on the flight a night show in the egyptian capital and d.-day the deadline that protesters gave to president mubarak to resign has come and gone with no word from him some of those protesters in fact many of them are very disappointed a fair amount of starting to make their way home they do not want to be outside in the night but having said that there are still hundreds of thousands who remain into his square hundreds of thousands who remain in alexandria the country's second largest city and we look at some of the them as a few people have been displaying particularly in alexandria they're not just calling for mubarak to step down they calling for him to be assassinated calling for him to leave the country the organizers are encouraged they've been void by the numbers that turned out today many people saying that the numbers on the streets exceeded a million more than the one million more number that was called for on tuesday so we do expect that these demonstrators demonstrations will continue making his face known today in toughness which was also the secretary general of the arab league he

was welcomed he was cheered and he actually said that he might consider standing for the gyptian presidency now no doubt he will have to resign from his current post to take up this new post but it certainly is putting a new face in the political arena also appearing in tough to square with the country's defense minister and this naturally was welcomed by the crowd it did make him feel secure that the army and the government would not carry out any kind of crackdown against them it is also indicating that there are some kind of divisions within the government between those who feel that mubarak should step down right now and listen to protesters demands and those who still support him and what he stated that he wants to stay in power at least until september he was not in tough whiskery today with mohamed el baradei he is the figure that has emerged as the leader of an interim government in fact we haven't seen him in this way for some days now and this does point to a knowledge of problem in terms of who is leading this opposition they've been able and to rely on the spontaneity be anger the frustration. that is walk people to the

streets with very real questions asking what are they going to do and what can they do when the president simply does not listen to their demands to step down before sunset friday there are also other legal hurdles that the protesters themselves would have to overcome there are question marks hanging over issues such as how do you nominate presidential candidates and who's actually allowed to run for office and then of course earlier in the day we did see careers death was a moment when everybody came together in midday prayer they're saying that this was not an ideological movement it was not a political movement any actually praised the army and the soldiers marketing involved and managing to maintain calm throughout the day friday while the european union has been meeting in brussels and their twenty seven the e.u. member states issued a statement very much in line with what we're hearing from the american government and that is a call for mubarak to step down as soon as possible for the process to be put in place that would lead to free and fair elections there is one proposal on that on

the table coming from the american administration that the current vice president omar suleiman would head up an interim government and that seemingly seems as if that is something that egypt people would support perhaps not in the long term then did they then in the short term we're also hearing from the un secretary-general ban ki moon and he has called for elections to be held here in egypt as soon as possible and not for him only to be held in september but by and large we've had a lot of criticism on the streets to any kind of international affairs interference the egyptians in solve saying that this is an internal domestic issue and really the world community was from must remain out there's a lot of criticism being leveled at the united states in particular that people here feel is playing a double game as my colleague laura emmott explored from london president obama started a my belief that an orderly transition must be meaningful. it must be peaceful and it must begin now and then fully one after the other one the i. the governments

followed suit. to show these democratic change has to start now. it needs to happen now the growth of freedom and democracy in egypt and it seems the theme was contagious as the call for a new egypt spreads uncontrolled across the western mass media there were no one hundred fifty thousand people in the streets of cairo protesting for democracy this is how democracy happens but what right do u.s. and european leaders have to get involved in what's essentially domestic old rest about dissatisfaction with a ruler who cares what they want in egypt certainly not these demonstrators at the egyptian embassy in london basic or did you feel regime for such a long time. you feel regime when now they are talking about democracy and respect the from the right side of this and so obama's speech. could be seen on the face so much. as not the same going overboard just saying that's the appearance for

a transition where is this peaceful transition there are shades of past conflicts in the world's attitude to the situation in egypt egypt is a sovereign state but what they have always done things western they've used this humanitarian or came and they said oh we can intervene in. we can intervene in byelorussia we can put sanctions for example this week so i put sanctions on this. election as well in some way invalid or there was some irregular as well they're all sufficient irregularities in the british elections without your knowledge opinion putting sanctions on. it's a complete turnaround for the western world which is always supported hosni mubarak is a force for stability in the region the u.s. gave him one and a half billion dollars a year for his armed forces alone and it was western support that catchment. in

power betraying an inherent misunderstanding of the way in society operates according to chatham house doing regimes like mubarak survive. is by making themselves useful. to the west so they have to convince the world that. if they leave it will be muslim brotherhood. in egypt. it's the worst case scenario so the. minute you can see beyond. the fall of all of which suggests that western countries should stand back and let the egyptian people exercise their sovereignty the president of the united states would call us to move immediately and instantly to make changes as if we are the fifty first state of the united states we are not trying to play a role in egypt's future is a dangerous game for western leaders hosni mubarak enjoyed strong support from america and co for many years but now at the first sign of trouble their support is

