Tahrir looks beautiful tonight

From Al Jazeera’s website.

where is Mubarak?

A little over an hour ago were the first rumors that the road to the airport had been closed. Then came the rumors that Mubarak had gone to Sharm el-Sheikh or even to Dubai. But others say he will speak from Cairo tonight. (If the latter, the protestors may remain suspicious about who’s really in charge.)

miscellaneous events

A tweet about an Army Major who just turned in his weapons and joined the protestors:

Army officer Ahmad Shuman speaking on AlJazeera from Tahrir: I joined people. Army should protect people not regime #jan25 #egypt

Another tweet says that Nile TV has turned on a dime and is suddenly praising the Tahrir protests, a very good sign.

One could hardly be blamed for cynically fearing a dirty trick here, after all we’ve seen. But protestors, I think you really may have won.

another news report

You can click these as easily as I can, but HERE IS WHAT CNN IS REPORTING.

This reinforces my sense that the strikes were the final blow. When you read about how many people in how many industries were beginning to walk off the job, you can see how the government would start to panic.

Mubarak stepping down?

You probably all knew this before I did, since I was out having a hearty Polish meal for a couple of hours on this cold, dark afternoon. But apparently MUBARAK IS STEPPING DOWN TONIGHT.

There was really no other way to get out of this, short of a brutal crackdown. Two things still unknown…

*Will the protestors settle for Suleiman as the transitional figure? They had said no, but perhaps the removal of the President will be enough to satsify them.

*How voluntary was this on the President’s part? There were suggestions that the message title (Communique #1) is the sort of language used during military coups.

My guess is the probably standard one: the military decided to pull the plug to save themselves. Not a bad decision, in fact, and it also helps the country.

But how will the street react to the solution?

It’s also interesting to imagine the President’s state of mind at the moment. He doesn’t seem to realize that 30 years in power, all of them under emergency law, is, to put it mildly, a problem. Given that, he must feel like a well-meaning and sucessful leader who was suddenly stabbed in the back by everyone around him both nationally and internationally. I think that’s the wrong assessment, but it must be how he feels. What a strange mental place to be in, especially when deserted by probably almost everyone.

UPDATE: The language in the news stories suggests a less-than-voluntary departure, with the army “taking steps to save the nation,” etc.

If Mubarak really plans to step down tonight, I hope he does it graciously, in a way that allows Egypt to move forward.

Another hypothesis: the strikes were the last straw. They might still have been toying with a crackdown on the people in Tahrir (especially after Saudi Arabia offered to pay whatever aid the U.S. might cut). But mass labor actions across so many economic classes was really going to make this an unmanageable situation, and it might have taken years for the economy to recover.

Ahmed Zewail calls for transition

The Cal Tech professor and Egypt’s Nobel Laureate in Chemistry speaks out again. (The story says it was a Nobel in Physics, but that is incorrect.)

Today 6:56 AM Nobel Laureate Urges Mubarak To Go

Reuters reports that U.S.-Egyptian scientist Ahmed Zewail, who once received a medal from Hosni Mubarak, is calling for Egypt’s leader to exit immediately:

“He should step down tomorrow and allow for a transitional government,” Zewail told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.

Zewail, 64, who won the Nobel prize for physics in 1999 and was awarded the Grand Collar of the Nile by Mubarak the same year, has long enjoyed a celebrity cachet in his native land.

doctors enter Tahrir, chanting

From a Tweet:

Big crowd of doctors marched from Kasr El Aini hospital to #Tahrir. Chanting “I am a doctor. I am against the rule of the dictator”

more on the strikes

Al Jazeera reports HERE that thousands of doctors and medical students will be striking along with the lawyers, public transit workers, and artists, along with the Suez Canal workers who aren’t mentioned in this article specifically.

great slideshow

60 Egypt photos from Reuters. Fine work here, with many of the photos being up-close shots of very dangerous incidents.

HERE.

(Hat tip, Jeff W.)

nuts and bolts

Here’s the NY TIMES with a good piece on the nuts and bolts of how the protests have been planned.

Perhaps the most intriguing detail here is the way in which the protestors’ planted false rumors so that the police would concentrate at irrelevant locations. It doesn’t explain exactly what code they used to allow insiders to tell the true from the false, but it seems to have been an effective technique.

For example, a few days ago I hinted here that something big might be about to happen. That’s because I heard the rumor that the protestors might be storming state TV headquarters (it sounded brave, but potentially suicidal). I stayed quiet about that because I didn’t want to give away the secret, but it turned out to be one of the deliberate false rumors. The target, instead, was parliament. And now they are there.