eta:
New ONTD_P livepost just posted! Yay!
BAD SHIT GOING DOWN.So, last night in Alexandria, there was an altercation between a pro-Mubarak group (who may have been plainclothes police and/or paid by the government to be there, said Al Jazeera) and the rest of the protestors. That was nasty enough.
Now it's gotten worse, this time in Cairo.
Cairo clashes fuel Egypt turmoil; "Hundreds injured as pro-Mubarak supporters attack protesters seeking president's ouster in Egyptian capital."
Protesters from both sides threw stones at each other in Tahrir Square, the epicentre of ongoing opposition demonstrations against President Hosni Mubarak for the past nine days.
Al Jazeera correspondents, reporting from the scene, said that more than 500 people had been injured in Wednesday's clashes that are still continuing.
Al Jazeera just reported that the offical numbers say one person has been killed and ~400 have been injured. (Witness reports say more people than that have died.)
[eta, 12 am Feb. 3 in Cairo: Now it's 1,500 injured & 3 dead.]
Military personnel in Tahrir Square are telling people to go home because of the attacks, but the person AJE was talking to who is in the square is afraid to leave because the thugs are outside the square, past the checkpoints. She believes it's safer to stay in the square because "The thugs are not that many; they haven't outnumbered us yet."
...omg. Witnesses have been taking ID cards from the attackers they capture, and it seems at least some really ARE government plants. Classy, Mubarak. CLASSY.
(Also, shots have been fired and the army denies it was them.)
eta: I wrote this bit yesterday, after AJE had showed some footage of pro-Mubarak demonstraters (whom I DON'T mean to say are entirely sent by the government! I believe they're real): Okay, they just showed some Mubarak supporters. And... I get that they're scared. It looks fucking terrifying to be there, in the middle of that uncertainty and stress and potential for violence. But... "if he were that bad, he'd have been forced out a long time ago"? Maybe people were too scared to try to force him out. (Y'know, because of the TORTURE he's been accused of) And it's great that Egypt didn't have any wars during his presidency, but what I'm hearing from the anti-gov people is less "yay, let's have some wars!" and more "dude, we need this fucking poverty shit to stop. ALSO THE TORTURE." So, yeah, I do feel for them, even if I disagree.
SOME HAPPIER NEWS.Just as events in Tunisia helped spark the events in Egypt, now Egypt is effecting other changes:
Jordan's King Dismisses Cabinet After ProtestsJordan's King Abdullah II, bowing to public pressure, fired his government on Tuesday and tasked a new prime minister with quickly boosting economic opportunities and giving Jordanians a greater say in politics.Yemen president not to extend termAli Abdullah Saleh, the Yemeni president, has backed down on a plan to rule his impoverished Arab country for life after mass protests demanding his ouster.
In an announcement on Wednesday, Saleh said he plans for elections in April had been scrapped along with constitutional amendments that would have seen him become president for life.You know, just in case you thought the Middle East hated democracy or something. GO, MIDDLE EAST PEOPLE, GOOOO! \0/ Rock on with your bad icky-government-toppling selves! I love how these two rulers have apparently looked at Egypt, looked at their own just-starting-to-protest citizens, and gone OHHH FUCK, DNW, LEMME JUST...FIX SHIT RIGHT NOW. Ha
haaaa.
NEWS OF ANNOYING PEOPLE FROM THE U.S. GOVERNMENT.Mike Huckabee, a Republican who really really wants to be president of the U.S., is
Worried About “Cascading Effect” Of Democracy Across Middle East. Translation: OMG WE CAN'T LET
MUSLIMS RULE THEIR OWN COUNTRIES!!! They might hate America or something! (ONTD_P responded with
LOLLL stop saying words. Good times.)
LINKS OF INTEREST.Five Things You Need to Know about the Egyptian Armed ForcesFascinating article on the structure and strategy of the Egyptian army, especially if you've been as curious as me as to why they haven't attacked protesters.
Translations of some of the Egyptians' chants. I know zero Arabic, but I adore languages and I've been dead curious to know what the protestors are saying. The rhythm of "Al Sha'ab yoreed isqat al nizam" always gives me chills whenever all of Tahrir Square starts shouting it. ♥
[WARNING: GRAPHIC PHOTOS.] Two gigantic galleries of fucking
stunning photos:
The Egypt Protests;
The Egypt Protests Part 2. These are mostly photos of protesters vs. riot police earlier in the protests. The second link is not as bad as the first; the worst it gets are a couple of photos of injured, bleeding people. The first link, though, contains several up-close photos of a man who was shot and killed. They're numbers 21, 22, and 23 if you want to try to scroll past, but I warn that it's almost impossible not to see them. I think the rest of the galleries are worth seeing, though, so I'm linking them anyway.
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