All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
And joining us live from Cairo is Adam Morrow.
He's a reporter for Inter Press Service.
That's IPSnews.net.
And he's got a piece today with Khaled Moussa al-Amrani.
And they've actually built up quite an archive here at antiwar.com.
Muslims and Christians protest as one.
And of course, the news is that all the sources seem to agree Hosni Mubarak is preparing to give a speech admitting that he's lost and stepping down from power in Cairo.
Is that what you're hearing over there?
That's right.
That's the latest thing we're hearing.
We're expecting to hear him speak in about half an hour.
And it's widely expected that he will announce his resignation.
Of course, that's only the beginning.
That's only the beginning of what's going on here right now.
What comes next will really be decisive.
Well, I'm looking at the live feed from Al Jazeera English right now.
Huge crowds in Tahrir Square celebrating, waving flags, and cheering and clapping.
Right, right, right.
But again, exactly what happens next will really determine whether or not we can say this uprising has been a success or not.
Well, now, there's a lot of reasons, pro and con, as to how to believe this thing will turn out.
Of course, it's a very powerful state.
And deposing one general and getting another is a problem that these people are going to have to face.
And yet, it seems from here like they really mean it.
And I'm thinking especially of the fact that at least, as I understand it, the protests yesterday were the largest yet after three weeks of this, that this crowd is not going to be mollified by just simply one man leaving.
They want some real changes.
Right, right.
Well, you mentioned the coverage.
I don't know exactly how this is being covered in the United States.
Because I also have been watching mostly international stations, including Al Jazeera English, which has done an excellent job as its Arabic language counterpart.
But I do know that what I have been hearing is that there are attempts to maybe put down the numbers involved in the Western media, especially in the US.
I can't tell you that for certain, but I've heard there's a lot of people saying it's limiting it to hundreds of thousands and even tens of thousands, when in fact, the reports I'm getting from people who are there now say that the demonstrations have never been bigger, and that they broke the million man mark a long time ago, and that they're closing in on two million people now.
So this is something to bear in mind when you are watching coverage of this.
I think there might be certain elements at play that are trying to possibly downplay the size of the popular uprising.
Well, you know, the footage I'm looking at live from Cairo right now, there's the hospitals and makeshift encampment in the center, a huge ring completely packed around that, and then all the way down the street.
I don't know if they're marching somewhere or what, but if they are, somebody else ought to look out.
Right, right.
Well, this is Al Jazeera English that you're watching, right?
Yeah.
OK, I'd be curious to know how CNN and Fox and others might be covering it.
I'd just be curious.
That's a good question.
I want to turn it to them right now.
Right, right.
You might get tighter shots involving smaller numbers, but there are techniques that can be used to make crowds look smaller than they actually are and bigger than they are.
Well, I think it's so important, your piece that we have at antiwar.com today, Muslims and Christians protest as one about the Muslims protecting the Coptic Christians when they're attacked, and then the Christians protecting the Muslims in the square from the secret police during prayers, and how no matter who tries to split this movement this way or that, it really is a broad-based Egyptian nationalist movement for liberty.
Simple as that.
Absolutely, absolutely.
And I'm glad you enjoyed the piece.
And it's a subject that's quite close to my heart, because there has been so much exaggeration about it.
And there's been so much, and not just exaggeration, but actual deception, with a lot of people trying to exaggerate the problems between Egypt's Christian population, which is estimated at about 10% of a total population of 80 million, and the Muslim majority.
And it's unfortunate.
But the truth of the matter is the two communities have always gotten along, generally speaking, traditionally speaking.
For the hundreds of years, even under the caliphate, especially under the caliphate, they lived in harmonious coexistence.
And this whole idea of this sectarian strife is a relatively new phenomenon that's only sort of reared its head in the last 10 years or so.
Well, I was joking the other day with Juan Cole about how Ayman al-Zawahiri kind of got half of his wish.
He was right in thinking that if you bait the far enemy into getting bogged down in the Middle East, they'll overplay their hand and blow it and lose their empire.
But he certainly was wrong that he'd be able to rally the people of the Middle East to his cause.
These people don't seem to be religious, fundamentalist, backwards-looking people whatsoever.
