How forgetfull Egyptians are, During the 6 day war-- DirectlyIsrael and undirectly UK/USA/France were killing thousands of their folks. LBJ was just about to unleash the atomic bomb--
So America bribes Egypt authories,on the condition they love Israel.If only they knew that America,with Israel was about to turn Egypt into glass'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHkUuYzFvI8&feature=player_embedded
And Jimmy boy,how forgetfull you are---Western world media gets it's orders from Israel.If the riots in Egypt were shown--day after day as Iran---this "used" country will be hanging alot of politicians and Army officials.

since according to the western known concept "He's son of a bitch, but he's OUR son of bitch"

Mubarak, the dictator & oppressor, is called ally and moderate and wise leader as long as he serves certain agenda regardless of human rights, democracy and equality and such shiny terms aka blah blah blah.

Mubarak reached the presidency by rigged elections and thugs to terrify the voters especially women from participation and voting. and in spite of that he's welcomed by the western leaders and if that happened in iran , it would attract a lot of rhetoric and condemnations .. unfortunately we live in hypocrite world. i can no longer trust the western comments against certain countries violation of human rights , certainly it would be because another purpose.

i really appreciate the basic postulates and premises that u r setting forth....attempting at a more impartial and objective media coverage on behalf of the west...good job indeed.
the picture u depicted is true to a very large extent. and indeed...mubarak and his entourage are puppets displyed by the west. whilest the iranian regime is an opponent; the egyptian one is a staunch ally!
there is one last point though which i find compelling. the analogy between iranian and egyptian opposition is not quite accurate.whereas the iranian opp is greater in terms of magnitude, severity and widespread; the egyptian one is still limited and low profile

I agree with Jack Shenker's post all the way. The issue in Egypt is far more complex than most foreigners think...the reason being that, as was stated, most people in Egypt don't know when and where their next pound is coming from, so of course they have absolutely no sense of civic responsibility...if I am not mistaken, Egypt is a lot poorer than Iran in terms of GDP, and even if not, I'm an Egyptian and I've seen firsthand how horrible the state of the economy is....

In addition, please do not forget that Mubarak and his cronies and allies to Washington. AS SOON AS he falls out of favor for any reason, it'll be Iran all over again, trust me....

Lastly, I disagree with the Muslim Brotherhood comment. The reason simply being is, that when people are oppressed, their only outlet is religion. That is not a mistake in and of itself, but when the religion is extremist (please don't forget the Brotherhood's terror campaign in the 90's and the fact that they REALLY don't have any plan for the country - their motto in the last parliamentary elections was "Islam is the solution" - vague, narrow-minded, and no sense whatsoever of the Christians in Egypt) there lies the problem....

Finally, I would like to say that I am hoping more coverage is done on Egyptian dissent in an unbiased way to show the fight for democracy there....and NOT AS A MEANS OF INTERFERING IN THE COUNTRY.....

and am hoping more unbiased coverage of the ElBaradei campaign, for example, is shown....as this will help with international pressure on Egypt....

Jim he just mentioned when in the article, Mahala april 2008. (mahala does it on an annual basis actually)

Correction: The Turkish government isn't trying to convince anyone "that there was no such thing as an Armenian Genocide". They are rejecting the "Genocide" label for the tragic events of Eastern Anatolia in 1915. Lying Armenian Propagandists deny the atrocities committed by Armenian Revolutionaries and present a very one-sided account of a complex chain of events. Then they slander anyone who disagrees with them with the epithet of "Genocide Denier" likening them to Holocaust Deniers who deny the Nazi Gas Chambers. They target Historians who refuse to submit to their demands then they claim that "The genocide is settled history". These Armenian Propagandists are liars attempting to pass themselves off on us as Humanitarians !!

I lived in Egypt for a number of years and the protests were miniscule. I was there for the Mahala protest too, it was probably the largest in many, many years, though it was still on in the few hundreds. (It was also widely covered in western media - just google it).

Guys, I'm not saying there are not injustices and I'm not saying there aren't protests, but contrary to what the article says, all of it is covered in the western media, and the scale of protest and repression cannot be compared to Iran at all (which I have also been to).

