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有為者亦若是：埃及的臉書革命 -- H. Al-shalchi/K. Laub
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Freed Google executive helped spark Egypt revolt
Hadeel Al-shalchi And Karin Laub
CAIRO (AP) – The young Google Inc. executive detained by Egyptian authorities for 12 days said Monday he was behind the Facebook page that helped spark what he called "the revolution of the youth of the Internet." A U.S.-based human rights group said nearly 300 people have died in two weeks of clashes.
Wael Ghonim, a marketing manager for the Internet company, wept throughout an emotional television interview just hours after he was freed. He described how he spent his entire time in detention blindfolded while his worried parents didn't know where he was. He insisted he had not been tortured and said his interrogators treated him with respect.
"This is the revolution of the youth of the Internet and now the revolution of all Egyptians," he said, adding that he was taken aback when the security forces holding him branded him a traitor.
"Anyone with good intentions is the traitor because being evil is the norm," he said. "If I was a traitor, I would have stayed in my villa in the Emirates and made good money and said like others, 'Let this country go to hell.' But we are not traitors," added Ghonim, an Egyptian who oversees Google's marketing in the Middle East and Africa from Dubai, one of the United Arab Emirates.
The protesters have already brought the most sweeping changes since President Hosni Mubarak took power 30 years ago, but they are keeping up the pressure in hopes of achieving their ultimate goal of ousting Mubarak.
Ghonim has become a hero of the demonstrators since he went missing on Jan. 27, two days after the protests began. He confirmed reports by protesters that he was the administrator of the Facebook page "We are all Khaled Said" that was one of the main tools for organizing the demonstration that started the movement on Jan. 25.
Khaled Said was a 28-year-old businessman who died in June at the hands of undercover police, setting off months of protests against the hated police. The police have also been blamed for enflaming violence by trying to suppress these anti-government demonstrations by force.
Ghonim's whereabouts were not known until Sunday, when a prominent Egyptian businessman confirmed he was under arrest and would soon be released.
Time and again during the two weeks of demonstrations, protesters have pointed proudly to the fact that they have no single leader, as if to say that it is everyone's uprising. Still, there seems at times to be a longing among the crowds at Cairo's Tahrir Square, the main demonstration site, for someone to rally around.
The unmasking of Ghonim as the previously unknown administrator of the Facebook page that started the protests could give the crowds someone to look to for inspiration to press on.
Whether Ghonim forcefully takes up that mantle remains to be seen, but he said repeatedly in Monday night's interview that he did not feel he was a hero.
"I didn't want anyone to know that I am the administrator," he said. "There are no heroes; we are all heroes on the street. And no one is on their horse and fighting with the sword."
The show commemorated some of those killed in the protests and showed their pictures during the interview, sending Ghonim into sobs just before he got up and walked out of the studio.
"I want to tell every mother and father: I am sorry. I swear it is not our fault. It is the fault of everyone who held on tight to authority and didn't want to let go," he said before cutting short the interview.
Ghonim looked exhausted and said he had been unable to sleep for 48 hours, but not because he was being mistreated.
He said he was snatched off the streets two days after the protests first erupted on Jan. 25. After he left a friend's house, four men surrounded him, pushed him to the ground and took him blindfolded to state security. He said he spent much of the following days blindfolded, with no news of the events on the street, being questioned.
In contrast, he said, in his release he was treated with respect. Just before he was freed, he said, he was brought before Interior Minister Mahmoud Wagdy — installed only days earlier in a government reshuffle — in his office. The minister "talked to me like an adult, not like someone of strength talking to someone weak" and then the new head of the National Democratic Party escorted him home.
"This is because of what the youth did in the street," he said in the interview on private station Dream 2 TV.
He said his interrogators were convinced that foreigners were backing the movement, but Ghonim asserted it was just young Egyptians "who love this country." He also sought to debunk the government's accusations that the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, Mubarak's most bitter rival, was involved in planning the protests.
He referred to his arrest as a "kidnapping" and a "crime" but also sounded conciliatory, saying "this is not a time for settling accounts or cutting up the pie; this is Egypt's time."
He did forcefully place blame for the country's ills on Mubarak's National Democratic Party and said the good among them should abandon it and start something new to earn the people's respect.
"I don't want to see the logo of the NDP anywhere in the country," he said. "This party is what destroyed this country. The cadre in this party are filthy."
U.S.-based Human Rights Watch told The Associated Press on Monday that two weeks of clashes have claimed at least 297 lives, by far the highest and most detailed toll released so far. It was based on visits to seven hospitals in three cities and the group said it was likely to rise.
