Syria, Egypt (and Beyond) LiveBlog: Just Another Protest Friday?

Protest in Stadium Street in Homs, Syria last night (see 0545 GMT)

Also see today's video post - Latest Syria Videos: Deir Ezzor to Damascus & Beyond

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1618 GMT: In the northern town of Jabal al-Zaweh, Idleb Province, the city was once the scene of 100,000 protesters, or more, every Friday. Today there are only 2,000 protesters in the streets. An Al Jazeera contact in the city explains:

“Since the military started their operations in the area and set up check points and started arresting people their presence has discouraged people from participating,” he said. “We are almost under siege and people find it difficult to get enough food on a daily basis.”

However, protests in the rest of Syria have been large and widespread. 10,000 people have taken to the streets of Binnesh, near Idleb, the Guardian is calling the day one of the biggest since the beginning of Arab Spring, Syrian activists are claiming that more than 1 million protesters took to the streets today, and we have already posted more than a dozen videos from Syria.

1553 GMT: Ahram News has posted their own liveblog from Tahrir Square. The protests across Egypt are once again on the rise, as frustration is growing at the Prime Minister and the Supreme Council for the Armed Forces. While protests have been limited in the months after the ouster of Mubarak, in recent weeks they have been larger in scale and more widespread.

The Guardian's Jack Shenker has this assessment:

In Egypt thousands of demonstrators descended on public squares around the country to offer a 'Friday of Final Warning' to the ruling military junta, amid fears that the revolution which toppled Hosni Mubarak is now being betrayed by conservative forces.

Rallies and hunger strikes were reported from Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast all the way down to Luxor in the south and Suez in the east, with the main focus once again on Cairo's Tahrir Square where a large sit-in is now over a week old and shows no sign of ending.

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Egypt (and Beyond) LiveBlog: Marching Again in Cairo

1645 GMT: Thanks to James Miller for taking the LiveBlog through the afternoon.

Video testifies to a series of protests across Yemen today, calling for a transitional government. Claimed footage of a march in Taiz attacked by security forces:

A march of women and children in Taiz:

A demonstration in Hodeidah:

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Syria (and Beyond) LiveBlog: Assad "Is Not Indispensable"

1526 GMT: Four American journalists in Egypt were arrested yesterday in Suez while filming anti-government protests. According to the report, they were arrested by civilians and then turned over to the military. Jason Mojica, a former Al Jazeera reporter, two of Mojica's crew, and Egyptian-American energy consultant Sherif Helwa were detained.

1518 GMT: As crowds grow near the cabinet building, Tahrir Square, Cairo, the Guardian's Jack Shenker assesses the reaction to the SCAF speech:

"That sort of language, coupled with the fact that companies in downtown Cairo appear to have sent their employees home early (we don't yet know if this was on official orders or not), has led some to believe that the state is preparing an attack on the ongoing Tahrir sit-in - many activists are using social media sites to call on Egyptians to come down and defend the square. But at this stage predictions of trouble are rumour and conjecture.

"Elsewhere shouting matches have broken out on live television between protest representatives and army officials; whatever happens over the next few hours, it's clear that there are two competing visions of Egypt's revolution being put forward, by the revolutionaries on the one hand and the armed forces on the other - both increasingly view the other as illegitimate, and neither are showing any sign of backing down."

1511 GMT: Meanwhile, the Revolution Youth Coalition has held its own press conference, calling for the resignation on Prime Minister Essam Sharaf. They have accused Sharaf of being counter-revolutionary, and have condemned today's statements by The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). According to Ahram News,

"The coalition listed four demands in its statement: a full delineation of the powers and prerogatives of the SCAF and those of the cabinet; administrative participation in the current transitional period; the adoption of economic policies favouring Egypt’s 40 million living under the poverty line; and a complete purging of remnants of the Mubarak regime from all state bodies."

The crowds in Tahrir Square are still growing, according to multiple sources.

1502 GMT: In contrast to the earlier conciliatory comments made by SCAF, Maj. Gen. Mohsen el-Fangary has said in a televised message that the government will take “all necessary measures” to halt challenges to the authority and legitimacy of the government. Furthermore, though the SCAF spokesman pledged support to the revolution, he also warned that the military would stop “anyone who would disrupt public order and services.”

