Ayman al Zawahiri, al Qaeda's new chief, might lack the charisma and presence of his predecessor, but that hasn't stopped him from communicating prolifically over the years, rallying followers to attack Western interests, condemning France's banning of the hijab, and praising recent protests in the Arab world. Below are some of his major statements over the years.

Forming al Qaeda (Feb. 1998)

In a faxed statement to a pan-Arab newspaper based in London, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri announced the formation of their new group, al Qaeda, intent on waging war against the United States and its allies -- and for the first time called for the killing of American civilians. The founding document for the new group (a coalition of Islamist organizations, including Zawahiri's Islamic Jihad) said: "To kill the Americans and their allies--civilian and military--is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in nay country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Asqua Mosque and the holy mosque [in Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim." 

Telling Iran to shut up with their 9/11 conspiracies (April 2008)

In an audio interview, Zawahiri lashed out at Iran and Hezbollah for propagating the conspiracy theory that Israel -- not al Qaeda -- was really behind the Sept. 11 attacks. He accused Iran and its proxy of trying to discredit al Qaeda by diminishing its signature success. Shiite Iran has long been one of Zawahiri's biggest targets, rhetorically at least. In response to a question about the theory that Israel was really behind the attacks, Zawahiri said, "The purpose of this lie is clear-- [to suggest] that there are no heroes among the Sunnis who can hurt America as no one else did in history. Iranian media snapped up this lie and repeated it ... Iran's aim here is also clear--to cover up its involvement with America in invading the homes of Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq." 

Sparking a debate about female jihadists (April 2008)

In that same interview, Zawahiri set off an emotional debate in jihadi circles with his insistence that al Qaeda does not allow women to fight and that a woman's role is limited to caring for the home and children of male fighters. His comment angered some female al Qaeda sympathizers.

"How many times have I wished I were a man," wrote one woman in a jihadi chat room, according to the Associated Press. " When Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahiri said there are no women in al Qaeda, he saddened and hurt me ... I felt that my heart was about to explode in my chest. I am powerless."  

Zawahiri's comment showed he was a bit out of touch with reality in the Middle East. At the time, women were asserting a stronger role in fighting American and other forces. In Iraq alone, there had been at least 20 female suicide bombers since the start of the American war there.

Zawahiri's first wife was killed by an American airstrike in Kandahar in 2001, which might account for some of his views on the topic.

Congratulations, Mr. President (Nov. 2008)

Newly elected Barack Obama got a special shout out from the al Qaeda No. 2, who called him a "house negro."  "It is true about you and people like you...what Malcom X said about the house negroes," he said in audio message posted online, lumping Obama in with Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. Zawahiri also taunted Obama about increasing the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. "Beware that the [stray] dogs of Afghanistan have savored the taste of your soldiers' flesh, so do send them in thousands."

Voicing support (sort of) for the Arab Spring (April 2011)

Al Qaeda's standing as the vanguard force against the corrupt regimes of the Middle East was undoubtedly diminished by the Arab Spring this year. And Zawahiri's often rambling, unfocused statements on the protests didn't help. In April, he lashed out at both the NATO troops bombing Qaddafi's infrastructure and Qaddafi himself. "I want to say to our Muslim brothers in Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and the rest of the Muslim countries, that if the Americans and the NATO forces enter Libya, then their neighbors in Egypt and Tunisia and Algeria and the rest of the Muslim countries should rise up and fight both the mercenaries of Qaddafi and the rest of the NATO."

According to Juan Zarate, former deputy national security advisor for combating terrorism under President George W. Bush, his statements on the Arab Spring make clear that under Zawahiri's leadership, al Qaeda's goal will still be targeting the "far enemy."

Bin Laden's eulogy (June 2011)

Zawahiri paid tribute to bin Laden in a YouTube video. He praised him as a "hero of the first battle line," and a "man who said no to America." He also warned of a major new attack against the United States.

Some analysts found it curious that he made no reference as to who would take the reins of al Qaeda. Zarate speculated that the delay in his naming was partly due to real questions within the organization about whether he was the right man for the job. As analyst Leah Farrall pointed out, there are several second generation al Qaeda figures who have more charisma and appeal than Zawahiri.  

Hamas and Fatah, the two rival Palestinian factions that reached a unity agreement last month, began negotiating in Cairo this morning over who would lead the new government. According to press reports and sources close to the sides, negotiators reached a consensus on a new leader, to replace current Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who is seen as close to Fatah. But negotiators are keeping the name under wraps until next Tuesday, when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Mashal are expected to officially mark the agreement.

