Thousands March in Egyptian Capital Calling for President’s Ouster

[David Guyatt]

Translated from western pol speak the below simply means slow the election down to give us time to fix it - for "freedom and democracy".

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/0...6L20110205

Europe to Egypt: After Mubarak, don't rush election

(Reuters) - European powers Germany and Britain urged Egypt on Saturday to change leaders rapidly but take its time holding elections, saying traditions of tolerance and fairness had to be built to make democracy work.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron and European Council President Herman van Rompuy reiterated demands for a rapid "transition" -- a phrase that has become a diplomatic codeword for the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak after 30 years of military-backed autocracy.

But they said caution would be needed in the aftermath.

"I don't believe that we solve the world's problems by flicking a switch and holding an election ... Egypt is a classic case in point," Cameron told a security conference in Munich.

"I think a very quick election at the start of a process of democratization would be wrong," Merkel told the same meeting, citing her own experiences as an East German pro-democracy activist at the time of the 1989 collapse of the Berlin Wall.

"If there is an election first, new structures (of political dialogue and decision-making) don't have a chance to develop."

Mubarak, who has pledged to step down in September, said on Thursday he believed Egypt would descend into chaos if he were to give in to almost two weeks of demands by an unprecedented popular revolt that he quit immediately.

He has fashioned himself as the crucial rampart against Islamist militancy in Egypt and the indispensable player in maintaining a peace treaty Egypt signed with Israel in 1979.

WORRY ABOUT ISLAMIST RISE

Political analysts say European caution about free elections in Egypt will be seen by many in the Middle East as evidence of Western anxiety about the possibility that Islamists could come to power in the Arab world's most populous country.

Critics of Western diplomacy in the region says this anxiety reflects a double standard, namely that the West compromises on its democratic ideals when the outcome would be unfavorable.

Egypt's largest opposition movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, is tolerated by the authorities despite being officially banned. The Brotherhood says that, if given the freedom to choose, most of Egypt's 80 million population would choose a form of Islamic law, although it is publicly committed to political pluralism.

Cameron said that a transition to a new leadership and political reform in Egypt is essential, because delay would produce an unstable country that the West would not welcome.

But he said building democracy in Britain itself had taken hundreds of years of inculcating traditions of tolerance, showing the growth of democracy was a process, not an event.

"Yes, the transition has to start now to demonstrate to people inside (Egypt) that their aspirations are being understood. But if we think it's about the act of holding an election, we are wrong," he said.

"I think there's a naivety that existed among politicians in the past that somehow if you introduce democracy like that you solve a country's problems," said Cameron. "I don't believe that for one second. But what I do believe is that we should build a partnership for an open society."

[Jan Klimkowski]

"I think there's a naivety that existed among politicians in the past that somehow if you introduce democracy like that you solve a country's problems," said Cameron. "I don't believe that for one second. But what I do believe is that we should build a partnership for an open society."

Ever since British PM Cameron and Chancellor Osborne returned from the Davos summit, they've been relentlessly ON MESSAGE. A very neocon, War On Terror Lives, message.

Cameron has just delivered a speech with the following themes:

David Cameron tells Muslim Britain: stop tolerating extremists

PM says those who don't hold 'British' values will be shunned by government

Patrick Wintour The Guardian, Saturday 5 February 2011

David Cameron will today signal a sea-change in the government fight against home-grown terrorism, saying the state must confront, and not consort with, the non-violent Muslim groups that are ambiguous about British values such as equality between sexes, democracy and integration.

To belong in Britain is to believe in these values, he will say. Claiming the previous government had been the victim of fear and muddled thinking by backing a state-sponsored form of multiculturalism, the prime minister will state that his government "will no longer fund or share platforms with organisations that, while non-violent, are certainly in some cases part of the problem".

In a major speech to a security conference in Munich, he will demand: "We need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism."

He will say that "some organisations that seek to present themselves as a gateway to the Muslim community are showered with public money while doing little to combat extremism. This is like turning to a rightwing fascist party to fight a violent white supremacist movement."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/...-extremism

[Peter Lemkin]

He probably misspoke or was misquoted. I don't think he meant shunned; more likely gunned. Being 'shunned' by the government is hardly such a penalty...but being gunned by them.....well.....that's a different matter entirely.

