You could have asked them to speak about the Campaigns of Thutmose III, the Book of the Hours, the Coptic Chronicle, the History of Tabari, the Travels of Ibn Battuta or the novels of Naguib Mahfuz; in all cases, they would have remained speechless and unable to formulate a substantially informative answer. You could have asked them about Nuh, the Biblical and Islamic Prophet Noah, getting the response that .....
- He was someone with a felucca!
7. Officers burning the police stations
The alienation was total, and therefore the days left to this regime were numbered. What occurred in Egypt for some years was that the system in place was functioning just out of earlier acquired speed. But the majority of the functionaries, the largest part of the administrative machine, and the lower layers of the police and the military (up to a level of 75% of the officers) reviled deeply and definitely the socioeconomic elite and the upper layers of the apparatus that were of course intertwined with the socioeconomic elite.
This was masterfully highlighted by the fact that in the evening of Friday 28th of January many police officers in Cairo and throughout the country set fire and burnt their own police stations and offices, which were of course deeply hated by the people. This simply shows that they were forced -" due to the hierarchical structure of the state machine -" to execute orders that they greatly reviled as unjust, unfair and unpopular.
The regime was therefore effectively deprived of the ability to properly deal with a social crisis, due to its progressively reduced or finally vanished social basis.
Some may assert that, despite the fast and precipitated departure of many corrupt economic and political paragons of the regime, it is too early to speak about the "'collapse of Mubarak's regime''; however, the overwhelming desire of the quasi-totality of the Egyptian people imposes the president's resignation and immediate replacement by the Vice-President of Omar Suleiman, and the subsequent proclamation of constitutional elections free to all political parties.
Certainly, the urgent priority is social safety and urgent return to normal daily life; the burned cars have already been removed from the streets of Cairo during Sunday, 30th of January. But it will take more than some tanks in the basic arteries of Cairo to reinstitute social order; in this regard, the Vice-President and the new government must demonstrate to the Egyptian people as soon as possible that the people's voice has been clearly and unmistakably heard. The longer this is not shown the worse for Egypt.
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