Blog: Middle East Diary

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February 11, 2011

A new day in Egypt

What a difference 24 hours makes.

Last night I was in Tahrir Square watching a people deflate. Tens of thousands who had gathered for what they thought would be President Hosni Mubarak's farewell address were stunned and saddened when what they heard was an opaque and often rambling message that lacked the words so many Egyptians wanted to hear: "Goodbye."

Tonight, Egyptians heard it, though not from Mubarak himself. He decamped to Sharm El Sheikh, the Red Sea resort town, and left his ashen-faced vice president Omar Suleiman to announce the end of his era. I watched on CNN, and the translator could barely contain himself. When Suleiman said Mubarak was stepping down, the translator's voice jumped an octave.

The streets immediately erupted into a cacophony of car horns, screams, songs and cheers that hasn't stopped for nine hours, and may not stop for days.

After I returned from the square and was working on this story, I called Ahmed Salah, who was among those who organized the first day of protests on Jan. 25. I met Ahmed just a few weeks before the uprising, when he told me, "Something is in the works." I'd be lying if I didn't say that I was skeptical -- how many protests had been quashed by Egyptian security forces before, how many demonstrations where there were more police than demonstrators?

Obviously, I had no idea how big it would be. And Ahmed had no idea either. By the time we saw each other again, in Tahrir Square several days into the revolt, he said that the whole thing had surpassed his wildest expectations.

He suffered a broken nose and received a rubber bullet to the skull during the police crackdown on protesters Jan. 28. He was left with a big bandage on his nose, which made it difficult for him to travel to and from the square. The bandage identified himself as someone involved in the protests, a target for pro-Mubarak thugs or security forces. He stopped coming to Tahrir every day.

He was there Thursday night when many thought Mubarak was leaving. He'd taken the bandage off, and he warned that even if Mubarak were to leave it would be far from over. "We want a transition to a new type of state -- a parliamentary republic," he said.

When I finally reached him Friday night, after we'd both returned from Tahrir, Ahmed was in tears. I could bear to interview him for only a minute. Finally I told him, "Mabrouk." Congratulations. He and millions of Egyptians will wake up tomorrow in a new country, one that they created.

Assuming they go to sleep.

Update: Here's my account of covering the Egyptian uprising, for Playboy magazine.

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Comments

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Posted by: anonymous | February 21, 2011 at 07:28 PM

The impact of the Egyptian revolution on the West and the world will be clear only after the constitution of a new democratic government. But judging by the joy across the world in reaction to Mubarak's departure, one thing is clear. People all over are looking at the Middle East with new eyes. Oppressed citizens are in no mood to give a free run to any despot. It will not be a surprise if more dictators have to face the wrath of suffering people.

Posted by: Asian Tv | March 14, 2011 at 02:39 AM

http://www.meetatthegate.com/component/option,com_article/article_id,847/ Read this article by respected Egyptian historian Alaa Al Aswany. It's a great overview of the recent Egyptian history and the impact that the revolution is having on the other Arabic states.

Posted by: CateC | March 25, 2011 at 08:56 AM

My favorite.I appreciate.

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Looking back on this happy report only reinforces what I thought would happen after he left. Now it's just the military doing the same crap that Mubarek did. Only more openly. Sad for the people.

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Posted by: Marloes | July 26, 2011 at 12:00 PM

There are People who claim that Democracy does not exist, except in theory, and then there are those who say that some Countries are more Democratic than others.

I refer to three types of what is claimed to be Democratic Systems, and one is the American Style Western Democracies that most of the NATO Countries and their Puppets, and I shall refer to these as Western Democracy.

Another Countries that are Defined as Democracies are the rest the Countries that have Elections, or Non-Western Democracies.

The third type of Democracy can be described as the one Muammar al-Gaddafi created for Libyans.

The first thing that needs to be fully and properly understood that Democracy in America and its Puppets that look like Democracies does not exist, nor will it ever exist in Anglo-France, or with their Client Puppets.

Satan wants me to a Politician in my Country, but I do not want to become a Politician, and besides, there are many People who suspect and say that I am a Secret Servant of the Invisible Demons, and so would make it impractical in this English Speaking Western Democracy.

We know that the Bible says that anyone who does not believe in God is a Fool and that they are inexcusable for not believing in God, because the evidence is more than abundant, regardless of the lies of the Pretend Atheists.

Even though many People have accused me of being Secretly in League with the Invisible Demons, I will not confess to it, because I have been tortured in the invisible realm by the Invisible Demons before, and I will always deny being in League with the Invisible Demons, even if my denial is a lie to protect myself from being tortured by the Invisible Demons.

The Bible tells us that God is Eternal and Invisible, and that he had a family of good invisible angels in Heaven before He created the Earth and the first two People.

We know that some of the good angels rebelled against God, and those demons are as real and invisible as the gravity, the earth’s magnetic field, and radio waves.

Jesus said that the Invisible Satan the Devil is the Real Ruler of the Earth, and we know that the physical manifestation of that is that America, or Anglo-America is the Ruler of the Earth, because most of their Politicians are Secret Devil Worshippers.

They arrived in the territory of the Gerasenes on the other side of the Sea of Galilee. As Jesus stepped out of the boat, a man came out of the tombs and met him. The man was controlled by an evil spirit and lived among the tombs. No one could restrain him any longer, not even with a chain. He had often been chained hand and foot. However, he snapped the chains off his hands and broke the chains from his feet. No one could control him. Night and day he was among the tombs and on the mountainsides screaming and cutting himself with stones. The man saw Jesus at a distance. So he ran to Jesus, bowed down in front of him, and shouted, "Why are you bothering me now, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Swear to God that you won't torture me." He shouted this because Jesus said, "You evil spirit, come out of the man." Jesus asked him, "What is your name?" He told Jesus, "My name is Legion Six Thousand, because there are many of us." He begged Jesus not to send them out of the territory. A large herd of pigs was feeding on a mountainside nearby. The demons begged him, "Send us into the pigs! Let us enter them!" Jesus let them do this. The evil spirits came out of the man and went into the pigs. The herd of about two thousand pigs rushed down the cliff into the sea and drowned (Mark 5:1-13).

We know that Anglo-France control the United Nations, and they get China to vote with them because the Pretend Atheist Chinese Leaders cannot be free from being tortured and manipulated by the invisible demons, because God will not keep the invisible demons away from Liars, because all Pretend Atheists are Liars.

I can assure People that no human being can resist the invisible demons unless they serve Satan, or if they serve God.

There could be People who think that I have been tortured by the invisible demons to provide this information at this time, because Satan wants People Western Puppet Democracies to believe that True Democracy is coming to the Satanic Dictatorships England, America, and their NATO Puppets, and to their Non-NATO Puppets in the World who pretend to be Democracies.

Posted by: THE | August 26, 2011 at 03:43 AM