[Keith Millea]

This is an extremely good video compilation.......Check it out.

[Magda Hassan]

I've lost the link but will try to find it. The Deputy Director of the Egyptian State TV quit saying it was a propaganda machine iirc.
Edit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfXimfZ6LcU
(CNN) Former Nile TV reporter Shahira Amin quits her job, claiming she was pressured to air only pro-Mubarak rallies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh-5oRtjHkM Al Jazeera interview with Shahira Amin

[Peter Lemkin]

I've lost the link but will try to find it. The Deputy Director of the Egyptian State TV quit saying it was a propaganda machine iirc.
Edit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfXimfZ6LcU
(CNN) Former Nile TV reporter Shahira Amin quits her job, claiming she was pressured to air only pro-Mubarak rallies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh-5oRtjHkM Al Jazeera interview with Shahira Amin

Well, good for her. Yes, I heard the same - and a short interview with her - brave while the Regime is still in power! However, it is not surprising that 'State' TV only wants State OK TV.....why it is even so in the 'ol USA....they only make it seem like there is debate in the USA....watch the news about the war or documentaries on 911 or JFK, it is all Corporate approved [i.e. State Approved].

[Ed Jewett]

Frank Wisner, Son of Nazi-Recruiting CIA Official, Sent to Prod Mubarak

5th February 2011

Also see: "The CIA, an American Pinay Circle & the Muslim Brotherhood"

Frank Wisner, Sr.
" … Here in Washington, news that Mr. Obama had tapped Mr. Wisner revived memories for some of an even more colorful Frank Wisner: Mr. Wisner's father, a freewheeling if mentally unstable cold-war-era spy who helped found the modern C.I.A. and ran its clandestine service. The elder Mr. Wisner's clandestine exploits were said to have included masterminding an anticommunist coup in Guatemala in 1954. He suffered a mental breakdown after the Soviets crushed the Hungarian revolution in 1956 and never quite recovered; in 1965, he committed suicide. … "

Frank Wisner, the Diplomat Sent to Prod Mubarak

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
New York Times | February 2, 2011

