Return to Transcripts main page
Parker Spitzer
Mubarak Refuses to Step Down; Father Worries about Daughter in Egypt; Anger on Streets of Cairo
Aired January 28, 2011 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KATHLEEN PARKER, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening. I'm Kathleen Parker.
ELIOT SPITZER, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Eliot Spitzer. Welcome to the program. Tonight, breaking news from Egypt continuing with the coverage you've been watching on CNN all day. What we've been seeing is nothing less than a revolution in real-time.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SPITZER (voice-over): We're looking at pictures from the street that runs right outside CNN's bureau in Cairo. This video was shot just about 90 minutes ago even at 1:30 in the morning, people were still pouring into the streets to protest.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SPITZER: Less than three hours ago, President Hosni Mubarak addressed the Egyptian people. His first appearance since the massive and violent protests began. This was no resignation speech.
President Mubarak announced he would dismiss his cabinet but he plans to tough it out, ride out the crisis. Moments after his speech ended, about two hours ago, thousands of protesters returned to the streets in defiance of a government-imposed curfew.
President Obama in a statement tonight made it clear that he is not taking Mubarak's side. Tonight he said American loyalties lie with the people of Egypt. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: The people of Egypt have rights that are universal. That includes the right to peaceful assembly and association, the right to free speech and the ability to determine their own destiny. These are human rights and the United States will stand up for them everywhere.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SPITZER: This, at the end of a violent day of protests. At least five people dead in Cairo. Six in the northern city of Alexandria and 13 people reported dead in Suez.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SPITZER (voice-over): Take a look at this remarkable scene captured by a Canadian computer science professor visiting Cairo.
What you are seeing is thousands of protesters marching forward as riot police slowly retreat on a bridge leading to the central square. You can see those police trucks in reverse as the protesters march forward, forcing them backwards.
After that confrontation over the course of the day control seemed to shift from the police to the Egyptian army. In many areas, the military was not fighting the demonstrators. Instead, at times, soldiers even appeared to cheer the protesters and the question that remains, will the peaceful mood last until tomorrow and some 30 years of authoritarian years of rule in Egypt coming to an end?
PARKER: CNN's senior international correspondent Ben Wedeman has lived in Cairo for years and knows Egypt as well as any reporter on earth. We've been talking to him since the Egyptian uprising began. And he joins us again now from the CNN bureau in Cairo. Ben, what's the latest in Cairo?
BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, what we have here is about half an hour ago, several tanks from the Egyptian Army drove up here. Basically, the army is taking over the city because the police have simply disappeared.
We're hearing reports from -- from throughout the city that almost all the major police stations have been ransacked. The police as we saw in one of the police stations just behind our bureau, the policemen hid inside their barracks while the crowd outside was trying to crash down the door.
Many of them changed into civilian clothing and ran away. The worry of many Egyptians is in the absence of any police the danger of looting, the danger of absolute chaos. And that explains one of the reason yes people have been so happy to see the army come out.
Because the army is not associated with many of the excesses of the police, like brutality, like arbitrary arrests, like simply rounding up people in certain neighborhoods. So relief that the army is out, but certainly politically the situation is very unclear.
The president says that he's dismissed his cabinet and is going to reform a new government, but that may simply be too little, too late for these protesters.
PARKER: Well, President Mubarak, after he spoke tonight, what was the reaction on the street? What did you see?
WEDEMAN: The reaction was almost instantaneous. There were already many people in the street, but as soon as word spread that the president was not resigning, the celebrations at what looked like a collapse of the regime became sort of defiant demonstrations.
We saw as thousands of protesters marched down the street toward state television. Of course, here's one of those tanks right behind me repositioning on this main road in Cairo, but to get back to that reaction, instantaneous.
People angry that the president, after all this, still is not willing to apologize to the Egyptian people that's one thing they want. And to somehow leave office hasn't happened. But that's what people are hoping for.
SPITZER: Ben, as somebody who has been a student of Egyptian politics for so many years, explain to us, is asking the cabinet to resign a significant step? Is this something that has never happened before? Or is this viewed as merely a small sacrificial lamb that he's offering up for the public and nothing significant?
WEDEMAN: It seems more like window dressing because everybody knows in Egypt that the cabinet functions at the whims of the president. The president has the power in Egypt. The cabinet merely deals with day-to-day mundane matters but does not determine policy. So it's just window dressing. It depends on who he appoints to this new government. By and large, it's just not enough.
SPITZER: Ben, what you are seeing behind you? You seem to keep looking over your shoulder. Also what are you hearing about what is being organized for tomorrow, is word going out to re-create the massive protests that we had today?