Jim, I think you're confusing a very brutal and effective state security clampdown on public displays of dissent (which is genuine) with widespread apathy and disinterest on the part of Egyptians (which is not). Of course not everyone in the country is manning the barricades - most are living either below or very close to the poverty line, and are struggling to feed their families before they can even think about the enormous social and economic risks involved in demonstrating, and of course those that do attempt to take action are normally prevented from doing so by state security (ask anyone in Egypt who has witnessed what happens when a demonstration begins to form on the streets, and they will tell you - riot police move in 'kettling' those that have gathered, selected activists get dragged off by plain-clothes officers, and all other civilians in the area are rapidly dispersed - this took place only yesterday at a Police Day demo outside the Supreme Court in Cairo).

Considering the obstacles in place to freedom of expression, the strength of anti-government feeling in Egypt is all the more remarkable. I'm afraid the claims that only a few hundred took part in the protests of April 6, 2008 (of which Mahalla was just the centrepiece) are simply not borne out by the facts - in Mahalla alone the numbers on the streets swelled to thousands after the workers walked out of their afternoon shift at the textile mill (see report here: http://www.dailystaregypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=12981) and nationwide there were dozens of other protests. You're also forgetting that April 6th was an intended general strike, which meant most people indicated their feelings by staying at home - therefore the fact that the streets in many places were free of people (Cairo is normally one of the most crowded cities on earth but was eerily empty that day) is a indicator of how angry large parts of the population were with the government, not a sign of the protests failing.

Yes there have been international news articles about Mahalla and other aspects of the Egyptian opposition movement, some of them very good, others pretty poor. But it is simply impossible to put them in the same league as the coverage of Iranian anti-regime activity - the numbers I quote above tell the story, and even the briefest glance through the world news pages of any major newspaper on a given week will bear that out. As I argued, I'm not saying there should be a perfect parity of column inches, but I think it's hard to contest the claim that the western media applies different editorial judgements to countries where our governments are supportive of repressive autocrats compared to countries where our governments have ratcheted up the rhetoric against repressive autocrats (this isn't just limited to Egypt - as other have pointed out, during the Iranian election violence there was very little media coverage of uprisings in Georgia or Peru - http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10616.shtml).

Jack,
thanks for the that.
If the Mahalla protests were in the thousands, fair enough - I still wouldn't describe that as something approaching or indicative of a mass popular uprising or an attempt at one, and it should be remembered the strike was particular to the fact that it was a labour strike in what is a massive plant that employs several thousand workers.
I remember attending other protests in Cairo, called by the Muslim Brotherhood, or Kefaya, or student groups, or whoever, and they never garnered more than a few hundred people at most. I know the heavy-handedness you talk about, I had my camera taken at one protests and friends had equipment broken or were beaten.
But Really since Nasser there I don’t believe there has been any serious protest movement or attempt at a popular uprising. I'm not saying the government is popular – it isn’t, for many obvious reasons - but I think many people see the Muslim Brotherhood as a poor alternative with numerous associated risks.

As regards the comparison of coverage with Iran - if there were protests in Egypt on the scale of those that occurred in Iran in June and since then, there would definitely be as much, if not far more coverage. Almost certainly more because most wire services have large bureaux in Cairo, as do many broadsheets, magazines and tv stations, as well as the many western stringers and freelancers who can operate there without visas (at least they weren’t needed when I was there). Coverage of Egypt, in fact, is extensive and critical in the western and English-speaking Arab press, even at the quietest of times. Every other day there are news features on poverty, or corruption, or the lack of political freedoms, or press freedom and laws, or presidential succession, or the Muslim Brotherhood, or Christians…
In fact, in many years of following Egypt in the western media, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a story that was positive about the government, with the exception perhaps of certain officials like Farouk Hosni and the minister of antiquities (whose name escapes me right now).
Iran, on the other hand, has the most stringent requirements for media, especially western. I don’t know if you’ve tried to get a journalistic visa for there – it’s a long, hard process and often unsuccessful.

