Crackdown in Cairo

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"With the tacit consent of the Bush administration, authoritarian Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is continuing his campaign against the democratic movement that sprouted in his country last year," writes the Washington Post. His government has made it illegal to ""affront the president of the republic" — or insult parliament, public agencies, the armed forces, the judiciary. Journalists and bloggers have been arrested, jailed and brutally treated. "The crackdown on the press was predictable," the Post says, "because it followed Mr. Mubarak's assault on opposition political parties and on a judges' reform movement — the two other key elements of Cairo's promising Spring of 2005."