While there was no exact breakdown of how many of the dead were police or protesters, "clearly, a significant number of these deaths are a result of the use of excessive and unlawful use of force by the police," said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch.
Egypt's Health Ministry has not given a comprehensive death toll, though a ministry official said he is trying to compile one.
Protesters have clashed with police who fired live rounds, tear gas and rubber bullets. They also fought pitched street battles for two days with gangs of pro-Mubarak supporters who attacked their main demonstration site in Cairo's central Tahrir Square.
The violence has spread to other parts of Egypt and the toll includes at least 65 deaths outside the capital, Cairo.
Heba Morayef, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, said that she and other researchers visited five hospitals in Cairo, a field hospital in Tahrir Square and one hospital each in the cities of Alexandria and Suez.
The count is based on interviews with hospital doctors, visits to emergency rooms and morgue inspections, she said.
Morayef said a majority of victims were killed by live fire but that some of the deaths were caused by tear gas canisters and rubber bullets fired at close range.
"We personally witnessed riot police firing tear gas canisters and rubber bullets at the heads of protesters at close range, and that is a potentially lethal use of such riot-control agents," said Bouckaert.
In most cases, doctors declined to release names of the dead, Morayef said.
The group counted 232 deaths in Cairo, including 217 who were killed through Jan. 30 and an additional 15 who were killed in clashes between government supporters and opponents in Tahrir Square last Wednesday and Thursday.
In addition, 52 dead were reported in Alexandria and 13 in Suez, Morayef said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110208/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_egypt
本文於 修改第 5 次
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摩爾希展現領袖格局 - A. Taheri
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Tehran slapdown: Mursi shocks the mullahs
Amir Taheri, 08/30/12
With his speech yesterday at the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Tehran, Egypt’s new president, Muhammad Mursi, drew a line in the sand against Iran’s hope of creating an “Islamic Awakening Front” under its leadership.
Iran’s leaders had spent a great deal of energy preparing what “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei dubbed “the triumph” of Ayatollah Khomeini’s version of Islam.
That version de-emphasizes the religious content of Islam to instead highlight a political role.To Khomeini and his successors, anti-Americanism provides the ideological backbone of contemporary Islam; shouting “Death to America” was as important as saying “There is no God but Allah.”
In his opening address at the summit, Khamenei spelled out that ideology with a torrent of hate against the American “Great Satan.” For him, Islam’s ultimate goal is “the destruction of America.”
To the Khomeini-Khamenei school, the only valid version of Islam as a faith is the Shiite one as interpreted by the ayatollah. Sunni Muslims are “deviants,” partly because they venerate the first caliphs of Islam — Abu-Bakr, Omar and Osman. In the Khomeinist version, all three were “usurpers” who betrayed the Prophet by preventing his cousin Ali from succeeding him.
Each year, Khomeinists organize ceremonies to “expose and denounce” the three caliphs, labeling them “The Dirty Trio” (al-Muthallath al-Mulawwatha). Omar is particularly hated because he led the Arab invasion of Persia. Burning his effigies (Omar-Suzan) is a major feast in many parts of Iran.
Khomeinist discourse now stresses three other themes:
* It wants the recent uprisings in the Middle East to be termed not “the Arab Spring” but “the Islamic Awakening” — and somehow, against all logic, linked to Khomeinism in Iran.
* The second theme is Holocaust denial, coupled with calls for the “elimination of Israel” as a “cancerous cell.”
* Finally, Tehran demands “unwavering support” for the Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad.
In his speech in Tehran, delivered during a four-hour stopover, Mursi disappointed the Khomeinist leadership on all accounts.
First, the Egyptian leader took care not to allow any hint of anti-Americanism in his speech, rejecting Khomeini’s equation of Islam with politics and politics with hatred for the United States.
Next, Mursi rejected the label “the Islamic Awakening,” insisting that uprisings in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Yemen be described as “the Arab Spring.” The uprisings, he insisted, had been for democracy and human dignity — not for strictly religious reasons, let alone Khomeini’s weird version of Islam.
He then turned the knife by asserting that the uprising in Syria is “an extension of the Arab Spring” — not “an American-Zionist conspiracy,” as Khamenei claims.
Khamenei has declared the preservation of the Assad regime as one of Tehran’s key strategic objectives. Mursi called the Assad regime “oppressive and illegitimate” and threw Egypt’s support behind the Syrian uprising.
Nor, to the chagrin of the Khomeinist leadership, did Mursi beat the drums of war against Israel.
Tehran media had promised that the Egyptian leader would cancel the Camp David peace accords and join the Iranian-led “Resistance Front” to “wipe off the Jewish stain of shame.” Mursi did none of that. Instead, he said his administration is dedicated to peace and stability in the region.
