Wael Ghonim over Egypt flag

The opposition leader threatens to oust the President by the use of force. The crowd draws inspiration and takes to the streets by raising their shoes. Growing weigh of the Army, which vows to call off the state of emergency as soon as the protest calms down.
The revolt in Egypt doesn't stop. Thousands people have thronged Tahrir Square, the centre of protests, for 16 days. The Cabinet of Ministers has been evacuated and UN President Ban Ki-moon again demands "an orderly and peaceful transition as soon as possible".
La Repubblica reports that the uprising also reached the editorial board of Al Ahram, the Country's most important daily. For some days it has given up its obliging manner towards the regime and on Monday an editorial signed by editor Osama Saraya praised the loftiness of revolution, asking the goverment for legislative reforms.

Wael Ghonim

Wael Ghonim, local manager of Google, had been missing for over a week after being arrested by plainclothe policemen, he was detained and then questioned. Tahrir Square demonstrators had called for his release and pointed at him as the symbol of the Egyptian "digital revolution", turning his Facebook page in a reference point to organize the first protest marches, afterwards the man was arrested. A few days earlier he had published an article against the government and had posted on his blog a sentence where he said he was "very worried because it seems as though the government were planning war crimes against the population for tomorrow. We are ready to die".

Yesterday, after his release, he restarted updating his blog and to tweet, by releasing an interview to Egyptian tv channel Dream TV where he declared:“Don't consider me a hero, I am not”.

IS DIALOGUE WITH THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD POSSIBLE?

Washington Post's Richard Cohen envisages a future of Islamist rule before the very possibility of democracy can ever loom at the horizon: "Things are about to go from bad to worse in the Middle East. An Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement is nowhere in sight. Lebanon just became a Hezbollah state, which is to say that Iran has become an even more important regional power, and Egypt, once stable if tenuously so, has been pitched into chaos. This is the most dire prospect of them all. The dream of a democratic Egypt is sure to produce a nightmare".

In the pages of the same newspaper, Fareed Zakaria disagrees: "The Egyptian protests have been secular; the Muslim Brotherhood is one of many groups participating, all of whom have demands that are about democracy and human rights. Egypt is not Iran in a dozen important ways".

According to New York Times' Thomas L. Friedman, who soecifically mentions the case of Wael Ghonim, "Egyptians are not asking for Palestine or for Allah. They are asking for the keys to their own future, which this regime took away from them. They are not inspired by “down with” America or Israel. They are inspired by “Up with Egypt” and “Up with me”."

See the links in the box below