"We have agreed that the talks will be finalized next Tuesday, on June 21, with the participation of Abbas and Khaled Mashal," a Fatah representative said in Cairo earlier today.

The choice could have major near-term repercussions for Palestinian statehood. The U.S. Congress has threatened to cut off aid to the Palestinians if the candidate is seen as too close to Hamas.

Perhaps wary that he might be soon losing American support, Abbas is in Saudi Arabia today, trying to get more money from the kingdom's leaders, according to a Washington-based source.

Finding a choice to fill the leadership role seemed less than certain just this past weekend. On Sunday, Hamas firmly rejected Fatah's nomination of Fayyad, who is credited with helping to build up institutions and commerce in the West Bank (and was a representative favored by the United States). Hamas opposed him because, as prime minister of the Fatah-led government, he is blamed for supporting the arrests of Hamas leaders and activists in the West Bank.

"For us, Fayyad is unacceptable because his name is connected with a black phase in the history of the Palestinian people," a Hamas official, Taher al-Nounou, told the New York Times.

Analysts say they are keeping the name under wraps so that both sides can minimize any campaign against the nominee. The negotiations have included only a very small circle of people close to Abbas and Mashal. And there are some in both camps who will likely disagree with the choice.

One Middle East analyst speculated, "At some level, both sides probably felt it was better not to reach an agreement for a while and keep things going as they are."

The two sides agreed earlier this year to establish a government of unaffiliated ministers, mainly made up of technocrats, and to prepare for elections within a year.

Mark Perry, an independent Mideast analyst, said the candidate would probably have to be someone from the West Bank, since it would be difficult to negotiate with a prime minister who is based in Gaza, since traveling to the capital Ramallah is not possible. But the candidate would likely have some affiliation with Hamas.

"Hamas is actually the stronger party at the table" in these negotiations, Perry said. "They won the election in 2006. It will be hard for Abu Mazen [Abbas] to argue their role should be diminished."

A Bahraini security court sentenced 20-year-old student Ayat al-Qurmezi to one year in prison yesterday. The young woman, infamous for her February recitation of an anti-government poem in Pearl Square, has been found guilty of speaking out against the king and inciting hatred. Her poem has become an international symbol of the Bahraini opposition:

We are the people who will kill humiliation and assassinate misery

We are the people who will destroy the foundation of injustice

Don't you hear their cries, don't you hear their screams

Down with Hamad

Al-Qurmezi has been in captivity since March. She was rumored to have been raped and tortured after an alleged phone call was made from doctors at an army hospital in April. Yesterday, a relative confirmed that her face had been shocked with an electrical cable, she was forced to clean the prison bathroom with her hands, and held in a near-freezing cell for days at a time. Ayat al-Ghermezi has incited a rally cry for free speech in Bahrain, where female students, doctors and professors have become targets of government crackdown on civil rights.

She is not the only poet to face such harsh punishments recently in the Middle East. Waleed Mohammad al Rumaishi had his tongue cut out after reciting poetry in support of embattled Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. In 2009, civil servant and poet Moneer Said Hanna wrote a five-lined satirical poem about former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and is now serving a three year sentence, as well as paying a fine of over $16,000. Syrian poet, Faraj Bayrakdar, now fuels the revolution from Sweden after enduring over 13 years of torture in prison where he would carve pens from wood splinters and make ink from tea leaves in order to write poetry.

Robert Frost said that poetry is what gets lost in translation, but for Ayat al-Qurmezi and her fellow dissident poets, the message is quite clear.

On Sunday, for the first time since January 25, the Arab world's attention was riveted not on scenes of protesters castigating their own governments, but on much more familiar imagery: that of Palestinians resisting Israeli occupation.

For months, Palestinian and Arab activists had planned to mark May 15 -- Youm an-Nakba or "Day of the Catastrophe," which usually takes place the day after Israel's independence celebrations -- with a civilian march on the occupied territories. For Arabs, Nakba Day represents a day of mourning, a time to commemorate the expulsion during the 1948 war of Palestinians from their villages and homes, press for the right of refugees to return, and denounce the Jewish state.

In past years, Nakba Day has generally passed without much fanfare: demonstrations around the world and in Palestinian villages, occasional attempts to march on Israeli-held territory, met with force.