And Mursi delivered one more slap at the Tehran mullahs. Khamenei had started his address by saluting “the Prophet and his descendants,” an old phrase revived by Khomeini that excludes the early caliphs. But Mursi in his speech saluted “the Prophet and his successors,” naming the “Dirty Trio” one by one.
The sound of those three names would send shockwaves down the spine of any mullah who has one.
Not surprisingly, Tehran television interrupted its live broadcast of Mursi’s address with a gas-company ad.
Mursi made it clear that, post-Mubarak, Egypt intends to reclaim its position as one of Islam’s three key powers (along with Iran and Turkey) by rejecting Khomeini’s equation of Islam with anti-Americanism.
Some have criticized Mursi’s decision to go to Tehran. I think he was right to go — especially with a powerful message that rejects every tenet of the Khomeinists’ schismatic doctrine.
Amir Taheri is author of 11 books on the Middle East, Iran and Islam. He has been a syndicated columnist for American, British, and Middle Eastern publications since the 1980s. He has edited newspapers and magazines in his native Iran as well as Britain and France. He has been writing for the New York Post since 2002. In 2005, Taheri was named Senior Fellow at the National Committee on American Foreign Policy.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/tehran_slapdown_r5KGQk7s2QGcRia26QYY9I
本文於 修改第 1 次
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摩爾希的寧靜革命 - E. Blair
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Egypt president sweeps out army rulers
Edmund Blair, Reuters, 08/14/12
CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi has driven back the biggest challenge to civilian rule by dismissing top generals and tearing up their legal attempt to curb his power in a bold bid to end 60 years of military leadership.
Taking the country by surprise, Mursi pushed Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi into retirement. The 76-year-old figurehead of the old order had taken charge of the biggest Arab nation when Hosni Mubarak fell last year and remained head of its powerful, ad hoc military council after the Islamist was elected in June.
Yet on Monday, the armed forces, which had supplied Egypt's presidents for six decades after ousting the monarchy, showed no sign of challenging the move announced late on the previous day; lower-ranking generals and other officers may support a change which shifts power in the military to a new generation.
One analyst spoke of a "civilian counter-coup" coordinated with an internal putsch by more junior figures inside the army.
State media cited a military source dismissing talk of any "negative reactions" to a decision which hands Mursi, in the absence of parliament, sweeping control over the country.
Mursi and his long-suppressed Muslim Brotherhood had been expected to roll back the influence of the army, a close ally of Washington and recipient of $1.3 billion in annual military aid; but many had predicted a process that would take years of delicate diplomacy to avoid sparking a military backlash.
Instead, just six weeks after he was sworn into office and a little more than a week since a humiliating security lapse that left 16 border guards dead, Mursi announced sweeping changes on Sunday in the army command and reshaped the nation's politics.
"Mursi settles the struggle over power," said a headline in the state-owned Al-Akhbar daily, a newspaper that is traditionally a mouthpiece for the army-backed establishment.
"Mursi ends the political role for the armed forces," wrote the independent Al-Masry Al-Youm. Another independent newspaper, Tahrir, added: "Revolution of the president over the military."
Apart from some demonstrations of support for Mursi late on Sunday, there was little reaction on the streets to the president's decision and any response on the stock market was muted, with the benchmark index rising 0.6 percent.
As well as ordering the retirement of Tantawi, the head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and Mubarak's defense minister for 20 years, and Chief-of-Staff Sami Enan, 64, Mursi also cancelled a decree issued by the military before his election which had curbed the power of the presidency.
Mursi appointed General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, 57, from military intelligence, to lead the army and become defense minister. Enan was replaced by General Sidki Sobhi, 56, who led the Third Field Army based in Suez, on the border with Sinai.
SUBDUED ARMY RESPONSE
"What we saw ... in Egypt increasingly seems like a mix of a civilian counter-coup and a coordinated coup within the military itself," wrote Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Doha Center.
The army's response was subdued. General Mohamed el-Assar, who becomes deputy defense minister, told Reuters Mursi's decision was based on "consultation" with Tantawi and the rest of the military council.
There was also little immediate public reaction from the United States, which after Egypt signed a peace deal with Israel in 1979 had been a big backer of Mubarak's military power base.
A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was unclear what the fallout could be. "This is an internal political matter for Egypt and it's too soon to say what the potential implications might be," the official said.
Tantawi and Enan were both appointed advisers and awarded medals of honor, suggesting they will not face the same fate as Mubarak, a former air force commander, jailed for life aged 84.
