station run by the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah faction, Egyptian anchor Amr Nassef, who was once imprisoned in Egypt for alleged ties to Islamists, cried emotionally on the air and said: "Allahu Akbar (God is great), the Pharaoh is dead. Am I dreaming? I'm afraid to be dreaming."

In Tunisia, where a successful uprising expelled a longtime leader only weeks earlier, cries of joy and the thundering honking of horns greeted the announcement. "God delivered our Egyptian brothers from this dictator," said Yacoub Youssef, one of those celebrating in the capital of Tunis.

[...]

In the Gaza Strip, ruled by the Islamic militant Hamas, thousands rushed into the streets in jubilation. Gunmen fired in the air and women handed out candy. "God bless Egypt, it's a day of joy and God willing all corrupt leaders in the world will fall," said Radwa Abu Ali, 55, one of the women distributing sweets.

yes, god willing, all the corrupt leaders in the world will fall...

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While we celebrate Egypt, let's not forget what's going on here at home - the plutocracy is playing for keeps

john cole with thanks to glenn greenwald...

One thing that even the dim bulbs in the media should understand by now is that there is in fact a class war going on, and it is the rich and powerful who are waging it. Anyone who does anything that empowers the little people or that threatens the wealth and power of the plutocracy must be destroyed. [emphasis added] There is a reason for these clowns going after Think Progress and unions, just like there is a reason they are targeting wikileaks and Glenn Greenwald, Planned Parenthood, and Acorn. To a lesser extent the fail parade that was the Daily Caller expose on Journolist was more of the same.

You have to understand the mindset- they are playing for keeps. The vast majority of the wealth isn’t enough. They want it all. Anything that gets in their way must be destroyed. They don’t care if they poison every stream or crack the foundation to your house or if your daughter dies getting a back alley abortion or if every one in your mining town has an inoperable tumor. They just don’t give a shit.

And they are well financed, have a strong infrastructure, a sympathetic media, and entire organizations dedicated to running cover for them. They’ve even created their own mythical ideology in which they are superhero Galtian overlords, and this lets a few rubes who babble ignorantly about the free market get to feel like they are playing along, when they are really just being played. It’s these guys versus all of us, yet half the people being rogered (Republicans and glibertarians and hell, half the Democrats) have been convinced the other side is a bigger threat to their well being than the people with all the power, money, and resources. Hell, even in this post I can guarantee that at least five shitheads will come in and tell me they don’t like Glenn Greenwald because he uses too many words or that Jane Hamsher is shrill or because neither of them fellate Obama to satisfaction. Talk about not fucking getting it.

I don’t even know why we bother to hold elections any more, to be honest, the game is so rigged. We’re a banana republic, and it is just a matter of time before we descend into necklacing and other tribal bullshit.

you can be sure that what's taking place in egypt is scaring the ever-loving shit out of our super-rich overlords... there's nothing - NOTHING - these people want to see less than ordinary people re-claiming their power...

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They didn't fight, they didn't kill, and they didn't rely on someone who claimed to "lead" them

they simply came out en masse, took care of each other and said, in no uncertain terms -

NO MORE...!!

they've reclaimed the power that is the birthright of every one of us...

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Power to the people of Egypt...!

tahrir square is exploding with joy...!



after 30 years, it took the combined will of the egyptian people 18 days to topple the regime... god bless them... i'm in awe of their courage and pray for better days for them, their country and, indeed, for all of us...

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