The battle continues & SUMMING UP THE BATTLE IN TAHRIR SQUARE, FEB-2

SUMMING UP THE BATTLE IN TAHRIR SQUARE, FEB-2.

In this summary we mix info from Al Jazeera and the one send to the Guardian by Ahdaf Soueif, plus some other reporters from inside the pro-democracy lines. I’m taking the info from Al Jazeera as a base and all that comes in brackets belong to other reports, especially The guardian report: in http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/02/egyptian-regime-thugs-protesters.

In point 4 there are double brackets that contain my own comments on US wrong policies so far.

Today events you can see it directly in video and with scripts in English and Arabic in: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2011/feb/03/egypt-protests-live-updates#block-64

Here the Al Jazeera report

Running battles rage in Cairo

Violence continues between pro-democracy protesters and loyalists of Hosni Mubarak near capital's Tahrir Square. (extracts)
Last Modified: 03 Feb 2011

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/02/201123125548860929.html

There have been running battles near Cairo's Tahrir (Liberation) Square between pro-democracy protesters against Mubarak and the loyalists of Hosni, [with the official result of 13 deaths and hundreds of injured people. The battle continues and at early morning the army manage to give secure exit to the remaining thugs. Then comes the PM apology for the violence last night and promise to open an investigation, while demanding the nation to stop of more meetings. However, the square is start being filling again by pro-democracy demonstrators and the loyalisls to Mubarack.

1. Mubarak unleashed his thugs:

[The same tactic used before to crack down anti-gov demonstration en election times. Though they were now “much more regimented and much less civil: the gunshoot noise, the tear and other gases pollution, the rude gestures at the street, the whips and sticks, the attitude and -at the same time- the perfectly scripted banners, the "stewards" marshalling and directing them”].

Gunshots had rang out near the square, for first time in 10 days of protests against Mubarak. An Al Jazeera correspondent, reporting from the scene, said it was not clear who was behind the firing. [see the Guardian report in this topic “The Egyptian regime has turned its thugs loose again”. It was a planned act: a tank open the bridge path controlled by the army soldiers (at this point the army was trying to avoid more anti-Mubarack get inside the square) to facilitate the entrance of the horses, cammels and a group of thugs behind them into the Tahrir square. When a pro-democracy protesters try to do the same (cross the bridge) he was kill from an American helicopter around the area. (see the video in my previuos sent on Egypt).

This is the time when the police snipers placed into the building around the square start firing their gans. The intention was to scare and dissolve the pro-democracy demonstration, while horse-riders start whiping pacific demonstrators and the thugs were launching molotovs on them. They succeed, most of the crow was smoked away, not the young people who start the battle to control the square, and they succeed too.]

There have been sporadic clashes throughout Thursday, as the army fanned out to separate the two sides and allowed thousands more protesters to enter their camp in the square.

Al Jazeera's online producer in Cairo said: "The battle for downtown Cairo on Thursday has taken on an almost medieval quality, with protesters erecting makeshift barricades and building homemade catapults to launch rocks at each other.
"Close-range combat ensued for several hours, with hand-to-hand combat near the barricades erected by pro-democracy protesters. Both sides threw hundreds of rocks back and forth."

Pro-democracy protesters gradually pushed back Mubarak loyalists who had swarmed onto a nearby highway overpass where they had been pelting their rivals with objects.
Our producer said: "The pro-democracy group began a slow advance onto the bridge, which had earlier been cleared of pro-Mubarak forces by an army tank.

"The pro-democracy crowd briefly lost its high ground ... but they regrouped, and their counterattack eventually pushed the pro-Mubarak group down to the Corniche, where they are now slowly retreating past the state television building.
"The contrast between both sides' tactics is striking: The pro-democracy protesters have organised themselves, building walls and seizing strategic locations; the pro-Mubarak crowd has mostly advanced in a mob, hurling rocks, throwing motovos and then retreating under return fire."

2. Prime Minister apologises

A day earlier, Tahrir Square had witnessed fierce clashes, after Mubarak loyalists - some of them riding camels and horses - attacked the pro-democracy protesters. [open this info at http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/02/20112315345153370.html ]


Ahmed Shafiq, the Egyptian prime minister, made an unprecedented apology on Thursday for Wednesday's assault that turned central Cairo into a battle zone.
"Egyptian hearts are bleeding," he said of the clashes in which at least 13 people were killed and hundreds hurt.

Shafiq said the attack on the anti-Mubarak protesters was a "blatant mistake" acknowledging that it was likely organised and promised to investigate who was behind it.

The pro-democracy protesters accuse the regime of organising the assault, using paid thugs and policemen in civilian clothes, in an attempt to crush their movement.

Egypt's state news agency has reported that the prosecutor-general has banned travel and frozen the bank accounts of three former ministers of the government that was sacked over the weekend, including the interior minister who was responsible for police.

The prosecutor-general said he ordered the same restrictions against a senior ruling party official until security is restored in the country.

3. Journalists targeted

On Thursday, mobile operator Vodafone complained about the use of the network by Egyptian authorities to send messages to the people of Egypt.

In a statement, Vodafone said: "These messages are not scripted by any of the mobile network operators and we do not have the ability to respond to the authorities on their content.