Frank Wisner, Jr.
WASHINGTON Once a month or so, a coterie of aging diplomats convenes at the elegant Metropolitan Club of New York. Over lunch in a glass-enclosed restaurant overlooking Central Park, they engage in verbal thrust and parry over the foreign policy issues of the day.
The man who sits at the head of the table is Frank G. Wisner, a bald, barrel-chested, martini-drinking (he gave up cigars, friends say) 72-year-old retired ambassador and businessman. Like his lunch mates, he is of a distinct class in Washington: a corps of foreign policy realists who came of age in an era when American power reigned supreme, and who have the heft and experience to troubleshoot the crises of the moment.
When the United States and Iran headed into a stalemate on nuclear issues during the administration of George W. Bush who had branded Iran part of the "axis of evil" Mr. Wisner was among several well-connected former officials pursuing a "track two" process of back-channel communications to find a way out. (The effort fizzled.)
When Mr. Bush was contemplating war in Iraq, Mr. Wisner joined with Edward P. Djerejian, another fellow former ambassador, to publicly warn against it. Yet when Mr. Bush needed help bringing Kosovo to independence, his State Department deployed Mr. Wisner as chief negotiator there. (He was successful.)
"He's one of the supreme American diplomats of the last 30 to 40 years," said R. Nicholas Burns, who oversaw the Kosovo talks as under secretary of state.
This week, Mr. Wisner, whose stints around the globe have included four ambassadorships, one of them to Egypt, was briefly President Obama's man in Cairo, charged with prodding an old friend, President Hosni Mubarak, to make his exit. How much effect he had was unclear. On Wednesday, as Mr. Mubarak resisted Mr. Obama's demand for an immediate peaceful transition and each side dug in its heels, Mr. Wisner left the country.
"He wasn't sent there to flatter him and hold his hand," said Leslie H. Gelb, the longtime diplomat and journalist who co-founded the lunch club with Mr. Wisner. "He was sent there because he has a very close relationship with Mubarak, and because that's the kind of person who can best deliver some hard messages."
An imposing presence with a resonant voice whose last posting was as ambassador to India, Mr. Wisner has spent the years since his retirement in 1997 operating at the nexus of diplomacy and business. For more than a decade, he was vice chairman of the insurance giant A.I.G.; he left in 2009, just as the company was getting bailed out by American taxpayers, and joined the lobbying firm Patton Boggs.
He is well known in foreign policy circles, but not beyond them. Unlike the late Richard C. Holbrooke the Obama administration envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, who was one of Mr. Wisner's best friends he does not crave the limelight. But he is respected enough that his name is being bandied about as a possible Holbrooke replacement, a job friends say he would be unlikely to take.
"He's not a flashy fellow in the sense that Dick was," said Morton I. Abramowitz, another longtime diplomat who knows Mr. Wisner well. "But he's very solid, he studies the issues, he's a very serious guy who works very quietly, very effectively and knows how to deal with people."
Mr. Gelb put it this way: "Dick saw being a public figure as part of the power he needed to do what he wanted. Frank was much more of an inside man."
But as did Mr. Holbrooke, Mr. Wisner relished the frisson of the diplomat's life. He has been married twice to upper-crust French women; Mr. Wisner's current wife, from whom he is separated, was once married to Pal Sarkozy, the father of President Nicolas Sarkozy of France.
He is accustomed to being dropped into chaotic situations. During the administration of the first President Bush, Mr. Wisner was sent to the Philippines to help stabilize the administration of President Corazon Aquino. She had survived several coup attempts by rogue elements of the Philippine military, and Mr. Wisner's office in the United States Embassy was part of the old American governor-general's suite.
Cigar in hand, he loved to take visitors out on the giant veranda overlooking the bay and describe the sweep of American interactions with the Philippines, back to the days of the Spanish-American War.
Here in Washington, news that Mr. Obama had tapped Mr. Wisner revived memories for some of an even more colorful Frank Wisner: Mr. Wisner's father, a freewheeling if mentally unstable cold-war-era spy who helped found the modern C.I.A. and ran its clandestine service. The elder Mr. Wisner's clandestine exploits were said to have included masterminding an anticommunist coup in Guatemala in 1954. He suffered a mental breakdown after the Soviets crushed the Hungarian revolution in 1956 and never quite recovered; in 1965, he committed suicide.
His son chose a more conventional path, the Foreign Service. He graduated from Princeton University in 1961, learned Arabic and pursued a career that took him from Algeria to Vietnam at the height of the war there, to Zambia, Egypt, the Philippines and India, with tours every so often back in Washington.
"I told Frank, The title of ambassador does not suffice for you, Frank. We need to call you Pasha,' " said Mr. Djerejian, using the honorary title. "He reveled in the role of being an ambassador. He loved the substance and the trappings of the role, and was very enthusiastic about representing the United States abroad."
At the monthly lunch meetings, Mr. Wisner plays the role of enforcer when the discussion gets too rowdy. The high-powered attendees include J. Stapleton Roy, an East Asia specialist and three-time ambassador, and Mr. Holbrooke before his death.
Mr. Gelb says they met for a time at an Albanian restaurant, which everyone liked, until Mr. Wisner insisted they move to the Metropolitan Club. Mr. Gelb decided it was a waste of time to negotiate.
"A Zambian minister once told me it was always easier to agree with Frank than to let the meeting go on for four days," he said. "He has that kind of persistence."
Mark Landler and David E. Sanger contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/03/world/...nted=print



http://www.antifascistencyclopedia.com/a...od-mubarak

[Paul Rigby]

can't we bring the same collapse to the big ''western'" nations...it would do more good for the...

...denizens of Wall Street:

Egypt's Social Crisis: Financial Bonanza for Wall Street Investors and Speculators: Hidden Agenda behind Mubarak's Decision Not to Resign?

by Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, February 6, 2011

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?c...&aid=23099

Mubarak's decision not to resign was taken in close consultation with Washington. The US administration including US intelligence had carefully identified the possible scenarios. If Washington had instructed Mubarak to step down, he would have obeyed forthright.

His decision not to resign indelibly serves US interests. It creates a situation of social chaos and political inertia, which in turn generates a vacuum in decision making at the government level.

The continued social crisis has also resulted in a massive outflow of money capital. More concretely, what this signifies is that Egypt's official foreign exchange reserves are being confiscated by major financial institutions.

The ransacking of the country's money wealth is an integral part of the macroeconomic agenda. The newly formed government on instructions from Washington has not taken concrete steps to curtail the massive outward flow of money capital. A prolonged social crisis means that large amounts of money will be appropriated.

