Grudging Change News Today

Yesterday when i was at a protest where we had police, riot police and protesters square off it was going right by an army post and you had soldiers waving at them giving them the thumbs up definitely supporting them so it would definitely be a show, a test of their discipline. if they would have been ordered to shoot and if they would go through with that. >> okay, ian in tahrir square bringing us up to date with whats being described as the biggest demonstration so far and we have seen a lot o...

Are now playing out on the streets of cairo. >> reporter: the domodedovo have one basic demand. they are demanding the ouster of egyptian president hosni mubarak who has been in power since 1981. >> no hosni mubarak, no hosni mubarak. >> reporter: what weve seen in cairo today is that the streets were flooded with tens of thousands of angry people all demanding a change here in egypt. >> reporter: everyone here wants to speak to us. everyone -- sorry. everyone has an opinion and as you can see, ...

Mubarak into grudging change. more freedom of expression, newspapers allowed to publish articles critical of the government. and economic reforms that brought strong economic growth. but this interview from 1981 may offer a hint at mubaraks cautious approach to change. >> look what happened in niger, in tunisia, they tried to make tough reforms. the people are human being. they didnt accept it. or they couldnt accept it. >> reporter: michael holmes, cnn. >> well, weve seen years of pent-up anger...

Change. >> and then he watched the speech on board air force one while playing back to washington from michigan and later issued a sternly worded statement which in part called for clarification. we therefore urge the egyptian government to move swiftly to explain the changes that have been made and to spell out in clear and unambiguous language the step-by-step process that will lead to democrat a and the representative government that the egyptian people seek. going forward it will be essentia...

The alternative, the government hinted, was chaos and exwlipts painful history of terror attacks meant little was left to the imagination. from luxor in 1997 when 60 people mostly tourists were slaughtered to the resort city in 2005 where 88 people were killed. like a cat, mubarak seems to have had nine lives, he survived multiple assassination attempts, including an attack by islamic extremists on his motorcade during a 1995 visit to ethiopia. still mubarak is now 82 and in recent years his hea...

Democracy. after the fall of saddam hussein in iraq, u.s. forced mubarak into grudging change, more freedom of expression, newspapers allowed to publish articles critical of the government, and economic reforms that brought strong economic growth, but this interview from 1981 may offer a hint at mubaraks cautious approach to change. >> look what happened in israel, i think and nigers, in tunisia. they tried to make tough reforms. the people that are human beings, they didnt accept it or they cou...

1981, he inherited a country torn apart by economic and political differences. islamic idealists and radicals wanted a muslim state. secular moderates wanted a western style democracy. after the fall of saddam hussein in iraq, u.s. pressure forced mubarak into grudging change. more freedom of expression, newspapers allowed to publish articles critical of the government. and economic reforms that brought strong economic growth. but this interview from 1981 may offer a hint at mubaraks cautious ap...