But this is 2011, and things were rather different on Sunday. In Lebanon, a group of hundreds of Palestinian refugees tried to stream across the border and were fired upon by both Israeli and Lebanese troops. Near the Erez crossing in Gaza, IDF soldiers fired on Palestinians seeking to cross into Israel. Near Ramallah in the West Bank, a large crowd battled tear-gas-wielding riot troops with rocks and Molotov cocktails. And in Syria, another large crowd swarmed over the fence along the disputed line that separates the two countries and made it into Majdal Shams, a Druze village in the Golan Heights, before being rounded up by the IDF. (Jordan and Egypt prevented smaller crowds from reaching the border.) Altogether, more than a dozen Palestinians were killed and dozens more wounded by live fire, according to the New York Times.

Al Jazeera Arabic went large with its coverage, deploying a split screen to show the events live, while thousands more followed developments on Twitter using the #nakba tag. So did Syrian state television, happy to change the subject from the domestic demonstrations of the last few months. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah hailed the protesters, addressing them directly: "You are adamant to liberate your land no matter how many sacrifices you make and the fate of this [Jewish] entity is to fade." Hamas declared the onset of a third intifada; its leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniya, declared that changes sweeping the region would "lead to the collapse of the Zionist project in Palestine and victory for the program of the nation." Meanwhile, in Cairo, Egyptian security forces violently dispersed a large crowd demonstrating in front of the Israeli Embassy, arresting a number of well-known revolutionary Twitterati.

Somewhere in Damascus, Bashar al-Assad is smiling for the first time in weeks.

All of this sounds a bit like the old Middle East, doesn't it? Arabs raging impotently at the Jews instead of their own brutal rulers? And yet the narrative that the Arab revolutions were never about Israel has always been wrong, or at least incomplete. For Arabs living under authoritarian regimes, Israel (and America's support for Israel) has long been seen as an important reason for their subjugation. Nowhere is this more true than in Egypt, where Hosni Mubarak bucked popular opinion by selling gas to Israel below market rates and enforced a widely reviled blockade of Gaza. In Tahrir Square, there were plenty of chants denouncing Mubarak as an Israeli and American agent, no matter what Thomas Friedman says.

Yet there is nothing impotent about Sunday's tactics, which put Israel and its American ally in an incredibly tough position. Whatever Assad's cynical motives for allowing and even encouraging the protesters to reach the Golan ("See, Bibi, you need me after all!"), Palestinians now have a powerful tool at their disposal, and there will no doubt be attempts to replicate the feat. As Haaretz columnist Aluf Benn puts it, "The nightmare scenario Israel has feared since its inception became real -- that Palestinian refugees would simply start walking from their camps toward the border and would try to exercise their ‘right of return.'"

Even more awkward for the United States, Netanyahu is due to visit Washington in a few days in what will likely be one long exposition of the words, "I told you so." If he is smart, he will announce a serious plan for peace and get out ahead of the most serious threat to Israel's security since the 1973 war. If he is true to form, he will use the opportunity to double down on his argument for the status quo.

President Obama has planned two speeches for the coming week: one for Thursday, billed as a disquisition on the Arab Spring, and another an address at the AIPAC conference. With George Mitchell's resignation, the peace process is officially dead. The Arab street now understands its power -- people clearly aren't going to sit around quietly waiting until September for the U.N. General Assembly to pass a resolution recognizing a Palestinian state. The BDS movement ("boycott, divestment, sanctions") is gaining steam internationally. There will be more marches, more flotillas, more escalation, more senseless deaths.

What is Obama going to say now?

World opinion seems to be divided on the propriety of America's sometimes-raucous celebration in the wake of Osama bin Laden's death. Hopefully, though, we can all agree that Americans -- by virtue of long-standing national tradition -- should at least be indulged a few attempts to make a quick buck off of the affair.

Book publishers have been especially eager to track down authors who can write knowledgably and efficiently - read: quickly! - on the subject of Al Qaeda. As one publishing executive told the Wall Street Journal, "If it's not going to be great, it's got to be as fast as possible."

A number of authors have been happy to oblige. Former Newsweek Jon Meacham has already begun editing an e-book essay collection called Beyond Bin Laden for Random House. Peter Bergen, author of The Longest War and The Osama bin Laden I Know, has been signed by Crown to write a book tentatively titled The Manhunt, covering Washington's search for the fugitive terrorist. The Free Press has also said that it is hoping to publish a digital work by Bergen.

Following Hollywood's standard playbook, Penguin Press announced Wednesday that it had signed New Yorker correspondent Steve Coll to write, in essence, a sequel to his Pulitzer Prize-winning Ghost Wars, which covered America's vexed relations with radical Islam from the 1980s through September 11. The new book will discuss the last ten years of that relationship.

