Ongoing Events

CNN

It's always amazing to see a population suddenly take to the streets. And noteworthy to once more see the contrast between the U.S. and cultures with a sense of the public square.

Whether Egypt will be able to move in a liberalizing direction is unknown.

Plenty of reporting suggests the importance of the generational factor, and of protest being sparked by an educated class without adequate work.

Bag News has been running work by photojournalists in Cairo, including this post, about local ingenuity in maintaining the protest.

One photo is described:

Here we see an outdoor medical clinic. Before the uprising, there was one clinic in a mosque near the square. One week later, there are now five. I first visited there last Saturday night. At that time, they were taking donations for medicine and food. When I went back yesterday, the original clinic had turned into a warehouse for donated medicine running a distribution system to the five satellite clinics.

In the mosque clinic, things run like a well-oiled machine. There is one guy on a podium, calling out orders for shipments, directing traffic, dispatching ambulances. There is one section just for treating eyes. The main type of wounds now are rock injuries. The first few days, however, it was wounds from rubber bullets fired by the police.

This outdoor version is smaller than the mosque clinic but it works the same way. The mats are set up and doctors wait for the next injured person to come in. If the injury is serious, the patient is transported to the mosque or taken away by ambulance.

The U.S. background to events is familiar, with tanks and other hardware courtesy of years of "aid", and the Chamber of Commerce's role in pro-Mubarak stealth political lobbying.

There's the familiar story of dictator taking an "après moi" line.

And the anti-protest forces tell a story that usually ends one way, as it's generally not hard to keep a larger majority suppressed by putting just enough thugs on the payroll.

Even U.S. media are paying attention: not only are events dramatic, but there are those brutal attacks on and arrests of fellow journalists.