conspicuous in its absence this sends a message to friends and foes alike in the region when the going gets tough they don't count on us a message that's likely to further destabilize an already deeply unstable part of the woods. or james dan's now an author on middle east policy and security says mubarak's regime had fell by battling legitimate opposition groups well i think the middle east won't be the same after these actions occur i mean certainly whether egypt goes to a sort of being a military regime light rather than the mubarak style or if it opens up into the world's most populous country and its biggest democracy we will see but certainly what's happened so far is unprecedented i think it's an incredible coincidence of two new factors in particular that have aided this not only is it the moribund say to these countries economies it's large youth unemployment it's also the fact you have a. huge amount of transparency coming out through wiki leaks and social networking

and internet tools allowing people to organize and sort of subvert the traditional obstacles that a police state prevents to stop them essentially participating in their own country's affairs the reason there were such things as radical groups in egypt was because more traditional legitimate groups were allowed they were banned which is the reason why the regime ran the country as it did it didn't allow for an effective and open opposition so if the politics of the country significantly change and we see a period of time in which parties are allowed to articulate the concerns of normal egyptians then i think we're far more likely to see a politics that everyone can actually agree on rather than focusing on this fear mongering about islamic extremism where of course it's an issue it's an issue of cross the world just as other forms of religion dream ism are but i don't think it characterizes the only other option to mubarak's rule which is the story that he tried to peddle himself he says and he says he'd love to leave the country but he can't for its own stability yet it is he who is unleashing armed gangs on the

street who are throwing molotov cocktails at people and shooting people so i think he's ultimately trying to answer his own question which is not fair for the people of egypt. a lot of speculation in the unrest in egypt is being fueled by students groups operating in the region vigilantly mall the book humanitarian imperialism supporting dictatorial regimes is also a form of extremism. i think what we're seeing now is the total collapse of american and western policy in that region and israeli policy in that region which was always to support dictatorship that were supposedly friendly to the west and friendly to israel but of course as you have seen russia seen in eastern europe if your friendly government that unpopular then in the end it turns against you because the people are against you in the government and they're being overthrown and that's what's happening now so you know you can call them extremists if you wander there's nothing you can do about it with real disease these so-called

extremist by supporting our own extremism because why isn't it extremist to support a government which is vastly unpopular as mubarak has been for many years and why isn't it extremist to support israel as we have been doing for so many years which is not accepted in the region and doesn't care to try to be accepted in the region . to some of the news that now and still to come in the program a moment in history russia and us are finally set to shake the symbolic city back three minutes made i couldn't it costs to then there are some. u.s. lawmakers are pushing for a renewal of the patriot act which allows security agencies to go through private telephone and e-mail records the majority of congressmen insist that all defends the public from the threat of terror but as you can reports many people view it as a violation of civil liberties. major provisions of the patriot act about to expire

are due to be extended by lawmakers brought in by the bush administration as an emergency anti terror measure the act gives sweeping powers to the authorities to spy on people but the u.s. senate judiciary committee is in a real hurry to rubberstamp rather than discuss and debate the far reaching measures they expire in three weeks and i think there is not time really to go through. a major change in those there was no time either for real debate back in two thousand and one when the patriot act was adopted weeks after the nine eleven attacks according to congressman dennis close senate lawmakers hadn't even read what they were passing what happened once the patriot act was passed the fourth amendment rights to. reasonable certain to be protected from unreasonable search and seizure just thrown out the congressman was one of the very few who openly oppose the act we have

a challenge to the essence of our democracy with the very existence of the patriot act and of course its name the patriot act who would want to oppose the patriot act because it makes it sound as though you're a patriot if you're for it but actually. idea of tying patriotism to destruction of cherished constitutional privileges new shelf to be challenged although lawmakers insisted that the patriot act would be used just for anti-terrorism federal authorities have used its powers far more broadly the senate's intelligence watchdog found that without any judicial checks government employees journalists anti-war activists and others had been spied on over the last six months more than twenty anti-war activists around the country have been subpoenaed after the f.b.i. raided homes in chicago and minneapolis reportedly using patriot act powers to

round up american citizens there's ample reason to believe that when you create massive databases of politically potentially very useful information about both innocent and guilty people eventually someone with access to that information will misuse it and we see all the time how people who become politically engaged politically threatening are subject to disclosures of sensitive information about them the patriot act allows security services to lawfully spawn by wiretapping large groups of phone numbers and monitoring e-mail addresses in ball instead of needing a warrant each time the national security agency has even intercepted bill clinton's private e-mails later said to be an inadvertent mistake among millions of other pieces of correspondence snooped on a privacy watchdog suggest that since two thousand and one the f.b.i. has intelligence investigations have compromised the civil liberties of american citizens far more frequently and to a greater extent than was previously assumed supporters of the act say it's needed

because of the terrorist threats that we've had thirty six stored in terrorist attacks since nine eleven well do you know for a fact that it was thanks to the patriot act that the attacks were prevented it's difficult to say that for sure because when you look at.