Finally, there are those publishers who already have a perfect book in the works, but somehow failed to predict months back that a potential assassination in early May would provide the opportunity for marketing synergy. Sales strategies have been scrambled, as relatively unknown authors prepare to bask in the full media spotlight. The Black Banner, a narrative account of the war on terror written by Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent who served on the front lines against Al Qaeda, is certain to be marketed heavily when it's published in September by Norton.

Then there's St. Martin's Press, which had originally scheduled a May 24 release for a book by retired Navy SEALs Howard Wasdin and Stephen Templin on the subject of the military's secretive Team Six. When that unit succeeded in its secret mission to kill bin Laden on May 1, the publishing house immediately pushed to get the book in stores as quickly as possible. The release date has now been moved to May 10. "Sometimes you get lucky with current events," Mark Resnick, executive editor at St. Martin's, told the New York Observer.

At the Al Jazeera Forum this weekend in Doha, where dozens of Arab political figures and activists of all persuasions gathered to discuss the dramatic events sweeping the Middle East, there was a lot of optimism in the air. One Egyptian organizer, YouTube starlet Asma Mahfouz, even expressed her hope that next year's forum would be titled "One Arab Nation With No Borders."

Pressed over lunch about the risks of it all turning sour, one Emirati political scientist told several of us, "Let them dream. These youth have never had the chance to dream before. It is good to have dreams."

But outside of Tunisia and Egypt, Arab dreams are fast becoming Arab nightmares. In Libya, a spontaneous popular uprising is turning into a civil war -- one that the rebels are rapidly losing. In Bahrain, protests that began as a call for civil rights and constitutional reform have devolved into ugly sectarian street battles; and as Saudi forces intervene to protect the ruling Sunni monarchy, the situation risks sparking a proxy struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Yemen is kicking out foreign journalists as tribes cowboy up and activists talk of an impending bloodbath. Iraq's hapless government is clamping down on political freedom. And all of this is taking place against the backdrop of rising oil prices, a hopelessly stalled Middle East peace process, and an epic natural disaster in the world's No. 3 economy.

There are some bright spots: Morocco's King Mohammed VI seems to understand at some level that he needs to embrace change lest he be swept up by it; Jordan has remained surprisingly calm even though its monarch, King Abdullah II, has thus far only pretended to get it; Kuwait already had a relatively vibrant political scene; and quiescent Qatar and the go-go United Arab Emirates don't seem at risk of any unrest whatsoever. But in general, the region's autocrats are responding as they always have to popular anger: with a combination of brute force, comically half-baked reforms, and economic bribes.

What will happen next is anybody's guess, but I find it hard to be optimistic in the short term. Much depends on how the democratic transitions in Tunisia and especially Egypt go, but it will be many months before the dust settles there. In the meantime, the rest of the region is ablaze. And as they did with Iraq, Arab leaders will now eagerly point to Libya and Bahrain as cautionary examples of what happens when citizens take to the streets.

Meanwhile, the region's two traditional problem children -- Lebanon and Palestine -- haven't even joined the fray yet. Burgeoning youth protest movements in both places are calling on their bickering, ineffective leaders to get their acts together in the name of national unity, but the forces of the status quo are far stronger. It's hard to imagine Hezbollah and Lebanon's March 14 movement in Lebanon, or Fatah and Hamas in Palestine, putting aside their differences and coming together for the common good. And Iran and its pal Syria haven't begun to make trouble yet. Now that Saudi Arabia has thrown down the gauntlet in Bahrain, the gloves may come off -- especially if the U.N. special tribunal ever gets around to indicting Hezbollah figures for the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri.

None of this is to say that there is some magic formula that the United States could have employed to avoid this dangerous state of affairs. U.S. influence in the region is fast evaporating, as evidenced by the fact that its ostensible allies -- Israel and Saudi Arabia -- are now flaunting their rejection of Washington's advice: Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly about to debut an absurdly disingenuous peace initiative, and Saudi troops just rolled into Bahrain a day after U.S. Defense Secretary Bob Gates urged King Hamad to compromise and embrace political reform. The Pentagon didn't even get a courtesy call.