Moreover, Iran is undergoing what is potentially another revolution, or at least some major process of change with significant consequences throughout the region. It is also at the centre of a major news issue – its nuclear programme. Whether you believe the nuclear programme warrants attention or not, it is still of major interest to people because of the enormous consequences it may or may not have regionally and internationally. The saga in Iran is ongoing and interesting – no matter who you support or even if you support no one – and it sells papers.

When Egypt undergoes something comparable, which it is not at the moment and which I think your article fails to demonstrate – no offence – then there will be equal if not greater coverage.

(Apologies for the lengthy post).

No apology necessary for the length of the post, it's good to get a debate going! I appreciate your point, and I'm sure it's correct to say that the volume of protesters on the streets in Tehran and elsewhere in Iran at the moment is greater than those in Egypt. But I think the argument about this being a reflection of police crackdowns here, and not of a weaker current of public anger, still stands.

Briefly on the other stuff - I'm no fan at all of the Muslim Brotherhood, or any religious-based political movement for that matter, but as I've argued elsewhere, I do believe their strength and relevance has been overstated and that suits the Mubarak agenda (having said that they are still the largest organised opposition movement in the country and so are clearly a major feature of the political landscape)

There certainly are a lot of wire agencies, etc. based here but I think most of the stuff that makes it into the international media in a meaningful way isn't either pro or anti government, rather it's soft news, cultural colour stuff OR, as I claim above, pieces on the 'secular vs Islamic' battlefield, which again vicariously help to reinforce the notion of Egypt being on the cusp of being overrun by fanatic Islamists, and thus strengthen Mubrak's hand.

Finally if Egypt does undergo a revolution there will undoubtedly be a lot of media attention - but such things don't happen overnight, and by cutting off the oxygen of coverage to dissidents now, I think the international press are helping make the likelihood of such an eventuality more remote.

Thanks, Jack

Thank you for your article. Very true. Most Egyptians are very angry about how the country has been driven down through the past 50 years. The problem is that we are scared, you do not know the type of horror that awaits any one who dares to make a his/her voice heard, even those among the upper class and even the few reasonable voices in the ruling party and check what happened recently to Dr. Kamal Abu El Magd and NDP members who disliked the way the gov press dealt with Dr. El Baradi. For years we have been made to fear cooperating with each other thanks to the emergency rules that could have you taken in by the brutal state security with no access to lawyers etc if you happen to be in a group of more than 3 persons. Also, there are state agents almost every where and any attempt to do something gets reported and gets the person behind it taken away or hurt. However, because we are fed up demonstrations have been on the rise, granted it is still mostly groups of ppl demonstrating for their own interests mostly but the fact is more ppl now resort to demonstrating from judges, to workers, to gov workers, to bus drivers, to Egyptians against discrimination even the Christians have just taken to the streets recently and i hope this marks a unified front to demand equality for all Egyptians. Also, please make sure to cover what will happen on Friday when El Baradi arrives. Several Egyptians are hoping to make it to the airport to show him he has supporters but God knows what will happen to them and to him.
If things change to the better in Egypt that would mean things are likely to change to the best in the Middle East, many young Arabs have their eyes set on what will the Egyptians do.
To the lady who spoke about the MBH, we all know their power is over-estimated. Ppl liked them for 2 main reasons they do provide services and have clean hands and they are the only ones facing-off with the regime. Also, there is no reason to deny those among them who believe in a civil Egypt with rights to all the right to express their own ideas just like you have conservatives in Europe. They are not as much of a threat as Mubarak was so clever to try and convince the West by allowing 80 MBH members into the Parliament. The true threat is frustrated majority of young populations in MENA seeing how the same Western governments who preach day and night democracy and human rights, playing friends with the regimes ruling them by force.
One more thing, I doubt this has been reported but the regime has been appointing police and army generals as governors and in other top position, at a higher % than usual and what we all talk about secretly is how this is meant to insure control over the country during the coming 2 years since there is a parliamentary election as well as a presidential election in 2011. Also, the admin court ordered the ministry of interior to allow registration for voting cards through out the year, before that we were only allowed a window of few months to register. Whether the ruling will be enforced is yet to be seen.