WEDEMAN: Well, what I'm looking at is this tank right behind us. We'll try to zoom over, but it may be difficult. As far as protests are concerned, there are lots of people still out the streets and it's passed by word of mouth because at the moment the internet still, to the best of my knowledge, does not work, nor do cell phones.
And that's something that was unprecedented that happened this morning. In fact, my last e-mail I received on my Blackberry at 8:54 a.m., and it's been dead ever since. The phones went off about an hour later.
So really the government tried to use the communications system to handicap the protest movement and we've seen how successful that was.
PARKER: Well, Ben, President Obama, of course, has made a statement and said that the United States will support the people of Egypt. And he said the government, but he did not say Mubarak. Has that word trickled down to the street?
WEDEMAN: Well, people are aware. This has sort of been hinted at over the last few days that the U.S. is slowly, gradually stepping back from the Mubarak administration, which it supported so warmly for many years.
But the reaction seems to be why now does -- do the human rights of the Egyptian people matter when since 1981, it rarely seemed to be an issue in bilateral relations. In fact, there is a certain simmering resentment at the United States.
For instance, one young man came up to me and he showed me the tear gas canisters that have been so liberally used over recent days. And it said made in the USA and they all point that out. And we must -- I mean if you look at modern Middle Eastern history, in terms of potential setbacks for American policy in the Middle East you can only -- the only comparison is the fall of the shah of Iran in 1979 in terms of political significance.
Egyptian people don't have the well of resentment that the Iranians did as a result of U.S. support for the shah, but there is intense awareness that the United States and one president after another were always enthusiastic backers of President Hosni Mubarak.
SPITZER: Ben, thank you so much. We will check back with you later. That tear gas canister could unfortunately be a powerful metaphor for what this revolution turns into. We'll be back with you in a bit.
Now we turn to story of Steven Graves who has not heard from his 18-year-old daughter Courtney since Thursday morning. She's studying in Egypt and he's at home in New Hampshire worried and waiting.
PARKER: Courtney is fluent in Arabic. She loves the culture and the people. Her last blog posting was dated Wednesday and it was titled, quote, "uprising" and included this. Emotions were so high and passion so great it was almost tangible. I've never seen men so angry, yet so happy to be expressing their anger. I walked next to girls in Hijabs -- those are the Islamic headscarves -- screaming for the downfall of Hosni Mubarak.
I walked behind men begging god for freedom. In the middle of the tumult, I spotted two Muslim men praying in the middle of the sidewalk. I soon heard screams from behind me and realized that the police had sent tear gas canisters flying into the air.
SPITZER: Steven Graves joins us now by phone. Steven, thank you for being with us and Steven, your daughter is a brilliant writer. We could just see that here reading those excerpts of her blog posting. We know how worried you must be and we are grateful you are taking a few moments to chat with us.
STEVEN GRAVES, TEEN DAUGHTER IN EGYPT (via telephone): Well, thank you very much. It has been a busy day, but the more information I can get out there about her being missing, the better.
PARKER: Absolutely. Well, tell us about your last contact with your daughter.
GRAVES: My last contact was a brief conversation from her cell phone, and I don't know how she knew, but she was telling me that the communications were going to be shut down very shortly and it might be the last conversation with her for a while. And the phone call itself was cut short so that was disturbing. And since that time, we've had no information at all.
PARKER: What are her circumstances there? Is she living in a dormitory, with a family? Did she have an apartment? GRAVES: She's living with a family that she -- that was her host family last year. Her senior year of high school, when she was there on an exchange program to be fully immersed in the Arabic language.
SPITZER: And have you reached out to the embassy? Have you reached out to the U.S. government in any way to say how can we reach U.S. citizens who are living in Egypt at this point?
GRAVES: Absolutely. I'm a good cage rattler. I've spoken to the State Department, the embassy in Cairo directly and also Charlie Bass is our congressman. I'm working with their constituents contact and they've been wonderful in keeping me up to date on the progress. Supposedly from what they tell me, they are actively looking for Courtney as we speak.
SPITZER: I am sure they are, and we hope they are. We're going to have on the show in just a little bit, somebody who is an expert in how to work your way through even the barriers the Egyptian government has created to internet access.
Maybe what we'll do is get you guys talking later this evening because there may be ways to get a Facebook connection or some other mechanism so you can reach some point where the two of you can chat.
GRAVES: That would be great. When Courtney comes home, she'll be a little sorry to hear that I didn't speak with her crush Anderson Cooper, but you guys are great.
PARKER: We'll pass that along. We hear that a lot.