But what happens next will have huge repercussions for U.S. national security, and will present President Obama will terrible dilemmas in the region. If Saudi troops kill Shiites in Bahrain using American weapons, what will he say or do? Iran wasn't behind any of these uprisings, but if it starts creating mischief, how should he respond? What if Yemen turns into another Somalia? What if Palestinians rise up against Israel in a third intifada? If Egypt's transition goes badly? Right now, coming up with tough questions is a lot easier than providing answers.

In case there were any remaining question that Seif al-Islam Qaddafi, the scion of Libya's fast-fading leader, is not exactly the brightest star in the galaxy, he dispelled those doubts today by appearing on the Al-Arabiya satellite channel to declare that "everything is normal" in Tripoli even as news outlets reported on growing signs that the Qaddafi family is losing its grip on Libya.

Earlier this week, Seif had invited foreign journalists to the Libyan capital so they could see for themselves just how wonderfully the Qaddafis were handling what he downplayed as the work of foreign-backed, pill-popping Al Qaeda terrorists bent on Libya's destruction.

But correspondents for both Al Arabiya and the New  York Times, two news outlets that took up his invitation, managed to break away for their minders and report that all was not, in fact, under control.

The Times' David Kirkpatrick "discovered blocks of the city in open revolt" and spoke with eyewitnesses who told of "snipers and antiaircraft guns firing at unarmed civilians, and security forces were removing the dead and wounded from streets and hospitals, apparently in an effort to hide the mounting toll." Al Arabiya reported that Qaddafi's security forces appeared to be abandoning Tripoli's streets to the rebels. And the Associated Press relayed word that the Libyan regime "passed out guns to civilian supporters, set up checkpoints Saturday and sent armed patrols roving the terrorized capital."

Recent reports from eastern Libya, where Western news organizations have had correspondents for days now, make it clear that the Qaddafis have lost control of everywhere east of Ajbadiya, some 850 kilometers from Tripoli, while the opposition has held onto Misurata, the country's third-largest city, and is closing in on the capital from the west as well. The Qaddafis still have plenty of firepower in Sirt, their home base, and in Tripoli, but their room for maneuver is shrinking rapidly.

So, what was Seif thinking?

Perhaps he thought that the regime really could control the flow of information, present a cleaned-up Potemkin village inside the capital, and earn some goodwill from foreign news organizations by appearing to be cooperative. But nobody's buying the spin, and newspapers and satellite channels have become extremely sophisticated in how they leverage citizen networks in difficult reporting environments. Libyans inside the country are still, miraculously, risking their lives to take gritty cell-phone videos and upload them to Facebook or other social networking sites, where Libyan exiles pick them up, translate and provide context, and pass them along to a broader audience. Activists and journalists have been using tools like Skype to communicate directly with sources in and around Tripoli, and then spreading the news quickly on Twitter.

So, even if Kirkpatrick were stuck being driven around by government minders who only showed him what they wanted him to see, his colleagues in Benghazi and Cairo would still be able to get the real story from brave Libyan eyewitnesses who want the world to hear their story.

Unfortunately for Seif, Kirkpatrick managed to go a step beyond that and even managed to speak with some anti-Qaddafi folks in person:

[A]t another stop, in the neighborhood of Tajoura, journalists stumbled almost accidentally into a block cordoned off by makeshift barriers where dozens of residents were eager to talk about a week of what they said were peaceful protests crushed by Colonel Qaddafi’s security forces with overwhelming, deadly and random force.

A middle-age business owner, who identified himself only as Turkey, said that the demonstrations there had begun last Sunday, when thousands of protesters inspired by the uprising in the east had marched toward the capital’s central Green Square. He said the police had dispersed the crowd with tear gas and then bullets, killing a man named Issa Hatey. [...]

Asked why he and his neighbors were rising up now, after living under Colonel Qaddafi for 42 years, Mr. Turkey, 46, shrugged. “No one can tell the time,” he said. After forty years of pressure, “you explode.” Two funerals were taking place nearby for those who died on Friday, and he said they expected another big protest on Sunday. 

It seems hard to imagine the regime can hold out much longer, given how quickly the information walls are coming down, but let's not forget that the Qaddafis have said repeatedly and emphatically that they will fight to the death. Their loyalists have every reason to believe that the rebels -- who say they are preparing to march on Tripoli and liberate the city even if it takes "pilots who are ready to crash their planes in a suicidal way" -- will exact furious retribution after 42 years of tyranny. Expect them to go down swinging.

Revolutionaries in Benghazi, Libya's second largest city, have taken over a radio station and are broadcasting their message on the Internet. Benghazi has long been a center of dissent against the rule of Muammar al-Qaddafi, who has ruled Libya with a mercurial iron fist for more than four decades.

