Why Do We so Carelessly Wish Revolution and Chaos On Others? ; the Overthrow of Egypt's Despotic Ruler Was Hailed in the West As a Triumph for Democracy. Nine Months On, Peter Hitchens Reports From a Confusing, Fearful and Still Violent Land and Asks... Christian Protesters Were in Killed by Troops and Thugs How Long Before Military Joins the Islamic Militants? [Eire Region]

Summary

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From Peter Hitchens in Cairo How small Tahrir Square turns out to be. How scruffy and modest it is. Television broadcasts, like the photographs in estate agents' windows, have a way of making places look bigger than they really are. They also make them look simpler.

Just a few months ago, a great revolution took place here, or seemed to. A mighty despot fell. The world gasped. Freedom and democracy, we were told, had come to Egypt.

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Why Do We so Carelessly Wish Revolution and Chaos On Others? ; the Overthrow of Egypt's Despotic Ruler Was Hailed in the West As a Triumph for Democracy. Nine Months On, Peter Hitchens Reports From a Confusing, Fearful and Still Violent Land and Asks... Christian Protesters Were in Killed by Troops and Thugs How Long Before Military Joins the Islamic Militants? [Eire Region]

But what really happened? And how will Turn to Page 74

From Page 73 it affect us, in our safe and stable cities under our cool grey skies? Was it just a melodrama of shouting and posturing? Or has the world actually changed? I sought to find out in this confusing, shocking city, so vast that its population, 17 million, is greater than that of many European countries, so old that parts of it pre-date the Bible.

Cairo is a puzzle, an education and perhaps a warning. In the warm November dusk, some beautifully restored streets of the old city could be in Seville. A few of its grander squares and avenues are like Paris, distinctly European in shape and atmosphere, much closer to Italy than to the great cities of the Islamic world.

But look closer and you find the sad neglect, the crumbling pavements and unpainted facades that are so common in this part of the p...

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