"I did not mean to send a negative message about anyone, but my aim was the benefit of this nation and its people," Mursi said in a speech on Sunday night after issuing his decrees. He praised the work of the armed forces and said his decisions would free them to focus on their professional tasks.
Two other generals left for senior civilian positions heading the Suez Canal Authority and leading an industrial operation, extending a tradition honored under Mubarak of offering lucrative sinecures to top officers who retire.
"The decision was a sovereign one, taken by the president to pump new blood into the military establishment in the interests of developing a new, modern state," presidential spokesman Yasser Ali told Reuters after he announced Mursi's decisions.
Mursi had already shown he was ready to confront the military head on. Last month, Mursi challenged the army's decision, based on a court ruling, to dissolve the Islamist-led parliament. Mursi's decree was reversed by a top court.
"ISLAMIC STATE"
There was no immediate sign of any legal challenge to Mursi's latest move, which canceled a constitutional declaration by the army that had curbed the presidential powers.
By sweeping aside that declaration, Mursi, rather than the army, will hold legislative powers in the absence of parliament. It will also give the president the power to appoint an assembly to draw up a new constitution if the panel now working on it fails. That body's composition is being challenged in court.
Some liberal and other rivals of the Muslim Brotherhood have voiced increasing alarm at the growing might of the Islamists, who swept up seats in parliament and took the presidency.
"Forget Tantawi and Enan," one critic on Twitter, Nervana Mahmoud, wrote in English. "This is not a soft coup, but a declaration of Islamic state."
But many liberals are equally concerned by the continuing power exerted by the army. The April 6 youth movement, which galvanized the anti-Mubarak uprising, said Mursi's move was a "first step towards establishing a civilian state".
Mursi, whose election victory over a former general prompted concerns in Israel and the West about alliances with Egypt, also appointed a judge, Mahmoud Mekky, as his vice president. Mekky is a brother of newly appointed Justice Minister Ahmed Mekky, who had been a vocal critic of vote-rigging under Mubarak.
Mursi, who has pledged to uphold democratic accountability and to stand by Cairo's treaties with Israel and other states, has shown impatience with the military following violence in the Sinai desert that brought trouble with Israel and the Palestinians' Gaza Strip enclave this month.
The president, whose own Brotherhood movement renounced violence to achieve political change in Egypt long ago, sacked Egypt's intelligence chief last week after the attack in which Islamist militants killed the 16 Egyptian border guards before trying to storm the Israeli border.
On Sunday, officials said Egyptian troops had killed five Islamist militants after storming their hideout near the isolated border with Israel.
(Additional reporting by Yasmine Saleh, Marwa Awad, Shaimaa Fayed and Ali Abdelatti; Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)
http://news.yahoo.com/egypt-president-sweeps-army-rulers-104335752.html
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莫爾希當選埃及總統 - CNN
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Muslim Brotherhood's Morsi urges 'unity' in first speech as Egypt's president-elect
CNN Wire Staff, 06/24/12
Cairo (CNN) -- Hours after being declared his nation's first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi vowed late Sunday to represent all Egyptians, and he urged his countrymen to put aside their differences and come together for the common good.
"This national unity is the only way to get Egypt out of this difficult crisis," Morsi said in a nationally televised speech.
The longtime Muslim Brotherhood member paid special tribute to those "martyrs" who helped spearhead the revolution that led to the ouster of Egypt's longtime President Hosni Mubarak and, more than a year later, to Morsi's election.
He expressed thanks and admiration for military personnel, police officers, judges and others in the Egyptian government for their work on behalf of the nation. "I must salute them because they have a role in the future" of Egypt, Morsi said.
The president-elect also promised "we will preserve all national and international agreements," a topic of concern in light of questions about how his election might affect Egypt's ties with neighboring Israel. And he vowed to "protect the rights of women and children," as well as Christians and Muslims alike.
Earlier in the day, election officials announced Morsi earned more than 13 million votes in last week's presidential election, while Ahmed Shafik -- the last prime minister to serve under Mubarak -- had more than 12 million. That worked out to just under 52% of the vote for Morsi, while Shafik got just over 48%, officials said.
The announcement triggered massive cheers and celebratory gunfire in Cairo's Tahrir Square, the hub of last year's revolution, with temperatures near 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 Celsius) failing to subdue the joy felt by Morsi's supporters. Similar rallies erupted Sunday in Alexandria as well.
"We've been waiting for it for 7,000 years," said Abdul Mawgoud Dardery, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party. "For the first time in history, we have our own president, elected by us. The power of the people is now in the hands of the president -- and the president has to go and move forward."
Added another man celebrating in Tahrir Square, "What we are happy for is Egyptian people could overcome the remnants of the last regime."