SPITZER: We'll tell Anderson and we'll be back in touch with you.
PARKER: Let me ask you this -- we're not quite finished because I've got a lot of questions for you, but just to be clear, have you tried to reach her -- the family, her host family and were not able to? Were their phones disconnected as well?
GRAVES: We cannot reach anybody. We have a lot of contacts in Egypt. No land lines, no cell phones. No internet. We've tried everything. You know, aside from a plane ticket.
PARKER: Well, I assume Courtney has lots of friends there. Other American students perhaps and have you been in touch with other parents?
GRAVES: I have been in touch with other parents and actually she has a friend that was supposed to join her in Egypt for a -- they were going on a three-month trip through the middle east together and she and her parents are beside themselves.
Courtney has a lot of friends -- she went to prep school in Massachusetts at Dana Hall and she has a lot of friends there and here in New Hampshire as well. And there are a lot of people worried about her this evening. SPITZER: In the last conversations that you had with her, did she give you a sense that there was violence that was incipient in the streets? What was the dynamic that she was describing in the streets of Cairo?
GRAVES: First and foremost, and she wrote about this in her BBC account, I believe, was she is very politically savvy. But she told me that there was so many men out in the street that were angry, but they were so happy to be able to finally express their anger with the government freely that it was really something beautiful to see.
And she sees a real beauty in the Egyptian people as do I, and I think Obama's address this evening was right on target with the support of the people of Egypt because that's where it belongs.
PARKER: It sounds like Courtney is not only adventurous but resourceful. I'm sure she'll be fine. As you watch these reports on television, though, are you going to be getting any sleep tonight?
GRAVES: Probably not.
PARKER: All right. Well, we'll be thinking about you and look forward to meeting Courtney when she gets back.
GRAVES: Well, thank you very much. And thanks for the call.
PARKER: Sure.
SPITZER: We'll be chatting with you.
GRAVES: OK. Bye-bye.
SPITZER: Thank you.
When we come back, CNN chief international correspondent Nic Robertson joins us. He's done some amazing reporting in Alexandria, which is the city north of Cairo. You'll want to hear what he has to say. Don't go away.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SPITZER: Continuing our breaking news coverage of the crisis in Egypt. Let's go to Alexandria, Egypt's second largest city and our senior international correspondent Nic Robertson.
Nic, you've been on the street talking to people there. How was President Mubarak's speech received?
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Elliott -- not very well, people want him gone. He says he's getting rid of the government. He says he sympathizes, emphasizes, understands the people. They say they've heard that before. It doesn't go far enough.
They want him, his family gone from the country. They want his regime out of power and this doesn't do it. We've been told both from the people we're talking to here after the speech that they won't settle for anything less. And they will keep coming out and demonstrating on the streets in the days ahead.
PARKER: Lost cell phones and Blackberry power for a while. But we're hearing that it's back on and working. Is that right?
ROBERTSON: I think perhaps what we've been hearing through the day is some blanket statements that don't quite reflect some of the nuances of the situation on the ground. I haven't had phone service all day. I haven't been able to send text messages, but I have been able to send e-mails by my Blackberry.
That's because there's a particular service provider in our area that I can use. So I think the situation has been perhaps a little over generalized. But certainly I haven't seen any change here. People are waiting for the internet to come back on. That's still switched off.
My friend here, their cell phone services haven't come back on. So the situation here right now in Alexandria doesn't seem to have changed so far as far as we can see here.
SPITZER: You know, Nic, we just got a report from Ben Wedeman in Cairo that there were tanks rolling into the city. The army was taking over and making itself very much a presence. What are you seeing in Alexandria and what do you predict for tomorrow when daybreak returns. Will there be massive protests once again or will the presence of the military, the police have put this to an end?
ROBERTSON: There are several things that are happening here, Eliot, one President Mubarak has raised the stakes. The army came on the street about five or six hours ago. They came in to chants and support from the people on the streets. People were hugging them. They were shaking their hands. They were clapping their hands in support of the army.
What they will realize in the morning is the army has come on to their streets and they were asking them, are you here against us or for us. And the soldiers said we're here to protect you. I asked somebody, well, are you worried that they are here for President Mubarak and he said, well, we hope not. We hope that they've come here to look -- to come here to protect us and not to support the president this time. So the stakes are going up.
So what will happen tomorrow? People will come out and protest against the army and that's where the conflict could happen. Will the army do what the police did today, which is back down in the face of overwhelming anger? We've just come back from being out on the streets here. There are perhaps maximum, maybe several dozen, perhaps five, six dozen even, soldiers out on the streets. What are they doing?
They are protecting the police stations that have been literally burnt down by protesters today. We're talking about some very big buildings. The army are protecting those police stations that are under the noses of the army. They are standing there watching looters pull whatever remains inside those burnt out buildings.
So the army doesn't seem man enough to stand up to even the few protesters out tonight. They don't seem willing to take them on at the moment as far as we can see. So the protesters when they say they won't rest until Hosni Mubarak is gone, they'll be facing off tomorrow not against the police who they overthrew, all the riot vehicles that the police brought into town that we saw today are all burnt out at the side of the roads.
They were in the streets when the police literally faced off with their -- faced off with the rioters and decided -- there was an incredible dynamic moment when a man walked out in front of the police, raised his hands in the air. There were rocks flying over his head in both directions appealed to the crowd for calm.
They talked to the police. They convinced the police to back off. Then a few more rocks were thrown and the police realized the game was up and they had to pull off. So that was a dynamic that played out with the police. The police are no longer an effective force in Alexandria. It's the army. There were only a few of them.
They don't seem willing to stand up to the demonstrators so far. So it's going to be a big test now because they'll be seen as implementing Hosni Mubarak's new decision to stand firm.
SPITZER: All right, Nic, thank you so much for this fascinating coverage of what is an evolving story. No doubt we'll be chatting with you more tonight and over the coming days.
Now let's bring in two of the most prominent Mideast experts. Irshad Manji of the European Foundation for Justice and James Traub, a friend of the show, being here regularly from the "New York Times" magazine. Thank you both for being here.
All right, first question, simple. What's going to happen tomorrow? Can Mubarak survive what appears to be a crystallizing moment now out in the streets in Cairo?
JAMES TRAUB, CONTRIBUTING WRITER, NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE: Well, as Nic said, the question is the army. Remember what happened in Tunisia. That the security forces, which were loyal to Ben Ali were willing to kill people. And then at a certain point when the army moved in, the army was not willing to kill people and that's when it all came to an end.
Now Egypt has a very large army, a very professional army and an army which is loyal to the state. Mubarak himself is a former Air Force officer. But so far as I understand, in the history of Egypt, the army has never turned its guns on the Egyptian people. So what happens if those civilians force that moment and the army says they won't shoot? Does that mean the gig is up?
IRSHAD MANJI, SENIOR FELLOW, EUROPEAN FOUNDATION FOR DEMOCRACY: President Mubarak knows how to resort to last ditch attempts to cling to power because he's done that a number of times. I remember being in Cairo in May of 2006 on the first anniversary of what was then the biggest demonstration the previous year, a demonstration that has as a slogan enough.
And what I saw in the streets of Cairo was, you know, bottom line, disgusting. I saw large green paddy wagons that housed young men, uneducated, illiterate from the villages being paid to go out and attack demonstrators.
This is a president who knows no bounds and I fully expect that he will resort to those last-ditch attempts if he needs to which he may very well.
PARKER: What do you make of president Obama's statement? He said he talked to Mubarak and made some suggestions for how he might amend his behavior. But the real message was that he was the -- that the United States would support the people. The Egyptians would determine their own fate. What do you feel --
TRAUB: Until this moment, the United States has -- especially this administration -- has spoken of and to Mubarak in a way that was always meant to be reassuring to Mubarak.
So when they talked about reform and democracy, what they meant is we would like you to do the right thing and we think it's in your interest to do the right thing. Mubarak doesn't think so. Mubarak quite rightly recognizes that a general democratic opening would be the end of him.
This is true of all the autocrats in the Middle East. They're right. They're rational calculator. They're so unpopular that any true liberalization would bring their end. This administration, I think, has come to recognize that their bet on Mubarak, which is come what may, he'll be there. It's history. He may still be -- I think he still will, but we don't know. Suddenly what was obvious is not obvious. It's open ended.
MANJI: I've been very interested to see that President Obama has said today that the -- America sides with the people of Egypt when, of course, he certainly didn't say something like that during the green movement in Iran.
And moreover in the very early months of the Obama administration he very quietly, the president did, shut down a program that empowered democracy activists that the previous administration, the Bush administration, had propped up. Democracy activists were livid about this and this was, obviously, a concession to Mubarak. So he's changed something.
SPITZER: That during the Iran dynamic, the word out of Washington was he we don't know if we say anything if it will help or hurt if that indigenous grassroots is big enough to overthrow Ahmadinejad.
Here clearly the calculus is the genie is out of the bottle in Cairo. The numbers of people in the street, the organizational effort seems so big. Nobody thinks Mubarak can survive which then begs the question, who comes after him? Will it be a radical Islamic force? Will it be a moderate force? What is your take on that? MANJI: My take is that the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the Islamist force in Egypt is very well integrated into the system. They have the resources. They have what it takes to be elected the next government. But, of course, whether that will be the last election under them is the real question.
They tell us -- they assure us that won't be the case, but you can't trust these guys. So I'd like to believe that the Egyptian people have learned from history, have learned, for example, from Iranian history that you simply can't trust the rhetoric of democracy. You have to be able to implement democracy.
But I must tell you guys. I think that the situation will get worse in terms of a crackdown on freedoms and human rights under another government before it gets better and it may need to.
TRAUB: Well, but I think there's also an immediate question which is, OK. Let's say Mubarak is forced out as Ben Ali in Tunisia was forced out. What happened then? He was replaced by his own prime minister. The prime minister couldn't retain his footing either. We see this gradual movement towards, we hope, elections and democracy. It may or may not be the case.
In Egypt you have an enormously powerful security intelligence apparatus. Omar Suliman, the head of the intelligence system in many ways insofar as there is a power behind Mubarak that would be him. Very close to the United States. We have very close Intel to Intel relation with Egypt.
And so I can imagine that Mubarak would in the end be forced out by those who are intent on retaining power and think they can do so by getting rid of this hated figure. Again, it's so hard to know how this will play out. You can see any number of scenarios where Mubarak does not remain in power, but it doesn't lead to the kind of reform system that we would all hope for.
MANJI: One quick point if I may. It's very important for everybody to remember that, you know, 60 percent of people in the Arab world in general are under the age of 20. You deny these kids the opportunities for civic and economic participation as is being denied to them today and you contribute to inciting the kind of chaos that is capable of convulsing much of the planet. This is our problem as much as it is theirs.
PARKER: Hold those thoughts. We'll have more with Irshad and James when we come back. Also Twitter and Facebook and how they were part of this revolution taking place before our eyes.
SPITZER: Up next, we'll go on the web to show you exactly how this revolution is spreading in real-time. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SPITZER: We're back with breaking news coverage of events in Cairo, joined again by James Traub and Irshad Manji. The events we have been watching unfold in Egypt have largely been shaped by what those on the street have seen on their computer genes. Facebook, Twitter and other forms of social media have accelerated how the news travels and how the movement has grown.
KATLEEN PARKER, CNN CO-HOST "PARKER SPITZER": Here tonight to show us how this evolved online is Nicholas Thompson, social media expert and senior editor at the "New Yorker" magazine. Nicholas, can you show us how people are reacting to President Mubarak's comments tonight?
NICOLAS THOMPSON, SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERT: They are not reacting that well. I've just gone on Twitter and we've gone to -- a number of hash-tags you can look at. You'll see a constant stream of comments. So we have three minutes ago, "unrest continues to grow." "Obama tells Mubarak to deliver promised reforms."
Throughout the day we've seen "people are standing up against the tanks." "Mubarak is giving a speech. I'll wake up tomorrow in a free country." As you watch these pages and the tweets scroll in you have this immense feeling of excitement.
It's not as on the ground today because the Internet has been shut down so a lot of it is westerners talking about what they are hearing. But it's still pretty amazing to watch this.
PARKER: Aren't people making phone calls or they could --
THOMPSON: People were making landline phone calls and then posting them on Twitter. In some ways the revolution started to the extent it's a revolution, started more on Facebook than Twitter, started in Facebook groups where you already have networks built.
SPITZER: Can you give us a sense of what it said on Facebook pages in Egypt? Can you pull up comments posted by people who there are in Alexandria, in Cairo, people are saying let's get out and protest tomorrow to show us how this radiates out, like a germ. It's not a germ, a good germ, but how it radiates out.
THOMPSON: Sure. I can't do that at the moment because they aren't posting live. A lot of it is in Arabic. One of the interesting things as we follow this revolution, sometimes we overemphasize the role these pages in English have because they are what we can see and read, and there are so many different languages.
SPITZER: Can you do it on Twitter or any of the other technologies?
THOMPSON: The problem is it happens to be that it's -- the Internet has been cut off. So they aren't doing that. I can pull up an archive from a different site that will show you the post from three days ago. They are like get together in 20 minutes.
SPITZER: Pull that up. That would be fascinating.
THOMPSON: Give me a minute or two.
PARKER: Do you sense that there's a difference between the role of social networking in this potential revolution versus what we saw in Iran a couple of years ago?
THOMPSON: Absolutely. And there's a very important dynamic at play. And that is how much power does the social media get to the people and how much does it give to the state. A lot of people when they look at these revolutions say it gives all power to the people. And it seems that way sometimes.
But the government owns the pipes. So the government an counteract that. And we saw in Tunisia the government actually hacked the Facebook passwords of everybody in the country. So if that had gone on longer, they would have been able to do a lot of damage.
In Iran it seemed like Facebook is going to bring the government down, but it didn't. Why is that? It's partly because the government was able to figure out how these networks worked and then was able to slow down the revolution and the protest movements through that. So technology, it's a tool for - it could be a tool for one side or the other.
PARKER: Can you take us back to the beginning and where this movement started online?
THOMPSON: Online it really starts about a year and a half ago with the April 6th, 2008 movement. So there are social protests organized on Facebook in Egypt. Crackdowns, people flee, it sort of stops. But a community starts to build. Then in August, starts to build up again. A guy is beaten. People form a Facebook group.
PARKER: Khalid Sayid, beaten to death in the streets.
THOMPSON: That gets a lot of people together again. Then the revolution in Tunisia. We have this holiday coming up, January 25th, and this is a get together January 25th Facebook page. Everybody get together and we'll protest then. Then it starts to build.
SPITZER: We have an amazing chart. I don't know if we can put it up on the screen that shows the number of new Facebook users in Egypt over the course of the past month. And this is a staggering number, you say give million new Facebook users just in the past month or so. And a huge number of them over the last couple of weeks as this phenomenon of moving towards January 25th emerged.
So clearly, as you point out, the government can tap into this pipeline and even close it down, but somehow this capacity of people to communicate on this technology, 5 million people in a government -- with a government that's repressive, somehow communicating one to the next.
THOMPSON: And you trust communicating over this more than you do meeting with people. It creates a new way for people who aren't closely tied together to start to get tied together.
But what's also interesting here is that because of what we just talked about, you get a dispersed movement. It's not congregated around a Vaclav Havel figure. So, OK, that's good. It's harder to shut it down. But what happens if it takes over the government? SPITZER: Who was the leader of this movement? Is there somebody that can step in to fill a void?
JAMES TRAUB, CONTRIBUTING WRITER, NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE: That's what's so fascinating. We tend to focus on someone like ElBaradei. Where was Muhammad ElBaradei the former head of the IAEA --
SPITZER: Won the Nobel Peace Prize.
TRAUB: -- being thought of as a potential rival to Mubarak. Where was this important gentleman when the violence broke out? Vienna. That's where he lives. And so he suddenly realized the train is pulling out of the station without him. So he raced to catch up.
Or think of the Muslim Brotherhood. They sat out the whole thing and then suddenly yesterday they said we're going to get involved. So what we haven't even fully begun to understand is, what does it mean to have a movement like this which, by its nature as nick said, disperses power and doesn't require institutions? What do you then do when you need an institution?
Tunisia is already moving along that road. They have effectively no political institutions and yet they've overthrown the one existing institution, the state.
PARKER: Have you hash-tagged for some of the other countries where there's -- where people are watching this closely? What's going on in Jordan right now, for example?
THOMPSON: We can pull up hash-tag Jordan and some of the other countries. One point to make is if you have a democratic movement with the leader and he's extremely charismatic and comes to power --
PARKER: Or she.
THOMPSON: Or she, absolutely, they are very good at organizing protests. They may not be very good at govern, the people who lead them out of colonialism. I'll pull up --
PARKER: One point about ElBaradei, a quick story about him. I was coming back from the world economic forum four or five years ago and overheard a conversation he was having with a very high ranking U.S. senator. This senator had taken a shellacking, to use a good phrase for the day, at the world economic forum because this was under the Bush administration.
And ElBaradei said to him, please understand. It's not that we, meaning Arabs are anti-American. It's that the behavior of America is what we are criticizing. And this exhausted U.S. senator said to him, I understand. I get it.
And just -- that moment was such an encounter of understanding between the two that you aren't going to see in front of the cameras because everybody is posturing. Everybody is on script. SPITZER: There's another thing about ElBaradei that comes back to what you said before -- the median age in Egypt, 24. ElBaradei is, how old, mid-60s?
TRAUB: He's 67, 68.
SPITZER: This is a generational shift just as we've seen here in politics as much as anything else.
PARKER: That's why he's not so treated.
SPITZER: And people are saying 30 years with Mubarak. We want somebody of a totally different generation. ElBaradei just doesn't touch the nerve of the street.