Right, no, no, no, no, not at all.
And everybody's represented in these protests.
I was just speaking to someone.
This was just maybe one or two hours ago.
It was right in the middle of Bafi Square right now.
And the way he described it was he said, in front of me, I have farmers from the Nile Delta.
And behind me, I have a group of Coptic Christians who are together.
And then to my left, I have a group of guys who are from the Muslim Brotherhood.
And then behind them, there's a group of so young socialists camped out making coffee and tea.
So it's extremely diverse.
And again, you'll see, as I mentioned in the article, that there's been a lot of attempts to paint it as a possible Iran, Iranian-style Islamic Revolution, to paint it with these very, you know, painted in very ominous tones, when, in fact, that's not the case at all.
Now, tell us about the protests in other places, because I've seen a little bit of coverage saying that there are protests in Giza and in Alexandria and in Sinai.
But I don't really know.
But this really seems to be a nationwide thing.
It's just mostly coverage is about the capital there.
Right, right.
Most of the coverage definitely has been in the capital.
I'm in the capital.
So I've been focusing mainly on events in Cairo.
But absolutely, it was countrywide from the very first day, on 25th January.
Or maybe, actually, maybe the other provinces might have joined the following day.
I can't be sure.
But from the first or second day, you had unprecedented protests taking place throughout the governorates or the provinces of Egypt, from the Nile Delta in the north to Upper Egypt in the south.
So it hasn't at all been confined to the capital.
In fact, I heard in the early days, we heard reports that the clashes were the most intense in the city of Suez, which is the northern part of where the Suez Canal lets out into the Mediterranean.
You have the city of Suez.
I'm sorry.
Actually, it's in the Red Sea.
It's where the Red Sea turns into the canal.
This is Suez.
And apparently, the clashes and the skirmishes were the hardest fought there during the first couple days of the uprising.
And I think the heaviest death toll might have been seen there when the first big numbers of people that were getting killed, I think, many were coming out of Suez.
And to the point where people were actually calling Suez, they were describing the city of Suez as the Abu Dhabi of Egypt, Egypt Abu Dhabi, which apparently Abu Dhabi is the city in Tunisia where the Tunisian uprising kicked off there in early January.
All right, we're talking with Adam Moro, IPS news reporter live from Egypt.
And I'm wondering if you're hearing anything about the border of Egypt and the Gaza Strip and whether anything is going on there.
Yeah, very, very interesting question because so much of this has to do with Egypt's proximity to Israel.
I mean, this is a big factor in what's going on here and the future of the peace agreement between the two countries and what exactly is going to happen at the border because the current policy, Egypt's current policy, which is to keep the border very tightly closed, its border with the Gaza Strip, that is, is very unpopular on the streets here.
People don't sympathize with that position at all.
People see it as the criminal locking up of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip without any way of getting food in or out to them.
So the future of Egyptian policy vis-a-vis the border will be a big factor in whatever comes next.
There have been some strange things that have happened in and around the border recently in the last couple of days.
And also, bear in mind, things have been so hectic because we've had communications outages.
The Internet was gone for three days.
Mobile phone communications were out for several days.
So there's been a lot of rumor.
There's been a lot of unfounded reports that later turned out to not to be true.
And that's not just because of general chaos and the lack of communication, but that's because the government was actually putting out a lot of misinformation, especially in the first three or four days.
As it really started to lose control, it started to put out a lot of misinformation just in order to scare the public with the hope that, you know, with the idea that the public would, when faced with the security vacuum and this possibility that escaped prisoners would come and loot their homes and kill their family.
And it was basically an attempt to turn public opinion against the uprising.
So there's been a lot of misinformation.
There's been a lot of rumors that later turned out to be untrue.
All right, well, I'm sorry that we're all out of time, but I just want to end this by saying there is nothing more beautiful than the live feed right now at english.aljazeera.net.
Hundreds of thousands of people celebrating in Liberation Square, liberating themselves.
And I really appreciate your time on the show.
I hope we can do it again in the days to come.
Yeah, looking forward to it.
Anytime.
That, again, is Adam Morrow from Cairo, Egypt, reporter for Interpret Service.
That's ipsnews.net.