Yet some Shafik supporters were crushed by the news. Manal Koshkani told CNN from a Cairo hotel that she and others "fear" the direction the Islamist party, the Muslim Brotherhood, could take Egypt.
"I hope we see a better future" Morsi, she said, adding, "I highly doubt it."
Egypt does not have a constitution, while military rulers dissolved parliament in the wake of a controversial and pivotal court ruling earlier this month. Moreover, the presidency as currently defined is largely a figurehead position as the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) maintains much of the control over the country, as it has since Mubarak's exit.
For this reason, a young Egyptian man named Mohamed Saleh dismissed the importance of the presidential vote. "(Morsi) doesn't have the power -- SCAF has the power," he said.
Yet Morsi, who resigned from the Muslim Brotherhood and its Freedom and Justice Party shortly after the results were announced in an apparent effort to send a message that he will represent all Egyptians, said late Sunday that he is "in charge" thanks to the vote, while stressing he must answer to the people.
"We are all equal in rights, and we all have obligations to carry on for this country," he said. "As for myself, I have no rights, but I have obligations."
Like Mubarak, Shafik is a former air force officer with close ties to Egypt's powerful military and was "the quintessential candidate of the counterrevolution," said Khaled Elgindy, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
Morsi, an American-educated engineer, "represents the older, more conservative wing of the Brotherhood and openly endorses a strict Islamic vision," said Isobel Coleman of the Council on Foreign Relations -- a view Morsi seemed to try to rebut in his speech Sunday.
Among others, his victory raised questions about how it might affect Egypt's relations with Israel. Morsi didn't directly address Israel on Sunday, though he did promise to maintain "agreements." He previously told CNN he'd honor Egypt's 1979 accord with Israel but in the past, the Islamist figure has referred to Israeli leaders as "vampires."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a statement Sunday, said, "Israel appreciates the democratic process in Egypt and respects the results of the presidential elections. Israel looks forward to continuing cooperation with the Egyptian government on the basis of the peace treaty between the two countries, which is a joint interest of both peoples and contributes to regional stability."
Meanwhile a prominent Palestinian legislator, Hanan Ashrawi, said Palestinians "look for future corporation with Egypt and its supportive position for the Palestinian cause." She added that "the democratic process in Egypt should be propelled" by a movement to help it regain "its leadership in the Arab world and region."
Both campaigns had accused each other of fraud leading up to last weekend's runoff election.
And well before the official announcement, the two candidates both used social media to declare victory -- a claim they repeated, once again, early Sunday.
The results were expected to be announced earlier in the week, but were pushed back to Sunday. Even then, the head of the Supreme Presidential Election Commission kept people waiting -- after beginning 45 minutes later than expected, he took 45 minutes before finally announcing Morsi the victor.
Afterward, leaders from the country, region and world sent in their congratulations.
They included Egypt's Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa and the head of the Al Azhar religious authority Ahmed al-Tayeb, who both congratulated Morsi, according to state-run media. The two are key Muslim figures in the country who were appointed by Mubarak.
U.S. President Barack Obama called Morsi to congratulate him and pledge to "support Egypt's transition to democracy and stand by the Egyptian people as they fulfill the promise of the revolution."
Earlier, the White House issued a statement calling on Morsi "to take steps at this historic time to advance national unity by reaching out to all parties and constituencies," including respecting the rights of women and religious minorities such as Coptic Christians.
Others described Morsi's election as momentous but stressed that it doesn't mean the county's "revolution" or its problems are over.
Egypt's economy continues to struggle, with widespread poverty, high unemployment and its vaunted tourism sector still sagging on the heels of the political unrest.
With mass demonstrations and clashes with authorities common, the security situation remains tenuous.
Officials warned Sunday -- in advance of the declaration about the presidential winner -- that they were ready to carry out their longstanding policy of using deadly force against people who attack government buildings. More than 1,800 ambulances were dispatched across the county before the announcement in anticipation of election-related violence, the state-run EgyNews agency reported.
And even after Morsi's win, the political situation remains very much unsettled amid lingering questions about whether the military will loosen its grip on power.
Under an interim constitutional declaration, the military council said it retains the power to make laws and budget decisions until a new constitution is written and a new parliament is elected. The declaration said Supreme Council members "shall decide all matters related to military affairs, including the appointment of its leaders." Once sworn in as president, Morsi can declare war but only with "the approval" of the Supreme Council.
Wrote Wael Ghonim, the then-Google executive who helped organize the 2011 revolution, on Twitter: "The first elected civilian Egyptian president in the history of modern Egypt. The revolution continues."
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/06/24/world/africa/egypt-politics/index.html
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