"Vodafone Group has protested to the authorities that the current situation regarding these messages is unacceptable.

"We have made clear that all messages should be transparent and clearly attributable to the originator."

Foreign photographers reported a string of attacks on them by Mubarak supporters on Thursday near Tahrir Square.

The Egyptian army rounded up several journalists after they came under attack from supporters of Mubarak.

"There is a concerted campaign to intimidate international journalists in Cairo and interfere with their reporting. We condemn such actions," PJ Crowley, the US state department spokesman, said in a statement issued via Twitter on Thursday.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said on Wednesday that violence against journalists was part of a series of deliberate attacks and called on the Egyptian military to provide protection for reporters.

Shahira Amin, a senior journalist at Nile Television, a government-owned network, walked out on Wednesday in anger that state TV was not broadcasting enough of the protests and clashes in the square.


4. My commenst and some of today events from the guardian

4.58pm:CloseLink to this update: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2011/feb/03/egypt-protests-live-updates#block-84 Suleiman blamed the violence on "some other opportunists carrying their own agenda. It might be related to outside forces or other domestic affairs". He said it was "a conspiracy".

This approach was predicted in this morning's Guardian by the novelist Ahdaf Soueif, who wrote:

Their next trick will be to say that the young people in Tahrir are "foreign" elements, that they have connections to "terrorism", that they've visited Afghanistan, that they want to destabilise Egypt. But by now the whole world knows that this regime lies as naturally as it breathes.

My comment

[[The same can be said of Mrs H Clinton and VP Biden words: We have to support Mubarak in power at whatever cost, was their policy in Egypt. Now the lady is dropping cocodrile tears about the result of a wrong strategy. A strategy based on two lies a. "peacuful transition to democracy" and b. "the terrorist threat" of the musllim brotherhood if they take advantage of the "vaccum of power".

Egypt is the evidence that the story of "peacefull transition" is the most cynical lie. They knew the methods used by Mubarak to rig elecction (the violence of thugs we seen yesterday in TV is a 300 years old practise, though maybe they got new things from the repression used in Irak and Palestine). This lie is based on the premise that the inmediate resignation of Mubarak will create a "vaccum of power" (meaning: we cannot do nothing without puppet dictators). What is it? lack of creativity or lack of committment to these values?. I guess both, with one more ingredient: they like to get the money coming from spreading such story-tellings for idiots.

The terrorist tell is as much as /or more cynical than the previous one. It was coined by the Bush dynasty and implemented by the most "inteligent" idiot in the clan of presidents we have in American history. You know who was the puppet of Unocal and the military-industrial complex and main investor in the Carlyle group in which the Bin Laden family were honorable members. This story cost a lot of damage to our constitution (patriot act) and a lot of money to thug mercenary companies -like black water -whose job was just spreading american terrorism.

Who benefiti from such policies? I will mention one: Enron and you do the rest.

Is there any danger coming from the "muslim brotherhood?. Do they have the power to fill the "vaccum of power"?. No one single spie disguised as "journalist" inside the Tahrir square (either from the US,Israel or England) were able to create any evidence of such terrorist threat. Ineficiency? if so they pay the price, they were bitten by Mubarak thugs.

Who is afraid of the muslim broterhood? No one in Egypt. If they are terrorized by Mubarak thugs, they will respond, and this is why the army -that has the real power now- should put Mubarak in prison and call inmediate elections. If delay, it will be late, the gap between the civil society and the army will be wide and wide, and that is a source of instability. Who is afraid of free democracy in Egypt?.

Only the israelit zionist in power are afraid of the "muslim broterhood" in Egypt,ant that is because real democracy has nothing to do with the atrocities they comit and are creating in the ilegally occupied zones of Palestine. These profiteers of holocaust are using the story of "terrorism" just to produced over and over in neighboring countries. If the rulers of the White House were fine with neo-nazis like Sharon, is because they have power in the US mass media and in Wall Street.

Do Americans benefit from such power?. Yes, will say those who got renewed tax evasion decree, bailouts and now a lot of benefit from the especulation effects of the QE-II. NO, will say most of Americans. So, is time to re-think and change all these wrong policies. All this in double brackets was my commento. Haz. Feb 3-11]].

Today story continues:

Suleiman said: "The object behind this was to create the maximum degree of instability, intimidation and defeat the people of Egypt," but he added: "The 25 January movement is not a destructive movement."

Of the army, he said: "Now the armed forces are changing their duties, hand in hand with the people, to protect the people."

He said Hosni Mubarak had discussed how the protesters' demands could be met:

President Mubarak, when he found out the demands expressed by the January 25 were lawful and objective, he discussed how these needs ... could be met ... He has responded to all the lawful demands. We could also have accepted other demands ... However the time limit is thin and tight.

4.49pm:CloseLink to this update: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2011/feb/03/egypt-protests-live-updates#block-83 Vice-president Omar Suleiman is on state TV. He has held out the prospect of the presidential election taking place in August (previously September has always been cited as the date it would be held) but holding it any earlier would leave a "constitutional vacuum".

He says the wishes of the January 25 movement are "acceptable" and blamed outside forces for trying to foster instability.

See the rest in: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2011/feb/03/egypt-protests-live-updates#block-84

OR: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2011/feb/03/egypt-protests-live-updates

OR: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog