{"id":187874,"date":"2011-02-10T19:05:00","date_gmt":"2011-02-11T00:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/02\/10\/the-football-is-pulled-away-again\/"},"modified":"2011-02-10T19:05:00","modified_gmt":"2011-02-11T00:05:00","slug":"the-football-is-pulled-away-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/02\/10\/the-football-is-pulled-away-again\/","title":{"rendered":"The Football is Pulled Away Again\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"border: 1px solid black; float: right; margin: 0px 10px; padding: 5px; text-align: center; width: 400px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/img36.imageshack.us\/img36\/4838\/lucyfootball8950832.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" bordercolor=\"white\" src=\"http:\/\/img36.imageshack.us\/img36\/4838\/lucyfootball8950832.jpg\" width=\"390\" \/><\/a> <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Who knew that Lucy Van Pelt was an 82 Year Old Egyptian President?<\/span><\/div>\n<p>In a move that stunned observers, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/02\/11\/world\/middleeast\/11egypt.html\">Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak refused to step down, and instead delegated his powers to his VP<\/a>, Omar Suleiman, who is also doing duty of the state intelligence services, which, unsurprisingly, does not bode well for the prospects of democratic reform.<\/p>\n<p>Note here that he did not &#8220;transfer&#8221; his authority, he &#8220;delegated&#8221; it, which means that he can take the powers back whenever he wants:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: blue;\"><p>President Hosni Mubarak told the Egyptian people on Thursday that he would delegate authority to Vice President Omar Suleiman but that he would not resign, enraging hundreds of thousands gathered to hail his departure and setting in motion a volatile new stage in the three-week uprising.<\/p>\n<p>The declaration by Mr. Mubarak that he would remain president appeared to signal a dangerous escalation in one of the largest popular revolts in Egypt\u2019s history, and some protesters warned that weeks of peaceful rallies might give way to violence as early as Friday.<\/p>\n<p>The 17-minute speech itself underlined a seemingly unbridgeable gap between ruler and ruled in Egypt: Mr. Mubarak, in paternalistic tones, talked in great detail about changes he planned to make to Egypt\u2019s autocratic Constitution, while crowds in Tahrir Square, with bewilderment and anger, demanded that he step down.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Mubarak seemed oblivious. \u201cIt\u2019s not about me,\u201d he said in his address. When he was done, crowds in Cairo waved the bottoms of their shoes in the air, a gesture intended to convey disgust, and shouted, \u201cLeave! Leave!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is not going to end well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Who knew that Lucy Van Pelt was an 82 Year Old Egyptian President? In a move that stunned observers, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak refused to step down, and instead delegated his powers to his VP, Omar Suleiman, who is also doing duty of the state intelligence services, which, unsurprisingly, does not bode well for the &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[971,964,1009,986],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-rights","category-foreign-relations","category-government","category-middle-east"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187874"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187874\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}