Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia,

[Dr. Love]

Best part of this whole thing is the armor that the protestors have started to wear:







This guy has the right idea

[ELVIS]

[Blaze]

The wounded march victorious in Cairo square


(AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

By MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN and HADEEL AL-SHALCHI, Associated Press – Fri Feb 4, 5:11 pm ET



CAIRO – Men with freshly bandaged heads marched through Tahrir Square on Friday, the wounded, victorious veterans of two days of street battles against supporters of President Hosni Mubarak.

A child made a victory sign with a bandaged hand and stared blankly into the distance. The men chanted for those killed battling for a few city blocks with showers of rocks and sheet metal shields on Wednesday and Thursday.

"Oh martyrs on the door of heaven!" they shouted. "Oh martyrs, rest. We'll continue the struggle!"

As the afternoon faded, the crowd of around 100,000 walked slowly around the square. A young man handed out cookies with quiet purpose, as if he was fueling his comrades for more fighting.

Suddenly, a clanging echoed across the square. Young men banged lengths of iron rebar against a metal fence and hundreds rushed out of the square and into a street heading east toward downtown.
Hundreds of Mubarak supporters in nearby Talat Harb Square were moving down the street toward Tahrir Square.

"Whenever they start approaching, we start giving that alert," said Karim, a 28-year-old engineer who spoke in English and declined to give his last name for fear of government retaliation.

Everywhere, the roadway was broken up into fist-sized chunks of asphalt — and the two sides showered each other with volleys until a mass of bloodied fighters swarmed back into Tahrir, or Liberation, Square with a captured pro-government man in their midst.

"They don't hit them, they don't beat them up," said Bahaa Kialani, a 35-year-old employee of a public relations company.

The crowd moved over to a tank guarding the northern approach to the square, where demonstrators said they were handing him over to the army.

Health Minister Ahmed Sameh Farid said 28 protesters suffered mostly minor wounds Friday and three more people died from injuries sustained in clashes in the square on Wednesday and Thursday, driving up the death toll from those two days to 11. The Tahrir clashes brought the number of deaths since protests began Jan. 25 to 109 people.

Officials have said about 900 people had been wounded in the two days of fighting around Tahrir.
Mohammed Awash, a 25-year-old computer science teacher, wore a plastic construction helmet tied to his head with a scarf.

"We'll be destroyed if we don't fight so hard," he said. "We made the lion angry. If we give up now, it's going to come back fiercer than it was before."

Across the square, people threw trash down the steps of the Sadat Metro station, where it piled up against metal gates that had been pulled shut, chained and barred with a timber from a construction site to make a jail for pro-Mubarak fighters captured in the rock battles.

Demonstrators said those captives had been taken away by the army too.

The military presence was heavy around the square. A lieutenant speaking flawless American English checked IDs at the first checkpoint on the west side of the Kasr el-Nil bridge. Across the bridge, soldiers with black riot helmets, bulletproof vests and Kalashnikovs with folding stocks stood behind razor-wire while hundreds of people filed through a narrow gantlet formed by dozens more soldiers.

Battered pieces of sheet metal that had been used to haul rocks and shield fighters from rains of stones lay abandoned on the ground.

Serious-looking young men in civilian clothes checked IDs and bags, separating women and men for quick pat downs.

Yet another civilian checkpoint, and the crowd dispersed into Tahrir Square.

A group of young bloggers gathered in an area under an ornate lamppost that protesters have come to call "upper-class corner."

Four words were spray-painted on the green metal gates of the shuttered Egyptrav tour company nearby. In English, it read "Facebook" and "Twitter." In Arabic, "Youth" and "Al-Jazeera."

Attorneys Ahmad Fathi, 47, and Osama el-Feyana, 43, strolled through the square together.

"The hairs on my arm are standing on end. I have goose bumps," Fathi said. "As lawyers we were always told we could say whatever we want but there was never any freedom. I owe a lot to the youths. They were able to move that barrier of fear and allow us to come here today."

The square was filled with members of Egypt's struggling middle-class, men who said they were educated as engineers and teachers but found themselves unable to support their families, or even find an apartment and get married. There was a heavy presence of men with the long beards and shaved upper lips of Salafis — ultra-conservatives preaching a return to the ways of early Muslims.

One was Gharib Ibrahim, a 35-year-old painter with worn shoes and a kaffiyeh wrapped around his head.

He said he had come to help turn Egypt into a country where he could have rights including "the ability to find a good job, the ability to get an apartment without having to know somebody who knows somebody."

Another was Alaa Mohammed, a 40-year-old religious studies teacher who showed the scars on his wrist from where, he said, security forces had hung him by a rope when he was jailed from 1994-2006 for what he said were political activities.

"They were just jailing Islamists," he said.