IRSHAD MANJI, SENIOR FELLOW, EUROPEAN FOUNDATION FOR DEMCRACY: You pointed out that when Tunisia happened, people in Egypt saw that. The old media element of all of this is Al Jazeera. Now why did people -- why did everybody know about what was happening in Tunisia? Was that because of Facebook? No it was because of TV, this thing that never existed before, Al Jazeera, which is showing everybody, everything that's happening, no matter what kind of screens the government put in front of it. That also strikes me as being a real difference.
TRAUB: Absolutely. What's interesting about Al Jazeera, the first protest that happened in Tunisia, their video, Al Jazeera starts pulling stuff off of that page and starts showing those. So it's social media feeding the old media TV. So the Jordan --
PARKER: Nicholas, we have to do Jordan another time. Thanks for a fascinating conversation.
THOMPSON: Thank you.
SPITZER: Coming up, our live coverage continues here. We'll have more with our Middle East experts. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PARKER: Twelve days, the Egyptians are calling them "days of wrath." They began with a spark literally and now a nation is on the brink of revolution. In the age of Facebook, what used to take years can happen in the blink of an eye. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(MUSIC)
(SHOUTING)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PARKER: International affairs expert Fareed Zakaria hosts "Fareed Zakaria GPS" has been following events in Egypt and he joins us now from Davos, Switzerland. Welcome, Fareed. FAREED ZAKARIA, HOST, "FAREED ZAKARIA GPS": Good to be with you.
SPITZER: Fareed, we have seen of course the speech by President Mubarak in which he said, counter to what the protesters want, I am saying. He said he will replace the government, but he is staying. What do we think that means?
ZAKARIA: My guess is that he consulted with the army. He's a former army officer. The army has been the backbone of his regime, and decided that they could ride this through, that they were going to ride this through, offer up as a sacrificial lamb the government.
The government, to be clear, serves at his pleasure, is appointed by him and is made up of people who are politically unknowns. So many of them are actually quite clean reformers. The prime ministers is an engineer. The trade minister is a former businessmen of high reputation.
So it's an odd thing to do because the people are not angry with his government. The people are angry with him. And I don't think it will work. I think that the anger of the people, the dissatisfaction is all channeled against Hosni Mubarak.
But Mubarak is making a judgment that at the end of the day, the Egyptian state will hold and be able to maintain order.
PARKER: Fareed, earlier today at a White House briefing, Robert Gibbs said the United States was reconsidering its aid to Egypt. Now what does that mean to Mubarak? I would have thought that that might have signaled to him that he's in trouble with us, but he seems not to mind. What do you say?
ZAKARIA: Mubarak has a long memory. For him, the image that haunts him is that of the United States with the Shah of Iran in the late 1970s. He looks at that and he reads that as an example of the United States having a strong ally that stood by them in all kinds of foreign policy crises and then at the first moment of protests in Iran the United States and the Carter administration backed off from supporting the shah of Iran and that helped bring about the downfall of the regime.
So I'm sure he's furious. I'm sure he wanted unequivocal American support. But the United States has to maintain a balance here, which is a difficult one. Mubarak and Egypt under Mubarak has been a good ally of the United States. They've maintained peace with Israel, maintained a peaceful border. They have been very good in terms of maintaining a coalition against Iran. They have fought Hezbollah. They have tried to deal with Hamas in a way that would help the Middle Eastern peace process.
So in many, many ways, Egypt under Mubarak has been very, very helpful to the United States.
SPITZER: I just have a hard time thinking that the Islamic brotherhood will be satisfied with anything it heard today from Mubarak. Why would any of that organic energy in the street now step back? Why will it not just redouble its effort and say this guy will not leave and we have to go forward?
ZAKARIA: I think that's exactly right. That must be the way the opposition is looking at this, the Muslim Brotherhood. But, remember, there are other opposition movements as well, many of them small and fragmented. But I somehow don't think even if they go back home, that the genie can be put back in the bottle.
PARKER: All right, Fareed Zakaria, thanks, as always. Fascinating analysis.
ZAKARIA: Pleasure, guys.
SPITZER: Thank you.
Now we turn back to Cairo. Senior international correspondent Ben Wedeman. He's still watching events there where it's now almost 4:00 in the morning. Ben, what are you hearing about protests tomorrow and what are you seeing happen on the street?
BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: In terms of the street, things are actually getting quite quiet. There are still a few people milling around coming basically to sightsee, to see the army in the streets of Cairo, which is something that Egyptians have not seen in 35 years.
The curfew, which officially goes from 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. doesn't really seem to be being observed by most Egyptians, but this is a city that never sleeps.
In terms of tomorrow, it's hard to say because of the lack of the kind of communications that facilitated these protests in the first place. The Internet is still down and as far as we can tell, cell phone service, blackberry service still not functioning.
