Egypt: Protesters refuse to leave

With the euphoria subsiding the Egyptians are slowly realising "the new boss is the same as the old boss".

Getting rid of Mubarak was the easy part for the protesters.The difficult part will be to change the old regime and its apparatus represented by the army which are still in place .

The army apparently believes that the people will wait until the moment of their choosing for the introduction of watered-down elected civilian rule which will try to retain the same elites in the political framework.

The Egyptians need to stay in Tahrir Square and send a message to the army that they are in control of things and not the army.

I would like to believe that people on the streets will keep up their demands for freedom and better life and that the military gives way. But it will take a long period of "people power" to change that aspect of the regime.

Their energy - and success - has inspired the Iranians: thousands (not hundreds of thousands - yet) are marching and chanting "Down with Taliban, in Cairo and Teheran!" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/14/AR2011021400848.html?hpid=topnews

A good start to the week.

(BTW, for anyone inspired to start learning Farsi in honor of the Iranians, B92-advertiser BYKI ("Before You Know It" - see B92's Serbian-language home page) offers a great free program (and an even better paid version. Natch.) for learning languages. It's essentially a flashcard program with sound (also images and videos, if you go for that sort of thing). The free program comes with lists of common words and (tourist-related, mostly) sentences; the paid version allows you to make your own lists. It includes files for most of the world's languages - Serbian, Albanian, Georgian, Arabic (transliterated and Arabic script). Even Latin. (No Classical Greek, though, unless they added it recently.)

With the euphoria subsiding the Egyptians are slowly realising "the new boss is the same as the old boss".

Getting rid of Mubarak was the easy part for the protesters.The difficult part will be to change the old regime and its apparatus represented by the army which are still in place .

The army apparently believes that the people will wait until the moment of their choosing for the introduction of watered-down elected civilian rule which will try to retain the same elites in the political framework.

The Egyptians need to stay in Tahrir Square and send a message to the army that they are in control of things and not the army.

I would like to believe that people on the streets will keep up their demands for freedom and better life and that the military gives way. But it will take a long period of "people power" to change that aspect of the regime.

Their energy - and success - has inspired the Iranians: thousands (not hundreds of thousands - yet) are marching and chanting "Down with Taliban, in Cairo and Teheran!" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/14/AR2011021400848.html?hpid=topnews

A good start to the week.

(BTW, for anyone inspired to start learning Farsi in honor of the Iranians, B92-advertiser BYKI ("Before You Know It" - see B92's Serbian-language home page) offers a great free program (and an even better paid version. Natch.) for learning languages. It's essentially a flashcard program with sound (also images and videos, if you go for that sort of thing). The free program comes with lists of common words and (tourist-related, mostly) sentences; the paid version allows you to make your own lists. It includes files for most of the world's languages - Serbian, Albanian, Georgian, Arabic (transliterated and Arabic script). Even Latin. (No Classical Greek, though, unless they added it recently.)