While it's hard to know what's going on in Libya given the difficulties in reporting there -- the country has no independent press to speak of, basically zero civil society, and is not at all welcoming to foreign journalists -- Libyan exiles have been working hard to get the word out.

The radio commentary itself is gripping, with breathless amateur announcers calling on the international media to cover what "the criminal Qaddafi" is doing and warning fellow Libyans about "foreign mercenaries."

"This is an Arab revolution not just a Libyan revolution. This is a Muslim revolution," I heard one announcer say.

Perhaps the best source in English is the Libya February 17 blog, which is posting videos and short dispatches sourced to Twitter. What seems clear so far is that the government's response to widespread and growing protests has been brutal, with reports of at least 24 deaths so far and likely many more. This is not going to be the kind of peaceful revolution that I witnessed in Cairo.

The scene in Cairo's Tahrir Square had an aura of finality today, as volunteers dismantled barricades and checkpoints, began packing up their blankets and tents, and prepared to go home. Crowds of Egyptians strolled the square, many of them looking more like tourists as they gawked at the scene of last week's intense battles and took pictures with soldiers and bandaged-up protesters. Others -- some wearing signs saying "Sorry for Disturbance. We Build Egypt" and "Enter Egypt in Peace and Safety" -- brought out brooms, dustpans, and trash bags, sweeping away the piles of garbage and dust that had accumulated over the siege of the past three weeks.

Mohamed Azzam, 33, an unemployed high school graduate, was ebullient about President Hosni Mubarak's departure: "For 7,000 years, we haven't had freedom."

But while Mubarak may have left the scene, the revolution is not quite over.

In its statement this afternoon, the military council that is now governing the country stopped well short of signaling a full transition to democracy. The existing cabinet, for one thing, will stay on for now (one exception is Information Minister Anas el-Fiky, who was reportedly arrested while trying to flee the country). The military did say it would oversee a return to an elected civilian government, but it also urged Egyptians to cooperate with the police -- a despised institution that retains broad, unaccountable powers under Mubarak's emergency law.

Ahmed Naguib, a spokesman for the core group of organizers in Tahrir Square, said glumly that the military's statement was "not a good start." The organizing committee planned to tell people to go home, he said, but would ask the protesters to return to the square every Friday until all of their demands were met. "At least they could have named a new prime minister," he said.

According to the coalition of youth groups who helped staged the "January 25 revolution," as it is now widely being called here, there is still a long way to go. At a press conference at the Journalists' Syndicate in Cairo, representatives of several of them -- including the April 6 Youth Movement, the Justice and Freedom Party, and the Muslim Brotherhood Youth -- laid out their objectives: an end to the emergency law, an interim government of national unity, an anti-corruption drive, accountability for the abuses and violence by police forces and armed thugs over the last few weeks, the immediate release of all political detainees, the dissolution of parliament, complete freedom of the press and association, and committee to write a new constitution.

Mohamed Abbas, 26, said that the youth coalition had begun indirect talks with the military Friday, though he declined to comment on the discussions. Ahmed Maher, the co-founder of the April 6 Youth Movement, said that it was "just the beginning" of the political process and that the protesters had to "keep the pressure" on in order to ensure a transition to an elected civilian government and a new constitution. He said that Ahmed Zewail, an eminent Egyptian-American scientist, was negotiating with the Army on their behalf.

Back in the square, Abdelaziz Abdel Qadr, a 30-year-old Arabic teacher and Muslim Brotherhood supporter, said, "The ball is in the Army's court."

Osama Khalil, a 37-year-old English teacher who had been manning the barricades in Tahrir Square since Jan. 28, said he wasn't leaving until all of the protesters' demands were met. "We don't trust anybody."

In a seeming tactical victory for the thousands of protesters still occupying Cairo's Tahrir Square, top members of Egypt's ruling party resigned Saturday, according to Egyptian state television.

Safwat el-Sherif, the widely reviled chief of the National Democratic Party, is out, to be replaced by Hossam al-Badrawy, a doctor who was previously the party's secretary for business. Gone, too, is Gamal Mubarak, the president's son, as well as the other four members of the Steering Committee that runs the NDP.

Protesters were clearly not satisfied by the announcement.

"It's a good step, a good tactical gain for the protest movement," said Ghad Party secretary-general Wael Nawara, calling instead for the full dissolution of the NDP. "So far they have not responded to any of our demands," he said. "Instead they have been sacrificing scapegoats."