But word of mouth is that tomorrow could be another day of demonstrations. But they'll be different demonstrations, because the police have disappeared, just gone completely. We watched as the police station behind our office was under attack from protesters. The police in a panic changed into civilian clothing and just ran down the street. And we're hearing that other police stations have been sacked as well.
SPITZER: All right, Ben, thank you so much. This will be a continuing story. We'll be checking in with you over the days ahead, no doubt.
We're back with Irshad Manji and James Traub. James, all day long we heard people were huddling in the Pentagon in D.C. What is their biggest concern? What are the strategic threats they are fearful of?
TRAUB: There's a series of things. Remember, we refer to Egypt as a moderate Arab ally. So as Fareed Zakaria mentioned earlier, there is its role in regard to Israel. There is the all-important question of the alignment of moderate forces against Iran. They are very hostile toward Iran. They are hostile to Hezbollah. They also control a key shipping point for the world's oil. And that also is a matter of strategic concern. So one reason why the Obama administration has been so restrained in its comments is that the sense of dependence is very, very deep. If they knew that Mubarak was going to be gone, they might speak differently, but they don't. And they have relied on him and they continue to rely on him for a long time to come.
PARKER: Irshad, you said earlier that things were going to get a lot worse in Egypt before they get better. And then you said but they may need to. What did you mean by that?
MANJI: Simply put that history shows that so often the rhetoric of democracy is what people follow as opposed to truly understanding what the people they follow are about. We saw this with Ayatollah Khomeini. He spoke a good game about democracy and look what happened after he came to power. We saw this with Hamas. They spoke a good game about being anti-corruption yet earlier this month a group of cyber-activists came out with a manifesto declaring the need for change.
The point is that democracy language is not enough. I hope that the people of Egypt have come to understand that. But sometimes you actually need to see how bad the alternative is in order to really reform the system.
PARKER: Is there any chance that what's going on right now in Egypt, Tunisia, would help reignite the green revolution in Iran?
MANJI: It's a fascinating question. And here's what I would say about that. It is possible, but keep in mind that most of the Arab world is Sunni whereas Iran is Shia. And in the Shia mythology is the sense that sometimes the moral victory is all you need and the political victory will be saved for the hereafter.
I'm not saying that Iranians succumb to fatalism, not at all. But there is that mythology that props up this notion that, you know, if we rise up, then god will do the rest. And I am not so sure, therefore, that we can make strong parallels between what's going on in places like Egypt and what could be reignited in Iran.
SPITZER: There are other totalitarian, autocratic regimes in the Middle East of course. What is going on in Saudi Arabia? Is there fear within that kingdom that somehow this revolution that began in Tunisia is spreading eastward is going to make it as far as Saudi Arabia?
TRAUB: I think it's a mistake to even think in geographic terms, like it's spreading this way or that. That's part of the a-geographic world of Facebook and the internet and so forth.
And so a more relevant question is look at the other countries that seem similar. Yemen is an obvious example. Algeria is another example. I think there, I mean, it's already clear in Yemen. The president there, President Saleh is desperate. He's also throwing lifeboats overboard the same way these fellows have done. Algeria had terrible riots about the same time Tunisia did. I don't thing gulf countries are on a much more solid foundation. They have oil wealth. They are deeply conservative. There's the strong sort of theological elements of loyalty. So for all of the popular embitterment there maybe, I don't think those are the ones whose foundations are shaky.
PARKER: Is it -- was it a bad idea for Egypt to shut down the communications systems, to shut down Facebook and Twitter and the Internet? Because that is actually a venting system. It allows people to express themselves, kind of get -- they can put a little bit of a damper down on it. At the same time it's igniting passions. It can control them somewhat. What do you think is going to happen with that?
MANJI: This may be the last vestige of power that the state can exert. And that may be the signal that they want to send out. But, you know, in the medium to longer term just don't think it's going to be enough.
This is a regime and these are regimes that are in deep, deep trouble. But as -- in being in deep trouble, I think those of us who live in parts of the west as we do also need to consider how we're going to have to change in order to adjust to what's going on there.
SPITZER: We've only got about 20 seconds left. I'm going to put you both on the spot. Six months from now, is Mubarak in power, yes or no?
MANJI: Yes.
TRAUB: Yes, and in any case if he's not, it's still not going to be moving towards democracy.
SPITZER: All right, we'll take that as a hedge. Thank you Irshad Manji and James Traub for your times and expertise. Thank you all for being with us. Goodnight from New York.
PARKER: Be sure to stay with CNN for our continuing coverage of the crisis in Egypt. "Piers Morgan Tonight" starts right now.
