MUBARAK RESIGNS, Gives Authority to Military

Mubarak Resigns; Egyptian Streets Erupt in Cheers

(snips from an article byTheunis Bates on AOL. I have not given the hyperlink, since its title reflects facts no longer true).

Hosni Mubarak resigned as Egyptian president today and handed control to the military, driven from the top after 30 years of autocratic rule.

Seconds after the nationally televised announcement by Vice President Omar Suleiman, celebrations broke out in Cairo's central Tahrir Square, ground zero of the protest movement, which was packed with some 250,000 protesters. They greeted the news with shouts of "Egypt is free! Egypt is free!"

That transition will be overseen by the High Council of the Armed Forces -- a group of generals headed by Defense Minister Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, 75 -- which is now in charge of the country. In a statement issued hours before Mubarak's resignation, the council promised that it would support free and fair elections, and would also scrap the much-hated emergency laws instituted when Mubarak took power in 1981, and which grant police almost unlimited powers of arrest.

"What are you waiting for?" one protester yelled at soldiers stationed outside Mubarak's main residence, Oruba, in northern Cairo, The Associated Press reported this morning. "Did you sign an oath and pledge your allegiance to the president or the people?" shouted another member of the 1,000-strong crowd.

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DID YOU SIGN AN OATH AND PLEDGE YOUR ALLEGIANCE TO THE PRESIDENT OR THE PEOPLE?

Superb. This is one of the most important questions for all people, all nations, all constitutions of the World, as long as human governments exist.

Do we know????? 'We' as anyone in the World; 'we' specifically as citizens of the United States. We in the USA know that the President is Commander-in-Chief -but we have recently seen POTUS-power ignored, mocked and defied (yea, even in popular electronic media) toward Obama, particularly, and obviously, wantonly subverted and co-opted by Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz toward GWB. I speak in main of military authority, but we continue (by mass media) to realize more and more how our elected and appointed officials have been puppet-mastered by purseholders foreign and domestic. The US military has many times turned against First Amendment demonstrations of (among others) tax protestors, states'-rightists, trade unionists, the poor, including, specifically, impoverished military veterans, and patriotic anti-globalists. Is our military a creature of 'the State' - which often means 'de facto present political and other ruling elites', or are they the armed 'arm' of RES PUBLICA?

All honor and congradulations to the Egyptians for effecting one of the most peaceful and rational (as well s amazingly swift) revolutions the World has thus far known. As Vice President Biden noted, the priority must be that further changes must irrevocably promote true democracy and freedom.