Thursday, February 10, 2011

Robert Fisk: The Army Disobeyed Mubarak's Orders to Crush Demonstrators on January 30

A revelation from Robert Fisk's latest (2/11/2011):

Last night, a military officer guarding the tens of thousands celebrating in Cairo threw down his rifle and joined the demonstrators, yet another sign of the ordinary Egyptian soldier's growing sympathy for the democracy demonstrators. We had witnessed many similar sentiments from the army over the past two weeks. But the critical moment came on the evening of 30 January when, it is now clear, Mubarak ordered the Egyptian Third Army to crush the demonstrators in Tahrir Square with their tanks after flying F-16 fighter bombers at low level over the protesters.

Many of the senior tank commanders could be seen tearing off their headsets – over which they had received the fatal orders – to use their mobile phones. They were, it now transpires, calling their own military families for advice. Fathers who had spent their lives serving the Egyptian army told their sons to disobey, that they must never kill their own people.

Thus when General Hassan al-Rawani told the massive crowds yesterday evening that "everything you want will be realised – all your demands will be met", the people cried back: "The army and the people stand together – the army and the people are united. The army and the people belong to one hand."


And the cowardice and hypocrisy of the West, as Fisk has been pointing out in his reporting:

The events of the past 12 hours have not, alas, been a victory for the West. American and European leaders who rejoiced at the fall of communist dictatorships have sat glumly regarding the extraordinary and wildly hopeful events in Cairo – a victory of morality over corruption and cruelty – with the same enthusiasm as many East European dictators watched the fall of their Warsaw Pact nations. Calls for stability and an "orderly" transition of power were, in fact, appeals for Mubarak to stay in power – as he is still trying to do – rather than a ringing endorsement of the demands of the overwhelming pro-democracy movement that should have struck him down.


I cannot agree more.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

You cannot trust any dictator for they will at any moment strike you down if the opportunity arises. Supporters of dictators like Mubarak and no different. They only have their self interest and their desire to control and exploit others. The National interest. Exactly what the hell is the Ntional interest? To keep dominating others and make them submissive to the great white Western Powers? Vice President Joe Biden said Hosni Mubarak was not a dictator!! No wonder our country is in trouble. With leaders like this, western civilization will continue to go down!

arevamirpal::laprimavera said...

Mitt Romney said Mubarak "is a monarch-type".

The US admin and other Western government didn't say and do much for 18 days so that Mubarak could hide as much of his wealth as possible. I bet Mubarak's financial advisors are from Goldman Sachs...

Anonymous said...

What does X-SKF mean?

arevamirpal::laprimavera said...

EX, as in "out of".

SKF is a leveraged (double) ETF that inversely tracks the financials (banks). There is a stock discussion board for SKF at Yahoo, and there are several regulars who decided to do their own blogs on stocks, markets, and economy, right about the same time (about 2 years ago).

So, the name of this blog is "coming out of that SKF stock board"...

The glory days for SKF were of course November 2008 ($300), and March 2009 ($250). These days it trades for less than $14, thanks to Ben Bernank.

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