According to official sources, Egypt's Central Bank had (prior to the protest movement) 36 billion dollars in foreign exchange reserves as well as an additional $21 billion of deposits with international banking institutions which are said to to constitute its so-called "unofficial reserves." (Reuters, 30 January, 2011).

Egypt's external debt, which has increased by more than fifty percent in the last five years is of the order 34.1 billion (2009). What this means is that these Central Bank reserves are de facto based on borrowed money.

In early 2010, there was a large influx of hot money deposits into Egyptian government debt instruments.

Foreign exchange flows into the country and is exchanged for Egyptian pounds (EgP), which are then used by institutional investors and speculators to purchase high yielding government bonds and treasury bills (denominated in Egyptian pounds) with short term interest rates of the order 10 percent.

The interest rate on long term government bonds shot up to 7.2 percent at the outset of the protest movement. (Egypt Banks to Open Amid Concern Deposit-Run May Weaken Pound, Lift Yields - Bloomberg, January 2, 2011)

At the onset of the crisis, international investors owned about $25bn of Egyptian T-bills and bonds, almost a fifth of the total T-bill market and about 40 per cent of the domestic bond market. Foreign investors also accounted for about 17 per cent of the stock market's turnover, and held about $5bn-$6bn of Egyptian shares. (Ibid)

Under its agreement with the IMF, Egypt is not allowed to implement foreign exchange controls. These hot money deposits are now leaving the country in anticipation of a devaluation of the Egyptian pound. In the days preceding Mubarak's speech, capital flight was running at several hundred million dollars a day.

In a bitter irony, Egypt deposits 21 billion with the commercial banks as "unofficial reserves" on the one hand, while the commercial banks acquire $25bn worth of EgP debt, with a yield of the order of 10 percent. What this suggests is that Egypt is financing its own indebtedness.

The protest movement started on a bank holiday. While the closure of the Cairo stock market and domestic banking system had put a temporary lid on the outflow of money capital, large amounts of capital flight instrumented by major financial institutions had already occurred in the days leading up to the protest movement.

Egypt's banking system reopened on February 5, leading to a renewed process of capital flight resulting in the depletion of central bank reserves and a corresponding increase in Egypt's foreign debt.

A devaluation of at least 20 percent is contemplated. According to UBS' emerging markets currency division, "the pound could "easily" drop by a further 50 per cent or so to E£9 per US dollar". FT.com / Currencies - Banks weigh risk of capital flight, February 1, 2010)

A devaluation of more than ten percent would wreck social havock: Domestic prices of food are dollarized. If there is a devaluation of the Egyptian pound, this would inevitably trigger a renewed increase in the prices of essential food staples, leading to a further process of impoverishment.

A scenario of currency devaluation, rising external debt coupled with a renewed package of IMF sponsored austerity measures would inevitably lead to an accentuation of the social crisis and a new wave of protests.

The newly appointed Finance Minister Samir Radwan is firmly committed to the Washington consensus, which has served to impoverish the Egyptian people. In a contraditory statement on February 3, Radwan confirmed that "the government won't reduce subsidies even if global prices of food and commodities rise. Public spending will be used as a tool to "achieve social justice," he told a news conference in Cairo." (Bloomberg, February 5, 2011)

Radwan is abiding by IMF-World Bank guidelines: no restrictions will be placed on capital flight. The Central Bank will ensure the conversion of hot money deposits into hard currency by major financial institutions. The coffers of the central will be ransacked.

With capital flight, domestic debt is transformed into foreign debt, putting the country into the stranglehold of foreign creditors:

Radwan said Egypt will honor its debt obligations and urged foreign investors to have confidence in the country. "All the bond obligations, everything will be honored on time," Radwan said in a Feb. 4 telephone interview from Cairo. "We are not defaulting on any obligations." (Bloomberg, February 5, 2011)

In a bitter irony, Mubarak's decision to remain as head of State with Washington's approval has served the interests of institutional investors, currency traders and speculators.

The latter group is, of course, the primary source of Obama campaign money.

[David Guyatt]

Hence the strategy of delay.

[Jan Klimkowski]

See also the material here, from posts #20 onwards in particular, about international finanicial looting of Tunisia during and after the fall of her government.