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Syria, Yemen (and Beyond) LiveBlog: Postures of "National Dialogue"

1155 GMT: Thanks to James Miller for stepping in for a bit.

A couple of quotes, from those opposition figures who did attend, to flesh out the sketch of Syria's "national dialogue" talks that we offered in our first entry (see 0310 GMT)....

Mohammad Habash, an independent MP, said, "The way out is by putting an end to the security stateand to work for a civil and democratic country where there is political pluralism and media freedom and to end the one-party rule. Confronting protests with bullets is not acceptable at all."

And dissident writer Tayyeb Tizini asserted, "The bullets are still being fired in Homs and Hama. I would have hoped that that would have stopped before the meeting. That's what's necessary."

1130 GMT: Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh has met with US envoy John Brennan in Saudi Arabia. Yemeni State Television has released this video, where Saleh can be seen with his hands still bandaged. According to the State Department, Brennan pushed Saleh to sign the GCC transition plan.

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Syria Snapshot: The Checkpoints of Defiance in Hama (The Economist)

Hama Anti-Regime Protest, 1 July 2011The city of Hama is both defiant and fearful. Boys with wooden sticks man makeshift checkpoints. Burned-out government cars, rubbish bins, gates, piles of bricks to street-lamps unscrewed at the base and carefully laid across the road have been used to create blockades to prevent the security forces from re-entering the city. Even satellite dishes, with the name of Al-Dounia, a pro-regime channel, scribbled over with Al-Jazeera, have been used. The streets are eerily quiet; shop shutters are locked and the roads are almost empty of cars. No sign of the Assad regime remains. Pictures of the president, Bashar Assad, have been torn down and a plinth where a statue of his father, Hafez, once towers stands empty. Outside the city, the government's forces wait.

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Syria Document: US Ambassador's Facebook Response to Regime "This is a Crisis About Dignity, Human Rights, and the Rule of Law"

The people in Hama have been demonstrating peacefully for weeks. Yes, there is a general strike, but what caused it? The government security measures that killed protesters in Hama. In addition, the government began arresting people at night and without any kind of judicial warrant. Assad had promised in his last speech that there would be no more arrests without judicial process. Families in Hama told me of repeated cases where this was not the reality. And I saw no signs of armed gangs anywhere – not at any of the civilian street barricades we passed.

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Syria (and Beyond) LiveBlog: A Blogger is Detained

2015 GMT: Claimed footage of protest tonight in Homs in Syria:

1915 GMT: In Morocco, thousands of people have marched in Casablanca and the capital Rabat, demanding political change and greater social justice.

In Casablanca, more than 8000 people, chanted slogans such as "Less corruption and a fair distribution of wealth", "Sovereignty to the people", and "We want more equality".

The protest in the Oulfa quarter of Casablanca:

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Syria, Egypt (and Beyond) LiveBlog: Protest Friday

Protesters gather in Tahrir Square for "Persistence Friday."

See our separate video entries: Latest Syria Videos: The "No Dialogue" Protests - Set 1 and Set 2

2056 GMT: As we close the day, a brief reflection. Our predictions this morning were pretty accurate. We saw massive demonstrations in Yemen, both for and against President Saleh. We saw a large pro-Gaddafi celebration in Libya because Gaddafi had ordered a single Friday Prayer celebration. We saw massive demonstrations in Suez and Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt.

Perhaps the most important development, however, was in Syria. In Damascus, we saw large protests in the center of the city, and security fired on the crowds, a sure sign that even the capital is starting to turn against the regime, slowly but steadily. In Hama, US Ambassador Robert Ford was described by the Syrian Interior Minister as meeting "with saboteurs in Hama ... who erected checkpoints, cut traffic and prevented citizens from going to work." However, he got a hero's welcome, and nearly 500,000 people peacefully took to the streets with few incidents of security cracking down on the city.

Protests continue tonight in Egypt, and US-Syria relations may have changed permanently. Check in tomorrow (0600 GMT) to find out what happens next.

2051 GMT: Near Tahrir Square, Cairo, 5:30 PM:

Near Tahrir Square, Cairo, 6:00 PM, and the protesters are still there now.

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Latest Syria Videos: The "No Dialogue" Protests --- Set 2

Hama

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Latest Syria Videos: The "No Dialogue" Protests

Today's protests across Syria, many of them rejecting the regime's invitation to a "national dialogue:

Lattakia on coast

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