Sometimes, he said, electrodes were attached to his ears to deliver electric shocks.

"I challenge anyone to bear the torture of having electricity pulsed into your ears," he said. "Only Allah saved me."
___
Diaa Hadid contributed to this report.

[Blaze]

And this is just such an awesome photo!
The spirit of her shines through.
I like how the artist painted her face gave it a Picasso feel, very intriguing.


(AFP/Patrick Baz)

Huge crowds turn out for Mubarak departure ...
An Egyptian anti-government protester with her face painted in the colours of her national flag stands at Tahrir Square in Cairo. Egyptian demonstrators held a massive "departure day" show of force on Friday aimed at ousting President Hosni Mubarak as both the United States and Europe indicated the time has come for him to step down.

[Blaze]

Why are people far out on the left so afraid of Limbaugh and Palin ??

Why do you take pleasure observing them defecating, urinating and in general spewing vile from their gluttonous spirit ?

Or in other words,
Why do you relish them pissing and pooing for profit?

[FORD]

[Nitro Express]

That's what my cousin said. The military was all over the place but they were doing nothing. Egypt has always had a very strong police presence. For every uniformed cop you would see there would be three others who you didn't see. Egypt's main industry is tourism so that is where all the focus went and the rest of Egypt has been sorely neglected. Too many people and not enough industry. The typical story.

[Nitro Express]

Not that I'm a fan of the corrupt Israeli government but when I lived there you could actually see where the border ended. Israel is green due to high tech drip irrigation and much of it is green and as soon as you get to the border, it's back to desert. There is also a lot of industry and high tech in Israel where there are more PHD's per capita than any other nation. I always heard there if the land was turned back to the Palestinians, the desert would reclaim the land and it would go back to the dark ages again. I have to admit, the Jews are more educated and motivated than their arab neighbors.

[Nitro Express]

Best part of this whole thing is the armor that the protestors have started to wear:







This guy has the right idea

I get most of it. Head protection. The cooking pot and bucket would probably work the best but bread buns? He looks like an angry fast food mascot.

[Seshmeister]

This is why no one will leave Tahrir Square. This is a video from Alexandria, 31/01/2011

The kid was probably angry because his friend was shot, so he walked up to the police, he showed them he had no weapons on him, but they still shot him anyways when he was leaving.

The death toll from the violence had risen to 54 dead and 1,000 injured by 28 January. As of 30 January, Al-Jazeera reported as many as 150 deaths in the protests. As of 29 January, at least 102 people were known to have died, many or most shot. The dead included at least 10 policemen, 3 of whom were killed in Rafah.

By 29 January, 2,000 people were known to be injured.[ The same day, an employee of the Azerbaijani embassy in Egypt was killed while returning home from work in Cairo; the next day Azerbaijan sent a plane to evacuate citizens and opened a criminal investigation into the death.

Funerals for the dead on the "Friday of Anger" were held on 30 January. Hundreds of mourners gathered for the funerals calling for Mubarak's removal. By 1 February, the protests had left at least 125 people dead, although UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay stated that as many as 300 people may have died in anti-government unrest in Egypt according to a report by Human Rights Watch. This unconfirmed tally included 80 HRW-verified deaths at two Cairo hospitals, 36 in Alexandria, and 13 in the port city of Suez, amongst others; over 3,000 people were also reported as injured.

Leading up to the protests, at least six cases of self-immolation were reported, including a man arrested while trying to set himself on fire in downtown Cairo. These cases were inspired by, and began exactly one month after, the acts of self-immolation in Tunisia triggering the 2010--2011 Tunisian uprising. Six instances have been reported, including acts by Abdou Abdel-Moneim Jaafar, Mohammed Farouk Hassan, Mohammed Ashour Sorour, and Ahmed Hashim al-Sayyed who later died from his injuries.

[Blaze]

Not that I'm a fan of the corrupt Israeli government but when I lived there you could actually see where the border ended. Israel is green due to high tech drip irrigation and much of it is green and as soon as you get to the border, it's back to desert. There is also a lot of industry and high tech in Israel where there are more PHD's per capita than any other nation. I always heard there if the land was turned back to the Palestinians, the desert would reclaim the land and it would go back to the dark ages again. I have to admit, the Jews are more educated and motivated than their arab neighbors.

So altered state is "more educated and motivated"?

Ox

[ELVIS]

You're an idiot...

[chefcraig]

You're an idiot...

That's a bit harsh, E. "Medicinally incoherent" on the other hand...

[ELVIS]

Too bad she's not famous, Dr Drew needs the ratings...

[chefcraig]

You have a point. Watching her, Gary Busey, Tom Sizemore and Mackenzie Phillips debate just about anything, let alone find their way into a room without knocking over the furniture could be the sort of train wreck tv that is just what the doctor ordered, pardon the pun.