"It's just a game," said Magdy Soliman, 38, a software engineer who supports former International Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei's National Association for Change. "They're all criminals. From the same gang." (A longtime Egyptian democracy advocate who knows Badrawy well said he was "pretty decent" in comparison to other party figures and had tried to reform the NDP from within, albeit to little discernable effect.)

The news came amid reports, sourced to U.S. and Egyptian officials, that Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman "was exploring a transition of power in which President Hosni Mubarak would give up presidential powers but remain a figurehead until elections are held."

According to the New York Times, the Obama administration has formally backed "a gradual transition" that would involve Suleiman supervising fresh elections in September as Mubarak informally cedes power but does not leave outright.

A group of prominent Egyptians calling itself the "Council of the Wise" is trying to mediate a similar solution between the government and protest leaders, though it's doubtful many of the demonstrators Tahrir Square will accept anything less than Mubarak's outright resignation.

Hassan Nafaa, chairman of the political science department at Cairo University who is in touch with many opposition figures, worried that the loose coalition of groups calling for Mubarak's ouster don't have a coherent game plan. "There is no strategy. Every group has its own perception of the situation, its own dynamics, but I don't think there is any common strategy. They want Mubarak to leave or delegate authority but differ on how to achieve that."

Meanwhile, Mubarak was shown on state television Saturday presiding over a meeting of his economic advisors, and he remains head of the NDP. A number of journalists and activists remain missing, including the bureau chief of Al Jazeera's Arabic channel, presumably swept up by the Egyptian regime's still very active and brutal security apparatus. "There's a new game in town and we don't know the rules," said one Cairo-based analyst whose organization had come under severe pressure in recent days.

At Tahrir Square today, the army took a firmer hand, sending elite reinforcements, manning checkpoints, and pushing protesters to move their makeshift barricades inward. A top Army general appeared and urged the protesters to go home, telling them he respected their right to speak out but said that they were damaging the Egyptian economy.

Outside the area around the square, traffic surged as life began returning to normal. State television appeared to be toning down what Nawara described as a "campaign of terror and xenophobia against foreigners," though the overall depiction of the protesters as wide-eyed radicals bent on destroying Egypt -- with the help of Iran, Israel, and Qatar, no less -- remained in place.

"Given the events of the past 48 hours, the best possible scenario is a slightly more open authoritarian regime. Egypt's democratic moment was thwarted this time," said Joshua Stacher, an assistant professor at Kent State University.

Greetings from the center of the world.

I'm in Cairo, Egypt, where thousands of protesters remain holed up in Tahrir Square in the heart of this city's decaying Beaux-Arts downtown, fighting pitched street battles with pro-regime thugs and defiantly refusing to buckle under, give up, and go home.

I arrived here this afternoon at around 2:30 p.m., after a surprisingly quick ride in from the airport. I found a city that looked largely as it did back in 2005 and 2006, when I lived here as an Arabic student, wannabe journalist, and democracy activist.

There are, of course, some important differences. Commerce has ground to a halt. Army vehicles now dot the major arteries into the city -- I counted at least five armored personnel carriers and five tanks on the way in to downtown -- and the area around Tahrir Square shows the signs of a weeklong siege. There are burned-out wrecks and makeshift barricades at major entrances, which are halfheartedly manned by Army troops. To enter, one must show ID -- presumably one that doesn't say "I'm a police spy" -- and submit to one or more enthusiastic pat-downs by (polite) volunteer guards. But once you're inside, it's generally peaceful, as the raging rock fight near the Egyptian Museum is at the far end of the square, perhaps a quarter-mile away from the main roundabout.

Read on

Today's crackdown in Tahrir Square is horrific, but can anyone truly claim it's surprising? Journalistic parlance seems to have settled on the word "thug" to describe the attackers, but that seems to me to obscure more than it clarifies: I'm skeptical that a group of mercenaries spontaneously assembled early this morning and instructed itself on the finer points of counterinsurrection. Mubarak's Egypt was a security state, after all. In all likelihood, these are the people who held Mubarak's regime together in the dank corridors of the Interior Ministry, and this is the brutal manner in which they worked. Under Mubarak, menacing peaceful Egyptians had become a promising career path.

