100000 i kravaller i Kairo mot regeringen! Livestream i första inlägget[Mod]

Upproren i Nordafrika leder till en "massflykt" till Italien, sade inrikesminister Roberto Maroni och varnade för "terroristinfiltration från tunisier som vill komma till Europa förklädda till politiska flyktingar".

Sedan i torsdags har 641 papperslösa flyktingar från Tunisien stoppats på Lampedusa, en liten italiensk ö mellan Sicilien och Tunisien.

"---Egyptian bloggers and those at the square agree. Around 5% of the protesters belong to Arab nationalist and or/progressive parties. No more than 15% are affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). And no less than 80% belong to no parties at all, or are apolitical. Talk about revolutionary momentum - even against the multiple co-option strategies deployed by the regime.

Ghonim went to the square as well. And he refused the role of hero/leader already slapped on him by some among the foreign press. He told hundreds of thousands "you are the heroes". "You" means not only Tahir Square; it means the two-thirds of the 350 million people in the Arab world who are under 35 years old. What Ghonim accepted was to be added to a 10-member coalition of youth groups representatives that are coordinating the protests and advertising their demands.

Even the working class is moving. Ahram online reports that over 6,000 Suez Canal Company workers from Suez, Port Said and Ismailia started a sit-in, protesting about miserable wages and working conditions. And the people from Telecom Egypt are threatening to do the same; they want a 10% rise and the sacking of the managing director.

It's a no-brainer, between Washington-supported "Sheik al-Torture" and the protesters, who's on the right side of history. The Egyptian street revolution proves that the ghastly "Arab exception" concept - according to which dictatorship and hardcore repression are intrinsic to the Arab world - was always a false consensus manufactured by Washington, its European minions and the dictators themselves.

Young Egyptians want Western-style democracy, free and fair elections, a free press and most of all, a truly representative, sovereign government. Yet that does not entail remaining a slave of US foreign policy. And at the same time it does not imply that Egypt wants a Sunni replica of supreme leader-run Iran.---"

"---As the world’s biggest bully, the US had no moral right to judge the behavior of tyrants like Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Once the dutifully ignored long-repressed popular discontent boiled over into the popular revolts we have seen over the past month in Tunisia and Egypt as well as Yemen, Jordan, Algeria and beyond, the Obama administration rushed to get on the “right side” of the issue. To avoid criticism for refusing to contend with the problems bred by Arab authoritarianism, Obama went to the other extreme. He became the most outspoken champion of unfettered popular democracy in Egypt.---"