If it's hard to imagine that the "thugs" are motivated by ideological conviction -- Mubarak had no basis on which to indoctrinate a Basij or Revolutionary Guard -- it's easy to imagine they're acting out of self-interest and fear. The Egyptian military seems to have a place reserved for itself in whatever new order emerges. But who can say the same for the country's security services? When Egypt's emergency laws are eventually rescinded, who will have use for people practiced in torturing their fellow citizens? The people wielding machetes in Tahrir Square probably have a hazy vision of a future Egypt in search of scapegoats. And they know that there won't be a plane waiting to bring them out of the country, like there will be for Mubarak.

As hundreds of thousands of angry protesters mobbed downtown Cairo to denounce his 30-year rule, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak delivered an utterly unapologetic speech Tuesday evening, vowing to safeguard his country's stability and security while announcing that he would not seek a 6th term.

Defending his record and saying he would "die on Egyptian soil," Mubarak indicated that he he had no intention of following the example of former Tunisian president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and fleeing ignominiously into exile.

Almost immediately, the demonstrators in Tahrir Square renewed their calls for his ouster, rejecting his bid to remain in office for another few months. It seems that Mubarak has made yet another mistake, one that may ultimately lead him to share Ben Ali's fate. So what were his biggest blunders?

1. Failing to spread the wealth. Egypt's economy as a whole has grown by a respectable amount, but most Egyptians don't feel they've gotten their fair share. Instead, they see wealthy businessman with ties to the ruling National Democratic Party stealing the country's riches.

2. Allowing corruption to pervade Egyptian life. If there's  one thing Egyptians complain about, it's the grand and petty corruption that makes it nearly impossible for anyone in the country to make an honest living. Getting anything done requires a bribe (the infamous baksheesh) and/or connections (wasta), and high-level embezzlement is rampant.

3. The vision thing. Say what you want about Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat, but Mubarak's two predecessors knew where they wanted to take the country and had a plan for getting there. Nasser wanted to create a pan-Arab union under the banner of socialism and non-alignment, while Sadat sought to regain Egypt's martial pride before making peace with Israel and joining the West. As for Mubarak, what does he offer Egyptians? Crumbling infrastructure, decaying socio-economic conditions, and utter fealty to the United States.

4. Half-hearted reforms. Egyptians have grown rightly cynical at their-government's on-again off-again reform efforts, characterized by unpersuasive propaganda or Orwellian doublespeak. When they hear the word "reform," Egyptians look for the catch, such as the constitutional amendment that more or less bars independent candidates from contesting the presidency.

5. Grooming Gamal. If there's one thing nearly all Egyptians agree on, it's that they don't want to be ruled by Mubarak's British-educated son. Over the last decade, Gamal played an increasingly visible role in setting domestic policy, tying his fortunes to unpopular liberal economic reforms and wealthy businessmen who are seen as corrupt and out of touch with ordinary Egyptians. Some of the most popular chants at demonstrations in recent years were variants of "No to inheritence!"

6. Underestimating the activists. Clearly, the Interior Ministry and the police were not prepared for the surge of protesters that first hit the streets on January 25. Accustomed to small demonstrations organized by Egypt's utterly inept, fractious opposition parties, the security forces clearly expected more of the same. But the organizers behind the current uprising are networked, tech-savvy young people who obviously know how to connect with their audience and get the word out. They're not from the political parties. The police were clearly rocked back on their heels, exhausted, and outmaneuvered last Friday -- and that's when the army had to step in.

7. Cheating too much. In most of the parliamentary contests during his 30 year reign, Mubarak has allowed a token number of seats to go to opposition parties. But in the 2010 elections, the NDP's rigging got out of control, leaving only a handful of seats for the coopted Wafd Party. The Muslim Brotherhood was shut out, leaving it with no stake in the government and the patronage opportunities that go along with representation in parliament.

8. Sending in the thugs. After the police forces mysteriously dissolved Friday, reports came streaming in of looters attacking people in the streets, breaking into shops and homes, and otherwise intimidating ordinary Egyptians. Many of these thugs were found to be carrying police or state security IDs. If Mubarak's hope was to drive the middle class back into the loving arms of the state, it seems he badly miscalculated -- the protests have only gotten bigger since then.

9. Bringing in his cronies. Despite his Friday speech vowing to enact various unspecified political and constitutional reforms, Mubarak named his spy chief Omar Suleiman his vice president, dumped his cabinet, and named a retired Air Force general as his prime minister. Opposition leaders and analysts rightly interpreted this as a sign of business as usual. 

This is hardly an exhaustive list, and I imagine Mubarak will make a few more major mistakes in the days ahead. What do you all think he got wrong? Please weigh in below.